REVIEW: Lake Placid (1999)

You know what’s great about summertime? The sun is out. The beaches look tempting enough to skip school and work for. The girls all wear less clothes. You sweat like a fountain. And sometimes…you get eaten by giant killer crocodiles inexplicably residing in lakes owned by crazy old women. Wait, what?

Director: Steve Miner

Starring: Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Brandon Gleeson

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139414/

"What, are we all museum bigots here in Maine?"

-Bridget Fonda

Yes, Lake Placid, that classic movie about stupid people getting slaughtered by a big crocodile. With a semi-well-known cast of B-grade actors and also Betty White, this movie got some press back in the day and was a pretty big hit in theaters, despite getting mostly shit from the critics. But is this big, dumb monster movie stupid or…really stupid? Let’s take a look.

The film starts off quietly, serenely on a lake with some guys fishing. Nothing wrong here, right? Well, only if you don’t think a guy’s legs getting bitten off by a crocodile underwater is a big deal. In which case, everything’s peachy.

He could still be OK.

So yeah, this bloody spectacle gets the attention of some scientist organization all the way in New York when an ancient looking tooth is found in the remains of the diver. So…what, the monster is losing its baby teeth? Or was that diver really so rock-hard that the tooth just fell out of his mouth like that? Yeah, it’s stupid, but then, we’ve got bigger things to worry about. Like our leading bitch played by Bridget Fonda, who is not a conniving, murder-friendly wife this time but instead something even worse: an insecure scientist who does nothing but complain, complain, COMPLAIN. About EVERYTHING! I can sort of understand why she’s pissed off, as the guy she’s having an affair with wanted to see some other bimbo, but god, the way she’s carrying on it’s like she’s a toddler with a soiled diaper.

I’m serious. Look at the scenes after she gets to Maine; it continues there too. Some cops say some stuff about how she works for a museum and she gets all defensive. They want her to go out on a boat with them and it’s like they told her she had to be a slave and work in the Sahara Desert pushing giant stone rocks for a year. God, it’s like she’s…no, I won’t say ‘on her period,’ because that’s an insult to women everywhere. This…is something entirely new. I believe we have discovered a hypersensitive breed of woman entirely removed from the normal one. We will call them the LEGION OF SUPER-BITCHES.

So, uh, yeah, she meets Brandon Gleeson, who plays the town sheriff, and Bill Pullman, who plays a random rugged male well equipped to fight a monster in a B-horror movie, and together they form a power trio of annoyance as they go out on the lake and listen to Fonda bitch some more. God, she even bitches about the tents they have to sleep in. There’s one scene where she slaps Gleeson in the face like twice for accidentally getting her wet or something. Slaps him in the face. UGH. Why can’t the crocodile kill her first? In what cruel world does this lady have to be the main character?

Alright, alright, so then they’re introduced to the one good thing about this movie – and it’s a major plus – Betty White as Delores, this batshit crazy old lady who lives by the lake and raises farm animals. She says she killed her husband when he was suffering from a terminal illness. The movie…just kind of throws this at us and then the scene ends. So…OK then.

Then we’re introduced to more diabetes fuel when we see our next character, Hector, played by Oliver Platt. This guy is apparently a rich crocodile hunter, or something, who likes to swim with them rather then…actually hunt them. Apparently, according to Fonda, he thinks they’re godly creatures because they’ve never bitten him specifically. Well, have you ever considered the fact that they don’t bite you because they smell the toxic annoyance running through your blood like poison? Might be a factor. And godly creatures? Well I guess if you can claim Jedi as a religion these days, claiming that crocodiles are godly creatures isn’t so ridiculous after all.

So they all form a big old group of crocodile hunters, which is confusing to me, as I have no idea why so many people are jumping at the chance to go to this backwater Maine lake just for the possibility of maybe finding something legendary and unique literally right after it happens, like they have NOTHING ELSE they could be doing, but then, hey, I guess I’m just too dumb to understand the complex inner workings of a group that lets Bridget Fonda hang out with them. Must be something in the water – oh wait, it is. It’s something in the water literally comes out in the blink of an eye while nobody is looking and bites off a guy’s head.

Wait, what? Rewind that. Let’s watch that again.

OK, so Fonda falls off the boat because she’s a clumsy idiot, and they have to go save her. Then they go pick up Platt too, and when everyone is finally on board…wham! No more head for random disposable deputy. What the hell? How could a giant crocodile get THAT FUCKING CLOSE and not be heard or seen? How…why…who…HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Did they all suffer a simultaneous spell of deafness and blindness? Does the crocodile just have a homing beacon so he could aim precisely for that guy’s head and slip back into the water before anyone could do anything about it? Or – wait, I got it; I really got it. Maybe the crocodile is actually a ninja. NINJA CROC! That sounds like a Newgrounds game from the early 2000s.

So, in other news, Brandon Gleeson is depressed that one of his deputies got eaten by the crocodile, although really I think he’s just pining for the Harry Potter movies to come and revive his career. Platt tries to comfort him by telling him a story about a dream he had as a kid about his head being separated from his body and used as a soccer ball by the neighborhood bullies, which is, I guess, supposed to comfort Gleeson for his loss…I got nothing there; that one’s too weird even for me to touch. Let’s just skip to the next scene.

Gleeson doesn’t take comfort to this (surprised?), but then he gets caught in one of Platt’s traps, which does not make him any happier of a man. This results in Gleeson chasing Platt around like Elmer Fudd chasing Buggs Bunny. It’s completely stupid and makes it even harder to take this movie seriously, but what happens next is a testament to everything wonderful in this world. I warn you, viewers – prepare for this scene, or else you might end up unable to handle how ungodly awesome it truly is. This, folks…this is what is good in life.

