Frogs (1972)

Director: George McCowan (Fantasy Island (T.V.), Charlie's Angels (T.V.))
Writer: Robert Hutchison (Outside In and Frogs...that's his entire resume)

Starring: Sam Elliot (Roadhouse, Tombstone); Ray Milland (Dial M for Murder, Rich Man, Poor Man); Joan Van Ark (Dallas, Knots Landing)

What can be less menacing than a frog? When was the last time you looked at a frog with anything but optimism? Have you ever seen a frog hopping toward you and thought, "Oh, shit! Here comes a frog--run!" Apparently frogs were scary back in 1972. Actually, the frogs never really do anything aggressive at all, even though Sam Elliott says, "Frogs attacking windows, snakes hanging from chandeliers...what's next?" The frogs weren't attacking the windows, they were pretty much just leaning against them. In fact, the frogs are more like the pigs in Animal Farm than anything...they sit around looking bored while all the other reptiles (and some spiders) attack the people (and before you jump in my shit, yes I know frogs are amphibians). Seriously, has anyone in history ever been scared by a frog? Maybe Ramses back when Moses brought the hordes upon Egypt...but since then...not so much.

The premise is pretty cut & dry: Sam Elliott's a free-lance photographer who's floating around some island in the Everglades (I'm assuming...it's never really revealed where exactly they are) taking photos of the wildlife and the pollution. His canoe gets swamped by rich boy Clint Crockett (Adam Roarke). He & his sister (Joan Van Ark) tow him to their rich grandfather Jason Crockett's (Ray Milland) house on the island, where they offer him clothes, food & drink. At lunch, the frog population is discussed with much concern (again, the frogs never kill anybody), and Jason asks Pickett (Sam Elliott) to check things out, since he's not only a photographer, he's somewhat of an environmentalist as well. A whole lot of nothin' happens for quite some time, then the killings begin. I will list them individually, because they're all so ridiculous, they deserve their own description.

Pickett finds Grover, the groundskeeper, dead in the swamp...but remember, this is 1972, so dead folks are played by live actors, so even though Grover's dead, you can see him breathing. Next to die is one of the grandsons...Ken, I think. He's sent out to look for Grover (before Sam Elliott finds him). This moron trips & shoots himself in the shin with the rifle he's carrying. As he's lying on the ground, bleeding and generally being a pussy, a ton of tarantulas drop down from the trees, bite him and then SPIN A WEB AROUND HIM. Never you mind that tarantulas don't live in trees. Next is cousin Mike, who goes into the greenhouse to cut some orchids for the 4th of July celebration. He's followed by some geckos & a couple of monitor lizards (not indigenous to the U.S., and not observed here in the wild until the '90s). The monitor lizard climbs up on the shelves of the green house & knocks over a bunch of poisons...therefor asphyxiating Mike. Grandma is next to go...she's out chasing butterflies & completely panics when she sees a rattlesnake. Ironically, it's that same rattler that kills her. Next is all the black folk, but they don't show what kills them. Then it's Clints turn: another monitor chews his boat rope; the boat floats out into the middle of the lake; Clint swims to it & is bitten by a snake in the water. Clint's wife gets it next, she trips over a snapping turtle (I had just said out loud, "Where the hell are the turtles?") and is bitten by a snake as well. Ray Milland dies of an apparent heart attack, and the "malevolent" frogs converge upon him...to do what, I don't know. Perhaps to pee on him...that's about as malevolent as a frog can be. (I know there are poisonous frogs in the world, but the only frogs in this movie were bullfrogs & leopard frogs & such...all the benign breeds.

Here's a question: where the hell are all the mammals on this island? Really...no squirrels, racoons...nothin'. Odd.

Highlights: Joan Van Ark in 1972 looked pretty good & wore a bunch of tight fitting clothes.

Lowlights: All the non-indigenous reptiles...monitor lizards & black mambas in the Everglades in 1972? Really? And the tarantulas falling out of the trees...epic fail on that one. And the frogs...really. Frogs are like zombies, you can totally outrun them, regardless how "malevolent" the plot scenario portrays them to be. The acting is piss poor, which is surprising, considering the fact that Ray Milland won the best actor Oscar in 1945 for his role in The Lost Weekend (he was up against Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly & Gregory Peck) and Sam Elliott turned out to be quite the likeable actor as well.

The ending is boring and predictable, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark & her nephew & niece get away in the canoe...they come across one snake in a moronic plot twist that has Sam paddling the canoe into shallow waters. They reach the mainland & are picked up by a passing motorist & her kid, who's holding (what else?) a huge bullfrog...cue menacing music.

Really...frogs? I saw this movie when I was about 8 or 9 years old, and it kinda freaked me out...now that I'm 40 & fancy myself a movie critic, I probably would've laughed at myself at nine and called me a pussy. Frogs are anything but malevolent, unless you happen to be in the rain forest...then look out.

This movie has all the production value of a '70s porno...without the boning. It's sloppily shot & horribly acted. The characters are predictable & cartoonish. If you watch it, don't go into it with the attitude that you're watching Jaws or Psycho or something...watch it for what it is: a poorly made, pulp-fiction type cult film.

Check out the trailer: Frogs!

Gone (2007)

Director: Ringan Ledwidge (directorial debut)

Writers: James Watkins (The Descent, Part 2; Eden Lake) & Andrew Upton (Bangers)

Starring: Shaun Evans (The Virgin Queen; Being Julia); Scott Mechlowicz (EuroTrip; Mean Creek); Amelia Warner (Quills; Aeon Flux)

I literally could've eaten a box of Alpha-bits cereal and crapped out a better script than this movie had...and it had TWO writers. It had to be the most boring movie I've ever seen in my life...and I've watched the English Patient.

Generously billed as a "contemporary psychological thriller", Gone could have been 15 minutes long and still delivered the exact same impact. You'd be better off watching flies fornicate than wasting your time on this film.

Here's the premise: A young Brit is backpacking through Australia when he meets an American who ingratiates himself on every aspect of this kid's trip. They get drunk and pass out with a couple of girls (the Brit is engaged, and supposedly meeting up with his fiancee during the trip), the American (Taylor, played by Scott Mechlowicz) snaps a polaroid of the Brit (Alex, played by Shaun Evans), and has him sign it...evidently, that's his "thing"; he takes polaroids of the people he meets and has them write on them. They meet up with Alex's fiancee, Sophie (Amelia Warner) and some chick named Ingrid (Zoe Tuckwell-Smith). Taylor invites himself on the remainder of the trip (he owns a car, so I guess it's ok), but when they go to leave the next morning, he tells Alex & Sophie that Ingrid decided to go off on her own. What follows is around an hour and ten minutes of driving footage, hotel stays, and limited, boring dialogue until about the last ten minutes of the movie, when shit actually starts to happen.

Highlights: Unless you're into the beauty of coastal Australia, ZERO.

Lowlights: This movie moves slower than a snail on heroin, the music is more menacing than it needs to be, Taylor is an annoying little prick throughout...and where the FUCK is Ingrid? I mean, we know Taylor killed her...but where the hell is she?

The term "psychological thriller" is WAY over used these days, kinda like the word "Diva". Psycho was a psychological thriller, and a good one at that; The Minus Man with Owen Wilson was a psycological thriller. Gone is just a bland "what if" interpretation of somebody's boring ass road-trip: "Hey...what if we met a really annoying American serial killer while on holiday?" Please.

And to make matters worse, the ending is SOOO predictable: Taylor shows Alex the polaroid of him and the drunk girl spooning (he was supposed to have thrown it away when the trip started, Alex freaks out, hits a kangaroo, has to tell Sophie about the girl, Sophie gets pissed, won't share a room with Alex, Taylor kills Alex, has sex with Sophie, Sophie discovers Taylor killed Alex, and after a less-than-thrilling segment where Taylor almost gets her, she kills Taylor with his own car.

It's like Mad Max--but without the excitement, car chases and any semblance of an actual thrill--on an entire bottle of valium to boot. I've seen more thrilling curling matches. I would have killed for a cheap boo moment, and we all know how much I hate those. At one point, I turned to my girlfriend and said, "If something doesn't happen soon, I'm gonna slap somebody."

Do yourself a favor: if you ever get the urge to see this piece of crap, put a piece of bread in the toaster oven and watch it turn brown...you'll be more entertained, and you won't waste as much time.

Check out the trailer: Gone. It almost makes the movie worth watching...don't be fooled.

Peace.

Night of the Living Dead (1990)

Director: Tom Savini (best known for his special effects & make up in movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre & Friday the 13th; he was also "Sex Machine" in From Dusk 'til Dawn...he's a legend)

Writers: George Romero (he co-wrote the original 1968 film; Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead) & John Russo (he co-wrote the earlier screenplay; Voodoo Dawn, Santa Claws)

Starring: Tony Todd (Candyman, Platoon) as Ben; Patricia Tallman (Army of Darkness, Roadhouse) as Barbara; Tom Towles (Dog Day Afternoon, Rob Zombie's Halloween) as Harry Cooper.

IMDB user rating: 6.6 out of 10 stars.

"They're coming for you Barbara!"

Even though I'm not a huge fan of re-makes, 1990's Night of the Living Dead is pretty true to the original in a time when so few are. So sit back and relax, this is not going to be the typical slam-fest review. I'm a big fan of not only George Romero, but of Tom Savini & Tony Todd.

Just in case you've been living under a rock since 1968, I'll set up the plot of Night of the Living Dead for you. A brother and sister drive two hours to place flowers at their mother's grave. Zombies show up, eat the brother, chase Barbara, she ends up in a seemingly abandoned farm house, black guy shows up, people come up from the basement, zombies converge upon the house, people board up the house, shoot the zombies.

With the exception of a few differences, like I said, this movie is pretty true to the original. Barbara's a little more pro-active in the 1990 version, there are more people in the house, and it's shot primarily during the day.

