The 500th Post: Zyzzyx Rd. (2006)

Well, it's been a long road to get here, but I've finally reached the 500th blog post on Cinema Freaks. Hooray!

Just imagine the sounds of people cheering.

Now you're all probably wondering what exactly I'm doing to commemorate this occasion...well, it's easy: something that will please legions of fans and draw in more audience traffic than ever before. Something well known by everyone that will surely seem like the logical choice for such a momentous occasion.

I'm of course talking about Zyzzyx Rd. See? Look at all the audience traffic JUST THE NAME ALONE has drawn!

Also, Cinema Freaks now takes place in high class theaters.

….

Well, shit. Ruined it again!

Director: John Penney

Starring: Leo Grillo, Katherine Heigel, Tom Sizemore

IMDb

You're probably wondering why I'm reviewing this movie at all, let alone making a big deal about it. Well, I'll tell you: it's because this is the all-time box office record for the least amount of money made on a movie in the history of film. This thing was only in theaters once a day from February 25 to March 6 of 2006, and in that time it made a grand spanking total of $30 at the box office, with $10 of that being from a “personal refund” to makeup artist Sheila Moore and a friend by one of the leading actors after the opening weekend.

On top of that, the name of the movie comes from a real road in the Mojave Desert. Only here they spelled it wrong – whether by accident or not, I have no idea, but the real road is Zzyzyx Rd., not Zyzzyx Rd. Either one though, wouldn't really roll off the tongue enough for moviegoers to pique interest that much. I mean it does kind of sound like the sound you'd make when being electrocuted to death. Not really a big selling point.

"ZYZZZZZYX!!!"

Honestly, though, this is really only part of the story. Some newspapers were lazy at the time and figured the movie was so bad it only made $20. In reality, director John Penney didn't really care about releasing the film theatrically and only did it to fulfill a requirement with the Screen Actors' Guild so he could then distribute it on DVD – where it did make a respectable sum, or at least one that wasn't $30.

I'm sure this is in no way an inaccurate portrayal of the makers of the film after DVD sales.

In fact, the only reason they even wanted to release it on DVD was to make money to make other movies, which Penney and lead actor Leo Grillo fantasized as being “Hannibal with animals.” (Grillo was a pretty big animal rights activist and Penney was right there alongside him on that being a good idea, but then again, they have only done one film in the eight years since, which apparently wasn't a horror one at all.)

So with all the hullabaloo about this movie's creation and box office gross, it did gain a modest level of fame among the kinds of people who were fascinated by films like Plan 9 or The Room. And that's good enough for me. Let's take a look at this thing. What, already? Yes, I realize I'm jumping in with both feet...

We start the film off with a middle aged businessman named Grant (Leo Grillo), who is eloping from his wife and young daughter with a young girl named Marissa – real class act there already, movie; great job enticing me to like the character. Apparently these two not only killed Marissa's violent ex-boyfriend in a struggle at a hotel after he caught them having sex, they're now driving out into the desert to bury him. Which to me is always the best time to suck on a Ring Pop:

Put that shit in a commercial already.

It's just got that after-murder refreshing taste, ya know?

Grant gets out into the desert and tries to bury the body, which goes about as well as you'd think for a middle-aged tax accountant who looks like that trying to bury a body. Lots of swearing, sweat and the obvious one: misplacing the body. Yes, really.

"WHICH WAY DO I TURN THE SHOVEL AGAIN?!?"

He gets back in the car and asks Marissa about whether the boyfriend was really dead, to which she replies that she didn't even see him, because she was in the bathroom the whole time. Grant, apparently, just sucks at telling dead bodies from live ones. Either way they're both morons.

So Grant goes out and runs around in the dark looking for the escaped would-be dead body, but only ends up taking a tumble down a hill and getting hit at least once, but not actually capturing him. He goes back to the car and has a really telling conversation in the car with Marissa. First, Marissa panics, thinking the ex-boyfriend might tell someone, or even more bafflingly that he might die out there and someone else will find him!

Uh, for one, if he DID tell someone, what would he say? “I tried to kill these people and they fought back”? And two, if he died out there in the desert, IT WOULD SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS. Have you even seen where you are? You're in the middle of the fucking Mojave desert! The only people who will find his body are going to be other people trying to hide bodies!

Then she changes gears completely and says he isn't going anywhere and they can find him in the morning. He isn't going anywhere? I think you have an incredibly warped sense of space and the ability of people to move, lady!

Then they start talking about being in love, which really makes sense as they met in Vegas and had a skanky affair in which Grant cheated on his wife. Grant says he wants to be with Marissa now, because clearly having sex in a motel and then killing the girl's ex-boyfriend is what true romance is founded upon.

What? You don't agree? Then you, my friend, have never killed your girlfriend's ex-boyfriend in a shitty motel in Vegas and then driven out into the desert to kill him. Totally eye-opening experience, guys.

To add insult to injury, he then finds out that Marissa isn't even eighteen years old yet! I don't think it really matters though, as if you're a 50+ year old man married with kids, and you're spending your time with a girl who wears her hair in pigtails and sucks on Ring Pops when you're going to bury a body, you probably need to check yourself into marriage counseling – because, congrats, you have a bona fide mid-life crisis that's grown into a malevolent tumor.

I just love that he's still okay with kissing her after she tells him she isn't 18 yet, even though he still acted like he was pissed off about that a second before. It's like, I have priorities and morals, but eh, they aren't that important. What a fucking cockbag.

