Friday 30 December 2011

Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid

Well, after basically a month of leaving this for dead for one reason or another, I'm finally back. This time with help from the internet! Shout-out to “Chuck Diesel” at the Leafs blog Pension Plan Puppets for linking me to this one 'cause there's no way I would have found it on my own and I will never forgive him for that. So now, everybody strap in for the 80s “classic” Zeisters! I know it doesn't sound that bad (weird, yes, but not bad per say), but it also goes by the far more ridiculous name (which is saying something) of “Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid”!
      For starters, I'm watching this online and it starts with a preview for itself. I'm not sure I have enough booze left in the house to make it through this movie. Next there's another preview for a version of Romeo & Juliet by “the director of The Toxic Avenger” (something they're apparently quite proud of) and has Lemmy from Motorhead in it and providing the music. Can't be much worse than the 80s skateboarding James Brolin Rome & Juliet called Thrashin' (that is an actual movie) and this one even seems to have a lesbian scene between Juliet and some random girl. I don't think they were too big on sticking with the characters and plot line of the source material considering... well pretty much everything that happens in this preview after it says it was based on Romeo & Juliet. Apparently Sublime also contributes music to this. What a mess. I'm just going to skip ahead to the actual movie but first I'll mention the next preview is of Sgt Kabuki-man, NYPD and rips off Michael Keaton's “I'm Batman” line. Now on to the full length train wreck.
      The opening scene has three guys, all 80s glasses and facial hair-ed up, laughing as they're standing in a church with a casket. A different room full of people are less enthused with whoever it is having died. Some shady “doctor”, although he may just be a drug dealer, is pushing various pills he's pulling out of his pockets on the fat one of the first three guys. There are too many Jewish stereotypes going on right now to name and we aren't even through the opening credits yet. The funeral ends with one of the three guys wife being pissed at him and the other two making obscene gestures at her as she drives off. Nothing but class.
      Up next is a scene in... some sort of acting class, I guess. I don't know, that's what I first thought when it cut to it but it's looking less like that and more like the guy brought a hooker to the backstage of a play. It's set in some warehouse and one of the guys from the start (Roger, it turns out) is dressed as a clown. His business partner comes in and bitches him out for not working so Roger sulks for a bit then gets around to weighing garbage bags worth of stuff. Side note, and probably what's least wrong with this movie: when he's recording the weight of whatever is in the bag, he says it's “27 pounds, 243 grams”. Pounds and grams are different systems of measurement. Yes I'm a nerd for pointing that out. That's also the complete end of the scene as we next see Roger waking up to a phone call and then getting out of an elevator in a totally different building, now dressed in a regular suit rather than the clown variety. The best part of this? He takes the elevator up to whatever floor, does a lap around the balcony, and then goes down some stairs to the floor below.
      I'm still not entirely sure what's going on here, as he's just gone into a room with someone he addresses as a judge and a few others and they tell him he's got too much time on his hands so they've found him a job. Was he not just at a job? Is he some spoiled rich kid living off a trust fund or some sort of conditional inheritance that these other people get to tell him he needs a job in order to keep receiving? Why can these people tell him what to do since he looks like he's about 35? None of these questions are answered and we go right to him showing up to work, walking into the boss's office, and announcing in his best “I can't act and that's why I'm in a movie called Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid” kind of way that “alright, [he's] here!” Naturally no one knows who he is.
      After that some other guy teaches him how to use a punch-clock and talks to him in a tone like he thinks Roger is mentally challenged before they start to go around showing what it is Roger's supposed to be doing. Also: damn wages in the 80s sucked. $3.80 an hour to start and the guy that's been there ten years is only making $7.20? I've worked some shit jobs in my time but that's pretty fucking bad. Hope a lot of that wealth trickles down quickly. He's also carrying around a cardboard box with the word “parts” written on it in marker at one point. Do you know of any company that just randomly labels boxes, in marker, with the generic word “parts”? Seems like that might lead to problems down the line.
      Anyway, it looks like he's decided to quit since he threw his coveralls in a dumpster, and now he's wearing a cowboy hat as he gets into his pick-up truck to leave. I will point out again for those that missed this: New York Jew, working in New Jersey, wearing a cowboy hat, driving a pick-up truck. I'm not sure if they were trying to counter some of the stereotypes from the first scene or just be a huge joke in itself with this one. Either way, he drives out to a “camp” which is referred to on its own sign as being for “retarded adults”. God bless the politically incorrect 80s. He sneaks in and finds one of the other guys from the start (his brother I assume, but I don't catch his name and can't be bothered to go back and check) and tells him that he needs a place to stay until his money situation gets sorted out. He then says he's really tired and asks if he can “sack out”. A term that I have a hard time believing was any less dirty in the 80s than it is now (although “busting makes me feel good” is in the Ghostbusters theme so who knows for sure). As if to illustrate that point even further, his brother is now standing in just his underwear telling Roger to “toss him a 'lude” to help him get back to sleep. “Sack out” indeed.
      The title character now makes his first appearance. As one of the other guys sleeping in the room, Roger steals Fat Guy's blanket, waking him up. Fat Guy plays it cool, though, and pretends to be asleep until Roger is all “sacked out” (I assume that's how you can use the term; either way he's asleep) and then steals Roger's briefcase that has all the drugs and whatever else in it. Not bad for a retarded adult. He takes the briefcase into the bathroom and starts looking through it. And by “looking through it” I mean he starts throwing handfuls of pills all over the floor. Then a bunch of other guys start to come in and soon enough it's a party in the bathroom and they're all playing with stuff from the briefcase. One's got a handful of pills to chop on, one has a gun so that's probably safe, and Fat Guy's got an electric razor and he's shaving his own head. Luckily, the brother (who is not a retarded adult but is just in charge of them and sleeping in the same room as them I guess) comes in to stop the madness. He bitches out Roger for leaving his shit lying around, and then Roger makes a Holocaust joke. While singing. Even given how stereotypical these guys are, I think even neo-Nazis are offended by this.
      Hey, you know what we were missing up till this point? An all-male group shower scene. Good thing the people behind this movie realized that too, otherwise we wouldn't have the scene where the camp director confronts them set in the showers. This results in the director kicking both brothers out... but not before they both speak and act in ways that would make you think they should both be there as patients. Oh, the other brother's name is Hugo, by the way. They finally mentioned it again. But yeah, as they're leaving, Fat Guy has stowed himself away in the back of the truck. Hilarity will no doubt ensue. Also, Roger says “zeisters” so they've mentioned the title. Still not sure what it means but he uses it like it's a curse of some kind.
After some really hasty and suspect logic, they tie Fat Guy to a tree and leave him there. Turns out they didn't tie him very well 'cause he breaks free pretty much instantly. If the stuff that's going on is meant to be the hilarity that ensued, it's falling pretty flat. Fat Guy attacks a gas station attendant and then there's some even more suspect logic which makes it seem like locking the attendant in the bathroom rather than letting him go is the smart thing to do to avoid jail (to them anyway, even after the booze I don't see how this makes any sense).
      Another fart joke and a change of clothes for Fat Guy later and they get to the other brother's (Harold) house. Harold is even fatter than Fat Guy. Not sure anyone making the movie was aware of that irony. Roger and Hugo go talk to their lawyer and, not surprisingly, he tells them to take Fat Guy back to the camp first thing in the morning. The problem with that is they left Fat Guy at Harold's and, by the time they get back, the place is a wreck. Harold, understandably, doesn't want anything to do with this mess, but the other two convince him that he needs to let them all stay for the night anyway. Hilarity was attempted, but did not ensue from any of this.
      The next scene has the Fat Guy sleeping on the floor between Roger and Hugo. Fat Guy, as you recall, was shaving his head earlier and has left himself with a patch on the top that, from the right angle, looks like it might be the beginning of a mohawk. He's also wearing an army coat in this scene. I can't help but think “wow, Travis Bickle really let himself go”. Anyway, back to the movie. Roger has a pegasus tattoo on his shoulder, and Fat Guy seems intrigued by this so he keeps poking at it until Roger wakes up and turns to look at him. They end up going out to get something to eat and Fat Guy eats too much too fast and ends up puking in the middle of the restaurant. Monty Python would be spinning in their graves if more than one of them were dead.
