Monday, March 31, 2014
Reviews
The reviews below are some old reviews I took from my IMDb profile. My newer reviews will be a little different. They will be longer, include pictures, a gore meter and 50% less trans fat.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Sabotage (2014)
Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest actioner is a bit of a disappointment to be honest. It's not the action, trust me. When it comes to action, this movie delivers in spades. Which makes it even more irritating that flaws dragged the movie down.
Like I said earlier, the action delivers in spades, the movie definitely surpassed my expectations in that department. Every bullet results in a copious amount of blood. There are also some fairly graphic aftermaths of disemboweling and some scattered body parts after an accident that were very welcome surprises.
Now on to what dragged the movie down.
Don't expect the action to be non-stop, trust me when it happens, it HAPPENS, but the movie gets very talky on several occasions, which wouldn't be an issue if the plot was interesting, which it wasn't. Basically Schwarzenegger's character is in the DEA (as you can tell from his hat on the cover) and he's being double-crossed by somebody and there's an investigation and whatever. All I really cared about was the action.
The entirety of Schwarzenegger's crew (including the woman) were all the tattooed macho muscle-bound tough guys you would expect from this kind of movie, and as such you an expect a lot of swearing, particularly "F"-bombs. Now, I am definitely not one to complain about language, but there are scenes where these people can't get past a single sentence without a "f*ck you" or "f*ck that" or "suck my d*ck" and so on. It was amusing for a little while, but it got very old very fast.
Now, the plot does take some interesting turns as the movie goes on and it progressively gets more and more engaging, but the good final 30 minutes can't make up for the OK first hour.
Oh, and did I mention the action is incredible?
6 out of 10 garbage bags
Hallucinations (1986)
The plot of Hallucinations, the Polonia Brother's first movie, is that
brothers Mark and John (played respectively by Mark Polonia and John
Polonia (R.I.P.)), and their stepbrother Todd (played by Todd Michael
Smith) are home alone while their mother works a double shift.
Suddenly, they all start having gruesome hallucinations, and none of
them knows why. Their mom calls telling them she's going to be gone
another day, and the three brothers must work together to figure out
the cause of the hallucinations before it's too late.
First, let's talk about the hallucinations themselves. Some of them are pretty funny, but some are also surprisingly scary. Among said hallucinations we have a hilarious scene where a cat is torn up by a sentient chainsaw, a man vomiting and crapping out a purple liquid and then crapping out a knife, a man being attacked by a pipe creature in the shower, and another man being attacked by a demonic baby doll.
Now let's talk about the explanation for the hallucinations. For most of the movie, it is suggested that a "monk" who talks to one of the brothers may have something to do with them, but for the most part things are kept pretty vague, that's a good thing, the lack of explanation adds to the creepiness of the movie. We actually do get an explanation towards the end of the movie, but it doesn't make any sense.
Now let's talk about gore, gore hounds who are also fans of SOV horror and are therefore willing to look past some budgetary constraints are going to be treated to some surprisingly decent gore including the chainsaw scene with the cat I mentioned earlier, a wrist slicing, blowtorch torture, and a surprisingly good decapitation.
Another reason this movie is so scary is the fact that the only people in the movie are the three teenage brothers, who are home alone, and there seems to be nobody around who can help them, so they are forced to fend for themselves and face whatever force is causing these supernatural events alone. That's scary.
As far as technical issues go, some of the normal SOV issues are present, particularly the fact that it's shot with a home video camera. Keeping that in mind, the quality is a lot better than some of the other SOV movies I've seen. Lighting isn't really an issue here. The sound cuts in and out every once and a while, and towards the end (when everything is explained) the music drowns out the actors. Being a veteran SOV viewer, I can look past things like that as long as they're not too extreme, it's pretty forgivable here.
Scary, creepy, surreal, gory and silly all at the same time, Hallucinations surprised me, in that the Polonia Brothers actually made a good movie, rather than just an entertainingly bad one. Honestly, I still get the shivers thinking about this one.
8 out of 10 garbage bags
A Fucking Cruel Nightmare (2010)
A F**king Cruel Nightmare (I'll call it AFCN for short), is a homemade
splatter movie that's wholly illogical, pointless and shows no
semblance of any sort of plot. However, not only is it incredibly gory,
it's unforgettably bizarre and even somewhat engaging.
The story of AFCN is that a man is plagued with horrible nightmares where a masked killer savagely tortures and kills several seemingly random people. Is it just a nightmare, or is it more than that? Confronted by a dark past, the man must confront his inner most demons and plunge into the deepest depths of his mind to unlock the secrets of his f**king cruel nightmare!
Um... Okay, that's not what happens at all.
The real "story" of AFCN does center around a man who's having a nightmare. In this nightmare, he wanders through a corridor, in each room a person is being tortured by a person in a mask. One by one, he looks in each of these rooms and watches the brutal acts of torture inflicted on these people.
This is the first 30 minutes of the movie.
