Nightmares

Directed by John Lamond

Screenplay by Colin Eggleston
1980, USA

The Italians might have done it best but the Aussies sure did have a good time trying. As unstable as a one-legged pirate walking a tightrope, Nightmares (directed by Ozploitation guru John Lamond) isn’t shy about what it’s doing. From the opening scene we are bombarded with an erratic pace and a pulsating score which quickly informs us that we are in for one hell of a ride. The film opens with a set of flashbacks, where we see Hellen Selleck (Jenny Neumann) subject to two early childhood traumatic experiences. The first, which in some way causes the second, is of a young Helen discovering her mother and her lover having sex. Helen’s initial need for mommy to reinforce that there are no bogeymen under her bed is quickly put on the backburner by a more current and real fear, her mommy getting boogie manned all up in them guts. This sighting, which echoes throughout the film, causes her to presumably go completely insane. Helen’s second episode comes roughly a month later while driving home one night. Momma’s loverboy gets a little frisky in the car causing Helen to scream “get your hands off my mommy” momentarily distracting whoever was driving enough to swerve into another car, ejecting mommy through the window, slitting her throat with the windshield. On top of this, Helen plays a further part in her mother’s literal undoing by trying to pull her mother back into the car only to worsen the cut to her throat and possibly providing the final blow to mommy dearest. Just perfect! Now the film is set up to bring us to the present, some 20 years later, and we have a very crazy broad on our hands.

Nightmares is one capricious little devil but one of the steady points is a hammering score composed by Brian May. Striking hard and cutting deep from the first chord, May’s score is fervid and violent. At times dominating the film, the score encompasses the film’s complete insanity. The look and feel is uniquely Australian, with some borrowed components from Italian and American slasher schlock. Using the giallo staple of a POV killer with black gloves, broken glass and lecherous heavy breathing, Nightmares, cuts its victims up in a fleshy display of hatred for the body. Intersplicing scenes from Helen’s traumatic past with the killer (although there is no real question as to who that is) slicing up naked people (remember this is John Lamond we’re talking about, champion of Ozploitation sleaze including The ABC’s of Love and Sex, so there are ample opportunities for genital slashing), Nightmares caters to audiences looking for blood, butts and sleaze.

It’s easy to see resemblances to Michel Soavi’s 1987 Stage Fright – which is the original title of Nightmares and is more prominently known. Both follow a self-reflexive, behind the scenes narrative structure, using the stage and theatre as the setting for their killings. Yes, Soavi’s killer dons an amazingly absurd owl mask, but Lamond’s Nightmares is inarguably more insane. Edited as seamlessly as a baseball, Nightmares jaggedly cuts through its scenes as rough as its killer cuts through a victim’s flesh. Although there’s no real sense of mystery within the film, Nightmares is completely unpredictable.

Detroit Burns

EXTRAS:
• Audio Commentary With Director John Lamond And Not Quite Hollywood Director Mark Hartley
• A Brief History Of Slasher Films Featurette
• John Lamond Trailer Reel

About Severin

“Like the poems scribed on a public bathroom wall, this movie is childish and fucking great.”

Directed by Drew Bolduc & Dan Nelson

Written by Drew Bolduc

2010, USA

It never occurred to me that you could make feature length film about all the bad jokes and perverted thoughts you had in high school and yet still have it turn into an enjoyable experience for someone other than your dysfunctional self to watch.  The Taint is a constant reminder of our stupidity. Its obsession with all things genital-related is as embarrassing as discovering your pecker for the first to time while watching the S&M comedy Exit to Eden.With all its dicks, jizz, and gay jokes, The Taint comes across as a psychotic, moronic teenage dream, induced from an overdose of video game playing, porn watching and murderous fantasies. Some might call it a nightmare; but I call it a funtime bonanza, mainly because I don’t know what those words mean yet.  Writer, director, composer, cosmic dancer, etc. Drew Bolduc, uses every great thing from 80’s b-movies and molded it into his Taint. Circles of death, masked avengers, Castlevania-like Casio scores, boobs, and exploding faces are all just the tip of the phallic iceberg, for this movie is phenomenally messed up.

Remember when films like The Toxic Avenger actually were really fun and gross? Remember when watching those films felt wrong and filthy, making your pants rise and your mouth orifice tingle with the inevitable eruption of a vomit waterfall? The Taint is a reminder that these horrible, horrible films are so fucking great. It also is the first film that I have seen in a long time to use its digitally enhanced special effects, as well as latex (dildos are made of latex, no?) effects with effortless perfection. This DIY piece of skull-fuckery is 100% worth tracking down. You’ll see squirrel’s heads whipped off, faces pulled off, dicks shots off, skyscrapers blown up and jerks jerked off. I had so much fun watching this film that I had to take a break from seeing my psychologist about my Dan Akyroyd nightmares, instead choosing to just sit starring blankly into my empty fishbowl collection wondering what it would be like if I were still watching The Taint.

The Taint is unapologetic ally raunchy. What doesn’t work for the film (a couple of anti-climatic flashback/explanation scenes towards the end of the film) doesn’t really matter. The film cares so little about making sense or what it’s doing, that criticizing it only makes us waste our precious words and most likely would result in a hand written response on a cheap bar napkin from Drew Bolduc reading “your Mom.” Like the poems scribbled on a public bathroom wall, this movie is childish and fucking great.

