the butchershop

Serbia, revisited

2011-07-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

104 minutes torture porn it's truest form. I finally got to watch the uncut A Serbian Film, and I'm still impressed with the execution. Sure, it didn't have the surprise effects anymore, but still. It is rare that I rewatch a movie so shortly after the first go, but it is hard to resist to check out the uncut version if the cut one was already so impressive. Actually, I can't pinpoint from memory where those 8 minutes were missing. That's a good thing, as it just tells me that the movie is, in either version, a round thing.
However, Vukmir's monologue about victims and their power made me think. Is it true? Do victims have the power he claims? In A Serbian Film, Milos is both victim and victimizer, yet I feel nothing of his power. He is, in fact, powerless; a tool Vukmir and his men use, which puts him more on the victim side. But do I care about him? Do I feel sorry for what happens to him? No. I don't. I see him as a tool. A choiceless machine that does what the puppet masters ask. No matter how he tries to escape or fight against it. What about his victims; Maria, Petar, the nameless women? Same here, means to an end. I also feel nothing about Vukmir, Rasa and the other victimizers.
And maybe that is exactly what I find so impressive: That I, the viewer, can just sit back and watch, without taking sides. No morals, no ethics, no common sense is forced on me; they are all victims in their own way, and victimizers at the same time. And the movie doesn't tell me either side is good or bad. And also leaves me the option to still think that people who genuinely like Lady Gaga or Jedward are by far more dangerous than people making movies like this.

Serial Offenses

2011-06-05T05:25:00.000-07:00

Since the end of Stargate Atlantis, scifi has lost me. Or have I lost scifi? And was that intro pseudo-philosophical and unneccessary? However, lately I feel not only scifi has let me down, but television as a whole.

Stargate Atlantis, ironically the last scifi series to really pull me in, started this mess during season 4. 'Michael', a most brillant adversary, began whipping out one liners and revenge plans that would make every golden age comic villain blush; carefully deconstructing the incredible character he was from late season 2 on. The villain against will or own fault, the lingering evil out there, the one to scream "what the hell, hero?" whenever the fantastic four needed to hear it, Michael had it all. Well, and then he changed his name to Rumpelstiltskin and went after Teyla's firstborn child... fathered by a guy who came out of nowhere and never played any significant role, no less.

At that point, I had forgiven the Replicators, but Michael's fall from grace wasn't so easy to stomach. I gave it a chance anyway, and what did I get? Half the cast of SG-1, more than obviously sitting out their contracts, and the most ridicolous "new enemy" mid season cliffhanger ever: Pegasus Asgard that vanished after two episodes and were never mentioned again, nor had any consequences for the big finale. Before enduring this, I was also insulted with a laughable CSI Atlantis abomination that swam on the trendy wave like Atlantis self should swim in the ocean shortly after.

Reason: Stargate Universe, the next big deal. Well, not really. Actually, the story wasn't all that new. Once upon a time, a certain Captain Janeway had been lost thousands of lightyears from home and known space. And battled a conflicted crew, forced together by circumstance, and later a technologically superior enemy with a hive mind. While Voyager wasn't a revelation in itself, it had this very story first. And in Voyager, I didn't instantly high five any of the characters, but warmed up with the few better ones during the first season; namely B'Ellana Torres and the Doctor, later also the much missed Lon Suder and due to him, even Tuvok. In SGU, it took me several episodes to keep these guys apart and when I finally had most of the names down, I only wanted to punch each of them in the face. Two dimensional (at best), stereotypical people I gave a shit about - if I didn't hate them. The writing, the story, the (mostly absent, if present disappointing) enemies, the so-called character drama - it all sucked.
I sat through both seasons. I tried to like it. I tried to hope it would pick up at a point. And gave up, stayed tuned, for the only reason you could possibly have: laugh about it and wager when it would be cancelled.

Stuck without scifi alltogether, I decided to start watching a series from better times; when space opera wasn't an endangered species. I considered Battlestar Galactica and ran into the big problem: Which one? Whenever I thought I had it figured out, someone would come along and yell "OMG that's the wrong one! It's so cheesy/blasphemic, you gotta watch the other one!" And somehow, I believed both sides. That it was both cheesy and blasphemic. And having read so often that Stargate Universe was a half-assed attempt to be like BGS, I also didn't really want to see it full blown. So I ended up watching neither old nor new, and sat down with another rerun of Babylon 5 instead.

At the moment, I try hard to like Farscape and it somehow doesn't work. Except for Aeyrn Sun, none of the characters really interests me. I also have a hard time dealing with the puppets, as much as I appreciate the attempt to bring in more diverse aliens. And a sentient ship is one thing, but a pregnant sentient ship? And the big bad Scorpius, looking like made of Borg spare parts? It all feels like a flashback to Andromeda, down to the oh so alien cleric. I did like Andromeda, yes. But I never really got into it that much. It was nice to watch, not more, not less, and it became utterly boring and pathetic in the 5th and final season.

The other front, crime shows, seems to stand strong. Criminal Minds got a 7th season. But at what cost? First, they disposed of JJ, then the useless and unfitting agent-in-training Seaver didn't even begin to fill that gap and before it really sank in, Prentiss was gone, too. And on the other end, the more interesting character background about Reid's schizophrenia simply vanished mid season, never to be mentioned again, and JJ came back. Chaos much? Oh very much so, as the cliffhanger is the open question if anyone will take the offer to leave the team.
The series had survived two surprising changes in the team; when Gideon as the main draw left and Rossi came in, and the brunette switch when Prentiss took over for Greenaway. It had the team balanced - why change a working system now? Budget cuts? The spin off? Drunk writers? In short, CM was simply not the same anymore in season 6, and robbed of all scifi joys, I needed something new to really catch my interest.

I went into a rerun of The 4400, while trying to decide if I should give Fringe or Dexter a shot, but neither seemed appealing when I was through. I toyed with the idea of watching Enterprise again, but I didn't feel up to another rerun. So I read through my to-do list - and finally watched Rome, the most different-from-anything-else-on-the-list thing. Within 4 days, both seasons, hungry for more, knowing there wouldn't be any more seasons. Devestated, I withdrew to the realm of history documentaries in my grief.

A week later, my brother lived up to his nickname and turned out to be salvation: He showed me the pilot of Game of Thrones. Having found blind faith in HBO productions with Rome, I knew this would become a wonderful companion. But it became so much more. The breeze to ignite a flame I hadn't felt burning for years. Longing for more, I had watched several clips on the HBO YouTube channel about the houses and characters in Game of Thrones - and came to click on a 'related' link, leading to a trailer for Spartacus.
Spartacus had aired a few months earlier and recieved horrible feedback along with mentions of being cut to pieces beyond recognition on TV, so I had never bothered. But two trailers - one for Blood and Sand, the other for Gods of the Arena - were enough to make me head straight to Amazon and get US imports. What show the critics had seen, I don't know nor care about. Yes, there is a lot sex and violence going on, but connected so perfectly, so beautifully, I cannot see the "guilty pleasure" nature.
As an ace, I naturally don't care much for a deluge of sex scenes - if they are pointless. In Spartacus, they rarely are. They are major plot devices and tools for character development. Unlike the horrible SGU, Spartacus has no stereotype, flat characters you give a shit about. It has characters that scream to be discovered in all details; their relations, their motivations, their thinking and their goals.
I'm certainly not opposed to massive foul language and graphic violence either. To be frank, some of the violence qualifies as pointless for the story. But then, what do you expect in a series about gladiators in Rome, where violence was the most valued form of entertainment? And having that in mind, I can definately appreciate the effort to make a character recognizable, add some personality and keep it up for several episodes, for the sole purpose of a spectacular kill - one that hits home in every possible way, no less, and makes even a gorehound swallow for a moment.

For years, no series has had me from hello like that. If ever. Even my all time faves - Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 - needed more than an episode (and DS9 almost 3 seasons!) to pull me in. And with a new love like that, it's just half that bad that my favourites on Britain's Got Talent, Edward Reid and the Circus of Horrors, were eliminated in the semi-finals. Just like last year; just like every year.

Men Behind The Sun

2011-02-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

I'm moderately shocked - my long time memory seems to be damaged! It's been some years that I watched Men Behind The Sun, and it was a poor quality video tape in original language with subtitles in... well, Asian letters, Chinese or Korean maybe; same for the cover and credits. But I should still remember the movie correctly, at least what happened, if not the order of events.
This was the first time I watched the English version on DVD, so both understanding of the story and the quality were a lot better, but it doesn't explain how I remembered two scenes totally different.
For once, the surgery scene on the Chinese boy. In my memory, the boy was lured into the building with his toy ball and picked up on the corridor by the scientists. In the movie, one of the Youth Corps soldiers promises him food and hands him over to his commander
And secondly, though that might be a result of the poor quality, the women with the frozen hands. In my memory, she was on an open field, not a yard with ice walls. Probably quality; on an old tape, white is white. However, I also thought it was her real baby and not a pillow she thought was her baby - that's a quite big difference. Even more that, in my memory, the soldiers hit her frozen hands while still outside until they shattered and then the woman remained there; while the shock frosted person in the laboratory was a man, and he was the one who got the flesh ripped off.

I'm really confused about this. Both scenes are so specific and clearly in the movie - somehow - so I don't think I mix it up with one of the sequels. Has it really been that long that I watched any of it? Have I seen too many camp movies to keep them apart? Anyway, still a good watch; now I just need to find subbed or dubbed versions of the sequels to check if it is my memory messing with me.

10 Things that make every movie a bit better

2011-02-01T12:09:00.000-08:00

While archiving my movies and re-watching a lot, I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of things I like in movies. First of all, because I really like lists, but also to shed some light on a general misunderstanding. Most people associate "horror" with the big names and titles; Halloween, Nightmare on Elmstreet and such. By that definition, I'm probably not more of a horror fan than the average person on the street. The stuff I like doesn't fit in this picture, and a list will make it easier to explain people that I don't have much to say about "Who would win a fight, Jason or Michael Myers?"

In no specific order, these are the things I like in movies:

1. Mad Scientists

Mad scientists make every movie better. Seriously, it's a horror and partly also scifi stereotype, but they do. It can be any sort of scientist; it's not limited to Frankenstein types trying to create monsters from dead bodyparts. Of course, the doctors Frankenstein and West are awesome, but I also like movies that aren't focussed on them. For example, Bloodsucking Freaks features the insane doctor who just likes to do disgusting surgeries for fun, with no actual scientific goal. He's not a main character, but still adds a lot to the movie.

2. Sideshow, Circus, Cabaret/Theatre or TV/camera

The setting is naturally an important element of every movie. And my favourite setting deals with killing or torturing on stage. The more freakshow-ish, the better. Movies with this premise usually also feature a charismatic ringmaster character and/or eccentric employees of the show; a safe bet to not have generic and forgettable characters. Examples would be, of course, Bloodsucking Freaks, Wizard of Gore, but also Sadisticum, where the torture is not part of a stage performance, yet still for an audience, or A Serbian Film with the movie background.

3. Rocker Gangs and/or Trigger-happy Rednecks

Again, an element that makes sure the characters aren't boring and generic. Nothing is worse than a main cast so faceless that you can't keep them apart while watching the movie. Even though rocker gang or redneck-with-shotgun characters are rarely main characters, they add a lot to the group dynamics or general atmosphere, especially in zombie/monster invasion movies. It is also more believable that some tough road warriors or "Get off my yard!"-yelling farmers stand a better chance to survive than the high school student next door. There are many examples; the all female biker gang in Feast, Tallahassee in Zombieland, Darryl and Merle in Walking Dead.

4. Human Experimentation and/or Torture Camps

Closely related to Mad Scientists, but not exclusive to them. The rather unoriginal motivation of a movie's "big evil" to see how much a human body can take usually works for me - if it keeps the promise. Nothing is more disappointing than a movie claiming to be sick and to push all limits, and the worst you get to see is someone kicking or slapping another person. If a movie promises to be extreme, I want it to be extreme. Examples for doing it right: Ilsa - She-Wolf of the SS, Men Behind The Sun, Guinea Pig, Martyrs. Examples for doing it wrong: Hostel, SS Camp 5, Funny Games, Ilsa - Tigress of Sibiria.

5. Grindhouse Cannibalism

Cannibalism is easy to spot, but cannibal movie doesn't always equal cannibal movie. I love the old school movies with the old school story - "western people go to jungle of choice and are faced with native cannibal tribe". That's how it's done right. Savage barbarians hunting white morons with spears in the jungle. How can you do that wrong? Easy. Take the savage barbarians away and move the setting out of the jungle. Blood Feast II is probably the one and only cannibal movie that works without these basics; any other "urban cannibalism" story just sucks.

6. Deranged Hillbilly/Incest Family

Related to "rocker gang/trigger happy redneck", but with the significant difference that the deranged family is the "big bad", while the rocker/redneck teams with the heroes/survivors. A single serial killer or psychopath usually can't carry a story for me; a clan, family or similar group of people can. There are many examples how such families make a great movie, starting with the classic - Texas Chainsaw Massacre; the Firefly clan from Devil's Rejects, the fishbillies is Harpoon, the mutant clan in Hills Have Eyes, the nazi family in Frontier(s).

7. Nuclear Waste and Chemical Accidents

Very closely related to Deranged Hillbilly Family and zombies, as these are often the reasons for their existance. However, toxic waste can also work without the clan or zombies if the consequences are absurd, dangerous and funny enough. I much prefer toxic waste as a reason for zombies and mutants than a virus or supernatural causes. Examples for doing it right - without zombies/deranged clan - would be Street Trash and, of course, the classics Class of Nuke'em High and Toxic Avenger. Examples for doing it right - in combination with deranged clan/zombies - Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn, The Crazies, Redneck Zombies.

8. Undead Celebrities

They make every zombie movie funnier, even if it is just a strong resemblance and not the celeb self. Fun splatter gets a lot better with famous dead people and it can save the trashiest of movies from being complete garbage/not worth to watch. Examples would be the references in Zombieland, some of the zombies in Zombie 90 - Extreme Pestilence, The Video Dead and, of course, Hardrock Zombies.

9. Urban/Modern Zombie Apocalypse

I'm not a big fan of the zombie movies that play in the woods or tiny villages. Maybe it is because I don't connect to a rural setting in general and can relate better to bigger cities; maybe it is because the photography simply looks more impressive there. As fun as movies like the Blind Dead series are, I much prefer the modern scenarios in more civilized areas. Examples would be the shopping mall from Dawn of the Dead, the Big Brother house in Dead Set, the post apocalyptic cities in La Horde and Diary of the Dead, and Hollywood/Pacific Playland in Zombieland.

10. Creative Kills

Creativity is rare when it comes to kills, sadly. Saw tried to set a new standard, succeeded to a point, and then failed - on it's own standards. After Saw 3, the kills were uninspired, lacked of the symbolism and just seemed desperate attempts to be even more extreme than the first movies. I also don't find it very creative to shot people or slash throats with knives, swords, machetes or stuff. Creativity shows in I spit on your grave, Violent Shit 3 and A Serbian Movie - and again, Hostel fails big time. That's pretty sad for self-declared torture porn, by the way.

(Very) Short Cuts 4/11

2011-02-01T11:28:00.000-08:00

My first review isn't a movie or anything TV related. It's a the new Rockstar Energy & Recovery (yellow/black). I'm too lazy to write an entire entry about energy drinks, also because I'm still on withdrawl and wouldn't have that much to say. Anyway, I'm also still the tester for the store downstairs and have to evaluate the latest taurine and caffeine overkills.

Rockstar Lemonade has no bubbles and that is rather irritating if you are as used to the brand as I am. It doesn't taste bad, but I also don't think a lemonade with lemon taste is all that revolutionary. It still has all the good stuff; guarana, vitamine B, taurine, caffeine, ginseng; and it's probably not the worst idea without bubbles. I usually like drinks with reduced or no bubbles, so this might work for me over time.
I also tried Monster, the much hyped energy drink people kept recommending. I must say, I find it very confusing. The 50/50 juice/lemonade idea isn't new, but I'm very indifferent about the taste. At first, it resembles marzipan and not in a good way; then the pineapple comes through, and then it's just... something else. It's not quite as offensive as the beer mix I tried years ago and that still haunts me - strawberry daiquiri with wheat beer with energy drink - but I highly doubt Monster will become a regular in my fridge.

But back to what I wanted to work down; movies. Not that much to tell; I've been a bit lazy.

The Attic Expeditions (2001)
This is more mystery and fantasy than horror, and in a good way. It is basically a story similar to the overhyped Shutter Island, but in a better setting, with a more surreal feel and well, Jeffrey Combs as a mad scientist, and that makes every movie a bit better.

The Wizard of Gore (2007 Remake)
For those who expect a rant about the blasphemy of remakes, this will be a disappointment. Jeffrey Combs AND Brad Dourif in a H.G. Lewis movie that includes a sideshow? It's all I need to like a movie; no complaints at all.

Reality TV
The world of reality TV is letting me down. After the wonderful white trash garbage reality soap opera, "I'm a celeb - Get me out of here", ended, there isn't much going on. The first auditions of our German Idol version are through; the recall is coming up, and I have already forgotten about all of the possible participants. Through the many seasons, that has never happened. The people were at least not completely forgettable; if I liked them or not. Through the auditions, no-one impressed me in any way. That promises to be boring as hell. I might not even be able to follow the fan wars in the forums, which is the best about audition shows.
In other words: Time to look up Britain's Got Talent and American Idol once more...

Short Cuts 03/11

2011-01-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

I haven't been too busy with movies in the last week. I had to catch up on reality shows, with the sad result: all my suspicions were confirmed. It's really just the German version that always sucks bad, and it's our very own fault that we will never find a real idol, talent or top model. Our winners will stay exactly that: audition show winners, regardless of their quality.

The better result of a comparison is that Europe is stronger than ever when it comes to horror movies. While the US is busy to "re-interpret" successful Asian movies, come up with more pointless sequels of movies that are far beyond their highlights or to re-make classics/commit brutal blasphemy, Europe pays no attention to this trend and has found a silent agreement to go in a different direction.

[Rec] and High Tension are no longer exceptions from the prejudice that European movies aren't daring enough or too artsy to shock.

Martyrs is great, as to be expected. I'm at a point where I'm more surprised if a French movie sucks than if it doesn't. Martyrs is artsy, no doubt, but it is also extremly sick and graphic, right from the start. A girl, Lucie, escapes a torture chamber, grows up in a mental hospital, only talks to her best friend - Anna, another girl who was abused by her stepfather. After 15 years of silence, Lucie returns to the family that kept her like a dog in a dark chamber - with a shotgun. I call this the 'first act' - Lucie kills the family, even though they seem to have changed and live a normal life with their children now, while Anna, the more stable one, loves Lucie too much to give up on her. In the end of act one, Lucie commits suicide; she still sees a hallucination of a girl she left behind on her escape; an illusion that punishes her for that and finally drives her to cut her own throat.
Act two is actually the one losing some of the tension - surprisingly, because this is the actual torture porn part. A group of people, dressed in black and acting like a militia, rush into the house and take Anna prisoner. She had discovered a secret door to an underground facility, and found the girl Lucie saw in her halluciantions. Attempting to help her, she undersetimated how disturbed someone would be after over 15 years of torture. Well, she will discover it soon enough, as Anna takes her place in the dark chamber now.
Act three, or more the revelation act, finally reveals the intentions of the mystery militia. The group is dedicated to create Martyrs, unrelated to religion, by inflicting pain and suffering, in order to reach a state of ecstasy that allows the 'Martyr' to see 'the other side'. Why exactly they do it? It's not mentioned, but it also doesn't matter. Martyrs manages it to stay interesting, even through the quiet parts of plain torture, lacking of any dialogue or explanation, and to come up with a satisfying end.

A Serbian Film is a revelation of it's own. Someone actually got the concept of torture porn and brought it to a new level. Milos, a retired porn star in need of money, accepts the offer of the shady artist Vukmir to appear in his new movie. He soon starts to doubt the project, but tries to go through with it while his brother Marko, a policeman, investigates Vukmir.
The movie is like a 96 minutes drug trip through the eyes of Milos, and though it uses many elements I'm usually not too fond of, I would call it a perfect execution. We have a not always chronological storytelling, but it fits the blackout moments of Milos, the time steps and backflashes when the memories are triggered. We have some cases of handcamera, but again, this just underlines the unstable drugged scenes. The 'artsy' scenes shot by the strange cameramen sometimes remind of the glass box scenes in Tromeo and Juliet, just a lot rawer and sicker.
In movies that intentionally go for the most extreme perversions, it can easily come out forced, constructed and stay behind expectations. We've seen that in movies like Hostel, Wolf Creek, Hills Run Red or the Hills Have Eyes remakes. A Serbian Film, however, fulfills these expectations and presents them in such a raw and dirty way that it feels authentic and disturbing from the first moment to the last - and can still surprise through it all.

Session 9 as the only US production I watched last week, is certainly not a bad movie, but - sorry to say - pales in comparison to the outstanding European ones. It is by far more mystery than horror, but though there are a few graphic scenes (maybe 5 minutes and not going to any extremes) it creates a wonderful atmosphere of permanent danger. Sure, there are some parts of the plot that don't make much sense and also don't really reveal their meaning or relevance, but overall, the spooky scenery of an abandoned mental hospital makes up for it. It's a nice watch, though I can see how it never made the big break.

Moderately Funny

2011-01-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

Funny Games (1997)

I wasn't really sure what to expect. Torture porn made in Germany? Oh well, at least I didn't have to bother with bad snychronization...

The story. An upper class family - mother, father, son - arrive in their vacation lake house to do what upper class families do on vacation. Play golf, go sailing, meet other upper class families for dinner. Shortly after their arrival, two upper class young men show up, take the family hostage and play "funny games" with them, which obviously translates as torture and violence.

During the first hour, the movie really creates a strange and interesting atmosphere. The two men, calling each other Peter and Paul; Tom and Jerry; Beavis and Butthead, walk a narrow path between good manners and eloquence, and misanthropic sarcasm. They don't give any reason for their deeds either - picture perfect psychopaths who simply enjoy the thrill.
However, after they kill the kid and leave the house, the movie takes some lengths and doesn't manage to get the tension up again when they return. Of course, there are some unexpected and quite amusing scenes of breaking the fourth wall, but that alone is not enough to get back to the atmosphere of the beginning. A part of me waited for the turn from plain torture porn to rape'n'revenge, and that didn't happen. Too bad, it wouldn't have left this empty feeling of something missing.

Famous last words: Moderately funny, yet not the big joke I expected it to be.

Das Experiment

2011-01-12T06:49:00.000-08:00

or, for the absent international readers:

The Experiment
Been a while since I watched it, but I always had it in memory as one of the really outstanding German movies. And that hasn't changed. Besides the real life background story and officially counting as 'drama', this is pretty much torture porn with A list actors. While Hollywood, and other countries in general, oftenly think Germany only has two actors, Till Schweiger and Franka Potente, we do have some more, and I like nearly all of them better than the two international franchises. This combination; - the official category 'drama' and rather unfamiliar names on the cast - make The Experiment a surprising and usually very appreciated recommendation.
A social experiment with prisoner and guard roles applied to 'the average guy on the street' brings out the most popular aspects of late 70ies camp movies, with the significant difference of having only guys in the camp. A refreshing change from all the caged women back then, and Moritz Bleibtreu isn't the ugliest of all actors, so it's not even too painful to deal with the (near and full) nudity that comes with 12 guys wearing nothing but hospital gowns and sandals most of the time.
Though the scientists conducting the experiment restrict violence, we eventually get there. Starting with a power struggle between guards and prisoners, loss of sense for reality, first steps over the line with mild punishment and moderate humiliation, it soon leads to raw, open violence, torture and disgusting and humiliating punishment. Of course, there is still a strong drama aspect, and the sadly typical elements of trying to be artsy, but it's neglectable and doesn't ruin the movie. There are no lengths; the movie manages it to keep the high tension from the start to end.