Eventually, the man wakes up, puts on a mask and goes back to sleep. Where another masked person leads him down the corridor again. Again, he looks in each of the rooms and watches as people are brutally tortured, but this time, it's the victims getting revenge on the masked people and torturing them. This is the rest of the movie.
So, yeah, this movie is basically just a continuous montage of people being tortured to death one by one, with some random scenes of a masked person mutilating himself in between. You would think this would make for a very boring 90 minutes, but this is not so because of several factors. All of the kills are incredibly gory, very sadistic, brutal, sometimes pretty creative and, mostly, keep from becoming repetitive.
The kill scenes, which are already pretty gory to begin with, keep getting progressively gorier as the movie goes on. Starting out with gratuitous blood splatter and progressively goes into full-on dismemberment and mutilation. It all looks great considering this is a low budget movie.
There are also some nasty scenes including a necrophilia scene and some gory penis abuse. Some of it is pretty cringe-inducing, but it's also very fake and unconvincing, and never actually disturbing.
If you're looking for an extremely gory movie to watch, and are willing to look past any flaws, including complete lack of coherency, as long as the movie delivers on gore, then I fully recommend AFCN.
Oh, I almost forgot, they say the name of the movie in the movie, that's another plus.
7 out of 10 garbage bags
Vampire Academy (2014)
I'm not one to bash or criticize other people's opinions, but quite
frankly I'm amazed at all the positive reviews.
In my mind, if your not a girl between the ages of 8 to 16 then this movie has nothing for you. This movie was not funny, it was annoying, actually it was really annoying. The harder it tried to be funny, and the more irritatingly stupid dialog spewed out of these generic teenage character's mouths, the more annoying it got.
While the gore is rather heavy by PG-13 standards, the action scenes were nothing to write home about for the most part.
I found the movie to be a little hard to follow, but not because the plot itself is confusing, actually it was because the movie had a very hard time keeping my attention, mostly because I didn't care about many of the characters. I didn't care about Generic Hot Teenager #1's secret crush on her teacher, I didn't care about Token Annoying Girl, I didn't care about Generic Bad Boy Chick Magnet, and I definitely didn't care about Stereotypical B**** Character and Stereotypical B****y Head Mistress.
Well, now that I've bashed the movie into the ground, I would like to say that I actually think that the VA series could have some potential to be good if, no, when they make it into a franchise. If they would lose the clique teen vampire movie plot line, and not skimp out on the gore, or at least make it more interesting. We'll see what happens.
I think I'm being a little hard on this movie, I was actually going to give it a 4, but then I decided to lower my rating, hoping in vain that I would even out the scale a little bit. This does not deserve the 7 that it currently has.
Generic, clique, annoying, stupid and boring. But it could have been worse.
In my mind, if your not a girl between the ages of 8 to 16 then this movie has nothing for you. This movie was not funny, it was annoying, actually it was really annoying. The harder it tried to be funny, and the more irritatingly stupid dialog spewed out of these generic teenage character's mouths, the more annoying it got.
While the gore is rather heavy by PG-13 standards, the action scenes were nothing to write home about for the most part.
I found the movie to be a little hard to follow, but not because the plot itself is confusing, actually it was because the movie had a very hard time keeping my attention, mostly because I didn't care about many of the characters. I didn't care about Generic Hot Teenager #1's secret crush on her teacher, I didn't care about Token Annoying Girl, I didn't care about Generic Bad Boy Chick Magnet, and I definitely didn't care about Stereotypical B**** Character and Stereotypical B****y Head Mistress.
Well, now that I've bashed the movie into the ground, I would like to say that I actually think that the VA series could have some potential to be good if, no, when they make it into a franchise. If they would lose the clique teen vampire movie plot line, and not skimp out on the gore, or at least make it more interesting. We'll see what happens.
I think I'm being a little hard on this movie, I was actually going to give it a 4, but then I decided to lower my rating, hoping in vain that I would even out the scale a little bit. This does not deserve the 7 that it currently has.
Generic, clique, annoying, stupid and boring. But it could have been worse.
3 out of 10 garbage bags
Dawn of An Evil Millenium (1988)
I was looking online for some splatter shorts and I found this little
oddity from Damon Packard. This isn't splatter (though it has a few
moments), what it is, however, is incoherent, insane, hilarious, and,
in a way, mesmerizing.
The plot centers around a demon from an alien planet who is sent to earth to destroy all mankind while riding around in a custom 1970's Oldsmobile. He splits up into two beings, one of them good and one of them evil. A cop and his partner are after them, there's something about gnomes controlling the forest, I don't know. Some of the characters are difficult to understand because of heavy echo and distortion effects, I probably wouldn't have understood half of what was happening if I didn't read the description before I watched. But I don't think the point of the movie is to understand it, I certainly didn't care either way because I was just so mesmerized at the images being placed before me.
This movie is often very comical with it's randomness, I laughed out loud on several occasions.
