REVIEW: Sting of Death (1965)

For this week’s review, I will take you back in time. Back to a time when things were more innocent. When people just liked to dance all day on sun-drenched docks and didn’t have to worry about anything except guys dressed up like mutant fish monsters killing them. Oh those were the days. Put on your nostalgia goggles and let’s dig into the wonderful wrongs of Sting of Death.

Director: William Grefe

Starring: Joe Morrison, Valerie Hawkins

IMDb

Got your nostalgia goggles ready?

Okay then! How about some booze?

Great! And the weed?

You’ll need it. Trust me.

We start off by establishing that girls wear bikinis and put on suntan lotion while sitting on docks - and they did so back in the 60s, too! And then we see that apparently sitting around sunbathing while fancy music plays is enough to make you a target for the worst scuba diver since Goofy and Donald Duck tried to find Atlantis and came up with a plastic fishbowl accessory.

Those fins are really dirty. Go clean them you neanderthal!

It’s also amazing how she gets replaced with a blow-up doll when he’s dragging her through the water…

If they got her to stay underwater that whole time, she's the one who deserves a movie made about her, not the shitty looking monster. If not, well, I guess one of the actors had a blow-up doll lying around in his trailer.

After that, I guess we get introduced to our main characters. For the uninitiated to 60s horror, they’re sort of like 80s slasher characters. Except instead of drugs and beer, they tuck their shirts into their pants, slick their hair back and talk about going to church or something. They’re all pretty interchangeable, except for one character, which is Egon.

No, not the Ghostbusters character…this guy is a shy and socially awkward misplaced caveman who can apparently sneak up on people even though he’s the size of a house. I bring this up because it’s a big deal. And because he is the killer.

Yeah, try not coming to work hungover next time, buddy!

I know, I know – I really disappointed a lot of people by revealing that fact. But just hear me out. If I had not told you guys that, the reveal would have been so terrifying that none of you would be able to sleep for weeks. Did you know that the Chernobyl disaster was caused because the people at the plant were watching Sting of Death at the time and were so surprised by the twist, that dozens of people died? It’s true. Most people won’t tell you about that part because they don’t want it to happen again.

They talk about boring things for a while. Mostly it’s a bunch of shit about who’s coming to the party and what not. They find a dead body washed up on the docks and say that maybe they should call a doctor who can do an autopsy and find out what’s wrong with him. Uh, I don’t think it matters THAT much to you guys what’s wrong with him. And yeah, maybe calling an ambulance would be the best idea when you find a dead body. Isn’t that like saying “hey, there’s a fire over there. Maybe I should call the fire department”?

But screw that shit, we have dancing to do!

Yeah, this becomes a “thing” in the movie for way longer than it probably should be. It’s a party, sure, we get it. Does that really mean we need creepy close-ups of people grinning like they just sucked in helium?

Or an abundance of ass shots?

Well I guess that isn't AS bad...

Not to mention the music, which is about as nerdy as you can get. I guess it’s still better than the 90s and early 2000s disposable waste featured in the Hitcher remake. Ugh – shivers, every time…

So eventually Egon shows back up and they decide, as a hive mind apparently, to make fun of him and chase him off the dock, like a bunch of jackasses. Why? Because they are jackasses. I mean seriously, what kind of cretins pick on somebody just because they look a certain way? What kind of asinine, horrible person would actually do that? I guess it’s just what passed for fun before the Internet, because nowadays we prefer to keep our bullying online.

But I digress – he gets chased off and then they just continue dancing. Even the one chick who scolds them for it stops caring in a second or two and just rejoins the dancing like nothing was wrong…talk about a short attention span. And seriously, MORE DANCING?! Why do we need more? In what unholy, hellish dimension is this considered entertainment? I’ve seen more enjoyable spectacles watching fat trailer park families at Walmart! It’s seriously just embarrassing. I bet if we showed this to these people all these years later, the ones who are still alive would pretend to have dementia so as to not have to face what they created. Nobody could watch this even a year or two later and pretend they were proud of it.

After that we get some more talking about boring stuff like who’s going to do what at the party…I can almost see my boredom as a physical entity. I mean good god. It’s like being at a party with an old folks’ home. Even 80s slashers had more compelling dialogue than this! I may not be speaking for everyone here, but I’d sure as hell take booze and sex over ‘what are we going to do next at the party?’ I mean come on! Give us a death scene or something!

Oh, and we also see one girl jump in the pool and then everyone starts talking about how she might die in the water. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be ironic, if they really think you’ll die if you go in a pool alone, or…

Ohhhhhh. Was it supposed to be foreshadowing? Well, then it was the worst attempt at foreshadowing I have ever seen. Thank you, Sting of Death…you deserve a goddamn medal for that.

Anyway, yeah, she gets killed somehow in the water and nobody seems to see the monster, how amazing…I guess they were all too busy talking about their oh-so-important party chit chat. Seriously, how can they be so blind? HE’S RIGHT THERE. You’d think a full-grown dark figure in a swimsuit, in a tiny swimming pool, would attract a little attention, but I guess in the 60s it was pretty commonplace. I guess whatever this guy was saying to this woman was just too important to notice someone being attacked in the pool.

Real stand up people there…better not hang out with them. If you ever get mugged, they'll probably just ignore it. But don't worry - they're having a really good conversation!

After that we see one of the guys get attacked too, so everyone goes out on the water in a panic to take them to a hospital. While they’re doing that, I guess they get attacked, because the boat flips over and several of them die.

Like every party in the 60s, it started with bullying, had some dancing in the middle and ended up with complete carnage and chaos. No wonder our generation is so fucked up.

What is our heroes’ next move? Well, the only logical course of action: go home and eat dinner calmly!