     They then go to a club where a band that sounds like the missing link between Stray Cats and Brian Setzer Orchestra minus any of the talent is playing. If anyone were to try and make up the worst looking band ever and have them play some rockabilly-style stuff, they would be hard pressed to top these guys. Naturally there's a keyboard player (it was the 80s after all, can't have a band without a keyboard or two) and he's trying way too fucking hard to look like he's contributing to the music. It's kinda like watching bass players nowadays. They try so hard and yet so few people care. Ha ha, the sax player thinks he's in the E Street Band. He's really not and is really, really white. Fat Guy seems to enjoy it, though, even playing air sax along with him. The performance ends and I guess Roger knows these guys since he and Fat Guy get backstage and are hanging out with the band. Notably absent from this scene are any drugs or groupies. Go figure.
      I guess it was just a mid-show break as the band gets back to playing their particular brand of third-rate rockabilly, but this time Fat Guy has come out of his shell. He's out on the dance floor flailing about like it's 20 years later and he's at a rave. And the people love him! He could have his choice of 80s chicks, but who does he go for? Why, a mohawk-sporting punk rock girl, that's who. He zeroes in on her, gives the creepiest “I'm not really gonna rape you... as long as you say yes” smiles ever, and she can't help but blush and look away. She's his. Doesn't amount to anything, though. The song ends and it's a cut to Fat Guy and Roger walking together in a park. It's at this point that Roger tries to train him like you would a dog. Also, there's about half an hour left and he's gone a lot less “nutzoid” than the title implies.
      We cut to the next morning where Harold, the fattest person in the picture I remind you, comes out of his room in just his underwear (try to get that mental picture out of your head) to find that it's just his two brothers sleeping together on the floor and Fat Guy has disappeared along with Roger's briefcase. We find both at a diner where Fat Guy is once again eating more than he can manage faster than he can handle. When it comes time to pay, he just throws down a bunch of bills causing the waitress to ask “are you crazy, mister?” Hilarious. He then gets in a cab and, when asked where he's going, pulls out a porn magazine and holds up a picture with two naked girls in it. I like his style.
      Having come to his destination, Fat Guy gets out of the cab but doesn't pay. The driver takes offence to this. Fat Guy throws the porn magazine at him. The driver (apparently) takes this as payment. Did the 80s really work like this? Anyway, the random porn store he was dropped off at being closed, Fat Guy then approaches a random woman standing on the sidewalk waiting for a cab. Why she didn't take the one he just got out of is a matter for further discussion that I won't go into. She doesn't take kindly to his advances (also worth noting, he's lost his shirt at this point so it's just pants, jacket, and a snazzy hat for Fat Guy) and slaps him.
      Next on his adventures, Fat Guy walks into the middle of an inter-racial marriage ceremony. That probably seemed pretty edgy at the time. He ends up hitting one of the over-age choir boys over the head with Roger's briefcase. This seems to cause a commotion in the church. A few people try to fight him, and that's when Fat Guy really goes nutzoid. The police, brought on by the random sidewalk woman, show up at this point as well. After a brief run, Fat Guy locks himself in a phone booth and covers his ears, refusing to come out. After the cop tries to talk him out, Fat Guy responds by pulling a wad of cash out of his pocket and putting it up to the booth window. At this point, the best part of this movie happens: the random sidewalk woman, upon seeing the cash, literally says “I didn't know he had money” with a look on her face like that made all the difference. A shirtless retard comes up to her out of the blue and dances in front of her on the sidewalk and all it takes is a bit of cash and everything is fine. Fantastic.
      Complete side note: by far the worst acting in this movie goes to the guy playing Hugo. He's like a poor attempt at a bad B-movie actor's portrayal of a terrible Woody Allen impersonator trying to act.
      As Fat Guy gets out of the phone booth and the brothers show up, the briefcase gets knocked open. The drugs on the sidewalk is fine, even in front of the cops I guess, but when Fat Guy picks up the gun, that's when people start to worry. Seriously, a briefcase full of drugs just opened up on the streets of New York and the five or six cops standing right there only start to care when the guy picks up the gun in a totally non-threatening manner. Fat Guy goes back in the phone booth and Roger tries to talk him out of it. When he does manage it, Roger makes the mistake of struggling with Fat Guy to try to get the gun. It goes off and the cops “drop the fat one”. Then Hugo runs in and does his “acting” about how terrible it is that someone could have shot someone that's mentally challenged. The irony in this being that, 25 years later, there are still people being executed (legally) in the U.S. Who are similarly handicapped.
      But yeah, enough politics for this blog. Fat Guy ends up in surgery getting repaired and Roger does his best to ensure infection by popping his head into the operating room (seriously? It's just a swinging door?) without a mask on. The best part: the nurse that kicks him out makes it sound like he's done this several times before. Why doesn't someone lock the door?
      Also, after some more heavy handed crap, it turns out there's an answer to why Roger was talking to a judge and they forced him to get a job. He's on parole for something. Why didn't I think of that at the start? Fuck I'm dumb sometimes. Anyway, in an interview room the next day, Roger and his business partner/lawyer are talking. I'd like to point out that, despite this being either a jail or a police station, no one bothers to actually close the door for the room they're talking in. Seriously, there's a good inch or two between the door and the jamb for the entire scene. Obviously the first order of business is to talk about Fat Guy rather than what got Roger in jail again, so that's what they do. Turns out he's being sent for psychiatric evaluation as possibly being “criminally insane”. I actually would like to know if that's a real term or if it's just used in movies and TV when they want to lock someone up and make it sound scary. This scene itself, by the way, is an exercise in who can fake laugh the longest and make it the most awkward for anyone foolish enough to still be watching. All they do is laugh and there is no goddamn reason for it.
      Cut to Hugo's apartment where Roger is apparently living now. Hugo comes back from work and, quite naturally, goes to take a piss. What's more than a little unnatural is when his brother Roger, who is wearing only a towel for reasons unknown, gets up and goes to stand in the bathroom doorway to watch him piss. All that aside, Roger is upset because he's the one that got Fat Guy put into the “nut house” so he drives up to whatever place Fat Guy is in and tries to visit him. The nurse is having none of that, but thankfully she turns away for a few seconds so Roger gets to sneak in and the nurse doesn't bother to ask questions about it because... well I don't even care anymore so why should she? Whatever the reason, he sneaks past her and then sneaks past some other attendants to the ward while one of them is telling a needlessly racist joke (in it's entirety: a black guy walks into a Cadillac dealer and the salesman comes up to him and says “so you're thinking of buying a Cadillac, huh?” and the black guy says “nope, I'm planning on buying a Cadillac, I'm thinking about pussy”. Why'd the guy have to be black?). It's also a good thing the key to secure wards in a mental hospital are left hanging on a string right outside the door otherwise this plan of Roger's might not work.
      Roger then finds Fat Guy (who for some reason needed to show his ass to the camera in this scene), and gives him the package that he'd brought with him: a Hulk action figure. It's then that Roger is discovered and dragged away. Life proceeds to go on as Roger goes back to the job he tried to quit before this wackiness started. He then proceeds to give $20,000 to the guy that was showing him around as a bribe so he would punch Roger's card in and out each day for a year. He then walks out and meets up with his crooked lawyer who tells him that there's a big score going down that night and all Roger has to do is be there to pick it up. Naturally, all Roger wants to talk about is Fat Guy. The lawyer doesn't like this but Roger tells him that he loves Fat Guy (like a brother I assume) and walks out on the prosperous career of drug dealing that his lawyer offered. Also, Roger family's last name is Morloch. Not really relevant but just figured I'd point out it serves the double purpose of sound Jewish and evoking images from The Time Machine. Seriously, every time I heard any of them referred to as “Morloch” I thought of blue monsters with yellow eyes.