While it may not be for everyone, Dawn of an Evil Millennium is surreal, crazy, off-the-wall and fascinating in it's bizarreness. I will definitely be looking into more of Mr. Packard's works.
The plot centers around a demon from an alien planet who is sent to earth to destroy all mankind while riding around in a custom 1970's Oldsmobile. He splits up into two beings, one of them good and one of them evil. A cop and his partner are after them, there's something about gnomes controlling the forest, I don't know. Some of the characters are difficult to understand because of heavy echo and distortion effects, I probably wouldn't have understood half of what was happening if I didn't read the description before I watched. But I don't think the point of the movie is to understand it, I certainly didn't care either way because I was just so mesmerized at the images being placed before me.
This movie is often very comical with it's randomness, I laughed out loud on several occasions.
While it may not be for everyone, Dawn of an Evil Millennium is surreal, crazy, off-the-wall and fascinating in it's bizarreness. I will definitely be looking into more of Mr. Packard's works.
8 out of 10 garbage bags
The Nut Job (2014)
Because I was walking into this expecting it to suck, it was nice to
know that it actually wasn't that bad.
I do have to agree with one reviewer about the animation being what saves the movie, because it really does look good.
As far as everything else goes, chances are this one won't veer too far from your expectations. Plenty of tired jokes abound, also some fart jokes which I found to be funny, but that's just because I'm really childish. Since this is a PG movie there really aren't that many nut puns, which was actually kind of disappointing.
As for the plot line, it's pretty much the usual clichéd family movie setup: Main character is really self-centered, main character goes out on his own to prove he doesn't need anybody (actually he's kicked out but you get the idea), main villain plots evil scheme against main character's former friends, main character has a change of heart, main character reconciles with friends and saves the day.
Despite these shortcomings, I actually kind of enjoyed this one, the animation was good, and some parts were kind of funny. What can I say? I have a soft spot for this stuff! I'm sure the younger children will love it, there were two kids in the theater I was in laughing their heads off.
I do have to agree with one reviewer about the animation being what saves the movie, because it really does look good.
As far as everything else goes, chances are this one won't veer too far from your expectations. Plenty of tired jokes abound, also some fart jokes which I found to be funny, but that's just because I'm really childish. Since this is a PG movie there really aren't that many nut puns, which was actually kind of disappointing.
As for the plot line, it's pretty much the usual clichéd family movie setup: Main character is really self-centered, main character goes out on his own to prove he doesn't need anybody (actually he's kicked out but you get the idea), main villain plots evil scheme against main character's former friends, main character has a change of heart, main character reconciles with friends and saves the day.
Despite these shortcomings, I actually kind of enjoyed this one, the animation was good, and some parts were kind of funny. What can I say? I have a soft spot for this stuff! I'm sure the younger children will love it, there were two kids in the theater I was in laughing their heads off.
6 out of 10 garbage bags
Kettensägen Zombies Redux (2010) (Short)
This short was co-directed by Andreas Pape, who also directed a splatter movie called Hunting Creatures (reviewed here) which I really liked, this one not so much sadly.
Luckily this is pretty short, if it was a full-length movie there is a good chance my rating would be a lot lower because this is a pretty boring short, even during the gore scenes! Various people have various body parts cut off, most of the time in full view, with a chainsaw, an ax, and some other weapons. It looks good, but how this movie managed to make it so boring is beyond me. The long dragged out scene of the guy riding his bike didn't help either.
If this is one of those movies that you really, really want to see, at least go in with very low expectations, something I always try to do anyway.
4 out of 10 garbage bags
Mutation (1999)
The good: There is some nice gore. The computer effects, make-up, and
CGI were very well done for a low-budget movie like this. A lot more
creative and ambitious than most. The fake documentary at the beginning
was cool.
The bad: Confusing plot, bad CGI effects for some of the gore scenes, the gore itself is rather sparse, the movie manages to be rather boring a lot of the time, and (while this doesn't really have anything to do with the actual movie) the subtitles on the version I watched were poorly translated which made the movie even more confusing.
I do have to give the movie extra points for ambition, as said before a lot of the effects are really well done, especially for a debut feature, and the movie is more creative than most movies of this sort. But unfortunately, the low budget held the movie back, and the general boredom and lack of gore dragged the move down.
The bad: Confusing plot, bad CGI effects for some of the gore scenes, the gore itself is rather sparse, the movie manages to be rather boring a lot of the time, and (while this doesn't really have anything to do with the actual movie) the subtitles on the version I watched were poorly translated which made the movie even more confusing.
I do have to give the movie extra points for ambition, as said before a lot of the effects are really well done, especially for a debut feature, and the movie is more creative than most movies of this sort. But unfortunately, the low budget held the movie back, and the general boredom and lack of gore dragged the move down.
5 out of 10 garbage bags
Hunting Creatures (2001)
I wasn't really sure about Andreas Pape's Hunting Creatures before I
went into it, it wasn't one of those movies where I was really melting
with anxiety to see it, I discovered it on a review site along with
some screen shots and thought I'd check it out. I sure didn't expect to
like it as much as I did.
