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.

Ghost Shark: Bites From Beyond

2013’s Ghost Shark is memorable for a number of reasons, sub-budget special effects/dialogue/acting notwithstanding. But first you have to ignore the plot, which gives Ghost Shark its rai·son d’ê·tre.

After being fed a hand grenade thrown from a fishing boat by redneck a-holes, Ghost Shark’s corpse floats into a half-submerged cave where early settlers performed satanic rituals. (Okay, what?) It is here Dead Shark is converted into a glowing, transparent kill-beast able to trans-morph out of any body of water, be it a fire hydrant, bath tub, swimming pool, mud puddle and even a bottled water drinking fountain. And this is exactly what makes Ghost Shark’s 84 minutes of dumbassery entertaining.

GS crashes a pool party and devours teenagers. GS opens wide and swallows little kids on a Slip ’n Slide™, an unsuspecting youngster shooting down the shark’s throat as if a human oyster on the half shell. A mayor’s assistant pouring himself a cool and refreshing paper cup of thirst quenching death after GS leaves the bottled water container and is delivered to the assistant’s insides, where it splits the guy in half during the chewing out. (This scene alone is worth an Academy Award.)

Time wasters until Ghost Shark straps on the feedbag: a drunk lighthouse keeper, savaged by guilt for killing his wife in said satanic cave years ago who seeks revenge on GS. Not sure how that works. The smack-talking mayor going on a Jaws-driven balance-of-justice boat ride. (His crunchy death – being sucked down a watery toilet – as a true feel-good moment.) Tthen there’s the never-ending parade of young girls in bikinis and a really, really fat guy riding a jet ski that looked like it might get permanently lodged into FG’s ass crack on the next wave.

Back to the bikinis: Most horror films feature young gals in their 20s, probably still in community college or of X-rated movie age. Not so with Ghost Shark; The girls running around in kite string swimsuits are barely (heh) in high school. I felt somewhat dirty watching Ghost Shark make fish bait out of jail bait. I would’ve showered my shame away afterward, but hey – Ghost Shark possibly coming through the nozzle.

P.S. Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws (pending 2015) is not a sequel or related to Ghost Shark. It’s an indie movie (i.e., made with two New Zealand guys and a Best Buy™ video camera) that was supposed to have come out in 2010. Time to put down the Foster’s mates, and show us some of your Down Under horror. Okay, that didn’t come out right.

Demonic Demon v.2

And the sequels keep on sequeling. Sinister 2, arriving in theaters August 12, 2015, continues the evil doings of Buhguul (dumb name, hard to pronounce, hard to spell), the demonic buttwipe who spooked the holy crap out of a true crime writer and his family.

The crime writer was researching a murder and stumbled across some 8mm home movies. Probably thinking “Score – vintage porn!” he rolls tape and sees families being snuffed in a variety of serial killer fashion: drowning, car burning, death by lawnmower. (Someone sure got their weed whacked – heh.)

But it’s the pool drowning scene where the writer gets his first look at Buhguul, who happened to be in the bottom of the pool, watching from a ringside seat. This goons out Mr. Writer. The upshot is all these families were murdered and their children(s) taken away by Buhguul. Well dang – the writer has kids! Connect the dots and go from there.

Sinister was not half bad for a demonic horror movie. The sequel, however, does not continue  with the same cast, but with a whole new set of victims. As such…

“In the aftermath of the shocking events in Sinister (2012), a protective mother and her 9-year-old twin sons find themselves in a rural house marked for death as the evil spirit of Buhguul continues to spread with frightening intensity. ”

Intensity’s a lot better when it’s frightening. So rent and watch/re-watch Sinister, then intensely wait for Sinister 2.

Bigfootage

Hunting The Legend – YET ANOTHER “found footage” horror movie. Hunting The Legend – YET ANOTHER “found footage” horror movie about Bigfoot. Both are so 1999. And yet anyone with a hand-held camera thinks doing movies like this makes them a filmmaker. If that’s the case, then I should be up for an Academy Award™ for my movie, Doing Stuff in the Neighbor’s Pool While They’re Gone (2013). Now there’s some found footage.

While Neighbor’s Pool was full of drama and twist-y plot turns (the garbage can submarine was pure genius), there’s nothing in the trailer for Hunting The Legend that doesn’t scream Blair Witch Project (1999) rip-off.

Case in point: “When Chris Copeland was a young boy, his father was abducted by the legendary Bigfoot when the two went on a hunting trip. Authorities gave up on the case, stating it was all caused by a wild boar. It’s now five years later and Chris has recruited the help of two friends and a hired film crew to take matters into their own hands and capture the truth of the mystery monster.”

And just to drive home my bitchy point, the broken-but-still-running video camera on Hunting The Legend’s movie poster rips-off Diary of the Dead (2007) and Area 407 (2012), two other found footage horror movies.

Found footage “filmmakers” should just leave the camera to me and an unattended swimming pool.

Haunted House Janitorial Service

Here’s an idea – take a vacation and stay in a haunted house. Rent is only $900 for two months with fridge privileges, but you have to clean up the place and feed the old lady in the attic once a day. Oh yeah, you can’t talk to her or even look at her withered old face, either. Just leave the food outside the door and get your fat sack out.

So the Rolf family moves into the spooky 37 room/50 acre Victorian mansion on the agreement they’ll take care of Aunt Bat and mop the floors, mow the lawn, clean the turds out of the pool, etc. Yep, sounds a like a real relaxing vacation.

So mom, dad, the kid and their aunt Elizabeth (played by the iconic shriveled raisin Bette Davis) move in and slowly things start going tilt-a-whirl, like dad suddenly going mental and trying to drown his son Davey in the just-cleaned pool. Then there are the photos throughout the house depicting unrelated people, none of whom are smiling. Would you smile if there were turds in your swimming pool? Sure as heck not me.

You’d think the Rolfs would get the hell outta there, but man, that was such a sweet deal on the rent, hard to throw it down the drain just because of violent, unexplained mood swings and dead relatives. As everyone finds out TOO FREAKIN’ LATE the house is alive – and it doesn’t want alive people in it.

If I were to tell you the secret of Burnt Offering’s (1976) old woman in the attic, you’d probably never send me $5.00 in the mail. Let’s just say it’s spookified. And those photos in the house? Take another look. And no, I’m not in any of ’em doing the two-fingered dealie behind someone’s head. I save that for wedding pictures.