Night of the Lepus

Night of the Lepus (1972)

Directed by: William F. Claxton
Written by: Don Holliday and Gene R. Kearney based on the novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit by Russell Braddon
Starring: Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley, Melanie Fullerton, Paul Fix, Chris Morrell, Chuck Hayward

In order to commemorate this Easter (which, having been raised totally oblivious of the Church, I always thought of as bunny/baby chicken/The Ten Commandments on TV day. When I found out it had something to do with Jesus, I was quite alarmed), I did what I do on most holidays. I watched a very stupid horror movie. Unfortunately, there aren't really that many horror pics about Easter short of Passion of the Christ and I don't have that one.

So it came down to Night of the Lepus, often hailed as one of the stupider movies of all time. This is the one where a bunch of giant mutant rabbits go on a kill crazy rampage and eat a bunch of people. It's like Watership Down on steroids. They'd pretty much done every other giant animal movie possible (giant tarantulas, giant insects (pretty much every kind imaginable), giant gila monsters, giant crabs, giant chickens, giant gorillas, giant people, giant shrews). This was inevitable.

Granted, this movie is totally moronic and preposterous. Rabbits don't eat people, no matter what size they are (well, actually, when my rabbit gets hungry, he does occasionally nip at me and he's pretty docile compared to other breeds). But to be fair, birds don't typically kill people in large numbers. And I think gorillas eat vegetables too (though I'm not 100% sure they don't eat meat from time to time - it does, however, seem kind of unlikely that Kong would actually want to fuck Fay Wray. Just sayin').

Really, a herd of giant rabbits would be pretty scary. Rabbits are a little bit intimidating. And they scream something terrible.

No, the big problem with this movie is not that it's about giant killer rabbits. Godzilla is about an atomic iguana, for fuck's sake, and it's campy. This movie just happens to also be poorly written and kind of... cheap. The scenes of humans and giant bunnies interacting, though few and far between, are particularly amusing.

Also, the 'scientific explanation' is a little bit bogus. And it had a 'message' (although, I guess if you're going to have a message (frankly I'd rather have a massage but that's not going to happen), it might as well be 'don't fuck with the food chain - look what happened in Australia').

Another problem was that the humans were really irritating. I couldn't wait for them to die. Especially that fucking kid. Mr. Red suggested that the movie should have been British, which would make up for a lot. It could've had Christopher Lee in it.

How the hell did Janet Leigh end up in this movie though? (It kind of bothered me that she and Stuart Whitman were referred to as 'the young couple'.) I understand McCoy being in it (nice moustache doc), but Janet Leigh did stuff, right? I guess. I dunno.

Maybe they paid her a lot. That would explain why they only had, like, four minutes of bunny footage looped over and over and over again.

Oh well. I could talk about this movie for a long time. It was pretty retarded I guess, although sort of fun to laugh at whilst gorging oneself on chocolate (chocolate makes everything more fun. At least until you barf). And it was better than Friday the 13th... more entertaining, leastways.

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Taste the Blood of Dracula

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)

Directed by: Peter Sasdy
Written by: John Elder
Starring: Anthony Corlan, Christopher Lee, Linda Hayden, Geoffrey Keen, Peter Sallis, John Carson, Isla Blair, Gwen Watford, Martin Jarvis, Ralph Bates, Michael Ripper

Go on, taste it. You know you want to. Fourth film in Hammer's Dracula series, which is remarkably refreshing after watching all those frigging Jason movies. Jesus Christ.

Well anyway, this one's about a bunch of guys who revive the Count for lack of anything better to do, which turns out to be kind of a bad idea.

Christopher Lee doesn't even really show up until thirty minutes into the movies and he doesn't do all that much (okay, he's pretty creepy and he gets to drool on a couple of busty maidens which is always fun, but he's barely in it), however, it's hard to go wrong with him as Dracula.

That was sort of what was wrong with Kiss of the Vampire or whatever that movie was. That one with the guy who kinda looked like Lee. Also, it was kind of... well, I kept thinking of The Fearless Vampire Killers and was having a hard time taking it seriously. Particularly that part with all the bats. I loved that part.

