latherzap Reviews

The Young Poisoner's Handbook (1995)

Empty

[5/10 · 17 March 2010]

This is a movie that I *wanted* to like. I just watched it for the second time and my reaction remained the same: indifferent.

So we have this loose portrayal of Graham Young, a cold young man with a passion for poison. He poisons some family members, takes notes like a good scientist, prison, more poison, end.

I liked the look of the film, and the acting was adequate. But it just drags. It's not dark enough to be disturbing (In a Glass Cage),and there's not enough humor to be a good black comedy (such as 1995's To Die For). Mechanical dialogue. None of the characters felt fleshed out enough to support a 90 minute viewing experience; the shallow characterizations would be fine for, say, appearances in a brief flashback scene. But full length films usually require some characters that aren't so 2 dimensional.

A few nice moments, but I was disappointed.

Pontypool (2008)

Interesting idea, would be better as a 30 minute short film.

[4/10 · 11 October 2009]

I've seen much worse, but I could live 300 years and I'll never see this movie again. Some smart and funny moments here and there, but ultimately a very heavy handed wannabe "clever" message movie about problems with communication.

They're at the station all day getting phone calls about mobs of people (zombies?) wreaking havoc. But they can't see outside and cannot reach any police to confirm details. This is supposed to create tension, but I just didn't find the phone chats compelling.

Things go on like that for a while, phone calls with screams. Uncertainty.

Then a few characters stutter a little, get zombified, and we soon learn the virus is transmitted through the English language. Language is alive and words can have different definitions. Certain "infected" words are dangerous only if you understand their meaning. So one must "unlearn" them by sputtering incoherent sentences. Preferable while a recording keeps repeating "Sydney Briar is alive" for 10 minutes!. I wanted to shoot the movie screen.

Unlearn and shed all the communications we're assaulted with everyday, and y'all might get a little closer to "The Truth". The dangerous power of media and the madness of crowds is represented by all the zombie violence. This is supposed to be a "really deep" message.

Only the radio host was the least bit memorable. I found this a chore to sit through. The (admittedly rude) phrase that comes to mind is "a thinking person's movie for people that don't do much thinking." But a lot of people seem to like it, so maybe it's just me.

Land of the Dead (2005)

Not very good. Sorry, George.

[2/10 · 26 June 2005]

I wanted to like this movie. Romero has made some good movies (dead trilogy, Martin, Season of the Witch, Creepshow). It's quite rare these days that I go to the theatre, but I figured I'd show some support and check it out. I don't regret seeing it- but I doubt I will ever watch it again.

I like the premise, that the zombies are learning and becoming even more intelligent. It doesn't bother me that one zombie used a machine gun and killed somebody with fire. Because if the zombies did not evolve, there would have been no reason to make this movie. We would just be covering the same old material.

Unfortunately, virtually none of the dialogue is interesting. And not ONE of the characters are the least bit memorable. The social commentary felt like it was thrown in there as an afterthought (which is weird since I'm sure it was intended to be so much more significant). Dawn of the Dead (1979) did a much better job of mocking society (although LOTD did score big points by using fireworks to entertain/distract the zombies!). It's all pretty generic and boring. At least a couple people on the message board actually said they think this is George's best movie! I find it a little disturbing and very sad that any adult would think this is a great film. It's absolutely ridiculous that so many people voted this movie a 10! Makes me wonder if any Hollywood execs out there are stuffing the ballot box.

Bloody Moon (1981)

Sporadic laughs

[3/10 · 25 May 2005]

Bad, boring slasher horror movie. But some laughs are scattered about. Some of the women are hot. Some of the music is very dated and funny. There's a great bit of bad, redundant dubbing near the end. A woman is threatening somebody, ordering them to keep their mouth shut. It goes something like this "Just remember it. Don't forget. Remember. And just be damn sure to remember it!".

My favorite scene has a girl visiting a friend's house, only to find her dead in the bath tub. Frightened, she runs out and returns a few minutes later. A man is now at the house, and he takes her to the bathroom to show her there is no body. It was your imagination, he assures her. She JUST saw the dead body, and yet he convinces her that nothing happened. She comes back the next day to snoop around, and now sees that the tub has a significant amount of blood in it. We immediately cut to a scene of her wandering around town calling out her friend's name, as if the girl had only been injured and might still be alive. Hilarious!

