Hack-and-stack – Page 16

Pig Hunt (2008)

Now this is more like it! Plenty of weird shit as far as the eye can see.

Writers Zack Anderson and Robert Mailer Anderson and director James Isaac are obviously genre geeks—observant viewers will spot references to Alien, Road Warrior, even Apocalypse Now—who understand exactly what elements will best play in Peoria.

Blood sure, but even more, carnage. There’s enough carnage in Pig Hunt to fill Carnagie Hall. Yeah, I know.

Rugged leading man John (Travis Aaron Wade), his super-hot girlfriend Brooks (Tina Huang), and John’s three dopey bro buds drive out to the California equivalent of Appalachia, to go hunting for wild pigs on property owned by John’s uncle, who perished under mysterious circumstances.

But since the movie is named Pig Hunt, probably not all that mysterious. Look, just play along!

The gang goes through all the familiar check points (or plot points, if you prefer): They stop at a backwoods general store for directions—this one run by blues harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite, who gives them dire warnings—and encounter a hostile clan of indiginous rurals, a rattlesnake, and a van containing a muscular black gentlemen with a hippie-chick entourage, part of a nearby weed-growing commune.

Somewhere in here, we discover that John grew up around these parts, and that he’s actually a skilled hunter and woodsman, unlike his three hopelessly doomed friends.

Some hillbilly acquaintances of John come a-visiting, and they all decide to go hunting for “the Ripper”, a legendary 3,000 pound killer hog that most likely wasted John’s uncle—and the train goes off the rails, big time.

This sounds like it has all the makings of Troma Team farce, but somehow Pig Hunt avoids broad comedic pitfalls, and plays it somewhat straight.

The Andersons actually have the guts to develop the characters beyond stereotype to the point that I actually felt sorry for John’s friend Quincy (Trevor Bullock), a gentle chef who accompanies his more macho comrades. He and his beloved dog Wolfgang come to a bad end that they really didn’t deserve (though, to be fair, Quincy has no more business being outside the urban landscape than Ned Beatty does).

Collateral damage, as it turns out.

What the filmmakers demonstrate most effectively in Pig Hunt is that it’s the various human tribes (duh!) that wreak the most havoc, and that in order to survive, you have to become the biggest monster of all.

Hell, the giant pig is almost an afterthought until the one-hour point in the film. Bonus: The music is by Primus bassist Les Claypool, who also doubles as Preacher, one of the bloodthirsty hillbillies.

I love that shit.

Chromeskull: Laid To Rest 2 (2011)

Pardon me while I spill my gushing guts. I admired the heck out of the original Laid To Rest, but the sequel is everything the second installment of a film series should be: bigger, artistically bolder, and rife with disturbing implications. (See Evil Dead—Evil Dead II. )

Like the Raimi films, LTR2 is an evolutionary leap beyond its predecessor, as it takes virtually the same story and creates a whole universe for it to live in. And like Romero’s zombie epics, Chromeskull has the chutzpah to place a modern horror film into the larger and more provocative context of a thoroughly corrupt and predatory society—one that bares a striking resemblance to our own.

Even though writer-director Robert Hall’s sophomore effort isn’t quite in the same league as the aforementioned films and folks, it’s still a bloody good time.

The second film opens just moments after the conclusion of the first: The relentless killer known as Chromeskull (Nick Principe) is apparently kaput after having his noggin pulverized by a pair of plucky survivors, but modern science can do amazing things these days.

The mutilated maniac is heroically raced to a hospital and sewn back together by the finest surgeons money can buy and so embarks on a three-month convalescence. See, it turns out Chromeskull can afford top-drawer health care—he’s friggin’ rich, the CEO of his own shadow corporation.

Like any successful man, he’s got disgruntled employees and ambitious rivals, or in this case both, in the person of his right-hand flunky Preston, played with gonzo panache by 90210‘s Brian Austin Green!

While the boss gets his head back together, Preston entertains ideas of moving up in the company.

Naturally, another woman is methodically stalked and many people are gutted, carved, and filleted in excruciating detail. A big round of applause should be directed to the special makeup effects team of Cris Alex and Joe Badiali, who seem to be cut from the same gruesome cloth as the master himself, Tom Savini.

Laid To Rest 2 is a rockin’ righteous bloodbath. The kills are teeth-gritting in their unfettered savagery, as Chromeskull is clearly a man(?) who loves his work and has a near fetishistic reverence for his tools—which should serve as inspiration to his ungrateful underlings.

Seeing the boss working the line and getting his hands dirty is an increasingly rare thing in corporate America.

