a jaded viewer reviews the world of horror, splatter, gore, cult, grindhouse, trash, b-movie, erotica, indie, asian and exploitation films
Friday, July 03, 2009
Happy Independence Day from the jaded viewer!
Technically it's July 3rd but tomorrow you get to go all patriotic. And what's more patriotic than Uncle Sam.
Go have your BBQ, eat some red meat and potato salad and watch all those Michael Jackson tributes on E.
And catch up on some horror and anything you missed on the jaded viewer. And don't be shy about commenting. Share your 2 cents on anything I've written be it you agree or disagree. If your on Google Connect, add yourself below and subscribe to my RSS feed.
I'm thinking of even Twittering. Tweeting seems kinda lame to me. For you other horror bloggers, do you tweet? Is it worth doing this?
OK now check out the trailer below or Uncle Sam will kill you.
I first heard about Adam Wingard and E.L. Katz when I first viewed Wingard's short Laura Panic. It starred this hot Scarlet Johansson lookalike Hannah Hughes and I was entrenched by the short short too short story.
So of course I IMDBed Wingard and saw he'd directed two flicks, this one and Pop Skull.
It seems Home Sick went on a horror festival run and from what I've read from the horror-sphere people dug the flick tremendously. Standing at a solid 90 minutes, we've got a stallar cast of Chiller regulars. The horror queen herself, Tiffany Shepis, Bill fuckin Moseley and Tom Towles.
So what's the hyperpalooza over Home Sick. Home Sick is a macabre dream come to life, acting by actors who should not be acting and buckets and buckets of gore.
It's the splatter that stands out far above the rest of the film (other than Tiffany Shepis's perky, voloptuous breasts).
Boring Plot-O-Matic
A maniac with a suitcase full of razorblades unleashes a super human killer upon a group of kids in a small Alabama town. They must take up arms with a insane Chili enthusiast if they want to survive. Awesome Review-O-Matic
Home Sick seemed like a flick made by a group of friends/horror regulars in Jersey over the weekend while they were attending a Chiller or Fango Weekend of Horrors convention. Seemed like the director was like "Who wants to make a movie?" It just has that feel of almost video maybe this could be film sorta feel. It's extremely low budget, but the effort to please the horror-core is ever present.
A cast of horror fan minions all attend a party. Who are these fresh fodder soon to be victims?
1.) Crazy gun happy redneck (this dude is the worst actor I've ever seen) 2.) Some Munster looking kid 3.) Tiffany "looking damn gothy yummy" Shepis 4.) Hipster looking dude 5.) Final Girl girl
A man carrying a suitcase of razorblades named Mr. Suitcase (Bill Moseley) crashes the party and starts demanding to know who everybody hates. As they tell him he cuts his arms with razorblades. Who the fuck knows why but to push the non existent plot along, this initiates everybody they name to be killed.
After getting that pesky plot outta the way, all the successive scenes are set up death scenes of various people. The hated get arms cut off, intestines spillage, hacked in the head, etc.
It's the top notch, anti CGI gore that is full of hip hip hooray. The effects are brilliant and well executed by our masked demon killer. The makeup is also to be applauded. Stellar effects in both gore and splatter.
The craziest scene has gotta to be a topless Tiffany Shepis rolling around in blood, laughing evilishly. If I could put this scene in the WTF Moment Hall of Fame, I would induct it immediately.
That's the good yip for Home Sick.
What's the arghhhh?
Well aside from Shepis and Moseley and the gore, everything else falls apart. Some of the actors seem to be improvising their lines...badly. This is not Tara Reid acting bad. Or Uwe Boll acting bad. This was cardboard cut out acting bad. I really wanted Keyboard cat to play these bad actors off.
Adding to the horribleness is Tom Towles as Uncle Johnny, a crazed Confederate gun toting old redneck geezer who the remaining survivors go to for help. A scene where the group eats chili seemed to be 10 min of filler.
The flick also suffers from being so dreamlike, it's definitely entering Herschell Gordon Lewis territory. It's almost like a Gregg Araki-ish horror flick combining a bizarro world with a slasher flick.
