Brains, Blood, Boomsticks, & Broods

You couldn’t have lower expectations about a movie at the title screen. It looks like you’re about to watch a blown out version of Sabotage by the Beastie Boys filmed in 1988 with a hand held VHS Camcorder. On top of that when the movie gets going you better have read the back of the DVD. The only dialogue I could understand was “Hi I’m Barry.” “Oh I’m Robert. Nice to meet you.”  However, somehow, it’s the first movie that managed to keep Luke awake in the last 3 weeks in spite of his faux swine flu.

It builds.

I can’t explain it. I’m not sure how he did it. But when you’re done with it you realize how much genius was wasted on The Lord of the Rings. Dammit Peter Jackson why aren’t you making more guys “drool” on screen?! This movie has a bigger body count than Scarface, Rocket Houses, Vomit Rituals, Recycled Brains, Amazing Head Explosions, hemorrhoidal aliens, and a 1970 Ford Capri GT MkI European model. What it doesn’t have are women. Yes. This movie was a gloriously one sided affair with all of the “undertones” you would expect.

We laughed our asses off.

This definitely works best as a group, though one of the six of us was strangely silent. You do have to get past the first WTF 10 minutes or so and then you’ll be well on your way. There is a plot,probably, but unless you were born in New Zealand you won’t be able to confirm it. And the only special feature (yes subtitles would be special on this DVD) were freeze frames from the film.  The movie as a whole seems rather low budget, however by the time they blow up a car, the side of a house, and 5-6 heads you realize PJ may have had a little cash behind him. Well worth the watch and it steadily climbed over other schlock as it went on.

4/5 Orange Ball Gags

I’m still not sure where to start. I’m actually still not sure what happened last night. I know we started this movie. I know their remake of “Glory Glory Hallelujah” as an opening number had us laughing. But about they time the lead actors took off on motorcycles against a tie dye background it gets a little fuzzy. In fact I’m pretty sure this may have been a CIA attempt at hypnosis and subliminal thought implantation. At the end I was scared. I looked over to find one friend perturbed that his nap had been disturbed (running theme) and the other trying to figure out how he had just been violated.

His mouth agape in abject horror. He said “that movie was like the dirty condom you wake up to find hanging out of you.” Was it consensual? How did happen? It even made you wonder if your bed was actually your bed. This movie had an assortment of everything: Lesbian witch covens, devil preachers, angry elvises, dildo of the Armageddon, and stereotypes of parodies of stereotypes of real life.

Were we entertained? 2 /3 of us certainly were. Could any of us tell you what the movie was about or anything that happened? No. Absolutely not. And if I could I probably wouldn’t tell you, because really, there are no expectations to have for this movie.  It was written by it’s producer, director, and main actor. It’s credits were shorter than a rolodex entry. And surprisingly it succeeded in inflicting more mental trauma than Martyrs, even though Gory Gory should be rated PG-13.

Can I recommend it? It’s a niche movie for sure. And if you do drugs (lots of them) it would probably make it more interesting… though it may permanently affect your mental state. But in the end, yes, there were zombies.

2.5/5 Corkscrews to the Penis

When it comes to schlock it’s really hard to compete with what the eighties had to offer, and Sleepaway Camp is one of it’s finer achievements. As a testament, 8 out of 9 of us stayed awake the entire movie, and even the one who slept enjoyed it when he was awake. This movie truly has a little bit of everything except nudity (how much can you have when the whole film is kids?), well maybe a little.

The costumes? clothing? alone are enough reason to watch this movie, however when you throw in the 5 “guys in daisy dukes” dogpiles, one guy on guy water balloon fight, and even a prolonged baseball scene with a masturbating catcher you really can’t pass this movie up. The kill scenes are laugh out loud funny and some are even, dare I say original. And to finish it all off if everything mentioned isn’t enough, there’s a suprise ending, and no I won’t spoil it here.

The more people you have to watch this movie with the more fun it becomes. It’s rife with racism, pedophiles, homoerotic campers, amazing hair, and good times. There’s really not a reason to not watch this movie. There’s plenty to look for in the scenes like the opener where the dad on the sailboat has apparently raised two masts. If you read too many reviews though you’ll spoil the fun, so stop reading and go watch it…

4/5 Curling Irons (Because mannequin nudity isn’t real nudity)

If shlock night had a mascot it would be Special Dead (plot summary). It has by far been the favorite of all shlock nights (and though I haven’t had a chance to write about them all there have been far too many). We’re still talking about when the next time we’ll watch Special Dead. It’s everything you want your horror/comedy to be, and it gives you hope that somewhere in the world someone is as twisted as you are.

The damnedest thing about the movie is, beside it’s heart, some of the characters are actually endearing. To say the filmmakers didn’t take the film seriously would probably be an undermining statement because they cared a hell of a lot. Ultimately that’s what makes this film… (did i just type that?) movie extraordinary. 

Ultimately you are watching some independent film makers who are really on top of their game. Better yet they know that their audience wants to have fun, but aren’t 13. The special effects, music, and insanity are all there. In some ways I feel like you spend all your time watching mountains of bad movies hoping to stumble across a movie this amazing. Through and through we’re counting down the months until our annual Special Dead viewfest. In the meantime you should not only immediately rent, buy, and tell everyone you know how great this movie is but check out their website at http://www.specialdeadmovie.com/

If you’re offended…

5/5 Electric Chainsaws

Last night I went rogue. I abandoned the safety of Shlock night and threw in a dusting copy of Hell Comes to Frogtown (plot summary). *(It seems extremely important to note the star of this movie is none other than The Rowdy Roddy Piper. If you were born outside of the eighties that reference is probably completely lost to you. However, all the wonderful over-the-top moves of the WWF (that’s right, before the WWE) are not lost in this heaping pile of shlock.) Suprising myself I spent the first 20 minutes in good laughter as supposedly undersexed women (Spangle and Centinella) fawn over one of “the last remaining remaining fertile men on earth.” The movie is alive with puns and freely pokes fun at itself. Though I don’t think anyone ever thought about taking this one seriously.

Hell Comes to Frogtown

Once the frogs show up, it all goes… badly, but not without a few laughs. There are definitely no surpises here, no amazing special effects (Centinella’s gun isn’t even firing bullets at one point, just noises), and everything you’re waiting for to happen does (in more of a PG-13 than R way though). There are plenty of tidbits to look for, like the member of the harem who is without underwear and when the scriptwriters forgot about his “range sensitive chastity belt.” And oh yeah, it’s rife with Star Wars rip offs. In fact I’m not so sure this wasn’t the rejected script. Let’s see a scantily clad prisoner lady, led around by a neck chain, while large fat gree blobish frogs argue over her. Nope, never ever heard of that one before.

I’m sure there is a lot (?) more to be taken away from this one if you aren’t flying solo with it. However, it was never painful, and I quite often found myself laughing at the absurdity of it. I have few reservations about recommending this one with the slightly ironic caveat that you can’t expect much from it.

3/5 Blue Balls