I used to own a VHS copy of this, but tossed it in the garbage last summer. I sort of regret that. On the other hand, don't go out of your way to watch it.

Exhibition 2 (1978)

"Professional libertine"

[7/10 · 13 April 2005]

Interesting, fun documentary about porn star Sylvia Bourdon. It does not cover her film career, but rather focuses on her personality, lifestyle, and beliefs. She appears to be a total hedonist. Defines herself as a "sexual communist, but conservative with the purse strings." And she's very blunt and irreverent. At one point she laments that she can't have anal sex because of her hemorrhoids, but she optimistically says she will have the doctors take care of them. "Knowing Sylvia is a surrealist experience," says one of her friends.

Some of the more interesting scenes involve her playing with one of her consensual slaves. She degrades and whips him, all while one of her uptight sexually conservative friends is in the room. Her friend is very disturbed by the display, looking away at times and appearing to sob. Bourdon tries to explain that she and the man both enjoy the activity, but the uptight one is too horrified to understand.

And perhaps my favorite quote occurs at a dinner scene. A man criticizes Sylvia, charging that food and sex are all she thinks about. Sylvia cheerfully concedes "I'm a c*** with a stomach". Good times!

Evils of the Night (1985)

Many chuckles to be had.

[2/10 · 6 April 2005]

An absolutely absurd horror flick, featuring the always amusing Aldo Ray (Bog, Executioner 2, Don't go near the Park).

It begins with some young adults camping, and having lots of sex. Some are murdered and taken to a cheap looking hospital. Two women in '50s style scifi Jetsons outfits wander the halls. Three old aliens of human appearance (Carradine, Louise, and Newmar!) are there, mapping out their plan. They depend on fresh victims for their blood, and they are paying two idiotic mechanics (a gold coin each) to do the kidnapping.

It's a lot of fun. There's a ridiculous easy-listenin' song during a love scene, and other lousy 80s music (one which I suspect might be sung by the dumb blond character). Lots of bad acting, and Karrie Emerson looks hot in red! And, it features the time-honored line "gives me the creeps!". Do they say that in every horror movie???

Irrelevant trivia: at least 3 or 4 porn stars have bit parts in this movie. Even the script was written by a porn veteran. I would love to hear how this project came to be. I hope this gets a DVD release someday soon!

Hi, Mom! (1970)

Awesome!!

[8/10 · 5 April 2005]

An odd, cynical movie. And it puts a smile on my face.

A young De Niro plays Jon Rubin, a single guy that wants to become a porn director. He's been spying on the all the neighbors in the local apartment building, and hatches a plan to make voyeur porn, filming the unwitting neighbors. Some smart dialogue and slightly corny humor develop, and a great cast makes it work wonderfully. One of the neighbors is a bearded young white fellow whose liberal politics are in overdrive. He's producing a play called "Be Black, Baby". The flyers promoting the show feature photos he's taken of white folks painted black. Seeing him pose for the camera, you can see that he is proud and excited- apparently he thinks that covering himself in black paint will immediately enable him to completely understand the plight of African Americans. And perhaps help purge whatever latent racism he has within. Nice goals, but a useless strategy. Cracks me up.

Anyway, De Niro's porn career doesn't take off. He ends up trading in his camera for, embarrassingly, a television. And he ends up auditioning for Be Black Baby, playing the role of a cop. The play is a "guerrilla theatre" production, with actors interacting with audience, and designed to help races identify with one another. A bit slow at times, but it's pretty intense and realistic.

The end of the play (now being shown on a television that Rubin is watching) shows the theatre troupe storming a middle class apartment complex, a flaccid attempt to spark revolution. The middle class tenants defeat the revolutionaries. Rubin can't take it, pulls out his gun, and fires at the television! His whole existence had been swallowed up by activism, and so he can't handle its failure.

