the Tripper

I believe that the Tripper may actually be the first combination of the Cheech and Chong formula with the slasher genre. It’s kind of odd, but it works. It mixes and matches its separate elements pretty well. Pot-smoking hippies and a Ronald Reagan-obsessed killer! Drug comedy, political commentary, and spurting blood! I’m not sure why nobody thought of this first. I’m especially astonished that this film was co-written and directed by David Arquette. David-fucking-Arquette. Apparently he’s not the fuckwit I imagined him to be.



The film starts out forty years in the past with young Gus watching Ronald Reagan on the television as his father tends to his dying mother. A problem arises at his father’s logging worksite, and Gus accompanies his father there. Apparently a bunch of hippies are protesting the cutting of the trees. This is unfortunately keeping Gus’s father from working and providing his mother with the medical care she needs. Things go terribly wrong when one of the hippies strikes Gus’s father with a rock. Then Gus strikes the offending hippie with something too.



In the present day, Frank Baker (Paul Reubens aka Pee Wee Herman) is holding a Woodstock-like festival in those very same woods. Samantha (Jaime King), her boyfriend Ivan (Lukas Haas), and friends Joey (Jason Mewes), Jack (Steven Heath), Jade (Paz de la Huerta), and Linda (Marsha Thomason) are all attending. Samantha is trying to steer clear of drugs due to a bad experience with her violent ex-boyfriend Jimmy (Balthazar Getty), but the others are continually toasted and tripping (go figure… Jason Mewes playing a druggie!). Unfortunately, a killer dressed as Ronald Reagan is bringing a little right-wing action to the festival… one axe swing at a time. It’s up to Sheriff Buzz Hall (the incredibly awesome Tom Jane) to keep those damned hippies safe.

The Tripper is a great debut for co-writer/director/producer David Arquette. The script is pretty tight. It delivers on all the right things that a horror comedy should. It’s funny as all hell, and the horror moments are well done. Surprisingly Arquette does a great job bringing life to the script. Apparently, he hasn’t been wasting his time on set during his film years. He’s picked up quite a bit of knowledge from all the directors he’s worked with. The acting is by-far the best thing about the film though. The hippies are all funny despite their one dimensional roles. They know they are there to deliver the laughs and be killed, and they have fun with it. Paul Reubens is a blast as the incredibly profane concert promoter. There’s a moment in the film when he hides in a Port-A-Potty to avoid the killer. It’s gross, but the character is such a dick that you can’t help but love the scene. Tom Jane is the real scene-stealer here though. It’s the first time I have seen Jane outright chew the scenery, and it’s awesome. Tom Jane has seriously become one of my favorite actors over the last several years, and this only increases my respect for the man. As for the killer… I would love to see this turn into a franchise because I was totally cheering on the murderous Reagan. You seriously haven’t lived until you’ve seen Ronnie start slaughtering a field full of hippies. I only have a few problems with the film. The hippies characters fall into the genre-trap of just being there to be victims. Unfortunately we spend too much of the movie with them despite their one dimensional personalities. There just wasn’t enough of the Gipper for me. Secondly the film was a little too comedic for me. There are no really serious moments of horror at all in the film, as they are all played for laughs. All that is really nit-picking really. I loved the movie just for the simple fact that hippies are slaughtered. I swear I have such hippie hate. And really… who better to kill the hippies than Ronnie Reagan? Brilliant.

April Fool's Day

Holidays. I love them in a twisted way. I don’t actually enjoy the holidays themselves (unless we’re talking about Halloween), but I love the horror movies made about them. Halloween, My Bloody Valentine, Friday the Thirteenth, Silent Night Deadly Night, Black Christmas, and New Year’s Evil all fill me with holiday cheer. April Fool’s Day is probably the one that makes the most of its holiday though.

Muffy St. John has invited her friends to her family’s island home for a weekend getaway on April Fool’s Day. Her friends are your usual 80’s slasher film victims. They’re in for a weekend full of alcohol, drugs, sex, kickball, and April Fool’s gags. Unfortunately their pranks start off with the accidental maiming of a ferryman on their way to the island.

Geez… that guy can’t take a joke.

After a night of fun (that accidental destruction of a guy’s face doesn’t bring these kids down), the group realizes that one of their friends is missing. What follows are the best jokes of the weekend. April Fool’s Day proves once and for all that murder is the most awesome prank of all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen for the ol’ decapitation gag. I don’t even need to mention my unfortunate experience with the ol’ castration prank. Oh… the shenanigans!

