Tag Archives: after they were famous

January Joust: Crap Killers

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Despite film boxes stating otherwise, not every psycho killer can be Jason or Michael. In every trade there are crappy workers – fast food joints, education, social work… We hope that these people realise they’re just not cut out to live their dreams, y’know, like when Simon Cowell stamps all over someones ambition on The X Factor / American Idol*. It’s the same in the slasher realm. No matter how they might try, some killers are doomed to fail…

Big ol’ spoilers loiter hereabouts!

thefinalterrorTHE FINAL TERROR 1981

Killer: Eggar’s Mother

Why so crap? In spite of stalking about a dozen people round the forest for a couple of days, this bush-guised, hook-knife-handed mama only manages to off a measly five of them. Now, five isn’t that bad by comparison, but her methods are pretty crud (tin can lids on tree branches!?) and success rate worse: she can’t even slash Daryl Hannah’s throat effectively. And then she dies by walking into one of her own traps. Duh.

Cowell-ism: “At this stage in the competition, this just isn’t good enough. Do you want to be the next Leon Jackson???”

dangerousgame2aDANGEROUS GAME 1989

Killer: Officer Murphy

Why so crap? Oirish-cop-in-Australia Murphy manages to trap five teenagers in a department store for the best part of their Friday night out, even kidnaps two of them and kills a third. But that’s it. After one murder he flakes and starts blurting that he “didn’t mean it” la la la. Save it for the judge, pal! The spoiled rich teens prove more than a match for him and merrily escape while he staggers off all beaten and bruised.

Cowell-ism: “I honestly expected more from the Irish. I don’t see you as any competition for Westlife.”

*

shriek-if-you-know

SHRIEK IF YOU KNOW WHAT I DID LAST FRIDAY THE 13TH 2000

Killer: Doughy

Why so crap? Aided with gusto by the fact that the film is pretty crap on its own, the killer here, “Doughy” (…groan), fares even worse than Murphy by failing to kill anybody. He’s a wannabe. He shows up, mask, weapon, motive all ready to go and then the intended corpse goes and dies by some freak accident, i.e. fatal bee stings, a handy coronary, or more commonly by tripping over things.

Cowell-ism: “I just didn’t get it. Was it supposed to be funny?”

freak

FREAK 1997

Killer: Keller. Killer-Keller-Killer-Keller-Bo-Fella-Banana-Fo-Fannah-Fella-Keller.

Why so crap? Nine years after starting out the same way as most of these guys do, by offing his nasty mom, “catatonic” Keller-Keller-Bo-Fella escapes whilst being transported to a new hospital and cross paths with a couple of recently orphaned sisters who’re driving to their new home. He kills a grand total of two people before kidnapping the younger sister so that big sis and transport-driver-guy have to come to the rescue. Freak‘s budget is about $3.75 so they probably couldn’t afford extra victims, but the film isn’t so bad otherwise.

Cowell-ism: “Look, I can see you’re trying but this just isn’t good enough, we’re looking for a worldwide star here, the bandage look isn’t working for you.”

berserker

BERSERKER 1987

Killer: Pappy Nyquist

Why so crap? Oh just piss off 1987. What did you do for anyone? Nothing. And take your shit misogynistic horror films with you! Yeah, you too George ‘Buck’ Flower as some freakin’ Viking-bear-thing that shreds campers to death but CAN’T KILL ANY OF THE ANNOYING CAST MEMBERS, JUST THE YOUNG, NUBILE ONES AND SOME OLD PEOPLE!!!

Cowell-ism: “1987? Leona was two by then and already better than you.”

*

thewisher

THE WISHER 2002

Killer: Shane

Why so crap? Another half-assed attempt on behalf of the sappy Emo killer to suck up to horror-fixated heroine Mary by granting her wishes. Her dad dies, her mouthy friend gets her tongue cut out and then she wishes the killer slice himself up – which he does. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Cowell-ism: “My only wish is that you had more talent and I was convincingly heterosexual.”

christmas_evil

YOU BETTER WATCH OUT (Christmas Evil) 1980

Killer: Harry Stadling

Why so crap? If… this… film… were… any… slower… it… would… bore… a… can… of… Red Bull… to… death… After the slowest descent into madness ever recorded on film, toy-worker Harry’s obsession with Christmas (spying on the neighbourhood kids to make sure they’re being good) spills over when he kills a work colleague who disses the season and three people outside a church who laugh at his Santa costume. Then he flies away in a van.

