Scourge

Scourge (2008): If you have seen the movie “The Hidden”, you have seen the best movie of this genre but to be fair, this is not a bad little thriller. It seems an ancient evil is released when a local church burns down. Something gets into one of the firemen and soon he has a large appetite and lots of gas to pass. He starts bleeding from the eyes and staggering, clearly something is wrong with him. He attacks his recent squeeze and a ‘thing’ exits his mouth and penetrates into her and the cycle starts to repeat. The thing seems to have a preference to enter though the navel so all the gals with bare midriffs are at risk. The police think there is a murderer running around and naturally they have the wrong man in their sights. The two leads that learn what is really happening have a hard time convincing anyone about what they have seen. This is one of the strong points of the move as desperation starts to build when they learn it can start reproducing after it consumes a certain number of people. The police start to get a clue after they see their infected chief take 14 rounds to the chest, three hits from a car, and be at the center of a large explosion before going down for the count.

While there are some typical low budget fluffs like the blood on the hero’s face going from heavy to light and back again, they do a pretty fair job overall and the ‘monster’ is well done. While similar to “The Hidden” and the remake of “The Thing” which had visitors from space as the protagonists, this movie is a bit less specific bringing in a religious group of ‘thing’ hunters and also showing ancient publications indicating these things have been around for quite some time. The movie passed an R rating for: massive gas passing, massive burping and other methods of bodily gas removal, skin peeling, multiple ladies with bare midriffs, massively fat victim, navel fixation, excessive bloodletting, and for the flapping loose jaw on victim number 3.

Teeth

Teeth (2006): Most men are going to get a queasy feeling watching this flick while women may enjoy the situations depicted. Described as a provocative feminist horror movie, this tongue in cheek effort is more a set of multiple metaphors about the problems of coming of age for today’s stress filled teens. Our heroine is a star in the local town’s ‘abstain from sex’ program but she feels there may be something wrong with her. She is a buttoned down most proper teen with a heavy metal sex crazy older step brother (John Hensley of Nip Tuck fame) living next to a nuclear power plant. She becomes attracted to one of the other members of the group and repressed embers start to spark. When they swim to a remote cave, the boy gets a bit aggressive and…well, let’s just say, soon he isn’t half the man he thought he was. The poor lad tries to swim back but doesn’t make it. The gal is horrified and doesn’t know what happened since the sex education class in school has all pictures of the naughty bits blacked out so no one can see them. The funniest part of the film occurs when she goes to a doctor to have a physical and all is revealed along with additional loss of body parts. It seems she has a condition known as vagina dentata (look it up) which profoundly affects her sex life. The poor gal is terrified and soon several other guys are trying to comfort her with additional negative consequences. Her mom soon dies of cancer and her whole world seems to be collapsing around her. Her step brother has evil designs on her and the film’s conclusion shows her growing up and adjusting to her new found talent. The cast does an outstanding job and the lead ingénue is excellent as an innocent with a lot of extra teenage problems to overcome. The movie is rated R for: multiple breastulations, multiple finger and other extremity losses, gushing blood, screaming guys, screaming gals, screaming doctors, multiple conditions for which the blue pill will not help, and especially for the dog quietly snacking on a removed naughty bit.

The Cottage

The Cottage (2008): It seems the horror comedy field has become a cottage industry with films seemingly coming out of the woodwork in this genre and The Cottage appears to fit into this category as well. While The Cottage didn’t exactly come out of the woodwork, it seems rather to have come out of the Isle of Man, an unusual source to be sure. In the film, a pair of unusually inept crooks (they’re related so it must be in the genes) kidnap a nasty crime boss’ daughter in order to get enough money to get one brother out of the house so they can each live in their own digs. One is a veteran though lower echelon criminal, while his brother doesn’t usually get involved with the inner workings of the syndicate. In league with the equally dim step brother of the victim, the three truly mess up ‘the perfect crime’. The nasty boss sends the son with the ransom which turns out to be tissue paper and also sends his two favorite Korean hit men to follow and straighten everyone out, or more likely, plant them. However, the victim gets the upper hand and knocks out her step brother while one brother is making another call for more ransom in the local town. She then kidnaps the third kidnapper and forces him into the woods to make a break for it. Needless to say, they all wind up at a farmhouse with a most unpleasant resident who doesn’t take kindly to trespassers and is quite fond of using sharp farming implements. So what started out as a crime farce quickly lurches into a splatter comedy with multiple removals of bodily parts for just about everyone. However, the spirit of the film is set about right and quite a few guilty chuckles can be had for the intestinally hardy. The movie is unrated but would probably slash an R for: excessive brothers, ineffective Koreans, multiple head removals, multiple toe removals, pick in the leg, knife in the side, turkey in the straw, and for the extremely effective head butting by the ingénue.