      Aaaaannnnd it's at this point I'm going to stop commenting. The movie's last scene involves a helicopter assisted escape and Roger dressed like Che Guevara. Seriously. Nothing I can say would top that. None of this is explained, by the way. Apparently helicopter's are just lying around waiting to be rented in order to break mental patients out of their hospital. Granted a guy actually did escape a French prison by use of a helicopter, but in this case... wow. That's the end too, by the way. No thought of what happens afterwards when Roger realizes there's a reason Fat Guy was in a camp for “adult retards” to begin with, nothing. They escape and live happily ever after, I guess.
      Also, it's not “Hugo” at all, it's “Doogle” according to the credits. How could I have made that mistake? Although, considering the fat guy didn't really go “nutzoid” at all, I think we'll call it even between me and the people that made this movie. ...Although they might have the upper hand considering I sat through this whole thing.

Friday 25 November 2011

Scarecrow Gone Wild

Hello again, everyone. I'm back for another drunken, rambling review on this half-assedly maintained blog that no one pays any attention to. Meanwhile, I continue to slip closer and closer towards becoming a human beach ball physically and continue to be be nearly incapable of genuine social interaction with anyone in the real world. I need to re-evaluate my priorities. But, while we wait for that to never happen, here's 2004's “Scarecrow Gone Wild”:
      First off, if the title wasn't awesome enough for you, prepare to be rocked even harder because it turns out the first build actor is none other than Ken Shamrock. Yes, the Ken Shamrock. This is going to be something else. Opening credits over a cornfield and then we jump right into the action with a random blonde girl running madly through said field without even the decency to wait until the credits had finished. She must be in some serious trouble. Looks like she is because there appears to be Bigfoot chasing after her. At least... it looks like Bigfoot for the few split seconds he's on screen to start with. Let's see how this plays out because, if there's one thing Hollywood knows, it's that adding a crossover aspect totally makes any movie better. Bigfoot and a killer Scarecrow? That's pretty much halfway to a Nightmare Wizard Of Oz (Bigfoot taking the place of the Lion, of course). Also, mental note: look into whether or not there actually is a “Nightmare Wizard Of Oz” movie and either review it or write it.
      It turns out not to be Bigfoot after all. So that's the first time this movie has let me down from what it could have been. There does look to be a little bit more stuffing inside than the average scarecrow gets, though. Probably need some pretty heavy duty posts to hold him up in the field, if you get what I'm saying. Also: the girl seems to have had her face frozen in the same expression as, whether she's running through the field at top speed, collapsing into a random clearing in the field exhausted from her run, or nervously looking around for any trace of her attacker, she's always got the same stupid look on her face and I'm not totally sure it's appropriate to any of those situations.
      After running a bit more, she comes to a big cross in the middle of the field which appears too be standing on top of a pyramid of hay bales (don't question it, just keep drinking). This is probably supposed to be very symbolic of something or other except that it's pretty common knowledge that you need a cross to hold a scarecrow up. She's pretty much ran all the way around for who knows how long just to end up right back in the middle of the scarecrow's living room. Naturally, she climbs the bales and goes up to the cross. This ends exactly as you would expect. The scarecrow slits her throat with one slice from (what I assume is) a mini-scythe, and she “falls down” (a pretty well controlled fall) clutching her throat as we get a good look at the scarecrow for the first time. I really rather we didn't. Somebody obviously just went to Value Village or someplace like that and grabbed what was labelled as a scarecrow Halloween costume and tossed that on for the movie. Disappointing. I mean, I know it's a low budget and all, but when you can't even be bothered to do your title character's costume right? That's just sad.
      Oh hey, turns out this was all just a story some college jocks were telling to a group of guys they have tied up, gagged, and stripped down to their underwear in the shower. That... doesn't even make sense from a “hazing ritual in a movie” standpoint. Oh hey, Ken Shamrock shows up as the coach. He can't act. At all. He doesn't approve of hazing... until he gets the two ringleaders in his office and tells them he was hazing people before they were born but they shouldn't do it because his job is on the line. Then there's some baseball metaphors to show that these guys are all about sports, and the “best player” on the team suggests they throw the other guy (who is the team captain) under the bus since they only need to make an example of one of them. Great team plays like that are why you aren't the captain. But I guess no harm not even doing that because Mr. Shamrock decides to look the other way after he gets the guy's word that there won't be anymore hazing.
      We then cut to that same Best Player walking down the hallway and ending up in the bathroom where he finds his roommate with a needle in his hand. It's okay, though, it turns out it's just insulin, not any “drugs” or whatever. Plus, the BP is actually such a great guy, he helps his roommate out by giving him his shot. Look at the different aspects of his personality come into play.
      Hey look, some equally blank-faced college girls as the one that started the movie. They're nattering on about something or other, it's probably not important since they're just there to serve as eye candy to the other jocks who are making the new recruits do a bunch of push-ups. Also, one of the girls seems to be the BP's girlfriend and it's implied that the roommate has the hots for one of the others. And now, some random tits from a girl that will probably never be seen again in the movie.
      Another random happening: some guy carrying a guitar over his shoulder stops in to interact with the main characters out of nowhere only to walk away just as mysteriously as he appeared. He's wearing a shirt with a name and number on the back, though, so he'll probably be seen again as one of the baseball team. That whole scene was there to show that the roommate is pretty shy and awkward around girls and he can't bring himself to even go talk to the girl he likes. Even though his super-jock roommate is trying to hook him up with her and even though she seems to at least like the idea that he's interested in her. Although what she seems to mind even less is suggesting her and the BP go off somewhere else while the roommate is headed into the back of a truck with the other rookies.
      OH MY GOD! The Team Captain just throw a gas can out of the window of the truck as they were driving down the road and nailed some random kid in the head with it! This movie is awesome! Ken Shamrock disapproves, in his completely expressionless way, but I guess he can't do anything about what his players do when they're driving on a road right in front of him and throwing gas cans at people? Must be a disciplinary grey area.
      Turns out the BP and the girl were just going off to do some running around campus. Nothing wrong with that, totally innocent. Oh wait, turns out that's not the case as they end up making out in a gazebo. Do college campuses even have gazebos? Either way, that's still pretty slutty on both their parts since he's got a girlfriend (...maybe...?) and she... actually, she's pretty clean in this case. She knows the other guy likes her but if he doesn't even have the balls to talk to her why should she stand around waiting on him? BP's kinda a douche for sniping his boy's girl, though.
      Back to the cornfield from the story where the baseball team and the other groupies (seriously? Baseball groupies? No wonder the girls seem a little less than top notch in the looks department; they're down the list from the football and basketball groupies; still decently hot, though) are dragging the rookies up to the scarecrow in order to keep going with that hazing they promised not to do. One of the rookies decides not to take having beer poured on him anymore, and throws one of the worst fake punches in the history of film at the Captain. Seriously, not only does he not even come close to connecting with it, the sound of the “impact” goes off just as he's raising his fist to throw it. This may actually have been the roommate that did that. Everyone in this movie is so generic looking it's hard to tell one apart from the other. Anyway, they tie him up to the scarecrow and then the Captain decides the best thing to do is pour some more beer on the guy's bare chest and lick it off. Wow. And since that was kinda gay and we wouldn't want to disturb anybody in the audience with guy-on-guy stuff, we cut to a totally heterosexual sex scene between BP and the Red Head. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention before: the one that looked like BP's girlfriend is a Brunette, the one that the roommate wanted is a Red Head, and there's also a Black Haired one and a Blonde. That is pretty much the only way you can tell the girls apart. Seriously, all these people have the same body type. But yeah, this is a sex scene where everyone keeps their underwear on, and we quickly go back to the corn field where it turns out to be getting dark all of a sudden and the team is now leaving the roommate tied to the scarecrow overnight. They do relent after they drive out of the corn field, though, and decide to call BP to get him to come get his roommate since it's “getting cold out and something might happen”. BP doesn't answer, though, because he's still busy banging Red. That's actually pretty impressive since it was mid-afternoon when they started and it's now completely dark out. One of the girls literally asks “are we there yet?” about the beach as they're standing in the middle of the road just outside the cornfield, and at that point Captain decides to send the other rookies to go untie Roommate so that all the rookies can walk to the beach while he, the rest of the team, and the girls drive there. Obviously he realized how stupid one of the girls is and wants to get somewhere where he can just bang her and not have to listen to her as quickly as possible and this is a better option than waiting for BP to answer his phone and come pick up Roommate himself. I honestly don't blame him.
