http://jmountswritteninblood.com/category/pacific-rim/

MY CALL.  Effects. Effects. Effects.  That’s why you wanted to see this movie.  NOT for a good story!  This is live-action anime.  If I hear one more fool (who thinks he’s a deep thinker) criticize the story while overlooking the action I’m going to lose it.  You can’t sound smart if your critique of the story suggests this movie is “bad.”  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Real Steel (2011) and Transformers (2007) successfully captured similar action and CGI-robot combat choreography.

http://themindreels.com/2013/07/14/pacific-rim-2013-guillermo-del-toro/

This is one of those movies that gets your over-critical friends saying “it just looks like a big blob of CGI.”  Sure, the scale of this summer blockbuster-style film is TREMENDOUS.  But, unlike the Transformers sequels, it doesn’t get away from itself.  No.  We still find some Guillermo del Toroisms, especially in creature-creation and preternatural market senes.  The story, on the other hand, is quite simple. It strikes me as something out of a videogame or a futuristic Dungeons & Dragons adventure.  It’s no Troy (2004).  Troy was an epic-scale war story that–among some AMAZING action sequences–still allowed its viewers to intimately understand the characters.  Rim is less (successfully) character-driven.  A few things are revealed about the characters, but they don’t seem to “develop.”  But why was this movie made, how was it marketed and who was it made to please?  Probably not a bunch of stuck up plot critics.  No, this was made for sci-fi effects and action junkies.  So, if you’re not willing to check your critic’s hat at the door, then I suggest you just shut up and wait for the next giant monster fight when you go see this.

Through some manner of portal between tectonic plates deep below the Pacific Ocean emerge giant behemoths called Kaiju.  These creatures come all shapes and plus-sizes.

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There’s your movie.  If you need great writing to accompany this, then shame on you.

To save humanity all of the world powers set aside their differences to pool their finances and engineer Jaegers, giant robots jockeyed by paired, mind-melded (aka, drifting) pilots.  All seems to be fine–given that we are under attack by 600 foot tall abominations–until the Kaiju start winning!  Though simple behemoths at first, subsequently emerging Kaiju are bigger, smarter fighters with more bells and whistles.  The world powers begin to doubt the Jaeger program, whose director Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba; The Losers, Prometheus) is running out of options.

Despite the simple story, there is a steady flow of information to keep us informed and updated about the Jaeger program and what we know about the Kaijus.  It provides a nice balance between the action, which was delivered with a sense of uncertain urgency as to just how bad things were going to become for the Jaeger pilots in many situations.  To put it briefly, the dire consequences of piloting a Jaeger are realistically depicted even as we enjoy a world-threat story in which humanity actually unites instead of letting our differences impede our success.

Pentecost turns to ex-pilot Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam; Sons of Anarchy, Deadfall) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi; Assault Girls), who get the most attention among several pairs of Jaeger pilots we meet.  Mori is meant to strong and complex, but to me her character seems ill-imagined and entirely out of place.  Raleigh isn’t perfect either, but at least he’s not another one of those “reluctant heroes.”  There’s a little romantic interest there and I think it fails both in execution and contribution to the movie.

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Raleigh and Mako suited up

Interspersed between pilot-Jaeger highlights we have a pair of bantering scientists who provide some silly, charming comic relief.  Dr. Gottlieb (Burn Gorman; The Dark Knight Rises, Red Lights) is some sort of physicist and Dr. Newt Geiszler (Charlie Day; who brings a welcomed quirky performance) is some combination xenobiologist-neurobiologist-biomedical engineer.

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Lastly, Ron Perlman’s Hannibal Chau is a Kaiju parts broker.  Why is he in this? I’d just say because del Toro can’t seem to make a movie without him…Hellboy 2, Blade 2, Cronos.

Returning to the effects, the effects make this movie. They don’t “save” it.  They make it a satisfying experience all on their own.  The Kaiju each come with their own distinct appearance and fighting style, and the same goes for each Jaeger and its pilots.  In fact, the Jaegers and Kaiju are presented as their own named characters.  Amazing attention to detail was placed on the movements of these over-sized combatants, their surroundings and how they destructively plow into and through them.  I already can’t wait to watch it again because so much was going on in each of these fights that I feel I must have missed a lot of clever nuance.

http://filmedge.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/review-pacific-rim-has-big-monster-hits-but-some-human-misses/

See this movie.  Then see it again!

http://jmountswritteninblood.com/category/pacific-rim/

http://blurppy.com/2013/04/18/watch-the-first-trailer-for-universals-supernatural-action-comedy-r-i-p-d-starring-jeff-bridges-and-ryan-reynolds/

MY CALL:  This could have been a very fun spin on Men in Black with evil spirits and undead law enforcement had it not been for soul-crushingly bad directing and film-editing which rendered this movie hardly watchable-maybe even unwatchable.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  The Men in Black series (1997, 2002, 2012) for sure!  They succeed in terms of budget, writing and direction where R.I.P.D. fails over and over again.

http://www.liveforfilms.com/2013/07/03/new-images-from-r-i-p-d-show-ryan-reynolds-and-jeff-bridges/
“So here’s the deal…this movie ‘should’ be good.”

Let’s start by addressing something that must be acknowledged before we proceed to the review…I have a bro-crush on Ryan Reynolds (Safe House, The Change-Up).  It’s no secret.  He’s got a sharp sense of humor, even sharper features and abs, and is the leading cause of SHAD (screaming heart attack syndrome) in women under 40.  I’ll admit it–I wish I was him, I want to hang out with him and he may be the only actor who I’d ever approach in public like a total fan boy.  I have a history of defending his poor choices.  Poor direction and even worse writing and character development led to the utter ruin of Green Lantern (2011), pulling Ryan into the wake of vicious criticism misdirected at the star instead of a stillborn script followed up by ill-execution.  And while I was pretty disappointed with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), again I must blame the director and writers.  Besides, every Marvel fan EVER is now totally stoked for the day that Ryan finally stars in a Deadpool movie–if only they’d stop the eternal buzz-cancel cycle.  He’s one of the coolest guys ever and he gets a bad rap.  People say “he’s no movie star.”  But if Anthony Hopkins or Denzel was given a shit script I have a feeling people would suddenly rush to their defense and point their fingers at the director and/or lousy lines.  Since Ryan has a history of choosing more “fun” movies, I guess he has yet to garner the clout of these more-reputed actors.

That said, I loved watching Ryan in R.I.P.D.  That’s not to say that I liked the movie…which was horrible.  But Ryan was his typical fast-on-the-trigger quippy self.  I thought he acted his role well and provided what we wanted.  Unfortunately, as has plagued him before, poor direction and even worse film-editing muted the effectiveness and timing of his better lines.  Actually, this flaw hampered all of the lines and all of the scenes!  This must be the most produced movie I’ve ever seen for which I specifically noticed the awful work that took place on the cutting room floor–a rare observation, I believe, if you stop to think about it.  Outside of being a Ryan fan, this deficiency was so prevalent that I’d deem this movie nearly unwatchable to anyone who isn’t under the influence of a behavior-modifying substance.

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This debacle follows Nick (Ryan Reynolds), a skilled cop who is murdered in the line of duty by his crooked partner.  Then he joins an undead police force (the RIPD)–the origins of which are never explained–under the tutelage of a more experienced,  critical joker of an 1800s lawman.  Together they are charged with recovering souls that have escaped judgment and hide among the living.  These evil souls, called “deados”, leave clues as a result of their foul “soul stank” and reveal their true form in the presence of Indian food–you got that…Indian food, OF F@(#!^@ COURSE,  is the cosmic identifier of evil souls–even the mere suggestion or description of Indian food forces deados to reveal their true nature.  That was a nice funny and utterly rando-insane touch.

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If you saw the previews on TV and thought “well, this feels familiar,” it’s because it should be.  This movie does more than simply borrow from Men in Black (1997).  This basically IS Men in Black but with evil Hell-bound souls and undead lawmen instead of aliens and alien-hunting agents.  Our RIPD characters are equipped with special weapons, hunt perps that the public doesn’t know about, have a special secret workplace and, since they couldn’t have a Neuralizer, they appear to the living in different forms: avatars.  Jeff Bridges, who appears as drunk as when he’d step off the set of True Grit, appears as Victoria’s Secret supermodel Marisa Miller and Ryan Reynolds appears as “an old Chinese guy” (James Hong; Kung Fu Panda 2, Safe).  Despite all the entertaining potential of this MIB remake, destitute filmmaking all the way from poor camera angle choices to post-production yields an unsavory result.

http://www.liveforfilms.com/2013/07/03/new-images-from-r-i-p-d-show-ryan-reynolds-and-jeff-bridges/

The poor choice to work on this movie was not Ryan’s alone.  Kevin Bacon (Crazy Stupid Love, X-Men: First Class) strikes me as entirely out of place playing Ryan’s crooked cop partner.  Every time I saw Bacon on screen all I could think was duuude?  What are you even doing here!?!!?!  Why are you in this?  Whereas Jeff Bridges (TRON: Legacy, Crazy Heart) presents a mess of a hybrid between a more jovial version of his True Grit role and Men in Black‘s Agent K.  Picking up Rip Torn’s MIB role is Mary-Louise Parker (RED 2, Weeds), who does fine, I guess.  The deado CGI effects were also a mixed bag of fun, neat to look at, mundane or boring.  Speaking of boring, the action at the end of the movie is really disappointing.  The whole finale is disappointing–even the idea behind it.