I am of course talking about a scene where a bear fights a crocodile. THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING.

You are looking at the crowning moment of AWESOME in this entire film.

So Bill Pullman, frustrated with the fact that he hasn’t done anything in this movie yet despite getting top billing, jumps in and saves Bridget Fonda as the crocodile drags the bear off into the water for some, uh, lunchtime. Then the movie decides that all the sudden, Fonda and Pullman like one another romantically as she fixes the wounds he got from a hard day’s croc-fighting. Where did this come from? I don’t know; I guess anyone who isn’t a crazy psychotic killing roommate is an upgrade for her. Or maybe she just fell for the old Lone Starr charm.

Works every time on any lady!

Speaking of which, Bridget Fonda’s acting here is just horrible. She constantly pauses between lines, and while doing that she changes her facial expression at MINIMUM five times before her next line. Did the director just have an incredible tendency for mood swings? Was he bipolar? “No, uh, Bridget, try an angry face now. No, that won’t work. How about a sad, confused face? No…”

While that awkwardly forced romance is going on, Brandon Gleeson finds out that Betty White lied before about her husband and has been working in cohorts all along with the crocodiles that ate him for the last 6 years. Yes, folks. You are now looking at the world’s first and last old lady-slash-crocodile cohort team. TREMBLE IN FEAR! But seriously, what sense does this make? The old lady is working with the crocodiles that killed her husband? Why? Next you’ll be telling me it was all a conspiracy the whole time to kill him together! I smell a Hitchcockian mystery-thriller! Call David Fincher!

Happy birthday Mr. Croc! Here's your present!

So, yeah, they place her under house arrest after seeing her feed a cow to the crocodile. Because animal rights need to be preserved! Betty White, in an amusing twist, starts calling them all names as they put her on lockdown. I don’t know about you, but I think “Officer Fuckmeat” is a very poetic way to express one’s feelings. Touching.

Meanwhile, Platt and his new cop girlfriend go on a helicopter ride while Platt tries to find the crocodile. He gets in too far over his head and the crocodile tries to eat their helicopter:

"Yum, a snack! I love helicopters, even when they're storebought and not mother's homemade kind..."

Then we get our climax, as everyone decides they have to kill these crocs before anyone else gets hurt. I love how even though Gleeson and the others gave Betty White all that crap about animal rights and mistreating her cows by feeding them to the croc, they have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM with using one of the cows as bait to lure it out in the open. You hypocrites, that’s like if Richard Nixon went on tirades about how people shouldn’t steal. You goddamned hypocrites.

But anyway, Platt and Fonda both think they should SAVE the poor defenseless creatures. Well gee, why didn’t I think of that? It’s not like the croc actually killed anybody…oh, wait, it did and you’re both idiots. Why doesn’t that surprise me in the least? So they run around and Fonda falls off the truck they’re on – seriously, can’t this broad quit falling off shit for one second so she doesn’t have to be rescued? – and the croc chases her into the water, where she evades him by…hiding behind a tree. Yeah, because there’s NO WAY a crocodile would EVER think to look there! You might as well put up a fake wall with a tunnel drawn on it and see if he goes through it.

But, surprise, the croc finds her and chases her until it gets caught in the broken down helicopter like some fatal neck-brace. The animal rights pussies complain, so Pullman just shoots it with a dart gun and puts it to sleep, but then OH NO, there was actually TWO crocodiles this whole time! Gleeson immediately blows it up with a rocket launcher and…nobody complains even one bit about that. Huh. Those fuckin’ double standards, right? Gotta love ‘em.

This movie is stupid. Really stupid, in fact! Bridget Fonda is a pain in the ass, most of the characters are morons, the plot is full of holes and the only thing even close to redeeming any of this is Betty White as the old lady. They should have just made this whole movie about her! Maybe then it would have been at least a little more entertaining. As is, the only thing this movie is good for is taking it to Gatorland to use as food for the gators. And that’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

Pictures copyright of their original owners, although I took all the snapshots from the actual movie.

REVIEW: Insidious (2011)

Director: James Wan

Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1591095/

"It's not the house that's haunted. It's your son."

Yeow! That’s some red-hot horror-flavored cheese going on here – like, so cheesy that it almost defies the laws of cinema how this isn’t totally terrible. Insidious is a new movie by the makers of the original SAW movie, James Wan and Leigh Whannel, and Oren Peli, who produced Paranormal Activity. That isn’t exactly a pedigree to be proud of. I know what you’re thinking – didn’t the SAW guys create that horrible movie Dead Silence a few years back? Didn’t they both have a hand in several of the mediocre and underwhelming sequels? Didn’t Paranormal Activity pretty much suck? This movie had a lot of stuff going against it. But something about Insidious made me want to see it – maybe my thirst every now and again for modern horror movies about rich suburban white people. Or maybe the ties to H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos, however vague, were what incensed my interest. I don’t know. But this is one hell of a kick-ass horror movie from a bunch of guys I never suspected to put out a good one.

The story, about a rich white suburban family with few other problems, gets scary when their little boy Dalton falls into a ‘coma’ that he can’t wake up from. That’s distressing enough, but when the film adds in a bunch of supernatural poltergeists, parasites and hell creatures tormenting the family, things get real. Fast. Now I know what you’re thinking (again) – that sounds totally generic and dull. How on earth is he praising this movie?! Well I’ll tell you.

