Death Denied – But Not For Long

The filmmakers lost sight of what made their first two Death-comes-calling Final Destination movies so kick ass and turned this franchise into an assembly line of “yeah, what ev” deaths.

In Final Destination 3 (2006) there’s no story to speak of and the killings just aren’t that cool. (Example: Two topless teen chicks roast to well done in a sun-tanning bed. When does that not happen on a daily basis?) Attempting to piece together clues as to how and why Death is coming for them, a guy and his girl go through the motions to try and stop the chain of events that will inevitably lead to their expiration dates.

 Two sorta cool things: The DVD comes with a feature that allows you to “choose their fate,” meaning you have the power to save their lives. I kept choosing “die,” so I don’t know what happens when you hit the “don’t die” button.

The alternate ending is much better than anything the movie has to offer and echoes the original FD, but with a train instead of a plane. While I might have gone with a submarine loaded with Mentos™ and Cherry Coke™ heading for a busy intersection with malfunctioning stop lights, I’m down with the choo choo.

An Ode To Rubber Monsters

Monster X Strikes Back: Attack At The G Summit (2009) is a comedic homage to Japanese giant rubber monsters, though I fail to see the point about making fun of giant rubber monsters. I’m thinkin’ oxymoron.

Nevertheless, world leaders have gathered for another windbag summit, right about the time Guilala – a giant creature with some Godzilla pointy things on his back, a horizontal flat face a horn and two perfectly straight antennae that probably gets all the channels – shows up to crash the party. The monster was brought back from outer space as spore and, when exposed to Earth’s atmosphere, grew into the mega-tall dumbass he is today.

The G8 Summit leaders decide to help Japan from becoming a demolition derby. Japan fails with their use of controlling magma and earthquakes. Russia fails with Polonium 20, a poison so strong, it can kill anything. (Don’t know what Russia’s czar was thinking – I’ve eaten sandwiches that were more toxic.) England fails because, well, they’re England. (Their plan was to drop giant headphones on Guilala and pipe in thought-disrupting frequencies. In the States we call that heavy metal.) Then someone gets a bright idea to cover Guilala in a huge sheet of Saran Wrap™ and pump pink-colored gas into his lungs.

The monster thinks their attempts are hysterical and laughs out loud. Time to call out the nuclear warhead, which may or may not kill Guilala. But everyone’s fresh outta ideas. Fortunately, the villagers nearby do a song and dance routine to invoke the mighty Lord Take-Majin, a multi-armed golden deity who grows from a small statue holding a fire extinguisher and an umbrella, to equal size and weight of his opponent.

 Take-Majin appears right as the nuke arrives – and sticks it right into his own golden rump. A momentary distraction as Take-Majin, um, shoves the missile all the way in and farts. Not making this up. I really wish I was. Guilala gets in a few good pops before Take-Majin cuts G’s head off as though it were a pimento loaf. Japan is safe once again from itself.

There’s some other stuff going on involving a supermodel news reporter and a mad scientist with a gang of giggling supermodels, called the Pleasure Squad. But don’t let yourself get distracted or you won’t be able to appreciate the subtle nuances of Guilala’s ping-pong ball antennae.

Kiss My Abyss

The USS Montana, a ballistic missile submarine, sinks near the b-hole gapingly deep Cayman Trough, where weird fish swim/poo. American and Soviet ships and subs race to salvage it (the re-sale of ballistic missiles on eBay™ is freakin’ HUGE).

A hurricane is forecast to make waves about the time a Navy SEAL goes all high-pressure nervous system crazy and plans to drop a nuke into the Trough to kill the NTIs (non-terrestrial intelligence) thought to be behind the sinking of the Montana. So it wasn’t gangsta clams as previously thought.

A brave dumbass volunteers to sink several miles down in a liquid-filled suit to disarm the nuke, the NTI’s show up looking like Disney™-made jellyfish to save the day. (Their first appearance was in the shape of a water hot dog, probing the underwater sub-station to check things out, a cool effect I often use in the shower.)