http://www.liveforfilms.com/2013/07/03/new-images-from-r-i-p-d-show-ryan-reynolds-and-jeff-bridges/

There are a lot of beloved actors in this.  But don’t trust them!  It’s a TRAP!!!!  This movie will likely make you lose respect for them.  I can only hope that this will receive some special post-release Blu-Ray cut that better allows these actors to shine, be funny and entertain us.  But as it stands this was more like watching Men in Black underwater without headphones or goggles.

http://actionmoviefanatix.com/2013/06/06/three-new-banners-for-r-i-p-d-starring-jeff-bridges-and-ryan-reynolds/

MY CALL:  Poltergeist (1982) meets The Exorcist (1973) in this modern horror classic that only fails to meet perfection because its predecessors already claimed the title by pioneering the scenes and atmosphere that form modern horror filmmaking dogma as we know it today.  But James Wan kicks up the competition and demonstrates his mastery of storytelling and character development in a genre that normally relies entirely on atmosphere and gore-slathered effects to fill seats. IF YOU LIKE THIS THEN WATCH:  Poltergeist (1982), in case you missed it.  Also, anything from my series The Best Horror Came from the 80s or the upcoming The Best Horror Came from the 70s–back when horror actually came with a story and characters worth watching.  SIDEBAR:  Mark (not a major fan of horror) also wrote a very positive review of The Conjuring and offered an overview of director James Wan’s impressive work.

http://realtalkrealdebate.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/the-conjuring-2013/

Let’s just start by saying that this wasn’t just a great horror movie.  This was a solid film and a horror movie based on a true account of Ed and Lorraine Warren’s case with the Perron family in the 1970s.  There were loads of scares and—while, yes, they were often “jump scares”—the creepy tension-building on the approach was finely crafted.   You would know that “something” was about to happen and it was going to be scary, but it would still manage to catch you off guard, and you wouldn’t feel that the scare was “cheap.”  Already this film has rightly stepped away from the last several dozen theatrical horror releases by engaging viewers with more than just funny satirical demons and loud noises masquerading as scary things.

http://butlerscinemascene.com/2013/07/19/the-conjuring-things-that-go-boo-in-the-night/
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as Lorraine and Ed Warren

Director James Wan’s (Insidious, Saw) film is consistent and smart, feeding viewers a steady and even diet of story and character development for both our haunted family and the paranormal investigators.  Instead of taking the first twenty minutes to introduce us to the characters and hope that we invest ourselves enough to care when their lives are threatened, Wan piece by piece reveals the nature of the Perron family, their house and the paranormalists who come to their aid.

Roger (Ron Livingston; Office Space) and Carolyn Perron (Lily Taylor; The Haunting, Hemlock Grove) have just moved their five daughters into a secluded house in Rhode Island and, as we’ve come to expect in horror movies, all horror movie houses come with a dark past.  Upon realizing that their troubles eclipsed the simplicity of a sleepwalking daughter and the stress of adapting to a new home, the Perrons seek help from Ed (Patrick Wilson; The Watchmen, Insidious) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga; Source Code, Safe House), two married paranormal researchers with an impressive résumé  when it comes to purging evil.

http://butlerscinemascene.com/2013/07/19/the-conjuring-things-that-go-boo-in-the-night/

The big success in storytelling and direction here is that because Wan presented the Warrens to us in the opening scenes–to set the tone and show us how these paranormal investigators work–and fairly alternated between their college lecture circuit and the escalating situation in the Perron house before the two couples had met.  We weren’t force fed some ghost hunters halfway through the movie (or later) who we are “supposed to like.”  Instead, we’ve already met them and learned that they’re not some spirit hunting hacks who “hope” to find ghosts and get evidence so they can be taken seriously.  They hope there “aren’t” ghosts, they’re not in it for the money or fame, and they just want to help people (with an understandably fearful reluctance) utilizing their strange gifts.

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Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as Lorraine and Ed Warren

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A VERY evil doll

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A VERY evil music box

Score one for character development and great direction in a horror film, James Wan!

Following in the obvious footsteps of Poltergeist (1982) and The Exorcist (1973), we are met with some very familiar scenes.  However, I felt this was a respectful nod executed with a succinct sense of urgency rather than simply riding coattails and milking past horror axioms for all they’re worth.  The Conjuring skips most of the “are they just nuts” skepticism that would normally dominate the first half of a movie like this and gets right to dealing with the problem in a surprisingly practical manner.  As a result, most horror moviegoers’ maddening frustrations are avoided in this film; no one does anything dumb or too perfectly right, the characters develop to protect their own and don’t turn into sudden superhero evil-slaying experts over night, they don’t walk into any traps when they should’ve known better, there are no ridiculous “Antichrist baby-Hell on Earth-chosen one-omen-gypsy curse-ancient relic-house built over sacred burial ground and angering the spirits” reasons justifying the spirit or what it wants or why it chose them, and they even address why the Perron family doesn’t leave the damned house and if it would make a difference at all if they did.  All of this is done with simple explanation and for good reasons.

Score for the writers!  By the way, the same writers (the Hayes brothers) will be doing the already announced sequel The Conjuring 2!!!  However I have not found anything indicating Wan’s involvement.

As we slowly relax our muscles between creepy tension, scares, “wait is there more?” and then the next creepy tension, we wade through some shocking imagery, disturbing shots, a little bit of brief gross stuff (but nothing truly gastro-intestinally gruesome and gore-slathered as we find in Tucker and Dale vs Evil, The Cabin in the Woods, Drag Me to Hell or Evil Dead) and eerie sounds.  Then there’s the perfect–PERFECT–atmosphere that Wan spins.  Only with this paramount atmosphere could a small child staring into her dark bedroom corner (as we view nothing but out of focus “black”) be as terrifying as the most horrible monster leaping from behind a corner drooling all manner of evil yuck.

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As most horror is rushed and features a slapped together story-and-victims-sandwich as a vehicle to shock us with cringing brutality, creature make-up and buckets of rubber guts, Wan demonstrates a mature and tactful restraint which, contrary to most horror filmmakers’ training, is wildly successful and eclipses most horror of the last two decades!  Even Wan’s shot transitions were thoughtfully discomforting and artistic.

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The Conjuring is rated R rating but actually seems less scary and intense than Poltergeist (1982)–of course, Poltergeist was WAY scary and I’d keep the kids over 14 to watch it!  I mean, it is scary–very scary.  But the gore is by no means a highlight and I didn’t even notice the profanity (whatever there was).  All I noticed was that I was never bored or “waiting” for something cool to happen.  I was immersed and loved every minute of this modern classic horror.

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MY CALL:  Maybe great for preteens.  But for adults this is just plain not good.  I was disappointed by the effects, the characters and the action.  So…pretty much everything.  WHAT TO WATCH INSTEAD:  Want something a little bit more serious (but still funny), with more appropriate creatures, creature personalities and creature effects?  Then watch Troll Hunter (2010).  Want to see truly gigantic things fighting in amazing action sequences?  Try Pacific Rim (2013), even though the acting, characters and story are at the same level.

http://myreelpov.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/ask-not-whence-the-thunder-comes-jack-the-giant-slayer/

Director Bryan Singer, the man behind X-Men and X2 (the “good” movies of the franchise), truly disappointed me with his spin on Jack and the Beanstalk.  Other than a few somewhat funny moments, this movie was simply moderately entertaining and largely a letdown.  This is just my opinion though.  So if you want to cut the criticism short and hear a review from someone who had a more positive experience with this movie, then please read Mark’s review instead.

This classic tale follows the classic plot points.  Jack trades something for some “magic beans,” he’s scolded for being stupid by his uncle, the seeds get wet and a bean stalk on steroids lifts his house to the land of giants up in the clouds, and then he faces off against giants.

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As Jack, Nicholas Hoult (Warm Bodies, X-Men: First Class) brings a strong sense of purity and goodness as if it came naturally to him.  Despite that, I wasn’t otherwise impressed by his performance at all, which is unusual.  I typically very much enjoy his acting.  We quickly meet his love interest, future queen Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson; Alice in Wonderland), who also fails to impress me and is accidently carried to the land of giants with Jack’s house.

http://myreelpov.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/ask-not-whence-the-thunder-comes-jack-the-giant-slayer/
Jack (Nicholas Hoult) and Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson)

A smooth, well-spoken and stylishly haired knight named Elmont (Ewan McGregor; Haywire, The Impossible) leads a band to rescue Isabelle from the land of giants.  He goes with a company of knights, Jack and Isabelle’s extremely unsavory intended husband Roderick (Stanley Tucci; The Hunger Games, Captain America: The First Avenger).  Roderick slithers his way through the story and manages to do something despicable every step of the way.  He backstabs everybody and sides with the giants to seize King Brahmwell’s (Ian McShane; Snow White and the Huntsman, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) kingdom below for himself.  I was unimpressed with all of these characters.  ALL OF THEM!!!  Sorry.  I call it like I see it.

The giants are led by General Fallon (Bill Nighy; Total Recall, Wrath of the Titans).  Bill Nighy normally does great playing evil bad guys (e.g., Underworld, the Pirates franchise).  However, I felt he really missed his regular benchmark here.  Nothing about his character struck me as inhuman except for the CGI that illustrated him on screen.  Speaking of which, the CGI is just “okay.”  I’ve seen MUCH better.  I guess it does its job but shows far too strong of a contrast with the non-computer-generated actors and backgrounds.  This goes not only for the giants, but for the fantasy-scapes as well.  Much as General Fallon, the other giants fail to feel like monsters outside of eating humans and their deliberate appearance.  They’re simply mean “giant” humans and, as a result, were uninteresting.

http://myreelpov.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/ask-not-whence-the-thunder-comes-jack-the-giant-slayer/

Sadly, while provoking a few giggles, I didn’t care for the action either.  And the ending was just awful.  I can comfortably say that there were only three things that I really liked about this movie.

