Feast (2005)

Directed by: John Gulager (yes, who?)
Starring: Balthazar Getty and a bunch of others

Short Review: Totally Goresome! 8/1o

Longer Review:

It starts with a crash.....and moves swiftly to a remote Arizonan bar. This is where the scene is set - each character is introduced one by one with a fun little fact sheet: Name, Skill, Life Expectancy. You're basically getting a bunch of stereotypes and due to them being largely a bunch of no names, you know that when the eventual bloodletting starts, you have no idea what order they're going to perish in. There are no numbers painted on these foreheads - "He'll be first, she'll be second.....she's definitely going to survive".

And what, Jason Mewes & Henry Rollins! YES!

So, we've been introduced and all the while there are cut scenes to something approaching quickly. When it does arrived, it's a bloodied man...Fact Card pops up....HERO! But that doesn't last long - his last words are "I'm the guy that's going to save your ass" before people pulled out of the window and having his head bitten off.....splat. Then a woman turns up....Fact Card - HEROINE! The late hero's wife...

That's when all hell basically starts to break loose - something gets in the bar and starts causing all kicks of gory chaos - and Jason Mewes has his fucking face ripped off! One minute he's with face, next minute he's all "Face/Off" - and that's the end of him! Two minutes later, and we're watching the one person you thought would survive gvetting chomped - the kid! They broke the rule in spectacular fashion.....and then the monster vomits up over one of the survivors of the recent carnage - a horrible maggoty green pea soup puke.

And so it goes on with various inventive deaths and set pieces all the while trying to get the hell out of there - all the while providing plenty of laughs:

1. Rollins' motivation speeches
2. Monster sex!
3. Graphic eyeball extraction.....complete with stringy nerve
4. Rollins having his pants pulled off through the wall
5. Monster cock getting trapped in a door
6. Rollins used as a fucking battering ram by the monsters!!!

This is a film that loves blood and humour, clearly in the spirit of the likes of Brian Yuzna and Peter Jackson. It never takes itself seriously, which makes for great viewing - you can watch it with a big dumb smile on your face as each Fact Card comes up and marvel at all the invention in the death scenes.

And just when you think it can't get any gorier, the final scene tops it all - HEROINE 2 (the first one was a surprise death) has run out of bullets, so, with the handle of the gun, she pummels the monster until all it's teeth are out and then sticks her hand down it's goddamn throat and pulls out its innards.....Holy Shit!

This is how gory horror films should be made - tongue firmly in cheek, with two fingers raised at quasi-serious shit like "Mirrors" and a big grinning salute to gore-classics like "Re:animator" and "Braindead"....

It's just a shame that it set up what is probably a substandard sequel....but, as it is, it's just a great addition to the genre.

Gamer (2009)

Directed by: A 40W Lightbulb
Starring: SPARTA!!!!, Dexter
Not About: Cider

Where to begin? What to think? Who to blame?
I blame the founders of Atari, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. When they created Computer Space in 1971 they unwittingly unleashed a sequence of events that would eventually lead to Gamer. Cause and effect. I could go back further, but that would be churlish. No, this falls squarely on Bushnell and Dabney. May God have mercy on their souls.

So, again, where to begin? Let's start with Genesis, Chapter 1, verses 1 to 3.

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

Where's the Goddamn light? It's so murky that I feel like I'm drowning in the water from Shark in Venice. I can barely see SPARTA'S face.

Poor Lighting = -100pts
Crap HUD = -20pts

So, we start with a dark battle, which in these post-Saving Private Ryan days of visceral battle detail isn't actually that brutal at all.

Flying Grenade Man = 50pts
Save Point = 5pts
New High Score = AAA

No, we're in the game.....and Sparta has won a battle. And then we move on, out of the game to the brightly lit world outside. See what they did there? Darkness = Bad men killing each other. Light = Bad hair. Nothing is quite making sense yet.

It is here we meet Dexter, the creator of Society, some futuristic porno-real version of The Sims who also happened to create this murderous game that SPARTA!!! is trapped in, called Slayers. A hatchet job of the story pops in now in the guise of a cheesy chat show - men on death row play in Slayers and if they survive 30 battles, they're free.....except no one ever has.

Cheap ripoff of Running Man = -100pts
Nanocell in the brain controls the player = 20pts
Ludacris as a hacker!! = 100pts

This isn't even funny.....and then something really fucking mad happens. With The Bad Touch by The Bloodhound Gang playing we a treated to a strange segue to explain what happens in Society.....