For starters, it doesn’t take itself that seriously. This is one of those movies that doesn’t mind throwing in a little comedy into the mix. Everything about this film is overblown, ridiculous and colorful, and I love it. It really sets this one apart from the crowd and makes the scary parts that much scarier. We’ve all seen other horror movies where all the colors are dark and seedy, and that’s cool too, but it’s just so expected. To have a film throwing all these weird colors at us is really out of left field and offers a nice treat for the eyes. And the sounds are off the wall too, with this weird opera music popping up at various points to accentuate even more how strange and alien the goings-on of the plot are. Top notch atmospheric device. It makes everything feel that much more off-balance and uneasy.

Second, the story is better than the norm for these kinds of films. Movies like The Haunting in Connecticut had it decently done enough, but Insidious goes the extra mile and spices up the usual formula. Yes, the boy is being haunted by spirits, but this time they’re all from a spiritual hell-zone called ‘the Further.’ And the film goes into detail about the connection with this and people astral projecting in their sleep – which the boy can do quite adeptly, although he does not know it. And you actually do get to see ‘the Further’, endowed masterfully with excellent special effects and delicious horror imagery to make it look cooler than any 3D film you’ll see this year. Awesome stuff. All of these things add up to a more detailed plot that makes the movie more believable (even in its most excessive, silly moments) and more interesting.

Third, the scenery and aesthetics? Just awesome, beyond belief. This is horror incarnate; of a kind I haven’t seen done so well since the cheesiest days of the 80s. I like horror because of its over the top excesses and silly imagery: flaming torches down long dark hallways, red lighting and chains and monsters that get right up in your face and scare you. Shadow-men with horns and claws standing in the corner by your comatose son’s bed. Scary little girls with grins of death frozen forever on their faces. This movie operates on a very campy and un-subtle notion much like Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights – or, for non-Floridians, the biggest, most over the top haunted house attraction you can think of in your own state. Everything is big and loud, so that it will reach even the people furthest away. Horror – good horror – is about the theatrical and the surreal, both of them combined to warp the minds of the audience.

The film pays gleeful tribute to the horror of the past all throughout its duration. The musical cues and those frozen grins popping up on the ghosts remind me of old 1920s silent horror. The Gothic black and white look of the shots of the house in the credits sets a very classic feel as well. The hellish colors and warped, stylish dramatic flair recall Lovecraft. The whole haunted house motif, the jump scares and the manic energy the film has are all like things time-capsuled out of an 80s horror movie. This whole thing should be a mess of jumbled influences and nonsensical parts, but it comes out to something hugely entertaining.

Hell, even the jump scares are awesome. These are actually really well done and make the experience that much more fun! How did they do that? Most movies I see these days just put them in there as excuses to not write any actual suspense or terror into the script (laziness kills), but Insidious uses them forcefully and powerfully, proving that anything can truly be done well if you try hard enough.

I think that’s the best word to describe this movie in the end – energy. Everything here feels vital, urgent and honest. Everything here is so in your face and so excitedly done that you have no choice but to sit up, pay attention and let the movie bowl you over like a tank. This movie was made out of love for the horror genre, and with powerful strokes it has become one of the most enjoyable American horror films in recent years. Sure, it’s not perfect. The characters could be a little better, a little less generic, but even then, they’re no worse than any other horror film, and the movie itself is strong enough so that you won’t notice unless you’re really looking to pick it apart. Insidious is a ton of fun and I will definitely watch it again more in the future. Highly recommended.

REVIEW: A Simple Plan (1998)

Director: Sam Raimi

Starring: Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120324/

Sam Raimi is an odd character, isn’t he? You can’t fault him for not branching out. I think his best work will always be The Evil Dead (the first one), but most of the other stuff he’s done is admirable as well.

Well, OK; MOST of what he’s done is creative and has merit to it. But in between the creeping horror/comedy of his early works and the mainstream-friendly work he did with Spider-Man, there lay another movie – a dark and tense drama about two brothers who find a crashed plane with a dead guy and a bag with millions of dollars in it, in the middle of the snowy woods.

Starring Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton, this is one of those movies that is certainly dramatic and gripping, but at times takes the dramatism a bit far, and sometimes lapses into a comic book-like melodrama. Mainly the focus is on the two brothers and the decay of their worlds around them as the money destroys them. Yeah. Money is evil! In this case, it’s pretty easily understandable – it drives several characters to murder, for Pete’s sake. The acting is well done. Thornton gives the most emotionally vulnerable performance, and his status as a poor, downtrodden and weak-looking guy gives him a lot of potential for empathy from the viewers. But Bill Paxton does a good job playing a snooty, opportunistic schemer too, as he double-crosses and backstabs his way to keeping the money for his wife and kid.

The story unfolds pretty smoothly, rolling through each conflict and gradually escalating to the chilling and tragic climax. Lou (Brent Briscoe) is a rude, crude lout who also discovered the money with them, and through the film he gets progressively more irate about Paxton’s suggestion that he (Paxton) keep all the money at his house until they’re sure they can get away with spending it, finally ending in a shoot-out where Lou ends up dead. There’s another scene where a farmer is killed, too. These are not murderers; just average people in possession of a lot of money. That kind of power makes people susceptible to things they might not do otherwise. This is pretty much the movie’s main theme.

