House Of The Dead (2003)

All nudity is gratuitous, Roger Ebert often said. In House Of The Dead, Uwe Boll proves his point.

Point the camera at a dancing fool? She’ll flash you. Crank up a jam she likes? Off comes her top. Her seasick boyfriend just blew chunks on her blouse? Well, she can’t wear it and wash it at the same time now, can she? Guy she’s been dancing with all day would rather stay on the beach? No thank you. She’ll jump in the water wearing just a thong. She only jumps out when it’s suddenly unsafe. This isn’t a frothy teen romp, honey. Wake up.

House Of The Dead is a patchwork of recycled hackery, an unoriginal horror movie that doesn’t know how to shock or startle. Random titty shots aside, it only knows how to bore.

Two dumb storylines come crashing together here. First, there’s the lure. A bunch of twentysomethings are invited to the party of the summer. (Sadly, it’s not SummerSlam). The way this event is billed you’d think at the very least thousands of people would be in attendance, grooving and frolicking away on this isolated island in British Columbia.

Instead, it looks like maybe three dozen people are here bopping around in a small, designated space to undanceable techno courtesy of silent DJ Bif Naked (who did film an acting scene but it was excised). It inspires an unintentional laugh. This is supposed to be a heavily wooded area but it might as well be someone’s backyard.

While this rave is decidedly not raging, another small group of partiers are bummed the boat has left without them. This is what you get for being 15 minutes late. So, one of them attempts to bribe a couple of conspicuous smugglers to take them all to the island.

Clint Howard, who’s dressed like the heel from I Know What You Did Last Summer, plays the wildly inconsistent first mate Salish while Jurgen Prochnow is Captain Kirk. Yes, he’s heard all the bad jokes and no, he doesn’t like them. (Neither do I.) I think he’s supposed to be a Southerner but I don’t know any who say “reckon” with a thick Teutonic accent. Despite a long career of playing heavies, Prochnow is surprisingly unintimidating and stiff here, even when he suddenly brandishes that large knife out of annoyance. Whatever you do, don’t say Spock.

When first approached, Salish is cranky and unwilling to help. At first reluctant to take on horny ravers as passengers, that all changes when money is offered to the captain. Sweetening the deal is the sudden arrival of boat inspectors demanding to come onboard. Suddenly, a thousand bucks to play boat taxi sounds very appealing indeed although Kirk stupidly blurts out after the fact that the money wasn’t necessary. He would’ve taken them for free! Sure, dick.

Meanwhile, Salish dramatically goes from being hostile to paternal worrywart, going so far as to offer a crucifix necklace to one of the girls “for protection from evil spirits”, this after warning everybody about the bad mojo they’re about to experience on the Island of Death. Wrong subgenre cliche, pal. This isn’t a possession movie. It doesn’t matter anyway. She never wears it. The power of Christ does not compel her.

Upon arriving ashore, Salish privately pleads with Kirk that he doesn’t want to turn back without the kids. Does a thousand bucks really make you more compassionate? The Captain just wants to unload the goods they’ve been smuggling. Because ravers are always looking for black market grenades.

By the time they actually show up to the rave, the party’s over. And this gang is either in denial or completely clueless. But we know what’s happening, just like Salish and Kirk. The place is infested with the undead and they are insatiable. They manage to eliminate all but a handful who the stragglers eventually bump into during a brief moment of reprieve. A cameraman shows them what happened on his camcorder but his work is hopelessly shaky and sloppy. You can barely see anything. You feel nothing.

Eventually all the partiers learn the full backstory. A bald Spaniard from the 18th Century wanted to live forever and figured out a way to make it happen. It involves mutated blood and other people’s body parts. (We are sadly spared the flashback revelation of a eureka moment which might’ve been fun.)

Aesthetics be damned, he doesn’t seem to care that he looks like De Niro in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein dressed like The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Unless he brings hot babes back to life, what is exactly the point? Shouldn’t have hung yourself when you looked good, ya knob.

Now about 200 years old, it must be exhausting to be constantly hunting for new victims through his growing zombie army just to keep him going. Again, what is the point? One unfortunate face tonguing aside, he doesn’t exactly like to get down. He doesn’t need more time to catch up on his reading. He just doesn’t want to die. As a result, his isolated life seems so dreary and unfulfilling.

House Of The Dead is a colossal dud. At times, it wants to be The Matrix so bad even going so far as to mimic those slow motion bullet time effects during woefully uninspired fight sequences. Boll has a huge hard-on for that rotating camera shot that he uses as a showcase moment for every remaining babyface fighting for their lives which just adds to the pretentiousness.

How convenient that the late arriving partiers and the initial rave massacre survivors all have access to Kirk and Salish’s crates of automatic weapons which help them reduce the threat somewhat until they’re all out of ammo. How lucky that they all know how to aim and fire them perfectly with just split second instructions beforehand. And how miraculous that two of the women can summon the power of the martial arts when a gun is unavailable.

What’s really stupid is the opening scene which reveals in the film’s first minute who the sole survivor will be, the one who’s not going to turn into a monster. This deflates any potential for suspense and surprise. This character acts as an occasional narrator who quickly introduces the heroes right at the top and later openly mourns the murdered, including a couple of lovers. I didn’t care.

Based on the popular arcade game series from Sega (the “sponsor” of the doomed “gathering”), quick shots of The House Of The Dead, as it is called, are randomly inserted for no good reason multiple times throughout. It’s distracting while also reminding you that playing games is almost always more enjoyable than watching their misguided screen adaptations. Time has not been kind to the game’s less than stellar graphics.

“House Of The Dead isn’t Citizen Kane,” the film’s co-writer and executive producer declares in the DVD liner notes.

No shit.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, March 24, 2024
3:25 a.m.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun (1985)

She’s the new kid in school, an army brat that has never known stability. She’s awkward and shy, somewhat uncertain of herself. But despite frustrations at home, she’s full of cheer and the thing that gives her the most joy is Dance TV, a daily institution in her new adopted home of Chicago.

Janey’s cheerfulness immediately attracts the attention of Van Halen fanatic Lynne, who becomes her new best friend. She, too, loves Dance TV. And when they watch the British host (who sounds Australian to me) announce a contest to find two new dancers to join the show’s regulars, nothing else matters. Janey’s dream is about to come true.

Sarah Jessica Parker plays her while Helen Hunt is the mischievous Lynne, her boy-hungry classmate who is curiously and paradoxically unattached despite having a strong libido and seemingly low standards, although even she wants nothing to do with creepy Jonathan Silverman.

Yeah, let’s talk about him for a minute. A wannabe entrepreneur constantly hustling unauthorized Dance TV merch that no one buys, this annoying shit is also an unapologetic perv with no boundaries.

Peeking down a woman’s top when she’s bent over (thankfully unseen), making an inappropriate comment to Janey (thankfully unheard by her), his worst moment comes at a dance club called The Court (neat-o outdoor neon sign, though).

Muscling in on somebody’s gal, he proceeds to convince her to play along with a World War II-inspired scam. It’s all to get her to raise her arms, so he can “radio Tokyo”, if you sniff what The Earl is baking.

Romantic comedies in the 1980s were notorious for making jokes out of sexual assault and for normalizing such abuse. Watching this compulsive creep grab the horrified woman’s tits thinking this was ok is the most uncomfortable scene in the entire film. I wish I had the same reaction when I first saw this as a less enlightened teen myself.

I blame my former dance partner. Her family invited mine to have a fun night with them at their house, something that happened a lot in the late 80s and early 90s. One time, I’m thinking 1987, while the parents were yakking away in a different room, she wanted me to see this movie which did not sound appealing but she played it anyway. Her big selling point was the radio Tokyo gag which did not make the film any more enjoyable. But yeah, at the time, it amused me, if for a fleeting moment. It doesn’t anymore. I know better.

It’s the only scene I still remembered from all those decades ago, probably because for the most part I wasn’t really paying that close attention. I just didn’t care. Watching Girls Just Want To Have Fun Again on my own terms recently with much greater focus, I now fully understand this is familiar underdog terrain. There’s no doubt what will happen during the big contest at the end. But I liked Hunt and Parker, yet to have their breakthroughs, and their natural chemistry even though they’re given zero funny things to say. (The only actual laughs come from the music news reporter on Dance TV who admires the artificially enhanced bodies of the men carrying her around on furniture and a special thank you in the end credits to The Buttheads. Tough luck, Beavises.)

