Shark Porn v.2

In The Deep, YET ANOTHER shark movie, washes up on the beach August 2, 2016. Originally titled 47 Meters Down (both names suck clam nectar), Deep follows The Shallows (2016) and goes like this:

“Two sisters become trapped at the bottom of the ocean when a diving expedition to observe sharks goes horribly wrong. When the cable attaching the observation cage to the boat breaks and the cage sinks to the bottom of the ocean, the sisters must figure out a way to get back to safety battling injuries, lack of oxygen, and, worst of all, bloodthirsty great white sharks.”

Yep, as weak as the title. (Note to math heads: 47 meters measures out to 154.16 feet. This doesn’t bode well for the sunk sisters as a real shark named “Shack” was tracked by scientists as diver downining 1200 meters – nearly 4,000 feet.

This fun fact was found on the Discovery Channel’s™ website for the ratings powerhouse Shark Week, the annual week-long TV series featuring a ton of sharks doing a ton of chowing. (Note to shark heads: Shark Week premiered July 1988. That’s some serious chow power.)

The website features a prehistoric breed of shark called Helicoprion. Sounds like a Swedish prog metal band name. They should make a movie with Heli as the star as this thing has a buzz saw mouth. The friendly sea roast never stood a chance.

The revelation of Helicoprion finally answers the question of where W.A.S.P.’s Blackie Lawless got the idea for his britches…

Shark Porn

Ever notice how Lou Diamond Phillips looks just like porn legend Peter North? From the neck up, anyway.

In the rogue shark movie Red Water (2003), Lou plays a charter boat captain in Louisiana in financial trouble because his business is seasonal and his customers aren’t. He used to work on oil rigs, but they had a blow out and two guys were killed. It wasn’t Lou’s fault, but he blames himself and traded his hot wife and career to own a stinky boat that barely floats. I probably would’ve done the same thing, but kept the hot wife (in case the boat quit working and we needed to be rowed back to land).

Speaking of which, she shows up as a rep for the EPA wanting to charter his boat so she can keep tabs on the oil drilling going on up river. Lou’s hot ex-wife is played by Kristy Swanson, the original and ONLY Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also in the drilling zone is three million dollars scuttled when the feds were closing in on a drug run gone horribly awry.

Now the drug dealer who owns the spending rights wants it all back and hires a shark-bitten scuba expert/criminal to retrieve it. He also sends rap icon Coolio along to keep an eye on things. Coolio has played good guys before, but he really shines here as a gangsta thug brandishing a gun to cap yo’ ass and using appropriate street talk to get his point across.

Prior to these soon-to-cross scenarios, a 12-foot bull shark has made it up river and has eaten several people. I see you waving a red flag here: sharks are salt water fish. Not so fast — bull sharks are ambidextrous. The criminals clash with Lou, resulting in a MANY opportunities to bleed in the water. To a hungry shark, that’s like a refreshing human beverage to wash down its hourly meals.

Realistic criminal behavior, all-purpose explosions and enlarged fish attacks build up to a well-staged climax. Lou’s past factors in nicely on the final face-off with the shark (which looks like its made of some sort of water-proof rubber when it launches (!) out of the water to eat people).

The oil drill, it should be noted, looks to be of Peter North proportions, if you catch my drift. But it’s the snappy dialogue and double-crossing gangstas that are the real heroes here.

All That Cremains

Uh, oh, a funeral home guy did something he wasn’t supposed to do — cremate two bodies at the same time to save money. Problem was, he got the ashes mixed up, and the barbecued leftovers of a little girl and a serial killer were combined. You can bet the funeral guy got in big trouble for this, but you don’t know how deep the death doo doo is until the end of this ambitious and inventive indie vid.

So begins Cremains (20010), a trilogy of horror with the narrative wrap-around. Funeral Dude recants several tales of horror to a couple of disembodied voices that are questioning him about his questionable ethics/business practices. (Note to self: don’t talk to ghosts – they’re big time scary.)

One morbid story finds a woman driving through a weird community looking for a sacrificial something-or-other for Jerry, the town snake.

The next is a nasty short about a suicide counselor helping teens realize their whiny, attention-getting threats at offing themselves.

In the third, a woman believes she’s being stalked by a neck-licking vampire that used to be her girlfriend. (Friendship sucks.)

To wrap things up, the mom of the little girl who died made a deal with a witch to bring back her daughter. All the bitc…, uh, witch needs is the ashes from the freshly-roasted girl. See where this is going?

Lots of bare boobies, rumps, a little gore (including a guy getting his head run over by his own car), and a death-seeking creature whose face looks like a burnt summer camp marshmallow. What’s not to like?

New York – A Killer Vacation Destination

Resurrected by an underwater electrical cable (a good source of power and vitamins for the dead), Jason Voorhees, the unstoppable hockey-masked serial killer is nearly showroom ready YET AGAIN. A believable though predictable beginning for Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989).

