2001 Maniacs

The best times happen on Spring Break.  Right?  For three college boys, nothing goes their way.  Which is perfect for this movie.  Lots of quality kills and a few good lines too.

 

These three guys meet up with two girls and guy on their way down to Daytona for spring break.  Both cars take a detour, along with a couple on a motorbike, and find themselves in Pleasant Valley, GA.  The town is about to have their "Guts and Glory" jubilee and all of the outsiders stay for the party.  Big mistake.

 

One of the girls in the second car is the first to go missing.  COOL DEATH SCENE ALERT: Her limbs get tied to four horses and they all run in separate directions, pulling her limb from limb.  But while gruesome as that is, the rest of the guests are fed the balance of her carcass. You now know that it's not too pleasant in Pleasant Valley.

 

There are several other COOL DEATH SCENE ALERTs in the film.  Forced drinking of acid, getting smashed by a large bell, and a few others that I am not going to give away here.  It all looks pretty bleak for the kids until one of the college boys relies on a gentleman's word of honor for escape.  The survivors are allowed to leave.

 

There is a twist at the end that helps tie everything together.

 

I give this movie 3 1/2 out of 5 Confederate Flags

The NOTscars

The Oscar award ceremony is tonight and it was suggested that I watch the ceremony to review it.  That's probably not going to happen.  Instead, let's look back on some of the highlights of the movies we have reviewed so far.

Nominated for Best of the Worst Digital Threat
The sharks in Malibu Shark Attack
The shark from Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
Piranha from Mega Piranha

And the winner is, ... The shark from Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
This was a tough category.  Each of these digital villains has their attributes.  The piranha double in size every ten minutes and are able to take out Naval vessels.  The Malibu sharks are these prehistoric sharks, brought back from the dead due to a tsunami and their swim skills are probably what doomed them in the first place.  But the Mega Shark chomped the Golden Gate Bridge.  That was enough to take the award.

Nominated for Stiffest Lead or Supporting Actor
Hero in Mega Piranha
Elderly Doctor in Dinoshark

And the winner is, ... the hero in Mega Piranha.  If you could remove the acting from this guy, a carpenter could use it as a straight edge to build some cabinets.  Most of his dialog was angry stares.

Nominated for Time Filler Portion of the Movie
Camouflage make-up montage in Skeleton Man
Pheromone creation scene in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

And the winner is, ... pheromone creation scene in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  It was close, but the scientists attempting to create the lure for the two creatures was a thing of beauty.  Pouring different colored water into beakers edged out a group of people putting smudges on their faces.

Sorry, that is all the time we have for this year's NOTscars post.  Tune in again for another exciting edition of The NOTscars!

Crocodile II: Death Roll

I thought I smelled a sequel.  Yep.  The big crocodile is back for more.  Only this time, it's not Egyptian.  It's Aztec.

 

A group of criminals rob a bank and are going to Mexico to escape the law.  They board Air Acapulco and check all of their bags holding the loot.  It's a rainy flight and the storm is so bad that the pilot is told that he needs to turn around.  That's when the expletives and bullets fly.  The plane is hijacked.  The copilot is shot and the bullet damages the instruments, forcing the plane to go down.  The plane rips in half and there are not many survivors.

 

The boyfriend of one of the flight attendants sees on the Acapulco news that the plane has gone down and hires a tracker to help find the plane, since he thinks that no government officials will do any thing.  This tracker guy has it all, a helicopter, several small boats, electronic gear to track the "black box" of the airplane.  You name it.

 

The croc starts taking the survivors down one by one.  The boyfriend and tracker meet up with the survivors and the whole crew of them make it to some deserted boat launch or something.  Of course, that doesn't last and they have to make a break for it to try and get back to the helicopter.

 

Like the first Crocodile movie, the croc waits until the end to do something worthwhile.  This time it takes down the helicopter.

 

It's as bad as the first one, but at least the croc is killed so we know there won't be Crocodile III: Expect Less.  Or should we?

 

I give this movie 1/2 out of 5 Aztec crocodiles.

Crocodile

How could a movie about college kids going to Spring Break on a house boat be bad?  Right?  Well, Crocodile makes it bad.

