From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: The Grudge 2 (2006)

Zombos Says: Fair

The vengeful ghost in The Grudge 2 is a yūrei--definitely. Telltale signs are the long black hair that hangs disheveled, and the dangling; you know, the twisting, floating--sort of lopsided walk--most J-Horror apparitions do when staring you down, or just before they ring your neck into a pretzel. And those wide-eyed, gray-skinned ghosts definitely haunt a particular place. No, wait a minute. They do tend to leave the house a lot, even in The Grudge, and in this sequel they've hopped all the way over to Chicago. So they are now haunting two places at once. There's nothing about yūrei haunting two places at once. Damn. And what's with that little gray boy that meows like a cat, and the cat that doesn't meow at all?

The Grudge 2 is a bit confusing at first. Director Takashi Shimizu weaves his continuing tale of blind rage and death between three plotlines: three school girls in Japan dumb enough to go into that house; Aubrey Davis (Amber Tamblyn) traveling to Japan to find out why her sister (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is accused of murder and arson; and a romantic relationship in Chicago that escalates into darkness, witnessed by a frightened young boy.

The opening breakfast scene jars you to attention, but before you can say "We should have gone to IHOP," we cut to Japan and three school girls--one Japanese, two American, and all three heading for a major bad hair day. The tall, not-so-hip Allison tags along as they enter the haunted house where it all started. On a dare, she enters the closet. That infamous closet. Shimizu does a good job of building this claustrophobic scene to it's expected climax with solid scares. Closets can be very scary, whether you are hiding in them or hoping nothing pops out of them. And the way you can never find things in closets--yes, they're evil, pure and simple.

But this early scene is the only true scare in the entire film. While there are shock-cuts galore, Shimizu dotes on showing us the deadly duo again and again, as they appear under sheets, in windows, in hallways, on desk tops, and in sweatshirts (you will understand that when you see it). The tableaus are visually clever, but swing more toward the manga-style of visual cleverness making it all humorous; and lose their scariness and suspense by doing so. Instead of sustained tension from the unseen, Shimizu has created Hollywoodized slasher-yūrei monsters that rack up the body count in ever clever but not very scary ways. Instead of tight glimpses of that stark, wide-eyed pasty face of evil--covered by severe split ends of hair--we see lingering shots of it appearing out of photographs and mirrors.

This is not to say Shimizu has done a bad job: he's just Americanized J-Horror to a stage where The Grudge has become a franchise. What was once iconic J-Horror imagery has now been replaced with your typical American horror movie modus operandi--and would you like fries with that?

A journalist researching the murders since the first occurrence joins Aubrey Davis in searching for answers to the mysterious deaths. Finding a journal written by an eight year old girl in the closet, he brings it to a friend who studies Japanese folklore. The journal explains some things, perhaps including why the original evil or rage came into existence, but before Davis and the journalist can head out to see the person who may be responsible for the evil, the yūrei pay a visit in a well-staged, but to be expected, scene involving photographs, photo developing trays, and really bad over-exposure on a negative.

As Aubrey pursues the answers to this mystery, our three daring school girls are not faring so well. The yūrei are working overtime to make sure no one who visits their humble abode goes without a thank you from hell. And Jake, the young frightened boy in Chicago, is also experiencing new tenant issues--only these tenants don't walk up the stairs, and they make a hell of a lot of noise, too. The neighbors next door, the Flemings, also have a hooded guest who creeps him out. Strange noises and pounding from their apartment eventually force him to find out who the hooded person is, and why dad is going bonkers.

The score is actually quite good, creating more of an ominous mood than most of the movie. The weird gurgling, clicking sound made by the broken-neck yūrei apparition is also used very well here. It provides more chills than most of the closeups. The acting is topnotch, too. But the continual cutting back and forth between the separate plotlines is confusing, and has a dulling effect on what should be mounting tensions leading to a climax.

And what a disappointing climax. As one character notes, "there can be no end to what has started." I would modify this to "there can be no end to a cash-cow franchise in Hollywood, so what you see is what you get until The Grudge 3. And don't expect much there, either if we can strudel* the story along to The Grudge 4."

*strudel: the fine Hollywood art of stretching a concept for all its worth, using as little 'filling' as possible to keep you coming back for more.

Movie Review: Santa Claws (1996) Don't Watch Out For This One

Zombos Says: Are You Kidding Me?

Disclaimer: Zombos' Closet cannot be held libel for the loss of precious holiday time or mirth should any reader decide to ignore the numerous warning signs in this review and purchase, open, and view Santa Claws alone and/or sober. By reading this review, said reader releases Zombos' Closet and its heirs, in perpetuity, from fault, risk, and all future liability or damage that may occur from such viewing.

 

"How long has he been like this?" I asked.

"For the past half-hour," Glenor Glenda said.

"You should have called me sooner?" I felt Zombos' faint pulse.

"He said he wanted to watch something different," said Glenor. "I didn't know."

"How can you not know?" I held up the offending DVD, Santa Claws, while admonishing her.

"But Paul Hollstenwall said Zombos asked for it specifically—"

"Paul! So he's the one to blame for this. The last time he was here he wasted our time with Neon Maniacs. I can't believe he'd stooped this low. The man is incorrigible; a menace to decent horror fans everywhere."

"I told Paul he shouldn't. I told Zombos he should have gone to you first," Glenor said with tears in her eyes. "But Zombos said it didn't matter, that he wanted something new, something totally different to watch. He said he was too old to play it safe anymore. He's been that way ever since his birthday."

"Well, the damage is done. I hope you've learned your lesson," I said, lifting a brandy snifter to Zombos' lips. The color was gone from his cheeks. "At least with Paul Naschy movies I have a chance, but this? I'm not sure how to bring him back to sanity."

Zombos was grayer than usual and his breathing was short and shallow.

"What was that?" I asked. I leaned closer. Zombos' lips had moved, and a faint whisper caught my ear. "Say again?"

"Nudie-cutie," he managed to whisper. "I just...wanted...to see...nudie-cuties. My god, it was beyond horrible." He took the brandy snifter from me and held it in his trembling hands.

"Nudie cu—" Glenor started to say.

"That will be all, Glenor," I said, interrupting her. "I can take it from here. Thanks!"

She left the room. Zombos slowly recovered in-between sips of brandy.

 

Nudie-cuties, scream queens, bodacious tatas—none of this can save Santa Claws. It’s a movie not to see alone or sober. It stands as the perfect equivalent to bituminous coal: sufficient punishment for any horror fan on your Naughty Horror Fan holiday list. Sleazy synthesized background music, ear-numbing dialog delivered through cereal box acting, and sloppy camerawork all bump and grind together, along with the T and A, in this one shoestring-budgeted movie.

The cinema-train wrecks in the first five minutes when dubious horror overwhelms the night before Christmas cheer, and another young soul is damned and primed for future killing. Director John A. Russo (yes, that guy of Night of the Living Dead fame) mires blue-tinted, mismatched close-ups with a wobbly pan to find little Wayne (Christopher Boyle) sleeping on the couch in the living room. In the bedroom, his mom is frolicking with a naughty man. The man wants to open his present early, but she's afraid Wayne will wake up. He tells her he spiked Wayne's hot chocolate with two sleeping pills to knock him out. She smiles and quickly displays her ample stocking-stuffers. Wayne, who apparently dislikes hot chocolate, wakes up and interrupts their sleigh ride. The boy is so upset—though you can’t tell by his acting—easily pulls a loaded gun from a dresser drawer. They plead with him using dialog so bad I also wanted Wayne to shoot them.

He does, they scream, and the years and holidays fly by.

Now free from prison, grown-up Wayne (Grant Cramer) is working publicly as a teacher's aide and acting privately as a weirdo. When he receives his very own Raven Quinn (Debbie Rochon) life-size—but armless—mannequin from Scream Queen Magazine (a dubious promotional tie-in to be sure), he starts getting all dreamy-eyed as he admires its certificate of authenticity. Now there's a true collector: I would have been happy with the 12-inch doll.

The mannequin looks nothing like Debbie Rochon, the real-life scream queen who plays the fictional Raven Quinn scream queen. Rochon has arms, killer legs, and a beautiful smile. Apparently the props department did not have enough money for doing a life mold of her, so they used a commercial mannequin's torso instead, cutting off its arms and adding a black wig. One clever and creepy touch—actually the only clever and creepy touch—has Wayne dropping packing peanuts over the mannequin's head as they dance. This is as artistic as it gets.

While Wayne admires and listens to his mannequin, the real Raven Quinn picks up her two children from her in-laws—her gallivanting husband's mother and sister—who chide Quinn on her chosen profession. We learn Wayne lives next door to Quinn and acts like an uncle to her kids. As the kids run off to play, she and Wayne spend the next three hours sitting on the sofa—wait, I’m wrong, it only seems like three hours—proving why movie-making is a visual medium by boring us to death with their inactivity and mindless chit-chat.

For a psycho-teacher's-aide-horror-memorabilia-collector (no insult intended to any teacher aides who are horror memorabilia collectors), who has the ‘real’ object of his obsession this close, not much heat or psychosis is shown. When Quinn comes on to him, he still doesn't do anything. No, wait, he does: he goes back to express his love to the armless mannequin.

Then he decides to start killing people.

Just like that.

He goes to Scream Studios and kills a nudie-cutie, but not before she gyrates and completes her important shower scene acting moment; then he goes after the producer, who shoots Wayne at point-blank range. This being a no-budget movie, the blanks do no harm.

Scratch one producer.

Now let me reveal the spoiler. Are you ready?

To kill his victims, Wayne uses a prop from one of Quinn's horror movies on gardening. I think it the documentary called Fertilizer of the Damned, or Weed Be Gone to Hell, maybe. Anyway, the gardening tool is a puny three-pronged weed-puller. We never actually see Wayne use it. He waves it around, and then there are a few drops of blood followed by a body slumped on the ground.

Let’s move on.

Wayne complains to his stoic mannequin how everyone needs to pay. It’s not clear for what, but he’s certain everyone needs to pay. Meanwhile Quinn tries to get back with her husband, but he’s bedding down with another nudie-cutie, providing ample opportunity for more T and A. With no one noticing the producer is missing, more nudie close-ups fill screen time while "Uncle" Wayne drugs Quinn's two little girls' hot chocolates and goes shopping for a Santa Claus suit. Right! That’s the tie in to the movie title. It’s the only tie-in.

More nudie-cutie shower scenes ensue with another potential victim; she takes her shower, she answers the phone, she chats for a moment or two, then she goes back to take a bath.

But didn't she just take a shower? Who is she anyway?

We don’t find out.It’s just another randy, randomly inserted shower/bath scene with a well-endowed randomly inserted naked woman.

Wayne, dressed as Santa, shows up and kills her. I don’t know why and you wouldn’t, either. He just shows up and kills her. This is the only time he wears the red Santa Claus suit. He spray paints the suit black. Another inexplicable action left unexplained, but I thank god little kids everywhere are spared having a red-suited Santa slaying around without his sleigh.

