The Worst Movies That I Saw This Year

We looked at my favorite movies yesterday, now for the fun part. The ones I hated. A lot of people are going to disagree with me on some of these. Same order as before, the order I saw them.

No Country For Old Men
I think that everyone I've talked to about this one has liked it. I didn't. Go figure.

Day of the Dead
If this were in order, this would be at the top. One of the worst movies I've seen in ANY year. It's Ultraviolet bad.

The Dark Knight
Sorry, kids. I just didn't like it. You can call me an idiot if you want, but...I still won't like it.

Into the Wild
Read the book if you're really interested in this story. It's better.

The Black Dahlia
The movie is as awful as the book is great.

The Best Movies That I Saw This Year

Title says it all, doesn't it? These are the best movies that I saw this year. Well, either the best or the ones I liked the most. Some people won't agree with me, actually most people won't agree with me. That's okay. I'll admit that I probably didn't see enough movies to make a list that everyone would even have a chance of agreeing on. And, really, if you want to argue with me, just wait until I tell you what movies I thought were the worst (we'll save that for tomorrow).

Here we go, in the order that I saw them:

Doomsday

Right At Your Door (I admit 2 things here... 1. It did not come out this year. I never said they all did. And B. I never wrote about it. Which is a shame. I really liked it and I wish I had said something about it)

The Orphanage

Wall-E

The Strangers

The Signal 

Son of Rambow

Let the Right One In

Persepolis

So...9. The 9 best movies I saw in 2008.

Tomorrow...the ones I hated.

Where the hell has the time gone?

I'm sitting around, trying to enjoy the secular, commercialized, Anericanized holiday like I do every year. Just sitting around, taking it easy. Clearing out the old mental inventory of everything that has happened over the past year. Relaxing and watching movies.

Movies.

Oh shit! I write about movies!

I forgot for a minute there. So, in the interest of just playing catch up...here for you is my holiday viewing:

Traitor:

 

I liked it. It wasn't what I was expecting though. It was much slower and less action than the ads would have led me to believe. It was a different take on the terrorism theme though and showed the Islamic faith in a much more favorable light than American movies usually do. 

Speaking of movies that weren't what I was expecting...

There Will Be Blood:

Not that I really knew what to expect from this one. It was certainly interesting though. Very dark, and a great performance by Daniel Day Lewis. I think I liked it. I'm not sure though.

CJ7:

 

Honestly, it's not a bad movie. It was even fairly enjoyable in a way. In the end though, I just didn't feel like it was a good movie.

It had a trailer though that reminded me that I really wanted to see

Persepolis:

 It was pretty amazing, as movies go. A really interesting story from a perspective you don't often see.

Zombies Anonymous (formerly Last Rights of the Dead):

 

 Cheaply made and it shows. Unlikable characters, lousy actors and a story that doesn't make a lot of sense. Not the worst way to spend an hour and a half, but it felt like it should have been over after an hour.

Kiss Me Deadly:

 

Aside from the fact that Ralph Meeker looks alike like Bill Paxton, which distracted me, it was a pretty good movie.

Last but not least...

The Long Goodbye:

 

Honestly, I just can't decide if I liked it or not. I have a deep affinity for the Raymond Chandler novel and character and it just seems like too far of a departure from the source. On the other hand, it's an interesting take on the hard boiled detective story.

Ok. I think that catches me up.

Second verse same as the first but a little bit louder and a little bit worse.

I really liked the first installment of James Gunn's PG Porn. The new one? Um...less so. It's a multi-parter though, so, we'll see what happens in part 2, but the first part isn't nearly as funny as the last episode.



Oh...yeah, I expect you to watch it anyways.

I don't actually have many problems with the movie...

I like Jurassic Park 3. I like it a lot. Really, I only have 1 problem with it.

Naturally, my problem is the event that sets everything in motion. What the fuck happened to the guys on the boat? They go into the fog, and then they're gone, and it's never said or even really implied as to what got them...unless I missed it. Repeatedly.

The Best Vampire Movie In Theatres Right Now

I don't often get really excited about a movie. There are very few 'must see' type movies in my life. It's not that I don't get excited about seeing a movie, or look forward to them, it's just that...well, it's hard to explain. I'm just not usually in any hurry to see a specific movie. I watch things when I get to them. Let The Right One In became a must see for me.

As we've previously established, I live in the decaying city of Detroit. And, while many independent and foreign movies do play here, some don't. Let The Right One In is one that isn't playing here. Oh well, right? I'll just have to wait for the DVD and see it at some point. No big deal, I've done that countless times before.