Yeah, Christopher Lee... best Dracula ever (I'm already arguing with myself in my head over that, so don't bother. Actually, go for it. Who is the best Dracula ever? Bela Lugosi? Gary Oldman? Patrick Bergin? (I'm curious to know if anyone actually thinks that.) I care what you think).

So Geoffrey Keen is, like, M (M from James Bond, not M from M. That was Peter Lorre). That tickles me, for some reason. M got pwned by Dracula (I have got to stop writing 'pwned'. Not that it lowers my intelligence any). Bond vs. Dracula. Now that would be a fucking stupid movie. It should never ever get made.

Well, whatever. Not too bad (like I said, better than Friday the 13th. Not that that's really saying much of anything. Man). Some spookiness going down there, and nicely echoes some classic stuff (a couple of scenes in carriages, the staking of Lucy, Hargood, et cetera. Yay).

BLAH

Freddy Vs. Jason

Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Directed by: Ronny Yu
Written by: Damian Shannon & Mark Swift
Starring: Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger, Kelly Rowland, Christopher George Marquette, Brendan Fletcher, Katherine Isabelle, Lochlyn Munro, Paula Shaw

Finally, the big pay off. I'm not entirely sure what the hell was going on in this movie, but somehow Freddy and Jason team up (one brings the other back from the dead or something. Whatever) and go around killing people who do bad stuff (i.e., have sex, drink, act like arseholes, smoke (not just pot, but cigarettes now too), party, rape the drunk chick, worry about their appearance, et cetera). Unfortunately, they seem to be incapable of playing together and, like, fight and stuff.

This movie is even more cartoony than the other films in either series, if such a thing is possible. Like Coyote and Road Runner on meth. w00t.

I would say it was probably better than one of the Friday the 13th pictures, but not as good as most of the Nightmare on Elm Street ones (same deal with AVP - better than Predator, not as good as Alien). Granted, it still was unbelievably stupid, but they managed to do some interesting stuff with it. Like that part with the Dope Slug (he's, like, that Opium Caterpillar's 21st Century cousin). I liked the Dope Slug.

Well anyway. At the beginning of the movie, I was kind of rooting for Freddy, seeing as the Jason movies had made me very very tired. However, about twenty minutes in I started hoping he would get his ass kicked. He's really annoying.

But what was up with the hydrophobia? That was a little weird. I mean, dude lives at the bottom of a lake, how come he's afraid of water? Well, whatever. I was trying to ignore those details (like how come these people can fall asleep that easily? I always had that problem with the Nightmare movies. People drop off so easily. I guess if they were like me (it sometimes takes me up to three hours to fall asleep), the movie would be kind of boring).

Eh. The movie was vaguely entertaining, I guess. It was more like one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, only not quite as interesting, stylistically. And it had a big budget. It was just stupid as fuck.


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STATS
Body Count: 21 - not counting the flashback montage. I didn't take a count for the Nightmare flicks (there were more interesting things going on...), but my total count for the Friday movies so far is 161.
Request Death: Death by Dope Slug! Naw, dude gets stabbed a whole bunch of times and then folded up in the folding bed. Nice.
Who Wins: Freddy gets pwned. Okay, they try to sort of make it a tie, but come on. He's a severed head. What the hell's he gonna do? Well, whatever. Either way, I think I lost.

Premonition

Premonition (2007)

Directed by: Mennan Yapo
Written by: Bill Kelly
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Shyann McClure, Courtney Taylor Burness, Nia Long, Kate Nelligan, Irene Ziegler, Amber Valetta, Marc Macaulay, Peter Stormare, Jude Ciccolella

About a woman who learns that her husband was decapitated in a freak car accident, only to wake up the next morning and find he is alive and walking around. The next day, he's dead again. Apparently, the days of the week are scrambled up or something. Sort of like a backwards version of Groundhog Day only not half as interesting.

And why is this happening? (Spoilers) Turns out it's an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Jim Carrey, who was trying to sabotage the success of this movie so that everyone would go see The Number 23 instead. Fuckin' Jim Carrey.