Once it picked up, the action and gore was awesome, featuring a lot of very bloody shootings, some dismemberment and some nice gut-munching. The characters are bad**s and it was a pleasure watching them go around hunting and slaughtering creatures. So they're barely developed, who cares?
The plot was also cool and wasn't any more complicated than it needed to be, which is all I can ask for in a plot in a movie like this.
Bottom Line: Hunting Creatures is a cool, gory, well-paced horror-action flick that definitely delivers. Running at only 70 minutes, the movie's not any longer than it needed to be. Definitely a big surprise for me.
8 out of 10 garbage bags
Dr. Shock's Tales of Terror (2003)
You can't expect a lot with these no-budget SOV movies, this one I found to be a rather pleasant surprise. The movie consists of four short horror stories hosted by a guy named Dr. Shock, each reviewed individually below:
Bullet For A Vampire - An old fortune teller summons a vampire named Drake Ula (Get it?) to exact revenge on a mafia boss and his men. Drake falls in love with the boss' daughter after he saves her life, and the boss hires Drake to work for him (even though he says later that he doesn't like him), but Drake has his own plans. This one was my least favorite of the bunch, kind of boring and not that interesting. At the beginning we saw a vampire skeleton, and I was hoping that the skeleton was going to go around killing people, but I was sorely disappointed. The whole thing with the mafia was cool, but other than that it's just another vampire story. 6 out of 10.
The Town That Loved Pizza - A very Texas Chainsaw Massacre-y short about two inbred brothers, Obediah and Jedediah, who move into a new town to start a pizzeria (meat pizza only), then one by one people start going missing. This one's just some goofy, silly fun. Not my favorite story but I really enjoyed it. 7 out of 10.
The Garden Tool Murders - A dork is picked on by some bullies at the park, and is then chased by a lunatic grounds keeper who is constantly taking crap from his boss. The dork is never seen or heard from in the movie again. The grounds keeper then goes around killing random people with various garden tools, while his boss is setting up a cherry festival. This leads to an... interesting climax. There is some nice gore in this one. Just don't expect anything but mindless gore. People basically show up on screen just to spill their guts. I liked it. 8 out of 10.
Demon's Day - A woman is being chased by a hooded figure and has her heart ripped out. She is then taken to a morgue where a doctor checks her out and finds samples of her killer's flesh under her fingernails, which he then clones, without knowing that he cloned Lucifer himself! Features some nice gore, a cute little devil baby, minions with hilarious voices and a climactic battle between the Lucifer clone and the real Lucifer. This one was undoubtedly the coolest of the bunch. 8 out of 10.
Now that I've covered the shorts themselves, let's talk about Dr. Shock himself. Well, let's start with the fact that he's annoying as f**k. He's... energetic to say the least, and his jokes are just dumb, some times nonsensical. For example: "You know what the last thing on that guy's mind was when he got thrown into that meat grinder? His feet!", what? That doesn't even make any sense, his feet were on his mind? Also, was it really necessary to have credits after all of the shorts? Couldn't they have just compiled it all together and saved it until the end of the movie? Well, at least most of the time they show a series of bloopers, which are entertaining to watch.
Bottom line: Save for Bullet for A Vampire and Dr. Shock himself, I actually enjoyed this movie a lot, even if in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way.
7 out of 10 garbage bags
Platoon of The Dead (2009)
OK, I will start with the good things about this movie, what little
there are. Well, the story, while kind of a mess, was kind of
interesting, the zombie platoon leaders looked pretty cool... trying to
think of something else... um... there's some gut munching here and
there... uh.... err..... yah, I think that's it.
Now the bad, I personally felt the movie's biggest crime was just being downright boring. There is not a single memorable thing about this movie. You watch it, it passes you by, and that's it. There really weren't enough zombies, just people standing and talking and arguing.
That's not to say there isn't a fair amount of stupid stuff as well. You could tell all of the weapons were toys. There's one scene where a character named Sargent Butler (Tom Stedham) tries to rape a female character but is caught, the other characters beat him up a little and ask him to apologize... yah, sorry but I don't think I would want him in the house anymore, and the scene where Sargent Butler starts shootin' up some zombies in the garage, was just a joke.
Also, if you're getting your guts munched by zombies, please try not to smile.
Let's face it, this is an SOV movie, nine times out of ten the special effects are going to be bad, so I wasn't really bothered by that.
Bottom line: A dull, bland, boring, stale, unmemorable, mundane, tiring, insipid, stupid, trite, lifeless (pun intended) zombie movie with nothing to offer (thank goodness for the thesaurus). If you are bored and looking for something to watch, you will find no relief watching this.
Now the bad, I personally felt the movie's biggest crime was just being downright boring. There is not a single memorable thing about this movie. You watch it, it passes you by, and that's it. There really weren't enough zombies, just people standing and talking and arguing.
