Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

In the 1980s, movie fans united as one as a voice to the ever-present and deafening winds of Hollywood, crying out for a crossover film between Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Film studio executives, being perceptive as fuck, waited until 2003, long after both characters were past their primes, to give fans this crossover. And so now, for all the people too nerdy to watch pro-wrestling, we have Freddy vs. Jason.

Director: Ronny Yu

Starring: Robert Englund, Monica Keena, Jason Ritter

IMDb

Apparently the idea for this production goes all the way back to 1987, and possibly even before. Like all great films, this went through a rotating carnival circus of new production studios, script drafts, writers and everything else under the sun before finally surfacing as what we have before us now. Apparently one of the old script drafts involved Freddy at one point being a camp counselor at Camp Crystal Lake who molested Jason.

...I wonder how that would have gone. Freddy would be like "Hey, Jason, I once touched you in a bad place!" Jason would be like “....” and then would keep slashing. Only then the audience would just have a very uncomfortable picture in their head, which is important to avoid in a movie about two serial killers hacking up teenagers. So I guess they concluded that plot wouldn't have been very eventful.

Another draft included a cult called “Fredheads,” which sounds more like devotees of a bad 90s pop boy band member. In this draft, there would be a cult based around Freddy Krueger trying to sacrifice a little girl. Her older sister would put her dead boyfriend's heart in Jason's body so he could fight Freddy. This sounds better than the other idea, but it still raises a few problems. How would that whole 'dead boyfriend's heart' thing go? That's gotta be awkward.

“Kristy! What are you doing?!”

“Cutting John's heart out! It's okay; he got a stroke last week after eating too many Hot Pockets! I figured putting his heart in a serial killer would be the best way to honor his memory!”

“You need help!”

There was also an ending in which Pinhead made an appearance. I guess they ditched that one because they figured that while Freddy and Jason were washed up has-beens at the time, they were at least better than fucking Pinhead in terms of film quality. I mean even Jason X is better than most Hellraiser sequels.

Well, I think that about sums up everything I need to talk about in regards to this thing. I think it's clearly established now that the finished product is by far superior to all the other ideas that almost happened. So what now? Oh, I know. Let's actually do the really stupid part of all my blog posts where I go through what actually happens in the movie. Ugh. It's my least favorite part of every review, too. I feel your pain.

We start off with Freddy Krueger where he deserves to be, in hell – or rather, a metaphorical extension of the shitty scripts bin in Hollywood studios. He's angry because nobody remembers him anymore. It's okay, dude, you'll be played by Jackie Earle Haley in the remake a few years from now. That will really revive your character.

I know, dude. I, too, feel your pain.

He gets the idea to summon Jason back from the dead too, to go kill a few teenagers in Springwood to make them remember Freddy. Which is really kinda a stupid plan, when you think about it – I think if you have a big hulking abomination in a hockey mask cutting people in half, that will really only make them afraid of him and not you, you weirdo dream-monkey, you.

Then we get our main characters Lori and Kia, who think it's totally cool to talk in normal-volume voices about how much Lori hates the guy Kia is trying to set her up with, when he's right around the corner in the next room. I'm sure you guys are the catches of the century. I'm sure he won't be offended by this at all – which I guess he's not, seeing as he rather creepily puts his arm around her within like a second of meeting...

"Please, allow me to invade your personal space. PLEASE LOVE ME!!!"

Then two of the others, Gibb and Trey, go upstairs to have sex. Afterward, to prove he's hip to all the new fads for what to do after sex, Jason shows up and stabs the fuck out of him. Kind of a buzzkill, but hey, different strokes for different folks.

Kind of a turn off, according to 9 out of 10 victims. The 10th one was just a real freak.

Gibb, in the shower, doesn't see anything that unusual about the blood on the floor, but it's only when she actually sees him dead that she freaks the fuck out.

