"Hobo with a Shotgun" Running commentary:

Well as the previews are rolling, I'll take the time now to introduce my Hobo with a Shotgun running commentary. It's been a while since this was done here on these fine pages, and I decided that since the last one was Human Centipede, this one would have to be equally ridiculous in concept. Enjoy:


8:22- Popped in movie.
8:23- Rutger Hauer. Still awesome. Especially when shown playing harmonica on a train all Depression style.
8:24- This city looks shitty. Like Newburgh shitty.
8:25- A bum fight? Yeah. A bum fight.
8:28- Barb wire noose, man stuck in a manhole with his head sticking out. Everyone sounds Canadian.
8:30- Well...That seemed gratuitous.
8:32- Rutger shows us the world of the homeless guy. I now know how the guy by Gully's makes his living.
8:34- Just yelled "Oh shit" because a bunch of assholes just crushed a man's head with bumper cars. It appears these people don't like the homeless.
8:36- "The only thing I'm gonna let slide...is my dick in your pussy" Wow. I smell an Oscar.
8:38- Man who said above statement actually picks up the little slut he was talking to. And she says "Are we gonna fuck or what?"
8:39- Rutger is now pissed. "Shut your filthy mouth, Mother Theresa is a saint". Rutger dialogue. I'm not sure of the context here.
8:41- Rutger doesn't have a shotgun yet.
8:42- Cops work with the bad guys. Rutger just got stabbed brutally. Apparently not enough to kill him however.
8:44- So the lady from before is a hooker. Weird.
8:46- Hooker with a heart of fucking gold I'd say. Rutger's chest now says "Scum" on it.
8:48- "Well, I fuck for a living" Hahahahaha!
8:50- Our lady of the night has taken Rutger in. What a nice whore she is.
8:52- Still no shotgun.
8:53- Was that Santa Claus kidnapping a child?
8:54- Rutger is now chewing glass. For twenty bucks. What the hell is happening in this movie?
8:55- Bunch of robbers are threatening to kill a baby. Rutger is there. And now we have a shotgun.
8:56- "I'm going to sleep in your bloody carcasses tonight!" Also Rutger just Charles Bronson'd the shit out of the robbers.
8:57- Bum fights guy. Dead.
8:58- I now love this movie.
9:01- Rutger just killed pedophile Santa. And everyone else in the town. The Punisher ain't shit.
9:04- I'm not sure what happened there but some dude lost his organs and the bad guys just sorta laughed about it. This movie has no plot.
9:05- I think the bad guys are now torching a school bus full of kids. While "Disco Inferno" plays in the background. The crime boss in this movie is a fucked up dude. So is the director.
9:06- The cops are now going to kill homeless people. In creative and disgusting ways. Canadians are fucked up people.
9:07- Our whore with a heart of gold is running away from a cop with really bad sexually explicit dialogue.
9:08- Rutger is fucking Superman. The whore is Lois Lane.
9:10- Rutger really wants to buy a lawnmower.
9:12- One of the bad guys is kicking Rutger with hockey skates on. Brutal.
9:14- One of these fuckers looks a lot like Shia Labeouf or however you spell that turd's name.
9:15- Shia is sawing off the hooker's head. Rutger just burned a guy with a toaster. This director is just full of good ideas.
9:17- Rutger just ruined Shia's weekend. I don't think you can fix that. I now hurt in strange places.
9:18- So...a bunch of dudes are now wearing armor and gearing up for war, presumably with Rutger. They look like Mad Max characters.
9:20- Rutger saved the hooker's life somehow. Freebie?
9:23- The Mad Max killers are kind of brutal. They're like Nazi samurai. They are also killing the whole hospital.
9:26- I can't really describe what's happening but...I'm impressed.
9:28- Nazi Samurai Mad Max Death Squad just kidnapped Rutger. That won't end well.
9:30- Normal well-adjusted people don't make movies like this. Normal well-adjusted people don't give people money to make movies like this.
9:30, part 2: Our superhero hooker is now preparing to bust Rutger outta the pokey.
9:32- Ok. The Mad Max death guys are called The Plague.
9:34- This really reminds me of like an unrated version of "Escape from New York" if John Carpenter was completely bat shit crazy. Also, I think this movie would've been great with Gary Busey in it.
9:36- The hooker is rescuing Rutger with a lawnmower. Dead Alive style.
9:37- That was brutal.
9:38- This lady is having a shitty day.
9:39- I don't understand.
9:41- .....
9:44: Ok. Every one's dead. Spoiler alert.