Detroit Burns

Sortie 67

Directed by Bastien Jephté

Written by Bastien Jephté

Canada, 2010

It isn’t every day that you get to witness a film like Bastien Jephté’s Sortie 67 – a rough and raw film that looks into Montréal Nord / St-Michel gang fares. Montréal, a city in which crime films have generally surrounded its infamous biker wars, serves as a menacing backdrop where its citizens can only refer to it as a “jungle.” Made up of predominantly up and coming actors, Sortie 67 battles through its rawness, keeping the scale balanced although wavering at times between its oft-forced performances and genuine honesty.

We don’t have to think far back to find similarities to Jephté’s ç. In theaters worldwide, gang life has been a hot film topic and well documented. Films like John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood marked the beginning of a new era of street films, at times both romanticizing the life of a G whilst also pointing a finger. America has a gang problem and the film world has fervently done its part in documenting it. Montréal, as any urban city, also has gang problems and yet there haven’t been any films documenting gang life (other than that of the bikers or the mafia.) This isn’t a black and white thing, nor a language battle as Sortie 67 habitually proves, but rather a slower understanding and refamiliarizing of Montreal’s current gang population. Mount-real is a city like none other and Bastien Jephté willfully shows that. Sortie 67, conveys that sense of isolation and desolation surrounding St-Michel. A city isolated from a larger entity, similar and yet completely different, much like Montréal is to Canada.

Following the life of Jecko, (later to be named Wacko-Jacko, played by Henri Pardo as an adult, Anthony Clevearuax as a teen and Shevon Jeremy Noëlas as a kid), Sortie 67 doesn’t take long to depict the hardships of growing up poor, black and without any options. Haunted by the brutal slaying of his mother, Jecko must come to terms with his new adopted life and the struggle to survive on and off the streets. After a brief incarceration, Jecko rejoins Pakko (Alain Lino Mic Eli Bastien) and Zophe (Edouard Fontaine) to work for the self-made gang lord and general knowledge dropper, Brooklyn (Benz Antoine). Jecko quickly earns his stripes, which digs him deeper into the muck. Driven by the rage he’s bottled up towards his father, Jecko awaits papa’s release, battling not only the world and gangs surrounding him but the blemishes left on his soul from being a killer.

Jecko’s struggle to find life amidst all the chaos is what drives this film. He is torn. His inability to embrace his life as a G pits him against his peers, while his rejection towrds the responsibilities of being a father to his child Naima (Vanessa Uguru John) or to his lover, Sonia (Jacquay Bidjeck), make Jecko’s inner battles on screen reign far truer than the superfluous “jungle out there” mentality the film sometimes creates.  Lines like “a lion never asks if he’s a lion, he knows it” or similarly, in moments like when Jecko makes his initiation kill intimated by his peers from their chanting of “loser” and their dropping of the L’s (seriously is making your hand into the letter “L” gangsta?) seem forced and only serve to hit the nail on the head. This ultimately takes away from what does work for this film: it’s realness.

At one point Jecko reminds us that “things been hard.” This is a refreshing souvenir of what the film is really all about. The grittiest moments are taken right from our backyard.  Hence scenes wherein a mini-F1 buggy mobile cruises for a pick-up seem out of place. Lest we forgot, the wheelchair bound bad guy named Blade (Danny Blanco) who comes across as a mix between Wesley Snipes in New jack City and Dr. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, as well as an omnipresent narration coming and going as it please, blur the reality of the film. Still emerging through its oddities and raw performances, Sortie 67 does manage to create a glimpse into a part of Montreal that is real and that is rough without romanticizing or being preachy, a trap that these films can get snarled in far too often.

- Detroit Burns

“A dead body has more spirit then you.”

Pep Squad (1998)

Directed by Steve Balderson

With a wicked sense of humor and the surreal campy flavor of a pageant dad’s trophy room Pep Squad rah rah’s itself through a frenzy of high school traumas. Tackling the horrors of yearbook photos to school ground mass murders, Pep Squad is far from child’s play. Sporting an obvious obsession with high school comedies, Pep Squad’s twisted take on growing up in small town America, comes out like a classroom debate between Heathers and Serial Mom. For you film freaks out three, imagine if Buffy the Vampire Slayer ate out Carrie while the Lloyd Kaufman took the minutes and then turned everything he saw (or thought he saw) into a feature film.

As with most high school killer comedies, this film takes it sweet time to get its rocks off. From one demented disillusioned youth to another, Pep Squad aims for the sky and doesn’t seem to really give a damn about how it gets there. Toying a fine line between a surrealist look into Middle America and an all out tongue in cheek black comedy, Pep ends up being a jumbled mess of fun times and twisted ideas. It’s impossible to not enjoy some of the more “subtle” moments in the film. In one instance, Cherry (played whole heartedly by co-producer Brooke Balderson) cruises through the small town streets with a handgun out the window blasting away at passing teens, a gun by the way she pawned her “best CDs” for (the one moment in film where any character feels any sense of real loss.) Other memorable moments include a surreal, orgy of the damned mixed in with a “how to” on the proper discarding of a dead school principle.