 

These college kids get on a houseboat and head off to a secluded part of the area and set up camp.  In the distance, there are the remains of a hotel that was burned down.  Legend has it that the owners of the hotel had a crocodile that was direct descendants from Egyptian pharaohs.  The legend is told around the campfire and is supposed to scare one of the girls.

 

Two fisherman, on a wildlife preserve, decide to destroy a nest of eggs that they come across.  Always a good idea to do that on a preserve.  The first fisherman becomes a mist of blood when the croc attacks.  The second on heads back to the car, where he is attacked and killed.  And unlike any other act of defiance that I have ever seen before by a computer generated creature, it then pushes the car into the water to cover the crime.  Pretty smart.

 

The kids get picked off one by one.  There are some pretty weak death scenes.  Breaking through the hull of the houseboat, the croc destroys the vessel and the kids have to swim to shore.

 

The sheriff begins to investigate the missing fisherman and notices the destroyed nest.  He brings one of the egg shells to a local gator farm to try and see if they can make anything out of the shell.  It's really over the top when one of the workers shows up at the office, bleeding because the gators "don't like getting their teeth brushed".  Was that really necessary?

 

It's not until the very end of the movie when the croc finally does something cool.  A full water breach, spinning the entire time, over the sheriff's boat.  The croc does survive.  Do I smell a sequel?  You betcha!

 

I give this movie 1/2 out of 5 Egyptian crocodiles.

Zombie Strippers

Zombie Strippers is one of those movies that you probably could never take a date to see.  But it has it all.  Brutal killings.  Nudity.  Zombies.  What more could you ask for?

In the near future, America is at war with just about everybody.  Even Alaska.  A group of scientists are in charge of creating a toxic virus that reanimates dead tissue and jump start brain motor functions so that the dead soldiers could come back to life and continue fighting.  The test subjects get out of control and a military team has come to the test facility to eradicate the test subjects.  Only, one of the team is bitten and escapes the lab while all of the other zombies are killed.

The bitten team member makes his way to a strip club and bites the best stripper of the group.  "Let me get this straight.  Our best stripper is a reanimated corpse who feeds off the living flesh of out customers ...."  But get this, the zombie stripper is out selling the rest of the girls.  Not only do the customers not seem to mind, but they love it.  So the other girls become zombies one by one.

There are some fantastic ultra violent kills by the strippers.  There is a wonderful brain eating scene, several head splatters, and face stomping aplenty.  Two lines in the movie got a chuckle from me.  "Get on the bread truck and haul f**king buns" and "Not enough kids smoking these days".

Definitely worth the time.  I give it 4 out of 5 Rhino's (strip club name).

Weirdsville

One hour and forty minutes down the drain.  Well, not completely.  There was some midgets.  Long story short, the devil worshipers try to drown the head midget and he and his midget band get revenge.

By the way, the movie is not about the midgets, but it should have been.  The midgets are part of some medieval reenactment group, so they have all of these weapons.  Like a mace and a crossbow and this big hammer.  If anything, there should have been more scenes with the midgets.  Or just make the movie about this band of midgets thrashing all of the normal sized people.  I tell ya, ... I'm all about the midgets.

The movie was supposed to be about some drug heads that need to pay off their source and their hooker friend is mistakenly introduced into this satanic ceremony and they now think that she has the power of Satan and try to nab her back so that they can perform another ritual.

See.  I told you they should have had more midgets.

I give it 1 1/2 out of 5 midgets.

Mega Python vs. Gatoriod

We haven't had a "mega" movie title in a few days, so wait no more.  On second thought, you might want to wait some more.

Things to look out for in this film:
1) A massive python eats a moving train.  MOVING train.
2) Tiffany to Debbie Gibson, "I think we're alone now."
3) Response of Debbie Gibson to Tiffany, "There doesn't seem to be anyone around."
4) There is an 80's style montage where the snakes and gators grow larger.  Yes, it is set to music.  No, they do not pump iron.  They just grow larger.  To music.  Possibly Tiffany.  Possibly Debbie Gibson.  Definitely bad.