Fear Island (2009)

A low-wattage variation of I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which a handful of amoral dirt-bag twentysomethings, who once did a terrible thing, end up paying the piper on a remote island.

Not very bloody, no nudity, and only one plot twist, that’s immediately obvious to anyone who’s seen The Usual Suspects.

What else is there to say? Haylie Duff is in it. Pass.

The Reeds (2010)

Boy, I hate it when my tranquil weekend of boating with friends turns into a blood-soaked nightmare.

After thousands of movies in which a back-to-nature retreat results in death and dismemberment, you’d think people would just stay the eff home. Watch Nature Channel, or some shit. But noo-oo-oo!

Three unexceptional couples hit upon the brilliant idea of renting a boat for a river excursion through a remote British waterway that’s choked with (cue the title) reeds!

So what form of doom will they encounter on their nautical getaway? Ruthless delinquents as in Eden Lake? An insidious beastie from the depths? Piranhas? Killer kelp?

Nope, the crew gets mired in a tragic feedback loop between an angry loner and a bunch of scruffy mute kids, who are seemingly locked in an eternal spiral of antagonism—despite the fact that the rugrats have been dead for decades. Talk about holding a grudge…

The claustrophobic spell cast by the forlorn, colorless landscape gives The Reeds a crucial boost of atmosphere, and the silent band of urchins are a creepy lot. And while director Nick Cohen is possessed of sufficient skills to keep things relatively interesting, it’s a glacially-paced affair without much in the way of action—though the anchor impalement scene was a welcome highlight.

The Reeds is worth a viewing, but only if it’s a slow news day and all your chores are done.

The Burning (1981)

Probably the best way to describe The Burning is that it’s a post Friday The 13th knock-off and an interesting conversation piece.

It features a gonzo Exorcist-meets-Yes score by Rick Wakeman, a script that was doctored by future scumbags Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and some recognizable actors in teeny teen roles—and in the case of Holly Hunter, make that downright microscopic.

Yes, that’s Seinfeld foil Jason Alexander as Dave, a wisecracking camper (with a full head of hair!) who miraculously doesn’t get his jugular severed by Cropsy (Lou David), the hideously scarred former camp caretaker out for bloody revenge.

Nutshell: A bunch of snotty boys at summer camp punk Cropsy, the alcoholic caretaker, by placing a burning skull next to his bed. Things get shitty real fast as the clumsy bum catches himself on fire and spends the next five years fuming in a hospital while doctors point and laugh at his freaky face.

Eventually Cropsy leaves, kills a hooker to get warmed up and goes back to camp to carve up the current crop of kids. His weapon of choice is a deluxe pair of hedge clippers.

Were the writers inspired by Cropsey, the legendary Staten Island boogeyman? Well, duh!

Seeing the likes of Alexander, Larry Joshua (The Rundown, NYPD Blue), Leah Ayers (Bloodsport), Fisher Stevens (Short Circuit) and Brian Backer (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) pay their dues as Doomed Campers is worth a giggle or two, but sadly, The Burning is slower than Granny’s bowels.

It takes a whole friggin’ hour for the first camper to get carved! Note to the writing department: we do not now, nor have we ever given a shit who has the hots for whom—unless it leads to a nude scene.

Too much yakkin’ and not enough whackin’ is no way to create horror history.

Fortunately, director Tony Maylam had the good sense to leave the gruesome special effects to the best in the business, namely Tom Savini (Friday The 13th, Dawn of the Dead, Maniac, and so many more).

So by the time Cropsy finally gets around to some serious slicing and dicing, the blood arrives in buckets, including a sensational canoe sequence where he wastes five kids in a flurry fit for a ninja.

Worth a look.

Creature (2011)

Lucky me! I was in the mood for a good ol’ monster matinee and I found one.

It ain’t exactly Ingmar Bergman, but it gets the job done; the horror movie equivalent of a shot and a beer. Creature more than meets the minimum daily requirement of gore and casual nudity, with just enough plot to complement, rather than complicate, the visual carnage.

A half-dozen camping buddies pitch their tents in a remote patch of the Louisiana bayou (“They’re dead already!” I shouted gleefully at the dogs) after being told the tale of Grimly, a local legend that haunts the vicinity searching for food—and a bride.

Note to Doomed Campers: Is your skepticism really more powerful than the possibility that a local legend has some basis in fact? Use your heads people!

Anyway, Grimly is a monstrous human-gator hybrid worshipped by the indiginous population (~~hillbillies~~ swamp rats), who pass the time of day steering tourists toward the wonders of the bayou.