      Unfortunately for everyone else (but fortunate for anyone that wanted to start seeing people get sliced up), some crazy things have started to happen to Roommate as he's left tied to the scarecrow. Crazy “inverted colours video effects” type things. Seriously, that's the type of budget they were working with, I guess. In the midst of this, the Scarecrow opens his eyes... although it's hard to tell since it's all in negative... and he's wearing a cheap Halloween mask so you can't see his eyes so well anyway... and he's not supposed to have eyes in there to open in the first place since he's just supposed to be a regular scarecrow. Either way, the Scarecrow magically transports himself down to the ground where he looks up at his cross and we get to see Roommate posed like he's Jesus and just hanging there, possibly dead from what was maybe an hour or two out in a field.
     Now the three other rookies are wandering around the field looking for Roommate and bitching about how cold it is (remember, they're still having a beach party and everyone is running around in T-shirts and shorts so “cold” is a relative term) when one of them hears something. Turns out... it's just him farting. Which is all fun and games... until the Scarecrow grabs him and pulls him into the corn stalks. I guess the lesson here is: never fart in public. After that the other two (who had run off and so didn't see or hear their friend get killed) find Roommate hanging off the cross either dead or barely alive. Using the sound logic that, if they called the cops, they'd miss out on the beach, they decide to call the coach instead. Everyone brace yourself for another dose of Ken Shamrock on screen. ...Guess not, answering machine. So they leave a message basically confessing to the hazing and only then go up to cut Roommate down. Scarecrow kills them both in what has to be some of the worst acted and worst made-up (seriously, the “intestines” on the one guy look like they were just sitting on top of his perfectly good shirt) deaths I've seen so far in this blog.
      After another two or three rounds in bed with Red, BP finally checks his phone and hears the message the team left. This prompts him to jump into action to go save Roommate and Red comes along with him because if there's one thing a guy that's been hazed wants to see it's the girl he likes showing up still flushed from the quickie in the car she had with his roommate. Also, there's the worst dialogue so far in the movie as the two of them are lying in bed. It's pretty bad. Anyway, they take a hell of a lot less time to get to the scarecrow cross than the rookies did, and when they get there they both actually seem pretty concerned about finding Roommate tied up and unconscious/dead. This is easily the best acting so far in the movie. A point made slightly less valid when it takes less than a second to get the ropes undone and Roommate off the cross. Oh hey, looks like those same random tits from before did show up again. Let me explain: Red called the guy that's banging the Girl Who Never Wears A Top because he's a doctor (and he ex-brother-in-law, it's a plot point from the first time he was on screen that's not worth getting into) and Roommate is in insulin shock so he tells her where the nearest hospital is and that he'll meet her there and we all get to see some fake tits again. Everybody wins... except Roommate who is in insulin shock and dying.
It's also worth noting that the term “hospital” is not used in the movie. They call it a “trauma centre”. Anyone watching the movie would call it “an unfinished house that still has plastic sheets covering holes in the wall but also happens to have a stretcher in a hallway”. Working on a tight budget sucks. Also, while Roommate is in the care of Dr. Ex-Brother and Nurse Topless (she's actually not topless in this scene), it's at this point that Red and BP start fighting because they were banging rather than looking out for their friend... with some terrible dialogue.
      It's now day for no reason and we're at the beach with everyone else because fuck continuity. And the Black Haired Girl decides to take her top off to tan because why not? Seriously, there's nothing said by anyone else or her to lead up to it, she just tosses a blanket down beside Blonde (who keeps her top on, by the way), sits down and takes it off. Then the camera cuts to a couple of the jocks and they're busy putting a spiked pole in the sand and literally no one seems to be looking at the topless chick. That's kinda sad that her cry for attention went so unnoticed that the guys would rather take turns playing with pieces of wood than look at boobs. Good thing Captain is there to point out the topless girl that is literally right in front of them. They also say something about wondering why the rookies didn't make it to the beach but it's fine since the rookies couldn't find them with a compass or something. Plus it's right in the middle of that point that they get told there are boobs in front of them so they pretend to stop caring about boys and pretend to start lusting after boobs (I can read the subtext). Doesn't matter, though, since it turns out Topless was just doing it to try and catch BP's attention. BP, however, is the only guy there not looking at her because he's back with his girlfriend Brunette. I should probably mention that it was told before that Topless Black Haired girl and BP had hooked up one time before the movie takes place. While he was with Brunette. So yeah, BP pretty much only has to tap Blonde to “hit for the cycle” (see what I did there? It's a baseball term).
      Also, just as a side rant, something that's bugged me so far in this movie: the “varsity” baseball team seems to consist of a total of nine players. That's including the three rookies that were killed and Roommate who is in the partially built Habitat For Humanity wing of a trauma centre. Why did any of them put up with the hazing? Seriously. I mean, I'm by no means an expert, but I know that a baseball team needs a minimum of nine players and that's if you expect your one pitcher to pitcher the entire game every game. Captain threatened the rookies with benching them if they didn't show up for the push-ups part of the hazing, but who else was he going to play? Also, that's not really his call, it's the coach that makes line-up changes. Anyway, enough plot holes for now, back to the movie.
      Captain picks up a cooler full of... melted ice and nothing else, I guess, and starts chasing Blonde around with it before throwing the water at her and then picking her up and carrying her into the water. This leaves the semi-naked girl alone because the other guys are too busy watching Captain to pay attention to a topless girl (remember the subtext I was reading?). Black Hair starts to hear the same music the rookies did before Scarecrow showed up coming from over top of the rocks. After putting her top back on, BP shows up asking if they're still cool and still friends. I only point this out because it means that, at some point, he left his girlfriend to go over and talk to her while she was still topless. That is a pretty damn clueless girlfriend... although she did seem not to notice that BP and Red were both not there the night before so I guess that's kinda her thing. Also, as she came into the foreground for the first time in the movie while BP and Black Hair were talking, turns out she's not really a Brunette, just a dark blonde. Still calling her “Brunette”, though.
      ...I may have to backtrack on some of this. Remember how I said that “all these people look alike” or whatever? Turns out that's really true because the guy at the beach that has the girlfriend and still banged Black Hair may not have been BP at all but some other guy that looks exactly like him (to be fair, watching this on my computer and it's pretty piss-poor quality video) because BP and Red are still sitting in the “trauma centre” waiting on what happens to Roommate. Seriously, all the girls have the same figure and look aside from their hair colour (and the girlfriend is a lot more tanned than the rest) and the guys all look the same except for their hair and the fact that one of them is black. Also, really, Hollywood? Only one black character? Never mind. Anyway, BP and Red have a heart-to-heart standing over Roommate's bed and it turns out BP and Roommate are basically brothers and, back when they were teenagers, Roommate stopped BP from jumping off a bridge in front of a train while BP was “doped up on... pretty much everything”. It's worth noting that the movie shows Red feeling more sorry for how things went than BP which just makes him look like even more of a douche since it's gone from banging the girl his roommate wanted to banging the girl his brother wanted and... I'm just going to stop there. I'll also say, though, that in this scene Red keeps saying things... but there are no words picked up on the audio track. It's BP's story told, with inter cuts of Red's face with her lips moving and words being said only... nothing. Great technical work. Whatever she might have been saying, they end up deciding it's time to go whoop some ass down at the beach. Ken Shamrock, who only now hears the message left for him, also decides to go whoop some ass... in an acting style that would make even Vince McMahon cringe it's so bad. Ladies and gentlemen: shit is about to get real.... I hope.