In a flurry of scenes, it’s Quinn's turn to start flashing her T and A—but we cut back to Wayne doing?—Nothing, really, so we quickly cut to Quinn's errant husband returning home to find the kids knocked out on the sofa——And now we're back with Quinn being nicely naughty with a cuddly stuffed toy—No! Back to the house and a frantic call to the in-laws—Yes! Back to Quinn strutting her assets for the camera; she takes her top off and then—No! We’re back to her husband running over to crazy Wayne's house—Yes! Back to Quinn playing with her two big,unwrapped, Christmas presents.

So much for building tension (the dramatic kind I mean) as it’s killed during this inane scene and theme shifting. But like they say in those annoyingly loud infomercials, “Wait, there’s more!”

Black-suited Santa Wayne attacks Quinn's husband, then goes after her. In one last breathtaking struggle—I was excited the movie was almost over—Wayne and Quinn's husband go hand to hand (more like hand in hand the way the action was staged).Quinn grabs the weeder and plunges it into Wayne.

Finally, The End.

Bring Christmas cheer by leaving this one on the shelf.

Give a tie instead.

Movie Review: The Burrowers (2008) Not Deep Enough

Zombos Says: Fair

It came to this; a setting sun lingering at the warm edge of approaching night, watched from three rocking chairs indecisively teetering back and forth on their compass tips, saddled by three bored and restless riders of the stiff-slatted pines.

In between a dot and a dash rode Zombos, Lawn Gisland, and me, to nowhere in particular as we traded silences and hiccups on the terrace. The footfalls of summer could be heard bounding up the steps, bringing with them the sizzle of barbecues, giggly splashes from pools, and the monotonous drone of air conditioners humming through hot, molasses-sticky, nights where forgotten candy bars melted in jean pockets, mosquitoes danced to the crackling of ice cubes in sweaty glasses of lemonade and iced tea and soda, and texting fingers Keystone Copped their slippery grasp on hot cell phones.

"I am not looking forward to estivating by the seashore or anywhere near a barbecue," said Zombos, absently swirling the iced tea around in his glass.

"Mind chewing on that a bit more for me?" asked Lawn Gisland, lazily swatting a fly off the pitiado floral rose on his right boot. He yawned larger than a barn door opens and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Former movie cowboy and now traveling circus rodeo star, he was never one for estivating in all his long ranging years.

"Pass the summer," explained Zombos. "Estivate means to pass the summer."

We stared off into the waters of Long Island Sound as it grew dark. Zimba brought us another round of iced tea. Lawn took the half-lemon, cut just for him, and squeezed it between his massive fingers. We often joked that if he wanted so much lemon in his iced tea he should be drinking lemonade.

"Oh, I almost forgot, this came today," said Zimba. She held up The Burrowers DVD.

I jumped up faster than Zombos. "Last one in is a really bad egg!" I said, snatching the DVD. Zombos and Lawn quickly followed me as we hurried to watch this Western horror tale.

 

Lurking monsters spoil the tranquil Western Plains in J.T. Petty's The Burrowers; an almost refreshing mix of creature-feature, saddle-sores, and the American Old West. I say almost because, while Petty mines the bitter social climate between Indian and settler after the Trail of Tears and the demise of the bison—a once plentiful food source for the Indians—he doesn’t dig deep enough into his characters or embellish their actions to make this a definitive terror on the range Wild West story.

Homesteaders are massacred during the night. A search party is quickly formed to go after the Indians who everyone assumes butchered the men and kidnapped the womenfolk. While you may be tempted to draw comparisons to John Ford's The Searchers, that would be a bad trail to follow. Ford composed an emotionally-charged journey that eventually forces one man to confront his prejudicial demons, and shot it against sumptuous vistas of sky and land where the deer and the antelope play. While Petty uses his budget-lens quite well to show the desolation across vast distances and makes his assembled posse just as calloused with similar prejudices, its riders and their intentions pale in comparison. No one worth a tinker's damn stands out from the tumbling tumbleweed to take the bull by the horns or, in this case, the ugly as a mud fence Burrowers by their withers through his shallow direction.

Clancy Brown's tall and sure character, John Clay, is not given enough dialog or motivation to sink his spurs into. The brash relationship between the slow moving cavalry, wanting to treat every Indian as hostile and hang them high, the lovelorn Coffey (Karl Geary) wanting to move with more urgency to get his kidnapped fiancé back, and Clay's impatience with the cavalry's youthful commander never heats to branding iron hot in this story. And as soon as the riding gets rough, the Indian-hunting cavalry and the more determined group of rescuers, led by Clay, go their separate ways after a brief confrontation, splitting the tension, but not intensifying it. Also left behind is any hope of recalcitrance, growth in characters, or mighty clashes of egos to move this period piece beyond the more contemporary getting picked off, one by one, formula.

Petty makes the horror palpable through brief glimpses of the hungry quadrupeds skulking in the bushes, waiting for the cowpokes to fall asleep. The way in which the Burrowers paralyze their victims, bury them, still conscious, in shallow graves to ‘season the meat’—you will know what I mean when you watch the movie—and then chow down after a few days wait is gruesome. But he never moves beyond the lazy horror movie tempo of stalking and dying. If you have watched a few contemporary horror movies, you know how often it always seems to boil down to one frenetic encounter after another, leading to one victim after another being killed, with emphasis on how creatively or gorily that kill is done. For Clay and his search party, you can break it all down to when an attack will take place—at night—and who will be next; place your bets on the annoying guy who can’t shoot straight. This approach fills the running time; suspense and chills don’t, even when the rescuers find their bullets aren’t effective in holding the Burrowers at bay.

In-between encounters, the cowboys learn a little more about the Burrowers, who mysteriously show up every twenty years, chow down hardy, and then disappear until the next time. When Clay and his party hear that another tribe of Indians knows how to fight these mysterious Burrowers, they go looking for members of that tribe to help them. The method that tribe uses, however, is not quite what the rescuers had in mind, which leads to the only nail-biting showdown with the Burrowers. If only the rest of the movie could have shown more of this.

At one point I hoped the cavalry would show up with a Gatling gun; but maybe the budget squelched such ideas.

After the initial attack on the homestead in the opening minutes, the pace becomes leisurely with little verve to distinguish the proceedings from the usual horror movie situation. When a young survivor from another attack is dug up, she's quickly packed up and sent away with Dobie (Galen Hutchinson), a young man whose mom sent him along with the search party hoping it would make a real man out of him. Not much happens between the paralyzed girl, who can only wiggle her toe against her boot, and Dobie after he is sent back with her, hoping to find a doctor who can help; except for an encounter with the Burrowers that ends on the expected down note.

Eventually you start to wonder how many people are buried in shallow graves lying a few feet away from the riders as they make their way along the trail. At one point, a horse's hoof breaks through the ground—and something more—but Petty keeps his riders moving unawares. The beautiful views of the Plains take on an ominous tone after this, especially when you realize the Burrowers bury their living victims close to where the attack takes place.

The Burrowers fails to use, play with, or dance around the wealth of tropes, clichés, and thematic conventions most of us are familiar with after watching Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Unforgiven, Dances With Wolves, and many other Western shows and movies.

While not exactly a hanging offense, it would have given the story more true grit.

Movie Review: Tokyo Gore Police (2008) What the Hell?

Zombos Says: WTF? 

I grabbed Glenor Glenda's elbow as her foot slipped on the ice water puddling across the Mongolian teak wood floor of Zombos' study. She composed herself, slid the steaming hot mug of Satan's Balls back to the center of her serving tray, and properly presented Chef Machiavelli's frothy and zesty spiced rum-cocoa concoction—splashed with peach-ginger--to our shivering and quite unexpected guest. Our housekeeper waited expectantly as he took a sip and neatified her uniform with much suspicious intent.

"May I get you a blanket...Mister...? Glenor asked.

"Lucifer. Oh, hell, let's not stand on formality, just call me Luc, okay? You're a darling, but I doubt a blanket would help."

Lucifer's long red tail waved excitedly as he sipped his drink.

"By Tartarus! This drink is wicked bad! And you say your Chef doesn't use any black arts? Amazing! My three-eyed cook couldn't find her way round a souffle, even with her two heads. Damn creature burns everything. Ah, this sinful beverage is heating up my rump. In spite of all the fur in my nether region I was going numb down there, you know."

He winked at our usually flirtatious housekeeper. Glenor giggled.

I cleared my throat. She stopped giggling.

"Oh, jealous are we? You needn't be." He winked at me and flicked his tongue in a devilish manner. Glenor clapped her hand to her mouth stifling another giggle. My withering glance at her helped keep it at bay.

I was desperate. "Zombos! Any luck?"

Zombos was standing behind his Carlton House desk, holding the phone in one hand and a thick legal document in the other. Every now and then a few more sheets of paper slipped from the document and fluttered to the floor. He shrugged. "Sosumi is looking into it. He does not know how this could have happened."

Sosumi 'Jimmy' Jango was Zombos' crackerjack estate lawyer.

Lucifer finished his drink and smacked his lips. I motioned to Glenor to bring another one for our frisky guest. It looked like evening vespers would be well over by the time Zombos found the document we needed.

"What is that Jimmy?" said Zombos into the phone. "It is in Attachment 66? Okay. Okay, I will look for it." Zombos hung up the phone. "He is almost here. He said to look for—"

"Attachment 66, yes, I heard," I said.

"Ouch! Oh, you devil!" gasped Glenor with delight.

I looked at Glenor.

"He pinched me," she said giggling as she hastily left the room.

I looked at Lucifer; he shrugged, smiled, and winked again. I looked back at Zombos imploringly. "Let's find that attachment pronto, shall we? Did you check the Wooten? You tend to bury things in there pretty well."

"Of course!" Zombos turned around and quickly opened the doors of his Wooten desk. The two places Zombos relies on to hide, store, or forget things are his closet and his cherished Wooten desk. Since the Wooten desk is smaller than his closet, I figured it would be easier to search first.

"Well, I'll be," said Zombos.

"You found Attachment 66?" I asked.

"What? Oh that, no. I found my set of Brasher Doubloons. I was wondering what happened to them.”

"Great, I'll let Philip Marlowe know. What about the legal document?" My spirits were sinking fast.

"No, I do not see--wait a minute."

"Yes?"

"I found it!" Zombos said triumphantly.

"Thank god," I sighed. Lucifer cleared his throat. "Sorry," I said, shooting a glance his way.

When I looked back to Zombos he was doing the walk the dog move with his gold-trimmed Duncan YoYo. That’s what he had found. I sighed again. There but for the grace of God I thought. Lucifer cleared his throat more loudly and gave me a smoldering stare.

"We really need that legal document...now!"

"Oh, yes, yes. Let me see." He put the YoYo back and opened another draw. "Here it is." He held up Attachment 66. "Let me see, now. Jimmy said to check the waiver at the bottom of page 13. Hmm...hmm...not good. Here, you better read it."