Priest with balloons = 1000pts

Yes, a priest with balloons. Someone has literally shit this out after eating some funny cake. We know it's a game, but now we are introduced to the kid that "plays" SPARTA! - and once again he wins a battle, No. 28 - only two more until he's released - the world celebrates in unison like at the end of Independence Day.

No, seriously - Los Angeles, Baghdad, Bombay, Beijing......WHAT THE FUCK? Honestly, they're making you care less and less about what happens from now on in by not explaining anything resembling a story. You've been introduced to a bunch of characters so far with no motive whatsoever - and you don't even know who half of them are! So, you have to sit through more turgid and dimly lit shit whilst a resolution is convoluted out of nothing.

Turns out that they're trying to kill SPARTA.....Ludacris the hacker is on his side and helps the kid out that is controlling him by give him a mod to speak to him Battle 29, wins....are you still following this? GIVE ME A STORY!!! GIVE ME A REASON!!

Here we go! I think it's past halfway through now and they've realised they need to patch something together. Sparta's wife, who is a Society porn star that is controlled by a hideous fat man that we briefly saw earlier, is trying to get custody of their child back but fails spectacularly.

We don't care about this because it's not clear who the hell this woman is - the only time we've seen her she was wearing a wig, making out with a man with a fake pig's nose strapped to his face whilst she was being controlled by the hideous naked fat man whilst he touched himself and ate cake.

Lack of SPARTA! = -200pts

Back to Slayers - Ludacris wants the kid to give up control of Sparta for battle No. 30 and let him do it his own way.....so, reluctantly, he does....and what does Sparta do in preparation for his final battle? He necks a fucking bottle of vodka???? What the hell? So, he's drunk, falling all over the place like a concussed babboon and kind of goes off the grid of the game. He then VOMITS INTO THE PETROL TANK OF A CAR!!! And, after he's done vomiting into the petrol tank, HE FUCKING PISSES INTO IT TOO!! And it starts! Presumably because of the vodka and not because of some leftover fuel....

This is where I started eating paper = -200pts
Sparta Escapes = 50pts

Hooks up with Ludacris, rescues his wife from being anally violated by a nutjob in rubber whilst fat man rubs his nipples, gets loads of people killed and gets his wife's nanocell thing reversed so she's normal again....

AND HERE'S WHERE THE STORY KICKS IN!

Military Project = -250pts
He was framed = -500pts
Dexter adopted his kid = -1000pts

So, now he's after the rich bad guy that wants to rule the world by remote control drones to rescue his daughter from probably being groomed by a man with bad hair and halitosis. And here comes the showdown.....

....what the fuck just happened there? Did they really just have I've Got You Under My Skin lip-synched to a weird robo-dance whilst SPARTA went all 300 on a bunch of drones? Yes they fucking did. Oh. My. God.

After all that has gone before, the ending is actually disappointing. It's some kind of weird self-controlled Mexican stand-off on a basketball court with two men holding a knife whilst the world looks on and presumably whilst looting is taking place.

Dexter dies, Sparta tells some techy guy in black to turn off all the nanocells, and presumably millions of people are now out of a job and the world is going to fall into some global meltdown. It's all okay though, because Sparta can now play happy family whilst society crumbles and adapts to having to play an old Atari 2600 console because nothing else works.

John Carpenter-esque music kicks in = 100pts

GAMER OVER

Final Score = -1045
Enter Initials: WTF

Battlefield Earth (2000)

Directed by: A Blind Monkey
Starring: Danny Zucco, The King of Norway and the ghost of L. Ron Hubbard

What was I thinking? Two minutes in, and I was already regretting it. Scenes that looked like they had been thrown out by Paul W.S Anderson after the mess of Soldier opened the film after a brief explanation about man being an endangered species, aliens, yadda, L. Ron Hubbard, Church of Scientology, kerching....

....no. A few more minutes in, and I couldn't believe I was still watching it, even ignoring a police siren outside, just waiting for something to happen. When something does happen, it sounds like the sound editor had left the boom mike in a large wicker basket - you can't hear anything properly. And its all been shot from funny angles and has really cack handed John Woo style repeat shots.

Kill me already.

I was about to switch off and erase it from the DVD, before Travolta turns up. Now, everyone else knew they were in a piece of turd and therefore were just not trying. Travolta comes on and hams it up with some odd method acting. The method being that there isn't one, he's just chewing the scenery so hard that later on a chimney falls down. Not to mention his hair extensions and stilts. For fucks sake, its like Halloween at a hairdresser's.

Have I said how shit it is yet?

The special effects look like they've been done with Crayola, and the script...what script? There isn't one! I'm sure this is just a really bad episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? and I'm expecting the fat faced no neck alien to reveal itself to be Clive Anderson if I ever get round to watching the final 70 minutes.