Famous last words: Always a pleasure to watch - This is likely the closest thing to a real camp movie made after 1985.

Short Cuts 02/11

2011-01-11T02:17:00.000-08:00

Digging through movies I haven't seen in ages/at all, I came across these in the 2nd January week.

Blood Feast II - All U can eat
The thing that bothers me most about this classic is the title. "all U can eat". That's l33t speak before it was trendy. But luckily, the title is really the only thing I dislike. The story is incredibly funny and gory, and though the FX can't completely keep up with more recent movies, it is still way better than most so-called gore flicks of the past 10 years.

Bloodsucking Freaks
An all-time fave that combines so many of my fave grindhouse elements - caged women, slave trade, sideshow flair and sick torture, along with an almost stand up comic lead duo. What I don't really get is why this movie is said to be so politically incorrect. The dwarf, for example, is not shown as a mindless idiot who obeys whatever his master Sardu says. No, he's almost an equal partner - almost because Sardu is the director and Ralphus an actor. But still, he gets his share of fun and artistic freedom, and frequently enjoys the same luxury as his boss. Also, the caged women are almost all white, while Sardu's dominatrix and her aide are black - that's very open-minded for a gore flick and completely reverses the 'token minority dies first' trope. This movie has been a fave from the first time I've seen it, and it will always be.

Wrong Turn I & II
Oh man, how could I ignore them so long? Answer: I got them along with Vacancy I and II and High Tension. I found all of these boring and uninspired, so I didn't bother to watch Wrong Turn - and then forgot. Now I gave them a chance and they immediately made it into my top list. While Wrong Turn (1) was nice and bloody and didn't have any lengths, Wrong Turn 2 - Dead End is even better. Not just bloodier, though that certainly applies. I also just love the premise of a reality survival game show turning into the real deal. Bonus points for Henry Rollins as retired marine Dale, who is so badass, he'd technically need an identical twin brother to contain it.

Dead Snow
...made me regret yet again that I never learned any Scandinavian language, because the DVD only features the original Norwegian sound and German, both also as subs. Not really helpful. As much as I love the movie, as much am I bothered by German synchros. I would have watched it in Norwegian with English subs, if there were any. German translations always seem to lack authenticity - the voices seem wrong even if I don't know the real actors' voices. Still, a great movie that will always have a special place in my heart. Nazi zombies are simply better than just nazis or just zombies.

Saw II
Easily my fave of the series. Not that hard, as I only consider Saw 1 - 3 as decent and the rest as crap I only watch to rant about it. Mainly watched it because I needed to relax, voice-wise, and it was the nearest DVD I knew had English audio.

Anatomy
After (yet another) failed attempt to watch Salo - The 120 Days of Sodom, I decided to make the test: a German movie in original language. And yes, my theory confirms; the voices sound right, only synchros suck bad. To my surprise, the movie didn't suck. I hadn't bothered with it before because I don't like Franka Potente, which is a reason I dislike a lot German movies. It's sad but true - we don't have that many decent actors. One of them was in Anatomy, by the way, Benno Fürmann.
The movie has a few lengths in the middle, but that's not too bad. It's actually quite entertaining and features some awesome grotesque plastinated bodies. I hadn't expected the surgery scenes to be so explicit; kudos.

Salo - The 120 Days of Sodom
Well, I just don't get it. It's one of these 'must sees', but I can't get through the full length. Why the hell is this movie so controversial? Why do people claim it is perverse and shocking? It's goddamn boring! I make 1 hour at best, and then I get distracted by the first fly on the window, hunger, urgent desire to play a video game... anything, if it's only more entertaining than this. I keep trying, just so I can say I've seen it, but I have a feeling I make it through the 235 minutes cut of Caligola before I ever see the rest of Salo.

New Year Resolutions

2011-01-10T21:33:00.000-08:00

Oh I've been so lazy last year. Not just with blogging, with everything. One of my resolutions, hehe, is to change that. At least a bit. Maybe. So for my personal amusement next year, I post a list of things to do/change/whatever in 2011, so I can laugh about my laziness next year around this time.

Fangs
Who knows me on msn, yahoo and various other messengers knows that I use the screenname Fangoria a lot, and that I absolutely hate it to be called "Fang". Most people also know that I really dislike vampires, and make very few exceptions. That would be the classic Nosferatu and, to a lesser degree, Lost Boys. I don't even like Christopher Lee's Dracula. And I'm horribly annoyed by all the trendy vampire stuff of modern times. Daybreakers was a nice movie, but you'd say that too if you had seen it after the FFF openers.
Anyway. This plan/resolution will turn me even more into an oxymoron, as I've finally found a dentist who not only cured me from my phobia, but is also willing to make me fangs. Why, of all modifications, do I get fangs if I hate vampires so much? Well, basically, for the lulz. I don't dislike the looks of vampires, I just dislike the hype and simply have different horror preferences. But vampires are a very essential part of horror history; they belong to the oldest inhuman creatures in literature and art. Plus, I kinda look foreward to make stupid "I bite" puns. So this is the plan, execution already started:

Tattoo

Well, once at it, I also get some more ink. The target is my right arm, and the plan is long term. Starting with a cartoonish zombie duo; Tom Savini and Michale Graves, I'm going for a full sleeve with a horror/scifi/movie/entertainment theme. Other parts include a personal "Walk of Fame" with stars of H.G. Lewis, Lloyd Kaufman and another lucky winner, possibly Romero or Gordon; Ambassador Kosh - possibly also Mollari and G'Kar, Quark, Weyoun and a Breen; band logos of Blitzkid, Misfits, Backyard Babies, VNV Nation; a Walker from Midnight Nation (which is easily the most personal part of the design); a heart with "your name here" on it, a bit circus memorabilia and lots and lots of stars and skulls.

Culture other than watching TV

My kind of culture, that is. Mostly, I want to see two things live this year, and that would be the Circus of Horrors and Stevie Starr. I was never really a concert/festival person, so I decided I'll just try to find my kind of 'going out' on weekends. That's something to entertain me, that doesn't involve dancing and has less overpriced beer than some so-called 'underground club'. Generally, cabarets and performance arts are quite close to watching TV: not as overpriced as cinema, allow conversation due to a moderate noise level, appeal to my laziness, more interesting than just sitting in a bar and waiting for the morons to leave the pool table.

Living Healthier

Probably the biggest LOL on this list. As every year, I decided I should drink less energy drinks, and as every year, I'll be back to two liters Red Bull by March. However, after being confronted with an incredibly funny looking fruit and consuming it, I also developed an interest in eating more funny fruits.

Dragonfruit! I really thought Capri Sun had made it up or something. It has no real taste, but it's very entertaining to eat it. I mostly want to eat fruits that look funny, so I'm not bothered with the way they taste. Just that they are fruits, that makes them very healthy.

Renovation

The part I most look foreward to. *echem* My place really needs a makeover. The kitchen still looks like I just moved in, probably because I rarely use it. Oh blessings of all the fast food temples within 500 meters! The bathroom... Well, I thought it was nice when I moved in. Now I realize that the awesome paintings on the walls are stupid as shit and I really don't want the damn dolphins anymore. And once at painting... the living room. Yes, yellow/orange is a nice, warm color and it creates a wonderful relaxed atmosphere. Unless it is summer, and I want to open the door to the yellow balcony. And every insect in a 5 km range hurries to get here. I might even ask the landlord if I can have the missing doors... Yes, that's right, when I moved in, this place had no doors to the living room and kitchen. I didn't see that as a problem; I just got nice curtains and voilà. But that was before I realized how much it sucks if you forget something - let's say a salami pizza baguette - in the oven and the smoke fills up ALL rooms instead of only the kitchen.

TV

While impatiently waiting for the next season The Walking Dead, I'll finally sit down and watch at least 2 of the following series people keep recommending:

† Dexter
† Fringe
† BSG old
† BSG new
† Farscape
† Firefly

I also plan to finally archive my movies, re-watch and review more and yeah... I try to make a list or something useful since years, it never seems to work. I guess I'll die trying.

The Walking Dead

2010-12-26T05:50:00.000-08:00

I'm really lazy reviewing TV series, but in this case, I have to make an exception. The Walking Dead is incredibly good. It is new (at least in this format), it is gory, it is intelligent, it is character-driven, it is in fact the zombie movie that never ends.
I haven't entirely warmed up with all of the main cast; one reason may be that you never know who really belongs to the main cast long term, but they all keep me interested in their stories and characters. That's the opposite of Stargate Universe, where you know exactly who's the main cast and who will survive, but still give a shit about everyone in mid season 2.

The Walking Dead takes the crossroad between Romero zombie classics and modern drama; it's not so much about the gore - though gore is certainly and luckily in it - but about the characters, morality and survival under extreme circumstances. At times, it feels like watching Zombieland, then it feels more like City of the Living Dead or peeking into a post apocalyptic scenario without zombies; cyberpunk c-movies of the 80ies, Y - The Last Man.
The concept of a neverending zombie movie is a dream coming true. With all the shitty sparkly vampire crap coming out lately, it is even refreshing to see some bloodthirsty monsters that don't even try to be sexy. Of course, I personally could watch zombie movies for days and weeks without getting bored, but I think the characters and their relationships and stories will also keep watchers interested that don't think 25 liters blood per episode are enough to tell a good story.

Not exactly related, but worth to mention: Norman Reedus. From episode 3 on, he's a guest in the cast and I truly hope he'll be added to the main cast. The character is exactly what the group needs to be 'complete'; the trigger happy redneck with a tendency to spit out racial slurs. With two cops, there has to be some balance and the backstory about his brother adds a lot, too. Norman Reedus is one of these actors that I trust. If I see his name in a cast, I'm more likely to watch a movie or show, and so far, he hasn't let me down. He picks the interesting roles; the outsiders, nerds and rednecks; and seems to have a taste for overall good scripts. The theory is sound; if he actually takes the lead, the movie is twice as good as most others. I call it the Jeffrey Combs Effect; a supporting character being the first sign of a great movie/series.

Anyway, I'm almost through season 1, and I can't wait for season 2 to 200. May this become the longest running TV series ever.

Short Cuts

2010-12-13T17:37:00.000-08:00

Machete is an excellent, entertaining movie with a great cast, soundtrack and visual effects. I'm too lazy to write a full review, but this one is really worth to watch. Go, Rodriguez!

Ice from the Sun, on the other hand, is bullshit. 'Trippy Gore', most certainly, if 'trippy' says you better be on drugs to understand the senseless story. It can be summarized as: Wizard. Dimension. Ice Wall.
Some girl (it takes a while to figure out it's a girl) named Alison tries to kill herself by cutting her wrists, but while she's dying, a trippy oracle surrounded by colored smoke shows up and tells her a long and boring story about a wizard who created a new dimension by taking ice from the sun to contain his magic, had an apprentice who now took over this realm and is so f'n mighty that angels and devils can't stop him. For no particular reason, 6 people have to enter that realm and die from their greatest fear to feed the... apprentice, magic, realm, ice, dimension, wizard. If you think that was a badass long sentence - listen to the trippy oracle. THAT is a long sentence. And one hell of a boring monologue, too.
Alison is the chosen one to defeat the wizardapprenticedimensionicewall by reminding him that he was once human and had to sacrifice his lover to gain power. Or something. Also, 6 random people enter the dimension and die from their greatest fears. Some rather boring, some with okay FX, but nothing that would equal out the oracle speech, horrible cuts, equally horrible actors and kinda stupid story. In the end, Alison turns out to be the reincarnation of the lover the apprentice had to kill to... oh whatever. The movie sucks, especially after 'Machete', which makes a lot movies look bad. But still, that's no excuse.

Famous last words: Maybe the ice was from the sun, but the script was from a drug rehab center, department 'beyond hope'.

Everyone can be Jigsaw for a day...

2010-12-13T17:10:00.000-08:00

...in other words, Saw 7 meets all expectations. The unlucky detail is that I expected it to suck.

The uncharismatic Jigsaw escaped the trap that the charismatic Jigsaw left his wife. And starts a new game, this time with the victim Bobby. Bobby self makes no sense at all as a character. He is a self help guru and book author who claims he's a Jigsaw trap survivor, though he has really never been anywhere near a trap. Now, how does that work? Jigsaw is the most wanted killer, the crime scenes are the mekka of every cop in sight, and someone can just claim he survived a trap that didn't exist?! And really no-one, especially not the cops, notice that? Nope, sorry. Doesn't work for me at all.

Anyway, the original Jigsaw knew Bobby was lying - obviously. But how the... umm, 45th Jigsaw knew remains a mystery, and it also doesn't matter. Bobby has to go through a game similar to Saw 3 and Saw 6, with his wife being the reward for 'learning his lesson'. Oh, I miss the times when that lesson self was the reward... While Bobby plays, Jigsaw's ex-wife goes into protective custody and sends a generic cop after the current Jigsaw, who once, when he was still a cop himself, saved the life of the cop hunting him now. Woohoo, who cares? No-one, including the movie.

Jigsaw is also more random than ever. The movie starts with a public triple saw blade trap of two lovers of the same greedy girl, hanging from the ceiling, getting cut in halfs. It has nothing to do with the story, but the two guys survive, so they are potential new Jigsaws for the inevitable sequels.
Early in the story, Jigsaw also kills four neo nazis on a junkyard, just because. None of them survives, so Saw 8 will still show political correct kills. Late in the movie, Jigsaw also slays an entire police station and kills all cops hunting him to then kill Jill, the ex-Jigsaw's ex-wife. Just like the traps Bobby goes through, these kills are unoriginal and don't have any message at all.

Bobby has to face various helpers on his way to survivor fame, like his manager, but he fails to save any of them and they die in half assed traps. When Bobby reaches the last room, where his wife is, he has to face the trap he claimed he survived in his book, yet again fails and his wife dies in basically the same trap as Obe in Saw 2. Just more pyros, but same story. Bobby then throws himself into an electric fence around the oven and dies. I think.

Jigsaw, who meanwhile killed all cops and Jill, sets his workshop on fire and leaves, just to be attacked by three people with pig masks - we haven't seen those in a while - and finds himself in the basement from Saw 1. Guess who also got a message from the original Jigsaw, who was also a helper, and is now probably the new Jigsaw? Never mind, I tell you. It's the guy who survived the basement. After sewing his foot off and creeping through the basement, he was healed by Jigsaw and became his helper. He is the doctor who recommended to kidnap the other doctor in Saw 3 and... really, who cares? I don't, because it seems that really everyone who ever walked through the set was really a secret helper, ally or successor of the original Jigsaw and the next sequel will be just like the last one. Random victim, someone turns out as a helper and it's neither surprising nor original, traps so unoriginal and meaningless that you wouldn't learn a lesson from them if you studied them all your life, and another generic cop fails to catch whoever is Jigsaw that day.

Famous last words: It's always sad to see a legend not die, but make a fool of itself. And that's what the Saw series is doing proudly since at least Saw 4.

ArtTroll - Graveyard Trash

2010-08-14T05:49:00.000-07:00

What started as an attack on fangirls and bad fanfic writers meanwhile became a personal challenge of self improvement. I know, I could buy some spiritual video workshop about more concious breathing, but I prefer my way.

Here are some of my latest atrocities from the quest to become a better artist.

All The Horror Movies

Hooray for Horrorwood

Never Never Never World

Holla die Waldfee

2010-08-14T05:38:00.000-07:00

Space Zombie Bingo (1993) is probably the best worst movie made in a damn long time. Since "Plan 9 from Outer Space", I dare to say. Random archive footage, a completely ridicolous plot about alien invaders, acting beyond good and evil, stage props from the garage sale - it screams "Plan 9", and it even gets better with silly character names.
All American Girl Barbie Que just lost her expendable boyfriend Hugh Heard to the attack of the robot zombie alien invaders, and immediately finds a new love in the movie's hero, Kent Bendover. If Space Zombie Bingo didn't win you over at this point, you're reading the wrong blog, by the way.

The awesome costumes (almost as bad as in "Piratenmassaker"), the completely retarded story (alien invasion must be stopped by nuking all major cities on earth) and the horrible acting, not to mention the awful special effects, make this the highlight of my movie week.

And now off to fuel myself with beer and energy drinks for the Re-Animator trilogy

Under Siege III - Attack of the Mary Sues

2010-07-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

Attack of the Mary Sues

They were everywhere. They came from all sides. One more annoying and devestating than the other. When Odo had realized in what danger he was, he had transformed into a Death Star, by pure instinct. It had been enough to kill the Magic-Yaoi-Sue-Fangirl, yes. But it had also destroyed the entire security office and parts of the habitat ring above it. The last thing Quark and Weyoun had seen when they escaped back to the bar was the Death Star-Odo, breaking free from the debris he had caused, and launching himself into space.

"Damn shapeshifter!" Quark muttered as they ran, firing phasers in all directions. "He had the means to escape all the time! Why did that egomaniac not take us with him?!" "The Founder will go and get help!" Weyoun replied and killed an approaching fangirl with a clean, pointed headshot. "I should have known you'd come up with that story again!" Quark groaned. "But here's the news, Odo is not a god. He's a damn egoistic bastard and he left us behind!" "He has faith in us that we can hold out until he returns with help!" Weyoun argued. "Can it be your delusions get worse with each clone?" Quark sighed and pushed the door to the bar open.

He quickly slipped in, not opening the door wider than neccessary. Weyoun followed him, slammed the door and while the Ferengi began to lock it, the Vorta got tables and chairs and dead Jem'Hadars to barricade it. "Come here, I need your help!" he heard Quark from the bar. "I can't carry Morn alone!" Weyoun hurried to get over to Quark, who tried to move the Lurian from his chair to add his weight to the barricade. Together, they managed it to carry the massive alien through the room.

"So far, so good..." Quark sank to the floor, leaning his back against the counter. "No, not good", Weyoun replied. Exhausted, he sat down next to Quark. "Our weapons are almost depleted. We need new ones." "I know", the Ferengi said. "And we need a new plan. Out there are at least 25 Sues and fangirls. No way we'll make it anywhere near the shuttle bay or engineering." Weyoun nodded. "Not without being raped, tortured and slashed, at least." Quark looked over to him, utter disgust in his eyes. "You don't consider that as an option, do you?" Weyoun stared at him, equally disgusted. "Of course not! Or do I look like someone who enjoys being stripped naked by underaged humans for... their horrific mating rituals?!" Quark grinned, bitterly. "No, you don't", he admitted. "But I never judge a book by it's cover." The Vorta's eyes glittered angrily, but before he could return the compliment, a giggling voice from across the room said: "ZOMG UR SO KEWT 2GETHER!!!1"

Quark and Weyoun froze in shock. A self insert fangirl emerged from the darkness of the first level. Probably, it had been hiding in the holosuite. Quark recovered first. He fired a phaser charge to the stairs, grabbed Weyoun's arm and dragged him behind the bar. "Quick, get the alcohol!" he whispered and pointed to a board behind them. "Maybe we can make molotov cocktails somehow." Weyoun raised an eyebrow. "And set the bar on fire? I admire your genius..." Nonetheless, he crawled to the board and began to grab some of the bottles.

"I no ur there!!! :heartsmily: I CAN C U!!!!1" they heard the high pitched, annoying voice of the self insert say. It came closer. And there was something else out there. Quark and Weyoun could both feel it, and they knew the other one knew. There was no need to speak, no words for it. Like an unmerciful winter crept over fields of green, leaving only death and cold behind, the evil crept towards them. It was a Pity Me-Sue.

Pity Me-Sues were some of the most dangerous creatures that came on board of the station during the invasion. Out of universe dressed, usually in pink and black, and with the ability to take massive damage without losing their functionality. Like robots, they moved through the hallways; unstoppable doom. Like soul vampires they sucked any hope out of their victims and left them empty, emotionally unstable - easy prey for Fix It-Sues and Hurt/Comfort-fangirls. And like zombies, they were uneffected by most weapons and means of defense.

Weyoun, with an armfull of bottles, crawled back to Quark. The Ferengi tried to hide his fear, but he did a really poor job on it. Weyoun felt tempted to make a sarcastic remark about that, but a part of him felt exactly the same, so he remained quiet. "There's also a Magic Sue out there", Quark whispered. "I can see the rainbow reflections of its hair." He tried to sound strong, but again, failed. Weyoun's face dropped. "Then we are doomed", he said, sadly. "Give me the bottles." Quark gave him a serious glance. "At least, we'll go out in a blaze of glory. And with our clothes still on." The Vorta handed him the bottles. "For you, this will be the end", he whispered. "For me, it only means they clone me again and it all starts from the beginning."

Resistance - Weapons of Mass Annoyance

2010-07-26T05:23:00.000-07:00

Weapons of Mass Annoyance

Nog watched from a save distance as Jake Sisko approached the first hostile target. General Martok, with whom they had set up a temporary headquarter for their armed resistance cell in the docking bay, held a comm frequency open.

"What's the situation, soldier?" the Klingon's voice asked. "Number 3 is approaching the first target", Nog replied. "Engaging conversation!"

Jake had seated himself on a table occupied by a level 2 Mary Sue and introcuded himself. The target seemed delighted and that was a first good sign to Nog that their plan had a chance to work out.

"Can you hear what they say?" Martok asked over comm. "General, please!" Nog replied. "Of course I can hear them!" He listened for a while, then informed his superior officer about the progress. "Number 3 asked the target about its background story. It is a Magic Portal-Sue that came here from a universe it calls 'Lord of the Rings'. Its species..." He listened again and continued then. "...is 'half elf', whatever that means." "Hm", Martok said. "Is it trying to use any ridicolous super powers on Number 3?" "Not that I can see, General", Nog replied. "He is clearly not under its control. He acts perfectly normal."

"What about the target?" the Klingon asked. "Any effect yet?" "It seems scared", Nog said, smiling. "I think it's working!" "Very good!" Martok replied. "If this really works, we can begin with phase two. Any idea where Dr. Bashir or Captain Sisko are? Or Mr. Garak? We will need estrogen brigade bait." "Haven't seen the Captain or Garak", Nog said. "I think Bashir is in the infirmary. He still tries to clone Lwaxana Troi." "Hm, can't hurt to have a biological weapon..." Martok mumbled. "Then, what about Dukat? He'd be disposable enough to lure the fangirls to an airlock and be spaced with them."

"I'll keep my eyes open, General", Nog nodded. Then, he hastly added: "It is working! The enemy is withdrawing from Number 3! He made it! He questioned its one dimensional character so much that the Sue ran away in panic!" "Very good! Return to base!" Martok ordered. "Good work, soldiers!"

Under Siege II - My Enemy's Enemy

2010-07-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

My Enemy's Enemy

"You are insane!"

Weyoun stared at Quark as if the Ferengi had grown another head. "Your plan won't work! We'll never make it to engineering!" Quark crossed his arms. "Oh? And why not? I know this station a lot better than you! We take the turbo lift and... " "I know where we are and where the turbo lift is!" the Vorta interrupted. "And between us and the lift are both the infirmary and Garak's shop!" Quark shrugged. "I know that. And both will provide enough distraction for us to get through." "Maybe", Weyoun replied. "But if not... If we get caught near any of these locations... You should know better than me what that means."

"For them, yes." Quark stepped over the remains of the destroyed Fix it-Sue. "But we should be save. It's Garak, not Dukat or Damar." "I don't feel save near any Cardassian!" Weyoun followed him reluctantly. "I bet they never slashed you with one of them." Quark shuddered. "A few times", he admitted. "But I tell you, Klingons are worse. Especially Worf." Weyoun stopped. "They... slashed... you... with Worf?!" he gasped. Quark turned around to see the Vorta was even paler than usual. He just nodded; the memories were too painful to tell any details. "Now come on. The sooner we get off the station and to another universe, the less we'll have to worry about... that."

