Some of My my Favorite Reviews from 2009

So I wrote alot between april and now, I want to share with you, my reviews that were written, that haven't been processed as of yet and generally keep you entertained...

for your sakes, I don't have a film timeline I follow, when I watch them I write a review, if I get to it...

so here are some of my fave articles I did-

1: Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus (2009)
2: Lunatics: A Love Story (
3: 2012 (2009)
4: Bad Biology (2008)
5: Boarding House (1982)

Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus
Written and Directed by Jack Perez

Cross one off of my anticipated movies of the year, here's one for everyone! Actually, I believe the new millenium for midnight movies is upon us, this is fair proof.

Asylum pictures is probably one of the most fruitful name brands in the industry, with a movie a week mentality, the companies president and film makers pretty much can beat any major block buster to home video, before that block buster has been in theaters. Often times they feature actors who could've had a name but didn't manage to find the legs in their careers to do so. But I got to respect a company, no matter how much crap it throws out there on the market, can produce and distribute a film within a months time, thats better than Troma's stats, or even companies like Magnolia. Fortunately for us though, in these hard economic times, we can take them up on their offer.... if you dare to...

Innocently and very eighties like, the movie starts off with an Alaskan exploration, Deborah Gibson playing the typical female brainiac, Emma, is aboard a mini sub trying to communicate to Whales, via playing Mozart as sonar? (!) She and her college professor come across a herd of whales swimming away from something, DUN DUN DAAAA....what could it be?

Above the waters in a Jet flying dangerously low ready to deploy test bombs into a glacier... (cough).... these bombs release the titianic creatures, held imprisoned by ice some odd millions of years ago in while in battle.... its up to the scientists and armed forces to stop these goliaths before they devour the world...

but the movie is called MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS, it spins out of control trying to fit in as many destruction money shots as it can... is this the rival for 2012? who knows...

then the movie becomes a chaotic nonsensical journey, with stereo types every where, the japanese scientist thats straight out of Godzilla and the always reliable Lorenzo Lamas as the captian...

this movie includes set pieces that try to demolish everything in site... because organic living creatures just love to tear apart metal, probably because its inconviencing them... however, the Octopus destroys an oil rig, the shark jumps of the water to take down a 747, Octo beats up submarines like their bowling pins and another great scene is...

"captian, target is going for the golden gate bridge!"

Shark dips its head up and munches down on the golden gate bridge...

all in all, this movie is ace... very bad, very unintelligent, panders to nobodies expectations. There are so many WTF moments, you can help but snigger or cough when something is done or said... also goes to show you, humansare not prepared or capable to handle Prehistoric creatures that get thawed out of ice... i mean these creatures are impervious to any kind of damage caused by bombs or missiles, I mean fuck, we're screwed! MONSTERQUEST take notice!

I know I criticize movies for being too cutesy or not meeting their full potential, I don't think this movie had potential other than the title page of the script... its a ridiculous ride to fun town. It also boasts some impressive CG effects... until it becomes too evident they couldn't afford what they wanted to make... its also fun watching actors like Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas read lines like they are on a bad SNL sketch... oh the pain...

for the midnite crowd, enjoy staying up late with this, however, regular movie goers could and probably would do better on SCI-FI original movies... even if they could, I'd still recommend this....its so fun

Lunatics: A Love Story (1991)

W and D: Josh Becker

Here’s a wildly hilarious rare gem to get your grubby hands on…if you can find it…

Ted Raimi (brother of director Sam Raimi) stars as Hank, a poet and reclusive inhabitant of an apartment he hasn’t left in over six months since being released from a mental institution. He is haunted by visions of spiders crawling on his brain and an insane doctor (Bruce Campbell) trying to inject him to stop fighting his fantasies. He is desperate and wants to find love, he calls party chat lines and gets a call from his mother, who tells him his other brother is getting married. Fed up after having another nervous breakdown (featuring rappers rapping at him) he randomly tries to connect with somebody, so he dials a number at random.

Enter Nancy ( Deborah Foreman) whose luck is no better. She lives in the real world but everything she touches is doomed to die or fail. Her boyfriend ( also Bruce Campbell) leaves her with a large rent bill for another broad and also steals all of her money. She too fed up with how life is going runs from it all. So, after shooting a gang member she is on the run and finds herself ina phone booth receiving a call from a distraught Hank.

They decide to meet.

Hank falls in love. And that’s when the comedy really starts. One scene involves him imagining Nancy is someone else, so he punches her in the face knocking her out. It also features awesome stop motion, weird green screen shots and Evil Dead inspired hilarity. She eventually inspires him to leave the apartment, and in a Monty Python fashion, hell breaks loose for Hank. As steps out of his apartment he ‘accosted’ by surgeons, an earthquake happens and garbage truck is a giant spider going after him.