April Fool’s Day is a pretty fun 80’s slasher. It’s a little weak on the gore, but it makes up for it with the suspense and comedy. The cast is strong all the way around with Deborah Foreman (yummy Valley Girl) and Thomas F. Wilson (aka Biff Tannen) being the standouts. Director Fred Walton deftly handles the amusing script and balances the horror and the comedy pretty damned well. The infamous ending probably racks up as one of my few complaints, but I also consider it to be a fitting end the film. April Fool’s Day is good stuff.

NOTE: DO NOT WATCH THE INCREDIBLY HORRIBLE REMAKE STARRING SCOUT TAYLOR-COMPTON (AKA QUEEN OF THE SHITTY HORROR REMAKES)!

NOTE: I'M VERY BUMMED AT THE LACK OF AN ARBOR DAY FILM.

Lord of Illusions

It seems I’m a little behind on my horror reviews this week. My negative review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pretty much drained me for this week. The show should go on though.



Lord of Illusions is a hard film for me to review. It’s one of those films that I love even though I know in my heart that it’s a cinematic failure. That’s often the case with the film translations of Clive Barker work. Barker himself directed this (as he did with Hellraiser and Nightbreed), and it’s full of great ideas that are pretty poorly implemented.

I have to admit that I’ve always loved when films have tried to mix the hard-boiled detective pulp genre with horror. It’s not as if there are tons of examples of this combination around (the entirely awesome Cast A Deadly Spell and the entirely shitty Rough Magic are the only ones that really spring to mind), so I tend to latch onto the few I know. Harry D’Amour (Scott Bakula) is a down on his luck detective always in search of the next job. Unfortunately Harry also has a predilection of somehow getting involved with the darker aspects of the world and the occult. Harry agrees to take a routine job in Los Angeles as a sort of vacation from his troubles in the Big Apple. His stay in LA is anything but routine. He quickly gets drawn into a deadly case involving the famous illusionist (ala David Copperfield and David Blaine) Philip Swann (the always awesome Kevin J. O’Connor) and his wife Dorothea (the always smokin’ hot Famke Janssen). It seems that Swann was once the protégé of the evil sorcerer Nix. For some reason, Swann and some friends didn’t really agree with Nix and his cult when they decided it was time to “murder the world,” so they killed Nix, bound him in some magical face-clamp, and buried him out in the desert. Now Nix is coming back, and Swann’s friends are dying left and right. What do you do when a really pissed off dead sorcerer comes back to finish his interrupted plans to destroy the world… apparently you hire the guy from Quantum Leap to save you.

The movie has a great atmosphere and some creepy visuals to boot. Barker has always excelled at bringing a darker tone to horror than most other writers. He tends to create a strange sexual sadomasochistic tone to most of his work that’s outright creepy. Lord of Illusions is no different. Nix’s main henchman, Butterfield, is a pretty perverse character that somehow reminds me of a demented, evil version of the fat interior decorator from Beetlejuice. On the down side, Barker has never been a very accomplished director. The pacing is all wrong, and the material isn’t always handled correctly. It seems that Barker went at this story half-assed and didn’t deliver the full goods amid worries about how commercial the film should be. I also have to say that while I generally like Scott Bakula… he just doesn’t fit the tone of the story. He’s more suited to lighter drama and comedy. It doesn’t help that D’Amour is the lead character, yet he’s also the least fleshed out. Anyways, this was fun for what it is. It’s disappointing that the premise isn’t fully explored, but on the whole it’s a somewhat likeable film. It’s definitely a hard film for me to look objectively at, so this is a pretty shitty review.

Xtro

I had a line I wanted to use about this film before I even saw it. “This movie was Xtro crappy!” Fortunately, it wasn’t. Xtro was actually pretty damned entertaining despite the fact that it was a total mindfuck. It’s so damned surreal that I pretty much kept my “WTF” face on perpetually. I thought my head was going to have a Scanners moment.

Sam Phillips (a very good Phillip Sayer who looks like Hugh Jackman and sounds like Clive Owen) is a loving and devoted husband and father. That is… until he gets abducted by aliens in front of his son Tony. His wife Rachel (Bernice Stegers aka the female Oliver Reed) moves on with another man, but Tony has trouble letting go of his dad. Everyone tries to tell him that his father ran out on him and his mother, and no one will believe him when he tells them what really happens.

Three years later, Sam comes back. Apparently he’s changed a bit during his travels.