I walked over to Zombos and he handed the document to me. I mentally translated the waiver's legalese as I read it. Hidden in all the mumbo-jumbo was the stipulation that if the New York Times ever printed a movie review that was favorable toward a movie that I, acting as Zombos' agent, reviewed negatively, hell would most certainly freeze over. I glanced over at Lucifer sitting uncomfortably on the large block of ice. So that’s why both of them suddenly popped up around midnight.

"But this is impossible," I said. The New York Times has never given a favorable review to any horror movie I disliked. It's always the opposite. They never give favorable reviews to horror movies I like, either."

Glenor Glenda ushered an excited Sosumi Jango into the room. He furiously waved a copy of the New York Times.

"I found it!" he declared. "It's Jeannette Catsoulis's review of Tokyo Gore Police." He unfolded the paper and read the review out loud. “Propelled by geysers of blood and tidal waves of neuroses, Tokyo Gore Police plumbs wounds both cultural and physical to deliver splatterific social satire."

I was dumbfounded. Had she seen the same movie I had?

"Ouch! He pinched me," said Jimmy, pointing at Lucifer.

"What?" shrugged Lucifer. "I can't help it. I like lawyers."

"It just doesn't make any sense. This movie is simply not worth all this bother," I was bewildered.

"Let me see your review for the movie," suggested Jimmy, rubbing his behind as he stepped to a safer distance. "I can't give you any reasonable council until I see it."

Lucifer laughed. "I've not had this much nuisance since Daniel Webster stirred up a dickens' worth of trouble and kicked me out of New Hampshire. Thank the fallen there are forty-nine more states, I can tell you that. And the lord knows I love congress. Wouldn’t be any fun without them."

“Hold that thought,” I said and ran up to my attic office to retrieve my laptop. Still huffing and puffing after running back down, I showed Jimmy my review. As he read it out loud, Lucifer was enjoying another mug of warm comfort while Glenor made sure to stay within pinching distance. The woman is incorrigible.

 Here’s what Jimmy read:

 

“Within the first half-hour of watching Tokyo Gore Police I realized it was going to be a transgressive tour through the cineburbia of outrageous gore and absurd social commentary, far away from movie Main Street. Surprisingly, it works for about the first half-hour, but begins to take questionable—albeit scenic—detours through RoboCop-styled commercials lampooning Japanese consumerism, Japunk-technorumble filled with bed wetting-inducing Rob Bottin-styled monstrosities comprised of squishy-gooey latex body parts glistening with stringy mucus highlights; and hacked limbs spouting endless geysers of blood saturating everything, including the camera lens. A chewed limp penis, one monstrous erect penis, chip and dip ankle drilling, a golden showering chair with vagina, and pretty women turned into grotesque objects of perverse desire, meld non-stop into arthouse incoherence. This Pachinko parlor's worth of bright colors and frenzy left me wondering when exactly director Yoshihiro Nishimura let the special effects department direct his movie.”

 

Jimmy stopped reading and looked at me. "What's this mean in English?"

"Just read on," I said. He continued:

 

“The Scooby-Doo-simple story centers on Ruka (Eihi Shiina), a grown up, silent, and self-mutilating daughter traumatized after she sees her police officer father assassinated. She now works for the police as a special agent. She has issues. Ruka repeatedly slices into her wrists with a razor before going after a cannibalistic Engineer who is dining on his latest victim like a heaping serving of human sushi. Engineers are serial-killing criminals who can morph their wounds into weapons. Using a bazooka, Ruka blasts herself into action as her fellow officers, questionable members of the privatized Tokyo Police Force, are cut to pieces by the Engineer's newly acquired chainsaw appendage. These opening moments are fun to watch because everything is so seriously over the top and Ruka wields a mean cleavage—with her Samurai sword.

“After Ruka does some ice-sculpting with the Engineer's own chainsaw—using him instead of ice—the remains are brought back to the dirty and dreary police morgue. The hunchbacked, one-eyed coroner with a spring in his step and clothing like one of Hostel's housekeeping staff”—

 

"I love Hostel," said Lucifer. "I almost died laughing it was so funny."

 

—“searches for and finds the key-shaped growth found in every Engineer, which gives them their ability to mold tissue into lethal weapons. Someone known as the Key Man is responsible for mutating people into maniacal killing machines.

“That is as much story as you will get jammed between the dolled-up, blond-haired police dispatcher with her bubble-gum explanations and lively commercials extolling stylish self-mutilating box cutters, in assorted colors, and remote torture family fun for society's deviants. Prolonged blood-fountain fanboy-favorite gore shocks provide the sticky action and, apparently, the main appeal this movie has for many reviewers and horror fans.

“The piece de resistance is the fetish club an off-duty police officer visits. It defies conventional or even tasteful description (not that many real fetish clubs could be described conventionally or tastefully). Women, grotesquely mutilated, are displayed as sexual objects to satisfy the appetites of the club's vinyl-clad patrons. The officer loses his head over one woman (guess which head, I dare you), but winds up with a much bigger one. Under the control of the Key Man, he returns to the precinct to show it off to his fellow officers with lethally envious results.”

 

Jimmy stopped reading. "Does this get any better?" he asked.

"No, the movie doesn't," I said.

"I meant your review."

"Just keep reading," I said.

 

“Ruka eventually confronts the Key Man, who tells her the truth about her father's murder, and reveals those responsible. As she goes after her father's killers, the Tokyo Police Force goes crazy and begins attacking citizens.

“Not sure why. Not sure the director knew why, either.

“One person is drawn and quartered while others are shot, stabbed, hacked, and (insert your own favorite gore gag or body disassembly gimmick here).

“With little said and much mayhem done, Tokyo Gore Police will undoubtedly become a favored cult classic for some and a Pepto-Bizmol moment for others mostly due to its zeal for incomprehensible distastefulness.”

 

Jimmy closed the laptop's cover, tapping it again and again while he weighed his thoughts, then stopped. "I got nothing."

I slumped into the Regency sofa. Zombos practiced his Double Gerbil move on his Duncan YoYo, and Glenor Glenda busied herself by doing nothing.

"Wait, I have it!" announced Jimmy after a few moments reviewing the documents on Zombos’ desk. "It's here on page 777, under Rider to Attachment 66, 'herein to be known as Clause 3, otherwise referred to as the Two-Thirds Clause. If both parties agree to unbinding arbitration, dissolution of prior binding agreements, notwithstanding mutually agreed upon settlements of pre-existing or ongoing issues, will supersede, preclude, and nullify Attachment 66. Whereby the second party, hereafter referred to as Lucifer (also known as, but not solely restricted to, Mephistopheles, Asmodai, Beelzebub, Satan, Belial, Abbadon, and Mr. Scratch)—' "

"That's my favorite," Lucifer interrupted. "Has a nice inviting and unassuming ring to it, doesn't it?"

" 'Mr. Scratch,' " continued Jimmy, " 'and the first party, hereafter known as Godfrey Daniel Zombos and his dutifully bound executor, Iloz Mordecai Zoc, representing his living and or dead or quantum situated estate, including but not limited to chattel, codicils, bequests and residues and residuals wherever presumptive and inclusive, may reach mutually satisfactory resolution by invoking the Two-Thirds Clause.' "

Jimmy read the rest in silence, then said "All right, then. Now we just need to find out what this clause is." He looked through the papers in his hands. Not finding it, he turned to the papers scattered on and around Zombos' desk. Soon he was on his hands and knees examining each sheet on the floor and under the desk.

"Damn your souls to Hades with all this nonsense,” rumbled Lucifer. “It's like waiting for a miracle. Enough of this! Time for the Four Horsemen!"

Lucifer reached into his Loculus.

Glenor Glenda dropped her serving tray and turned pale. I felt my heart suddenly pound against my chest. Jimmy banged his head against the desk in his haste to stand, absently crumpling sheets of paper in his fists as he stared at Lucifer in desperation. Zombos continued to practice his Buddha's Revenge with his YoYo, oblivious to the impending doom about to embrace us all.

He almost had it, though.

"Don't do it!" yelled Jimmy. "We can work this—"

Lucifer pulled out a bright red iPod classic. "What's that you say?" he asked, pushing the earbuds into his pointed ears.

"Nevermind," said Jimmy, exhaling. He looked at his balled fists and loosened their death grip on the crumpled sheets.

"The Four Horsemen's 666 song is my favorite," said Lucifer. "I like to crank up the volume on that one. Then again, I like to crank up the volume on everything."

"Hey, here it is!" Jimmy triumphantly held up a crumpled sheet of paper in his right hand. He uncrumpled it, reading it as he did so. " 'The Two-Thirds Clause is described herewith. Should the party of the first part and the party of the second part mutually agree to arbitration by a party of the third part, satisfaction of encumbrance will render null and void all prior commitments, restrictions, and privileges pursuant to Attachment 66. Third party arbitration may be satisfied by agent or agency not associated with, bound to, or administered by either party. Third party agent or agency must show no prior agreement with either party of the first part or their executing authorities, dependents, and antecedents."

We anxiously waited for the translation.

"It says that if we find someone else who always disagrees with your reviews Zoc, but who would, for this one time, agree with your review of Tokyo Gore Police, Attachment 66 would no longer apply. Of course, it would need to be someone not associated with you, and who has, up until now, always showed the opposite of your opinions and tastes in horror movies."

"What the devil," I stammered.

"Yes?" asked Lucifer, removing an earbud.

"No, not you.”

Lucifer popped the bud back into his ear.

“This is impossible. Who are we going to get who has always shown the exact opposite in their cimema taste to mine and whom would suddenly agree with me? It would take a mira—"

"So what's all this?" asked Paul Hollstenwall entering the room. "I kept ringing the front doorbell. Chef Machiavelli finally let me in.”

Paul waved hello to Lucifer. "Dude, that's some serious Face Off makeup you got going there. Hexcellent! What are you guys doing? Hey, am I being punked? That would be so awesome." He looked around the room for a hidden camera.

"Paul, now's not a good time," I said.

"Wait a minute. Now I get it. You and Mr. Z are Larpers! Man, how cool is that! Looks like you got some weird sh*t going on. I bet the devil's in the details , right? Anyway, I was passing by on my way to Jersey to catch Vampire Breakfast Club. I tried to Twitter you but I kept getting that stupid ass whale. Wanted to tell you to forget my tweet on Tokyo Gore Police. Saw it last night. Lame with a capital LAME. I was so disappointed it cooled my beans to zero. Now Drag Me to Hell was awesome."

A car horn sounded.

"Gotta go before my date gets pissed at me again. Later."

Paul flew out of the room. A moment of silence followed.

Jimmy looked at me. Zombos looked at his fingers tangled in his Cat's Cradle. I looked at Lucifer. He removed his earbuds and nodded.

"Agreed! Most certainly, agreed." He stood up.