Cowell-ism: “All I want for Christmas is for you to go away so only I can ruin it for everyone by forcing one of my boringly inoffensive contest winners to take a cover version of a song everybody once loved to Number One after I adorn it with a children’s choir and some strings and make everyone who ever gave a shit about the sanctity of musical individuality want to kill themselves.”

WINNER LOSER: The crappest killer ‘award’ goes to Eggar’s Ma. Such opportunity, such a big cast…wasted!

Closing Cowell-ism: “Well, I’m not surprised. Leona could do this in her sleep.”

*delete appropriately to whichever one clogs up your viewing schedule.

The Day the Laughter Failed to Live, Let Alone Die. Miserably.

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stanhelsingSTAN HELSING: A PARODY

1 Stars  2009/18/87m

“The most feared monsters in cinematic history have met their match…”

Director/Writer: Bo Zenga / Cast: Steve Howey, Diora Baird, Kenan Thompson, Desi Lydic, Ben Cotton, Ken Kirzinger, Leslie Nielsen.

Body Count: 1

Dire-logue: “I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.”

When it came out in 2000, Total Film magazine gave Scary Movie four stars! AND they said a sequel would be great. Thanks, TF, look whatcha did!

Stan Helsing is ‘from the brother-in-law’s former roommate’s dog’s previous owner of the executive producer’ of Scary Movie; that alone should be enough to secure an indictment. It stars Howey as your standard issue movie slacker-cum-stoner, Stan, who works in the videostore Schlockbuster. Are you laughing yet? On Halloween, Stan is charged with delivering some “videos” (which are, in fact, DVDs) to his boss’s mother’s house before he can party with his bud Teddy, ex-girlfriend Nadine and Teddy’s dim-witted date Mia (see Dire-logue). After they get lost, get shot at by gas station hippies and pick up a psychotic hitcher, the gang end up at Stormy Night Estates, where a fire raged ten years back, as explained by Leslie Nielsen’s waitress. Waitress. Yes, he’s in drag.

Stormy Night Estates is tormented by ‘monsters’, who are in fact crap parody renderings of famous movie villains, such as Needlehead, Fweddy, Lucky the doll, Pleatherface, Mason, and Michael Crier. Fuck. Off. Several onlookers think Stan is a descendant of Van Helsing and he and his friends spend 80 minutes running from shit joke to shit joke until they’re forced into a karaoke contest against the monsters, who perform a stupid version of YMCA.

OK, questions: why is Michael Jewish? Why is Fweddy done up like some late-80s rapper? Why is there but one murder of a non-important extra? Who green-lit this movie? It really is a train wreck of a film, made only worse when I learned that ‘Mason’ (Jesus wept…) was played by Ken Kirzinger, who played Jason – yes, Jason – in Freddy vs. Jason. Nothing in this film even flirts with being funny. Hell, it doesn’t enter the club where funny is out having a good time. It’s refused entry, kicked in the ass by security and told never to darken their doors again!

Enough with these shitty parodies, Airplane! was 30 years ago.

Blurbs-of-shame: Diora Baird was in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning; Ben Cotton was in Harper’s Island and Scar 3D, and The Tooth Fairy; Leslie Nielsen was, of course, Principal Hammond in Prom Night; Kirzinger was also in Wrong Turn 2. As well as being part to blame for Scary Movie, Zenga was also an exec producer on Turistas.

ICE CREAM MAN

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ice-cream-man2 Stars  1995/18/84m

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for the Ice Cream Man.”

Director: Norman Apstein / Writers: David Dobkin & Sven Davison / Cast: Clint Howard, Justin Isfield, Anndi McAfee, JoJo Adams, Mikey LeBeau, Olivia Hussey, Lee Majors II, Jan-Michael Vincent, David Warner, Karl Makinen.