But wait! It's playing in Salt Lake City! And, wouldn't you know, that's where I was going for vacation! You know what that means, right? I have to see it while I'm there. This is fate. This is out of my hands. There's nothing I can do other than talk people into going to see it with me.

And such it was that I convinced my cousin and two of her friends to go see Let The Right One In with me. It's amazing how persuasive the phrase 'Swedish vampire movie' is.

Oskar is about 12. He doesn't have a lot of friends. He's picked on at school. It's a pretty sad state of affairs for him. Living next door to him is Eli, a girl who looks to be about his age. She just moved in. And she tells Oskar that they can't be friends. The first time they meet! Just like that. "I can't be your friend"

Of course, Oskar and Eli do become friends. And it's this relationship that is the focus of the movie. Eli teaches Oskar to fight back against the bullies and Oskar learns that Eli is a vampire. One could even infer that they fall in love.

Let The Right One In is not a movie made for an American audience. Pretty shocking considering that it's a foreign movie, right? There are elements of the movie that an American director would simply not be allowed to do.

The movie is sad, brutal, and simply put, pretty amazing. I absolutely loved the movie. It's not something that I would want to watch over and over again like some movies, but it's definitly something that warrants a second viewing. It's not just a movie about vampires, though it's definitly a vampire movie, and it's not just a movie about relationships and young love, though there's plenty of that as well.

I'm glad I was someplace where this movie played. I'm glad I got to see it. I don't know that everyone will like this movie, but I sure as hell did.

Okay. Time to get back in the swing of things.

Take two down on their luck 28 year old's and have them go to their 10 year high school reunion. Have them meet a gay porn actor and then, after the reunion have your intrepid stars lose their utilities. It's these desperate times that give them the idea to make a porno. It's really a story as old as time itself. When the going gets tough...fuck for money.

Zack and Miri is a romantic comedy, an incredibly crude and vulgar one, but still a romantic comedy. You know how it ends before it begins. Crude and vulgar are probably Smith's biggest hallmarks at this point. And, I think it works here.

Now, I've never been one to hide my Kevin Smith fandom. I think he makes some damn funny movies. They aren't all perfect, but I can certainly say that I enjoyed more of them than I disliked. Zack and Miri Make A Porno was no exception. And, I would say that would be typical among the other reviews that I've read. People who like his movies have tended to enjoy this one. People who haven't liked his movies in the past don't like this one either.

One More Video

Those are very nice armadillos...do they come in silver?

Rather than pretending that I could write anything coherent today (that doesn't have to do with me complaining about getting IDed to buy cold medicine), I'm posting a Star Wars video. Imagine if...Star Wars were a silent film...

Monster Movie Poster Monday

I'm not usually one for taking vacations. I take my time off of work, don't get me wrong, but it's rare for me to go out of town or anything. I mean, I travel a lot for work, why would I do it for fun?

I guess because it is fun. It was nice to get out of Detroit for a few days and go out to Salt Lake City. I had a really good time. I came back sick, but I had fun while I was out there. Getting sick when I got home is the bad part though. I mean, who wants to be sick when they're on vacation? Seriously. This sucks.

So, here I am, hopped up on cold medication hoping that I come off as coherent this week. I don't want to make excuses for my writing, I mean, I know it's not great on a good day, but if it makes less sense than usual, you can blame me for filling myself with more over the counter medications than a meth lab.

And, I know I've posted a Rodan poster before (as part of my review), this one is slightly different though. And, it's pretty f-n sweet. Rodan is available as part of a two pack now with War of the Gargantuas. It's a nice little set but devoid of special features, which really sucks. I mean, if two movies ver really cried out for a making of or commentary, it's these two.

What I would do if I won the lottery.

I was watching War of the Gargantuas the other day and remembered something. One of my dreams. One of those goals that is only ever going to exist in a 'what if' scenario. A scenario like...What If I Won The Lottery.

If I won the lottery, I think I would have to hire a Hollywood model making company to create a scale replica of downtown Detroit. Basically, I would want the Renaissance Center to be about...oh...waist high, and everything else to be proportionate.

The roads would need to be widened. I would need them to be wide enough for a person to walk down. That way, one could stroll the streets of Detroit. Taking pictures perhaps of this tiny metropolis. Maybe it could be used for movies. Or a sort of tourist attraction. Either of those would be pretty cool, though not why I'd want to build it.

No. Of course not. Where's the fun in that? There is only one reason anyone could possibly want a scale replica of a city...to destroy it.