Thunder shook the room and the ice block Lucifer was bound to split with a sharp crack, then shattered, sending glistening shards into oblivion.  His massive hooves clattered on the floor as he stretched to his full height, dwarfing us in his spreading shadow floating across the floor.

"The last time I heard a sound so sweetly soothing was when I teased Moses into breaking those two little tablets of stone." His voice, now unfettered, rebounded off the walls like the echos in a sepulcher. His eyes glowed brighter than red hot iron.

"Be seeing you," he said with a nod to me.

His arms and legs erupted into plumes of red smoke as his torso disappeared behind a shower of white sparks. His face lingered for an instant, alone in the air with a chesire-cat’s grin lingering behind. With a wink of an eye and a devilish grin, he vanished in a flash of crimson fire.

Now what did he mean he’ll be seeing me? I thought.

The Video Dead (1987) It's A Crime!

Zombos Says: Poor, Stupid, Lot's of Fun

"Slow down a minute and let me get this straight," said Detective Web. He paged through his notebook. "You say this Paul Hasselhoff—"

"Paul Hollstenwall," I corrected him.

"You say this Paul Hollstenwall is to blame for Zombos's death?"

"Yes. It's all his fault. He insisted we watch another one of his inane travesties of straight to video horror called The Video Dead. Zombos keeled over dead away toward the end. It was horrible."

I held back the tears. Glenor Glenda, our housekeeper, stood in shock over his body. Thank God Zimba and Zombos Junior were at the theater to see the livelier Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

"I told him, I did," said Glenor, between blowing her nose and dabbing her wet eyes. "I told him to go with his son and get away from all this nasty horror. Oh, how will we explain this to his son? The missus will be so upset!"

"Hey, has this been dusted for prints yet?" asked Detective Web as he reached for The Video Dead VHS tape.

"Yeah, done," said a voice from the other side of the room.

"Haven't seen one of these in a while," he said, picking it up. "So tell me about this movie. I find it hard to believe the guy croaked just from watching it."

"I...I don't know where to begin," I said.

"Start with the facts. Just the facts. That will do fine."

"Let me think. Okay. It's about a TV set that looks like it came from the house in Night of the Living Dead. The TV is delivered, by mistake, to a writer who is promptly killed by the zombies who enter our world through it."

"Flesh-eating zombies?" asked Detective Web.

"Well, not quite. They strangle people, mostly, then toss them into washing machines and start the spin cycle."

"I thought you said this television set came from the house in Night of the Living Dead. Didn't those zombies eat people?"

"Yes. I mean no. I mean I didn't say the set came from the house in Night of the Living Dead, it just looks like it did. Now, one neighbor does get eaten, sure, but that happens later in the movie, and we don't see it happen, just the messy aftermath. The rest of the time the zombies giggle a lot…and want to go dancing, too. And there's this Garbage Man fellow that appears briefly in the TV, but we never find out why, or what he's actually doing in there, or even how he got there in the first place. Then again, I'm not sure how the zombies got into the television set, either."

"So...this is a Japanese horror movie?" asked Detective Web.

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Well, you said they come out of the TV. I remember seeing that ragu movie—"

"Oh, you mean Ringu, or The Ring as the Americanized version is called," I said.

"Yeah, right, that's the movie."

"No, this movie is from 1987. Ringu came later.

I looked up at Detective Web. He scratched behind his ear with the pencil in his hand, closed his notepad, and thought for a moment.

"Maybe we should view the evidence to get a better idea of what this is all about," he suggested.

I reluctantly took the tape from him and put it into our old VHS player. We pulled our chairs close to the screen as The Video Dead started playing; after I fast-forwarded through the trailers and such of course.

It starts off innocently enough. The Hi-Lite delivery service delivers an unmarked crate to an unsuspecting writer. We know he is a writer because he is sleeping the day away, he’s impatient, and he says he does not have time to watch television. He must be a blogger, too.

Over his protests they leave the crate in his living room. He manages to pry the it open, takes out the old, battered, rotary channel dial, black and white television set, and plugs it in. Remember, it is 1987. He checks to see if it works, but only one show comes in clearly no matter which channel he turns to. The show is Zombie Blood Nightmare and not much happens in it except for zombies continuously staggering around in the woods. He turns off the television, but it keeps turning on. He unplugs it and goes back to bed. The set turns on even when unplugged.

Creepy.

In a rare moment of directorial acumen, one rancid zombie notices he's "on" TV and presses up against the inside of the cathode ray tube. In a flash, and lots of smoke, he is poking his head out of the set. Remember, this is 1987.

When the Hi-Lite boys sheepishly return later, realizing they made a mistake—the television was actually supposed to go to an occult institute, sure, why not?—they find one dead writer, conveniently propped up by the front door to save them time going through the house to find his body.

 "Boy, those are lousy zombies. That '80s makeup isn't bad, but they didn't even eat the guy," observed Detective Web.

"The zombie look does manage to capture a bit of the EC Comics style, but it suffers from that '80s rubbery mask technology. Wait, it gets worse," I assured him, "those delivery guys were the best actors in the bunch."

"It's criminal." Detective Web shook his head in disbelief.

 A few months later the house is sold while the zombies are still out and about in the woods nearby waiting for the housewarming party. The new owners are sister and brother, Zoe (Roxanna Augesen) and Jeff (Rocky Duvall), and their parents due to arrive from overseas. April (Victoria Bastel), a neighbor, welcomes Jeff to the neighborhood. Her skunk-chasing poodle, Chocolate, runs off into the woods, encounters a zombie and dies from fright.

"Do the zombies chew anything besides the scenery?" asked Detective Web, growing impatient.

"Eventually. All I'll say is her name sounds "like the smell they put on Kleenex" and she's heading to the pet store in the morning.

That night, Jeff finds the old television set in the attic with a little enticement from Jennifer Miro of the The Nuns band who pops up in his room. Jeff carries the TV back to his room and plugs it in, forgetting the dire warning from the loud Texan (Sam David McClelland), who showed up earlier that day demanding to know where the television set was. The encounter with the overacting Texan, calling the underacting Jeff a "damn fool," was forgettable even for me, so maybe Jeff's memory is not so bad after all.

After taking a few medicinal tokes on his weed, Miro pops up again on a TV channel, then suddenly in his lap. Before he can decide whether it’s the weed or fortune that’s placed a naked woman in his bedroom, she pops back into the TV; just in time to have her throat cut by the Garbageman, who warns Jeff she was a zombie playing with his head.

"Hey, was that meant as a double entendre?" asked Detective Web.

"I doubt it," I said. "Nothing in this script indicates the author is that clever."

This is the first and last time we meet the Garbageman. He scares Jeff into following his directions to put the TV set in the basement and tie a mirror across the screen. But the other zombies are still out and about, and after three solid months of staggering aimlessly in the woods they decide to have some fun with the neighbors.

Entering April's house, one undead couple have a hearty giggle at the buzz from a blender—they must have been dead for a long time—while another zombie strangles April's mom.

And strangles her.

And continues to strangle her for some time.

"This is a first. Usually zombies bite your throat, not strangle it," said Detective Web. "He's also got to be the weakest walking stiff I've ever seen."

Finally, even after April's mom plunges an iron into the zombie's head, he manages to strangle her completely. The iron remains in his head for the rest of the movie. Being dead, it is not much of a bother for him. I'm sure there is a witty remark one can make about a zombie with an iron stuck in his head, but I'll take the high road on this one and stay mum.

 "Wait a minute." Detective Web pulled at his earlobe. "How does the Garbageman manage to kill a zombie by cutting its throat...while an iron plunged deeply into this one's noggin' has no effect at all?

"I'm sorry, but if you are looking for any logic or rational thought here, there isn't any. Just go with it. It's another senseless cinematic crime like so many others."

"And I thought I'd seen it all," he said.

"Mr. Zoc, I've made some lovely tea for you and...?" said Glenor Glenda, putting the tray beside us.

"Jack," answered Detective Web. "That's very gracious of you."

I paused the movie while Glenor served our tea. Ever the flirt, she gave Detective Web extra sugar. He noticed. With our cups of tea in hand, I started the movie again.

After murdering—not eating—April's parents, the zombies go next door. The Bride zombie, another flirt, pops out of a washing machine to kill one surprised housewife by strangling her. The housewife is then loaded head first into the washer and put on a spin and rinse cycle. More giggling ensues.

I kid you not.

The Texan returns to save the day. He tells April, Jeff, and Zoe that the zombies can be killed! All you need to do is shoot them so THEY THINK they're dying, then chop them into pieces.

While they discuss this diversion from standard in zombie lore, April is captured by Jimmy D. (Patrick Treadway) a greaser zombie who likes blonds. Not in a rush to save April, the Texan and Jeff get a good night's sleep before heading into the woods to track down the undead, fun-loving killers. Not being an NRA kind of kid, Jeff heads out with a bow and arrow. The Texan wisely chooses to bring along a big gun and a chainsaw.

In the woods, Jeff shoots a zombie full of arrows, and relishes acting like Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, his favorite movie, as he slices the zombie into pieces. To entice more zombies to come and get it, the Texan hangs Jeff—who apparently hasn't watched many horror movies beyond Texas Chainsaw Massacre—from a tree; high enough so his feet don't touch the ground, but low enough so the zombies can grab at him to build suspense for us.

Or try to.

At this point we also learn that zombies, when approaching, make bells ring. Fans of Hammer’s Captain Kronos will recall how he hunted vampires with bells and croaking frogs. No croaking frogs were used in this movie, however, just bells. One final tidbit of zombie lore, mentioned by the Texan, mentions they also go crazy when locked up and start eating each other. So the plan is to either trap them or chainsaw them into itsy-bitsy pieces. More zombie lore I didn’t know. Did you?

"Finally, we'll get to see them eat something," commented Detective Web, taking a sip from his tea. Glenor handed another pastry to him. "These are wonderful, thank you."

Finding the shack, and a partially eaten April inside, the Texan promptly falls asleep while Jeff is left hanging outside. The bells they had spread around start tinkling. Jeff, getting poked by the long sticks the zombies wield with vigor, yells for help, but the Texan apparently did not sleep enough the night before.

I bet you didn’t know zombies like to use long sticks to poke their potential dinner, right?

Right on cue, Jeff drops the only weapon he has, the chainsaw, and the Bride zombie picks it up. Jeff, now with a more urgent reason to yell louder, finally rouses the Texan, who shoots the zombies "to death." The Bride zombie escapes, but the other zombies are down for the count. He lets Jeff down from the tree and both go after her, who, in one of those ironic twists of fate so prevalent in horror movies, goes after them instead.

Unfortunately for Jeff, the she must have been a fan of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, too, because she throttle’s the chainsaw with relish. Jeff, in true horror victim duplicity, runs directly into it as he swings a machete, lopping off her head. Both Jeff and the Texan wind up deader than the zombies through their ineptitude.

A deep groan followed Jeff's slapstick death.

"Yes, that was a groaner, wasn't it?" We both said at once.

Detective Web looked at me. "I thought you groaned.”