In conclusion: I sit here now wondering if I liked it, loved it, or had no idea what the fuck just happened. I mean I knew what I was getting walking in, but I didn't think they would take it where they did. Now I should warn you, this is in no way a "good" movie by any normal definition of the term. Just like Machete, or Black Dynamite this is kind of a spoof of bad movies, not to be taken seriously. I mean...it is called Hobo with a Shotgun. Shakespeare this is not. Still, I had fun.

Grade: 88% (The sheer stupidity and the concept bump this movie up like 20 points)

Tribute: The Phantasm series

 

 I know I've been going super hard on the posts here lately. I got a lot of time on my hands what can I say. Anyway, I wanted to take the time (and waste all of yours) on paying tribute to, in my mind, one of the most underrated series, if not the MOST underrated series of horror movies to ever be made. Everyone knows about Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. Everyone also knows Child's Play (Chucky series assholes) and obviously Scream and Saw. But how many people have ever heard of, much less seen the Phantasm series? I can probably count that number of people I know at least on one hand. That's a fucking crying shame. This series has more ideas in 20 minutes of film then any of the series I mentioned above through 8 or 9 whole movies.

  Yeah, some people (assholes) won't get these movies. Some people will also say if they watch them the inevitable, "whoever made these movies was on a lot of drugs". Like no one can be fucking creative without copious amounts of mind altering substances. Yet, there is one thing you can not deny about all four of these movies. They are fucking completely original. I dare anyone to watch these movies and then tell me you've seen anything like them before. I will try not to mock you like the little liar you are.

So what makes them so great? Several things. In the interest of time and space restrictions I will briefly break these all down right now.

1. One of the BEST villains in horror movie history: The good guys in the Phantasm series are being terrorized by The Tall Man, played by Angus Scrimm. The Tall Man starts out in the original movie as what appears to be a creepy undertaker that the good guys suspect is up to some sinister shit at the funeral home. Turns out it's a shit load of a lot worse than that. My interpretation is that he is the ruler of another dimension and his mission is to kill the entire human race and enslave them to build his army of feral dwarves, and to trap their souls in his death orbs. More on that later. The Tall Man, like Pinhead from Hellraiser, is a completely developed, evil as fuck character. He's not some mindless brute like Jason or Michael Myers, nor is he some wise cracking jokester like Freddy Kruger. He's evil and he doesn't fuck around with catch phrases. He is just out to straight up murder the world. Not to be fucked with.

2. The premise itself: I sort of alluded to this above, but I will explain the basic idea behind the movies. Basically, these friends from a small town stumble upon the activities of the Tall Man whose mission is to kill every fucking human on Earth. When a person dies, The Tall Man steals their bodies, shrinks and disfigures them, steals their brains, and sets them loose on the next victim. He does this to build his army of the undead to rule time and space. How fucking awesome is that shit?!


3. The Death Orbs: When the Tall Man steals your brain, he traps it into these flying death balls (which kind of look like big Chinese Stress Balls). When these things come after you, they have all manner of sharp objects that slice and dice you. Their primary way to kill you, however, is a three pronged blade thingy (see picture below). When they stab you in the head, a tiny drill comes out of the orb and drills into your skull causing your brains and blood to shoot out. In the interest of better explaining this to the uninitiated, I have provided many pretty pictures.

4. The fact that you can't kill ANY of the Tall Man's zombie people: When the Tall Man takes a human slave, either to dig up graves or whatever, they are like super powerful and you can't fucking kill them no matter how hard you try. I mean they die eventually, but you pretty much have to light them on fire or blow their heads off.


5. The quad-barreled shotgun: Reggie, one of the good guys, builds himself a super shotgun with four barrels of death. He uses this throughout the whole series, and as a result murders dwarf and zombie fuckers on the regular.

6. The endings to each movie: I have written before on these fine pages in regards to the "Carrie" scare, which you may recall was the last scare of a horror movie, usually cheap and ineffective. Phantasm takes this idea, turns it around, and tells it to go fuck itself. For the entire duration of the series, just when there's 2 minutes of downtime, the Tall Man fucks shit up again. It never seems to stop. At the end, just when the good guys think they finally beat him, he comes back for one last attack, usually killing one of their new companions. In fact, every time our good guys meet someone new who isn't a servant of the Tall Man, it's almost like the guy on an old Star Trek episode wearing the red shirt. You just know the guy (or child, or woman) is going to die miserably.

