ThomasBleedPHD's Reviews

Slender (I) (2016)

1/10

15 May 2017

Have you ever wondered what an Asylum Films version of Slenderman would look like? Why? Why did you will this into reality by thinking about it? Ugh, whatever.

There have been a couple of Slenderman movies over the past couple of years, and pretty much all of them are bad. I can't speak to the quality of the HBO documentary, but I don't necessarily count that one anyway.

Although Slenderman is a beloved part of internet folklore, he's a copyrighted character. Somebody owns him and has exclusive rights to use the character. That means if you don't have his permission to make a Slenderman movie, you won't make a Slenderman movie. Unless of course, you avoid ever using the character's actual name or likeness, play with him just enough to make him recognizable but never actually show him, and just call him a "Slender Being" instead of his actual name.

That's how this movie came to be. A zero-budget, zero-talent, zero- originality schlockfest that rips off the notability and likeness of Slenderman but stops just short of anything that can get them sued, this is a Z-movie bootleg.

Even if you can forgive the movie for being a tasteless ripoff (I can forgive "Due Date" for being a blatant ripoff of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" because it's entertaining) you'll find yourself being slowly tortured by the bad editing, endless filler, scenes that never pay off, scenes that have nothing to do with the rest of the movie, scenes of people yammering about nothing, and massive flaws that go directly against the most basic rules of filmmaking. This movie is a disaster, like bad poetry in motion.

If I held this movie to normal standards, I'd have to call it one of the worst films ever made. However, I can't even count this as a real film. Generally, "indie" films are excluded from my list of the very worst (because there's so, so many bad ones) unless they can hit that sweet spot where they're coherent enough to count as a real movie, but bad enough to be garbage.

This is not coherent enough to be a "real" film. This movie is a mess. This is a bootleg Slenderman film, and it isn't even a good bootleg. Avoid it like you'd avoid the real Slenderman.

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Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

1/10

What the hell was that?

29 April 2017

This movie shares a lot in common with Blair Witch 2: a greedy studio wants to cash in a popular horror film but the original director wants no part in it, so they get someone who despised the first movie expecting something marketable only to watch in horror as the new director sends them back a confusing, pretentious mess that wouldn't entertain a toddler, let alone a grown adult.

I didn't really like the original movie, it wasn't my thing. But this movie is so offensively awful to all of the senses a movie can influence that it isn't anyone's thing.

In the span of about two hours, this movie gives us: - A magical dream machine that can look into your mind - A priest riding a giant bumble bee - Linda Blair curing a young girl's autism by smiling at her - Linda Blair walking on the air - James Earl Jones in a locust costume - Characters giving corny monologues about "hope" and "light" that really mean nothing - Sexy Linda Blair clone trying to seduce a priest before turning into a spooky zombie monster

This movie is a long, painful slog of boring nonsense and bad writing and it's all managed by a really bad director who's just a really dumb person in general.

Legend has it, this film was so bad that the only audience that didn't laugh it off the screen chased the producers down the street. You ask me? They were all far too nice.

Exorcist II: The Heretic is bedeviled by the horror of a 1/10. It is one of my Top 5 worst movies of all time.

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Bill Nye Saves the World (2017–2018)

2/10

"Bill Nye Saves the World" can't even save itself.

26 April 2017

"Bill Nye The Science Guy" was a terrific, fun show in the 90s that taught kids about science without boring them. With some clever production values, a charismatic host and great comedic writing, it was both education and entertaining.

So, when Bill Nye got a new show on Netflix years later, you'd expect it to be just as exciting and fun, but you would be tragically wrong. Rather than capitalizing on nostalgia and making a show in the same vein as his most popular one, Bill Nye decided to create a political round-table show with various sketches. The result is a trash can fire: it provides warmth to a few desperate people, but it's a dirty, smelly safety hazard to everyone else.

Bill Nye's strength as a host was his making people laugh and feeling friendly and approachable. Here, he attempts to be a typical angry, sarcastic host you'd find on the Daily Show or the Colbert Report. It doesn't suit him, and watching Nye yell at the screen and make wisecracks may be funny at first, but it gets old very quick.