A pointed energy beam from Weyoun's pistol almost strifed Quark's ear; a high pitched scream behind him. The Ferengi jumped around in shock, and saw the body of a Yaoi fangirl collapse near the corridor to Garak's shop. "There, I told you!" Weyoun yelled angrily. "Now listen to my plan, you big-eared freak!" "Look who's talking..." Quark grinned. "Why don't you get some pink contacts and disguise yourself as Anime-Gary Stu, space elf?" "Jealous of my ears?" Weyoun smiled sarcastically. "Don't worry, every other fanboi is, too."

Slowly, Quark raised his phaser to point at the obnoxious Vorta. Slowly, Weyoun pointed his gun at Quark. For a moment, time froze. Both stared at each other, anger glittering in their eyes. "Never. Call. Me. Fanboi. Again!" Quark hissed. "Never. Call. Me. Space. Elf. Again!" Weyoun mocked.

"OMG UR EARS R SO AWZUM!!!1!"

In the blink of an eye, both turned around, pointing the guns in the direction of the voice.

"U no I writed a fan fiction were Quaak gived uh-mox 2 u, Wayon!!1"

The rainbow-colored monster smiled a horrible, sadistic smile when it slowly came closer. "Blessed Enchequer!" Quark gasped. "A Magic-Yaoi-Sue-Fangirl!" "That's worse than Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot..." Weyoun stuttered. "Stop mocking me! Now is really not the time to argue!" Quark replied. "But if you still have a plan... NOW, I'm listening... big-eared freak!" Weyoun quickly looked over his shoulder, making sure no enemy was approaching behind them.

"To the security office!" he yelled and ran. Quark followed him quickly. "We lock ourselves in. The Founder will be able to fight it off!" "You're right!" Quark agreed. "He's usually paired with Kira, so he shouldn't pose a threat for us!" "Pf, what do you know with whom they pair Odo...!" Weyoun growled. "Got whipped by him, wearing a WWII uniform... Kira... You dreamer!" They had almost reached the office, but the Magic-Yaoi-Sue-Fangirl was still in pursuit. "Oh my, that's horrible!" Quark replied. "And you still wanna go to his office?!" "Of course!" Weyoun yelled over his shoulder. "He can take the form of the Female Changeling! That should protect him!"

They finally reached the security office; the doors slid open and Weyoun, followed by Quark, rushed through, straight for the cell block. "Consider the truce signed!" Weyoun shouted at Odo, who watched the scenario puzzled. "Wait! What's going on here?" he growled and got up from his desk to follow the two men he wanted to see in a brig since the day he first met them. To his suprise, that was exactly where they were when he arrived. "Quick, take the form of a female changeling!" Weyoun screamed in panic. Odo just watched him, still confused. "Or a rock! Or your bucket! Anything, just change your shape!" Quark added. He looked just as haunted as the Vorta.

"Well, I'm not in the mood for your games, Quark", Odo told him. "I'm just glad you finally accept your place and I don't have to go through the trouble of arresting you myself." "Arrest?!" Quark gasped. "We are in protective custody!"

Under Siege - Invasion

2010-07-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

Under Siege - Invasion

"How very diplomatic of you!" Weyoun remarked. "Lure me here for 'peace talks' and then have an invasion on that little station of yours!" "Shut up, elf ear!" Quark growled. "Do you really think THAT was the plan?!" "Let's say, it wouldn't exactly surprise me if it was", the Vorta replied. "After all, it is just one station. A small sacrifice if you hand it over to these Mary Sues and their fangirl minions, if you know they'll come for my quadrant after that..." Quark rolled his eyes, grabbed his phaser and sneaked to the door of the bar. "See, I agree, the hewmons would certainly consider that option, but I try to run a business here. There is no profit in hostile invasions. I don't care who tries to take over, I just wanna make it out alive and in one piece. You can come with me or stay here, I don't care."

Weyoun watched him, thoughtfully. After a moment of silence, he picked up a gun from one of the dead Jem'Hadar to his feet. "You have a point", he slowly admitted. "I guess two guns are better than one." He followed Quark to the door. "But just to get things straight. It doesn't mean I trust you!" "Ha!" The Ferengi laughed. "Getting things straight around will take a lot more than that. This is a fangirl invasion, after all." He began to unlock the door. "But now, back to the plan..." "Wait, who says you are the one calling the shots here?" Weyoun interrupted. "From what I see, you are just a bartender, while I'm a field commander and..." "Yeah, whatever you say..." Quark sighed. "But this is still my bar, my quadrant and hence my plan."

Weyoun's eyes narrowed. "Your quadrant... We'll see about that", he said, more to himself. "You're not the only one with good ears around here", Quark replied. "I heard that. And I don't think you are in the position to make any threats right now." He finally had the door unlocked and opened it a bit to peek out to the promenade. "I didn't", Weyoun said. "I merely pointed out that it doesn't quite look like your quadrant since the invasion began." "Trust me", Quark sighed. "I would really prefer a Dominion invasion to this myself." He slipped through the door out to the promenade. "You would?" Surprised, the Vorta raised his eyebrows. "Maybe it's not too late for 'peace talks', after all." He followed Quark outside.

For a moment, both just listened to the spooky silence on the promenade. "Alright", Quark whispered, sneaking closer to the next wall. "We try to get to engineering. O'Brien has a high resistance to fangirl attacks, and he can probably modify a cargo transporter to get us all on a shuttle." He wanted to say something else, but Weyoun put a finger on his lips and Quark was quiet.

"Yes, Captain Sikso!!!1 I'm on my way now, I can fix it 4 u, I can fix everything 4 u!!!"

Quark looked up to Weyoun, relieved. "It's just a self insert Fix it-Sue..." He watched the reflection of the monster in the window of the closed Bajoran souvenir shop. "Early stage, red shirt, ensign", he added. The Vorta nodded. "Then we have a chance", he said. "Is your phaser set to kill?" Quark nodded. "It is. Let's just hope the Sue can't fix itself after we kill it..."

Hate is my Muse

2010-07-25T21:45:00.000-07:00

People who claim love is their inspiration for artistic activities must be quite confused. The very opposite is true. Hate is more inspiring than anything I've ever tried! Out of pure hate and annoyance, I began my digital drawing series "Under Siege". Finally, I have a way to put my aggressions to good use and rub in the faces of Mary Sues and self inserts of bad fan fiction writers and fangirls! I have never been more inspired in my life! I will post the results here with the tag "ArtTroll"; full size pictures and more can be seen at the link under "DeviousArt".

Resistance - Unity or Death

They had long lost track of the number of attacks. Too many intruders roamed the decks of the station; too devestating their weapons to only think of fighting back.

Garak's hand held the nearly depleted phaser so tightly, it almost hurt. He peeked around a corner, down the promenade. Since the invasion had begun, it looked like a ghost town. Most shop owners, except Quark and himself, had fallen during the first attack waves, though ironically they didn't even own red shirts. With his keen sense for fashion, the tailor would have known about that.

A quick and painless death fic seemed merciful, Garak thought. Oh what he would have given to trade roles with some unnamed ensign who got blown out of an airlock in chapter 2, or at least a random bridge officer dying on his console! But there was no mercy. Not here, in this alternative universe; not for him.
Here, he had to endure countless hurt/comfort fics, and even in the comfort part, Garak couldn't find much of it. He always ended up in the infirmary, beaten and bruised, just to be 'cared for' by Dr. Bashir. Usually, both were naked in the end. Garak shuddered at this thought.

He tried to shake off the horrific memories. Maybe, he finally had a chance to escape this reality. It didn't look as bad as usual. The invaders had withdrawn from the promenade a bit ago to besiege Quark's Bar. From what Garak knew, Quark and Weyoun had taken shelter there and presented, at least for the moment, a more appealing target.

His eyes scanned the empty hallway. Over in the Klingon restaurant, Worf and Jadzia were hiding and trying to hold out until they could reach a shuttle. That was also Garak's plan, but it was far too risky to move in groups. He checked the other direction. The turbo lift to the docking ring was too far away to take the risk and sneak all the way at once. He needed a hiding place, half the way. There was the infirmary, of course. But Garak knew that Dr. Bashir had locked himself in there, trying to develop a biological weapon as a last resort. He would probably have opened the door to let his lunch partner in, but Garak just couldn't go in there. Too many disturbing memories were connected to this place...

The Bajoran Temple! he thought. This was the last place where anyone would be looking for him. And it was just close enough to reach it without drawing attention from the raging mob outside Quark's Bar. Garak took a deep breathe and then he ran.

When he finally reached the shelter, he sank to the floor in the hallway between entrance and altar room. He considered searching the temple for water or food when he heard steps coming closer.

"GARAK!!!!1 U r my fav char!!!1"

The tailor froze in shock. This couldn't be! This just couldn't really be happening! Since the invasion began, he had never been so close to escape, and now this! He set the phaser to kill and crawled to a corner. This would be his last battlefield, he knew.

The invader stepped into the temple. The two-tone eyes began to shine brighter than the sun when they spotted the Cardassian. And it smiled. What a horrific sight it was! What disgusted Garak more than anything wasn't the silly pink and purple eyes, or the manic smile. No. It was the Starfleet uniform it wore - clearly an outdated version from the last Star Trek series...

It opened its mouth to speak, but Garak didn't hestitate. He fired the last bit of energy from his phaser, and much to his dismay... the monster was uneffected.

"Ur weaponz cant harm me!!!1" it smiled. "My mother was the queen of the Urzuhumfzi from the omega quadrant!!" Garak just stared at it. Obviously, this Sue shared the background story with around 1.2 mio others of her kind and had a parent of a self invented non-canon species that granted her super powers. "U must fall in luv with me now!!1" it informed the Cardassian. "Please... No! Not again!" he begged, desperately trying to get just one more charge out of his phaser.

"It will not come to that, my child!"

Surprised, Garak - and also the monster - looked over to the altar room. "Kai Winn!" they yelled; the monster in shock, Garak in relief. In times like these, it didn't matter if she was the religious leader of the world his people had occupied for so long. With so many of both their people fallen and hunted, it was easy to forget. Maybe not to forgive, but this was to be saved for later - if there was a 'later'. Even someone like Kai Winn, on who the various ridicolous super powers of the Mary Sues and fangirls had no effect, could not defeat them all.

It all happened so fast, and Garak was so exhausted, he couldn't follow the events of the next minutes. Kai Winn opened the Orb of Resistance that she carried, and the spiritual powers of it sucked in the monster, shattering it into pieces and leaving nothing behind.

When it was over, the Kai turned to Garak and offered him a hand to help him up. "We must go now, child", she said, smiling. "We must find the other First Ones and prepare for the final battle." Irritated, Garak replied: "First Ones? Isn't that from Babylon 5?" "Yes, it is", the Kai said softly. "I have learned to turn our enemy's weapons against them. I have found the lost Orb of Crossover."

The Senseless Dwarf

2010-07-08T22:18:00.000-07:00

Umm, 'The Sinful Dwarf', I mean. I know it's a sexploitation classic, but even more, it is a picture perfect example how bad a movie can really be.

It's not boring. It's painfully predictable. It's not just a bad story, it's even more the bad execution. And more than this, it's the misconception beginning with the title. This is not a movie about a dwarf. It is a movie that also has a dwarf in it. But the exceptional performance and lead character is his mother.

The story. Absurd, naturally. We have the dwarf Olaf or Oleg or something. He lives with his mother, a former cabaret star still clinging to her past glory. They live in a big house with a small room they rent to young couples; and they have an attic with drugged, naked women to rent to strangers for sex. And they have a drug dealer who also runs a toy store and hides the drugs in stuffed animals. Obviously, the plot is that a young couple moves in the house, the dwarf and the mother want to add the woman to their collection of slaves, but her husband (who gets a job with the toy store drug dealer) finds out and saves her.

So far so good. But the only thing the dwarf really does is leading men to the attic and locking the door for them. Sometimes, he also plays with toy trains. That hardly qualifies as lead character, as the mother is the one plotting and planning all the time. Plus performing on her own cabaret stage and dealing drugs. I realize a movie called "The evil old lady with the dwarf son" would not be as appealing from the title, but it would get the point.

Famous last words: Rent this movie. Don't buy it. You'd regret.

RePost: Good Movies, Part 2

2010-07-08T05:05:00.001-07:00

Punisher: Warzone

Really, last year's Punisher: Warzone has it all. What the hell was so difficult to get it right before? This is straight from the picture book - actually, in the very meaning, because the script is very obviously based on an actual Punisher mini series. My heart opened like a flower in the first spring sun when I watched this wonderful movie! Yes, you can say I'm in love! *throws bullets and flowers*

First of all, the script is b e a u t i f u l and perfectly how a Punisher script has to be. No wasting time with sentimental flashbacks, just point out the essential keywords "park, picnic, mafia execution, family dead - Punisher", but give it 10 minutes through the entire movie, and not the first 45 minutes. Authentic straight from the book characters - gangs, mafiosi of all nations, drug freaks, psychos; the obsessed cop, Frank Castle's sidekicks...

Then we have the cast. PICTURE PERFECT! After Thomas Jane did a hell of a job to play the role of Frank Castle down to a pretty boy with a trendy shirt, Ray Stevenson is my personal new hero; I love this man, I truly do. Did I ever say I want Bruce Willis, and no other, as Frank Castle? I can't remember that. NO. THIS is my Punisher, the way he has to be, look, act, talk - and dress. HE HAS NO PUNISHER SHIRT! Not for a single moment does he wear it, and still, he's so much more the Punisher than Thomas Jane and Bruce Willis could ever be. *sends flowers to Ray Stevenson* But enough of my burning love for the main role - everyone, even all side characters, are perfect. It was a bit like watching Hellboy for the first time - all the time waiting for the one side character that makes you think "WTF, did they really find no-one who fit in a tiny bit better? Can't be that hard" - but it never happens; the cast couldn't be any better.
And, having praised script and cast, the essential thing... This movie has 120 bullets per minute, average. Awesome! And it has all the other Castle goodness in killing, crippling and punishing the bad boys; creative kills, cold hearted and efficient; raw, nasty, dirty, logical, beautiful, gory, giving you ouch moments all the time.

Yeah, we do see that Frank Castle isn't some killing machine without remorse. We do learn about why he does what he does. We do see him give a blanket to a little girl. But we also see him kill both his sidekicks, we see him torture the kingpin, er, excuse me, Jigsaw; and we see him kill right before the eyes of the cops and walk away.
All the time, I've been scared to get to the "oh shit, now they messed it up" point - but it doesn't come. Perfect, from the very beginning to the very end (which is a gun shot, naturally).

YES. I am in love.
YES. I believe in good comic based movies again.
YES. I wanna see a sequel.
YES. I wanna give Ray Stevenson an Oscar.

Sadisticum
Less than an hour playtime. Amateur movie. German audio with nearly unreadable English subs. Sounds like shit? Hell, no! This is clearly the splatter surprise of the (last) year! The effects are outstanding and realistic like I've never seen it before in a low budget production - and you bet no-one with a sane mind would really invest in a movie with no chance in hell to ever reach a big audience. The actors are way above average; lighting, cut, camera and sound effects, too.

So, what is Sadisticum about? A sadist. Not that hard to guess. At the age of 17, our narrator more or less accidentally kills a classmate and experiences yet unknown satisfaction and pride from this act. For many years, he surpresses the urge to kill and torture, but 30 years after his first crime, he gets robbed on the way home. Feeling the blood on his head and being reminded of the situation at school, the urge to kill arises and he breaks out his normal life.
He prepares to live his dream - to kill and torture for an audience that will appreciate his passionate work. It results in "torture workshops" and these scenes are so intense, Eli Roth would blush and deny he has anything to do with Hostel. The nameless killer appears like the competent guy from a Tool Time show when he explains his students how to cause the most pain with the smallest work, with and without tools, how to keep a victim concious, how to make the torture last as long as possible. He's friendly, smart, patient and skilled - a passionate teacher of perversion.

Obviously, the kills don't stay a secret and the police starts to investigate. And this leads to the one thing that annoyed me. It is - at least in the east of Germany - not uncommon to meet people with English first names. In the DDR, parents gave their children American names as a pocket size protest against the communist government. So nothing wrong with the main investigator's name being Steven. (Though I don't see why it can't be Stefan. I assume that the movie was made with the intention to be synchronized; the intro and outro are written in English, too. That counts as an excuse.) But that his name, Steven, is spoken out in every damn sentence said to Steven in every damn conversation with Steven, that really gets annoying, Steven. Alright, its also annoying that his wife's name, Alina, is used in the same way. In some scenes, you think you hear nothing but Steven-Alina-Steven-Steven-Alina-Steven. The other thing I found a bit unlucky - its only about 57 minutes. I would have liked another hour - its really a very entertaining and well done movie with a relatively surprising end.

Famous last words: More movies like this, please!

Tombs of the Blind Dead

A totally 70ies zombie b-movie from Portugal. It was my absolute fave when I was a kid, along with the sequels. I would watch them over and over again. Today, I really wonder why. I had so many better movies. Still do. And I bet everyone else does.

Is there a story? Yes. Berzano is a ghost village in the nowhere near Lisbon. This is where Virginia (occupation unknown), Roger (her just-a-good-friend) and her best friend from school, Betty (runs a store for shopping window dolls) meet. Not that it makes any sense that Betty shows up in the hotel where Virginia and Roger stay, because, well, she lives in Lisbon anyways.
It doesn't matter. Because Virginia and Roger planned a camping trip to wherever, and Roger asks Betty to join them.
The totally 70ies background story is that Virgina and Betty had a lesbian affair in school. In the train, Roger starts to hit on Betty, Virginia gets jealous and jumps off the train because she's so angry with both. Umm, ya. However, she finds the abandoned village and stays the night in the ruins. That, or something else, wakes up the Templar Knights, a group of knights from the 13th century that brought back the secret of eternal life from Egypt. The secret is: kill people, drink their blood, perform satanic rituals. Why that is Egyptian? Don't ask.
Virginia gets killed by them, the police starts to investigate and blames a group of smugglers for the murder. For totally no reason, Virginia returns from the dead in the morgue, kills the perv night guard (or whatever he is), then goes to Betty's store and dies in a fire when she tries to kill Betty's shop assistant. Meanwhile Betty and Roger visited a strange history professor who is the father of the leader of the smuggler gang. Umm, the police investigator suddenly shows up after the professor told the story about the templars, to reveal that the smugglers are the killers.
Again, without further reason, Betty and Roger visit the smugglers and find Pedro (prof's son) and his bitchy girlfriend, and talk both of them into staying in the ruins with them over night. Pedro gets killed first after raping Betty on the cemetary. Roger loses a hand when escaping the dead and dies a few minutes later from blood loss. Pedro's girlfriend dies right after him, only Betty manages it to escape and reach the train. The train stops, the blind dead kill everyone, and somehow the train reaches Lisbon anyways with Betty as the only survivor.

Now, Betty. When I was a kid, I hoped and wished that, when I grow up, I would never look like her. That I would never have such an awful haircut. Such ugly boobs. A face you just wanna kick. Wear these horrible - even for the 70ies - clothes. And that I would never ever meet a guy like Roger (keyword: sideburns and 70ies pornstar hairdo).

That she survives so long is really pissing you off. All the time. You so wish that ugly thing would finally be killed by the blind dead. But alas, they are blind, they don't see what you have to suffer.
Other notable mentions: When Betty stops the train and even gets help to climb on it... It is humanly impossible to be THAT slow. Yeah, you read right! That fugly bitch is to blame for everyone else getting killed! Because SHE is so slow!
Several scenes, especially the wake of the dead from their graves, and riding around on their horses, are recycled in all movies. You see each scene at least 3 times. With the same cheap and really bad sound effects, that is.
The blind dead, well, yeah, they look pretty funny. I think its not actors with make up. Its bad actors with skeleton masks and gloves. Adding to that, we have rubber bodies and slow motion, and thats it for FX.

Do I recommend this movie? No. I recommend all of them. They are so bad that they are already good again. The actors suck, the FX suck, the story barely makes sense - and that's why you just gotta love this crap.

Return of the Blind Dead
Umm, I watched this for breakfast and already forgot most names. Sorry if I mix it up, but so does the DVD - the cover says "Return of the Blind Dead", the DVD menu "Return of the Evil Dead". I'm perfectly on topic.

Let's try to get the cast together...

We are in Berzano again. 500 years ago, the villagers burnt the Templar Knights after catching them performing a sacrifice for the devil. The knights promised to come back for revenge, and their eyes were burnt to blind them, so they wouldn't find the village anymore.

Here, we have Mayor Duncan, his bully/assistant (I forgot the name, he'll be called Bully for the rest of the review), his fiancee Vivian; the young family Branco, Amalia and daughter Nina (or Nancy?); Bully's wife (no idea, I call her Blondie now), the village idiot Mordu (Modo, Mudro...?) and Jack.

Its the night when the village celebrates their victory over the templars with a festival. For that, the mayor and Vivian hired Jack, who is an expert for fireworks. The difficult social network will play a role later, so I try my best here. Blondie (Bully's wife) is not on the festival; she cheats her husband with her secret lover Juan (he also looks like that) in their house outside the village. Bully self lusts after Mayor Duncan's fiancee Vivian, who is the ex girlfriend of Jack and decides to leave Duncan for him on the festival. Earlier that day, Blondie saved Mordu from some bullies.

While the village prepares the festival, Jack and Vivian make out somewhere outside the village - in the ruins where the templars are buried. There, Mordu surprises them when they talk about leaving the village together and start a new life. He tells them that legend about the templars and all, then they all go back to celebrate.

The festival begins, and Mordu - who considers himself a friend of the templars - waits in the ruins for their wake. They do wake, but clearly not require his help to find the village - there's a huge noisy firework to guide them, so they simply ignore Mordu. Meanwhile, Blondie got a visit from Juan. When the templars knock on the door, she fears its her husband, but alas, its not. The templars kill Juan, Blondie escapes through a window and with one of the undead horses. She reaches a train station and convinces the guy in it that the legends are true. He tries to call for help, but no-one hears the ringing phone because of the - firework. Blondie runs off into the (quite bright) night.

In the village, the mayor meanwhile noticed that his fiancee is making out with Jack on the dancefloor, and commands his bullies Bully, Branco and Guy 3 to beat him up. Before this can really start, Amalia (the wife of Branco and secretary of the mayor) finally answers the phone, decides the train station guy sounds like he needs help, and the brawl is already over. The mayor and Bully talk to the train guy, and then hear a breaking window. The templars reached the stations and killed the guy. Branco and Bully go to look what's wrong there.

Vivian and Jack try to use the chaos to leave the village, but run into Blondie who passes out on the street. They bring her back to the village, where Branco and Bully also arrive and confirm that the templars are really on the way and they are all a bit in a deep shit. The mayor tries to call the gouvenour, but he thinks the entire village is drunk.

The templars arrive, and the villagers try to fight them with various gardening tools. Branco, Amalia and their daughter can barricade themselves in the church; almost everyone except the main characters gets killed. The mayor, Vivian, Jack, Bully and Blondie try to escape in a jeep, but are soon surrounded and find shelter in the church, too.

There, they find Mordu in a closet. Then... they talk a lot, and finally the mayor tries to flee somehow. He tries to talk Bully into helping him, but Bully suddenly became very loyal to Jack for no reason and declines. Using the old "its for your family" story, Duncan talks Branco into his plan - distract the templars with fire, reach the jeep and flee. The plan doesn't work and Branco dies. Meanwhile, Mordu lured Blondie in another room and told her that he will help her escape because she helped him earlier that day. They start to dig through a secret tunnel; no-one notices they are gone.
Now, Duncan does something quite clever. While Amalia is sleeping, he sends her daughter outside to call for her daddy. The screaming child distracts the templars enough and Duncan reaches the jeep - which sadly won't start and makes more noise than the kid. So the mayor dies instead. Good plan, bad luck.

Now, Amalia notices that her child is missing. They all search and finally see her outside on another building. Clever Duncan pinned her to that door with a dagger, so she can't come back to the church. Jack, who is a perfect allround hero, sneaks out to get her. The brat makes too much noise, and draws the attention of the templars. To save her child, Amalia runs out with a torch to distract them; it works - at least for Jack and the kid; they make it back to the church; Amalia dies.