Silverman’s own best friend is Lee Montgomery, a hunky piece of dream meat who greatly resembles a young Joey Lawrence. (A bit insecure himself he needs to be convinced by his obnoxious pal to even try out for the show.) Hunt notices him first but Parker is reluctant. Defiantly, Hunt, a great wingman, immediately blurts out Parker’s number to him during the outdoor auditions for the Dream TV contest and very quickly, he’s calling her for night rehearsals. They clash over their differing styles even though doubles do most of the dancing. (An unintentional laugh comes the first time Parker’s replacement starts doing backflips during her tryout because it’s so noticeable.) Parker seems conflicted but that won’t last long.

Movies like this always have a spoiled vamp to provide adversity for the hero. Holly Gagnier, who resembles a young big-haired Sophia Bush, is the snotty daughter of a bottle factory mogul who actually employs Montgomery’s supportive dad. Thinking like a wrestling booker, she wants to be put over, ethics and rules be damned. (She pays her audition partner to make sure Hunt doesn’t make the cut.) That starts a childish war between her and Parker.

When Parker sneaks out of choir practice for a day rehearsal with Montgomery, Gagnier rats them out pretending to be one of the humourless nuns at their girls only Catholic high school by calling her strict, overprotective dad, a retired military bigwig who doesn’t want her gallivanting out at night on her own. But for some reason during the call Gagnier uses her own name. (Maybe she wanted to send a message?)

Parker and Hunt find out that Montgomery’s been invited by a lusty Gagnier to a country club soiree being thrown in her honour. So the gals, feeling devious, decide to make multiple photocopies of the invitation Montgomery temporarily thinks about throwing away and hand them over to as many undesirables they can find including punks and female bodybuilders, all of whom crash the party and start breaking shit. One of those punks is apparently Robert Downey Jr. but I didn’t spot him.

Getting desperate, Gagnier’s white-haired dad puts the belated squeeze on Montgomery, who gets grumpy when things don’t go his way, threatening some kind of unspoken retribution against his dad which ends up being an empty threat. His dad hates the gig and doesn’t even give a fuck.

Even though the movie runs less than 90 minutes, it takes an awful long time to get to the finale when the six advancing couples from the outdoor tryouts dance it out for Chicago one last time. Of course there’s a tie. Of course the babyfaces will get a push after a sudden death dance-off. And yeah, Hunt gets a consolation prize at the last minute after being the subject of a screwjob.

However, during the earlier auditions, I preferred these two Black girls, identical twins, who unfortunately don’t get any lines. During the TV show, they do a mirror bit but their earlier routine is stronger.

The best couple in the finals actually dance first but are essentially extras with forgettable names like the twins. Since it’s between the heels and Parker & Montgomery, based on the dancing alone, the booking is correct.

My Mom was an accomplished dancer for much of her life and later ran her own respected dance studio. I don’t remember if she actually saw this movie. It never came up in our conversations. But I think she would’ve agreed with me that the men and women who dance either during the auditions or on numerous airings of Dance TV are all talented, including a young Gina Gershon, apparently, although during the opening credit sequence the men are given more challenging moves to perform and therefore stand out more, at least at the start of it.

Some of the music, much of it original and written for the film, is catchy if a bit slight. You can understand why the soundtrack was not a best seller, though. It’s danceable fluff that won’t shatter your senses or leave a lasting impression, although the uptempo Dance TV theme might be an exception to that.

Cyndi Lauper, who famously covered Girls Just Want To Have Fun but with changed lyrics, outright refused to allow her version to be used in the film. It honestly doesn’t make any difference to the overall quality. I’ve never liked that song, anyway. It always drove me nuts as a kid.

The actors do what they can with the usual subpar slop they’ve been given. God knows almost all of them deserve better, especially a very young Shannen Doherty, Montgomery’s younger sister, who develops a gross crush on Jonathan Silverman, for some reason. When he plants one on her in celebration at the end, she is wide-eyed and thrilled. (At least, he doesn’t “radio Tokyo” again.)

Based on the way he treats other women, I was hoping for a different reaction.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 18, 2024
4:18 a.m.

Ed (1996)

It’s never a good sign for a sports team if they need a wild animal to help them win games. Such is the case with the Santa Rosa Rockets, a minor league baseball franchise in every sense of the word.

Managed by Jack Warden, they’re doomed to be basement dwellers even after acquiring a new starting pitcher with a wicked fastball.

In what has easily been the most questionable decision he’s ever made in his career, Matt LeBlanc picked this embarrassing travesty as his first feature film after finally breaking through on Friends. Courtney Cox held out for the Scream franchise. What’s his excuse?

Clearly living out an on-screen fantasy as a baseball player, LeBlanc obviously set aside all artistic standards he may have had for that big moment. You know the one that every cinematic underdog dreams about. Winning a championship against all the odds.

The problem is we’ve seen that story countless times before and it’s getting very tired indeed. In Ed, LeBlanc easily impresses the Rockets during his tryout despite being a farmboy without a proper uniform.

But during an actual game, he routinely craps out. He’s not fooling anybody at the plate. After the damage is done, he’s always taken out before the game is over by a reliever who would rather have his job. (By the way, what’s going on with his face? Why is he so overly tanned when he’s almost always wearing a ballcap?)

Little does he know, his luck will abruptly change and not because he’s been reduced to rubbing a horseshoe. Early on, he’s asked to pick up the new mascot, a chimpanzee the franchise dubs Ed Sullivan purely, I believe, for a throwaway newspaper headline gag that probably went over the head of any poor kid subjected to this stupidity.

Right away, we have a major problem. That’s not a real monkey, it’s a smaller guy in a costume and it’s immediately distracting. Also, Ed’s not funny at all. In fact, he’s a nightmare to be around. LeBlanc not only has to bring him to the ballpark, he has to make him his roommate in his tiny apartment which doesn’t make any sense. Why is he stuck with him?

Ed is loud and energetic. He constantly breaks things. He also farts a lot. LeBlanc despises him so much he cruelly buys him a giant bag of dog food which he makes him carry home and upon being offered a sample is rightly rejected in an instant. He’d rather have LeBlanc’s TV dinners which don’t look any more appetizing.

Struggling to win a game, LeBlanc is also facing pressure on a different front. There’s a single MILF living in his apartment building (she’s a waitress in a local diner) and she’s been quietly wondering why they still haven’t hooked up yet. He’s so reluctant to make a move that her cute young daughter openly asks him, “Are you gay?”

It’s weird seeing a kid play matchmaker this aggressively when LeBlanc has enough stress in his life. (And what happened to her dad, anyway?) But he eventually gives in and of course, things go well at the carnival. That said, would you leave your child alone with a wild, undisciplined animal? The kid’s lucky he’s friendly and not real. He’s immature, not an actual threat.

Ed has a secret. He can actually play, up to a certain point. The gag is he belonged to Mickey Mantle who apparently taught him how to play third base. He certainly didn’t teach him how to hit. In his one at-bat, because of his extremely low strike zone, he gets a game-winning walk without ever taking a swing, which turns the tide for the Rockets now destined for redemption. Tommy LaSorda eventually becomes interested in their revived star pitcher.

However, future Jesus Jim Caviezel will not be joining them. Despite encouraging LeBlanc to go on using Carlton Fisk as an inspiration, he gets cut from the team not even halfway through the movie. Imagine the humiliation of being the only player who gets fired, especially when your hairy replacement becomes a star attracting national media attention.

Then, most insanely, Ed gets sold to some abusive circus folk by the weird guy from Frasier, the son of the owner, now sporting a toupee so obvious it openly invites lazy mockery.

By this point, LeBlanc has suddenly softened his stance with the chimp, even allowing him to join him in bed at night. But it’s only after his new girlfriend, the single MILF, browbeats him into planning a risky rescue that he actually bothers to locate Ed and attempt to bring him back to the team.

But in the ensuing chaos as they flee a couple of goons, one of whom has already used a tazer on their purchased prisoner, the chimp, a frozen chocolate banana addict, gets accidentally locked up in a freezer truck leading to a bogus health crisis. With the single MILF’s cute daughter by his side at the hospital, everybody is waiting for him to wake up. This manipulative ploy only worked for E.T., you know, because we actually cared about him.

Even though Courtney Cox had made movies for years before Friends, LeBlanc was the first castmate to make one while the show was on the air. One wonders what he turned down in order to make this crap. To be fair, the much missed Matthew Perry made two zero-star stinkers of his own: Almost Heroes with Chris Farley and Serving Sara with Liz Hurley. But none of those turkeys starred a guy pretending to repeatedly fart in a fake monkey costume.

