REVIEW: HAZMAT

One might think that the slasher formula has been done to death, and maybe it has. Having just watched (out of morbid curiosity) Texas Chainsaw 3D, I remarked to a friend during the first twenty minutes, “Critics are absolutely right to disrespect the horror genre when this is the kind of output that filmmakers and studios are giving us.” And I still feel that way. If you’re going to go back to the same well, whether it be the same tired character of Leatherface, or the same tired well of “get kids, put them in location, let loose the bad shit,” for the love of Tobe Hooper, please do something the least bit original, or clever, or hell, just inject a bit of life into it. More often than not, studios are proving that they are simply not up to this challenge, but yet it’s the smaller productions that are.

“Scary Antics,” a riff on the real life show “Scare Tactics,” (which, last time I looked, was hosted by Tracy Morgan), isn’t doing so well. Despite having made it to its third season, the network is keen to pull the plug, leaving its creator David (Todd Bruno, the love child of Jason Bateman and…Jason Bateman) struggling to find a way to keep it afloat.  Then you’ve got co-creator/make-up girl Brenda (Aniela McGuiness) wanting to leave the show behind just as much as the studio wants to kill it, her excuse being professional growth, but really, because David probably won’t commit to her ever since they were, are, or had, a thing. And meanwhile, David’s trying to produce an episode in which a kid named Adam (Reggie Peters) is setting it up for himself and his friend Jacob (Norbert Velez) to be on "Scary Antics" in an effort to get Jacob, who became obsessed with the paranormal following his father’s death, to snap the fuck out of it and be Adam's BFF again. With hidden cameras around nearly every turn, the “skit” begins – that of Jacob leading his friends around an old abandoned factory where many years earlier a fire had broke out and killed everyone. Convinced the place is haunted, Adam allows Jacob to guide them through and tell them his ghost stories, knowing that the “antics” portion of the show will be kicking in soon.

And then Murphy’s Law happens.

Conceptually, HazMat is very similar to 2001’s Halloween: Resurrection, but that’s about where the similarities end, because while Halloween: Resurrection is a giant piece of cinematic shit, HazMat is not. I admit that I was ready to write off HazMat from minute one, just because I’m embittered and cynical, and based on the synopsis, I said, “Oh boy – here we go again.” But as HazMat played on, I found myself actively engaged in the events unfolding. The ensemble cast was solid, at the very least, though there were a couple performances here and there not entirely ready for prime-time.  And I was pleased to see actual thought had been put into the script. Attempts at drama and development are present and accounted for, though I’m not entirely sure every character arc was ultimately fulfilled. I especially appreciated every attempt at closing a potential plot hole was made. ("Why don't they just use their cell phones to call for help?"  "Why don't they just wait it out, knowing the network will eventually send out the police of their crew doesn't return?")

And can I just say, despite my earlier condemnation regarding the asphyxiation of the slasher genre, that a part of me is secretly pleased movie maniacs are still finding new costumes and masks to put on before separating heads and limbs from torsos? There’s something about that I  find strangely comforting. It harkens back to a similar time in the genre when filmmakers just wanted to have a bit of fun, gimmicky and played out though it may have been.

Triple threat Lou Simon (writer/director/producer) has done a fine job making something out of nothing. The shooting location lends as much as it can, despite it having been a much smaller set than the film lets on. The film isn’t terribly violent, as most of the deaths are obscured by quick cutaways before we cut back to see the damage left by the maniac’s blade, though we do get a money shot or two, and they are pretty excellent. Since we focus on a small group of characters, more time is spent with them, and some of them last longer than you might suspect.

No one ever wants to watch the credits roll on a film and say, “That was terrible,” because all that equates to is having wasted 90 minutes of your life, so while it’s obviously preferable to think the opposite, it can be even more rewarding when a film comes along that defies nearly all of your expectations.

HazMat will be available on DVD come April 1.

STILL MISSIN' SPENGLER

Fucking :(

MADNESS

OLD MACDONALD HAD A FARM

Back in 1994 my brother Josh was working as an on-site technician for a large phone company. His role was twofold: Firstly to set up new lines, and secondly to find the problem with and fix broken landlines.

He was based in a small town, but most of his time was spent catering to farmers in the nearby areas. The problems were usually hard to find but easy to fix. Sometimes Josh had to walk half a mile up and down dusty roads to find where a particular cable was broken – and the repair didn’t even take ten minutes.