At the same time, Mordu and Blondie reach the exist - too bad the templars already wait there and kill both. Bad plan, bad luck. Now, Bully decides its a good time to rape Vivian. But before it comes to that, Jack interferes and more or less accidentally kills Bully by pushing him on the lance of a statue. It doesn't really bother him. Its getting day outside, and they "can finally see" the dead. The night had been damn bright, so it comes a bit surprising they didnt see them before.

Anyways, Vivian and Jack decide to escape. Jack tells the child that she only dreamed her parents died, and for real, they have a surprise, so they blindfold her and will lead her to the parents. Outside, between all the dead templars, that annoying brat takes off the blindfold and starts to scream. But oh surprise, nothing happens. The templars just fall to the ground and are really dead. Jack, Vivian and Brat walk into the dawn and a probably pretty shitty future.

Is this worth to watch? Yes, totally. The acting is below any known rating; the story makes a bit sense, the dead are cheap as usual, and a lot scenes were recycled from Tombs of the Blind Dead. We get to see weird 70ies fashion and awful hairdos. What more could you ask for? Great movie, even better than the first part!

Hard Rock Zombies aka Heavy Metal Zombies
The movie starts with like 12 totally senseless stereotypes. A rock band is on the road and that's already trash at it's best. The singer, Jesse, would win any Freddie Mercury lookalike contest in a heartbeat. The mustache! But also the guitar-or-bass-guy (they switch instruments sometimes) scores with a perfect symbiosis from Jon Bon Jovi in his weirdest hair crime times and Richie Sambora, putting together the very worst of both.
But back to the story. This awesome band also has a manager and sometimes that guy uses buttons on a mixing pult. And now he invited THE record label owner to a gig. Of course, this historic moment takes place in a village out in nowhere. Where else? On the way there, the pretty musicians take a female hitchhiker with them; she will shine in ultra-senseless dancing scenes a bit later. However, for now she invites the band to stay over night in her house - but does not mention her family: her 95 years old super-potent grandpa, her werewolf grandma (Are werewolfs blue?), two dwarves (one eyed and disfigured) and a not really introduced guy who is addicted to taking photos.
Meanwhile, Freddie-Mercuy-Wannabe played out his sensible side. He hates groupies and wild orgies, he has only eyes for the morbid hairdo of the village's beauty queen Cassie. She sometimes shows up and tells him to leave the village because the mayor declared rock music as the devil's work. And what do politicans do? Right. They come up with a new law: rock music prohibition! For being devil worshippers, the band is sent to jail, but the hitchhiker girl helps them to escape. While Jesse writes a love song for Cassie. It's also a good rhyme, Jesse and Cassie.
The band hides in the hitchhiker's house again and now the real fun part begins. The freak family starts to slay the band; partly in parodies of famous movies from more talented directors. For example, we share the doubtful pleasure of a very very bad copy of "Psycho". But that's not the real big bang. The real big bang starts with the grandfather to pull off his rubber mask and turn out as Adolf Hitler! And his wife is not only a blue werewolf, she's also Eva Braun! Grandpa's speech is the funniest piece of celluloid history ever made. I mean, really, Adolf Hitler saying "Ami go home, Winnetou is back!" is a milestone.
But before I get distracted too much by the most awesome speech in movie history, back to the story. As the last survivor of the band, Jesse gives Cassie a tape and tells her to play it in case he dies. And yeah, of course he dies. The miracle happens: the music played on the band grave brings them back to life! The zombie band takes revenge on the freak family, turning them into zombies in the process, and then goes to play their gig.
Now guess what, the record label guy doesn't notice the band is dead and tries to sign them. Meanwhile, outside the concert hall, almost the entire village is a zombie nest. The last humans try to stand their ground and fight the zombies with the best weapon against walking dead: posters of Jimi Hendrix! Of course, that makes no sense and also doesn't save them. So the villagers remember an old legendary way to get rid of zombies: Tie a virgin to a tree. As soon as the zombies ate her, they'll go away for 100 years and become someone else's problem. Luckily, Cassie shows up to the villager meeting - and surprise, she's a virgin!
The raging mob, or what's left of it, drags her to a hill where some tree-like whatever stands. But they didn't count in the band's manager! He goes to re-animate the band again and the undead rock stars fight the zombies with their satanic music and save Cassie. Of course, she still loves Jesse and will stay a virgin forever because the undead lover returns to his grave after the battle and stays there.
The most awesome movie ever made! Really, it's a perfect and senseless treasure case of trash that I can only recommend again and again. From cheap early 80ies rock including hideous hair metal outfits to awful parodies to the tremendous speech of the grandfather - this movie has it all.

RePost: Extremly Bad Movies

2010-07-08T04:55:00.000-07:00

Last House on Dead End Street
Last House on Dead End Street and I have history. I saw the title on a 100 Sickest Movies of all times list, years ago. It was said to be the most perverse and twisted piece of celluloid ever. Forbidden in like 47875 countries for a very disturbing deer leg rape scene. For years, I tried to get a good quality uncut, and finally found a tape. (Hello, kids, tape, that is this huge black thing you put in video recorders; these are the huge black boxes your parents replaced with a DVD player 10 years ago...)

Last House on Dead End Street has nothing of the raw charme of early Wes Craven splatter, in detail: It is not like Last House on the Left. It is more like some boring 70ies porn with some violence and pseudo s/m scenes for the first half. It is also hard to follow the plot. Friends of fanfiction may know what I mean with the rating "PWP" - Plot, what plot?

The story. There is Terry. He looks like a wannabe rock'n'roller and he has no job, or some strange movie-related job. Just like his buddy (whose name I already forgot, but who looks like the professor in several generic late 70ies cannibal movies, just without a pipe), who was big in porn production, but now works as a slaughter and still has contacts to very very famous directors. The very very famous director Terry and his buddy want for their snuff (?) movie is a Mr. Palmer, who is married to a whore called Nancy. He also has a partner, again a name I must have missed, so let's call him Mr. Awful Sunglasses.

Terry and his film crew (Terry, cannibal movie lookalike, 2 random chicks, a camera man that was kinda forced into the team, but still likes it) now kidnap Mr. Palmer, Nancy and Mr. Awful Sunglasses and bring them to the "last house on dead end street", which is no house but an abandoned industrial facility. Or something like that. That was the summary of around 1 hour of 70ies haircut visual torture for the viewer and a plot beyond all logic and sense.

The second half of the movie deals with the ending lives of the 3 kidnapped people. Mr. Palmer, whom I expected to be the main target for refusing to direct the movie, surprisingly dies first. And not even spectacular. The slaughter/former movie guy simply stabs him with a knife. Exciting, huh? Next is his wife, delivering the one scene that is not completely boring and kinda well done. Its a patient-is-consious-during-double-leg-amputation-with-a-saw scene. Ok, the scene plays completely in the dark and ends with Terry using a saw to open the belly and pull out something meant to be guts, but clearly coming from a Italian fastfood service. But it is much better than the biggest disappointment in my long exploitation history. *sniff*
You know, if someone tells me the movie has a rape with a deer leg, I imagine a female victim. But the only female just died after amputation. And there's only Mr. Awful Sunglasses.

Mr. Awful Sunglasses is tied to a chair, and at least 3, maybe 4 of the bad guys are in the room. This does not make any sense, because the next scene shows Mr. Awful Sunglasses obviously trying to escape - however he got rid of the ties, chair and killers. They catch him outside the building though.

I will describe the deer leg rape in all detail: He licks a deer hoove. Oh my god, how disturbing. Right after that, Mr. Awful Sunglasses gets killed with a driller, which does not visually express. We just see Terry take the driller and walk over to the victim; then some moments of screams in the dark, and now the real unexpected part: The movie is over! And some voice tells me, while the credits are scrolling down, that all 5 killers were sentenced to jail!

Hello??? There are several ways to end a movie. The traditional way of rape'n'revenge; one victim escapes and kills the bad guys, then gets picked up by a police car. The boring way; the killers finish their work, then get surprised by the police and are sentenced either to jail or death. The hey-lets-make-a-sequel way; the killers escape and are on the run. The creepy way; the killers already eye a new victim. But all these ways are visual. You see what happens to them. And not some voice in the off to tell me! Oh yes, it leaves room for my imagination. But I couldn't take the chance, I was too busy asking "WTF?!"

Basement Jack (2009)
I made it through the first 15 minutes, then I threw it in a dark corner and it shall never be seen again. I can't really tell you what the movie IS about, I can only tell you it is SUPPOSED to be the story of a freak who lives in the basement and terrorizes a girl. First, there's a couple in a car in a rainy night deciding to walk home for whatever reason. At home, the entire family is dead on the dining table, the guy gets killed by a freak. The girl - smart horrormovie victim - hides in the basement. For unknown reasons, the police shows up, and when the girl and freak come out of the front door for whatever reason, the cop shots. Sometimes there are senseless flashbacks to a mother who forces her son to lick on a battery. Then there's a female hitchhiker who stops a car with a dead driver (don't ask how that works) on a country road in the desert, drops the dead guy and steals the car. Then she flirts with a random cop and I turned it off. It made no sense at any point, nor did it give hints there'll ever be a sense.

Hell House - Book of Samuel (2009)
Made 20 - 30 minutes. Two teenage couples are somewhere and tell each other the scary story about the father who killed his daughter and her lover 10 years ago. Somewhere else, a TV reporter team and their camera man report about the same story, then go to a hotel and the reporters make out. The camera man turns into a mutant monster and secretly films them, then kills them. Meanwhile one of the teenagers tried to drive away from the others, but the car drove him to the house of the killer father. The other teenager follows him by foot, the conversation goes like "Hey yo, dude, that horror story is true!" - "Yeah man, but we can't tell our girlfriends, they'll be scared!" - "You're right. Let's just go home." Well, that they do, the one guy tells his father he drinks too much and then goes to a library. And I turned it off.

Necromentia (2009)
Desperate for something to watch, I tried the third 2009 movie on my desk and promised myself to watch it complete. Bad mistake. Its probably the most senseless and stupid movie ever made. There's that guy Hagen, a necrophile loser. Then we have Travis, an occult rocker who works as... I have no idea, he tortures women in a s/m studio and they pay him with drugs. Travis has a mute insane younger brother in a wheelchair who sees a fat man with a pig mask and barbed wire dancing in a broken TV. Elizabeth plays no real role, because she's dead; Hagen's dead wife and object of his necrophile desire and belief she will come back from the dead. And Morbus, a formerly mute bartender, who is now a grey painted demon and the ex-boyfriend of Elizabeth, who cheated and killed him with Hagen. And now Morbus wants revenge. When the dancing barbed wire pig mask guy talks Thomas, Travis' brother, into suicide or kills him (I have no idea what it was), Morbus drags Travis to hell and teaches him necromancy. He's a quick learner, and as soon as he wakes up in his place, he revives the babysitter rocker that was killed by Thomas and the dancing pig earlier. Then Morbus possesses the babysitter and together, they go to find Hagen. With the promise they can bring Elizabeth back, Travis cuts him a pentagram in the back and sends him to hell. Hell is a long corridor with some pipes, by the way. Then, some random demon with a gas mask tells Morbus something... and Morbus or some other demon kills Travis... Er, I really have no idea. The movie has no chronology or anything, and the most important thing they forgot when the production began was a script. Serious bullshit.

Exitus Interruptus
If I watch a movie by Andreas Bethmann without being forced to do so, it can mean two things. One, I lost a bet. Two, I'm bored out of my mind. Today, it was neither. It was curiosity.

Last week, I found an old issue of a horror magazine under my couch, and there was an interview with Bethmann about the movie in question - Exitus Interruptus. It appeared he suffered from the delusion to have made a serious, professional movie, and I wanted to see what caused this tragic idea. Last time I checked, a movie starring a porn 'star' and listing the same person as responsible for camera, cut, lights, stage probs, sounds, effects and as director was quite far from 'professional'. Just for the records, it still is.

Main character Manuela is portayed by Renee Pornero. If that name doesn't say anything to you, let me help your imagination. Do you know the type of desperate young woman, dreaming of a career as a movie star, but lacking of talent? The one that would do anything for a 'serious' role, and ends up as a hardcore porn actress, though she hasn't really the physical attributes to be a successful one? There you go.

Other than Manuela, there are only two more or less significant roles. That would be the stereotype Monique. The "you know I only love women" type of 'best friend' that will engage in a pointless lesbian scene during the first 15 minutes and later die rather spectacular. And the killer, mainly defined by the most ridicolous latex mask I have seen since... No, Violent Shit 1 doesn't count, that was a devil rubber mask. Anyways, all three together have the talent of a doorknob.

The dialogues from hell [tm] are not even stupid or funny, they are plain pointless and the way the so-called actors speak them, I totally wish for subtitles only. Because the music isn't much better. I can't say for sure, but I suspect there is only one title and it was played over and over again, no matter if it fit the scene or not. Mostly, it didn't. However, the synchro is slightly off - and that is from German to... German. Respect for that.

The, hehe, story... Manuela was kidnapped and raped 5 years ago. She killed the offender and buried him in the woods. Now she's in therapy, but alas, the therapist is the killer's brother, finds out where she buried him, digs him out and kidnaps Manuela again to bring her together with his brother. What's a, hehe, 'good' movie without an insane masked axe killer, if that killer doesn't live with the corpse of his mother and talks to her? Right, its probably not a movie about Ed Gein then. Our killer does live with his dead mother, dead brother and a latex mask. And just like his brother, he fails with his task. Manuela escapes, after the killer invited and killed Monique, and decided to couple her with his brother. Then Manuela kills him and burns the dead brother in the woods. And Andreas Bethmann has threatened the world with a sequel. I bet it will be very professional and tell a real deep story.

Famous last words: What a waste of time, for everyone involved. The story is overused and boring, the acting is beyond grace even for a porn star and yes, it is worse than Angel of Death.

Goremet - Zombie Chef from Hell
I'm amazed. There is really a movie that does everything, absolutely everything... wrong. I can't believe how wrong though, and have no idea where to begin this review...

First of all, it took at least 10 minutes before I got the pun in the title. But that is the only thing I can't blame he movie for. 70 minutes playtime, and I did have to take a break at 30 mins because my stomach hurt from laughing. Don't get me wrong, the movie is not funny. We are talking about the manic laughing of a psychopath that normal mortals will never understand; about the urge to giggle in disbelief. The "no way, they *really* did it?" kind of laughing.

Our main character Goza is played by a totally stoned former pornstar past his best years. The problem is, that is not his role. His role is a 600 years old cursed priest who is now a cannibal zombie who runs a beach BBQ restaurant and wears the same hawaii shirt all through the felt eternity of 70 minutes. Decide for yourself what's worse.

The next problem this movie has is the music. Not the rather senseless mix of country classics, freestyle jazz and organ pipes alone. The sound mix seriously went wrong. If you set the volume so you understand what people say, the music will blow your head off. If you set it so the music does not, you don't understand a word. Praise the remote control and good reflexes. Anyways, the general feel can easily be recreated at home: Put something like "Braindead" in the DVD player and turn the sound off. Then put the soundtrack from a very very old and very very stereotype Nosferatu rip off in the CD player and turn the volume to maximum. Voila!

Effects are also a major issue. Most low budget movies focus so much on the 2 or 3 gore scenes that they have no money left for a good camera or something essential. Not here. There are not really effects. There are a few plastic limbs with ketchup, but you never see even the attempt of a gore scene. Except for one. And that goes totally wrong, too. A guy boxes off another guy's head with an uppercut. Or something. Its worse than Violent Shit 1. Its worse than Zombie 90. Reminder: Most effects in Violent Shit 1 were made by intentionally pixelating the scene and in Zombie 90, they had neon pink blood.

Now an attempt to tell the story. And trust me, mine is better than the director's or the writer's, and certainly better than any of the actors' attempts. Goza was cursed by a brotherhood of priests in the late 1390ies for whatever (killing high priest?), and because the brotherhood had the power but not permission to kill him, they made him a zombie. (This does visually not express.) From that day on, he must eat human flesh or he gets a skin disease.
600 years later, Goza kinda likes all that and runs a BBQ restaurant with another priest (?) who is not a zombie, but drinks human blood (he's no vampire either). A guy finds the ring of his girlfriend in a burger. Then some random people have a party and Goza poisons 4 women. It has no relevance for anything. Then a policeman who never appeared before sneaks through the restaurant and gets killed. And then, we learn that ALL priests of the brotherhood are immortal AND have superpowers. And some decided that it is time to kill Goza and lead the world into the new age. Or something.
Meanwhile Missy, a part time teacher, visited Goza's restaurant and stole his antique book in the n00bishest way possible. No, the book was never mentioned before. From this book and a drawing in it, she (and everyone else) learns that she is the incarnation (?) of the high priestess.
Another priest goes to battle Goza; not without having an extremly badly performed conversation about saving the world with a random other priest in a park before. Goza appears to this epic battle on a bike and if you now expect the gore to come, nope, sorry. The battle between the priest and the cursed cannibal zombie does not involve any attempts to destroy the head. In fact, the entire battle consists of force chokes. Darth Vader, anyone? Goza wins. With a force choke.
Then he returns to his restaurant because he needs human flesh, but Missy awaits him and finally defeats the monster with the aid of... Oh, you wanna guess? Sure. So here's the quiz:

The incarnation of the high priestess uses which of the following to defeat the cursed cannibal zombie:

a) axe & hammer
b) bow & arrow
c) scythe & force choke
d) superglue & undefined tool that is probably what wiki lists as "Hot melt adhesive"

YESSSS!!!! The correct answer is d) superglue and whatever tool (used on shoe, so no idea what it really is, it looks like a driller, makes no sounds, doesn't rotate and obviously also doesn't do anything to shoes).

The movie ends with Missy, the high priestess, running the restaurant and a scene where 2 priests drink a beer.

Famous last words: No, I didn't make it up. Its really that bad.

Schramm
For years, I only knew the preview trailers from other DVDs and always wanted to watch it. I wish I had kept it that way. The duo Jellinski and Buttgereit (Nekromantik) is responsible for this German amateur movie and I really wanna know what the hell they were thinking. I mean, Nekromantik is a cult movie, no doubt. There are millions of better and less boring movies, sure, but only few with a more controverse reputation. Nekromantik 2 is in my top 10 "most boring movies of all times". Schramm - I don't even know what charts I'd have to open for that. It's the kind of movie you keep on watching because you hope it will make sense at some point. Well, it doesn't.

We follow Lothar Schramm, a taxi driver, through his every day life. He seems to like running/marathons, rubber torsos, killing and cognac. And he has a crush on his professional neighbor Marianne. The rubber torso and the sounds her customers make are also a notable combination, you don't need an AP to know what I'm saying here. Schramm also has badass hallucinations, resulting in not-so-badly-done rubber monster effects, mutilation fantasies and kinda senseless time jumps and flashbacks. Adding to this, the entire movie - around 66 minutes uncut - lives from the pictures; from extreme gore visuals to surreal dream sequences. In short - there are maybe 30 lines of text in total.

Its asked too much from me what the plot really is. There is a plot, but not really. Things that happen (the when, why and where aren't defined) are: Schramm kills two people we all wanna kill. Jesus Army ringing your door to "talk about god if you have 15 minutes" and then trying to sell you a 65 bucks bible. Schramm gives his neighbor a ride to a strange job in a villa outside the town, waits in the taxi and brings her home. He goes for diner with her, later they have cognac in his place, he gives her sleeping pills and takes dirty pics of her in underwear. Schramm has millions of hallucinations, including several moments when he sees himself mutilated in some way (leg gone, teethy monster mouth in his forehead, castration, dentist pulls teeth and eyeball,...).

Notes:

1. Dear special FX designers! If you show a real eye in close up right before a pull eyeball out scene, do me the favour and make the rubber eye the right color. Like in: actor has green eyes, why use a brown rubber eye?!
2. The one thing you wish when watching Schramm is: LESS nudity. Especially LESS FRONTAL MALE NUDITY. Or at least less gorilla-like body hair. Or an actor that is a tiny little bit attractive. Maybe no shapeless blob bodyshape. Maybe no Jean-Luc Picard memorial hairdo. Maybe simply ANYONE else.
3. There is only one scene that makes a guy scream harder than the syringe scene from Dellamorte Dellamore. And this scene is in Schramm, involves a hammer, nails, a table, and male restricted content. You get the idea.
4. A surreal dream sequence should never involve the devil or Jesus because it always looks silly. In Schramm, its Jesus.
5. If you wanna learn German and start easy, this is the movie for you. The subtitles cut the 30 lines (that don't make much sense and add like nothing to the story) to maybe 15 lines and its really really easy to follow.

Would I recommend you to watch this movie? Yeah. If you have nothing to do. If you have no better movies. If you wanna know how Berlin looked in 1993. If you wanna see some real disgusting german food in a restaurant. If you are into overweight males with more bodyhair than King Kong, but way less hair on the head. If you wanna make your uninvited guests leave. If you wanna challenge yourself intellectually after 12 beers. If you can deal with a senseless visual drug trip in exchange for some real well done FX and the historic "I nail my own buddy to the table" scene. Then I do recommend it. If none of this applies... Well, watch something from Andreas Schnaas.

RePost: Bad Movies

2010-07-08T04:52:00.001-07:00

Hostel 2

I read the worst critics about Hostel 2. I was going through the last Scream Award nominations, and saw Hostel 2 nominated for Most Memorable Mutilation - Eaten alive by cannibal. This surprised me, because it sounds spectacular and I never saw it mentioned anywhere else. So I decided to finally watch the movie.

I must say, its not as boring as the first part.

Everything speaks against the movie. Its a sequel of a goddamn boring pseudo softporn. The critics, no matter if a regular cinema magazine or genre mag, were awful. The cast was bashed, but I didn't find it that bad. I mean, sure, they all look and act on a meaningless level, there's no sympathy, no antipathy, nothing. You just sit there and wait for something to happen.

This is already the first positive point: The waiting for blood wasn't so long. In Hostel, I almost fell asleep 2 or 3 times when those boring guys wasted my time for about an hour, showing off the best railway tracks in Europe. Umm, yeah, I've seen them before, live, and it was way more interesting.

So, the waiting in Hostel 2 seemed to be shorter. 3 meaningless females, but no felt 2,5 years of boredom; no travelling scenes or dialogues pulling like bubblegum. Also, the gore was some better. It wasn't so spectacular, but also not too uncreative.

The countess Bathory thing, pointed out as oh so bad in most reviews, seemed ok as a warm up; I still had high hopes for the cannibal scene. Well, that scene is like 2 minutes and far from what I expected. Same goes for the head football; it was a short scene in a dark forest, like 2 or 3 kicks and that was it. The headshot to the kid? I read that was so bad, too, but oh well, seen it done better, seen it more extreme, seen it done less tasteful.

There are no words to describe the story itself. Its beyond good and evil and shows no creativity at all. Switching from male to female victims wasn't quite a breakthrough; and even letting one escape and kill the guy who was supposed to kill her... umm, where did I see that before? Right, in Hostel.

Oh well, the movie didn't live up to the expectations and the scenes that were mostly cut in European cinemas don't save it. As senseless as the SAW scripts became after Saw 3 - I prefer that a million times.

Last House on the Left (remake)
Wes Craven's infamous Last House on the Left from 1977 (if I recall correctly) was a bit a pioneer project; nearly every rape'n'revenge based movie that came later has references to this masterpiece of violent trash. Of course, compared to more recent movies like Saw or even Hostel, Last House on the Left is almost tame, obviously also a result of much better special fx. But this oldie but goldie is still a major reference for non-monster horror.

The story is probably known, if not, told quickly. Two teenagers wanna have a party, get kidnapped by a group of psychopaths, raped and killed; the psycho gang then accidentally has to seek shelter from a storm in the house of one victim's parents. The parents realize who these people are and kill them.