Highlights: Decent time progression (lots of movies jump all over the place due to tight shooting schedules, and we the viewers suffer), there are a couple of funny lines: "They're SO slow, we could walk right past them" (but they never do in zombie movies) & "They're dead but they're comin' right for us!!" Nice. The kid who lives in the farmhouse is given the task of getting out to the gas pump, but it's locked & he has the wrong keys...so what does he do? Shoots the lock. Gas goes everywhere, sprays the torch in the back of the pickup...KABOOM! Dumb kid. The ending is awesome, it's like a zombie jamboree...there's a roach coach, zombie fights, a pig roast & zombie shooting gallery (they hang zombies from a tree and plug away).

Lowlights: As much as I love George Romero, he's not quite a master of dialogue...the script is cheesy. There's a scene where the local news is broadcasting about the zombies, making fun of the scientist that theorize the possibility of people arising from the dead. The reason this is a lowlight is due to the fact that it's what would really happen; even with evidence staring them in the face, people always scoff at the new found reality...remember Independence Day when they made fun of Randy Quaid as he's ranting about being abducted by aliens...all the while there's an alien spaceship hovering in the background? Stupid people.

The ending is same but different: less military, more rednecks. Tony Todd is locked in the basement with a fatal gunshot wound, lights up a smoke & sees the gas pump key hanging on the wall...oh sweet irony.

See this movie, you won't regret it...especially if you love zombies as much as I love zombies.

Check out the trailer: Night of the Living Dead Trailer

Baghead (2008)

Directors/Writers: Jay & Mark Duplass (The Intervention, The Puffy Chair)

Starring: Steve Zissis as Chad (Momma's Boy, The Intervention); Ross Partridge as Matt (Prom Night, Kuffs); Greta Gerwig as Michelle (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights & Weekends) & Elise Muller as Catherine (Baywatch Nights, I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant)

IMDB User Rating: 5.9 out of 10 stars.

When my friends ask me how and why I started blogging bad movies, I usually start the answer with today's movie, Baghead. I was still awake at around 3am one morning, and amazingly enough, Baghead was really the only thing that caught my eye enough to watch...I needed something mindless; something I didn't care if I fell asleep while watching...Baghead fit that bill.

I have to give the Duplass brothers credit for a somewhat original (if not completely disappointing) concept: Four morons decide to make a film at a cabin in the woods where they're stalked by a man with a bag on his head. Notice I did not call the man a killer...that's part of the disappointment. And that's it...that's the plot in a nutshell. In essence, it's really a movie about itself--a paradox. I could end this review here, and you would be completely up to speed. But then I wouldn't have the chance to go off on one of my infamous rants & slag someone else's hard work, now would I?

It starts with our four movie maker friends at a movie theater, watching another really crappy indie film at which the film maker himself (Jett Garner, played by Jett Garner) is present. One of my favorite lines in the movie comes during the Q & A with Jett, when Matt asks him how he made the movie so cheap (he claimed to have made it for less than $1,000, which was twice as much as he wanted to spend), he explains that he used his parents' camera, natural light, real people...here's the line: "Hollywood has us convinced that it takes a million dollars to make a quality piece of art--and that's a crap statement, as you just saw". Wait a minute...did this guy just call a thousand dollar home movie in which he appears naked a quality piece of art? Yes, yes he did. And it just keeps getting better from there.

Highlights: Ross Partridge's acting isn't bad, but then again, it's in comparison to the rest of the cast, so...who knows, really. There's one boob scene...not bad, but not spectacular.

Lowlights: WAY too many closeups...like, almost the whole film is shot zoomed in...I don't get why. The dialogue is so contrived, you wonder if the Duplass brothers watched too much Curb Your Enthusiasm before they wrote the screenplay and just let the actors go; I'm sure it's meant to be improved and realistic, but it comes out clumsy and embarrassing, and the characters can't seem to gel. In addition to there being way too many close ups, the camera work is shaky and confusing and looks like my dog shot it (not every movie needs a steady cam, but at least invest in a mono pod). The brainstorming sessions our four film making friends have are childish, and again, embarrassing. And there are cheap "boo" moments, and we all know how I feel about those.

You think this movie is gonna be a slasher flick...you know, some psycho out in the woods, wearing a bag on his head for some reason or another, cutting up the people unfortunate enough to be in his neck of the woods that particular weekend. That would have been a good movie.

What we get instead is a huge set-up by Matt: he has a friend of his to come out and scare the shit out of his friends so he can get their genuine reactions and use them in a screenplay. None of them is aware of what's going on until--while running away from Baghead--Chad gets hit by a car. It's all fun and games until the awkward fat guy with the fro gets hurt...I've seen it a thousand times before...

The end is just as uneventful and awkward as the beginning...Chad is lying in the hospital with a bunch of bruises and a cast or two. Matt explains the whole thing to him...and instead of being pissed, he proclaims it to be a brilliant scheme, asks to see the footage, and tells Matt all is forgiven as long as he goes and gets him some ice cream.

I'm warning you, if you decide to watch this movie, you're going to be super pissed when it's over...really. Out of all the movies I've reviewed, only Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire is worse...IMDB users gave it an unbelievable 5.9 out of 10 stars...I give it a 3...and that's being generous.

Thanks for reading, next up is 1990's remake of Night of the Living Dead.

Baghead Movie Trailer

Living Death (2006)

Director: Erin Berry (Trinity Dogs, Time Bomb)
Writers: Erin Berry (Time Bomb, Silent But Deadly), Leo Scherman (lots of T.V.)

Starring: Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Chase, Big Daddy), Greg Bryk (The Incredible Hulk, Saw V), Joshua Peace (The Brady Bunch in the White House, The Sentinel)

IMDB user rating: 4.1 out of 10 stars.

"Stretch me...but be gentle."

As bad as this movie is, it could've been so much better. The concept is actually not half bad: Rich asshole inherits daddy's money, his abused wife and his lawyer conspire to kill him but mess it up, he comes back seemingly from the dead to exact revenge. Sounds solid, right? Wrong! Bad direction and even worse acting stands in the way once again to ruin what could have been a pretty decent movie.

The opening scene is ridiculous: Victor (the rich asshole played by Greg Bryk) is trying to impress some buxom chick (Kelsey Matheson--Dracula 2000) with his collection of torture devices he keeps in his attic; he has a 17th century rack that she leans over & says (are you ready?) "Nice rack". Somehow he talks her into getting on the damned thing, straps her in, and starts to stretch her. Just as it's starting to really hurt, his wife Elizabeth (Kristy Swanson) comes in & startles him, causing him to lean on the rack's lever, which stretches the girl so much, her tibia rips right through her damn skin! GROSS! But I'm hooked at this point.

Conveniently, Victor has his lawyer Roman (Joshua Peace) re-draft his will to allow him to go out the way he came in...no embalming, no make up, "Just put me in my best Italian suit and throw me in the ground". Fair enough...not unheard of at all...but convenient given the plot.

Roman decides the best way to take Victor out is with a drug, especially since the will disallows an autopsy. The scene at his drug dealer's place is out of this world; Roman asks his dealer (Rajiv Narang) for a "totally new high", stating he's tired of the coke, the meth & the crack. Dealer (that's how he's credited) tells him about this "extremely rare" neurotoxin that comes from blow fish called tetrodotoxin (TTX). He gives the back story about how if it's not prepared right, the sushi that comes from this fish can kill you; in fact, one blow fish contains enough TTX to kill 30 people. I checked this out, and it's true. Here's where the science fiction comes in: Dealer tells Roman that TTX can make a person appear dead..."Like a zombie?" Roman asks. "No, not like a zombie! Zombie's are dead, asshole". I love it when people talk about zombies like they're real. But again, TTX is extremely rare and almost impossible to get a hold of...which he basically tells Roman as he's reaching into his refrigerator to grab a vial of the stuff. I also love the fact that some skanky drug dealer in the valley can get his hands on TTX. Roman takes the drug, Dealer warns him one more time about the side effects, no money is exchanged (?), and Roman is on his way.

Well, Roman & Elizabeth put this shit in Victor's Pad Thai, he keels over & they think he's a goner...but we get to see the movie from his point of view here and there until he wakes up...very reminiscent of Serpent and the Rainbow. The medical examiner is there soon & wants to "do a full autopsy, of course". Roman puts the kibosh on that one, telling the M.E. about Victor's will, even going so far as to put an injunction on the autopsy. Pretty iron clad, one would think. But at the funeral home, (the buxom blonde with the broken leg shows up & spits on Victor in his coffin) here comes the M.E. with a court order that supercedes Roman's injunction, and he and his assistants proceed to close the casket and take it to the morgue! It's the movie's most priceless moment.

Back at the morgue, Victor's toe tag gets switched with a dead homeless guy so the M.E.'s assistant & his medical school classmates can practice surgery on a "pristine" corpse. But remember, Victor's still alive, so after they slice open his abdomen, evicerate him and are about to crack open his chest, he wakes up, gets three fingers sawed off & completely freaks out the students. They quickly give him a shot of thorazine or something to knock him out, shove his guts back inside his body, and decide the better decision is to bag him and bury him alive. As they're throwing him in the grave, he cuts his way out of the body bag, kills all three of them, cauterizes his fingers with a car cigarette lighter (after lighting up a smoke, of course), and sets out to seek his revenge...and gets it.

Highlights: there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor that makes the film somewhat worth watching; some pretty decent gore; the drug dealer is actually a pretty good actor...he plays the part well; and Greg Bryk plays a great asshole...he makes you hate him about ten minutes into the movie...that takes skill.

Lowlights: what the hell happened to Kristy Swanson? She looks like shit in this movie, and it's her worst acting since Buffy. I'm a little perplexed at the torture devices...can you really have a working rack in your home? The acting never really gells, almost like instead of working toward a common goal, everybody's trying to win the Oscar single-handedly...very sloppy.