Basic plot: Debbie Gibson releases some pythons into the Florida everglades where they grow large enough to swallow trains.  Tiffany combats the snake problem by feeding anabolic steroids to a group of alligators in order to have nature balance itself out.

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Except having someone okay this film.

I give it 1/2 out of 5 gator eggs.  Even the horrible "cat fight" scene between Tiffany and Debbie Gibson is awful.  At least Debbie could have ripped Tiffany's dress to make her massive cleavage pop out.

Snake King

This is one of the few movies that I have seen that has one redeeming quality.  A giant multi headed serpent.

A team of researchers discover a stone casket that has the remains of a very old man.  GenTech International discovers that the man was over 300 years old.  The "Amazon Man" is introduced to a crew of reporters as "the most significant, scientific, biological, and archaeological find of modern times."  And they are determined to find the Fountian of Youth behind it.

A team that includes two research doctors is sent to the original dig site.  They hire a helecopter to take them to the dig site, but it is hit by lightning and they go down.  Nobody is hurt, which is fortunate because we need some victims.  The audience gets to see the serpent, but our characters do not know what they are in store for later.

The helicopter pilot is friends with a local tribe who finds them at the crash site.  A few of the team become snake food and one of the team decides to go on by himself, in a jungle, with no idea where he is going.  Perfect.  He might as well be wearing a bullseye for a hat.  A tribe of Snake People hold the secret of eternal life and they also pray to the large serpent.  One thing leads to another and the lady research doctor who was originally going to be sacrificed to the serpent, reasons with the tribe leader to try and make everything right.  It doesn't happen and the serpent goes nuts.

There are some quality kills be the serpent.  One guy is sliced in the abdomon and a river of blood flows from his gut.  Another guy is pulled apart limb from limb.  And the serpent also has some flesh dissolving saliva at the end that it never had before.  And SPOILER ALERT, the serpent does not get destroyed.  Which is fine by me.  Nothing like a giant multi headed serpent to keep out researchers.

I give this movie 2 out of 5 serpents

Triassic Attack

If you like dinosaur skeletons rampaging about, have I got a movie for you.

Stayton University, located in Mills County, Oregon, has purchased land from the town to expand the university and attempt to revitalize the community.  The townspeople feel cheated and one Native-American man decides to take matters in his own hands.  He breaks into a museum, which apparently has no security at all, and performs a ritual with some artifacts.  The skeletal remains of three dinosaurs come to life and are released into the town.  "What have I done?"  Probably doomed us all.

The destruction and kill scenes are pretty terrible.  A leader of a fraternity is "eaten" by the T-Rex, but since it has no skin/throat/stomach, the body simply falls back to the ground.  I thought that was pretty funny and if you had a heart, you would think so too.

One of the poorer parts of the movie is when one of the smaller dinosaur skeletons is chasing down the police vehicle.  The sheriff lines up his SUV and rams the skeleton, which reforms after being broken apart.  The solution is to "run fast".  Good thinking.

After several failed attempts to kill the creatures, the solution is to perform another ceremony with the artifacts.  Lightning strikes are going to save the day, but when the guy performing the ceremony is injured, the sheriff's crew turn to the local substation to create their own lightning.  It's hard to describe, but one of the cables is severed so the circuit cannot be completed to kill the skeleton.  The guy who built the lightning contraption holds the ends of the cable together and the switch is thrown.  100,000 volts is sent into the circuit and throws him back a few paces.  Not only does it not kill him, the cables are left intact for a second use.  That's Hollywood for you.

One of the brighter moments in the movie is when the pterodactyl bones and T-Rex bones reconstruct to form this one colassal super-flying-dinosaur skeleton.

I give this movie 1 1/2 out of 5 colassal super-flying-dinosaur skeletons.

Iron Invader

There are many film grenades that I am throwing my body on out there for you.  This was another one.  Iron Invader doesn't offer too much other than an afternoon spend watching the screen.

A Russian satellite gets hit with a meteor and the wreckage hurls towards the Earth.  The satellite wreckage lands in Redeemer, Idaho.  A small little town that barely has enough people there to fill a bus.  The wreckage lands on an old man's property and he is the first to discover that this satellite has a bit more debris from the meteor than expected.  This green colored space goo gets on his hands and kills him.