I know that this is probably the last thing I should be worrying about when it comes to a movie about putting the days of the week in a blender, but this flick had some pretty serious fucking logic problems.

How come nobody seemed to know that the girl ran through a glass window? How did Sandra Bullock escape from the metal hospital? Why did she even bother trying to get away from the exploding thingie when she knew her husband was going to die three days later? How come the fucking coffin wasn't locked? God dammit. This movie was so sloppy.

Dig this (I can't remember the exact line, but it was something along these lines): "Throughout history, there have been hundreds of inexplicable events. Nobody knows why" That about sums it up.

And somehow it has something to do with faith. Fuck. This movie pretty much pissed me off from beginning to end. There was all this shit in there that didn't really have any purpose except to be creepy - creepy sounds, creepy dead crow, girl running into window. As if there wasn't enough going on, they had to add all this other stuff.

And Sandra Bullock looks like a lizard. Just had to mention that. It was really freaking me out. I always kind of liked Sandra Bullock, though. She seems nice. She gives people soap.

But anyway, it probably would have been better to just watch The Lake House again. Stupid though it was, it was superior to this movie (and it had Keanu Reeves in it, which is always a plus. I mean, Julian McMahon is Dr. Doom, who the hell would want to marry him). Oi.

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Beowulf

Beowulf (2007)

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Written by: Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, based on the poem
Starring: Ray Winstone, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, Anthony Hopkins, Crispin Glover, John Malkovich, Alison Lohman, Angelina Jolie

This being the animated version of the Beowulf story, as opposed to that thing with Gerard Butler which came out a little while ago.

I'm still not sure what to think of this movie. It awed me. First off, it was kind of better than the Gerard Butler one. I liked Gerard Butler, and I kinda liked Grendel even though he maybe wasn't that close to the guy in the original text (I'm not really a Beowulf nerd. I don't care). However, Sarah Polley's performance totally canceled out anything that might have been good in that movie. She was really annoying and has blocked off all other memories of the picture. Why did she have to be in that?

Oh well. I thought doing it as an animated feature was probably a good idea. I guess 'animated' isn't quite the right term, but it's close enough. But instead of just doing the action scenes with really shitty, distracting CG, they made everything the same level of realness. They could also enhance that actors as much as they liked (example: Ray Winstone is about three inches shorter than John Malkovich. They also made Anthony Hopkins look a couple hundred years younger).

On the other hand, it creeped the hell out of me. It looked too good to really be animated, and yet not quite real enough somehow. There was a real uncanny valley thing going on there. It kept startling me. And I kept waiting for Shrek to show up, but I think that had a lot to do with the busty wenches.

I think it may have been released in 3-D, though. They shouldn't make 3D movies. They just look stupid when you watch them at home.

Still it was COOL, and so frigging epic. Yes, it was ridiculously macho, screaming guys beating the living crap out of each other (and yet they spent a lot of effort to not show any nudity), but it's a huge epic action movie. It's supposed to be frickin' macho.

I also liked the guy what played Beowulf, Ray Winstone. I wasn't familiar with him (I remembered him in The Departed but that's about it), but according to IMDb, he's been in like five million movies, many of which I've seen. He was good. He reminded me of Sean Bean, kind of, only with a different accent. I thought, 'how come Sean wasn't in this movie?'. Then I thought, 'hey, they should do a movie like this only about Odysseus, and he could be in that'. I think this is a fantastic idea and they should begin work on it immediately. In fact, they could get Robert Zemeckis to do it just so the director wouldn't look like a total hack.

Moving on, John Malkovich was barely in the movie, and yet his accent still sounded like a speech impediment (you just knew I was going to poke fun at him - I can't help myself).

He wasn't really that annoying, though. Angelina's accent was a whole lot worse. It sounded remarkably like her Greek accent in Alexander (she's only thirty two and she's getting the mom roles - okay, neither Grendel's mother nor Alexander's mom are typical 'mom roles'. Still, she's only, like, eleven months older than Colin Farrell. How sick is that?). And she had high heels on. That was really weird.