How could someone NOT want to rampage through a miniature city? I look at model trains and all I can think about is how cool it would be to stomp through them. Is there anything that looks like it would be more fun? Maybe it's just me...me and a steady stream of old Toho movies...but this is my dream. This is what I want more than anything, except for all the other, more realistic things I want.

Of course, if I won the lottery...I could build TWO mini Detroits...you know, so I could blow the other one up...that would be cool, too.

Monster Movie Poster Monday

I've actually never seen First Blood

Imagine that you are 8 years old and are being raised in a very religious family. You aren't allowed to have friends outside of church members, and you aren't allowed to watch movies or television. You go to school but keep quietly to yourself. When a movie is on you go out and sit in the hall. Then, one day, just by chance, an unusual set of circumstances causes you to see First Blood. Suddenly, Rambo is your world. You imagine him as your dad, and you have to save him. And it just so happens that your classmate is trying to make a movie himself. The two ideas converge and suddenly you're having fun with other students and getting in trouble with the church. And everyone wants to be in your movie.

Son of Rambow is about the trials and tribulations of making that movie. At least, that's what the story centers around. In reality, it's about family and it's about friendship and it's about the enthusiasm of being young.

And it's a lot of fun. Really. I can't say enough good things. The acting, the script, it's all quite good. While I thought that Garth Jennings' previous movie was a little weak, this is much stronger and much more consistent throughout.

I certainly can...

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Enjoy the day and tell your family I said hi! Then go settle down on the couch and hope that the Lions don't embarrass themselves too much on the TV. Maybe there's hockey. We have a good hockey team...

Do you have the crazy?

I'd wanted to see The Signal for some time. I didn't know too much about it aside from it looked, conceptually, a lot like Pulse. And, we all know how much I loved Pulse...

The Signal is a story about our electronics turning on us. Not in a Maximum Overdrive kind of way though. There's no clown trucks and no Emilio Estevez here. Instead, what we have is a signal that is transmitted through the tv, radio and phone systems. It's a signal that makes people crazy. And once they have the crazy, they start killing each other.

The movie is broken up into three segments (referred to as Transmissions). Each segment is it's own story. It's almost like three short films about the same event with the same characters. They even have different directors.

The first and third segments were very good and served to tell the story very well, but for my money, the middle segment was the best. It's also the lightest of them. The other two are much more serious, the first sets up the characters and what's going on, the third has to bring everything to a close, but in the middle there is some levity and humor. Everyone is starting to deal with the isanity of what's going on in the world. And it's very funny. The Signal isn't a comedy though. No more so than it is anything else. I guess by that I mean that it's not something that you'll find in the comedy section of your local video store.

The Signal is what Pulse should have been...really fucking good. In fact, it's only noticeable flaw, if it can be called that, is that it never makes any real effort to explain the origin of the signal itself. There's no what or why or how. All we see it that it's there and the results of it. The signal itself isn't the story though. And that it doesn't get explained is actually easily forgivable.

Um...right

I like zombie movies, even though the recent glut of them has watered down the genre. And, I'll watch just about any zombie movie, even if the box doesn't say something like "Better than Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later" (beyondhollywood.com). Let's be honest though...is a quote like that really going to sway me? No. It's going to make me go into the movie with very low expectations. How likely is some low budget zombie movie going to hold up against one of my favorites?

Pretty fucking poorly.

The Zombie Diaries follows 3 groups of survivors in the immediate aftermath of a zombie outbreak. The story is presented in a 'found footage' style ala The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield. Except, in this case it's neither novel or well executed. While one of the groups of survivors is a television documentary crew, there is no reason given for either of the other two having and continuing to use the cameras.

The movie itself is boring and not exactly what most people would think of as 'scary'. In fact, the most interesting part of the story has nothing to do with the zombies! The characters are poorly developed and, as far as I could tell, most of them may not have even had names.While I may not have liked it, a quick glance around the web shows that I might be in the minority. Once again showing that I'm better than the majority.

Monster Movie Poster Monday

Not much to say today. Just a poster for you. And, it's pretty sweet.

Actually, wait, there is something. 7 Dollar Popcorn is now on Facebook! Now you can tell all your friends that you're a fan of 7dp just by clicking a button...and signing up...and having friends! I have no idea what else I can or will do with it. I'm sure I'll tie it in somehow though. I wonder if 7dp should get a MySpace next...

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG

On the advice of my cousin, I read James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. It is a fictionalized account of the infamous Black Dahlia murder in 1947.