Opening in March 1996 and tanking immediately (it didn’t even make 5 million dollars), I vividly remember LeBlanc appearing on Regis & Kathie Lee at the time trying to sell Ed as something worth paying to see with a straight face. He knew this sucked. He knew he fucked up.

Rightly nominated for four Razzies, Ed should’ve had a clean sweep. Spare a thought for poor Cockroach from The Cosby Show who plays either the shortstop or the second baseman, not that it really matters. And Bill Cobb, too, the second-in-command behind Warden. I hope they never listed this on their resumes.

Ed hasn’t been the only animal sports comedy. A year later came the first of many Air Bud movies. I didn’t like that one, either, but at least it had laughs and some charm, just not enough of the former. And say what you will about the hockey-playing chimp in MVP, Ed is more unbearable.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 18, 2024
4:00 a.m.

For Richer Or Poorer (1997)

I have a problem. I watch a lot of bad movies, willingly. And it’s getting worse. Maybe it’s because of how I’m feeling these days. It is a dark time, after all. Maybe it’s a sickness I caught from my Dad who loves hate watching soap operas. Either way, I just can’t stop.

So, why do I do it? Why do I allow myself to be disappointed repeatedly like this? Why the need for more mediocrity? Well, for starters, I don’t want to be left out of the cultural conversation. But more importantly, there’s a perverse joy in writing about trash.

Call it critic’s revenge, call it what you will. Sometimes, it feels really good to vent and mock. All this self-imposed suffering shouldn’t be wasted in silence. Out of this torture must come catharsis.

In For Richer Or Poorer, the mismatched Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley are a bickering couple barely surviving high society. He’s supposed to be a high-powered real estate mogul. She’s a long-suffering socialite who would rather start her own clothing line.

After ten years of marriage, they are still trying to keep up appearances, even provoking jealousy from the likes of Marla Maples, if you can believe it, who wholeheartedly buys that everything is kosher.

But after a sales pitch for a religious-themed amusement park (far from “hilariously offensive” as intended) goes horribly wrong at their anniversary party at the Plaza in New York, when they return to their penthouse apartment, the masks come off. They’re the Roses without the violence. No decent zingers, either. Just a lot of formulaic roasting. They don’t even sleep in the same bedroom anymore.

Not helping matters is their crooked accountant Wayne Knight who has somehow implicated both of them in his own financial fraud. Their accounts get frozen and soon supremely dumb IRS agent Larry Miller is on their trail.

In a scene emblematic of the complete phoniness of this story, Miller mistakes a satellite phone Allen pulls out as a gun and immediately shoots it out of his hand. The idea that a rich white guy would ever be threatened like this by a trigger-happy white cop is beyond absurd. It’s no wonder it takes almost two hours to finally arrest the couple.

But of course, the only fraud they’ve actually committed in public is pretending they’re happy, decent people while privately, these selfish knobs are swimming in their own debt and resentments. Long story short, they end up in a stolen cab barely escaping Miller, the FBI and the NYPD who for some reason stop following them altogether after surrounding each other mistaking the IRS clown as a threat in his own right.

Riding around all night, while trying to avoid a cow in the road, they ultimately crash into a nearby pond, the cab conveniently plunging out of sight for most of the movie. Spending the night outdoors, Allen realizes they’re now in Pennsylvania Dutch territory. He overhears that a couple of cousins are supposed to arrive here in a month. Why not pretend to be those cousins showing up earlier than expected?

Using Peter Weir’s Witness as a guide, they immediately ditch the wedding rings, something they were already planning to do anyway. When Alley acts a little too normally for this crowd of stiffs, the plan is to say they both come from a more “liberal” community. Even Helen Keller would see through this bullshit.

Jay O. Sanders looks ridiculous with that Emo Phillips wig and fake beard, an appearance that to a certain degree is meant to be deceiving. He’s the head of this large brood and is more or less an amateur marriage counselor for Allen and Alley who will inevitably reconcile along the way. The problem is I never believed them as a couple in the first place.

Both instantly realize that being Amish means longer days of working and shorter nights of sleeping. While Alley works in the kitchen helping to prepare meals and in the rest of the house scrubbing floors, Allen is trying to break in Big John, a seemingly untameable horse so he can plow the fields and plant corn. He also serves as a counselor himself advising a guy on how best to get Sanders’s oldest daughter to marry him since he can’t get past his anxieties. He even helps him get a deal on some land he wants to buy for his future family, although I’m not sure his blunt technique would work in the real world. It would probably get him thrown out the door.

Allen adapts relatively quickly, even going so far as to slow grow the Abe Lincoln beard. But it takes Alley much longer. It isn’t until she learns the women hate having a lack of colour options for their drab attire that she suddenly finds a reason to start a fashion line. Even Sanders will end up wearing a flashy orange dress shirt.

Meanwhile, the couple’s scrambling attorney Michael Lerner, who instantly knows the feds have tapped his line while continually updating a frustrated Allen, is trying to locate the elusive Wayne Knight who barely manages to escape the long arm of the law himself. To not give Newman any great quips is a travesty. Perhaps he should consider himself lucky that he’s barely given any screen time once he disappears. I didn’t realize Switzerland had an extradition treaty with America. Should’ve fled to the Cayman Islands, ya boob.

All of the attempted humour here is very cheap and groany. Like the scene where Allen is asked why a married Amish man such as himself doesn’t have the Lincoln beard. Alley answers for him. It’s because he had an infestation, if you will, and had to shave it off. But it was a quick problem to solve. Blame it on the “minute lice,” she says.

During the sales pitch for The Holy Land, the misbegotten theme park proposal, Allen talks about an exhibit he plans to call Torah! Torah! Torah!, in honour of the holy book of Judaism. Thinking cross-promotionally, he also says the Japanese will flip for it, too. You know, Tora! Tora! Tora! Yeah, pretty fucking lame, guy.

Because Sanders plays a character named Samuel and even named his baby after himself, when the kid cries one night while everybody is gathered and awake, and Alley finds out his name, she refers to him flippantly as “another son of Sam”. We get it. Make it stop.

Not only is there not one laugh in For Richer Or Poorer, there’s no sincerity, either. This might be the phoniest movie I’ve ever seen. Allen and Alley are fakes, as is Maples, Knight is a crook, Miller has no business carrying a gun and even the Amish turn out to be full of shit. In the inevitable scene when Miller and the cops finally swoop in at the worst possible time, Sanders and company act as though they’ve been betrayed when they obviously know the real cousins they’re expecting who conveniently show up at the exact same time as the feds.

There’s a bogus courtroom scene where Lerner earns his money at the last minute but I’m not sure justice is served. That cabbie can’t possibly be happy. And then the expected reconciliation with Sanders and his wife. It’s not necessary when no one is upset. Why’d they string them along? And why do they even give a shit about their marital problems? There’s no pay-off here.

Same with the scene where Allen gives Sanders a parting gift as a thank you for all his hospitality and advice. I actually had to look up the Wikipedia summary to find out what’s actually hidden in the back of that antique stop watch he gives Sanders since his facial expressions left me confused. He can’t sell shit.

For Richer Or Poorer was released in late 1997 and was directed by Bryan Spicer. His first film was the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie. It’s slightly less bad than this steaming pile of dung. For Richer Or Poorer performed so horribly with audiences and critics, Spicer never directed another feature film again.

He figured out the only way to get me to stop watching bad movies. He stopped making them altogether.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 18, 2024
3:49 a.m.

Fall (2022)

Fall is Frozen in the desert. Instead of three friends stuck on a malfunctioning ski lift in the dead of winter, two hot babes are stranded on top of a 2000-foot TV tower in the hot sun. Whereas the trio in Frozen are genuinely forgotten victims caught in an unfortunate dilemma while on vacation, the women in Fall have no one to blame but themselves. To put it bluntly, if this was real, their story would be prominently featured on Ridiculousness.

We first meet them on a mountain climb. Adventurous Hunter (Reese Witherspoon doppelganger Virginia Gardner) is the buxom, free-spirited blonde YouTuber afraid of nothing. Her best friend Becky (Grace Caroline Currey who looks like the love child of PJ Harvey and Sally Hawkins) is the more reluctant brunette who needs to be talked into doing something risky like this. Clearly, she would never come up with any of this on her own.