The "round-table" discussions usually consist of very stream-of- conscious, bite-sized conversations between people who probably have detailed, nuanced ideas but end up having to only scratch the surface of them, because four people are talking at once. Occasionally, a guest with a dissenting opinion will show up, and Bill and the other panelists will all gang up on them at once. There's very little about these round-tables that is educational or entertaining, they're boring and obnoxious.

The general tone of the show is, again, obnoxious. There's lots of smirking, lots of yelling, lots of lecturing, lots of condescending. The show is very combative, stand-offish, seemingly to emulate the style of entertainers like Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart. But what worked for them doesn't work for Bill, because his strength is as a comedian and an educator, not as a political commentator. The show feels like a square peg shoved into a round hole: you can wedge it in there, but it doesn't fit.

Then there are the really uncomfortable moments, like the ice cream sex scene and the "sex junk" rap. These sketches attempt to use crass humor to make a point but feel jarring and tasteless as a result.

When everyone was looking for a continuation of the original "Science Guy" series, Bill Nye decided to make his own version of the Daily Show. But nobody wanted that. It's like pointing pizza spice on custard, the flavors don't go together.

I can't tell if "Bill Nye Saves the World" is a confused show unsure of its purpose, or if they knew what they were doing and simply failed, but it doesn't work. It's a bad show and not worth your time. Skip this one and watch some of the original "Science Guy" episodes instead.

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The Electric Piper (2003 TV Movie)

7/10

A fascinating lost film, finally found.

24 October 2016

The Electric Piper is unique in that it is a Nickelodeon animated film not based on any pre-existing property or franchise. It really wouldn't be that notable if this film weren't technically "lost" for the past ten or so years.

Produced for airing in 2000 and premiering only once on Nick in February 2003, The Electric Piper was a film with a cast of celebrity voices and a soundtrack of original music. This is probably why it was trapped in copyright limbo three years after it was made and over a decade after it was released.

The movie is a modern-ish retelling of the fairy tale of the Pied Piper. I use the term "modern-ish" because it's very clearly set in the 1960s. That's actually one of the coolest things about the film, the style and aesthetic of the film is heavily influenced by 60s subculture. By making the film an intentional period piece, the movie keeps it's setting from feeling stale or dull. It really adds an interesting layer to the film.

The film is a beat-for-beat retelling of the Pied Piper with a few extra bits thrown in there. The story follows a pair of siblings, Mick and Janis, who live in the town of Hamilton. Their father is the mayor, and he's stubborn and old-fashioned. This description applies to virtually all the parents in the town. Eventually, the kids start noticing that the city is infested with rats. Sly, a smooth-talking musician with magical powers and a sweet guitar, offers to rid the town of the rats in return for the mayor's Harley motorcycle.

The film is a musical, with groups of characters singing songs about the current situation and big dance numbers and trippy visuals. Just about everything you'd expect. Wayne Brady is the voice of Sly, and even though he's as far as a human being can possibly be from Jimi Hendrix, he sings quite well. If your ears could squint, you'd swear he really WAS Hendrix.

Amazingly, Rodney Dangerfield, Rob Schnider, and George Segal are all in this movie. They all give good performances but it's not like their characters are very deep or complex. Nobody really gets much of a character arc outside of the siblings, the father and Sly. The plot is very bare bones, doing only what it absolutely needs to and not much else.

The biggest problem with the film is its animation. It's very similar to a Butch Hartman cartoon (not surprising, since it's the same studio) which would be fine for a television show, but for a feature-length film, even one made for television, is simply not acceptable. If Scooby Doo can have decent animation in its movies, you should be able to pull it off too.

But overall, this isn't a bad film at all. It's entertaining enough to watch to the end and it does everything it needs to do quite well. The music is good, the plot is structured well and moves coherently, and the voice acting is especially good.

