Flesheater (1988)

Grampa's gotten into the strawberry jam again.

Bill Hinzman played the zombie who chased Barbara around the cemetery in Night of the Living Dead. Twenty years later he decided to capitalise on his marginal fame by making a zombie film of his own; writing, producing, directing and placing himself in the title role. The result was Flesheater, otherwise known under the almost copyright infringing title Return of the Living Zombies and in the UK as Zombie Nosh. An homage to Romero's classic, Hinzman essentially reprises the same role from that movie.

The film begins with a group of "college kids" on a hayride, ready for a night of drunken debauchery. It's 1988, so it's stonewash denim and feathered hair as far as the eye can see. They are uniformly obnoxious and I couldn't keep their names straight, so I didn't bother. A nearby farmer digs up a coffin inscribed with a vaguely menacing passage, and when he opens the lid, a zombie (Hinzman) leaps out and eats him. At this point the film proceeds like countless slashers, with teens pairing off to engage in poorly acted romance before being munched by Hinzman.

Eventually the main group run across some zombies and retreat to a nearby cabin. They board themselves inside and the requisite power struggle between alpha males ensues. The women, meanwhile, are busy backing themselves up against windows so the zombies can bust in on cue. One girl's repeated cry of "Oh my Gawd!" will have you in stitches. They attempt to call the police, who respond to their not-unreasonable pleas for help with remarkable skepticism. They are cut off mid-call when a sneaky zombie rips out the phone cable. Eventually the zombies force their way in and the teens are killed.

So, we're almost half and hour in and all of our protagonists have been eaten, save for a couple who've sealed themselves up in the cellar. Time to introduce some more fodder, I guess, through the timeless medium of the nude shower scene. I don't know who the girl is supposed to be (older sister? babysitter? live-in maid?) but downstairs the mother and kids are preparing for Halloween night. Hinzman politely knocks on the front door and proceeds to eat the entire family, starting with the little girl and finishing with the girl upstairs. Naturally he removes her towel and gropes her for a bit first (one of the perks of being producer/director/star). The father returns home and is eaten by his former family. Whoops, those characters didn't last long. Better move on.

The couple from the cellar manage to escape when a policeman responds to the cabin and is quickly eaten. After trying unsuccessfully to seek help from a farmer, they crash what appears to be the lamest Halloween party ever. Only about eight guests have shown up, and the host (dressed as Dracula) is hitting the sauce pretty bad. The guests remain unconvinced of the couple's story until the zombies crash the party too. Hinzman takes the opportunity to grope a few more topless actors, because why not? The two teens are the only survivors, and escape back to the safety of the cellar.

By this time word of the zombies has spread, and a volunteer force of gun-toting rednecks has been assembled. The last act of the film follows them as they hunt down and destroy all the zombies. Despite some nice head explosions, it all proceeds in a fairly uninteresting manner. Most of the zombies from earlier in the film make an appearance, which is nice because it's not very often you see a bunch of rednecks blasting a zombie in a chicken suit. The ending of the film is painfully telegraphed (hint: it's stolen from Night of the Living Dead, like everything else in this film) and the two teens happily pontificating on their future together hammers it into your head with the force of a shotgun blast. Of course, Hinzman's zombie survives the extermination process, but if he was setting himself up for a sequel he was wildly optimistic.

The gore effects are nothing special, but occasionally impressive for such a low budget. Hinzman is twenty years older than in his appearance in Night, and the makeup does little to hide the fact that he's not the gaunt, cadaverous man he once was. The acting in this film is hands down some of the worst I've seen, and that's saying something. The dialogue-heavy scenes are downright painful. It's good for a laugh, if nothing else.

There's very little in this film that other people haven't done better. Skip it, unless you really want to see the boobs of some 30 year old actors pretending to be college students. If that's the case, I'd like to direct you to a little friend of mine called google.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Deathbell

Over his illustrious career, Guy N. Smith has lent his writing talents to a wide variety of subjects, including killer locusts, killer bats, killer pesticides, killer pheasants and, of course, killer crabs. But how many authors are brave enough to tackle such heady fare as killer percussive instruments?