Oh okay, this isn't the immediate next thing they do, but come on, it might as well be...how are they so casual? One of them says "Today was awful." Heh heh, yeah, THAT'S a bit of an understatement..."two people got attacked and many more were injured, what a bad day! If only we hadn't just ignored the big, dark, noisy shape in the water the first time..."

You sad, despicable pieces of crap.

The movie also shows us a GREAT plot twist by revealing Egon as the killer!

I never woulda guessed! You have completely taken me off guard, movie! Bravo. I also love how they show you he's the killer this early, thus effectively eliminating any suspense for the next 45 minutes of the movie.

Yeah, he goes into some cave with flashing spaceman lights and computers all around, puts his hands in some kind of opening and then transforms from a jellyfish space-alien monster into human again. Now, keep in mind this was before drugs got big in the 70s. Your guess is as good as mine what the hell the explanation behind this is…how does he have this stuff and, more than that, know how to use it? Is he an alien? I dunno. The movie never tells us! Perfect.

Then we get some more long drawn out bullshit where a bunch of the characters leave to try and go to the mainland. They stop in some Everglades type clearing and enjoy the wilderness for a while, because nothing says “people are getting attacked in the water” like going even further out into the wilderness, right? This one chick leaves the group and gets attacked by the monster. I think she deserves it. How can THIS sneak up on you? Is the guy really that hard to hear coming? There have to be some leaves or sticks or something cracking underneath those gigantic swimming fins!

Nothing? Nothing at all? Fine…ugh…

There are some other scenes with Egon trying to romance this one girl back at the camp. They’re really short and not all that fleshed out, but that’s not a surprise. We also get shower scenes, like this one, which rips off a kind of famous movie from a sort of well-known director…I can’t place which one though…

I always thought Psycho could have been improved if the killer wore elephant droppings and dirty vines as a costume. This movie gets it right.

Yeah, keep rubbing your forehead there, princess; someday you'll get it clean...

Hmm. Must be Rear Window.

So he kills this girl by putting a hand on her throat. I guess the special effects are really just that bad. He looks kind of like an astronaut that got eaten by a lawnmower.

Look at that thing on his head. I've seen that in the pillow sections of Walmart.

Then he kidnaps the one girl he likes and takes her to a cave under the water where he threatens her for thinking he’s ugly even when she insists she doesn’t. She hasn’t given any indication that she does, but still he throws a fit anyway. Then, because he doesn’t want to be ugly, he sticks his hands back in that thing again and electrifies himself. Because electrified people are totally not ugly at all! I bet nobody will make fun of you now…

Also, seriously, what is up with this underground alien robot magic cave? How can he just stick his hands in that thing and transform into his costume, which we see him take off like regular clothes in an earlier scene? In fact, what even is that thing? Is it a spaceship? Is he a superhero? An alien? What? WHAT?!

Okay, whatever…so in a very sexist re-enactment of how a caveman usually got a new girlfriend, this one guy comes and saves the girl.

"I'm here for the Asylum remake of The Time Machine?"

Seriously, the women in this movie are portrayed as weak as hell. She barely puts up a fight at all, which at first makes sense because he’s a fairly large guy. But when her friend comes in, they fight for a few seconds and then he kicks Egon once or twice and that’s the end of it! He wasn’t that tough! Are you telling me a woman has such a hard time standing up for herself at all that she couldn’t get away from this wimp? Come on!

Oh who am I kidding, look at the movie I’m reviewing, at the time it was released…I’m wasting my breath.

Anyway, yeah, check out the awesome fight scene these guys have. They shove each other’s arms a little, kick each other once or twice and that’s it. Real gripping. Kind of like the last time I watched my four year old cousins play-fight in the backyard.

And your guess is as good as mine what THIS shit is:

Looks like a science fair project done by Doctor Who villains.

The cave blows up or something and the two heroes get out, but sadly drown in the ocean before they can resurface, because they forgot they couldn’t breathe underwater.

…

…

Okay, that didn’t really happen, but wouldn’t it have been a much better movie that way? I think so. This was just ridiculous. Terrible story, no good effects and very little suspense. It’s just crap. But it is very enjoyable crap in its way…I won’t lie and say there’s absolutely nothing of worth in it, because there are very funny moments here and there, even if the movie didn’t intend them to be. But that’s usually the best kind of camp anyway, the schlocky kind. It’s terrible, but it’s also terribly endearing. I’d rather not see those dancing scenes again though. That was far scarier than the monster in the movie.

*Heart attack*

You can watch the full movie of Sting of Death at this location: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlt08v_sting-of-death_shortfilms#.UeTHn43VCSq

Enjoy!

REVIEW: Tamara (2005)

Ah, I remember the days when we got movies like this all the time…you know, the stupid “horror” flicks about people who get killed by dumb high school students and then come back for revenge, killing them off in silly slasher fashion? I Know What You Did Last Summer, Forget Me Not, Sorority Row, Prom Night…the list goes on. So why not add another movie to the list? I’m talking about the asininely stupid, daft mess known as Tamara.

Director: Jeremy Haft

Starring: Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Katie Stuart

IMDb

A good way to tell a movie isn’t going to be that good is when the title of the film is the name of a character you don’t know and probably won’t remember after it’s done…some of them, like Lincoln, work because the title is an iconic figure. I bet the people who made this really thought Tamara was going to be a big hit, though – the next big horror villain. Maybe they even had sequels planned. Guess how well THAT went…

We start with a four minute long credit sequence in which nothing is established. They could have easily put these credits over the top of the actual first scene, but I guess instead they thought it SO IMPORTANT that we see a bunch of pictures of dark basements, candles being lit and occult pentagrams everywhere. Or rather, they thought it important to pad out the length of this thing and make it look like a longer movie than it really is. Splendid.