Along for the ride is Becky’s equally fearless husband Daniel (latter-day Scream alumnus Mason Gooding). It does not take you long to predict what will happen to him. I just wish it was more jolting. The scene is crucial in establishing what will happen next. Beautiful scenery and expertly maneuvered cinematography aside, the expected pay-off is rather underwhelming. We barely know these people.

Nearly a year later, Becky remains in deep mourning, drowning herself in booze and popping those anti-depressants like Tic Tacs. Daniel’s remains are in her custody which she clings to like the holy grail. Desperate to hear his voice, she calls his cell just to hear his jokey outgoing voicemail message until it’s finally disconnected at the worst possible time.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays her deeply concerned father. They once had a strong bond over pro wrestling (he has a Stone Cold Steve Austin bobblehead on the dashboard of his car and his ringtone is the old Legion Of Doom entrance theme that I didn’t realize was co-written by Jimmy Hart), but are now as distant as Peter Hook and New Order.

He keeps calling, she never picks up. Isolated from everyone, he finds her, probably not for the first time, coming out of a watering hole tipsy and pissed.

He tries to reason with her. Hey, maybe Daniel wasn’t this great guy you thought he was. Maybe it’s time to finally move on and be happy again. In turn, she feels smothered and attacked. He fails to convince her that Daniel wouldn’t react the same way if the roles were reversed. When he blocks her attempt to drive drunk, she snaps and eventually walks home defeated as always.

On the verge of suicide, another familiar ringtone saves Becky’s life in ways that she will never expect. Hunter’s back home (Becky’s dad’s been calling her, too) and thinks she has a foolproof plan to rescue her lonely pal.

There’s a discontinued TV tower not found on any map that’s about twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Thin, long and rickety, no reasonable person would ever think of scaling this aging monstrosity. Hunter is not reasonable.

She wants Becky to face her fears in a most visceral manner, a sort of radical, extreme form of cognitive therapy, you could say. The brunette won’t accept her father’s wisdom but she will ultimately go along with this doomed expedition. She continually puts her faith in the wrong people.

Once they get there it becomes very clear that Hunter never did her homework. She didn’t mention all those determined vultures nor the fact that the tower looks like it’s barely holding together. She also didn’t seem to know that you’re not actually allowed to be anywhere near this thing.

“NO TRESPASSING – DANGER OF DEATH” reads the sign in front of a locked gate. You cannot say they weren’t warned. With the sun blazing, Hunter as always takes the lead. Becky needs constant encouragement to keep going. Should’ve brought more than one bottle of water, ladies.

Hunter has her own YouTube channel. She calls herself Danger D (sounds more like a Bud Bundy rap persona) and films all her global exploits, greatly emphasizing her sexuality. (“Tits for clicks,” she explains unapologetically while wearing a very revealing push-up bra. Two guys wrote this.) Hardly seems worth it though when the Lara Croft wannabe only has 60000 followers. More like cleavage for clicks.

Instead of connecting a GoPro to her chest while they climb, Hunter will only film short clips with her phone at the start and finish, and when they finally reach the top, she will also insist on having snaps taken while foolishly dangling over the edge of a tiny platform hanging on only using one hand. Then she will push the reticent Becky to do the same, even though during the climb she clearly saw a big loosened screw plummeting right past her.

Basking in their lucky triumph, it’s time to come down and go home. But of course, that giant ladder will break and collapse, and despite running through a number of ideas to get off this fucking thing, they will be left here baking, thirsting and starving for days. How they avoid sunburn is a mystery.

During the accident, their bag of supplies and their video drone fall off the platform but conveniently land in a spot where they, after a while, will eventually be retrieved, although the circumstances of that retrieval won’t be fully clear until a pivotal moment when we realize the importance of regular sleep. (That said, it’s enough with the “it was only a nightmare” False Alarms which you always see coming., only one of which is a bad omen.)

All the while, there are hope spots. A couple of shady guys in the area who maybe can see them high above if they can make enough noise or attract enough attention. A message written in eyeliner and attached to that drone if only it can reach their hotel when it’s at its busiest. Their cell phones with pre-typed emergency texts each secured and padded in Hunter’s running shoes waiting to be sent but needing to be dropped to the ground because there’s no signal at 2000 feet. (You can only look at pictures and videos from up here.)

You can pretty much guess how a lot of this will go. The two men who they think will save them turn out to be more interested in their abandoned car. The first cell phone drop does not result in an immediate rescue. And I laughed very hard when disaster strikes their drone.

Actually, it takes two attempts to fly the damn thing. First, it doesn’t have enough juice and needs to be recharged. After they MacGiver a solution, introduced during the diner scene, Becky is the one who has to climb even higher to implement it. Cue the hovering vulture.

And then there’s the internal drama between the two friends. Long before it’s revealed, you know exactly why Hunter’s been avoiding Becky. It makes you wonder if guilt is her real motivation rather than altruism. And if she’s really regretful, why did she get that tattoo? I mean it’s like she wanted to get caught.

Having to put her sudden resentment aside so they can both survive this very dumb dilemma they haphazardly threw themselves into, Becky will soon realize she now has a reason to let go. Thinking catastrophically, she belatedly admits she blew it with her dad and films what she thinks will be her last video to him. If you watched Frozen, you know she’ll be fine. That meddlesome vulture, on the other hand.

Let’s be clear about one thing. The set design and cinematography are the absolute best things about Fall. They picked beautiful locations to film. No stunt doubles here, even though the actors were never in any real danger. The best scene is the climb. It’s harrowing. The movie does an excellent job of making you believe that’s a big-ass tower and it’s never a good idea to look down. You can feel it in your legs. I can only imagine how this all looked on IMAX a couple of years ago during its profitable theatrical run.

The problem is the circumstance that leads to this expedition. Hunter’s solution to help Becky overcome her depression is to put her in another dangerous situation similar to the one that caused that depression in the first place. And the result is exactly the same!

And what about their lack of preparation for potential calamities, inexcusable considering the opening scene. Hunter wholeheartedly believes this will be a quick little release for her friend and then everything will be back to normal. They only bring water! On a hot sunny day! There are no contingency plans whatsoever. When they find themselves fucked, over time they improvise with the limited capabilities of their handheld technology and not very well, either. You’d think past experience would inspire more caution.

Look, I get it. Becky’s stuck in a horrendous rut. Her life is frozen by tragedy. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. She needs something powerful to pull her out of the darkness and back into the light. But surely, there are healthier ways to get past your grief.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, February 16, 2024
3:07 a.m.

Watcher (2022)

He lives on the fifth floor in the old building across the street. When night falls, there he is, staring at her, just a shadow without a face. This is what happens when you’re hot and take forever to put up curtains.

Such is the dilemma lovely Maika Monroe faces in Watcher. With her cute Kurt Cobain haircut and striking angelic features, she is a Hitchcockian heroine completely out of her element.

The decision she makes to uproot her American life for a duller one in Romania of all places is beyond misguided. It’s all because of her selfish, clueless partner. And he’s far from hunky.

He happens to speak the language fluently (she’s just starting to learn it) and he’s agreed to move here because of the opportunity for advancement. He’s a workaholic marketer barely home in their new apartment.

Left alone for much of the time, she wanders the streets and sites of beautiful Bucharest during the day and lollygags around at home during the night. She gave up acting for this?

The only excitement is uncertain danger in the form of The Spider, a mysterious serial killer with a predilection for decapitation. There have been several victims thus far, all young women, but just one survivor. Who’s next?

Her rather boring existence gets a lot more interesting when she decides to take in a joined-in-progress screening of Charade (subtle, guys) and there he is, moving up in the row right behind her, groaning a little like Michael Myers. But you can’t top the master.

And when she almost decides to give in to her once abandoned nicotine addiction (she eventually falls off the wagon), there he is again seemingly following her around in the grocery store. That’s not a good place to put jarred pickles, fellas.

Already wanting to go home, besides reverting back to those nasty ciggys, Monroe starts making questionable decisions, like waving at the guy one night just to make sure, yes, he is in fact stalking me. (Were you really that doubtful, toots?) Or later when she spots him wandering around town and starts foolishly stalking her stalker as she watches him feeding the pigeons and taking in a meal outdoors, even going so far as to follow him into his rundown building. (Why do you think he’s covering his face with that newspaper? He can see you, bitch!)

That last ploy backfires. He calls the cops on her and suddenly, there he is at her door, quietly pretending to be embarrassed, deliberately avoiding eye contact as they are forced by the same officer she contacted a little earlier to avoid such a scene to shake hands because you know, this was all a big “misunderstanding”. It will not be their last meeting.