That's not to say there isn't a fair amount of stupid stuff as well. You could tell all of the weapons were toys. There's one scene where a character named Sargent Butler (Tom Stedham) tries to rape a female character but is caught, the other characters beat him up a little and ask him to apologize... yah, sorry but I don't think I would want him in the house anymore, and the scene where Sargent Butler starts shootin' up some zombies in the garage, was just a joke.
Also, if you're getting your guts munched by zombies, please try not to smile.
Let's face it, this is an SOV movie, nine times out of ten the special effects are going to be bad, so I wasn't really bothered by that.
Bottom line: A dull, bland, boring, stale, unmemorable, mundane, tiring, insipid, stupid, trite, lifeless (pun intended) zombie movie with nothing to offer (thank goodness for the thesaurus). If you are bored and looking for something to watch, you will find no relief watching this.
3 out of 10 garbage bags
Dard Divorce (2007)
After skimming through several bad reviews for this movie, I had low
expectations, maybe that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did, that and
the incredible gore.
While suffering from a rather slow start, it gets good once the gore gets going. There is some incredible action and gore in this movie. Some of it is pretty unnecessary and is done simply for the sake of showing more bodily mutilation on screen, this is one of those things where whether that's a good thing or a bad thing all depends on the viewer, personally I loved it myself!
That's not to say the movie doesn't have it's flaws, because it does (hence my lower rating). Some of the gore effects aren't all that convincing (which is forgivable considering this movie had a limited budget), the acting is not so good, the shaky cam during the gore scenes is annoying, there are at least two scenes where the music drowns out the characters voices, and another where two songs actually play over each other! It's really annoying.
Also the scene where the main woman (played by director Olaf Ittenbach's wife Martina) is getting beaten while tied to a chair, could have been really effective if it didn't look so fake. If they could do a decent job of making all of the other scenes of violence look reasonably good, why not this one? There is also a part during that scene where the guy torturing the woman decides for whatever reason to untie her, then she stabs him in the neck with a broken glass bottle, brilliant dude!
Given the amount of gore in this movie most of the flaws can be forgiven so a certain extent, but they did taint my enjoyment for this movie a little. I would still recommend it to gore film fans. Remember, watch it for the gore and nothing else.
6 garbage bags out of 10
Suburban Sasquatch (2004)
Suburban Sasquatch is one of those movies that is so cheesy and stupid
that you doubt whether the creators meant for it to be taken seriously
or not. Actually, director Dave Wascavage has said in an interview that
Suburban Sasquatch really wasn't meant to be taken all that serious.
Sure some scenes were meant to be serious, but the director knows it's
a B-movie, and just has fun with it.
This one has all the usual SOV problems, questionable acting, dialog that, while not bad most of the time, occasionally ventures into downright terrible (check the scene where the news editor must have said the word "sell" at least 20 times), cheap special effects, continuity errors, etc. If you can get past all that, you should have a lot of fun with this one.
Hapless victims stand there and scream for their lives as Bigfoot tears them apart piece by piece. Bigfoot himself gets shot countless times, he bleeds profusely, but is never hurt. For those of you studying Bigfoot, the legend is true, the blood of Bigfoot is made of terrible CGI. In one scene, the main girl is getting ready to shoot him with a bow-and-arrow, and Bigfoot leaves himself wide open, spreading his arms wide as if to say "shoot me, go ahead, I don't mind". In another scene, Bigfoot tears up a girl, an arm and some blood go flying, then in the next shot the arm is right back on her, completely unharmed.
There is also a good amount of gore, that ranges from some good prosthetic effects to laughably bad CGI.
While maybe a bit long (this one lasts about 100 minutes), it really didn't bother me all that much because I had a pretty good time with this one.
This one has all the usual SOV problems, questionable acting, dialog that, while not bad most of the time, occasionally ventures into downright terrible (check the scene where the news editor must have said the word "sell" at least 20 times), cheap special effects, continuity errors, etc. If you can get past all that, you should have a lot of fun with this one.
Hapless victims stand there and scream for their lives as Bigfoot tears them apart piece by piece. Bigfoot himself gets shot countless times, he bleeds profusely, but is never hurt. For those of you studying Bigfoot, the legend is true, the blood of Bigfoot is made of terrible CGI. In one scene, the main girl is getting ready to shoot him with a bow-and-arrow, and Bigfoot leaves himself wide open, spreading his arms wide as if to say "shoot me, go ahead, I don't mind". In another scene, Bigfoot tears up a girl, an arm and some blood go flying, then in the next shot the arm is right back on her, completely unharmed.
There is also a good amount of gore, that ranges from some good prosthetic effects to laughably bad CGI.
While maybe a bit long (this one lasts about 100 minutes), it really didn't bother me all that much because I had a pretty good time with this one.
7 out of 10 garbage bags
Weasels Rip My Flesh (1979)
I'm pretty sure I heard somewhere that Nathan Schiff was sixteen when he made this movie, and he was able to get adult actors and crew to work for free in his movie, now that's an accomplishment!