In Deathbell, a mysterious stranger named Martyn Hamilton moves into the long deserted Caelogy Hall, along with his wife, his Chinese servant-girl Karamaneh and an ornate bell he picked up during his stay in Tibet. After it's installed in the belfry of his chapel, they are ringing it day and night and it is so fucking loud that deaf people can hear it.

Soon the villagers are dropping dead of brain hemorrhages and when his mother is the latest victim, Julian Dane returns to the village, determined to uncover the mystery of Caelogy Hall. The Noise Abatement Society is no help, their instruments show the volume of bell as being well below legal limits. The police are a bunch of useless bastards who refuse to believe the bell is responsible no matter how many people bleed from the ears and drop dead.

To make things worse, the sound of the Deathbell drives people homicidally insane. A local tough rapes and murders a girl. Then the village idiot rapes her corpse. Talk about a bad day! A couple of bank employees have mad monkey sex and then torture and kill their boss (Smith used to work in banking, I wonder if that part's autobiographical?) A bunch of people are killed when the village cathedral's stained glass windows suddenly explode during a packed service.

People are also experiencing visions of robed monks with no ears performing horrific rituals. What's up with that? Eventually Julian gets close to Karamaneh, but Martyn Hamilton always materialises out of nowhere when she's about to say anything. I won't spoil the ending, but it has something to do with an evil Tibetan cult. I wouldn't think Tibet to be a hotbed of Satanic cults, but whatever.

I think Guy N. Smith wrote this one when he lived next door to a guy who played loud techno at 3am. I imagine it would be pretty cathartic. It's pretty gory, even for Smith, and a few sex scenes appear out of nowhere, complete with hilarious turns of phrase e.g. "...nipples stiff and red, like cherries topping a sundae." Smith's characters are normally paper-thin, but they're a good quality 90 gsm parchment paper. Here they're like crumbling newsprint. I barely knew who the hero was, let alone cared what happened to him. He doesn't even find anything out until the last couple of pages, when Hamilton barfs up about two pages of exposition right before he dies (um, spoiler). Anyway, if you care about nitpicking details like characters and plot, this book isn't for you. Actually, Guy N. Smith probably isn't for you either, so why are you reading this?

Apparently there's a sequel called Demons. I hope it's about a Satanic aromatherapy candle called the Deathsmell that stinks out a whole village. People have nosebleeds and drop dead while experiencing visions of monks with no noses. How do they smell? Terrible! (Oh God, I'm so sorry)

Day of the Dead (2008)

Zombies are the worst. They never chip in for petrol.

Was this movie a calculated attempt by Steve Miner to disappoint and infuriate me? Cause if so, mission accomplished. You know, I kind of liked Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake. Like a hungry zombie, it stripped out the brains, heart and guts of the original, but damned if it wasn't entertaining. Day of the Dead takes everything that was annoying about that film (and modern horror in general) and turns it up to eleven.

Super-fast zombies running along walls/ceilings, dodging bullets and screeching like parrots? Eschewing the mature adult cast of the original for a bunch of annoying teenagers and twenty-somethings? Fast cutting, shaky-cam bullshit? Computers vomiting CGI everywhere? Check, check, check and hell yes.

The film mainly revolves around military hard-ass, Corporal Sarah Bowman, inexplicably played by the baby faced Mena Suvari. Jesus Christ, would it kill filmmakers these days to fill a tough gal role with an actor who weighs more than 90 pounds? Remember Sandahl Bergman in Conan the Barbarian? She looked like she could ruin some shit. Anyway, when a zombie virus invades her shithole home town, Corporal Bowman teams up with an unsurprising bunch of stereotypes and tries to save the day. These include such genre staples as the trash talking black guy (Nick Cannon) and the slimy scientist who will probably betray them at some point (Matt Rippy). Her commanding officer is Captain Rhodes (Ving Rhames, in what amounts to an extended cameo) who pretty quickly turns into a zombie and eats his own eyeball. Yum!

Like the original, there's also a semi-intelligent zombie named Bub. He doesn't eat people because he was a vegetarian in life. When I heard that I almost sprayed beer out my nose, so I hope you're happy Miner. They decide to sit him in the back seat of their car and take him along (I'd be calling shotgun pretty damn quick), which a good indication of the kind of brains trust we are dealing with here. I'm surprised they didn't let him drive.