If you're interested in lost films or just animated movies in general, this is worth checking out. You can't buy it on DVD but it's up on an archive somewhere. Give it a look if you have the time.

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Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

1/10

A rare kind of cinematic disaster.

16 May 2016

A formula for a movie this bad only comes around a few times, and it should definitely be studied and observed to prevent future tragedies of it's kind.

What happens when a studio wants to cash in on a wildly successful movie but can't get the original director? Then hires someone known only for making documentaries with no experiencing directing narrative-driven fiction? And that director doesn't even like the first movie? And then that director makes the exact opposite of the movie they want out of pure spite for them and original film?

You get a cinematic 30-car pileup like "Book of Shadows." Whereas the first film was a fake documentary that showed a group of people fall to pieces in a realistic situation and at the end only hinted at something supernatural, Book of Shadows is a more generic horror movie that makes no attempt to seem like a documentary at all. Staffed by a team of insufferable, banal characters with no interesting or redeeming qualities. They are all apparently based on people who all serve as a metaphor for the people "effected" by the first film, like Wiccans, Goths and people who thought the movie was real. The director put so much thought into what they were supposed to represent, he forgot all about how to make them compelling character in the actual film.

The movie is laden with subtext and hidden meaning, but that doesn't justify it's existence. Now, not only is the film a mindless, generic, incoherent and totally unentertaining mess, it's also extremely pretentious and smugly satisfied with itself. Like an especially dimwitted dog who takes a poop on your carpet because he's mad at you and grins at you like he actually accomplished something. But at the end, you're going to have to clean the carpet, he has to sleep outside, and nobody won here.

One half of this film is motivated by greed, the other half is motivated by wrath. You put the two together and it's like mixing nerve gas, everyone in the room dies horribly.

The director apparently blames the studio in some regard for the movie's poor reception due to the heavy editing they did. But honestly? Even just from watching the footage that actually made it into the film, it's easy to see there wasn't much to salvage.

It's rare to see a film that's cheap cash grab AND insanely pretentious, but Book of Shadows pulls it off. It's one of my top ten worst movies of all time.

And no, "Book of Shadows" doesn't mean anything.

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Smiley (2012)

1/10

The worst slasher film of all time (seriously)

17 February 2016

There are movies out there like "Savage Weekend" and "Fat Crazy Ethel II" that are worse to sit through than this movie, but those have such low production quality they can't even be called actual movies. Smiley, however, is an actual movie, and by that standard, it's easily the worst slasher movie ever made. It's also the worst horror movie ever made. In fact, I even consider it one of the ten worst movies of all time.

Smiley is a movie made by and starring a bunch of internet celebrities I'm only vaguely aware of. A self-indulgent passion project, this movie was created purely to kick start all of their film careers.

Smiley is part of a depressingly skyrocketing trend of "Social Media"-themed horror movies. Other entries in this sub genre include the abominable "Megan is Missing" and "Unfriended." A movie that is easily the best of the three, but is still a 4/10 film.

Smiley revolves around a boring, lifeless protagonist I can't even remember the name of as she finds herself caught up in the seedy underground world of "Trolling." Here, evil internet trolls go to "The Bee board on Four-Chan" and "hack severs to post CP" and other inane nonsense. I'm not kidding, the dialogue is really like that.

This movie relies very heavily on internet references, and the creators saw it fit to have characters explain what all of the terminology and lingo means in really blunt, obvious, patronizing expository dialogue. So if you ever wanted to know what "Anonymous" and "Lulz" are, now you can! Of course you don't actually exist because no one with a proper amount of chromosomes cares about any of this.

Of course, being a movie about the evils of 4chan, Smiley puts a lot of stock into the phrase "I did it for the Lulz!" being haunting. Since the movie uses it over and over and over again. In fact one of the characters even gets a long-winded speech out of nowhere about how it represents nihilism and sociopathy and how it's extremely terrifying as the camera closes up on his pudgy face and smug grin with cinematography and lighting so cartoonish it feels like he's about to morph into a lizard or something.