Flash to what is presumably several years later, and Rubin is now married with a kid on the way. His wife and he have inane conversations about his job and the color of the washing machine. His passionate idealism was fleeting, inevitably replaced by his surrender to the rat race.

But then Rubin lights dynamite in his apartment complex, killing many people including his wife. People interviewed outside the wreckage aren't that disturbed, one man lamenting that his wallet was in there. And Rubin approaches the news camera because he wants to say hello to his mother.

My description may make this sound like a dark movie, but (except for the play sequence) it really is a fun offbeat comedy. I even loved the music. Check it out!

Hell Riders (1984)

Disappointed

[1/10 · 2 April 2005]

I was prepared to laugh throughout this movie like a Mystery Science Theater experiment, but it was just boring. It appears that the producers had many biker enthusiast friends, and from there casually decided to make a movie.

It is frequently unwatchable. Lots of footage of the bikers riding on a dirt road, with the same music played repeatedly. Unfortunately, Renee Harmon is barely in the movie. Harmon probably would have livened things up. Perhaps she had other commitments the day this was filmed.

Of course, the bikers terrorize a small town. Fights, murder, a cowardly cop, a goofy mechanic, etc. One of the bikers always wears a football helmet, a weak attempt to distinguish him from all the other outlaws.

The script has nothing to offer. One scene features a biker assaulting a woman, yelling in the lady's face "You're all the same! You're all the same!". We come back to the scene a minute later and he again declares "You're all the same!". Couldn't the writer think of something more creative to say??

At the end the good guys have killed the bad guys. We also learn that the wedding between middle-aged mechanic Joe and young Susie has been canceled. Susie is going away to college, and we abruptly learn that Joe's wedding is still on (but with a different bride). End.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

"This isn't easy for any of us... so let's just have breakfast."

[3/10 · 31 March 2005]

The above sensitive quote is delivered by an authority figure trying to comfort some teens the day after one of their friends has been killed. Overall I think this is easily the most entertaining Friday film. It's terrible, but amusingly so. This movie averages more than one corpse every 5 minutes.

This time around we have a group of teens with psychological problems staying at some isolated treatment center. They wander around freely, so it's sort of another camp scenario. We have the usual stereotypes substituting for actual characters. The stutterer. The new wave chick. The horny couple. A corny hillbilly mother and son. The furious mayor. A guy whose entire character is defined by his reading a porn mag and making a lewd gesture at the beginning, and then later snorting coke. A pair of rockabilly dudes, one of whom wanders into the forest to defecate (that was unexpected, as people outdoors generally wander off to take a leak, instead). We also meet a waitress who spontaneously flashes her chest in the mirror for no reason (one assumes the director was under pressure to meet a breast quota). Of course, there is a thunderstorm throughout the climax of the film. The movie also features Dudley (of "Diff'rent Strokes") and two cast members from Return of the Living Dead. That right there is a good enough reason to watch F13 part 5. And the stiff acting of the grey haired cop is also pretty funny.

I find it ridiculous that some F13 fans hate this movie because the real Jason is not in it. Does that mean if the final 10 minutes were edited out, they would actually consider this to be a good movie??

Escape to Passion (1971)

"When you need an instant orgy, I'm your man!"

[4/10 · 25 March 2005]

Not very exciting but somehow still watchable tale about Leo, a man who hates his job and turns to crime as a means of achieving the kind of lifestyle he wants. Although he enjoys the simple things in life (he inexplicably pours some unidentified candy into his bottle of RC cola in one scene), he wants more. He is a petty thief who can't get a raise at his job. Fed up, his girlfriend leaves him at the beginning of the movie. He then hooks up with a stripper, and together with a dim-witted buddy they rob a bank. Needless to say, things don't quite go as planned. The climax features a crisco orgy interrupted by a shoot out with the police.

'tis a low budget film with all the expected weaknesses. And very dated. It features some fun, hokey country music. Perhaps the oddest thing is how it shifts gears between a would-be action drama and scenes which feel like they belong in a soft-core porn flick. There's quite a bit of gratuitous full-frontal nudity.

Code 46 (2003)

Ideas alone can't carry a movie.