There doesn't seem to be anyone else that sees the satellite streaking across the sky other than the old man and these two brothers trying to restore an old house.  The brothers drive to the crash site and after looking around decide to take the satellite and sell it to the junk dealer of the town.  Earl the junk dealer, is constructing a metal golem for the town celebration that is going to be happening next week.  You can already see where this is going from a mile away.  Yep, the satellite makes its way near the golem and brings it to life.  Now a seventeen foot, one ton metallic man is going to destroy the townspeople.

The town drunk figures out that alcohol will kill the green space goo, which is some sort of bacteria.  The discovery is made when he drops his drink while people are watching the golem reassemble itself after a failed attempt at exploding the creature.  Then they start pouring liquor on all of the metallic parts that have the green goo on it.

Scrap metal shaking, a car rim or two rolling around, and veins drawn on people when they are killed is what you will see for most of the movie.  It's horrible.  No real property damage to speak of, no real quality kills.

I give this 0 out of 5 metal golems.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

Made for television movies are a hit or miss.  The nice ones that try to teach the kids a lesson and then there are movies like this one, starring Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Llamas.  Deborah Gibson, a.k.a. Debbie Gibson, is a marine biologist that has stolen a mini-sub to do some research in northern waters.  Unbeknown  to her, she witnesses these two creatures locked in an epic battle, but frozen in solid ice.

There is a situation that unleashed the Mega Shark and the Giant Octopus from their frozen jail and they are once again free to roam the waters of the world.  But don't get worried, Debbie Gibson is on the case.

The team of marine biologists and naval vessels try to lure the creatures with pheromones so that they can possibly be destroyed.  There is a scene where they are trying to come up with the chemical to lure the creatures is fabulously ridiculous.  The pheromones work, but they cannot destroy either one.  So they have to go with more drastic measures, have the Mega Shark battle the Giant Octopus in a one on one death match to the finish.  Obviously, the team doesn't think about the possibilities of what to do with the winner.  Do I smell a sequel?  Jeez!  I hope not.

Unreal destruction: C-
While the Mega Shark jumped out of the ocean to catch a jumbo jet in mid flight and also chomped the Golden Gate Bridge, the quality of the destruction was just brutally low.  In fact, I have just given two of the four major destruction scenes away.

Violence: F-
None to speak of.  Human casualties at a minimum.

Unneeded Sex: D
While there was a scene of totally unnecessary sex, there was no nudity.


This movie fails on every level.  The friggin' octopus was such a disappointment.  Same for the shark, but at least the shark ate part of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I give it 1 out of 5 giant octopus

Pledge This!

There comes a time when you have to suck it up and watch a Paris Hilton movie.  I don't know why, but today was my day.

Like most National Lampoon movies, you have to expect some sophomoric humor.  The bathroom jokes and topless women for no apparent reason.  This movie has all of that and commentary by Paris Hilton.  Comments like, "School starts when I pop out of my limo and see my shadow.  But I can't see my shadow, because I am so thin."  There are more of those lines littered throughout the movie.

It's a proven formula for a movie.  Introduce stuck-up hot girls and lovable misfits, have both combine and conflict with hot girls coming out on top, misfits get revenge, the end.  The Paris Hilton bunch are the sorority girls from Gamma Gamma on the campus of South Beach University.  The girls are never in a classroom except for "fashion class" and "secrets of sex" class.  Just about all of the action takes place at the Gamma Gamma house and pool.  "Is everybody from MySpace in my pool?"

Other than a few funny lines, a giant chicken houseboat, and a pie fight ending, there is little reason to watch this movie.

I give it 1/2 out of 5 sorority girls.

Skeleton Man

This movie has no cohesiveness.  From the first scene where Skeleton Man appears until the very end, you never know what you are going to see next.

The beginning scene lets us know that a Native-American skull has been discovered.  And it also lets us know that there was an evil spirit protecting the skull.  The professor/archiologist that discovered the skull soon finds out that the evil spirit is Skeleton Man.  The professor's assistant flees the research cabin, deep in the woods, to come across some sort of industrial facility.  Security at the facility proves to be no match for Skeleton Man.