But "I did it for the lulz" is not scary. It's not haunting. It's not even unintentionally comedic. It's stupid. It's a stupid phrase with bad grammar and a made up word. It's the type of thing that can only work on the internet ten years ago. It's like trying to make "lol" sound scary. It just isn't, and no amount of spooky low-voiced monologues or turning down the lights will ever make it scary.

It's hard to talk about this movie with using the word "cringe" a lot. It's the best way to describe the way you'll react to most of the dialogue and plot points: cringe. It doesn't matter if you know about "internet culture" or not. Whether you're a tech-savvy teenager or an old grandma, you'll be sighing, groaning, and cringing your way through this film until it's merciful credit sequence.

It's impossible to care about any of the characters. The ones that aren't complete blank slates or soulless exposition machines are extremely ridiculous strawmen with lines so over-the-top they should be saying them while tying girls to train tracks. This movie attempts to tackle the casual nihilism of internet communities and gets everything completely wrong.

I'd really hate to say it, but "Unfriended" took a lot of the concepts this movie attempts and did them far better. Using internet bullying and "trolling" as concepts for a horror movie is a stupid idea, but at least Unfriended was competent enough to make it's terrible characters seem like real people (terrible people, but real enough) and to avoid exposition about dumb internet crap nobody cares about.

Oh, and Smiley, the movie's killer? He gets about four minutes of screen time, and three of those aren't really him. I won't spoil anything but the twist pretty much invalidates the entire film and comes out of nowhere.

For some reason, Keith David makes an absolutely humiliating cameo in this and you can't help but feel sorry for him. I expected more dignity from the guy who played Coraline's cat.

If I had to use one word to describe this movie, it'd be "embarrassing." Even if you watch it alone it embarrasses you. It's a huge embarrassment for the entire cast and crew. I don't even like these guys, but nobody deserves to be a part of a piece of garbage like this.

They deserve better, and so do you. Don't watch this movie. It's insulting to your intelligence.

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V/H/S (2012)

6/10

V/H/S: It is what it is

8 November 2015

Found footage isn't one of the best Hollywood trends out there IMO. I hate seeing scenes pigeon-holed into a shaky camcorder, I hate all the massive plot holes that come up from the very concept itself, and I really hate how they never look like actual videos someone is taking. Don't get me wrong, it's way better than the Torture Porn trend Eli Roth started, but it's still annoying. And because these movies are so incredibly easy and cheap to make, it looks like we're stuck with them.

But as long as they're not going away, I suppose you can do a lot worse than V/H/S. I've certainly seen far worse horror movies from this genre, with worse execution and definitely worse concepts.

V/H/S is a horror anthology film - something you don't really see all that much. It's a great concept, hell one of my favorite horror movies of all time is Creepshow. This film is built up from five stories and a framing device, all of varying quality.

The framing device is pretty much just there because it has to be. It strings all the stories together in a really vague way and doesn't explain or elaborate on anything interesting. The big twist at the end of it has nothing to do with anything and feels like it's just there because they thought they needed a stinger.

The first real story, however, is a real hoot. It starts off with this grating, annoying frat-boy stereotype characters but slowly gets better as it progresses. Despite starting out rough it slowly gets better and better until the big ending twist where everything goes off the rails.

Immediately following what might be the best story in the movie is what is easily the worst. Absolutely nothing at all happens in this story happens until the very end, and the twist feels tacked on and forced instead of shocking. It's barely even a horror story.

The third story is pretty fun, since it feels like a weird hybrid between a Blair Witch-style found footage film and a classic 80's slasher flick. The monster in it is pretty cool too. It certainly isn't high art, but it's fun to watch.

The fourth story is told entirely from a series of webcam chats. It deals with some sci-fi type stuff. The guy playing the male lead in this story puts up a terrific performance but the budget for this film really hurts it, the effects are pretty bad. Still, it's one of the more effective stories.

The final story is nothing special, but not offensively bad. It's all about a supposed Halloween party that goes horribly awry. I really don't have any strong opinions on this one way or another, which is probably a bad thing for a closing story. But whatever.