I’m not sure what the swamp rats get out of this arrangement, but Grimly has a well-stocked pantry and uh, lots of brides. Yes, I am fully aware that the suggestion of a gator-man impregnating some unfortunate lass is going to be a deal-breaker in most households, but the concept does goes back to Greek mythology.

Fortunately, there’s no onscreen miscegenation. And in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll also mention there’s a recurring subplot about incest. Taboos mean nothing when you live in a swamp, I suppose.

The campers are actually a better lot than the usual walking cliches, thankfully eschewing the typical Jock-Nerd-Stoner-Slut-Virgin hierarchy.

Instead, we get a pair of not-too-stupid veterans from Afghanistan, a weird brother and sister team (sshhh!), and the soldiers’ nubile girlfriends, who have no qualms about doffing their duds when the mood strikes them.

The swamp rats include name actors Sid Haig (Chopper) and Pruitt Taylor Vince (Grover) who both lend dependable gravitas to Fred Andrews’ often distracted direction. Speaking of Sid Haig, there’s even a Spider Baby reference!

As for the monster itself, after suffering through an endless parade of shitty CGI creatures that look like they were created on an old Amiga computer, a big guy in a halfway decent rubber suit works just fine for me—even though at times Grimly suspiciously resembles an off-duty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sans shell.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to the Louisiana film industry, who seem to be doing a bang-up job of luring horror movie companies to bayou country, pumping needed money into local economies.

Strong work, one and all!

Hyenas (2011)

Now here’s an example of the much-talked-about “so bad it’s good” genre.

Yes, it’s definitely possible to have a movie that’s rife with crap writing, indifferent acting, and feckless direction that is nonetheless diverting. Of course, Hyenas is helped out by sporadic nudity, but writer-director Eric Weston seemed to inject his actors with a certain “who gives a shit” elan, that goes a long way toward keeping the laughably lame action watchable.

Ambulatory side of beef Costas Mandylor plays Gannon, a grieving bad-ass whose wife and baby were ambushed and devoured by a pack of shape-shifting hyena folk that came to America during the days of the slave trade.

He teams up with Crazy Briggs (Meshach Taylor from Designing Women, who can’t decide if his character is supposed to be a Rasta, a Cajun, or a Delta bluesman) to thin the pack, since the cunning predators are becoming plentiful and increasingly aggressive.

Meanwhile, in one of the subplots that no one cares about, the small Arizona town where the story takes is seething with adolescent unrest, as a dipshit bunch of townies are looking to rumble with the local Latino contingent.

Somehow, these storylines overlap somewhere down the line, and it all boils down to a final battle in a nearby abandoned copper mine where shit will be blowing up shortly.

Weston fearlessly tacks on endless scenes that have absolutely nothing to do with were-hyenas and their taste for human flesh, but the effects and gore are serviceable, and hyena Alpha female Wilda (Christa Campbell) generously removes her top on several occasions, which helps mitigate the annoyance factor of the lousy acting.

Amanda Aardsma in particular, who plays devious hyena hottie Valerie, delivers one of the most mind-blowingly awful dramatic performances I’ve witnessed in recent memory. She’d have to study with Lee Strasberg for 10 years just to improve enough to be cast as an understudy in a community theater production of West Side Story.

But either in spite of, or thanks to the graceless ineptitude on display, Hyenas kept me engaged. I would recommend it as a bland-tastic palate cleanser between better films.

Malevolence (2004)

I believe the concept of crooks on the lam hiding out in a haunted house dates back to Buster Keaton. True, in Malevolence, the crooks are hiding next door to a haunted house—and it’s only haunted inasmuch as there’s a deranged serial killer living there. A very similar motif is used (more successfully, I might add) in the Andy Serkis black comedy The Cottage (2008). But Malevolence is not a waste of time.

Julian (R. Brandon Johnson) and Marilyn (Heather McGee) are the couple we’re supposed to care about, but they’re not all that likable. They get mixed up in a bank heist with Marilyn’s hoodlum brother Max (Keith Chambers) which concludes with everyone fleeing the scene and Max mortally wounded. As Marilyn thoughtfully reminds Julian several times that it’s his stupid fault her brother took a bullet, one gets the distinct feeling that this couple ain’t gonna make it. Meanwhile, the other member of their gang, Kurt (Richard Glover, a poor man’s Jeff Conaway), kidnaps a young mother and her tomboy daughter, and takes them to the remote hideout where the robbers are supposed to reconnoiter and divide the money. Unfortunately, the hideout isn’t quite remote enough; right next door there’s a decrepit factory farm inhabited by a bargain-brand Michael Myers (the Halloween killer, not Austin Powers) who brings his steely chopping knife to the party.

