HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

THIRTEENTH

Happy Friday.

KREEG'S TASK

"It happened thirty years ago on a late Halloween afternoon. A school bus was on its usual route, but this wasn’t your typical school bus… and they weren’t your typical kids. There were eight of them, and they were… different… troubled… disturbed. Every day, parents put their dirty secrets on this bus to be driven to a school miles outside of town. But that day, the driver took a different route. And instead of taking the students home, he drove the bus to an abandoned rock quarry. What the kids didn’t know is that over the years their parents had become exhausted… embarrassed… and they were willing to do anything to ease their burden. So one day, the parents approached the bus driver and made him an offer. With the money they collected together, they asked him to do the unthinkable...."

 

 

DEMENTIA

"Come with me into the tormented, haunted, half-lit night of the insane. This is my world. Let me lead you into it. Let me take you into the mind of a woman who is mad. You may not recognize some things in this world, and the faces will look strange to you. For this is a place where there is no love, no hope...in the pulsing, throbbing world of the insane mind, where only nightmares are real..."

Source.

REVIEW: A NECESSARY DEATH

"It's not that I want to die. It's just that I don't want to live anymore."

The "story" of filmmaker Daniel Stamm is one that is starting to become irritating and all-too-common within the unhallowed hills of Hollywood. A Necessary Death, his found footage film debut, made the festival rounds and captured all kinds of attention, including that of hack Eli Roth. In conjunction with Strike Entertainment, Roth hooked Stamm up with the gig of directing The Last Exorcism, another found footage film, this time with far less brains and more cheap theatrics. And like so many other directors, whose knack for low budget and unique ideas was wasted on brainless studio fare, Stamm, too, was instead assigned to a generic project that was entirely beneath him. After first watching The Last Exorcism, I was merely disappointed by what as only an overly hyped film. But now, after watching A Necessary Death, I look at Exorcism not just as a bad film, but as a huge waste of time, money, and resources, all of which could have been used on a different project for which Stamm had more interest and passion.

A Necessary Death is not only remarkable, but the most realistic found footage movie I've ever seen. Though it would not be traditionally considered a horror movie, the fact that this narrative could very well have been a real documentary is what truly provides the audience with all the horror it could ever need. In this day and age, in which the curious could literally log onto Youtube and watch real people dying real deaths; and in this time where everything needs to be recorded on video and released to the masses, whether that be journalists being beheaded by terrorists, or a man's face being eaten off on a Florida street, A Necessary Death could literally have been released and marketed as a 100% real documentary and I doubt it would have caused any sort of uproar. It's this kind of demonizing, yet desensitization, to death and dying that has driven our filmmaker/lead character, a college student named Gilbert, to carry out his vision: to capture, from first realization to final act, a person's suicide. It is the very kind of ego-inflated, self-important, pretentious idea that any college student might have, which makes it all the more believable.

After a series of open interviews, in which candidates vie to be the focus of Gilbert's film, he and his crew settle on a kid named Mathew, who is dying from an untreatable brain condition and has opted to end his life before encountering the condition's very painful final stages. After Gilbert explains the "point" of the documentary to Mathew - to strip away the taboo and baggage associated with suicide and show that the person who wants to end their life is completely cognizant of their decision - Mathew agrees to be the focal point.

Like all things in life, God laughs as we make plans, and what started off as a peculiar but straightforward project eventually becomes anything but. It all unfolds strikingly realistically, and except for one or two sequences that reek too much of narrative, it never comes across as blatantly cinematic. Meaning, if a person had told me to watch the movie and told me it was real, I would have believed that person...that is until the ending.

A Necessary Death is an amazing debut from a young filmmaker. It is a highly emotional journey, as the characters onscreen are just as affected by the events as the movie's audience. We understand, condone, root for, and then eventually despise Gilbert. His transformation is as obvious and dark as the unfolding events of the film. A slightly arrogant but ultimately likeable young student (who goes as far as alerting social services after two young girls come to his suicide candidate interview, which shows that he does have a conscience), eventually devolves into the very thing you may have sensed was inevitable, but definitely hoped was not unavoidable. It very much captures very real people experiencing very real conflicts and emotions in conjunction with the project. And the scenes consisting of Mathew and the film crew visiting Mathew's mother, and lying to her as to why Mathew is the focus of their documentary, is especially heartbreaking. We as the audience cannot help but put ourselves in Mathew's shoes. We can't help but wonder how it would seem if that were our mother, or father, or grandmother or grandfather - someone who cared for us and loved us and would die a thousand times before we ever experienced pain - and wonder if we would ever be able to wear that fake smile and tell that lie without breaking down in front of them.