Home Sick is slightly above any other indie horror flick as the gore and splatter are in a stratosphere of awesomness. Add in Tiffany Shepis and a creepy Bill Moseley it jump ups a few notches on the horror belt. But it's still amateurish for Wingard's first feature which brings this flick down to Earth.
Experimentism in my horror I can take to a point. But overall, it's worth a look for the inner gorehound in you. Gore-ipedia
Knife to the mouth Sliced feet trauma Ax to the head trauma Heavy intestine trauma Fingernail trauma Split body trauma Beheadings (x2) Shotgun blast to the stomach trauma Gunshot to the head trauma Punch to the face trauma Shotgun blast to the head trauma Nude-ipedia
Tiffany Shepis A+ Boobs
WTF moment More Tiffany Shepis giggling, vomiting and rolling around in blood....naked.
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
Wingard would follow up with Pop Skull which according to some is hit or miss. I wouldn't mind if Laura Panic turned up as his next feature. For Home Sick, if you get into the mindset that your watching this at a Chiller convention with other horror fanatics, you'll dig it. You'll need a few beers in you to get some laughs but it's been a while since I rewound some death scenes for multiple viewings. Synapse films is distributing the DVD with a bunch of extras and some shorts.
Group of young hot coeds go on vacation + fucked up shit happens (somebody dies) + normal dudes turn into evil psychopaths = Donkey Punch.
See? The UK can make generic horror just like the good ole US of A.
With a title liked Donkey Punch, you'd hope the Brits would go extreme-o with this type of sexual horror gone awry. However, they obviously don't and go the same generic route of formulaic horror and become an outright B-grade copycat of Dead Calm and all the other horror hijinks (maybe hikink?) on the high seas.
If this was made in America, it would be called The Yacht or Dead Water. It wouldn't have any sex in it, most certaintly be PG-13 and star one token black guy. Yes folks. It would be The Hills meets Dead Calm. I'm thinking Tara Reid as the blonde....maybe Freddy Prinze Jr. as the evil captain.
Oh oh. I can hear the Hollywood remake machine. Fuck.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
After meeting at a nightclub in a Mediterranean resort, seven young adults decide to continue partying aboard a luxury yacht in the middle of the ocean. But when one of them dies in a freak accident, the others argue about what to do, which leads to a ruthless fight for survival.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
[Cue Gilligan's Island theme song]
Just sit right back & you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip That started from this Spanish tropic port aboard this tiny yacht ship. The mate was a mighty sailing man, The skipper evil for sure. Six passengers set sail that day for an orgy, drug fueled tour, an orgy, drug fueled tour
The sex started getting rough, the large blonde chick was donkey punched, If not for the evil of the fearless crew The audience would be bored, The audience would be bored.
The final girls started running around while everybody went nuts With Tammi, Lisa too, Sean and Josh, The DJ
The Lawyer and Kim,
Here on Donkey Punch Isle
OK that didn't turn out too good. But overall that sums up the movie in a nutshell. Lets make fun of the characters ok?
1.) Final Girl Mary Ann (not her name but lets go with the Gilligan theme ok?) 2.) Movie Star big boobies, blonde chick 3.) Brunette with short hair that looks like that Survivor chick who was in that movie with Rob Schneider 4.) Some Gilligan looking guy in a light blue shirt that does the donkey punch 5.) DJ guy who does his best Ali G impersonation 6.) Skipper/captain guy 7.) Another dude in a white shirt
Let me start off by saying I needed subtitles. Sometimes you can't understand even Brits speaking english with the level of slang and heavy accents vocalizing all over the place mate.
The movie is at 1 hour and 40 minutes. Seriously? I think the extra 10 minutes was because of the sex scene. Which honestly is why any horror hound would be intrigued to see this flick.
So as our 3 really dumb Brit chicks accept an offer from some rich, young Brit dudes to go aboard their yacht and do drugs, you can see this is going to Natalie Holloway into really bad fuckedupness. Soon we see the hot blonde chick get double teamed and she gets donkey punched to death while another couple are skinemaxing on the couch. Still thinking of the sex scene? Yeah Metacafe!
You good? Soon we go into coverup mode as everybody doesn't want to go to jail. Lots of talking, threatening speeches, yada yada yada and we get to some stabs o plenty from the generic horror vending machine.