We then get a sex scene between Tamara and her teacher, Mr. Natolly. Then a bunch of kids appear in the doorway and start laughing at them. The teacher recoils and says he could never love her, which is all revealed to be a dream that she’s having in class. Amazing – that’s almost ten minutes of wasted time that won’t have anything to do with the actual story now. I so love when movies begin with non sequitur garbage that won’t have a bearing on the plot – so many good ones do!

Aw, how cute, you can turn the camera sideways.

We finally get to the plot – joy, joy – when we find out Tamara has written some article for the school paper accusing a bunch of athletes of taking performance enhancing drugs, and now they all want revenge or something…riveting. Or just sleep-inducing. I sometimes get the two confused. It’s really just kinda confusing, though, since we never hear hide nor hair of Tamara writing anything for the rest of the film, and the whole plot point about the drugs is dropped about fifteen minutes in.

Also, how the hell are these people supposed to pass for high school students? They’re clearly in their 30s! Not that I don’t believe the people who made the movie aren’t 30 year olds who never got out of high school, but c’mon, not everything has to be an allusion to real life.

Yeah, that's about two steps away from an alcoholic deadbeat dad.

What are these two 30 year olds doing on a high school campus? Are they lost? Maybe they're just revisiting their glory days.

Tamara goes through the day and gets threatened and harassed by a bunch of people who are bigger than her, and like any school, nothing is done to stop it at all. I guess this one girl tries to tell them to back off, but even then, she doesn’t try that hard. Not much of a victory there...

After that, we see her try to make out with her teacher in real life this time, after he tells her he believes in her or some shit. He turns her down because he already has a wife and doesn’t want to end up on the 6:00 news in black and white stripes. Good choice there, bucko. Unfortunately the bullies all heard it too, and make a plan to trick Tamara into thinking the teacher really does love her back – because yeah, schemes you’d see on Roadrunner cartoons make for good horror movie plots, right? Sadly many movies take my sarcasm there waaaaay too seriously…

Before that though, they launch a contrived plan to use the school’s TV and audio equipment to filter one of their voices to sound like the teacher’s. To do this, they enlist the nerdy, socially awkward geek with glasses (glasses always = no social skills in these movies, you see) who runs the equipment to help, and invite him along, telling him it’s going to be a party. They also invite along some random guy and his girlfriend, but the girlfriend declines.

Their facial expressions are very telling. You can practically glean a whole narrative out of it - their futures, even. The guy's says "I'm destined to be in a movie like Tamara." The girl's says "I'm so done with this idiot. Time to ditch the beanie cap and go to nursing school like my mom said."

I’m actually fairly sure this character wasn’t supposed to be in the movie. The scene is so random and he doesn’t do anything at all the whole runtime, so my guess is, he just overheard the other characters talking about a party and figured they were having a party in real life and weren't acting. By the time he realized what was going on, it was too late, and any aspirations he had to a career in entertainment were shot down.

Meanwhile, Tamara performs a voodoo spell trying to get the teacher to love her. Way to get me invested in your main character, movie…you stupid piece o’ shit. Of course the magic in this movie is totally one dimensional and just there to fuel the idiot plot. Movies like this, as well as Forget Me Not and My Soul to Take, might as well just go all out and say the characters buy their magic in the new aisle at WalMart.

The bullies trick Tamara into coming down to this crappy motel room and leave a note in the room telling her to take her clothes off. Everyone else, being idiots, just assumes she is actually an exotic dancer. I really can’t wait for them to die now…I mean seriously?

Yes, the cautious and demure way she took off that dress, and the way she gets under the covers afterwards to cover up, is really how exotic dancers act, right?

I guess the fact that they’re all in their 30s makes it a little harder to tell, though.

So she gets pranked on tape and runs out of the room crying. She sees the one girl who was nice to her in the hotel room too (why did the bullies bring her again?), and goes crazy, attacking them. They accidentally kill her by knocking her head into a table, and then everyone starts the usual crap you get in these movies. What’s that? You don’t know how it goes? Well, let me enlighten you…

A DRAMATIC RE-ENACTMENT OF TIRED HORROR CLICHÉ

UNREALISTIC JACKASS: We can’t turn this into the police, I have a life I want to live!

VOICE OF REASON (as a metaphoric concept): No, this is insane and cannot happen! We are moral human be----

[UNREALISTIC JACKASS unzips his fly and urinates on VOICE OF REASON, who recoils in disgust and fear]

UNREALISTIC JACKASS: I won’t let any of you go against me or else I’ll kill you! We’re all in this together even though it was just me who killed the person in the first place! The justice system doesn’t discriminate against different levels of a crime! I don’t care if I did just murder another human being by accident, I NEED TO LIVE MY SUPERFICIAL AND SHALLOW LIFE! I am more important than anyone else in the world! I AM THE ALPHA AND OMEGA!

Eh, I may have embellished a little. But that’s the gist of it. Ugh, can you believe the main bully actually says to the nice girl, “You go ahead and tell the cops; I’ll tell them you killed her because you got jealous”? Seriously? The cops would have to be pretty god damned stupid to believe that. But I guess another staple of these movies is that the cops are always monumentally incompetent at their jobs. Tamara doesn’t actually show us this cliché, but having dialogue like this makes the cliché appear by proxy, so it’s no excuse.

"I'm supposed to be the heroine of the film but I let myself get swayed to cover up a murder in two seconds flat! Wow am I ever a failure!"

I also love how the one chick who is supposed to be “good” is swayed in like two sentences from this bully who she probably doesn’t even know that well – wonderful, movie; just wonderful. They bury Tamara alive outside and then, two seconds later, she pops up behind them all evil and stuff. She chases them around and kills them, but then it turns out to be a dream again. You know movie, you’re really not good at dream sequences.