The film is best summed up by one line from the head cheer skank “a dead body has more spirit than you” which arguably could be said about this film except for the fact that all it ever seems convey is its own spirit. In fact this film has so much a sense of spirit about itself it doesn’t seem to care that it often starts to suck. Sometimes showing a love for what your doing is great other times it just leaves the audience feeling left out. It’s in the films self-adoration of it’s own concepts, gags and grim outlook that film gets lost. I’m reminded here of another film which feel into similar problems, the Manson family black comedy, Leslie: My Name Is Evil (2009.) A film which given its potential had the pieces to be a far superior film but again always seemed to fall into its own traps over and over again. Like Leslie, this movie has the potential for you to fall in love with it. It looks the part and has a sense of humor to boot. It’s just that it seems more like the close friend type rather than anything special let alone home to M & D. I’m sorry, it’s not the film, it’s me.

- Detroit Burns

Visit the official website for Troma

“A dead body has more spirit then you.”

Pep Squad (1998)

Directed by Steve Balderson

With a wicked sense of humor and the surreal campy flavor of a pageant dad’s trophy room Pep Squad rah rah’s itself through a frenzy of high school traumas. Tackling the horrors of yearbook photos to school ground mass murders, Pep Squad is far from child’s play. Sporting an obvious obsession with high school comedies, Pep Squad’s twisted take on growing up in small town America, comes out like a classroom debate between Heathers and Serial Mom.  For you film freaks out three, imagine if Buffy the Vampire Slayer ate out Carrie while the Lloyd Kaufman took the minutes and then turned everything he saw (or thought he saw) into a feature film.

As with most high school killer comedies, this film takes it sweet time to get its rocks off. From one demented disillusioned youth to another, Pep Squad aims for the sky and doesn’t seem to really give a damn about how it gets there.  Toying a fine line between a surrealist look into Middle America and an all out tongue in cheek black comedy, Pep ends up being a jumbled mess of fun times and twisted ideas. It’s impossible to not enjoy some of the more “subtle” moments in the film.  In one instance, Cherry (played whole heartedly by co-producer Brooke Balderson) cruises through the small town streets with a handgun out the window blasting away at passing teens, a gun by the way she pawned her “best CDs” for (the one moment in film where any character feels any sense of real loss.)  Other memorable moments include a surreal, orgy of the damned mixed in with a “how to” on the proper discarding of a dead school principle.

The film is best summed up by one line from the head cheer skank “a dead body has more spirit than you” which arguably could be said about this film except for the fact that all it ever seems convey is its own spirit. In fact this film has so much a sense of spirit about itself it doesn’t seem to care that it often starts to suck. Sometimes showing a love for what your doing is great other times it just leaves the audience feeling left out. It’s in the films self-adoration of it’s own concepts, gags and grim outlook that film gets lost. I’m reminded here of another film which feel into similar problems, the Manson family black comedy, Leslie: My Name Is Evil (2009.)  A film which given its potential had the pieces to be a far superior film but again always seemed to fall into its own traps over and over again. Like Leslie, this movie has the potential for you to fall in love with it.  It looks the part and has a sense of humor to boot. It’s just that it seems more like the close friend type rather than anything special let alone home to M & D. I’m sorry, it’s not the film, it’s me.

- Detroit Burns

Visit the official website for Troma

“…grim atmospheric tale of madness and isolation.. tortures the viewer with its rich landscapes and violent twists.”

Dark Nature

Directed by Marc de Launay

With a Chopin fueled drive into the horrific, Marc de Launay’s grim atmospheric tale of madness and isolation, Dark Nature, tortures the viewer with its rich landscapes and violent twists. Following a family in the woods setting, or in some moments versus the woods, Dark Nature, owes its form to horror standards such as The Shining , The Long Weekend and Calvaire. Heightened by the constant threat of their surroundings, the town folk and the woods, as well as the insecurities in their own sanity, these poor souls must constantly battle the dangers of the world and its messed up inhabitants.

Dark Nature is a bit of a rough film to pinpoint. Its weakness is in the film’s hesitance to go one-step further and yet its strong point is patience and a commitment to build up. The use of the rich Scottish landscape and maniacal score create a stark and tense atmosphere, an atmosphere that the film creates very well. Its problem however (and I’m shocked to say this considering it’s a Troma release) is that it’s death scenes are rather anti-climatic and serve no purpose other than the elimination of a character from the rest of the script. Maybe this saved them money at the Kraft table but what they didn’t realize is that the dead still need to eat. Moreover, for a film like this I tend to want my death sequences to be filled with the sounds of pig guts being catapulted into waxed glass walls while the harrowing wails of the nations children cry for the loss of their fathers, not the pffff of an old lady fart. For so much build up and often near-perfect tension, Dark Nature, seems to always back away from the violence. I don’t need every film to be drenched in blood, sweat and tears, but if it’s going to have it, I’d at least like to get a little squeamish. Driven forth by a beautifully arranged piano score Dark Nature, builds and builds and builds always challenging the viewer to feel comfortable while at the same time worrying about what might kill you next (usually it’s the psychopath with the hatchet hiding in the shed, but shit, you shouldn’t have gone in there in the first place.)

