Bill357 Reviews

Hide (2008)

Unfrozen Indy Filmmaker : A Bedtime Story

[19 April 2010]

In 1994, while working as a waiter in a trendy Hollywood restaurant, aspiring filmmaker K.C. Bascombe was retrieving a frozen dish from the walk-in freezer, when the place was raided and shut down by the city of Los Angeles, after apparently making the mistake of serving Barbara Streisand her main entrée before she was finished with the teaser. (Babs hates that.)

Accidentally locked in the freezer, he's trapped in a state of suspended animation for fourteen long years. Miraculously, when K.C. is thawed out, he's still alive and full of movie ideas.

After a quickie lawsuit against the city, he obtains the funds to finance the quintessential early-nineties independent film, the story of a murderous, philosophical dirt-bag who take off in his 1960's convertible, on a nicotine fueled crime-spree across the truck-stops and greasy-spoon diners of the southwest, with his loud, over-sexed hick girlfriend, who likes to shout, "You sweet on me!" to greasy, fat rednecks before flipping out and offing them.

The problem with KC's script was that time had passed him bye. His ideas, that were once so hip and fresh, had been squeezed of all their potential in the years that he'd been away.

At his wits end, he summoned the help of others, writers more experienced in the modern ways of screen-writing. Those men helped KC a lot, introducing new concepts to the hopelessly behind-the-times filmmaker, modern concepts like having no real action or suspense in the film and adding mindless torture in order to give pimply-faced geeks a chubby.

With the screenplay finished, KC was quite excited. He immediately suggested to the casting director that the two leads should be filled by Woody Harrelson (that funny guy from "Cheers") and Juliette Lewis (whom he loved in Kalifornia), only to be nervously told that those two already made a film together and besides, they're both a bit too old these days. After all, it's been fourteen years!

KC then suggested Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, prompting the casting director to quit.

With no famous actors in the leading roles, KC soldiered forward with an actor and actress who mimicked Woody and Juliette quite nicely, filming his movie, which he called Hide, and eventually releasing it on DVD.

"What's a DVB?", asked KC, who's last memories of home video were of 1994, videocassettes, and Blockbuster Video.

"It's called a DV-D.", replied the distributor. "It's like a tiny laser-disc!"

And so it was released, prompting sarcastic a--holes like myself much merriment, as it was just too derivative of about a million other movies (Wild At Heart, Kalifornia, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, The Road Killers, Love And A .45, Freeway) from the early to mid-nineties.

However, it's mindless scenes of torture, as well as it's excessive heavy-petting, did give pimply-faced geeks across America plenty of Chubbies!

THE END

Knowing (2009)

Thanks For Nothing, Alien Scum!

[1 April 2010]

Let me get this straight - these aliens have mastered interstellar space travel, can predict the future at least fifty years in advance, possibly time travel, and can manipulate the minds of human beings. They can just about do anything, except help us the (expletive) out!

Perhaps maybe they could have done us a small favor like maybe shielding the Earth from the sun-bursts, or if they wanted to remain undetected, beam the solution into Nick Cage's brain-pan. The least they could have done was send a scientist a letter, fifty-years back and let him work on it himself. That would have been nice!

Instead, these extraterrestrial jerks ruin a woman's life and scare the hell out of a couple of kids, before flying them off to a wilderness planet, clueless as to how to survive and left to their own devices.

Meanwhile, the rest of us get to howl in excruciating pain as the flesh melts from our bodies!

With friends like these, who needs Reptillians?!

Blindfold: Acts of Obsession (1994 TV Movie)

There's only one reason to watch this. You know what it is!

[2/10 · 14 January 2010]

This is the type of late-night cable flick usually associated with Andrew Stevens or Shannon Tweed. Though unlike most of Tweed and Stevens' T&A fueled vehicles, this is lethally dull!

Let's cut to the chase. The real reason for watching this non-thriller is to see Shannon Doherty's breasts. Anyone who states otherwise is a LIAR! However, most of her steamy sex scenes appear to be all smoke and mirrors.

Notice that all the shots where her head and chest show at the same time are quick peek-a-boo flashes. The frames where the camera lingers on her nude body, there's little or no face attached or she's behind a dripping, wet shower door.

All you boob-watchers out there know what that means - Body double!

