Saturday, June 29, 2013

Weekend Update: World War Z

I would have a review of World War Z but I fell asleep 15 minutes in.

You may take that as you will.

Meh.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Insert Sexually Charged Warrant Lyric Here

Picture it.  The year 2000.  Four years after Scream made every teen slasher film self referential and ironic.  There was madness in the streets and half-assed horror films were lurking in every corner.  The faces of the entire cast were squeezed and layered on every poster.

Horrifying.

And then came this under-rated gem.


Much like in Hellbent, this one starts out with a couple in a car making out and getting massacred by a mysterious killer in black. .Meanwhile, Jody (Brittany Murphy) and her soon to be ex boyfriend are making out and Kenny thinks it's time to go all the way.  She, of course, does not WANT to go all the way and leaves the poor guy with a serious case of blue balls only to get in trouble with her dad because she's out past curfew.

The next day, when her dad, Brent (Michael Biehn), is investigating the murders, they find "virgin" carved on each of the corpses.

Except this guy.  Not a virgin.  Cute smile, though.


Wait, what?

And, then, when a third victim is found, Brent holds a town hall meeting to inform parents.  This, of course, starts a fight.  Jody and her buddy, Timmy, are eavesdropping on the meeting and Timmy goes off to make a call.  Jody follows him and finds him stuffed into a locker, dead.  Then the killer is after her but her dad saves her.

Poor Timmy.

Jody describes her would-be killer to the police and Brent confides in the principal that the suspect looks like one Lora Lee Sherman.  We're not quite sure of the significance of this, yet, but Jody heard the whole conversation.  
Of course, the word gets out that those with cherries still intact are being targeted, the kids in the town plan a full-scale orgy to rid themselves of their potential victimhood.  This, in turn, drives parents completely bugfuck (when they find out about it), which they do because it reaches the LOCAL NEWS!  How this happened, we'll never know.

SHUT!  UP!

So, Jody and Kenny reconcile and, later on, Jody learns about the gang-rape claim by Lora Lee Sherman... the accusation includes her father.  Because apparently Sheriff Brent had a wild streak.  Because rape culture is alive and well, she wasn't believed and she left town and hadn't been heard from since.  Because this freaks her out, she hunts down Kenny and tries to get down and dirty but Kenny, like a responsible young man who completely forgot that he tried to push HER into sex at the beginning of the movie, refuses, saying that she should do it because she wants to, not because pissed at her parents.  This pisses Jody off and she breaks up with him again.

So, anyway, long story short, Orgy happens, dad gets all perforated but not killed, beloved English teacher in drag is the killer, Jody's dad COULD be English teacher's father, weirdness ensues, police reports get filed, film is possibly left open for a sequel.

Worst lube EVER!

In a world where every stupid teenager that goes to have sex in a cabin in the woods where there's a psychotic lunatic with an axe running about, it's refreshing to see a movie where every stupid teenager that DOESN'T go to have sex in a cabin in the woods still get a knife to the eyeball.  This is one example of the inversion of a trrope that was actually done kinda right.

Except for one thing:  How DOES the killer know that the victims are virgins?  It's kinda improbable that they would be able to hear everything that goes on in a teenager's life?  And how would they know about a guy, anyway?

In any case, this movie, while not one of Brittany Murphy's best, was certainly entertaining.  I mean, it's cheesy but what teenage slasher flick isn't?  It was probably the last GOOD movie Michael Biehn will ever make.

I kinda wish Brittany Murphy could see this, really.  She was a star.  Her untimely death was a sad, sad thing because I really enjoyed watching her improve her craft.  She didn't do a lot in the horror genre but this unsung, b-grade giggler should be getting more attention than it's gotten in the past.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

YAY! Computer Generated Melodrama! From SPAAAAAACE!

You know... when a movie starts out with a dude saying "I served three tours in Iraq" you KNOW it's gonna be classy.

CLASSY, I tells ya.

And that brings us to today's good, old-fashioned monster movie, SPIDERS 3D.

Ugh.  You're gonna make me do this, are ya?


The movie starts with a hunk of the International Space Station.  Because that never bodes well.

Then we catch up with Jason, a dispatcher for the NYC Transit Authority.  They get a "distruption" and send someone in to check it out.  He's the dude that served three tours.  Just FYI.  He gets bit by something which, surprise, surprise, is a spider.  Because they show it crawling out of his pant leg.  Because SOMEONE doesn't understand the concept of "suspense".