The ending is predictable...but not. Victor kills the buxom blonde, calls his house from her apartment and discovers that Roman & Elizabeth are making grass sandwiches behind his back. He makes it back to his house, ties Elizabeth up, and when Roman comes to her aid, Roman ends up on the rack himself. Victor obviously has nothing to lose at this point, he's supposed to be dead, remember, so he rips Roman's arm off with the rack, and is about to turn his attention on Elizabeth when she elbows him in the gut, therefore splitting his wound open and spilling his intestines all down his front. She grabs a HUGE battleaxe from the wall & splits Victor's wig with it.

You think it's over, but the last scene is Elizabeth getting out of her car--pregnant--with a bunch of shopping bags and going into her (um...Victor's) house. End credits.

Here's my problem with this movie: After Victor changes his will and ends up dead(ish) like--the next day, and his attorney and his widow shack up together...how come nobody's investigating them? In the real world, the feds would be all over these two morons, especially since they're so damn sloppy about the whole thing.

Regardless of that, my advice is to go ahead and see this one. The subliminal humor & the plot actually make for a semi-entertaining film. No nudity, but enough gore to make up for it.

Enjoy & thanks for reading.

Check out the trailer: Living Death

Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire (2005)

Directors: Sarah Nean Bruce, Eduardo Durao (directorial debut for both)
Writers: Karrie Melendrez (writing debut), Sherri Strain (sophomore writing effort)
Starring: Rhett Giles (lots of T.V.); Paul Logan (Syfy original Mega Piranha & he was in a movie called Aliens on Crack...I'm DYING to see it); Denise Boutte (ironically in a film entitled 15 Minutes of Fame...wonder when hers will run out)

I knew as soon as I reviewed a vampire movie, even one as horrible as Vampire Diary, I knew I was going to be attacked. The wannabe vampire counterculture is a protective one, and will no doubt continue to rail against my reviews of their beloved movies. Which brings us to my next review, Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire.

Way of the Vampire is living proof that not all books or ideas should be made into movies...especially vampire stories. I'm sorry to keep picking on this particular genre, but it's been my experience that literary vampires usually do not translate well (don't make me cite Tom Cruise as Lestat again, please), with very few exceptions, i.e. Gary Oldman as Dracula. This movie's only redeeming quality was the clever consumption of holy water in order to make one's spit acidic to the undead creatures. But THAT'S IT.

The film opens with Van Helsing & his band of vampire slayers getting ready to go do battle with Dracula & his minions. Mrs. Van Helsing is intentionally left with the one person who is "enamored by her beauty" simply because he's the most skilled vampire slayer of them all. What a powerful dichotomy. To make matters worse, as Van Helsing and his crew are searching Dracula's "lair", we are treated to visions of electrical outlets and drywall clad walls (apparently they used one of the movie crew's home to shoot that scene), and one of the girl vampires has chemically straightened hair...mind you, this scene is set in the late 19th century.

Switch to present day Los Angeles, where Van Helsing is working in a phlebotomy lab, keeping a keen eye on modern-day vampires, who coincidentally now reside in the P.J.s. Dracula's blood line is still alive in Sebastian (Andreas Beckett), who was the vampire that destroyed Mrs. Van Helsing many moons ago. Sebastian is dying of thirst, when he's convinced by his right-hand vamp, Arianna (Denise Boutte) to begin the hunt anew...humans are food, she reminds him & the battle rages once again; Van Helsing recruits members of the Knights Templar (yes...the Knights Templar) as new vampire slayers & after one full afternoon of training, they're ready to kill them some vampires! I think it's important to note that after dining on his first new victim, Sebastian literally beats on his chest like a gorilla...and it just gets better from there.

Highlights: the writers stay loyal to Stoker's vampire rules; the soundtrack isn't bad...very dramatic & gothic; & the use of holy water in this film is actually quite clever.

Lowlights: It's no surprise this is a directorial debut for both directors...there's very little direction at all...in fact, the actors don't seem to know they're in a movie...there's a definite stage quality to their performances (the stabbing is the worst...very theatrical); the prosthetic fangs the vampires wear must be those toy fangs we used to get for Halloween, because they make the actors sound ridiculous; the lighting and the sound are borderline childish; and there's a ton of scene recycling.

This movie makes all the other movies I've reviewed look like Oscar contenders. I will give the filmmakers credit for squeezing 82 minutes of excrement out of a short story written in the late 19th century. Pathetically cheap acting, photography, lighting & sound make this one a definite "no" on the watch list...don't waste your time.

I would love to include a trailer for you to watch, but unfortunately it contains nudity, and I'm not yet sure about the rules governing this particular carrier in that arena. It's available at youtube.com, you just have to create an account.

Thanks for reading...my next post will be a murder-mystery review starring Kristy Swanson...be ready...it's a baaaaad movie.

The Importance of Film & Television

Some people may think that having a blog about watching movies on T.V. is a colossal waste of time, in fact, people I know personally think watching T.V. at all is a mindless, frivolous way to piss away one's life. To them, television has no value or redeeming qualities whatsoever (amazingly enough, lots of people who think this way have children who watch at least five hours of T.V. per day...ironic, don't you think?)

It is my personal opinion that sending and receiving flowers is probably one of the worst ways anyone can spend money. I'm not talking about growing flowers in your backyard, just the buying of cut flowers as the means to a gift. But that's just me. A vast majority of our country find it so gratifying that it's a multi-million dollar industry. Because of that particular definition, it cannot be wrong; if it brings happiness, jobs and prosperity to people, it absolutely has value...just like movies & television.

Think about it, television has the capacity to educate, to motivate & to raise awareness. Speaking personally, I learned how to read from a little green Muppet named Kermit when I was about 3 or 4. And think about the awareness that was raised by FarmAid, LiveAid and Comic Relief, just to name a few. In my opinion, it's not the amount of T.V. one watches that "rots your brain"...it's the quality (or lack thereof) of programming we digest. I personally watch pretty much only movies, documentaries and educational programming...I admit, I have a few guilty pleasures, like cartoons and one reality show...but since T.V. is also meant to entertain, I'll buy the ticket & take the ride.

Movies, in my humble opinion, are a valuable, accurate audio/visual account of our history...a sort of living encyclopedia, if you will. Without movies as an historical vehicle, we wouldn't still be talking about Dracula a couple thousand years after his death. Film immortalizes our heroes & villains for us & allows us to root for or against them at will.

Film also allows us a glimpse into the vernacular climate of the period in which the film was made. I'll give an example: I recently watched The Fly (1958) with Vincent Price. Now, 1958 was a pretty amazing time, technologically speaking, as voiced by Patricia Owens' character, Helene: "first television & satellites out in space...supersonic speed and now this (speaking about her husband's molecular transporter), I just don't know if I'm ready for it all to happen." Very much the climate of the times. Fast forward to the tumultuous late '60s; Night of the Living Dead, by George Romero's admission, was a highly political film with a bunch of zombies in it (it had a black hero at a time in our history when black people were demonized)...Romero was trying to prove that no matter what the color of our skin, an individual can rise above all the rest, even in the fight against zombies. Even cartoon movies aren't safe from social commentary...ever seen Wall-E? Talk about a strong message hidden in a super-cute animated feature.

If not for movies and television, I may not be inspired to read in the manner that I do. After watching The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio, I read everything about Howard Hughes I could get my hands on; after watching a documentary entitled How Bruce Lee Changed the World, I read the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, which changed my life; thanks to what I learned from Cesar Milan's show The Dog Whisperer, my dog is amazing.

My point is this: regardless of opinion, movies and television not only entertain, they're a modern art form that's more powerful than any that preceded. The Mona Lisa is an amazing painting, and the skill that went into it is apparent, but the computer generated animation in Beowulf with Ray Winstone & Anthony Hopkins is mind-boggling, and it brought a classic literary tale to life for a new generation; Morgan Sperlock's documentary Supersize Me brought awareness of the dangers of over consumption to a shocking new light...whereas, while beautiful, the Mona Lisa simply hangs on a wall in Paris, viewed by those fortunate to either live there or visit...roses sent to a loved one wither and die with time.

I'm not trying to convert anyone here. I'm also not trying to get you to let your kids watch T.V. instead of going out to play. All I'm saying is this: the next time your friend talks to you about the cool show or movie he just saw on television, indulge him or her instead of being condescending or dismissive. In fact, try to remember the last time you brought up something you were passionate about...remember, you have to give respect to get it.

Dagon (2001)

Director: Stuart Gordon (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Re-animator)
Writer: H.P. Lovecraft (he wrote this story in 1917; plus, he wroter Re-animator)
Screenwriter: Dennis Paoli (The Dentist, Re-animator)

Starring: Ezra Godden (The Package, lots of T.V.); Francisco Rabal (LOTS of foreign films...this one was dedicated to him, evidently he died either during or shortly after); Raquel Merono (nothing but foreign films)

IMDB user rating: 6.2 out of 10 stars

When you see a movie description that states: "A businessman & his girlfriend arrive in a village inhabited by fish like creatures which practice human sacrifice", you almost have to watch it. The concept is original, and has a ton of potential: two couples on a sailboat holiday off the coast of a Spanish village that's cursed by a fish god named Dagon. Never mind the fact that it's adapted from a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1917, it could've worked as one hell of a sci-fi/horror flick.

That is, until the bad acting, the bad dialogue and the horrible visual effects got in the way.

The cheap trick of using the unknown, unseen evil is taken to a whole new level in Dagon...three frames in the end is really all we get to see of the monster, which looks to be some sort of octopus-type of a thing...hard to tell. The legend of the monster is explained to the main character, Paul (Ezra Godden) by the only human who seems to have escaped the fish-people's grasp: some drunken homeless guy who speaks broken English...therefore it's almost impossible to understand what the hell he's talking about. It's a sketchy tale; something about the village relying on God to bring them more fish, when a mysterious stranger comes to town & gets them to worship Dagon, and prosperity ensues. The catch: regular human sacrifice.