She doesn't kiss and tell...or rather, she does, but only in the Mojave desert in the middle of the night with frumpy, sad old men.

Oh yeah, and then she attempts to give him a blowjob, but because of the Ring Pop having a cinnamon-y flavor, she burns his dick as soon as she touches it. What a magical scene. I sure am glad that one was put in there!

A metaphor for the hard times in life when you just need to leave your wife and young daughter who you constantly claim to love for a 17-year-old girl who gives painful blowjobs.

Then we get some more scenes of them looking around in the desert and it's basically just a big old ad for the Mojave: come here and fall in love with the endless hallucinations and Hitcher flashbacks.

It really does reflect the movie - empty, dry and without much to do but keep going in a desperate trudge to find the end.

Speaking of flashbacks, we get some incredibly important and vital ones that show off an invaluable plot asset: Marissa has boobs. Truly we wouldn't have been able to figure that one out otherwise.

Her ability to have physical body parts that over half of the human race has is just astounding to me! She truly is great in this movie because of that.

Grant runs into the ex-boyfriend, Joey, played by Tom Sizemore. He's hiding out in some abandoned mine located conveniently right next to the road, which he says is because Marissa is actually some kind of succubus or demon that feeds on what you desire inside. However, I think it's really because he was hiding from the cops because he was wanted on drug charges.

Whoops! Did I spoil the illusion there? I'm just so sorry.

Joey tells Grant to go find Marissa and lure her down to the mine, and because he's got no sense of will or brainpower, he just goes along with it. After all, if you can't trust some weirdo you met in a dirty old mine in the middle of the Mojave desert, who can you trust?

"I, the Lord of this Abandoned Mine in the Mojave Desert, am truly a credible source for information!"

Grant gets Marissa down there, and she acts rather suspicious and skittish about the idea. He gets her in the cave and has to stab her in the leg when Joey doesn't hold up to his end of the bargain about trapping Marissa. Then Grant runs away and finds Joey being a fucking coward out in the desert, saying he just got scared or some shit like that – what a wimp!

Then they go back and Grant tries to lure Marissa out of the cave by saying he's sorry and it was a misunderstanding. For stabbing her, mind you. You know, one of those conversations every couple that's truly meant for one another has at one point or another. “Hey, honey, I'm sorry I stabbed you in the leg! Let's have make up sex! I'll make you brownies!”

Then we get a chase scene where it seems like Marissa is actually the one who's normal and Grant is the crazy one – wait, you mean the guy who was convinced his new girlfriend was a demon ISN'T the picture of sanity? Well, fuck; check ME into a mental asylum then. Marissa is chased by Grant to some house in the country, where Grant kills the guy who owns the house. Then, they go out to this road where Marissa trips over nothing and falls on her stomach:

"Damn air, always tripping me up. Maybe I'd better just use a wheelchair to get everywhere from now on."

She pleads with Grant not to kill her, and apparently understands in seconds that Grant is actually seeing a hallucination of her dead ex-boyfriend Joey who's telling him to kill her. I guess Joey was just that kind of guy. Ya know, the kind of guy where you just look at him and go “yeah, that's the kind of guy who will later appear from beyond the grave telling mentally weak people to murder me in cold blood.” I hate those kinds of people.

He doesn't do it though, and instead decides to take the easy way out and kill himself. I'm sure people were glued to the screens about that one.

"What have I done...hmm, what should I have for dinner tomorrow? Did I finish my laundry?"

This whole thing wasn't terrible or anything. In fact the setting was nice, it had some good ideas here and there and it was even kind of suspenseful, in a trippy, psychedelic sort of way. It was the kind of thing you can definitely use to simulate the feeling of psychedelia when you're too poor to go buy mushrooms from that weirdo down the street at the abandoned old K-Mart. The acting, while not great, did manage to convey the story reasonably well.

The only problem was that it just wasn't really fully realized. Was Grant really so weak-minded that his delusions took the form of the dead body of a guy he just met once, and under stressful circumstances? Why was Joey his hallucination telling him to kill Marissa? Maybe it could have been his wife, whose voice we hear a few times nagging him in his brain – that would've made more sense and probably added some depth to this character who otherwise is just an unlikable asshole. I mean, yeah, that would have made no sense for her to be in the desert with them, but maybe his delusional mind tells him she followed them there. And these things don't have to make perfect sense anyway.

Also, why was he even crazy to begin with? Nothing really suggested he was, apart from the script forcing you to think so. It just kinda came out of nowhere like a truck on a foggy morning. Or one on a clear day where a crazy man can jump in front of it and kill himself, but either way is fine. And some of the dialogue in this thing was just so bad. I mean it really was just so stupid, silly and unrealistic, and took you out of the movie with the force of a guy falling from a ten-story window with an anvil strapped to his ballsack.

Overall though, it wasn't bad. It did at least prove one thing – guys who go for 17-year-old girls wearing their hair in pigtails and who suck on Ring Pops after murdering someone DO tend to be quite crazy. Though, for unrelated reasons that aren't fully explained and are quite separate from that initial pedophilic attraction.

If that wasn't enough for you, you also get some super cool extras when you buy the DVD, like behind-the-scenes things that are kinda cool. I dunno; I love the idea of seeing what goes into the creative process with any movie, as it really points out how so much work goes into making even a bad movie.