1)  There’s  a knight with a monocle.  That’s as random as the Monopoly guy fighting in the UFC.

2)  General Fallon’s second head.  It’s a brain-damaged, malformed little mongoloid that growls, cackles and mumbles incoherently with a stupid, googly-eyed look on its face at all times.  It reminded me of Gollum.

http://becomingthefuhrer.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/jack-the-giant-slayer-film-review/

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3)  Ewan McGregor’s hair.  I had no idea that fantasy knights had access to decent hair products.

MY CALL:  What a pleasant surprise!  Good gore, a story that kept me curious and odd creature-effects outweighed the blaring acting and film-adapted writing flaws.  Fans of gore and H. P. Lovecraft should definitely try out this little gem and enjoy.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  I was quite pleased with the Lovecraft adaptation Dagon (2001).  Also try Hellraiser (1987) and The Re-Animator (1985) for serious gore and weird tones.  ALTERNTATE TITLE:  Shatterbrain, I have no clue why.

Watching this movie you’ll find yourself frequently asking “what is THAT?”

This nifty Lovecraftian film is about a man who finds the lab journals of an old ancestor and is drawn into continuing his work–however morally questionable it may be.   Private detective John March, the narrator of our story, is approached by Claire Ward about her husband Charles Dextor Ward (Chris Sarandon; Fright Night remake and original, Child’s Play, Bordello of Blood) and why exactly he moved out of their home and especially why he requires suspicious quantities of meat and blood delivered for his mysterious experiments.  Charles’ laboratory, a secluded house, has a local reputation for wreaking of carrion.  Hmmmm…

What is THAT for?

While all Lovecraft-adaptations diverge from the actual stories, the better ones retain strong elements amid modernizations.   Director Dan O’Bannon (Return of the Living Dead and writer of Alien, Life Force, Total Recall, Screamers, Bleeders and the Total Recall remake, among many others) follows suit accordingly with heavy weird tones, a general adoration for the macabre and a powerful element of mystery that prods viewers’ curiosity into wondering the same things as Charles’ estranged wife.  “What is he working on at the house?  Why does he need all that meat? What is that smell?”

Based on H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” this adaptation is far from action-packed.  Instead, it follows Lovecraftian suit with horror that prods at your curiosity.  It is one of the better Lovecraft adaptations I have yet seen, with some disturbing images and ambiance.  It captures the atmosphere and the alchemy, the darkness and the “less is more” approach that leave haunting little shadows staring at its viewer, and it feeds the imagination. Another reason it is worth tasting is because it also leads the viewer forward, tempting them to keep going in order to unravel the mystery of what has happened.

As Dr. Ward, Chris Sarandon does a fine job.  He captures the tone and the horror of discovery well.  Missing the mark and deviating far from the purpose of the film is the grossly over-focused attention to a (pointless) romantic interest between Ward’s wife and the detective.  This side-story is handled poorly and inconsistently, as if the writer couldn’t decide whether to escalate the romance or not.  But, ill-placed romantic subplot aside, this is about as smart a film as we could hope for providing such a tiny budget.  As Lovecraft wrote of utilizing the “essential saltes” of an organism to bring it back from the dead, Ward’s work is suggestive of genetic experimentation and cloning.  Unfortunately for Ward, the results were not exactly as he expected.

What’s a Lovecraft story with out a dash of madness?

What is THAT?

Lots of gore, blood and various remains.  We enjoy great zombie (i.e., animated dead flesh) effects,  some off-putting surgical imagery and surreal dream sequences.  The monster effects and action are limited largely to the very end, but it’s all well worth the wait.  There are LOADS of special effects in the third act.  Some classic, refreshing stop-motion and claymation action as well as creature make-ups.

What are those evil dead hands doing?

This film was a really nice surprise.  REALLY.  This is for lovers of gore, the macabre, Lovecraft, dark horror films and worthy horror stories.

Pretty classy poster, right?

MY CALL:  Hardly horror at all, this was deliciously cheesy and raunchy to the point of hilarity.  Watch this to remind yourself of what it’s like to be a teenage boy.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Death Spa (1989), which was basically a failed attempt to duplicate this with a zanier plot, more attention to kills and effects, and way less TnA.  There’s even a scene when someone tags the gym “Death Spa,” perhaps influencing the title of the subsequent movie.  ALTERNATE TITLE:  Aerobicide.

Brace yourself for sweaty hard bodies, ass-choking leotards, hot pink tights and excessively inappropriate camera angles as we are introduced to Rhonda’s (Marcia Karr; Maniac Cop, Savage Streets) gym.  They’ve turned up the volume on the 80s-ometer warning us that they probably used more of the budget on the soundtrack than whatever we get in the form of special effects.

Nope.  That’s not a prostitute walking up to the Bunny Ranch.  That’s an aerobics instructor in her classiest uniform hitting the gym.

In the opening scene some naked chick is killed in a laughably violent tanning bed accident.  What seems to be the very next day a woman is brutally murdered in the women’s locker room shower.  Despite daily homicides people keep coming to the gym as if nothing happened and never seem to wonder what happened to their training partner.

She didn’t exactly miss her Zumba class because of the flu.

Now, let’s be real for a moment here.  Before we hit “play” we all knew there wasn’t going to be a good story and that there would be no character development.  We came to laugh as people get killed with random gym apparatuses.  And, given that this is very low budget 80s horror, we understood that most of these death scenes would occur off-screen after a shot of a hand holding a weapon and followed by someone spraying blood on the wall.  But what this flick lacks in knives cleaving sweaty cleavage, it makes up for with extra cheese.

We get our raunchy cheese, as any cheese connoisseur would have it, in a variety of forms.  There are the standard shower scenes along with the opening tanning bed scene.  But the real highlights here are aerobics montages to remind us that back in the 80s women pretty much dressed like hookers when they worked out.  We learn that the camera man understood his instructions loud and clear as we are bombarded by tandem close-ups of sweaty bouncing aerobic boobs, thong-wedgied butts and leg-spreading crotch shots.  No joke–the aerobic routines are more than a little slutty and there’s an inordinate amount of this.  Every 10-15 minutes it’s like the director was just filming hooker tryouts.  SIX TIMES we get these bouncy slut montages encored by a highlights reel during the closing credits. LOL.  We even see a scarred up burn victim’s bare breasts in more than one lengthy scene!!!  That’s an awful LOT of screen time for TnA even in a raunchy horror flick.

I have no clue what this move is called.  But I think I love it.

Yup.  This really happens in this flick…a lot.

But the cheese oozes all the way to the kills themselves like when someone is stabbed to death with a giant safety pin–and no, that’s not a typo, an over-sized safety pin!  Evidently that’s the killer’s weapon of choice.  In addition to the lame kills, there are some funny martial arts fights between a couple of meatheads.  They’re really going for it on the karate, too.  These goofy fights are complete with jump spin kicks and during one of them a bro gets stabbed with a rake.

These two bros are locked in heated fury in this bro-fu match.

Watch this because you want to roll your eyes, laugh and feel young and dumb again.  But, bro…seriously, bro.  Don’t watch this with your girlfriend or wife.  I don’t care how cool she is or how much she likes horror.  She will judge you every second of this flick’s running time and will be totally justified in doing so.  LMAO

I think the word you’re looking for is CLASSY.

http://lefthandhorror.com/2012/03/22/the-initiation-1984-movie-review/
NSFW WARNING: There is a single NSFW image at the end of this article.

MY CALL:  This movie has all of the hallmarks of a classic 80s slasher flick hybridized with a plotty story arc from General Hospital.  A lot of reviewers consider this movie to be underrated.  Sure, I guess so.  But that doesn’t make it worth your time.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  If it’s dead college kids you want, then you could almost pick randomly from the history of slasher movies.  I’d direct you to I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) or Scream (1996) if you want to see attractive stars killed by a mystery murderer under much better plotty circumstances.

Like so many other 80s slasher movies, The Initiation feels a bit on the haphazardly random side, writing-wise.  It isn’t exactly like those WTF crazy acid-trippy movies (e.g., Deadly Blessing, Xtro), but I get the feeling that someone sat down one day, started writing this while drunk, then continued to write more and more sanely while sobering up towards the end.

http://scarina.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/the-initiation/
Daphne Zuniga (before she was famous) as Kelly

Kelly (Daphne Zuniga; Spaceballs, The Fly II, Melrose Place) is a new sorority pledge who’s just trying to get through her initiation and prank night.  While prank night turns out to be the main focus of this movie, it takes the writer about an hour to get us there…so just bear with me as we review a bunch of details that allegedly make sense of this story.  So….bear with me here…

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Kelly has a recurring nightmare in which she is a little girl witnessing her mother engaging in some infidelity and a fight breaks out between two guys–presumably the husband and the co-cheater, one of them lights the other on fire.  Whoa!  She even has a few visions from the dream while she’s awake.  Perhaps linked to the nightmare Kelly as also amnesia, remembering nothing before age 9 (about the age she appears to be in her dream).  This nightmare preoccupies her to the point that she is writing a paper on dream analysis for one of her classes.  I guess she thinks that she, a college freshman living in a catty sorority, can master the field psychology while writing a single paper and solve all of her problems.