He’s still a nice guy, but that doesn’t keep him from killing a Eurotrash stud with permed mullet and his lady friend. Seriously… I’d kill a guy with a Euro-perm mullet too just on principle alone. He also can’t be running around like a terd with legs, so he decides to impregnate a nearby young lady with his penis proboscis. He’s reborn as a full-grown human version of himself in what has to be the freakiest birth scene of all time.







Being such a family man, Sam tries to reconcile with his wife and child. Since Tony knows what really happened, Sam decides to make him part of his new alien family in what could be considered an insanely incestual and pedophilic manner.





This leads to trouble, however, as aliens can pretty much change reality just by thinking about it, and Tony is apparently a young psychopath killing any and everyone that slightly inconveniences him. He does so by creating murderous live versions of his toys. Believe me… my distrust of midgets has been heightened even more by this film.





Anyways… you’ll have to see how it ends yourself. I highly recommend Xtro to B-movie enthusiasts. It’s cheesy, well-acted, and just so fucking absurd. Xtro is the lovechild of Lynch and Cronenberg that you’ve always wanted to see. It’s the strangest family film I’ve seen in some time (I still think Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q still holds the trophy on that one). You won’t be disappointed.

Hatchet

Finally… the family movie we’ve all been waiting for has arrived.



Wait a minute… scratch that.

Most horror buffs have probably heard quite a bit about Hatchet by now. It’s had incredible word-of-mouth amongst horror fans. They’re treating it as if it were the new messiah of horror. I won’t lie. It’s not, but it is good. Unfortunately the fact that it’s pretty damned derivative of the films that influenced it keeps it from the big leagues. Still, Hatchet shows that a great amount of fun can be had with gore, laughs, and the right attitude.

Ben’s (Joel David Moore of Dodgeball and Grandma’s Boy) friends have dragged him to New Orleans and Mardi Gras to help him forget a break-up. Ben’s not having any of that though. He really wants to go on a haunted swamp tour. His best friend Marcus is the only one that sticks with him despite protests over how he will miss out on the beer and the babes,. On the way to the swamp tour, Hatchet introduces its cast of characters. Tour guide Shawn is hilariously inept. Wannabe porn film director Shapiro constantly films the breasts of his two actresses Jenna (a pretentious “serious” actress) and Misty (Buffy and Angel’s hilarious Mercedes McNab as a Paris Hilton-like airhead blonde trying to break into acting). The Permatteo’s are a typical Midwestern tourist couple (Mr. Permatteo is played by Office Space’s Richard Riehle). Last, but not least, is Marybeth the quiet loner who we later find out is on a mission of revenge for the death of her father and brother. Unfortunately, they don’t realize the swamp is off limits because of the murderous Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder playing the billionth deformed, retarded redneck in this type of film). We’re told that he died due to an accidental hatchet strike to the face(happens all the time), but we’re never quite sure what he is... ghost or freakishly tough human. Anyways… the usual (actually… it’s a bit more hardcore than the usual) mayhem follows.

Hatchet knows exactly what it is, and it delivers the goods. There are very liberal amounts of gore, nudity, and laughs in this film. All of the actors turn in great performances for this type of film. They’re consistently funny (this is considered a horror-comedy) and end up bringing more life to the typical slasher stereotypes. Kane Hodder (the man most associated with Jason Voorhees) portrays a new film slasher, and he does a great job here. Apparently the cast was even frightened of him off-camera too. You’ll even see cameos by Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) and Tony Todd (Candyman). Director/writer Adam Green does a great job here as well. His script, despite being pretty damned standard plot-wise, is constantly funny. There are enough issues (you’ve pretty much seen this all before) that will keep this from being a horror great, but the film is still a great watch.

*Strangely, there is a Disney review of this film telling about parents about all the questionable material the film contains, so that they can speak about it with their children.

Deaths: 11
Where to start… cutting, hacking, ripping off with bare hands, head twisting, impalement, death by belt sander, beheadings, and just plain ripping out of guts. The gore is incredibly over-the-top here, and I loved every moment of it.

LOL:
An old redneck that drinks his own piss tries to warn away the characters from the swamp. It has to be seen.



Sadly, we probably won't ever see his "Jump To Conclusions" mat.


It would be wise to avoid the Victor Crowley Dental Clinic.

Nightmare Man

The After Dark Horror Fest movies are a mixed bag. Eight independent horror films each year (with a few bonus movies) are picked to be distributed by After Dark films and ran during the film festival. The Horror Fest has run for two years so far giving us sixteen (plus bonus films) horror films. The quality ranges from utter shit to outright awesome. Nightmare Man leans more toward the shit end of the spectrum but at least it’s entertaining shit.