A boat load of dumbass high school dumbasses are pleasure boating up the coast to go spread their dumbassery around New York. Jason loves boats (kyaks in particular), so he grabs hold of the S.S. Scream ’n Die’s anchor and gets a Lyft™.

What few survivors left escape by row, row, rowing the rest of the way to New York, where Jason follows. Strolling the well-littered streets of Manhattan, Jason punches a mouthy gangbanger so hard, his head comes clean off. A bit dramatic, but hey, JV was just excited to be anywhere except Crystal Lake for a change.

In town with a few days to kill (heh), Jason takes in the sights: Times Square, the sewer system (kind of the same thing), and a nightclub (he skated without paying cover). The movie’s ongoing joke is that one of horror’s most prolific killing machines could walk mostly unnoticed among the city’s jaded residents.

Jason gets a taste of New York hospitality when toxic waste is poured into the sewer and his flesh dissolves like Alka-Seltzer™ after a long night killin’ it in the City That Never Sleeps. (He’ll be back.)

Say what you will about the Big Apple – you can’t get this kind of entertainment in Los Angeles.

Haunted Country Music

Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967). Sounds like a reality TV show. It certainly has all the ingredients: country singers, a haunted house, a gorilla, a supermodel, international spies and Merle Haggard. (Not making that up.) Heck, this thing would pair nicely with The Real Housewives of Melbourne and Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood.

Three country singers – one of which is the camera-ready Joi Lansing – are on the way to Nashville, home of white shoe wearing music legends and good ’ol boy alcoholics. (State law – you have to be drunk all the time in Nashville.)

Car trouble forces the trio to spend the night in an abandoned house with no amenities, except for a TV and nourishment (electricity) to power it. These troubadour squatters don’t know it, but in the basement is a ring of spies trying to get their lips around a top-secret formula for rocket fuel (geez, guys – it’s right on the label of a bottle of Jagermeister™), all of which is made even more entertaining with an unruly gorilla hanging around.

However, this “horror” music comedy is distinguished by music interludes done by Joi and Ferlin Husky (great name – the red-headed country/rockabilly/pop legend behind the classic Champagne Ladies And Blue Ribbon Babies/1974), and footage on the tube of a clean Merle Haggard before he met Jack Daniels™ and made and endless stream of immortal duets.

Numerous knuckle-headed comedy segments with horror legends John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr. and Basil Rathbone. But it’s the last 15 minutes that rocks the haunted house with music performances by Merle (iconic icon), Sonny James (20 Number One country hits) and Country Music Hall of Fame’r Ferlin, sportin’ red hair, white shoes and a tight Chicago Boxcar Boston Back hairdoo. (You can get ahead with a style like that.)

P.S. Hillbillys in a Haunted House is the sequel to Las Vegas Hillbillys (1966). Didn’t see that one as I was informed it didn’t have gorillas playing slot machines while Frank, Dean and Sammy drank rocket fuel and embarked on madcap adventures.

Space Wife

In Solaris (2002), professionally handsome George Clooney plays a widowed psychologist sent to the space station orbiting Solaris (hey – same name as the movie title – neato!), a new planet with potential Starbuck’s™ applications. He has to find out why the crew gooned out and aren’t returning Earth’s tweets.

When he arrives (just a mere shuttle flight once you pass the moon on the left hand side, what crew isn’t dead is gooned out. Seems they’ve been having visitors drop by. These visitors are a physical manifestation of someone in your life. For George, it’s his dead wife who he’s been in power-grieving mode for since she committed suicide after an argument she and George had. He carries guilt around like a grocery bag.

When she suddenly appears, he goons out. Rationally, he knows it can’t be her, even though she still smells as fresh as a Nordstrom’s™ 1/2 off shoe sale. He tricks her into getting into an escape pod, and jettisons the illusion to the lunar curb. The next day she shows up again. What the hell? Is she, a space boomerang?

Clearly, this is the work of drugs. Or Solaris. Probably drugs. There is a way to permanently kill off the visitors, but it involves a science weapon of some sort. This gal, though, wants to die because she knows she’s not real, and drinks liquid oxygen. (Shaken, not stirred, served up.) But soon she resurrects and it’s back to being boring.

Another plan is devised to get out of Solaris’ gravitational pull in the escape module, but George stays to be with his artificial wife because he still hearts her. Then he ends up back on Earth and cuts himself while chopping up mouth-watering zucchini in his kitchen. That’s odd — his cut just healed instantaneously. That must mean… Yep, he’s officially dull, too.

There’s just no other way to put this: Solaris is a really boring sci-fi movie with more talking than outer space-y stuff.

Unborn To Be Wild

Strangled by his twin sister’s belly button extension cord while in a womb without a view, Jumby was stillborn — something he’s still very pissed off about.

His sister made it out alive and grows up to be a supermodel-worthy college hottie who walks around in Victoria’s Secret™ panties (page nine of the summer catalog/3 for $30). This is a plot device that never gets old.