I must admit though, that the finale where Doherty is bound, blindfolded and menaced with a knife, provided a certain fetishistic thrill.

If you find a VHS copy anywhere, buy it! As all involved are probably too embarrassed to ever let this come out on DVD!

Exit Speed (2008)

P.C. Junk

[2/10 · 7 January 2010]

Whatever entertainment this rehash of John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 may have provided is undone by lame attempts on the part of the filmmakers to score cheap political points.

The whole thing's basically an exercise in politically correct stereotyping. The heroine is an AWOL Iraq War vet/victim, apparently forced into the military by her mean, draft-dodging politician dad, giving a few characters a chance to (yawn) take pot-shots at Bush/Cheney.

As the other smart and righteous characters, there's a single mom (Lea Thompson sure has sunk!), a hippie vegan girl, a black girl, and a Mexican guy. Unfortunately for the superior folks, they're saddled with a few stupid white men who act like blow-hard jerks.

However, there is one token smart white guy. Though he's been on hard times and learned the error of his white-devil ways. More importantly, he's sooo cute!

The two stars I give it are for the bloody gunshots and projectiles. They deserve a better script!

Boot Camp (2008)

Are We Supposed To Sympathize With These Awful Kids?

[1/10 · 28 December 2009]

Sorry, but from what I've seen of these little turd-muffins, they're getting exactly what they deserve!

Yeah, I know - I'm a fascist. But these people (especially the main character) are obnoxious creeps!

The film's target audience of fourteen-year-olds might not realize it, but making sexual abuse allegations against someone simply because they "cramp your style" is a nasty, vicious thing to do. She then has the nerve to say she's stuck in that hellhole because "she lied"!

If the girl's stepfather were smart, he would have sued the girl for defamation of character and took her trust-fund!

It's sad to see that even after their ordeal at the hands of the hippie-dippie, new age doctor and his jack-booted thugs, that each of these spoiled-rotten brats retained every single bit of the unfounded self-righteousness and selfishness they came in with!

I hate youth culture. Someone, please bomb the Island.

Exterminate the brutes ...the horror... the horror...

Chemical Wedding (2008)

Stinks

[1/10 · 27 October 2009]

Do not listen to the glowing reviews of this movie! It's a despicable piece of crap! They are using the name Iron Maiden in an attempt to steal your money! Bruce Dickenson's pathetic attempt to ape the success of Rob Zombie by becoming a rock star filmmaker is an absolutely silly failure that deserves to be shunned by moviegoers the world over. This was so bad it makes Dee Snider's Strangeland look entertaining.

The actor who plays the reborn Aleister Crowley seems to be the only person having any fun. I don't know much about Crowley but this guy seems more like the reincarnation of the Marquis De Sade.

Quickly, his actions become tiresome and repetitive. The character's motivation for what he's doing becomes lost in the endless sea of Mumbo Jumbo and fake science.

In the end there is a smug attempt to try to get the words "social commentary" into people's descriptions of this movie and gain a little favor with left-leaning critics and probably radical British clerics as well. It's nothing more than a gratuitous Bush bash.

Blast (2000)

I Hated These Kids !

[2/10 · 11 October 2009]

If this is an example of what to expect out of today's youth then please give me a gun and let me end it all right now! These kids were absolute smug worthless losers who at every turn chose to do the stupidest thing possible.

Even the adults in this one are pretty disgusting. The town's chief of police witnesses a crime and covers it up. He then commits a crime himself and covers it up. He confides in a fellow officer who proceeds to keep her mouth shut, helping him cover it up. With role models like this, no wonder the kids are so vile!

Hell, the only person in the whole film who does the right thing is the character that these extremely wrongheaded filmmakers attempt to manipulate the viewer into disliking!

Ed Lauter's character should have come back from the "grave", tracked down each of these little turds, crammed a piece of his coveted dynamite up their wazoos and lit the fuse! Then he should have tied the two cops to chairs and used a chainsaw to give each of them the death of a thousand cuts!

However, the young actors gave pretty good performances playing despicable scum of the earth. They should have all died.

Dead Clowns (2004)

Bozo Is Spinning In His Grave.

[2/10 · 26 July 2009]

Apparently made by and for clowns, Dead Clowns is an inept rip-off of The Fog.

