THINGS!

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Things – 1989, Andrew Jordan, Canada

Things-Poster-14

Things is what I like to call a “worst case scenario movie”…

I’m sure you can see what I mean.

…Because at the end of the day, a movie is just the culmination of countless decisions; some large, and some tiny, but all important in one way or another. Everything from “What’s the movie about” to “what ‘door slam’ sound effect do I want to use in this scene?”, each and every one of these choices must be made, and all have some measurable impact on the finished product.

Now, a “worst case scenario” movie happens when every single decision made throughout the entire process was 100% wrong, but somehow, the movie just exists anyway. It’s hard to accept, but this IS possible; somehow, in isolated cases, people have been able to finish an entire film and never once make the right call on any single decision throughout the entire process, start to finish. It does happen, my friends, and it DID happen; with Things.

Things Gillis Intervision Picture Corp DVD 13 People like to throw around the term “worst movie of all time” an awful lot these days, and by now, the phrase has become so overused that a lot of it’s impact is sorta lost, but Things absolutely is one of the worst movies ever, and it always will be. This isn’t so much a feature film, it’s more a case of people standing in front of a camera correctly. Not well, mind you, but they are in front of a camera, so if it’s a pass/fail, they pass.

THE PLOT~ Some dude’s wife can’t get pregnant, so they attempt some sort of experimental, artificial insemination procedure, and as a result, she births a litter of murder bugs. So far so good, right? Well, that’s where the good news stops. After that, we are immediately thrown into a universe where two morons drink beer and act like unintelligent, aimlessly hostile children for an eternity while absolutely nothing ever happens, and absolutely no one reacts to anything, ever.

things-01 Acting is reacting? Think again. Things is here to refute that hypothesis.

Periodically, there is news footage intercut with our “narrative,” but like the rest of the film, these are both stupid, and entirely incoherent. People do eventually die, but it fucking sucks so hard, and it takes a thousand years before anything happens. If you accidently hit “record” on your smartphone while it sits around in your pocket for 90 minutes, there’s a strong likelihood that the result will be a more entertaining, and more artistically valid film than this one.

things-2 It’s basically this for two hours.

You should see the notes I took for this review; they go on for pages and pages, and while I could probably write a five thousand word review outlining just a couple highlights, it feels like a bad use of my time. The truth is, every critic in the world could go at this film full blast until they collapse from exhaustion and still not even scratch the surface. It is, simply put, as bad as a movie could possibly be. I can’t imagine how this film wasn’t just thrown right into the garbage the first time someone watched it.

163837420_640 I’m all for the preservation of art, but this film just screams “destroy me.”

Movies aren’t easy to make, I acknowledge that. Actually, in my mind, that just makes this whole thing even more confusing. How could anyone be capable of actually creating an entire film and still lack even the most basic grasp of what a film should be? It’s a mother f’in’ enigma, you guys. Seriously, NOTHING in Things is done right, well, or even good enough. This movie is, and I speak with complete conviction, one of the single worst movies ever made. Probably in the top five, maybe the top three. Frankly, I don’t expect this title belt to be challenged anytime soon, and probably the worst thing about it is that is isn’t even fun. When we watch other worse case scenario films, like Birdemic, or The Room, we laugh…. When we watch Things, we groan. My recommendation is to avoid this travesty at all costs, for it is terrible… so, so very terrible.

Still a better movie than Sucker Punch.

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare!!!

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare – 1987, John Fasano

ROCK-N-ROLL-NIGHTMARE

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare promotes itself as being a cool, Canadian made horror film filled with gruesome monsters, hot babes, and a fantastic heavy metal soundtrack. In reality, the only one of those things that it actually manages to be is Canadian. This film is successfully Canadian.

Written by and starring Z-Grade hair metal singer Jon Mikl Thor, it follows a supposedly popular heavy metal band called Triton as they bed down in an isolated Canadian farmhouse turned studio for a month in hopes of recording new material. Don’t let the rural setting fool you, this is a hard rockin’, chart toppin’ juggernaut of a heavy metal band, so expect to see these rowdy rock stars on their worst behavior! Oh, yeah, you’re gonna see a whole lot of:

Being Polite
Reading Quietly before bed
Staying positive
And doing the dishes, as seen here:

Whoo- Rock and roll!

Seriously- I thought these guys were a heavy metal band!!! In the 80’s!!!! Do you have any idea how often people do the dishes in this movie? It’s absolutely ridiculous, it happens over and over again- In 90 minutes they do they dishes more often than I do in a week. Motley Crüe didn’t do the dishes, they probably didn’t even have dishes! What the hell is going on here?!?!

mormons

THESE are your ROCK STARS?!?!