 Lately, though, she’s been having real-time nightmares of a back-from-the-dead Zombie Jumby. Dumb name — he should be thankful he wasn’t born. (Note: Though dead on arrival, Zombie Jumby is portrayed to be about 8-years-old. How does that work?)

The neighbor kid she baby-sits keeps showing up and doing the spooky trance thing, declaring Jumby wants to be born right the screaming heck now. Then she finds out she was a twin and that her mother committed suicide in an insane asylum over Jumby’s less-than-spectacular debut. Throw in a ridiculously reaching back story involving a family curse, Nazis and a demon wanting revenge, and you have one fright-less turd of a “horror thriller.”

 

The chills and spook moments in The Unborn (2009) are so stock as to have been downloaded off the Internet. The Jewish (!) exorcism is so clumsy, I could’ve done a better job — and even given them a discount as business has been slow lately.

P.S. Do your utmost best to not confuse this The Unborn with 1991’s The Unborn, a heartwarming family horror flick about a couple who can’t have children (lucky them), but chose to go the in-vitro fertilization route facilitated by an insane doctor, which yields them a science-gone-wrong kid. Unlucky them.

Put Your Teeth Into Love

The problem with being a high school female spokesperson for The Promise, a Christian abstinence group, is that your pitch is only believable if you’re south of good looking. Not so for Dawn O’Keefe, a smoldering blonde hottie who tries believing in abstinence, even though her heart and lower heart are sending mixed signals.

After going swimming with a boy she’s sweet on, he gets his hot on seeing Dawn in that abstinence-free bathing suit and forces himself upon her. It’s here Dawn discovers she has an inner goddess — teeth in her womanly tool shed. And those of us without dentures know what teeth do.

Dawn goes to a vaginacologist, who examines her. But what he’s really doing is tryin’ to get some. Snap! Cancel all the doctor’s appointments. Depressed and seeking comfort with a greasy classmate who has been trying to get jiggy wid it, she gets drunk and has sex with him and…the phone rings during the process and the boy brags to his buddy he won the bet. Of all the things to say at that moment, this wasn’t one of them. Snap!

Then Dawn finds out her sick mother died while her punk rock/heavy metal brother was having improper relations with some romantical skank, leaving mom’s calls for help unanswered. Dawn knows what she must do — have sex with her brother, whom she’s intensely disliked every since he got tattoos and started smoking drugs and listening to non-Christian metal.

The family moment lasts about one minute until… Snap! She calmy gets up and “releases” his Oscar Meyer on the floor where the brother’s pitbull… I’d rather not say.

Teeth (2008) features from-the-waist-up sex and more sliced hot dogs than lunchtime at Nathan’s™. So yeah, you’ll watch it, even though it’ll pain you to do so.

Haunted Casa

Any demonic possession movie that showcases the legendary Latino acting skills of Eric Estrada – who starred in the street-tough Homeboys From Outer Space and Extra-Large: Gonzales’ Revenge – can’t be entirely bad. Then again…

In Spirits (1990), Eric – who plays a priest with right-side up crosses – gets sexed up in a dream sequence while a ghostly succubus uses language unbecoming of church, and opens a door in the basement in a haunted house to another dimension. (Unfortunately, it didn’t lead to a 7-Eleven™, a 24-hour convenient dimension/Heaven that is a gold mine of chilled and refreshing cans/bottles of adult juice.)

A snooping psychic (Brinke Stevens) becomes possessed (by a ghost demon and/or refreshing cans/bottles of adult juice) and hammers nails into her own hands. Ouch, yet I felt it was necessary to the plot.

All of Spirits verily sucks except Eric, so you may want to consider hammering nails into your own hands for more entertainment value. P.S. Don’t hammer nails into your hands. You might miss the nail and smack your fingers with the hammer. That would freakin’ hurt.

Aliens Taking A Crop

In the time waster Silent Warnings (2003), a nutbag survivalist in Oregon gets himself blown up real good while chasing aliens invading his remote farm.

So his cousin, just now graduating from college, rounds up five friends (three of which are supermodels) to clean up the inherited property, sell it, then probably buy drugs with which to get high.

These city hippies discover crop circles all over the farm’s cornfields and notice that everything is starting to smell electrical. Then there are the nightly visitations, abductions, then ultimately a confrontation with the aliens who are using crop circles as a means of transportation. A sort of Old McDonald Stargate, if you happen to be partially standing in a spot where the circles suddenly appear, you’re vertically cut in half, as illustrated with the Cuisinart-ing of one post-grad student.

By the time the sheriff arrives, everybody’s screaming and shooting at the aliens, neither of which are doing any good. Somebody figures out that iron is the only thing that’ll kill the spacey farmjackers. Once again, metal saves the day.

The aliens are digitally transposed into scenes and look like 1980s cartoon figures. I offered to put on an alien suit to scare the smug outta those thugs, but the movie’s producer said aliens don’t have beer guts. How the hell does he know? He ever been to Mars? I have. In fact I’m going there as soon as I gas up the ’ol Stargate.