I looked at him. "No, I thought you groaned.”

We looked at Glenor. "It wasn't me."

Another groan sounded from in back of her.

"Will you look at that? Hey Jack, we got a live one," said the forensic photographer.

Zombos stood up, cradling his head in his hands.

"Lord love a duck. That is the last triple hot toddy I have on an empty stomach. Glenor, fetch me a bromo-seltzer please. What is everyone looking at?"

Glenor clapped her hands with delight. "You're alive, you're alive!" She ran to fetch the bromo-seltzer.

"Aw, crap, you mean I had to sit through this movie for nothing?" said Detective Web.

"Well, it's almost over. We might as well finish it," I said. 

"What is all this?" asked Zombos, as he pulled a chair over and sat down. "Where is Paul?"

"Long story," I said to Zombos. "I'll fill you in after we finish watching The Video Dead. Glad you could make it."

The Bride zombie, also cradling her head in her hands, joins up with the other zombies, who realize they were not "killed" after all. They all go after Zoe. Left alone to overact, Zoe melodramatically widens her eyes and cries as the zombies lurch outside, stopped only by the mirrors hanging on the doors. Recalling the Texan mentioned the zombies only kill people who show them fear, she decides to invite them in for dinner.

You read that right: dinner.

The zombies don’t know what to make of Zoe's sudden heart-warming attitude, but they go with it.

With everyone sitting around the kitchen table, she serves dinner. Then it is off to the living room for cordials. Two zombies, paging through a magazine, see a couple dancing. Zoe, ever the good host, directs them to the basement, where she pulls out the phonograph. On the pretense of looking for a suitable record, she runs up the basement steps, falls down long enough to build suspense, then locks them in. They quickly go mad and start eating each other. Unfortunately, as you may recall, the TV set is in the basement, too. No sooner than you can say jumpin' jack flash, the zombies are back on TV in reruns.

Zoe, understandably, winds up in a mental institution. Her parents visit, bringing along the TV set, hoping it will perk up her spirits. Zoe's spirits are indeed perked up as she receives unexpected company looking to finish their dance of death.

I turned off the video tape player. Zombos drank his bromo-seltzer as we sat in silence.

The forensic photographer handed me his business card. "I do weddings, bar-mitzvahs, and socials, too."

“Thank you.” I put the business card in my pocket.

"Well, with you alive, we don't need to bring in Hollstenwall. Russo?" said Detective Web, looking around the room.

"Yo."

"Cancel that APB on Paul Hollstenwall. Put one out on Robert Scott. He's the real criminal."

"For what?"

"Impersonating a director and screenwriter."

Movie Review: Prom Night (2008)

Zombos Says: Fair

Prom Night's life-size theater-promotion cardboard standee of a door, strategically placed to pique interest for this teen thriller, is a good indication of how much effort went into this movie. When I opened the door it only produced a halfhearted, single scream. The teenagers walking by when I did this looked surprised and laughed. Even they were expecting something a bit more slasher-scream-full.

When I watched the movie, I found boredom made my mind wander a bit when Donna (Brittany Snow) and her boyfriend, Bobby (Scott Porter) exchange corsages as Donna's aunt and uncle look on, beaming with happiness. I imagined a prom night filled with monster corsages devouring boyfriends, Carrie-like J-horror prom nights stalked by ghosts seeking vengeance, or maybe even tuxedoed zombies crashing the prom night party; anything else but this unnecessary reworking of Jamie Lee Curtis' more violent and relevant 80s slasher. I didn't attend my senior prom. Perhaps I have unresolved issues with that. Or perhaps this movie has unresolved issues with terror, tension, and thrills. I think that’s more likely.

Director Nelson McCormick has done a large amount of episodic television work so maybe that’s why his movie is paced around imaginary commercial breaks. Each time tension builds he moves away from the action to show people dancing or crowning the prom king and queen. Like an episode of CSI, nothing appears out of control or erupts into hysterical terror. He also seems to have a fetish for closets. I lost count how often someone opened, reached into, looked in, or hid in, a closet. Donna hides under a bed twice, but I didn't find that as annoying. Not much tension builds from opening closets, I can tell you that. I’d sum up this movie this way: give sinister look, slash a victim, show dancing in slow motion, show someone opening a closet; give sinister look, slash a victim, show more dancing, show someone else opening a closet; slash a victim, stop the dancing long enough to show prom king and queen being crowned, show someone opening a damn closet again, slash another victim; and so on…

Donna is stalked by her college teacher (probably her chemistry teacher; they're all nutzy from handling toxic substances). It's not clear why he needs to kill people in order to get close to her, but this is a slasher movie so reasons are not always necessary, only lots of slashing. He's so good at it he leaves a bloodless trail suitable for this PG-13'er. After her family is massacred, three years pass before Donna's back to normal enough to attend her senior prom. Not surprisingly, her stalking teacher escapes in time to rent a tux and join the festivities.

The teacher (Johnathon Schaech) gives overly sinister looks and acts like a Charles Manson wannabe. He wears a black golf cap, tweedy sport coat, and needs a shave. He looks intensely at you when spoken to without saying a word. Only in movies do psychos dress and act this way. In real life, the only guys who dress and act this way are directors and bloggers of horror movies. I admit I did wear a black golf cap before seeing this movie. Now I realize it does make you look like an oddball if you're not golfing, so that's it for me. I'm happy to say I haven't worn a tweedy sport coat in years. I do still need to shave.

When Donna realizes she's being stalked again, the action is chopped, but not in that good, horror-chopped-up sort of way. We keep shifting, never staying long enough in one place to be scared or cause popcorn tipping seat-jump. The opening few minutes promise much but deliver little, and I won't pin all the blame on the PG-13 rating requirements. All the action is homogenized around those imaginary commercial breaks, and starts and stops with little tension or visceral involvement. It's all glossy, television-slick—not cable, mind you--with no blemishes to fret over.

The prom is held in a lavish hotel with beautiful young people who don't worry about recessions or social inequities or our out of control national debt. The police are adequately inept to help increase the body count, but Detective Winn (Idris Elba) goes through the motions anyway, and Elba does a good job in spite of the character he's written into. When Donna is left almost friendless, I imagined how different this might have been.

What if Polly Pureheart Donna was a black-haired goth with punky attitude? Perky goth Donna flirts with her chem teacher (or maybe lit teacher is better: they like tweedy jackets, too), and going too far, regrets it. He goes nutz when she calls it off and can't hold a test tube without breaking it just thinking of her. So now there's her guilt and his feelings of rejection adding to the terror. Guilty terror with feelings of rejection is always great for building tension. To stay alive, she's forced to make nice with the vixens from hell--the envied, fashion-conscious, hip girls at school who despise her Ubergoth ways. Her Doom Cookie boyfriend finds out all about the side fling and joins the chem teacher and both go after her and her newfound friends. Much collateral damage ensues, add lots of blood. The end is a multi-ambulance tear-jerker.

But, sadly, Donna is not goth, and her friends are the socially coolest in school. Everyone but the stalking psycho is dead set on having fun at the prom. Even the girly rivalry between Donna and Paris Hilton--sorry, my bad--between Donna and the spoiled rich girl who despises her is lukewarm and goes nowhere. Her boyfriend doesn't even get the chance to protect or save her. What's a boyfriend good for if he can't at least do that? When the end comes, it's exactly like the ending you'd see in a non-continued television episode just before the commercial break.

And roll credits.

Wait! There's a glimmer of tension when her best friend Lisa (Dana Davis) realizes who the creepy guy in the black golf cap and tweedy jacket reminds her of, but no, that fizzles out without much frazzle. Instead there's lots of predictable running away from potential help and through translucent plastic curtains hung in dark rooms as Lisa hides from the killer in a deserted part of the hotel under renovation. I was hoping she would stop and improvise a defense from the paint cans and tools lying on the workmen's tables, but her character wasn't written to be that clever.

At least she didn't open another closet.

Movie Review: The Perplexing Case of Shrooms (2006)

Zombos Says: Fair 

Down a forgotten street somewhere in New York City there stands a used-up, ashlar-surfaced office building waiting to be torn down. Should you enter through its bell archway, walk towards the solitary elevator that's seldom used, and turn right, you would find yourself in a narrow hallway.

In its heyday, you could find the finest business agencies rubbing elbows, hustling and bustling, here, along with the home away from home, cubbyhole, sanctuary, and hideout for the New York Globe reporters.

But that was in its heyday. Now all the hustle and bustle is done digitally, behind flickering screens, and piled up cups of coffee. Most of the tenants are now tech-related. How boring.

If you walk past those frosted-glass doors now, with their chipped and peeling lettering looking like the worn names on tombstones, and continue all the way to the end, you would come to a frosted-glass door whose lettering still shines. That's my office and my home away from home: the New York Globe’s old hangout.

My name is Artemis Greensleeves. Since my regular business has been slow of late, I decided to pick up some extra cash by working for the League of Reluctant Reviewers. I didn't realize how busy I'd be. I prefer the peace of quiet here, though, so they send me what I need when they need to.

I'm always here until three in the afternoon, waiting, with one eye on the door’s metal mail slot, and the other nestled in a good book. After three I head to my regular job, making sure to stop at Starbuck’s for a dark roast coffee on the way. I like my coffee strong.

It's always the same. I like that, too. A knock hasn't sounded on the New York Globe’s door since the war, but the sound of footsteps clicking down the hallway lets me know when another movie is coming my way for review. Quick footsteps. Click, clack, click, and another DVD pops through the mail slot; then click, clack, click echoing back down the hallway and the silence returns.

While I waited for the sound of footsteps today, I stared again at the lithograph hanging above the Globe’s trophy case. They sure did win a lot of writing awards. There’s even a Pulitzer in there, on the second shelf, just behind the large crack in the case’s glass door. I’d love to win a Pulitzer one day. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

The lithograph is called The First Prayer of Congress. Every man in it is either bowing his head and kneeling or looking up towards heaven, very pious-like, as if seeking spiritual guidance—or maybe looking for forgiveness? If you look close enough you can see places where it's torn and foxing, and fading.

I still like it, though.

When the click clack of footsteps came this time they sounded unusually hurried. Before the DVD slid free of the mail slot and hit the floor they were already retreating, leaving me alone with Shrooms. I read the cover, looking for a clue as to what I could expect. The tagline, "Get Ready to Get Wasted," didn't fill me with confidence.

The soundbyte "Blair Witch on Acid" from a lucyvine.zoo didn't do it for me either.

Who the hell is lucyvine.zoo?

I got to work writing my review.

 

Once again a group of American teenagers head abroad to get into mischief, and as usual in these low budget horrors, the actors look a tad older than 'teensy' would allow, but I won't quibble. They do a wonderful job with a listless, by the body count, story for the most part.

Heading over to Ireland they meet up with shroom master Jake, who drives around in a Mystery Machine reject (minus Scooby Doo). I guess being a mushroom expert doesn't pay all that much these days. Funny, but when I travel, which is seldom, I don’t usually book mushroom tours. I don’t think many people do, either. Only too old-looking college kids in horror movies book tours like that.