Lori, in the police station, falls asleep for a few minutes and then wakes up and is baffled at how she missed the fact that the police station was actually doubling as a stage for the fall production of Jacob's Ladder everyone was putting on:

So I guess the backstory here, if you want to call it that, is that when they were kids, Lori's boyfriend Will disappeared, and he hasn't been seen her since then. It turns out he's been put in the worst mental hospital since 12 Monkeys, as we clearly see when they just leave the TV on to the news when a grisly series of murders has just happened – not only would that make them agitated, but in this case, it's also the exact same case of murders that the hospital was trying to protect the kids from in the first place! Safety shmafety. Just let em run wild with firearms and knives if they fuckin' want to. They're all adults, after all!

Will and his friend break out, and go to the high school to try and find Lori. They just break in with no consequences, and Will's buddy tries to talk to them by doing the whole Freddy “one two coming for you” song – which of course freaks everyone out, because Will's buddy has the social skills of a drunk migrant worker on cocaine.

"You can also find me in the drunk tank at 3 a.m. or outside my next serial killing victim's window at 5 a.m."

Will, not to be outdone, merely shows his face and causes Lori to faint and lose consciousness. Wow. What a guy.

He's a real ladykiller.

The police decide now is a good time to act, springing up and chasing the two intruders off the premises. They hide in their super-cool van, which I'm sure they had plenty of fucking time to decorate while doing all this other important shit:

The next ten or fifteen minutes is all about discovering the backstory to Freddy and how the town covered it all up. One of my favorite dumb plot points in this is how all the kids apparently “heard the cops mention” Freddy's name after the first murders. Yeah, real good job there, guys – you spent years specifically trying to make everyone forget Freddy so he couldn't kill anymore, then at the first sign of trouble, you're blabbing his name all over the place like teenage girls gossiping about who they slept with. Come on. At least put in a little effort.

Aside from that, it's pretty much the same kind of stuff in every movie – they discover that Freddy is America's favorite pedophile, who was burnt alive years ago and now comes back to haunt peoples' dreams. Yawn. 3/10 for storytelling factor by way of the fact that I've heard it all before.

Another prominent main character is Linderman, a nerdy, skinny guy whose apparent mission in life is to get Lori to notice his existence. That's difficult, though, because Lori's friend Kia is apparently the ultimate cock-blocker. She compares Linderman to “one of those frou-frou dogs that keeps humping your leg,” because having tact and politeness is her strong suit. I guess, to be fair, she IS right though – the kid's pretty desperate.

The first real action scene of the film comes when the students do the most logical thing when it comes to mourning the deaths of their murdered friends – have a corn-maze rave in their honor. You know, the traditional middle-America send off. It's the Viking Funeral of...well, funerals.

"So are you really just the compilation of every nerdy geek stereotype in the world?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"That really sucks."
"You're still not going to have sex with me even out of pity, are you?"
"Not a chance in Hell."

At the rave, Gibb gets really drunk to mourn her dead boyfriend and then goes and passes out in the cornfield. She wakes up in a dream, finding Freddy's boiler room in the windmill – you know, the windmill. Where all boiler rooms are located, really. She wanders around for a bit, gets chased around by Freddy, and then locks herself in a locker. I think it really shows my age, though, that when I watch this now, the scariest part of the scene is the glow-stick wearing fuckwad trying to rape her in the real world:

Without the glow-sticks it would be tragic and despicable. But WITH them it's now hilarious I guess...or maybe not. Maybe it's still despicable.

Fortunately he gets shiskebab'd by Jason shortly after. Freddy is angry because Jason stole his kill and Freddy needs those kills to come back to life! I guess it was kind of a dumb idea to let another serial killer loose in your town, then, huh genius? Really not sure what you expected to happen otherwise. I guess this is the reason Freddy Krueger isn't a shining example of entrepreneurship. Maybe he was in that bargain-bin hell for a fuckin' reason after all.

What follows after this is the only true example of the Burning Man festival:

It's not your parents' Burning Man - though, your parents were the same generation that gave us Jason Voorhees to begin with...hmmm....

He kills a bunch of people, but the main characters get away. They just kind of drive home, without any of the shock, awe or reverent fear-of-God terror you'd normally have after seeing a seven-foot tall psychopath in a hockey mask slaughter several of your classmates. Seriously guys – I don't think you really fully comprehend what just happened! But it's okay. I'll assume you're just in shock.