Actually, she didn't really bother me that much either, but I didn't think it would be fair to beat up on John Malkovich and leave Angelina unscathed. And you know I'd hate to be unfair to John Malkovich (no really, I'm afraid he'll come to my house and eat me). And Crispin Glover was speaking, like Anglosaxon or something, so that's cool.

Anyway, this movie was pretty entertaining. It kept me occupied for a couple hours at least. One of the better action movies from last year. Keeping my fingers crossed for an animated version of The Odyssey (dammit, I want them to make that movie so much).

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Jason X

Jason X (2001)

Directed by: James Isaac
Written by: Todd Farmer
Starring: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Chuck Campbell, Lisa Ryder, Peter Mensah, Melyssa Ade, Derwin Jordan, Jonathan Potts, Dov Tiefenbach, David Cronenberg

My library (and source of movies) seems to have every Friday the 13th movie except part 9, Jason Goes to Hell. I figured, hey, fuck it, I'll just skip ahead to Jason X and watch part 9 when I can get a hold of it.

In this one, Jason gets captured by the government and cryogenically frozen for 400 years. He is woken up by a bunch of randy teenagers on board a space ship (I guess) and starts killing people like it's 2455.

Great. The movies in this series were pretty stupid, I must say, but this one really goes above and beyond the call of stupidity. It was just... SO bad I couldn't believe it.

I -- I can't even make fun of it. There are no words to describe how much this movie sucked.

At least they didn't have those stupid electric scalpels like they had in Sunshine. You know, if a regular scalpel works, a moving one must work so much better. It worked with turkey carvers. Who came up with that?

Ugh. I didn't like this future world. It was like an episode of Star Trek only not half as interesting, and they didn't have those cool colour-coded body suits to determine who dies first (red shirts always die first, unless it's Scottie or Uhura. Ah, Star Trek). Which leads me to my usual statement. Forty five minutes into every stupid sci fi movie, I make sure to remind myself "if this was an episode of Doctor Who, it would be over by now". Unless it was a two parter. Or it involved Daleks (the Daleks will never be defeated - this seems to frustrate some people for some reason. You can't defeat the Daleks, they're classic. It'd be like defeating the Klingons or the Romulans or whoever).

There were a few amusing moments (when they get Jason on the halodeck... that tickled me. It was a pretty good description of the entire series). Other than that, though...

It was sufficiently gory throughout, although I was driven to eat biscuits through the whole thing. That happens sometimes when I watch really dull movies. I get the munchies. It was really just exactly like Alien (why wasn't Alien in this movie? Who knows...).

Well, whatever. This movie sucked big time. But now I feel strangely liberated. I can move on to Freddy vs. Jason. I really miss Freddy.



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STATS

Body Count: A whopping 23 if my tallying is correct, putting the total at 140 so far.
Request Death: Hmm... the girl getting sucked out the hole in the hull was good, although much more disgusting in Alien: Resurrection.
How They Kill Him: N/A. Woo, he's still out there. In the future...

The Fair Haired Child

The Fair Haired Child (2006)
Masters of Horror Episode 9

Directed by: William Malone
Written by: Matt Greenberg
Starring: Lori Petty, Lindsay Pulsipher, Jesse Haddock, William Samples, Walter Phelan

William Malone's entry in the Masters of Horror series (apparently...). The only thing I've ever seen of his was the remake of House on Haunted Hill. I liked that movie for some reason. According to IMDb, Mr. Malone has done lots of other stuff, but I haven't seen any of it. Oh well.

This particular movie is about a girl who gets kidnapped by witches who plan to feed her to some kind of thing in order to restore their son who drowned in the lake twelve years ago.

I guess. Nothing happened for a really long time, and then a lot of stuff happened but it didn't really mean anything. Eh.

I was a little bit disappointed, only because The Haunting of the House on Hell Hill or whatever the fuck that movie was called, kind of freaked me out and this didn't.

It had a look to it which was kind of cool, and the Thing (whatever the fuck that was supposed to be) had a creepy way of moving. It was still really stupid looking though. I dunno. It had... twigs (?) growing out of its head?