They find out, eventually, that the "disruption" was caused by falling Russian space debris.  We knew that.  Then the worker that got bit falls on the third rail and Jason has to go play hero.  He doesn't actually GET to since the Department of Health and the police have already found the body.

Along the way, we get introduced to Russian scientist, Dr. Zarnoff and figure out that Rachel, the department of health rep, is Jason's ex.  Jason, in the meantime, goes to the morgue and the doctor there gives him the spider eggs that were laid in his buddy's guts.  Because the Transit Authority needs to have those.  Because they are all doctors and entomologists.

Guuuuuuh.

Uh, oh.  They look all concerned and shit.

So, yeah.  Jason finds a crap-ton of fleeing rats and brings an exterminator down into the tunnels.  One of their dudes gets gang-raped by spiders and they appear to be resistant to Earth-poisons.  This causes sections of New York to be evacuated.  Jason, because the Transit Authority has this kind of power, gets through a mess of quarantine barriers to get his daughter.  

And then we discover that Zarnoff knows exactly what the hell is going on.  He reports that the "queen egg" needs to get to the nest, the military finds out that Jason and Rachel have the eggs, Jason tries to rescue his daughter who's been kept under house arrest and Jason and Rachel run.  All the while, the Spiders are getting bigger.

No, really.  Bigger.

This is what you get when you cast a soap opera "star" in a movie.  ALL of the acting in this piece is overblown, extra-moody and absolutely awful.  Even the fake newscasters.  Like they're all working from cue cards.  Like they all took acting lessons from William Shatner.  

I mean, holy CRAP is the acting bad!  I'm pretty sure that my eyes are still rolling.  I can't really tell.    They've been rolling for the past hour and a half.  You get used to it after a while.

THEY GAVE IT A FACE!!!

As you guys know, I'm an arachnophobe but, seriously?  I'm more scared by this guy.

Well, hello.

Damn, son.  Why did people spend money on this?  The Lake Placid SyFy sequels were better than this.

You may watch this but only to laugh at it.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Swamp People

In 2006, Adam Green gave us a return to the classic slasher format with Hatchet which was all well and good but today I'm gonna talk about Hatchet III because it's new and shiny. 






This being the third in the series, we should all be aware that Victor Crowley is a giant, deformed Louisiana ghost that has a penchant for tearing tourists into bite-sized chunks.  It should also be known that a certain Final Girl, Marybeth Dunston, is out to kill him and, indeed, it appears that she has at the beginning of the film... you know... since we watch her plunge her entire arm into his face then bisect him with his own chainsaw.

She brings the scalp of Victor Crowley to the police (led valiantly by Zach Galligan of Gremlins fame) whereupon she is promptly, and rightly, arrested because she looks like she slaughtered Texas.


Do you not remember what I said about club soda?

Of course, the sherriff's ex-wife is a Crowley fanatic and is trying to reestablish her journalistic career with this story (since she heard it on her police scanner) and tries to interview Marybeth who, like any traumatized young adult, tells her to go fuck herself.  There's tension, there.

And then the annual Massacre of the Police Department begins on Crowley's island home.  There's a-killin' and a-maimin' and a-hootin' and a-hollerin' and the SWAT team gets sent out.  After that everything goes straight to shit.  Again.

404 fucktards.

I would blame the impending blood-soaked hootenanny on all of the dick-waving but there's at least 2 women on the team and Naughton seems to be utterly cowed by the new guy.  The new guy seems unfazed at the notion of someone's testicles hanging from a tree branch.

Yep.  Balls.

In the meantime, the ex-wife is trying out her hoodoo-hokum method of getting rid of Crowley and she knows where his daddy's ashes are kept.  So now she has the ashes of Crowley's dad and the daughter of the bloodline of the man that killed him and all she needs to do is get Marybeth to hand Crowley the ashes and then he can be killed.

He's right behind me, isn't he?

All in all, unless you're watching these movies all together in one sitting, I'm not sure you're gonna like the Aliens-esque plot line of this one.  "Ooooh, the big bad sherriff's office/military is coming to save the day.  Let's watch them get slaughtered one by one.  Bring munchies."  We all know that the show of force is always futile.