[4/10 · 19 March 2005]

Code 46 is one of those scifi movies where the government controls who you are allowed to love, and in fact will punish you if you try to procreate with the wrong person. The haves and the have-nots live in completely separate territories, the powers that be can remove your memories, etc. We've seen this stuff before, but that's OK- no movie is 100% original. This kind of premise is always fun to contemplate. Unfortunately, just imagining such a future is more interesting than actually watching Code 46. The characters are boring and rarely say anything interesting. Maybe that's commentary on a dehumanized future, but it's still dull to watch. It's sloooow.

At times the imagery is nice, but usually (coupled with its "evocative" soundtrack) just looks like a glorified perfume commercial. Code 46 also sometimes uses the kind of television camera-work that I find annoying. You know, two characters talk as the camera artlessly "floats" on one side. Two seconds later it's floating on the other side of them in a vain attempt to keep your attention.

My friends liked this movie. If they tried to get me to watch it again, I probably would not do so unless they agreed to pay me $50.

Chopping Mall (1986)

Whatever

[3/10 · 15 March 2005]

I'm as passionate as the next guy about "bad movies". And so I hate to be a grouch about Chopping Mall, but it really is not very entertaining at all. It's more DULL than bad. Stupid script, but the dialogue isn't dumb enough to be entertaining. The acting isn't bad enough, either.The characters all blend together. By all means CM is NOT good, but it merely exists in that boring middleground- there's just nothing memorable (good or bad) about this movie, except for the title and the concept.

On a positive note, if any viewers thought Karrie Emerson was cute, you really should find a copy of Evils of the Night. She's in that movie as well, and IMHO Evils of the Night is far more amusing than chopping mall.

The Nail Gun Massacre (1985 Video)

"It's time for the organ transplant. You're the donor and I'm the recipient."

[1/10 · 13 March 2005]

A must-see for bad movie buffs. Fun stuff. A killer drives around in a gold hearse, wearing camouflage and a motorcycle helmet, killing people with a powerful nail gun. Bad acting and bad script (the most important elements of a crummy flick) are here in abundance.

After the massacre has begun, there's a scene in a small shop where the old lady clerk says "Remember when you could go outside without having to worry about the mosquitoes or the killers?". Classic. There's a scene of a couple making out in a car, while the radio plays a song (sung by the director?) called Foosball. The dj talks a moment, and then plays Foosball AGAIN. Watch for the scene near the beginning, of the couple in bed. It looks like a less explicit outtake from a porno. "But you said we could play doctor all day, today!" the girl complains. Then, topless, she walks to a large mirror to comb her hair. The camera then shamelessly zooms in on her breasts in the mirror reflection! Hilarious!

The director, Terry Lofton, recently released a DVD of this movie. At least one scene (a couple in a forest)is slightly extended. Oddly enough, my DVD does not contain any end credits, but they are on my old VHS.

I'd say the movie sucks, but that's what makes it so entertaining. I would much rather watch this than Lord of the Rings or Star Wars movies. If you're into this kinda stuff, and you can't find NGM at your video store, I highly recommend you search for it online.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Intensity

[9/10 · 12 March 2005]

I first saw this movie years ago when I was 15. I didn't scare easy but LHOTL really had me on edge. And I don't think any other movie ever made me jump up in the air, as this one did in one jolting scene.

As you probably know, two teenage girls are kidnapped and tortured in the woods by a group of ex-cons. The parents of one of the girls soon take their revenge. Most of the acting seems very natural. And the inexperienced camera-work gives much of the film a cheap documentary appearance, making the events all the more real. There is some odd comic relief with two bumbling cops. Fans, myself included, often find this annoying. But I must say that when I saw it as a kid the cop scenes were a welcome break, allowing me to relax a bit.

David Hess as Krug is amazing. Weasel is sleaze on two legs, and who can forget Sadie? Especially bizarre for some viewers is that the killers actually have some affection for each other. They're not simple fairy tale monsters.

The scene of Mari walking into the lake is heartbreaking. They destroyed her will to live. And notice the killers are not jumping up and down in victory. They are not all that ashamed, but neither are they proud. They are empty. Some serial killers have commented that the actual murders generally did not provide the "high" they were hoping for.