I'm not even going to bother with the story - its just turgid man vs profiteerring aliens bollocks.

8.

Out of 100.

Second Half

I just didn't bother. Why waste another 70 minutes of my already dwindling life. Whats that Mr. Travolta? You put your blood, sweat and tears into the project? Well fuck me, and fuck you. I had the chickens to feed.

Why bother? The first 50 minutes were so poor, that it was in danger of crashing into the train wreck that was Under Siege 2, and passing right through that into Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, which only scored a mark due to Claire Forlani's presence.

The words diabolical drek don't come easy, but in this case I was positively ejaculating them - something that everyone involved in this turgid pile of rancid whale jism is probably still doing right now. The fucknuggets. Just the thought of watching anymore of this extended advert for scientology had the appeal of licking the sweat from Geoff Capes' particulary sweaty bollocks at the end of a World's Strongest Man contest - so sweaty in fact, that it's turned into acid and burnt through the underpant lining in his unflattering shorts.

I couldn't bear to see Barry Pepper mong his way through his "ughs" and "mehs" anymore. I just didn't have the courage to see Forrest Whitaker "act" a billion times worse than he'd done as the world's dumbest psychic in "Species" (he was the one that when confronted with a grisly death scene who put his hand to his head and said "Something bad happened here". NO fucking SHIT SHERLOCK!).

I didn't want to see any more of Roger "I was second unit director on Star Wars: Phantom Menace AND I won an Oscar for Set Decoration on Star Wars: A New Hope" Christian's cack handed direction. Was he fucking drunk? Everything was at a funny angle. I felt ill, and not just because it was piss poor.

No, I'd had enough and pressed delete harder than ever before.

I just hope that Tom Cruise doesn't pick up the reins and make the second half of the book.....or the 10 volume Mission Earth crapfest.

Fuck You Michael Bay.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (2000)

Directed by: It doesn't matter
Starring: Michael Keaton

Michael Keaton returns as Jack Frost to wreak havoc on the selfish bastard family that let him melt in Jack Frost.....oh, wait. I forgot about the snowman rule....Monobrow = Bad Snowman. Not that you see Jack until quite far into the film anyway, so you'd just have to guess up until then. Though you already knew that, unless you eat bricks.

So, after being foiled by a truckload of antifreeze at the end of the first film, Jack's melted antifrozen remains have been buried at a secret location. We know this due an "hilarious" opening scene where Sam the Sheriff (hero of the first film) is in a psychiatrists chair reciting his story....to much amusement from the psychiatrists and everyone listening on speakerphone.

Antifreeze gets dug up/scientists/clumsy cleaner knocks anitfreeze in water tank/tank exlodes/glass in cleaner's throat....JACK'S BACK! And back to what he does best - killin'!

To cut a long story short, all the soon to be dead people end up on a tropical island, along with some of the survivors from the first film......Jack kills several people and ends up being killed by a fucking banana, due to some contrived cross-DNA thing with Sam, who is allergic to them. Seriously.

And there's a fucking snow shower on a tropical island, courtesy of Jack. It's like adding ice cream to chilli.

Ultimately, it's all about the deaths - and there are plenty. No. 4 gets killed by a giant fucking ice anvil, for instance. Totally ACME. No. 7 eats a Jack infected icecube and has her head exploded. Most are just variations on snowballed to death, or icicles through eyes etc. and it's all heading towards another showdown with the antifreeze.....Jack falls in it, goes all melty "Urrrgh!"....but survives. He then voms up a snowball......

Or so we think......because these aren't just snowballs, they're just Jack's babies!!! OMFG! I am not making this up. As if it wasn't totally batshit mental already, this is where it just goes absolutely insanely surreal. There is even a snowball bar party scene straight out of Gremlins. I couldn't breathe from laughing at this point - they're so damn murderously cute.

"Seriously, do I look like I need a fucking caption?"

And then the bananas......a Banana Daquiri to be precise. Cue some loaded up waterpistols....

Oh fuck this....I can't stop laughing. Look, if you liked the first one, you'll love this. If you want to watch some comedy deaths, watch this. If you want to see Willem Dafoe's green goblin, then watch "Antichrist"....I mean, this is practically Dogme anyway....it's definitely got a lower budget, and was sponsored by Asahi.

FX: 0
Cheese: 10
Bananas: 150
Leagues: 20,000
Comedy: Yes
Baldwin: No

Overall: 5/10

Shark in Venice (2008)

Sharks, Venice, a Baldwin brother.....what the shitting crikey could possibly go wrong?