By itself, it's OK.  It's a fun way to spend a couple of hours.  It's certainly kept a lot of humor and, for lack of a better word, charm about it.  It's just not as great a movie as the first two.  The whole series, though, is a giant "I LOVE YOU" to horror fans and I appreciate that.  Not as much as, say, Tucker and Dale or Cabin in the Woods, but it does a decent dissection of slasher flicks in its own way.  AND it does a fantastic dissection of it's characters.  Literally.  Not figuratively.  Except for one and you'll know it when you see it.  SFX failure.

Give it a watch. 


Life...

Big things today.  Post later.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Dammit, Switch to DVD at least!

And so it returns.  Last year, we got a taste of some of the new kids on the block with V/H/S.  This year, we get cold leftovers with V/H/S/2.


Rushed into production so that it could make its way to Sundance 203, V/H/S/2 features a distinctly different group of directors, barring returnees Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, this time around and includes Jason Eisener, Timo Tjahjanto, Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez.

The wrap-around story is similar to the first movie except that instead of criminals breaking into a house to find a tape, private investigators break into a house to find a missing college student.  Because B and E is still not illegal or anything. Larry and Ayesha (who is, oddly, white) manage to get into the kid's house (and if you look carefully, you can see Larry's ass through a hole in his jeans) and find a stack of tapes.  Ayesha starts to go through them to see if she can find anything since the video on the computer suggests that the kid believes the contents of the tapes are real.

They're HEEEEEERE!

What follows is... well... meh.

In the first tape reviewed, we follow a man who has just had his eye replaced with ZOMG-top-secret video hardware.  Like any ZOMG-to-secret video hardware, it lets him see ghosts.  Wait... what?  Yeah, you heard me.  Ghosts.  He gets followed by a goth chick who can hear them thanks to a cochlear implant.  She explains the dealio to him and he gets delightfully paranoid.  He also determines, somehow, that the bathroom is the safest place to be in case of haunting.  This, by the way, is the best of the 4 vignettes.

Yes, that's a straight razor he's holding up to his face.

Our next vignette was shot entirely using a GoPro camera attached to a bike helmet.  And this pisses me off.  Plus, it's standard zombie movie crap.  Zombie plus shakey cam equals Angry Bob.  It's not even well done zombie crap.  Boo.

This is why we don't shoot zombie movies from the POV of the zombie.

I should break to point out that Ayesha is suffering from blackouts and nosebleeds at this point...

The third tape follows a news crew investigating an Indonesian cult and is filmed through documentary cameras or hidden cameras in the shirts of the crew.  The crew is reluctantly invited to the cult compound to give what the leader hopes is a positive view of his flock.  It's strongly implied that he sleeps with all of the female inhabitants (which, seriously, isn't news when it comes to cult activity) but this, ultimately, isn't the big issue.  Let's just say that Jim Jones would have been proud of this guy.  Pregnancy is also heavily involved... and guns.  Lots of guns.  An inordinate amount of guns.

Lamaze will not help.  Trust me.

In case you're wondering?  The only thing that scared me about this one is this guy.

Bitch is creepy.

Now, Larry finds Ayesha dead and another tape with "WATCH" written on it in lipstick which brings us to the last tape.

It's a dog with a GoPro camera, this time, following the kids around, having a grand old time, catching a kid and his friends pranking his older sister.  The pranks escalate and it's all fun and games untilOHSHITALIENS!

And that's about it.

The wraparound concludes.  The movie is done.

Meh.

As much of a ground-breaker as V/H/S was, this is a lackluster and, frankly, dull attempt to recreate the success of the first film.  You guys know me, by now.  I LOVE me an anthology film.  The collaboration between the directors is always fun to watch.  This time around, though?  I fully believe that these bitches got what they deserved for rushing production because two out of the four sucked ass and of the two remaining, the foreign one ran too long and was not entertaining until the last half.  Only the first "tape" was any good and that's stretching it a little.

Sorry, guys, but if you manage to pull a third film out of your asses, give it a little love before you smack it into our eye sockets, OK?  We can wait more than a year if you're gonna give us good product.

I'm not saying it's bad.  Just tamer than I expected.  Your mileage, as always, may vary.

Speaking of varying mileage, you can check out Brent's video review right over here.

Friday, June 21, 2013

The Gang's All Here

Finally, on our tour of LGBT horror, we come to the indie-camp side of things.  We do so because it must be done.  Because the gays do love puttin' on a show and if we're gonna do it, we might as well do it big so the whole world can see it. 