Soon they're off to find magical mushrooms in the forest. Only this forest is populated by two drooling, unwashed, dim-bulb—stop me if you've seen this before—axe-carrying ne'er-do-wells who don't communicate well; which is fine since after seeing them you wouldn't want to hang around and chat anyway.

Unperturbed, the magical mushroom seekers venture deeper into the woods to steep some toadstool tea. At this point, you realize all of them are expendable because no one is likable and the catholic girls are having non-catholic thoughts while the boys aren't catholic to begin with.

So you can see what's brewing goes well beyond a simple cup of mind-bending tea.

Stirring the pot and plot, Jake tells them the creepy tale of the evil black brothers of Glenn Garig, who tortured and murdered their young charges—orphaned boys with no place to run except these woods. After one abused boy sneaks some bad-ass shrooms into the communal soup, seventy-eight kids, assorted brothers—and the janitor, I’d warrant—wind up massacred by one crazed surviving brother carrying a sharp blade.

And that brother might still be stomping around the woods since no one really knows what happened to him!

At this point, the girls can't take it anymore and tell Jake to zip it. Lucky for them, Glenn Garig is not close: sure, it's about a ten minute walk from where they're camped, but it's not that close, so they should be able to sleep in their flimsy tents without any trouble whatsoever.

Right?

 

While I waited for the sound of footsteps today, I stared again at the lithograph hanging above the Globe’s trophy case. They sure did win a lot of writing awards. There’s even a Pulitzer in there, on the second shelf, just behind the large crack in the case’s glass door. I’d love to win a Pulitzer one day. Hey...wait a minute...

The plop of the DVD hitting the floor nudged my attention. I picked it up. It was Shrooms.

Again.

I was just watching it, wasn’t I?

Maybe I was having visions like Tara (Lindsey Haun), who went off to enjoy nature while Jake was giving his lecture on which mushrooms to stay away from. In a fit of pique, Tara eats the bad-assiest one of the "don't" group.

After her near death experience, she becomes a regular Esmeralda the Fortuneteller, and has visions of her friends being stalked and butchered, one by one, by a hooded creepazoid with long nails, a sharp blade, and rotted teeth; looking like a cross between your typical J-horror vengeance ghost and a Hills Have Eyes mutant, this black brother is a tree-hugging nightmare.

But is he real, or are they all just tripping from the mushrooms?

Her friends, meanwhile, have made themselves pretty damn easy pickings with their sudden arguing. Just once I'd like to see a horror movie with friends that act like they are friends and not acquaintances. Of course the group splits up to make the slaughter, and the writer's job depicting same, easier. While a group of people screaming at each other is somewhat easy to victimize, it's just easier to victimize screaming singles instead.

"Don't forget to tell them about me," said the cow.

"Sure, I won't—." I blinked.

For a minute there I could have sworn a cow slid through my mail slot, blew up to full size, and talked to me, like in the movie. I mean, there's no mail slot in the movie, just a cow that talks to Bluto (Robert Hoffman), who goes running off —that would be Bluto who ran off, not the cow—after drinking the entire pot of mind-tripping tea. Of course—sorry, but "of course" is a natural with most horror movies these days—that action makes him the first idiot to get whacked.

On a personal note, I really have to stop drinking those venti-sized coffees from Starbucks. I pulled myself together. This review was starting to get to me.

 

Hack and slash, and run run run...to Glen Garig.

The one place in the forest they really shouldn't be going is where they wind up. Before that, everyone is screaming at the top of his or her lungs for everyone else.

So my question is this: when being stalked in the forest, can anyone hear you scream? Based on this movie, the answer is NO.

As panic sets in, Tara manages to do a Looney Tunes bonk! into a tree, face first. While I think Elmer Fudd had better timing, she's not bad at it.

Holly, meanwhile, runs to the scary-looking dilapidated shack nestling ominously in the woods. Now who, pray tell, would be living here? You guessed it: the Jonas Brothers!

No wait, it's not them.

It’s Ernie and Bernie, the two drooling, dim-bulb conservationists seen earlier in the movie. She—sorry, but I can't avoid it this time—of course walks right into the shack as Burt and Ernie—I mean Ernie and Bernie—look on and drool a lot. Maybe because there are no carcasses or raw meat hanging around she doesn't realize you don't enter decrepit shacks in the woods looking for a phone while two unwashed guys talk a lot about goats with fondness in their voices.

And you wonder why the academy awards doesn’t take horror movies seriously anymore?

While there's a bit of oh-my-god-how-stupid-can-she-be? in watching Holly walk into that shack, the tension doesn't quite build enough to raise the scare factor beyond tepid. Director Paddy Breathnach also lingers on peering-through-holes-too-closely moments, but builds little suspense. His direction is by the numbers with little V8 creative juicing to liven up the one down, two down, three down slasher momentum. There is one bright moment regarding how the black brother, real or not, can sneak up on you unawares, but that's the brightest it gets.

 

Well, it's almost three in the afternoon. One more thing before I go.

You will find out at the end whether the black brother is real or not, if that's any consolation. Shrooms is not all that terrible. It's just not the acid trip it could have been.

None of the creative people involved in this movie apparently ingested any shrooms during its production, making it one big, unmagical, mystery tour.

The mystery is how it ever got green-lighted in the first place. 

Movie Review: The Sick House (2008)

Zombos Says: Fair

"I don't have time for this," said Anna (Gina Philips), the comely archeology student in The Sick House.

Zombos and I looked at each other. We agreed with her. Once again Paul Hollstenwall, the scion of inconsequential cinema, had underwhelmed us with another exercise in pointless moviemaking.

Anna has just discovered the four punk metal wannabes who are freaking out because one of them appears to have the plague. For shame: that will teach them not to go kicking about in stolen cars for joy rides and breaking into bio-hazard excavation sites previously used as plague hospitals. And shame on Anna, too. Here she is yelling at them for breaking and entering when she did it first, releasing a centuries old evil—and former member of that notorious 1665 London touring group known as the Black Priests—in the process.

The five of them, the usual mix of underachieving and overachieving victims you’ll find slamming into each other in slasher movies, are in for a rough night of it. So is everyone else watching this whoozy, blurry, head-spinning shock-cut apparition, and zoicks! musical extravaganza. Whatever originality and novelty to be found in the story is undercooked by director Curtis Radclyffe's palsied camera and over-reliance on J-horror hackneyism.

"Why can he not keep the bloody camera still!" cried Zombos.

"He's sustaining the tension by forcing your disorientation with his constantly moving frame," explained Paul.

"Tension? My neck is tense from all the quick-cut splicing and visual chittering," Zombos retorted. "And those flickering fluorescent light fixtures must go. Could they not afford better lighting? I cannot see what is going on."

Plague doctors? London's Black Death of 1665?

A capital idea for gut-wrenching suspense and terror is reduced to a half farthing's worth of overdone digital and cutting room trickery, making sense the first victim in this suspense-less nonsense. My mind drifted among the possibilities if less confusing herky-jerky motion and more stillness were the norm, to let the actors convey the terror overwhelming them.

Gina Philips gives a fair performance, though she seems too calm, too emotionless at times when you'd expect some "oh, sh*t, it's the plague, we're so f**ked!" or "blimey, what the hell is that thing what wants to eat our souls and kill us!"

Instead, she's so proper, so academic. At least the others provide some frenzied bickering and craziness, and run like the dickens through the halls of the orphanage away from the not so good reawakened evil doctor making his terminal rounds. Lots of aimless running is part and parcel to horror movies, but here it’s more aimless and unintentionally confusing.

"Help me out here," pleaded Zombos. "Are you pondering what I am pondering?"

"Not if it involves cocoa butter and bananas," I said.

Zombos and Paul stopped arguing and looked at me. I quickly pulled my thoughts back to landfall.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"What do you think? asked Zombos. "Paul thinks this bloody movie is a punky masterpiece of new horror style and I am too old to appreciate it. Talk some sense into him will you."

I took a deep sip from my hot mocha latte, embellished with Chef Machiavelli's secret mix of herbs and spices he calls the Bombay tincture. I looked at Zombos, then at Paul. They waited expectantly with folded arms. I took another long sip and pondered. Was it simply bad direction or bad directorial choices? Was the acting mediocre or just hacked to pieces by all the scene juggling? Was the story poorly written or intentionally ground into a confusing mash? The Bombay tincture fortified my thoughts enough to proceed.

"It's obvious the choices made here point to commercially shaping the movie for a younger audience, especially with the odd addition of that acid-drenched-metal song screeching over the opening credits. Today’s kids' snippet-drenched YouTube attention spans are primed for choppy narrative, so they probably wouldn't notice the yawning chasms of missing structural coherence in the visual narrative of this movie."

There. I said it.

Zombos and Paul continued to look at me. Each slowly unfolded his arms. They ignored what I said and started arguing again. Good. At least now they would leave me alone to enjoy my mocha latte in peace.

But what ails The Sick House?

Although it contains cliché after cliché repeated in numbing succession, the acting is strong, the historical context very intriguing, and the atmosphere almost menacing, in spite of the overused Saw-styled tinting in the saturated lighting.

Ludgate Orphanage, aside from its spookhouse-flickering fluorescents, is dark—often too dark to make out what is happening—and filled with brooding rooms and hallways. Then there's the tall, unstoppable, plague doctor dressed in his bizarre clothing and bird-like mask, stalking around with a bevy of grotesque children, murdered by him back in the 1600s. There is also a kicker ending that twists the story back on itself; but it will leave you just as confused as before.

The archeological dig that Anna's been working on in the basement of the orphanage leads to another chamber further down. Before she can dig deeper, the authorities find evidence of lingering plague. Being an A student, Anna ignores the grave danger to herself, and the public at large, and breaks into the condemned orphanage after hours, to continue her work.

While she's digging around in the basement, the four miscreant fun-loving  hoody-punksters crash their stolen auto near the orphanage. Finding the door open—thanks to Anna—they hustle inside to avoid the English Bobbies and all those nasty lectures on grand theft auto and public menace behaviors they've obviously heard before.

It all goes down at midnight.

Time becomes frozen for everyone in the building as the plague doctor (John Lebar), brought back from the netherworld by Anna's academic zeal, makes his killer appearance. There seems to be satanic purpose to his malevolence, but in J-horror fashion, the story doesn't give you much to go on and the director is so hellbent on gimmicking the action, it becomes impossible to follow at times, actually, most of the time, to the point of annoyance.

One clue: it all revolves around a baby to be born, but that is all you get.

Although there is not much gore, you do have people yelling at each other a lot and frantically running to or away from danger, people becoming possessed and frantically chasing other people, and people slippin' 'n slidin' in something white, gelatinous, and filled with pukey-looking nastiness.

Leading up to an illogical but plot-convenient bathing scene—this is the creepy, insane killer infested orphanage remember—in thousands of blood sucking leeches (used to treat the plague back then: go figure).