Well whatever. This was still kind of better than Cigarette Burns (that's not really saying much, though. Lord, that movie was really... well, I'd best not get started on that). Lori Petty was kind of creepy and some bits were interesting.

It just had that feeling, if you know what I mean (if you don't know the feeling, you've probably decided I was crazy a long time ago). That vibe, right? Like they went a little too far or something, they let it go. I am well acquainted with this feeling. A lot of my work has the feeling. It's sort of distracted...

Blarg. Speaking of which. I'm getting very distracted. This movie wasn't terribly good. It wasn't terribly terrible either, it was just kind of irritating.

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The Brave One

The Brave One (2007)

Directed by: Neil Jordan
Written by: Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort
Starring: Jodi Foster, Terrence Howard, Nicky Katt, Naveen Andrews, Mary Steenburgen, Ene Oloja

In this movie, Jodi Foster plays a radio host whose fiancé is killed by thugs in the park. Once she recovers, she buys a gun and goes on a vigilante style killing spree. Huh. In the meantime, she befriends a Good Cop, and we get to ponder whether or not her actions are justified.

I personally trust the Police Service with my safety, probably because they've done a pretty good job so far. On the other hand, I don't really live in a particularly dangerous city.

Anyway, I was more worried about Jodi Foster exploding from stress. I mean, really. How much stress can one woman handle? I think the last thing I saw her in was Flight Plan and before that Panic Room, and she was pretty stressed out in both those movies. And when she gets stressed, I get stressed. It's very stressful for everybody.

Moving on, I thought the movie was pretty good, albeit very stressful. It was interesting to watch, even though I try to avoid thinking about 'issues' if at all possible. It was well done, well acted. Jodi Foster is so good it's scary (the stress thing, like I said).

Why is it that I see Terrence Howard everywhere now? He's very good, but it seems to me that he keeps popping up at random in every other trailer I watch (I've stopped watching movies, I'm just watching trailers now. It seems much more efficient, time-wise). I guess he's in a shit load of stuff. He's got, like, sixty credits on the IMDb. Cool.

So I liked him and Jodi - the movie managed to be heavy and important without annoying the hell out of me (as opposed to, say, Michael Clayton, which I didn't bother reviewing because I have nothing to say about it other than it bugged the hell out of me).

Although Jodi Foster needs to do something... lighter. Soon. I mean, she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to (she pwns me), but, you know, maybe my psychic energy can make something happen. She could do a romantic comedy with, like, Dennis Quaid or something. Yeah...

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Massacre III (1990)

Directed by: Jeff Burr
Written by: David J. Schow
Starring: Kate Hodge, Viggo Mortensen, Ken Foree, Joe Unger, William Butler, Tom Everett, R.A. Mihailoff, Miriam Byrd-Nethery, Jennifer Banko

Second sequel to the original Chainsaw Massacre, supposedly. As I recall, at the end of the last one, Leatherface got a chainsaw through him. This is almost more like a remake.

Two young people are driving through Texas (they're going to Florida, I guess) and run afoul of the chainsaw people. Then they spend the rest of the movie trying to escape with the help of this other guy who's some kind of survivalist or something.

Eh. Not really very good. There's not really all that much to say about it other than that. It took itself a lot more seriously than Part 2, but probably wasn't as gory. The gore levels were actually fairly restrained for some reason (pile it high, god dammit!).

Anyway, the writing was pretty bad, and the movie was pretty predictable (not in the general sense either - in the very specific sense). Most of the acting wasn't that great either.

It mostly relied on the 'they're eating people' thing to freak me out, without having anything really scary, shocking, or even mildly alarming in it. There wasn't even really a gross-out factor, though there was a lot of potential. It was pretty lame, actually.

The highlight is, of course, Viggo Mortensen as about the sexiest cannibal redneck ever he can nail my hands to a chair anytime. I was all like 'screw your weenie boyfriend, lady, go hook up with Captain Texas', even though the woman in the movie couldn't hear me. I think it's his smile. He's got a really great smile.

Ah well. I've hopped off my train of thought here. Yeah, he doesn't really save the movie though. It was still lame, though not as mental as the last one. So... I don't know. If you dig Viggo, go for it. Otherwise... maybe not.