A reality too stupid even for this movie...what an amazing accomplishment.

The next day at school, Tamara returns through her black magic bullshit, and makes that TV/audio kid kill himself by cutting off his ear, his tongue and then stabbing himself through the eye, on the morning announcements. It’s great how there were no teachers or supervisors around to make sure weird shit like this doesn’t happen, and even better that the school apparently doesn’t pay attention to what’s showing and doesn’t have a filter to just turn off the screen at times like this.

Now he's ready to audition for a Japanese horror movie!

But perhaps my favorite part of the whole thing is just their reaction to it later. After witnessing this incredibly bizarre and grotesque death scene, what do the other main characters have to say? “I can’t believe he killed himself.” Ha ha ha…yeah, THAT’S what’s unbelievable about what just happened. Not the fact that he did it in an insane way by mutilating himself and talking gibberish, though. That part’s normal.

There’s also some bullshit about how Tamara can now touch peoples’ cheeks and see their pasts, or something. Before she kills the nerdy kid, she “sees” that he tried to kill himself once. That could have been an interesting plot point, but does THIS movie elaborate on it? Nah. We have no time for human problems or character depth at all here. We’re too busy with scenes where Tamara makes the two guys have sex with each other to get revenge for humiliating her earlier:

Tamara, the only movie whose heroine can stand that close to two guys and turn them gay.

And to round out the complete disposability of this whole mess, we get some cheap tit shots when she makes the one girl bully take off her shirt. Women aren’t good for anything in movies except showing their tits, right?

Someone ought to just go all the way at this point, and make a movie with nothing but naked chicks running around getting killed off after a while...I guess Bikini Girls on Ice was close enough though.

So I guess that girl’s story is that she throws up in order to get a ‘perfect body’ for her boyfriend…the only reason this matters is because there was one line earlier about how she didn’t eat much. And even then, you wouldn’t catch that unless you were stupid enough to pay attention to this, like I was. Tamara’s power makes her start trying to eat her fingers – how deliciously stupid.

These “kill” scenes aren’t even scary at all, they’re more like comedy kills. Even the Nightmare on Elm Street movies at least had the dreamlike, surreal atmosphere. This is just the ass-hairs of the kind of pandering, low-brow minds that brought us gems like 5ive Girls. It’s not as bad as that, but trust me it is close. Very, uncomfortably, Sandusky-level close.

There’s some bullshit showdown at the hospital where Tamara chases everyone around and kills them. I love when the one random dude gets killed, the good girl cries over him like she knew him for years. Wasn’t he just some random kid who came up to them on the street at the beginning? Oh well. It’s not like her actually knowing him would make the scene any more poignant. It’s like trying to put a pretty pink ribbon on a pile of dog shit.

After that, we see them figuring out that they can’t kill Tamara, partly because of the “black magic,” but mostly because the script says so. The only way to kill her is for the teacher, Mr. Natolly, to throw himself off the building and kill both of them, since apparently, they are “linked together for eternity.” Yeah. Right. I can so totally tell – I mean I can literally see the passion in this movie’s creation, which shows me the doomed, romantic love between these two characters! It’s almost like…a fanfiction a 16 year old girl wrote about having a crush on her teacher.

Romantic maybe if you like Twilight...personally I think Texas Chainsaw was more romantic.

What a terrible ending! There was no build-up to it, no emotional connection…it’s just nonsensical crap that will oddly make you feel a tiny bit down afterwards because of how pointless it was. But wait – there’s actually even less sense to be made with the following scene, where it turns out the girl who bit her own fingers off is the new bad guy:

Oh no, she got possessed by Tamara, because that...wasn't ever how it actually worked before! Which means this movie is incompetent and has no idea how to tell a story! Shock and awe!

Aaaaaand that’s the end! Doesn’t make sense? You’re not alone.

This really is just a mess of a movie…when I said it was like a fanfiction by a girl with a crush on her teacher, that’s pretty much the best way to sum it up. It’s all so cutesy in its romanticization – “oh, my teacher is hot; better have us die together Romeo & Juliet style!” “Oh, people are mean to me; better make them one-dimensional bullies who resort to murder to solve their problems!” “Oh, I’m insecure; better turn the character into a Cordelia from the early Buffy seasons rip off!”

Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Just a quick PSA to finish this off: If you’re a high school student, you’re most likely generally dejected and lonely. You most likely have fantasies that are unrealistic and implausible. And you will inevitably write something creative to get out your frustrations and express yourself.

However, you must resist the pressure to revisit these cathartic writings years later and turn them into a movie. Just kill that impulse where it stands.

Remember Tamara.

Images copyright of their original owners, I do not own any of them.

REVIEW: The Hitcher (2007)

Let’s talk about remakes for a second. They’re not inherently bad; it’s just that people these days don’t seem to like putting much effort into them, especially in the horror genre…too much of the time a remake is an excuse to just make some cheap piece of trash, with generic characters doing silly things while cursing a lot and reinforcing the reasons why being white isn’t something to be proud of. Case in point? The Hitcher.

Director: Dave Meyers

Starring: Sean Bean, Sophia Bush

IMDb

I mean this is seriously just insipid. Take the worst elements of 2000s horror and mix them with the plot of The Hitcher, only without anywhere near the level of tension or drama as that film.

…oh, were you waiting for something else? No, there is nothing else.

We start off with a truly brilliant recap of the original movie’s themes: two rich college kids meeting up and driving around while a shitty alt rock song plays in the background. It’s more like a commercial for Abercrombie and Fitch than a Hitcher movie. The girl says she has to pee, which really just caps off the re-enactment. I know; I can’t contain myself either. It’s just so much like the original that I can’t even comprehend it!