Ending in a climactic game of “Hide and Go Kill”, Dark Nature, serves as a prime example of the need for home renovation in rural Scotland. Fix your creaky stairs, make sure you have all your keys, double check the stove before you go out, fortify your hiding spots and never, I repeat never, wait beside your bear traps to see if they end up working, you’ll just end up blowing your cover or getting impatient and trying it out for yourself.

-Detroit Burns

“a world where hookers, pedophiles and violent-murderous creeps are all second fiddle to a killer Easter Bunny”

Easter Bunny Kill! Kill!

Directed by Chad Ferrin

Leaving your mentally challenged children at home has never been more dangerous.  Around every corner lies creepo-freak-a-zoids willing to trade your body for coke just to get a little taste.  But that’s not the worse of it, if they don’t get you murderous Easter Bunnies will…or the paid Hispanic help which always seem to be trying to rob you.  Easter Bunny Kill! Kill! (which bares no resemblance to the film of which the title suggests) is a raunchy dark splotch of a movie on a piece of blank paper. Its low budget DIY attitude and valiant steps in creating utterly gutterly reactions make it a fun watch while not becoming too much of an homage or a hostile attempt. The story, a night of terror in which a mentally handicapped boy is trapped in a world where hookers, pedophiles and violent-murderous creeps are all second fiddle to a killer Easter Bunny who’s taking out the trash.

Filmed in sleek HD video and supported by a simplistic yet effective score, Easter Bunny Kill Kill stands out from the rest of the straight to DVD over the top amateur horror jargon.  With a sense of dark humor (which isn’t entirely being forced upon us) Easter Bunny manages to both crack a few jokes and blast the screen with guts, without feeling too cheap or amateurish.  These films are best when they work against their obvious setbacks.  With little to no talent involved in neither their cast nor the proper funding to fully explore their ideas, Bunny truly makes the best of what it’s got.  At times the film comes off a bit too clique but that’s what’s so great about the DIY cheap horror film.  Anyone with a little bit of guts can go out and do it, inspirational no? It’s just rare that these films end up being worth watching outside of the local circle in which they were spawned.  Get this, I don’t really find dudes in Easter bunny masks scary. Masks in general aren’t scary. I mean Michael Myers was scary but in a I’m 6’10 kinda way.  Dudes in bunny masks just make me think of stuffed animals, potpourri and Sesame Street and I never liked Sesame Street.  Probably because I was never was able to associate with the neighborhoodly feel it went for.  It’s just that in my hood I wasn’t surrounded by talking stuffed nightmares being fisted by some dude with a beard and a wild sense of imagination trying to trick me into learning something.

What Chad Ferrin has here is an honest addition to an oversaturated b grade genre.  This movie isn’t gonna thrill you but if you’re considering watching it then it’s probably worth it.  I mean anyone who is “considering” watching a movie with a name like Easter Bunny Kill Kill is probably in it for the right reasons. The good things in this movie are for you (creepo) the bad things are for the people who shouldn’t have watched it in the first place.

-Detroit Burns

“…the ultimate relationship between the Director, his camera and his star.”

You can imagine why I was apprehensive at first when delivered Warning!!! Pedophile Released and Amateur Porn Star Killer from Cinema Epoch.  Justifiably worried that when entered into any web search engine, my name would now turn out Warning! Pedophile Released and Amateur Porn Star Killer, along with all the other expected results; hot guy, smart brain, super-hero-muscle-winner-best-person-Canadian-Gandhi.  With that being said both these films proved to be more than their titles suggested and surprised me like a bear in an alley killing a porn star while on stilts (Shouldn’t you be in the woods? Stupid lost bear.)

Warning!!! Has a lot going for it.  At times the gritty next to no dialogue film can resemble both the absurd beauty of a Harmony Korine film, with the straight to DVD bargain bin feel of a modern trash film. Regardless of how the film looks or works, the emotion and heart is inarguably present.  Crafted under the able hands of one-man wrecking crew, Shane Ryan, along with the help of star and co-writer, Kai Lanette, Warning!!! develops into the ultimate relationship between the Director, his camera and his star.  Using this intimate relationship the film creates an unabashed look into street life and what it’s like to be a vulnerable girl in a dangerous world, which as a young man I’ve never experienced, but through my D & D performances I can imagine the dangers (i.e. dragons, wizards and date rapists.)

“…(Ryan) perversions don’t seem to be something he wants to leave in the closet.”

Another fine example of this young filmmaker’s gusto is Amateur Porn Star Killer.  Shot entirely on hand-held grainy digital film, APSK mends both the exploitative trash you’d expect out of a 70’s Grindhouse picture with a contemporary artistic flare and command over it’s new digital medium. Using inter-titles, multi-projections, and shot exclusively through a home video look, APSK is a rough cut into the world of Snuff films.  The film’s amateurish cast both adds a genuine feel to the film and yet at the same time pulls the viewer out due to their off attempts at over-acting. Think bad acting and overacting as in John Waters or Lloyd Kaufman’s early films, now assume that this films isn’t as good as those and you’re getting warmer. However, slandering this film for its lack of talent would be cheap. If these films fail it isn’t due to their lack of effort but simply due to their repetitive nature.