I actually enjoy most of the music in the movie, and especially find the opening track haunting. And there actually is some comedy to be found in parts. Notice Krug popping the little boy's balloon near the beginning. Evil personified!

Fast Company (1979)

Depends on what you're looking for

[5/10 · 7 March 2005]

Viewers who have a passion for drag racing will probably get more out of this than the average person. Myself, I've never sat through the whole thing in one sitting. It's a pretty generic story about good guy and bad guy drag racers competing. The corporate sponsors of the cars only care about money, etc. I even thought the soundtrack (sounding like a Seger/Springsteen combo) was pretty lame. In fact, I was actually a little bummed to hear Cronenberg say on the audio commentary that he really enjoyed the music! Yeah, I know, I'm being a little picky there.

On the bright side, John Saxon is fun to watch. And if you're a die-hard Cronenberg fan I would recommend checking out the double-disc edition so you can watch his early films Stereo and Crimes of the Future.

Boardinghouse (1982)

"I'm preparing the THORazine..."

[1/10 · 5 March 2005]

I really can't add anything to what the others on this board have already said. I just wanted to show my support and say that this is one of those bad movies which is genuinely amusing. The average movie buff may have trouble, but any seasoned bad movie lover should be able to find the humor.

It's shot on video. With bad acting, bad script, bad spelling (two typos appear in the opening message) and some bad fashion (our hero begins the movie wearing a light blue shirt with a pink tie). It even has some really generic rock songs apparently performed by the two lead actors. Oh, and the lead guy really does look unusual. Kind of like a cross between Sting and Malcolm McDowell.

Ladder 49 (2004)

Won't see it again

[4/10 · 13 January 2005]

It certainly is not a terrible movie, but I thought it was very unremarkable. I'm not too familiar with Phoenix's acting. Perhaps he does better in other movies? I don't know, but here he seemed very stiff and uninteresting.

It was occasionally engaging, with a few nice action scenes. But the movie just did not stimulate me.

What were my highlights? I thought it was very novel to show all the rats coming down the stairs near the beginning, and Phoenix was forced to squash them as he went up the stairs with the hose. It tickled me to discover that I was psychic when a fight broke out in a bar scene. A newsmedia helicopter circled a burning building at one point. It was realistic that the info the news man fed us was so typically uninformative and cliché that I could not stifle my giggles. I found it amusing how the last 5 minutes resembled a sappy music video. That was about it for me.

Crazy Love (1987)

Beautiful Beautiful

[10/10 · 12 January 2005]

One of the few movies that has the power to bring a tear to my eye. We see the life of Harry, as a young boy, as an acne-scarred teen, and as a lost soul thirtysomething. As a child, he has a naive enthusiasm for romance. But his socially awkward self and repulsive appearance lead to a lifetime of rejections. Until the end when he finally finds somebody who accepts him. Repulsive and unacceptable as his last acts may be, they are not a violation so much as they are his desperately grasping for somebody, anybody, to love.

For me the movie is simultaneously depressing and uplifting. I will never forget the "invisible man" strategy he employs to get a girl to give him one dance. Or the painful scene of him as a young boy on the carnival ride with a girl, paralyzed with fear and unable to make any advances.

Anyway, SEE this movie. It was released on DVD last year, and should not be too hard to find. Order yourself a copy if you don't see it at your local stores.

Alexander (2004)

Ouch

[3/10 · 4 January 2005]

I don't care if some of the accents were off. I don't care if Jolie may have been too young for her role. I don't even care whether or not Stone is 100% faithful to history. But you must hold my interest. Even a terrible Ed Wood type movie can be interesting in its badness. But Alexander is not even memorable in that category. And, no, homosexuality does not bother me. Sorry to disappoint you- I realize that screeching about people's prejudices can sometimes be a nice way to indirectly pat yourself on the back. But I'm afraid you won't have that opportunity, here.