Well… They are Canadian… And anyway, I guess it’s not really fair to call them total prudes- they do pack in kind of a lot of sex scenes into this movie.

ugly horrible people

Including one where these two get it on. I bet you’re all real excited for that.

So, considering that Triton is a band which would probably look more at home slinging religion door to door than touring with Def Leppard, you might assume then that their secluded recording session in the Canadian countryside would be a pleasant, productive affair, but friend, that’s where you’d be wrong; dead wrong!

You see, while working on their new material, all of which is just terrible, by the way, Triton is plagued by two dark, wretched entities. Firstly; there is an enigmatic, creeping force of pure evil, sent straight from Hell, which haunts this farm house and slowly kills each member of Triton, one by one. Secondly, and probably worst of all: they must tolerate Stig, their drummer, who is a massive hunk of bullshit shaped into a human.

This is Stig, the biggest piece of shit in the whole fucking world.

Stig sucks like crazy. The actor playing Stig also sucks. He’s walking, talking proof that the universe is a fundamentally miserable and stupid place without purpose or justice, and part of what makes him suck the way he does is his stupid accent; this character has the lousiest, phoniest sounding Australian accent of all time, it’s cringe inducing. It makes Tarantino’s accent in Django Unchained sound like some serious pro-level shit. It’s as if the closest thing to dialogue coaching this guy got was to be shown a photograph of a Koala bear and to be told that Australians “Sorta sounded like people from England, only slower. Okay, action!” Later on in the film Stig is murdered (thank you) and replaced by a demon replicant with an American accent, but nobody in the band seems to mind the change given that this new Stig is a better drummer and is also less obnoxious.

If it is wrong to kick a man when it’s down, then it is, frankly, unethical to apply any form of criticism to Rock N’ Roll Nightmare whatsoever, but I am going to go ahead and confirm what you probably already suspect; this is a low budget, lame, badly made film with little in the way of talent, on, or off screen. That’s really about all that can be said, except for, that is, a detailed, photographic essay on the film’s climax, which is what I’m about to show you now. Ordinarily I would shy away from revealing the end of a film in one of my reviews, but this time I’m bending that rule to hell and back, because, A) the ending is the only part of this movie worth talking about in the first place, and B) absolutely no one cares. That being said, if you fear spoilers, turn away now, cuz they are comin’ atchya, fast and furious. Turned away yet, have you? Okay, off we go, to the film’s hilarious climax:

So… What happens is that after everyone has been dead and demon replicated except for Thor, Satan shows up and confronts him in the barn while he’s working on one of his shitty little songs. Having caught his prey seemingly offguard, this hideous demon-king reveals his evil plans and big, fake looking puppet body, but is surprised to find that Thor is actually already aware of the ongoing demonic situation, and doesn’t really seem to care about it. “That’s kinda weird,” Satan thinks to himself. Well, apparently the reason for all that is simple; as Thor explains, he ain’t human, he’s actually an Archangel called Triton The Intercessor; and he’s here on Earth incognito for some sort of top secret Angel-stakeout, and so he knew what these demon guys were up to all along. He doesn’t really LOOK like what you imagine an Angel to look like, he mostly looks like a Post-Op sex change Michelle Pfeiffer, but whatever, he’s totally an angel, you guys, and that’s not all; apparently none of the people in this entire movie were even real. This gaggle of dorks were all mere illusions Angel-Thor crafted using his magical powers to give Satan a false sense of normalcy, thereby creating the perfect Devil trap. Yep! That’s the Shyamalan twist at the end of Rock N’ Roll Nightmare; it was all an elaborate ruse to bust some Demons and send them to Heaven Jail. How blown is your mind right now?

What comes after Thor’s big reveal is… Well…. It’s SUPPOSED to be a fight scene… I think… I mean… I’m pretty sure…. You know what, here, I’m going to go ahead and just show you some images from the climax of the film; you look them over and then you tell ME what you see.

Here…:

satan am i seeing boobs

on his chest Did anybody else just see gay porn?!?!?!?!

My Bloody Valentine (1981)!!!