Where do you even begin with a film like this? The beginning would be a good start, but it doesn't really begin. It kind of meanders from some wobbly "studio" graphics into some murky water, slow motion bubbles and some leftover music from "Gladiator". The first set of extras you see are staring straight at the camera! If indeed they were actors - this could be someone's home video for all we know.

Okay, so some divers are looking for some treasure underwater - God knows what at this stage, all we know is that their days are numbered due to the false tension. And the appearance of a young Colonel Gaddafi:

Wham never recovered from their makeover.

So the divers uncover a stone plaque - some Medici crap. And then out of fucking nowhere, a shark. But you guessed that anyway. One diver, two divers, three....they all fall down. Killed by stock footage of a shark. Gaddafi ain't happy.

It takes 8 minutes for (S) Baldwin to show up. Oh, he's a college lecturer. Turns out one of the divers is his father - this is important. VERY important. And they haven't found him - just two bodies of the other guys. They tell him it was a "propellor" accident. So, off he goes to Venice with his gobby fiancee to investigate and find his father.

At this point, you just want shark action.....you don't even get to see the mangled up bodies that he has to identify as "not" his father. Propellor? You ain't fooling Baldwin - he was in "Usual Suspects" after all. After meeting the police and being told of some strict rules, Baldwin is allowed to look for his Dad's body.

This is the clever bit. And by clever, I mean.....actually, scratch that. It's not clever. It's just a bit of history about the Medici and The Crusades cobbled together to give a backstory. So, it turns out that there is some hidden treasure under the city that Gaddafi wants. Great! Sharks. Buried Treasure! It gets better!

Now it's time for some treasure/corpse hunting. As we see Baldwin getting into a wetsuit, it becomes clear that Baldwin could do with borrowing Seagal's medicinal corset. He's positively Shatner-esque in stature. It is also at this point that we are given a fantastic excuse for the shockingly murky underwater camera work - pollution! Well thank you very much.

So, in he goes with someone you already know is going to be shark bait - Baldwin finds his father's watch....and sure enough, shark bait is wasted a minute later and then the shark attacks Baldwin - you see blood. Of course, our hero manages to escape and finds a mysterious hole that he climbs up....WITHOUT A FUCKING SCRATCH ON HIS WETSUIT!??? Did they only budget for one Baldwin-sized wetsuit?

This next bit is stolen from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade - only with a budget lower than The Crystal Maze. Traps, treasure.....and Baldwin steals a gem. The common thief. But, he's in pain because he's bleeding....so he jumps back in and you are treated to a total headfuck of a scene whereby you see Baldwin chopmed up.....before he wakes up in hospital two days later, minus the stolen gem.

Anyway, some of Gaddafi's men find Baldwin in the hospital and invite him to meet him. Off they go, and a tense verbal standoff ensues with a large cash offer. Gaddafi holds up the gem, Cue a flashback reminder of something that happened 5 minutes ago!!! Thanks!! I'd forgotten about that - I really had. I needed that reminder because I wasn't actually paying attention.

But, Baldwin refuses....would have been easier to say yes at this point - it's clear that these men ar the mafia, but Baldwin and his fiancee think it's better to say no. And off they go. The filmmakers then also show at this point that the shark doesn't just have a taste for men in wesuits by chomping a drunken couple.

You know what's coming next though - how do the Gaddafia make Baldwin play water guide? They kidnap his fiancee and take her to a warehouse. And leave him.....it would have made far more sense to take Baldwin at this point as 5 minutes later they're trying to kidnap him from his hotel room where he's being guarded. Before we get to that kidnap, a shark takes out a goddamn Gondola! In gloriously awful CGI....

After about 5 to 10 minutes of padding and a dreadful street chase, Baldwin is eventually caught and taken to Gaddafi. Find the treasure or your fiancee gets fed to the sharks, oh yeah, and it just so happens that Gaddafi introduced the sharks to Venice....not much choice, so off he goes.

Same formula - some shark bait sent with him that doesn't last long....treasure room/Baldwin crossed/kills guy - more shark fodder.....explosion....gunfight.....and the longest goddamn underwater fight scene ever. Gaddafi and Baldwin are fighting forever underwater as a pathetic gun battle rages around them.....Gaddafi naturally gets eaten by one of his sharks....police win, game over.

Now, remember how one of the first three divers was Baldwin's father? The one where they didn't find a body? No? You've forgotten?

So did the goddamn filmmakers!!!! I sat through that pile of crap to see Baldwin's goddamn father and they forgot about him. Even Baldwin forgot about him.....seems that finding his watch was enough for him. That's it....roll the credits....hang on, SHARK IN CREDITS.....they're obviously thinking sequel. Maybe Baldwin's missing father will turn up as a circusmaster in St Tropez....