      You know what this movie was missing before now? A “Top Gun” reference. Yup, there's a volleyball scene for no reason. I can't put it quite into context since I wasn't old enough in the 80s to understand, but I think this music is worse than in Top Gun but it's also slightly less homo-erotic since there are girls involved in the game rather than just shots of Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise. Oh yeah, Wal-Mart either paid for part of this movie to be made or sued them and got paid because the ball they're using is a Wal-Mart smiley face volleyball. Trust me, I stocked shelves there for two non-consecutive summers while I was in school. I know what those things look like. Okay, even without proper context for how bad the song in Top Gun might have been, this one is worse. It does not fit at all. Also, there are several continuity errors in how their shots go. The physics just don't work. Also: Captain outs looks-like-BP for banging Black Haired Girl behind Brunette's back, Brunette runs off, not-BP runs after her, Black Hair runs off in the other direction for some reason, and the Lone Black Guy returns from surfing this whole time (I guess) to ask “what did I miss?”. I'll let you make your own judgements about how necessary a character he is at this point.
      Not-BP catches up to Brunette and he tries to talk it out with her but they start hearing the Scarecrow music. In a rare moment of sense this movie makes, they both assume it's just one of their friends screwing around so Not-BP goes to chase them away so he and Brunette can talk in private. He says he'll be back in “two seconds” and literally two seconds later she starts calling after him and goes to investigate where he is. Side note: I'm almost positive (but I can't be sure, the actresses are that interchangeable) it was her voice that asked “are we there yet?” while they were stopped on the side of the road. She finds him holding what can only be described as... I can't even describe what it looks like. Suffice to say, it looks like the special effects department tried to make it look like his insides were outside without remembering that there needs to be an opening on his outside for his insides to get out. Also: she acts like a TV actress playing a character auditioning for a part in a horror movie where she sees her boyfriend lying with his guts torn out and is really bad at it. Only not as hipsterly ironic. This seems to be her actual talent level. Wow.
      Scarecrow grabs Brunette and she... offers absolutely no resistance at all as he drags her across the beach. At the same time, Roommate is having a seizure in his “trauma centre” bed. Then Scarecrow lets go of her (it's the only possible explanation since she wasn't kicking and yet he let go of her feet) and she tries to run off. It doesn't work so well. She falls for no reason, waits there for Scarecrow to walk up to her and pick up a rock to bash her head in. Which he does.
     Back to the beach. Captain and Black Guy are burying Guitar Guy in sand because he's asleep. Including sand breasts. At which point BG tells Captain he'll “always love [him]” (in this case that's actually in context and the one non-gay thing about this scene) and Captain calls him a “fag”. Immediately after which Captain says Guitar Guy “looks hot” and looks up at BG... meaningfully (I can read subtext... but don't have to for this one). The response of “maybe he needs a hose-down!” (word for word) speaks for itself.
     A decent entrance for BP and Red happens (they find Not-BP still encased in sand after being pissed on by the other two and BP says the line “you look pissed”) and we cut to Blonde and Black Hair talking again. Captain comes up to try and apologize (the two angles were shot at two different times...just a technical fact you notice if you've ever tried to make a movie before), but she doesn't go for it. Then the worst “hold me back while I pretend to want to fight... no I mean it, hold me back!” scene in the history or the world. Not just movies, the world. Seriously, even The Drew Carey Show episode where Ryan and Oswald asked Drew if they could stop pretending to hold him back was more convincing than this. And now it turns into a PSA about diabetes. Seriously. Symptom list, etc etc. OH SNAP! Turns out... a lot of minor details come out that makes it so no one involved feels like they're to blame for what happened to Roommate. Guess who's going to end up dead? That's right, everyone that thinks they're not to blame! (wild prediction, I haven't seen what happens next but... come on, you all know what's coming).
      Brunette dies next. She... she really deserved it the way she acted leading up to it. I'm not going to go into details about it because... MY GOD is it ever stupid. Roommate has another seizure while it happens, though. That's worth mentioning for those that haven't picked up on what's going on (it's a horror movie, remember, not real life, make the connection accordingly).
      Hours later, someone finally notices that Not-BP and Brunette are gone. It's brushed off, though. Goddammit college kids are stupid. Blonde even congratulates Red for hooking up with BP even though she knows Roommate was looking at Red before.
      Anyway, set the scene: BP and Captain are making up as friends by hitting baseballs into the ocean. Blonde and Red are gossiping about Red's time with BP, and Guitar Guy and Black Guy are standing around on the other side of the fire with BG wanting to hear the song GG wrote.
      I take back what I said about “Backwoods Bloodbath”, I guess the “two guys for every girl” ratio happens in other movies too. The problem here being that at this point GG starts playing and singing for everyone. And they all crowd around. And it becomes even more obvious that the actor playing Guitar Guy cannot play the guitar. He can also not sing, or at least, not lip sync to the track they dubbed over because he is way off a few times. ...and they play the whole song through. You know what the camera sees while they spend three minutes on this song (which is only half-decent to begin with)? It sees the two girls “accidentally” bumping into each other and then shots of them together. It shows shots of BP and Captain together. And it shows BG alone, but looking longingly over at GG. I don't even need to read subtext for this one. The couples have been established. The only problem? Scarecrow shows up, picks up one of the spikes that was used for the post of the volleyball net, and goes all Hate-Crime on the happy couples by impaling Guitar Guy. Bad acting ensues (although, that's really another relative term at this point of this movie). Also worth noting: after GG dies, Scarecrow's next victim is BG who, you remember, was GG's “partner” in the mix. No one tries to stop Scarecrow while he's choking BG to death. It's only after Scarecrow has evened the gender numbers that they start to fight back. Scarecrow goes after Red next and BP and Captain knock him away so that BP can carry Red away to safety as Captain and Blonde run away with them.
      Subtext aside, for no reason at all Red falls down as they're running over a sand done. This causes everyone to stop and try to help her. The idea that it might be a “spinal injury” is floated around even though that is fucking retarded since she was just running and then decided to fall over for no reason. Whatever, they all seek shelter under a lifeguard station on the beach. Then... some of the weakest bullshit I have ever heard for “boogie man” monsters. I won't even repeat the back story they try to give Scarecrow because, even though it kinda fits why Roommate hooks up with him (spoiler alert... but you were smart enough to know that already), it is just... for fucks sake! I'm drinking on purpose for your movie and even I can see the problems with your story. Think about that.
      And now, Ken Shamrock acting. The greatest horror of them all. Luckily, we're reprieved from that by Ken Shamrock finally doing what he's at least a little bit good at (i.e.: fighting) and kicking Scarecrow in the face and then throwing him into the ramp. So... yeah.. it just became a pro wrestling match. Even though he's the good guy... common sense says bet against Shamrock.
      He gets choked out.
      The two couples are still running away, though. After a while they end up on a road with a truck coming and surely this is some help... Or just Scarecrow driving a truck so he can run over Blonde? Really? Because there are so many reasons that shouldn't make sense... and yet... nope, still doesn't. Good thing she isn't actually dead from it... oh wait, that's just the crappy effects. I guess she actually is dead. Captain tries to act for a while: It's not very effective.
      The three left get back to the unfinished house of horrors (with attached trauma unit). Captain makes the inevitable post-Scream horror movie comment (in this case: “if you say 'let's split up' I will bitch slap you” in reference to the horror movie rule pointed out in Scream how anyone that says “let's split up” get killed) and then... They walk down the abandoned and possibly Scarecrow-infested hallway armed with nothing but Captain holding a fire extinguisher, BP holding a pocket LED flashlight, and Red holding nothing but BP's hand. Fantastic. Still 23 minutes to go.
      They get to Roommate's room only to find... he's not there! Dun dun dun! They don't play that music in the movie, but the acting makes it seem like they might as well have been that cliched. After that they end up finding Roommate, still under the care of Nurse Topless and Dr. Ex-Brother a few rooms down. Having visited a friend in the hospital a few times, I know for a fact that switching rooms without telling anyone that might show up to visit them is pretty much standard policy.