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Body Snatchers

Body Snatchers (1993)

Directed by: Abel Ferrara
Written by: Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli, Nicholas St. John, based on the novel by Jack Finney
Starring: Gabrielle Anwar, Billy Wirth, Terry Kinney, Reilley Murphy, Meg Tilley, Christine Elise, R. Lee Ermey, Forest Whitaker

Third adaptation (out of four) of The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney takes place on a military base.

For the uninitiated, it's about alien pods that copy peoples bodies while they sleep (I couldn't sleep for a while after seeing the 1978 version of this story. I'm okay now, though).

This movie wasn't all that great. It had some pretty creepy moments, and the pod FX were pretty cool, but it felt somehow too obvious. I mean, they kept saying over and over again 'they take over your body when you sleep, and everybody sleeps. It's hard not to sleep. Remember? Everybody sleeps. Even you'. Yeah, I knew that. I make a habit of sleeping on a regular basis.

Also, the acting wasn't terribly good (they made it about teenagers, too, which bothers me. But nevermind that). Say what you want about The Invasion, but it had a pretty good cast.

This one just had Forest Whitaker and Meg Tilley. And R. Lee Ermey, for once playing a guy who isn't a drill sergeant (he's barely in it though). I didn't like any of the other people.

On the other hand, they killed the annoying little kid, which is a plus.

This movie was also less 'yay, America' than The Invasion, having a whole 'the U.S. military is scary as fuck' thing going on.

So I kind of liked parts of it, but generally I didn't think it was all that frightening. As opposed to the 1978 one, which scared the living bejeezuz out of me (watched it again recently - man, I hate the end of that movie. I almost couldn't watch it. Fucked up shit).

Anyway, this one wasn't terribly optimistic (as opposed to The Invasion) and not too bad. Worth seeing, anyway. Yep.

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Texas Chainsaw Massace 2

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

Directed by: Tobe Hooper
Written by: L.M. Kit Carson
Starring: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Jim Siedow, Bill Moseley, Bill Johnson, Lou Perry, Ken Evert

First of quite a few sequels to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (okay, there aren't that many, but there are more than I thought there were).

About a radio DJ who captures the chainsaw people's latest murder on tape, thus becoming their next target. Lucky for her, leatherface thinks she's hot (turns out all that chainsaw business is a sex thing - like we couldn't figure that out already. I mean, just look at the way he holds it). Meanwhile, Dennis Hopper is the Lord of the Harvest.

No really, I have no idea what the fuck he's doing in this movie. He's a cop or something, and the father of two of the kids from the first movie (or their uncle. Or their brother. Or all three...). He spends a lot of time running around with a chainsaw.

The movie tries for a little more funny than the last one - in fact, almost none of it can be taken seriously. Some of it actually manages to be mildly amusing, but mostly it's just weird. What the hell is with this movie, kind of weird. A lot of it doesn't really make that much sense.

Other parts feel like some kind of wacky sitcom they'd show on CMT at 3 in the morning. Like Roseanne on acid. Join the Sawyer family and see what kind of crazy antics the boys get into this week. Actually, that's not such a bad idea. This should be a real show. It could be all about their chili business.

Overall it kind of feels like they had way too much money and no idea what to do with it. Apparently they had some editing problems with this movie (I'm not sure of the actual details, but there were issues) which would explain a lot.

I mean, what the hell does happen to Dennis Hopper? He's just gone. Ah well.

And the only person in this movie who was also in the original was Jim Siedow. Interestingly. I looked up Gunnar Hansen just for the hell of it and came across something called Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (listed as 'in pre-production on IMDb). Apparently he's in that.

What I also learned during my travels on IMDb is that Bill Moseley's character isn't the same as that guy with the camera in the other movie. Not that this particular piece of information is necessary or interesting. I was just wondering about that.

Okay, that's all I really care to write about this movie.