Ellen and her husband Bill are having trouble trying to start a family, so they do the obvious thing when dealing with infertility… order an ancient African fertility mask in the visage of a horned demon (that looks as if it were made in a 3rd grade art class). That’s definitely going to fix the situation, and hey… who doesn’t like to look down and see a demon’s face during sexy time! Unfortunately, Ellen starts having nightmares about the demon mask, and starts to believe she is possessed by the demon inside it. Of course, Bill instantly wants to have her in the committed to the psych ward. Predictably the car runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and Bill decides to hike to nearest gas station leaving poor Ellen alone in the car… in the dark… with the mask that is the basis of her psychosis. He even makes a lame little joke about it keeping her company. That’s when a being wearing the visage of the mask starts chasing her around the woods with a knife (and wearing tennis shoes). Obviously, demons bring their Nikes when cross-country running after their victims. Thankfully she finds a cabin housing two couples there for a weekend getaway. Engaged couple Jack and Trinity, and cabin-owner Mia and her boy toy Ed have a strange game of sexual Truth or Dare (actually the game of Truth or Dare was probably one of the best scenes of the movie featuring a naughty striptease and the best fake orgasm I’ve ever seen) ruined by the bloodied Ellen. It’s just too bad that Mia accidentally leaves her crossbow (that she keeps for “protection”) outside for the “Nightmare Man” to use. That’s where the real fun begins as the characters are killed off one-by-one until we are hit with an inane supernatural twist at the end.

The film isn’t all bad. It tries to make itself out as a horror comedy, and succeeds in all the wrong ways. Thankfully, the film knows what it is, and doesn’t take itself that seriously. The acting is pretty weak on the whole. Blythe Metz (Ellen) reads her lines with all the skill of a porn actress. You’ll want to have the subtitles on during any scene containing Luciano Szafir (Bill). The rest are just as bad (though Hanna Putnam aka Trinity should become the go-to woman for fake orgasms). Tiffany Shepis (Mia) is the only one that really stands out from the pack. Already a B-movie scream queen, Shepis pretty much carries the movie with her charm and likeability (plus it’s a given that when she appears in a movie that she’s not going to be clothed for long). Talking about much else is pretty irrelevant. The writing is atrocious. The direction is terrible. It looks as if the film was shot on a $300 camcorder. None of that really matters because the film is just plain fun to watch (preferably drunk and with friends).

DEATHS: 7
Nightmare Man had a couple of standout deaths. One crossbow bolt through the mouth nailing the completely annoying Ed character to a tree was pretty funny. I was also pretty fond of the head-crushing via fertility mask and rock.

LOL:
The whole movie pretty much is a laugh out loud moment.


Insert sexual joke here.


Nightmare-inducing, no?


best evil-fighting costume ever

Did I mention the fake orgasm?

30 Days of Night

I had decided to start my horror film review project last night, but I hit a brick wall instantly. What would be the first film to watch? Did I want to watch an actual good classy horror film, or did I want to go the trashy route? I'm a fan of both, but I generally tend to enjoy the laughably bad ones a bit more. Then another consideration came into mind. I bought a PS3 recently to use as a Bluray player (I highly doubt that I'll be torn away from the gaming on my XBOX 360 anytime soon). I decided to pick up a used BD disc at the time that I bought it, so I picked 30 Days of Night up, as it was the only option that I was interested in seeing that I didn't already own as a regular DVD. I decided to make the film my choice of the night, for 27 Dresses (don't laugh) so far has been the only film I have seen in the format.

That might have been a mistake.

I have one major criterion for horror film viewing: the film must be enjoyable to watch. I don't care if it's a serious film or a b-movie if I'm not having fun watching the fucker then what's the point in watching it? Needless to say… I didn't have fun watching 30 Days of Night.