When Robert Harmon directed the original film, I bet he was just wishing he could include scenes like THESE in his movie, if only he had found the right female actress to play Jim's girlfriend! Luckily the remake was around to fix it 21 years later.

And yes, there are two main characters now. Because lord knows having just one wasn’t good enough. We need a second character so they can shout at one another and so the camera has tits to show more of the time. Brilliant filmmaking, just brilliant!

So while in the original, the car just stops and lets the Hitcher in, in this one we get an ‘exciting’ scene as they swerve around and do a figure-8 on the road without even picking him up at all. The girl, Grace, says they shouldn’t pick him up – okay then; roll the end credits. I guess that’s the end of the movie. But of course they keep going…after all, it wouldn’t be a shitty remake if we didn’t drag things out as long as possible.

They go to some gas station and buy some junk food that I’m sure won’t be good for them. The Hitcher ’07: it’s no good for your health! Jim talks to the attendant who just mostly bores the hell out of me. We’re like fifteen minutes in. Jesus; in the original, we would have already seen several thrills by now. We would have already had several key scenes. What do we get in this? Junk food at a gas station.

…that’s actually kind of a brilliant metaphor for the whole film.

Anyway, back to wasting time: Sean Bean, who is playing the Hitcher now, shows up at the gas station and asks for a ride, which Jim grants despite Grace’s reservations. In the car, they talk about how long Jim has been fucking her. A-HA! Now I know what the original was missing! Cursing and sex! What a revelation…Jim asks how long Bean has been fucking his wife, to which Bean replies that he doesn’t have one. Apparently THIS is the big ‘evil switch’ in the movie as then he breaks a cell phone and holds a knife to Grace’s face while reciting lines from the original.

It's a shame because Bean is really trying. But the script is about as articulate and intelligent as a Cro Magnon on PCP.

I guess Bean isn’t too bad or anything, but the whole scene just points out how deficient this is from the old one. We don’t need two characters for this scene, or any of the scenes for that matter. Having just Jim and the Hitcher alone was fine. Adding an extra character just makes it cluttered and messy.

They kick him out of the car, this time with more elaboration as Jim shouts for Grace to unlock the door so they can kick him out. They then wake up and it’s a bright, sunny day again, so they can stand around posing in the desert looking like a commercial again. Another crap-ass rock song is played, and the cycle of mediocrity is complete. Why are you even trying, movie? Why don’t you just give up while you’re ahead and let the world forget you exist?

Then we get a long, drawn out version of the excellent scene in the original where they see the Hitcher with that other family and then find the car afterward. In the original it was powerful because you don’t see what happened to them – here we spend way too long with the car and we see too much of what happened. One of the family members, the father, is still alive even. They drive off with him to find a hospital and this falls out of the car, which one of the kids was reading:

Heh heh heh…that’s almost funny. Almost.

They go to this stupid restaurant and have a whole scene where a waitress inexplicably thinks Grace and Jim killed the people from the car. If that was true, why exactly would they be coming in asking for help and acting hysterical? I think there’s a reason this chick is a waitress and nothing more. Personally I doubt she’ll amount to anything else, especially after she calls the cops and gets them arrested. Before that though, we get a loooooooong, sloooooooow scene of Jim trying to save the dying guy and failing, and Grace hiding in a bathroom when she should be running to help a dying man or trying to get to a phone – aren’t you guys glad this chick is one of our main characters?

She's so scared, her makeup hasn't even started to run yet.

Eh, I’m not.

So yeah, they get arrested by the idiot police, only to get broken out by Sean Bean in about two seconds. Glad they had this part in the movie at all…in the original they were at least there for a while. Here, the movie wasted like 10 minutes on that shit with the dying father in the car and just glazed over the jail part so fast that it barely mattered that they were in jail at all. And it’s just not that interesting, movie! It’s just too much of what we don’t need. I even get what this is going for…it’s trying to make the new remake different from the original classic, and does so by elongating some scenes and shortening other ones. But it just doesn’t work at all. You don’t get any tension or atmosphere from this version, just annoyance at how Bean sneaks down and has Jim in his grasp, and then leaves in two seconds once Grace comes down with a flashlight and a gun.

So let me get this straight, he went down there to threaten Jim for a few seconds and just disappear as soon as Grace finds them? This guy sure doesn't have 'efficient use of time' as a big part of his evil plot, does he? Pretty goddamn pointless in the grand scheme of things...and by that I mean ENTIRELY POINTLESS.

Yeah…pretty retarded.

So yeah, the next fifteen minutes is just stuff you remember from the original – Jim and Grace come upon some cop and take him hostage, though that goes well when Bean kills him a few moments later – glad this part was even in the movie at all, right? There are some pretty good chase scenes and then they end up in the desert somewhere. They argue a bit about whose fault it is that they’re out there, and since this is a quiet and reflective moment where the screenwriter could have actually done some good with the two characters and developed them a little, the movie literally throws a truck in front of them to stop it.

Character development?! Eww! Just throw a truck in front of them!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie just literally not give a shit this much. Even The Hitcher II was trying compared to this right now…what kind of lazy ass do you have to be to just throw a truck in between your characters during an argument? Could you just not think of any other way to end the argument? Allow me to make a suggestion for next time: if you have a shit-ass script with no worthwhile elements to it, just have your characters ripped apart by wolverines at random next time. It’s more unique than a truck, and more painful. It might offer some minor catharsis for the audience’s pain.

And trust me, anyone with half a brain is in pain during THIS right now. Let’s just get it over with.

So they find some motel where they have shower sex and talk about how horrible everything is. I just love these movies’ conceptions of people and their sex lives. Isn’t that great? “We’re so traumatized!” “I know, let’s make out!” It’s not even like…desperate, grieving, panicked sex. It's music video sex with a bland piano ballad over it. It’s just like they’re shooting a porn video in the middle of a horror movie.