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Severance

Severance (2006)

Directed by: Christopher Smith
Written by: Christopher Smith and James Moran
Starring: Danny Dyer, Laura Harris, Tim McInnerny, Babou Ceesay, David Gilliam, Andy Nyman, Toby Stephens, Claudie Blakley, Juli Drajkó, Judit Viktor, János Oláh

Horror-comedy involving a group of people out for a team building weekend in Hungary getting hacked up, burned, and generally killed in nasty ways by a bunch of ex-military psychos.

It kind of makes me wonder, what the hell do we have against Eastern Europe? I mean, their tourist slogan might as well be 'Come to Slovakia - home of Hostel'. I guess there are some pretty big, dark forests there and everybody talks like Dracula.

Well, anyway. I haven't actually seen Hostel as yet, but I have seen the trailers, and stylistically this movie seems to be along the same lines. Only this is, like, funny.

It's got some pretty good dialogue and amusing/disgusting scenes (if this stuff were happening in real life it would probably be really horrible but in this context, it's pretty funny). And the cast is pretty good - Laura Harris played Daisy on Dead Like Me. Yay! Mr. Green also informs me that Danny Dyer has something to do with football.

Mind you, it's no Shaun of the Dead. The characters aren't really that good, but the acting sort of makes up for it.

And it's actually set in Hungary, as opposed to some really crappy low budget movies (I don't know what the budget of this movie was, but it probably wasn't terribly high - it looked pretty good though) shot in Hungary or Romania or someplace but are set in, like New Jersey. If this was a video, I could make all kinds of jokes about that, but it doesn't really come off right in writing.

So not a great movie, but entertaining enough and better than a lot of stuff. While watching it, I kept thinking 'If this were a Friday the 13th movie, this person would be dead by now'. It tickled me, having seen way too many puritanical, moralistic slasher movies, that the last man standing was the mushroom head. Spoilers.

It kind of changes the formula there, anyway. Maybe because it's British. I don't know. Yep, nice change (for me, anyway) from American slasher films from the '80s. Just a bit of entertainment for, like, 90 minutes.

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Friday the 13th 8

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Written and Directed by: Rob Hedden
Starring: Jensen Dagget, Kane Hodder, Todd Shaffer, Peter Mark Richman, Tiffany Paulsen, V.C. Dupree, Kelly Hu

Okay, I'm almost done this series (the end is near! I can almost taste it! Then when people ask me 'have you seen Friday the 13th?' I can say 'yes...' and really mean it).

Okay, in this one, Jason comes back! (I don't even remember what the hell they did to him in the last one... oh yeah, the dead father of the psychic chick comes out of the lake and drags him down or whatever.) Now, he climbs onto a cruise ship destined for New York and kills a whole bunch of people.

They don't even make it to New York until, like, fifty minutes in. And even when he does get there, he doesn't exactly take it. I was hoping to see him walking down Time Square with a machete, hacking people up. But no. He's very focused. Biggest disappointment ever.

It also raises some serious logic questions (I know, I know, debating the logic of the Friday the 13th series is totally futile) - how come when Jason, king of killing people for no reason, walks into a crowded diner, he totally ignores everybody except the main chick and her boyfriend. I mean, people are just sitting there. Why not have a swipe at them? Fuck.

Well anyway. I'm not even going to bother saying what a piece of crap this movie was. It would just provoke a whole bunch of questions such as 'then why the hell did you watch it?' and 'why are you going to watch part 9?'. Followed up by 'why are you such a dumbfuck?'. I ask myself that question all the time. I can't help myself.

Um... yeah. This one doesn't differ significantly from the other ones 'cept they go to New York for about ten minutes (what the hell route did they take to get there, anyway? Where's Crystal Lake? New Jersey? They looked like they were crossing the frigging Atlantic on that damn cruise ship). Oog.





END

STATS

Body Count: 19/117 (hootah! Actually, that's not counting all those people who were trapped on the boat when it sank - I forgot about them. I don't know how many there were, though. so fuck 'em)
Favourite Death: Girl gets head chopped off with guitar (they don't call it an axe for nothing)
How They Kill Him: Toxic waste or something
To Go: Two more, plus Freddy vs. Jason. The next one is Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. My ass. They already had a final Friday (you can never have too many Fridays, apparently).