In a nutshell, on January 15th, 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short was found naked and cut in half in an LA park. The body was severely mutilated and the blood had been drained from the body. It was a gruesome murder that captivated the country at the time and to this day, remains unsolved.

Ellroy's novel, and subsequently the movie adaptation, follows the lives of
Bucky Bleichert (who's perspective the story is told through), his partner Lee Blanchard, Kay Lake, and Madeleine Sprague (Linscott in the movie). The story isn't so much about solving the crime as it is about how the crime affects their lives.

The book is great. It's a captivating story full of ups and downs and twists and turns. I highly recommend it to anyone. The movie...well, it might be okay if you've never read the book. I get that things change when a book gets adapted to a movie. The ending changes slightly, parts get dropped for time and pacing. I'm okay with that. There are two problems here though. One is that the omissions make The Black Dahlia into a rather bland, pedestrian movie with a myriad of pacing problems. Skipping over huge plot points and character development to get the movie to come in at 2 hours just causes problems in the end product. We're talking a story that takes place over the course of years presented in a way that it could have happened over the course of a week. Of course this is going to lead to problems. When you have no sense of the time that's passing, it just feels weird.

The second problem is that all of the actors are wrong for the parts. I read The Black Dahlia knowing that there was a movie made from it but without knowing who was in it or what parts they played. There may as well have not been a movie at that point. You know how it is when you read a book though. If it's a book that was made into a movie and you've seen the movie, you picture those people in their parts. Their voices speak in your mind. And, when you don't have that, well, you're mind makes it up for you. While all of the main actors are certainly capable and generally good, they were just the wrong people for the roles. If Hartnett and Eckhart changed roles, maybe I would have liked it a bit more. If Johansson were a little older, she would have been fine. And, well, Swank just seemed wrong for the role altogether.

Like I said, the movie started off at a disadvantage because of my love of the book. I was genuinely excited to see the movie though. I wanted to like it. Too much of what I enjoyed about the book was just missing from the movie. Again, maybe if I hadn't read the book, I would have liked it a bit more. Then again...maybe not.

That's just fucked up.

I've often asked, what was the most recent truly scary American horror movie. I don't know that I've ever asked here, or aloud for that matter, but I think about it a lot. Well, I found an answer...The Strangers.

Set in a rural suburban home, The Strangers is the story of a young couple terrorized by three kids in masks over the course of the night. No reason is given for their invasion aside from 'you were home'.

There is very little gore, very little plot. The movie is what it is. Two people being terrorized. As a horror movie, it taps into the unexplainable. The fear is centered around how arbitrary the events are. The couple has done nothing wrong. By all accounts they've led perfect, wholesome lives. Yet, here they are being brutaly terrorized by three people that they've never met.

And, it's scary.

Director Bryan Bertino manages to keep things pretty taut and tense throughout the movie. There are the usual jump scares, timed perfectly to the music, as well as littler things like someone just silently appearing in the background watching the woman get a glass of water. The movie clocks in a little under an hour and a half, and manages to build and maintain it's suspense throughout. There isn't much levity. There isn't much of a break once it gets going. It's a little unsettling and kinda fucked up to be honest. It is scary though, and it is good.

No, not the country supergroup

I picked up Highwaymen on a whim. I'd never heard anything good or bad about it, hell, I'd never heard of it, period. I was bored and decided to stop in at the video store down the street to see if I could cure said boredom. Walking around aimlessly, I spot the box. It says it has Jesus and the hot chick from Doomsday in it. Ok. That sounds interesting. And it was directed by the guy who did The Hitcher, not sure if they mean the original or the remake, and I didn't look any further into it. I took it home with me. What's the worst that could happen? A movie I've never heard of by a director who made a movie I liked staring an actor I like. Sounds good to me.

Is it as good as the soup I had for dinner, or as so-so as the sandwich and should I look for further analogies in my meals? How would it compare to the applesauce I made, or even the water I was drinking. Am I making you hungry yet? Hungry for action? Starving for suspense? Good.

Highwaymen is a demolition derby for the most part. Five years ago some nutjob killed Jesus' wife with a 72 El Dorado. And not in the Dr Horrible Capt-Hammer-threw-a-car-at-my-head kind of way. He ran her over on the side of the road. This is apparently the sort of thing that this guy does. Jesus, aka Rennie, is trying to find this guy. Molly, the chick from Doomsday, just sort of happens to get caught up in this whole mess...well, along with a state traffic investigator that is.