I mean, maybe if I watched more of these special commentaries and behind-the-scenes featurettes for the movies I reviewed, I'd have a whole new outlook on life. Maybe I'd suddenly see the good in these films and have a much rosier, sunnier picture of the world and really turn my life around because I wouldn't blow a gasket every time I saw one of these horrible movies! Maybe I'd finally turn into a rainbow, break through the shrouded gloom-cloud of life and magically see all the faults in my life and fix them with the snap of a finger.

Or maybe I'd just get shitty featurettes that looked more like you saw the movie in theaters and recorded it with a fucking cell phone camera. Where you can't hear any dialogue so the whole thing is pointless.

You can, however, hear the wind against their microphones. Whispering siren songs enticing you to watch bad movies...

Hear that? That's the sound of my last hope for happiness being murdered in an alleyway.

Oh, and we also get a "theatrical trailer" that makes this thing look like some kind of action-packed thrillfest, like it's some Denzel Washington thriller or something.



I'm sure that would have been magical if the movie were actually like that in the least.

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

Godzilla (1998)

Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo

Director: Roland Emmerich

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120685/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_(1998_film)

Yeaaaaaah, you though I was just going to ignore this piece of garbage, didn't you?!

Actually, I had not planned on reviewing Hollywood's 1998 attempt at Godzilla, but given that I was already doing the ones from the 50s, I figured, "Sure, why not..?" and re-watched this one for my own pleasure/torture. While a lot has been said about this movie already, I found that I had enough thoughts from a personal perspective to create this post. This will be more like a mini-review like the ones I used to do, but give how long my last one was, it should suffice (for a more comprehensive take, watch the Nostalgia Critic's review of it here; it is one of his classics).

In this "original" American film, Godzilla comes into being when a bunch of iguana eggs are turned radioactive as a result of nuclear testing. Soon, boats start disappearing and New York comes under siege. It is up to a team of…people…to stop Godzilla. Whoopty do.

Most people dislike this movie and there are valid reasons for it. While most of them are well know to those who have seen it, and even those who haven't, here are the top ten (in no particular order):

1. It rains throughout virtually the entire film for no apparent reason.
2. The world's most powerful military will fire their guns at random, yet almost none of their ammunition can hit a 300-foot lizard within a contained area (resulting in them destroying more of New York City than Godzilla).
3. How can you lose said 300-foot lizard in New York City?!
4. Matthew Brodrick's character is a dweeb and most of his lines are either mind-numbingly stupid or inappropriately timed. In any other movie he would have been the comic relief, and yet he plays the lead; it is like if Rick Moranis' Louis Tully character was the leader of the Ghostbusters.
5. All of the other characters are either unlikeable or severely underdeveloped (except for Jean Reno's, maybe).
6. The romance in the movie is so contrived and mushy, it is painful to watch.
7. It rips off "Jurassic Park" too much.
8. Mayor Ebert and his assistant Gene, obviously parodies of the late great film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, are neither stomped on nor eaten, even though the real Siskel and Ebert said that this would have made a lot of sense!
9. It tries to make certain scenes appear meaningful, but they never go anywhere.
10. And, of course, Godzilla spends most of the movie hiding in the subway system, and when he does appear, he either runs away or chases after a taxi cab.

So is there anything really good about this mess? Well...the special effects are decent. It is obvious that this film had a budget…even if it did not use it right…

And while a number of people think the monster is ugly, I say it looks cool enough. I mean, it is not the traditional look, but I can see that a giant mutated iguana would look like this…sort of…

Strangely, only the iguana was considered by the casting director.

And at least they got a cool cartoon out of it on Fox Kids…

…even though it is kind of sad that it was better than the movie is was based on...

Okay, it is obvious I am struggling here, but I will give this movie credit for one thing: it introduced me to Godzilla. I may have seen the cartoon beforehand, but the movie gave me a real idea of what Godzilla was like as an all-destructive monster (even if he didn't actually destroy much). Hey, I first saw this movie when I was about nine years old; I was not exactly making quality judgements calls back then! So while this was not one of my favorite movies, I liked it well enough, so when I saw "Godzilla: King of the Monsters!" at a video store (remember those) one day, I got it and was hooked.

That being said, I cannot defend the lack of quality. It looks obvious that director Roland Emmerich and his producers were not that interested in taking this movie seriously (though some of them have apparently expressed regret about it in recent years). While this did get me to see the "real" Godzilla, I was likely in the minority. In fact, there may have been a lot of people who got repelled by this movie and did not want to have anything to do with him afterward!

Now, I cannot not blame the producers entirely; Godzilla is a silly series in a lot of ways, especially as it went from being fairly serious in the first movie to, well, this:

But you know what? "Batman and Robin" was based on a campy 60s TV series, but that doesn't make it a good movie or its lame humor anymore tolerable. Godzilla has a special place in people's hearts, just like Batman or any other cultural icon does for their respective fan-base. While fans can certainly be overzealous, when you make something that is important to them and it shows a lack of effort on your part, it is disrespectful not only to them, but also to would-be converts. The filmmakers should have been trying to entertain people; but the only thing they achieved was their bottom line.

Luckily, the producers of the new film coming out this week seem to understand this and, from what I have heard, have apparently worked with Toho Company Ltd. (the production company behind the Godzilla series) to create a more "authentic" version of the big guy and with a tone that is more in line with the seriousness of the 1954 original. Translation: do for Godzilla what Christopher Nolan did for Batman. I can't say for sure whether it will be good or not, but I will post a review of it as soon as I can!