One of those calls, in August of 1994, led him to a rather large family-owned farm. A girl called Kasey had called in from a neighbors’ house, saying that the family’s phone was dead. Josh drove out the next day.

I don’t know how it’s done now, but back then Josh told me that phone cables are buried together with other cables, sometimes even together with piping, in hollow tubes of either hard plastic or cement. In areas where that wasn’t possible the cables were usually placed on high poles. But in rural areas where not all houses were connected to the electric grid, it was sometimes more cost effective to lead the wire, covered in a thick plastic coating, simply along a road.

When Josh was called out to a farm those ground-led cables were usually at fault. A machinery drove over the cable, an animal ripped it or maybe some bored kid cut through it. Either way, those jobs kept Josh employed and so he didn’t mind slowly driving along country roads, stopping every few meters to stop potential breaks.

The MacDonald farm was an easy case. Already while on the route to their house Josh spotted the ripped cable. It was a clean cut and the separated ends had been pulled apart for several meters. Josh figures it was likely from a plow or similar device, a simple accident, likely done by the farm owners themselves.

He had all the right tools and Josh fixed the cable break within half an hour. Then he drove to the farm to tell the family the good news and make sure that the problem was fixed.

He arrived at the MacDonald farm around 4pm. The heavy wooden gate was open and so Josh drove his van straight inside to drive up to the house.

When he turned into the gate Josh saw a cow lying on the driveway. He was used to that. He honked the horn to shoo the cow away. Usually that worked but this particular, all-brown cow refused to move.

Josh slowed down, drove closer and tried the horn again – longer, this time. Still the cow didn’t move.

There was no way around the cow, other than to drive into a ditch next to the driveway and Josh didn’t want to risk breaking the car. Finally, just a few steps away from the cow, he stopped and let the motor roar. When the animal still didn’t react Josh carefully and well-aware that a diseased cow might attack him without warning, got out of the car. He grabbed his toolbox from the back, then slowly walked around the car to pass the animal from behind.

Only then, two steps in front of his car, did he notice the puddle of dark brown, dried blood around the animal.

The animal was lying, with its head on the floor and towards the direction that Josh had come from. He saw a large, gaping cut through the brown throat and three long slits through the enlarged stomach.

Josh was on edge, but not seriously worried. Occasionally farmers have to put pregnant cows down when the calf refuses to be born – and to get rid of a cow’s body is not easy and it can take days for the specialist to arrive.

Josh figured the MacDonald family or the veterinarian had tried to save the calf by cutting open the mother’s body, like a cow’s C-section, just without the anesthesia that humans would receive. Likely they killed the mother first, by cutting her throat, then, when the animal sank on the floor, they cut the body open.

From the looks of it, Josh concluded, they hadn’t succeeded. The bulge in the cow’s body was clearly visible; the calf without a doubt still inside. The skin had been placed back into its original position, only the cuts and a small gap between skin flabs was still visible. Josh resisted the urge to look inside the animal’s body.

Holding his nose, Josh walked around the cow and further towards the farm. The driveway was long. To his right was a pasture with several cows, some were standing, but most were lying on the grass, probably chewing the cud. To Josh’s left was a thick corn field that made him feel slightly uneasy.

Josh reached the farmhouse about five minutes later. He called out and rang the doorbell but there was no response. He knocked against the wooden door and called out again. He thought they might be out, trying to organize the removal of the cow’s body in the driveway.

To make sure that they weren’t just not hearing him Josh turned to the right and circled the house. He glanced through the windows while he passed them, first the kitchen, then a living room window, but everything inside seemed calm and dark.

At this point, before he saw it, Josh told me, he began to feel uneasy. There was nothing unusual, except the dead, pregnant cow, but still he felt a tingling in his legs and back, like a warning of bad news.

Then he turned the corner.

Josh only saw the scene for a few seconds, but he says he still remembers it today in vivid detail; like a photograph burned into his brain.

A large dog lay on the back porch. His body was slit open lengthwise and the organs and intestine were pulled out.

Right next to the dog’s body laid the bodies of an older couple. The man’s body was naked, his head separated from the body and placed between his leg. Two large cuts went through his body, one from the throat to the groin and one from left to right through the abdomen. His intestines were pulled out and placed to the left of the body, near the dog.

