The Carrying On of A Wayward Son

The Raging Boll refuses to take a fall!

A half-decent Uwe Boll film? Sounds crazy, right? While Final Storm won’t be winning any major awards anytime soon, the latest film from notoriously terrible director Dr. Uwe Boll isn’t as much of a stinker as you might suspect. In fact, unless you catch his name in the credits, you would never even suspect the Raging Boll had anything to do with this vaguely supernatural thriller.

Steve Bacic and Lauren Holly star as Tom and Gillian Grady, a married couple who have escaped to the countryside in order to patch up their faltering marriage. Along with their teen son Graham (played by Cole Heppell), the family has made a good life for themselves – even if they do have their occasional squabbles.

As the story begins, the world is being beset by a series of devastating storms — each bring ruin and chaos to whatever part of the world they appear in. In the wake of the storms, people are rioting — or even odder, just up and disappearing.

Continue reading ‘Final Storm May Not Be A Great Film But It’s A Great Uwe Boll Film’

Posted in Movies
Tags: 90210, Cole Heppell, Lauren Holly, Lost, Luke Perry, Magnolia, Revelations, Steve Bacic, The Bible, The Final Storm, Uwe Boll

The eagles are coming! The eagles are coming!

There are bad movies and then there are bad movies. Birdemic: Shock and Terror is a film so awful, so misguided, so wondrously terrible that it transcends pure technical miscalculation and becomes a masterpiece in garbage. Birdemic is officially the worst movie I have ever seen — but it may also be one of my new favorites.

Birdemic first flew into the public consciousness in 2008 when director James Nguyen crashed the Sundance Film Festival in a van plastered with props and signs — one of which, according to legend, misspelled the title to his own film.

Despite not being accepted into the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, Nguyen rented a local theater and showed the movie to a sparsely populated audience. From there, the Birdemic spread.

The film is an obvious homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds but it is also so much more (or less, depending on how you look at it). Alan Bagh plays Rod, a stiff-walking, awkward talking software salesman who finds his attempt to woo an old high school crush crushed when a flock of eagles begin attacking (and spontaneously exploding) all over his tiny California Bay city.

Continue reading ‘Birdemic Is Everything You’ve Heard and More’

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Tags: Alan Bagh, Alfred Hitchcock, Birdemic, Birdemic: Shock and Terror, James Nguyen, John Lennon, Julia Roberts, Sundance Film Festival, The Birds, Whitney Moore

Not your father’s pin-up calendar.

When brainstorming ideas for a picture calendar, one wouldn’t normally jump to idea to take the 12 months and accompany them with nude photographs of 12 people born disabled due to the side effects of Thalidomide, a stress reliving drug popular in the late fifties.

Niko von Glasow, himself a victim of the drug, did have the idea and NoBody’s Perfect chronicles his attempts to gather 11 other people who are willing to strip down and expose themselves — something that many of the victims of Thalidomide have long been uncomfortable doing.

Continue reading ‘NoBody’s Perfect, But This Film Sure Tries Hard To Be’

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Tags: Niko von Glasow, NoBody's Perfect, Thalidomide

Honky Mother… You Ain’t No Soul Brother!

Color me surprised, but I found The Bad Bunch, Greydon Clark’s 1973 racial drama, to be a damn fine movie despite, or perhaps due to, the film’s cheesy exploitation roots. Clark co-wrote, directed and stared in the film, which has also gone under the titles The Brothers and Tom.

Clark stars as Jim, a Vietnam veteran who returns from the war with a note from his recently killed-in-action best wartime buddy — who just happened to also be a black soldier. Venturing into the ghetto to deliver the letter, Jim finds himself at odds with his friend’s brother Tom (or Makimba as he now goes by, having thrown off his oppressive slave name).

Makimba, refusing to believe that his brother would have ever had a “honky” friend, vows to teach the cracker a lesson by kicking his ass. The first half 15 minutes of The Bad Bunch, much like the climax of Do the Right Thing, can be seen either as a horror film or a feel-good-movie depending on your race and political leaning. As Jim is chased through the ghetto by a group of large, very pissed off black men, things begin to look bad for our hero — that is until he is saved by a couple of racist cops.

