Death For Dinner

The weirdly titled Noriko’s Dinner Table (2006) is a prequel to Suicide Club (2002), which had 54 Japanese school girls jumping off a platform in front of an incoming commuter train. As far as their synchronized death leap goes, their form was pretty good. Not quite Olympics-grade, but well executed nonetheless.

In this follow-up, we see flashbacks of the jump, some over-dramatized knifings, and a lot of yelling. But little else.

Seventeen year-old Noriko is bored and frustrated with her life and runs away from home, only to be recruited into an odd business that rents make-believe family members to those who will pay for such a service.

Not sure how this ties into 54 girls jumping in front of a train. There’s an attempt to connect the dots, but I simply could not figure it out. That, and the darn thing runs for nearly three hours. Where’s a train platform when I need it?

Mean Mountain Monster

Ellen is a good person, but she can’t steer a car worthy of a student driver. Traveling along a mountain road, she crashes into another car. Yes, it was me. She then witnesses a hulking mutant freak with a pasty-white face dragging the body out of the mangled wreck (me) into the woods.

The person doing the dragging is Moonface, a super mean serial killer. (I know, that sounds so generic, but it gets better.) Moonface pursues Ellen, but thanks to survival training with emphasis on guerilla warfare and special weapons tactics forced upon her by her super mean serial husband, she eludes Moonie.

Moonface eventually catches her and drags her to his bloody workshop so far into the woods, even Bigfoot won’t go there. Tied up and knee-deep in corpses, Ellen meets Buddy, a mentally handi-capable hick who warns her of bad things Moonface does to his victims. Case in point: Moonie hauls the body of another woman into the cabin, throws her on a work table and removes her eyes with a drill press. Think butcher meets optometrist.

Using her survival skills she manages to get free and has a punchy fight with Moonface, who gets thrown through a window, but is barely resisting gravity by holding on to a blanket that keeps him suspended over a mega waterfall. A bed cover does not a parachute make.

If you think Incident On And Off A Mountain Road (2005) ends here, shut up your brain. In a smooth twist, Ellen does something that’s both sick and brilliant – and it doesn’t involve shaving her armpits. I’d tell you but it just wouldn’t be as gratifying as all those other movies I’ve plot-spoiled for you. I must be getting soft.

A Monstrously Bad Monster

Monster (2008) is a Cloverfield (2008) knock-off so unbelievably bad, how anyone could claim writer’s credit for this pile of film droppings is more unbelievable. Hell, it’s not even good enough to be a rip-off.

Two American girls doing a hand-held camera documentary on global warming go to Japan to get their take on the whole pollution myth. While fumbling through an interview with the Minister of Garbage (great job title), a 7.5 earthquake rattles everyone’s teeth. Then another and another. An ominous roar is heard reverberating throughout the city and you hear (but don’t see) any buildings being destroyed, or more than three or four people in a city of eight million running for their lives.

This is the first 15 minutes. The rest of Monster is spent with the sisters trading the camera back and forth and crying, whining and checking their makeup. When the monster does show up (wiggling its patently fake rubber legs – less than 30 seconds total on-screen time), it’s so horribly pathetic, you wanna kill your TV.

The DVD cover promised a 200-foot multi-tentacled creature flipping buildings over. This does not happen. What does happen is you get extremely pissed for having wasted $3.99 on something that looked like it was made by a sixth-grader. (Note to six-graders: Sorry about that, but you’ll get your turn.)

Alien Baseball Mitt

An alien baseball mitt with tentacles needs someone with raging emotions to activate it. Enter Sachicko, a fetching young gal who is the target of date rapers and a daughter-beating father. Seething with unexpressed explosion anger, the alien encases her in wicked body armor and steers her boat via the host’s nervous system.

Sachiko is now a Necroborg and has veins on the outside of her face. All messed up and nowhere to go, except we learn the alien life forms have come to Earth to inhabit our bodies then engage in battle with each other. The loser gets eaten alive. In other words, they’re using us as part of a gaming battle ritual. Double not cool, alien baseball mitts.

Necro-Sachiko and Yoji, a would-be suitor back when body parts looked like stuff you’d see in JCPenney™ catalogs and also alien infected, fight it out. But Yoji can’t bring himself to eat his would’a-been girlfriend, so thanks to a bomb he swallowed earlier, he now has the upper tentacle on the alien inside his body. (This Japanese gore rodeo is kinda hard to follow what with people growing new mechanical limbs and/or eaten alive.)