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

My Bloody Valentine– 1981, George Mihalka

MyBloodyValentine

As of 2015 there have been a generous handful Valentine’s Day themed horror flicks made, and this one here is the best of the bunch, by far. I really expected that, by now, somebody would have made a horror film about a big fat guy in a diaper with tiny wings who shoots people with a bow and makes hilarious jokes, but if that movie exists, I can’t seem to find it. The closest we’ve come so far is the 2001 horror film Valentine, and dammit, that is a far cry from the glorious killer Cupid flick that I have imagined. Fortunately, My Bloody Valentine is a total classic, even if it doesn’t quench my thirst for absurdity, and it remains one of the best Holiday Themed slashers out there, even after thirty years. If you’re at all a slasher fan, you should track it down pronto, Tonto.

THE PLOT ~ A rural Canadian mining town finds it’s annual Valentine’s Day celebration disrupted by a string of gruesome murders, reminiscent of an infamous killing spree committed twenty years ago by a psychologically unhinged miner called Harry Warden. Believing Harry to be back in action, but not wanting to stir the townsfolk into a panic, local law enforcement does what it can to keep the news of the killings suppressed, while canceling all Valentine’s Day celebrations in accordance with the killer’s demands. The local youth aren’t into that shit, though. They want to party, and are fully willing to fight for their right to do so, regardless of the fact that License To Ill wouldn’t be released for five more years. Since they have literally no idea that people are being murdered in awesome ways all over town, these care-free future pickaxe victims conclude that the best course of action is to ignore the ban on Valentine’s Day celebrations, and to have a secret party anyway, no grown-ups allowed. But where would be best place for a secret Valentin’e Day party? Well, clearly, deep within the very mine where Harry Warden once cannibalized his peers, of course! Yes, he ate people toward the end of his mining career. So, that’s what they do- and guess how well that works out for them? Not real good.

There’s also a love triangle thing in here- which is actually the focal point of the plot, but that’s not very much fun to write about, and probably even worse for readers, so I’m mostly just going to hit you with the murder stuff. I really do think it’s best this way.

So, My Bloody Valentine is very much what you would expect it to be if you’re familiar with American/Canadian slashers of the early eighties, but if that’s the case, then you should also have seen this movie by now, because it’s a damn essential. It’s a close relative to Black Christmas, The Prowler, and the original Friday the 13^th, and also owes a lot of influence to earlier Italian giallo films like Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood. Like those films, this is essentially a murder mystery, but with a much greater emphasis on sensationalized violence, and a focus on the role of the hapless victim, instead of seeing the story through the eyes of some bozo trying to solve the crime, as would be the case with most traditional murder mysteries. It’s distinct from the slashers that would follow it later in the 1980’s by being markedly less poppy, and by giving us characters who are much more realized and complex. We weren’t quite at the point where the audience just wanted to watch our killer tromp around and slice folks in half yet, so it was still important for the film to establish a somewhat believable world. My Bloody Valentine does that.

As a slasher, My Bloody Valentine has the title of “best Valentine’s Day horror film” on lock petty much for eternity. It’s a solid movie, and a damn fine horror film to boot. Our killer is both scary, and acceptably iconic, and the many red herrings doled out as the plot unravels keep the picture feeling interesting and surprising. This may even be the best horror film ever set in a mine, except for maybe Rodan, so suck it, The Stragneness.

Another fun fact that earns My Bloody Valentine mucho street cred amongst horror fanatics, It’s fairly violent. The picture is widely believed to have had nearly ten minutes of gore and violent content edited out of the picture before it was released, to appease the puritanical demands of the MPAA, and to date there is still no real uncut version of the film available. Subsequent versions have included additional unseen footage, but rumor has it there is still more sitting in a canister somewhere that we have yet to enjoy, so hopefully someone get’s that shit cut back together in the future. As it is, the theatrical cut leaves something to be desired if you’re coming into My Bloody Valentine after a gore-fest on par with Evil Dead, any of the Euro slashers, or even the aforementioned The Prowler, but it remains much stronger than, say, Halloween. I think My Bloody Valentine can hold it’s own against comparable slashers of the era in this respect, and it’s certainly good enough to warrant a viewing either way.

Before we wrap up, I want to briefly address my favorite part of the film; the character of Hollis. Hollis is a supporting character- but dammit if he isn’t a bad ass. He kinda looks like what you would get if Garfield the cat was a real human being- and also a little like the product of a cloning experiment involving John Candy and Teddy Roosevelt. As far as I’m concerned, this guy is the film’s main draw. End of paragraph.

A+

Fantastic Crap Comics

by Christopher Ochs

Tag Archives: Canada

THINGS!

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare!!!

My Bloody Valentine (1981)!!!