In conclusion: There will be people out there who are going to say I'm retarded for writing this post. They will disagree and tell me I have taste up my ass. These people suck at life. Phantasm as a series is probably the most creative and original series in horror history. The entire series is like a low brow Dali painting. You're not sure what's going on, and it's pretty messy, but you know that it's fucking interesting. I wish that just once I will see another movie or series in my lifetime with this much originality. But no. I have already resigned myself to the fact that all I will see in the next 20 years is rehashed bullshit and remakes. So if Saw is your thing, don't bother with Phantasm. You want something a little different, Netflix has them all. It's a good use of your time.

Fuck that's gotta hurt.

Really Stupid Movie Review: Watchers

Director: I don't know and really no one gives a shit.


Actors: Corey Haim (RIP dude), a dog, and Michael Ironside.

Plot, at least my interpretation of one: The movie starts with a huge explosion in the woods somewhere in California I think. We then see a golden retriever running like hell through the woods. We also get the impression that something large and angry is chasing this poor puppy. There's a lot of roaring and such, and then we are taken to a somewhat random farmhouse somewhere nearby. A semi cute girl is walking through the farm area towards her horse stables when none other than Corey Haim scares her. And then they make out. Hardcore style. As things start getting uncomfortable for me to watch, the couple hears a roar and something breaking. The girl thinks immediately that it's her dad and she puts her shirt back on and tells Corey to get the fuck out of there. Corey obviously stricken with a large case of blue balls reluctantly does as hes told and leaves. The girl meets her dad by the stable (he's got a rifle) and as he's questioning his slutty daughter, the two are immediately attacked by the angry creature who was chasing the dog earlier. But we don't see the creature, nor what he does to dear old dad. What a fucking waste of a good kill scene. The girl somehow escapes certain mauling at the hands of the vicious creature. In fact I don't remember what happens to her during the attack but I know she was knocked out in a corner somewhere. Anyway, the cops come and it seems apparent to me that their are only two cops in this entire town. More on this later. Suddenly Michael Fucking Ironside (you may remember him from such fine work as Total Recall) arrives with a government badge and a bad ass attitude. He takes charge of the investigation and tells the cops to fuck off. He also goes in the ambulance with the girl. I should maybe have mentioned that Mr. Ironside was in the way beginning talking to some shadowy government figure who ordered him to "contain the problem". Sorry about that. So next we see Corey in all his curly mulleted glory driving a pickup truck, trying to avoid cops. We then notice that our pooch from before has stowed himself away on the truck bed. Corey finds him, all sorts of bullshit Disney animal talking ensues from there. It doesn't take Corey long to figure out that his new puppy is a super intelligent lab experiment. It also doesn't take him long to figure out that wherever they go, somebody gets mauled by the feral monster that's chasing the doggy. Yet we don't see any of the mauling. Fucking lame. Once Corey's house is attacked, Corey, Corey's mom, and the puppy go on the lam. They're running not only from the monster, but from Michael Ironside and his sidekick. Finally at this point of the movie, shit starts to get bloody as the bodies pile up. About fucking time. The government guys find the hotel Corey and his mom run to and somehow Corey escapes. Corey and the dog run to a cabin in the woods, and immediately Corey goes into monster killing preparations. By this point, Corey Haim is a fuckin pro at this shit. After his near death at the hands of the werewolf from Silver Bullet, and the emo vampires from Lost Boys, Corey isn't fuckin around anymore. He somehow buys a shit ton of guns and weaponry and prepares for war. The government gets there first, with Corey's mom and girl in tow as hostages. Corey then takes on these government pricks like a champ, and kills Michael Ironside with a knife to the neck and some gunshots. Then the monster shows up, and it's Corey vs. the monster in a fight to the death.

Gore: This movie should have been a monster violence extravaganza. But no. We get the director attempting to be all artsy and such by not showing the monster, or the monster killing anyone. What the fuck is that shit?! When I watch a creature movie I am there to see one thing and one thing only. I want creatures to maul people brutally. That's it. But no. This movie decided to have a lame creature with no monster on person violence (shown at least) until the very end of the movie. What a waste of fuckin time.