I can’t believe this movie isn’t on DVD yet, considering the hits team Raimi has produced in the last ten years (Spider Man notably) this should have found its audience by now. I absolutely love the movie for its undeniable charm but also its depressing qualities of people who are socially inept trying to reach out to one another. Its very sweet in a way.

Doesn’t hurt that Bruce Campbell has several reoccurring roles neither.

But I am mostly surprised by Ted Raimi’s paranoid romantic, much different from his serial killer in Skinner or his cameo’s in Spider Man. He pulls of a lead role very well and shows he can command the screen acting like a more physical Woody Allen. There are also priceless dialogue exchanges with Hank and Nancy, at one point asks him:

“Have you ever thought about killing yourself?”

His response “No.”

“Then why were you in a mental institution?”

“Because I tried to kill myself.”

I highly recommend it….if you can find it…

Josh Becker also directed episodes of Xena and Jack of all Trades, Alien Apocalypse and also another great indie Bruce Campbell movie called Running Time.

If only they’d release this and CrimeWave on dvd some day….

2012 (2009)
written by Harald Kloser and Roland Emmerich
directed by Roland Emmerich


Will we ever know what could happen to the end of the world? If it happened would we register it collectively or just fear it so much we'd all die? I'd like to think the end of the world would mean the death of Earth, which invariably will probably die, not in our lifetime, but some very scary way we couldn't comprehend. However it may be, 2012 follows the Mayan 'prediction' behind the end.

We follow several scientists as they sweat and run around blabbering about tectonic shifts and rising heat. Then we meet our band of individuals, who all live in different states, but will meet up with every one, because, this is a Roland Emmerich movie, and thats the way shit goes down.

Ok, got the grievance of character out of the way, because 2012 ignores all potential for greatness with ignoring rigorous plot development, but who the hell wants that? We paid to see destruction, to see California sink, Yellowstone turn into a giant active volcano, and to see the Vatican crush Catholicism once and for all. This movie delivers spectacle, but you already knew that, the previews, don't lie, kicked your ass. But does the movie?

In many ways yes, figuratively, because for one thing, leave your concious mind at the door, it will not do you any good here. There is alot of things wrong with the plot development and the chracters are so painfully one dimensional, its not even worth examing what the hell the Studio was making. Again, the price tag equals, awesome special effects, but other than seeing a few things go boom and couple of hold your breath action set pieces, you feel absolutely nothing. Not one character is really likable, and each one is just introduced to add dimesion or have a reason to cut during a boring conversation to show another part of the world being eaten away. Last minute rescues and plenty of groan inducing moments that should make any audience member roll their eyes, but the audience I saw this with all laughed at the new Sarah Jessica Parker trailer, where she runs after her horse exclaiming that she wasn't on the horse. Yeah, every one chuckled for a while after that...

cough...

Spectacle aside, this is one of the most hilarious movies I have ever seen, every and anything is pot boiled into this cinematic mess. No I could not make anything better, so anybody that says I'd like to see you do better, shaddup, because I'm not the irritable fan boy, I'm the passionate film goer, I wanted to shit go boom, and I did, it was amazing. But everything came with an eye roll, a moment that made you think 'I'm going to see this on South Park'... Hell, every line of dialogue from Team America could've been applied. Particularily the line where one charater says 'I promise I will never die' if John Cusack looked at his kid and said that, I would give this movie an A plus.

2012 doesn't make one think about the end of the world, I didn't, it made me think, shit, that was cool. And is that really the point? No stupid clapping for this one, the real joke is, we'd all die, fuck. But what kind of audience manipulation is that, only the rich can survive, the poor are just destined to die, has Roland Emmerich made an elitist movie? More than likely, these people are not destitute, or charming.

I guess my dream idea would be to have a movie like this, with spectacular effects, but with the heart and reality of Don Mckeller's 'Last Night', where people get together for the last party on Earth and await the end. Alas, 2012 could not be like that, even though this is done by the same guy that made 'Stargate' and 'Independence Day', its also the same producing team of the dreadful 'Day After Tomorrow' and '10,000 BC'. Roland Emmerich has talent, that is for certain, but without the necessary talent to engage rather than tantalize, we are left with a lifeless shell of a movie.

But an awesome looking one at that, and its worth a watch, just like Dante's Peak, Volcano, Daylight, Twister, and the Archie movie were all worth a watch... see it, thats for certain.