Perhaps realizing that this is a bit beyond the research capabilities of a teenager, she enlists the help of a some doctoral student who evidently specializes in everything pertinent to her problem: parapsychology, dreams analysis, hypnotherapy and sleep pattern analysis.  Sounds to me like this guy is working on four concurrent PhDs.  But that’s okay since the writer of this movie balances things out with his complete apparent lack of education.  Or so, I’m guessing based on the writing quality.  As it turns out the writer (Charles Pratt, Jr.; All My Children, General Hospital, Melrose Place) moved on to a 30 year career in soap opera writing immediately after this movie.  So he clearly learned how to capitalize on his flair for melodrama and found his niche.  I mean…amnesia, infidelity, traumatic childhoods, privileged families, visions and the gross over-glorification of doctorates?  Yeah, he started writing a soap and then turned it into a slasher movie.

http://scarina.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/the-initiation/
It’s always the guy with the scar.

As if the nonsense wasn’t piled high enough yet, Kelly’s parents are talking about things suspiciously vaguely, her mother (Vera Miles; Psycho) is always mettling and controlling, and her father (Clu Gulager; The Return of the Living Dead) is making weird phone calls; there are a lot of red herrings to grab at in this soapy slasher story.  All this plotty background is delivered at a slow soapy pace and with little sense of urgency.  It’s a bit boring really.

All of the sudden (about an hour into the movie) our attention shifts back to prank day, Kelly steals the keys to a shopping mall from her father (who owns the mall) so that they can sneak in overnight for prank night, and all of this soap opera nonsense is left behind.  The tempo really shifts gears when they arrive at the shopping mall.  These college kids start wandering around, the killer is there skulking around and picking them off one by one with various sharp implements, and it takes forever for the kids to realize what’s happening.  FYI, the kills are all BORING!

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http://lastroadreviews.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/the-initiation-1984-review/

The acting isn’t nearly as bad as most 80s horror fare.  But, despite some of these actors’ ability to carry a few lines, this movie has all of the hallmarks of a classic 80s slasher flick hybridized with a plotty story arc from General Hospital.  There is an obligate shower scene (Hunter Tylo, future star of The Bold and the Beautiful) accompanied by girls in their underwear.  Kids split up and are picked off by the killer.  There’s even a guy in a great penis costume–not that this has anything to do with 80s horror.  I just think it’s awesome–easily my favorite part of the movie.

http://lefthandhorror.com/2012/03/22/the-initiation-1984-movie-review/

A lot of reviewers consider this movie to be underrated.  Sure, I guess so.  But that doesn’t make it worth your time.  I didn’t feel it was worth my time and, if you read my reviews regularly, you know I can make the best of some really lousy S#!T.

http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/louise-does-ginger-snaps-back-the-beginning-wild-weird-west-week/

MY CALL:  Apathy best frames my feelings about this movie in one word.  I just didn’t care what happened.  And I’d like to point out that I was totally “all in” for the first two and had every curiosity and worry as to what would happen in this pseudo-prequel.  I won’t warn people away from this, but I’m not recommending it either.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Ginger Snaps (2000) and Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004) were both MUCH better.

This third and final installment of the Ginger Snaps franchise provides more of a period piece reimagining of the original story instead of a prequel.  Set in 19th century Canada, sisters Ginger (Katharine Isabelle; American Mary, Ginger Snaps, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins; Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed) take refuge in a traders’ fort.

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It seems that every movie in this series takes a different approach and style.  In the first we find two gothy sisters in a coming-of-age story using lycanthropy as a metaphor for the pains of puberty, sexual development (i.e., transformation) and the bond between two sisters.  Part two examined only Brigitte through a lens of drug addiction, being the counterbalance to her “disease.”  Now, in this prequel/reimagining we find the sisters together again, this time in a fort besieged by werewolves as Ginger slowly turns after being bitten.

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Ginger is bitten by this…

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Turns into this…

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Makes her sister run like this…

After the bite Ginger’s change is slow, consistent with the first two films.  Capturing the doomed fate of Ginger Snaps, an old woman prophesies that “one sister must kill the other.”  Boorrrrring.

While I loved the first two, I was largely unimpressed with this film.  I didn’t think it was “bad.”  But I definitely didn’t find it good, stimulating, engaging, interesting or entertaining.  For me, it was just kind of “there.”  However, many fans of the franchise support this installment as enjoyable.  So I’ll simply consider my view to be a strong difference in opinion and I won’t provide any reason for you “not” to see this–I’ll just leave you with the complete absence of good qualities on my part.

http://teleport-city.com/2013/02/13/ginger-snaps-back/comment-page-1/

http://goregirl.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/goregirls-werewolf-project-ginger-snaps-back-the-beginning-2004/

http://teleport-city.com/2013/02/13/ginger-snaps-back/comment-page-1/

The effects were decent.  I’ve certainly seen cooler looking werewolves, but for a total absence of CGI I think they did well…sort of.  There was also a lot of screen time for the monsters as well as a lot of blood.  Since neither aspect impressed me, I didn’t really care for this effort.  Being less interested in this movie I also wasn’t very invested during the attack scenes.  So, again, watch it and form your own opinion.  Mine is burdened by apathy.

http://teleport-city.com/2013/02/13/ginger-snaps-back/comment-page-1/

As a matter of fact, apathy best frames my feelings about this movie in one word.  I just didn’t care what happened.  And I’d like to point out that I was totally “all in” for the first two and had every curiosity and worry as to what would happen next.

You see this poster and you think “this is gonna’ be SERIOUS!”  But it’s not.  And the scene depicted above…easiest eye injury to watch on film EVER.

MY CALL:  Intended as a brutal, cruel installment to the torture porn subgenre, it felt like the intensity was declawed, domesticated and rendered family-friendly.  However, at times the character dynamic in this ridiculous scenario makes the movie at least watchable, although still falling short of recommendable.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Red Room (1999) and Series 7 (2001) both pit regular people, some more reluctant than others, against one another–to do heinous things to one another.

Here’s another poster.  This one looks as hokey and unserious as the movie therein.

Iris (Brittany Snow; Prom Night, Nip/Tuck) is a good person with a good heart who finds herself in a difficult situation.  Her parents are dead, she has no money and no job, and she is left to care for her terminally ill brother.  Philanthropist Shepard Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs; Lurking Fear, The Pit and the Pendulum) offers Iris an opportunity to change her life in the form of an invitation to a dinner party that offers a solution to all of her foreseeable problems, financial or otherwise.  Upon arrival, Iris finds herself among similarly desperate individuals all looking to make some money.  Basically, this is Dinner for Schmucks if the schmucks were financially desperate and the hosts wanted to morally bankrupt them one sadistic challenge at a time.

The guests include a mix of transients, gamblers, young and old, able and wheelchair-bound, friendly and unfriendly.  Completely out of left field, one of them is played by porn star Sasha Grey.  But the real wild card in this rated-R truth or dare is going to be the sweet, naive old lady in the wheelchair.  What is she going to do to people?  What are people going to do to her?

Jeffrey Combs basically plays a rich jerk who likes to ruin (ahem, END) people’s lives.

It starts out with mean-spirited intentions–masked as helping people–in the form of paying a vegetarian to eat steak and fois gras and coercing an alcoholic to binge drink fine scotch. But they quickly graduate to things like “would you rather electrocute yourself or Iris?”  Then lashings, stabbings, drowning and some other seemingly mundane, poorly executed,  unshocking punishments.  Even things that should have been hard to watch (in the hands of a different director) were presented in subdued, PG-13 form. Really, I could watch this with my grandmother.  She’s seen Goodfellas and The Godfather, both of which have more scares, shocks and brutality than this.

No. Actually I’d rather not.

Iris is clearly meant to serve as the audience’s moral compass.  But I never found myself rooting for her, nor caring about her or any of the other characters…except for maybe the transient, selfish Amy (Sasha Grey), the first one who realized how to get out of this alive.  In fact, from the start Amy really embraced the concept and celebrated the challenges as a malevolent force.

Sasha Grey as Amy

Fledgling director David Guy Levy likely intended this to be a brutal, cruel installment to the torture porn subgenre.  However, I felt that the intensity was declawed.  I felt no suspense.  But I did enjoy watching the character dynamic as people tried to rationalize their “would you rather” options.  A task that, again, Amy really owned.  So while I was disappointed by the near gorelessness, watching the “game” still offered sufficient entertainment.

A major shock was that the best performance wasn’t by horror king Jeffrey Combs or Pitch Perfect (2012) favorite Brittany Snow.  The only convincing character was Sasha Grey’s coarse portrayal of Amy.  But there were no shocks from schlock, gore, moral corruption, torture, cruelty or even the lame attempt a surprise twist ending.  Oh, and the old, sweet naïve lady in the wheelchair?  Totally under-, or even un-utilized; mishandled by too much restraint while directing a film in which there should be no restraint!  What a waste.

Laaaaame!

If you are looking for jaw-drops, you won’t find them in Would You Rather.  I would only recommend this to someone who watches no fewer than four horror movies per week.  Really.  Like four.  As in, you probably systematically try to watch all horror ever anyway and won’t listen to me as I try to warn you away.

The worst movie poster I could find (above).  I wish this was the advertised image on Amazon.  Then I wouldn’t have watched it.  I would have never watched anything with such a bad poster.  Doesn’t this poster make you “want” the movie to awful?