Seriously?

OK, see, it's gonna SOUND like I hate this...

Our trip into Really Bad Stereotype Town starts with a Nancy Sinatra knockoff (that I can't really tell is a drag queen or not but I'm betting on tucking) singing about how we have to "Watch Out for the Straights".  After she's done freakin' me right the fuck out, our first line of dialogue is "Dammit!  Fucking cell phones."

Really, Sean Abley?  You couldn't have called this shit out, Mr. Producer Man?  LOVE YOU!  Mean it. 

So, yeah.  We then get introduced to our cast of stereotypes all on their way to the Blue Party.  The leather sash-queen (whose name is actually Dom...) and his boy/surreptitious drag queen, the sugar daddy and HIS boy, the self-loathing Log Cabin Republicans and their sex-starved ALA (alternative lifestyle assistant... I'm not a fan of the term "fag hag"), the pretty lesbians and the crunchy granola lesbians complete with folk-singing action.  They ALL get greeted, separately, mind you, with the same overdone welcome speech by the owner of the Sahara Salvation Resort, Helen and her freaky Igorina-like daughter, Luella. 

Helen, of course, has a hyper-religious plot to get Luella a husband by way of converting a gay dude.  Because bitch is psycho-nutty.  For realsies. She serves mincemeat muffins.  Mincemeat muffins that contain actual meat.  The source of the meat is unknown but pretty fuckin' obvious.  There's an earring involved.


Oooooooh, girl.  You got She-Mail.


You know, I'm not sure that I'm going to do this movie justice with a description so I'm gonna show you some pretty pictures for a few...


A gay boy that can't swim just won't go into the water.
Water wings?  Seriously?

Oh, wow.  Let the giggling begin.

A little club soda will get that right out.


How did this guy get away?  The dude he was HAVING SEX WITH (not his partner, by the way) just got massacred WHILE HIS DICK WAS IN THERE, a la Friday the 13th.

What the hell did I just watch?

No, really!  This movie has it all!  Sex!  Violence!  Occasional peen!  Gallons of fake blood!  A Fred Phelps analogue!  Overgrown flipper-babies!  Bobaloo from The Great Food Truck Race as a nun!  Rabbit fur, kitten head purse!  From Tuscany!

And it's BAD!  But hilariously so.  The acting is kind of horrendous, no gay people dress like that, and it's a little long-winded and convoluted, as if the editor just kind of switched scenes around and didn't tell anybody.  It's all kinds of "but black people call each other the "N-word" and, god dammit you can't help but to watch it all the way through just to make sure you didn't miss any of the freaky.

And freaky it is.

What the hell is up with 30 minutes of the film being wasted with a girl carrying around an ice bucket?  The bastard child of a hundred Republican National Convention delegates? Did you guys SERIOUSLY refer to a character as "Darren Stevens"?

Freaky.

This is the kind of craziness that people spread like a virus because OMGYOUHAVETOSEETHISBECAUSEIT'SHORRIBLE!  It's the cinematic equivalent of "Does this taste bad to you?"

I'm OK with that. 

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Stress Kills

Now, I wouldn't be a proper, politically correct, pro-feminist blogger if I didn't mention Alexandre Aja's 2003 masterpiece of the slasher genre, Haute Tension (High Tension in the US).  This was one of those movies where people fought like rabid stoats over revealing the ending.  Considering the movie is now 10 years old, and the statute of limitations for spoilers has lapsed, I'm going to warn you now that this article contains spoilers.


Like any decent French film, it starts with a dream.  A young woman in a hospital gown.  Screams for help.  Bloody hands and open wounds.

Marie, our dreamer, is on a road trip with Alex, her bestest friend in the whole, wide world, to visit Alex's parents and study over the weekend.  She gets a tour of the house, they have dinner and they go to bed.  Well, Alex goes to bed.  Marie stays up flicking the bean. 

"I'm totally gonna masturbate in your guest bed."

Ruining the mood, some asshole rings the doorbell and Marie gets up to investigate, as does her father.  Of course, because this movie is French, there's no explanation for the serial killer at the door but, really, do we need one?  Alex's dad, who doesn't really need a shave, gets a straight razor to the face then gets decapitated by way of the staircase and a bookshelf.  This, of course, wakes up Alex's mom who gets to find her dead husband.