First of all, I don't buy the story that a train full of clowns would plunge into a body of water without at least an attempt made to recover the corpses, even in the 1950's. Secondly, I don't believe for one minute that someone wouldn't have erected some kind of a monument, not even in a local cemetery.

However, I'll give director Steve Sessions some credit for being one of the few low-budget filmmakers to understand that a film is primarily a story told in pictures and not endless streams of worthless dialogue, but he loses all points gained by loading the film down with endless scenes of characters doing lots of mundane things like Brinke Stevens removing her contact lenses, the guy in the wheelchair taking out candles from a drawer, and the night watchman preparing a line of cocaine. These things just bloated the running time and made the movie more boring. Also, what's with the camera always being on the floor constantly photographing the clown's feet? Is this movie called Dead Clowns or Night Of The Living Clown Shoes?

Most of the dialogue is drowned out by the blaring music and rain sound-effects, causing most of the zombie clown's back-story to be nearly inaudible. This is unacceptable.

The serial-killer couple are obnoxious and pretty pointless. What was the reason of making them murderers? Was it to solely to show a priest getting his brains blown out? I found it pretty laughable that this bonehead tries so hard to stop the zombie clown attack. Does he feel like he's the only one entitled to murder people? Last but not least, the method used to (temporarily) repel the dead clown attack is horribly silly. Mr. serial killer makes a memorial sign with a piece of poster-board and a Sharpie and places it on the bank. That's all they wanted?!

Run Like Hell (1995)

Horrible, just horrible! Run like hell indeed!

[1/10 · 17 July 2009]

I would only recommend this post-apocalyptic home video to big fans of heavy T&A and thong enthusiasts that like the kind that ride high on the hips and make the wearer's buttocks look long and droopy (I think you know what kind I'm referring to. I hate those.)

The silly plot has Robert Z'Dar (whose scenes look as if they're shot in a day) as the despotic warden of a futuristic women's prison. Luckily for him, all single women have been rounded up and incarcerated. Needless to say, all the inmates wear the afore mentioned high-riding thong and nothing else.

Thrown in are an escape, a cyborg bounty hunter, chainsaws, some ninjas, and other crap that came springing from the minds of the three (It took three people to write this!) obviously twelve-year-old writers.

In case my words inadvertently inspire someone to watch this, let me end by pleading with you to please skip it. It sounds very cool but it's a boring, shot on video mess. It's so bad I had to turn the lights on and stand up to keep from falling asleep.

Boogievision (1977)

Not Funny!

[1/10 · 17 July 2009]

Apparently people in the seventies laughed at anything, even crap. Boogievision is proof of that. Then again I don't smoke tons of wacky tobaccy like everyone else who thinks this kind of film is funny.

It tries hard to be like the early (overrated) years of Saturday Night Live, The Groove Tube, and Kentucky Fried Movie but the jokes are more embarrassing than hilarious.

The structure of Boogievision is also pretty bad. There's the main story of the hippie film director who looks a bit like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. In the first scene he exposes a badly run sanitarium in a scene stolen directly from a young Geraldo Rivera! After that he becomes decidedly more immature and stays pretty much unlikable throughout the film.

His trials and tribulations while trying to direct a crap movie aren't very interesting or sexy, despite loads of full frontal nudity.

Then there's the badly written TV parodies that litter the place, cutting in at random intervals. Though marginally more entertaining than the story of the film director, they're still pretty bad unless you think dildos are funny.

Do yourself a favor and get high before you watch this!

Mortuary Academy (1988)

Who thought necrophilia would be this Funny? (It wasn't really)

[4/10 · 15 July 2009]

One thing I never thought I'd see was Paul Bartel having passionate sex with a corpse. Thanks to this film, that which I thought impossible has become reality and I don't think I'll ever be able to close my eyes again without seeing the sight of a topless pot-bellied Bartel atop a beautiful dead teenage girl on the beach with his lips locked onto hers.

Believe me when I tell you that this sounds funnier than it really was. This movie is one long, tasteless, and painfully unfunny necrophilia joke. However, there are some sporadically amusing moments

A great cast is mostly wasted. Perry Lang continues (after The Hearse) his lustful pursuit of older women, only this time with more success, while Christopher Atkins tries hard and fails to fully explain why he's even in this movie. Caesar Romero and Wolfman Jack are here to collect a paycheck. Tracy Walter, Mary Waronov, and the rest do try hard.