So, what is the final word on Emmerich's version? It…sucks. I mean, it's not terrible; there are certainly worse movies out there to watch (i.e. 90% of the stuff on Cinema Freaks). But it's not good either, and it's a slap in the face to the series and really annoying for anyone who happens to come across it. Therefore, I do not recommend it.

The pictures and links on this post are copyrighted by their original owners and are being used for entertainment purposes only. Please do not sue me.

Troll 2 Review: Part 3 - Best Worst Movie (2009)

The First Part
The Second Part

So Troll 2 is a spectacle of a movie – it’s so bad in every aspect that it should be indefensible, but somehow it comes out as a glorious, beautiful butterfly of a bad movie. Everything about it is awful. The acting is stale and the writing is confusing. The storyline is so botched that it may very well have come from a coke-addled mental patient, and the special effects are like something a couple of college kids threw together in an afternoon. The directing is a cobble of ridiculous close-up shots and nonsensical ideas that make the film even more of a headache, when it isn’t side-splittingly funny. These things are basically ironclad facts. So why do we love it so much?

Director: Michael Stephenson

Starring: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Claudio Fragasso, the rest of the Troll 2 cast

IMDb

Best Worst Movie, released in 2009, is a documentary made by the lead actor of Troll 2, Michael Stephenson, who played Joshua the wonder kid in the movie, and it attempts to shed light on these questions. In Best Worst Movie he takes a camera and documents the cult phenomenon that Troll 2 has grown into, with showings all over the world and lots of devoted fans who don’t quite fit into any other fanbase. Lots of shots are used of people in low-fi theaters laughing their asses off at the movie. It’s heartwarming and really cool to see how a movie like this has affected people. Some journalists quoted in the film call Troll 2 ‘the Rocky Horror of the Myspace generation,’ which is about as accurate a description as anyone can come up with.

But the real treat is seeing what all the stars from the movie are doing 17 years later. George Hardy, who played the dad in the movie, is given a lot of the spotlight, because he is honestly just a cool, wacky character. He’s a dentist in a small town in the Midwest who is well-loved by everyone he knows and a popular face in town even without the Troll 2 fame on his back. You see a lot of dimensions from astonishment that his movie is finally being recognized to discouragement when he goes to conventions and nobody knows him. Some of the best scenes are the actors re-enacting scenes from the original film all these years later. The one with Hardy, Stephenson and Margo Prey doing the “row row row your boat” scene is priceless.

The disconnect between the director’s intentions and the critical reception is just insane here. Claudio Fragasso fashions himself, apparently, a pro filmmaker, and seems to honestly kind of resent the way everyone just laughs at Troll 2 now. To his credit, he does seem to like playing to the crowd for laughs, but I don’t know, the look in his eyes just seems a little annoyed at it all, and he comes off as pretty pompous really. Both he and his wife, who wrote most of the script and story, just can’t seem to see what about the movie is so funny.

The real thought provoking things in this film, though, are the actors who are…different. Like Margo Prey, who played the mom in the movie, and who is obviously a bit off. She’s just a little odd and you feel sorry for her because she doesn’t seem like life’s given her its best hand. Same thing for the general store guy in real life – he lives alone and just doesn’t seem terribly well-off. He tells the story of how he got the part: he was a mental patient at the time, self-admitted, and had no idea where he was or what he was doing. “It wasn’t acting,” he says, and he means it. He also says that when he got on stage at one of the Troll 2 screenings, it was “the first time he ever felt happy with himself, in his life.” That’s really touching, and brings the movie to another level. If a movie like this can make somebody feel like that, I don’t care what you say, it’s not a bad movie. No movie that makes a person feel that way can ever be bad.

Best Worst Movie is a documentary about people. If you want a film that just makes fun of a bad old 80s movie, look elsewhere. This just takes a strange, unique situation from years ago (the filming of Troll 2) and catches up with everyone to see what their lives are like afterwards. It shows that people in terrible movies are just people, too, and that the line of quality between good and bad movies is really rather blurry – what critics and popular opinion says really matters way less than people think. Movies are so much more than just black-and-white good or bad. They’re hard work by lots of people, and Best Worst Movie shows that through every pore, through every odd humorous anecdote and every cheering crowd. For that Best Worst Movie has left an impact on me.

Image copyright of its original owners.

Troll 2 Review: Part 2

Read the first part of the Troll 2 review before reading this one!

The mastermind in question is this lady, who is incredibly hammy, dressed like a Tim Burton-vomited-out gothic caricature, and who I am convinced is trying to win a contest for Mugging Into the Camera the Most, but is still more subtle than Catwoman from Batman Returns.

She serves them some drinks – because yes, I’d take drinks from a lady who looked like that! – and then watches as the unnamed girl turns agonizingly and slowly into a plant. She then invites the dorky 80s kid to drink his drink too…yes, because I’d totally drink something after watching my companion turn into a plant in front of me…while trolls come out and devour her. This prompts perhaps the most famous scene from the movie:

Such great acting is just unheard of in other movies…OK, OK, being sarcastic about it is pointless; it's been done a million times before. The scene, just that twenty seconds, is just so fascinating though. According to the Wikipedia page, the actors were all instructed to say their lines exactly as written, even though they were all in terrible Engrish and written by people who didn’t know the language. And it didn’t help that all the actors had basically no experience. But even THAT doesn’t explain the absurdity of scenes like this! I want to know how they physically told this kid to talk like that! You would think even foreigners would have a general grasp on how people talk, enough so that your scene doesn’t come out…well…LIKE THAT!