So our Gore-ipedia includes a stab to the shoulder, flare kaboom! and a rotor to the neck. Yawn. I've seen more gore from an episode of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors.
Soon our goody two shoes final girl and her BFF are trying to figure out ways to escape the yacht from hell. Horror-rity ensues until we get to the uber anti climactic ending. The movie is more thriller on the high seas than a gorehound's delight. It just didn't seem to go clickity click on any of my "wow" radar. At least we got to see some boobies.
Nude-ipedia
Umm see the scene above dummy
WTF moment Rotor to the neck by Survivor chick didn't make any fuckin sense
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
Dude the donkey punch scene does not live up to the hype. I'm sure you can find it online. Surrounding this high level of gratuitous nudity and sex is another B grade Caucasian horror film that could very well be on Skinemax real soon.
Best if you catch it then. 2 spinkicks for being at least watchable for what it was trying to do. At least it wasn't about teen vampires.
Every now and then we here at the jaded viewer take a break from reviewing the horror and grindhouse and delve into the indie scene. Why? Because indie movies from every country are where filmmakers still bring creativity to cinema.
And the indie spirit is where you can find a movie like No Right Turn, a full fledge fairy tale pulp crime thriller that can only be described as eclectically unique and darkly comedic.
You'll get the feeling somebody's been eating your porridge and sleeping in your bed.
Well this is my first review of a David Bourke movie. I did not see his previous effort Last Exit so I'm coming in fresh on his work. I've never seen anybody blend pulp crimeyness, film noir and fantasy all together. Does this soup of genres work? You better believe it does.
No Right Turn is like a stage play come to life, depicting the seediness of Denmark's underworld and relying on four characters that pull us into the mystery filled with twisty twizzlers and shady betrayal.
What made this work so well? Let's explore. Boring Plot-O-Matic
Nina is the voluptuously alluring girlfriend of Johnny, a charming but delusional crook. To escape from her weary life she casually sleeps with an old friend, Teddy, but is fed up of her current lifestyle especially the drunken dreams of Johnny. One night after an argument with Johnny, she storms home where she is abducted by a pair of thugs and is fortunately rescued by a timid and guilt-ridden girl, Monella.
Even though they are from two very different worlds, they quickly become close friends and sooth each other lives.
Johnny hearing about Nina's ordeal with the thugs, sadly attempts to win her heart back by going on a crazy revenge spree.This scares Nina off even more. Nina eventually tells Monella of her ploy of escaping from Johnny’s seedy world by conspiring to steal his much talked about hidden stash, stored in a safety deposit box deep in the neon city.
Monella reluctantly agrees to help...
...and we follow each of their dangerously entangled lives until their ultimate and bloody fate.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
No Right Turn slaps your senses right from the start. From the opening scene of Nina pleasuring a character straight out of a Coen Bros. movie Teddy, we're in for a jam packed grimy world that you will feel dirty after viewing. What drives this film in the beginning is the characters and for the first hour we get to explore their characterologies to a level where we have to be comfortable with so that when we get into plot mode (which we finally get to in the last 30 min), we can see the motives all spinning out of control.
First, we get Nina (Laura Bach) a blonde, hot vixen who wants to be an actress. She's multifaceted in more ways than one. More likely than not she is the town whore as we find out later but her ever changing hair colors and lesbian inklings are devishly sexy. It's Uma from Pulp Fiction, but nastier. She's the angel that fell from the heavens but ended up with Johnny.
Johnny (Tao Hildebrand) is Mr. Asshole Junkie. A drug dealer by trade, a junkie by hobby. He's our Mr. to the Mrs. that is Nina. Johnny works for Pedro our big drug czar. For now, Johnny is our "pizza" delivery guy delivering but he's aspiring for bigger things. Johnny's days go like this.
1.) Bang Nina 2.) Drink and smoke 3.) Deliver drugs 4.) Sniff coke 5.) Bang Nina (ever harder) 6.) Drink and smoke Repeat 5 times.
He's a slimy dimebag of a dude that if you make him mad, he'll fuck you up.
One of Johnny's customers is Teddy, a John Waters looking chap who is a writer and pseudo engineer. Teddy is quirky times infinity, doing his drugs and smoking like a chimney (that's on fire). An odd cat, he's wrapped in secrecy that will be revealed toward the end.