There's also a bunch of annoying teenagers in this film, the two important ones being Corporal Bowman's brother Trevor (Michael Welch) and his girlfriend Nina (AnnaLynne McCord). They end up trapped in a radio broadcast tower, where Ian McNeice is playing a radio DJ. I swear that guy looks fatter every time I see him. I thought he was going to have a heart attack on camera. Trevor's mother, now a zombie, recognises Trevor's voice on the radio and has the sense to head to the radio station to find him (and eat him). By zombie standards, that's some Mensa shit. They try to explain these occasional flashes of intelligence by saying that the zombies retain part of their memory or some such thing. It's still stupid, but it does lead to some hilarious scenes like a platoon of zombie soldiers running around and firing their guns wildly like the most retarded militia in the USA (this is supposed to be scary).

Anyway, eventually Trevor and Nina meet up with Corporal Bowman and company, and together they stumble across the "secret" laboratory where the zombie virus was created. For some reason the lead research scientist has turned into a super zombie who can dodge bullets. Whether he knows kung fu is not explored. And please, people, having someone point out how bad an idea it is before splitting up does not make it okay. Anyway, a bunch of them die, they blow up the laboratory using some convenient gas cylinders, end of film.

If you haven't noticed, this is a remake in name only. It's disheartening, since Romero was forced to cut a great deal out of his original script due to budgetary constraints, and it would have been cool to see his original vision realised (albeit by a different director). No doubt the result wouldn't have been any worse than this dog's breakfast. There's a few characters who share the same names and there's some military dudes and some scientists, plus there's an underground bunker, I guess. That's where the similarities end.

This film has no subtext. It barely has text. I don't know about supertext, the jury's still out on that one. This movie joins the pile of shameless cash-ins along with Day of the Dead 2: Contagium and Creepshow III. Okay, maybe it isn't as bad as those films; the special effects are pretty good and it looks pretty slick, especially for a direct-to-video release. I guess if you can put up with epilepsy-inducing camera work, loud noises passing for scares and a moronic plot filled with morons - and if you aren't saddled with the expectations built up by the original film - you might like Day of the Dead.

Oh, and a word on this "fast zombie" bullshit. I don't having anything against it in principle. I liked the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Units of Time Later. However, some people say that zombies aren't scary because they are slow and weak, which is a profound case of missing the point. Sure you can kill them easily, you can run away, but where are you going to run to, fucker? As long as there are humans, there will always be zombies. The inexorable march of the zombie is a symbol of the hopelessness of the human race, the slow creep that is destroying civilisation. That's the scary thing about zombies. You take that away and you remove the smothering atmosphere, the sense of dread. The zombies become just another creature of the night. So I guess I do have something against it in principle. Forget I said anything.

5 Games That Have Caused Me to Lose My Shit

1. Ninja Gaiden - XBox
What I might have said:
"What the fuck?! That boss killed me in, like, two hits! That's fucked!"

2. Battletoads - NES
What I might have said:
"God damn hoverbike level! That column came out of fucking nowhere! Nobody could beat this! This is bullshit!"

3. Shadow Warrior (aka Ninja Gaiden) - NES
What I might have said:
"Fucking eagles! Three whole hit points, are you shitting me?! Knocked me into a God damn pit! Fuck this game!"

4. Mega Man - NES
What I might have said:
"Fucking moving platforms! Jump you fucker! Nooo! Fuck you, you little blue shit!"

5. Bart vs the Space Mutants - NES
What I might have said:
"These controls fucking suck! I can't jump over shit! Why the fuck can't I hit that bird with a rocket?! Fuck!"

Creepshow III (2006)

If you can look at these makeup effects without laughing, you are a stronger man than I

Creepshow is the shit, and Creepshow 2, while a step down in quality from the first, definitely has it's moments. They managed to capture the essence of the 1950s pulp horror of E.C. Comics (the first film more than the second) while being fine genre films in their own right. As horror anthologies go, they are at the top of the heap.

So, twenty years later, Creepshow III is unceremoniously dumped onto video store shelves. A perusal of the credits shows that nobody from the original is involved, although they are shameless enough to namedrop both George Romero and Stephen King on the back of the box. Worse still, these are the same group of hacks who brought us the excremental Day of the Dead 2: Contagium, so I guess that they won't rest until they've taken a dump on Romero's entire legacy. Can The Crazies 2: Epidemic Boogaloo be far behind?