All the stories seem to share a common theme of deception and people masquerading as something they aren't. It's interesting that all the stories are bound together in that way, but otherwise they have absolutely nothing to do with each other or the framing device. The framing device, by the way, could have been totally left out of the movie and it would have been fine.

V/H/S is what it is. A serviceable horror film you can watch on Netflix or rent on DVD and not feel terribly ripped off. It's a good party film. But it's nothing spectacular or even that memorable. But as far as the terrible found footage genre goes, it's one of the better ones.

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Gang Land (1998)

1/10

Absolute garbage. Thanks Nazisplotation!

7 September 2015

Let's talk about Skinhead movies, shall we? That's a fun genre. Romper Stomper, American History X, Green Street Hooligans - they all run the gambit from exploitative fun to depressing cautionary tales with ease. Some even do both!

With such a great track record of good movies, you could be excused for thinking every movie about bald-headed, racist scumbags causing trouble would be good. Then you'd accidentally find yourself watching "Pariah."

Pariah follows the story of a man who joins a skinhead group to stalk and kill all of them in revenge for the gang rape of his black girlfriend that ended in her suicide. You might ask yourself "one would a skinhead - someone who inherently believes people of color are less than human - want to have sex with a black woman, even if forced?" The question is never answered. I guess the writers didn't know how to make you hate the characters unless they used a woman's emotional pain and eventual suicide as a plot device. Pretty sure those other movies I mentioned didn't have rape scenes and worked perfectly anyway.

There's a scene that works early on where the boyfriend cusses out his mother for trying to get him to read the bible - but we never see her again and that's about the last chunk of character development our fair protagonist gets.

He crafts an elaborate revenge plan wherein he disguises himself as a skinhead, infiltrates the group and proceeds to... do nothing the rest of the film. I guess the implication is he's going to trick them all into getting themselves killed or something? But that doesn't happen. Instead, nothing happens.

The film makes the avant-garde, experimental and oh so artistic move of having absolutely nothing happen the entire rest of the film. There's a lot of scenes of the Nazis behaving badly, being scumbags, arguing with each other, doing drugs and drinking beer, swearing at each other some more, not bathing and generally being creepy, loathsome jerks. The film is so obsessed with executing these scenes, it forgets things like basic act structure or even basic storytelling.

Nothing happens in this movie. There's no build up, no pay off, no revenge, no tragedy, no pivotal events, nothing. The protagonist isn't even the protagonist after the thirty minute mark, becoming just another empty character in a film populated by them.

The ending of the film, which I will not spoil for conveniences sake, comes out of nowhere and resolves nothing, paying off for a moment in the film you could easily be forgiven for forgetting about.

The film meanders around aimlessly with no plan, plot or end goal. It's only purpose seems to be to show how awful and scummy it's main characters are - which I could have easily guessed, since they're Neo Nazis. Apparently someone felt it necessary to make a movie to tell us about how evil and nasty Nazis are. Which is like making a movie to tell us water is wet.

Roger Ebert pushed this film as a "better version of Fight Club." Which is just about the stupidest thing any film critic has even written that's been published. Even if you only saw Fight Club on a broken VHS tape on a tiny black-and-white television, it's still a better movie than "Pariah."

It's a film with no tension, conflict of payoff or any kind despite it's shocking and upsetting opening (which Pink Floyd's "The Wall" pulled off far better despite only devoting a few seconds to it.) This is a film that just gives up and never bothers to finish itself.

It would all be forgivable if this was the only movie of it's kind to tackle it's subject matter, but it wasn't even the first! This movie came out six years after "Romper Stomper."

This film goes nowhere, does nothing and has no kind of climax or payoff of any kind. Even if there weren't dozens of other, better movies in this genre, this film still wouldn't be worth watching. Don't bother with this turd. Go rent "American History X" instead.

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Wired (1989)

1/10

The film Hollywood didn't want you to see! ...For good reason.