The best performance is that of Stoney Jackson as the token black guy, who manages to be the funniest thing in this movie despite his lamentable rapping skills.

I'll give Mortuary Academy some credit though. I didn't hate it and it has perhaps the strangest Bar Mitzvah scene ever attempted in a motion picture.

Hack! (2007)

Hack! is whack (and not the good kind of whack, either)

[1/10 · 13 July 2009]

Just when I thought they they hammered the final nail in the awful spate of Scream inspired nonsense, another movie comes along to bore me to tears all over again.

The screenwriter of Hack! apparently suffers from "Scream Sickness", a mental illness related to "Tarantino Disorder", a malady effecting too many young filmmakers these days where they think that by making annoying references to things deemed "cool" in their movie that the coolness rubs off onto their film, only the difference being that people suffering from Scream Sickness make endless references to the horror genre in particular.

A personable young cast and a bunch of cameos by great character actors can't redeem such a rotten script as this. They all really deserve something better.

I'm not even going to get into the plot or anything. I'm just here to warn everyone that this is really dull and uninspired film-making

A Cat in the Brain (1990)

Fun For Fulci Fans, Not Sure About Others

[8/10 · 10 July 2009]

In the late eighties and early nineties the decline and death of independent video companies like Vestron and Media effectively shut off Italian horror films for much of it's American audience. Coincidently(?) Italian genre films also declined in quality and profitability.

Occasionally movies like Primal Rage, "sequels" like Beyond The Door III, Troll 2, and a few Dario Argento films limped out onto video but most remained unreleased (until DVD) in the US for nearly a decade or longer. Movies from these lost years became very sought after and talked about among horror fans.

Of these films, Cat In The Brain is probably one of the most hyped of all due to the legions of Lucio Fulci fans and the fact that it was not only directed by but also starred their idol, Fulci himself.

Though not quite Fulci's best, it's still better than most of his later efforts. His rabid fan-base will probably love it. Italian horror and giallo aficionados might also enjoy it, depending on their tastes but I'm not sure about anyone else. People who only watch Hollywood stuff might not want to take the word of the many glowing reviews here.

One thing I personally found fascinating were the scenes featuring probably Benito Mussolini's only lasting contribution to Italy, Cinecitta Studios. The name is instantly recognizable to any fan of Italian movies. Until I saw it here, I could only imagine what it looked like.

The Last Duel of the Great Wall (1987)

The Main Event: Kung Fu vs. Bushido

[8/10 · 6 July 2009]

Ninja Over The Great Wall as it's titled in English, is a pretty entertaining loose remake of Bruce Lee's Fist Of Fury on a shoestring budget. Personally, I thought it was more entertaining despite the fact that Bruce Le hasn't the fighting skill or the charisma of Bruce Lee.

It takes place in the early nineteen-thirties when China was occupied by the Japanese imperial forces, a period of time that weighs heavily even today on the Chinese psyche.

Bruce Le directs himself as a peasant who escaped the mass murder of his village by the Japanese. He joins his master in Bejing shortly before the old man's assassination by ninjas.

The Japanese are portrayed as brutal oppressors who've abandoned the code of the warrior, with the exception of one Bushido master who's taken it upon himself to singularly represent his country in the way of honor.

The bloody, brutal climax was shot on location atop the Great Wall Of China and is quite exciting and worthwhile despite some corny animation depicting bone crunching and blood dripping. The movie ends with a salute to Chinese nationalism.

This movie's economical at eighty-one minutes, action packed, and doesn't waste too much time on boring subplots or stupid comic relief characters, which is quite refreshing if you've had to wade through a lot of dreck to find some really good martial arts movies. Unjustly obscure, I think this is overdue for rediscovery.

Watch the English version all the way to the end. The theme-song is credited to someone named "Fung Kin S--t"! Is that a real guy?!

The Black Room (1935)

Boris' Best

[10/10 · 5 July 2009]

When I was a boy people didn't own many videotapes. All the big Hollywood blockbusters were about twenty bucks each (eighties money) and every kid I knew had a collection of bargain tapes recorded in SP mode. One of my absolute favorites was the Goodtimes Home Video release of The Black Room.