But a lot of the time even that gets stretched beyond the limits of credibility. When Paxton’s wife (Bridget Fonda) sees the money for the first time, she automatically – like literally, in a second – starts plotting and scheming ways to keep the money for themselves. At first I thought this was just a little silly, being that she had changed her tone so fast, but when she started advocating murder and telling Paxton to turn his brother against Lou, I couldn’t believe it anymore. It’s just too comic book­­-esque. How would this seemingly normal looking woman be able to come up with all of this shit so fast, and with so much certainty? Is she some kind of secret agent, or terrorist? It’s just too over the top.

And then at the end, when Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton and the sheriff (Chelcie Ross) are out in the woods and the ‘FBI agent’ they’re with turns out to actually be the brother of the guy in the plane who was trying to steal the money to begin with when it crashed. He kills the sheriff and holds Paxton at gunpoint, and I don’t know, this also just seems way too comic-book-like, way too fantastical for such a gritty story like the film was going for. I can’t help but think that moments like these take away from the very realistic and poignant drama that some of this film has. I don’t mind comic-book-like, over the top and melodramatic scenes in movies – sometimes they can be entertaining; these are still movies, mind you, and I don’t pretend everything has to be scaled down to a realistic level. But when a movie like this one has some really good, touching drama and tension, over the top moments like the ones I’ve talked about here really ruin the flow.

I think the best parts of this movie are the scenes with Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton together just…talking about stuff. These are the moments when the movie quiets down and really delivers some raw, emotional goodness in the form of solid and relatable drama. Like the part where Paxton finds out that their father committed suicide – that’s good! I wish they had really done more with this idea. There was a lot of potential there. And in general their conversations are always interesting. The two actors work well together and the writing remains strong and down to Earth.

So this movie is good. It’s not perfect and there are moments when the drama is stunted by the over the top nature of some scenes, but it’s worth watching, and never gets dull. Sam Raimi’s works after this weren’t nearly as impressive, but this one’s worth seeing. Go check it out.

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REVIEW: Ax 'Em (1992)

Director: Michael Mfume

Starring: Michael Mfume

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349113/

“You so fine, I could kiss yo daddy’s ass.”

-Rock

So…yeah. Yeah, I can’t even think of a good way to start this one. Ax ‘Em is a B horror movie made sometime in the 90s, but it was distributed finally in 2002. Yeah, it took director, producer, writer and lead actor Michael Mfume (try to pronounce that) about ten years to get this fucking thing out, and really, was it worth it? For all the ridiculous Ebonics in the dialogue, for all the horrible camera work, for all the nonsensical plot holes, for all the blurriness of the screen at all times…was it worth it? Questions we will try to answer by the end of this review. REVIEW START!

Here’s a little tidbit of history for you: When this movie was finally released, Michael Mfume actually said he would sue any Blockbuster that didn’t carry this movie for being racist. That takes BALLS, man. I mean, you’ve got to have an ungodly level of shamelessness to pull a stunt like that. You’re basically forcing people to watch your movie. It wasn’t enough for Mfume to make this hack work of a movie; he had to ENSURE that people would watch it, forcing video stores to carry it or else they would be RACISTS. This is the work of an evil genius, a mastermind who stopped at nothing to have his vision put out to the world! I just want you to keep all of this in mind when we review this movie. OK? Let’s get started.

The first thing you’ll notice is the name of the film, which isn’t so much a title of the film as it is a description handy for many different meanings. Your expectations? AX ‘EM! What do you want to happen to all these characters? AX ‘EM! What should we do with the copies of this movie that still somehow exist? AX ‘EM! What will you want to do to anyone who is subjected to this movie? AX ‘EM and put ‘em out of their misery! What a multi-faceted title. It’s like some kind of all purpose pocket knife.

So first, without any credits, intro or menu or anything else, the movie gives us the following opening screen.

Yeah, all those typos and grammar issues? Doesn’t exactly bode well when your movie can’t even pass first grade spelling! I mean what’s wrong with you? Don’t you know anything at all about spelling?

The movie begins and…okay, who accidentally put in their home videos? I’ve seen better picture quality from ‘80s music videos for Pete’s sake. No, seriously, I thought I had put in the wrong DVD. The first few minutes of this movie is nothing but a bunch of morons standing outside in a place they probably couldn’t actually afford but the officials let them use it out of pity anyway, talking. Just…talking. It isn’t even interesting talking, and you can’t even hear it anyway. They don’t even use a microphone! I’m…I’m seriously at a loss for words there.

So, yeah, this is an all-black cast in a horror movie; one of the few cases where that actually happens. My question is, if the entire cast of a horror movie is black, and the black character always dies first…who dies first in this movie? Questions to ponder.

After that we move to…the credits finally, played over an absurd step dance sequence and you see the name of the film, Ax 'Em, confirming without a doubt that this is the right movie. I mean really? A dance sequence that looks like somebody filmed it with a 10 dollar camcorder from the 80s? THAT'S how you want to start off your incredibly scary horror film? Then we get a weird kind of rally where some douche in a jean-jacket tells Yo Mama jokes over a microphone. My thought on this is that birth control wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Then they all go to some cabin in the woods, I guess, where our 20 or so characters (yeah, good luck figuring out their names) start to act like anuses and basically just fuck around on camera, with nothing of any worth to the story coming out of it. There’s one scene where they get out of the car and one girl keeps talking about how hungry she is. SHUT UP! God, who considers this entertainment? Luckily one of the guys agrees with me as he steals her wig (???) and runs off with it.

