David Cronenberg Classics VS Modern Horror: The Battle

Well, it's almost Halloween again, so that means I'm actually going to have to talk about horror movies at some point! Yes, I know, what a shocker. But enough about that. Let's talk about David Cronenberg.

If you don't know him, well, you'll want to after this – the man is famous now for making movies about Robert Pattinson riding around in limousines, but back in the day, he was famous for horror. Really fuckin' good horror, too. The kind of horror that was unique, creative, weird and trippy, full of social commentary, interesting characters, interesting visuals...man, they were just so goddamn good. What do we get now? Dime-a-dozen exorcist possession flicks, remakes and torture porn. It's just about enough to make you want to build a time machine and head back to that time to experience it all firsthand.

I mean really, where's the contest? In The Fly, Cronenberg wowed us with a tale of a man tampering with science and turning into a monster. There was also a subtext about aging and disease and even a bit near the end that tackled pregnancy in the face of disease. It was a powerful film and was actually about something. Through Jeff Goldblum's frenetic performance balanced against the horror of his on-screen co-stars, there's a real sense of tragedy and horror at what he's going through which mirrors real life decay, disease or just aging – as well as the terror of a man messing with science.

What is Dead Silence about? A fucking dummy makes dumb ghost stories happen while the worst detective in the world digs up puppet graves. Where's the social commentary?

Real horror doesn't just come from the director shoving something scary in your face and saying “boo.” There has to be some kind of story or concept that reflects something in reality – or else, what incentive is there to give a shit? Yes, to some degree horror movies can just be mindless entertainment, as any genre has a subset like that. But we've reached an oversaturating point when movies intended for that purpose fail at being entertaining.

In Videodrome, Cronenberg lays on the satire thick, weaving a tale of the modern day obsession with violence on TV and making it into a warped, psychedelic tale of a smarmy TV station exec who becomes embroiled in a strange otherworldly cult's conspiracy to take over the world. It's completely bizarre and insane, but you do get the point driven in – if with the subtlety of the nails hammered into Christ's hands.

What do we get in Sharknado? “LOL, bad movies are hilarious! Look how bad we can be! Isn't it totally ironic and crazy how bad we're being? But it's on purpose, so you can't criticize us at all!”

There's just no comparison here. In the old days, movies weren't afraid to be totally off-the-wall crazy to drive a point in, in the name of both artistry and entertainment. A film like Videodrome, despite being completely batshit, had a real direction to it and a point to what it was trying to say: modern TV is too gratuitous and violent. And it wasn't afraid of using the most over the top, grotesque imagery to get there, because that's what satire is supposed to be – going all the way back to A Modest Proposal, satire is about being as subtle as a jackhammer to the face. It's about being totally off the wall and ridiculous to drive home a point. (Well, yes, you can be subtle about it too. But that's not the kind I'm talking about here.)

Movies these days don't seem to get that on the whole – a lot of films these days are ashamed to be that way, as being over the top is seen as bad and not cool. So instead, we just get stuff that's ironically bad, removing itself from criticism by going “well, I meant to make something horrible.” Surprise, that's not how it works – you won't be remembered.

In Scanners, Cronenberg tells a surprisingly emotional and dark tale of the journey of a special psychic man (a “Scanner”) to help save the world from what he's told is an evil Scanner. I don't want to spoil too much of it for those of you who for some reason haven't seen it yet, but it's actually a very deceptive story about trusting in large powerful corporations (or whatever deity holds its influence over you) and about belonging to a group – nothing is as it seems. The film is a tortured epic and tells a story about corruption and lies.

One thing the film is great at is explaining its very complex and multi-faceted universe – as this is a science fiction tale about things we don't normally experience in real life, it's obviously necessary to have some explanation and exposition in there. But it's done tastefully. When this movie explains shit, it keeps those explanations short and lets you know the facts without being egregious about it. And you do care, because you want to see the main character succeed and you're interested in what the hell's going to happen next – so the explanations have more gravity. Going off that, you also have NO CLUE what's going to happen – it's not a predictable film and so you're actually sitting there wondering what's going to happen, and thus the exposition is important for that reason.