That's not to say it's a shitty movie. It definitely had its high points. I'm quickly beginning to believe that any film that Ben Foster appears in has definitely got something going for it. As usual, Foster pretty much owns all of his scenes as the nasty stranger come to town acting as the vampires' Renfield. Seriously… the guy is impressive and gone from the movie all too soon. I was glad to see Mark Boone Jr. play a part as something other than a sleazebag. You might not recognize the name, but you definitely would recognize the face. Sleazy motel deskman in Memento… Boone! Sleazy partner of Jim Gordon in Batman Begins… Boone! It was nice to see him in a heroic role. As long as I'm talking positives, I've got to mention the fact that I love it when vampires break through the romantic Dracula and Lestat mode. I like my vampires vicious and animalistic. To this day, Near Dark is still my preferred vampire flick because of the savagery of the bloodsuckers in the film (the boner-inducing Jenny Wright may play a part in my love for this film as well). The film delivers on the technical side of things as well. Director David Slade does a decent job here (not quite as promising as his work in Hard Candy). The visuals of the film are downright entrancing. I've always liked the mix of darkness, blood, and snow. I've never seen it done more beautifully than here. The visual effects, make-up, and gore are all great too. WETA is definitely becoming the go-to guys for effects.

Unfortunately, not everything is peachy keen in the film. The film has a tremendously weak narrative. That can't be blamed on the film alone though. 30 Days of Night had that problem as a comic book as well. Writer Steve Niles is a good idea man, but his writing is often shit. The art of Ben Templesmith is what really made the graphic novel shine. The film (and comic) just has so many plot holes that you would think that they just brought ED209 in for a simple demonstration (I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with Robocop). I can't understand how the human survivors exist as long as they do is a mystery considering that they seem to not be eating, drinking, or thinking in any capacity. The leads of the film are also a major drawback. I'm sorry, but Josh Hartnett and Melissa George are two of the blandest actors around these days. I'm pretty sure they continue to find jobs based only on their looks despite the fact that George reminds me of a cartoon rabbit (In fact, I was hoping that Melissa George would be turned just so I could see a buck-toothed vampire. I'm pretty sure it would have been pretty fucking priceless.). The movie has some pretty strange logic as well. Time is very subjective in this movie. One man apparently takes about seven days to turn into a vampire while another may only take two minutes. WTF? Remember when I said that I liked the animalistic portrayal of the vampires? Apparently animalistic also means incredibly stupid at times. I kept waiting for one of the vamps to hike a leg over water hydrant and mark his territory. The vampires speak in their own language of clicks and squeals through most of the movie and apparently lose the ability to speak English except to deliver some really shitty lines. The only vampire to be shown being somewhat intelligent (Danny Huston) spends most of his time walking around looking like the vampire version of Karl from Sling Blade. He does, however, utter the one laugh out loud moment in the movie. "God? No God!" The line is pretty simple, and doesn't really seem funny, but the reading of the line in the film is hilarious in a mentally-handicapped kind of way (I apologize to the mentally-handicapped). Over all, my biggest problem with the film was that lack of fun that I mentioned earlier though. The film takes itself way too seriously, and the only humor in the film is unintentional.

Deaths:

There are a few scenes of mass killing in the film, and I lost count. There were some nice deaths though. I'm particularly fond of "death by snow plow."

Sexy Time:

There was sadly no "sexy time" moments in the film. What did I say about this film not being fun?

LOL:

The film was unfortunately extremely light on the laughs. You know it's a sad day when you're forced to laugh at the retarded portrayal of the squealing bloodsuckers.


"Reckon you make me some biscuits." C'mon... you know you're thinking it.




IMDB tells me this isn't the nerdy guy from Dodgeball and Grandma's Boy, but I can dream.

Review Project

Recently my friend Joe turned me onto a horror movie review blog (http://www.horror-movie-a-day.blogspot.com). I wasn't impressed initially since the first review I read blasted a particular favorite film of mine and its director (who I also love). I noted my distaste and promptly forgot about the site for a few weeks. This week that all changed. I work for a college, and the next couple of weeks fall into the intersession area between the Spring semester and the Summer semester. All activity dies down, and the campus becomes a ghost town. This all has the effect of driving me bat-shit insane from boredom. Therefore, I turn to anything to liven my day up. Well… Horror Movie A Day slipped into rotation once again in my browsing schedule and quickly took over. The reviews are well-written, fuckin' funny as all Hell, and written with that extra special nerdiness that I connect with.

With that said, I'm thinking of attempting a lesser feat. There's no way in Hell I could force myself to watch a horror film and review it every single day of the year. I propose a horror film review three times a week. That will be a task for me, for I haven't really been particularly forthcoming with the blogs lately. I even plan to actually sit down and put some thought into these reviews. The majority of my blogs are just mouth diarrhea anyways. I tend to just blurt out some shit that was never really thought out.

I'll start soon. I promise one within the next few days. I'll be taking suggestions on movies. Feel free to subject me to some horrible shit.