Lori's father is apparently an older, fatter version of Liam Neeson, who gets mad when Lori is driven home by Will, and promptly has to hold back any speeches about how he has a very particular set of skills and will find and kill him.

Here we finally get some of the backstory, as Will tells Lori that he saw her dad kill her mom years and years ago, and that's why he got shipped off to that mental hospital. Lori's dad tries to keep her from leaving, but she runs to join Will. They make it over to his friend's house just in time to see his friend get murdered by Freddy. What a cheery scene indeed. We also see Freddy has been working on his tattoo artwork since we last saw him. I sure am glad he's taken up that hobby.

He loses points for using a Comic Sans-ish font though.

The gang ends up breaking into that mental hospital to steal some drugs that can prevent them from dreaming and, by extension, prevent Freddy from killing them. We see the hospital is engaged in some truly legal things like this, where they have a bunch of patients catatonic hooked up to machines after experimenting with drugs:

They get the drugs, but the problem is, the random stoner character they brought along for no reason gets possessed by Freddy somehow – did he fall asleep while walking? I guess the conservatives were right: marijuana is evil. Anyway, he dumps the drugs down the drain after seeing a vision of a talking slug, and then gets cut in half by Jason. What a way to go, I tell you. My grandfather went the same way.

And no I don't feel like going through the convoluted explanation for all of these seemingly random events.

They then drug Jason with tranquilizers and load him into the Mystery Machine (yes, that's what it's called, even if it's just something I made up). I guess their plan is to wake him up once they drag Freddy into the real world and let them fight. Why do I get the idea the movie's producers were devil-whispering in their ears? “This is the reason you've been put on this Earth...to make this ridiculous match-up fight happen and MAKE US MONEY!”

Insidious.

So then we get the big fight. It's actually pretty fucking awesome. It's full of machete-slashing, throwing each other into walls and cutting off limbs – it's pretty much like what you'd expect from a Freddy and Jason mash-up, and why wouldn't it be cool? For all the flaws these characters' worst films have, this fight is pretty damn entertaining.

It is. It features moments such as Freddy taking cues from the Knights of Ni:

...to Freddy's terrible aim as he tries to impale Jason with a bunch of strategically-placed construction objects and still can't seem to get the big lunk to stay down:

...to Jason's triumphant Rocky-esque rise from the water after Freddy's discrimination. All it needs is Eye of the Tiger and it's complete.

In the course of this fight, all of their friends die. Afterward, Will and Lori just sort of go off and it's supposed to be a happy ending. I assume the next day they wake up and realize 90% of their class including most of their friends are now dead and that they watched them horribly murdered the night before. Then they probably get sent back to that mental asylum Will was trying to escape from in the first place and spend the rest of their young lives on an alphabetically organized lexicon of prescription drugs.

Yup. Sounds like a happy ending!

Freddy vs. Jason is a modern day epic on-par with the best adventure stories of all time. It is a timeless struggle and conflict in the mode of many Greek tragedies. That must have been why most of the characters died at the end, as it's clearly trying to emulate the bittersweet and bizarre nature of a Greek tragedy. Freddy and Jason, to that end, are obviously homages to the great gods of Greek mythology. If superheroes are our new mythological figures, well, obviously slasher villains are our new mythological monsters. But it's better, because it's Freddy and Jason, and they had twenty years before this to set up their characters and what not. So it has to be better, and my logic is infallible. Don't challenge me!

Well, maybe I was exaggerating about all those parallels to Greek myth. Except I wasn't.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

The Cinema Freaks Late Night Talk Show with The Lake Placid Crocodile

Good evening, faithful readers! As you all know, I have reviewed the Lake Placid series in all its bloody, crocodile-y goodness up until now. When I thought I was done last year, well, the series went and proved me wrong, popping out another sequel in the same manner as the fat lady next door with nine kids and an apartment smaller than your closet. I can’t even review these movies fast enough. I mean Jesus Christ. By the time I’m done writing this paragraph, they’ll probably have the script, casting and first scenes done for the next one.