Body Count: 9

Dire-logue: “You little turds are gonna learn you can’t run from the ice cream man!”

There’s an IMDb review of Ice Cream Man titled ‘I Scream, You Scream, We All Screamed when we saw Clint Howard’s face.’ Quite appropriate.

Ron’s bro is the titular tormentor, Gregory Tudor, in this strange B-flick, in which he thinks nothing of grinding up the locals – mostly parents of the kids who accurately suspect that he’s the one behind a spate of disappearances.

A quartet of plucky kids decides to investigate for themselves when one of their gang vanishes (secretly a willing captive in Gregory’s aged ice cream parlour). Meanwhile, cops Lee Majors II (!) and Jan-Michael Vincent (!!) look into Greg’s past at the Wishing Well Sanatorium and try to pin something on him. Hussey plays a kooky ex-nurse who has a garden of plastic daisies. And there’s a fat kid named ‘Tuna’.

Similarities between this and 1991’s C-flick Mr Ice Cream Man are obvious to anyone who’s seen both, though the budget and crew competence here run circles around the other film. There are also rumours that the crew of the older film sued those of the latter, which was reportedly part-financed by Converse Footwear, hence the numerous shots of trainers/sneakers throughout.

The comic trimmings don’t always work; there’s a completely extraneous and prolonged scene in the mental institution that doesn’t seem to add anything relevant to proceedings and was probably inserted to pump up the running time. Disappointingly, our fiend doesn’t murder any kids at all, settling for cops, a neighbour’s dog, and a couple of unfaithful parents instead. The idea of a murderous ice cream man could be scary if he was offing the little darlings on the block – it was freakin’ scary in serial killer flick When the Bough Breaks. Ergo, it wouldn’t be hard to make a truly scary film of this ilk, but after two botched attempts to get the scoop into the cone, I doubt anyone who try balancing a third on top…

Blurbs-of-interest: Howard had a small role as a luckless patient in The Dentist 2; Hussey was, of course, the lead in Black Christmas and also played Norman’s ma in Psycho IV: The Beginning.

Every SCAR tells a story…unless it’s so boring you forget what it was about

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scar1.5 Stars  2005/15/92m

“It was just bad timing.”

Director: Rhail Bhorania / Writers: Rahil Bhorania & Stephen Goetsch / Cast: Randy Waybe, Ashley Nelson, Dee Wallace Stone, Christopher LeCrenna, Joe Estevez, Rochelle Vallese, Tom Wade, Klara Jolesz, Brad Pennington.

Body Count: 8

Poor Dee Wallace… Stuck in a film with a tagline that sounds like an excuse for it being so terminally boring. Scar is a film in which so little happens that the DVD came with some toothpicks to prop my eyelids open.

Thespially-challenged teenager Tom returns to a small wooded town along with his best friend Jenny to try and work out what happened to his best friend (Jenny’s BF) one year earlier during a doomed hike in the surrounding forest. In the prologue, we see said friend attempt to seduce and then rape a nubile teenage girl at a remote cabin and then get the axe from her enraged mother. It soon transpires that the girl and her mom died a decade earlier…

If this is so, then how come they keep appearing to embed axes in horny men who turn up at the cabin? Why do those who encounter them find a strange scar on their belly? Did I leave the iron on in the kitchen?

Dee played a local psychic who gets dragged into proceedings when the dumb teen heroes figure out the paranormal slant, but even she cannot save this shoddy tale, which crumbles like a sand castle that manages to catch fire as it goes… There’s an evident influence from Asian girl-ghost flicks (The Grudge comes to mind) but Bhorania isn’t an agile enough director to make these homages count towards anything and they sink into the burning sand like petrified feces, resulting in a mound of crumbly, sandy crap that’s on fire.

There’s a vaguely eyebrow-raising moment at the last second, which I’ve now completely forgotten about, but I made a note that it occurred so I assume it’s still there. Wade on through, if you must.

Blurbs-of-interest: Dee was also in Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, Dead End Road, Halloween, Popcorn, and Red Christmas; Joe Estevez was in (the even worse) The Catcher and also Sigma Die! and Axe Giant.

