Death Tunnel

What is it with movies that don't have a physical villain to beat?  With no giant digital snake or gator to blow up, it is like the people who come up with the story lines can't figure out how to end the movie.  Even when the characters figure out the reason behind all of the silliness, it still doesn't make any sense.

The basic plot of this movie is to have a party where five college girls are abducted and brought to an abandoned hospital.  They are monitored by closed circuit television and, I don't know, have to figure a way out or something.  Five girls, five floors, five hours.  The survivors get to go to a party or something.  I have to admit, the prize didn't exactly fit the abduction.

The girls see some of the ghosts haunting the hallways of the facility, which freaks them out.  And rightly so.  But, some of the girls also take on the persona of the dead from the facility.  It's all very odd.  After a while, I was hoping that the ghost man with the mask would take them all out.

Gore is at a minimum.  No violence to speak of either.  One scene with a girl stabbing another girl with a shard of glass does not count.  Especially since the stabbing was fast forwarded so that the stabbing girl would not realize who she was stabbing.

Freaked out level was at 6 out of 10.  But after a while, the freak level drops to 1.  Nothing to redeeming about this film for me.  At some point of the ending, the girl who makes it through the five hours wants to save the thousands of souls that were transported through the Death Tunnel.  No idea how she is supposed to save them, but she wants to somehow save their souls.  And then the movie ends.  Thankfully.

At the beginning of this movie, there is a note that this movie is based on true events.  I can't even begin to think what would be the truth to the story.  Other than it sucked.

I give this movie 0 out of 5 buckets of orange goop.

Cabin Fever

There is not too much normal on this vacation for these five college kids.  Sure they drink and have sex, that much is expected.  But I doubt that they expected to be consumed by a flesh eating virus.  Becuase who plans for that?

A camper kills a (very stiff) rabbit and brings it back to his tent to cook it up for him and his dog.  But his dog is dead and when the man investigates further, he has blood squirted on him from the dog.  I need to mention this, because that man is now the carrier of the flesh eating virus that will be critical to the story.

The five college kids head off to their cabin in the woods.  First stop is at the local store for supplies.  And they are greeted by a long haired boy biting one of the college guys.  Nice boy.  He's a good boy, ... sure.  The kids arrive at the cabin and tow of them immediately have sex.  The others go off for a swim and the big fellow, Bert, goes off to shoot some squirrels.  "Why would you want to kill squirrels?"  "Because they're gay."  "Don't be a retard."  "I'm kidding, I don't care if they are straight or gay."  That brilliant exchange is one of the few to look forward to in this movie.

The camper from earlier finds the kids and they see that he is sick.  After turning him away, for fear of catching what he has, they have to beat him with a baseball bat after he vomits blood inside their truck.  Then they set him on fire.  On fire, he runs to the lake and now his disease is in the water supply.  Now, not only are these college kids going to get sick, the whole town will too.

One by one, the kids get infected and it brings out the worst in each of them.  Karen, the first infected, just wants to leave and get help.  The others don't want to get infected and pretty much sign her death certificate.

Because the "killer" in this movie is a virus, it a) can't be seen when attacking its vicitm, b) is introduced to the victim at any time during the movie, and c) can be in varying degrees for each victim.  It just takes so long to set up this tragedy.  The ending is worth it.  Or at least, right before the ending.  Shovel to a head, shotgun blasts, screwdriver in the ear.  It's where all of the mayhem happens.  Oh, and I almost forgot about the guy getting a harmonica rammed down his throat.

This is an okay B movie.  Nothing to make me watch it again, but worth one veiwing.

I give this movie 1 out of 5 viles of fox urine.

Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent‏

The best part of this movie, and believe me when I say best, is that it is a short film.  The producers may have been on a budget and couldn't afford too many special effects.  I don't know, but ... it is best that this movie is only 76 minutes long.

 

When you draw a picture with this special voodoo pen, what you draw becomes true.  But only circumstances involving revenge.  So when a young boy witnesses his dad being mean to his mom and then draws a picture of his dad being eaten by a half alligator/half snake, it actually happens.

 

In a similar instance, a Bronco full of college kids who want to get drunk at a camp, strike and kill a man's wife when the driver decides to look at the rump of his buddy's girl instead of watching the road.  Of course, the man draws a picture of the Bronco being eaten by the snake-gator, instead of calling any police or anything.