But it’s not the aliens that rock The Abyss (1989); it’s the fluid-choked people drama that scores. The parts where a chick has to voluntarily drown herself in order to be rescued, the bomb disarming descent into the bottomless toilet void, and the liquid-filled diving suit scene where the guy has to load his lungs with some sort of liquid, are the things that make lower extremities clench. And the NTIs? Yeah, kinda cool for water hot dogs and such.

Meat – It’s Good For Every Body

 

You gotta be careful who you meat, uh, meet online. Noelle and Adam connect in an online chat room called In The Garden of Eatin’ (OK, I made that part up) that’s full of delicious new people. They agree to meet in person, hold hands, smooch and rub each other’s tender loins.

 As it turns out Noelle has a taboo-esque fetish involving the consuming of human flesh. As it also happens, Adam has a unique personality tick as well – to have his flesh dined upon. What are the odds of meeting your dinner mate on the web?

Through artsy flashbacks, sparse dialogue (“Why won’t you cut out my spleen and grill it for dinner? Don’t you love me?” OK, I made that part up) and romantic music, both get their wish. The problem is, the extracting of grillables (only internal organs, not the flavor-laden buttsteak or femur soup bones) and shocking lack of blood and gore totally ruin this meal, to say nothing of the Art Institute™ level of acting.

I never thought I’d ever have to say a cannibal movie was boring, but Diary of a Cannibal (2006) left a bad taste in my mouth – and not in a good way.

The Horror of Christmas

One of the most horrifying movies ever made, A Christmas Carol (1951) is full-of-nothing-but-bad-news ghosts of Christmas past, present and future that strong-arm a rich miser with metaphorically crooked teeth into holiday-loving wussdom.

The haunted Scrooge, who learned a valuable moral lesson and became mega-nice because of it, gave in way too easily.

Zombie Elephants

Scheduled for release on Blu-ray™/DVD February 3, 2015, Zombie Killers: Elephant’s Graveyard has probably the most interesting and confusing title going. It’s assumed there are zombies. But zombie elephants?  If one were to go by the title alone, that would be the assumption. And the synopsis is no help, either…

“A community comes under siege by something horrible that is not what it seems. Life vs. death, living vs. existing all come to the forefront of a stand out action film.”

We’re under siege by something horrible alright – lousy copy writing. And if that wasn’t enough, the trailer is about as cliched as one can get: zombies encroaching on the living who are armed to the teeth with military grade guns. The living argue amongst themselves while the undead stand around waiting to be fed. Everything in-between is just a video game.

So no zombie elephants. I’m so disenchanted right now.

This Horror Is For The Birds

Bodega Bay in Northern California is a small seaside town. Until recently, all was Norman Rockwell life as usual as life could be living next to stinky low tides.

A snubbed rich socialite shows up to chase – and possibly hook up with – a fashion catalog worthy handsome man. He thinks she’s a b*tch. She kinda is. But hey, she’s high tide hot, so my advice would be to play this one out.

This encounter coincides with unusual attacks on the townsfolk by indigenous birds, which may or may not include flesh-eating pterodactyls. OK, maybe not. A metaphor on how women nag men, the pecking escalates into a full-blown war on all things human by countless seagulls, murders of crows, a duck, and I think a squadron or two of vultures. Time to cry fowl. Heh.

Eyes get jabbed out by beaks of destruction. Children birthday parties get spoiled by air raids of gulls. Cars get covered with metric tons of bird sh*t. The socialite takes refuge at the handsome man’s house where he lives with his little sister and conservative mother, all of whom are beleaguered by the winged doom-bringers. Who would have thought mere stupid birds could bring so much beaked beat down?

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) is one of the all time greatest horror movies ever because the killer birds are real. No stunt feathers here. Amazingly, there is no soundtrack to this film either, so oboe warnings of impending attacks are nowhere to be heard.

And the birds? They’re about to rearrange the pecking order of the entire Human Race. Heh.