As the brouhaha continues, Marie gets up and rearranges the guest room so it looks like no one is staying there and hides under the bed.  Of course, the killer makes the cursory inspection and doesn't find her.  Sensing that the coast is clear, Marie makes her way to Alex's bedroom and finds her chained to the bed.

Kinky...

In the process of finding a phone, Marie has to hide in a closet and witness Alex's mothers death.  Alex's younger brother gets chased into a cornfield (minus children) and gets brutalized.  Marie returns to Alex and promises to get her free but as she's searching for the tools to do so (and a butcher knife to defend herself, Alex is taken into the killer's truck and whisked off for a night of fun and excitement.  Marie, of course, manages to get aboard before the killer locks the door.

When they stop for gas, Marie gives Alex the knife and sneaks into the gas station to get help where she gets to watch the attendant get an axe to the chest.

Does socialized medicine cover this?

Marie, like a smart woman, takes the attendant's car keys and follows the killer's truck down a deserted road where, because she's not really all THAT smart, the killer rams her car off the road into a ditch.  She's hurt but she's really determined to get herself killed by the madman holding her friend so she runs into the forest and arms herself with a fencepost wrapped with barbed wire.  She gets to beat the killer in the face with it a few times before he grabs her by the throat.  She suffocates him with a plastic bag and then goes to rescue Alex who seems HORRIFIED by the prospect.

And then we go over the tapes.  (Spoiler alert!)  Marie is the killer.  She bound and gagged Alex.  She killed Alex's family.  She slammed an axe into the gas station dude's chest.  SHE, is murderously in love with Alex.  
 
Lesbians and power tools... seriously?
 
It's all very Single White Female only without the "If I can't have you, I'll just BE you" angle.  

A lot of people didn't care for this movie but I think it's kind of amazing.  Watch it with the subtitles and you'll get it more than if you watch it with dubbing.

The way they played the killer versus Marie through the first half of the movie is nothing short of brilliant except for a HUGE plot hole.  How the hell is Marie following the killer in the truck with a stolen car if Marie IS the killer?  You know what, though?  I don't fucking care.  Movie magic strikes again.  If it's all a delusion, Marie probably didn't steal the car.  For that matter, I don't care where the killer got a truck to begin with, since Marie didn't drive herself to Alex's place.  All that matters, since this is a delusion and we don't know WHAT the facts are, is that Marie is a cold-ass psycho bitch.

The only thing that bugs me is that they chose to portray a psycho-lesbian again.  I know that the plot could have been played with a straight couple but the idea that the killer was A) a woman and B) a lesbian was calculated to shock the audience.  I get that but it plays into the "evil and mentally unstable" stereotype of gay characters (and gay people in general since I come across a whole slew of people that still think, even after 40 years of the scientific community telling them to cut the shit, that gay people are mentally ill).  It pisses me off a little, but, then again, this movie is kind of determined to do that regardless of WHO the killer was.

If you haven't seen this, see it.  If you HAVE, see it again.  It makes a little more sense the second time around.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

What Am I Doing In This Basket?

Yes, I had to do it.  I'm sure you all remember that I mentioned Hellbent a while back.  Well, now I'm actually going to talk about it.  Like a gossipy drag queen, I must expose the shame.






Our tale starts with one of the most iconic of horror movie images, the young couple making out in the car.  I'm not sure if there were "woods" or not because they're in L.A. but it's nice to imagine things.  And, then, by sheer serendipity, they get attacked by a muscle-y dude in a devil mask who beheads them both with a sickle.


Who, apparently, always walks around with mood lighting.


Oh, and did I mention it was the day before Halloween?  Because that's totally a factor, here.

On Halloween proper, our protagonist, Eddie, a police technician, is handing out flyers detailing the murders for everyone's safety.  He's not actually a policeman but he wears his father's old uniform as a costume.  He gets to flirt with Jake, the motorcycle-ridin' tough guy.  'Cause that's new or anything.

Later, Eddie meets with his roommates, Chaz, Tobey and Joey, because living in L.A. without at least one roomie sleeping in the closet is unheard of, and they decide to go traipsing about the woods to see the murder scene.  Because the California sun has baked their skinny-ass brains into oatmeal cookies.  While there, they actually see the devil-face dude and they think he's cruising them.  Because they're gay and live in Hollywood and are, therefore more vain that the wicked queen in Snow White.