There is an instant urge to look to The Hitcher for comparison. Not because the two are very similar, because really they aren't. Sure, there are some superficial similarities. Open roads, cars, killers without a reason. I think it would be fair to say that Highwaymen does draw some inspiration from The Hitcher. The two movies also share a director, which is a much better reason for the comparison. And, I think it's easy to say that The Hitcher is the better movie. Not just the plot, but the way it unfolds, the way it builds suspense.

Which isn't to say that Highwaymen isn't suspenseful. It is. The story is unique and intriguing. The characters are fairly shallow, but the connection between them all is well played out. The acting is good, especially that of Caviezel and Mitra. The story itself is just a little weak. It takes too many leaps of faith to get to that ending. Too many coincidences. The movie collapses under the weight of those questions. It was just like the sandwich.

Banshees are cool. There should be more banshee movies...

When watching nearly any modern horror movie you can figure out pretty quickly, if not who is going to survive, at least who will survive the longest. For example, in the movie there will be a completely useless guy, some jock who is a complete jerk, looking out only for himself. He will horde supplies or try to sleep with someone else's girlfriend. In the end, he will die, but not right away. He will be one of the last ones to die. So, for almost the entire movie you will watch the movie hoping, waiting, praying for this dipshit to die.

It's a cliche. In horror movies, it's no less a guaruntee than dying if you have sex. Frankly, if you like everyone, you sympathize when they die. However, if you don't like one or some of the characters, you sympathize with the killer, at least for a while. And, when you sympathize with the killer, you don't mind watching people die for a hour and a half.

By having this detestable person around, you can also allow the audience to believe that he might have a hand in the killing, throwing doubt and confusion into the story.

It can also be the sign of a weak writer creating a very shallow character.

However, if that character dies first, well, it doesn't exactly mean that the writer is any better.

Take Shrooms for example, a group of five American students go to Ireland to take shrooms. You have the harmless stoner and his girlfriend, the jock and his girlfriend, the blond 'good girl' and the Irishman she happens to like.While hunting for the magic mushrooms, the good girl trips and finds a slightly more magical mushroom. One that is often lethal, but that the druids used to see the future and give them strength and other mystical things. It doesn't kill her, but she starts to have visions, apparently foreseeing the future and many of her friend's deaths.

I'd wanted to see Shrooms for some time. I think it was the poster that did it for me. And, it's a watchable movie. I mean, it's better than the likes of Yeti. The actors are pretty good. Lindsey Haun (currently of Haun Solo (nice voice, boring music, 7th Fall was a little better) which I think might be the best band name that I've seen lately, but then again, I'm a fucking nerd), is good as 'good girl' Tara. She spends half of her scenes having seizures in the mud while having visions, and it's her performance that ultimately carries the movie. It's Tara's story.

The biggest problem I have with the movie, really, is the ending. It's horrifyingly predictable. And while they do their best not to telegraph it, it's as inevitable as Christmas. You just know it's coming. I can think of a couple of endings that would have been more intersting and less predictable. A banshee, for example. Maybe I should make a banshee movie. That would be pretty cool. I could call it Unsilent Night, that way it would be offensive to viewers based on content and English majors based on the title.

Back to Shrooms though, I cannot in good conscience recommend this movie. It's not that it was bad...it just wasn't good.

Follow the ring

You'll be happy to know that I managed to tear myself away from the Xbox 360 long enough to watch a movie. It was pretty easy after I finished Fable 2 for the third time...and own everything in it...there really isn't that much left to do besides, you know, start over again. And, let's be honest, I need something to do this weekend.

I was in a hotel a couple weeks ago watching House or Law & Order or Monk or SOMETHING on USA, and they kept showing commercials for Inside Man. Now, this isn't the type of movie I would go out of my way to see. I mean, I liked Denzel Washington enough in Glory and Much Ado About Nothing, though Virtuosity is almost certainly my favorite of his movies. He doesn't do a lot of fighting monsters from outer space though, so I don't see his movies. Same with Spike Lee, I saw Do The Right Thing as part of a film class in college, and I liked it enough, but he doesn't make a lot of movies about monsters attacking cities, so I don't watch his movies. In fact, if it weren't for one person, I would never have put Inside Man on my Netflix queue...Clive Owen. I think he is one of the most intersting actors out there right now, and I just can't see enough movies with him in them. If you tell me that Clive Owen is in a movie, the odds of me seeing that movie increase by at least 46%. As an added bonus, it also had Serenity's Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Inside Man is a heist movie. It's a movie about a bank robbery, and it gets right down to it. Our bank robbers are in the bank and have it locked down in the first chapter of the DVD. Time to bring in the police. Since the normal hostage negotiator is on vay-kay, it's up to Denzel to go and talk the robbers down. Meanwhile, the bank owner has something, it's unknown what, in a safe deposit box that he wants to see stay there, so he hires a woman (played by Jodie Foster) to make sure it stays hidden.