In The Conjuring, the exposition and explanation are there because the movie has no story. When the psychics Ed and Lorraine Warren are telling the characters what's going on, it's really just because the film had no other substance – there's no real emotional connection or depth to this story, no reason for the audience to care. It's just explaining and explaining and explaining, followed by jump scares, with a possession exorcism climax.

What am I supposed to be invested in there? The film's story – what scant little there is – has already been done a thousand times over, so you can't even fall back on the novelty of a unique idea to cover up for the lazy writing.

I don't even think Scanners is necessarily a perfect film – it's got some flaws. I don't think lead actor Stephen Lack is that great (certainly not good enough for the amount of screen time he has) and, as the movie goes on, I do find it gets a bit slow at times. However, its intrigue, message and overall journey from beginning to end are satisfying and interesting to watch. You at least got the sense of a powerful story being told overall. With The Conjuring, it's just empty – empty “go quiet followed by loud noise” jump scares, empty story clumsily trying to fill its own inadequacies with more exposition...there's just no imagination.

In The Brood, Cronenberg weaves a cautionary satiric tale of new age hippie medicine and healing practices, combining that with a very dark and surprisingly touching family story about a father trying to do what's best for his little girl, while also struggling with his wife who's gone crazy. Lead actor Art Hindle is just incredible in this, delivering one of my favorite lead horror actor performances. You get a real sense of his struggle and the weight on his shoulders. I especially like the scenes where he interacts with Susan Hogan's character, his daughter's teacher who he almost has a budding romance with – it's very tender, fragile and a little sad, and the emotions are complex.

The scares come from the shocking and brutal murders committed, apparently, by tiny gremlins which have a connection to the wife's therapy sessions at the new-age place. It's a strange concept, but the murders are grisly and the way the characters react to them is very honest, dark and tragic – it's just a great story.

What do we get in World War Z? Cardboard cutouts of characters re-enacting the same old zombie apocalypse you saw in a billion other movies, only with zero substance or connection to the characters. It's got to be a world record for making the zombie apocalypse more boring than sitting through your high school calculus class.

If you really like any of the movies I've been slagging here, well, that's your prerogative; I'm sure there can be arguments made for enjoying these films as there can be with anything. However, I just think something has to be said here.

Yes, some of what I've said could arguably be called elitist in this article, but is that a bad thing? Elitism is quality control. It's caring about what comes out of a medium you love and having opinions. It doesn't mean I look down on anyone for thinking differently than I do here, it just means I think horror could do well going back to some of the creativity of its earlier years with directors like Cronenberg at the helm. Make of this whole thing what you will; it's just one guy's rambling. And if you haven't seen any Cronenberg flicks yet...well, make it a priority to do so this Halloween.

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

Satan's Little Helper (2004)

Doing these reviews, you fake anger – you watch a stupid movie, then you take an exasperated tone and bitch about how ridiculous it was that the movie got made, et cetera – you guys know the deal, you know what I do. But every now and again a movie comes along that I don't even have to fake it for. Sometimes you're just sitting there seething with rage at every new scene and wishing death on the characters every time they utter a new insipid line of dialogue. Sometimes you just reach a boiling point and its name in the tumor developing in your brain is revealed as if in some Hellish vision – and it is called....Satan's Little Helper.

Director: Jeff Lieberman

Starring: Alexander Brickel, Katherine Winnick, Amanda Plummer

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This is a 2004 ass-fest full of horrible characters, horrible writing, horrible storylines...it's just a cauldron of everything wrong with the world. If you're wondering why horror these days is so formulaic and bland, well, you can thank the sheer unrepentant awfulness and tastelessness of this piece of garbage for jolting the mainstream studios awake like an electric shock to the nipples and going “HEY! You need to make money off of this and movies like Satan's Little Helper aren't helping!”

Well, as much as I'd love to continue stalling, I guess that doesn't work when you can already scroll down the page and read the rest anyway.