MY CALL:  A solid success for a writer/director with a small budget on his first feature length film.  I’m excited to see what this guy does next.  Amid the constantly recycled concepts and axioms that both plague and serve as hallmarks for the horror genre, this film manages to stand out as original. The story is nothing wowing and the horror elements are technically not unique.  But the approach was!  Because of this, I struggle to compare this to any other horror.

After her passing and leaving everything to her only son, antiquities dealer and atheist Leon (Aaron Poole) visits his estranged mother’s (Vanessa Redgrave) home which is neatly, but densely decorated with all manner and medium of Christian–and not so Christian–artifacts, making it somewhat unsettling.  The house is also littered with stitched and framed religious adages formed into strange warnings.

The recently deceased Rosalind Leigh (Vanessa Redgrave; Nip/Tuck) narrates, explaining her distance from her son, her deep religious beliefs and Leon’s resentful distance from the faith.  In this modern approach to a classic-style ghost story Rosalind, haunted by her past, learns what it will be like to remain forever alone.

There is plenty of creepy in this house of angel statues and forces which would prey on the non-believers dwelling within.  As we question where Leon’s soul will fall on the counterbalance weighing Leon’s lack of faith against those powers that would claim his ungrateful soul, he his hunted by some manner of beast outside the house.

In a well-lit church? Fine. But anywhere with suboptimal lighting angel statues are just plain creepy!  There.  I said it!

This film features only one character that we “see.”  There are many represented by video or voice (as by phone call), but we watch only Leon interact with his surroundings.  His therapist girlfriend remotely leads Leon and us viewers to question if Leon is going mad, or if he really is being hunted by an other-worldly evil.

Writer/director Rodrigo Gudiño shows us some proficient camera work.  Nothing spectacular, but he serves his film well.  The CGI effects are better when they’re not the focus of the shot.  Briefly animated statues elicit expected uneasy jumps and the beast, when framed in a shadowy corner, is scary and of off-putting form.  But when it comes to fully revealing the creature via close-ups or action, it’s just some anorexic werewolf-looking thing from a ScyFy movie-of-the-week.

The poor quality CGI and use of a single on screen actor help inform us of the small budget Gudiño had at his disposal for his first feature length film.  Being the lone actor, Aaron Poole faced an unusual challenge having no one with whom he could directly interact.  So don’t be too quick to criticize his performance or Gudiño’s story staging.  I’d love to see what Gudiño could do with even a small studio budget for a theatrical release.  He has good ideas and a proficiency that exceeds most horror filmmakers of such limited experience.

See this, be mindful of Gudiño’s financial limitations and get stoked for the day this guy gets a budget and some more actors to direct.

This is a misleading poster, but it looks cool.

MY CALL:  I wasn’t thrilled with this film, but I remain very interested to see what the Soska sisters do next.  Horror has plenty of remakes and recycled concepts.  So I was happy to see this film for a nice change of pace and style.  Fans of body modification should enjoy this for what it is.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Celebrate more exploitative female empowerment with Boys Against Girls (2012) and Bitch Slap (2009).

The scoring does a fine job enhancing the politely visceral tone as we first meet medical student Mary (Katharine Isabelle; Ginger Snaps, Freddy vs Jason, Being Human) practicing her incision and suturing skills on a store bought turkey.  Talented, but finding herself in a difficult financial situation, Mary lets a club owner hire her to play “mob doctor” for cash.  This slowly begins to resculpt Mary’s moral compass, transforming her from almost naively innocent to readily corruptible.

Shortly thereafter, we meet the surgically distorted Beatress (Tristan Risk; Darkest Hour), a cartoonishly weird character who pulls Mary deeper into her illegal medical practice.  Beatress and her friends are interested in elective surgeries that are refused by doctors because of their extremity.  As Mary accommodates these taboo surgical desires, she herself desires more novel modifications to stimulate herself.  This swings into body modifications beyond what you’d find leafing through the latest issue of Taboo magazine and she even uses her unique niche skill set to exact revenge on those who have wronged her as she climbs her way into underground subcultural fame.

Needless to say, it’s hard to write about this movie without ruining the surprises within.

The acting falls short of the highly effective tone, the dialogue falls even shorter.  It’s disappointing.  I really wanted to take these characters seriously but I found it impossible.  I was especially irked by the attempts to depict entitled, egomaniacal surgeons.  It was as if someone started the background of a masterpiece with this especially taboo tone, scored and set so well with an underutilized premise, but then filled the foreground with poor writing and stale delivery.  I thought Katherine Isabelle did VERY well in Ginger Snaps and her small role in Being Human, but now I’m left to wonder if this rigid performance was the fault of her direction or her own acting.  I’d prefer to blame the direction, which failed to impress on several other accounts as well.  And Katherine was not outperformed by any other members of the cast.

A couple of Mary’s satisfied customers.

This film was written and directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska. They haven’t done much and I felt that it showed.  The inclusion of elective genital modification surgery, rape and surgery addicts felt forced.  These concepts are naturally shocking on their own; they don’t need to be over-sold.  I really wanted to believe that this was meant to be more than another pervy exploitative shock flick.  But once I saw how Jen and Sylvia Soska wrote themselves into the movie with over-the-top body modification extremists, it was apparent that they were more concerned with celebrating body modification than they were with telling an interesting story.  They may have been passionate about this film.  But it strikes me that they never considered how others would view the film without living life through the lens of their subculture.

Meet the Soska sisters.

This review comes with its share of negative criticism, but I’m also very interested to see what else the Soska sisters can do and what kinds of projects they’ll pursue.  Horror has plenty of remakes and recycled concepts.  So I was happy to see this film for a nice change of pace and style.

Saw this poster and thought “meh”

MY CALL:  This seventh franchise installment could be described as no fun.  Maybe not as “bad” as part 6, but not as entertaining either.  At least part 6 had the WTF-factor that made me laugh.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Puppet Master (1989), Puppet Master II (1991; the most slapstick crazy of the first three), Puppet Master III (1991) and Puppet Master 4 (1993).  Also try Ghoulies (1985) and Ghoulies II (1988).  SEQUEL SIDEBAR:  Puppet Master III (1991; set in 1941 and having the highest production value of the first three franchise installments) is actually a prequel to Puppet Master (1989), which occurs decades later in present day and is seamlessly followed story-wise by Puppet Master II (1991; which was the least serious, most zany installment).  Puppet Master 4 (1993) returns us to present day after Puppet Master II.  Puppet Master 5 (1994) picks up right where part 4 ended and marks the most noticeable drop in quality of any other franchise installments.  Then, after the events of parts 4 and 5, Curse of the Puppet Master randomly happens and is difficult to link to the others.

Director David DeCoteau (Curse of the Puppet Master, Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge) takes the helm again to dig the Puppet Master franchise’s grave a few feet deeper with this unremarkable prequel, which opens as a sequel to Puppet Master III, which itself is a prequel to the first Puppet Master, but most of the story takes place before Puppet Master III, making it, at least in part, an…interquel?  Is that even a thing?

In 1944, Toulon (Guy Rolfe; Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge, Puppet Master 4, Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter) was planning to escape Germany with his puppets Blade (Parts 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6), Pinhead (7 movie veteran), Tunneler (7 movie veteran), Jester (7 movie veteran) and Leech Woman (Parts 1, 2, 3 and 6).  So naturally, you’d think this movie is about their escape.  It’s not.  Not at all.  Before bedtime, he decides to tell his puppets a story–the origin story of the franchise–and we never return to their escape from Germany.  So why even open with them escaping to Germany?

So here’s the story…

In 1902 (Egypt), a man named Afzel is being pursued as a sorcerer by worshippers of Sutec.  You remember Sutec, right?  The evil Jim Henson demon lord from parts 4 and 5 who sent his antichrist only son to be reborn on Earth to kill Toulon’s puppets and all who knew his secret.  When the worshippers fail, the demon God Sutec raises some mummies (that look like dudes in mummy Halloween costumes–way to go, make-up team!) to exact his revenge on the thief of the power of life.  Afzel flees to Paris, but is followed by Sutec’s mummies, now made-over to look like goonish G-men with bad skin.

Meanwhile young Toulon (Greg Sestero) is entertaining Parisians with his puppet shows.  After coming to the aid of Afzel, who we learn is a 3000 year old Egyptian sorcerer (despite looking like an old white dude–and they never explain how he lived so long since we are told he can only have eternal life if his soul is placed in an inanimate object), he proves his powers of eternal life by animating Toulon’s puppets–which appear as crude (or “retro”) versions of the puppets we know and love today, including Six-shooter (even though he wasn’t in the opening storytelling scene).  There are also some new puppets (Dr. Death and Cyclops) which receive no explanation at all…huh?

Young Toulon with retro Pinhead, his first puppet to come to life.

Armed with death magic, Sutec’s acolytes kill Toulon’s puppet show crewmen.  But now armed with the power of eternal life, Toulon infuses their souls into his puppets.  Well aware that Toulon has bound their souls to these puppets, his crewmen don’t seem to mind and are happy to fight Sutec’s G-man mummies.  But let’s just pause for a sec here!  What happens if the puppet is destroyed?  Is their once-immortal soul now also forever destroyed? Do they still get to go to Heaven?  Did this “eternal life” backdoor damn them to Hell?  I would have asked a few questions before signing up to fight an angry demon lord’s sorcerous henchmen!  CONSEQUENCES OF ETERNAL LIFE FAIL.

Retro Blade etching a protective glyph on Toulon.