Continue reading ‘Race Relations Go To The Drive-In With The Bad Bunch‘

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Tags: Do the Right Thing, Fat Albert, Greydon Clark, The Bad Bunch, The Brothers, Tom, Tom Johnigarn

I think we’re alone now … except for the cannibal ghosts, that is!

I’d like to thank director Jason Robert Stephens’ film Necrosis for making me confront a truth about myself that I had long denied. As much as I’d like to say that I take the moral high ground and that I’ve learned my lessons from the fables every person is read to as a child, I have discovered that I am very much one to judge a book by its cover. Or a DVD by its cover, as the case may be.

Looking at the box art for Necrosis, the recently released horror film about a group of friends who encounter terror after they are stranded by a snowstorm, I instantly had it pegged for a bad movie. Maybe it was the sub-par Photoshop effects or the presence of former teen singer Tiffany in the cast, but I took one whiff of Necrosis and cried stinker. Being a fan of bad movies, though, this was open invitation to enjoyment.

I went into Necrosis hoping for a crappy version of Dead Snow. What I got instead was a crappy version of The Shining.

Continue reading ‘Pop Star Tiffany Attempts To Reanimate Career In Necrosis‘

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Tags: Creature of Darkness, Dead Snow, George Stults, Heroes, Jack Nicholson, James Kyson Lee, Jason Robert Stephens, Michael Berryman, Necrosis, Of Mice and Men, The Donner Party, The Hills Have Eyes, The Shining, Tiffany

Turtle power!

Being a child of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle generation, it’s no wonder I’ve always had a soft spot for Gamera, the giant monster turtle with a heart of gold. Created in 1965 by Yonejiro Saito, Gamera has gone on to star in 12 films — not too shabby for a kaiju created solely to rival the success of Godzilla.

Now, thanks to the mad geniuses over at Shout! Factory, the original Japanese version of Gamera is available to own on DVD.

Gamera: The Giant Monster, as the Noriaki Yuasa directed film has been retitled for its new DVD release, begins when an atomic bomb is accidentally detonated over the frozen tundra of Alaska. The explosion, caused by a downed Soviet bomber that made the mistake of loosing a pissing contest during an aerial battle with American fighter jets, awakens Gamera, a giant turtle who has long laid dormant — frozen in a block of ice. Gamera, awake and just a little pissed off, sets off in search of some sweet revenge —and maybe just a little food too.

Continue reading ‘Watching Gamera Isn’t Cheating On Godzilla‘

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Tags: August Ragone, Dean Devlin, Gamera, Gamera: The Giant Monster, Noriaki Yuasa, Roland Emmerich, Shout! Factory, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Yonejiro Saito

Sex, drugs and rock and roll!

Whether it was the gratuitous sex, the gratuitous rock and roll or the gratuitous chemistry between the leads, I gratuitously loved 9 Songs, the 2004 British film from writer/director Michael Winterbottom.

Winterbottom’s film is perhaps most notorious for its frequent unsimulated sex scenes. And it’s true, audiences will see a pendulous uncircumcised penis, a multitude of ball shots, close-ups of breasts and vagina a-plenty and, to cap it all off, a vivid scene of ejaculation. And, thanks to the film recently being released on Blu-ray from Palisades Tartan, you’ll see it all in glorious 1080p resolution.

Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, the film is a sweet, if rambling, case study of a love affair that spans 12 months. In many ways, 9 Songs would make the perfect double feature with last year’s (500) Days of Summer.

Continue reading ‘9 Songs, All Of Them About Sex’

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Tags: 500 Days of Summer, 9 Songs, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Elbow, Franz Ferdinand, Kieran O'Brien, Margo Stilley, Michael Nyman, Michael Winterbottom, Palisades Tartan, Primal Scream, Super Furry Animals, The Dandy Warhols, The Von Bondies

The return of Devon Sawa!