Can you picture Taylor Swift singing in the cutaway scenes yet?

Because that’s what this movie needs…oh, wait, it actually is what it needs at this point. I guess I’ll give it a pass. Everything else is so banal I might as well.

Like the next part, where the Hitcher tries to rape Grace in bed...

…because THAT was what was missing from the original! A rape scene! Brilliant! 10/10 stars! Two thumbs up! The utter worthlessness and bad taste of this scene have just driven me up the wall! A movie finally did it; drove me completely insane! Thank you, Hitcher remake, for completely destroying a great film. I think we might as well make an epitaph for The Hitcher right now.

That should do it. God, this scene though – so tasteless, so utterly missing the point. In the original he was just waiting for her in the bed and wordlessly put a hand over her mouth to kidnap her and the scene lasts maybe a minute or something, most of it taken up by the chilling suspense. Here it goes on for almost five and he says – he actually says this; damn you for making me type it at all – “I’m horny too.” What kind of a line is that? How does that add to the mysticism and mysteriousness of his character? And the whole attempted rape is just…eugh; it’s just unpleasant to watch. It pretty much singlehandedly takes the character of the Hitcher and turns him into a big nasty joke. This isn’t even the same character. This isn’t John Ryder, the force of nature – this is just some creepy bum off the streets who happened to get lucky a few times.

I also love how she hides in the bathroom afterwards with a gun, like this whole thing is some Freddy or Jason shit instead of a terse, atmospheric thriller. But then again I guess hiding in bathrooms is all she was ever good at anyway.

Oh please, this shot was just here because the director wanted her in a thong. She's wearing a skirt again in the very next scene two seconds later, so really?

So yeah, in conclusion the makers of this movie should go sodomize each other with rusty pitchforks. It might just improve their creative forces.

But, sigh, we’re not done yet, so why not just look at the part where we get the classic ‘tied between two trucks’ scene, except it’s Jim who is tied there and Grace who has to save him. Basically the whole thing looks okay at first blush, but then when you think about it, they just messed it up completely. Like when Grace has to go confront the Hitcher in the truck. Again, in the original it lasted a few moments and was mostly wordless. Here it goes on WAAAAAYYYY too long and just wears out its welcome, not to mention stupid as hell too.

The original did well to make everything ambiguous and not go into too much detail on what the Hitcher’s motives were. This one not so much. First he says he will kill Jim if Grace doesn’t get in the car. He says if she doesn't, he will take his foot off the gas and rip Jim in two. So Grace gets in the car and he then says to kill him. So what the hell? If she does THAT, then his original threat is null and void because Jim dies anyway! I guess he got an ‘F’ in Movie Villain School – I can just see his report card now. Total failure to blackmail your heroine correctly, total failure to scare anyone, even little kids…

"Yeah, I guess I don't really have any idea what I'm doing..."

And we get a bunch of nonsense about how he “wants to die,” and maybe if that simple thought was the only motive he had throughout the whole thing, it coulda worked, but it’s mostly confused and vague. So it’s just a waste like the rest of the flick.

Then we get SUPER COOL GORE, GUYS, WOW!

Yeah, great job…it’s not scary or interesting in the least. Mostly it’s just kinda ehhhh. See what this film is doing to me? I can barely even make a coherent sentence anymore!

They arrest him just like in the original and then handcuff him and take him away in an armored truck. They show him breaking his finger – which is remarkably easy for him; is his skin made out of paper mache? – to get out of the handcuffs. Honestly it’s just pointless. The original worked so well because we didn’t know how he did stuff like this; it was shrouded in secret and mystery, and made him more of the force of nature that he was. By showing these things, he becomes less mysterious and more human. It doesn’t work at all to create any kind of feeling besides a tradeoff between blandness and outright disgust at some parts.

Like this other part where he’s killed the officers and crashed the car – he gets out and walks across the field and it’s supposed to be real suspenseful, but he just looks like some skinny asshole in a vest.

Really? We're supposed to be afraid of him right now? He looks like any old common thug now. If he was still trying as hard as in the beginning, maybe, but it seems like Bean was instructed to act like he was high in these last scenes, so the impact of his acting alone isn't even that great anymore. Bravo movie...bravo...

So Grace somehow survives a fire he starts in the truck she’s in, and goes after him with a gun. She shoots him a couple times in his bulletproof vest – yeah, way to waste bullets, you idiot. He finally looks up at her and asks her “how it feels,” to which she replies that she feels nothing, and kills him. Trust me honey, the audience shares your exact sentiments about the movie they just got done watching.

Cue another vomited-up alt rock piece of shit song, and the credits roll. What the hell is even up with the shitty music anyway? It's like the director was just better at directing mainstream music vid---

...oh. So he really was a music video director. Well that explains everything! Except, you know, WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY GET A MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTOR TO DO A HORROR MOVIE? I guess the Michael Bay producing credit explains that well enough. Or just the fact that the studios care as much about quality in their movie remakes as the Westboro Baptist Church does about equality and fairness in the eyes of God. Ugh.

It's seriously a miracle of horridness - take the plot of the original, stretch out story elements that were perfectly fine in the original, subtract any and all scares and tension, and add in dullard contemporary rock more fit for a shitty MTV show than a horror film. How did this ever get past the drawing board? It's so awful I can't even comprehend it. Good God this is shit. The original is a classic and this is the stinking raw sewage that happens when modern Hollywood decides 'hey, we need to make a movie! Who cares if it's good or not? Just take some old film people barely watch anymore and make it hip and swag!' Well I think that's completely despicable. Just forget this crap ever existed. I know I'll be trying – and trying hard – over the next few days...in fact, I think I'll go watch the original. That's the perfect way to get this out of my system once and for all!