The film starts with an amateurish piece of Newgrounds-quality animation that makes the cut-rate cartoon of the second film look like Fantasia. It has about as much to do with E.C. Comics as my nuts, and it does not bode well for the rest of the film.

In Alice a bratty schoolgirl is walking through a typical suburban street (hope you like it, because it's one of a handful of shooting locations), musing about how much she hates her life. She returns home to find her father fiddling with a universal remote he obtained from the nutty professor down the street. However, this is no ordinary remote, and each push of a button sends Alice into an alternate universe. Pushing the "Color" button, for instance, turns her family into African-Americans. For some reason, with each successive change she develops weeping pustules all over her body, but she doesn't seem particularly worried, so why should we? In the end a push of the "Signal" button turns her into a mess of oozing sores, until the Professor arrives and turns her into a rabbit. Whuh?

Radio sees a down-on-his-luck security guard buying an old radio from a bum on the street, only to have it start talking to him in a sexy voice. At first it starts ordering him to clean up and telling him what to eat. Much like having a wife. Inevitably, it's advice becomes more sinister. Actually this story is probably one of the better ones. The radio routinely dishes out financial advice, and is obsessed with diversification and long-term sustained growth. "Don't even fuck with commodities" it warns.

In Call Girl, a serial-killer hooker makes a trip to see her latest John, not knowing that he has a surprise in store for her. Should I tell you he is some sort of vampire thingy with a terrible facial prosthetic (featured prominently on the box art and at the top of this review), or let you experience the terror for yourself?

In The Professor's Wife, a couple of former students come to visit their professor on the eve of his wedding. As shown in an unbearably lame flashback montage, the professor was fond of practical jokes, so the students come to the sensible conclusion that he has built himself a Stepford Wife. They proceed to knock her unconscious and take her apart in an attempt to find her circuitry. This is played for laughs, so when the professor gets back they realise their mistake and "hilariously" run around hiding severed body parts in his kitchen. Stupid.

Haunted Dog introduces an asshole doctor who is being forced to work at a Health Clinic as part of his community service. On the way to work he drops a hot dog and so he gives it to a bum and, of course, the bum chokes on it and dies. The doctor is subsequently haunted by the bum offering him a spectral hot dog from beyond the grave. The story is padded out with interminable montage sequences of the doctor writing prescriptions and being a dick. They aren't funny. He pops pills and is mean to his patients, but he's no House MD. He's not even a Dr. Becker.

There isn't really a wraparound story this time around. Rather, the different segments occur near-concurrently and the characters and story arcs overlap. It's just a method to work around an extremely limited budget and reuse sets and actors. The stories are muddled and incoherent, with no tension or interesting characters. Acting ranges from near-competent to terrible. The "comedy" is absolutely dreadful and you can hear the gears grinding with the tonal shifts. Gore effects are limited to a few rubbery limbs and lots of ketchup. There's not even any boobs. Creepshow III is pretty bad, is the message you should be taking away from all this.

There really isn't a single thing to recommend about Creepshow III. You may see the box on the shelf and be tempted, like I was. Be strong and learn from my mistakes. Taurus Films trades in broken promises and shattered dreams and I'm pretty sure they feed on the tears of small children. You know what's really scary? Creepshow IV is in production as of February 2008.

Hard Target (1993)

This is how a man deals with snakes

I have a lot of guilty pleasures, but the guiltiest of all would have to be the 1993 John Woo film Hard Target. Actually, you know what? Fuck it, I'm not guilty at all. I love Hard Target, mullet and all, and I don't care who knows it. But first, some history. After the breakthrough success of The Killer and Hard Boiled, Woo was about to make his stateside debut. Sure, he was going to be saddled with Jean-Claude Van Damme, but I like to think of it as a trial by fire, an initiation test into the fraternity of Hollywood action directors. I think many of us Woo faithful were upset with the result because we still had hope for Woo's Hollywood career, but looking at it now I can appreciate it for what it. Cause seriously, this shit is bananas.