“Fucking cops are useless,” a wise man says later on. But come on, this is just dumb.

Even dumber is the reaction of her man, who despite going back to the grocery store to look at surveillance footage (they can only get a sideview of his face which she quickly captures on her phone) and even going with that same cop to the weird guy’s door just to confront him, does not believe she’s in any danger. He even gets caught making a bad joke about it, in Romanian, right in front of her to colleagues at a cocktail party. Why exactly is she with this asshole?

It is not until the inevitable climax that he finally realizes, oh shit, maybe I should’ve believed her. As she looks straight at him in the last shot, I was hoping she would say, “I’m going home. Don’t call me.”

Watcher is a frustrating experience. It starts very slowly with a couple whose chemistry is non-existent and who aren’t particularly enthralling. Basically, not much happens despite the pretty scenery.

Then things start to pick up considerably during an at-home dinner when a discussion about The Spider reveals some disturbing details. Over time I started feeling that welcome sense of dread in my stomach, the same feeling I had throughout much of The Shining.

But at the same time I didn’t really care about many of the characters in Watcher and so we have all this unsettling atmosphere skillfully orchestrated through camera and score but no real investment in the outcome of the plot which you can easily predict anyway.

Monroe’s got charisma with a capital C but her character’s a total contradiction, an odd, incompatible mix of fear and chutzpah.

One minute she’s having a premonition about what could happen to her (a nightmare that becomes all too real), the next she’s a courageous amateur detective on an impromptu reconnaissance mission but without a disguise or a weapon.

Unable to sleep because of her anxiety (first, because of the move and then because of him), after getting someone else to confront her future attacker by pounding on and yelling at his front door without success, she herself knocks as well only to encounter the man’s elderly and harmless father instead. No woman would do this in the real world. They’d be hopping on the next available plane.

The villain is too much like Norman Bates, an antisocial, short-haired nebbish who reeks of obvious awkwardness, a screaming red flag that doesn’t seem to attract any attention beyond his doomed victims. Like Monroe herself, we know what’s in that bag. How come no one notices a smell?

He draws too much attention to himself and yet even the police are looking elsewhere. He looks the part but how does he stand out amongst a long cinematic legacy of woman-hating serial killers? How can he stand out when he’s not original? Plus, he seems more like a rapist than a murderer to me.

And he’s also hit-and-miss when it comes to his technique. Monroe makes friends with her neighbour, a former ballet dancer who she unexpectedly discovers is now a stripper in a strange underground club that is apparently located in the same building as The Spider. (By the way, how do they get tipped if they’re strutting around in glass cases? Is there a slot where you can shove in Euros?)

At some point, she goes missing and Monroe gets understandably worried. When we find out her fate, we’re wondering why the killer botches his aim with his next victim. Regardless, how is she able to survive for all that time having lost all that goddamn blood? Shouldn’t she have passed out already?

Writer/director Chloe Okuno was onto something here. She has a great visual sense, her cinematographer making highly effective use of existing European architecture but her story lacks imagination. She and her craftspeople can set a mood as well as Kubrick and his team but can’t pay it off like they could.

Watcher lacks dark humour, too, unlike the underrated Ginger Snaps. Its uneven pacing reminding you over and over again that it’s an indie film with a start-and-stop fetish. But Halloween is just as entertaining when it’s not terrifying you. It does not suffer from any inconsistency and we cared about everybody. What’s this movie’s excuse?

I’ll tell you. It’s an overdependence on False Alarms in between those slow-ass conversations and underwhelming horror scenes. I must’ve counted half a dozen over the course of the film. When it actually tries to be scary, like I said, it doesn’t know how to apply the exclamation point.

Despite being made by a woman, stripped down to its very essence Watcher is very much another recycled woman-in-danger thriller. Yes, much is made of Monroe’s alienation especially in the company of Romanians who don’t speak her language. But it’s The Spider who dominates, the only reason to pay attention. If only he lived up to the billing and the killing.

There’s a famous adage in fiction. If you introduce a gun at some point in your story, it ultimately has to go off. Bottom line, someone needs to pull the trigger. The second Monroe’s friend shows her her own pistol, Watcher has already spoiled its ending. It would’ve been more impactful if she aimed it at her boyfriend.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, February 3, 2024
2:33 a.m.

How To Eat Fried Worms (2006)

Joe Guire is an asshole. So is his older brother. Neither deserves any sympathy for how they treat other kids.

And yet, one is seen as the bigger villain and, in the end, the only villain. From where I sit, they are mirror images of each other. If they swapped bodies, nothing would change. And no one would even notice the difference.

Joe is the ginger you don’t want to fuck with. The second he lays his beady eyes on you, he already knows how he’s going to torment you. This miserable little shit even wears a “death ring” for extra heel heat. One slug to the gut and you eventually die because the poison the death ring supposedly contains takes a while to work its way into your system. It’s obviously bullshit but you only have two choices: snatch the ring and examine it for yourself or wait until you reach the eighth grade to find out for sure. And it’s easier to wait in fear then get your ass beat.

Silly ring gimmick aside, I knew kids like Joe. They were relentless bullies until an adult would intervene and they would finally back off. One would take pleasure in throwing my hat over a neighbour’s fence that was so high you wouldn’t be able to climb and retrieve it. (He later tried making headphones out of plasticine but they stuck to his ears and wouldn’t come off. Karma can be wonderful.) Another would fill my toque with snow and put it right back on my head. (He had teeth like a beaver and looked like a stereotype.) It has been decades since I suffered from their cruel antics and I hope never to see them again.

Young Billy feels the same way about Joe. He’s the new kid in school and absolutely hates it. Leaving his friends behind because his dad is starting a new job in a new town, from the moment he arrives he is instantly targeted. It does not help that the humourless principal palms the top of his head while introducing him to his new classmates.

During his first lunch break, Billy discovers his thermos has been sabotaged. Expecting to pour out a drink, out come a pile of worms instead. The fiendish Joe is firmly in control or so he thinks. Billy, a dedicated soccer player, does something no one has ever done before. He fights back. He pretends he likes eating the creepy crawlies and then throws one right at Joe’s stupid face. He should’ve thrown the whole lot.

This, of course, does not solve the problem (but it does get him over as a babyface to the whole school). Joe doesn’t take kindly to those who fight back. It only encourages him more. And thanks to his equally bullied co-conspirators (one of whom looks like a young Robert Smith with his unusually spiky haircut), Billy is seemingly on his own. But after his first encounter with Joe, he is befriended by the very tall Erika and shortly thereafter, a dancing fool named Adam. Both will remain loyal, although Billy probably doesn’t deserve Erika’s support the way he treats her sometimes.

Things come to a head when a bike chase leads to a breaking point. Tired of all this bullshit already, Billy makes a terrible bet with Joe. He has to eat 10 worms by 7 p.m. on Saturday, their first day off. The loser has to shove worms down their pants while walking through their school hallway on Monday.

With a title like How To Eat Fried Worms, there’s no room for subtlety or nuance, nor should any be expected. You can’t say you’ve haven’t been warned about the gruesomeness you’re about to subject yourself to.

But since this film deviates so much from its original source material I was very surprised by how triggered I was and how depressing it is to see so much unnecessary, unjustified cruelty in a kids movie. There is nothing funny about any of this.

Erika is repeatedly mocked for her height and her name. ”Erk! Erk! Erk!” Joe and his kowtowed cronies constantly chirp at her. I’m pretty sure they would stop altogether if she brought her bow and arrow to school and threatened to use it. (Billy spots her expertly practicing her archery in her backyard.) Because of what happens during that pivotal lunch period, Billy is forever referred to as “Wormboy.” Even the dopey principal is given a demeaning nickname - Boiler Head – which doesn’t even make sense. ”Pencil-necked geek” would be more accurate.

It’s not just the names themselves that aggravate me so (although they’re obviously not the worst thing you can be called; this is a PG movie, after all), it’s the intention. It’s always the intention. The constant degradation and dehumanizing of these characters makes for an unpleasant viewing experience. You’re not laughing, you’re cringing and getting angrier. Like Billy, you just want it all to stop.

And then there’s the sheer absurdity of the bet itself. Billy, it is established right from the start, has an unusually sensitive stomach. Whether it’s watching his annoying little brother drool or eat disgusting food that somehow remains mostly on his face, following the spin cycle a little too closely while their MILF of a mom does laundry or simply riding in a car, it does not take much for him to hurl.