The ending neatly leads into a sequelization antic for another set of plague doctor's rounds ad nauseam in a round of franchise sequels, but I don’t think this doctor got to make another house call on DVD yet.

Maybe Paul is right. Maybe Zombos and I are too old to appreciate the style of The Sick House. Or maybe a script doctor and a steadier hand at the camera would have made this a more memorable, even classic, frightfest instead of another victims-offed in factory assembled horror movie storyline, with added visual confusion to make it appear youthfully fresh.

Movie Review: The Mysterious Case of The Blood Shed (2007)

Zombos Says: Poor

Although the chandelier was unlit, light from the brightly burning logs in the large fireplace shimmered through its crystals, sending beams of white into the high, dark corners of the ceiling, across the walls, and across the richly carpeted floor. Facing the fireplace stood a high-backed Chippendale wing chair with exquisite cabriole legs. The chair was upholstered in the same deep color as the carpet. A short man briskly entered the room and walked toward the chair.

"Ah, Mr. Bolton, you are early." A small, stark white hand briefly appeared on the right side of the chair, flicked the ashes off a long cigar, then disappeared. "It must be a serious matter then?"

Bolton looked down at the ashes piled in the bronze ashtray resting on the oval-topped trestle table beside the chair. He pulled a DVD case from his worn messenger's pouch. He addressed the back of the wing chair.

"Yes, it's a serious matter. Seventy-three minutes of bloody hillbilly debauchery that defies sanity, convention, and good people's decency. Bluntly put, it's schlock with a capital S."

"Excellent, I love a challenge!" said the voice, accompanied by a single clap of hands.

From the left side of the wing chair a stark white hand reached out expectantly. Bolton was relieved to hand over the DVD.

"You will find sherry and a polished Stiegel glass by the couch. We will be a short time, I'm sure."

Bolton removed his overcoat and retreated to the couch in the other room. He sat down, poured the sherry, and waited, as he normally did, for the review that no one else would do; no one, that is, except for the League of Reluctant Reviewers.

 

What are we to do with Alan Rowe Kelly, then? The man is incorrigible. What infantilistic need drives him to dress like an aging, demonic Little Lulu, carry wicked-sharp garden shears, and wreak gory havoc worse than the dogs of war? Why does he find subject matter like inbred New Jersey hillbillies with a penchant for cannibalism and sadistic nut-cracking with pliers—not Walnuts, mind you—gleefully choreographed to the tune of the innocent Little Lulu song (and my sincere apologies to Marjorie Henderson Buell), fit for decent horror fans?

As the grotesque Beefteena Bullion, who dreams of becoming America's Next Top Model, he charges ahead with a nightmarish blend of over the top gore, grievous over-acting, and unsavory, outlandish scenes that play parody with too much off-the-wall seriousness. From the shallow end of the genre pool he drags it up with elephant stomps, falling short of delivering unnerving terror or witty black humor.

Yet his compositions are executed with a keen eye for ominous camera angles, foreboding, lingering shots of dread, and the conventions of glistening viscera, sadism with a laugh, and uncouth characters overstuffing this independent horror.

In sum, The Blood Shed is art-house schlock that will appeal to some, be avoided by most, and provide ample forums for discussion by both. Given a healthy budget and a mainstream script, no doubt Kelly would be a force to reckon with. But until that time comes, if ever, we must, reluctantly, direct our critical attention to The Blood Shed.

On the plus side, Sno Cakes (Susan Adriensen) is fun to watch as she and Beefteena chit-chat, sell sour Lemonade, and join in the murder spree with reckless abandon. With her corny drawl, over-done makeup, trashy clothes, and silly hairdo, she's repulsive yet oddly sexy and funny; a bright spot in this drive-in disappointment.

And it's not that the acting is bad, it's more a case of story-telling for the sake of being as outrageous and naughty as possible. Rhyme and reason do not put in an appearance here; not when Beefteena playfully pulls her little stuffed rodent Flapjack on a string as she skips through the woods; or when a local brat is "accidentally" pulled apart in a tug of war; or when dad pulls the shotgun trigger to shoot down airborne squirrels, with comic close-ups of the rigor-mortised rodents lying on the ground, while he and the boys whoop it up.

When the local sheriff's most important asset is attacked with a pair of pliers, the absurdity becomes more disgusting than put-on-funny. Kelly works this gory theater of blood angle with heaviness throughout, putting The Blood Shed out of the range of parody, satire, comedy, or even serious horror because he doesn’t stick enough with any one of them to make a difference.

Beefteena' climactic birthday party scene—why is there always a deviant party or wacko dinner scene in these inbred, cannibalistic, hillbilly movies?—with decaying bodies of past victims wearing party hats seated around a festive table, and terrified future victims waking up to the festivity. It’s a mélange of grossness, bright colors, Little Lulu song playing, and humorless torture. The buzz of the electric carving knife while it’s used on the long-suffering sheriff, and Beefteena's ire at the modeling agency personnel who laughed at her photo session induce nausea throughout this ham-fisted spectacle of tasteless scripting.

Yet throughout this repugnant romp you will find quietly competent cinematography by Bart Mastronardi, who frames each scene with loving precision, making colorful use of inexpensive string lights in unusual settings to cast a deceptively warming palette across scenes of depravity. The resulting dissonance creates a disorienting atmosphere that invites you in, but subtly warns you to stay away.

I heartily recommend you stay away unless you just want to enjoy the scenery. Watching paint dry would be a more productive expenditure of your seventy-three minutes; possibly not as much fun for some of you, but definitely more productive.

 

Spookies (1987) The Other Plan 9

Zombos Says: Poor (but fun to raz on)

Listen to the Movie Review

"Come again?" I asked.

"Cinderella. He wants to dress up as Cinderella for Halloween," said Zombos, glummer than usual.

"Okay. Why not?"

"What do you mean why not? No son of mine is going to—"

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Look, I'm on the phone here. I still can't find someone to come with me to see Saw IV. I'm sorry you've got issues with Zombos Junior dressing up as a princess for Halloween, but I need—Hello? I’m trying to reach an Elvis Mitchell. What? Retired? What the hell? Is Peter Travers there, then?”

Zombos moaned. "Oh, lord, dressing up as a girl! At least if he would be Prince Charming, I could accept that. I should have realized something was amiss when he preferred watching America's Next Top Model instead of the Goosebumps marathon. I blame Zimba for this."

"Maybe you can get him to dress up as Maleficent instead? Damn it all, he hung up. Who else can I call," I said to myself. I was desperate. I should review the bloody movie, but I can't take all that sadistic, gory torture stuff that keeps the Saw franchise alive. I needed moral support. And someone to tell me what happens when I close my eyes.

"Why do you need someone to hold your hand just to see a stupid horror movie. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"You're just mad Zombos Junior prefers Cinderella to that Jack Sparrow pirate costume you bought him. Look, so what if he's transgender? He's still your son, right? Maybe he's got an Ed Wood thing going. That would be super, wouldn’t it?”

In the hallway, Zimba and Junior went running by. She yelled at him to give her high-heels back and to stay out of her makeup case. Zombos moaned even louder.

"Oh, bugger. At this rate, Saw IV will be on DVD before I get a chance to see it. Maybe I'll review that cinematic train wreck, Spookies, instead."

"I thought it was only available through Amazon UK?" said Zombos.

"That's right. But I just got my region-free DVD player, so now I can play all those nifty UK horror movies I've been dying to see."

"Count me in," said Zombos, looking for any diversion to take his mind off of Junior.

We headed to the cinematorium to watch Spookies.

 

If you’re looking for the perfect second-half of a double-bill Halloween show with Plan 9 From Outer Space, look no further. Spookies is a movie to be savored for its underdone acting, overbearing dialog, and sheer incoherence. Rarely do horror movies reach this pinnacle of hilarious ineptitude.

Originally started as Twisted Souls, that unfinished movie gave birth to a spook show hodgepodge of 1980s makeup and monster effects colliding head on with badly edited additional footage from yet another unfinished movie, resulting in a two-headed storyline that never meets eye to eye (or should I say eyes to eyes?).

Billy (Alec Nemsir), possibly the dumbest thirteen year-old ever appearing on screen, runs away from home because his parents forgot his birthday. What that has to do with the two cars, filled with bickering couples from Brooklyn—judging by their accents—beats me, but they're in this movie, too.

The kid and bickering couples wind up at a decrepit sorcerer's ominously dark and creepy home: it's ominous because it has an old graveyard surrounding it. Billy is the first to enter the empty house. In the dining room he finds presents and birthday decorations, and quickly concludes his parents are throwing a surprise party for him; in a stranger’s house. Billy doesn’t notice the ominous cemetery or the creepiness. He admires the presents and opens the biggest box, asking out loud if it's a bowling ball. That’s right, a bowling ball. High on every kid’s birthday list, I’m sure. Instead, the sorcerer's smiling head is in the box. Billy screams and runs out of the house, straight into a freshly dug grave. One down, now it’s time for the bickering couples to play their roles as proper horror movie victims, which involves acting dumb and dumber when it can cause the most bodily damage.

Now back to the two cars filled with the bickering couples. Oh, and there's one solo guy: he's the one with the sock puppet sitting alone in the back seat. And not a very good sock puppet. They wind up at the ominously creepy and dark mansion just when young Billy is coughing up dirt as a purple-faced werewolf buries him alive.

Yes, that's right, a purple-faced werewolf. Just go with it. Nothing in this movie makes sense so get used to it now.

The werewolf not only enjoys burying little boys alive, he gets a kick out of holding doors shut on people, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Couples and sock puppet guy enter the mansion to party hardy, and you know what happens to party people in horror movies, don't you? They die hardy.

The Sal Mineo look-alike insists on breaking into a padlocked closet and finds a corpse clutching a Ouija board. Ignoring the significance of a corpse CLUTCHING A QUIJA BOARD, Carly (Lisa Friede), the quiet, Ouija-savvy girl of the group, knows what to do with the planchette. They continue their bickering over what questions to ask like "will we get out alive," while we cut to the sorcerer (Felix Ward) playing a game of chess, although he never moves any of the pieces. He needs souls to revive his wife, who poisoned herself to get away from him. Finally, a little peek at the plot! Enjoy it while it lasts because a peek is all you get.

Carly becomes possessed by the sorcerer and goes after the others. As they run out the front door, zombies pop up out of the graveyard to stop them. They run back into the house screaming hysterically. You will be screaming with laughter at this point. The bickering continues forcing them to split up. That’s another cardinal rule for victims in horror movies: split up to die more easily. Every lazy horror movie scriptwriter knows that one.

Let me recap this for you: with zombies outside, a demon-possessed Carly on the inside, a purple-faced werewolf holding doors shut on them, and a gloating sorcerer playing chess without moving the pieces, THEY SPLIT UP. At least they spend a few minutes bickering over the pros and cons of SPLITTING UP.