This is one of those clever heist movies though, so you never really know what it is that they're after or how they plan to get away with it. Only that, in the character's words:

My name is Dalton Russell. Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself. I've told you my name: that's the Who. The Where could most readily be described as a prison cell. But there's a vast difference between being stuck in a tiny cell and being in prison. The What is easy: recently I planned and set in motion events to execute the perfect bank robbery. That's also the When. As for the Why: beyond the obvious financial motivation, it's exceedingly simple... because I can. Which leaves us only with the How; and therein, as the Bard would tell us, lies the rub.

And, at the end, like when Verbal starts walking without the limp, it all sorts of hits you. He really did tell you everything in that opening paragraph. Like I said, this is a clever movie. Is it as clever as the previously mentioned Usual Suspects? No. Of course not.  Is it an interesting movie though? Well, hell yes. Despite being fairly straight forward, you're constatly wondering, how is this going to work? What ARE they trying to do? And they're interesting enough questions to really keep you riveted.The only thing I would have liked to have known more about is the planning. How it came together. Where did the idea for the hiest come from? In that regard, the ending is a little unfullfilling, but without giving anything away, it works. Now, I can get back to the things that really matter...like playing Fable some more...

Fable 2 is destroying my will to live

Okay, not really. It is, however, consuming way too much of my free time. Consider this, it came out on October 21st. I bought it on October 21st. With the exception of days that I've been out of town, I've played it everyday. In fact, as of last night, I've played through the main game 3 times.

What's sad is that I don't think it's as good as the first game. And I don't think it's as good as some of the others that I've played on the 360. Yet, there is still something compelling about it. I like the impact that my in-game decisions have on my character. I like that everyone in a couple of the towns is afraid of me after 2 massacres. I love that they all hate me after I bought all their houses and raised their rent. I love that I can hire whores and sleep with them in beds that belong to strangers. As you can tell, I'm playing the game as a horrible person. I'm going to save the world...mostly from myself it would seem.

The game has three choices you can make at the end, and I've made two of them. I wanted to choose the very selfless, save everyone who died ending, but it wouldn't bring my dog back. And, dammit, I can't hunt for treasure without my dog. So, all I am this time is a slumlord and slayer of innocents. I own every building in the kingdom!

That was surprisingly amazing

As a friend of mine said, this is going to be either the worst 90 minutes of your life, or the best. Zombie Strippers is the kind of movie that could go either way. It's easy to look at it and think it's going to be absolutely awful. I mean, this is a movie that could have easily been WORSE than the "remake" of Day of the Dead. Instead, you get a movie that is more like Flight of the Living Dead...much better than it has any real right to be.

The whole thing starts with really bad actors learning that some equally bad acting scientist have created zombies in an attempt to create a super soldier. We all know how that goes. Soldier gets bit, doesn't want to get killed though, so he runs off. As a result, he finds himself in an illegal strip club (the movie is set in Bush-Cheney fueled future). It's here that he attacks one of the strippers.

Now, most would see this as a bad thing. The proprietors, however, do the math and see that the zombie is generating more money. Granted, she eats some of the patrons, but who's going to worry about that. Well, the other strippers decide to infect themselves for a piece of the profits.

Of course, in movies like this, no good thing can last. Eventually it turns to an all out war inside the club as zombie strippers battle zombie strippers for...attention I guess.

It's very silly and cheesy. I couldn't imagine watching it without a beer or two to start the night off with. I'll tell you what though, in the right...frame of mind...it's an incredibly entertaining movie. Robert Englund is...well...less annoying than I usually find him. Jenna Jameson is...well, Jenna Jameson. The soundtrack is surprisingly good too. The story and the acting are...not so good, but is that really why you're watching? There's tits, there's blood and guts, there's billiard balls flying out of hoo-has...what more could you ask for from a low budget zombie movie?

Quick Reviews of Bad Movies: One more time

If you're anything like me, you will, at some point, be tempted to watch SciFi's Yeti. Go ahead and pass on that.

It was like watching Alive, but not nearly as funny.

Monster Movie Poster Monday

You woke up today, wondering aloud, just what DID WMAP find?

There is only one force in the universe that could be so powerful...