So how are we to accept the very idea of him eating and swallowing worms without provoking a similar episode? I mean he doesn’t even dry heave! And he’s not eating them raw, remember. The worms are cooked and deliberately covered & mixed in increasingly unappetizing muck to the point where if this was Sal Vulcano being punished on Impractical Jokers, he would quit the show.

By the end, Billy comes up a little bit short because of an unforeseen problem. Feeling guilty for not winning legitimately, he predictably comes up with a compromise solution. All of this only happening because he and the others who have slowly but eventually switched sides see how Nigel mistreats Joe. Sorry, but this little bastard is “a joke”. I certainly wouldn’t be standing up for him. I’d be throwing him in the lake.

Realizing he’s been checkmated by a determined foe while obviously appreciative for the belated support, an embarrassed Joe instantly softens and the bullying stops. And we end with two people humiliating themselves for the sake of fairness before everyone enjoys a collective dance break, only briefly interrupted by the aforementioned scold in charge. Come on. What world are we living in here?

Depriving us of the joy of a true prick getting his comeuppance is the last straw for me. It doesn’t even have to be violent retribution, nor even truly vengeful. It just needs to be satisfying, an exclamation point that more convincingly ends the hostilities. Bullies are a scourge and a cancer and should never be celebrated. And they sure as hell are not your future friends unless they genuinely become better people and stay that way. I don’t remember Joe saying, “I’m sorry,” or even begging for forgiveness.

The message of How To Eat Fried Worms is a cold one irresponsibly masquerading as heartwarming reconciliation. Billy has to literally torture himself just to stop his own torture and make these dimwitted goons his friends. It hardly seems worth it.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, January 29, 2024
11:01 p.m.

Shrooms (2007)

Beware The Mushroom With The Black Nipple. That’s the warning that goes unheeded in Shrooms, a lifeless horror comedy that openly misleads you into thinking it’s a supernatural thriller.

Three couples in crisis convene for an outdoor drug party in an Irish forest. Tara, the cute American blonde who’s always bending over showing off her cleavage, has long had a burning torch for Jake, an Irish hunk who resembles Dave Matthews if he developed Russell Brand’s personality.

The problem is Tara’s backed up and Jake’s not doing his job. At one point, she confesses to her friend Holly that she’s embarrassed even being here. Why isn’t she getting any action, she wonders.

Lovely but uptight Holly has her own troubles. Her boyfriend, Malcolm, who for some reason is usually referred to as Bluto, is a little handsy and she’s not feeling it. So, he tries secretly making the moves on their friend Lisa, a hairy-pitted cutie dating a hippie named Troy who thinks he’s a karate expert. He’s so awful even a tree won’t put him over.

Meanwhile, Jake warns the others about The Mushroom With The Black Nipple. You ingest it and you could die, which, as it turns out, is total bullshit. You don’t die at all, actually. You just turn into a homicidal monster.

Sure enough, one of the six doesn’t hear this speech. They’re too busy wandering away aimlessly exploring the forest. And so, once they spot The Magic Mushroom With The Black Nipple, down the hatch it goes.

Suddenly, they’re having fever dreams out of nowhere while convulsing on the ground or are these premonitions of sudden mayhem to come?

As it turns out, they’re not predictions, they’re spoilers. And if I had actually given a shit about these idiots, and if these sequences had any kind of dark energy attached to them, the big reveal at the very end might have landed with a more dramatic impact.

Instead, it will remind viewers of Dream House which was only slightly better. And as far as slasher films go, nothing will ever top the original Halloween.

Shrooms telegraphs itself way too often and as I said, had I felt anything other than bored indifference, I probably would’ve clued in a lot faster. I can’t say the film doesn’t warn you about The Mushroom With The Black Nipple.

Deep in this Irish forest is an abandoned building filled with bad memories. As Jake recalls to the group during their first night together, it used to be a youth centre for naughty children. Run by the Christian brothers, it was more of a torture chamber than a place of refuge. (Why wasn’t it demolished?)

One fateful night, one of the kids reached their breaking point and mixed a whole lot of Mushrooms With Black Nipples in a pot of soup. The whole thing backfired when the suddenly amped up Christian brothers commenced a mass murder campaign that resulted in almost 80 casualties. Jake also implies there was mass rape, as well.

As the authorities combed through the aftermath, two people were unaccounted for: one of the murderous brothers and a young prisoner who witnessed his own twin being executed. One of the six dopes here for the drug party keeps seeing these survivors over and over again after they ingest The Mushroom With The Black Nipple. It’s all a swerve to throw us off the scent.

It’s never a good sign when characters in a horror film make questionable decisions long before they’re ever in any serious danger. In Shrooms, Jake orders everyone to hand over their cell phones. Why? So, they avoid inviting any “unnecessary embarrassment” if they decide to reach out for help while hallucinating during their trips. Of course, at one point, these devices suddenly vanish, so, great job, Jake.

Characters get separated when they should stick together, one even goes to a cabin to the woods hoping to find a working phone when all they encounter is a broken one that belongs to two Irish rednecks who have an unfortunate connection to that youth center. And clearly haven’t seen a woman in a really long time. By the way, do they have any electricity at all? Are they always in darkness?

Shrooms was produced mostly in Ireland and was imported to North America by Magnolia Films and Magnet Releasing in 2007. You can tell the filmmakers had very limited funds as well as a limited imagination. Notice how fake that archival photo of the abandoned torture house looks as Tara catches up on its history during a quiet moment to herself. 

Contrast that with Halloween which had a shooting budget of less than half a million but because of the brilliant set design and cinematography, it looks beautiful even today. The underappreciated Gretel & Hansel was made for five million and also has a dazzling look about it. You don’t need a lot of money to capture a mood, just a really solid approach and first-rate craftspeople to pull it off.

I will say this. There is a very nice overhead shot of Tara running into the abandoned youth centre which ends with her disappearing inside. But nifty camera shots only get you so far when you’re dealing with such shoddy material. I wasn’t scared in the slightest. I was literally unmoved.

I have a longstanding rule about horror films. If you kill off characters I don’t like or care about, I can’t hate you. You’re doing me a big favour. Yeah, the girls are attractive but they’re not bright or remotely interesting and, honestly, why are they even here? Aren’t there safer ways of getting high and laid? Their collective taste in men is highly questionable.

Bluto is a horny sleaze who gets brutally punished for it. Troy is so lame even I could beat his ass. And reckless Jake has a lot to answer for arranging this drug party in the first place knowing full well the dangers of The Mushrooms With The Black Nipples. Why didn’t he warn everybody about all of this well ahead of time?

Although it offers consistently weak attempts at levity, Shrooms more or less takes its preposterous premise seriously, especially in the latter stages when the numbers inevitably dwindle and one character belatedly realizes they’ve developed a psychotic alter-ego that can’t be stopped no matter how far they run.

If only they knew to avoid The Mushroom With The Black Nipple.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, January 12, 2024
7:10 p.m.

The ABCs Of Death

There is no harder subgenre of horror movie to master than the anthology. Which is why so few are made and even fewer are any good.

With multiple filmmakers presenting a myriad of visions over the course of an entire feature, quality is rarely consistent. These are often awkward patchworks of storytelling as we veer from one strange saga to the next until the curtain falls and the lights turn back on again.

Most anthologies usually have a wraparound story, a handy device to allow for a central character unaffiliated with these stitched together shorts to transition from one to the other until their own segment concludes the entire feature.

The ABCs Of Death discards this convention altogether. After a quick opening title sequence that is too reminiscent of The Shining, we jump right into the first installment.

In the opening Apocalypse, a woman fails to get away with killing her husband as the world suddenly starts falling apart. First, she slices through half of his hand. Then, she stabs him in the neck. Still hanging on, she rushes back to the kitchen to fill a pan with scolding hot water which she proceeds to splash right in his face. Several bonks on the head later and he still won’t croak. He is one tough son of a bitch. And this is one stupid story with zero explanation for her actions. The extent of the apocalypse involves unseen crashing cars. I mean how low was the budget for this one?

Before I move on, I want to be clear up front. This is the worst anthology film I’ve ever seen. Your limit for gore and spectacle will be put to the test. There are moments here of such outrageous depravity one would be forgiven for not proceeding further. It’s round after round after round of blatant unpleasantness. When you rely on empty provocation to elicit visceral reactions of your dumbfounded audience, you’re just jerking off and wasting everyone’s time.

All that doesn’t make for a fun viewing. In fact, it turns all of this into an endurance test. Can you survive through all two hours and ten minutes of this cinematic torture? Judging by how low its box office returns were a little over a decade ago, most were unwilling to even get started.