Bad Biology

Written by R.A. The Rugged Man Thornburn and Frank Henenlotter

Directed by Frank Henenlotter

Its been over fifteen years since Basket Case 3 came out and Frank Henenlotter has been missing from the scene for a while. Even though he has founded Something Weird Video, which specializes in re-releasing hidden treasures and whacked movies from the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies, he’s been a director I’ve patiently waited for another movie from.

That wait is over….

Some of my favorite movies are cult films, mostly from the eighties, since I’m a child of the time; I grew up watching Toxic Avenger and Little Monsters, always watching fantasy, feeding my imagination. Invariably when I got older I started back cataloging old movies, going on massive whale hunts to find out of print horror films, usually locating them in video liquidation centers, I found some real gems. Gems I’ve kept even when the format is dead.

Then I was introduced to Basket Case. Luckily I’ve been involved with video stores since I was seven, this odd ball movie came into my life when I was about seventeen. Basket Case is a perfect New York slice of underground cinema; depraved, hilarious and sick. Rex Reed venomously gave the movie infamy when he said it was the ‘sickest movie’ he’d ever seen. This was my first foray into Frank Henenlotter’s bizarre world. I felt most welcome. Basket Case 2 and 3 were a little more of the same, with better budgets, and really grounded by two things, Henenlotter’s obsession with the odd and Kevin Van Hentenryck’s performance as the ‘normal’ twin. Brain Damage was another glint of a diamond that I found on tape, boasting a cover with a guys head erupting ala Brazil. Brain Damage has a strong anti-drug message with some great stop motion animation and generally off the wall surrealism, its one not to miss… however, it is a tad dated. The only other movie of Frank’s is Frankenhooker, a hilarious comedy about a man who accidentally kills his girlfriend and pieces her back together with body parts of hookers. It is awesome.

So why the long intro for Bad Biology, a movie that took its sweet time to get to the viewers and fan base? Exactly that. This is a fan base movie. Charlee Danielson plays Jennifer, a seemingly normal girl who takes photo’s for an underground magazine, who unfortunately (?) was born with seven clitoris’s. This gives her an insatiable desire and also a wee bit of a problem with getting pregnant easily…like within two hours of conception.

Yeah…

Then we’re introduced to Batz (played by Anthony Sneed), a guy who has drug problems…or does he? No He’s just got a drug addicted penis. An amazing back story!

But this is Henenlotter’s universe, so anything goes. Characters emotions over take them and things can just happen. I’m kind of thinking, I don’t want to move to New York if this kind of shit is happening. The actors though, new comers, Sneed and Danielson play with a good amount of conviction, Sneed coming off as a counter part to Rick Herbst in Brain Damage. While Charlee Danielson seems like a new hybrid, over sexual version of Terri Susan Smith’s character in Basket Case.

But what I like is that Henenlotter hasn’t conformed but instead invited us into another one of his weird obsessive comedy horrors. He’s actually made a pretty out there movie, which is comfortably made in the wrong era, definitely would’ve played better in the pinnacle of his career. However, as weird and overtly perverse this film is, there is a over bearing sadness to it. An emotional reluctance, which is periodically interrupted, one scene in particular when Jennifer leaves one of her ‘freak babies’ to die, she looks to the camera and asks the viewer to not judge her, but to understand her. But isn’t that the point, we can’t understand these characters, one who’s constantly over stimulated, that being Jennifer, and Batz who can’t get any stimulation because of his ginormous penis. And as sexual this film is, any pervert welcome, the idea of people connecting is there. When Jennifer see’s the after effect of Batz having sex with a hooker, a very funny scene, she only wants to be in Batz life. Batz on the other hand is oblivious to this, and his penis is more and more becoming in control of him through the massive amounts of drugs he’s feeding it.

I like there is a little heart to such a twisted, uncompromising movie, even with the bevy of flesh that is displayed, you never feel it un-necessary or distracts from what is going on, mostly because your face is screwed up in a twisted smile, going ‘wtf?’ Make sure you stick around for the great ending! The film was produced by hip hop artists Jedi Mind Tricks!

However, general biases aside, this is not a film for every body, and trust me, even though this sounds like I just reviewed a porno, it is not. It is a movie a lot of people will hate, if they see it. But I am well versed in the language of Henenlotter’s universe, and if you’re a fan of Toxic Avenger, Killer Condom or even Bloodsucking Freaks, this is up your alley. Buuuuuuuuuutttt…. If your idea is sunshine and rainbows with kittens and a pot of gold…stay away, your eyes will hurt.

This also features a soundtrack composed by R.a. The Rugged Man, and has cuts by the likes of Havoc, Atmosphere and even includes Charliee Danielson singing and playing guitar.

5: Movie Review:
Boarding House (1982)
...................................... atrocious....