Director: Don Michael Paul

Starring: The Lake Placid Crocodile, Kate from Angel, Yancy Butler

IMDb

To commemorate yet another successful foray into the murky, croc-infested waters of this hopefully long-lasting series, I have brought a special guest onto the blog today to talk about the film. This is a very successful up and coming actor who brings a unique and personal touch to every film he acts in. Directors have called him a pleasure to work with, and he even donates to charity with the money he gets from his movies. Ladies and gents, please give a round of applause for…THE LAKE PLACID CROCODILE!*

*From here on out, my questions will be in BOLD. Lake Placid Crocodile's responses will not be in bold.

So, Lake Placid Crocodile, how the hell are you?

I’m doing great, thanks. I just got off the set for Crocodile 3.

Awesome. And how is that going?

To tell you the truth, pretty stressful. There's only so many broken beer bottles to the face I can take.

Sounds absolutely delightful! But about Lake Placid: The Final Chapter…

Yes, yes.

Where did they get the inspiration for such an inventive title? The Final Chapter. Jesus, that’s original.

Well, they were trying to pay homage to the Friday the 13^th movies. We figure we’ll do what those movies did. We’ll title the fourth movie The Final Chapter and then release an endless string of less-good sequels every year after. People will keep paying money for them because they love making fun of them and because we get a couple of 20 year old girls to take off their shirts for two seconds.

In Lake Placid land, girls take off their tops just to go in the ocean at night and splash each other like four year olds. It's not weird at all!

It’s a pretty genius formula, you gotta admit. We won’t even really have to try that hard.

But that sounds like you'd just be ripping everyone off with as little effort as possible!

Yeah, well, them's the breaks!

You're being awfully forthcoming about the...shall we say, less flattering aspects of your movie.

You kiddin' me? This is the Internet. No matter how much shit I talk about this movie, people will still watch it anyway. Hell, I think making fun of a movie like this will just make MORE people want to see it!

Sigh...you're probably right...

Oh, I know I am.

So the movie starts off with Yancy Butler, reprising her role from the last movie as a wisecracking, croc-killing deputy. How was it working with her?

She was almost too good at her role. I mean c’mon, the first scene plays like the aftermath of the world’s worst drunken butcher-shop orgy. Then a croc shows up and Yancy just throws her machete at it and kills it instantly! Ouch! Show a little compassion! Yancy was pretty nice off stage, but when we were filming? Gave me chills. It was like she really wanted to kill us man-eating crocodiles.

I see. And what about the rest of the actors? Were there any you got along with particularly well?

Elizabeth Rohm could be okay sometimes. But I really liked the black guy! He was great because he was a total environmental-loving pussy who said the humans couldn’t kill us crocs even if we were killing people! So basically this guy gives us a free pass to do whatever we want for the rest of the movie!

What about the subplot with Elizabeth Rohm the sheriff and her daughter?

Well, the fact that the daughter is obsessed with reading and Rohm tells her to quit it and go outside is just strange. I mean, in the crocodile kingdom, we pride those among our young who take the time to educate themselves. The fact that Rohm wants her daughter to stop reading is just bizarre! Plus, the other subplot with this other law enforcement guy who she has a love/hate relationship with is just underdeveloped! I kept telling Don to watch some classic romance films and get a better idea of how to do this kind of thing, but he just kept telling me to go away so he could do coke in his trailer.

So there have been some environmental activists and crocodile purists that insist the film is unrealistic. People have said that the portrayal of crocodiles is ludicrous and that the film almost completely “jumps the shark” if you will by having crocodiles that appear to have superpowers. What do you have to say to those people?

Well, I think it’s ridiculous. The crocodiles in the movie were portrayed 100% accurately. For instance, scenes like the one where the giant crocodile chases the humans in their truck like a hungry lion is something I drew from my own personal experiences. They really do that, you know. Many of my friends get their lunch on weekends by chasing humans like that!

And the fact that they see in blurry distorted green-vision is totally how we really see. I’m looking at you in that kind of vision right now, actually.

The makers of the Lake Placid series are very attentive to making their crocodiles as realistic as possible. I actually served as a consultant for them on that part of the film. They came to me with all their questions.