The town probably: should have had more than two cops. I mean to kill the monster Corey had to shoot the fucker like 80 times. The cops, when confronted with said creature peed themselves and one ended up dead. The other cop was then killed by Michael Ironside. Now you have no cops.


Boobs: No. None. In fact there were barely any females in the movie at all. No gore, no boobs.


Awards: Lamest creature ever award. Like it looked like a retarded sasquatch. The three seconds that you actually see the creature anyway.


Who writes this shit?: Dean Koontz. He wrote this shit. He's like a diet Stephen King only instead of zero calories he's got zero talent.


Corey Haim: Learned his lesson in this movie. I mean he seriously prepared himself well for the fight with the monster. So well he barely got a scratch. He may get the posthumous monster killer of the 80's award. RIP soldier.


Michael Ironside: is one of the best villains ever. In any movie. Even this giant piece of shit.


Pre-Columbine moment: The fact that Corey Haim could walk into a gun store and buy like a fuckin arsenal that would have made Saddam jealous with barely any questions asked. Also where the hell did a kid get the money to buy all that shit?


In conclusion: This is kind of a shitty movie. Like there isn't enough to make fun of but there isn't anything to recommend. It's a disney movie with monsters. That is somehow rated R with absolutely nothing to make it an R rated movie. There are better things you can do with 90 minutes of your time. Also Dean Koontz is a fuckin hack. The end.


Grade: 48%

Ha!

Beware the scary monster.

Stupid Movie Review: Mimic

Director: Guillermo Del Toro


People in the movie: Mira Sorvino (Paulie from Goodfellas' daughter), Charles S. Dutton, F. Murray Abraham, a British guy, an autistic kid, the European guy who got disemboweled in Hannibal, Josh Brolin for like 4 seconds.

Plot: Mira Sorvino plays an insect expert (totally believable role for her. I absolutely believe that she would play with bugs as a career. I really do.) who is given the task of trying to wipe out NYC's cockroach problem. Apparently, the cockroaches are carrying this horrible disease that kills children and half the city's kids have already been wiped out. So she figures out a way to biologically engineer a species of cockroach or cockroach DNA (the science is real hazy here and personally I think the whole idea is retarded anyway but whatever) that will wipe out the vermin and save the city. Good for her. She introduces this thing she creates into the sewers and every one's happy. Fast forward a few years later and we suddenly see a Korean priest running for his life from what appears to be a super strong monster of some kind. You just catch a glimpse of the thing, which looks vaguely human, for a few seconds after the priest falls to his death. We move over to Mira's lab somewhere in the city where these two street rat kids bring her a bug in a box that they want her to pay them for. I wasn't aware there was a market for this shit but ok. We see Mira has this whole lab full of bug stuff, including an ant colony in a huge tank. As she explains bug life to one of the street rat kids, I couldn't help but think Mira can't even fake that she knows what shes talking about. Anyway, she examines what the kids bring her and she realizes that she's looking at a semi-large cockroach that bites super hard. She immediately suspects that this is her little DNA fix from a few years ago mutated. Now I don't believe Mira Sorvino can be a scientist, but I do believe she can fuck up chocolate milk, so this part is totally believable. She begins telling her friends, husband, and colleagues about this, and now people are starting to turn up dead. We are brought to another part of the city where a shoe shiner in the subway and his obviously autistic son stumble upon the creature. I won't explain how this happens because that would take a long time and I'm not writing this for a Special Education course. At any rate, the kid is taken by the creature which everyone watching figures out is really a giant cockroach that has super sharp claws and can fly. We are fucked. So now Mira and crew go and check out the sewers and underground areas of the city, and the shit really hits the fan. Apparently the bugs can mimic human behavior and even have human faces for camouflage. What the fuck. So with the help of Charles S. Dutton, who gets to say "motherfucker" a lot, the crew (those who survive anyway) try and escape the sewers and wipe out the bug menace once and for all. Also Mira Sorvino can't act.


Gore: We have some decent creature violence but this is mostly just bug goo everywhere. Nothing to write home about.


Nudy scenes: No. Mira wastes the few assets she does have in a weak bathtub scene with her weakling husband. We have no nudity. In a bathtub scene. Waste of my time.