As far as the movie itself... let me try to explain it. The movie opens with a Manos-style opening sequence (though not nearly as long) with a voice that sounds like it was recorded over a phone reciting a speech about "life and it's purpose" that's way too deep for a movie called Weasels Rip My Flesh. Then two drunk girls enter a house, then get killed with a knife by some guy with frosting on his hands. After the opening credits, there is a model spaceship with rocks on fire sitting next to it on top of a black garbage bag. The movie then shows a guy walking in a completely black atmosphere and picking up a sample of green slime and puts it into a container. The model rocket then takes off into space and crashes on earth in the water.
As we find out later, turns out the model rocket was supposed to be a real rocket ship, and the rocks on fire on top of a black garbage bag, that was the planet Venus. A NASA space rocket was on an expedition to Venus to collect a highly radioactive specimen, and upon returning to earth, crashed into a lake.
Two boys then find containers of the stuff in the water, one of the boys gets bit by an animal, the other boy finds it's hole and pours the stuff into it (sorry if that sounds wrong). The weasel inside (which looks like it's decaying and was probably made with paper Mâché) gets the stuff on him and transforms into a giant monster and runs loose. Then some interesting stuff happens, I don't want to spoil it.
Some of the stuff I said in the plot description, you wouldn't know this is what is happening unless you rewound over and over again and studied the scenes hard because some scenes are shot in such a strange way or are so blurred that you can't tell what the heck is going on. I had to rewind the movie about four times before I realized that what looked like a pile of blood, discarded body parts and pus that then transformed into a monster was in fact the weasel.
Don't let that fool you though, I really did like this movie. It's really silly, surprisingly entertaining and it has a surprisingly fair amount of gore. It's really worth watching for the climactic battle and the ending alone. Looking forward to watching Nathan Schiff's other movie They Don't Cut The Grass Anymore.
7 out of 10 garbage bags
Things (1989)
Things is truly a masterpiece of cinema, and as such it must be shown
to everybody young and old so they can bask in the sheer brilliance of
this piece of cinematic art. Okay, so that's not exactly true, in fact
there is so much wrong with this movie in the first 20 minutes that I
could write about it for hours.
The plot goes something like this: A man named Doug (Doug Bunston) is tending to his sick wife Susan (Patricia Sadler) when his friend Fred (Bruce Roach) and brother Don (Barry J. Gillis) come over for some drinks and sandwiches. We then cut to some kind of hospital where a doctor is cutting various body parts off of some deformed guy... don't know what this has to do with the rest of the movie. As it turns out Doug let a doctor perform experiments on Susan so they can have a baby because Doug is unable to. This causes gigantic ants to crawl out of her stomach (makes sense, right?) and run amok in the house. It's up to Doug, Fred and Don to kill them all.
This movie seems to be one of those SOV movies made by a group of friends messing around with a camcorder (which I totally respect), and it shows here because the acting is terrible, so is the dialog. Some of my favorite lines of the entire movie:
"The next time you come with me on a trip, you're staying home" (Well, you can't do both!)
Don: "You didn't tell me you were a kindergarten artist" Doug: "You didn't tell me you were an *SSHOLE I had to find that out for myself" Priceless.
There are several more but frankly I can't remember them all.
The sound is pretty bad as well, there's one part where one character's voice goes really quiet for a few seconds, you can't hear what he's saying, but you know he's saying something. A lot of the characters seem to be dubbed over, quite hilariously I might add, one character is screaming while he is being eaten by "things" and he sounds like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, it's really funny. The sound FX are also laughable, in this movie, the cutting off of a head and the cleaning of a blade with a paper towel sounds like sloppy making-out.
The scene where the guy belches and farts cracked me up because, 1. I'm really immature, and 2. it pretty much came out of nowhere.
Also, what's with all the random news reports? The movie cuts out several times to show a news reporter (Amber Lynn) talking about a random news report that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Also, with how bad the editing is, she is cut off in the middle of a sentence once, and often quick flashes of random images pop up before the report comes up.
And what I think is the most obvious problem of all, WHY DID THEY STAY IN THE HOUSE??? Don says it's because their car's out of gas and they wouldn't make it through the woods and they could get eaten by bears or snakes. But later in the movie the doctor who experimented on Susan shows up, meaning he either walked or drove there, the latter being the more likely option but I'm willing to believe anything in this movie. If he walked, it can't be that dangerous, if he drove... DUDE, HE'S GOT A CAR, LEAVE!!!
Last but not least, the ending. Without spoiling too much, I can say this: WHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTT!!!???
There are so many more questions I could ask. Like why does Doug always laugh like he has problems? Why was Don sharpening the blade with his hand? Why was Don telling a long horror story that adds nothing to the movie? How can a skull talk? Bestiality Network? Cockroach snack?