The occasionally awkwardly performed or poorly executed scene, serve to remind us that this truly is an independent film, constructed almost entirely by the writer, editor and director, Ryan. For this I applaud the filmmaker, who’s perversions don’t seem to be something he wants to leave in the closet like the majority of us do, instead he release them onto the screen in a foray of wanton amateurish smut (and I mean all of that in a good way.)

Both these films at times can be trying but their determination and drive in being higher-grade exploitative cinema, make them like the real ugly girl at a party whose willing to do anything, you just can’t get them out of your mind. So take these films home, make them a strong drink, put on some Roberta Flack and just do it, but don’t tell any of your friends about it because they might call you a manwhore.

-Detroit Burns

Visit Cinema Epoch

“A film that’s fun but ultimately looks like more fun to make than to watch”

Meat Weed America

Directed by Aiden Dillard

I’m all for tits & ass in fact it was my nickname throughout kindergarten until I found out what it was and took further protection to not get the cooties. Blood and guts, and poops and pees are both staple characteristic traits in some of my favorite movies. It’s for these reasons that Troma has always been a true friend of mine. What other film company can throw tits, guts and feces into a scene as effortlessly as Troma does? That’s why when I got a copy of one of their most recent releases, Aiden Dillard’s Meat Weed America, a follow-up to the previously released Meat Weed Madness (2006), I was amply prepared for the stupidest, ugliest, goriest, gag-fest that the film so valiantly claims to be.

Obviously this film is raunchy. Imagine if you puked in a bag and let it sit out in the sun for awhile and then poured it over cheesecake and served it to the old folks at the retirement center you work at because you can’t hold down a job which doesn’t involve wiping rippled asses and hearing the same stories over and over again, telling them in was a fancy French dessert.  If you were unfortunate enough to have seen Uwe Boll’s Postal (2007) then you can assure yourself that this film is no different, other than the fact it’s a Troma film. Both films have unexpected penises (Dave Foley’s wang in Postal was divine but introducing your film Meat Weed America while dancing naked in the woods is just as metaphoric), and both films rely on the audiences love of poop and pot jokes while maintaining the constant threat of female nudity to keep audience members watching (“If there’s a boob coming out I’M going to see it” said with both thumbs pointing towards face). They also both have an assumption that we find terrorist-spoofs funny. I kinda feel like when Trey Parker did it in 2004 with Team America it was already old, he just banked on the fact that puppets are so cool because they look like humans but aren’t. At least I think they aren’t but they very well might have stolen our souls and now possess the power to become human (and we’ll talk about the cyborg/human debate at a later date).

The plot revolves around a circumcised terrorist and his band of scantily clad lady militia trying to take back the circumcision from the evil Lord Meatwood. Our hero, Bin Smokin’, must siege the castle in order to retain his missing foreskin before Lord Meatwood turns it into the highly potent, highly addictive marijuana!

You’ll get exactly what you expect with Meat Weed America, a film that’s fun but ultimately looks like more fun to make than to watch. Still you can’t fault them for having a good time. Guaranteed to make a party 2 step with confused anger/excitement, especially if you put it on in the background without volume.

- Detroit Burns

You might be asking yourself what’s the purpose of a list like this? Is there really that large of a body of work dealing with the brave men in blue who trench through neighborhood lawns, dodging the near death encounters with Chihuahuas and lonely old people? Well there probably isn’t. In fact, most of the films on this list are a complete stretch for being classified as “postmen” films. On top of this, films like Il Postino and Jour de Fete, were brushed aside for more major works, as in the films of Sinbad and Janet Jackson, reaffirming that this article was lost at birth.

5. THE POSTMAN

Let me just start off by saying that Waterworld was a fuckin’ cool film. Imagine Mad Max beating the shit out of Deep Blue Sea (like the whole film; posters, producers, sets, concepts, all shit blasted by Mad Max.) If that makes as little sense as I assume it did, then basically just imagine a post-apocalyptic Pirates of the Caribbean and you get what was considered Kevin Costner’s first flop Waterworld.  For his 2^nd attempt at the worst film ever, Costner home runs the most idiotic, frustrating, smash your TV in its face with a burrito, kind of movie ever made. Don’t get me wrong - I love bad movies mainly because I loathe good films for being everything that I wish I could have done in a film of my own. The Postman doesn’t make me feel good about myself, like other big flops like Knowing or Next did. It doesn’t make me high five my Dad while he’s sleeping (or at least that’s what he calls it, but I never needed a bottle of J&B and 7 midget hookers to fall asleep) like most post-apocalyptic films tend to do for me. What this film does do however, is make you want to throw your hands up in despair, stand up  and kick the air as if to beat the oxygen away in hope that you might shrivel up and die at that very moment versus having to try and figure out why the fuck Larenz Tate is playing someone named Ford Lincoln Mercury and it’s NOT funny as shit! How do you mess that gold up? That’s like watching an episode of the Bob Ross show and not wanting to move to Alaska, kill the first three people you encounter, bury their bodies on some resourceful spot of land (I’m pretty sure the land is all free up there so just take whatever looks the prettiest) and plant your seed (dead bodies) in the ground to grow a family of super-psychos to take over the world (i.e. your little corner of Heaven in Alaska.) In other words, as in not how I talk, it sounds like it should be fucking great. But, No. Costner has to try and make another Samba with the Wolf and ruins a perfectly good bad movie.