In my humble opinion this is the best horror film of the thirties, even better than the much touted Universal horrors. The first time I watched it, I was almost instantly mesmerized by the look and feel of this movie and by the incredible dual performance by Boris Karloff. The script is simple, to the point, and brilliant with a great ironic twist ending.

The idea of a serial murderer trysting with young unmarried women and filling a pit with their corpses seems very daring for it's time. This is one of the few purely psychological horror films of the era but with a foreboding Gothic atmosphere and plenty of superstition that gives it the feel of the supernatural.

Interesting note: The scene where Gregor (masquerading as Anton) is confronted by Anton's dog and treated cruelly by it's seemingly beloved master is repeated decades later in Karloff's Black Sabbath where he returns home having been turned into a vampire.

Nightmare City (1980)

One of the best and certainly the fastest moving of the Italian zombie epics.

[9/10 · 2 July 2009]

If you were lucky enough to have walked through a video rental shop in the eighties, one of the most memorable sights was the over-sized video box for City Of The Walking Dead, featuring a grainy blown-up still from the movie of a dead woman, her breast fully exposed with blood dripping down it and (if I remember correctly) her eye gouged out! It was usually located a few feet away from another over-sized video of Color Me Blood Red with a full color photo of the main character's disemboweled wife!

This is one of the greats, one of the faster-paced of all the early eighties Italian zombie pictures and the perfect movie for gore loving twelve-year-olds, of which I was.

The parts that stuck with me the time I first saw it were the scenes where the irradiated freaks crashed a live broadcast featuring a performance from the Italian version of the Solid Gold dancers, massacring the leotard clad women as the video-cameras rolled and the end where Hugo Stiglitz wakes up and begins the story all over again. Maybe this was the inspiration for Groundhog Day!

Monster Squad (1976)

Wow! This Is Bad! Six-year-olds might like it. though.

[2/10 · 2 July 2009]

Who would have thought that a show with Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein's monster teaming up to "save the world" would be so bad. Then again, what should I expect from a 70's Saturday morning show?

When I read that this was from the makers of the original Batman TV series I thought this might be good campy fun but it wasn't. It was horrible! This actually makes Batman look highly sophisticated.

Monster Squad tries hard to emulate the success of Batman ten years earlier but the writers don't seem to have enough imagination to bring us memorable scenarios or villains. The first episode's villain (Queen Bee) is probably the most annoying I've seen outside of a cartoon ever.

Each episode appears to only have two or three cardboard cutout sets where all the "action" takes place. Speaking of the action, every episode ends with a jaw-droppingly awful fight where the monsters defeat the super-villain's henchmen. The Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein's Monster seem to just stand there and flail their arms while the people they fight fall all over the scenery! It's so bad it makes the fighting in the Batman series look like a John Woo movie!

The only thing even remotely enjoyable about this TV series is the performance by the actor that plays Dracula. He delivers his corny lines with an expression on his face that seems to be saying "What the hell am I doing here?" They should have put him in a better show.

Urban Legend (1998)

Boring piece of ....

[1/10 · 29 June 2009]

Then I was a teenager I purposely avoided the ripoffs of Scream like the plague, saying thins like, "I don't watch that trendy crap!" or "This ain't no Texas Chainsaw Massacre!". Ten years later everybody's ripping off Saw and now the teenage crowd is flocking to see "torture porn" at the cineplex. Movies like Scream made the late nineties kids feel trendy while these newer films make them feel both trendy AND hardcore.

Films like Urban Legend are now (mostly) a thing of the past, so I decided that maybe now is the time to go back and see what I missed the first time around and my conclusion is that the thirty-year old Bill owes the teenage Bill an apology. This movie is a complete waste of time and a total piece of crap!

Slow and stupid is a phrase that perfectly describes both this film and all the characters in it. How these morons ever made it to an ivy league school (much less high school) eludes me and they're unlikable as hell too! However, I forgot how cute Tara Reid was before she got fake boobs and started drinking all the time.

As for the killer's methods, what is the point of imitating famous urban legends? Sounds very tedious to me and not exactly foolproof like it's portrayed. Someone going through all these ridiculous lengths to kill people would most likely get caught or killed very quickly. I'm all for the suspension of disbelief but this went way beyond the tricks that one skinny girl would be able to pull off.