Let's compare 1977 to 2009:

1977: Two hippy girls wanna go to a concert on the birthday of one girl.
2009: Two teenage girls meet a guy in a drugstore and he offers them the best weed they ever had, so they follow him to a motel.

1977: The movie plays by day.
2009: The movie plays almost completely by night/in the dark.

1977: There's a damn chainsaw!!!
2009: There's no chainsaw. Boo!!!

1977: The kills aren't all that quick, yet less spectacular.
2009: The kills are quite quick but some are quite original. (Doesn't matter, it plays in the dark, so its just a guess anyways.)

The two girls (Mary and Page I think) are kidnapped from the motel from the father of Justin (weed kid), his brother Francis and girlfrriend (?). Trying to escape, they start a fight in the car, causing it to crash in a lonely forest, not far from Mary's house. She's a swimmer and her dad a surgeon. Yeah, that's both important.
In said forest, Page tries to run first, but gets caught and brought back to the crashside. Justin's dad tries to make him pick one of the girls to rape, but since his son refuses, he rapes Mary himself, after stabbing Page and letting her die. That's one stab with a butterfly knife, ladies and gentlemen, that's what I mean with "quick kills". However, after that, Mary manages it to run, and she makes it to jump into the sea that borders to her parents' house. As a professional swimmer, she almost makes it to reach the other side, but gets shot and seems to die at 2/3 of the way.

Now the thunderstorm and real bad rain starts, and the psychopath gang, with their car damaged, walks to the house where Mary's parents have a romantic diner. They offer the gang shelter in their guest house and also treat the injuries (Francis has a broken nose from the crash). Justin acts strange all the time, and secretly leaves a bracelet or necklace he took from Mary in the kitchen, after seeing her photo on the fridge and realizing whose house it was.
During the night, the power generator gets stuck by lightning or something - from here on the entire movie plays in the dark and there is just a maximum of 3 candles to light a scene.

After the psychos went to the guest house, the parents hear a knocking on the porch, and when they go check what it is, they find their daughter more dead than alive outside. They take her in and treat her, and her mother finds the jewelry thingy Justin put in the kitchen. They now know who their guests are, and having no car (Mary used it when getting kidnapped) and no electricity/phone, they decide they have to do something for their own protection. And revenge.

While Mary's dad (John I think) is searching for tools, Francis wakes up and comes over to main house to get a drink. He finds Mary's mom (Emma I think) in the kitchen where she was getting knives. She can hide the knives in time and keep Francis distracted by flirting with him and claiming her husband is sleeping. Francis asks her to go to the hot tub with him, but on the way there he sees Mary in the living room and that she is alive. Before he can eliminate the witness, Emma stabs him with a kitchen knife from the back. They start to fight in the kitchen, until John shows up and helps his wife. Together they kill Francis in a probably quite original scene that I don't get. They seem to put his head under water in the sink, but then he pulls the plug and the water flushes away. When the sink is almost empty, John uses a switch on the wall and yeah, that's the part I don't get. It appears to be the on switch for a mixer or something IN the sink. At least the water gets brownish-bloody, but WTF? Who the hell has a mixer blade in the sink? And yes, I'm sure it is a sink!

When Francis is finally dead, the parents sneak into the guest house and find Justin awake and with his father's gun, sitting besides the bed where his dad and his girlfriend sleep. At this point, dialogues are temporarily suspended. There aren't any for the next 15 - 20 minutes, and they play in the very dark, so I might miss certain details. If there were any. However, Justin hands John the gun, and when loading it, the click wakes the victims. John pushes Justin's father out of the window - very silly scene, btw, because after the fall he gets right up and runs to the main house like nothing happened. John starts a fight with the girlfriend, losing the gun, leading to the bathroom. It ends with the girl getting a headshot by Emma and dying right next to the toilet.

Back in the main house, things get a bit chaotic in the dark. I think they involve John, Justin' dad and several fireplace tools. It ends with John on the floor, about to get killed with a hook, but Justin appears with the gun and forces his father to stop. Stupid thing, the gun is out of ammunition, but luckily Emma is around with a fire distinguisher and attacks Justin's dad before he can attack his son. John gets up and joins the battle and they leave the house in the morning. The finish seems to be the parents, Mary and Justin in a motorboat. I thought its a quite nice morbid happy end that they adopt Justin, kind of, after his father raped their daughter, the bloodbath and all. But actually, it isn't the finish.

The finish is Justin's dad waking up, asking why he can't move. John tells him he is paralized from the neck down, and what he couldn't paralize with medics, is duct taped to the floor. Then we see that the head is in a open microwave, which gets switched on by John. My question: What microwave can be switched on with the door open?! However, the rapist's head explodes and that is the finish. I guess they need to hire someone else to do the director's cut, because, well, this makes no sense at all.

Last Words: Na, save your time. Its not really worth to watch. Though the story gives some more details than the original, its not one of the better remakes. Not really.

Wolf Creek
I've watched this for the one reason that it was mentioned in a discussion about the term "torture porn" I read some days ago. "Wolf Creek" was an example of how unnessessarily violent and explicit movies have become in the last couple of years, along with the Saw series, Hostel and Feast, plus classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, several "Last House"s and Devil's Rejects. Mostly good or at least acceptable movies, but except for Hostel, not one qualifies as "torture porn".
Said discussion even had two takes on it. Sex + gore = gorno (I f'n hate that word, it makes me think of smelly cheese, not movies) aka torture porn; and gore - plot = torture porn. That's slightly closer to my definition.

Sex + gore = sexploitation, kids. Call me old school, but Hostel did not invent that genre, or even belongs in it. Same goes for Saw. Sexploitation is defined by both senseless nudity and senseless violence, existing for the sake of provocation. There is no plot, correct, and if so, its at best a poor excuse for one. Bamboo Women's Prison, Ilsa - She-Wolf of the SS and Barbed Wire Dolls are sexploitation classics, to a certain point also a couple of cannibal movies and the pioneer of of it all - Hershell Gordon Lewis. Nothing to do with Hostel or Saw.

Gore - plot = splatter, or fake snuff (depending on budget and intention). Its also not a new concept. Gore with no plot, that screams for the mention of Guinea Pig and its sequels, starting in 1985. A picture perfect example for fake snuff - intentionally fake, and never meant to actually be seen as real. On the other side, there are the Faces of Death series (starting even 1978) and similar productions claiming to be real snuff. "Splatter" also qualifies for many zombie invasion movies, which have all the same minimal plot (zombies come out of nowhere) to have a reason for excessive splatter scenes. The "little plot, much gore" idea dates back to 1963 and H.G. Lewis' Blood Feast.

Seriously, no-one can tell me Saw and Hostel invented torture porn. Saw has too much plot, Hostel not enough gore. The rest of the examples falls under slasher/rape'n'revenge (definition by plot), grindhouse/splatter (definition by plot and style of storytelling) and Feast is clearly fun splatter. Sexploitation is barely meant to be funny, it oftenly is, but not intentional. I think it even kinda defies the purpose of taboo breaking visual and moral standards - how am I supposed to be shocked if I think its funny?

With all that in mind, let me come to the point. Wolf Creek. Its far from torture porn by any definition. Its also not really a slasher - not enough victims (there are 2). Its not splatter - not explicit enough (kills by knife and rifle). Its certainly not sexploitation - no nudity, and far from enough blood. Its not rape'n'revenge - no rape, no revenge. Its not grindhouse - too clean cut. Its not fun splatter - neither funny nor gory. To make it short, I have no idea what it is. The story is about 3 backpack tourists in Australia, having a broken car in the outback, getting help by an old guy, the girls getting killed and the guy escapes, and all that is based on actual events. Its a nice and interesting scenario, but sadly fails to go anywhere with it. A lot sneaking around in the dark, creeping on streets/through the outback and that's it. But one thing is really cool. Close to the end, there are some kangaroos. No, they have nothing to do with the plot, and you only see them for a moment. But I like kangaroos, and if a movie is kinda boring I'm thankful for the little things.

Famous last words: If you try again, dear producers, - more blood, more daylight, and please - more kangaroos in the background!

The Hills Run Red
I can't be lucky 3 days in a row.

On wednesday, I enjoyed the wonderful Land of the Dead. YAY for Tom Savini appearances! YAY for gangland stuff, heavily armed cars and half anarchistic systems! YAY for great effects, great storytelling, great makeup, great acting!

On thursday, I got the surprise of the month with Zombieland. YAY for fun splatter with smart stories, YAY for Bill Murray and YAY for zombie hunting on rollercoasters!

Today... I made the mistake to pick blindly between Basket Case and The Hills Run Red. Is it Friday 13th? Because that would explain why I ended up with the second.

But let's start from the beginning. Does anyone care about the story? Just asking because the movie sure does not. Tyler is a super duper big horror fan and got obsessed with the research about a never released movie called "The Hills Run Red". The director vanished 20 years ago, and the only remains of the movie are a weirdo trailer and a few stills. Its said to be the most disturbing movie ever made and all the fanfare. Tyler talks his friend Lalo and his girlfriend Girlfriend (sorry, she had no name during the entire story...) into helping him with his research. For that, he finds the only living relative of the director, his daughter - a drug addicted stripper called Alexa.
After Alexa (who never looked like the junkie she was supposed to be) experienced a 2 - 3 days wonder healing from her addiction, they start to visit the locations were the movie was made/that were seen in the trailer. During the wonder healing through Tyler, Girlfriend cheated him with Lalo, which has no further relevance for the story.

To give you a general idea of the roles:

Tyler - main character, boring early 20ies guy with obsession about horror movies. I think he's an idiot.
Girlfriend - brunette stereotype girlfriend, annoyed by his obsession. I think she's an idiot.
Lalo - kinda annoyed by Tyler's obsession too, thinks horror movies are all the same and stupid. If all movies were like this one, I'd even agree with him.
Alexa - ultra hot blonde, fails to play a junkie, a scared teenager and is so-so at playing a ice cold killer. She plays all anyways.

Back to the, hehe, story. The 4 drive into the woods and do what people always do in this kind of movie. Run through the woods, make campfire, talk, get surprised by armed hillbillies, get saved by the - tataaa - real killer from the movie, then get chased by him. Yup. It gets THAT creative - the killer from the movie is a real killer. He looks like someone with little imagination tries to dress up as Leatherface for Halloween. He also acts like that. And now hold your breathe - his name is BABYFACE! And his mask isn't made of human flesh, no. Woohoo, he actually CUT OFF HIS OWN FACE WITH SCISSORS and replaced it with... you'll never guess it because it would never ever fit on a human skull - the face of a porcelain doll! AND SEWED IT TO HIS FLESH! That's right, he SEWED a PORCELAIN DOLL FACE to his head. I bet coming up with such a stupid idea hurts more than sewing anything to the face.

Okay, Babyface surprises the hillbillies that surprise the camping researchers. Alexa flees into the woods. Tyler runs after her and Babyface to help her. Girlfriend tries to call the police but can't explain them were in the woods they are. So she and Lalo run around, and tataaa - Babyface catches Lalo only a minute later. Meanwhile, Tyler reached the house of the insane movie director, broke in and tries to free Alexa. When they make it to the porch outside, they meet Girlfriend. She tries to run, but Babyface shows up again and now, sensational twist you so don't expect (if you watched the movie with closed eyes and without sound so far) - Alexa sends Babyface after Girlfriend.

Shortly after that, it turns out that Alexa isn't only the daughter of the director but also the incest mother of Babyface, and her father is also his father. Things that happen after this super original twist - the director ties Tyler to a wheelchair and forces him to watch scenes he already shot for his movie (snuff scenes that were used in the trailer). Babyface takes Girlfriend to a barn to rape her (doesn't get to it because of upcoming chaos). Alexa decides to become a director like her father and starts to torture Lalo in another barn. Her father brings Tyler there, then tells Alexa she sucks as a director and calls in Babyface to show her how it's done right. Due to that, Girlfriend escapes the other barn. The father shoots Alexa, and Babyface then kills him. Tyler manages it to get rid of his ties, and when Babyface tries to kill him, Girlfriend comes from the other barn and kills Babyface. And now, surprise surprise, Alexa (who was shot in the stomach 3 minutes ago) attacks both Girlfriend and Tyler and I have no idea what happens with Girlfriend, but Tyler gets tied to the chair again and Alexa forces him to watch snuff scenes from her movie. It ends with Tyler sitting in a cinema full of (dead) victims and laughing at the movie like a maniac.

I have no idea how they managed it to steal from so many better movies and come up with such crap in the end. We have a whole dose of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a bit Devil's Rejects, a bit 8 mm, a bit Last House on the Left. And another dose Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Babyface not only looks like a cheap version of Leatherface, he also has a slaughterhouse barn; Alexa tries really bad to be Baby Firefly and simply isn't, and the insane director is kinda boring and doesn't really do a thing. The victims are cut out from Hostel auditions, and it must mean something if I say they are even more faceless and random than the Hostel victims.

I give full points for gore. This movie is bloody, damn bloody. Its explicit, it has close ups, its really really violent. But the scores for everything else are negative, and even with a full score from gore, the final result is: waste of celluloid. Even the best mutilations don't save a bad story that is so obviously copying other movies and actors beyond good and evil.

Famous last words: Hands off the classics, n00bs!

Mark of the Devil II / Witches - Violated and tortured to death (1973)

Be sure I'm not complaining about 2,99 € for a DVD. But I also totally understand why it was that cheap. The full play option is damaged by a scratch. This means I had to watch the movie chapter by chapter, including returning to the main menu 5 times. Also, the dutch subtitles can't be turned off; in any language. (Not that there was such a big choice... I took English for my personal amusement.)

First of all, compliments. In 1973, it was by far not the norm to have a real good looking main cast - former Emanuelle star Erika Blanc, in this particular case. Usually, you can't help finding fashion or haircut funny if you watch 70ies movies; but Countess Elisabeth von Salmenau would still count as a real beauty these days. Obviously, she has red hair and maybe she just reminds me a lot of Jean Grey, lol

Anyways. The Count von Salmenau, his wife and 6 years old son Alexander witness a witch trial when travelling home. The Count interferes and ends up getting killed in a fight with witch hunter Balthasar von Ross, who has governour and council under his control. Soon he accuses and imprisons a young nun who babysitted Alexander, with the final goal of tormenting the Countess for being critical about witch trials.

It gets a bit confusing, but in the end, we have the following people accused of witch craft:

Alexander von Salmenau - accused of being the devil's child
Elisabeth von Salmenau - accused of being the mother of the devil's child
The nun Clementine - accused of bearing the devil's child (after being raped by a prison guard)
The priest Melchior - accused of being a sorcerer after forging an official protest in order to free Clementine

And the following people somehow involved in the story:

Another nun (mother of the order) - talking the priest into forging the document
A super ugly prison guard/torturer - raping all prisoners; but refusing to torture the priest for a confession (It totally makes no sense at this point; 2 scenes ago he raped a virgin nun but now feels it is wrong to torture a man of god...)
The witch hunter and his helpers

You can already imagine that this story isn't rocket science. Actually, it also makes not much sense, but at least it doesn't get boring. We take a short trip into exploring the visually less interesting kinds of medieval torture (ice water, briefly an iron maiden sort of thing, stretching, whipping, glowing metal) during this movie, before we reach the rather senseless highlight.

It ends as follows:

Clementine and the priest are about to get executioned. For no given reason, the witch hunters grant the priest mercy and kill him by sword. During this execution, a messenger from the emperor shows up to announce that all executions will not be carried out, and witch trials are no longer legal. He gets knocked out by an angry mob, and the priest dies. Next, they wanna burn the nun on the stake. But seeing a storm is coming, they also hurry to get the Countess and her son to the execution suite. While the nun burns, the big storm already comes and - dramatic! - the flames die when she dies.
Somewhere else, at least far enough away to show no signs of a big storm, the super ugly prison guard rapist decides - without knowing any of the events above (imperial messenger, divine big storm) - to let the Countess and her son go, give them a chariot and some food, because he wants to make up for his sins.

Well, yeah. There's no great acting involved. The story is extremly predictable, and brings neither surprises nor visuals that would make up for the lack of story, sense and talent.

Famous last words: If you watch it for a historical education about witch trials, there's nothing anyone can do for you. Being that misguided is beyond help. If you watch it for nude witches in a prison, you'll be majorly disappointed. If you watch it for graphic torture scenes - same. If there is a reason to watch it? I'm not sure. Maybe extreme boredom, or curiosity. At least, a combination of both did the job for me.

RePost: So-so Movies

2010-07-08T04:47:00.000-07:00

Ticks aka Infested
Harry Potter and the Forest of Bugs ...aka "Infested" aka "Ticks" is so damn 80ies, its hard to believe it's from 1993. Luckily, the movie doesn't take itself as serious as some reviews seem to do. I've read horrible things about this ultra-violent gorefest, but... Hell, we are talking about a giant rubber monster movie here, not a splatter flick a la Braindead.

So, why Harry Potter? Because Tyler, one of the youngsters taking part in a youth rehab program in the wilderness, just screams Harry Potter. I believe its the glasses, and the scene where he fights mutated rubber bugs with a flaming broom certainly does its part as well. Other participants of the "get over your troubles by becoming one with nature" camping trip fulfill their stereotypes. Panic - a stereotype big mouthed black ghetto kid. A Mexican suave guy (the name was mentioned once or twice, but I already forgot it) and his dumb blond girlfriend. The silent waters are deep Asian girl. The 'my dad is an asshole' daughter of the camp supervisor; said dad and his co-supervisor/affair Holly. They all are as stereotype as possible in their roles, and that's perfectly fine for me.

The part of the cast that gets slightly confusing contains Sir and Jerry, who are appearantly local dope dealers (and no-one knows what the f they are doing in the forest) and some weird guy living in a weird hut, with no relation to anything else.

The weird guy in the weird hut does weird things (drinking tea and preparing bear traps), then he is attacked by mutated ticks. Then we simply switch to some yard in LA where Dad and Holly pick up the kids for their camping trip and the story begins.

In said camping hut, Tyler discovers a slimy cocoon in the closet, which doesn't concern him, Panic or the Mexican suave guy, who all share this room. After some minor arguments, Panic's dog gets attacked and killed in the woods, having the two results of Dad and Holly calling the sheriff and Panic deciding to get back to LA on his own. Dad and Tyler take the dead dog to the next vet, where they learn about the mutated ticks (not why they mutated, this will remain a secret forever) and that their bites cause hallucinations. Remember this. Its very important to make sense of... something.

Meanwhile, a damn lot of events take place or start to do so:

Panic ran into Sir and Jerry, and somehow got them angry. Why, I can't tell, but they try to kill him.

Holly talked Dad's daughter (Melissa, I believe) into taking the Asian girl to a pond for fishing, where the girls find the dead body of the sheriff.

Mexian suave guy and his girlfriend discovered the weird hut of the weird guy, where the girlfriend got bitten by a tick; the weird guy killed himself after screaming "I'M INFESTED!" and having ticks spawn from his face. Or so.

On their way back from the vet, Dad and Tyler pick up Mexian suave guy and girlfriend. They make it back to the hut, while the most senseless scene ever takes place in the woods. Panic is still on the run from Sir and Jerry when he suddenly slips over a wire - which triggers two horns to go off. Awesome? Senseless? Both? It gets better. Panic falls and finds himself in front of two tanks of gasoline. Why they are there? No idea. But Sir tries to shot Panic, hits one of the tanks and sets the entire forest on fire. Panic makes it to jump off a hill or roll down, and being shot in the stomach, bitten by several ticks and just escaping a massive explosion... what would you do? You take the steroids you stole from the Mexican's bag, thinking its painkillers. Not? Its what Panic does anways.

The fire causes all the ticks to crawl from the forest... no, not away. To the center, where the camping hut is. I have never really thought about the movement of ticks. I spent 3 weeks in the peaceful nature of Finland, so I sure had enough time to think about ticks in general. But I always pictured them as sitting still. Or moving very slow, like bugs. Not running around like spiders on LSD. Guess the ticks in this movie do because they are mutated and all.

When everyone is back in the hut, Sir and Jerry also show up there and threaten to kill someone if they don't get the keys for the bus. Which made me wonder why they were somewhere in the woods if they had no car to get there. Anyways, the threat is only so-so effective, as everyone expects to die soon by either ticks or fire. Its also just a brief discussion because a near dead Panic returns, blames Sir and Jerry for his near death, and then dies. O lala. Now the others are really upset, but it doesn't change the idea they'll only get out alive as a team. Sir disagrees and forces his aide Jerry to make a run for the bus. Needless to say the ticks win that one.

Suddenly, Panic's corpse starts moving and then rapidly mutating into the mentioned giant rubber monster tick. The solution, for now, is leaving Sir alone with the monster for poetic justice and coming up with a new plan to reach the bus. Tyler Potter swings outside the window, fights the ticks with a flaming broom (and no, I'm not joking) and gets to the bus. In the end, all kids except Panic (who explodes with the house, Sir and the main part of the forest when the fire reaches yet another gasoline tank), Dad and Holly make it back to LA, where we see a cocoon drop off the bus.

The effects aren't bad, for a giant rubber monster movie. The worst is likely Panic's rubber face during the mutation, but the bug legs are quite cool. All in all, this movie is far from being a violent gorefest; its fun splatter at best, and an average monster movie at worst.

Famous last words: If I had never heard about or seen this movie... I would live. Its no must see. But you also wouldn't regret wasting 1.5 hours of your lifetime by watching it.

Frontier(s) (2007)
A group of young criminals try to get from Paris to Holland with the money from their last job. Yasemine, pregnant and freshly split up from the gang leader, and two more guys are our upcoming victims. The group has to split up early, to bring their last partner in crime to a hospital after he got shot by the cops. However, all 4 finally end up in a lonely motel near the Dutch border, with a strange acting nazi family as hosts.
All in all, this is likely the movie people actually watched, forgot the title, and called their review "Hostel". I'm pretty sure this is the only reason why Hostel got any good reviews. There's a motel, and unlike Hostel, here's also real violence and disgusting torture, both physical and mental. I must admit that some victims really died too quickly and too easily (headshot, for example), while other scenes are simply nasty and well done.
Not the best movie I've ever seen, but still entertaining and worth to watch.

Wyvern - Curse of the CGI Monster
With my computer being sick, I naturally spend more time with my friend Mr. DVD player. This sometimes leads to rather strange choices of movies, in this case the 2009 TV production Wyvern.

In a tiny town in Alaska, the dragon-like Wyvern escapes its icy prison and starts to hunt humans and eat them. While a sign suggests at the very beginning, Beaver Mills has 307 citizens, we only meet a small group of them (suggested to be the only survivors, and going with that, the Wyvern was really really hungry).

Our main characters, besides an early mutilated Dr. Yates, are the owner of the town's only bar - Claire; the currently between jobs trucker Jake, the town's idiot (?) Farley, the crazy old lady Edna, the old trapper/hillbilly Haas, the local radio DJ Hampton and the retired military man Col. Sherman. Cut off from the rest of the world, they try to call help and survive the attacks of the wyvern; later decide to kill it.

Its a pretty nice scenario, and besides a rather boring interlude about Jake's past, the story is also well told. However, I have a couple of problems with the movie.