Then two dumbasses who are like cheap bargain bin versions of Kenan and Kel start talking on screen as apparently one of them is scared out of his mind. He says something about a really tall man who he saw, presumably trying to advance the plot but miserably failing at it, and they both run off like cartoon characters…and then the screen poorly and sloppily fades into the next one. Yeah, that’s like…third grade editing skills there, movie! Good job. But don’t worry…only EVERY SINGLE FUCKING EDIT IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE is like that. Go go crappy low budget editing! Jump cuts and dissolves aplenty. It’s like a Christmas of bad moviemaking.

So now they’re eating dinner, the picture quality is still fuzzy and unclear, and the microphone is nowhere to be found. Snore. The movie decides to absolve its audio problems by simply replacing the dialogue in the next scene, where one guy is telling a scary story to everyone else (I think), with rap music. Bad rap music. Oh yeah, THAT makes it better. Now I get to watch the shitty video quality AND listen to terrible music behind it. What a lucky guy I am.

So now we get a flashback where the video quality is even worse, almost like that so-called ‘fake’ footage from The Fourth Kind with the terrible grainy black and white screen. It shows us what we already know from that opening abomination of text with the father killing his family and himself, and I have to say this was very educational. I never knew that blood splattered only upwards when you shoot someone while they’re lying down on the bed. And I definitely didn’t know that you could shoot yourself in the head but have the gun sound off only AFTER you’ve taken the gun out of your mouth, but still have your brains splatter all over the back wall perfectly. Physics? That’s for losers.

Then Rock and his girlfriend go out to this brick wall in the middle of the woods and talk. Apparently the chick makes Rock act in ways that he can’t help…well in some circles that’s called demonic possession, but when it makes you say things like “You’re so fine, I could kiss yo daddy’s ass” (this is the real line, I’m dead serious)…I tend to think even the devil’s spawn wouldn’t be so cruel to my ears. Then they start to have sex and Rock looks straight at the camera and half-sings: “Gotta get a piece of the Rock.” Yeah, only if it’s the piece that lets this guy keep on existing. That needs to be taken away pronto.

Then through some more scenes where you can’t hear any dialogue anyway so I’ll skip them, we get a story about two white kids’ (in this movie? WHAT A SHOCK) car breaking down and so they have to go into this…other abandoned house (???)…where the white guy goes in, despite the fact that there are no lights on, and continually asks for a phone even though nobody is there. Yeah, dumbass, keep trying! Maybe someone will answer you the 5000th time you try it! Fuck. So he gets killed. And they forgot to put in any kind of sound effect when the killer hits him, so…not very effective. Then the killer goes and starts massacring everyone else, and I have to say after the last half hour of this torture, I’m on his side.

By the way, remember how the name of the movie is Ax ‘Em? Well, the killer never uses an ax except like once at the very beginning. The rest of the time he uses knives, irons and God knows what else, but there certainly aren’t any axes in there! Oh, and how about how the killer, Harry, was supposedly ‘revenging the deaths of his family’? Kind of tough when they were killed by a guy who killed himself shortly after. I guess just…slaughtering random dumbasses who have every right to be there (seeing as it’s one of the guys’ grandfather’s house) is appropriate enough revenge. Don’t you just love logic? People can twist it up in so many wonderful ways. Or in ways that make me want to STAB OUT MY OWN EYES.

So then some other random idiots are walking in the woods. The girl says that she’s worried about the others, which is a reasonable concern, to which her guy friend says that she’s stupid for thinking about the others when the two of them are already in danger themselves. He says they need to focus on the task at hand, which is why I guess he starts freaking out when they find a car, worshiping it like it’s some kind of oasis in the desert, and wasting time by jumping around like a pussy and whining that he’s going to die. SO GLAD HE’S GOT HIS PRIORITIES STRAIGHT. THIS GUY’S A CUT AND DRY ACTION HERO.

There’s this other scene with the one white girl in the movie wandering around in the woods and randomly tripping and falling several times for no reason. Why? Fuck it, insert your own answer for why. Then inside the house we get another botched up slasher scene that even Lucio Fulci would have thought was badly done gore. But then, comparing this movie to anything Fulci put out is like comparing shit to gold, only much, much worse than that. The killer chases two people around for a while and when one guy escapes up the stairs, the killer just resorts to pulling out a gun and shooting at him a few times. Hah! I like that. He’s just like, ‘Fuck it, I’m too lazy to chase after him. Oh look, a gun!’ That’s more realistic than most serial killer movies get. Too bad this one looks like a cheap version of a 1950s zombie character.

Everybody runs around a lot, screams a lot for no reason, and eventually ends up in the room where only purple and green lighting is shown, where they have the ultimate showdown with this cobble of clumsy special effects, clumsy acting and all around clumsiness that the movie calls a serial killer. They just…shoot at him a few times, and then pull a pitchfork out of somewhere (one of their asses maybe?) and stab him to death. They leave, and, surprise surprise, in the tradition of American Psycho 2 and every other dime-a-dozen Blockbuster horror movie, HE’S NOT DEAD YET. Ooooooh! Scary.

"That's just weak."

OK, you know what? I’m just going to skip that usual part where I marvel over how bad the movie is and list reasons why. Because with this movie, there’s no way to sum it up concisely. I could go on for DAYS with everything wrong with this movie and still not convey exactly how mind-rapingly bad it is. Ax ‘Em is an absolute in filmmaking – the absolute shoddiest, least competent film I’ve ever seen. Just thinking about it makes me laugh, so was it worth it? I’d say yeah. Go in expecting nothing. You’ll be better off for it. Now, as for me, I’m off to take more lessons from Michael Mfume on how to be an evil genius. Good day.

These images aren't mine and are copyrighted of whoever owns them. And if you don't let me use them, I will call you a racist.