5 August 2015

Imagine for a moment, you are Judy Belushi, a grieving widow with a funny name. Your husband is John Belushi, one of the most talented and beloved actors of the 1970s. He died tragically in a drug overdose in a seedy motel, a speedball of heroin and cocaine in his system. Leaving your grief-stricken and alone.

All of the sudden, you meet Bob Woodward, the world-famous reporter who broke the Watergate scandal. He tells you that he wants to write a biography about your husband, showing his grand life and his tragic downfall. You of course agree, reasoning that the world deserves to know your husband's whole story. The good and the bad.

But when the book comes out, something goes terribly wrong. There's a whole lot of the bad, but virtually none of the good. The happier moments in your husband's life are either glossed over or woven into moments of piggish selfishness, and the bad moments are focused on with a heavy-duty microscope, exaggerated tenfold or outright fabricated.

Now you know the story of "Wired." A bizarre and confusing chapter in the book of Woodward, the only book he ever wrote that wasn't about politics. And that would be an unfortunate and tasteless enough end to this story were it not for this movie's production.

A mere year after publishing his hatchet job, Woodward was trying to auction off the film rights to his book, but no one wanted anything to do with it. Woodward eventually secured a low-budget studio's cooperation and production on this cinematic abortion began.

Even the gullible fans of Bob Woodward's Wired don't enjoy this film. What could have been a straight-forward Bio-Pic about the troubled life and times of a famous actor turns into a bizarre Three Stooges-style farce. Apparently the filmmakers decided that what a hard-hitting biopic about the raise and fall of a real person needed was comedic fantasy sequences of John Belushi's ghost traveling around with a wise-cracking Hispanic taxi driving guardian angel literally named "Angel."

The movie is a confused mess of bad ideas, poor execution and bad storytelling as the narrative goes back-and-forth between hammed up, exaggerated dramatizations of situations that vaguely resemble things that really happened, low-budget reenactments of legally safe bootleg versions of SNL sketches, and the insufferable "It's a Wonderful Life" subplot. The "Angel" character is one of the most unlikable characters in the whole film, spending his time either being Scrappy Doo levels of annoying and cracking bad jokes, or going on morally righteous tangents about how John Belushi ruined his life with drugs and is a piece of crap who deserves to die. He really is the heart and soul of this movie. The black, withered, shrunken heart and soul.

Woodward claimed Hollywood didn't want this movie made because it contained "too much truth." An assertion that becomes absurd once you actually watch the film. Even ignoring all of the ridiculous fictional elements, the "Real life" elements are just as out-of- touch with reality. People who were enablers and willing participants in Belushi's drug use become dotting parents who lecture him on the dangers of drugs, incidents that were totally innocuous are rewritten as bombastic pivotal disasters, and major moments in Belushi's life are either glossed over in seconds or totally ignored.

But by far the most insane and bizarre thing about this movie, even more bizarre than the inclusion of Angel the magic cab-driver and Ghost Belushi, is the inclusion of Bob Woodward himself as a character. Woodward, who served as a consultant on the film, is inexplicably featured in the story as a heroic protagonist unraveling the mystery of Belushi's untimely death. Watching this film would give you the impression Woodward was a brave hero everyone loved and Belushi was a mean junkie who everyone hated.

But getting angry at this film is pretty pointless, since it was a massive commercial and critical bomb. It's highly anticipated premier at Cannes ended in boos and a disastrous press conference and it's controversy and dubious quality ensured it never got a full home video release.

So is there anything redeemable about this film? Well, Michael Chiklis is great as Belushi. He looks like him, sounds like him and captures his attitude and behavior perfectly. Too bad this movie nearly ruined his career. At least him and Jim Belushi tearfully reconciled years later. Can Chiklis really be blamed for taking this part? This was his first real movie ever.

The story of Wired is far more interesting than Wired's story.This film is an interesting piece of film making history and an intriguing chapter in the life and times of Bob Woodward. But as an actual film? It's a real stinker. Don't even bother with it.