      Newest best scene in the movie:
Nurse Topless is running down to try to restart the generator because the power is out. As she's running off, Captain calls after her “Hey be careful! It's dangerous!”
She responds: “I know this place like the back of my hand!” foolishly assuming he meant to be careful because of the dark.
Frantically, he cries after her: “I mean there's a homicidal scarecrow... out... there...”
      Captain realizes how ridiculous that sounds and accepts that she's likely going to die because this movie is retarded and even given that she is rushing into certain death. He's right, by the way. She dies pretty much as soon as she's out of sight of the rest of the cast.
      After that, we get back to the rest of the cast pretending they're on ER. Heart failure! Shock him! No response! Do it again! Etc etc. In all fairness, Captain predicts his own death because they send him out to go turn the power on... which Nurse Topless couldn't do before him. It's kinda funny that he dies reminding everyone it's a bad idea to split up in horror movies. BUT WAIT!
      Captain's not dead yet. The team is still shocking Roommate back to life and, whenever he gets a bit of a heartbeat going, Scarecrow looses power. So now when Captain has Scarecrow's hands around his neck he gets a reprieve because of the defibrillator. But... there's only one more charge left and... they restart Roommate's heart and Scarecrow collapses. Captain, after BP and Red rush out to see him, says that “it was like the two of them [Scarecrow and Roommate]were one and the same”. Everyone goes in to watch as Roommate wakes up and... For no reason Roommate's heart stops again.
      Dr. Ex goes running for supplies and suddenly finds Scarecrow waiting for him... although at this point “Scarecrow” looks like he has feathers on most of his cheap-ass Halloween costume and the mask doesn't even look the same as the start of the movie. He looks like... he looks like the holographic character from Worf's training program. The Green skull guy. Anyone who's ever watched Next Generation knows who I'm talking about. Fuck y'all if you don't. Either way, Scarecrow overpowers Dr. Ex and kills him with... a beaker full of acid?
      After that the rest of them decide to wheel Roommate down into the centre of all this shit. There's a rather large fight scene (one might even call it a “boss fight” if this was a video game... or people reading this were that nerdy), that ends with defibrillators being used (though not as you might expect) for the win and then...

THREE WEEKS LATER

     Pretty much look-a-likes for the girls from before invite Roommate to a party while Red and BP make-out a ways away from that. Roommate accepts but then goes and talks with Red and BP about it, and the two of them invite him to go share a bottle of champagne with the coach. Ken Shamrock can apparently survive even WWE-style beat downs from scarecrows (hard to see why he couldn't; after all, he could loose to pretty much everyone else out there in pro wrestling and UFC). Also: I think everyone is acting down to his level at this point because... well, there's no other excuse.
      And then... HORROR MOVIE ENDING! With all the implausible turns of events (and coming from this movie, that's saying something) that implies. I'll give them this much credit: it actually looked like they were just wrapping shit up for the last ten minutes. Not so much. They may not have played it well, but they played it all in. Even despite how little sense even the writers can make of why this shit is going on. Someone at the studio said “give it a twist at the end” and the writers tried their damnedest to make it happen... at least, that's how I hope it happened. If the script actually called for this last fight in the first draft... may god have mercy on us all.

Thursday 3 November 2011

Return To House On Haunted Hill

Sorry for not posting for th epast couple weeks but I was on holidays from work and out of movies on hand to review so I took a little bit of a break here.  But, in order to make up for it, I present to you a review that's twice as long and half as funny as the others.  Wait, what?

      So fun fact: looks like they made a sequel to House On Haunted Hill (the 1999 version, not the 1959 one). And since it's on here, I bet you can guess the quality of it is. Let's begin.
      We start with opening credits much like the first movie in that they look like they should be in a NIN or Marilyn Manson music video. That may in fact be the highlight of the movie. After that it starts with the sounds of a shower and an alarm clock starting to buzz at five. Then a rather good looking woman picks up her phone to a message from her sister. She then promptly deletes it without letting it finish. Seems pretty harsh, but since there's soft music playing in the background of all this she's probably the hero so there's gotta be a good reason. Cut to the woman getting to work and we find out she works for a porn magazine.
      She talks to one of the photographers and we cut to a college lecture about some medieval demon worshipping cult. You'll also notice that this is not in anyway related to the haunted house that sits atop a hill and is mentioned in the title. The guy giving the lecture is selling a book and has been searching for the missing statue this cult worshipped. This is also not about a house but we're probably getting there. He also bangs one of the students that was in his lecture and gets interrupted by his assistant mid-fuck. Not really all that important, but it's worth pointing out that he doesn't even get all that pissed off and doesn't seem to go back to finish the job afterwards. That's just poor form.
      Anyway, I forgot to mention, but the first woman's sister apparently shot herself sometime between leaving the message and that morning. The sister being one of the survivors from the first movie. Look at how neatly they tied it all together. Still no house, though. After ripping away the police tape, as relatives of suicide victims are allowed to do (obviously), the main girl and the photographer get into the apartment where she sees a girl that is definitely not Ali Larter playing Ali Larter's part for about two seconds before her head explodes from a gun shot. The ghost of not-Ali Larter then gives a message to her sister and they then run into the professor who is also there looking for the journal of the head doctor from the insane asylum that was the house on haunted hill. This does not sit well with our female lead for obvious reasons so her and the photographer leave.
      Upon arriving back at her house, she decides to get over her sister's death by making out with the photographer. So they do that a bit before she leaves and goes inside. She then finds out that, the most shocking of all, the mail can be delivered in one day because she has the journal that her sister sent her already there waiting for her. This discovery is interrupted by a bunch of hired goons led by a guy that used to be on E.R. for a couple seasons. They must be the ones the professor tried to warn her about at her sister's apartment. After stealing the journal and kidnapping both our hero and the photographer, the goons finally take us all to the house on haunted hill in hopes of using the journal to find the demonic idol which the evil doctor from the insane asylum in the beginning of the 20th century had hidden away in a secret room in the basement. Makes sense. By the way, the movie is less than 90 minutes long and just getting to the title house takes more than 15. I get the feeling things are going to have to move pretty quickly from here on out considering how many hired goons are coming along for the ride.
      Hey, look at that, the hired goons and heroes aren't the first to get to the house after all. It's the professor, slutty assistant, and not-funny comic relief assistant.  Even more people to kill off in the next hour, what fun. Comic assistant does have one decent comeback when slutty assistant is trying to insult him by saying that he “wasn't listening, [he] was just looking at your breasts” so that's kinda funny, I'll give him that one. He also asks the, well one of the many, questions that anyone foolish enough to be watching this for the plot should be asking: how does a medieval demonic cult's statue from Europe end up in the basement of an insane asylum in California? The answer: because fuck you, that's why (not technically the answer, but it might as well be). Another question that might have been nice for someone to ask: how does a professor specializing in long extinct cults working at what I assume was a second or third rate school at best, have the funds to afford the “best treasure hunting equipment money can buy” (actual words spoken in this movie)? Books do not earn people that much money unless you're Stephen King and pump out about ten a year for 90 years. But instead of asking that, let's have not-funny assistant make a joke about the devices locating hollow spaces and then holding it up to slutty assistant's head. Hilariously distracting. It's also at this point that the other heroes and all the bad guys show up but don't actually go into the house yet (19 minutes in and only 3 people are inside the house). Some asinine reasoning on the part of “not good enough to have a career even though he was on E.R.” and they decide to leave the photographer outside with one of the goons while taking the girl inside to look around the house with them. Yeah, that's about as much sense as it makes to me too, but then again I'm not a mid-level henchman needing to delegate work to lower-level henchmen in order to assert dominance.