The actors are all incredibly wonderful and real, especially Mathew. He isn't the slobbering mess our preconceived notions of a suicidal person may fool us into expecting. He is a kid who happens to be dying, and who very calmly has made a decision based on his own needs and desires. He's not just some sad sack who is heartbroken over a bad break-up, or who feels the world is a cruel place. Ironically, he is a kid who would actually prefer to live - who shows signs of being happy with who he is and the life he so far has lived - but who understands that his proverbial ticket has already been punched. 

Gilber, too, is real, and likeable, though marginally less so than Mathew. Because he is the person endeavoring to capture a death on camera, by default you approach him with great caution. Though the movie takes great pains to paint him as an equally sympathetic person, who looks at his project as a way of waking up the masses and forcing them to see that suicide shouldn't be this shameful thing we hide away in our subconscious, the movie relents that because it is providing us with this character, we will never be 100% behind him. But we do want him to succeed. It's a very dangerous gamble to make, as how the audience approaches and responds to the film rests entirely on Gilbert's ability to be a sympathetic character. Luckily, he does.

The rest of the supporting cast, one of whom ultimately derails the the project once they become a bit too close to the film's subject, all do a great job at playing their roles exactly as they should be playing them. They aren't entirely comfortable with the film's topic, though they agree what is being captured is important. At several times throughout the film they all sort of tag up at first to remind Gilbert and the audience that though they're driven to continue, they are hesitant as well. (Stamm also appears as the documentary's cameraman.)

My only qualm is with the ending, and I can honestly say in the case of A Necessary Death that the "alternate ending" included on this screener copy of the DVD is more realistic and more affecting than the one the filmmakers opted to go with. While being as completely spoiler free as I can, I will say this: when the garage door comes down at the climax of the film, your heart will be in your stomach, as mine was. But some of this shock occurs due to its inevitability, which is somewhat telegraphed at the beginning of the sequence. While the "alternate" ending may be less shocking, it is far more realistic, and far more haunting.

A Necessary Death, though made in 2008, has only very recently come to DVD, and can also be purchased through iTunes.

SHITTY FLICKS: BLOOD FEAST

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.

I am Pete Thornton of the Miami police department, and the following is my report on the events leading up the squashing of Mr. Fuad Ramses, a man who wore clay eyebrows, killed women to appease a gold Egyptian mannequin, and passed away in a garbage truck.

No names have been changed because I was too busy reading the funny papers.

The following is my report regarding the events of these past few days, in which I flatly, and without emotion, discovered the following bullshits:

• Ramses owned a store of canned beans.
• He was obsessed with ancient Egypt and he killed women.
• He lived alone, his only company some random Egyptian bullshit.
• He often shouted at his gold Egyptian mannequin, for he was crazy and lonely.
• He also often removed super creeper gooey red things from each woman's body, simulating a heart or brain or, you know, whatever.
• After killing the women, I theorize that he removed their gooey goo parts to use in a stew. Or perhaps a goo pie.
• His one weakness is garbage trucks.

"Well, ya didn't Tivo Pushing Daisies, Karen,
and you're home all fucking day. Maybe that's
why I'm fucking pissed off."

Fuad Ramses was obsessed with old Egyptian bullshit. He was believed to have been seeking out various woman parts in order to offer them up to his stupid Egyptian mummy gods. His reward remains to be seen, but I, Pete Thornton, believe it could have been a blowjob, or perhaps a new suit.

One of Ramses’s victims, Blue Dress Woman, was just one of many plain-looking women to be torn apart by his stupid knife. His approach was methodical; his cunning, unsurpassed; his suit/eyebrows: a light powdery blue.

Ramses hacked the poor bitch apart as she lay in her tub, soaking in her own filth. Ramses, not one to be greedy, took only a leg. He wrapped it in a plastic bag and disappeared off into the night to go watch "My Three Sons."

I worked closely with my chief, Frank Something, on this case. His preferred method of investigating included unnecessarily reading aloud from the case files as we sat in our tiny office, chain-smoking, and wearing starched suits.

“There is a pattern,” Frank would stammer, frustrated with my inability to find said pattern.

“This looks like one of those looong, hard ones,” I said in regards to the case, not sensing how gay it sounded. I'm not gay, I fucking swear.

In the store of canned goods that Ramses owned, catering services were also made available.

A large cheese-hat woman inquired about his catering services, but requesting something extra special. Ramses, seeing an opportunity to perform more stupid bullshit, made his move.