There are tons of low points to this film. The reason for the village being so secluded is never explained (it's not on an island, so...how come nobody knows about this place?); the acting is bad enough to make you punch your cat in the mouth; the visual effects are sloppy; the church has the words "Esoterica Orde de Dagon" over the door...which has NO literal translation, in fact, the word "orde" doesn't even exist, according to online Spanish dictionaries; and Paul has a moment in the local hotel that makes us all understand why Europeans hate Americans so much: he says things like "roomo, pleaso" and "muchas dias". Thank you, Dennis Paoli, for reinforcing the stereotype. We also see the two female characters, Barbara & Vicki, apparently die horrible deaths; Vicki should have died in the opening scene boat wreck (she was trapped between the boat itself and a rock), and Barbara was attacked by the fish-priest & the fish-hotel concierge. Evidently, they are kept for mating reasons...but it's never really explained. Oh, yeah...and there are a few cheap boo moments...and we all know how much I love those.

The villagers look more like zombies than killer fish-creatures, in that they're kinda slow. But just like in zombie movies, somehow the humans just can't seem to outrun them at all. Paul is typical of how foreigners see Americans: cocky yet clumsy; he even looks a bit like Clark Kent...but he never turns into Superman.

Paul also keeps dreaming about this mermaid type girl, who turns out to be real, and real gross...and she has been invading his dreams to bring him to her, so they can be together. The twist on that one is that they're brother and sister (Paul was born in Spain, and could never figure out why his mother wouldn't let him learn Spanish).

The end is pretty gory. Everybody's gathered around this pit where Dagon apparently dwells. The fish people are about to sacrifice Barbara; mermaid girl confesses her relation to Paul and her desire for them to be together (ick); and Paul sets himself on fire after Dagon takes Barbara into the deep.

Like I said, this could have been a really good film, and in reality, it was entertaining to watch. But if the budget had been a little bigger, or the actors picked a little more carefully, it would've been stellar. Once again a great concept is ruined by bad acting and screen writing.

Oh well...happy watching!

Watch the trailer: Dagon

Mongolian Death Worm (2010)

Director: Steven R. Monroe (Ogre, the upcoming remake of I Spit on Your Grave)
Writers: Steven R. Monroe & Neil Elman (Caved In, Troglodyte)

Starring: Sean Patrick Flannery (Suicide Kings, Boondock Saints, Powder); George Cheung (he plays the Asian guy you recognize in lots of movies); Victoria Pratt (nothing of importance) & Andrew Stevens (he's not listed in the cast at IMDB.com, he doesn't have a speaking role, but he produced the movie & he was in 10 to Midnight with Charlie Bronson and on a lot of cheesy television...when you see him you say "Hey! That's Andrew Stevens!)

I'm not sure what kind of killer weed the writing staff over at the Syfy channel are smoking, but it's definitely potent. Think about Syfy original movies I've already reviewed: Ogre, Dinoshark; not to mention the titles I haven't: like Dinocroc & Mega-Piranha. Really? I hope to Christ they're smoking drugs at Syfy, because if they're not, these movie plots are just sad. The dialogue is ridiculously vague & all over the place, the CG looks like my dog made it & the attention to detail is virtually non-existent...these movies are where decent, credible careers go to die.

The title for this one says it all, which is a good thing, because the acting, the plot, the visual effects and the camera work collectively don't make a peep. Two very noticeable things about this movie: It's so bad, Yahoo.com saw fit to give it a headline; and it's either so new or so shitty that it doesn't have a movie poster or a trailer. It's set in Outer Mongolia, but it looks more like Texas; all the cars are left hand drive, the "Mongolian" sheriff drives a Ford and wears a cowboy hat and doesn't have a hint of an accent (in fact, NOBODY has an accent); the shooting schedule is confusing, the time line's all over the place & Sean Patrick Flannery has had WAY too much botox.

Here's the premise: A treasure seeker is looking for Genghis Khan's tomb, and therefore his treasure. Some locals are after him, because they know what he's found so far, and want it for themselves. He meets (and promptly extorts money from) an attractive female doctor...she balks at his extortion, claiming that the organization she works for--Doctors of Hope--is a not for profit organization, so why should they have to pay for a ride...it's a typical holier-than-thou attitude, as if NFPOs don't have to pay for travel arrangements...

...but I digress. Khan's tomb is guarded by these giant killer worms, and since the manager of this remote oil refinery (which is conveniently located RIGHT ABOVE the tomb) has discovered the treasure, the worms have been awakened, and they're out for vengeance.

The best part about this movie is its title. In fact, my girlfriend (who HATES this new hobby of mine) saw the article on yahoo.com and texted me to tell me about it, AND hit the record button on the DVR for me. I mean, how do you NOT watch a movie called Mongolian Death Worm? Starring Sean Patrick Flannery, no less! Easy. Follow my advice and DON'T WATCH MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM!!

Highlights: ummm...parts of it are so bad, it's funny.

Lowlights: Sean Patrick Flannery forgot how to act...I'm assuming the botox is pushing on the part of his brain that knows how to deliver lines. There isn't one Mongolian person in the movie...everybody's either Chinese, Korean or Tibetan. There's this old lady who keeps talking about the death worm (kind of like the old man in the remake of Godzilla...you know, the one who kept saying "Gozirrah" over and over?)...the problem with that is that the doctor who's taking care of her asks the interpreter what she's saying, and when the answer is "death worm", the doctor gets really pissed and says, "I don't wanna hear about any death worm...I thought you were talking about something real". But doc, couldn't the death worm be a parasite of some sorts? Perhaps that's what's killing all the villagers. Unbelievable. The manager of the oil refinery is crazy pissed all the time, and we don't find out why until almost the end (Syfy, you're soo good at anticipation!). There's another doctor character named Phillip...he's a huge pussy. Seriously, you wanna slap the shit out of him 20 minutes in. At the ramshackle, makeshift clinic where the doctors are treating sick villagers, the set designers decided it would look more authentic if they duct-taped a circulatory system poster to the wall.

I just can't go on. It's as if the writers of this piece of shit smoked a lot of weed, watched Tremors, Alien, Indiana Jones & Godzilla & said, "Hey...let's write a movie...we've got three hours to kill." It hurt to watch this movie...and yet, I can't get enough of Syfy originals.

Perhaps the most insulting of all was the ending, when SPF, the hot doctor lady and the sheriff blow up the oil refinery (the sheriff gets eaten by a worm while SPF and Dr. Hottie look on even though Sean has a pistol)...and as Sean & the Doc sit on the lawn outside the refinery and laugh for some strange reason (there's a lot of inappropriate laughter throughout), it begins to rain treasure. Yes, you read that correctly...it BEGINS TO RAIN TREASURE!! And miraculously, all the villagers are cured by the drugs that Dr. Hottie and Phillip the pussy brought to the clinic.

That's all I've got...I really wish there was a trailer to show you, but since there isn't...go ahead an watch this one...it'll hurt, but you'll laugh, and you'll have something to talk about next time you and your friends get high.

Thanks for reading...until next time.

I've Got a Bone to Pick: Movie DJs

So, as I'm watching all these shitty movies for all of you, & reviewing them on my blog, I'm starting to realize more and more that certain stereotypical aspects of movies really piss me off. And since I'm infamous for my tendency to go off on rants, I've decided to combine the two and add a feature called "I've Got a Bone to Pick".

I'm starting, not surprisingly, with movie DJs. You've seen them in movies like Sixteen Candles, Grosse Point Blank & She's All That (which is a ploy by Hollywood to get the younger generation to appreciate literature). Now, when I refer to movie DJs, I'm not talking about on-air personalities...for some odd reason, they have some protective halo around them & they're always portrayed as cool characters who are above everybody else (which isn't a far cry from how they perceive themselves in real life). No, I'm talking about wedding/party jox. Ninety percent of the time, they're portrayed as either over-smooth know-it-all assholes (like Usher in She's all that), or over the top cartoon characters (next time you watch Sixteen Candles, pay attention to the DJ in the background at the dance at the gym...you'll see what I'm talking about).

And just like radio jox, bands get the same courtesy, typically. How come event DJs have to be the court jester of the movie world?

There are a few exceptions: John Cuzak in High Fidelity & Wilmer Valderrama in Party Monster are two examples that immediately come to mind. Two great movies, by the way...see them when you can.

Is this how event DJs are seen in the eyes of the American people? It's embarrassing! They dress like assholes, do a lot of jerky dance moves, and talk like absolute morons on the mic. Wake up, Hollywood...event DJs move America's asses off their seats, stop making them look like retards.

Well, there's my two cents on that. Feel free to leave comments; let me know if you like the new segment...should it stay or go? Do you have movie bones to pick? Tell me about them.

Thanks for reading,

BM411G.

Side Out (1990)

Director: Peter Israelson
Writer: David Thoreau

Starring: C. Thomas Howell (The Outsiders, The Hitcher, E.T.); Peter Horton (Singles, Children of the Corn, thirtysomething); Courtney Thorne-Smith (According to Jim, Summer School, Melrose Place); Harley Jane Kozack (Parenthood--the movie, Arachnophobia); Terry Kiser (Weekend at Bernie's)

IMDB User Rating: 4.7 out of 10 stars.

Favorite lines: "You can stay here...you won't even have to pay rent."
"YOU don't pay rent."
"Details."

Favorite Scene: All the montages...most cheesy movies have one...this one has four.

Okay...so I'm still on a break from zombies & shit, and when this movie popped up on my cable listings, I had to watch it. I've seen bits and pieces of it, but last night was the first time I've actually sat through the whole thing. All I kept thinking throughout the entire film was, "What the hell happened to C. Thomas Howell?" It's as if he peaked in The Outsiders, and his career took a nosedive in a barrel of shit from that point forward.