First of all, I'm really not a fan of CGI monsters. The wyvern is well done, no doubt, but its still a CGI monster. Only few scenes make it look really alive. Probably a matter of taste here, after all I knew they wouldn't dress up a vulture or something.
Secondly, Jake is a problem. He is oh so heroic, its not funny anymore. As soon as anyone else wants to take action, no matter how small the task, Jake comes around: "No, sorry, its something I have to do." He never explains why really no-one else is able to do anything. The retired colonel obviously never stopped to live an army life, and is the first to show up with a rifle - can he use it? Probably, but Jake can do better. The radio DJ already proved she's good with guns, and she would also be the logical choice to get the antenna, seeing she knows about all the tech stuff required to make the radio work again. Does she climb the roof? No. Jake does, with the incredible reason: "Its no male-female thing, but I gotta do this." And, like all estrogen brigade bait, he has a dark past full of guilt, though no reason to feel guilty. In a scene pulling like bubblegum, he tells the lost-in-admiration Claire how guilty he feels for the car crash death of his brother. If that back story was supposed to explain his oh so heroism, it clearly went wrong.
Then, I have a big logic issue with a certain scene. Haas and Farley are outside the shelter of the bar, when everyone gathers supplies. They are about to carry some stuff back to the shelter when the wyvern shows up and Farley gets injured on his stomach. The wound can't be all that bad - its not bleeding much (and surprisingly the movie isn't shy about some close ups of torn off limbs). After being rescued by - you guessed it, Jake - he gets treated by Hampton and Edna. Outisde, the wyvern places the badly injured Dr. Yates (arm off - close up), and - as the survivors correctly assume - uses him as bait to lure them out of the house. Hero Jake runs out to get the doctor, and for no reason, Farley - suddenly pretty fit again - runs out of the house, screams and waves and clearly sacrifices himself. Bam, dead. Now, why? Why would someone with a so-so bad injury simply run into the fangs of a wyvern? Because he's already doomed to die anyways? Nope, that's the doctor who dies shortly after his rescue. In short - I simply don't get why that character should do that. He showed no signs of sudden heroism or total stupidity.
Another issue with this scene: The wyvern just showed intelligence. It used an advanced strategy - placing bait - to get at its food. Every biologist would jump in the air to see an animal develop this ability. Here, it goes by unseen. No-one even thinks about it, or says a single word.
The claim that the wyvern is a creature from norse mythology, and a monster banned from Asgard by Odin... Okaaaay. Not really. Not even close. The monster that bit a god was a wolf; Fenris that bit off Tyr's hand. No sign of a huge flying dragon.
I assume this was a mix up with a lindworm, a large snake-like dragon from norse mythology, but unlike a wyvern unable to fly. Wyverns, just for the smartasses to assimilate more information, are more located in british and french mythology.

If you can live with these issues, you get a mostly entertaining and not overly gory movie.

Famous last words: I so need a new computer!

[Rec]
What happens if a fan of Blairwitch Project plays too much Silent Hill?

Watch [Rec], find out.

I don't know if its still the aftermath of The Cold Hour, but I have a general issue with Spanish movies. And that is: People scream names way too much. Sometimes, for minutes, you hear no real dialogue, only someone screaming someone else's name. This is brought to a new level in [Rec], where we can't even see 'Pablo', the most screamed name.

This is because Pablo is the cameraman of a young, ambitious and equally annoying TV reporter, and the entire movie is shot through his camera. Including the shaking. All the time. Note for everyone in my current situation (starting to fear your eyesight gets weaker and considering to see a doc about it) - its not your eyes. Its the movie. Especially the first half is really really shaky and all realism praise aside, it totally gets on your nerves.

Our reporter Angela is working on a documentation called "While you were asleep" that is supposed to follow a team of fire fighters on their night shift. After Angela demonstrated that she will be a) the first you wish would die and b) the last to die on a tour through the fire department, there is really an emergency. Along with the 2 fire fighters assigned to the TV team, they reach an appartment building. The police is already there, and most of the residants are in the hallway. They had called the cops because an old lady was screaming insanely. Cops, fire fighters and TV team go to investigate, and find the old lady covered in blood, looking quite insane and attacking one of the cops by biting his neck. More zombie-ish than vampire-ish, by the way.

The fire fighters and the remaining cop fight her off and try to bring the injured one downstairs, where luckily one of the residents turns out to be a medical assistant. Meep, meep, coincidence alert! Anyways, shortly after, and for reasons I must have missed, one of the figher fighters gets thrown down the staircase and is now injured, too. Maybe it just caught me off guard, but I could have sworn he helped to carry the injured cop, and it was impossible he was at the 5th floor at that time.

However, suddenly the police and whoever else is outside, starts to seal off the building and put it under quarantine. No-one inside knows why, residants start to panic, yadda yadda. The police outside announces they will send in a health inspector or something soon. Meanwhile, the fire fighter and the cop check who lives in which appartment for the upcoming blood screening. During this sequence, we learn how stereotype the folks really are. Mommy and her 7 years old sick daughter, hysteric and wanting to see her husband. Guy next door medical assistant. Chinese family speaking broken English, wanting to see the sick grandpa who is still in their appartment. Elderly snob thinking he knows everything.

The health guy really comes in, complete with gas mask and all, and goes to see the injured people with the medical assistant guy. As everyone is already as annoyed by the camera team as you are at this point, they aren't allowed to film anymore. Resulting in extreme annoyance - Pablo secretly films through a window and we hear Angela ask "What are they doing?" and "What can you see?" for felt 12 hours. What Pablo sees is the health guy giving injections to the injured cop and fire fighter, who go rabid and attack, forcing the rest to escape from the room. They leave medical assistant guy behind, and a minute later he is dead.

Now totally pissed off, everyone demands to know what's going on. The health inspector reveals that there was a dog with a strange infection, and it seemed to originate in this building. Coincidence alert - it was the dog of the sick girl, who goes insane instantly and runs up the stairs. The cop, fire fighter and TV team follow her to the old lady's appartment, where they get attacked by both. The cop dies here. Downstairs, others have handcuffed the hysteric mother to the staircase. I have no idea where the Chinese family is at this point, but the elderly snob and the remaining fire fighter, and - of course, the annoying TV team, decide to seek shelter upstairs. People in horror movies are always that smart. It actually doesn't matter where they go though. The medical assistant guy meanwhile turned into a zombie and made his way to the hallway, where the handcuffed mother falls victim to his newly found hunger for human flesh.

Locked in... somewhere, the TV team and their buddies find the health inspector guy, who tells them he was bitten and locks himself behind something like an iron fence. Elderly Snob has the genius idea to escape through the sewers in the basement, and all they need for that is the key. Sadly, he dies through the attacking health inspector's teeth before he can say where the keys are, but at least he can tell the name of the residant who has them. Now its down to Angela, Pablo and Fire Fighter. They figure out where they can find the key, and on their way to said appartment, they get attacked by the zombie Chinese family that is suddenly back from... wherever they were for the past 20 minutes. In the process of accessing the appartment with the keys, Fire Fighter dies.

Angela and Pablo are smart. They get the basement key, and flee straight up to the attic. And if not long before, it gets 100 % Silent Hill-ish here. A dark scary appartment with strange newspaper articles about the Vatican investing demon possession of a girl all over, Jesus pictures, you name it. Old tape recorder with cryptic message about weird science experiments, you say? Yes, it is there! Not that any of it matters, because on the attic, there's also the freaky zombie demon whatever girl that kills Pablo (after some eyesore scenes of night vision cam only), and then Angela (finally!).

Actually, the movie got pretty good at that point. Too bad it ends right here. Well, I decided to watch and review to prepare for the Fantasy Filmfestival next weekend, where I voluntered to review [Rec] 2, so there is hope.

Famous last words: Let's hope it was a very long prequel, and the sequel will be less about annoying TV reporters screaming the name of their camera man, and more about Silent Hill-ish monsters, experiments and cryptic messages.

w Delta z (WAZ, 2007)
Advertised as "harder than Saw", compared to Hostel, and a cover that pretty much looks like another Saw sequel... A thriller is the last thing you expect. Yearning for blood and torture, I quickly got very very bored and tired. There's a serial killer, targeting couples (not always romantic ones, also relatives). One dies by electricity, the other by torture. Soon, the cops get a trace that it is the survivor of a gang rape case years ago. Well, that's the right trace. So you know around 25 minutes after the start who the killer is and whom she'll likely target next. That's not really creating a "thrill" for me - knowing what will happen, why, and who does it...? Umm, ya.
There are a few scenes with upper limit PG16 violence, but I really have no clue how this got a PG18 one. Maybe you just need a totally different mood to like this.

Mondo Cane 1 & 2
Did I ever say I will not review mondos? Yes, so I won't.

But I should let the world know that I watched Mondo Cane 1 and 2 this week, and even though both are kinda boring and obviously suck for being mondos alone, I wish to share my fever thoughts.

There is no real need to discuss the content. From totally senseless to actually perverse, every bad side of mankind is featured. Of course it takes a disturbed mind and a tendency for both voyerism and mistanthopy to watch it. I don't know what it takes to like it, but that isn't the point anyways. One will doom mondos for being so close to snuff (or even real snuff; as in Mondo Cane 2); the next one will be fascinated by this fact. I belong to the second group.

While the high society absurdity and the "civilized world" insights are clearly nothing but pitiful these days, they probably had a certain impact in the release years. But what mondos show about the "uncivilized" parts of the world and the destruction brought to the planet, nature and animal population by the civilized nations still has this effect in 2009.
Effects of nuclear tests and industrial polution, uncensored. The "white man" exploiting native tribes, uncensored. Evidence of slavery. Civil war. Bizarre religious rituals - not just somewhere in New Guinea, no. In "civil" countries. Italy. Spain. Portugal.

There is way too much featured to comment everything, so I will just pick some examples.

A tribe in South America; robbed of its real belief by Christian missionaries. Out in nowhere, with nothing but rain forest and the mission around, the natives witness the landing of supply planes. And having no other gods left, they start to worship them - build plane idols from wood, waiting every night for one of the "god birds" to discover them, land there and bring messages from the ancestors.
A tribe in a desert in Africa - American help organisations sent them 300 cows, to a region where these animals were completely unknown. Some years later, only a few cows are left. And the tribe does nothing but dive for sea weed from the only lake around, because there is nothing else the cows can eat.
Obsessed believers, celebrating a ritual in Italy - robbing through the village on bleeding knees, to show their love for god.
A desert tribe, having nothing to eat but crocodile flesh - which makes the men infertile. In 30 years, only one child has been born. The tribe will extinct within a few decades.
An asian village, where 90 % of the inhabitants are crippled by sharks - the only way for them to earn money and survive is shark fishing, because the crippled will find no other work.

All this was filmed in 1963. And I wonder, what would a mondo from 2009 show?

The House of Clocks
Lucio Fulci. And a rather strange one. Is it a zombie movie? Kind of, but I fail to see what the real concept was.

There's an old mansion, inhabited by an old couple, their house maid and their gardener. They have a dark secret - the conserved corpses of their nephew and his wife (both in wedding outfits) in a chapel. The old man collects clocks and loves them like his children. Early in the movie, they kill the maid for knowing too much after she discovered the chapel and dead bodies.
Then we have a trio of young burglars; a couple and the guy's best friend. They plan to rob that old mansion. Armed with toy guns. They manage to get in the house with the old "my car broke down, can I use your phone" trick. However, they get surprised by the gardener and a shotgun, and in the end, the old couple and gardener are dead; and the robbers can't leave the house due to a) rabid dogs outside and b) broken gate door mechanism.
They decide to stay til the morning and explore the house. Later, the couple sends the best friend away. He goes to search his lighter for consuming illegal substances, and discovers that the dead bodies aren't were they left them anymore, and the broken dining table looks like before the fight. During the night, the clocks begin to run backwards, and the "earlier" it gets, the more damage is undone; until the dead are back alive and out for revenge. They kill the two guys, and also the maid and the nephew with his wife come back to life - and the nephew and wife kill the old couple again.

In the morning, the girl that broke in wakes up in the car - both her friends are alive, and they are in the time before reaching the house at all. All had "strange nightmares" (which we see in flashbacks; the scenes when they died or got hunted) and decide to not go to the old mansion at all. They drive away happily and die in a car accident. In the mansion, we see the young couple (nephew + wife) on the dining table, inviting the maid to have breakfast with them.

Umm, yes... The setting and all is quite nice, I totally want that mansion. But the story is just weirdo, though the atmosphere isn't all that bad. The dream finish is a bit a let down, but oh well, that's Fulci. Most memorable mutilation... Hard to say. The movie isn't too bloody, it has more a 1979 than 1989 feel. I'd give it to the old lady killing the maid with a spear (?) and then dancing happily away to tell her husband. The rest is pretty much shotgun and knives. All things considered, I'd go with a 6.8 on a ranking zero = total waste of time and ten = perfect movie.

RePost: Good Movies

2010-07-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

All reviews from 2007 - 2010; reposted.

Dead Snow (2009)
A masterpiece of trash from Norway. The topic of this movie is nazi zombie fun splatter. 8 college students (of medicine) wanna spend a weekend in an old hut out in nowhere. Nothing but hills and snow around - and some weirdo Reinhold Messner type of person who lives in a tent and warns the kids that this place has a history. After a raid during WW2, the villagers fought back and the surviving nazis had to flee to the mountains with all gold they could carry. People thought they froze to death, others claim they still roam the mountains. Actually, both is true. An army of nazi zombies wakes up when the campers discover the hidden gold in their hut.
Its bloody - I mean, really bloody. Its funny. It has great effects, especially the makeup of the zombie leader is awesome. Highly recommended!

Last of the Living
Now this is totally what I mean when I say I hope there'll be a new cineastic fashion along with Zombieland. The flair is in Last of the Living, though there were clearly some zeros less on the budget. This is a true amateur/low budget production, and has all the good things - barely/non-authorized filming in public places (from what I read, most street/city scenes were filmed on the morning of christmas - that's dedication!), cheap (but certainly not all bad) make up, amateur actors, soundtrack (and outro credit performance) by local band... But even better, the camera and cut was all but n00bish, someone did a real good job there.
The PG18 rating was certainly not forced on the movie, I more think it's for marketing purposes. Its not overly gory, and a lot splatter close ups were left out. That's where the real good camera work shows. You don't expect an exploding body in every scene because of the way the entire movie is filmed. Cuts, scene switches and such are well done, too. I admit I compared a bit to Goremet here, and that set a whole new low standard, so really ANYTHING looks well done in the face of it. But still, Last of the Living is solid work; a b-movie for the sake of missing budget, not missing talent.

The story is quickly told. 6 months ago, the outbreak turned all New Zealand (and the rest of the world, I assume) into zombies, except for a few survivors. Our main characters are the self-proclaimed womanizer Morgan, the geeky Ashleigh and the rock band guitarist Johnny. It's not spoken out, but from flashbacks and dialogues it can be assumed that Ash is Morgan's younger brother, and they met Johnny about 2 months after the outbreak.

Now, that sounds kinda stereotype. It is, and that's totally cool. All three are losers in their own way. Morgan makes comments that he was working as an actor before everyone became a zombie; sweet and intentional irony that he says he was a great actor and Ash starts laughing at him. From the quality of the acting, I'd say Ash and Johnny are clearly better than the rest of the cast; however, Morgan isn't as bad as other reviews claim. Ash is the type of geek you'd really expect to survive an outbreak. He's not too cowardly, but still careful and tries to protect himself with logic. He's the only of the survivors wearing "gear" when they go zombie bashing, to show less skin the zombies could bite, for example. Johnny, much older than the two brothers, is stereotype rock'n'roll. His solution to everything is chips'n'beer, and he doesn't mind much to run into a house full of zombies and beat the crap out of them with whatever he finds on the way. My favourite Johnny line has to be when he's asked if he thinks the zombie issue would be in the way to make his band famous, and he says he's the only surviving member, but doesn't really see that as a problem because most bands sold more records after being dead anyways.

These three have no claim to save the world or anything. They break in houses, take what they need from shops, play video games and that's about it. When they decide the current house is too boring, they drive around to find a better one and come to a church that is surrounded by zombies. They correctly assume there are survivors hiding in the church and go to help them (mainly because Morgan hopes there's a hot chick). They find a scientist and his daughter Steph, both were working on a cure for the zombies. The father gets bitten, Steph makes it to escape with the trio, but loses the blood sample needed for the cure. To get a new one, they have to go to the hospital where she used to work, extract a new one and put it in some machine. Obviously, the hospital is full of zombies.
In a world that was overran by living dead 6 months ago, its also no big surprise the power goes out while the machine is running. Morgan and Ash fight their way to the basement where they can activate an emergency generator, while Johnny stays in the lab with Steph and defends the blood sample. Morgan and Ash are trapped in the basement; here we get some character scenes that lead to my guess they are brothers; before they can escape through a tunnel or tube or something. Elsewhere, Johnny and Steph escape from the lab, with the blood sample, and they face 30 zombies surrounding their car. While Morgan comes up with a silly plan to just make a run for the car, Johnny offers to distract them since he got bitten and will turn into a zombie within an hour himself. For an amateur script, that's a real great and touching sacrifice scene and I didn't even think about Hard Rock Zombies when Johnny gives Steph a tape with his latest songs and asks her to take it to the right people when all this is over. A beautiful detail is that he goes down fighting, and its the first time his self-invented boxing move works (at least for a while).

The 3 survivors continue their way to an airport to bring the blood sample to an island where other scientists work on the cure. Stupid problem - Steph, the only one who can fly a plane, gets bitten. The flight will only take 40 minutes, and she has an hour before she turns into a zombie, so we are a bit in a hurry now. On the airport, Morgan almost sacrifices himself to let Steph and Ash escape, but finally makes it to jump in the plane last minute. And now, as you probably already expected, Steph becomes a zombie during the flight and Ash has to use his knowledge from video games to land the plane on the island. Here, they find the science camp deserted, and in a quite surprising scene, Morgan falls victim to a sudden zombie attack.
Ash finds a not properly working radio in one of the zombie infested buildings, saying to stay away from the island because there are no survivors. Hunted by his now-zombie brother, he runs to the beach and tries to leave the island with a boat. In the process, he kills Morgan and also loses the blood sample in the water. I'm not sure this is really the best way to end the movie, but Ash becomes the last of the living, escaping on a lonely boat. There would have been more original ways to get there, but I'm not really complaining. The movie makes too much hope for the new zombie movie fashion to really happen, and its way better than most other amateur movies I've seen since 1995 or so.

Famous last words: Sequel, please!

Violent Shit 3 - Infantry of Doom (aka Zombie Doom)
I admit I'm biased. Andreas Schnaas is my favourite amateur/no budget director, and I praise nearly everything he releases. Always did, probably always will. He is what Peter Jackson could have been, hadn't he sold out to Hollywood. I adore especially the Violent Shit trilogy, and the (original) European title gives it away: This is the third and last part of it.
Its the first that actually had some sort of budget beyond a few 1000 bucks and that you can see. Of course, its still a low budget splatter and barely has a story, but there's the point. No money, no expert effects, no real story, but it has the essential thing that makes a bad movie a great one: Violent Shit has heart.

Karl The Butcher jr., originally based on a German serial killer's son in Violent Shit 1 and 2, is now the barbarian chief of a brutal militia, inhabiting a lonely island. It should be mentioned that I'm personally a big fan of Andreas Schnaas as an actor, too. No big surprise I give thumbs up for him as Karl Jr. in a ridicolous (but well made) viking costume with a ridicolous (and less well made) metal mask. We see a lot ridicolous metal masks and costumes, and a real tremendous improvement of make up effects, especially the half skeleton-zombie face of Karl The Butcher sr. stands out.

Three random guys arrive on this island for a camping trip or something, and immediately get captured by Karl's Infantry of Doom militia. This group trains for something, and prepares to wipe out rebels that are also somewhere on the island; the real point of their purpose and goal remains a secret. After one of the campers and a group of rebels/traitors get executed for offending the Meister (Karl jr. is called Meister instead of Master, to underline the slight nazi reference later), the 2 others are set free to be prey for a training hunt of the warriors. That's not uncommon, obviously the militia is unlimited in members - Karl executes some of his men as an example every 10 minutes.
The great thing about this is - we see it. Unlike other movies, that leave out such scenes due to a lack of money/material for effects and make up excuses for the scenes not being there... Violent Shit 3 just makes up excuses to have more senseless gore scenes; and the special effects are creative and well done. I love how Schnaas' movies never miss the humor, in this case a very visual "pain in the ass" scene involving a fishing hook and a spine bone.

We also meet Dr. Senius, a mad scientist working for Karl jr., who tries to create a Meisterrace of zombies to fight the rebel army, and intentionally resembles Adolf Hitler with the most ridicolous fake mustache you can imagine. Karl is a bit impatient about the army of darkness (quote!) being ready, so the ghoulish Dr. Senius instructs the Infantry warriors to not damage the heads of their prey. Obviously, some disobey and get executed; involving a daring mud wrestling scene with Andreas Schnaas in a viking custome. It certainly doesn't look sexy in any way, what the term "mud wrestling" may suggest. But I admit, it looks very manly. And you have a hard time to not laugh if you know/understand the original language and can't help usually finding Schnaas' dialect much too cute for something like this. It adds an extra level of absurdity to the scene, and the english synchro certainly takes away a bit of the movie's very own charme.

The two guys on the run meanwhile met an outcast of the militia who disobeyed the meister after seeing his wife sacrificed to a random god. Here comes a big bonus Schnaas always had - Leon is played by one of the badass triad/yakuza looking guys that appear in almost all Reel Gore Productions. They are friends of the team, and do a lot of the stunts (hence the high ratio of masked people in general). In other words, for amateur movies, the fight scenes stand out. These guys are real martial arts experts and not just dressed like they are. While their fights had totally no relation to anything in Violent Shit 2, they finally get well deserved bigger (unmasked) roles here.
Leon soon gets seperated from the 2 campers, but runs into 2 rebels (also played by badass triad guys). The campers die elsewhere (in explicit gore scenes), the 3 asians decide its time to kill Karl, his father and Dr. Senius before they can unleash their zombie army. Their fight scenes in the forest are incredibly entertaining, and spiced up with fun splatter elements in both armed and unarmed combat. After fighting off the first wave of zombies (wherever they came from; Dr. Senius' experiments were far from finished), they run into the elite of the (viking-militia-metal mask-psycho) infantry - the Black Ninjas. Needless to say we get to enjoy more Hong Kong style fight scenes with explicit mutilation of several rubber bodies.

Disguised as the freshly defeated ninjas, the 3 sneak into the camp and hell breaks lose. I mean, for real. It doesn't stop at the regular amateur weapons, its the entire arsenal of a war movie. Starting with self made wood spears and a butterfly knife early in the movie, we get it all here. Katana, machine gun, bow and arrow, axe, shotgun, revolver, viking sword, grenate thrower. Yep, that's right. 3 ninjas blow up viking warriors in army clothes with grenades. Though Leon dies in something you may call "dramatic death scene" (compared to others, at least), the 2 others manage it to kill their targets and win the battle over the entire infantry of doom.

Famous last words: Movies like this are the reason I just love amateur splatter!

The Dead Next Door
The Dead Next Door is a great classic. The story is quickly told; the world is overran by zombies and the few survivors are organized with zombie squads - soldiers cleaning up and defending humans. The team the movie follows has the mission to find the original outbreak, the laboratory of Dr. Bow who created the virus, in order to find a cure.
When they arrive in the almost zombie free area, they soon find out why there aren't many undead. A religious cult around a Reverend Jones holds the zombies in a basement, feeds them and considers it as a test of their faith. Why they also sacrifice a woman remains a mystery though.
Anyways, the zombie squad, along with 2 scientists, finds Dr. Bow's notes and starts to work on a cure. Meanwhile, they ran into a member of Jones' cult; Vincent. The guy attacked the squad when he heard they try to find a way to cure/kill the zombies; another member of the squad was infected earlier and its essential they find the cure before he turns into a zombie.

The real awesome part about this movie are the tiny references. Would you call it coincidence if you have a Dr. Savini, the soldiers King and Romero and a squad leader named Raimi in one and the same movie? ^^

Famous last words: Gory, entertaining, the cult is a nice twist and the end is just awesome. Totally worth to watch!

Strangeland
Its been years that I watched it; last time a heavily cut version in the graveyard slot on TV. That kinda got stuck in my head, and I was really surprised about the end of the movie. Doesn't happen too often!