Deep within its blackened soul, The ABCs Of Death is a gimmick movie and nothing more. Selected international filmmakers were assigned a word starting with a different letter of the alphabet. Their task was to build a quick story around the word. We’re talking segments that last less than ten minutes each, often less than five. With such stifling screen time limitations this project was doomed from the start.

Naturally, because of how the overall film is structured, each successive short is presented in the order of the alphabet. The producers want you to guess what the inspiration is for each segment which explains why every story ends with the title displayed instead of opening with it. I think I’d rather hear the pitch meetings.

Some filmmakers were given easier assignments than others. None of them deserve passing grades.

Of the punishing 26 entries, Unearthed, Ingrown, Pressure and Nuptials, all disappointingly average efforts, come the closest to working. The bare bones Unearthed is one of a couple of stories that are shot from the point of view of the main character (the unseen, suicidal surfer in the pointless Gravity being the other), in this case a cornered vampire about to meet a grisly end.

It embraces all the usual cliches: torch-wielding townspeople (including a guy who knows how to fire a flaming arrow), the wooden stake through the heart bit, and a Latin-chanting priest throwing holy water.

Not leaving anything to chance, the vampire is stabbed, defanged and beheaded, which begs the obvious question of why not just stick with the decapitation.

Ingrown features a couple in crisis. A nervous but angry husband is about to inject his wife, helplessly tied-up in the tub, with a poisonous substance. There’s no dialogue, just pointed narration from the victim mocking the toxic masculinity of the generic, cowardly villain who for some reason appears conflicted about his actions. But that doesn’t stop him from leaving.

If you’re going to make a statement about the scourge of domestic violence, you need to deliver something more powerful than this. A little puke on the floor isn’t cutting it.

Pressure is about an impoverished mom of three who earns a living as a sex worker. She has a deadbeat alcoholic boyfriend who eventually steals all her hidden money that she’s been saving for her daughter’s birthday. (The kid has her eyes on a particular bike.) Apparently desperate, even though business is good, she belatedly accepts an offer to shoot a particularly upsetting porn video.

It involves murdering small animals by stomping on them. In this case, it’s an orange kitten. To see the woman in the very next scene smiling and laughing as she watches her daughters play makes her deeply unsympathetic especially when she doesn’t really need to shoot these objectionable videos. When I say this movie crosses the line, this is only one such example.

The ABCs Of Death is a curious mix of serious and silly horror shorts. The only time I laughed, and it was a solitary laugh at that, happens during Nuptials. A guy proposes to his not-so-lovable lady but makes the mistake of giving her a talking bird as a gift. Let’s just say he should’ve taught his new pet all the ins and outs of bro code. Oh, and maybe, be more discreet with your side pussy.

Every other short is various degrees of awful. None is worse than Libido.

Two guys are kidnapped, chained to a chair and forced to jack it to a hot naked lady. The one who cums last gets offed and doesn’t move on to the next round. The main character manages to survive for about a dozen rounds until a scene is presented to him that is beyond disgusting. I have a lot of questions about his overly enthusiastic opponent.

This is immediately followed by a scene where a young woman can’t flush the toilet, so she goes searching for a plunger. When we see what’s clogging the bowl, well, there’s a reason the segment is called Miscarriage. Did we really need that dramatic zoom, guys?

Just as appalling is Youngbuck about the creepiest janitor in film history who preys on young boys at the school he works at. (I will not mention what he does with their sweat.) One will ultimately get their revenge but that last shot left me unsettled. Why is the kid pulling his goddamn shorts down? Take the win and go home. Thank goodness for Power Glove’s catchy retro synth pop which serves as a welcome distraction.

On the flipside, much earlier on there’s a more innocuous story built around the word Fart. A cute Asian schoolgirl has a crush on her cute Asian schoolteacher. The schoolgirl is ashamed of farting in public. It turns out, the schoolteacher has a powerful blast of her own, so powerful it literally lures the schoolgirl into her own asshole where they make out and toot internally for eternity. Unless you’re a teenage boy prone to gigglegasms, you’ll react the way I did, baffled beyond words.

There are a lot of these kinds of gonzo shorts thrown in here like Cycle where a guy discovers a mysterious portal and then realizes there are now two of him, one more murderous than the other which goes completely undetected by his wife. Zero explanation for any of this.

Or the segment about a dog, doubling for a British World War II pilot, who gets hoodwinked by a Nazi masquerading as a stripping fox and then Hulks up after receiving encouragement from a Winston Churchill impersonator while she tries to electrocute him.

The most peculiar entry is the last one and I defy anyone to explain it to me because I have no fucking idea what the hell is going on. You get a cute naked gal who looks uncannily like Lady Gaga wearing a Nazi hat and strapping around a giant fake penis that ejaculates rice. There’s other naked people eating Asian cuisine. There’s murky commentary about America giving Japan terrible “gifts” like the atomic bomb which sort of explains in some befuddled way why some of those naked people are wearing “Little Boy” helmets. Oh, and a guy in a wheelchair who suddenly stands erect in more ways than one. Is this supposed to be funny? The whole segment left me perplexed and deeply confused.

Running a close second is the truly insane Removed, another ugly story about a tortured kidnap victim. So, here’s the deal. Apparently, long parts of his skin can be stripped from his body and transformed into 35mm film. (I didn’t get it, either.) Not only is he constantly operated on, he’s also a display animal placed into a cage and fawned over by the most desperate groupies I’ve ever seen. Somehow, he gets away but there’s no happy ending. The blood rain is a decent effect, though.

A couple of shorts take the meta route by focusing on the struggle of making a good story because of the seeming limitations of a challenging word. The creators of Quack play themselves as they ultimately decide to kill a harmless duck not recognizing that committing actual murder on film itself isn’t original. I’d rather see the coke-sniffing topless gal again, thanks. I can tolerate the screaming.

And then there’s the appropriately named What The Fuck which begins with uncomfortable animation (tit squeezing should always be consensual!) and ends in incoherence. It too believes it’s doing something different by showing the consequences of having your dark thoughts coming to life while some freaked out TV reporter waxes philosophical in the midst of all this sudden chaos. But this isn’t original, either, if you’ve seen The Sender.

The ABCs Of Death is not strictly live action. Besides parts of WTF, there’s two additional animated segments, one traditional, the other claymation, that both unfortunately revolve around bathrooms.

In Klutz, a woman at a party takes a crap that doesn’t actually want to leave her body. It’s literally the turd that just won’t flush. But that doesn’t explain why it’s in a murderous mood. I’ll tell ya this. He’s no Mr. Hankey. No “Howdy ho” from this motherfucker.

We all have our irrational fears but the wide-eyed little boy who hesitates to use that poorly installed contraption in Toilet is not being the unreasonable one. With his kiddie seat thrown away, he now has to sit on this rickety thing without getting killed. He does not succeed. His father is a real asshole. One more unnecessarily gruesome spectacle.

There are a few unexciting action-oriented shorts, as well, like the dystopian Vagitus that takes its cue from Robocop. In the year 2035, you have to get permission to procreate. Otherwise, you’re hunted down like a terrorist by an ED-209 knock-off. Throw in a special baby that is supposed to be the next Jesus (not a huge fan of kids getting murdered in horror films, by the way) and you have yet another derivative work that at least has a modicum of intelligence but way too much ultra violence. I’m sure Cronenberg appreciates the final kill but he did it better in Scanners.

The misleading Speed involves a kidnapping, a potential sacrifice and a big car chase, all for the lead character to avoid being captured by some mysterious, ugly-ass, deep-voiced villain. But, as the final moment reveals, it’s all a big wind-up. I’m also not a big supporter of women demeaning each other in increasingly misogynistic ways. But the flame thrower is cool.

The poor big gal who can’t be accepted for who she is turns out to be even grosser than her harshest critics imagine in XXL. After being ridiculed and insulted while out and about (I thought they loved les grandes femmes in France), there she is literally pigging out in the most revolting way possible. Constantly pressured to fit an unrealistic beauty standard, she saves money on plastic surgery and does some drastic physical alterations all on her own which of course make things worse. I guess revenge was out of the question.

That’s not the case with another kidnap victim who realizes he has to fight his own missing dog in an underground fight club. What’s the deal with the baby in the crowd? And why is everything in slow motion? This does not improve the final result. No more animal violence, for Christ’s sake!