Now you probably all know the plot, but I'll briefly summarise: Nat (Yancy Butler) comes to the Big Easy in search of her father, a homeless Vietnam vet who has gone missing. After being a little cavalier with her bankroll, she is attacked by thugs and it's up to Chance Bordreaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his greasy, greasy mullet to rescue her. Cue fist fight, where we are treated to many shots of JCVD's oily mane whipping about in slow motion, no doubt spattering all nearby with warm grease.

Initially he has no desire to help her find her father, but a brother's gotta eat. Turns out that Nat's father has been the latest victim of a Most Dangerous Game style hunting operation run by the villainous Fouchon (Lance Henriksen). Soon Nat and Chance are on the run from Fouchon and his motorcycle goons, until Chance turns the tables. The film ends with an extended climatic shootout in a warehouse full of old Mardi Gras floats.

Van Damme trips and stumbles over his lines, leaving the corpses of bad one-liners in his wake. I think Yancy Butler and her eyebrows are trying to under-act JCVD on a bet, but she should know that such a thing is not possible. There is supposed to be chemistry between them but it's like watching a retard bang two blocks of wood together (although Nat seemed so impressed by JCVD's slow-motion swagger I'm surprised she didn't immediately take her pants off). When is Woo going to realise that the only love affair he should be committing to film is that between a man and his pistol? Literally, you sickos. At least this is one JCVD film that doesn't subject us to a shot of his bare ass, so woohoo I guess.

The rest of the cast is the greatest ensemble of B-movie wackiness outside of a Uwe Boll film. Wilford Brimley as Chance's bootlegging Cajun Uncle Douvee? Genius! Lance Henriksen plays Fouchon in a ridiculously over-the-top manner, all clenched teeth and menacing growls, although with Henriksen it's pretty much a menacing growl by default. He's the kind of bad guy who vents his frustration by punching out his own men. Arnold Vosloo is great as Fouchon's right hand man Pik, and an actor I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of.

All of Woo's trademarks are here... two-fisted shootouts, slow-motion jumping through windows and lots of birds. Here it's pigeons instead of doves though, which kind of botches the symbolism. I guess having a geographically inaccurate species of bird in your movie crosses the line of realism for Mr Woo. He also picks his own pockets a few times; Chance's gunfight with Pik and Fouchon's single-shot pistol are lifted straight from Hard Boiled.

There's some pretty awesome shit in this film, like Chance kicking a dude off a motorcycle or Uncle Douvee shooting an arrow that whips right past Fouchon's face in slow motion, causing a whole lot of stuff (including Douvee's own house, a bit of overkill on his part I thought) to blows up real good. There's also lots of dudes getting shot a whole bunch of times and then getting a roundhouse kick to the face for good measure, which is good stuff. But with John Woo's excess and JCVD's king-sized ego, the film balloons into self-parody, so we've also got scenes like Chance balancing on top of a moving motorcycle or punching out a rattlesnake. This is also awesome, but for different reasons. The constant bursts of Louisiana-flavoured music got on my tits, though... we're in New Orleans, I get it.

One other thing of note is that the editing in this film is just brutal. Apparently the studio put it through the wringer several times to try and get it below an NC-17 rating. As a result, action sequences seem a little sloppy and unfinished, plus Chance only shoots dudes a paltry five times instead of a more satisfying twelve. Apparently there's a Director's Cut floating around that alleviates some of these problems. I doubt it turns it into Hard Boiled 2 or anything, unless it excises Jean-Claude entirely, or at least digitally removes his mullet. If this is the case, please inform me as to where I can find a copy.

Aysecik ve sihirli cüceler rüyalar ülkesinde (aka Turkish Wizard of Oz) (1971)

Our heroes take part in another clumsy, poorly choreographed dance routine

I suppose it's not really fair to call this film a rip-off of the 1939 MGM classic, since the US film was not the first nor the last attempt to adapt Frank L. Baum's classic novel to the big screen. However, this film does take borrow a great deal from the MGM film, and puts it's own bizarre and unmistakably Turkish stamp on the proceedings. It literally translates to "Aysecik and the Magic Dwarfs in the Land of Dreams", Aysecik referring to our Dorothy stand-in, a character who had already starred in a series of Turkish childrens' films. She is played by Zeynep Degirmencioglu, and seems a lot more... glamorous than in the MGM classic. There's no English subtitles, but I doubt they would have helped much anyway. This film is cuckoo-bananas.