4. POETIC JUSTICE

The title alone screams awesomeness. Like a brick being smashed into a bad guy’s face with the word “metaphor” written on it. How’s that for being blunt about my feelings! I don’t need no similes for my thoughts, I just need a nickname like Justice and then no one would fuck with me. “Can I get your lunch money? Oh, wait it’s you Justice, sorry, I didn’t…” smash, through the window (probably of a bar because that’s where bullies hang out to take your milk money.) Or, “You failed grade 8, I’m sorry but you’ll have to do it over again. Unless your name is Justice in which case you now can become president-cowboy-astronaut of the Universe, here’s my wallet.” This makes poetry cool, like chicks make Sex and the City totally straight to watch, duh.

3. JINGLE ALL THE WAY

Two Dads, One Toy, No Prisoners. Schwarzenegger vs. Sinbad, that’s like a modern day version of two Greek gods fighting in the skies, i.e. Thunder vs. Lighting. How COULD this movie be bad? With classic Arnie lines such as “I’m not a pervert! I was just looking for a Turbo Man doll” accompanied by Sinbad’s Socratic rebuttals “I’ll know if you move ’cause I have the ears of a snake”, this movie is like the guy at a party who no one really likes but then he barfs all over himself and eats a raw hot dog stuffed into a raw pizza pocket and everyone kinda likes him again for about 5 minutes, or at least until he barfs all over himself again. Other than the godly battle between these two movie titans, the film also works on a more human level. Fighting over toys has is an essential part of growing up, if your BFF has a G.I. Joe that you don’t have, you’ll do anything to get it: murder, rape, murder-rape. No one’s safe when toys are in play. So just imagine what happens when you put Commando and Cherokee Kid Sinbad, on the same screen, instant magic. Abracadabra. Hocus-Pokus. Presto, in yo face-o, Jingle All the Way-O. Best movie I don’t remember on this list hands down.

2. SPECIAL DELIVERY

Filled with murder, botched cover ups, disobedient spouses, drunken logic, and identity theft, this NFB short is like Blood Simple spun through the animated doodlings of a sociopath’s Reading Rainbow fantasies. (Rainbow Fantasies, sounds like a cool new band name. Anyone down? I shotgun animal sounds and also pretending to know how to play the finger drums, while all the time thinking it’s a code word for sticking your finger in your J-Lo and then looking at it like “what do I do now?”) Films like this make you wonder why you’re reading articles about postmen in the first place (or for that matter writing about them….shit they’re cool) and not out there in the “real world” (we all know that the inter-web is now the new real, real world) making our own postmen movies, sorry totally sexist, postperson movies. But then again after watching this one, you kinda get all discouraged and like “ahhh-man I’ll do it later” cause this movie already had all the cool stuff in it mailmen, mailman murder, murder man, mailman lust, lust man, whiskey driven madness, male mail man nudity (or mail male nudity?), and some of that good ol’ reckless abandonment that we all call the Canadian life.

http://www.nfb.ca/film/special_delivery/

1. RSVParty – SHAPARTY

Now given that this is a music video and given that it’s my friend’s, I can’t stress enough how biased I am. In fact, this whole article could be seen as just a shameless plug for his shameless face but nonetheless he’s a handsome devil with the voice of mute angel. Filled with postal service heartbreak and smooth back-ups, RSVParty is like a wet dream about a girl you saw in the mall and then followed home and the wrote a song about and then went to jail for awhile and then wrote more songs about her while in jail and then went to the same mall where you saw her every day and played those songs hoping she’d walk by and forget all the “sexual” harassment, sorry, harassments. Join the Facebook page to see the dance-tastic video to “Somebody Asked 4 A Party” or hear the other party-pression (the feeling you get when a party is over) songs from the album War and Peace and Party.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shaparty/10405732447

- Detroit Burns

Dad not worry it’s not the flu, Mom’s Sheppard Pie or puberty, it’s just Shameless Tasteless. If you like Troma style humour with a touch of John Waters sex-appeal, this is not to be missed. Offering a guttural belch of life in the Ukraine, and serving up what essentially is the complete opposite of Pretty Woman, Levi makes whoring fun for the whole family.

Highlights include, Penisella, the petite Russian babe with the massive 12-inch schlong.  Her “burden” leaves her yearning for love, while leading her in all the wrong places. Guys just don’t seem to see her for who she truly is, all they see is a 12inch cock. Also included, is the babushka from hell. This sweet wittle wold waydey, is nothing like what she pretends to be. Hiding behind that sweet pirogue filled smile and her friendly demeanour, is a devilish desire for torture, abuse and life-long friendship aka kidnapping yo’ soul 4 life sucka! These plus the countless “ohh, you” Baba Alla moments are well worth the price of admission alone, however, there’s no way this film will ever play anywhere other than in your Dad’s nightmares, over and over again, so check out Troma’s website for more info.

- Detroit Burns

Directed by Andrew van den Houten

The horror genre must be doing wonders to Maine’s tourism development. Having spent many a summer on the quaint sandy beaches in small town Maine, never did I once come across a cannibalistic feral child wielding an impressively handcrafted axe nor did I encounter any wild mutts with the sole intention of playing fetch with my intestines.  I did, however, see old men, a wicker shop and a life size lobster, which at night time could seem pretty scary. And yet here we have Jack Ketchum’s Offspring (directed by Andrew van den Houten) a traumatically gory look at a nomadic cannibalistic family living in backwoods Maine, feeding off the meat of small town beachcombers, telling me yet another story about how there’s no fucking way I’m ever going back to New England.

