Descent Into Double Hell

The Descent: Part 2 (2009), picks up where The Descent (2005) left off, with Sarah Carter, the lone survivor of the women-only subterranean shopping trip/cannibal fest, is in the hospital, unable to recall the horrific events that left her friends eaten alive by sightless cave creatures.

Meanwhile, a police search party, led by professional underground explorers with cool flashlights and glow sticks, is under way. The sheriff, though, finds out the blood Sarah was covered with didn’t leak out of any of her primary orifices, but rather one of the friends whose bodies they can’t seem to find. Because she was only banged up by the Crawlers, Sarah is deemed cave-worthy, and is forced BY LAW to return to the vast Appalachian underground cave system to look for survivors. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

A creaky elevator in an abandoned mine shaft takes the sheriff and his female cop, three pro-cave climbers and Sarah into the pits of Purgatory. It’s not long before they find the rat-chewed body of one of the women. This freaks out Sarah and her memory comes rushing back. Time to get the hell outta Hell. She takes off, leaving the others to fend for themselves. And all the while that eerie clicking noise made by the Crawlers is getting closer.

The creature attacks are well-staged, with those blind, hairless, naked and hungry flesh-eaters (i.e., Goth fans) coming out of nowhere. The trick is to not make any noise as the beasts track by sound. Hard to do that when your neck croissant is bitten and your blood spraying like a shower nozzle. A gun shot triggers a cave-in, and all are separated. For the Crawlers this is good news as their meals are better when served ala carte.

What makes Descent 2 decent (heh) is the added twists. It could’ve been a cookie-cutter slaughterfest and you’d be suitably gleeful. But they took it to the next level with “you didn’t see it coming” swerves. Suffice to say, there are killer (ahem) gory/goon-out moments, and one particularly nasty scene, which finds Sarah and the lady cop in a pool of fetid water. Turns out it wasn’t a pool after all, but an outhouse. Or would that be an in-house since it’s essentially indoors? I must ponder that over a bowl of black lumpy oatmeal.

One more clever twist sets up the escape sequence, which leaves the cave wide open for another sequel. Watch The Descent: Part 2 — it’ll scare the hole outta you. 

Bats vs. Humans

Bats: Human Harvest (2007). Suckered yet again by a craptacular movie with an intriguing title. This “sequel” finds the U.S. Army being tasked with finding an AWOL scientist in the Chechen Rebel-controlled Russian forest of Belzan. It doesn’t look like Belzan, rather upstate Vermont during raking season.

The scientist managed to turn local bats into flesh-eaters to keep people from capturing him. A Russian-born supermodel CIA agent is in charge of leading a military special ops team into the batty forest. How she does this without taking her shirt off is a glaring plot discrepancy.

 The bats look like crows with pointy wings and they’re supposed to rip flesh as if made of one-ply toilet paper. Yeah, that didn’t happen. The plot stalls on the runway five minutes in. There’s no suspense or graphic scenes of nature-gone-wild. A bomb ends the bat problem and the movie.

I could’ve scratched my butt for 90 minutes and had more satisfying entertainment than this guano. But thanks to Gold Bond™ medicated powder (or “talcum in the middle”) that is no longer an option.

Ouija Boards and Zombies

Platoon of the Dead (2009) may not be the worst zombie movie ever made (pretty close, though), but it does have the worst explanation for the zombies: five teens resurrecting an evil entity via a Ouija Board™, which popped out and turned the dead into the undead. I would’ve bought anything from tainted Cheetos™ to a Republican agenda, but a game board you can buy at Wal-Mart™ for $10? And given the sub-standard special effects (rubber body parts, plastic machine guns that shoot “lasers”, peanut butter blood), that’s about how much they spent on the entire movie.

Three marines – a wussy private, an insubordinate sergeant, and a heavy metal long hair lieutenant – find themselves behind enemy lines as well as being the lone survivors of a zombie army ambush raised by the evil entity. Yes, these military zombies carry guns.

Cornered in an abandoned house, a battle with plastic laser rifles ensues, with animated light bursts being shot all over the place, with only a few finding their mark. (Note: Never in the history of the military has there been anyone with hair longer than a five o’clock shadow. Clearly, this hippie is NOT a true member of the Armed Forces.)

Very little gore, and what entrails do make an appearance are not even close to being believable; When two zombie kids trap a big-boobed woman in the basement, it’s all she can do to keep from laughing as the children “rip” open her stomach while she lays absolutely still.

I figured out why the zombies in this “movie” all wore gas masks – they didn’t want anyone to know they were starring in this festival of crap.

Sand Zombies

Nazi zombies are guarding six million taxable dollars in gold buried in the Sahara Desert. Dune of the Dead – heh.

Robert, an unmotivated college student needing a haircut and a swift kick in the pants, receives word his father just died. The good news is his dad hasn’t turned into a zombie. The bad news is, HE’S DEAD.

While reading dead dad’s diaries, Robert learns about the gold and decides to screw his University degree and get rich quick. For me that’d be a tough call: get degree, buy white collar shirt, work in office building, photocopy butt during company parties, or fight off undead Nazi soldiers? That’s pretty much the only thing standing between me and owning everything plus a swimming pool.

Time to go shovel shopping! And hey, why not bring a bunch of tasty friends along, just for enjoyment? The Nazombies don’t want anyone taking their gold, because they need it for investment and retirement purposes, eating those that would make off with their stash. Most of this is done off-camera. Great – a zombie movie that doesn’t show zombies applying their only marketable skill.

Oasis of the Zombies (1981) displays too many plot deviations, about 14 too many characters, and horror moments that aren’t shown. Sigh. And I could’ve gotten my laundry done instead of watching this thing in my bathing suit.