Best Party Ever

You know you’re in for a treat when one of the main reasons behind the production of a film was the film maker’s yearning to “write a scene where a guy gets eaten by demonic breasts”. Of course I didn’t know this when Shady brought over the flick. I just knew that there was no way in hell that a movie named Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned could not be full of awesome.

And it was! This super low budget romp the best possible way for my homie and I to get back into movie night.

First of all this film doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. Horror films (particularly low budget ones) that pretend to be more than they really are bother the hell out of me. I mean a director/producer has to realize at some point that the film is destined for the 5 dollar bin at Wal-Mart. Just be satisfied with your station in life (if you’re a tracer, you’re a tracer) and don’t expect me to believe I’m watching the next Saw. Bachelor Party reveled in the cheese. Gaps in continuity were even referenced in the credits. (Note: if you pick up this flick, watch the credits. Fucking hilarious!)

Bachelor Party is about, what else, a Bachelor Party gone really wrong. Sam, the dutiful best man, decides to put together a bachelor bash complete with strippers for Chuck. Along with a couple other buds (one named The Fish. After watching this movie Shady and I have decided we need friends with cooler nicknames.) they head to a bungalow in the Hamptons. As the movie warmed up two things were established; neither of us knew exactly what a bungalow was (“A small house or cottage usually having a single story and sometimes an additional attic story.” Thanks, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/)  and for every two guys in a hot tub there must be at least one girl in order for things to be considered strictly hetero. A first the movie moved along fairly quickly. Three strippers that I would never pay to see get naked showed up (I made Shady promise that if a chubby stripper ever tried to drag me away while I was passed out he’d put a stop to it. He assured me he would stop said shenanigans by telling her “no, stripper, go get a Twinkie!”). Soon these strippers turned into hideous monsters, later to be identified as vampires, and dispatched of couple of our party goers. Sam and Chuck manage to stay alive… kind of. Sam is unscathed but Chuck finds himself vamping out. Sam’s new mission is to revert Chuck to his human status by killing the master vampire.

This is where the movie started to get a little long. There were a couple of places where the movie logically could have ended. I was getting pretty yawny but I was glad I hung in there. Why? DEATH BY YARD GNOME!!!!!! Made it all worth it. You have not seen awesome until you’ve seen a vampire beat to death with a yard gnome. Cinematically, I could die happy.

Doing the write up for the review of this one I got another happy surprise, a website chock full of production notes. Other low budget films, take note, the more visible you are to the people who’ll be watching your film, the better. While I was partial to the film, I wasn’t really excited about writing it up until I read about the production.

If you have a sense of humor about your horror, you need to watch this one. You will so thank me.

Pace Yourself

Ever noticed box quotes on movies that mention how “fast paced” the film is? It’s supposed to be the kind of flick that sweeps you up in the action and moves right along. Usually, even a bad movie benefits from fast pacing. The suckage moves along quickly and you have less time to get pissed off. The Haunting of Molly Hartley

is the only movie I’ve ever seen that was too fast paced. This flick would have greatly benefited from a whole lot of slow the fuck down. Also, this is the only movie that’s been so bad that I had to remark about how bad it was to myself. There I was, all by my lonesome, in the hotel room and as the credits rolled I found myself saying aloud “wow, that was terrible.”

The movie begins with a dad murdering his daughter. Yep, it just jumps right the fuck in. All you gather from the opening sequence was that the girl was about to turn 18 and her dad wasn’t having it. Then we jump to the title character. Molly Hartley has moved to a new school to make a new start after her mom tried to kill her. She is immediately sought after by a religious nut, the hottest boy in school, (Chase Crawford is really good at that smoldering thing. Not much else but at least he’s got that.) and the school badass. Molly seems to be cracking up. She’s hearing some shit, she’s seeing some shit, and then she goes and breaks the class bully’s arm at a party. Oh, shit she has a tumor! And then she finds out mom and dad sold her soul to the devil! Bam, bam, bam…. all the eloquence of a machine gun. The only good part of the movie was the end when the viewer finds Molly decided since she couldn’t beat ‘em, she’d join ‘em.

This movie ended where it should have began. Molly fighting for her soul made for a lame story. Molly embracing the dark side (feel free to make a Vader reference here) would have made for some watching pleasure.

There was nothing redeeming about this flick. Can I get my money back?

Just in Time for Xmas Traveling

I believe it's human nature to want to be in control of a situation.  Confusion, of course indicates loss of control.  This is why I believe that confusion is so closely linked with fear. 

Consider a nightmare.  You don’t understand why people you know are behaving in strange ways, you don’t understand why you can’t scream, why you can’t run.  The confusion leaves you terrified.  At least that’s how it works for me.

Movies that can utilize this link between confusion and fear have something going for them.   While Rest Stop

had an itty bitty budget and showcased some pretty bad acting skills, it did manage to work the hell out of the confusion angle.

Our main characters Nicole and Jess stop at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere on an escape from home.  Nicole heads in to use the facilities and when she comes back out Jess is nowhere to be found.  All that’s left is one lone cigarette.  As the astute viewer we already have a good idea that Jess has been snatched up by the yellow truck driving bad guy that tried to run the pair off the road earlier.  Nicole, however, is left to wonder about the rest stop confused.

From here, the movie steamrolls ahead.  While the madman in the yellow truck stalks Nicole she encounters a bloody girl, Tracy, in the bathroom closet.  Our bloody, bruised friend tells Nicole of the bus where the madman tortures his victims.  And, for the viewer, it’s the best kind of torture…. staples, and drills, and sewing needles, oh my!  So our heroine decides that not only save herself and find out what happened to her boyfriend, but she’ll also jail break  Tracy.  Of course things don’t happen quite like that. 

The progression of the movie also leads Nicole into the camper of what may have been the strangest family ever.  One preachy father, one nut bag mother, two silent (and creepy looking) twins and Scotty the deformed youngster wielding a camera.  I watched this movie twice and neither time did I understand exactly what the hell the whole camper/family thing was all about.  Working the confusion angle again I suppose.

The last random character to show up amid all the confusion is Officer Deacon played by Joey Lawrence (go ahead, say “Woah”, you know you want to).  His arrival and subsequent dismantling by the killer leads to the best part of the whole movie…. nope, not telling.  But if you’ve already seen it I’m sure you’ve delighted in the fuckupness of it.

Rest Stop is an interesting act in patience.  You spend most of the movie wondering what the fuck is going on only to find at the end it seems that you were supposed to be wondering what the fuck was going on.  While I can’t say that it was terribly scary, I can say that I make it a point to avoid roadside rest stops.  I’ll be popping into Mickey D’s to take a leak, thanks.