It isn’t every day that you get to see a real good gore fest. Let’s not forget that cheap and simple isn’t always a good formula, especially considering how many real bad films get released and then marketed as “gorefests” or “cult sensations”, through in a snazzy cover/poster with some key words on the cover and some poor schlock jock is bound to fall for it. Offspring on the other hand is well worth your dollar. Managing to be both effectively completely gut-wrenching, blood splattering, intestinal spewing good times as well as a highly engaging storyline with strong characters to support its narrative drive.   Good performances make their characters untimely deaths all the more frustrating while in the the same time downright satisfying, leaving the viewer both content with continuing the story but apprehensive enough to grab a bucket (“I see where they’re going with this”.) Offspring, along with the 2007 release of Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door (directed by Gregory Wilson) and the underrated Brian Cox driven Red (co-directed by Trygve Allister Diesen and Lucky McKee), has created a series of impeccably written, devilishly demented films garnering Ketchum a full own cult following with the unanimous question of what’s next and how fucked up will it be?

Filled to the brim with visceral punishment, including a forced at knife point cannibalistic baby breast feeding scene, as well as intestinal chow-downs, baby tossings, bare-breasted biting and beheadings, Offspring clearly will find an open spot in hearts of gorehounds and anti-Maine enthusiasts.

- Detroit Burns

Children of The Corn

Directed by Donald P. Borchers

In what’s being marketed as a “rebirth,” Children of the Corn revisits the 80′s classic that spawned 6 sequels and countless amounts of children to fear those long weekends in the country.  There’s a trend happening again in the Horror genre. A trend that makes a strong case that children are complete creeps.  Not only are they capable of being annoying little brats but it seems that in every town, city, county or home, there’s at least one twisted little monster, who in between playing with Trouble the pop-omatic bubble game dreams of popping your skull open and feasting upon the meat of your brain. Word of advice: Don’t have kids and don’t trust kids, they’ll just try to kill you.  Children of the Corn, if anything, reaffirms these wise words as well as gives us the much needed visceral satisfaction of brutal violence towards kiddies, resulting in spontaneous moments of high-fiveable child asskickery.

It’s become apparent that the new generation of horror filmmakers truly fear their children.  With films like Christopher Denham’s Home Movie (2008), Tom Shankland’s U.K. splash The Children (2008) as well as James Watkins’ under-appreciated romantic getaway gone-wrong Eden Lake (2008) – and let’s not forget possibly the best of the bunch, Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson’s highly acclaimed Let the Right One In (2008), adapted from the John Ajvide Lindqvist novel of the same name – It’s becoming rare to go and see a horror film without being left with the feeling that the kids aren’t alright.  What happened to the stiff little brats that used to just look at you with their creepy eyes and control your mind or something? Why do kids these days always have to have some sort of flesh eating rabies or demonic urge to destroy or knives?  Whatever happened to kids just saying the darndest things and not trying to gnaw on my spleen?

Oddly enough, Donald P. Borches remodelling, or rebirth, or retry, of Stephen King’s Children of the Corn, is actually a second chance of his own original production from the 80′s, stating that “at the time… [Borches] was quite happy with every one of my decisions, as time went on; I became growingly unhappy with most of my decisions.”  A humbling statement in regards to artistic integrity considering the original did financially well and that bridge could have been considered crossed.  The rebirth does apparently stay more aligned to the original story (I’ve never read Stephen King’s novel).  The new version of the film creates solid dysfunctional characters, isolated landscapes and religious zealotry, saving the film from being brushed aside as another straight-to-video no show.  However, the film flutters too often on the verge of ridiculousness.  Over-acting (that’s how it was in Nam man!) by bad lead actors make the film at times laughable. Keep your remote handy because some of the over-dramatization and complete disregard for what’s being said on film is worth a second look. – my favourite moment being when Burton (David Sanders) hits a fleeing child in street with his car, later turning to his wife and expressing how disappointed he was in himself for not paying attention, all while completely paying no mind to the road ahead (a skill he seems comfortable with since he spend the rest of the journey driving while not looking at the road.). That being said, the film still remains fun (or funny), be it through good ol’ kiddy punchin’ or inarguably creepy concepts, setting, and atmosphere that KIng already laid out.

The rebirth is in many ways strange. The original did quite well and to this day is held dear to the heart by many horror fans, serving as a good alternative for horror fans who didn’t want to jump in the fire and say watch something like George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), but could deal with the thrills and chills, as well as higher production values, of a popular Horror writer like Stephen King.  For many Children of the Corn (1984), Creepshow (1982), Pet Cemetery (1989) and It (1990) mark some of the scariest films they had seen as children all of course have children as the main protagonists, or villains. Let’s not neglect the fact that Stephen King is also responsible for the writing of more major works such as, The Shining (1980) which in my opinion is still one of the best films of the last 30 years, as well as other favourites such as Carrie (1976), Salem’s Lot (1979), Christine (1983), Cujo (1983), Misery (1990), Stand By Me (1986), The Running Man (1987) and IMDB favourite (seriously the kids love this film) Shawshank Redemption (1994.)  This film however probably won’t fall into the any of the above lists, but may find itself accompanied by the likes of Sometimes They Come Back (1991) and the most ingeniously titled Sometimes They Come Back…Again (1996) which was justifiably followed by Sometimes They Come Back…For More (1998), three films that as a child I rented more than I care to discuss but it was over 20 and under 100…sigh.