Who was the asshole: That cast Mira Sorvino as a scientist in this movie? Really? NO ONE believes she can even READ, much less read MANY BOOKS to fulfill the requirements to become a PHD.


Why: Didn't the NYPD send more cops down with Charles S. Dutton to help our crew of scientists? I would think that standard operating procedure would be to send at least ONE more cop as backup right? He was not only the only guy with a weapon, but the only guy with balls to actually do anything to get these people out of the sewers. Charles S. Dutton, gold star for you. Also, Mira Sorvino can't act.


Are you fucking kidding me? moment: I'll preface this with a brief explanation of a moment I left out of the plot synopsis. While our heroes are trapped down underground by the insect horde, Mira briefly explains (seriously she sucks at this) that in an insect colony there will have to be one fertile male to keep the colony going. I was always under the impression that there was only one fertile FEMALE and that she was the queen and all the other insects were male. But hey, I'm no expert on the insect population. Not like Mira is of course. So anyway, end of the movie, her husband has just fried the whole colony except for one insect. It obviously attacks Mira who immediately says "the male". The bug looked EXACTLY THE SAME as every other bug creature in the fucking movie. How the fuck would she possibly be able to tell that THAT particular insect is the male? Are you fucking kidding me?


Creature effect award: The scene where the giant bug creature is finally revealed in full and chases Mira down the subway.


Leap of logic moment involving the award given above: So...NOBODY sees the giant bug creature chasing a woman down a subway? I'm pretty sure that in NYC, someone would see something like that. It's kind of a big deal.


In conclusion: Guillermo Del Toro is a great director. He has been quoted as saying that he makes two kinds of movies. Movies to pay the bills and movies that are close to his heart. Clearly this is of the former variety. Not his finest hour. The script is bad and full of giant crater sized holes and...have I mentioned that Mira Sorvino, despite being somewhat foxy, is a terrible actress? She ruins whatever credibility a giant bug movie might have had by sucking out loud for 90 minutes. I remember watching this when I was younger and loving it. I think it was the giant bugs. Which are definitely cool. In fact the only thing that saves this one from Metallica post Black album levels of suck are the creatures. But giant bugs alone do not make a great film. Also...Mira Sorvino sucks.

Grade: 62%

You my dear are a huge embarassing failure. Both me and your dad think so.

Stupid Movie Review: The Resurrected

Director: Dan O'Bannon



Actors: Chris Sarandon. You know Prince Humperdinck from The Princess Bride. Also known as the best actor to be a villain ever.



Plot: If you have ever read the short story "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward" by HP Lovecraft, than you know the story. But I'm going to go ahead and assume that no one who may read this even knows who the fuck Lovecraft is, nor has opened a book since college (or high school. See I don't discriminate). Anyway, the movie opens with what looks like a horrific murder in a mental hospital. Like body parts missing horrific. And then we see a detective guy who introduces himself as our narrator. The story then kind of unfolds like a film noir flashback from there. The detective is just sitting in his office one day when this distraught, yet semi attractive in that early 90's kind of way, lady walks in. She wants him to investigate her husband, Charles, who left under weird circumstances with a doctor friend of his. Charles is a scientist who she believes was working on something big when the noise and the smell kind of got to her, so she told him to find a new place to work on shit. Right now you're thinking, "then why hire the private detective if you know where the fuck he is?" Don't worry, I had the same thought. Anyway, she's worried that he's doing something fucked up wherever he is and she wants to know what's up. Problem is, Chuck won't let her near the place, which is some old farmhouse outside of the city. No I don't know what city. So our detective goes to the farmhouse to check shit out. The story gets weirder and weirder from there. Basically the detective, the damsel in distress, and the detective's assistant eventually find out that Charles is conducting experiments that may involve the use of human remains. Also, he may be repeating the same experiments done by a distant relative of his from the 1770's. There are some gross flashbacks here as well. Our team of good guys then figures out that Charles is basically making hideous monsters out of dead humans. Awesome.


Gore: This is mostly atmospheric, but when shit gets gooey it's really really gooey. We have severed limbs, decapitations, and disgusting creature violence. Yum.


Boobs: Nope. They are safely hidden away in the shirts of the two females in the movie.


Hats off to: The creature effect/ makeup guys. Every monster was amazingly gross and believable, and they used stop-motion effects for some of their movements. You would NEVER see this kind of creativity nowadays. Now it would be all CGI and look like a video game. Lame.