Otis

Otis (2008): The ‘torture-porn’ genre of movies (see Hostel, Saw, and similars) has seen a large number of entries lately and naturally what must follow is a satire based on that genre. Enter Otis, a portly, partially pixilated, paranoid pizza delivery man with a penchant for perusing, partaking of and then permanently planting high school girls. Not only does Otis deliver large pizzas but is pretty large himself. He takes his prey to a locked room and talks to them until they are totally frustrated by his idiosyncrasies and they agree to do what he wants or they get chopped into smaller parts. The film is populated by parents with a tendency to take the law into their own hands, inept police, the worst FBI profiler in history, and a news media that appears to be trying to suck as much emotion out of the situation rather than just reporting the news. Once the ingénue escapes, the parents and her wastrel brother decide to punish the serial killer themselves and off the logical plain go the story. The movie sticks some sharp pins into the modern world as well as in the genre it is satirizing. The actor playing the lead felon, Otis, does an outstanding job and the cast as a whole gives it a good go. The movie is not rated but would probably kidnap and R for: cheerleader cutting, cheerleader electrocution, apathetic cheerleading, prom from hell, shovel to the head, five iron to the same head, blowtorch to the throat, toes in a blender, and especially for the unhelpful sympathetic utterances by the FBI profiler.

Asylum

Asylum (2007): This movie has been done before but then, haven’t most stories been told over and over again. The key to success is to be sure you mask the hoary age of your tale so it looks new. Alas, while the movie is professionally done and the acting is reasonably good, the movie gives you the feeling you’ve seen it all before. At least it takes the time for some character development so the victims have a little background explained before they expire. The story goes something like this: a group of students arriving at a small college are sentenced to stay in the partially completed ‘new’ dorm which was formerly run as an insane asylum. At this point déjà vuism cuts in immediately. It turns out each of the main characters is full of angst about their life and all harbor mental secrets. Our lead ingénue saw her nutzoid father kill himself and her older brother killed himself at this same college. And she wanted to get her higher education here? (Maybe she really is nuts too.)
Well, it seems she wanted to go to school here to help her get closure. Give me a break, everyone wants closure today. What the heck does that mean anyway? I know we have had closure of several restaurants in the area but that hasn’t helped the quality of life very much.
Sorry, I got off topic. She starts to meet some stereotypical college friends, has neurotic episodes where the necklace her mom gave tries to strangle her, and her shower fills up with water and she almost drowns. When her roommate hears her screaming, she is sitting at the bottom of the shower with the water running. At this point we, as well as she, suspect she may be nutzoid like her dear old dad. All we can do at this point is give thanks to the director for the extended nude shower scene.
Soon her friends are disappearing one by one and the campus police seem to be good only for standing around and telling everyone to stay calm. The old janitor who was a former patient tells them the tale about the evil doctor who felt lobotomy by driving spikes through your eyelids and into your brain was the answer to mental illness. Soon the movie deteriorates into the reincarnated doctor chasing the remaining students around the building. Not bad as far as these types of movies go but as I said, you will get a heavy portion of déjà vu while watching. The movie spiked an R for: underwater nude shower scene, multiple lobotomies, spikes to the eye, spikes to the heart, spikes to just about every part of the body imaginable, death by twine, barbed wire wrap, and especially for the de-souling of the villain.

The Cook

The Cook (2008): Ok gang, here is another sorority house massacre where the gals seem to cut classes and successfully resist all attempts at higher education. However, studying doesn’t seem to help much because the one brainy ingénue buys the farm too. For about the first hour of this doggie, only one killing occurs which our dim bulbs seem not to notice and they even unwittingly have her for lunch as a Sloppy Joe. During that long hour, the girls launch more F-bombs per minute than a platoon of drunken marines. What a potty mouthed group! The action finally starts up well into the last 1/3 of the film when the hungry cook (called that because he is from Hungary) proceeds to rapidly slaughter the rest of the lassies to insure meeting the time limit of this epic. I am convinced he was fully justified after having to listen to them talk for the first hour. The cook was somewhat interesting and well played for laughs by Mark Hengst. The gals were clearly only there to be killed and were about the dumbest group of people posing as college students that I’ve seen in a long while. And of course, the conservative religious student converts to the lesbonian side of the aisle shortly before meeting her maker. This one tried to be a splatter comedy but missed and was just not very good. The best parts of the movie were the clips shown during the closing titles. The movie was unrated but would probably gouge out an R for: multiple breastulations and bumulations, nuclear F-Bombing, appalling cast mortality, appallingly low entrance standards for college, involuntary cannibalism, rampant lesbonianism, rampant S&M, rampant thighs, rampant stab wounds, and especially for the extra tasty Sloppy Joes made with the other white meat and I don’t mean possum.