      The college trio have begun to look around the house at this point (again, 20 minutes into a movie less than 90 minutes long) with large flashlights as well as fancy hallow space detecting equipment. Before I go any further, though, a new thing that's bugging me about this: hallow space detecting equipment? I know it'd be good for finding boarded up rooms or whatever and that's a place to start, but... isn't treasure hunting by nature a process of looking for spaces that are, you know, not empty and in fact have things in them? You know, the actual treasure? Anyway, that aside, they're going down to the basement to start the search when they hear someone upstairs coming into the house. Someone who then decides to do something which is completely against the rules of proper treasure hunting in a haunted insane asylum: they turn on the lights. This is a professor and two other college educated people in this search party and they didn't bother testing if the lights were working. Anyway, back upstairs they go to find the bad guys and it's revealed that Mr. ER is a former student of the professor who's turned to the dark side of treasure hunting or whatever. Oh, and they rip off Indiana Jones pretty much word for word. “This statue belongs in a museum, not in the hands of some private collector”. I think they did this on purpose... but it's just so poorly done that it feels cheap rather than as a proper tribute.
      Oh snap! Looks like slutty assistant is actually sleeping with Mr. ER as well as the professor! And she explains her betrayal in the sluttiest way possible. Never mind that, for the moment, though; looks like main girl is trying to make a break for it. She doesn't make it, though, as the only girl in the hired goons gets in her way and says the line “you're going to leave without giving me a goodbye kiss?” Normally, I'd let that slide as just standard B-movie bad guy banter, but the only reason I know this movie exists is because I caught this part of it on TV before Halloween, and I know where this is heading. I'd just like to point out that this is pretty much the first line this woman has said in the entire time she's been around and there's nothing to indicate this is anything but standard B-movie bad guy banter. I've probably given away where this is going but it's still so ridiculously out of context you might be surprised. More important to the “plot” is the fact that the house is sealing itself shut again like it did in the first movie. It's also started bleeding out of the walls again, but no one seems to notice this so we move on to the simple fix of the lock-down problem by going to the master control room and shooting at it until it stops. I'm not sure that's how ten foot tall gears really work, but it seems to do the job.
      Then they decide to split up to search the basement of a haunted house. Not-funny assistant even points out how stupid this is. Again, can't tell if they're intentionally referencing a far superior movie (in this case, Scream) or if the whole genre has become so self-referential that this is just acceptable dialogue. The answer, it would seem, is to drink until words like “genre” and “self-referential” aren't able to be processed by the brain let alone spelt correctly when trying to write them. They do, of course, split up. It also turns out that this movie isn't just a movie. It's a cautionary tale to MMA fighters all over the world. Not to stay away from trying to act (although we've had enough wrestlers try that that it would seem a fairly obvious point), but that the road post-championship is a dark and lowly place. After all, not-funny assistant recognizes one of the goons as a former UFC heavyweight champion. And then, after gaining a bit of camaraderie with him, tells the guy who is at least three times his size and a former professional fighter that he “fights like a girl”. Sense: you have none. Comedy for a movie: still doing it wrong.
      The ghosts finally start to show up. And then disappear without killing anyone... or being scary in the slightest. Come on, ghosts, this is a sequel, you have to bring your A game and make things bigger and better or no one is going to take you seriously.
      The professor, who is inexplicably being guarded during his portion of the search by slutty assistant, mopes for a bit and then the token black hired goon is the first to die (all pretty standard stuff), but not before he has a vision of a former inmate of the asylum being walled up inside a room for no particular reason. This makes no sense even in the context of “the doctor and all the people that ran the place were insane sadists that tortured their patients in inhumane ways when they were supposed to be helping them” because, frankly, there's nothing gained in the field of medicine by walling someone up and leaving them there no matter how crazy they are. But fuck it, it's a sequel and the bad guys always have to be worse in sequels Even... if it's the same bad guy, I guess. Anyway, some decent gore, bad acting, and a guy who is probably over six feet tall and around 200 pounds pulled through a hole in a wall roughly six inches across. For the first death in the movie (not counting the gun shot to not-Ali Lauter's head that you don't really see), I give it a C+ at best.
Now Mr. ER is trying to hit on the main girl. Even though he's freely admitted killing her sister. And has kidnapped her at gunpoint. And is holding her photographer boyfriend hostage (at gunpoint) outside. And while they're in the middle of searching for a demonic idol in a haunted house. If this were to work, this guy has some serious game. It doesn't work and we move on to the female goon searching her section of the place.
      Now is the time to remember the whole completely out-of-nowhere lesbian angle from before. And to remember that this is a sequel to a horror movie so everything has to be played up a million times more than it should be in any rational exercise. And that this is probably fairly low budget all things considered so they'll be wanting something to hook people into it. BAM! Fully nude (for two of them) lesbian three-way with ghosts! Try and top that one, Paranormal Activity 3. To be fair, this is probably one of the better scenes in the movie and not just because of the porn implications. This is really a scene that speaks to the eternal and undying nature of true love in that, even in death, the two girls who were no doubt locked up in the asylum for no other reason than they preferred each other to men, were so strongly connected that their love survived even death and continued on for decades after their physical forms had passed on. Plus even after the obvious reveal that they're ghosts and not nearly as hot looking as they first appeared when they got naked and seduced the other girl they still would rather stay in their room with each other rather than get down to the important business of chasing after their victim and killing her. They leave that for the evil doctor who appears in the hallway and slices her face off with a scalpel. This death gets an A+ in that it involved naked lesbians (and actresses who clearly need to find better agents since their entire part in a terrible sequel to an only passably decent horror movie is “get naked, make out, wear make-up to look dead, make-out some more”), actually has decent implications for a love story if you want to think about it for a bit, and involves a face being sliced off and then sliding down to the floor while leaving the eyes and a ring of skin around each in place so you can watch the insides of the human head for a bit.
      The main girl is then attacked by another ghost who gives her a vision of him leading the uprising against the evil doctor that caused the asylum to go up in flames killing everyone. This is despite the fact that they showed that scene in the first movie and he was nowhere to be seen in it and, in fact if I recall correctly, they showed a few completely different patients doing the “leading”. Continuity be damned, she comes out of her vision in a straight jacket because “fuck you, logic” seems to be the overall theme here. It's at this point that the main girl starts to believe in ghosts which, if you think about it, is going to cause her so much guilt afterwards since she basically started to ignore her sister that ended up dead because the sister said haunted shit happened to her at the house. Oh, and slutty assistant asks a question that makes you think not-funny assistant wasn't too far off with his hallow space detector: “how did she get [the straight jacket] on by herself?” A fine question, I suppose, if she hadn't arrived at the scene with the door open and Mr. ER standing over main girl. Really? Her mind goes straight to “she did it by herself” in that case?
      Now the one goon and the photographer get called into the house. I'm going to jump ahead a bit because, like I said, I saw part of this before and say that it turns out they weren't being called into the house at all, it was the house doing it. Fair enough, the house does have the power to do stuff like that, but... there's really no reason for it. They might as well have just all gone inside at once in the first place. This is made even more ludicrous by the fact that (very shortly) the main girl is going to escape from the house only to find that the photographer is no longer outside, and then she'll turn around and go right back in after the house opens a specific door for her while it's in lock down. That's nine kinds of retarded for five different reasons. Why not make things simpler by: 1. bringing everyone into the house at once; 2. not having her escape and then 3. not have her go back in to save her friend instead of going for help on the outside. Stupid people are stupid. And I don't mean her for getting away and then going back in (although that is true too), I mean the people in charge of writing this and just letting that happen.
      Anyway, before the escape but somehow in the five seconds it would take to get out of a van and into a house when you're parked right outside the front door, the UFC champion gets dismembered by ghosts pulling on sheets tied around his arms and legs. All this in front of not-funny assistant so he now believes in ghosts, too. This death gets a B+ because it's pretty awesome but when they pull off the first arm the effects look like they haven't advanced since the original Dawn Of The Dead and, on top of that, the next part where all three other sections are pulled away at once splattering him everywhere is just not physically possible because he basically liquifies with no solid chunks of flesh anywhere to be seen. At least they could have given us some ghosts swinging improvised bolas made out of sheets and UFC champion body parts. It only seems logical in this context. Then everyone else gets into the main room and we have the “I escaped but I'm going back in to save my friends” bit. On top of all the things I mentioned above, this is also dumb because she picks up a gun out of the van to bring back in with her to fight against ghosts. Yeah, think about that. Anyway, officially halfway through the movie and there are still seven people left alive. Either this gets really bloody really fast or we end up with more survivors than any movie like this deserves. Seriously, I think there were only like seven people total in the first movie and three or four of them were dead by this point.