Best Monster: The thing in the cellar towards the end of the movie. It was all fat with entrails hanging, and it had its mouth on its forehead and looked awesome as it tried to bite people. I can't describe it better than that.


Why the hell:  Have I never heard of this movie before I randomly saw it on Netflix? After watching it I immediately looked it up on the normal websites and I learned that it was a direct to video movie from 1992. THIS was direct to video? It was way too polished and well done for the normal direct to video nonsense. Leprechaun in the Hood? Yeah that's direct to video. Demonic Toys vs. Puppet Master? Yeah totally. This movie should have gotten more love. Way more.


Why: aren't there more good movies based on Lovecraft stories? The guy basically invented the disgusting monster story and there are a very small handful of movies that do his work justice. Although I hear Guillermo Del Toro is making one. Make it happen. Also for you illiterate fucks out there, go to Barnes and Noble and grab a cheap Lovecraft collection. You'll thank me.


In conclusion: I was really really surprised by this movie. Super pleasantly surprised. Like way to go me for just watching something on Netflix on a whim expecting it to suck. You can't find it on DVD but Netflix has it so search it and watch. I liked it so much that this whole thing was written within a half hour of watching it. For more info check out Fangoria's website. They do a much better job than I did describing it. Living proof the 90's didn't totally suck for horror movies. See it fuckers.

Don't lie. You woke up next to that last weekend.

On the Fright Night remake

  Well ladies and gentlemen it's summer movie season. We got half-assed sequels that fail miserably (I'm talking to you Hangover 2), superhero hits and shits (Green Lantern in the shits category) and more terrible Michael Bay robot movies. However while lookin through IMDB the other day I happened to notice that some scumbag decided it was a good idea to remake Fright Night for summer consumption. I understand that remakes keep making money, but there is no reason to remake every fucking horror movie ever made is there? Fright Night for those of you who don't know was a horror/comedy from the 80's that paid homage to the great Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing Hammer Horror House movies from the 50's and 60's. It starred the guy who played Prince Humperdink as the vampire who moves next door to a horror movie obsessed high school kid. The kid, while watching his favorite shit on tv, accidentally sees Prince Humperdink murder some whore through his bedroom window a la Rear Window. Hilarity and vampire cliches ensue from there.
    
   I want to say that I love this movie. I know it's corny. I know it's not Shakespeare. However it was one of those great unsung horror movies from the 80's that you can't help but like. Which is why I fucking HATE the idea of a remake. That being said, I've decided to give you fine people a list of reasons why you should NOT see this almost certain pile of dogshit on film. Enjoy:

1. Colin Farrel is in it. Everything he touches turns to shit.

2. It's another horror movie remake. Name one that's good and I'll try not to laugh at you.

3. It has the kid who played McLovin in it. How the fuck am I supposed to take that seriously?

4. Not only is Colin Farrel in it, he plays the vampire. The original had Prince Humperdink. Humperdink!

5. This is clearly trying to cash in on the whole Twilight thing. Like every vampire movie since 2006 or whatever.

6. Did I mention Colin Farrel is in it?

7. It will completely miss the point of the original. Therefore it will be a giant piece of shit.

8. Speaking of vampire trendy bullshit...yeah that was the punchline. I think it's time to demand a little bit of originality in our entertainment. I for one am tired of this shit. It sickens me that a movie like this (and Transformers, and Hangover 2, and Green Lantern, and name another surefire piece of shit movie and insert it here) gets made and wide released and I have to TRAVEL to see the new Woody Allen movie.


Now that that's over, I would like to take the opportunity now to make a list of movies you should see INSTEAD of wasting money on this guaran-damned-teed pile of crap. Here ya go:

1. The original Fright Night. Or how about all the original movies Hollywood ruined with remakes.
2. Any Chuck Norris movie.
3. Any movie Colin Farrel isn't in.
4. Any movie NOT currently in theaters this summer.
5. Any fucking movie I tell you to.


I think you get the point.

Scream, a People's History

  Well it was bound to happen eventually. Once again, Wes Craven needs money and his last movie probably ate donkey balls ( I didn't see it. I just remember hearing it sucked out loud). So of course, borrow some money from the Weinsteins, call Kevin Williamson (lord knows he's got shit else to do), and make another pointless, convoluted Scream movie. You can imagine my joy. I've seen the trailers, I've read about the premise for this one (like it's at all different from the other three), and I've noticed that everyone who lived through the last sequel is back for this one. I guess they ALL need money.