But there’s one scene where this guy is peeing in the ocean water, looks away for a second, and then a crocodile just appears in front of him when he looks back! What do you have to say about that?

Crocodiles have always had teleportation powers. We can also turn invisible if we want. You didn’t know that?

No, I didn’t.

Maybe you should read up on your crocodile facts! That’s common knowledge now, you dunce! Geez. You humans can be pretty stupid sometimes.

Oh, we can be stupid sometimes? You wanna back that up with some proof, huh mister?

Gladly. Like how about the scene where they give a press conference to the town and basically tell them it doesn’t matter if the crocodiles have been killing people in droves for years now, and that they can’t kill the crocs because they’re rare! Isn’t that just the biggest slap in the face ever? It’s like “we know we were hired as law enforcement to protect the city and its people, but we don’t feel like stopping those crocodiles from eating you all. Sorry!”

Okay, fine. That’s kind of stupid. But it’s not like they’re just throwing the townspeople to the wolves..er...crocs. They built a fence!

Oh, you mean the fence that any moron can get past? The electric fence that poachers and hunters could easily fall back into by accident when trying to get away from a crocodile?

Well, yeah, but…

Or the fence that a bunch of kids going on a camping trip could easily drive their bus past and not even realize they were in a crocodile zone until the next day? Because, yeah, that's the explanation we get a little bit later!

Shouldn’t there be stronger warning labels? Maybe a gate with a sign on it, at least? And speaking of that bus driver, he’s a real piece of work, a real good example of the brilliance the human species can produce. Do all human bus drivers look at porn on their cell phones WHILE DRIVING?!

Danny McBride?

I’ll give you that. It was a pretty ridiculous scene. But isn’t your whole argument about humans being stupid kind of prejudiced? I’m all for equality between man and crocodile, but it has to go both ways. Otherwise, the whole thing’s kind of hypocritical, is it not?

Not a bad point. But from the point of view of this movie, it’s not hard to see why I’d be so prejudiced. I mean, this is a movie that thinks a romance means scenes of two characters who acted like they hated each other having dinner by candlelight. And then the only other romance in the movie consists of boys telling the main girl that Heart of Darkness is boring.

Yeah. Real great romance there. If you didn’t know, we crocodiles are soft at heart. Not to mention well versed in classic literature.

Very charming. But at least you got to chase and kill them all in the next few scenes.

Very true. Those scenes were a lot of fun to shoot, because…well, you know why. I think some of the other actors were having less fun than I was, though.

Well, yeah. I mean, you jumped up and bit one of their heads off. That’s got to foster some bitter feelings here and there!

Oh yeah. No special effects there at all. Crocodiles can actually jump like bunny rabbits. We usually just don’t do it for the camera. Don't like to give people a view of our asses, you know?

What was that bear trap she got caught in doing out there anyway? Just one solitary bear trap in the middle of the woods? Hell, throughout this whole movie, we don’t see one bear.

We tried to get the bear from the first movie to come back. You know, the one that I fought with at that camp site?

But he had a scheduling conflict. So we just had to drop the scene where he and I were going to have a Die Hard-style gun fight after I ate the girl’s head. It’s a shame.

That does sound like a good scene. But you did have one enemy in the film in Robert Englund’s character. He played a poacher hunting for your eggs. What was it like working with this veteran horror actor?

The fate of all great horror icons, become a self-parodic, loud redneck character in later roles...

Oh, he was a character. I never liked the Nightmare movies after the first couple, but his scenes were pretty crazy in this movie. I don’t even care that he wants to steal my eggs. I mean, it’s not like they were really mine. You think I’d really let my own eggs be used in a movie? Hell no.

It was grape juice in that thing really.

Plus, there’s one moment where he clearly has more sense than any of the other characters.

Oh really, and which moment was that, pray tell?

It’s when he shows up with his boat at the shore and invites them all to come with them. Now, of course he has ulterior motives. But they don’t know that yet. They actually have to THINK ABOUT whether or not to go with him on a boat, or stay on an island where half of their team has been killed off already. Gee, maybe running from the crocodiles will work the 5,000^th time, right?