We start off with a little boy named Dougie, who is obsessed with a handheld video game in which you help the Devil wreak havoc on Earth.

This would only be a good game if Daniel Radcliffe was involved.

That's fucking unbelievable – the first thing we see in the film, and already you ask the audience for a Herculean jump in suspension of disbelief. Why would this game exist at all? In the United States of America, where you can be sentenced to prison time for posing for a dick-sucking picture with a statue of Christ? Where atheists are still viewed by the majority of the country as completely amoral, stink-bomb-throwing hooligans with no moral compasses? Where a prayer takes precedence over the National Anthem a lot of the time?

...and you're telling me a game where Satan helps you beat people up would be made in THAT climate?

...well, I just don't find that very likely.

But anyway, Dougie was clearly dropped on his head as a little boy as he then has a conversation with his mother, Amanda Plummer, about whether or not Satan is real and if Dougie can go find him on Halloween and hang out with him. Plummer, who I'm sure was stoned off her ass every second she was filming this shit, makes up some stuff about how Satan is evil and evil is everywhere. Personally I would have just said Satan is film studio executives, but hey, different parenting for different folks.

Then they go to meet Jenna, Dougie's sister, who is returning home from college for Halloween, because you know, Halloween is the type of holiday you normally go home from college for – and yes, apparently classes just give you time off to go do that. She brings her boyfriend with her, Kurt Cobain MK 2004:

It came from art school...

They go back home and start getting ready for Halloween. Dougie runs away and meets up with this guy, a serial killer in a Halloween mask who he sees propping up an actual dead body. Dougie, being a fucking retard, doesn't see anything wrong with this and instead asks if he can help this clearly psychotic killer, whom he mistakes, quite understandably, for Satan himself.

"Even I think you're an idiot here."

Of course the killer says yes, too, because why wouldn't you want some dumbass kid running around with you if you're trying to go on a mass-killing spree? I'm really just wondering here; what did this guy do the other 364 days of the year? Clearly Halloween was a real special time for him as he could be so lazy and just kill people in public, and no one would notice (because as the movie will soon show us, Halloween means people don't notice people being murdered in front of them). Did he just sit at home the other days of the year going “fuck! I got no ideas now that I can't just leave my dead victims out in public in the middle of the day! Oh well. Better just stay home and watch Mean Girls again.”

"I mean c'mon, who would actually fall for this? I'm just doing it to see how long it takes to get caught!"

If you're wondering what the fuck the rest of the family is doing while Dougie just wanders around town by himself (not bad parenting at all), well, good thing I'm here to tell you: Amanda Plummer is dressing her daughter up like a pirate wench, even though Jenna doesn't want to and the costume is even skimpier than what you see most actual prostitutes wearing.

"I forgot what boobs looked like."

I get it, Halloween means dressing up and being sexy – I just find it hilariously misguided that the mother is MAKING her daughter dress up this way. Kinda backwards! I mean the only thing the mother DOESN'T do is physically take her daughter out there and start filming her having sex with her Kurt Cobain boyfriend out there.

Dougie eventually returns home with “Satan” in tow, who he takes down to the house basement, where Satan cracks open an old wine bottle to...pour over his face for no reason, as clearly there's no mouth hole in that mask and you're really just wasting good wine.

Things get even more wretched as Dougie makes a plan with “Satan” to kill off Kurt Cobain boyfriend guy because Dougie is possessive of his sister, or some crap like that – apparently Dougie and Cobain-boyfriend are going to the costume store to get a costume and then “Satan” will jump out and kill the boyfriend. I guess the storyline here is that Dougie doesn’t think “Satan” is actually going to do anything serious, like he’s just playing around or something. Even that’s pretty flimsy though – was there nobody to tell this kid that hanging around with weird grown men in Halloween masks who don’t talk is a bad idea? Even three-year-olds could grasp that!

"It's just so obvious it hurts!"