One "Things" for certain, this is probably the funniest and most entertaining bad movie I have ever seen, I was surely never bored. Which is why I'm giving it a 10 that it probably doesn't deserve, I don't rate my movies on quality, I rate my movies on entertainment value, it's too confusing the other way. If I gave the movie a 1, it wouldn't be because of how horrible the movie is (actually it would), it would be because I wasn't entertained and didn't laugh, and I was sure entertained by Things.
Oh, one more "thing", the scene where they are watching a presumably fake horror movie on TV and they have the nerve to comment on what a cheap and terrible movie THAT movie is, was quite jaw-dropping, a grand example of irony.
The plot goes something like this: A man named Doug (Doug Bunston) is tending to his sick wife Susan (Patricia Sadler) when his friend Fred (Bruce Roach) and brother Don (Barry J. Gillis) come over for some drinks and sandwiches. We then cut to some kind of hospital where a doctor is cutting various body parts off of some deformed guy... don't know what this has to do with the rest of the movie. As it turns out Doug let a doctor perform experiments on Susan so they can have a baby because Doug is unable to. This causes gigantic ants to crawl out of her stomach (makes sense, right?) and run amok in the house. It's up to Doug, Fred and Don to kill them all.
This movie seems to be one of those SOV movies made by a group of friends messing around with a camcorder (which I totally respect), and it shows here because the acting is terrible, so is the dialog. Some of my favorite lines of the entire movie:
"The next time you come with me on a trip, you're staying home" (Well, you can't do both!)
Don: "You didn't tell me you were a kindergarten artist" Doug: "You didn't tell me you were an *SSHOLE I had to find that out for myself" Priceless.
There are several more but frankly I can't remember them all.
The sound is pretty bad as well, there's one part where one character's voice goes really quiet for a few seconds, you can't hear what he's saying, but you know he's saying something. A lot of the characters seem to be dubbed over, quite hilariously I might add, one character is screaming while he is being eaten by "things" and he sounds like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, it's really funny. The sound FX are also laughable, in this movie, the cutting off of a head and the cleaning of a blade with a paper towel sounds like sloppy making-out.
The scene where the guy belches and farts cracked me up because, 1. I'm really immature, and 2. it pretty much came out of nowhere.
Also, what's with all the random news reports? The movie cuts out several times to show a news reporter (Amber Lynn) talking about a random news report that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Also, with how bad the editing is, she is cut off in the middle of a sentence once, and often quick flashes of random images pop up before the report comes up.
And what I think is the most obvious problem of all, WHY DID THEY STAY IN THE HOUSE??? Don says it's because their car's out of gas and they wouldn't make it through the woods and they could get eaten by bears or snakes. But later in the movie the doctor who experimented on Susan shows up, meaning he either walked or drove there, the latter being the more likely option but I'm willing to believe anything in this movie. If he walked, it can't be that dangerous, if he drove... DUDE, HE'S GOT A CAR, LEAVE!!!
Last but not least, the ending. Without spoiling too much, I can say this: WHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTT!!!???
There are so many more questions I could ask. Like why does Doug always laugh like he has problems? Why was Don sharpening the blade with his hand? Why was Don telling a long horror story that adds nothing to the movie? How can a skull talk? Bestiality Network? Cockroach snack?
One "Things" for certain, this is probably the funniest and most entertaining bad movie I have ever seen, I was surely never bored. Which is why I'm giving it a 10 that it probably doesn't deserve, I don't rate my movies on quality, I rate my movies on entertainment value, it's too confusing the other way. If I gave the movie a 1, it wouldn't be because of how horrible the movie is (actually it would), it would be because I wasn't entertained and didn't laugh, and I was sure entertained by Things.
Oh, one more "thing", the scene where they are watching a presumably fake horror movie on TV and they have the nerve to comment on what a cheap and terrible movie THAT movie is, was quite jaw-dropping, a grand example of irony.
10 out of 10 garbage bags
Guinea Pig (1985) (Short)
I mean, it started off kind of interesting, but it got really slow with all of the long "experiments" and the lingering shots, and, though I'm sure she did the best she could, the victim didn't really give a convincing enough performance for me to be really believe she was suffering, with the exception of a few scenes, which as a result made me unable to be very disturbed or uncomfortable. I did squirm a little in a few scenes, but that was it.
To be fair though, it was pretty much exactly what I was expecting. 45 minutes of three completely random guys torturing a completely random girl (who falls asleep a lot I might add), no plot, just torture. They slap her (over... and over... and over again), kick her, spin her in a chair until she vomits, pour boiling hot water on her arm and then pour maggots in the wound, throw guts all over her while she's sleeping (???), and there's the eyeball scene, which is really the only memorable thing about this movie.
There are also some scenes of the victim in some kind of net out in the woods, which seem to pop up at random and make no sense, it made sense when it came up at the beginning of the movie because that's how we can assume she got captured, but when it keeps popping up throughout not meaning anything, it's unnecessary. Maybe it did mean something, I don't know.