Well, they DO have crocs in the water just waiting to eat them if they go in…

The damn boat isn’t even that far away. C’mon. And they get everyone on the boat pretty easily without any real problems. The only guy who stays is the teacher guy. He tries to run for a few seconds and then…well, just look:

Not to mention the girl's first thoughts afterwards are "I really wanted to give him back my school library books"...you humans are weird.

Woah! Now that’s some grade-A cheese there! How did that taste?

Like red food coloring. And cotton balls used to stuff that dummy.

Well, it sure made for an entertaining shot. So there was also some fuss made by activist groups about the fact that the crocodiles in the movie become super crocodiles by eating each other. Some people feel this will encourage real crocodiles to eat one another in the hopes of becoming super crocodiles.

Real crocodiles would never do such a thing. Unlike you humans, we don’t let movies act as instruction manuals for us. You people let shows like Dexter or video games like Mortal Kombat influence your children so far to the point where they kill their friends and siblings because of it!

Plus, the whole thing is overstated anyway in the film. I love how the dumb scientist is like “well, we knew they’d have a food shortage, but we didn’t think it’d get THAT far…” Isn’t that kind of like saying, “well, when we didn’t pay our electric bill until a week later and our power went out, we didn’t think ALL the food in the fridge would spoil”?

Fair points on both counts. So, the ending of the movie – we get Robert Englund trying to take the policeman’s kid hostage, and then getting eaten after his plan fails. Rohm kills you by shooting at you and then ducking out of the way as you plow into the electric fence.

Yeah. Those scenes were entertaining. That damn fence, though.

And the ending – how did you feel about the fact that you lost at the end? Rohm and her daughter reconciled, that policeman and his son reconciled, the daughter and son got together and Yancy Butler had your head on a plaque, which is about equal with all those other reconciliations...

She really just stole that plaque from Gatorland.

Well, we didn’t lose, really. Just look at the last scene! The radio broadcast says there are no more crocs at Lake Placid, but apparently they were just in waiting for girls in tight clothes running by…

What? But I thought this was the Final Chapter!

Ha ha ha…oh, you know how those wacky horror sequels work. You’ve reviewed a number of them.

But the way THIS is playing it, it’s like the officials killed THAT ONE crocodile…well, you, I guess…and then immediately declared that there were no more, without bothering to even look!

What can I say, they probably just needed to go back home and drink until they passed out. Just like the writers of this movie.

Sigh…so anyway, what’s next on the horizon for you as a budding actor, Lake Placid Crocodile?

Well, we’re starting production on several sequels. Like Lake Placid in Space!

Lake Placid Gets Crunk!

And Lake Placid and the Seven Dwarves!

Oh, I bet THOSE will be classics.

Either way, you’ll still end up reviewing them somehow!

Images in this review are not mine; they are copyright of whoever owns them.

REVIEW: Trapped Ashes (2006)

In continuation of Sexual Body Horror Month (yes, it’s a month-long theme now with Teeth and Rock n' Roll Frankenstein, and now this), I had nothing more interesting to look at and so I chose Trapped Ashes, an anthology horror film about as scary as having to stand in line at the post office for a few extra minutes. It’s really pretty damn boring, and the fact that they had five stories and NONE of them any good just shows what kind of incompetence we’re dealing with here. So, who’s ready for a bad movie with five times the “fun”? Not me…

Director: Several big name horror directors like Joe Dante and Sean S. Cunningham, among others...SERIOUSLY WHAT?

Starring: Boobs that eat people

IMDb

The movie kicks off with some introductions to our characters as they’re taking some Hollywood tour, comprised of a married couple, a non-married couple, some girl who looks like Wednesday Addams and a Boris Karloff lookalike. These introductions are all very rushed and mostly could’ve just been replaced with a white piece of cardboard with “CHARACTER INTRODUCTIONS” written on it. You don’t really get anything substantial. I do love how the tour guide played by Henry Gibson talks about preserving the integrity of Hollywood while acting in Trapped Ashes, though – that’s a laugh if there ever was one.