The gore and effects in the descriptively titled Meatball Machine (2005) are choco-extreme, as are the Necroborgs and their power drill super arms. Blood and gunk spray everywhere as if being used as an air freshener. I feel sorry for Yoji having to drill his lady, but that b*tch would’ve been a serious and literal pain in the ass. Couldn’t tell who came out ahead on this one, though, as it’s that splattery.

Heaven and Hell Street Fight

God sends his bestest warriors to Purgatory, a sort of lobby between Heaven and Hell, to purge the place of the Fallen, Hell’s bestest warriors, who’ve taken over operations. (Say what you will about those a-holes, but they do good work.) Purgatory, filled with souls that need rescuing, looks a lot like L.A., but in perpetual darkness, grittier, grimier, slimier, and crimier. But less smog.

All out of Arc Angels, God (whom you don’t get to see, probably because He’s invisible in real life), sends Gabriel to finish the job the previous six AA’s failed to do. They also failed to come back. Each side has seven angels, because the deal is there’s supposed to be balance. It’s hardly equal – Hell is beating the hell out of Heaven.

Gabriel arrives via a swirly tunnel that looks cool if you were drunk and sliding through it. If you’re sober, you’ll probably end up puking. All over puking, not just a cheek full.

Gabe finds all the angels, all of whom are drunks, druggies, hookers and soup kitchen assistant managers. Guess the Good Book wasn’t good enough. Gabe has to re-recruit the angels so they can gang up on Sammael, the head of the Fallen and the one who caused all the nice angels to de-wing.

A few heavenly moments, some interesting positioning (Asmodeus, Sammael’s crazy evil head of security, racks up a lot of points for killing everything), and low-rent special effects. (OK, I get that bright lights means God’s working His magic skills. But every time?)

All this blah-blah leads up to the final confrontation between Gabriel and Sammael. If you know your Bible’s back pages (where the really good stuff goes down), you’ll have already figured out who Sammael is. And no, he isn’t red and doesn’t make fire shoot out of your b-hole.

Slick and stylish, Gabriel (2007) could’ve used a better title, like God Hates Me, I Just Know It. There also needed to be fewer characters with confusing religious names. (Amitiel, Amitiel, Molloch, Remiel…sounds like God’s Mouseketeers.)

Still, Gabriel is a noble effort, though they went through a helluva lot of trouble just to have a fist-fight on a roof top ending.

Godzilla Vs. An Extraterrestrial Can Opener

The Japanese literal translation of Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) is Earth Destruction Directive: Godzilla vs. Gigan. Cool, but a lot of syllables. The U.S. version was titled Godzilla on Monster Island. They didn’t ask me if they could change it.

Giant insect aliens from Space Hunter Nebula-M come to Earth to colonize it (i.e., poop and pee on it). They do this by destroying everything in order to bring peace. (Big deal – we’ve already been doing that for years.) Masquerading as humans, the alien’s plans were captured on a tape recorder, and when played back, caught ears of Godzilla and Anguirus, who were hanging out on Monster Island, catching some rays.

Godzilla sends his little beer b*tch Anguirus to check out the problem. That they do this back talking to each other – in English – really lent credibility to the plot (Their conversation sounds like something a hip-hop DJ does to vinyl.) But Godzilla knew he was gonna have to put on his work clothes and go knock boots with the aliens.

Godzilla gets punched out and Gigan, who has a helmet with a cyclops eye, giant hook hands and a wicked neck-to-nut buzz-saw that, when activated, wrecks your shirt and everything in it, goes to mount him in a total Brokeback Mountain (2005) maneuver. That looked really uncomfortable. But the prison sex moment was interrupted by Anguirus. That was close. King Ghidorah also dog-piles on the party without being invited.

Comical over carnage, the only people watching 1970s Godzilla movies at this point were kids – and me.

Baby-sitting For The Devil

A college sophomore chick so desperate for money, she takes a baby-sitting job (for $400!) at a double creepy house located way out in the woods. It was a set-up to violently extract her soul. By the time the first act of soul violence happens, just over 60 of the movie’s 95 minutes has gone by.

This means it took an hour to establish a girl reluctantly accepting the job in a double creepy house for creepy people on the night of a full lunar eclipse. An hour. I could have read the Necronomicon in that amount of time (the paperback version).

While there’s no evil black gunk on the walls or furniture, there is a bloody pentagram in the attic with a few nicely arranged bodies laying around it. Good feng shui. However, with only a few minutes left, they try and cram in as much remaining plot as possible, with the girl being added (tied) to the pentagram by way of a drugged pizza (really?). Some old witch woman is drawing demonic stick figures on her college stomach. This is done using the artistic medium of blood. (Looked like drugged pizza sauce to me.)