The final scene where the killer is unmasked and revealed to be none other than Rebecca Gayheart is a travesty. Here, Gayheart begins to desperately overact, becoming so unbelievably obnoxious that it makes her look like a complete fool. It was really quite embarrassing to watch her act like an idiot! The director should have stepped in, unless it was his fault!

Bummer (1973)

A lame brained trip through a mostly dull rock tunnel!

[3/10 · 28 June 2009]

This is probably the worst rock movie I've ever seen! First of all, the music was bad and I don't mean in a good way. Bummer would have benefited greatly from having some good tunes on the soundtrack.

The story meandered for about an hour as we watch a rock band called The Group (real original,huh?) play around with a handful of frisky groupies with the exception of the bass player who can't get laid on account of his being fat and emotionally disturbed!

In fact, the only thing worth watching in this movie is the meltdown of Butts the bass player, played by the excellent character actor Dennis Burkley who in addition to being in the worst rock movie ever made was also in The Doors, one of the best. In this he's the spitting image of Brian Wilson when he finally got out of bed after three years!

The final thirty minutes were entertaining as Butts finally flipped his lid and strangled the lead singer's girlfriend in the woods, leading to a conclusion that would in real life would have sold them a million records and made the group legendary!

Johnny Firecloud (1975)

Johnny Firecloud: An Indian that can kick Billy Jack's a**!

[7/10 · 27 June 2009]

Johnny Firecloud borrows heavily from the other stand up and fight action/revenge flicks of it's day like Walking Tall and Billy Jack. Comparing it to the latter, it's less pretentious and overtly political, making it much more entertaining in my book, although it does have a slight problem with being overlong.

I think Johnny's goal of working hard and trying to find a place to fit in his hometown and as an Indian in modern America, is quite admirable. It makes the eventual (very bloody) war on the town bully and his group of nasty rednecks very satisfying.

The final scene isn't particularly exciting but still worthwhile.

Another thing that struck me about this film is the number of complex characters (for a drive-in movie) and sympathetic whites among the population of Johnny's town. Most of the time in these type of movies the only good white person is the town's lone attractive female. It blunts some of the other over-the-top redneck stereotypes presented in the film.

For the perverts out there, Marlon Brando's favorite fake Indian, Sacheen Littlefeather, shows off her breast implants in a gratuitous rape scene where we're "treated" to the sight of a greasy fat redneck reaching up her skirt and snatching off her panties, holding them up to the camera and grinning!

One of the morals of this movie is that when you have the cops on your side, don't abuse it. The same policeman that's going to let you get away with murder is liable to look the other way while your own throat gets slit!

Homeboys (1992)

Snorz N the Hood

[3/10 · 27 June 2009]

This is a cheap production from Action International Pictures meant to capitalize on the early nineties "hood" craze. It tries to rip off Colors and Boyz N The Hood but what it rips off most is the depression era hit Angels With Dirty Faces starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and the East Side Kids (not a rap group), especially the first scene.

The main characters Emilio, a cop and his brother Hector, a really obnoxious criminal. They end up competing for the affection of their very stupid youngest (and dumbest) brother, much like Cagney and O'Brien.

There isn't as much action in this as I'd like, mostly a bunch of really dumb angst ridden arguments between the brothers, some gang banging scenes, and some lame attempts at social commentary courtesy of Emilio's community activist love interest. Another subplot rips off Colors a bit, only in this the older cop is a fat racist!

On the plus side, there's some T&A in this for the horny guys out there and a pretty nifty theme song (by Ice T?), also a cameo appearance by TV's Todd Bridges from Diff'rent Strokes. You know you like him!

Two-Minute Warning (1976)

Some Good Suspense Here!

[8/10 · 26 June 2009]

First of all, I love all-star seventies movies loaded with cranky old men like Jack Klugman, Martin Balsam, and David Janssen.

The first half of Two-Minute Warning is a bit slow, taking a little too much time setting up characters and situations. The second hour is where all the excitement is, making up for the first as the sniper is spotted and the SWAT team begins taking their positions.

Really good editing adds much to the movie as we get contrasting shots of the game, the police, the sniper, and the clueless crowd (some of it through the sniper's scope) including a very paranoid Beau Bridges noticing things his fellow spectators do not.

The last twenty minutes are incredibly suspenseful and sad.