Horror Appetizers

In the mood for generic horror? Hey, who among us isn’t? That’s kind of a snarky set-up as there’s rarely anything new in horror, from title to plot. But heck, I’d rather watch a cookie-cutter horror movie than a chick flick anyday. And documentaries that aren’t about UFOs or Bigfoot? Not gonna waste my time, man.

So, here’s a few more to distract you from watching educational and or com/rom films…

Dark Summer (2015)
“While home alone under house arrest, a teenager undergoes a terrifying brush with the supernatural in this stylish, hair-rising horror film.”

I bet the terrifying brush with the supernatural is her having to grow up and find a job.

It Follows (2015)
“For 19-year-old Jay the fall should be about school, boys, and weekends at the lake. Yet, after a seemingly innocent sexual encounter, she suddenly finds herself plagued by nightmarish visions; she can’t shake the sensation that someone, or something, is following her. As the threat closes in, Jay and her friends must somehow escape the horrors that are only a few steps behind.”

They had me at innocent sexual encounter, although close encounters of the sex kind are rarely innocent. At least that’s what Christian websites tell you. Yet another reason to have sex.

Army of Frankensteins (2015)
“After a failed attempt to propose to his girlfriend, Alan Jones is beaten to within an inch of his life by a street gang and taken to a mysterious lab where Dr. Tanner Finski and his kid genius assistant perform horrible experiments on him hoping to re-animate a Frankenstein. The experiments lead to a hole being ripped in space and time, manifesting an army of Frankensteins from hundreds of parallel universes and sending them all back to the 19th century, directly into the heart of a bloody battle between the North and South.”

OK, this one sounds pretty cool. Really wish they’d quit using “Frankenstein” to indicate monsters. It should be “Frankenstein’s Monsters” as Dr. Frankenstein was the crazy S.O.B. who built the creature from scratch.

P.S. Try your hardest not to confuse Army of Frankensteins with the similarly titled Frankenstein’s Army, a Hellrasier-ish (1987) and surreal sci-fi flick that came out in 2013 and features some of the coolest monsters this side of Silent Hill (2006).

Dr. Feelgood

The Richard Miller University got an upgrade: the insane asylum ward, shut down for years, has been renovated and re-opened as a dorm for freshman arriving at college. (I’m sorry – did I just yawn?)

It was in this asylum Dr. Burke performed experimental lobotomies on his teenage patients. Then his patients ran out of patience, wrapped him in barb-wire and subsequently made him the exact opposite of healthy. Not sure how, but Burke is back to continue his work. (Oops – another yawn.)

Playing out almost exactly like Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), each student dies according to his or her dark past. For the muscle-bound jock, it’s being fat. For a cold hottie it’s being beaten by her boyfriend. (For me it’d be swimming in a lake of Budweiser™ – without fashionable swim trunks.) Burke, cracking jokes (but not as good as Freddy Krueger) transports his victims into the scene of their fear.

 With Asylum (2008) you seen it all before, you’ve heard it all before. Burke looks like a Rent-A-Center™ version of a Hellraiser (1987) Cenobite with the bondage leather and barb-wire shirt, but he has neither the wit nor style to carry it off. Once impaled by his own lobotomy picks, black stuff leaks out and all the souls he’s collected over the years float away like hot-air victims. I have GOT to stop yawning as it’s so rude.

Hook In Mouth

The Vader-voiced, trench coat wearing, chick magnetizing Candyman is the Barry White of Bogeymen. In Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (1999), his third flick, the hook-handed hunk goes after his great-great-great granddaughter, Bay Watch’s Donna D’Erricho.

 She doesn’t believe in HIM and that makes Candyman very unsociable. So he shoots bees out of his mouth and kills all of her friends with his gut-ripping skills. Been there, stung that.

An interesting angle, which they failed to follow through with, included a cult of stinky Goth Candyman disciples who “believe.” Little more than “look who’s stalking,” C-3 (based in East L.A.!) fails to generate any creepiness. Even the eviscerations are dull.

Tony Todd as Candyman phones it in and, while D’Errico is gorgeous, all she does is run around in tight tank tops which she keeps on at all times. That qualifies as falsie advertising in my book.