Nothing too subtle at work in Malevolence; it’s a lot of chasing back and forth outside at night, with a little bit of Ed Gein rural weirdness mixed in. Writer, director, producer, and composer Stevan Mena does a competent job of keeping things lean and tense, though his protagonists suffer from a kind of collective amnesia that prevents them from making sure the killer is dead, which probably would have shortened the movie by a good 20 minutes. Come on people, it’s the 21st Century! You know as well I do that if you’re fortunate enough to knock the maniac down, you MUST continue to beat on the body till it resembles guacamole. And we’ve known this for at least 25 years.

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

I haven’t read enough Clive Barker to decide if I’m a fan or not, but he certainly spins a fascinatingly lurid yarn. The Midnight Meat Train is based on one of his short stories, and it’s a bloody fun ride, even though I kept thinking I was watching a chopped up version that had scenes missing. There are moments when the action inexplicably jumps from Point A to Point M, and you wonder how the hell we got here.

A right-before-he-got famous Bradley Cooper plays Leon, a wannabe artsy photographer trying to capture “the beating heart of New York City” to impress snooty art dealer Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields), who advises him to take more chances, and not run away when danger rears its ugly head. He starts hanging out in the subway during the wee hours of the morning and stumbles upon a very dapper and intense-looking butcher (Vinnie Jones, in a silent part), and is immediately compelled to follow him around. (How do we know he’s a butcher? Well, he carries a meat mallet the size of Mjolnir, for one thing.) Sure enough, it appears his new-found subject is a methodical serial killer who’s been making late-night subway riders disappear for quite some time. Poor Leon realizes too late, that the butcher’s grisly nocturnal rituals are all a part of (sung in Elton John voice) “the c-i-r-c-l-e of l-i-i-i-f-e!”

Anytime you pad out a short story into a feature length film, there’s going to be filler, and The Midnight Meat Train is no exception, but for the most part, director Ryuhel Kitamura and screenplay scribe Jeff Buhler keep it fast and gruesome. The ending is pure Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, but it’s not a cop-out. It’s surprisingly weird and horrible, and hints at a “bigger picture” that’s even more terrible than we had first supposed. And that, folks, is what good horror should do. What, no sequel?

Salvage (2009)

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Atmosphere and the unpredictable flow of tension is the life’s blood of any Horrific Flick.

A successful horror movie is one that could be just as effective if it were staged as a play, and you can count Salvage among them. It’s a “trapped in the house” potboiler about a neighborhood under siege, from both a bloodthirsty (alien?) creature and a trigger-happy military—and we’re left to decide who’s the bigger threat.

Paranoia, infidelity, and xenophobia coat the air like cheap incense.

Much of the film’s running time is consumed with the domestic complications of Beth (Neve McIntosh, who’s a badass!), the hot divorced mother of Jodie (Linzey Cocker), a sullen teenager.

Are there any other kind?

Jodie gets dropped off by her dad to spend Christmas with her estranged mother who lives in a snug little cul-de-sac near the river Mersey.

A touching mother-and-child reunion ensues as Jodie walks in on Beth getting shagged by Kieran (Shaun Dooley), a bloke she met in a bar the previous evening. Disgusted with her slutty mum, Jodie runs off to stay with the neighbors. A-a-a-n-n-d-d, cue the monster as a mysterious container washes ashore a mere stone’s throw away.

The little community is soon crawling with soldiers shooting at anything that moves. A trickle of gore leaks out as a (largely offscreen) body count mounts. The messy mutant monster wreaks bloody havoc, leaving a parade of mangled souls in its wake.

For about a third of Salvage, you’re wondering if it’s just a movie about paranoia. Neighbors turn on each other, some seeing terrorists behind every bush. Or perhaps the military has staged a coup, and they’re rounding up citizens on Christmas to work in the mines.

Don’t laugh, it could happen. Director Lawrence Gough understands the times we live in very well.

The creeping tension is made all the worse due to the dicey relationship between Beth—a woman who seemingly chose a career in science (and getting shagged by blokes) over being a wife and mother—and Jodie, the prudish progeny who judges and resents her.

Like Ellen Ripley before her, it’s up to Beth to get in touch with her primal side before she can really earn the title of “mother.” Fortunately, there’s a vicious creature nearby that’s threatening her nest.