It was quite ironic seeing John Cassevettes, the sensitive artist, arguing with the lover of all things gun, Charleton Heston, over the fact that he would rather shoot the creep first and ask questions later while Heston wants to take him alive!

What I didn't like was the fictionalization of the football game, the creation of "Championship X" being a thinly veiled version of the Super Bowl with two bland looking made up teams referred to as Baltimore and L.A. Apparently the NFL didn't approve of the idea of a psychotic sniper at the Super Bowl!

I think it's time for a remake of Two-Minute Warning with modern stars and special effects and the participation of the NFL!

Ice Spiders (2007 TV Movie)

Sci-Fi Silliness

[5/10 · 25 June 2009]

My cousin recommended this movie to me and after watching it I will say that this is the last time I ever take film advice from a six year old! (true story) The blurb on the front of the DVD box reads: "Eight Legged Freaks meets Hot Dog: The Movie". That actually makes the movie look less appealing!

In all seriousness this is a typical (probably quintessential) Sci-Fi Channel movie, bland and inoffensive with giant a creature (or in this case creatures), a scientist, a strike force, and a laboratory that's gone to hell.

As I watched Ice Spiders, I couldn't help but wonder if the owners of a ski resort would be held liable in a civil court for deaths resulting from a giant spider invasion! Would their insurance even cover that?

Star Patrick Muldoon is pretty amusing as the aging ski dude in desperate need of a comb. Also it's neat to see Stephen J. Cannell in a supporting role.

Director Tibor Takacs made one of my favorite films as a kid, The Gate. It's kind of disappointing to see him working as a hired gun on mediocre TV movies.

The Hitchhiker (2007)

I don't care what you all think! This is a pretty entertaining low budget picture!

[8/10 · 25 June 2009]

The Asylum and Leigh Scott get a lot of heat from a lot of people over these films meant to capitalize on big studio productions. The low numbers for The Hitchhiker kind of surprise me though, as I think that it's actually better than the movie it supposedly imitates, the dismal remake of The Hitcher. It makes me wonder if any of the people voting this down even watched it. If this were made in the seventies it would probably be a cult classic right now instead of an object of ridicule.

Asylum contract star Jeff Denton gives a pretty good performance as the title madman terrorizing women in his plastic wrapped motel room. He's soft spoken, yet menacing and violent. The girls are all three-dimensional and the actresses that play them are decent enough too.

Unlike The Hitcher remake, it takes chances by actually having really unpredictable and violent things happen to some of it's female characters. It's sort of surprising which ones survive and which ones don't.

There's one thing I didn't like however, I believe that the film should have climaxed on the dusty Utah road instead of jumping foreword in time several weeks to the main protagonist's house. It kind of robbed the ending of some of it's excitement.

Legend of the Bog (2009)

All Bogged Down*

[1/10 · 23 June 2009]

(* pun intended)

The only good thing about Legend Of The Bog is some good Irish scenery. Other than that there's pretty much nothing else to recommend.

It starts off looking like it's going to be a fairly entertaining zombie type movie with Vinnie Jones doing an impersonation of Rupert Everett in Cemetery Man (or is it Dellamorte Dellamore?) but it goes downhill pretty fast when we meet the rest of the cast.

The characters are mostly obnoxious. We've got the ugly American and her driver, a despicable b---h she is, an idiot he; the pretty American and her pal, nothing more than kill fodder; the egghead archaeologist and college student, first she hates, him then she loves him, then she accidentally stabs him with a sharp stick; last we have the hunter, a character who's motives are pretty much a mystery, a one-dimensional cardboard cutout played by Vinnie Jones. They all get stranded through various mishaps in Jones' hunting shack near the bog.

Speaking of Jones, why isn't this guy in better movies? He virtually stole the show in The Condemned a few years back. I thought it was going to be a springboard to better things. Maybe he's difficult or something.

Anyway, the bog creature is really just a prehistoric oaf, acting a bit like the titular character from Eegah!, reanimated through some means never explained.

Also never explained is what all these people having killed someone beforehand has to do with the rest of the movie.(If you haven' seen this yet, don't ask.) It's hinted that it has something to do with what's happening but never elaborated on.

If you make it to the end, please fast forward through the college girl's vomit inducing story and flashback. Then again maybe you like incest and stillborn inbred babies but it made me a bit queasy! Yuck!