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Slaughter High (1986)

4/10

I expect nothing, and I'm still disappointed.

25 July 2015

Warning: Spoilers

Careful! This review contains spoilers. They'll be coming up two paragraphs from this sentence.

Are you ready? Are you sure? Okay, here we go:

THE WHOLE MOVIE IS A DREAM. NOTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE ACTUALLY HAPPENS. A WHOLE EIGHTY MINUTES OF THIS NINETY-ONE MINUTE MOVIE IS ENTIRELY POINTLESS. DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.

Are you still with me? Alright, good. I have no idea why, since that pretty much sums up the fatal flaw with the movie. But hey, maybe you figure that knowing the huge, disappointing ending will spare you the rage it would've caused otherwise and you can enjoy the movie on it's own merits now?

Well, there's not much else to look forward to here. The film is a fairly generic slasher film that borrows heavily from movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th (this movie even stole it's composer!) and probably even takes the time to borrow elements from Toxic Avenger, a movie that came out only two years prior.

The story revolves around Marty, a nerdy kid who gets picked on by the entire football team like crazy - the ENTIRE team, for no reason. What did this kid even do? Take a leak in the team Gatorade? Sleep with the quarterback's girlfriend? I dunno, doesn't matter. The point is these are generic movie bullies picking on a generic movie nerd. Eventually they go too far and Marty's face gets burned off, and he swears revenge. Then all the old gang are invited to a reunion at the old school building (now condemned and abandoned) to have one last big party for old times sake. But they better watch out! Because there's a mysterious killer there who will blah, blah, whatever. And then someone farts.

Everything you'd expect to find in a generic 80's slasher film is here in spades. We got thirty-five year old actors playing teenagers, we got nearly identical frat boys and easy girls getting killed, we got over-the-top death scenes that probably wouldn't even kill anyone, we got people dying while drinking and having sex because apparently all cheap slasher movies are very morally righteous, we got the last victim being a virginal woman (well obviously she's not a virgin, but she won't do porn!) and of course, the last ten or so minutes of the film is an extended chase sequence. All the horror movie elements that make you feel like you're watching the same movie over and over again. At the very end of the film it looks like they're gonna have a unique twist (even if it's confusing and makes no sense) where Marty is killed by the zombies of his victims - only for him to wake up in a mental hospital, where it turns out it's only been a few days since his face got burned off and it was all just an angry revenge dream. Then he kills the doctor and rips his own face off but you know what, Marty? It's too late to impress me. Your movie is over and you didn't kill anyone you actually wanted to. Maybe they were setting up a sequel? Fat chance. Especially since the actor who played Marty killed himself shortly after it came out. I watched this POS for an hour and thirty-one minutes and it was all one big waste. This movie is so full of clichés that they introduce a random black guy just so he can be the first one to die not five minutes later.

The movie was supposed to be called "April Fools Day" but another studio was making a movie with that same name and those guys had more money. You can tell this was supposed to be the title from the fact that the movie (and it's tragic back story) takes place on April 1st. You can also here references to it in the theme song. But it's not like "Slaughter High" is an inappropriate title; the whole movie takes place an abandoned school building. Must have been really cheap to shoot this.

This is a British film, in case you couldn't tell. That means fake American accents. I didn't really notice too much while they were speaking normally but occasionally they slip, leading to a bit of unintentional comedy. The only accent that's noticeably bad (and not just corny like the others) is the old black guy, who almost sounds like he's struggling to talk like a slave from an old Looney Tunes shot. If you don't know he's just trying to mask an accent (or assume that's what he actually talks like that) it gets kind of uncomfortable.

The costume is pretty underwhelming. If you're expecting Marty to run around in a crazy clown suit prepare for disappointment. It's just a boring jester mask and a letterman jacket. It doesn't really matter, though. Of all the problems this movie has the least of them is the costume.