 

The digital snake-gator will continue to kill until the revenge is complete.  If there is one person drawn, one person killed.  And so forth.  But the voodoo pen, the paper, and the digital snake-gator are all intertwined.  To stop the killing, you must destroy the paper and the pen.  And the only way to destroy the pen and paper is to have the stomach acid of the digital snake-gator destroy it.

 

It's a bit weak, but what do you expect for 76 minutes of a movie?  Not enough gore.  Not enough action.  Not enough senseless violence.  I still can't get past the 76 minutes, sorry.

 

I give this movie 1/2 out of 5 lift kits on a Bronco.

Banshee!!!

Yes.  With three exclamation points.  It might be because of the banshee scream being so loud or it might be because two exclamation points just wasn't enough.

 

Way back in 1970, three guys are getting high and watching TV.  They need to go on a grocery run and on their way, the woman that they were just watching on the TV is in the middle of the road.  So they pick her up.  But she is now what she appears to be and when the radio gets turned on, the frequency disrupts her disguise and she is the banshee.  She rips the guys to shreds and they crash into a lake.  The crash scene is pretty funny to me.  It's almost as if the producer didn't want to wreck the car, so it's a digital wreck.

 

Present day and the car is found.  The person who finds the car, Jack Gorman (Kevin Shea), is a scrap dealer and when he opens up the trunk, the banshee is released.  If you watched Attack of the Sasquatch, you will remember Kevin Shea as the hunter with the eye patch.  The banshee begins her havoc when a group of college kids show up for spring break.  Which is good, because we need some victims.  And they provide for some cool death scenes.  Being speared in the mouth, guts being eaten, heads ripped in half, torsos removed from the legs, ... all sorts of awesome gore litter this movie.

 

Jack's nephew, Rocker (oh yeah), gets in a few guitar licks too.  Towards the end of the movie, they figure out that the frequency from the guitar affects the banshee.  And Rocker becomes a rocking god on the front lawn to try and help kill the banshee.  The only problem that I had with this movie was the terrible ending.  It was wretched!!!  But other than that, it was not that bad of a B movie.

 

I give this movie 3 out of 5 electric guitars.

Headless Horseman

Ichabod Crane was to have had a problem with the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow.  But the locals from Wormwood Ridge say that it really happened in their town.

 

A van full of college kids need to get to a party.  They take a short cut through the woods, run over a bear trap, and get towed to Wormwood Ridge.  Once at Wormwood, they notice how the townsfolk are creepy.  Apparently, every seven years on Halloween, ole Headless comes out of his tar pit from hell to collect heads from any strangers who are not part of the town.  How they lure in strangers into this town is another trick.  I guess people come to see the midget.

 

Predictably, one by one, most the kids have their noggins removed from their bodies.  The first one is a COOL DEATH SCENE ALERT: decapitation occurs when a college kid pokes his head out of a car trunk and Headless jumps on the trunk.  Another COOL DEATH SCENE ALERT happens when a girl gets hit in the head and falls backwards into a bear trap.  There are several scenes like this and one where the tow truck girl runs over her father.  There should have been more scenes like this in the movie.  Maybe some more scenes with the midget too.

 

The gore could have been a little more over the top, but overall, worth seeing.  Add in some gratuitous nudity and you have an instant classic.

 

I give this movie 3 out of 5 mace wielding, headless horsemen.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

At first glance, you might think that this is another slasher film where everybody dies except for the main character and his love interest.  Well, you would be partly right.  Add in a boat load of comedy and then you have this movie.

 

These college kids are going camping and they forgot their beer.  So they stop in to get beer at the corner store and enter in Dale and Tucker.  The kids think that Dale and Tucker are a couple of backwoods hillbillies and think the worst.  But Dale just wanted to talk to one of the pretty girls.

 

Tucker sank his life savings into a fixer-upper vacation home that he and Dale are going to so that they can begin working.  It just so happens that the college kids have set up camp nearby and then the trouble starts.  There is one misunderstanding after another and also several killings that happen accidentally.

 

As you can see, I am not giving away much to this movie because it is so much fun to watch.  There is a lot of things to laugh at and the movie keeps you entertained the entire movie long.  I would definitely recommend watching this movie once or twice.

 

I give this movie 5 out of 5 Memorial Day Massacres.