RoboCop 3 (1993)

Starring Robert John Burke, Nancy Allen, Rip Torn

Directed by Fred Dekker

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107978/

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboCop_3

Remember "RoboCop"? That was a fun movie. In a city gone awry, you could always depend on this cyborg policeman to come in and save the day in order to 1) serve the public trust, 2) protect the innocent and 3) uphold the law (we'll just ignore that pesky little fourth one). It had surprisingly intense action scenes, brought about questions over corporate power and human life, and gave us some comedy to enjoy in between all that. It may not be the best action movie ever made, but it is still a very well-made one that is great to watch even today. The second film of the trilogy was not as good as the first, but it had its moments. The third one on the other hand, well...

(Warning: there will be spoilers. Not that you care)

It starts out in Detroit where the OCP corporation, now under the control of a Japanese company, is tearing down parts of the city using a paramilitary force known as the Urban Rehabilitators, or Rehabs, to make room for the new Delta City. As a result, many people are forced out of their homes and relocated, causing a group of rebels to take up arms to stop the threat to their livelihoods. Okay...I know that this is supposed to take place in the dystopian future, but this is really getting over the top. Sure, Detroit has never been known for having great local politics (in the series or in real life), but the filmmakers are starting to treat it like it is a third world country! Is this the only American city that this is happening to?! Is this even legal?! Shouldn't the National Guard or the rest of the U.S. military be doing something about this?! But it is pointless for me to be talking about all this, because we aren't going to be discussing any of this in the film, right? I thought so. Ugh...

So where is RoboCop in all this? Well, we don't come see him for the first 17 minutes of the movie, which is kind of dumb. When we does show up, you may notice that he is played by actor Robert John Burke, as oppose to the last few films where he was played by Peter Weller. What effect does this have on the film? None. Seriously, I didn't even know about this casting change until I started writing this review. Guess that is what happens when the character you play has a mechanical voice and a Silly Putty face that is mostly covered by a helmet the majority of the time. Oh well.

Anyway, he saves a bunch of cops from an ambush, including his partner Officer Anne Lewis (played once again by Nancy Allen), but in the process violates a direct order from his superior, Sgt. Warren Reed (played once again by Robert DoQui, in all of his overacting glory). After this event, there is a big debate over the extent of his human functions....just like there was in the second movie. Um, guys, I thought we had settled this already. We are literally having the same conversation about whether he is human or not! And once again, his humanity is being defended by a sympathetic female scientist (Jill Hennessy) and his robotic-ness is being defended by some corporate douchebag (Bradley Whitford, who must have taken this part to prepare to for his more far more sinister role as the corporate douchebag in "Billy Madison" ). Talk about lazy writing. And where will this plot line lead us? Nowhere. They make a big deal for a little bit, then almost completely drop it. Pointless!

RoboCop, conflicted over his role in the whole Delta City situation, finds the hideout of the rebels, with Lewis tagging along. However, they are ambushed by the Rehabs, and Lewis is killed by their leader, Commander Paul McDagget (John Castle). Really? Now you're going to kill off the main female character of the series? Nice job, movie, nice job!

After escaping, RoboCop goes underground with the rebels, but he is badly damaged from the fight and needs to be fixed up, so they bring in Dr. Marie Lazarus, the scientist from earlier who had defended his humanity. During this time, he develops a bond with a named girl Nikko (Remy Ryan) who was adopted by the rebels and is a computer whizkid.

Ok, this is mildly creepy. Let's just look at a photo of what Remey Ryan looks like now.
That's better.

So after he is fixed, he goes looking for McDagget. When he gets there, he finds out that the rebels are being sold down the drain by one of their own, Coontz, played by Stephen Root, who also played Milton in "Office Space". So what did they give him in exchange for turning against them?

Damn it, we should have known!

So the rebels are ambushed again, and they are either killed, captured or forced to flee. RoboCop doesn't return to the base for a really long time...for some reason...and by the time he gets back, he is confronted with the worst type of evil: NINJA ROBOT!!! That's right, the Japanese company has developed a robot called an Otomo (Bruce Locke) that is far more dangerous and agile than its cyborg predecessor.

And you thought this film series didn't have enough problems distancing itself from that other franchise.

Well, copycat issues aside, this would have been a cool addition to the film except...the Otomo kind of sucks. Sure, it has some good moves and a cool sword that can cut through metal, but it does not utilizes them well. It easily could have gone up to RoboCop and sliced his head off, finishing the job in about ten seconds tops. But nooooo! It has to show off its cool fighting moves, giving RoboCop plenty of time to blow its head off with a gun! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

While this is going on, the rebels and the regular police have formed an alliance and are in the mist of a battle with the Rehabs, who are being aided by paid off criminals. Using untrained street thugs as part of your private army; don't think anything will go wrong with that scenario, do you, McDagget? Meanwhile Marie and Lazarus infiltrate OCP headquarters. Before this, Lazarus gives a television broadcast saying that OCP only cares about its own profits and not the well being of Detroit. Gee, took the public a while to figure that one out, didn't they?! After saving the rebels and the other police officers by defeating the Rehabs, RoboCop goes to OCP, where he is confronted by McDagget and two Otomo, one of which is damaged and now looks like this:

"Take me seriously!"

After a struggle that destroys those things, he saves Lazarus and Nikko, McDagget gets blown up, along with the rest of the building, and the day is saved. The head of the Japanese company (Mako) arrives at the scene and bows respectfully to RoboCop. Ok, sorry, I'm calling bull on this one. Earlier in the film, you told McDagget to keep it cool, but you looked the other way by saying you didn't want to know about his tactics in concerns to dealing with the resistance. Now you are trying to play innocent saying RoboCop is a stand up guy. Screw you, buddy! But once again, it doesn't matter, because the film then comes to an end. Pathetic.