I digress, though, as there are still more horrors and amazements to come in this film…like when Joshua and his dad go into town to buy groceries and discover that everyone in town has gone to the Mass and the store is closed. The dad sits down in a chair and…immediately falls asleep.

What, do you have narcolepsy? I kinda doubt it. I think this guy is just a flat out moron. The kid doesn’t even notice! It’s like “aw, snap, dad randomly passed out again in public…at least it’s not like the time when he did it while on the toilet…” And the kid notices that Nilbog is Goblin spelled backwards. You’d think a bunch of goblins would be smarter than to name their town after what they secretly are. I guess goblins are morons.

Why is he even looking in the side mirror anyway? Does he just like looking in side mirrors from outside a car? What a weird kid.

So Joshua, being the smartest boy alive, decides to sneak around and go invade their morning mass. He sees them talking a bunch of gibberish about vegetarianism or something, and ends up getting caught. They try to force him to eat some of their green nasty-ass gunk which will turn him into a plant, but his dad comes in at the last second, begging the question of, what kind of father passes out and lets his kid wander around unsupervised for like 20 minutes? When he asks what they’re doing, the villagers say they were going to feed Joshua ice cream. Yes. They were feeding him ice cream. While holding him down and surrounding him like a cult of creepy pedophiles. Like an idiot, the father buys it and doesn’t question a thing. Well, then again, he DOES apparently just talk to random homeless men all the time too. I guess the family is used to it.

Meanwhile in the other plotline (seriously, Troll 2 has multiple plotlines…COMPLEX?!), one of the other doofuses goes out to buy food because they were morons and forgot to bring ANYTHING of their own…he gets accosted by a crazy madman in the grocery shop who mugs to the camera almost as much as the villainess from earlier. But not quite. No cigar, crazy general store man! You lose!

Even though this guy was just some mental patient on release for a few days, it's startling how he just seems like a normal member of this town, in the context of the movie. They're all nuts!

Speaking of the crazy villainess, she comes back in the next scene as the doofus is lured to her house and finds the first doofus turned into a tree-man hybrid, trying to free him. She catches them and kills the second doofus, and “punishes” the first with a chainsaw…still better than any Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequels! In fact, I’m just going to pretend this scene was the real TCM 2. It’s much less mind-numbing than the real one. I digress, though…what really makes this scene is more camera mugging! Yay!

I don't even think this lady was given direction. Well, aside from "more crystal meth than a Def Leppard concert."

Then we get some fun times at a house party where all the house guests bring food labeled ‘EAT ME’ and other asinine things, and of course it’s all very green and non-meaty. Grandpa comes back again, and actually turns real this time, which is never explained. He somehow summons a lightning bolt and kills the leader of the goblins, revealing him to everyone as his true goblin form…really, though, it’s just bizarre how everyone acts like they’re not even that surprised. I mean I guess they’re a little surprised…but it’s more the “oh, hey, an old friend unexpectedly dropped in” sort of surprised, as opposed to the “oh my god, he turned into a freakish aberration of nature!” sort of surprise…movie, why do I even try?

The father and Holly go and get Elliot from the camper and beat the shit out of him, threatening all the while that he BETTER GIVE UP THOSE DAMN FRIENDS OF HIS OR ELSE! Which, I guess, isn’t hard now, seeing as he only has one left. I can see this familial bonding ending well in the future, though. Probably with lots of lawyers, court appointments, crying, black eyes and 911 domestic dispute calls.

"Aw, but I just want some time with my fri---"
"NO! No friends! Your life will consist of your marriage and nothing else!"
"...can I have video games?"
"Kid, I'm gonna kill you with a rusty chainsaw."

The last dork is left on his own to hang out in the woods I guess; hope Elliot at least left him the keys to the camper just in case. He’s approached by the villainess of the movie, who transforms into a mildly hot woman who she guesses he’d like to fuck - if you're wondering how she transformed, just stop. You're using too many of your brain cells on this. They don’t have sex so much as re-enact a Z-grade porno and then make out while chewing on a Corn on the Cob...well, whatever turns you guys on; I ain't gonna judge.

And then...

Ah the popcorn-hangover...always a pain the next morning.

Popcorn. POPCORN!!! Nothing but popcorn. Why? You could write a book and not decipher the reasons why! You could fill the walls of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with the reasons why! I might as well just write any old nonsense here; that’d be about as good as anything this goddamn shit-ass-crack baby of a movie could conjure up! Don’t ever have the indecency to ask me WHY when it comes to this movie! Don’t even let it cross your mind! And do you know what’s even “better”? We never see the kid again! This is his last scene. Movie, I could shishkebab you with a broadsword right now.

The main characters all spend the last 15 minutes running around like chickens with their heads cut off, clearly not really going anywhere but away from the trolls goblins – c’mon, you’ve gotta have some kind of strategy! Go for the door! That's all you need to do! Grandpa comes back again but this time he only has 10 minutes for some unstated reason. He eventually disappears and is not seen again...why? Because his 10 minutes were up. Why were his 10 minutes up? Because. Just because. Stop questioning me!!!

Oh, and Joshua literally saves himself in the end by eating a bologna sandwich…yes, a bologna sandwich factors into the climax of Troll 2. Are you surprised? I think in order to be surprised, you’d basically have to have slept through the rest of the movie until now. Apparently it's because it has meat in it, and so the goblins are all repulsed by it. Suck it, vegetarians!