Images copyright of their original owner(s). Tombstone picture taken from http://www.jjchandler.com/tombstone/download.php

REVIEW: The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting (2003)

If there was anything the world needed, it was a direct to video sequel to The Hitcher, made almost 20 years later. Oh, wait, it’s not opposite day. My bad…

Director: Louis Morneau

Starring: C. Thomas Howell, Jake Busey, Kari Wuhrer

IMDb

So we start off with something totally different from the original film: a rainy setting where a car picks up a hitchhiker! Oh wait, it’s still not opposite day…man I’m bad at this. To be fair, the situation IS pretty different. It’s actually revealed to be a kidnapped child, and the guy driving is his kidnapper. The kidnapper gets shot by C. Thomas Howell, who I am surprised actually returned for this. Take a guess if Rutger Hauer came back or not…

So yeah, Howell’s character Jim Halsey is now a cop all these years later. Funny, considering the last interaction he had with the police in the first movie was when he held one of them up at gunpoint and stole his car. You would think that would sorta bar one from entering into the police academy and becoming an officer of the law. Isn’t it kind of like a church burning black metal musician becoming a Lutheran minister?

Oh, maybe he DIDN'T fall too far from the tree after all...

Either way, Jim kills the kidnapper and then flies away in his plane to go see his girlfriend Maggie. Yeah, he has a private plane, a little Wright Bros-esque number that I’m surprised the police department just lets him fly around to catch criminals in. He actually tells Maggie that yes, he did find that child kidnapper by flying around in the plane, so I’m not making that part up. This whole thing has a very carnivalesque superhero feel to it now. Like Jim Halsey is Robin Hood or something…only he can afford a private plane.

Yes, I'm so sure we have a reason to be afraid of this ominous tracking shot...I'm sure it's NOT AT ALL a red herring...

Yeah, this plot point isn’t going to be very important to the film, so I can just skip it I guess. Maggie makes a huge deal about Jim killing that kidnapper, and I really don’t get why. I mean yeah, he killed someone; it sucks by default. But at the same time…he killed a CHILD KIDNAPPER. Possibly a molester and a sex offender, too; let’s just assume. Why is this such a big deal? Maggie’s words are “You can’t just go around shooting people all the time!” I’m sorry, but how is killing ONE man who KIDNAPPED A CHILD the same thing as “going around shooting people all the time”? Yes, Jim. Listen to your girlfriend. Please stop killing horrible murderers and child molesters. That’s just so rude of you.

I love how they're sexualizing her after she's been working underneath a plane and probably smells like a BP oil spill right now...

After some dubiously silly and unbelievable acting, Jim decides that they need to go back to that desert road where the first movie took place to talk to his friend Sheriff Esteridge, now retired. Esteridge tells him over the phone that maybe it’s time to come back and revisit the past, and face his fear…I’m sorry, WHY?! What’s the gain? To talk to his old buddy about killing that kidnapper? I just…don’t think that reason is strong enough to justify an entire movie!

But, sigh, they do end up going, and of course it takes them all of five minutes to find a hitchhiker, which Maggie insists that they pick up, because a sandstorm is coming. I just love this character’s sympathies: she’s all for the child molesters and the hitchhikers! Truly America’s most under-represented, oppressed minorities! Jim is suspicious and has numerous flashbacks to the first movie again. Which honestly begs the question, why. Why are you watching this? Why not just go watch the first one again? The flashbacks make it painfully obvious even this early in that the original will be the better film when this one is over. So why? Just turn this off now, pop in the 1986 classic The Hitcher and you’ll be much better off for your time.

So, yeah, the hitchhiker guy is played by Jake Busey, because yeah, when I think of classic horror villains, I think of Jake Busey right next to Rutger Hauer from the original. Sure. Keep on living in your fantasy land, movie. Busey doesn’t seem threatening or creepy like Hauer did in the original, so it’s more ambiguous for a few minutes. Halsey screams a lot and acts like a jackass, and kicks Busey’s character out of the car anyway, prompting Maggie to get all self-righteous again. Why do I get the idea this is the kind of relationship where she picks out his shirts and socks every morning?

Of course Jake Busey IS the new killer in this film, which is revealed a few moments later. And honestly, the problems with this compared to the original are so boldly underlined, it’s practically able to be seen from space. The original movie worked because it was all so spontaneous and random. Jim was stranded out in the desert with this guy he just met trying to kill him. He was just passing through, just driving his rental car across the country. In THIS, Jim actively seeks out the desert road again, and so the spontaneity is lost. If a character knows where he’s going, and intentionally goes, the fear and the surprise just aren’t as great. In a better movie, maybe this could have worked – maybe if Jim was trying to hunt down the Hitcher again all these years later and kill him, after hearing of some similar murders in the same area. But the way it’s done here just feels contrived and forced.

"If I show my teeth and look constipated enough, maybe people will be engaged by my character!"

They are forcing this plot to happen. How do we get Jim back in the desert years later after he naturally would move far away? Well, it’s simple, just invent a flimsy excuse and have him go back! Nothing just comes naturally the way a good plot does – these are manufactured, doctored thrills forced into being by C-rate writing just to get to the end of the goddamn script.

Case in point: you remember how the original was relatively fast-paced and ambiguous as to what the Hitcher was doing? How he kept to the shadows and only appeared in short bursts here and there to incite violence? How his framing Jim for murder was understated and didn’t seem too obvious? Well, that’s all out the window here. One of the first things Jim points out to Maggie is that the Hitcher always tried to frame him for crimes. Well, here that plot point is hammered in until you just don't care. It's totally without subtlety. Busey’s Hitcher makes a wimpy phone call to police misleading them about Jim and Maggie. He tells the police that Jim and Maggie are going to kill Esteridge as opposed to just going to talk to him. When Jim and Maggie get there, of course Busey has somehow magically just killed them, in really vague and boring ways…certainly not the masterful suspense set up in the first one when Jim came across the abandoned family station wagon after Hauer was done with it.