The woman’s body was dressed, but the clothes were cut open. A deep cut went through her throat and a large sideways cut through her abdomen. She too was gutted. But what Josh remembers the most, the thing he still has nightmares about, are the bloody spots where her breasts should have been. There were two straight cuts, as if someone had carefully sliced the breasts off her body.

Both, the man and the woman’s eyes and mouth were sewn shut with a thick, dark thread. The man’s lips were split in several places, as if he had forcefully opened his mouth, but the thread had been stronger than his lips.

Josh threw his toolbox on the floor and ran.

He turned back around the corner, ran back onto the driveway towards the dead cow.

While running he saw that some of the cows on the pasture were looking at him, following his movement. But most of them were still on the floor. Most of them still hadn’t moved. Around one of them he noticed a large, dark puddle on the grass.

Josh ran so fast that he twice nearly fell over stones or potholes. He stumbled towards the cow, curved to the left around the body and ran around the back of his car to get to the driver’s seat.

Just before he reached the driver’s door Josh stopped dead in his tracks. The cow was still there. But the flap of skin was pushed further open. The bulge was gone. Inside the cow’s abdomen, where Josh had thought was a calf, was now just a large, gaping hole.

Panicked Josh ripped the car door open. He screamed when he felt the thick, brown-red liquid on the door handle. Still he pulled the door open, looked inside the car and jumped on the driver’s seat. He felt a large, squishy ball exploding when his feet pressed on the accelerator.

He looked down to his feet to see what it was – and just in that moment noticed movement in the corn field to his left. He slammed the key in the ignition, turned it, heard the motor howl, threw the car in reverse and hammered his foot through the squishy mass back on the accelerator.

The movement in the corn field came closer. The car moved backwards and swerved; Josh was barely able to avoid driving into the ditch at the side of the driveway. He slowed down to regain control over the car, saw the corn being pushed aside, then pushed again hard on the accelerator.

The car sped backwards, through the wooden gates and back on the country road. Back in the driveway, just when he was out of the driveway and backing onto the road Josh saw a figure emerging out of the cornfield, a few steps away from the cow. He swears the figure looked like a teenage girl with dark hair, covered from head to toes in dried blood.

Then Josh sped off.

Josh walked into the police station with the cow’s heart still stuck around his right foot.

The newspaper articles said that the MacDonalds didn’t have any children. 

Story source.

SISTERS

© Karena Colquhoun aka Magic Jelly 

SHITTY FLICKS: RAGING SHARKS

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up. 

Shark movies are the cat's pajamas. Whether they're the good ones (Jaws) or the bad ones (all the rest of 'em), there's just something so rockin' about seeing the same stock footage from Discovery Channel being utilized in every single direct-to-video shark movie. Now, this time, we have a real treat: stock footage of Corbin Bernsen, as gnarled as ever, ending every scene he is in with holding onto submarine innards and looking pensive.

The plot: 

Corin Nemec, who is basically Eric Stoltz, but affordable, works on an underwater observational laboratory, the Oshona. He shaves everything on his face except his neck. He is married to Vanessa Angel, who has seen better days.

Nickelodeon presents:

Together, they deal with Alien rocks that fall from space and land in the ocean (after crashing through a ship, of course, for some neat funky explosions). The sharks near the crack become RAGING and attack people near and far, because GOD, alien crack just DOES THAT TO SHARKS.

The cast is filled out with bad American actors and bad Bulgarian actors. Among these characters are several portly gentleman and an annoying blonde chick, who says stupid things in an annoying manner.

Sometimes the sharks are represented by plastic heads, other times by stock footage, but it's always brilliant, even when the stock footage shows the shark swimming just below the water line, despite the fact that the action is supposed to take place several hundred feet under water.

Due to the rage of the sharks, some divers are attacked while doing special neato science things for the lab. The hairy-necked one himself was not present at the time of his attacks, for he had to drive around on L.A. roads, giving him a reason to be away from the lab.

His tired wife calls him and informs him of the eating, and he says, "I'll be right there." Then he just magically shows up in the lab, with the help of Captain Corbin Bernsen's nuclear sub.

From time to time, sharks swim around, just to let you know they're there. Whether it's computer-multiplied shark footage or hilariously fake looking wobble fins covered in shoddy carve nicks, the sharks are there in all of their brilliant and artificial glory.