  Anyone who grew up in the 90's remembers when Scream 1 came out. It was for a lot of us the first movie that every kid we knew had to see. Whether mom and dad let us or not. It was 1996. I was 14. Now of course I saw the first one in the theater (snuck in actually) just like millions of other people did. So in a way I partly blame myself for what happened. Because of me, and people like me who went in droves to see this shit, horror movies were pretty much ruined for at least 10 years. After the massive blockbuster success of the first movie, every asshole movie producer on the planet had to make their own Scream.

  So lemme get to the point. I was watching TV the other day when I saw the trailer and I realized something. Horror movies in the 90's can literally be broken down into the "pre-Scream" and "post-Scream" eras. Seriously. There is a huge difference between how horror movies were made before Scream. The early 90's to most people are considered kind of a down period for horror. Everybody was kind of bored with the whole thing. Movies were either rehashing 80's cash cows (like Jason Goes to Hell or Child's Play sequels) or trying to invent new monsters to make a shit ton of money. For example, Candyman and Leprechaun. There was a Return of the Living Dead sequel (reviewed here on these fine pages), a Hellraiser sequel or two. Even Wes Craven did a few movies. Remember People Under the Stairs? How about Shocker? This was also the time when you saw a lot of Stephen King movies being made. Pumpkinhead 2...I could go on. The point is that the movies of the 90's had a definite mission and that was to get away from the "Freddy/Jason" plots from the 80's. Instead you had movies that were longer and tried to be more like thrillers or dramas. They tried to be a little more adult oriented. Problem was, the kids were the ones that went to the theater.

     Then Scream came out. A completely self-aware slasher movie that paid homage to (or ripped off depending on your opinion) the golden age of the slasher movie. Not only that, but it starred marginally famous TV actors that teenage kids recognized. Gone was the era of seeing a completely unknown actor or actress try to make a buck before their big break. These people were already semi-successful. The most important part of Scream however probably was the script. It was praised back in '96 as "smart" or "hip". Whatever the fuck that means. Basically it meant that supposedly teenage kids (they all looked 30) cursed a lot and made fun of each other using an SAT vocabulary mixed with the clever profanity. You also had the protagonists completely aware of horror movie history and realizing that their lives in the movie imitate art. The perpetrator of this script was one Kevin Williamson, who in my estimation was trying really hard to be the '90's fucked up version of John Hughes. He would go on to be responsible for the I Know What You Did Last Summer series and Dawson's Creek. Fuck... that... guy. Scream became bigger than just a movie. Now every single asshole producer wanted their own version of Scream. Like the aforementioned I Know What You Did... movies, you then saw shit like Valentine and Urban Legend. Also, I think I should mention the Final Destination series as well. All of these movies were slashers (sort of) and all followed the new Scream formula. The early 90's style was dead. Not to mention that now Wes Craven had more money, and could start calling himself "The Master of Suspense". Fuck you you sellout.

    There is no better example of this then Halloween 6/ Halloween H2O. Halloween 6, the before Scream movie, tried really hard to make the franchise about more than a crazy guy killing people. You had a shit plot, with the weird cultists and conspiracy subplot carried over from 5 that didn't make sense, and Paul Rudd in like his first movie taking his role way too seriously. Typical early 90's shit. Then you had H2O, the post-Scream movie. You had up and coming young actors, a script full of Kevin Williamson jokes, and Michael Myers doing what he's supposed to do. Also you had the return of Jamie Lee Curtis, who due to the 900 references to her in the Scream franchise suddenly was given a career boost. Now which one do you think made more money?

  We haven't recovered yet from this. Every horror movie that comes out, remake or not, tries to follow the Scream formula. It's like this logarithm for horror movie success that hasn't been proven wrong yet, only it has and repeatedly. Hostel, ANY Rob Zombie movie, ALL remakes, any PG-13 nightmare, Paranormal Activity. Everyone of them guilty of following the Scream formula. I'm not saying that these movies are all bad (most are though) or wrong for doing it, I'm just stating a truth. In fact, I can't think of one horror movie since 1996 that hasn't. Well, maybe not the movies from France or Japan (probably why they're awesome. I'm talking to you Martyrs and Audition). But everything American definitely bites off Scream. If you wondered where originality went in horror movies, just watch Scream.