      Mr. ER goes on a bit of a rant about how he still doesn't believe in ghosts and there “has to be some reasonable explanation for all this” and what have you. All the while one of the other nameless goons has wandered off on his own chasing a ghost. You can imagine how this turns out. In this case, he's taken in by what would appear to be a hot girl in a Sexy Nurse outfit that decided to wear Heath Ledger's Joker make-up three years before Dark Knight was made. You're picturing the scene where The Joker is dressed up as a nurse, aren't you? Well just to get that out of your mind, this death ends up being Ray Liotta-style in Hannibal in that the guy's skull is removed and the brain taken out. All while sexy female Joker films it with an old-timey movie camera. B on this one just because I can't remember if Hannibal came out as a movie before this (I'm almost sure it did) so the death might be a rip-off of that, but they still have The Joker's make-up before Dark Knight (and possibly before Batman Begins as well) so that counts for something.
      And now everyone's favourite game: How Do You Know This Movie Came Out After Tarantino Started Making Movies? The answer, as it usually is in cases like this, is there's a Mexican stand-off scene that is eerily similar to the one in Reservoir Dogs/True Romance/Pulp Fiction/etc. Plus this is a sequel to a movie made well after all of those ones, so obviously this had to have been made after Tarantino started influencing every movie ever, but thanks for playing.
      Then some stuff where they plan their escape route through the sewer and where main girl (after successfully winning a Mexican standoff against people with far more knowledge and experience with firearms than the average editor of a porn magazine is likely to have) takes charge. Then some more stuff to try and advance this “plot” about the idol along and set up what's obviously going to be the final battlefield (a crematorium that just happens to be in the basement of the house). I've honestly lost interest in this movie. Again. Remember: I said I only caught part of it on TV. And after the lesbian threesome that, frankly, if they'd expanded it to be some sort of “controversial, boundary pushing, Brokeback Asylum” movie, would've made for a better story than this one, I only watched for a while, zoned out, and then flipped over to Simpsons or Family Guy or something.
      Now the professor is going on about how the evil doctor was once a great man and then he became evil after he gained possession of the demonic statue. Let's just think about that for a second. This guy has spent basically his whole life looking for this statue. A statue that he knows authorities in the middle ages (granted it was the church and they don't have the best record when it comes to... well a lot of things, really) knew/believed to contain an “evil influence over men” (re: actually for serious demonically possessed). A statue that, when in possession of a “great man” like the evil doctor who was once a humanitarian who was even nominated for the Nobel Prize (doesn't mention in what field, though, and even if it was “peace”... well...), turned dear old doc into a butcher. Why the fuck would you want to find such a thing? The whole gist of his story seems to be that the statue corrupts anyone that seeks it out, so even if your motivation was “kill it with fire!” rather than “it should be in a museum”, actively looking for it sounds like it's going to turn you into a complete asshole once you find it. Granted you can't take superstitions from the middle ages seriously all the time, but if your assistant is making comments like “you don't seriously want us to split up in a haunted house?” and there are ghosts all over the place killing people, maybe you should think twice about ignoring ancient curses that involve evil spirits. Just saying.
      A giant tank of water, some bullshit explanation, the vision of what it was used for, and the D death scene of not-funny comic relief assistant later, and we've got Mr. ER and slutty assistant run off to look for the demonic idol with main girl, photographer, and professor looking for a way out of the house alive. Still half an hour to go. I take back all my criticism of them not getting to the house soon enough, now I think they're spending too much time in the house. Also: for wearing a white tank top the entire movie and being soaked in either rain or a giant tub of water, main girl seems to be magically resistant to every attempt at making this a movie based around a wet t-shirt contest where she's the only participant.
      A quick “we're lost, why don't you pull over for directions?” style fight between ER and slutty (she's nagging about him not knowing how to read a map and he tells her he knows what he's doing and he'll find the crematorium) and all of a sudden he's pointing a gun at her. Women, right fellas? This is some terrible writing (not Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 3 terrible... but close) and terrible acting (let's be honest, when you're best known actor's main credit is he was one of the lesser guys on E.R. For a season or two... you might be in trouble talent-wise) combined. Slutty runs away and ends up having a fridge dropped on her because, at this point, even the ghosts are tired of trying to make sense in this movie. D- but only because having a fridge drop on and splatter someone's head is pretty cool regardless of how little sense it makes.
      This is already too long so I'll try to make the last 20 minutes of the movie quick. The ghost that no one saw in the first movie but was apparently the leader of the insane tells main girl to destroy the statue because it's the only way to let all the spirits be free. The statue is inside a secret chamber inside one of the furnaces in the crematorium. They find the chamber and find... living tissue or something (like they're inside “a heart”) because everyone involved decided the rest of the movie wasn't a big enough 'fuck you' to the people watching it. They manage to get the statue and take it out (can't destroy it with their guns because... because they can't, that's why!), and take it out to the previously mentioned sewer grate to try to toss it away. Not before ER tries to stop them and ends up getting burned up in one of the furnaces, though (C+ on the death because it was obvious from the second they said there was a crematorium in the house that someone was going to get burned alive). At this point photographer gets separated from them and chased by ghosts back into the furnace that leads to the original statue chamber because why bother running through what seems to be an infinite number of passages in this house when you can willingly go into a furnace? Then the professor (who has always wanted the statue, remember) becomes possessed by its power and tries to kill the main girl. They fight (this time being drenched in “blood” rather than water so the wet t-shirt contest is still a no-go), every ghost in the history of ghosts shows up to watch (except those that are chasing the photographer), and main girl manages to overpower the professor so she can run over to the sewer grate with the idol only to find... The evil doctor's ghost waiting for her! If you look closely, you can even see the look in his eyes where he realizes that he has no future in acting and watch as his heart breaks at the notion. After that the doctor tosses main girl aside, goes all “ghosts can be passed through by the living” on the professor (who is now suddenly okay again), and then busies himself fighting the professor rather than dealing with main girl who, as you might recall, is the one holding the demonic idol that is the source of all his ghostly powers. This is a bad move on his part.
      Evil doctor kills the professor, sexy Joker nurse inexplicably appears to be the one threatening the photographer, and then main girl suddenly regains consciousness with all her faculties in place so she can drop the statue into the sewer. The statue goes spewing out into the ocean, all the ghosts around the photographer turn into corpse dust, and suddenly the lead inmate ghost and a bunch of his cronies show up to confront the evil doctor's ghost. They surround and over power him again (side note: this is the only time any ghost ever says anything and it's a comical “George Lucas should stop fucking with Star Wars” kind of “no! ...NOOO! NOOOOO!!!!!”), and then they all turn into corpse dust too. The house opens up and we're left with one guy and one girl surviving all the way till morning just like in the first movie.
      Except that, instead of the two survivors finding the promised one million dollar cheques and making it a good ending, we're left with some bullshit “there was evil trapped in that house and now we've set it free... you mean the house wanted us to succeed? ...I don't know” series of lines and then they drive off. It's also worth pointing out that there are two vehicles out front, neither of which actually belong to the two that survived. And there's no reason to assume (or even reasonably think) that the keys would be in either vehicle so that they can just get in and drive away. On top of that, remember that demonic idol that they just let drift off to sea? The one that apparently had so much power it could turn great men into psychopathic butchers and keep spirits trapped for decades? Whatever happened to that? Oh yeah, you let it wash out to fucking sea! What they fuck do you think is going to happen to it, and all the evil power it has, now? Fuck the both of you, you just made things worse. At least at the start of the movie all that evil was trapped in the house instead of out God knows where in the world. Plus, at the start of the movie, all this retarded shit about a medieval demonic statue had never happened and it was a simple haunted house story with ghosts killing people. Now look what you've done. Despicable.