More fuckin' mood lighting.  Seriously?  Is that necessary here?

There's some kind of carnival that the friends all go to and promptly leave when Eddie sees Jake go into a bar called The Meat Locker.  Ooooooh.  Original.  Can somebody tell me what the gay community's obsession with puns is all about?  This is why we can't have nice things.

So, anyway, Eddie goes after Jake, Joey is all obsessed with Jared but gets shot down and goes to cry in the bathroom.  Chaz consoles him but then leaves him alone to sob into the toilet paper.  Jared catches up with Joey and makes everything all better and then Joey gets hacked at.  Woooooo.

That's the BEST place to be found headless.

Chaz decides to go to another club where the killer, who, like all movie serial killers, can teleport, guts and beheads him on the dance floor where no one notices this happening because to the filmmaker gay guys are all fucking dumb and blind.  Excuse me while I seethe for a minute.

OK.  I got it together.

Anyway, Tobey, who's in really bad drag, is pissed that no one's hitting on him so he takes things into his own hands and tries to hit on the killer who, of course, collects his fucking head.

Worth it.

So, Eddie and Jake get back to the Meat Locker, since they'd disappeared to go do other stuff, and find it closed because of the discovery of the body.  Joey goes to get his bike and Eddie follows him but finds that Jake has already circled around.  Of course, Eddie gets attacked by the devil-dude and manages to get himself locked in to where the killer can't quite reach him but he does manage to get his eye scratched by the killer's sickle.  This SHOULD have warranted a trip to the ER but Eddie's eye is totally fake.

So, yeah.  Because they're both traumatized, they go back to Eddie's place to make with the horizontal mambo but Jake won't let Eddie kiss him.  Can we say "self-loathing gay"?  Jake finds Tobey's license with blood on it but he doesn't know what that means because, again, according to the film maker, gays are stupid.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
 
So, because every sane person allows themselves to be handcuffed on the first date, Eddie allows Jake to handcuff him to the bed on the first date.  Jake gets stabbed while looking for condoms which is pretty much the only smart thing anyone in this movie has done. 

And then?  HE STRIKES!  The killer has, through the auspices of Tobey's driver's license, found out where Eddie lives and as he's coming for Eddie, prone and helpless, Jake stabs him with a kitchen knife.  Eddie manages to get a hand free and thus begins the claustrophobic apartment chase. 

A Shining reference?  Really?

Eddie pulls out his dad's gun but in the process of loading, Eddie gets attacked and has his fake eye literally sucked out of his head and gets knocked over the fire escape railing.  While the killer is going after Jake again, Eddie fires but because he has no depth perception he hits Jake first and then lands a headshot.  It's only after this that Jake allows Eddie to kiss him.

Yes, this barker was left open for a sequel.

OH.  MY.  FUCKING.  HEAD!

You know, I'm all about supporting my community and that means their artistic endeavors as well but damn.  There comes a point where "If you build it, the gays will show up and redecorate the place" wears right the fuck off.  There's a serious problem in Hollywood and it's this:
 
Gay people are people.  Yes, we run with our own crowd but that's a safety issue because the world outside does not treat us like we're people.  That's why it's only recently where gay people stopped being treated as fey comic relief and were introduced as supporting characters in straight films.  Now, that being said, yes, there will be movies that portray us within our protective bubble and this is one of them.  The problem is that THIS film chose to show us at our very worst.  We're portrayed as self-centered jerks who don't pay attention to the world around us.  The dance floor scene is the epitome of this.  A person is violently attacked and the gays directly on the scene do nothing.  They're in their own little world, not caring about anyone but themselves and the good time they're having.  It's a HUGE stereotype and it pisses me off.

For an indie film, the production quality is actually not bad and the music by Pansy Division, Nick Name and Three-Dollar Bill is good but I have to give this a thumbs down for content.  

I'm not going to say for you to skip it, though, because I need people to see it and then hunt down Paul Etheridge-Ouzts and inflict the death of a thousand cuts on him for being an ass.

Monday, June 17, 2013

That Sweater Is Just Tacky.

You may or may not be aware of this but June is National LGBT Pride month.  This is the month where we celebrate who we are and remind others of our struggle for equal rights because it is around the anniversary of both the Stonewall and the White Night Riots.  This is the month where we remind ourselves that a whole lot of us keep our rock-throwin' arms in fantastic shape, that those shoes don't go with that top, that drag queens are deceptively strong, that lesbians do not have the kind of boobs you see in girl-on-girl porn and that gigantic, muscular men in black leather often have tiny purse dogs.