So “Satan” knocks out the boyfriend and then goes home, where Jenna and Amanda Plummer both assume it’s the boyfriend in a mask and costume. This could maybe be plausible for a few seconds when they’re playing around in the living room together, but when Jenna takes “Satan” upstairs (still thinking it’s her boyfriend) to have sex with her? HOW DOES SHE NOT NOTICE IT ISN’T HIM?!

"I'm your girlfriend and should probably pick up the signs that your touch feels different and you're not acting like him, but I'm also a complete idiot!"

And I get it – the movie is trying to be funny with all of this. It’s obviously not asking us to take it seriously as a scary movie or some kind of drama; that much is clear. But it’s just so unfunny. If the script were written with any clever satire of horror movies, or actually funny moments, a story like this might work - but everything is just so fucking bad. It’s seriously incomprehensible how this thing ever got out of the editing room.

Because get this – nobody guesses that the guy in the Satan costume ISN’T Jenna’s Kurt Cobain-esque boyfriend for the next forty minutes of the film. Are you shitting me? Am I even in reality anymore?

No, clearly I’m not – because we have a scene next where the guy in the Satan costume tries to eat out Jenna – while still wearing the mask which has no mouth hole.

Another horrible scene - she constantly gets a scared look on her face when she suspects the guy in the mask might not be her boyfriend, but then as soon as he does stuff like this, she forgets about it and is suddenly super aroused and not suspicious at all. Either she's just as horny as a horned toad or...the movie just makes no sense.

Just...every fucking scene makes me hate myself in this movie. Every scene just goes lower and lower and...no, not “lower” like that. You perverts!

Then Dougie and “Satan” go out and buy a bunch of knives and hammers and ropes to kill more people with, which Dougie still thinks is just fun and games. Guys, we’ve gone far past the point of this kid being retarded, and into the new and terrifying realm of “this kid is actually some kind of subterranean Mole Person who has never had contact with human beings before the movie began.”

When “Satan” stabs a worker from the store right in front of Dougie, there’s still no reaction – he just thinks it’s cool. You little douche. I hate to be mean spirited, but I really was hoping this kid would die at this point – he’s just so awful. This kid is making me yearn for Rush Limbaugh speeches and reddit commenters talking about how the Jennifer Lawrence nude picture leaks really WERE her fault. That's how bad this kid really is!

"Coooooool...let's bomb an abortion clinic next!"

What’s that? Don’t believe me that he should die? Well, check out the next scene in which “Satan” goes on a shopping cart rampage through the parking lot and runs over a pregnant woman, a woman with a baby carriage and a blind man.

I just...do not have WORDS to describe how despicable that is, so instead I’ll just muse on the incredible coincidence that a pregnant woman, a woman with a baby carriage and a blind man were all walking in the same area right when that scene happened. Just one of those wondrous coincidences I guess!

Oh, are you not convinced this kid is the worst human being in cinema yet? How about the next scene where he watches “Satan” break into some old lady’s house and murder her, and still doesn’t care? Is THAT proof enough for you?!?

I hate this kid so much, I want to age him rapidly to the age of 35, then force him to rewatch all of the awful things he helped do in this movie. Over and over again.

Back at home, because we can’t have anything likable in this movie at all, Jenna complains because her boyfriend and Dougie haven’t come back and it’s been several hours. Rather than be worried about silly things like their safety or the fact that it’s not normal for people to disappear for several hours after just going around the corner to the store, she’s worried that her boyfriend is cheating on her.

"How dare you make me think I was getting cheated on!"

Really. THAT’S your big worry? Why not focus on the REAL problems like “what kind of nail polish should I wear?” or “what should I buy my parents for Christmas?” Geez, get some perspective!

Meanwhile, “Satan” gets arrested by the cops, but apparently, off screen, he kills them all, because this movie secretly wanted to be a Terminator sequel. And because this is a small island town, apparently that also means the entire town is now without a police force and complete anarchy will reign, as highlighted by this scene where “Satan” high-fives some idiot who calls him “Nigga.”

Hmm, let me check – yup, I do think my life span went down a few years just watching that short two-second scene. Thanks, movie! I didn't want to live that long anyway.