He leaned in, his clay hair immovable, as he asked, “Have you ever had an…EGYPTIAN FEAST?”

Someone then sat on an organ as the cheese-hat woman looked excited at the prospect.

They made their agreements and she left to find a giant cracker.

Later, Ramses killed two more people: a couple making whoopy on the beach. The hesitant woman, who was unsure about baring her breasts while a maniac was on the loose, was convinced by her boyfriend, who challenged her with, “C’mon, baby. Prove that you love me.”

I wasn’t there, you understand - I was probably at the Suit Store For Whites Only - but this is probably how it happened.

However, the maniac that was on the loose, Ramses, then stabbed the girl a bunch of times, took some brains, and fled. The boyfriend may or may not have been turned into a snake, thanks to some witch magic.

Mary never knew what was better: fucking, or
gravy fights. One day, she did both at once.
It was transcendent.

Also, point of note: cleaning up a crime scene on sand is fucking hard, and it’s one reason I am considering leaving the force to become a ventriloquist.

Ramses struck again, this time at a sleazy motel. He knocked on the door, and when his victim answered, he forced her mouth open with his dirty fingers as he ripped out her tongue. I believe the combination of the woman wearing only a brassiere, along with this mutilation, gave Ramses a huge boner.

I, Pete Thornton, randomly attended lectures on ancient Egypt and tried to stay awake during Professor Boring's boring boreshit. From what I heard, while I wasn’t doodling in my notebook and playing with my wiener through my pocket, a mummy once existed and this mummy punched everyone in the face. The mummy punched so many people that it was damned to sit in a room and punch the ground. This mummy is known as Mummia Dude. (I think. I may have filled in my own story, because the man with glasses talked for so long that I was wake-dreaming of screwing the woman next to me.)

The bitch I was with later told me that he talked about something called the Blood Feast, which was when Egyptians would dismember girls and eat them in an effort to stay youthful forever. I told her that was ridiculous, and I went home and talked to a police sketch artist to make some preliminary posters of Mummia Dude.

"Eh...I read about it in a magazine and I wanted to try it.
Guess I fucked it up."

After the borefest, I, Pete Thornton, took some time to do some light, non-evasive kissing with my best girl, who unbeknownst to me, was having a party catered by Fuad, thanks to her cheese-hat mother.

Talk about irony.

You talk about it, anyway. I won’t. I’m Pete Thornton. I carry a badge and a gun. I don’t have time for that homo stuff.

In my town of L.A., I like my women like I like my beer: cool, and with their boobs out. Ramses also liked women with good boobs, and with all the boobs that are everywhere in L.A., it was hard to pinpoint his next move; that move being chasing a woman in broad daylight, knocking her out, and carrying her off to do God knows what bat-shit stuff that man did. And on top of these murder charges, Ramses is also responsible for one of the tamest whippings I, Pete Thornton, have ever seen. Given that I have never seen any whippings, rest assured that the whipping was very tame, resulting in a few red streaks across the victims back; streaks that look suspiciously like water color paint brush swipes.

I eventually stumbled across his workshop of terror and saw what was left of that whipping victim. She looked delicious. Not because I am sick, but because I am pretty sure she was covered in barbecue sauce. I ran a finger along a thigh and tasted it, but it was actually blood. I threw up in my hat and fell down.

Later, after Ramses attempted to kill my best girl at her party, he fled and I followed close behind him.

I, Pete Thornton, single-handedly stopped Fuad Ramses, the jerk-off in question. By employing a tactic we learned at the academy, I chased him across a trash heap for a long time, and then he jumped into a rubbish truck, dying of some massive mush-mush.

I would just like to congratulate myself on a job well done, seeing as how no one else in this half-assed department has yet.

In conclusion, Frog Rammers, or whoever, is now a messy pancake, so it doesn't really matter what my report has to say.

That's it for me, Pete Thornton. I'm off to write a report on another bullshit murderer: The Wizard of Gore. I hope he has candy. And a new hat, for my head.

Things I Learned From My Experience:

• Frank, the police captain, shrieks at me whenever I show any affection towards my wife. He's gay.
• Having a gimp can make a killer super creepers.
• It's OK to leave the dead body of a man behind as long as you've solved the case.
• Timpani hits provide super creeper tension.
• Super creeper snakes make any scene ultra goopers.
• All the white people in my town have weird, blue hair. And all the black people…hmm…well,  I’ve never actually seen any.
• The only people who still care about ancient Egypt also eat people pie.

LEVITY