It's fun stuff.

ANYWAY, that being the case, this week you're gonna get, if not entirely LGBT-themed horror, a good chunk of it.  If you don't wish to read about it, that's fine.  I'm not here to change anybody's mind on anything.  Please note, though, that I WILL delete hateful commentary.  It doesn't belong here.

All of that being said, let's get on with the show.

And, we're gonna kick it off BIG with probably the gayest mainstream horror flick EVER, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.





Director Jack Shoder, in 1985, brings us a pre-AIDS paranoia gay-coming-of-age story even if he won't fucking admit it.

Because greased-up Dawson's Creek casting is just de rigueur in Hollywood...

So, here's the dealio.  5 years after the events in the first movie, the Walsh's move into 1428 Elm Street, Nancy's old house and Jesse, our protagonist with the sexually ambiguous name, moves into Nancy's room.  Because this is a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, he starts having dreams about Freddy demanding that he kill for him since Nancy fucked up or something like that.  To do this, Freddy wants to be inside him.  Literally.  

Now, you'd never guess it or anything but Jesse has a girlfriend.  He has a girlfriend like I had a girlfriend in high school.  All for show.  Anyway, Lisa, said girlfriend, finds Nancy's diary in Jesse's closet which, of course, covers all of her interactions with Freddy.  He gets all panicky like a fluffy bunny and brings it to his parents who, of course, argue with him about it so he storms out.

And, somewhere along the line, he shoots dicks out of his mouth.

Now, like any repressed gay kid, Jesse finds himself walking late at night being all pensive and shit.  Because this is 1985, he takes himself into a bar where he finds his gym coach who's all decked out in his butch top S&M leathers and ready to ask "hips or lips".

Come to Daddy.

Now, seeing as how they aren't in school or anything, we know why Coach takes Jesse back to school to run some laps as detention.  Jesse doesn't but that's because Jesse is a fucking moron.  "Hit the showers?"  Seriously?

It's OK, though, because Freddy likes a little light bondage and knife play.  He slices up Coach but good and leaves his non-existent butt to hang.

The safe-word is banana.

But, when the steam clears, it's Jesse that has the glove on.  Of course, he panics like a little bitch and runs away.

In the meantime, not-girlfriend Lisa has done some digging into Krueger and has found the power plant where he worked and brought his victims.  At the same time, Freddy pays a call on Jesse's sister but when she wakes up, Jesse's standing over her with the glove.

To counteract these increasingly creeper-like actions, and to try and get the taste of Freddy penis out of his mouth (it had been there during a make-out session with Lisa during her pool party but he LEFT the party and ran straight to his dude-friend's house instead of continuing with his girlfriend because, y'know, dong), Jesse has his bestest buddy Ron watch over him as he sleeps.  Not his girlfriend.  A dude.  Of course, this doesn't work because Ron is an ass who falls asleep right after Jesse does.  As soon as Ron's eyes close, Freddy begins clawing his way out of Jesse.

That's gonna leave a mark.

Of course, the door is jammed so Ron's pretty much helpless against Krueger.  Duh.  

So, Jesse, who had apparently gone to bed at about 1 in the afternoon, legs it over to Lisa's house where her pool party is still... ummm... happening. 

When he gets there, though, he takes control of Jesse again and decimates the party.

'Cause this is Thriller...

Lisa saves Jesse/Freddy from being shot, because she's stupid, and runs to the power plant where she tries to use fucking conversion therapy on Jesse.  She's all "Pray the Freddy Away" and tries to cure him with a kiss.  Because this never works, Freddy accosts them on the school bus the next morning.

I think they're gonna be late for school...

So, yeah.  This is, of course, the black sheep in the Nightmare family but it's kind of culturally significant.  In 1985, not a whole lot of movies outside the art house circuit were about gay anybody.  This one, while BARELY outwardly straight, had so much gay subtext they may as well have just come out and said "Hey, Jesse's totally gay."  Hell, Mark Patton, the actor portraying Jesse was already out of the closet at that point.  The entire movie reads like Marcus Bachmann's autobiography.