A group of four women and four guys are sent to investigate.  You know they mean business because they perform a camoflage make-up scene with slow-motion walking afterwards.  Later, they stumble upon an indian man in the woods and he relays the story of Skeleton Man.  One by one, the team is picked off.  There are even some scenes of utterly-no-relevance-to-the-story violence.  Fisherman, ... shot with arrow.  Big rig driver, ... knifed. 

There are some nice kills by Skeleton Man that involve scapling and impailing several different victims.  One of the women in the group annouces, "If it breathes, I can kill it."  Nothing signs a death notice like trying to be the hero with 30 minutes remaining in the film.

The kills by Skeleton Man are not enough to save this film.  The story jumps around more than a kangaroo on a trampoline.

I give it 1/2 out of 5 spears.

Malibu Shark Attack

Malibu Shark Attack might be the worst movie that I have ever seen.  Even if this "movie" would have had some gratuitous nudity, it wouldn't have been worth watching. 

The movie was just so wretchedly awful.  Why did I watch the whole thing?  I was hoping that there would have been some cool death scene where one of the sharks would have jumped out of the water and got hit by a flying steamroller or something.  It just wasn't my day.
There is a point where one of the characters is hip deep in water, walking on a flooded pier towards a building.  He sees the dorsal fin behind him and begins this sort of speed walking away from the shark.  He is walking.  The shark is, well, a shark.  And somehow the guy manages to escape into a tool shed.  Then he gets a chainsaw and begins slicing the shark.  By this description, you would think that the scene is pretty good.  But the reality of it is that he is just randomly stabbing at the water with a chainsaw with some splashing going on around him.  It's just so ... bad.

I give it 0 out of 5 Malibu Sharks.

Dark Mirror

Dark Mirror is not that hard to follow.  It's just boring.  I was hoping for more.

Plot:
Mom, dad, and junior move into a house that once had a famous painter living there.  Mom is a struggling photographer and she comes to believe that by taking pictures with her camera, the people in the photos disappear/die afterwards.  Mom goes nuts and kills everyone except her son.  Credits.

There is supposed to be a bit of mystery behind the painter that is really bizarre and the way the mom finds out about the painter is even more bizarre.  Bottom line, it would be more entertaining to play Jenga on a Tilt-a-Whirl.

I give it 0 out of 5 crazed photographers.

Mega Piranha

Nothing says "I love you" like a movie about genetically altered fish.  Well, that and chocolate.  Unless the chocolate is genetically altered.

Mega Piranha is a movie about a group of genetically altered piranha that escape the research lab and begin terrorising Venezuela.  The research facility has been given the task of attempting to grow fish larger so that the people in the area will have more food.  I don't know why you would add piranha into the tank, but I am not a movie producer either.
While still relatvely normal sized, the piranha eat through the hull of a fishing boat to get to their first victims.  The American that is sent to investigate and help the scientists, was about as stiff as a cardboard cut out.  He really drowns the movie.  No pun intended.

The fish continue to grow exponentially and there seems that there is nothing that could be done to correct the situation.  Let's just say, towards the end, I was cheering for the fish.  The movie was impossibly wretched.  So of course I had to watch the whole thing. 

I give it 1 out of 5 gills.

Phantom Force

Let me sum up Phantom Force for you in one word, ... "what"?  This ancient stone that can summon these guys from hell to act a superwarriors during war.  It's some sort of port key that can bring these superwarriors into the present from the past.  One superwarrior guy did have a cool harpoon, but he doesn't use it until the very end.  The Phantom Force is a team assigned to find the stone and bring it back.  For .. research.  Yeah.  That's right.  Research.

For the team to collect the stone, they have to board a submarine that is in another dimension.  Wait, ... it gets better.  It really doesn't.  They have a lot of gizmos to help them along, one being a liquid nitrogen grenade that "could flash freeze a dinosaur".  Ah, science.

The main character, Richard Greico, also has some sort of sixth sense where he can tell the worse part of someone's life even if he just met them.  Hey, Richie!  Can you guess the worst part of my life?

I give this movie 1 out of 5 harpoons.