Unfortunately, the trading of Kansas for Turkey has left Aysecik's guardians farming a mountainous wasteland, fit for cultivating naught but dust and rocks. Nevertheless, Aysecik lives a happy and carefree existence with her little dog Toto, er, I mean Banju. The arrival of the twister prompts a change to some shoddy cel animation, presumably since it's cheaper to animate than some real-life special effects. Once she wakes up, the film suddenly and inexplicably cuts to Aysecik in the middle of a dance with some Turkish munchkins. She retrieves the silver slippers from the flattened witch (they're silver in the original book and besides ruby is so last year) and with a kiss from the Good Witch she skips into the forest. There's no brick road in this version, yellow or otherwise, just acres of dull Turkish woodland.

Dorothy comes across the scarecrow in a field, in a scene that plays out similar to the MGM movie, except that for some reason the scarecrow is a mincing gay stereotype. Fabulous! After his rescue, Aysecik and the scarecrow engage in a song and dance routine that seemingly goes on forever, not helped by the fact that neither of them can sing or dance. They also find the tin woodsman rusted up in a clearing in another sequence much like the 1939 film, although I swear the scarecrow hits on the tin woodsman at one point. The cowardly lion suffers the worst from the reduced budget, wearing a baggy body suit with clumps of hair stapled to his groin.

After a run-in with some gropetastic trees, the three of them stumble across a miniature village of living dolls. Two of the creepy dolls have a chat with Aysecik, which ends with everyone in tears (the Tin Woodsman is unaffected, presumably due to his lack of a heart). Following a brief journey on a river raft, they receive another visit from the munchkins.

Now it should be noted that the munchkins are a little different in this film. There are seven of them, and they can perform magic and appear and disappear at will. They dress like Nutcrackers and tend to line up in height order and laugh their asses off at absolutely everything. Here they have a clumsy song and dance with Aysecik and company, and then send them on their way.

At an incredibly bad model of the Emerald Palace, they meet up with a frighteningly jolly fellow in a fez, who leads them to meet the Wizard of Oz. The magic dwarves also appear to slingshot pebbles at the portly fellow's ass and then disappear when he turns around. They must have thought this was particularly amusing because they proceed to repeat the sequence several times. They finally meet the Wizard who, rather unimpressively, turns out to be skull on a table next to a flaming oil drum. Presumably, the Wizard instructs them to kill the Wicked Witch and they leave.

This is followed by a bizarre scene, where the scarecrow is disemboweled and turned into a pile of hay in which to hide Aysecik and the cowardly lion. I presume were trying to hide from the gaze of the Wicked Witch (who in this version, has a face that appears to be covered in a horrible fungus), but it doesn't work because she watches all of this occur. She sends out her soldiers, who tear apart the scarecrow and bash the tin woodsman with oversized styrofoam boulders.

Aysecik is taken to see the Wicked Witch who puts her in a dungeon. After the Witch tricks her into giving up her silver slippers, Aysecik defeats the Wicked Witch by throwing some water on her. This causes her to writhe around in an orgiastic manner before disappearing off camera. The soldiers of the Wicked Witch are happy to be free of her, and Aysecik and her pals return to see the Wizard, who is revealed as a man in a cheap Merlin costume. He gives what I assume is the speech about their brains, heart and courage being inside them all along. He agrees to see her home in a hot air balloon, but thanks to Banju's antics, she misses the balloon and the Wizard (or at least a doll in a model hot air balloon) floats away alone.

So, Aysecik and her three friends are on the road again in an attempt to find the Good Witch. They stop in for a song and dance number with the doll village, before coming across some caves filled with hammer-wielding cavemen. Thankfully, the munchkins appear and blast the cavemen with a cannon. The munchkins, of course, find their acts of violence hilarious. After several more awful dance sequences, she finally meets up with the Good Witch, and after a tearful goodbye, Aysecik clicks her heels three times and she's back on her dirt farm.

In some ways, this film is more faithful to Frank L. Baum's book than the 1939 film, but the pacing and editing make it seem like a random sequence of unconnected events. Frequent song and dance sequences are hampered by a cast who are obviously not up to the task. It doesn't have the manic energy and abstract craziness of Turkish Star Wars, but it's certainly strange, especially for someone who grew up with the MGM classic.