The premise is a predictable snooze fest: kid from the Midwest comes to Southern California to work for his uncle's law firm to make money for his tuition to law school; meets a crazy kid who wants to play volleyball; falls in love; does the right thing; lives happily ever after.

If you take this movie for what it is--an early 90s hormone injected feel-good movie made for teens--you win. It's a veritable barrage of name day-glo brand clothing & alcohol, i.e.: Mossimo, Bolle, Spot Sport, Lite Beer & Jose Cuervo. In that vein, the movie is actually quite relevant. I was stationed in Southern California in the late '80s, and other than Vuarnet's odd absence, they're spot on with the clothing and the lifestyle.

High points: If you're into skin, this is the movie for you...damn near everybody wears nothing but beach wear throughout. Peter Horton's charm once again supersedes his inability to act...although, he's the same guy in everything, and it's always been said the hardest thing to do in acting is to be yourself, so maybe Horton's a genius and we just don't know it yet. The kid who plays Wiley (Chris Rydell) is actually pretty entertaining. And like a lot of movies where they use a professional sport as the centerpiece, there are a few real-life pro beach volleyball players in it...and they're inability to act is VERY entertaining.

Low points: If you're into nudity, you'll be disappointed. The only nude scene is Harley Jane Kozak...and she's gross. Plus, even though everybody's in bikinis, you have to realize they're late '80s, early '90s bikinis...lots of those tube-top kind of bikini tops which just made boobs look...weird. There's WAY too much testosterone-driven rage on the courts, and the predictable twist at the end is almost insulting.

I'll explain: Peter Horton is a washed-up pro volleyball player, and even though he's "the legend" of the sport, he's considered a local joke...never paying his rent, squeaking by on life, etc. Tommy Howell is the kid who has to serve Horton his eviction notice, somehow turns out being coached by him & ultimately playing in the big tournament with him. Come to find out, he's a gambler who bet against himself at the last big tournament, and he was gonna lose in order to collect his winnings and pay his mob-based bookies. But he couldn't do it. So now, Howell is concerned if he's gonna even show. He does, and they make it to the finals, only to have Harley Jane Kozak beg Horton to throw this one as well because she's got a lot riding on the incumbent champions. And throw it he does...until Howell somehow convinces him to be a winner...things turn around, lots of sand is thrown, there's a high-five at the end, and we're left to make our own conclusions about whether Tommy Howell stays in Cali with the girl and enrolls in UCLA, or goes home to mom & dad in Wisconsin.

I think he stays...I would, Courtney Thorne-Smith used to be really hot.

Overall, the movie is worth watching, so long as there's not a whole lot else on. The camera work during the volleyball matches is pretty good, the scenery is nice, and even though the dialogue is HORRIBLE, the cast shares a relatively decent dynamic. So happy watching, and here's hoping that Terry Kiser doesn't make a Weekend at Bernie's III.

Click on the photo to watch the trailer.

Road House 2: Last Call (2006)

Director: Scott Ziehl
Writer: Miles Chapman
Starring: Johnathan Schaech (Prom Night, Doom Generation, That Thing You Do!); Jake Busey (Tomcats, Starship Troopers); Ellen Hollman (lots of T.V.); Will Patton (Armageddon, The Punisher)

IMDB User Rating: 4.4 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Line: "Hey, you're Dalton's kid...I heard all about you. I thought you'd be bigger."

Favorite scene: Jake Busey's character dies when he falls on a wooden pelican statue...poetic justice, given the plot.

Sometimes you have to break from the norm, especially when zombies, werewolves and vampires are all starting to cross over and blend together. And when you see a straight to DVD sequel like Roadhouse 2: Last Call come across your cable listing...you gotta watch it. Well, you don't--but I did. Given the fact that I had just come down off a pretty decent experience with a Johnathan Schaech character (Prom Night), and Jake Busey-like his dad-never fails to make me laugh, I couldn't pass this one up. The fact that it was a sequel to one of the shittiest (but fun to watch) movies of all time, it was doomed from the start. The dice were rolled...and I crapped out.

Roadhouse 2 is every bit as good as Starship Troopers 3. It opens very much like Roadhouse does, in a rowdy roadhouse called the Black Pelican, with the same redneck assholes causing the same redneck trouble. But in this one, the owner (Will Patton) is a bad-ass named Nate Tanner (Dalton's brother) who cleans out the riff-raff quite nicely by himself. But local drug lord Wild Bill (Jake Busey) needs the Pelican for its prime location (that's the only reason given...the whole movie is very vague), and will do anything to get it--including fighting dirty with Nate (some Asian chick throws a couple of knives at Nate, putting him in the hospital).

Johnathan Schaech is an undercover DEA agent who goes into a strip club and pulls the WORST drug deal EVER! He gets a call about his Uncle Nate (turns out he's Dalton's kid, he left Louisiana after Dalton was murdered) being in the hospital, and immediately goes AWOL from the DEA to run the Pelican...but wait! The twist is that there's the underlying issue of "the big one" that he owes his Captain, and going down to Louisiana just might be it..."You gotta trust me on this one".

And that's the plot. Simple as that--except I forgot about the Miami drug kingpin that Busey works for who gets pissed off and comes to Louisiana: "You live in a swamp, you know that?" he says to Busey...umm...what do you call Florida? The highlands? And then there's the girl that Schaech falls for, who just so happens to be Busey's cousin.

There are really no high points...the fight scenes would be pretty good if they weren't so horribly overdone and cartoonish. There are a couple of hot girls, and like one nude scene, and swamp boats, of which I'm a fan.

The throwbacks to the first one are a-plenty: Schaech not only drives a Mercedes-Benz just like his daddy, he uses it just like Swayze did in the first one: as an unmanned battering ram. Busey drives like an asshole in his first encounter with Schaech (just like Ben Gazarra). The bouncer rules are the same: "Take it outside, and be nice...until it's time to not be nice". And even though Johnathan Schaech is taller than most people around him, they all say that corny "I thought you'd be bigger" line.

The low points: The bar's relevance--other than location--to drug trafficking is never really explained. Schaech calls a DEA friend of his, and a whole crew of agents come down to Louisiana from New York to try to bust Busey, but he gets away on his swamp boat, and they pretty much shrug and split. Really? You're gonna give it just one day? The main female character, Beau (Ellen Hollman) confesses to being in the Army, ("two tours in Iraq") when it's apparent she knows her way around weapons, although the stuff she knows she definitely didn't learn in the Army. Perhaps most insulting of all is how many times Uncle Nate basically gets killed but doesn't die...he suffers no less than TWO fatal wounds, and is up and running around behind the bar by the end scene of the flick.

The ending is weak: Busey and Schaech fight in the bar, which is horribly lit, and that detracts from the fight itself (maybe they had to light it that way because Busey can't fight, and he got really fat. Simultaneously, there's a chick fight between Beau and the knife-throwing Asian chick (who keeps opening her butterfly knife for some reason). But where most chick fights are pretty good...this one sucks...it's no Two Days in the Valley, that's for sure.

I'm gonna go back to the zombies, werewolves, vampires and serial killer movies. At least for now. It did feel good to broaden my horizons a little, though. I still don't recommend you waste your time on this flick.

Have a laugh: check out the trailer: Roadhouse 2: Last Call

Vampire Diary (2007)

Directors: Mark James and Phil O'Shea
Writer: Phil O'Shea
Starring: Anna Walton, Morven Macbeth, Jamie King, Kate Sissons & Keith-Lee Castle. I know that lately I've been listing the cast & crew's other works...but this evidently was a Brit-Indie film with a bunch of NObodys working on it.

Favorite line: "Real vampires call it exchanging" (said to a real vampire...the look of "whatever" on her face when this is uttered to her is priceless.

Favorite scene: Chiller fucked up on this one, and showed the vampire chick's vajayjay for about three frames (Chiller's not a premium channel, boys & girls).

So I typically avoid recently made vampire movies. First, after seeing Bram Stoker's Dracula, and watching everybody but Gary Oldman and Tom Waits skunk up the screen and watching in horror as Tom Cruise was cast as 6'2" French aristocrat vampire Lestat (what a crime...what is Tom Cruise, like 4'11"?), I've all but given up hope that traditional vampire movies are ever going to deliver. You know I'm right, especially if you've ever seen Lugosi as Dracula...that man didn't even have to speak...he oozed Dracula. Second, contemporary vampire movies are overtly disrespectful. Other than the first installment of the Blade series and the vampires from the Underworld movies, vampires today get to walk around during the day, fall in love, have sex, etc. When I asked someone why the vampires in the Twilight trailer were walking around during the day, the reply was, "They can go outside on cloudy days." Really?! REALLY?! To all of you Twilight sycophants who overlook that movie's blatant disrespect of vampire movie rules I say, Google solar panels + overcast, and see for yourself how much sunlight really makes it through the clouds. Clouds diffuse sunlight, they don't block it. But this is what I'm talking about...they're making up the rules as they go along...you can't do that.

I know, I know...you're saying, "BM411G, have an open mind! It's a love story." Fuck you and your vampire love story. You might be saying, "But wasn't Dracula in love with Minna?" No...he was in love with his slaughtered wife, and infatuated with the likeness Minna bore to her...but terrorized by the fact that he could never feel corporeal love ever again. He wasn't cavorting around Salem Preparatory School or whatever seducing anorexic coeds. (Yeah, I'll say it: Kristen Stewart is gross, and her best acting role was when she was frozen solid in Zathura). If you wanna make a love story, make a love story...leave the vampires out of it.

So why watch a vampire movie? Simple. Lesbian vampires. Not only for the guy factor of it, but because I wanted to see how the hell they were gonna pull it off.