It is hard to say if there is one thing that sums up what is wrong with this film; it's mostly just a bunch of little things that just add up after a while. To start off with, the action is kind of dull, the plot is inconsistent, and there does not really seem to be any progression from the last two films. It is as if the writers were trying to create a jumping off point but could not quite take the dive. Apparently some of the blame goes to Frank Miller. Yes, that Frank Miller. He had written the screenplay for "RoboCop 2" but the final product was far different from his original vision. He was then brought on to write for this movie and many of his ideas from his previous script were used for the plot, hence the possible reason for the repetitiveness in this sequel (though they were still drastically altered from what he had wanted). That being said, it looked like director Fred Dekker had final control over everything, so I'm going to go ahead and place most of the blame on him.

This is a bit ironic, because they were things that were missing from this sequel that could have been added. One of the things I was disappointment about the second film was that it did not focus more on RoboCop's family; they hinted at it in the beginning but instead took it in a different direction. So even though my expectations were low for this one, I was hoping that it would at least try to address that issue, but it didn't; it just kind of skimmed it over with some flashbacks.

Another aspect that got thrown to the side, and I can't believe I am upset by this but I am, were the commercials! Those fake commercials that they used to show during the newscasts in the first two films! When I saw them in the original film, I thought they were distracting at first, but they grew on me, and by the second one, they had become a trademarked form of comic relief for the series. In this one, however, there are only two of them, both of which are pretty lame. No fair, I was kind of looking forward to them! What a rip off!

So that's that. I think this film serves as an example of when a series simply runs out of ideas (justly or unjustly) and probably should have either had more effort put into it or have just stopped while it had the chance. I admit that this was not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it is still a waste of time nonetheless. I do not recommend it.

I do not own any of these images. They are being used for entertainment purposes only. Please don't sue me.

REVIEW: The Lost Tribe (2010)

Phew. OK, so after The Descent: Part 2 killed me, I was able to make a deal with the Reaper to let me come back to life. The only downside is, I have to keep reviewing these bad movies. With that said…The Lost Tribe.

Director: Roel Reine

Starring: Emily Foxler, Nick Mennell

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0811124/

“[The church] were the only ones who would want to stop the world from knowing…that God did not create man on the sixth day.”

-Some dumb bimbo

The first thing the film decides to show us is that it is a Roel Reine film:

A Roel Reine film? PRAISE THE LORD! ROEL REINE, OUR SAVIOR, HAS COME TO DELIVER US FROM EVIL! Ahem. Excuse my outburst. I just tend to get a little facetious when it comes to The Great One himself, Roel Reine. He is truly the filmmaker of our generation, and having his name on a project will automatically elevate it to godly status! Truly this was the best thing to show the audience before the movie started, allowing us to be comfortable with the knowledge that we are in good hands.

So, after that incredible deliverance of good news, the film starts out with shots of some people at this archaeological excavation in some remote, unidentified location, probably searching for the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. After a blonde woman looks ominously into the camera at something we can’t see, the scene changes to a dimly lit church where a guy comes in and gives another guy with a huge mullet a package of some kind. We then switch to yet another scene – can’t this movie just choose a fucking scene and stay with it? – where some military guys are chasing some unidentified thing through the jungle.

You know what this is? This is a compilement of generic scenes you see in every action or horror movie. Seriously, they’re so clichéd that they’re almost new again. You might as well just put Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone in there; it’d just complete the whole puzzle!

So anyway, the military guys find the girl from the first cut scene and take her hostage. When she doesn’t tell them what she saw, they shoot her. What the hell? Why? She’s obviously in shock and probably needs medical attention, and you’re shooting her just for not telling you what she saw right away? What kind of gung-ho assholes are these guys? I can guess that the United States probably won’t take any responsibility for them.

Then we cut to a boat sailing along in the ocean with 5 people on it. These are your main characters for the movie. They’re pretty bland and don’t have many distinguishing characteristics that can’t be summed up in one adjective. There’s the headstrong guy who acts like the leader at all times, the other guy who constantly argues with him, the level headed chick who is the smartest out of the whole group, the other chick who believes in a bunch of hippie, self empowering bullshit and a guy who has an Australian accent. That’s about all his character amounts to.

They all talk about some stuff below deck like musical deals and Mel Gibson movies and then go above deck and make out with their girlfriends. Except the Australian dude, who for some reason is the fifth wheel here. Sucks to be him. Then they find a guy covered in blood flailing and screaming in the water. Yeah. Because that scene goes so well with the one two seconds before it showing the couples making out and having sex! That makes sense.

They help the guy out and give him some sedatives, but the one leader guy won’t call the coast guard because “it will take too long for them to get there.” Bullshit reason; what, is he really worried to be missing that much of their precious vacation that he can't help this poor guy out? What a whiny prima donna. They argue for a bit but end up backing down at the leader guy’s whim. We then see that guy giving his girlfriend a little black box which she thinks will be a wedding proposal but is actually a key, which he says will open a door. Well thanks for getting her hopes up, jackass! This movie isn’t exactly inspiring me to start caring about these characters.

"I like you so much I'm going to get your hopes up by giving you a wedding ring box with a key in it...it's not like I could have just...GIVEN YOU THE KEY by itself...I guess I am a huge douchenozzle, huh?"