I guess the lesson here is if a film is so bad the distributors have to put a guy on the cover defending it before you even open the box, that should probably be a warning sign. If you're looking for the most generic, by-the-numbers slasher movie you can find, you probably have a dozen better choices. But if this is what's on hand, you'll get exactly what you expect. I just hope you're not too afraid of spoilers to figure out the movie is all a DREAM SEQUENCE before you have to see it happen.

But honestly? I probably would have given this movie an extra 2-3 points if the ending wasn't so terrible.

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Jason Goes to Hell (1993)

6/10

Not Great.

21 July 2015

I have to be honest, I originally gave this film a scathing review, but upon re-watching it I liked it better than I remembered. So, here's a new review matching my current thoughts.

"Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday" is a mess of a movie, but a surprisingly enjoyable one. Corporate shenanigans and budgetary issues plagued the franchise in the late eighties and most of the nineties, leaving us with Manhattan movies that only spent an hour in Manhattan and a sequel where Jason turned into a cyborg and went into space. Even though these three movies were complete schlock and bad examples of executive meddling, they all came out surprisingly watchable.

Jason films are actually fairly consistent in quality in comparison to other horror franchises. Knowing Jason's films are actually a step in quality above other films is either inspiring or disheartening, depending on how you look at it.

The film takes a huge departure from other films in the franchise, with Jason dying right at the start in one of the most enjoyable and satisfying scenes in the entire franchise. The effect of Jason blowing up is a fantastic piece of special effects work. The full is full of really good gore effects, including a scene where a man's body melts.

In this film, Jason is an evil spirit hopping bodies until he can kill a relative and be reborn. The details of how this all works are left sketchy and vague, but we see a Necronomicon at his parent's house. I like a little ambiguity in my horror.

If you're looking for a traditional Jason movie with a guy in a hockey mask stalking and killing people, this one is kind of a letdown. However, even though it does something fairly different, it's surprisingly fun to watch. The dynamic of a killer switching bodies and slaughtering people is actually fairly cool.

Overall, out of all the Friday the 13th films, this may be the weakest one. But it's a surprising guilty pleasure.

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Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

8/10

Easily the best of the franchise

20 July 2015

The Friday the 13th series has a lot of movies under it's belt. Most range from "bad enough to be good" or "entertaining despite it's flaws" while some titles fall into "just plain bad" territory (A New Beginning, Jason Takes Manhattan and The Final Friday.) But for the most part, this franchise has been surprising competent for the number of films it's put out. It's ratio of good to bad entries is about 9- 3.

"Jason Lives" however, is easily the best standalone film of the series. (I'm not counting Freddy vs Jason because it's a crossover.) It pretty much sets the standard that a Friday the 13th film should strive for.

The plot is pretty standard fair, Jason running around in the woods killing teenagers and tertiary characters while a pair of moony-eyed protagonists try their hardest to stop him. What makes this movie unique is that it's the first one where Jason is "undead." Making him nigh-invulnerable to conventional weapons and totally impervious to pain. He shrugs off gunshots and stab wounds, smashes his way through walls and tosses people around with relative ease. Jason becomes a sort of hulking, lumbering Frankenstien-type monster. Probably why he was revived with a lightning bolt in the intro.

Complete and total '80s slasher cheese, this movie is an absolute blast for people who enjoy these kinds of films. This movie in particular features a touch more comedy then previous entries. Lots of goofy '80s comedy stuff and clever little one-liners. But the funniest moments in this movie, surprisingly, come from Jason. His dull, blank reactions to everything around him are hilarious. His slow head turns, his blank stares, his long pauses. It's like he's constantly saying "Are you serious?" in his mind before he kills someone.

But what really surprised me is that I ended up liking the other characters in the movie. The protagonist, the love interest, even the one character I really hated got a great moment near the end and I actually felt bad to see him die. This movie hits the mark perfectly. It's everything a Friday the 13th movie should be. If you're only ever going to watch one of these movies in your life, this is definitely the one. But you really can't go too wrong, so long as your one movie isn't "The Final Friday."

8/10 - The most Friday the 13thiest Friday the 13th movie ever made.

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