Stupid Movie Review: Nightmare City

Director: Umberto Lenzi


People in the movie: Some guy named Hugo (more on this later) and a bunch of Italian people.


Plot: Haha. I should end it there. In the interests of entertaining the four or five people who will accidentally google this, or catch it off Facebook, I'll keep going. Our movie opens in the home of a news reporter, we will call him Hugo (his name in real life), watching the news. Apparently, a nuclear reactor accident has occurred around the area where the movie takes place, and an eminent professor is returning to try and fix it. That's what it sounded like to me anyway. So then Hugo gets a call, and tells his pretty doctor wife he's gotta go. Apparently he's been given the task of interviewing the good doctor when he lands in the city. So after a stop at the station to get chewed out by his dickhead British accented boss, Hugo and a camera guy go to the airport. The most poorly run airport ever I might add. When the doc's plane finally comes in, the air traffic controllers don't even know to signal a runway for the plane to land. So Hugo and the camera guy wait for the plane to land, and when it does shit already just seems off. No one's coming out of the plane, nor are they responding to any of the people, and later cops, trying to communicate with them. Suddenly the door opens, and a multitude of zombies with faces that look like burned meat loaf pop out, and slaughter everyone they see. Hugo runs like a bastard. A wise decision. He immediately goes back to the TV station to try and warn everybody. He gets there, and he walks in on a weird European dance session. Europe is fucking strange. Hugo kinda stands there and watches for a sec before suddenly remembering that the meat loaf terror squad just landed. When he composes himself finally, he tries to interrupt the broadcast to warn the public. His dickhead boss is having none of it, and then an army officer appears to tell Hugo to shut the fuck up, "we don't want a panic". Yes, better humanity gets massacred quietly. Then the meatloaf zombies burst into the dance thingy, and brutally stab everyone. Apparently the zombies don't want anything but human blood to sustain them. You never really find out why. A few more massacres, Hugo vs. zombie chase scenes, and awkward sex scenes later, and our movie ends. And then (spoiler alert) Hugo wakes up. It was all a dream. Until the beginning of the movie repeats itself. What the fuck.


Plot stuff I left out, part 1: The side story of the General and his hot artist wife who is topless the whole movie. She dies brutally.


Plot stuff I left out, part 2: The other side story of another general and his hippy daughter and her husband. They both get stabbed in the face.


Gore: There's a lot of stabbings, blood drinking, hatchet to the head, a brutal eye gouge, and  two vicious scenes of breast violence. Yes. Breast violence.


Nudity: Awkward weird Euro sex occurs quite often in this one. Also many unnecessary and not entirely welcome boob shots sprinkled throughout.


Trivia moment: The reporter is played by a guy named Hugo Stiglitz. You may remember that as the name of one of the characters in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino apparently is a big fan of Mr. Stiglitz so he named a character after him. Don't ask me how I know that shit.


Cheap special effects award: The boob impalement. There are actually two of these but the first one where the meat loaf zombies attack the dance show will be the focus here. The zombie takes a knife and basically cuts a woman's boob off. However, look closely enough (which I did solely for your benefit dear readers) and you can clearly see where the real boob ends and the fake one is being cut off. Look even closer, and you can see that the real boob is fine and unharmed.


Best Massacre: The hospital. Everyone dies brutally and the effects don't look so shitty.


Dubbing?: Yep. Also shitty.


Favorite zombie kill: The general shooting his recently zombified girlfriend (from plot point number 1 above) and her head like flies off with brains and blood squirting everywhere.

Favorite zombie attack: When Hugo and his wife (did I mention Hugo was married?) go to a church thinking they're safe and the Priest attacks them with a weapon. Hugo then beats him to death with a giant cross.



In conclusion: This movie despite being a giant piece of shit is a really good time. The plot is nonexistent, but since there's a violent massacre every 7 seconds you don't even notice. It's got your basic trash movie elements, and some weird shit too. Most of the time I didn't know what the fuck was going on but who cares. If you have like a sixer of Pabst and a buddy it's not the worst 90 minutes you'll ever spend. See it if you can find it and can overlook some big flaws. And giant plot holes. And awkward Euro-Sex. And bad special effects.


Grade: 68%

Now you tell me his face doesnt look like cafeteria meat loaf? Or prison food?