The movie opens with sloppy video of a bunch of goth kid vampire wannabes hanging around some creepy, aging club DJ (yes, he's the typical douche bag movie DJ). He calls these kids his "kindred", and some of them even have prosthetic fangs. And how come goth kids always want to be vampires? Isn't being an uber-conforming non-conformist enough? Now you have to torque the douche-o-meter up to 11 by filing your eye teeth to points? Have fun when you're 50. Okay...sorry. So the video is being made by a semi-normal misfit named Holly, who's an aspiring film maker. She's decided to follow these "weekend vampires" as she calls them and make a documentary...amazingly entitled, "Weekend Vampires". Creative. Well, the "kindred" like to take advantage of her hospitality, and usually end up partying at her house once the clubs are closed. On this particular night, she notices a girl hanging around that hasn't been there before (her name's Vicki, played by Anna Walton). As she's shooing the kindred out of her flat, Vicki lingers, and Holly decides to go against her rules and let her stay the night. Hence the lesbian vampire scenario.

It's a weak, albeit ambitious premise: Holly and Vicki fall somewhat in love. Vicki reveals the fact that she's a real vampire, has killed a couple of the members of the kindred, and needs to feed not only for herself, but for her vampire fetus (apparently male vampires mate with females by stalking then raping them...romantic, eh?). Vicki is a sad excuse for a vampire: she can see her reflection, she has no supernatural powers, and she kills her victims with a bolt gun...you know, the guns they use to kill cows...because, as she says, "It's painless & more humane that way". Painless my ass...more humane? What do you care? You're a vampire...the very TOP of the supernatural food chain. Holly & Vicki start raiding hospitals for their blood supplies (Vicki makes a nice smoothie with a couple raw eggs, ice and some hot sauce), but that turns out to be a sad surrogate to fresh human blood. Next is transients that they actually pay to let Vicki feed off of, but Vicki takes it too far & Holly tells her that she's gotta stop killing people. Vicki tells her to back off, or she's next. They break up for a bit, the cops are obviously looking for Vicki, but Holly finds her first...very preggo, lurking the streets for victims. She takes her home, cleans her up and starts letting her feed off of her own veins...but that gets old soon, and Holly has to stop, 'cuz she's dying. They have to find food & go on the lamb...the cops are breathing down their throats, remember? So they end up at a friend's beach house (which is the weirdest house I've ever seen), the baby's born, and it comes to a paradoxical ending.

Low points: The goth/vampire clones...too much fishnet & PVC...and they're all relatively attractive, which is annoying since in real life, most of these kids are over- or underweight, acne-riddled misfist who can't get laid (if you live in the Detroit area and wanna see some of them, go to Movement at Hart Plaza over Memorial Day weekend, you'll see a ton of 'em). Victim #2 is shot with the bolt gun, drained of his blood, and miraculously still alive when Vicki and Holly go to dump him in the Thames. All the "real" vampire shit is embarrassingly bad...like I listed above, she's pregnant, has a reflection, etc...it ruins the vampiric image.

High points: Vicki's kinda hot, everybody's got an accent, and there's some halfway decent gore. But that's about all.

The paradoxical ending I was telling you about happens when the police finally take Vicki (who gives Holly the baby, telling her "I'm not really a vampire...vampires don't exist, remember?" Umm...fuck that...I'm not rasing no vampire baby) into custody, and she makes a video diary from prison for her little vampire baby, "Aunt Holly will take care of you, sweetheart...just until mommy gets out". Meanwhile "Aunt" Holly is feeding the baby the only legal way she knows how: by cutting herself to feed the fledgling vampire...and she looks like SHIT...all anemic and whatnot.

Cue shitty, unsigned goth music; end credits.

Shame on me and my male libido for being lured into watching this piece of shit. Lesbian vampires, indeed! I should've known better, but little BM411G did the decision making on this one. The reward was slim...the nudity was there, but fuzzed out; the penalty was another hour of my life lost to a shitty movie.

But hey, that's what I do, right?

Until next time, the question is, do I go back to zombies, or do I break down and go the SyFy original route again? Decisions, decisions.

Happy watching, here's the trailer: Vampire Diary

Prom Night (2008)

Director: Nelson McCormick (The Stepfather & lots of T.V.)
Written by: J.S. Cardone (The Stepfather, The Covenant)
Starring: Brittany Snow (John Tucker Must Die, The Pacifier); Scott Porter (Lots of T.V.); Jessica Stroup (Vampire Bats, School for Scoundrels); Idris Elba (Obsession)& Johnathan Schaech (best known for That Thing You Do! but was amazing in Doom Generation...good movie, see it).

IMDB User Rating: 3.6 out of 10 stars (which is generous).

Favorite line: (as the fire alarms are going off in the hotel) "I need to go back and get my mother's shawl." Dead or not, sweetie...fuck that shawl.

Favorite Scene: Michael goes looking for his girlfriend, looks in the closet, killer's in there with a ball cap on and his head down...looks up, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, and pounces. It's the best scene in the film...unfortunately, it's the best scene in the film.


You know how when you're surfing through channels, and you see a remake of a movie you really like, but you know it's not gonna be nearly as good as the original, and you tell yourself not to watch it...but then you watch it anyway, and totally regret it? Yeah. That's Prom Night.

This movie never should've been made. I'm sure it was a vehicle designed to slingshot a bunch of careers into super-stardom, but the rubber band broke, and this piece of shit landed flat on its face. It breaks a ton of slasher movie rules, including gratuitous gore. There is an oddly obvious lack of gore throughout this entire flick...and not just gore, blood as well. Don't get me wrong...lots of violence, but the killer in this movie (Johnathan Schaech) is a throat-slasher, so there should be arterial spray EVERYWHERE, and yet...there isn't. Perhaps the latest trend of gearing horror movies to teens while keeping them relatively clean so mommy & daddy won't get upset has gone awry. I'm sorry...I grew up with The Evil Dead, The Babysitter, Army of Darkness & the Holy Trinity: Freddy, Jason & Michael Myers...our parents knew these movies were bullshit, so they flew under the radar...nothing bad was gonna come out of slasher films...until Tipper Gore fucked everything up.

If you didn't see the original, or you can't just guess the premise (actually, anything you guess would probably be better than the actual plot), it's Donna's prom, and it's supposed to be "the night of her life". Right, except that three years earlier, a psycho stalker teacher of hers murdered her entire family (in the opening scene, she discovers all of them and watches her mom get sliced and diced)...not only would that not put me in the mood for over-priced prom tickets and itchy tuxedos with god knows what in the crotch, it probably would have made me leave the damn town altogether. Donna (Brittany Snow) has recurring nightmares about watching her mom get brutally murdered (no blood spray, though...evidently mom had clogged arteries), and is aggressively seeking therapy to try to help her through the rough patches...which is pretty reasonable...but at the end of the session, after sharing her feelings of dread over these recurring nightmares in which she replays her mother's murder over and over and over, her therapist asks her about her prom dress. This makes her perk up, and they have a little mini conversation about prom...ALMOST LIKE SHE'S NOT THERE FOR THERAPY AT ALL!!

And let's talk about the opening scene for just a second more, shall we? When Donna gets home and starts looking for her family (who's mostly dead), she does what we would all do--she starts calling out while walking from room to room. I mean she's making a TON of noise. So's the killer. So when she hears the killer in her parents' room interrogating her mother by asking over and over, "Where the hell is she? I know she's here!", she runs to her own room and ducks under the bed. The killer and mom end up right next to the bed (how else would she witness her mom's death?), and if he would have just turned his little head to the right, he would have found what he was looking for. But then we wouldn't have 90 minutes of torture, now would we? My point is this: Donna was making a lot of noise...a lot of it. How the killer didn't hear her is beyond me...and it only gets worse.

Low points: There's a scene in the salon where Donna, Claire (Jessica Stroup) and Lisa (Dana Davis...who looks a lot like Gabrielle Union) are talking about how their boyfriends are expecting to get laid, and eluding to how that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. These girls are in high school, for crying out loud...and who the fuck talks like that in front of their hairdresser? Maybe I don't get it 'cuz I'm not a girl.
For some reason, there's a red carpet (complete with barricades and paparazzi) at this school's prom, and rumor has it, the head of the prom committee (that bitch Crissy Lynn) went over budget by $100,000. Now, unless DJ Tyler cost $99,000, I'd be doing some embezzlement investigations. There's an odd absence of chaperons at this prom, as well...maybe that's changed in the last 22 years, as well...but at my prom, the teachers were totally getting off on separating us from our dates on the dance floor. The DJ is a total jizzbag (just like every movie DJ...except Superstar DJ Keoki in Party Monster...Wilmer Valderrama did an awesome job. And how come movie DJs are douchebags? Remember Usher in She's All That? Enough said). The killer escapes the mental hospital they put him in, and Donna's aunt and uncle (they're raising her now) opt NOT TO TELL HER. "It'll ruin her big night, she'll be crushed if we go in there in front of all her friends", her uncle says. Sure...better to be stalked and killed than risk embarrassment in front of a bunch of poser rich kids...good decision making skills there, unc. The gore is non existent, so's the nudity...breaking two major slasher movie rules. And when there is a little bit of blood, it's shadowed and predictable. I watched the credits, there are five makeup artists in this film...but evidently no makeup budget...the jugular wounds look like split hot dogs. There are a dozen visual effects editors...but extremely limited visual effects. Where'd the budget go? Catering? The cops are stupid and inept (how come horror movie cops aren't as smart as Barney Fife?), the acting is sophomoric, and the killer breaks through a hotel door...really? All hotel doors are fire doors, therefore steel enforced. There are a lot of stereotypical teenage moments, which would probably piss me off if I were a teen, but they make me laugh...like the prom queen hopeful losing her mind because a fire alarms prevents them from announcing the king and queen. Perhaps most offensive to the horror movie maven, there are no less than three or four really cheap "BOO" moments (as you continue to read my blog, you'll understand how much I HATE cheap boo moments).