In a bizarre turn of events, one of the characters announces the revelation that the sharks are in rage-form because they are protecting the gooey alien space ship. Despite this revelation, the sharks up and leave to Bermuda Beach to randomly attack surfers and divers. But then they come back and rage some more. Probably because they love space rocks.

"Hey, Bill Maher! Quit talkin' to your mom and get over here!"

A random smarmy lawyer man shows up and is smarmy, having heard about the shark attack, and gives our Eric Stoltz look-alike grief. Then Eric Stoltz's doppelganger and Vanessa Angel look at the space rocks together.

Vanessa Angel delivers a line twice, in the same exact way, one right after the other. 

"Well, find out what it is, OK?" 

"Well, find out what it is, OK?"

Eric Stoltz's hairy-necked twin calls for Matt, the scientist, who is in an unseen upstairs room, and who is also already in the process of entering the scene as he very flatly says, "Coming Mike."

The two discuss scientific bullshit that they spoon-feed to the audience, because lets face it: if you're watching this movie, you don't really know much about anything.

There are some profound lines delivered throughout the movie, such as:

"The Bermuda Triangle: don't they know how many ships have gone down here?"

"You idiots stumbled across it and triggered a beacon that shot into outer space."

and

Q: "Have you tried saturating it with deuterium?"

A: "Deuterium? No... Deuteriummmm......Of course!!"

During the movie, there is a shark autopsy performed. Inside the mouth of the shark sits an obvious tongue, which sharks do not in any way possess. But, then again, these RAGING sharks rewrite the big book of sharks that these filmmakers obviously failed to read.

"No, Punjab. The sharks will not eat us. We are made of shit."

Smarmy man turns out to be evil smarmy man and chases down our cast of characters, killing them one by one. He rattles off some bullshit about working for the CIA and that his cover up of the aliens was essential to our existence as we know it. Then he is sort of killed by a harpoon gun, which is apparently an essential tool in an underwater sea lab.

The film ends as brilliantly as it begins. ALERT explodes on the lab's computer screens with the same authenticity of a screen saver as explosions begin for no apparent reason.

Said aliens from the movie's intro beam down to the wreckage containing their rocks while the Oshona sits with no power or oxygen, due to said unexplained explosions that have crippled the lab.

Aliens, relishing in their beam of space light, sit and look around, set to a soothing operatic film score that totally does not belong anywhere near this movie.

As the dorky couple, trapped inside the Oshona, take their last breath, the aliens begin glowing so bright that orange light fills the screen. Just when it looks like curtains for our two lame marine biologists, we suddenly see them in full-out scuba gear, swimming away from the Oshona.

How did that happen?

You'll be on the edge of your seat, waiting for the explanation that never comes.

Also swimming away is the evil smarmy man who was clearly killed with a harpoon gun earlier in the film. Despite the giant harpoon in him, and the nearby aliens, and being several hundred feet under water, drowning, and surrounded by raging sharks, he still deems it necessary to attempt to kill the good doctor and his exhausted wife.

But don't worry. Mr. Smarm is instantly shoved in the plastic mouth of a plastic shark, and screams in his weird hoarse-voice.

Does this movie suck?

Yes. It does. A lot.

Did I love it?

Yes. I did. A lot.

And if the movie wasn't stupid enough, the DVD also provides content for you to scratch your head at.

I'd recommend watching the "Behind the Scenes" featurette, because you'll get to see everyone say with a straight face how good the movie is and why the audience will love it. They even go so far as to legitimize their claims with, "I think the audience will respond to the story because we're not just giving them sharks and/or aliens, but we're actually bringing together what has previously been two different and distinct genres."

You'll see one of the actors boast about his background in karate and how he did all his own stunts.

You'll see director Danny Lerner mutter unintelligibly in his unintelligible native dialect.

You'll see what has become of Vanessa Angel when she isn't covered in wholesale stage de-aging make-up.

The official cause of death for Hank was simply "Face Fart."

In the end, everyone has learned a lesson. Aliens have learned to keep their eye on their space goo. 

Eric Stoltz has learned to copyright his face, so every time Corin Nemec makes a movie, he gets a check. 

Corbin Bernsen has learned to not wear a blindfold when he signs his contract. 

And we, the audience, have learned that there has never been a good movie with “shark” in the title. Because really, anyone who willingly watches something called Raging Sharks deserves to be disappointed.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?