In an interview for Attitude magazine, Robert Englund stated that this was all intentional, including the casting of Patton.  Patton is apparently an idiot in real life because he said he had no idea (I kid.  I've met Patton and he's a doll.) and Shoder didn't even think about it even though David Chaskin's script was written to be extra-gay and Chaskin said so.  Kinda like the Fast and Furious movies.

Flaming Queen.


And, seriously, Nightmare 2 wasn't even subtle about it.  The claw coming through a girl's breasts makes boobs a threat.  Dick tongue.  S&M in the showers.  Snapping towels and flying balls.  The sign on Jesse's door that says "No Chicks".  The inordinate amount of time Jesse spends wrestling with Ron.

This movie is gayer than a San Francisco Pride parade.

It's also COMPLETELY hilarious.  I mean, it's not a good movie.  In fact, it's friggin' awful, but it's definitely that hilarious kind of awful that we all look for.

This one deserves a party with cosmos and finger sandwiches.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Scootin' On The Carpet

And from yesterday's thrill ride into Awesometown, we come to a screeching halt in the middle of WhatTheFuckville with broken door locks and forgotten wallets.

We're gonna get murdered in the face.






The movie starts with two men hunting in the jungles of Cameroon.  Oddly, Bebe Zahara Benet, winner of season one of RuPaul's Drag Race, did not come racing across the screen lip-synching to Diana Ross.  They get a call on the radio that includes the sounds of someone getting eaten.  Because this is Africa, they think nothing of it until they get attacked themselves.  And this is why hunting is bad.  Because there's a reason they call Nature a Mother.

Years later, we find Derek, a meek, scrawny milquetoast of a teenager pledging a fraternity, going up to his stepfather's cabin with 5 of his friends for some standard teenager fun.  They get lost and have to ask Clint Howard for directions.  Normally, this would be a bad thing but this time Clint is actually helpful.


Yep.  Still creepy, though.

So, after spending hours trying to FIND the cabin, the shenanigans begin.  It's all fun and games.  One couple goes outside for a little romp in the ... woods?  There's, like, one fucking tree there.  Another couple gets down and kind of dirty seeing as how the girl isn't gonna give up the hymen until marriage and, apparently, doesn't swallow.

The two on the left?  Sexually generous.

That leaves grungy trailer park chick, Sam, and Derek.  Nothing happens there.  Snoozeville.  Not sure Derek has a penis at this point. 

Anyway, the couple outside gets torn to shreds and then something begins terrorizing the kids indoors.  While most of the kids are cowering in the living room, Cherry Poppins in the bedroom, there, gets raped and murdered by, gosh, well, I'll be, a friggin' werewolf because her boyfriend told her to put some fuckin' clothes on.

That might be a hymen.  We'll never know.

So, Sam and Derek get back to civilization and work out, somehow, that Derek's stepfather is a damn werewolf.  They go all Scooby-Doo, as idiotic horror movie characters are wont to do, and because they do, Derek's uncle gets slaughtered.  Kind of a revenge thing, I guess.  All the while, Derek, Sam and the step-dad are all being hounded by... the school news team?  Like they're going to be the ones to break a story about mysterious murders?  For real?
Your W-DUM news team.

So, long story short, Sam gets abducted by step-dad and taken back to the cabin, Derek and the news team follow, the news team gets rendered into kibble, Derek and Sam attach silver knives to arrows, KNOWING that they ain't gonna fly that well, the werewolf is set on fire, the cabin is destroyed, Derek gets bit, step-dad passes on the curse, Sam gets all soppy and they drive off on a moped.

You people owe me.  You all had better be buyin' shit when I start offering it because if I don't shoot myself from the mental scarring all of these bad movies inflict, I'm still gonna have to pay a therapist and my paycheck just won't cover that right now.

This movie was AWFUL.  I don't care that it won an award in Houston, Texas.  It's TEXAS!  What the hell do they know besides big hair, Jeebus and lax gun control laws?  This was of even lower quality than your standard made-for-Syfy movie.  Sharktopus was better than this.

Seriously.  What the fuck was up with that makeup?  It's like someone sat on it before the latex cured completely and the $20 they reserved for make-up effects was almost gone because somebody needed a latte.  And the brown on brown on brown color scheme just made that face appear to have been molded from a weeks worth of dog shit.

This video?  Better than this movie.  NOT SAFE FOR WORK! 

 

Just ignore this movie.  Pretend it never existed.  If I can save you from the suck then maybe my life has some meaning.