- Detroit Burns

Danny Trejo, known for his muscle bound tattooed body and chiselled bad looks, finally gets some real documentation to answer some of the questions audiences have been asking themselves for years.  His countless appearances (something over 100 by now) in films and his reputation for tough guy characters, has earned him the well-deserved respect as a hard worker on set and true-to-life actor.  It’s clear from the start that the term type-cast shouldn’t even become a question with Trejo, who at the age of 25 had no acting abilities, other than the life experiences he brings with him.  His face alone is like a canvas, every crevice a different story, every scar a different tale and it’s for these unique features that he was able to secure a nice spot within Hollywood as the tough guy. In Joe Eckardt’s 2005 release Champion, Trejo recounts his struggle for redemption against his troubled life involving drugs, alcohol, violence and prison.

It wasn’t until I saw Steve Buscemi’s Animal Factory (2000) written by Trejo’s best friend and renown ex-con Edward Bunker, that I realized that Trejo had finally become a player and not just an extra or bad guy “type” in Hollywood.  His role as co-producer and close consultant to Buscemi, proved that this face was clearly becoming more of active participant in the world of cinema.  Now some 9 years later, Trejo is credited with 7 films as producer, something which if you told him at the age of 21 to be true, he would have laughed in your face and asked for whatever drugs you were on because they must be good.

Unfortunately Joe Eckardt first feature Champion, doesn’t seem to click with its own subject, which is truly unfortunate since the stories and material that are there are genuinely fascinating.  The approach is far too distant and disinterested, coming off almost as if Trejo’s neighbour niece had fallen upon film and scrambled together her cool, famous, next door neighbour as her guinea pig for bad documentary making 101.  Had the film been made by someone truly close to Trejo or passionate about his films, it would have been a different case altogether.  Needless to say, the film’s format and interviewer are flat and lifeless, taking away from all the life and insanity that is Danny Trejo.  Having Trejo tell stories about being the scariest mother-fucker in prison just so no one else is scarier than you and thus scares you is amazing, but having him tell it in such a cut and paste format is horribly disappointing.  Coming across as a high school paper on a forgotten subject, Eckardt checks off his list one by one; what’s Trejo’s take on drugs? Prison? Movies? You get the gist.  In one scene where Trejo’s son talks about Danny telling a story at dinner about going into a party with a

grenade, you catch a glimpse into the reality that is this child’s life.  And of course, in turn, you also find a more suitable person to be making the documentary, his son.  If the film itself were about being Danny Trejo’s son it would have been more effective.  Don’t get me wrong, the stories that Trejo tells and Danny himself can be mind boggling at times.  Everything you imagined looking into his face and his characters is next to true; the drugs, the prison life, the fights, the shear brutality, it’s just too bad that it’s being delivered to us in such a bleached fashion. In many ways Champion is like listening to the Dee Dee Ramone rap album.  You’re so happy that it’s there and actually exists but then when you put it on you start to feel sick to your stomach and wish it didn’t.

- Detroit Burns

I’m not sure what made me fall in love you or why we came together, but I do know that I’ll never be the same because of you.  People say there’s no such thing as love at first sight but after seeing you, I’d have to say people don’t really know much about nothing. Was it your pretty face or family values that lured me into your heart? Or maybe it was in the way you’d clean blood off your body and clothes, knowing quite well that it was only a matter of time before it was blood soaked again.   Perhaps it was the relationship between you and your brother that made me realize what I wanted from us.  The way you’d defend him to your last breath, the way your face lit up when you spoke his name “Rusty”, the way you backed your ass into his crotch as he taught you how to round house kick an assailant.  You looked so happy together, so perfect, I could only wish that we could be the same way…

My love for you is my cross to bear, for I know that we can never truly be together.  Your responsibilities in life are far too great.  Teaching children how to curb bullying by murdering the bullies your self was worthy of a purple star. Brilliant! I can see the posters in school hallways now “Kids Drowning Kids: Fight Bullying with Fire.”  I must admit, and I feel a tad embarrassed for saying this, but your knack for genital mutilation also raised some red flags.  I looked into it and most of the other girls I’ve dated never wanted to cut my penis off, attach it to a stick mounted to their crotch, and then anally rape a schoolgirl. Well most of them…

You remind me of part Hardy Candy, part Haute Tension, you little sugar cube you, and I love you for it.  Your piercing eyes stare deep into my soul and say “Wanna split a sundae?” but your blood soaked hands tell a different story… A story that I can’t be involved in, a story of rape, child murder, animal torture, incest and love loss.  It kills me to have to do this, to have to further crush your already broken heart, a heart that now due to so much torture and pain must look like a Gary Busey portrait made by Picasso.  We never could have been what you truly wanted.  I couldn’t be who you wanted me to be and you could never change what you are. I’m sorry…I love you…

- Detroit Burns

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