Sunday, March 30, 2014

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. 

10 out of 10 garbage bags

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