The first movie's killer killed people and was enigmatic and fearless. This guy is the equivalent of a phone-pranking douchebag with too much time on his hands. Great killer, movie; great killer.

I’m sorry – I know I’m just bitching about how much lamer this is as compared to the first one. But it’s just no comparison. This movie is simply a dumber, less interesting version of the first one. Nothing feels subtle or mysterious anymore. Everything is boldly defined and spelled out like the audience is dumb. Oh, is Busey trying to frame Maggie for his own killings? Please, movie, hammer that fact in until the whole plot just seems completely neutered and bland.

I guess if I’m going to continue actually summarizing any of this, Jim gets killed off by Busey from a couple of gunshots and dies in the desert. Maggie is the main character now and she walks around for a bit and then gets knocked out by Busey, who puts her in some kind of old water tower that’s about to fall down. He points out – he actually says it – that the water tower is about to fall. So, how exactly the hell did he carry a grown woman up it and put her in without it collapsing? I just love when a movie verbally states its own plot holes.

Maybe he can fly now. It honestly wouldn't surprise me. They've already surpassed the original in implausible scenarios and ridiculous kills...might as well just throw all realism to the wind.

She gets out of that with very, very little suspense, and while the desert settings are all very nice, I’m just so bored. There’s no danger in this! Where is the sense for the epic? Where is the fast paced adventure and high speed explosiveness? Even when the movie does speed up and try its hand at that, it comes off as a cheap imitation, sluggish and sort of drunk. Like if the first Hitcher got washed up and fat. Maggie isn’t interesting at all, far away from the fiery performance C. Thomas Howell gave in the first one, and Busey is just a joke, coming off more like a college frat boy playing pranks than a menacing, unpredictable killer.

There’s one scene where he pops up from behind a diner counter like a Jack in the Box, and then cuts his own finger off and throws it in a pot of boiling water nearby. Is this a Freddy Krueger movie now? It’s just completely retarded!

Eh, still better than The Dream Child.

The cops arrest Maggie for all of that shit and the Sheriff actually talks reason, and gives us another big glowing neon sign as to why this sequel doesn’t work and the original DID work: Maggie has family and friends, and a job. People back home can verify that she is who she says she is, and that she has no reason to do any of the crimes Busey is framing her for.

In the original, Jim Halsey was a shifty, slightly rebellious loner whose only familial contact couldn’t BE reached and had no ID or anything because the Hitcher stole them from him. There was fairly reasonable suspicion as to his innocence, and the way Hauer's killer character played things, you could see why Halsey would be under scrutiny. And as it was 1986, the communication fields were shaky enough as it was – there wasn’t a lot of ways to go check up on any of his stories. This is 2003. There are ways to PROVE beyond a doubt that this woman would have NO reason or cause to commit such crimes. Hell, pick up a phone and make a call, you morons! I'm fairly sure her identification wasn't stolen at any point either, which makes this extra stupid. If these cops used their brains, they would see that the woman in front of them is really not very suspicious at all, and couldn’t do anything she’s being accused of.

But I guess dumbass small-town cops need a reason to exist, and so they just ignore all logic and say, yeah, some crazy guy with no background and no alibi for anything is accusing a well-to-do woman from a civilized place of gruesome, insane crimes? Must be legit! No reason to actually think and investigate at all, is there? That stuff’s for nerds!

"We don't really like using our brains in police work out here. It's just not the true way of the desert cop. We just hate actually thinking about motive and plausibility, and instead just arrest the first person we find without asking questions. Truly we are the greatest cops ever."

The Sheriff does believe her though. Which could have proved for some drama, if Busey didn’t kill him two minutes later, in a very unspectacular manner. What ensues is…

Okay, I guess this COULD have been cool...but here it's just dull and ridiculous, frankly, and I'm not sure how they managed to make a plane chasing a truck evoke that reaction.

…proof that the movie just doesn’t give a shit. In their attempt to one-up the crazy chase scenes from the original, we get a really boring and implausible scene where Maggie steals a small plane and chases after Busey, who is in a truck. I guess it’s not the worst ever, but come on. It’s stupid.

We do get one kind of cool scene when Maggie knocks him out and then ties him between two trucks, like Rutger Hauer did to that girl in the first one. It’s…a bit silly, yeah, when you consider that neither of these characters had anything to do with that film, but it does create some atmosphere and is the only part of this whole mess where I got any tension or anger between these two.

But of course the stupid police show up, and even though Busey has killed several of their own now, they still go for Maggie and fire at her, thinking Busey is innocent. I love how he puts on the innocent act when the cops arrive, saying that Maggie attacked him for no reason and what not. It’s practically closer to an 80s Ferris Bueller-esque comedy than a horror film. What a joke.

Cue the "wah wah" noise.

So that’s The Hitcher II. What a bland pile of blandy blandness. I guess some parts are alright, but really, that’s only because they ride the success of the original so hard. Most of this is just pointless, as it copies the original note for note and isn’t near as good. It’s a dumb, vapid flick that won’t leave an impression on you when it’s done, except for minor annoyance at how hard it failed to replicate anything that was good about the original – in fact, a lot of the time it’s like they were actually trying to do the opposite of what the original did. I guess it IS opposite day.

But this is only a minor offense…a pedestrian annoyance.

Beyond this petty misdemeanor of a film lies a much greater evil; a primordial and demonic entity that mortal men tremble before…THE REMAKE!

Run for your lives!

Images copyright of their original owners, I do not own any of them.