High points: Johnathan Schaech. He's AMAZING as a creepy prick (I'll say it again, see Doom Generation...just don't eat beforehand). Schaech can do more with a look than the rest of the cast could with acting lessons and a possession by Marlon Brando...the guy is under rated. There's a good slow-mo scene where Schaech just overpowers some kid...I guess that's where the FX budget went. There's a strobe effect on Schaech toward the end that makes him look even scarier than he already does. Plus, there's a pretty decent cover of Time of the Season, but the credit font was so shitty that I can't tell you who did it. But that's about it...the rest of the movie sucks...in fact, if it weren't for Johnathan Schaech, it would be unwatchable.

And speaking of suck, let's talk about the ending, shall we? The cops finally decide to clear out the hotel (they gotta make sure the killer's really in there), and in the process, they look for Donna, who's nowhere to be seen, because she went looking for Lisa...who is dead. At one point, Lisa's boyfriend tells a cop he's gotta go back and look for her, to which the cop answers, "I can't let you go in there...but keep looking, she's gotta be out here somewhere." Here's the problem with that: he and Lisa are the only two black kids in school, and Lisa's wearing an electric blue dress with her titties hanging halfway out. My point is...she would stick out. The cops finally find Donna, and get her and her boyfriend Bobby, in the back of a squad car. "Oh, cool" you think, "they're gonna take them to the police station". WRONG. They take them to Donna's HOUSE! Over confident these cops are, me thinks. Of course the killer escapes the hotel...by dressing in the concierge's uniform, which fits like a glove, even though the concierge is four inches shorter than he, and at least 25lbs heavier.

Snaps to Donna's house, where a bunch of cops are posted inside and out...meanwhile Detective Winn (Idris Elba) is trying to call Donna's land line instead of using his cop radio. Finally he wises up, realizing that the killer's already there, and the phone line is cut (who the fuck still has a land line? Only when it's convenient, apparently). Donna and Bobby are sound asleep, when Donna gets up to take her Xanax, looks out the window, sees Detective Nash in his car...goes to the bathroom, takes her medicine, closes the medicine cabinet door HOLYSHITTHERE'STHEKILLER!!!! Boom! She wakes up...haha...gotcha on another cheap boo moment. She gets up, looks out the window, sees Detective Nash in his car...goes to the bathroom, takes her medicine, closes the medicine cabinet door...nothing. Goes back to bed, thanks Bobby for staying, he doesn't answer...she rolls over and oh shit...Bobby's throat is slit. But amazingly enough, the white sheets aren't completely soaked in blood...'cuz they blew their FX wad on that slo-mo scene, remember? No money for blood, sorry fellas. There's a few struggles, Schaech gets bit, kick in the face a few times, and just as he's about to stab Donna and put all of us out of our misery, Detective Winn shoots him like, six times. But no blood (not initially, but there's a little stain when he falls forward).

Run end credits over a bunch of grinding dance floor prom footage.

Cheap ass movie. Even though Johnathan Schaech delivers, it's totally not worth your time...wanna see him fuck some shit up? See Doom Generation. Wanna see him sing and sulk over his new-found fame and basically tell Tom Hanks to go fuck himself? See That Thing You Do! But under no circumstances should you waste your valuable time on this movie.

Enough said...I'm out. Next up, a lesbian vampire movie...keep your fingers crossed.

Here's the trailer for this crapfest: Prom Night

Cursed (2005)

Director: Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street; The Hills Have Eyes; The Serpent and the Rainbow)
Written by: Kevin Williamson (Scream 1, 2 & 3; I Know What You Did Last Summer; Dawson's Creek)

Starring: Joshua Jackson (Free Willy; The Skulls; Dawson's Creek; Fringe), Christina Ricci (The Addams Family; Monster; Penelope) Portia de Rossi (Stigmata; Scream 2; Ellen Degeneres' wife); Shannon Elizabeth (American Pie; Tomcats; 13 Ghosts); and for no apparent reason, Craig Kilborn & Scott Baio.

IMDB user rating: 4.8 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Line: Sorry...it's all crap in this one...a little boring (no surprise here...look who wrote it)

Favorite Scene: Christina Ricci locks the hell out of her front door, but leaves her first floor window wide open...very effective.

Okay, is it sacrilegious to rip on a film made by someone you've been a fan of for a long time? Maybe...but I'm gonna do it anyway. You know how some artists' work gets better over time, with each movie, song or book they come out with making the ones before it seems sophomoric? Well, it seems like Wes Craven's quality of work is going down the toilet. Unless the new Nightmare movie kicks serious ass, I might have to write him off. With Cursed, it's like he's phoning it in...just like Kid Rock's music...it's bland and predictable. But I thought "What the hell? There's a full moon outside, I'll watch a werewolf movie tonight."

The opening scene is typically Cravenesque: Two slutty girls at a carnival (Shannon Elizabeth & Mya--who has REALLY ugly feet) get their palms read by a sexy medium (Portia de Rossi) who tells them to beware...blood is coming. Flip to a nerdy kid who loses his dog, and the girl he's secretly in love with (it's painfully obvious to everybody but her...seen it!) catches the dog for him. The girl's latently gay, homophobic bully boyfriend and his cronies show up just in time (in the homophobe's Z-28, no less) to terrorize this kid (something that happens REPEATEDLY throughout the movie). Meanwhile, Christina Ricci meets up with her boyfriend (Joshua Jackson) at his club, Tinsel, that's set to open in a few days. Tinsel is a Hollywood themed nightclub, in Hollywood (very brave...they even rip on Planet Hollywood a little), with dioramas from classic horror films (you can see Freddy Kruger in the background, but always out of focus). Joshua is very busy, but still has time to tell Christina that he needs some space "I just wanna crawl into bed for three days", he says...to which she totally agrees...but he's not buying. Does Joshua Jackson have to be a douchy prick in everything? Flip to Ellie (Christina Ricci, who frankly peaked as Wednesday Addams, in my opinion) picking up her geeky kid with the dog (her brother). They live on Mulholland Drive (boooring...been there, done that), and in the course of all the twists and turns that imfamous road provides, they hit a mysterious animal, then a car, then a tree. The car they hit rolls down an embankment, and when they get out to help, it's Shannon Elizabeth (she should die in the first half hour of every movie she's in...she sucks), who's stuck in the car, upside down. Just as they free her legs from the steering wheel and the rest of her from the seatbelt, she gets grabbed by a beast that not only drags her out of the car, but Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg...Christina Ricci's brother) as well (he grabs her by the ankles), and Ellie (who grabs Jimmy by the ankles). At this point, my girlfriend (who graciously puts up with this obsession of mine) turns to me and says, "Something big enough to drag three people through the woods? Fuck that, I'd be outta there." Very true. And with those three vignettes, Craven has set us up for two hours worth of cinematic excrement.

From there, it's Melrose Place meets Teen Wolf for an hour and a half. Joshua Jackson (who's actually not half bad in Fringe) plays the part of the mysterious, aloof douchebag he's been pigeonholed into and perfected over his career. Christina Ricci is a bug eyed P.A. for Craig Kilborn who overextends the "innocent turned wicked girl" yet again; Scott Baio is embarrassing as always; Shannon Elizabeth is a moron; and the girl who plays Joanie (she's Scott Baio's publicist...get it? Joanie Loves Chachi...or however you spell it) sucked worse than anything she's ever been in...which is a stretch. Portia de Rossi isn't bad, but she only has two scenes, so I'm sure with enough time, she would've sucked, too. The only believable character is Jimmy, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who was in Zombieland (they're making a Zombieland 2), The Village & The Squid & the Whale, to name a few. He plays the nerdy victim turned stud muffin--albeit a little Toby McGuire as Peter Parkeresque--to the letter. Very entertaining.

The premise is a 3 on the crap-o-meter. Ellie and Jimmy are both infected by the werewolf & begin to feel the effects over the next few days, including the "mark of the beast" on their palm, which looks like five blisters in a circle..but wait! Trace over them with a sharpie, and you've got yourself a pentagram! Both of them are bullied at school & at work, but that changes the more lycan they become. They decide to hunt down and kill the beast that turned them into what they presently are, based on the internet & book research Jimmy does on the subject...but here's where it gets a bit muddy, because other than silver, they use vampire rules...and a zombie rule or two...separate head from heart, etc.--to kill the werewolves. Turns out, the werewolves are Johshua Jackson and Joanie the publicist. He's the original, and infected her with the lycanthropic curse through--get this--sexual transmission. "I guess there's no such thing as safe sex anymore", Joanie says. Please...don't tell me lycanthropic jizz is strong enough to penetrate a Trojan. She's killing all the women he's been with--and are still into him (werewolves have inexpicably strong sex appeal) in order to be the alpha female (they are wolves, you know). There are some predicable "BOO" moments, some Cravenian twists and turns, and a shitload of shitty acting, homophobia, and machismo. The C.G. is weak, the gore is almost non-existent and unbelievable, and the ending is PRE-DICT-A-BLE!

The climax happens at the club opening, where Joanie reveals herself as the killer werewolf, hell bent on taking Ellie out. There's a big fight scene, and when the cops show up, the she-wolf disappears into the wings. That is, until the cops ask for a discription, to which Ellie replies, "she's got a bony ass" among a few other nasty things. Well, Joanie won't take that...and she comes out to attack yet again. The cops shoot her a bunch of times...there's a King Kong homage scene, as she gasps then falls to the ground...seemingly dead. "All clear!" the head cop says...but NO! Joanie jumps back up and BLAMMO! The head cop puts a slug in her brain. "That would definitely qualify as head separated from heart...brains all over the floor", Jimmy says. "Like I said, ALL CLEAR! Get these people outta here!" says the head cop...hands on hips and everything.