Wrapping up our quartet is Monella. Her introduction is somewhat Irreversible but with a beatdown. After Johnny gives a drunk tirade to a some patrons at his local bar, the patrons decide to go out for some old fashioned raping in a dark alley.
Poor Nina ends up being the victim but is saved by Monella. They then proceed to have a very Wachowski's Bound like relationship. Monella, her mother having past away is a suicidal painter. The two go all Ying and Yang and go all lesbian grunting. Good times.
Like I said, the first hour establishes each of these characters. At times I got bored of seeing repetitive smoking and drinking. It wasn't until we see the Nin-nella relationship did I feel like I got some worthiness of my time. This was best illustrated in a scene where both women are playing darts and Nina tells off a man hitting on her. Cue lesbian love scene.
The plot kicks in on the last 40 or so minutes as Nina's proposed heist with Monella's help ensues. It's filled with twizzler twists to keep you on your toes, even going all fantastical in the last 10. I'm still scratching my head. What's the goodyness in No Right Turn? The characters are never boring, more so cardboard cutouts of pulp. A junkie drug dealer, a sexy siren, a innocent ordinary and a quirky 50s wannabe writer. The comparisons to Bound are hard to ignore. Nina and Monella's sassy relationship has that same Gina Gerson-Meg Tilly feel with Joey Pants as the Johnny type. NRT can be described as Bound's cousin once removed.
The visuals are shot remarkabely well for an indie. From snowy hills to Johnny and Nina's loft apartment are very top notch. Even the film quality makes this feel IFC-ish.
What's the baddyness in No Right Turn? Well it's the fact that the first 60 minutes has no plot whatsoever. Part of a mystery is to get the audience hooked and I had to wait a whole hour for that.
The first hour was also filled with scenes to promote the soundtrack. It almost looked like a music video. The characters are not doing anything special and after seeing Johnny drink, smoke, snort for the 20th time, I was wondering if anything from the trailer was ever going to happen. The scenes are so disjointed going to character to character. It's almost if you could have skipped the first hour and still understood the movie.
Even with my gripes, I enjoyed No Right Turn for what it was. A fantastical pulpy mixture with a dash of crime gone awry. The fantastical twist in a pulp fiction cocktail is completely different from anything I've seen before. And that's the beauty of independent film. You can do that and let the audience decide if it worked.
Thank goodness it worked.
Gore-ipedia
Some shot off fingers Bloody nose
Nude-ipedia
Grade B boobies from Nina
WTF moment The ending ending...I'm still going huh?
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
It's a crime fairy tale movie from Denmark! I was able to watch this from DVD screener from Mr. Bourke (thanks!). No Right Turn should be on the festival circuit soon, no word yet on any distribution.
Why do I watch movies I know suck? Well, first off because all these movies were free DVDs I got from work. Secondly, some seemed they may actually be MST3K worthy. Finally, some of these flicks had pseudo horror stars in them.
So in the posts below are reviews for Killing Ariel, Against the Dark, Black Swarm and Legend of the Bog.
In any case, I figure these reviews are more of warnings to avoid these films at all costs. These reviews will be short and savagely brutal. Fuck em. They don't deserve real in depthyness.
DO NOT WATCH ANY OF THESE MOVIES!!!
I've done my civic duty to the horror community. You're welcome.
OMG I'm reviewing the anti-Van Damme!! It's Steven "I have no other facial emotions" Seagal!!
Think of Against the Dark as the poor, bastard cousin of I am Legend. It's like 28 Days Later but with horrible acting, reusable vampire stuntmen and stuntwomen and Seagal barely lifting his sword in any action scenes.
Seems a virus has hit the entire fuckin planet and everybody who gets infected becomes all vampiry and gets a taste for blood and zombie mutilation.
The survivors all end up in an abandoned hospital and like a side scroller level game, they have to make their way to the exit or be mushroomed cloud by the Army. The flick just has random encounters with the infected who get easily slaughtered by the rogue hunters led by an overweight, barely audible Seagal. The survivors are just a bunch of white people who you know will become easy fodder for the mass of vampires.
Action scenes are barely action scenes and any level of tension is like watching an infomercial. This is the movie where Seagal said fuck it. Where's my paycheck?