The effects team returned to some of their stop-motion roots, which was nice.  Sadly, the puppet violence was awful and there were no memorable kills–none.  Most deaths are attributed to Sutec’s goons just waving their hands in the air and then people die in a blur of death magic that slowly makes them kneel and lay down…you know…as they’re dying from the anticlimactic evil sorcery. DEATH MAGIC FAIL.  No build-up, no scares, no blood…no fun.  Worse yet, our two new puppets don’t do anything?  I don’t mean they don’t have their own personalities or special ways to kill, which they don’t.  I mean they don’t do ANYTHING.  NEW PUPPET FAIL!!!

Retro puppets Tunneler, Cyclops, Blade, Pinhead, Six-shooter and Dr. Death, celebrating their boring defeat of Sutec’s mummy G-man.

In the end Toulon fails to reveal anything about the two new puppets.  He does, however, make reference to that being for “another story.”  So I guess we’ll just have to suffer through another sequel to find out.  Although, low and behold, part 8 doesn’t even touch this notion.  DOUBLE NEW PUPPET FAIL.

This whole movie could be described as no fun.  Maybe not as “bad” as part 6, but not as entertaining either.  At least part 6 had the WTF-factor that made me laugh when I wasn’t rolling my eyes.

In case you were wondering why there was no retro Leech Woman, it’s because Leech Woman didn’t come about until Toulon’s wife Ilsa died.  We meet young Ilsa here.  And her face pretty much sums up how I felt after watching this movie.

Dare we move on to part 8…

MY CALL:  Monstrous aliens Body Snatch the faculty of a small Ohio high school in this clique-y high school throwback filled with before-they-were-famous A-listers.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Here is a half dozen more movies pitting clique-y 18-year olds against the forces of evil in various forms… Disturbing Behavior (1998), Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), Urban Legend (1998), The Craft (1996), Idle Hands (1999), Class of ’99 (1990).

Director Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk til Dawn, Planet Terror) delivers a fun horror experience in this clique-y high school throwback.  As if pulled from the Breakfast Club‘s Saturday detention, we find a motley crew of completely dissimilar backgrounds and values who are forced to work together against their common enemy, forces of evil: their teachers!

The players include the shallow it-girl Delilah (Scream Queen Jordana Brewster; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Fast Five), the drug-peddling closet intellectual Zeke (Josh Hartnett; 30 Days of Night, Sin City), the bullied quiet kid Casey (Elijah Wood; Maniac), the maybe-lesbian antisocialite Stokely (Clea Duval; Identity, American Horror Story), the football team captain Stan (Shawn Hatosy; John Q, The Postman) and the southern belle do-gooder Mary Beth (Laura Harris; Dead Like Me, Dead Zone).  Some fellow student cameos include sesident stoner (Danny Masterson) and the token black guy (Usher).

That’s one Hell of a cast of before-they-were-huge actors!  When I recently saw this movie again, I found the cast to be as enjoyable as “the movie.”  It’s fun seeing a bunch of star power in a movie you saw years ago without knowing they’d one day be a big deal (or, at least, slightly more famous).  But we’ve only looked at half the cast.

Facing off against the students, we have the faculty, including the super mousy English teacher (Famke Janssen; Hemlock Grove, Deep Rising, The House on Haunted Hill), football coach and gym class teacher (Robert Patrick; Terminator 2: Judgment Day), biology teacher Dr. Furlong (Jonathan Stewart), Nurse Harper (Salma Hayek; From Dusk til Dawn, Dogma), Principal Drake (Bebe Neuwirth) and some other teacher who played a famous role (Daniel von Bargen; The Silence of the Lambs, Thinner).

After being taken over by alien monsters in this Body Snatchers-Puppet Masters sampler, this high school faculty begins to behave much as the cold, transient high school educators we find today biding their time until moving on to what they think will be more glamorous careers.  Blatant, weird stares, stolid faces and socially awkward over-explanations of simple concepts clarify to the audience who has or hasn’t yet been claimed by the alien lifeforms–as if we needed our hands held to understand this.  But, then again…this movie was marketed to high schoolers around the “no child left behind” days.  Anyway, this hardly begins to explain the weird behavior of the faculty.

See what I mean?  This stuff isn’t normal….rain-worming (whatever that is)…staring at your student’s bedroom window from the street in the middle of the night…

Mr. Furlong and Casey find some alien, aquatic larva which grows rapidly in water and self clones in seconds.  You’ve gotta’ appreciate all of the movie-referencing in the dialogue (e.g., Aliens, The Puppet Masters, Men in Black, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), when our protagonists emulate the “who’s one of them” test from The Thing and when a teacher’s severed head “crawls” away–again, we’d like to thank The Thing for that idea.

The violence and blood are “fun.”  It doesn’t match up to the comically overdone slapstick of Drag Me to Hell, Tucker and Dale vs Evil or Evil Dead.  But it’s pretty slimy and gross nonetheless.  There’s stop-motion, CGI and classic make-up…even rubber monster suits (but mostly CGI).

It’s all a good time, but the effects run at a slow pace until the end.  In the meantime this feels a lot like a high school movie with a series of eerie teacher scenes mixed in.  But the last 30 minutes–featuring eye stabbings, aural insemination, tentacle attacks and crawling severed appendages–are well worth the wait if for no other reason than competent and fun special effects surrounding a nostalgic cast including many of today’s A-listers.

MY CALL:  Horrible filmmaking…but being unexpectedly complemented by one of the best credibly tough horror heroines in the last decade makes it all worth it.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Vacancy (2007) and The Strangers (2008) capture the “why is this happening to us” tone, but The Purge (2013) really nails down the team domestic assault aspect.

Directed by Adam Wingard (V/H/S 2: Phase I Clinical Trials, V/H/S: Tape 56, The ABCs of Death: Q is for Quack) and written by Simon Barrett (V/H/S 2: Tape 49 and Phase I Clinical Trials, V/H/S: Tape 56 and Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger, The ABCs of Death: Q is for Quack), this movie failed in most respects except for excellently presenting a credibly tough female survivor character.  This is difficult to do without getting carried away, and it should be acknowledged that this is major.  However, despite their ability to entertain me with some of their short films, as filmmakers they failed me here.  I was entertained and this wasn’t a bad movie experience for me, but it was all because one well-crafted character saved this movie for me.

THE PLAYERS:  Parents Paul (Rob Moran) and Aubrey (Barbara Crampton; Re-Animator, Chopping Mall, From Beyond) are celebrating their 35th anniversary at their secluded house with their children Crispin (A. J. Bowen; The House of the Devil, The Signal, Chillerama) and his girlfriend and the savior of this movie Erin (Sharni Vinson; Step Up 3D); Drake (Joe Swanberg; Cabin Fever 2, V/H/S) and his wife Kelly (Margaret Laney, credited as Sarah Myers); Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and his new girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn; 11/11/11); and daughter Amy (Amy Seimetz; Silver Bullets) and her boyfriend Tariq (Ti West; The Innkeepers, Cabin Fever 2).

These are your killer.  They wear masks that would make it impossibly difficult to keep their eye on the target while swinging an axe or shooting a crossbow.

This movie approaches Vacancy and The Strangers but changes the victims from a couple to a family of ten.  Otherwise, quite similarly, the location is remote, contact to the outside world is cut off, and we don’t know why our killers are trying to kill them (for a while anyway).  This premise should have the ability to be very exciting, but your thrills will be serially curbed  by the break in tempo you’ll endure when you are forced to watch the characters interact with one another.

This well-written character tries to seduce her boyfriend next to the dead body of a family member of his.  There is really no build up to justify this extreme behavior.

Yup…it’s sad. The characters are terribly written and their choices and issues seem dumb even for a horror movie–even when you consider that they’re irrational and scared for their lives.  The one exception is thankfully a glowing one: Erin.  Sharni Vinson does an AMAZING job in this role!  Erin is a strong-willed woman who makes believably smart choices while remaining appropriately scared.  She maintains just enough control, avoids life-ending idiotic decisions, and when she’s fighting for her life she does it credibly whether she’s striking someone by surprise in the throat or recklessly jumping out a window to escape a killer.  She’s never depicted as unrealistically strong, tough, invulnerable, ninja-like or brilliant.  What’s great is that, however unlikely, they even provide us with a reason that she can handle herself so well under duress.

Here’s Erin.  She can handle an axe about as well as she suppresses her PTSD.  My kind of woman!

Like our heroine from I Spit on Your Grave (2010), Erin goes through Hell, gets considerably hurt and accumulates several debilitating injuries, and finds most of her strength in her desperation and anger with her situation.  The major difference between the two is that nothing horrible happened to Erin for her to seek revenge.  Instead, some folks just starting killing everyone at a dinner party and she reacted in kind.

Erin, you’ve made wielding an axe sexy again!  Thank you for that and thank you for saving this movie!

The story was unoriginal, incredibly simple, and yielded a plot twist which I think you’ll be expecting before they finally get around to the big reveal.  The blood, screaming, lacerations and impalements were abundant and, if you could get over the poorly written bonkers randomness of it all, there were some thrills to be had, though mostly thanks to Erin-fueled adrenaline!

A movie poster that makes no sense…NONE!  There are no evil claws and there is no giant evil eyeball.

MY CALL:  I watched this because someone called it one of the great horror movies and that it had more jaw-drops per minute than anything else they had ever seen.  I’ve learned never again to trust this reviewer…EVER!

From the first minute this movie is clearly anything but normal.  Barbara’s daughter Katy Collins is almost eight year old, sociopathic and terrifyingly precocious.  She likes to bully boys at the ice skating rink and she’s really good at Pong.  No idea why.  The director must have thought it was symbolic or clever or something.