I also didn’t care about the horny guy who becomes a human nest for baby spiders (Exterminate), the horny couple having unappealing oral sex before the guy decides to perform a strangulation (Orgasm), nor the absurdist “Samurai Movie” involving strange facial expressions and yet another beheading.

And then there’s the little girl who can’t get to sleep in Bigfoot. Her cousin and his hot lady, eager to resume their sizzle-free romp which is eventually over in a flash, spin a yarn of obvious bullshit to scare her into staying in bed and keeping her eyes shut so they won’t be interrupted again. And then, it sort of comes true when “the garbage man” suddenly pays them all a visit. Convenience isn’t irony, my man.

As a whole, The ABCs Of Death is overstuffed, undercooked and a goddamn drag. Horror movies are supposed to be cheeky fun filled with suspense, big laughs, well crafted scares and characters to care about. This is the complete opposite of that. And to think, they made two more movies of this.

They picked the wrong title. The whole thing should’ve been called What The Fuck?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, January 5, 2024
9:28 p.m.

Hatching (2022)

What’s going on in Finland?  Is everything ok there?  I’m asking because I just saw Hatching, one of the strangest horror films to come out this decade.

It’s about a seemingly perfect family who live in a beautiful, quiet neighbourhood. Surrounded by lush, green trees as far as the eye can see, with the odd bird flying around peacefully, it’s the epitome of tranquility. 

The mom is a vlogger constantly filming her kids and her husband with a selfie stick.  The dad is a nerdy architect.  The son, the youngest child, is his demanding, obnoxious clone.  And then, there’s the daughter.  Yeah, we have to talk about her.

A young teenager with a lot of problems, her life completely changes in an instant.  After a mysterious thump interrupts the making of the latest family video, she accidentally lets in a black crow who proceeds to fly around and cause a lot of damage. 

It’s eventually caught and given to the mom.  Now, because she presents herself as a cheery person, you would think she would take it outside and let it fly away.  Nope.  She snaps its neck and tells her daughter to dispose of it accordingly.

As always, the daughter does what she’s told.  But the bird ain’t dead.  And then it goes missing.  When the kid hears its cries for help deep in the woods, she does not nurse it back to health. Oh no.  She beats it repeatedly with a rock. Like mother, like daughter.

Then she spots the egg.  You should’ve left it in the woods, honey.

Over time, this damn thing grows and grows to the point where we know 1) this will not be an ordinary bird and 2) it will transition into something more sinister.  Indeed, as tears land on the outside part of the shell, out comes the hand.

Why is the daughter so upset?  Because her mom is having an open affair with a handyman who looks uncannily like Boris Becker.  After coming home from school, she catches him getting a little bit too handsy with her mom’s keester right there in the living room.  He’s only supposed to be putting back up the fallen chandelier.

The mom explains he’s her “special friend” but the dad is kept in the dark and she’d prefer it that way, young lady, so let’s keep this between us girls, eh?  She takes suspicious weekend trips to non-existent blogging seminars in order to cover her horny ass. Later, she confesses she’s in love. Her daughter’s fake smile belies a broken heart.

As it turns out, none of this is even necessary because the dad learns the truth anyway (it’s not clear how, actually) and because he’s such a wuss he has no objection whatsoever.  “Your mother is so strong-willed,” he tells his daughter.  And he admires her for going after what she wants.  What a cuck.

At one point, the mom takes the daughter to visit her side piece. Now I should mention the family lives quite comfortably. This guy lives in a giant dump.  The mom diplomatically calls it a “fixer-upper”.

While the daughter lays in bed with her dark secret, excessive moaning is heard in the background.  I’m amazed the husband wasn’t invited to watch.  He would’ve enjoyed it.

Let’s talk about the relationship between the two girls.  The daughter has only one friend, her new neighbour, a genuinely sweet kid with a dog she adores.  Both are gymnasts competing for a spot on their high school team.  The daughter sucks.  She rarely sticks the landing.  Her neighbour, however, can do this effortlessly.

The mom, a former figure skater whose career got derailed by a terrible injury (check out that big ass scar on her leg), demands perfection.  As she watches her fail and fail again during her dismount off the uneven bars, she keeps her after practice until her actual coach comes back hoping to lock up for the day.  She eventually gets it and they go home.

The mom also controls her weight.  Look at the scene where she sits down to eat with the side piece.  She is starving.  He’s amused by how fast she scarves down her treat.  But when she makes a mess, she gets worried.  He doesn’t care. He cheerfully makes a mess himself.

Later, when they’re outside, she tries to show him some moves.  She nails the cartwheel but not the aerial version despite numerous attempts.  Very upset, he consoles her, telling her, “It doesn’t matter.”  He even shows her that she’s better than him.  He can’t even do a normal cartwheel like she can.  It’s the first time anyone has fully accepted her, flaws and all.

The side piece has an adorable baby girl (his partner died giving birth to her) that the mom dotes on a little too much to the point where her actual kid feels jealous.  The monstrosity she unintentionally unearthed from the woods picks up on this and while she’s in the middle of that important competition, danger awaits.

A couple of fateful moments prevent calamity that we never expected to happen anyway, but the side piece who has already tolerated one such violent incident, which is incredible in its own right (the tolerance I mean, not the actual sequence), has reached his breaking point.

That leads to a truly demented bit where the mom screams out her frustration, thoroughly injures herself on her steering wheel, wipes her bloody nose in an undignified manner, turns to her daughter and blames her for ruining her happy indiscretion.  Jesus Christ, lady, buy a dildo already.

One of the biggest problems with Hatching is the daughter.  The movie doesn’t see her as a villain but rather as an overwhelmed victim, someone with good intentions who doesn’t know what to do about the mess she’s made.

The problem with this is that she has dark thoughts that her adopted child instantly picks up on.  You could say she’s something of a problem solver.

Annoyed by your neighbour’s yapping dog while she’s trying to sleep? It’s already taken care of.  Can’t make the gym team because her new friend is better than her?  Time to follow her alone at night as she walks down an abandoned street.  Jealous of that baby?  Well, the daughter picks the right time to injure her wrist.  At least someone is spared.

As awkward as her relationship is with her own father, who’d rather be noodling on his brand new guitar anyway, it’s baffling to me why she doesn’t want her evil doppelganger to attack her mother, the sole source of her misery.  But then again, I didn’t think Mommie Dearest was evil enough, just selfish and thoughtless.

Perhaps, that was the point.  She’s a terrible stage mother but she does love her child.  She is sometimes affectionate, just not as much as she should be. And she believes in impossible standards to the point where “I can do better” becomes a disturbing mantra for her kid. Where’s the moment where the daughter finally stands up for herself?

That may explain, albeit unpersuasively, why she isn’t at all upset about her daughter’s secret, even though it cost her access to regular side cock.  After comforting her and admitting to her son he wasn’t imagining what he saw earlier in the movie, there’s a final confrontation.  I found it wholly unsatisfying.  And really, would the mom accept this substitution?  She’s out of her mind but not entirely. Right? No, I’m not right, obviously. Just ask the steering wheel.

Hatching is at times more gross than scary but ultimately, just too weird to accept.  Everybody knows how mama birds feed their offspring.  The daughter learns this firsthand and, um, yeah, it’s not a pleasant thing to watch.  And during the final act, the mom experiences ickiness of a different sort, one moment of which inspires a very bad laugh.

As dysfunctional as this family clearly is, despite the rosy image the mom tries to present at every opportunity online (they only seem to get along during video shoots and bedtime lullabies), when it comes to cover-ups, they are all on-board.  The nice neighbour never learns what happens to her dog. 

During her last vlog recording, the mom offers a series of half-hearted attempts at an update after her daughter gets injured in competition. As the false façade of her carefully cultivated family image fades over a succession of unused takes, even the mom can’t admit in public that failing is ok.  Authenticity will hurt her brand. A lack of it kills this movie.

Released last year by IFC Midnight, Hatching feels like a weaker patchwork of other movies without offering much originality of its own.  The weird bond between the daughter and her evil twin evokes memories of the anger babies in The Brood and the empathetic connection between Elliot and E.T minus much of the warmth.  (Like Gertie, the creature even gets dressed up like the daughter.) Notice how they feel each other’s pain. They are completely in sync which causes an internal conflict that I didn’t completely believe.

The daughter frequently scolds her adopted child when she acts violently (even though subconsciously she clearly approves) but would do anything to keep her alive, even at her own expense, most likely because the thing loves her more than her own mother.  It’s a Faustian bargain no one should feel compelled to make.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, October 28, 2023
7:45 p.m.