"I've got bologna and I'm not afraid to use it!!!"

The ending is a silly scene where they go home and the mom gets killed by the trolls goblins…look at the green plant-ooze at the end; it still has boobs just so you KNOW it’s the mother!

That’s how we end…on green melting boobs…truly an image that will stay with the fans for generations to come.

PHEW. That’s Troll 2. I’m not even sure what else to say. I’ve been rendered speechless…and frankly my fingers are getting tired. What I just watched…I mean, it was something else. Something totally alien to my previous perception of films. What could have gone into its creation? What would the actors have to say about it? I have so many unanswered questions about this…isn’t there like, a documentary or something that could possibly help put this movie into context both past and present?

Yes!

Images copyright of their original owners.

Troll 2 Review: Part 1

I have a confession to make…before tonight, I had never seen Troll 2. One of the defining bad movies of our generation, and I haven’t even touched nor made reference to it on the Cinema Freaks blog yet…how do I even have my Bad Movie Reviewing License at all? Oh wait, I bribed the guy giving them out with dirty pictures of him with hookers and forced him to give me the license:

That’s right. How did I get so confused? Well, probably because I just watched Troll 2.

Seriously, what is there to be said about this that hasn’t already been said? I’m not sure I can really add a thing that everyone else hasn’t already made fun of…from the terrible acting to the silly dialogue, Troll 2 is just a spectacle of everything that can possibly go wrong with a film. It’s practically an institution now. This is the bottom of the barrel for the mainstream world – the absolute nadir. They hold big old Rocky Horror-esque conventions now to watch this thing, even. I bet the makers didn’t expect that back in 1990 when it came out. And now it’s getting the Cinema Freaks treatment whether it likes it or not.

The movie starts off with a story about a guy walking in the woods when he’s approached by goblins in the woods…not trolls, goblins; it’s made very explicit that that’s what they are. So why is the movie called Troll 2 then? I’m two minutes in and already this is warping my mind! Jesus. What’s next, are they going to reveal that this is all a story being told by a creepy old bearded man to his grandson?

There's something wrong with Grandpa!

Huh. That was just a lucky guess.

This is Grandpa, who tells main character Joshua that he can’t interrupt Grandpa’s oh-so-great bedtime story about goblins in the woods. Because I’m sure that’s an awesome story to tell a kid. Back in the world of the story, the guy in the woods meets Freckles Girl, who has freckles, and so she gets turned into a plant and devoured! Just look at the expert costuming on these goblins:

They look like a cross between a monkey, an Ewok and a brain tumor. With spears!

Then the kid starts leaking Nickelodeon slime from his forehead…and no, I haven’t been smoking anything while watching or writing this…

So THIS is where Nickelodeon got their ideas...

Apparently this whole thing was just a cautionary tale to warn Joshua that his family will soon have a horrible ordeal involving goblins that can turn people into plants to be eaten. Because it’s good to have relatives that look after your best interests. My grandparents always used to warn me about the dangers of credit card fraud, and getting stuck in ATM boxes by crazed killers. Frankly, it’s just good to have your elders looking out for you.

But unfortunately for Joshua, he forgot again that his grandfather was dead…you know, because that always happens…his mother comes in and reminds him that the old fart died months ago and that Joshua is just as crazy as shit. SO WHO WAS READING HIM THE STORY? The movie wants us to believe that, yes, the grandpa really was reading him the story FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! Eh. Still a better ghost story than any Paranormal Activity movie.

Then we get introduced to the greatest romance this side of Romeo and Juliet, the crazy sister, Holly, and her pushover boyfriend, Elliot. She keeps bugging him to stop hanging out with his friends, who literally followed him to his girlfriend’s house and are acting like total tools – who’s bright idea was THAT for a Friday night? “Hey, guys, let’s go to our buddy’s girlfriend’s house with him! Totally doesn’t make us look like needy morons!”

"Ooh! A girl's room?! I haven't been in one of those since my sister and her friends used to tie me up and put make up on my face!" Seriously, look at their facial expressions - shit's hilarious.

Also the girlfriend is totally 80s…I mean, with the spandex and the stupid music…really? This is what you’re expecting us to eat up?

Played to a symphony of poppy spandex-fueled 80s butt rock, this scene is a perfect picture of the 80s.

Also, when Elliot asks what’s wrong with spending time with his friends, Holly answers that only virgins do that…yes…the correlation between being a virgin and having friends is mutually exclusive; God these characters are such geniuses! Then she tells him how much her father hates him and finds him a good for nothing lowlife, and then says she can’t wait to see him tomorrow when he comes with them on the trip…such amazing incitement to go on the trip and not just get high, right? I’m really baffled as to why this guy puts up with this chick. She’s clearly batshit insane and does nothing but give him grief over everything…I guess the sex must be really good. Or he’s just retarded. Either one wouldn’t surprise me.

The next day the whole family is going on a trip out to a middle-of-nowhere town called Nilbog where they plan to switch houses with a rural country family for the summer. That’s a really stupid idea. There’s a really weird scene where Holly and her mother are both crying over the fact that Elliot never showed up like it’s a big soap opera – I’ve seriously never seen less realistic crying outside of one, anyway. The dad says it’s the final straw and he hates Elliot now, even though Holly said in the previous scene that her family already didn’t like him…yep, I’m confused again.