The story is quite original, and probably deserves the term "torture porn" more than most other movies with this label. Unlike most of them, the subject is in fact not *killing* people under torture, its the torture self - but keeping the victims alive. Captain Howdy is a body modification freak who sees it as his only mission to help others reach spiritual ascension through painful rituals. To find victims, he uses a local chat site and a profile of a cool teenage boy whose parents are on vacation, and invites other teenagers to a party. This party obviously never happens, they end up with their mouth stitched and their hands tied up in a basement, where Captain Howdy scars, pierces and brands them.
His most recent victims are Tiana and Genevieve; the daughter of police officer Mike Gage, who investigates the kidnapping cases. Tiana soon shows up dead in the trunk of her car; which is later explained by a heart condition that caused her to die from a heart attack, Captain Howdy declares it as an accident. Anyways, with the help of his teenage niece Angela, Det. Gage locates Howdy in a chat, and finally makes it to track him down and arrest him. In his basement, Gage doesn't only find his daughter, but 5 more - alive - victims.

Howdy is arrested and sent to a mental ward; and despite public protests, released as a "changed man" only 4 years after the kidnappings. Still under heavy medication, he tries to lead a normal life; but the angry smalltown mob goes vigilante style and hangs him outside the city. Gage, who is observating his house, decides to not interfere when the lynch mob drags Howdy out to his "trial". Due to his extensive training with near death experiences, Howdy survives and finally feels reborn on a new spiritual stage - he goes after the lynch mob, and to punish Gage for not holding them back, also his daughter again.

There are a lot notable things about this movie.

First of all, its still a very relevant topic. Teenagers with internet dates, and parents that can barely turn a computer on without help. Then we have the not-every day psychopath. Captain Howdy isn't a killer, he considers himself a guide to a new stage of existance. Don't we all get a bit tired of psycho killers that kill for the sake of killing, revenge or whatever? Howdy is different, in his mission and in his motivations. A deeper insight in the extreme bodmod scene is also a more original take on modern day scares than the average masked maniac in the woods, or the slasher in the house on the end of any road.
And then, Strangeland is yet another fine example that musicians make great directors and producers of horror movies. In this case, even more. While it often goes wrong if a producer plays the main character, and even more often if a musician decides to become an actor, it goes perfectly right here. 80ies hair metal hero Dee Snider of Twisted Sister wrote and produced Strangeland, and also plays Captain Howdy. Sure it doesn't take that much skill to play a sick freak, especially if you have a rather impressive appearance to work with. Howdy has a full body tribal tattoo (face included), long neon red dreadlocks, sharp fangs and an impressive amount of visible piercings on the face and upper body; he's big, buff and bad.
But Dee Snyder also portraits a believable "changed man" - the introverted bookworm Carleton Hendricks, without visible bodyart - before turning back into the monster man Captain Howdy. Another point is certainly a great soundtrack, and the final blessing for Strangeland comes from Robert Englund, who appears as lynch mob leader Jackson and later falls victim to Howdy. And what's a legend like Englund if you don't pay the tribute? Captain Howdy uses a few lines from the original Nightmare on Elmstreet. ^^

Famous last words: Great authentic movie, original and different from the average slasher; violent, bizarre and full of surprises. Totally worth a watch - but make sure to get the uncut version, the PG16/TV cut tells a whole different story.

Piratenmassaker

After German low budget legend Jochen Taubert already shone with trash pearls like „I piss on your cadaver“ beyond good or acceptable, I bought the really incredibly shitty DVD „Piratenmassaker“. Without much translation, the title is obviously „Pirate Massacre“ and not available in English as far as I know. The price of 4,99 € (I'm too lazy to look it up, but it was something around 4 USD at that time) is absolutely justified. It's worth every cent because this movie leaves no promise or expectation unfulfilled.

According to rumours and the back cover, the plot deals with pirates that search a legendary treasure on a small island, inhabited by only one monk. This is only partly true. The island is a forest somewhere near a highway to Cologne, and there isn't only one monk, there are plenty of cannibals in monk robes. Besides the unbelievable costumes (mainly from children birthday parties), also the dialogues and so-called acting is below any scala. Adding to this, there's also the totally senseless plot, not to say: constellation of people that roam the woods for no appearant reason.

We have a pirate captain, who meets a retarded cannibal woman (played by a tan studio worker in her late 30ies) early in the movie. From this scene on, they run around together and the captain realizes she's the love of his life. Several pirates and monks/cannibals kill each other on the mean time, but if you think „kill“ says there's blood and violence involved – wrong. A frightening majority dies by an arrow in the back. There's also a blond woman with a bodyguard in the woods; their presence makes even less sense and it is never revealed why they are there, where they came from and what they are doing at all.

You can't miss something this ridicolous! This movie is a shining example that totally senseless amateur movies can be fun from the start to the very end. That you need no actors, no script, no plot, no money and no talent to make a super entertaining movie. That bad costumes and non-existant visual effects can keep you laughing for more than 1 hour. I don't hestitage to recommend to invest the 4,99 €, but give it a second thought if the DVD costs 5,99 €.

Criminal Minds - Legacy

Dear Eli Roth,

please watch Criminal Minds, season 2, episode 22 "Legacy" before you dare to think about another Hostel sequel. This episode, not half the run time of one Hostel part, does everything right that you did wrong. I highly recommend to watch it along with Darren Lynn Bousman, because he can learn a damn lot for upcoming Saw sequels, too.

Where you lost track and simply tried to get close ups of mutilations that turn out to be disappointing in the end, this episode goes just far enough to leave the viewer enough room for own disgusting interpretations. I have never seen a regular crime show episode that features more blood and gore than this one. And it is perfect this way. There are close ups of a woman robbing on all fours through a room with broken glass, yes. There is the atmosphere of permanent danger. There is everything you missed in Hostel 1, Hostel 2, Saw 4 and Saw 5. Especially in comparison to Saw 4 and 5, you can learn a lot.
In Saw, the investigation from the police side was unrealistic and confusing. In Criminal Mind, it makes sense. In Hostel, you tried to leave your killer(s) faceless to make them scarier, and failed. No-one even cared about them. In Criminal Minds, the killer is faceless and still truly evil and scary.

Both Hostel movies are boring to no end. Saw 4 and 5 are a sad attempt to continue a legacy, which ended in plots and twists beyond logic.

This Criminal Minds episode feels like watching a damn good slasher movie, and should be an example for both of you.

Thanks for your attention.

Saw VI
To get you in the right mood, I will first tell you what I currently drink. Its not alcoholic or anything, no. Its in a pink plastic bottle, it was very very cheap and right next to my energy drinks in the store. How could I resist "Disney's Hannah Montana Star 4u Drink" in "mild strawberry & vanilla"? It has more bubbles than anything else I ever drank, mostly tastes like water and it disgusts me. I just love disgusting things.

Now, with this visual, let's advance to another quite disgusting fact: I liked Saw VI.

Yes, I liked Saw VI. In a "I liked Saw VI better than Saw IV or Saw V" way, that is. And that's basically like saying "I like typhus better than ebola because at least your eyes don't bleed so bad".

What makes Saw VI better than the last 2 parts? There are several things:

Tobin Bell. He's more around since he died than ever. Its not just Mark (that's the new killer's name, I realized that after about 50 minutes and totally missed it in the last 2 movies) we have to endure.
No more mixing up cop and killer. Because the cop is the killer now. They could have made that twist a bit more interesting, but oh well, maybe that would have been simply too Dexter.
Story. Yeah, there is one. Jigsaw finishes open business with the insurance company that denied his cancer therapy. We go back to the Saw III concept of one main victim having to question his past decisions and face their consequences. It was less random this time.
Traps. They were pretty balanced. Some real gory ones like the first, but also some that were visually less spectacular and made more sense for the story instead, like the choice between the secretary and the data clerk.

Sure there were also some downsides. No big surprise for a VI-sequel. The old Saw illness of having to tell the background story of each and every person that was ever anywhere on the set, for example. But this time, they didn't do it as annoying as before.

The trap I didn't like for several reasons was the russian roulette type with the 6 employees on the chairs. First of all, I couldn't really see what happened to the main victim when he decided to let one live (scene too dark), and that was inconsequent for Saw. And secondly, I would have liked to know the reasoning behind the choices. 4 die, 2 live, fine. But I didn't see in any way on what the choices were based. The other traps, and this one likely too, had the purpose to teach that man that his formula was wrong. During the choice trap before, he had to revise his formula already - formula says a healthy young man with no realitives and no history of chronic illness is valued higher than an older woman with a disease history in her family and many relatives. He lets the woman live, despite his own formula. He obviously admitted he was wrong with that, and this part was what I missed about the roulette trap. He kinda randomly let live and die, without any hints why he made what choices.
We also have to deal with a lot flashbacks, but oh well, that was to be expected.

The finale grande had a "oh wait, I've seen that before" effect. The trapped woman and son were supposed to be mistaken for the victim's family, but are actually the wife and son of a man that died because the insurance denied to cover his treatment, early in the movie. The annoying reporter turned out to be the victim's wife, and she made only little sense all the time. Got kidnapped and woke up in a room, but destroyed the tape before she (or I, or anyone) ever heard what Jigsaw told her, if there was a trap or a way to escape for her. That made it slightly obvious to guess that she was there for another reason.
I did like the mix up in Saw III, but not so much here.
Then, the woman and son get to decide if the insurance guy will live or die. Jigsaw grants the victims a chance to take revenge or show mercy - yet another thing we've seen in Saw III; it was all about forgiving. A very open repeat of that concept, if I may say so.

I'm glad Mark is dead. I didn't like him as Jigsaw. Not at all. Amanda, yes. She was a good heir. She had a reason and a background that made sense. About Mark, I never really understood why he helped Jigsaw. He just did. And through 3 movies, his motivation was never revealed, at least not that I noticed or understood.

So who's left? On what characters can we put our money for another sequel? Jill, Jigsaw's wife, finishes his work. She was a top bet for quite a while to become the new Jigsaw. The reporter survived unharmed, but also unchanged. She had no trap or lesson that her habit to exploit others for her profit was wrong. She saw her husband die, but that doesn't turn you into a killer. Wife and son of the man that died. Wife, not so much. She didn't pull the trigger. But her son did. He's about 16 I'd say - old enough to become a killer? We've seen less logic in Saw IV already, so why not?

Famous last words: I can live with this as the end of the Saw legacy. Really, its a good movie. It shows the best sides of the concept again, after 2 really disappointing sequels. Its a good moment to stop and let it rest. A worthy last impression if you will. And Hannah Montana is smiling at this movie.

Low Tension, after all

2010-07-08T03:07:00.000-07:00

So everyone told me if I want some ultraviolence, I should really watch 'High Tension'. Umm. Why? Because I just did and it was kinda... boring and uninspired. Not to say illogical, but that I don't mind. It's just...

Is there a story? Hm. Not really. There are two girls, Marie and Alexis, and they go to the country side to visit Alexis' parents who bought an old farm house. And then, a mad killer shows up, slaughters the family and kidnaps Alexis, while Marie can hide and tries to help her friend. For a very - very - long time this is rape'n'revenge without rape or revenge.
When I wondered when the damn movie would finally be over for the 15th time; it was after the 6th "chasing in dark woods with nothing really happening" scene - someone heard my prayers. Something did happen. Marie turns out to be a lesbian split personality mad killer with a chainsaw. Kinda. My little problem is - if she imagined it all... which is a problem in itself... how did she chase herself in a car while driving a truck?

Something doesn't add up here. Plus, it is quite annoying, or the reason why I simply don't get it, that the English language selection still results in a movie half English and half French. Since my French isn't too bombastic and there are not even ANY other language subtitles for the scenes I don't understand, I might have missed some really important things. 'High Tension' is bloodier than 'Frontier(s)' and 'Hostel', I give it that. But that doesn't make it a good movie. The gore - if you can call it that - comes, it is uninspired - it gets as original as axe murder; or it is plain illogical and painfully unrealistic. You can NOT decapitate someone with a shoeboard. You just can't. I also have my doubts you can cut off someone's hands completely with a razor, including bones, within two minutes.

Famous last words: I still feel pretty tense. Guess I just go watch something bloodier.

Shut up, Shutter Island!

2010-06-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

A prison island for insane criminals, a setting shortly after WWII, a conspiracy. It all sounds good, and it is not a bad movie. Actually, I could finally forgive Leonardo diCaprio for, well, his other movies.

But after 2 hours, 10 minutes I really couldn't take it anymore. The twist was so-so surprising - which is already worth something, Hollywood tends to be quite predictable when it comes to horror and psycho thrillers - the cast really great, the atmosphere even awesome. But this movie is simply much too long. I'm probably not qualified to really judge it, since I couldn't get myself to watch another 20 minutes after already knowing the twist.

So, the infamous last words: Nice try. Next time, try to tell such a story in... let's say 100 minutes, or 105. But really, not one minute more.

Up yer ass

2010-06-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

"The Human Centipede" is clearly a movie for and about assholes.

One day, I was chatting with a friend and she told me that her sister had heard about 'this movie', but found it so disgusting and disturbing, she could only speak out the title, nothing else. Naturally, my friend googled it and showed me the result: The Human Centipede.

At first sight, you certainly seem to need a stomach for it. The story is... simple. A German mad scientist kidnaps three tourists, two American girls and a Japanese guy (who consequently only speaks Japanese, partly subtitled tho). He then sews them together, mouth to anus, to create a centipede with a single digestive system. The reason for this, as briefly hinted here and there, is the death of his 'three-dog', a similar experiment involving, yes, three dogs he sewed together.
That is the entire plot.

The plot behind the plot is a guy who somehow got the money to make this movie by not telling investors exactly what the story is about and had actors sign contracts without giving them a full script. That alone clearly deserves some respect.
However, the movie - and that is probably very intentional - is barely more than a prelude. It is not bloody by any means. It sure as a few quite disturbing scenes, but its by far less explicit than one might think. Why intentionally toned down? Well, because right with release, there was also an announcement being made: A sequel is planned, where a mad scientist sews together not three, not four, not five - but twelve people. And honestly, I'm quite excited to find out how they'll manage it to find twelve actors willing to participate in this truly degrading role - there isn't much speaking after all - now that the secret is out.

Famous last words: Certainly worth to watch - and to keep an eye open for the sequel.

11.38 minutes to fail

2010-06-24T01:24:00.000-07:00

I just tried to watch a screener of the new 'A-Team' movie. I turned it off after 11 minutes 38 seconds, when B.A. got into a helicopter. Mildly complaining, yet fully concious. This movie is doomed. I refuse to consider it as 'A-Team'.

Biggest disappointment of the year. Congrats, you just ruined my childhood.

Looking for torture porn in all the wrong places

2010-06-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

Oh through what lengths have I gone to seek out the thrills and kills and thrillkills in fiction, just to find the one best kick where I least expected it! This one last drop of blood the barrel can't hold, this one last word that cuts like broken glass, this one little thing that would push me over the edge of sanity. Make me look away for a moment, and - as I can say now from experience, make me laugh in plain madness, in a moment of horrible clarity that I'm one sick individual and love it.

I can't even tell if TVTropes would define this moment as ultimate experience of Fetish Fuel or Nightmare Fuel, seeing it was the nightmare I was seeking so badly, making it a kind of obsession pulling me in like a fetish. All I can say is - it was a truly glorious moment, to put the book aside for a little while, laugh out loud in disbelief when I realized that this was what I was chasing all my life and come to peace, finally to peace, that my long journey had found an end.

Countless movies from various bizarre sub-genres of horror had entertained me on my search, yet only a few gave me a glimpse of what I hoped to find, and ultimately they all disappointed me in some way. Taboo-breaking sexploitation like 'Ilsa - She-Wolf of the SS' and 'Cannibal Holocaust' paved my way, no zombie movie I haven't seen, from B-movie crap to Hollywood hits. There were Japanese gore flicks like the 'Guine Pig' series or 'Men Behind the Sun', there were more recent self-proclaimed shockers like 'Hostel' and 'Frontier(s)'. Plain torture porn with even less of a story than rape'n'revenge, slightly more intelligent gorefests a la 'Saw' and the most recent absurdity, 'The Human Centipede'.

They couldn't give me the kick. They didn't bring me the moment when I would want the torture to stop. In fact, I was always disappointed in the end. Disappointed someone survived the movie. Disappointed the killer's last genius plan was prevented. Disappointed the movie ended and there was still an idea of what could, should happen left in my head.

But now, I have found salvation. I have found unforgiveness for my various sins. Now I have reached the point of 'damn, stop it, it's really enough'. In the Star Trek novel 'The 34th Rule'. How unexpected, how wonderfully surprising!

So, what's the story? The Grand Nagus decides to run an auction for the Bajoran orb he purchased in the DS9 episode 'Prophet Motive'. Soon, he excludes Bajor from the last bidding round, as their offer wasn't high enough, and this leads to a rather harsh reaction from First Minister Shakaar and Kai Winn. They close Bajoran space to all Ferengi citizens, and cut them off all trading routes through the wormhole, to force the Nagus to allow them the purchase of the orb.
And here, we switch and simply imagine this wasn't a Star Trek novel, but a horror movie. All criteria are met. Quark and Rom become innocent victims of a violent conspiracy that fulfills no other purpose than major bashing and suffering, both physically and mentally. The sheer beauty in that idea takes a while to sink in, but you'll come to realize it over time. Odo and Captain Sisko star as the investigators, torn between their obedience to law and their sense for justice; suddenly the exact opposites of each other. A twisted case - in movies like 'Saw', for example, you hear policemen state 'What that killer does is illegal, but it is right'. Here, we have the opposite: 'What they do is perfectly legal, but it's wrong'.

Oh, and how wrong it will become! When Quark and Rom try to escape DS9 before the deadline expires, all plans fail and Odo and Sisko have to act against their belief, and help the Bajoran Militia to arrest the Ferengi. So far, so good, so even much better - at this point, the Bajoran Militia turns into a sadistic force of madmen. The moment the Ferengi arrive on the planet, its both disbelief and anticipation: 'Welcome to Gallitep' says it all. They are brought to the former Cardassian forced labor camp, deep in the outbacks, where Bajor isn't oh so pretty and where no-one will hear you scream.
And yes, there will be a lot screaming, there will be blood, there will be hell, though there will not be their last battlefield. Actually, the trial never ends. But enough for random quoting for now. We now enter the stage where our imaginary movie takes the road to grindhouse. Gallitep, the desolate reminder of the occupation, comes to life. Nine perfectly innocent Ferengi prisoners face the insanity of Bajoran Colonel Mitra and his right hand Sergant Wyte. While Mitra calls himself 'Gul' and seems to have lost his mind years back as a prisoner of the Cardassians, Wyte is everything you want from a camp movie sadistic madman. The following chapters include near starvation, death marches with detailed descriptions of bleeding feet; several beatings to loss of conciousness; again with details about injuries and pain, claustrophobic isolation, violent interrogations and mind games of all sorts, all carried on a general tone of 'really no-one cares'.

We reach a climax of terror, after the escape from this hell (with radiation poisoning and near suffocation, naturally), in a nightmare sequence. A Bajoran zombie - yes, with rotting flesh and all the good things - Colonel Mitra, sneaks into Quark's room with a rusty knife to cut off his lobes. At this point, I laughed out loud. Of course, its more than just a nightmarish threat; no, its an actual splatter scene that was hinted earlier. We are so beyond hints and threats already... This certainly stands for one of the infamous castration scenes from torture camp classics, perfectly translated to the Star Trek univsere. The trained eye can see through the scifi tone, down to the dirty bottom of grindhouse.
And that is the beauty in it. It is the least thing you expect - a grindhouse tribute in a colorful, friendly, optimistic universe; a place where such violence and terror doesn't belong. Trek had a fair amount of torture - 'There are four lights!' after all - but never so graphic, never so explicit, and certainly never so unexcused. 'Gul' Mitra gets no sad backstory about the occupation; there is nothing to play down or excuse his actions, to portrait him as the victim. Even less Wyte - they are nothing but the insane, sadistic maniacs. Gallitep becomes Manchu 731, Nanking and Buchenwald - yet combined with the motels and hostels from 'Hostel' and 'Frontier(s)', as no-one knows the prisoners are even there. Bajor becomes the civilian population; looking away, not caring what happens to their prisoners of war, enraged in their fanatism against the Ferengi government and openly promoting racism and hate - most prominently Major Kira shows her true face, early in the book, when whipping out racist paroles like there's no tomorrow.

A combination as rare as a diamond. A picture perfect grindhouse camp, but with a huge difference to the classic camp movies: You like the prisoners. And that is the one thing I have never seen in any movie. Usually, I give a damn about the victims. They are faceless, disposable meat; merely a canvas for the atrocities to happen. In 'Hostel', they even get on my nerves so much, I wish them death and torture, simply for being such idiots.
Not that I like the maniac warden committing these crimes; I don't care about that person either. Yet am I not supposed to hate them for what they do? Well, I don't. Except for namegiving Ilsa, I barely remember their names. Nor care about it.

Ferengi bashing always had a place in Star Trek, and I've licked - literally and literary - blood. Though I doubt I'll be able to repeat this refreshing experience of plain disgust, I have some hope - the Ferengi chapter of 'Seven Deadly Sins' begins with ex-Liquidator Brunt, covered in blood, in ripped clothes and totally broke, trying to escape a civil war...

Smiling at Birds

2010-05-24T02:31:00.000-07:00

or: "Eaten Alive".

While cannibal movies never make too much sense, Umberto Lenzi's 'Eaten Alive' set a new standard for complete nonsense. The story is a mix of other more or less popular plots - in the mandatory opening scene (city lights, streets full of civilized Americans, elevator music), a native kills three random guys with cobra poison, then gets hit by a car and dies. As a result, some other random guys start an investigation about these murders and find out that they are related to a purification-back-to-nature cult. The random blonde, Sheila, is involved because her sister probably follows this cult, lead by a hairdo named Jonas, and currently located in the jungle of New Guinea. So she goes there, hires the local Vietnam defector Mark and tries to find her sister. The camp of the cult is deep in the jungle, and surrounded by cannibals. Yadda yadda.

It just gets more pointless as usual because only 50 % of the shown scenes are related to each other. The other half is completely random, and mostly taken from other movies, too. Almost all animal snuff scenes were originally made for other movies, also the infamous castration scene and a mutilation/cannibalism scene.
The related scenes in itself are only so 'logical' either. Cult leader Jonas, for example, has a drink that makes people obey him, and only him. Half his cult members, while refusing technology and everything 'civilized', wear watches and the camp also has a speaker and obviously a radio or record player.
Then we have a few 'explicit hardcore' scenes - according to the backcover. The sex scenes are actually the most unbelievable in grindhouse history. They are not even what the trope 'Ikea Sex' describes. They are plain bad and can - each of them - be summarized as "1 minute, woman spreads, man crawls onto her, man comes, done". This applies to the ritual involving a widow getting laid by her late husband's three brothers (in this case, all three finish the job within a minute, and that doesn't mean a minute each) as well as the rape scenes.

However, as bad as the movie is - there are a few notable scenes that are quite nicely done.

Smiling at birds is a very underused yet great idea. In 'Eaten Alive', there is a lot smiling at birds. Whenever Sheila, Mark, or anyone else tries to sneak past a hostile person, this hostile person will hear a strange sound, turn around, spot a bird (owl, parrot), smile at it, and move on with whatever they were doing. I especially like the early scene where some cannibals eat a victim, hear the voices of Mark and Sheila, one cannibal looks up, spots an owl, smiles and continues to eat.

Then, the name giving eaten alive scene is surprisingly well done. Sheila's sister and a native girl get caught by cannibals and eaten alive, including some close ups of mutilations and pieces of flesh. Here is where it paid out to steal all other budget-intensive splatter scenes from other movies.

However, despite all its flaws, this is rightfully a classic of the cannibal/jungle hell movies - because of all these flaws. Its a picture perfect example for cheap shock entertainment, though it would probably be advisable to not watch it right after the movies that were - pun - cannibalized for it.

Oh my... whatever!

2010-05-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Neelix: "Oh my god!"