FX: 1
Wetsuits: 4
Cliches: 9
Story: 5
Baldwin: S

Overall: 3/10

Jack Frost (1996)

What can be said about Jack Frost that hasn't been said already? Nothing....but that would defeat the whole object of even watching the damn thing. And if you haven't already guessed, this is the Mutant Killer Snowman and not the family one with Michael Keaton.

Good Snowman - Cute Little Hat.

Bad Snowman - Monobrow

Every B-Movie Horror Comedy needs a wacky type of "killer" - something that shouldn't instill any form of dread whatsoever into any rational human being. "Critters" had furry footballs, "Leprechaun" had an, um, Leprechaun, and "Red Dragon" had Ralph Fiennes. "Jack Frost" has a mutant snowman. You knew that from the cover though....well, kind of, as the the snowman in the film is not nearly as "terrifying" as the one on the cover.

So, our icy killer basically comes about in that b-movie cliche - serial killer being transported to prison, the conditions are treacherous and the vehicle crashes into a convenient lorry carrying some genetic material. Kaboom....the great thing about this genetic material is that it allows him to fuse with the snow on the ground.

Awesome!

So, what next? Yes, Jack goes on to terrorise a small town where the Sheriff that caught him lives with a series of inventive kills augmented by terrible special effects. This is the basic currency of films like this - how to kill and how to make it look. Of course, not every film has someone like Tom Savini to help with the inventiveness and realism. Everything looks so, well, fake.

And that's the point. It's been done purely for laughs. And it gets them in bucketloads. It even breaks the "don't kill children" rule by decapitating a young boy. And it probably has the very first "womena gets raped by a snowman in the shower" scene ever in a film. And almost certainly the last. Go on, guess what the carrot is used for......

All the while the sheriff and some FBI fodder are trying to work out how to kill......okay, it's antifreeze.

OR IS IT? There's a sequel....

As a sad footnote to this, Christopher Allport (who plays the Sheriff) actually died in an avalanche last year....that's just cruel irony.

5/10 (all marks for fun)

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory

After blowing all the budget on an overblown opening, set in, woah! Space! The makers were already over par. This was probably due to be some big star vehicle - Willis, Stallone, Schz...Arnie....but after that spacey intro, the makers decided that they couldn't afford the $20m fee for one of the big guns.

So, they called up the C-List Action Hero agency and got Steven Seagal - possibly in his last role without the medicinal corset. Add to that, they ruined production of the Penelope Pitstop live action adaptation by stealing the guy that was set to play The Hooded Claw and gave him an even camper role, and selected the rent-a-henchman during a game of darts.

"Tell me straight, do these curls suit me?"

It then moves onto Seagal saying "Hi" to his chef chums - just as a plot device for later, you see, before he heads on down to the train station to meet the daughter of his dead brother....meanwhile, Curly McBaddie and his crew are waiting to hijack the train further up the line with a plan to take over the mega laser thing you saw in that flash opening and destroy Washington DC - a scheme being bankrolled by some, ooo, controversial, Middle Eastern terrorists.

Space Laser? Washington DC? Wait a minute! Okay, so they've "borrowed" this bit from "Diamonds Are Forever"......Curly is no Blofeld though....and Seagal is no Bond....in any shape or Bondform.

What follows next is a mess. It seems that the original script must have been deleted and that it was reconstructed using the action movie cliché tombola.

Terrorists take over a train that just happens to contain the following:

1. Disposable scientists that hold the codes to some global destructo weapon.
2. An ex-Navy Seal, now a chef, from the school of MacGuyver.
3. Obligatory girl without brains.
4. Gung-ho cannon fodder.
5. Rent-a-sidekick
6. A blues band

And the terrorists just happen to have:

1. A leader presumed dead who happened to design the weapon.
2. Navy Seals gone bad
3. Obligatory bad girl
4. Badly trained henchmen.
5. Cardboard bullets
6. A mobile barbershop quartet

And so it goes....Seagal picks off the bad guys one by one like The Predator, cheats death twice, manages to use the chef plot device from earlier to send a message, actually leaves the train and catched up in a less than dramatic chase, manages to stop the bad guys scheme temporarily, before he eventually saves the day.

Its pony. It really is. The final scenes are surely taken from the 1994 Hornby Convention when disaster struck and someone dropped a match on a papier mâché hill. Even for 1995, the effects are poor. And Steven Seagal doesn't run, he kind of strides slowly. Which makes his survival at the end even less convincing.

Oh well, this train wreck of a movie spared us Under Siege 3: Cruise Control.

Um....

2/10