Wow this was just terri-awful. Just outright fuckin dumb. Everything about this movie made me want to kick myself in the groin, rip out my eyeballs and ramble obscenities at my TV for having watched this atrocity on film.
Random tourists (Americans and Irish and Brits folks) and some archeologist with a blonde hottie (Nora-Jane Noone who was in The Descent) converge on a cabin in the woods in Ireland. Yada yada yada they meet up with a hunter played by Vinnie fuckin Jones.
Seems like their is some sort of legend about bog bodies and these bodies come to life and look like Kane from the WWE.
Let me say this. I've never seen a bog. Seems like a puddle of muddy water to me. How you can possibly a justify a movie about bog bodies coming to life is unfuckinbelievable. This flick is 90 minutes of annoying people doing dumb shit.
Even Vinnie Jones was outright shitty in this.
Nothing redeemable in this flick. No nudity, no gore, no splatter, no suspense. Nada. Legend of the Bog is one of those flicks you'll see at the $5 DVD bin at Walmart where you may be tempted to buy it. DON'T!!!!!
You know how these movies go. Innocent family moves to suburbia, encounters local community, meets a member of the opposite sex and then killer insects try to kill them all.
I'm not going to say this was completely awful but it was in the vicinity of crappiness. I mean I'm all for watching killer, mutant wasps savagely stinging the shit out of helpless suburbans but my main problem was the wasps just seem like a bunch of pussies.
At least in the other Sci Fi movies, those killer monster animals are fuckin savage. These wasps don't have any creativity in them. All they came up with were sudden attacks in a house or an attack in the farmland which is lame. These motherfuckin wasps should be attacking teenagers while they are having sex. Or better yet stinging in unison some newborn or some 105 yr old grandma whose bolting on her walker.
And Robert England plays the Doc Brown crazy, wild eyed scientist who may or may not be evil.
What a waste of an England performance.
Killer wasps are no motherfuckin snakes on a plane.
Some middle age American salaryman decides to cheat on his wife with some Euro-hottie. Seems his mommy got it on with a succubi demon or some shit or the other.
Fast forward to the euro chick and dude going fuckin in a cabin in the woods when the dude goes going all crazy. A few killings of Ariel montage scenes later, I was bored out of my fuckin mind.
I didn't care about the dude or why he was all mental. It literally was 90 minutes of the dude acting nuts. Sure you can bang some Euro chick and then add a twist ending. But seriously, how does one get funding for a lame Shining ripoff.
Totally incomprehensible flick, loaded with generic T&A and scenes of violence that fit into a non existent plot. Yay. Now why don't you go F off.
I had that red and black jacket when I was a kid. I learned that Thriller dance. I had leather pants with the white socks.
It's a sad day all over the world because the King of Pop is now dead.
I remember rewatching the Thriller music video on a VHS tape that I would rewind countless times over. It was one of my first time also watching zombies. WTF are zombies I would ask my parents?
Fuckin scary.
Just forget the eccentric lifestyle, Bubbles, Macaulay Culkin, the oxygen tank, the pigmentation, the pedo-molestation charges, etc.
For a second, just remember the music and pop culture-ness of the icon of MJ.
Michael Jackson, you will be missed.
Now listen to Thriller live below.
And to cheer you up, go watch Filipino inmates do the Thriller dance again.
The Box Trailer and Twilight Zone "Button, Button" Episode
Richard Kelly (director of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales) is back and doing his best M. Knight Shyamalan impersonation. With The Box, he takes a short story by Richard Matheson which was in turn, turned into an episode called "Button, Button" on the new Twilight Zone in 1986.
Starring Cameron Diaz, the story is an interesting premise or a load of twisty badness. You decide. You are the experiment.
A small wooden box arrives on the doorstep of a married couple, who open it and become instantly wealthy. Little do they realize that opening the box also kills someone they do not know ...
Fuck yeah I would. Of course you all can see the twist coming a thousand light years away but fuck it, it's a million dollars.
Check out the trailer below.
If you want to be spoiled way ahead of the October 30th 2009 release date, you can watch the Twilight Zone episode "Button, Button" below. Hell, I did.
Technically it's July 3rd but tomorrow you get to go all patriotic. And what's more patriotic than Uncle Sam.