So “Satan” comes back and acts weird, prompting Jenna to think SOMETHING isn't quite right about her boyfriend who hasn't spoken a word or taken off his mask to prove it's actually him! Really?!?! Is that your brilliant fucking conclusion? You truly are the next Einstein. But it isn't until “Satan” kills their father that Dougie and Jenna truly see it isn't really her boyfriend and IS actually just some murdering psycho! Oh man – nothing gets past you guys.

"I just can't believe something bad happened after we didn't notice a guy in a mask who was obviously a killer, was killing people!"

Then “Satan” kidnaps the mother, ties her up with tape and forces her to go to this party, where of course nobody realizes she's being kidnapped and just assumes the guy in the Satan mask is her husband.

"WOAH! What good costumes! We're going to choose to ignore the fact that you look scared as shit and just assume it's logical that someone would choose to dress up as Chiquita Banana wrapped in cellophane as a Halloween costume! And that guy with you who we don't see his face and he never speaks a word, and has to hold you to keep you from trying to run? I'm sure that's not suspicious at all! Let's not even bother checking!"

Because like I said – Halloween is really just an excuse for psychopaths to get away with murder, and everyone in this world is so dumb they might as well just be a colony of lemmings, damned to extinction on their island which they were probably exiled to because of their stupidity – they're certainly not equipped to survive in the world anyway. I mean they didn't even notice when two people dropped on the floor dead from poisoned punch – which, by the way, is what the killer did in the movie's rolls of fat in the last 10 minutes.

"Woah! Such realistic Halloween death effects! Great costumes, guys! We'll just leave you on the floor to lie motionless like you're actually dead, because it's Halloween and we can't tell the difference!"

What's this killer's plan again? Either he's just the MacGyver of serial killers, or he's got the attention span of a speck of dust. “Muwahaha, time to kill random people and pose them like Halloween props...no, wait, time to follow a little boy around and do whatever he says...no, wait, now it's time to kill a bunch of people at a costume party I didn't know was happening until fifteen minutes ago! I'M NOT RANDOM AT ALL!”

The boyfriend and Jenna finally meet up again and kill who they think is the killer, but it's actually just the boyfriend's dad, which was a plot element explained while we were being lobotomized by the other scenes.

Then, apparently, the killer shows up again wearing a Jesus costume. I don't know why, but it does make something very clear to me that I wasn't sure about before: God really is dead.

He somehow kills the boyfriend, then does the old “disguise the boyfriend in the Jesus costume so they shoot and stab HIM instead of the real killer” trick, which doesn't make me at all want to kill myself. Oh wait yes it does. My bad.

The movie ends with the real killer coming back with this incredible disguise and presumably slaughtering the entire family, which is as close to a happy ending as we're liable to get.

I don't know whether to be angry that Dougie couldn't tell that was a mask and that it was the killer, baffled that the killer found a police officer costume so fast or relieved that the movie is over and these miserable, miserable characters died. So many complex emotions!

Of course, the only actual happy ending there could be to THIS film would be the director just appearing on screen and apologizing profusely for the whole thing, then erasing our memories of it via Men in Black thingamajiggies. But as is, this is pretty much the worst of humanity.

I mean it – this whole thing was about as funny for me as watching a concentration camp video. I just don't get it; what was supposed to be funny about this? The fact that it was doing traditional horror tropes badly on purpose? Well, congratulations – do you want a medal for that? It doesn't take effort to make a fucking shitty movie like this. It DOES take effort to put actual jokes or satire into your script that have a point and actually SAY something, which is the point of any satire – not just to be bad for the sake of being bad. Which this movie does not do.

It's just complete shit – they regurgitate a couple really old cliches, throw in the most unlikably stupid, asinine characters you've ever seen and beat the whole thing into your skull with a near two-hour runtime until you're too dumb to think about anything, and then wallah, the movie has succeeded! It's seriously beyond comprehension until you actually see it yourself. But don't subject yourself to this. Save your precious brain cells! This movie deserves to be burned in a garbage can.

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

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.

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