I was hoping something called The House of the Devil (2009) would actually have the Devil in it. I’ve had more evil times in your grandparent’s place. So if a creepy old dude asks you to baby-sit on a lunar eclipse, tell him you’re busy that night eating drugged pizza and making crank calls on your rotary phone.

Nightmare on Phlegm Street

Up to 1991, it’s been a good, if not rewarding 10 years for Freddy Krueger, the supernatural serial killer who has gleefully slaughtered nearly all the kids of Springwood. Unfortunately, there’s still one left, a John Doe who can’t remember his past, but has no problem with nightmares, Freddy’s enabling device.

Freddy attempts to close the file on this one but discovers he’s trapped within Springwood’s city limits. That sucks because the only bar in town closes early. And some more of Freddy’s past is also unveiled. Did you know Freddy was abused as a kid? Or that he was married, had a kid and killed his wife? Truly, an active member of his community.

John Doe gets the thought in his empty grocery bag of a brain that he’s Freddy’s offspring. He’s wrong – it’s one of the chicks he’s hanging out with who is the DNA sample of you-know-who. (Not a spoiler – they telegraph this one.) So it becomes Daddy-Daughter Day, with the girl giving her dear old melted face dad a Father’s Day gift in the form of a pipe bomb. A tie is more traditional, but points for originality.

The otherworldly fight scenes between Maggie (wouldn’t it be funny if she was named Frida Krueger?) and Freddy are inventive but double corny, especially when the movie switches to 3-D in Freddy’s world. But then, that’s why we watch sucker bait movies like Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). And by we, I mean me.

So is Freddy really dead? I don’t know as I quit watching any more of these sequels after this. OK, that is a total lie. I didn’t want you to think less of me. Sigh.

Zombies Fly First-Class

First it was Tail Sting (2001, scorpions on a plane), then Snakes On A Plane (2006, snakes on a plane), now Flight of the Living Dead (2007, zombies on a plane). No word if anyone is gonna make Octopus On A Plane. Because if they did, I HAVE to be in it. No matter, because this movie rocks.

A woman is kept in a science box in the cargo of a transatlantic flight. Her body is filled with germs, that if studied, could lead to a new war weapon: a way for military guys who can keep fighting after they’ve been killed in combat. When turbulence causes the science box to open, an armed guard shoots the woman. But she comes back to life and eats his neck. (Snacks on a plane.)

He then reanimates and bites passengers and causes a plight on this flight. To, um, juice things up a notch, the plane is flying headlong into not one but two gnarly storms, which cause the plane to rock and roll. Two cops are on board and they smartly use their automatic weapons in a pressurized cabin. The pilot and copilot have been zombified and a military jet is on their six (rear door) with orders to stop that plane at all costs.

The blood, neck pieces and explosive violence is wildly fun. Where it really hits the gas is when the airplane door gets opened at 30,000 feet. What happens next is stuff of legend.

Book a flight with the undead – it’s the only way to rack up frequent die’r miles. P.S. I did a shorter review of this a while back, so like, don’t get all up in my cockpit about me being lazy.

Puppet Purgatory

The Great Vorelli is great for several reasons, none of which has anything to do with his righteous beard. Vorelli is a hypnotist/ventriloquist who, along with his lap dummy Hugo, thrill London audiences with amazing feats of making wood talk. Backstage, Vorelli keeps Hugo in a locked cage. I would’ve stuffed him in a closet or something. But what the hell do I know about ventriloquism?

Hugo, as it turns out, houses the soul of a former assistant, transferred there by Vorelli. And Vorelli hates that little b-hole, mocking and taunting him by saying stuff like, “You’ll never drink booze again.” (Actually, it was wine, but I don’t like wine, so I substituted booze instead. It’s my blog – I do what I want.)

Vorelli is fixated on a young heiress and plans to use his skills to make her hot for him so he can appropriate her bank account. Vorelli needs the doll to kill her and transfer her soul into the puppet, thereby making Hugo’s chi homeless. But the dummy ain’t no dummy, and Hugo gets his moment in the sun by turning tables on his brow-beating boss.

Vorelli has about as much charisma as an articulated mannequin. Hugo doesn’t say much, but is a man of action and pulls a soul-transfer maneuver Vorelli would’ve been impressed with. And the heiress’ boyfriend? A trophy to parade around until he’s needed to finally do something in the last two minutes. Devil Doll (1964) needed a woodchipper to liven things up.