Never gonna dance again

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prowler-dvdTHE PROWLER

3 Stars  1981/18/85m

“It will freeze your blood.”

A.k.a. Rosemary’s Killer (UK) / The Graduation

Director: Joseph Zito / Writer: Neal F. Barbera & Glenn Leopold / Cast: Vicki Dawson, Christopher Goutman, Farley Granger, Lawrence Tierney, Cindy Weintraub, Donna Davis, Lisa Dunsheath, Timothy Wahrer.

Body Count: 8

Dire-logue: “This is everybody’s last night together. Some of us’ll never see each other again.”

Bad pacing almost kills this early slasher flick from the director of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. This unruly little feature begins with the industry standard prologue, here set waaaaay back in 1945, where young Rosemary’s Dear John letter to an American G.I. culminates in the rejected soldier gruesomely skewering her and her new lover with a pitchfork at their graduation dance.

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35 years later, Avalon Bay is set to hold its first graduation dance since that fateful evening, thus prompting the killer to don his old uniform in an effort to repeat the crime on the new kids. So far, so My Bloody Valentine. Nominal heroine Pam encounters the killer in the student dorms (unknown to her, he just killed a couple of her friends) and alerts her deputy boyfriend, Mark.

Together, they inform one of the chaperones at the dance while they begin snooping for clues, first around mansion of wheelchair bound Major Chatham, father of the long-dead Rosemary, as he grabbed Pam as she fled from the prowler. This takes a long time. A very long time.

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Back at the dance, Pam’s friend Lisa has already wandered off for a late night swim and becomes another casualty, as does the poor teacher who comes looking for her.

Pam and Mark continue to delve into the unsolved mystery of Rosemary’s murder and, without the guidance of the town’s sheriff, stumble around slower than a Mazda Premacy. To the police station they go, then to the cemetery where they find Lisa’s body in the freshly exhumed grave of Rosemary Chatham, then back to the Chatham house. All of this takes forever, which, in a slasher film is unwelcome.

Of course, Zito tries to wring suspense out of this nothingness but fails miserably. Dancing very slowly moving between shots of Pam in the car and Mark crouching down at the graveside is not scary, it’s boring. Hurry up. Kill some more people. Kill those people over there…

Finally, on the second visit of the night to the Chatham mansion, the killer puts in an appearance and chases Pam around with his pointy-pitchfork until she blasts his head clean off his shoulders.

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There are other ‘issues’ with the picture; a horny teen couple stray away from supervision so they can have sex in the basement. The camera lingers, showing them from behind objects in the foreground. A pervert watches too. We wait for him to die and then then couple. We switch to another scene (probably with Pam and Mark achieving nothing in their investigation) and the sex-couple are never featured again! Once the killer is revealed, it really turns out that his identity is secondary to the needs of the plot – it really could’ve been anyone ‘of an age’ to have committed the 1945 murder. And what the hell happened to the Major?

The low body count doesn’t do too much harm; Tom Savini’s gore-jobs here at top notch, so much so that even I questioned whether this could be a genuine snuff film at one point. The shower murder is particularly realistic and nasty, as is Lisa’s fatal throat-cuttery and the tracheotomy on the nice teacher. As with Zito’s previous film, Bloodrage and also his Friday episode, there’s more than a subtle hint of violence chiefly against young women, which was discomforting.

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The photography, score and the original artwork (above) are all ace and there are no problems with the acting abilities of those involved, although Vicki Dawson, as Pam, evidently excelled in her how-to-frown acting class. One curiosity of the film is its number of striking similarities to one Friday the 13th Part 2, so much so that even the final girls look like sisters…. See?

friday-prowler2It should probably be noted that The Prowler was shot before Friday was released (albeit several months earlier) so it’s just some kinda weird coincidence…isn’t it? I mean, Zito later directed a Jason and there’s that double-impaling. Hmmmm.

I think The Prowler is okay; it’s flawed but the technical abilities of its general look and Savini’s wonderful work means it would be ignorant of these plus-points to rate it any lower than three stars. It’s commonly viewed as a cult favourite, although be prepared for some boredom between the slashings…

Blurb-of-interest: Lawrence Tierney was in Midnight.

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