But it’s OK, because then it’s SINGING TIME! The mom asks – rather, demands – Joshua to start singing. She just out of the blue orders him to start singing, like he’s a hostage or a slave or something. I wonder what birthday parties are like for this family…

“OK Joshua, before you get your presents, YOU HAVE TO SING.”

“But Momma, I want to open my prese---“

“SING, YOU DEMON CHILD!”

“Momma, stop pointing that gun at me!”

“Do I have to ask again?!”

Horrifying. But not as horrifying as when they stop on the side of the road and Joshua talks to the ghost of his grandpa again (telling him to stop his family from going to Nilbog), but then it turns out to just be a dirty old homeless hitchhiker. Couldn’t this have just turned out so badly? He could have been kidnapped! This movie gets pretty dark at times…I mean, holy shit. And I must reiterate that I’m so glad the grandfather is helping Joshua stop the family from entering this crazy goblin town. That’s an oddly specific mission from God, isn’t it? “Grandpa, you will help your family to not be eaten by goblins who turn people into plants with green slime. I HAVE DECLARED IT AND SO IT SHALL BE DONE!”

"Aw, man, Joshua's talking to homeless rapists again. Joshua, didn't we tell you to stop that?"

Oh, and meanwhile there’s also the plot of Elliot the pushover boyfriend and his moron friends following in a camper that they park outside of town in the woods. I guess they’re late because they’re friends with each other, which of course means they’re going nowhere in life. Oh how ridiculous…then we get another scene of Joshua having a dream where Nickelodeon slime is dripping down his face and everyone is filmed with creepy wide angles and lighting from below. Joshua should probably lay off the crack.

Hi, wide angle lens! How are you today?

But let’s be honest – the mother was already creepy before this anyway. I mean, that scene where she makes him sing? That was just the tip of the iceberg. She’s constantly glaring, talking in a loud voice and acting like a domineering tyrant. I think Carrie’s mom was less vehement. Look at this face; how can you not shit your pants upon seeing that?

They get to Nilbog and find that the house they’re staying in has no food or pretty much anything in it, except some meals already randomly laid out on the table. Ignoring the fact that these meals could be stale or something, they just sit right down, not questioning a thing, and eat it – and did I mention it all is coated with some kind of green slimy, moldy fuzz? Appetizing!

Oh yeah, I would totally eat that. You wouldn't? You're just too picky.

Luckily grandpa climbs through the window and freezes time so he can figure out how to stop everyone from eating the food. Yes. He freezes time. I’ll let that sink in…OK, done. So what is Joshua’s brilliant solution to stop his family from eating the food? Well, I think showing as opposed to telling would be the best idea here:

Oh yeah, Troll 2 pissin' action time...why don't more movies have scenes where the main character has to pee on something to save the day? I bet Casablanca or Citizen Kane could have really benefited from that!

This also spawns the famous line from George Hardy’s father character, “YOU CAN’T PISS ON HOSPITALITY! I WON’T ALLOW IT!” And it’s true. You can’t piss on hospitality. That ought to be on some welcome mats at hospitals or nursing homes or something. Then whenever someone acts out of line even a little bit, the movie quote would be shouted at them violently. Ah, I do have the best ideas for health care…

After that nonsense, we have one of the nerdy 80s guys in Elliot’s van going outside and immediately finding a girl running through the fields clearly afraid. So he chases after her and tackles her down to the ground. She could be being chased by a serial killer for all you know, you moron! You could have just made it easier for him to catch her!

OK, there’s no killer…but she is scared, though she won’t say of what. For some stupid reason they don’t go back to the camper, but instead further into unknown territory, and end up just breaking into the first random place they find – some creepy church-looking building, which is coincidentally the home of the main villain of the film. WOW, you guys are incompetent! Try to escape and you end up walking right into the jaws of the person behind the whole thing! That’s a new level of stupid.

Aaaaand I’m out of space for this – the whole review is so damned long that I can’t even fit it all in one review. So click on the post above this and READ ON to find out who the mysterious villain of Troll 2 is...there is so much more to come! So much more!

Image copyright of its original owners.

Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009)

Okay, after doing two reviews featuring themes that included the Holocaust and 9/11, plus another mini-review that advocated selflessness in order to save the world, I feel like I need to lighten up a little bit for my next post. So what do we have lined up this time?

*looks at list*

GOD DAMN IT!!!!!

Starring: Deborah Gibson, Lorenzo Lamas, Vic Chao, Sean Lawler

Director: Jack Perez (as Ace Hannah) (yes, I would change my name too)

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1350498/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Shark_Versus_Giant_Octopus

*Sigh* Shall we begin...?

Oh, good, the cast is getting prepared as well.

The movie starts out in the ocean with a bunch of scientist looking at whales with the help of a helicopter and a submarine. We are then introduced to one of our main characters, Emma MacNeil (singer Deborah Gibson) who is such a scientific genius that she cannot apply the same fingernail polish for both of her hands. Anyway, the whales freak out all the sudden and the helicopter up above crashes into the iceberg, supposedly because of the chaos at hand, but personally think the pilot just wasn't very good. Anyway, the iceberg breaks up, causing two creatures to get unleashed.

In the next scene, it shows a bunch of Japanese on an oil rig. Suddenly, a Giant Octopus attacks and...that's it. No build up or anything; it just does.

Later on, in what is probably the funniest scene in the movie...well...see for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16_8l0yS-g

Okay, where to start...