Another thing that didn't really make sense: The girl's getting guts thrown on her while she's asleep, she wakes up to find she's covered in guts and she screams for like a minute, but when she had boiling hot water poured on her arm she barely even groaned!?!?!?!
At it's best, the movie made us feel sorry for the girl and everything that's happening to her, at it's worst, it's dreadfully boring and non-believable. Overall, it seems like a rather pointless movie. I don't know, maybe I'm just really jaded, but I wouldn't recommend this one myself.
5 out of 10 garbage bags
Rotten Shaolin Zombies (2004) (Short)
Rotten Shaolin Zombies is a really fun movie to watch, it's the kind of
movie that knows it's bad and just has fun with it. This is
ever-so-visible in such scenes as the one with the flying fish (with
strings visible), and a zombie fight scene with obviously and laughably
fake punches and kicks. The entire movie has a very oddball sense of
humor throughout, I personally found it to be very funny in a goofy
sort of way. Also a little bit of gore, but it would have still been
good without it.
Also, the movie is called Rotten Shaolin Zombies, but a more appropriate title would be Rotten Shaolin Zombie (as said in the title of my review), because in the entire movie there really is only one zombie.
Also, the movie is called Rotten Shaolin Zombies, but a more appropriate title would be Rotten Shaolin Zombie (as said in the title of my review), because in the entire movie there really is only one zombie.
8 out of 10 garbage bags
VS3: Infantry of Doom (aka Zombie Doom) (1999)
This movie has it all, gore, action, ninjas (one of them even has a flying guillotine), hilarious dubbing, even more hilarious and usually nonsensical dialog, the director as a masked killer in a diaper, gore, gore and more gore!!! This isn't what you'd call a "good movie", but there is a lot of fun to be had.
For instance, the comical dubbing I mentioned earlier, yeah it really is hilarious. So is the dialog, especially from the character mark, or as I like to call him "the philosopher", spouting such thought provoking lines as:
"Trouble is this starts to make us puke at each other, I make them wanna puke, they make me puke and so on"
"You reach a point, where you just puke at each other. I'll kill 'em all"
Watch the movie and you'll understand. As you can already tell this guy seems to be awfully fond of puke.
Now for the most important part, the gore. It's there, and it's amazing. Highlights include faces and stomachs being pulled apart with hooks, Karl Jr.'s minions showing one unlucky guy what a "pain in the *ss" he is (emphasis on "pain in the *ss"), a guy who gets sliced clean in half with a machete and then gets his head cut in half as well, a guy who kicks right through a ninja, a guy getting experimented on by having all of his innards pulled out of his body, and much, much more.
Several more things of interest include the Black Demons...err... Ninjas...err...Demons, unexplained zombies, the tiny robot killer, not to mention a scene where two characters hide in the bushes from a minion looking to steal his jacket and rather than sneaking up on him, one casually walks out and says "hey retard, I want your jacket", the scene where Karl the Butcher Jr. gives a speech about "friendship" and "peace", and a decapitated head squirting out blood (with the hose visible).
All these things make the movie a comical and worthwhile watch, I have never seen any of the other Violent Sh*t movies, but it's not essential to enjoy this movie.
"The world is full of puke and sh*t, and now a horde of tin masked *ssholes are puked in our faces filled with sh*t" - Mark
8 out of 10 garbage bags
Le Bagman - Profession: Meurtrier (2004)
This movie, while only 19 minutes long, is incredibly gory, almost Dead Alive level gory. All of it is prosthetic (as far as I can tell) and looks very good, it's creative, and all of it has a very over-the-top and slapstick tone. Like the girl who keeps getting hit on the head, or the guy who gets thrown into a trash can by the Bagman and then spends the rest of the movie stumbling around with the trash can over his head, and slips on a severed head. I found myself laughing several times throughout, not just at the slapstick, but the gang-banger characters. Listening to these guys talk "gangsta" was hilarious, especially the Boss, who was my favorite character of the entire movie (with the exception of the Bagman himself of coarse).
I can be a little generous with my ratings sometimes, but I don't give a 10 to just any movie. This one deserves it, it's comic genius and incredibly gory. Well worth my time.
10 out of 10 garbage bags
Brico Killer (2007) (Short)
Brico Killer is the story about a nerdy factory worker named Manolo who is always ridiculed and gets no respect. He is also struggling financially, as in there is no furniture in his house. One day, with the encouragement of a strange DIY program, Manolo uses an assortment of power tools to get his revenge on everyone who ridiculed him.
Funny, entertaining and very gory, didn't manage to blow me away like Fist of Jesus did, but as with all Eskoria movies I've seen, the gore looks phenomenal.
If you've got 20 minutes, you can watch this on YouTube right now, as well as several other Eskoria movies. I haven't seen all of them but I've seen enough to recommend them to any gore-hound looking for short films that have more gore in 15 minutes than some other full-length gore movies have in their entire runtime.
9 out of 10 garbage bags
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