Wow. Now what a writing flaw is that? How can a Talaxian refer to god? Don't get it wrong, naturally any alien can have and address a deity. But that made no sense. Talaxian afterlife, as imagined by Neelix, was shown in the same season. It dealt with the 'Big Tree' and being re-united with friends and family. No deity or other spiritual beings anywhere.
Any species shown with an own spiritual concept used related replacement terms in 'oh my god' situations. Klingons went with 'By Kahless!', Bajorans used 'in the name of the prophets', the Ferengi seeked guidance from the Blessed Enchequer. Weyoun shortened it to 'oh my', as Vorta have no prayer or need to address absent gods. Same for Garak, where it makes sense for Cardassians likely being atheists (at least there was never a reference to a Cardassian religion, monks, artifacts; and Dukat and Damar showed no understanding when talking to Weyoun about his gods).

Why were the Voyager episodes and characters written this bad? Janeway, a shizophrene psychopath. Harry Kim and Chakotay lacking of personality alltogether. And then the totally ridicolous episodes... 'Unforgettable' deals with a species that has it in their *biological* code that *others* immediately forget them by removing the memories. Sounds absurd, but the real awesome part is - it also works with non-biological encounters, like the Doctor and a tricorder! The Voyager is running out of power so much that they have to turn off life support on several decks, yet the best idea in this situation is to land the ship on a toxic planet and use up the little remaining power in the process? Not to mention the incredibly stupid encounter with the Ferengi stranded in the delta quadrant. Naturally, it is much more important to remove them from a world already effected by their presence than flying through the damn wormhole to the alpha quadrant. Or insisting on a right to use the Hirogen relais station - hello there, we are Starfleet, we respect no-one, and now we need your station, so deal with it - and then blow it up. Not one. The entire damn network. And you really act surprised that the Hirogen are not amused?

Yes, TNG had its moments. DaiMon Bok alone was a no brainer for more than one reason. The horrible Wesley Crusher or Deanna Troi centric episodes were annoying as hell. In DS9, playing baseball with the Vulcans during the last months of the war was borderline too silly to deal with, same for playing Ocean's Eleven. But TNG also had 'The Inner Light', 'Suspicions' and 'Lower Decks'. Just like DS9 also has 'In Purgatory's Shadow'/'By Inferno's Light', 'Sacrifice of Angels' and 'Far beyond the Stars'. Even ENT has some really outstanding episodes that don't deal with the awful Suliban and time travel crap. In no other show, senseless episodes are as focussed as in VOY. It will be hard to really get through the remaining 3 seasons...

Difficile est satiram non scribere.

2010-05-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

Jungle Holocaust (1977)

Grindhouse has no stars. Grindhouse merely has people that were involved with more than one movie, and for that, you recognize them. But you never actually like them. And that is the great thing about the sub-genre cannibal and camp movies: They have a very high chance that all these people you can't stand at first sight will not only die, but even die a slow, violent and overall horrible death.

We all know what cannibal movies are about and how the core cast looks. Its usually:

Guy 1 who goes to the jungle for one of the following reasons: anthropologic research, rescue someone for money or personal reasons, buy land/find resources (probably the silliest version), crash with a plane or a combination of these. He usually wears a moustache, has curly hair and is played by Massimo Foschi.
Guy 2 is a friend or fellow scientist of Guy 1. He usually has some survival training or, if Guy 1 is a researcher, acts as the cameraman.
Guy 3 is a local guide or pilot, and regardless where in the world the scenario is set, he is always a latino. There is a 99 % chance he will be the first of the group who dies, and a 1 % chance he only drops the group somewhere in the jungle/on an island and then goes home.
Girl is either the wife of Guy 1 or the girlfriend of Guy 2. In some cases, especially if she is the wife of Guy 1, she is also a scientist.

Jungle Holocaust stays true to that about 50 %. Robert Harper (played by Massimo Foschi) is a... scientist, maybe, who goes to check on a camp his employees have prepared for his arrival in the jungle of Manila. His pilot Charlie, a latino, is not the first to die, but it takes only 15 minutes and its girlfriend who dies first instead. The last guy is a bit a mystery. I didn't really catch his name, but I think its Ralph. I'll just go with that. What Ralph really does in this jungle? No idea. He talks about survival training, later he has insights in native languages, and inbetween, he is simply not around for almost an hour.

Anyway, when the four people arrive in the jungle, they find the camp deserted, and of course, the plane is broken and has to be fixed over night. When Charlie's girlfriend goes to pee, we hear a scream and that is all - she's dead, and we didn't see a thing. But who cares? The next morning, the guys go looking for her, and Charlie is killed by a trap... suspected (but not confirmed) to be set by a cannibal tribe.
Robert panics at the sight of a snake eating a waran and runs into the jungle; naturally not the smartest idea, but certainly one of the better choices he makes. In other words, he's a moron. Three minutes later, Robert and Ralph are completely lost, so they make a boat - within a minute, using nothing but a knife - to go down the river and find the plane. There wasn't a river anywhere near the landing site, but whatever works, guys. Confronted with a waterfall, they lost control over their vessel and got seperated - another minute later. It will take almost an hour until we see Ralph again.

Robert stumbles through the jungle, finds some mushrooms, and because he's such a smartie, he eats the one plant with the highest chance of being toxic. Not very surprising he gets sick and when he wakes up, he finds himself captured by a native tribe. However, they are not cannibals. As if the tribe hadn't confronted us enough with male nudity, they rip Robert's clothes off and unfortunately he will not wear anything for at least 45 minutes.
He is held in some cave-cage along with an eagle and a tucan (I think its a tucan, its a pretty cool big bird) and wonders why the natives don't kill him. He finds out - they use the birds as bait for crocodile hunting, and a bizarre ritual that involved hanging Robert under the ceiling of a cave implies they think he is a bird, too. *facepalm* Cargo Cult, alright, but this is a bit too absurd.
After Robert failed to explain the attractive native girl that he just wants something to eat, and she jerked him off instead, he decides to escape before the next hunt. I find it notable that someone is too stupid to make a gesture for 'eating' after figuring out one for 'drinking' that the native kids understood.
His escape is a total masterplan and he manages it to steal the attractive native girl from a guy who is about to rape her, and also a simple rock. With this bounty, Robert runs into the jungle and after running around with no plan at all, he rapes the native girl himself. Causing her to bring him food and function as a guide. Or whatever, no-one knows where they are going anyways. But somehow, they run into Ralph, who survived with a rotting knee injury in some cave. Robert goes slightly insane, but I didn't really listen what he was ranting about. End of this discussion is - they continue the way and try to find the plane. Ralph makes it to catch a cobra and poison the tip of Robert's spear, and later, the trio fights of at least 5 alligators with bare hands. Things look good, until they enter the territory of the cannibal tribe, which is near the plane.
The cannibals steal the native girl and eat her in a rather unspectacular rubber body scene. Ralph is meanwhile delirious. Robert fights off the natives by killing their chief with his poison spear - and then eats his heart. I personally would not consider eating someone I just killed with snake venom, but Robert seems to like playing risk. It works though, and Robert and Ralph reach the plane and can escape the jungle.

Both intro and outro credits state that everything was experienced or witnessed by Robert Harper, and is based on a real story and all. I somehow doubt. No-one can seriously be as stupid as Robert Harper.
Other than that, Jungle Holocaust has an outstanding amount of animal snuff - as if Deodato wanted to break a record. Even for a cannibal movie, its far above average. If only one of these scenes would have been made today, the entire cast and crew would go to jail. Rightfully.
What the movie totally lacks of is... dialogue. Robert is alone with a tribe that has some grunted and screamed native language, so there is really not much conversation. That's not bad, because the conversations that are there are beyond good and evil, talent, sense and context. In other words: This movie is bad. Bad-bad. Not boring-bad (like Hostel) or unbelievable-bad (like Gormet). Its a complete waste of celluloid and lifetime.

Famous last words: You have to see it to see everything you don't want to see.

ReRun: Voyager S02/03

2010-04-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

I'm simply too lazy to review each and every episode, so I will just summarize my observations. I finished season 1 and 2, and started watching 3 now, and there is one thing I simply can't figure out.

Why does Kes not annoy me?

When I had to decide what series to watch after finishing The 4400, Voyager wasn't exactly on top of my list. More somewhere in the very lower half, and the reason was: Its the Star Trek with the most annoying and/or colorless characters, except ENT. I can't accept Janeway as a good captain. She delayed the journey at any possible chance, violated the prime directive on a daily base and not starting something with Chakotay also didn't make her a very believable female character. (Compare: Seska, though kinda stereotype, and B'Ellana, one of the best female ST characters, and Seven of Nine all had a thing for him...). Tom Paris and Neelix permanently compete for the title 'most annoying man of the universe', Chakotay and Harry Kim may try once in a while to develop some character depth, but ultimately fail. Tuvok and the Doctor alone stand out from the main cast, in a positive manner. Kes has bad taste in men and I used to be highly annoyed by her - or so I thought.
She still has bad taste in men (though I admit, Ethan Phillips as a Ferengi is kinda rawr), but she doesn't annoy me anymore. Not at all. Actually, I would name her as one of my favourite characters now. (Main cast, that is, my favourite Voyager characters are Ensign Lon Suder, General Kurok and a random Hirogen. But then, I even liked R'Mor better than most of the main cast. That's the Romulan from the past the Voyager contacted through the micro wormhole, so it should say something about my sympathy here.)
I'm amazed how Kes is really a believable character and totally not like Ezri Dax, who I usually compared her to. Kes looks better than Dax. Kes is more aware of her abilities. Kes is more resourceful (than a Joined Trill with lifetimes of experience; what a waste on Ezri!). I also never really realized the complex social structure around her, especially the mentor-student relationship with Tuvok and the dilemma in the episode 'Tuvix'.

In loving memory

What still deeply saddens me is the underuse and early death of Ensign Suder. The potential wasted with his death is unbelievable. I never liked Betazoids. Sure that is mainly the fault of Deanna Troi, but no matter how hard Lawxana tried to compensate, it never worked. Lawxana was colorful and fun to watch, but she had a big flaw: She usually appeared along with her annoying daughter. The few other Betazoids we got to see were filler characters with no meaning, and unlike many other 'aliens of the week', they didn't compensate for the boring character with an exciting look.

Suder changed everything. A Betazoid with a personality. A twist. More than anything I had wanted to see him gain control of his violent urges with Tuvok's help, and resume duty in engineering. What a duo that would have been - B'Ellana, with a pretty bad temper, and Suder, with an affinity for anger, surpressed by Vulcan mind control that goes against his Betazoid brain structure. It would have made Voyager 300 % better, as this twist would have combined the fates of the outstanding characters - Tuvok, B'Ellana, Suder - and due to his medical condition, the Doctor would have been a part of this, too. It could have saved us from several extremly boring and predictable 'Harry was kidnapped - again' episodes.

ReRun: Voyager 01x01/02

2010-04-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

Why am I doing this again? Watch Voyager again, after years of trying to forget it? Oh, yes, because I'm bored to death and can't decide what else to watch. So why not document my waste of valuable lifetime here, right?

The story is known. Captain Janeway (picture taken during a Tetris tournament) investigates the disappearence of a Maquis ship in the Badlands, the Voyager gets kidnapped by an alien and strands in the Delta Quadrant, about 75 years travel time from Earth. For the upcoming seven seasons, Janeway will try to avoid finding a way home at any cost, while trying to look like she does the opposite.

Things I had totally forgotten:

Janeway violates the Prime Directive in the pilot. That beats every other Starfleet captain. Everyone violated it at a point, came close to it, made someone else do it... But at least the others tried to act like they take it serious.

The Maquis crew wears Starfleet uniforms without protest, right after stranding 75 years from home. Chakotay only gives Tuvok a serious glance after Janeway revealed that Tuvok was her undercover agent. And Chakotay flies the Maquis ship into the Kazon ship. Umm. In my memory, it took about 6 - 7 episodes before the Maquis turned to Starfleet fashion and I thought it came too soon. In my memory, Chakotay and Tuvok had more or less a verbal fight over betrayal. And in my memory, the Maquis ship had been damaged, and the crew had no choice than to move to the Voyager. It appears my memory would have made a better writer for the show.

Neelix was already quite annoying. When I watched Voyager first, it took almost 2 seasons before he really began to get on my nerves. On the other hand, Kes didn't annoy me as much as I remembered. Let's see how long it takes this time.

Female Scifi Character Fail

2010-04-11T16:26:00.000-07:00

There are very few female TV characters I like. Less than 10, I think. But there are at least 10 that massively annoy me for different reasons.

10 - Lily Tyler (The 4400)

Lily took her time to piss me off.

At first, I liked her. A nice surprise, I like only few female characters at first sight. This time, it didn't last long. Lily became pregnant. And from that moment on, she mutated into my arch nemesis: a character reduced to being a mother. She gave up any facial expressions except 'Ohhh lookies baby!' (happy) and 'Ohhhh no, my baby!' (frightened/angry). That was when I began to hope she'll die soon. Again, a nice surprise, she did. Just to be replaced by an equally annoying teenage daughter. Chrrrrrrrrrr!

09 - Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek Voyager)

Kathy had her chance.

I gave it a chance. I didn't scream 'oh no a female captain!' when Voyager began. I watched first, and then began to scream. This isn't so much about being a woman. This is about being the worst captain in Starfleet. Ever. I'm lost in unknown territory and my crew wants to get home. What do I do? I delay the return as much as I can, for every tiny reason I find. I have a badass hot First Officer. Do I take the chance? No, I 'just stay friends' and live like a nun for the next 7 years. That character was just a no brainer all the way.

08 - Kes (Star Trek Voyager)

Wait, isn't that the same role Ezri Dax played?

Ezri Dax was almost worse than Jadzia, and Kes was basically the same. The oh so cute oh so innocent I'm oh so not qualified for this kind of person. I can't stand those in real life, and I can't stand them in fiction either. Many people whine about sexism, that poor Kes was written out of the show for the sake of 7 of 9 aka more boobs better ratings. But I was very very thankful. Even if they had replaced her with a talking Targ, I had been very thankful.

07 - Sam Carter (SG1)

And why would I need a team?

Sam Carter is the prototype of a canon Mary Sue. She knows everything, she can kick everyone's ass and she is of a dazzling beauty. Well, I personally think Vala looked lightyears better, but what do I know, right? I know Carter annoyed me enough to never really get into SG1. Too bad, I hear its a real good show.

06 - Ezri Dax (Star Trek Deep Space Nine)

Me? No, I'm not qualified!

It may come as a surprise, but yes, Ezri Dax annoyed the hell outta me. Even a little more than Kes, as Ezri didn't only insist on 'not being qualified for (whatever)' but also on 'not being Jadzia'.

05 - Tasha Yar (Star Trek The Next Generation)

John Rambo (highschool photo)

It wasn't so much Tasha self. It was the people around her acting like she was a top model when she was clearly not. When I first saw her I thought it's a guy. TNG had Dr. Beverly Crusher, the classic 'hot redhead'. TNG had Deanna Troi, the classic 'exotic beauty'. But who did every alien regent find incredibly irresistable? Tasha 'Rambo' Yar.I thank you, black mud alien. I do thank you. A lot.

04 - Kira Nerys (Star Trek Deep Space Nine)

I'm always right, I endured the occupation!

Wait, isn't that Ro Laren? No, it's just a generic character that is just like her, with almost the same background story, and even the same haircut in season 7! And a tad more annoying, more one-dimensional, less original. Kira really really pissed me off a lot, not just because I liked Ro and Kira felt like a cheap copy. Her answer to everything: I'm Bajoran, so I'm right. Actually, the only Bajorans I kinda like are Leeta (as un-bajoran as it can get with a ripplenose) and Ro (when the story wasn't stale). Kira Nerys made me hate an entire species. May the prophets guide you into the next black hole.

03 - Deanna Troi (Star Trek The Next Generation)

I sense great annoyance! No, wait, it's just me.

What would a 'most annoying female scifi characters' list be without her? She had it all - extremly silly outfits that looked like pajamas, empathy and an emotional touch that compares to a bulldozer. The one episode where I liked her was when she was turned into a Romulan. And that says something.

02 - Jadzia Dax (Star Trek Deep Space Nine)

Actually, no. You're wrong, and (insert unfunny remark).

If Sam Carter is the Mary Sue prototype, Jadzia Dax is the finished product. She knows everything, and she knows it better. She can solve any problem, fix any console, kick everyone's ass with one hand and a blindfold on, and the entire crew wants her. Almost the entire crew gets her, too. A perfect example how the lack of a real weakness can ruin a potentially interesting character.

01 - Delenn (Babylon 5)

Two expressions and out.

When she grew hair, she gave all facial expressions for it. From the moment she left her cocoon, everything was erased. There was only 'surprised' and 'concerned' left, and I don't have to mention these two look quite similar. Babylon 5 is the one show with real good female characters; women I liked at first sight. Ivanova, Na'Toth, Talia Winters. They all left sooner or later. Just Delenn stayed and tortured me with pesudo-philosophical babble.

You fail at roleplay forever

2010-04-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

There is nothing wrong with humor in roleplaying. Really, absolutely nothing. And also really everything from another point of view. There is a narrow path between 'good RP humor' and 'RP humor fail' and I see that every day in Star Trek Online.
There is a lot humor in this universe, and that makes a lot options to be funny without crossing the line to stupidity. But not only plain stupidity leads to fail at roleplay forever.

Canon Fail
A real problem are people that have no damn idea about Star Trek. For example, I see starships like the USS Hellstriker, USS Total Warfare, USS Bloodknight and USS Iron Fist on a daily basis. While I don't find any of these names funny, original or good, they have one big problem. Starfleet, in times of war or not, does not name ships like that. Of course, the ultra canon nazis that recite naming regulations all day (and usually all fly the USS Aurora) are equally annoying, but at least I agree that some names are simply out of line. Its not creative, its not original, but please, before you promote yourself to commanding officer of the USS Genocide... just name your ship after your hometown. Unless it is the USS Herten-Westerholt. Then go with the country.

Humor Fail
Mostly notable in the Klingon faction. While I understand that not everyone speaks perfect Klingon, I also think people could just use an online translator and show good will. Or make up a word that sounds Klingon. Or play one of the other available species and use their language references. It's all better than failing at humor by flying the IKS Q'ock, IKS Q'umVast or IKS D'Cups. The irony is - statistics show that average Klingon players are older than average Fed players, and should, statistically, be beyond the age of 13, when these names may actually be funny. But then, 84 % of all statistics are made up. And it's not that the Fed players are really behind when it comes to names that make pimpled teenage boys giggle in their basement rooms. It has just been a while that I met Rear Admiral Pamela Anderson, commanding the USS Inner Thighs.

Fandom Fail
This is probably the most annoying fail of all. USS Death Star, USS Sailor Moon, USS Jedi Knight... You get the idea. While I, on the other hand, still don't get why people have to play a Star Trek game if they don't like Star Trek. I admit I have a Narn bridge officer, and yes, I did create her after Na'Toth from Babylon 5. But she isn't my captain, she doesn't fly the IKS White Star and she stays modestly in the background. Unlike the USS Galactica.

The Original Fail
Extremly popular. Am I not out to explore worlds no-one has seen, meet species no-one has met (according to the box)? Then why do I run into James T. Kirk wherever I go? And not just him, also his friends Jim T. Kirk, James Kirk, J.T. Kirk and Jim Kirk. And their buddies Will Riker, William T. Riker, Will T. Riker and William Riker. Along with their crew of Pavel Chakov, Dr. McCay and Lt. Uhara. Its not like I hadn't my hands full with the legions of Worfs, Martoks, Gowrons and B'Ellanas around Quo'Nos. Is it really that hard to come up with a simple name?

Spelling Fail
Goes hand in hand with all of above. Something inside of me simply wants to open fire on a fellow Klingon named Warf. Just like I'd throw Miles Edward O'Brian out of the next airlock whenever I'd see a chance. It even gets worse with ship names that are common words. Or should be. The USS Indipendense anyone? USS Comomwelth? Just so you know... Everyone can see you fly around in those atrocities. Everyone sees how you were unable to look up a single word in a dictionary.

So where is the good roleplay humor? Where are the original names and characters? Well, guess I'll have to keep my eyes open when I rubberband into the next star cluster.

The 667 things I hate most

2010-04-10T01:54:00.000-07:00

Or: The topics I rant about in this blog. There are quite some things that annoy the hell outta me and I will probably need a list to work down.

Fan Fiction
Fan Fiction is the kind of internet literature that usually begins with 'DISCLAIMER!!! The characters don't belong to me, I just borrow them to play around! NO commercial interest, just for entertainment! xoxoxo". And usually it doesn't get much better.
I am a fan fiction writer, but not a fan fiction reader. The vast majority is simply bad. Not just a bit. Not just bad spelling or grammar. Not just fandoms I give a damn about. Not just absurd ideas. No. All of it at once. I am the last of a dying kind - a fan who really just wants to keep the spirit of a favourite fandom alive, without any interest to let every single character have sex with inanimate objects, each other or the Mary Sue of the moment.

The wonderous realm of TV
Always a passion, never a fashion. I spend 65 % of my waking time with watching TV. Technically, its more DVDs. While I have a couple of all time favourite series and movies, I'm always willing to try out something new. And that oftenly leads into the wastelands of bad entertainment, good ideas gone wrong and misunderstandings of other kinds.

People
People suck. Well, most of them do. I don't blame them. Its not entirely their fault that they are dumb as doorknobs. I, on the other hand, am not better. I'm the devil's advocate, the collaborateur, the last stand of sanity. And a megalomaniac par excellence. Stupidity comes in all sizes and disguises and it would be a waste to not rant about that.

Blogging

2010-04-10T01:14:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what to write in this first entry of my first blog.

That is because I think blogs are pretty useless and never read any. It is not that people haven't tried to make me read various blogs of various people. "Oh my god, you have to read the blog of [insert celeb here]! There are news about..." - "No, there are not. I already read that last week on imdb." "You should know I already saw that movie. Didn't you read my blog?" - "You have a blog? Why?!" That's how it usually goes. I see no need to read blogs. Hence I don't see a reason why people write them in the first place. If I want to know what my favourite actor is working on... Allmighty imdb.com will tell me. If I want to know if a friend already saw a movie, I just ask. Somehow it seems easier than searching if said friend has a blog and made an entry about the movie if I can simply send a mail, text message or call.

Maybe I'm too old school to understand the blog mentality.

I already didn't get the MySpace mentality, so it would only be logical. For years, I haven't found a single person that could tell me what MySpace and all its unholy spawns are good for. At least no-one named a function that really made things easier. One day, my brother tried to explain it. He said he was on the way home from a concert, and in the train, he met a guy he never met before. He had no idea who this person was. A complete stranger. However, this stranger seemed to know him and started a conversation like they were friends, without giving any hints where they had met before. He dropped his own name, and later at home, my brother searched that name on MySpace, found the guy and added him as a friend. Not that this find gave any hints where they really met. No, nothing. "If I ever meet him again, I will know that I know him from MySpace and not be so confused", my brother said. Like it would really solve the mystery. Like it would really make his life easier.

I don't get MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and all these 'social networking' stuff. Not at all. I tried. I made a MySpace account because a friend insisted it was easier than using e-mails. I don't see how it is easier to go to MySpace instead of opening my mail client, log in because the silly page never saves my password and username, no matter how many times I insist 'remember me', dig through tons of spam a la 'add me we are a newcomer band' and then reply to a message saying 'What are you doing?' with 'Not much. You?'

Blogs are barely more useful than that. Which brings me to the reason why I started this blog. I have no other place to rant about various things. I have many places to rant about various things, and that is already too difficult for the lazy ass I am. I could rant about fan fiction on the fan fiction forum. I could rant about gaming on the games forum. I could rant about movies on movie forum. And so on. This blog is simply a vortex of rants, and saves me the time to go to different forums to freak about different topics. Not that I expect anyone to read it. I sure wouldn't.