Creature of Darkness, the recently released straight-to-DVD alien invader creature feature from writer/director Mark Stouffer, taught me a lot in its short 90-minute running time.

I learned, for example, that former teen heartthrob Devon Sawa is, in fact, not dead — he has merely let himself go a bit and resigned himself to a future of cheesy horror movies in which he can gleefully coast from one terrible CGI monster to another until the day he finally finds himself in the clutches of that one fate not even the man who tricked Death-personified-as-Tony-Todd can escape: VH1 reality shows.

I also learned that aliens like watching pretty girls take showers just as much as humans do. It’s nice to see that even across the span of galaxies, we’re not so different.

Continue reading ‘Creature Of Darkness Will Leave Viewers Creatures Of Sorrow’

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Tags: Creature of Darkness, Devon Sawa, James Bond, Jersey Shore, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Mark Stouffer, Matthew Lawrence, Predator, Tony Todd, Troll 2, Wild America

Val Kilmer, why has thou forsaken me?

Val Kilmer is a man who has always fascinated me.

On one hand, Kilmer is an undeniably talented actor — delivering over the course of his 25-year career more than a handful of memorable performances. In fact, for my money, before Christian Bale irrevocable damaged his vocal cords, Kilmer was my pick for best Batman in a live-action performance (that “live-action” qualifier exists due to the near unbeatable job done by Kevin Conroy in Batman: The Animated Series).

On the other hand, Kilmer’s well-publicized eccentricities and self-destructive behavior on film sets have left his career a little worse for the wear as of late.

Continue reading ‘Double Identity Another Loop In Val Kilmer’s Career Noose’

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Tags: Batman, Batman: The Animated Series, Christian Bale, Clash of the Titans, Dennis Dimster, Double Identity, Fake Identity, Izabella Miko, Kevin Conroy, Knight Rider, MacGruber, Val Kilmer

How sweet, dark meat.

Well here it is folks: the end at last. After 13 hours of watching seven A Nightmare on Elm Street films back to back, I’ve finally reached the conclusion of my journey — Freddy vs. Jason.

Released in 2003, Freddy vs. Jason is the result of two decades of fans’ hopes and dreams. Too bad it’s a bloody mess of a movie.

As the film opens, Freddy Krueger is still trapped in Hell and impotent in his rage. The parents of Springwood have finally figured out a way to stop Freddy Kruger — they’ve forgotten him. After erasing every trace that Freddy Krueger ever existed, a new generation of high school students go through their lives blissfully unaware that a scant ten years earlier, their high school was an all-you-can-eat buffet for a child murderer-turned-dream master.

Krueger, seeking to reclaim his place in the nightmares of today’s youth, concocts an evil plan that involves resurrecting Jason Voorhees and sending him to Elm Street for a killing spree. Freddy figures that he will be able to take the credit for Jason’s massacre seeing how Freddy is the usual suspect for any brutal slayings that occur on Elm Street.

Freddy’s plan mostly works. After teenagers begin to show up run through with machetes or slashed to pieces, word begins to spread that the person responsible is none other than the boogeyman who had previously laid waste to an entire generation of high school students. Unfortunately for Freddy, he finds that he has unleashed a monster on his turf and Jason’s poaching Freddy’s kills. Soon, the two are pitted against each other like a couple of stray dogs fighting over scraps.

The usual group of teenage clichés make up the film’s casualty list — among them Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Kelly Rowland, Chris Marquette, Brendan Fletcher and Katharine Isabelle.

Continue reading ‘Nightmarathon Pt. 8 – Freddy vs. Jason‘

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Tags: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Brendan Fletcher, Chris Marquette, Freddy Krueger, Freddy vs. Jason, Freddy's Dead: The FInal Nightmare, Jason Goes to Hell, Jason Ritter, Jason Vorhees, Katharine Isabelle, Kelly Rowland, Monica Keena, Xbox