And this inexplicable event happens…

Then there’s Raymond.  Raymond (Lance Henriksen; The Pit and the Pendulum, AVP) owns a basketball team and is a member of a strange cultish group. Raymond has been tasked by his weird cult with marrying and procreating with Barbara, the only woman of our generation capable of giving birth to an evil, empowered lineage.  Making any sense yet?  No?  Well this won’t help.  There’s also a Christ-like figure who seems to be leading a cult of robed, monk children and another tall, culty-looking, bearded, really old guy who is going to find Katy Collins and bring her back…to their cult of little bald kids…with the Christ guy…that’s a little creepy.

Weird guy!

More confusing than the story itself was the music.  I cannot recall a more senselessly scored movie.  Quite mundane scenes (like a dude walking down some stairs really casually or someone waiting in the halls in the hospital) are dynamically scored for no reason.  In fact, the whole movie is senseless.  The repetitive use of birds as a “symbol” failed across the board.  The bird scenes are not compelling, thoughtful or interesting–they’re just annoying.

This movie seems to fail at EVERYTHING.  The only entertaining aspect of this movie was what they got such a young child actress to say on screen in the 70s.  Some of her lines were a little messed up, reminding me of The Possessed (1975).

Katy does…”this”…whatever this means.

Right now you may think I’m skipping over a lot of major plot details.  However, they make so little sense that the review would just be more confusing.

Like when this happens.

I watched this because someone called it one of the great horror movies and that it had more jaw-drops per minute than anything else they had ever seen.  I’ve learned never again to trust this reviewer…EVER!

An alternate poster that also makes no sense at all.

MY CALL:  Brilliantly bad, this is the quintessential guilty pleasure that I hoped to find on HBO late at night 20 years ago.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Like the fantasy but don’t care for all the “bad”?  Let’s try Legend (1985), Beastmaster (1982), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Conan the Destroyer (1984) or Willow (1988) on for size.  Like the “bad”?  How about Flash Gordon (1980), Kull the Conquerer (1997) or Krull (1983)?

If you play Dungeons & Dragons and like bad horror, boobs and Flash Gordon (1980), this seems to be about where those things meet.

So Deathstalker (Richard Hill; Deathstalker IV, Cyborg II), yeah that’s his name and no one ever questions it, is basically the frat bro acquaintance rapist of R-rated 80s fantasy.  He thinks he’s better than poor people, he’s blonder than anyone else he’s ever met, he clearly spends some time in the gym, and any time he does anything for a woman he thinks he’s entitled to…you know…force himself upon her and expect her to be grateful for it.

You know the D&D adventure has started when some loony witch informs Deathstalker that he must find three sacred objects–a chalice, an amulet and a sword–before the evil tattoo-faced wizard Munkar gets his hands on them.  He must also rescue the oft-naked Princess Codille (Barbi Benton) from Munkar.  It’s never really explained what the sacred objects do, why Munkar wants them and, if Munkar were to get them as he planned, why he’d need the princess any more.  But whatever…sticking with the D&D theme, I guess this all doesn’t need to make sense.

I know what you’re thinking…”by the power of Grayskull, I have the power!”  And yes, this was better than Masters of the Universe in both silliness and breast count.

During his quest he encounters rape-y mongoloid mutant hillbillies of fantasy, ogres and a goblin that reminds me of the miscreants from Ghoulies (1985).  Like any classic heroes’ quest, Deathstalker encounters allies during his journey: a monstrous keeper of some relic transforms into a human ally, a beach-bodied bro wearing one of those gay-looking crop-top 80s belly shirts, and the constantly bare-breasted warrioress Kaira (Lana Clarkson; Barbarian Queen I & II, The Haunting of Morella).

By the look on Kaira’s face, that rufi Deathstalker slipped her is about…to take…effect.  SCORE!

Deathstalker is met with some challenges.  Munkar’s magic transforms his henchman into a beautiful woman to assassinate Deathstalker (and Deathstalker almost forces himself upon the him-transformed-to-a-her for some sexy time), he enters a tournament to prove he’s the greatest warrior in the land and fights an ogrish pig-faced barbarian, and he overcomes more of Munkar’s deceptive illusions.

[THUNK!]

This pleasantly humorous note shows us that the director really cared.

I think Munkar is staring at Deathstalker’s sculpted, glistening man boobs.

This movie was deliciously classless.  We had TnA within the first 3 minutes with loads of nudity, generally exploitative shots and misogyny to follow.  Yes, this is an exploitation flick.  But it’s still far from soft core; just really raunchy.  It features all the nudity of a Girls Gone Wild video with about the same attention to plot. However every effort was made to approach this budgetless mess in an ambitious fashion, which made it waaaaaay more fun.

Even before the recent success of Spartacus we had visionary directors.  This movie featured blood, blades, boobs, manhandling group orgies and mud wrestling!

No, dear.  This role as a bare-breasted warrioress didn’t turn out to be the big acting break you expected.  All you got out of this was a starring role as a bare-breasted warrioress in Barbarian Queen and, wait for it, yet another role as a bare-breasted warrioress in Barbarian Queen II.  Who’d've thought…?

There are some cheesy blood sprays and head loppings, an arm is festively torn asunder and used as an impromptu weapon, and Munkar’s funny little pet looks like a sock puppet covered in rotten meat.  The fight choreography is laughable at best, mixing lame sparring with drunken sloppy WWE moves.  I’d like to point out that Richard Hill reprises his role as Deathstalker in Deathstalker IV: Match of Titans (1991), which means there isn’t just one, but three sequels to this trash!  That fact alone is worthy of juvenile celebration.

Watch this, remember that no means no (no matter what Deathstalker thinks), and feel like you’re a dirty-minded teenager waiting for your parents to go to bed all over again.

MY CALL:  The movie was at times a little slow-paced and overdeveloped for a rather simple plot, but the production value was certainly competitive with horror movies of its time and damn does Joanna Pacula make a sexy voodoo witch!  The death scenes are also pretty fun and creative.  If you like 80’s B-Horror, then you’ll like this.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Lifeforce (1985)…In fact, I reference a lot of movies in this review.  If you haven’t seen any of them, you probably should.  Lifeforce is just the closest one in terms of genre.  But, for example, The Hidden and The Re-Animator are absolute must-sees.  Listen to me, kids, I’m giving you pearls, here!

For a B-Horror Movie, I’ll give this a “B”.  This movie features two lovely ladies: Joanna Pacula, who played Val Kilmer’s prostitute main squeeze in Tombstone, and Meredith Salinger, who played the very cute deputy in Lake Placid.

Meet our witch, the lovely Joanna Pacula.

Why, why, why does all of the bad stuff in the world seem to come from the tropics?  That ebola-ish virus from the Outbreak monkey, the zombie-ism-infected mutant rat thing in Dead-Alive, the nasty spider from Arachnaphobia, and now evil voodoo relics in this movie…all from South America, Papua New Guinea and Africa.  Go figure, the birds of paradise must all be lethal to survive such wilds.

The movie opens in the Belgian Congo in 1963.  Early on we see that a young girl’s aunt has a weird rash and a creepy voodoo-ish objet d’art.  This provocative antique seems to stare at the apparently possessed aunt as she awakens her tweenie niece, Felice, from a nap with a scream-muffling stranglehold and kissing her.  Kissing her 12(?)-year-old niece.  Nice.  After this curious act the aunt’s body looks drained (suspiciously similar to the life-drained victims of the hot, naked space-vampire from LifeForce, which was released in 1985 and features Patrick Stewart—just FYI).  Contrastingly, the young niece looks quite vibrant after the molestation.

Cut to present day (1988) in the United States.  Now all grown up and an aunt herself, Felice (Joanna Pacula) calls her sister out of the blue.  Afterwards the sister is inexplicably scared and dies in a freak accident while window-shopping for guns.  After the funeral, Felice becomes a part of Amy (Meredith Salinger) and her widower father’s life.  Shortly after her arrival, Amy’s BFF gets mutilated in a freak accident involving an escalator at the mall.  While snooping through Felice’s things, Amy finds a voodoo starter kit and some evidence linking her to her friend’s “attack”.

Felice seduces the father and we see that Felice, like her aunt, has a weird rash.  Amy’s boyfriend, who looks like he’d be a young fourth member of Color Me Bad, catches Felice conducting a naked voodoo ritual so naturally he dies next.  Meanwhile Felice’s rash is spreading—Lord knows why.

It’s really no spoiler to inform you that “the kiss” transmits a wormy parasite that uses the host body until the body is all used up, then on to the next body.  Does this sound similar to The Hidden?  Both of these mouth-to-mouth evil worm transmission movies were released in 1987.  The major difference is that Felice, unlike the wormy alien of The Hidden, didn’t care for sunglasses and red sports cars and that she had to transmit to someone of her own bloodline.

Yuck.  Yuck!  YUCK!!!  There is NOTHING magical about that.

Okay, so now I’m going to try to sell you into renting this based on a way cool aspect of the movie.  If you like super-nuts, badass cats then rent this!  Felice’s cat is in a few scenes in the movie and is even used as a “hitcat”.  I haven’t seen a creepier cat since the broken-backed back-to-life feline of The Re-Animator.  This cat was so badass that I bet it could surely hold its own against the rabbit with big pointy teeth that murdered those poor bastards in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  It’s apparently rabid, puffy, evil-looking, and has a really fun demise near the end of the movie involving a rake and a bug zapper.

Best cat ever!