It's true, real sharks, including Great Whites, have been know to propel their entire bodies into the air in order to catch their prey, but come on, this thing is practically flying through the sky! And why the hell is it going after a plane anyway? It doesn't have anything better to catch in the water? How can it even know that there is a plane up there in the first place?! The whole scenario is just so stupid you can't help but laugh at it!

(Yes, I realize the irony of making fun of a plane crash right after writing a review of United 93. No, I don't feel bad, because that was a serious film about a real-life national tragedy; this is a fictional film about...a Mega Shark and a Giant Octopus. Yes, I feel better about myself too).

A big chunk of this movie is devoted to MacNeil, who later teams up with her old college professor Lamar Sanders (Sean Lawler) and a Japanese scientist named Dr. Seijia Shimada (Vic Chao), as they try and find out about what these creatures are. Ummm....now this is just a guess, but...I think they are a Mega Shark and a Giant Octopus...just throwing it out there...

So why are these creatures roaming around in the present day? Other than the fact that their iceberg was broken up by the whales and the bad pilot and such at the beginning of the movie, so there really isn't any mystery about that at all?! Apparently many creatures such as these have been enclosed in the ice caps for millions of years, but are now being set free because they are all melting, leading to MacNeil to say that this is humans' "comeuppance" for global warming. That's right! Global warming is to blame for all this! So next time you decide not to recycle or buy a hybrid, you deserve to be eaten by a giant prehistoric monster!

SHAME!!!

SO, after learning about this little inconvenient "truth," the team is arrested and placed into the custody of Allan Baxter (Lorenzo Lamas), who has a pony tail despite being in the Navy, is racist, and acts like an overall douchebag. This character bores me. NEXT.

So they agree to help the government to try to stop the monsters, but only if they are not killed because they want to study them. Great, these things are costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars in property damage, but we can't kill them because the hippies want to study them! Well, that plan fails, and the shark makes a giant hole in the Golden Gate Bridge.

Wow, what great CGI effects. They're about as realistic as those original masterpieces made on Syfy.

Well, they finally decide the octopus and shark need to go (guess for the hippies, destroying San Fransisco goes too far) so they come up with a plan to get them to meet up with one another to destroy each other using certain smell senses. How did they come up with this? Because MacNeil and Shimada figured out they are both pretentious snobs who love they ocean a lot, and they have sex in the storage closet when they were suppose to be working on stopping the creatures. Umm...fine, whatever works for you guys!

Anyway, the scientists argue their plan will work because they are sworn enemies that hate each other so much that the destruction of the other is more important than their own survival. That...makes no sense! With the exception of humans, no animal, past or present, acts that way! And even with people there is some sense of a need to survive despite being forced to live with a dreaded enemy! That's how we made it out of the Cold War! Why the hell are these guys any different?!!! And if they really hate each other so much, why did they go their own separate ways after being freed from the ice berg at the beginning of the movie?!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid...!!!

Okay, I'm sick of this, so I am going to tell the rest. Spoilers ahead...not that you care. The teams encounters a bunch of problems trying to get the octopus and shark to meet each other. Most of it is filler, but there is one part here that stands out: while being chased by the shark, the guy in charge of directing the submarine (I don't know the actor's name, fortunately for him) freaks out and points a gun at the commanding officer (Dean Kreyling), saying he was going to get them all killed.

Oh, I'm sorry, this isn't an actual scene. I think this is just director Jack Perez during the time when he was talking to the actors about starring in this film.

Umm...okay, movie, you did a nice job of ripping off "Crimson Tide," but I'm afraid you have a few holes in this little scenario. First of all, why does that guy have a gun on him in the first place? Isn't that against protocol? Second, he is upset because his C.O. is going to force them to crash the sub, but everyone would otherwise get killed by the shark. So what difference does it make? Aren't you kind of dead anyway? At least with him in charge you have a shot. Third, if you aren't steering the sub and no one replaces you, aren't you kind of increasing your chances of dying?! The answer to all this: it ends in less than five minutes so it doesn't really matter. SUPER!

Okay, I'm getting tired of this. Let's wrap this up...,

When the creatures finally meet, they battle each other for about five minutes. It's called Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, and they fight for five minutes during the whole film, with most of the shots having such bad lighting that they end up looking like this:

Way to destroy my expectations, movie! I was really hoping for...well, not much, but I am still pissed off!

Well, just as the brilliant scientists predicted, they then kill each other off as planned and sink to the bottom of the ocean. The group celebrates and then set out on another adventure (they planned to make a sequel to this?!). The last scene shows the creatures continuing to fall into the depths of the sea, dead as can be...

...OR ARE THEY?!

Yes. Yes they are. So that last shot was entirely pointless. Symbolic of the whole movie, perhaps?!

This movie...is pretty much what you expect it to be based on the title alone. The acting is mediocre at best, the characters are bland, the CGI effects are horrible, the plot makes no sense and is given a half-assed environmental message to make it seem deep (sorry, I guess that technically counts as a pun), and worst of all, it's just plain boring. The monster movies of the 1950s featuring Godzilla and others were by no means great pieces of cinema, but they were at least kind of fun and had some creativity put into them. And when they had an anti-nuclear war or other environmental message, they usually tried to be subtle about it by working it neatly into the plot. By comparison, this movie just seems soulless and more like an excuse to make a cheap buck than trying to entertain anyone.

This goes without saying, but I do not recommend it!

I do not own the copyrights to these images or links; they are being used for entertainment purposes only. Please do not sue me.