Here's where you notice the acting in no way attempts to accommodate the adrenalin-rush terror befalling them. The three directors--yes, I said three--must have been on a coffee break during these crucial scenes. With directors missing in action, the makeup and special effects crew indulge their fancies. The 1980s is THE decade for puffy, rubbery monster suits, herky-jerky animatronics, skittery stop-motion, and glistening, greenish-purplish makeup. You see all of it in this movie with varying degrees of success.

One by one, the blundering, bickering over-aged teens get taken out by one monstrosity after another. Interspersed between each tableau of gory doom, the sorcerer gloats in a bad, Lugosi-styled accent and summons more creatures of the night through Carly. And each time someone scrambles to get out of a room there’s the purple werewolf outside, holding the door closed on one side while they pull hard to open it on the other.

The creatures encountered are like those you'd find on a Skywald horror magazine cover: there are the sod-men in the cellar, farting with each step they take  (I can now unequivocally say farting ruins suspenseful terror); there's the spider-woman (Soo Paek) that sucks the juices out of the annoying sock-puppet guy, actually deflating him as she slurps him up; there’s the grim reaper statue coming to life with blazing red eyes and wielding a mean scythe; and there’s a tentacled, sucker-fish-looking creature that shoots electric bolts. Go figure. The creations are fun to watch in action and help you ignore the messed up storyline.

While everyone is getting killed a la carte, the sorcerer's bride awakens and runs away. A witch-thingie stops her and forces her to run to the graveyard, where more zombies pop up and grab her in an overdrawn groping romp that needed splicing badly. She manages to break free long enough to run into the purple werewolf. There’s no door between them, though. The end makes no sense whatsoever: it's done for visual flair only. Indeed, the entire movie is a series of visual setups, strung between the incongruous sorcerer gloating, party people screaming and dying, the purple werewolf holding doors closed with glee, and a bride loathing her predicament.

If ever there was a reason to throw popcorn at a movie screen, this is it.

This movie is so goofy nonsensical you'll love watching it while deriding the hell out of it. I’m surprised no one’s made this a stage play yet. I’d love to see Spookies, the musical. 

Movie Review: Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane (2007)

Zombos Says: Fair

Marauding voracious zombies, no first class, no in-flight movies, and no salted nuts. And it gets worse! New Line Home Entertainment lands Flight of the Living Dead:Outbreak On A Plane straight to DVD, so fasten your seat belts because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

At a time when airlines have routinely kept passengers stranded in conga lines and airport terminals, creatively screwing-up the air travel experiences for so many travelers in so many nefarious ways, can flesh-eating zombies really be more frightening than having to get through a security checkpoint without completely disrobing, or finding your seat's overhead luggage bin not already stuffed with A30, C13, and D2's carry-ons? The writers, director Scott Thomas, Sidney Iwanter, and Mark Onspaugh, attempt the daunting task of answering that question, but don't have the budget or the scripting verve to make it a resounding yes.

What they do have is a good cast which includes Erick Avari and Kevin J. O'connor from 1999's The Mummy, and a clever sense for using the 747 Jumbo Jet's confining spaces as zombies overrun the cargo hold, the aisles, rip through the floor, and barge their way into the toilet. But the promise of a cheeky, retro-fitted storyline, and characters straight from the Airport disaster movies is not realized, although the opening credit sequence, with its bitchin' song and animation, teases us with that expectation.

Yes, there's a nun—sans guitar this time, thank God—a cop handcuffed to his wise-cracking, suave criminal charge, three perky stewardesses, an aging pilot on his last flight, and fast moving bio-zombies. What's not here is the needed scale to make the aisles of the 747 a harrowing battleground, or the depth of characterization and turmoil to put you on the edge of your seat, dreading every minute the plane is in the air. It's a good popcorn and soda movie, but you will find the popcorn doesn't stick in your throat and the soda doesn't fizz into your nose like it does when watching more gripping horror fare. Missing, too, is the realism and normal discomfort of being on a plane: passengers on this flight easily stand in and walk the aisles during turbulent weather, and there's no intrusive background jet engine noise; and for a 747, not many passengers booked this trip, although we keep getting new zombies from somewhere.

The strongest missing element is a more dynamic and iconic personality to rally the passengers against the voracious, economy class undead. While the properly cliché characters are adequate, not much is written into them. The famous golf pro, who carries and continuously polishes his beloved club, manages to knock a few growling heads off, here and there, but, like the martial artist in Snakes on a Plane, his potential is never realized. The quiet nun, ignoring everything around her, unfairly meets her grisly end without redemption, just when she decides to get involved. The cop and the sky marshal whip out their guns, but don't rally or rescue anyone in the process. Instead, it's a free-for-all as passengers run and zombies chase in a paint-by-numbers flow of lively action.

Automatic weapons and incendiary devices provide wacky fun. The outbreak begins when an infected wife of one of the renegade scientists on-board reanimates, much to the chagrin of the hazmat-suited guard nervously holding a semi-automatic weapon in the cargo hold. He opens fire, spraying bullets into the communications box and everything else but the agitated woman. She chomps down and the zombie romp begins.

With so many bullets flying around, it's hilarious the cabin isn't compromised. One errant bullet does manage to rip through the plane's interior and into the side of a flight attendant in a deft scene of mayhem. An improvised munition to blow up the zombies in the cargo hold doesn't put a dent in the plane, either, but this intentionally ludicrous scene is done well.

At least I hope it was intentional.

Cut-aways to increasingly worried military and government officials on the ground give the backstory, but tend to slow the action happening on the plane, clipping the tension instead of increasing it. Exterior shots of the CGI plane in flight are also glaringly budget and should have been used more sparingly. Then there are the air ducts. I'm not familiar with the 747's air circulation system, but whenever I see air ducts big enough to elbow your way through them, the words "convenient plot device" spring to mind. The disbelieving sky marshal is quickly made a believer when he suddenly encounters one energetic zombie in one.

While the dialog is not crisp or witty, it does have its moments, and the fighter jet, scrambled to bring down the plane, complicates things for the few remaining passengers not gnawing on each other. Only one fighter jet is dispatched, though, so I suppose the Pentagon isn't too worried about the infected plane landing (or crashing) in a populated area.

The best way to watch Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane, is with a bunch of fellow horrorheads, lots of popcorn and White Castle hamburgers, Cane Cola with lime, and Oreo cookies.

Toss in Snakes on a Plane, and Spookies, and you've got a night of it.

 

Movie Review: Resident Evil, Extinction (2007)

Zombos Says: Fair

I knew I had to steel myself against another blistering disappointment in horror movie entertainment. I headed to the concession stand and bought my usual reviewer-comfort food: small Cherry Coke, check; box of Junior Mints, check. I then sat in the last row, far from the screen, symbolically distancing myself from this third installment in a series that has, so far, failed to capture the eeriness and gut-wrenching involvement of the video game it sprang from. I was half-way through my box of Junior Mints, around the time when Alice--lithesome Milla Jovovich--was holding herself in her arms--her clone self, that is--that I realized kicking zombie butt can be fun to watch, even if the dialog, characters, and set-pieces are uninspired to the point of lameness. Let's face it: the franchise keeps going only because Milla Jovovich is the prettiest and sexiest zombie butt-kicker on the screen today.

Dressed in short-shorts, boots and garters, and two really big, sharp Kukri knives that Jim Bowie would have been proud to own, she presents quite the picture of the fashionably-dressed zombie slayer about town, or desert in this case. Unfortunately the T-Virus has spread well-beyond Racoon City, and now the entire planet is screwed big time, as well as the dwindling bunch of ragtag survivors traveling in a convoy that also would have made Mad Max proud, too.

It all begins promisingly with the nefarious Umbrella Corporation still trying to convert the millions of zombies it helped create into domesticated companions, and trying to perfect their Alice--zombie butt-kicker extraordinaire--clone army (in case their domestication plans fail, I suppose). The original Alice is on the run, trying to avoid the Umbrella Corporation's equally nefarious and ubiquitous spy-satellites that still run while the rest of the planet doesn't: damn, those Duracell batteries are good.

After a brief warm-up with a Rob Zombie-styled redneck white trash family and their dead but eager dogs, Alice comes across a notebook that points to the promised, zombie-free land of Alaska. And you thought Alaska was only good for crab and salmon, didn't you? Of course, with 30 Days of Night soon to hit theaters, that would have made quite a tie-in, don't you think? Zombies and vampires going at it, and Alice kicking, hacking and slashing all the way. Yummy.

Back to reality. As Alice continues her trek across the now sandy reaches of a decimated Nevada, she hooks up with her old MySpace bunch of Racoon City survivors, whose  caravan is in desperate need of food and fuel. Here's where the film gets mired in the usual hackneyed theatrics; that  let's-check-out-the-"deserted hotel," all two of us, and make sure to get bitten by a zombie while you're distracted, so you can ignore the impending danger--no one will notice you turning green and attracting flies--and turn into a dead flesh-muncher at a really critical time to screw things up kind of usual.

What's not so usual is Alice's newfound X-Men-like telekinetic ability which sure comes in handy when she remembers to use it, and, hey, what's with those cloudy-eyed birds that have been eating nothing but zombie carrion--oh, sh*t! Run!

Just when you think director Russell (Zen in the Art of Killing Vampires) Mulcahy and writer Paul (Castlevania) Anderson are blindly going through the zombie-shuffle, that Hitchcockian interlude with predatory zombie birds is a hair-raising thrill a minute, especially when Alice shows up to save the day.

But things go back to status quo when Alice and the survivors pull up in a desolate Las Vegas, only to get caught unawares by dozens of ravenous zombies dressed as Mr. Goodwrench by the Umbrella Corporation. While I sat wondering how they got all those uncontrollable zombies dressed in overalls, Alice battled them and the corporation's attempt at mind control.

Her friends didn't fare too well while she struggled with that one, but it does send her, very pissed, back to kick Umbrella Corp's butt, and square off against the evil scientist who tried to capture her. He, of course, is now mutated into the usual BIG and UGLY, possibly dead, creature with evil intentions. Oh, and she runs into her clones. Lots of them. In fact, that's the best part of the film: the ending. I hope it sets up the fourth installment. If it does, it'll be a knockout.

All in all, spending some time with Milla Jovovich is always enjoyable. While the make-up on the zombies is cursory,  and the action sequences needed more kick (as Gingold points out, the Las Vegas locale isn't used well at all), this installment in the franchise is more enjoyable than the lacklustre Resident Evil: Apocalypse. So I didn't really need to fall back on my Junior Mints and Cherry Coke much.

Disclaimer: We apologize for this reviewer's apparent lack of professional interest in any of the other actors, like Oded Fehr (who does a wonderful scene with a lit cigarette, a fuse, and groping zombies), in this film. While we agree that Milla Jovovich is an eyeful, it is important to recognize the talents of those supporting victims and zombies that made her look so good. Had we taken our eyes off of Jovovich, we'd be able to name them ourselves. We did notice Ashanti. She looked lovely, too.