So while they’re all sleeping, the crazy guy who they found in the water gets up and sends their boat on a crash course toward this island. Why would he do this? I don’t know! The movie expects us to just buy the fact that he’s crazy and let that answer all our questions. They wake up just as the sun comes up and just as their boat is crashing, sending them all tumbling safely toward the shore with no injuries whatsoever. Wait, what? No injuries? What, are they just…superheroes or something? Did the boat have some kind of futuristic protection device that made it so none of them got hurt?

The next twenty or thirty minutes is basically just the characters all wandering around aimlessly in the forest. I’m glad they’re doing such productive things trying to get back home, too:

Procreation should not be a priority for these people.

There’s one part where they find the body of that crazy guy who crashed the ship in the first place, except it’s way up shore in the middle of the woods. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and even the characters remark how silly it is. He’s been bloodied up quite nicely – even if they do only show it close up so the actor never had to wear all that gory makeup himself. They bury him under some sand and then the leader guy and his girlfriend go into the jungle and find this abandoned excavation site. The girlfriend says that it’s her old teacher from New York. How the fuck does she know that? And what the hell are the odds that she’d actually shipwreck on the same island her old teacher had been researching on? Like, a billion to one? And how would he even find this uncharted hellhole of an island anyway? I probably shouldn’t be questioning this so much, should I?

So then the body of that other guy disappears somehow while they’re all searching around. They all start fighting and it’s revealed to the fat guy who argues a lot that the boat was actually NOT sunk by a malfunction of the radar equipment but because that crazy guy got up at night and changed the course himself. They all stomp off angrily and the leader guy says he wants to be left alone. Aw, poor baby. It’s not like there’s anything more important going on, like, oh, I don’t know, BEING TRAPPED ON A DESERT ISLAND WITH LITTLE HOPE OF ESCAPE. Maybe you shouldn’t have let that crazy guy go up and mess with the equipment. Dumbass.

So that guy gets killed and then the next day they all go looking for him. The Australian guy pusses out, and ironically so does the chick who always talks about the power of nature and all that crap. What a load of horseshit. And have I mentioned how awful the camera work and acting is in this movie yet? There’s this one scene where the Australian guy is screaming about how he wants to go back to the shore and “stop playing George of the Jungle.” Not only is the acting reduced to over the top shouting that anyone could do, but the camera zooms in on the dude’s right eye and barely shows us anything else!

So the only two characters that aren’t complete pussies go find that excavation site again only to find that there isn’t anything there anymore. They do come across a computer, though, with a video journal on it from that chick that got shot at the beginning of the movie. She says that – oh my god I’m going to get dumber typing this…she says that they found the missing link out there in the jungle, proving that there WAS evolution of human beings in the past. Then…good god!...okay, she says that the church tried to kill them to make sure they didn’t spread the word and convince people – this is the movie’s own words here – “that God did not create man on the sixth day.”

Ooh, a church conspiracy! Fuck, this makes the DaVinci code look positively smart by comparison.

GOOD FUCKING GOD. What the hell is wrong with you, movie? Okay, we need to divide this one into bullet points:

+ First of all, why are these people (the archaeological researchers) so surprised that they found proof of evolution? There’s already tons of that. I mean, OK, they found the ‘missing link’; I got that. But the way these people are talking, it’s like they live in the days when the church ruled everything and had an iron fist clamped on the throat of scientific discovery. It isn’t like that anymore! There are TONS of proofs from LOTS of different scientists that talk about why evolution is a feasible theory. This isn’t news, you bumbling morons! It’s common knowledge now!

+ Second, why would the church try to kill these people for finding out that evolution existed? What is this, the fucking dark ages? Is the mafia involved in the church now? This is so stupid…gah, why should I even have to say this? The church isn’t evil! I mean, sure, some of them might be scam artists trying to take your money in the name of hypocrisy, but to suggest that they’d send assassins to go kill anyone who found out about evolution is just insane. I don’t mean insane in a ha-ha-funny kind of way either, I mean INSANE. In a way that suggests that whoever said it should be LOCKED UP FOREVER. WITH THE KEY DESTROYED.

Clearly the reason for all the poor, oppressed scientists' woes!

Ugh…so after that debacle of logic and reason, all the other characters end up getting killed. The one chick is still alive and runs around, watching the ‘lost tribe’ do charming things like eat peoples’ intestines. She finds her boyfriend, who actually did have a wedding ring he wanted to give her – bad timing, though, as he’s apparently been skinned on the back for some reason. So…yeah, they rip out the one guy’s intestines, but the guy they captured FIRST, they leave alive. Yeah, funny how those double standards work, huh? Maybe they were planning to throw a tea party for the next one they captured!

Also, the voices of the lost tribe are just AWFUL. Picture a bullfrog being sodomized, and then recorded and played backwards, and maybe you’re somewhere in the ballpark of how irritating their voices sound. GOD IT’S ANNOYING. Make it stop! I could just sum up the rest of the entire movie like this:

LEAD GIRL: Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

MONSTERS: GRGLGLRGLGRGLGRGLGRRRRGGG

LEAD GIRL: AhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHhhhhhhh!

MONSTERS: Grrrrrrrgggg!

Yeah, she gets away and we see this screen:

Dedicated to my greatest teachers? I don’t want to know what they were teaching him if this is the movie that came out of it. I mean this is just shit. It’s boring, the characters aren’t that interesting, and the plot is just SO DUMB. So what’s the purpose? Your time could better be spent doing anything more productive. Like educating the underprivileged about science and religion, because clearly this pigshit won’t do that! Skip this.