Cheesy dialogue. The "controversial" sexuality basically consisted of Leto and Farrell surreptitiously glancing at one another. The sexuality was not explored at all. Overblown battle scenes which drag on forever. The battles feel like you're just watching hundreds of random people riding horses and slashing at one another, with no great sense of who's winning or what progress is being made. To me the fight scenes are no more elevated than a big budget American Gladiators, with a hokey bird flying overhead. Battle. Rousing speech to build troops' morale. Battle. Wash, rinse, repeat cycle. Haven't we seen this stuff before? The scenes felt stapled together. Reading a Cliffs Notes synopsis of Alexander's story would have given me more emotional impact than this movie.

Now and then characters manage to spit out something mildly interesting. Alexander at one point angrily and humbly asks about the conquered people "And what makes us better than them?". Another reviewer here seemed impressed that Alexander at one point asks "am I divine, or weak?". Hmmm.Hardly profound. On second thought maybe there wasn't any good dialogue. I can appreciate that a lot of time and money and hard work was put into this movie, but it just didn't do it for me. If you want a decent Oliver Stone movie, I think you should check out Talk Radio instead.

And I've noticed a few pompous folks from other countries snorting that Alexander is too smart for Americans. I'll be the first to agree that most American movies are terrible. But when taking a multiple choice test, even a fool will sometimes pick the right answer. And I think that's just what the American public did in this case. This movie will NOT be remembered.

The Driller Killer (1979)

Odd combination of good and bad

[4/10 · 15 September 2004]

SPOILERS: A man runs around killing people with a drill.

More specifically, a struggling painter is slowly falling apart. He lives with two women and they are all behind on their rent. A loud band moves in above the painter, making it more difficult to focus on his work. Then his girl leaves him and his painting is rejected and he begins to drill people more frequently.

The good: some of the dialogue feels quite natural and the movie is sometimes artsy in a good way.

The bad- Some dialogue is ridiculous. I especially liked it when the DK approaches a drunken middle-ager in the dead of night, revving his drill. "Hey, you a fix-it man?", he asks with no sign of alarm. DK revs it again, waving it at him. "Watch it. You got problems?" he asks in a gently concerned voice that a parent would use with their child.

Also, Baybi Day's acting is often (unintentionally, I believe) quite funny. Very strange. And the crappy new wave punk band that jams in the apartment above is amusing. The film spends a surprising amount of time forgetting the main characters, dwelling on the lame music group. This was likely done to help pad out the movie's running time.

And don't forget to check out director Abel Ferrara's audio commentary on the DVD. That alone is entertaining.

Ultimately, I don't think Driller Killer is a "good" movie, but it entertained me and made me laugh. That's more than I can say for most Hollywood comedies.

Lady Street Fighter (1980 Video)

James Bryan does it again

[3/10 · 14 September 2004]

If director James Bryan never makes another movie, that's OK. He can rest on his laurels, having brought his vision to the screen in Executioner Part 2 and also with Don't Go in the Woods. AND, he also apparently sacrificed years of his life so that the rest of us could experience Lady Street Fighter.

As was the case in EP2 and DGITW, the audio in Lady Street Fighter is dubbed, apparently having been shot with no sound. It's safe to say the actors were bad to begin with, but having recorded the audio afterwards seems to have helped make their performances even more atrocious.

Plot involves an undercover female agent (with THICK German accent) assigned to kill a dirty FBI agent. The FBI agent has also been assigned to kill her. Attracted to one another, they have an affair in between car chases and shoot outs. Plot specifics aren't explained well at all, but I *can* tell you the movie is hilarious in parts. It really is terrible. Kookie music, bad dialogue, a hit man who seems to say "Get it?" after every other sentence. Awful, I tell ya.

If you like bad movies, check this one out. It's hard to find, but hopefully it'll get a DVD release someday.

Blood Beach (1980)

As useful as whiskers on sausage

[2/10 · 17 February 2004]

SPOILERS? The above summary is a prophetic quote from one of the movie's characters. There really is no reason to watch this film. As one positive-thinking reviewer below noted, the soundtrack isn't too bad. And even the acting isn't very bad, but it's all so dull.