Seeing as Henry Gibson has been around since the very first movie ever made, I guess he's entitled to his opinions

They all decide they want to go into this old haunted house that’s restricted access, so like a good tour guide the skinny old guy just lets them do it. I mean who cares, right? It’s only an off-limits part of the tour that could cost him his job! Totally not a big deal AT ALL. They go inside and unfortunately do not get killed off in the first few minutes, so we’re pretty much stuck with them.

"Hi, I'm Owen Wilson Lite. Nice to meet you. Care to listen to me being lame?"

They do, however, get stuck in this room that, apparently, this crazy director used to lock his actors in until they were done working for the day and they couldn’t leave unless he let them – because I’m sure THAT went over well with the actors, right? And I bet their agents were just thrilled by such tactful and fair directing manners!

I just love how angry these tourists get when they’re locked in, even though THEY ALL AGREED to come in in the first place…gee, it’s almost like tourists are just generally petty, impudent assholes or something. The skinny old man tour guide tells them to start telling scary stories to one another and maybe then they’ll get out. The amount of sense being made in this is just staggering. I almost can’t even take it! So they agree and the first story is about a girl with boobs that eat people – yes, really.

So now we get to the main reason I’m even doing this movie – this friggin’ story. Apparently one of the girls, a young actress, got turned down for one role, yes, one role, and decided to get breast surgery to see if that would help her get any better parts. So after just one rejection she’s that messed up over it? Gee. I’d hate to see what would’ve happened after four or five…seriously, rejections are very common in any kind of creative field. If you can’t take it, then you’re not cut out to do it in the first place. Maybe this girl’s talents would have better suited for something with less chance of heartbreaking failure – like a Starbucks coffee barista.

So anyway, yeah, she starts having sex with some idiot and this happens to him:

This is just one of those moments where you can pinpoint this actress's career dying. Just listen to it wither. I mean how desperate do you have to be to take a role like this?

He thinks it’s bug bites for some reason, because yeah, THOSE look like bug bites! What a genius. I hope he shares a long and prosperous relationship with this girl and really imparts his wisdo----

"WE'RE BREAKING UP!!!"

Oh. Well OK then.

She goes and tries to find the guy who did it in the first place, but finds out that he’s dead, and instead is faced with these three characters, who are never introduced or given any kind of explanation:

OK, that's it, somebody needs to take a belt to whoever green-lighted this image. Whoever it was clearly was not disciplined enough as a child.

They say they’re trying to make humans immortal because, and I’m quoting verbatim here, “why should people have to die?” If this was any other movie, perhaps a film of more merit, I would go into detail on how stupid THAT question is, but for this? Nah. Not worth it…but seriously, they’re trying to accomplish immortality by implanting fake blood-sucking breasts onto young women? Hmmm, yup, that IS the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! Congratulations Trapped Ashes! You win!

I mean really? Do I really have to review the rest of the movie now? I don’t think I can top this one. It’s just too much! Nothing in the rest of these stories can possibly beat this for ridiculousness! On another note though, let's see how much fame that girl's fake boobs brought her! Oh man, I bet she got all the big name roles after THAT! I bet she...

Oh. That was only the second movie she ever did and everything since has been TV appearances and shorts that weren't even big roles at all...hrmm...hum...awkward.

So the story pretty much just ends with the realization that she’s screwed for life and stuck with man-eating boobs, and in the present time she just covers them up now when she has sex – something that her current boyfriend just goes along with because he’s a friggin’ idiot, I guess…and here we have the main problem with the film. All of these stories are just dull as hell because they center around people in the room in the movie’s present time, so where’s the danger from that? We know they don’t die or anything, seeing as they’re obviously still around telling the story, so…where’s the incitement to care? Mostly these stories just come off as annoyances rather than legitimately scary or tense. And that’s never the way to go.

So, what, the next story is set in Japan and involves a woman getting involved with some monk who kills himself and goes to Hell. She then visualizes herself having sex with him and the movie turns into a weird porno – so, basically, it turns into a stereotypical Japanese film.

After that she disappears and her husband goes to save her. He has to go in this cave and put a tiny piece of paper in her mouth. Why do I get the idea this is just how the monks get their kicks, playing tricks on stupid tourists? The film then turns into basically a horrible anime styled thing, and honestly, have you ever seen something so utterly valueless in your entire life?