Ellie and Jimmy head home, but notice that the mark of the beast is still on their hands. Enter Joshua Jackson to explain that you have to kill the original to end the curse (again, isn't that vampire rules?). "But you can't kill me, and I have to kill Jimmy...there's only room for one alpha male". Huge struggle, Jimmy walks on the ceiling, and Ellie ultimately stabs Joshua with a sterling silver wedding cake spatula. He ultimately catches fire (vampire rules! werewolves don't burn, dammit) and all is well. Yawn.

Okay. I've seen worse...and I've seen much, much better. Wes Craven is definitely better than this; it's almost like he and Scott Baio went on The Craig Kilborn Show and said to one another, "Hey, we should all do a movie together!" Either way, this is a snooze fest. Boring gore, no nudity, and Mya's ugly ass feet. Don't bother. But like always, check out the trailer: Wes Craven's Cursed.

Fido (2007)

Director: Andrew Currie
Written By: Robert Chomiak & Andrew Currie
Starring: Carrie-Anne Moss (Memento, Chocolat, The Matrix), Billy Connolly (The Boondock Saints, White Oleander) Dylan Baker (Spiderman, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road), Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where art Thou?, The Astronaut Farmer, A Foreign Affair) and Introducing Kesun Loder (billed as K'sun Ray).

Favorite Scene: Mom (played by Carrie-Ann Moss) shoots a bully in the bushes, gets nine shots out of a revolver.

Favorite Line: "Thanks to ZomCon, you can be a productive member of society...even after you're dead!"

When I began this blogging trip, I knew for a fact that not all the movies I reviewed were gonna suck. Some of them were going to be somewhat entertaining, some of them I was going to watch and review for nostalgic reasons (like Evil Dead)...and I love some shitty movies just because they're shitty, i.e.: Starship Troopers & Showgirls. Never did I expect to run across a brilliant, very entertaining film like Fido. I'd like to make fun of it...I really would. But it was just too damn good; plus, it lampoons itself, which as all bullies know takes all the fun out of the act of torture.

When you are flipping through channels looking for shitty movies to review on your blog, and you're a huge zombie movie fan, it's hard to pass up a zombie movie with relatively big, definitely talented stars like Carrie-Anne Moss, Billy Connolly and Tim Blake Nelson...it has shades of a big name ensemble cast sleeper like Boogie Nights, Rat Race and Lake Placid. So the record button is hit, the DVR is programmed, and when it comes time to watch either a zombie movie with the well-known stars or a werewolf movie with the well-known stars...it's time to flip a coin (or in this case, ask my girlfriend's 10-year-old if he had to choose between zombies and werewolves, which would it be?) He chose zombies, in case you're bored, stupid or both.

Now, if you're a fan of zombie movies, you know there's a few types of zombies; there are your classic slow but persistent zombies, like in Night of the Living Dead (which, by Romero's admission, was a smoke screened political film) and Dawn of the Dead (original=awesome, remake=crap) & Sean of the Dead (I had to watch that one twice to really appreciate it...awesome soundtrack); there are psycho, drug-induced zombies that run after your ass, like 28 Days Later...which is bullshit...I wanna outrun my zombies; there are "Holy shit!...That could happen!" zombies like in Serpent & the Rainbow (thank you Wes Craven); and then there are the zombies in Fido...a zombie movie unlike any other.

Quite a few years ago I stopped using the phrase "now I've seen everything" because--in my line of work--as soon as you say something like that, something unusual, unique or cool tends to happen, rendering the phrase moot. That, my friends, is Fido. It's set in that colorful, idyllic, "a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down" decade that gave us Elvis Presley, T.V. in every home, and "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance--the '50s. Everything is in that odd technicolor that we so fondly associate with that decade, and when I say idyllic...I mean idyllic .

The movie opens with one of those old-time newsreel shorts detailing how awesome "post zombie war" life is thanks to ZomCon, a company that has developed a collar that, when worn by a zombie, neutralizes the zombie's craving for human flesh. Right away, I'm in love with this flick...'cuz I love movies that use those cheesy newsreels (Southpark, Starship Troopers, The Hudsucker Proxy). These collars work like miracles, rendering the zombies harmless, therefore turning them into pet-like slaves, until the red light goes off ("call ZomCon right away, or hit your ZomCon panic button"), at which time the zombies "go wild" and eat whoever is closest. The main character is a boy named Timmy (played by Kesun Loder...remember his name...he's going places), and his class is visited by Mr. Bottoms, the new CEO of ZomCon. He assures everybody that ZomCon is the best thing to happen to their town, because without ZomCon "we'd all be dead...and then where would we be?" To which the class answers "Dead" in unison. It's double entendres like that all throughout the movie, and it's cinematic gold, in my opinion. Ultimately, Timmy's family gets a zombie (brilliantly played by Billy Connolly) due to mom's desire to keep up with the Joneses (or, in this case, the Buttonses), much to dad's chagrin (the first and only zombie dad had to kill was his own father, when he was 11, causing him to be phobic of zombies).

Timmy's a weird kid, picked on by these two bully brothers who wear Boy Scout uniforms throughout the entire film, and when he tries to play ball with his family's new zombie, he gets frustrated that it can't catch, so he goes for a walk. Well, the bullies find him and start to beat the shit out of him (they also pointed a loaded rifle at him during "outside education", which consists of zombie target practice...gotta be prepared, just in case), at which time his zombie comes to his rescue, breaking one of the bully's arms in the process. Timmy and the zombie bond instantly, and Timmy notices that his new friend is carrying a baseball glove; "Wanna play catch, boy?" But again, zombies can't catch, so it's the next best thing: "Well, if you can't catch, then you're gonna have to fetch". Fido goes after the ball, which has rolled under the town busybody's bench, his collar malfunctions, he eats the busybody (Mrs. Henderson), and that's that. We're gonna have ourselves a free-range zombie on our hands.

Timmy, as any normal 10 or 11 year old kid would do, covers it up, even narrowly escaping getting caught when Mr. Bottoms (the ZomCon big wig) sees blood on Fido's face:
"Where'd that blood on that zombie come from, son?"
"Nosebleed."
"That's not a fresh zombie, only fresh zombies bleed."
"It was my nose that was bleeding."
"...why the hell did you wipe your blood on the zombie?"
Timmy is then saved by Mr. Bottoms daughter, who begs to be taken to ballet class.

It's like that throughout; Timmy has to decapitate Mrs. Henderson and bury her in a garden to avoid getting caught, but not before she eats a guy walking his dog; the bullies tie up Timmy and Fido, only to turn into zombies themselves, at which time Timmy sends Fido to get mom..."tell mom there's trouble, boy"; mom kills the zombie bullies, gets wrapped up in a mutually felt crush on Fido (dad doesn't pay attention to them at all); dad is completely obsessed with funerals, because only 10% of people have them, the rest "go zombie".

The dialogue is amazing, the photography is brilliant, and the characters share a dynamic that happens once in a blue moon. This movie is sort of a Night of the Living Dead meets Lassie meets Pleasantville. It's shot mostly during the day, which is completely unheard of in the zombie genre, it has a storyline that grabs you and doesn't let go...it's unique.

Some of my favorite things about this movie: Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) has a zombie girlfriend named Tammy (Sonja Bennett) who he dresses in short shorts and who "died of an anyeurism...they slapped that collar on her before she hit the ground...almost no decomp"; there's actually a zombie leash law...go figure; there's a scene where Timmy and Fido are washing dad's car...mom comes out with a glass of lemonade for Timmy...sees how much fun he's having with his zombie and goes back in the house to grab two more glasses...to join in the fun; Mom delivers lines like "You crazy, wonderful zombie!" and (upon seeing Fido's collar is malfunctioning), "how come you're not eating me, zombie?" Nice.

Perhaps the best part of the film is the ending. It's discovered that Fido did, in fact, eat Mrs. Henderson, so he's gotta go back to ZomCon. Mr. Bottoms tells Timmy that he could send him and his whole family to the "wild zone", which is apparently where they send offenders of ZomCon's laws. Timmy finds out Fido's still alive (apparently when zombies go wild, they get euthanized...makes sense, when you think about it), recruits Mr. Theopolis to help him get into ZomCon (Fido's working in the collar factory...evidently Mr. Bottoms "never wastes a good zombie"), and, somewhat predictably, gets caught by Mr. Bottoms, who takes him out back of the factory and puts him on the other side of the "fenceline" where the wild zombies roam the "wild zone". "Go make some friends!" he tells Timmy. Along come Dad and Fido to the rescue, Dad gets shot, and Fido eats Mr. Bottoms, fade to black.

Fade up, it's one of those goofy, happy '50s bar-b-que scenes, with Mr. Theopolis and his beloved Tammy, Mom, Timmy and the new baby (Mom was pregnant, Dad thought she was just getting fat). Along comes Mrs. Bottoms and little Cindy Bottoms with their new zombie in tow, coincidentally enough, it's Mr. Bottoms. "Cool new zombie, Cindy...what's his name?" Timmy asks. "I really haven't given him a name yet...I've just been calling him 'Daddy'" A swift jerk of the leash causes Mr. Bottoms to pay better attention to the situation, he passes by Fido, they exchange a menacing glance, Timmy says "does your zombie play catch?" Happy music, end credits.

Like I said, this is the most unique zombie movie I've ever seen. There's an element of pathos and empathy where Fido is concerned...he's almost still in there, you know? The acting is top-notch...it's a really good movie. Perhaps my favorite element of it all is that everybody's so blatantly matter-of-fact about the whole thing, as if to say "Hey, we're Americans...this is how we handle shit". And if you think about it...that's probably how we really would handle it, turning zombies into slaves.

My advice: see this movie when you get a chance. I caught it on the Sundance channel, so there's a possibility it'll come back around soon; or better yet, if you have NetFlix, make it happen. You won't be disappointed. Thanks for playing along, go check out the trailer: Fido