A monster lurks beneath a Los Angeles beach. Sometimes it sucks people down into the sand, the victims never to be seen again. Burt Young plays a cop from chicago, the whole depth of his character defined by a lame ongoing gag referencing his devotion to his former hometown ("this never woulda happened in chicago").

The woman who played the third housekeeper (Pearl) on Diff'rent Strokes has a cameo.

Nothing much happens in Blood Beach. It really drags. The monster appears at the end for LESS than one minute. That would be ok if BB had been building suspense. But it built nothing. So it's really not ok.

Oddly, about the only scenes I found to be somewhat effective happen during the end credits. The camera lazily pans around the beach. We see children playing, delighted with the funnel (the monster's tell-tale sign) growing in the sand. But by then it is waaay too little too late.

Friday the 13th: Part 3 (1982)

Cool theme music

[3/10 · 7 August 2003]

While Friday the 13th films all pretty much suck on some level, part three is slightly more entertaining than most. I give it a 4 out of 10.

Forget scares, 'cause there isn't much of that to be found. What you do get is a pretty efficient demonstration of horror cliches. I found it amusing how cardboard the characters were. One scene features two guys juggling. Two other scenes feature a character walking on his hands. You get the feeling the director asked all the actors what "tricks" they could do, in a desperate attempt to make the characters more interesting. Two of the characters are the stereotypical stoners. One girl is deemed pregnant in a conversation near the beginning- this info sorta distinguishes her from the other women, but the subject is never dealt with again. We are also treated to two scenes of somebody using a toilet, just another time-filling substitute for actual dialogue.

As lame as the characters are written, I don't think the actors are all that bad. Except for Dana Kimmell's sweater-wearin' boyfriend. His acting is very flat. He sucks, but that's what makes him cool.

The unironic script also treats us to two different characters in two scenes saying the same thing ("Where's this coming from?") for different reasons (blood from a body above, water dripping from the floor above). And perhaps the most awkward line is when a girl,speaking of a past run-in with Jason, says "he had a knife... and he attacked me with it!".

It's not a hilarious movie, but is funny at times. If you first saw it as a little kid in the '80s, "nostalgia" can be your ready-made excuse for watching it now. But anybody else watching this has some serious explaining to do.

The Executioner, Part II (1984)

Not the best, but well worth tracking down.

[1/10 · 16 February 2003]

It seems to me that the majority of "bad movies" are pretty boring. Too often we bust a gut laughing when a critic shreds a lousy flick, but we then find that actually watching the movie is a grim experience with few laughs. Fortunately, Executioner 2 is a clunker that delivers.

In the early 80s James Bryan wowed the bad film community with Don't Go In the Woods. I found another movie of his, Hellriders, terribly dull. But with Executioner 2 he's back on track. It's your basic vigilante movie, with bad guys running scared and cops embarrassed at the public's support for the vigilante. As was the case in Woods, the dialogue was dubbed (even though the characters were speaking English to begin with). Some not so good acting, a pair of stoner high school girls who are constantly laughing ("oh, heavenly coke!"), and Aldo Ray (of the movie "Bog") make Executioner part 2 a must-see. Sure, some parts are boring, but overall it's worth it. Watch this movie, it will justify your having searched through dozens of other lousy films in your quest for B-Movie Nirvana.

Frozen Scream (1975)

Slow, but somewhat amusing

[2/10 · 4 February 2003]

A pretty lame horror flick about a scientist's attempts to make people immortal. Unfortunately, his immortality process destroys the victim's soul and personality. This is a bad movie, featuring several funny parts. I particularly liked the scene of two women in the hospital talking, when out of nowhere the policeman narrator's voice is dubbed over the conversation. It's just sloppily put together.

Beyond that, the only point of interest is that H. Kingsley Thurber did the music. He also provided the exact same music for Don't Go In the Woods. I'd say over half of Frozen Scream's music appeared in Woods, also. For fans of DGITW this is certainly of historical importance, but ultimately Frozen Scream is not worth your time.

*dec. 2004. I watched it again. I now value Frozen Scream. Some stretches of boredom, but more amusement than I had originally thought. Don't go too far out of your way to see it, but bad movie fans should find something of interest here.