If you like 80’s B-Horror, then please add this to your queue!  You won’t regret it.

This movie poster should have depicted a photograph of the DVD boxed set with Puppet Master 1-7 fanned out like a poker hand because all we get here is a bunch of stock footage clips from these movies!

MY CALL:  This only succeeded at annoying me.  This eighth franchise installment serves as a review of the past movies with loads of stock footage.  Let this be a warning to franchise fans.  There is little original footage even though it’s only 70 minutes.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Puppet Master (1989), Puppet Master II (1991; the most slapstick crazy of the first three), Puppet Master III (1991) and Puppet Master 4 (1993).  Also try Ghoulies (1985) and Ghoulies II (1988).  SEQUEL SIDEBAR:  Retro Puppet Master (1999) introduced us to young Toulon in 1902. Puppet Master III (1991; set in 1941 and having the highest production value of the first three franchise installments) comes next and is actually a prequel to Puppet Master (1989), which occurs decades later in present day and is seamlessly followed story-wise by Puppet Master II (1991; which was the least serious, most zany installment).  Puppet Master 4 (1993) returns us to present day after Puppet Master II.  Puppet Master 5 (1994) picks up right where part 4 ended and marks the most noticeable drop in quality of any other franchise installments.  Then, presumably taking place after part 5, Curse of the Puppet Master randomly happens and is difficult to link to the others.

Director Charles Band (forefather of Full Moon entertainment) takes the helm for the first time–for this eighth installment in the series that he breathed life into.  I assumed Band was trying to rescue the franchise from its ever-dropping quality after Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge.  I was wrong.  This movie is nothing more than an assembled stock footage Franken-clip-show masquerading as a movie to earn Full Moon a few bucks.

In this story–if I dare to call it a story–some sort of agent-like criminal Maclain (Kate Orsini) will stop at nothing to get her hands on Toulon’s secret.  The scenes alternate between Maclain pursuit and flashbacks which are literally unmodified, full-length stock footage scenes from Retro Puppet Master and Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge.

Here Maclain interrogates Peter, the little German boy who met Toulon in Puppet Master III.  Peter is all grown up and has somehow come into possession of Toulon’s puppets.

Most Amazon reviewers have suggested this include scenes from part 1-7.  Well, it’s mostly 3 and 7.  But it would have been much more interesting if it tied all of them together.

In these scenes we see Toulon (Guy Rolfe; Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge, Puppet Master 4, Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter, Retro Puppet Master) and his puppets Six-shooter (Parts 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7), Blade (Parts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7), Pinhead (8 movie veteran), Tunneler (8 movie veteran), Jester (8 movie veteran), Leech Woman (Parts 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7), Torch (Parts 3 and 5), Cyclops (Part 7) and Dr. Death (Part 7).

This overuse of stock footage borders on offensive.  Most of the movie’s running time is composed of scenes from other movies!  Now, sometimes a few “part 1″ stock footage scenes can work wonders for viewers of a “part 2″ in need of catching up.  Whereas this movie just seems to offer some documentarian chronology to the events of the franchise’s movies, which were not at all released in chronological order. The “new” scenes involving the Maclain character amount to mere minutes.

Can I say one good thing about this?  Well…actually yes.  We get a nice highlights reel of stop-motion effects and the better kill scenes.  Let’s try to forget this movie ever happened and remember some of the good times…

MY CALL:  For lovers of truly bad horror and bad, cheesy horror comedy, this is a God-awful winner.  All others should keep a safe distance.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Killer Workout (1987), Death Spa (1989) and Hellgate (1990) are all served with extra cheese as well; lots of laughs.

This cheesy 80s horror comedy comes with a moral lesson: adultery is wrong.  In order to demonstrate the accurate real life consequences of adultery, this articulate film afflicts adulteresses with an STD.  The symptoms?  No biggie.  Just uncontrollable compulsive cannibalistic infanticide in the form of sexually-transmitted zombiism.

“Infanticide is a solid $5 vocab word meaning the intentional killing of infants or, more generally, one’s offspring.”

Everybody in this movie is unpleasant.  The mothers are all catty, spiteful, unfaithful, gossiping alcoholics who speak pure vitriol.  The fathers are all cheaters or wife-beating alcoholics. The kids, proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the proverbial slutty tree, are sassy and promiscuous.  A local well-to-do nurse flagrantly ignores HIPPA laws.  The ice cream truck man is dating a baby-faced high schooler while making eyes at every other young girl in town.  At one point, we actually see a cop and the coroner having a beer while discussing an autopsy…standing over the body in the morgue…drinking beer!

See?  EVERYBODY is unpleasant.

Once infected with this STD, the mothers behave like silly, flesh-eating monsters.  You know that saying “I actually think she would eat her own young”?  Yeah, it’s pretty much like that. Mothers start eating their smallest and most vulnerable children first with cheesy zombie gore and cheesy zombie facial expressions.  Some of them are more tactful, trying to fatten up their kids with milk-heavy diets.  Others have super strength and unhinging jaws–really funny and weak effects on the jaw, but it was an enjoyable brief highlight.

When witnesses to these horror speak up they are naturally not taken seriously…”Really, I came home and saw my mother eating my baby brother.”  “My mother…she ate my father.”  “She’s never done anything like this before.”

Somehow the oddly short lovesick coroner and the irregularly tall amorous nurse work together to create an antivirus with no educational background in immunology, no lab rats or human trials, and no access to a biomedical research facility.

The director of this masterpiece could never seem to decide if the STD-virus turned them into living zombies or methodical cannibals, but that was surely forgivable among the melee of other flaws in this fun-spirited FUBARed mess.  The effects were obviously weak, but festively cheesy and accompanied by entertaining sloppy chewing sound effects.  But there’s dismemberment, flesh-tearing and over-the-top zombie make-ups and dental inserts–these things are inherently fun to any horrorhound. The make-up work is so silly.  It reminds me of Killer Klowns from Outer Space meets the Joker.

To refer to the acting quality as wooden would be far too complimentary.  These actors–if we dare to call them actors–seem to just “say” their lines at the camera with a faltering pace as if they were struggling to remember them like a 4th grader reciting a speech in front of his class.

For lovers of truly bad horror and bad, cheesy horror comedy, this is a God-awful winner.

MY CALL:  Aiming more towards comedy than shoxploitation, this is a n early and rather tame Tokyo Shock-esque installment.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Helldriver (2010), Meatball Machine (2005), Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009),Tokyo Gore Police (2009) and Machine Girl (2008).  LANGUAGE:  Thai.  I bought my DVD in 2010 and it did not offer an English-dubbed audio alternative.

This contribution to the Tokyo Shock subgenre hails from Thailand, but tries to deliver all of the nonsensical fun of Japanese installments.  Our completely plausible story takes place in the future, when the news assures that Thailand is 100% virus-free–not so much as a common cold!–and will not be affected by the Sars virus.  Cut to Africa: everyone is dead and turning into zombies, a CGI roach crawls out of a Sars zombie’s mouth and flies to Thailand where it bites a man–yes, first reported roach bite like…ever.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand presto!  We have a bad movie!

So this roach flies from Africa to Thailand…

A cute animation depicting what Africa now looks like…

The roach bites this guy…who turns into this tooth-filed menace…who gets stabbed in the neck with an iron.

Our roach-bitten victim becomes a pus-spewing, vomiting, pulsating mess that begins eating cats and infecting the people of Bangkok immediately.  Once infected , they go all Evil Dead with brow and cheek bone demon make-up and develop some heinously jagged teeth.

Then our Sars zombie patient zero starts biting things, which in turn become uglier versions of themselves.

From here the nonsense kicks into high gear.  Unlike the more recently released Tokyo Gore Police (2009) and Machine Girl (2008), the slapstick is not limited to the gore.  Our characters find themselves speaking with all the seriousness of cartoon characters, they dodge bullets with cartwheels, they dance to their own theme music and the toughest characters are Asian school girls (exactly like Tokyo Gore Police and Machine Girl).

The action is quite limited in quality, high in frequency, and often supplemented by weak comedic antics.  Blood abounds, but the rubber guts and severed parts that I yearn for were quite rare.  A CGI zombie baby birth offered a brief change of pace, but by and large the effects failed to find the “shock” that earned this movie subgenre its name.  But hey, there was a strong hesitation to show any nudity–I suppose to keep our attention on the art on display before our eyes.

Here’s the evil CGI Sars zombie baby.

What really keeps this movie down below the ranks of, for example, Meatball Machine (2005) and Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009) is the overuse of CGI effects.  Typical Tokyo Shock films focus on over-the-top blood sprays, wacky monster prosthetics and armor, violent slapstick amputations and WTF-mutant-cybernetic-perverted-weapons, only rarely turning to CGI.  Whereas this installment uses CGI to the point of reliance.  In the beginning of the movie a severed, Sars-animated cat’s tail is eaten by a python, which then grows into some giant monstrosity of a demon anaconda and starts eating people.  This offered a WTF-random element to the movie with CGI and that’s all fine.  However, the snake became a recurring theme, growing bigger and making the low quality CGI more of a blaring flaw than a fun complement.  By the story’s end this snake monster served the role as the video game “last guy”–and it wasn’t impressive or fun. EPIC BAD GUY FAIL!!!!

Perhaps this movie predated the uprising of Tokyo Shock.  However, its nature is inescapably similar and likewise inescapable are comparisons to its newer, much better counterparts.  I feel like this movie would have been way more fun if I saw it back in 2004…before the availability of the higher quality found in subsequent releases.