I...I just...no. Just no.

I guess they make it out OK, if you really gave a shit, but it’s really frigging hard to do that. This story ends up just being a big pile of nothing with no redeeming features or even anything entertaining or atmospheric. Snore…

Next story involves the Boris Karloff lookalike when he was young and looked like something out of a 1920s Depression-era period piece. Apparently in the past he made friends with some guy named Stanley, and they had a bromance that bordered on homoerotic quite fancifully until…

It’s OK, Karloff lookalike – he’s just in denial. He’ll come around to you one day.

Anyway, they play chess and stuff and the girlfriend just hangs all over Stanley without any regard for politeness or anything – they even make out right in front of him, because yeah, that’s totally not a dick move or anything. In polite society it’s just common nature to make out randomly in front of company you just invited over.

Then Stanley disappears and Karloff lookalike is stuck alone with her for like a day, in which he turns into a mindless slave and stops doing work and everything. What a pussy. Eventually she just disappears and he moves on with his life until years later when he gets a videotape from Stanley telling him that the girlfriend was a vampire.

And I’m not even kidding – that’s the whole story. No resolution to anything, no final showdown with the vampire lady, no real action at all. How do you even do this to a story? Don’t most writers at least try to come up with something big to end a story? This literally has nothing to it – I guess the stranglehold of having to have the main character alive at the end really castrates most horror stories, a fact to which this movie is a big testament. I mean, I don’t really need some big Hollywood-esque overblown explosion-fest, but anything would be better than the amount of non-conflict this story has! Is it even really a proper story with so little resolution or conflict or tension?

Ugh, forget it; one story left and then I’m finally done with this…

The last story is told from the perspective of an unborn child in her mother’s womb – I wish I was kidding. Can’t I just end the review now and not go any further with this one? Well, I wish, but unfortunately this is like a big car wreck – really hard to stop paying attention to entirely.

So we get the story that the mother ate some bad meat and, when she got pregnant, ended up with a parasitical worm inside her womb with the baby – not sure that’s even possible, but hey, why not. Apparently the father runs off with one of his wife’s friends, because that’s the sign of a good human being, and the narration informs us that the baby in the womb made friends with the worm.

A few years later, the mother goes crazy and becomes an invalid – I guess it was just delayed shock. So the girl is sent to live with her father and his new wife, who is mean to her and gets mad at her, quite reasonably actually, for hiding food around the house to feed to her wormy friend, who is never seen. One night the girl sics her worm friend on the stepmother and it goes inside her vagina, providing us with this lovely image:

Let’s just recap this for a minute – this final story wasn’t even really about anything but indigestion and bowel movements caused by bad meat. We’re ending this anthology movie on gaseous stomach pains. Isn’t that such a fitting metaphor?

So it turns out, in a big twist I guess, that they all told their stories wrong and are either dead or have committed much worse crimes than they thought. The girl with the maneating boobs actually murdered the boyfriend character who has appeared to be with them the whole time, the husband and wife who got trapped in a bad hentai are actually both dead, and the Wednesday Addams chick actually murdered both her father AND stepmother…it really doesn’t make much sense, and mostly just comes off like the writer smoked too much bath salts and just came up with something random. I mean I seriously don’t even get it. Were they dead the whole time? It’s really not clear at all and I’m not even angry so much as exasperated at how incompetent this all is. Sheesh…

The movie ends with the old guy, who is really the crazy director who used to lock people up in the house with no way of escaping (glad Hollywood does such thorough background checks on their tour guides), giving another trolley tour, and this time adding in the random, pointless stories from this film to his anthology. I can only imagine the conversations among the tourists on this trolley ride:

“Gee, those stories sound like shit.”

“Yeah, seriously. I hope they don’t make a movie out of that bullshit. That would just be a drag.”

“I know. That would be the worst thing ever.”

“Whoever would do that should just be removed from the gene pool immediately. He should have his nuts chewed off by an angry gopher in heat.”

“If we agree on nothing else, let us agree on this.”

The pictures in this review are not mine, they are copyright of their original owners.