Devil Girl (2007)

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I first heard about this movie from a co-worker, and after doing a little research, thought it looked not only hokey, but plain stupid. Well, since I’m on Brain Damage Films mailing list, and they have distribution rights to Elite Entertainment films, I received not one, but 2 copies of Devil Girl over the course of time, and then a 3rd copy from my friend at our corporate office. So, with 3 copies at my disposal, I figured I should watch it, then spread the wealth to friends, and even if it sucked, what did I have to lose but time?

It starts out with a grindhouse feel, the grainy picture, loud soundtrack, old/fast cars, and also seemed very reminiscent of Death Proof, but with a female driver this time. So, as I’m trying to get into it, I have my first WTF moment in the first 5 minutes, where a motorcycle pulls over, the dude takes off his helmet, and has a painted clown face. A clown? Did dude just get off work and head home before showering? I guess not all clowns travel/carpool in those really small cars with other clowns, but wouldn’t you know it, he ends up a little later in a VW Bug anyway.

Our Death Proof chick, Fay, is tough (you can tell by the leather jacket and the biker boots), likes to hustle at the pool hall, and show just how fast her car really is, taking suckers money left and right. The clown, although I'm not yet sure of his motive (maybe it’s hate of being a friggin clown, that would suck right?), goes through cars and people like there’s no tomorrow. He also has a liking for anything that will take him to an alternative world, whether it be snorted, smoked, inhaled, or popped. It’s still early in the movie, but I’m guessing the final showdown will be between the clown and the tough chick. But wait, then enters Devil Girl, but she's only there long enough to smoke a joint, and then she’s gone.

Fay’s ride runs out of gas, so she must hike to nearest town and stay the night until the mechanic can get to it. This is where she has her first face-to-face run-in with Mr. Clown, but nothing really happens, as he just stares at her kinda dumbfounded. See, when she stopped earlier to get gas, he stole her wallet, so in order to make money, she has to strip. She’s cute, slender, long-legged, and has a nice little set of perkies, which seems to please the local pervs, and earns her enough money to pay for her motel room. She learns the next morning that her fuel pump is shot, so she’ll have to spend a few more nights, and heads back to the club to make more dough.

Up comes WTF moment #2, when after a long night of taking off her clothes, Fay hears someone lurking outside her room, so she pulls a screwdriver out of her duffle bag for protection. A screwdriver? Who (but grease monkeys) carries a screwdriver with them? A knife, yes, a gun, yes, mace or a taser, yes, a beat stick, yes, a screwdriver, no (unless it's a phillips). Granted, a screwdriver can do some friggin damage, but there are more practical, compact weapons that one can conceal.

Devil Girl seems to pop up everywhere, in the club, in the church to haunt the local pastor, who seems to have an evil side (don't they all?), and finally, to Fay, who has a sexual interlude with her. Fay’s car gets fixed, and she gets back on the road, but not before she’s chased by the perv motel owner, and helped out by the clown. The movie ends with Donald (the clown), now a normal looking guy, in a mental institution surrounded by all of those who were major characters in the story, but who are actually his nurse, orderly, or fellow patients. Haven’t we seen this premise before?

But, despite the similarities to other films, I liked this much more than I thought I would. Maybe it was the lead actress, Jessica Graham, maybe it was the nudity, maybe it was the ridiculous clown, I can’t really pin-point it, but I liked it and would watch it again. And, as far as Mr. Clown goes, he’s like Rodney Dangerfield, and can’t seem to get any respect. He’s constantly thrown out of the strip club, gets evil glares from everyone around, and continually has to fight his demons, mostly drug induced. The words that come out of his mouth are ridiculous, redundant, and only at times, a little chuckle-worthy, and even though he tries to be as witty as Heath Ledger’s Joker, he doesn’t even come close to Jack Nicholson’s, but I still couldn’t hate him. I never quite understood why they chose a clown, but I guess that’s what one might see being overmedicated on prescription drugs. A friend once told me that when he dropped acid, he saw Smurfs breakdancing on the hood of his car, so I guess clowns don’t seem that far-fetched after all.

This film is worth a watch, and I can see big things in Jessica Graham’s future. She has the talent, and a certain stardom quality, that I think can help break her into the mainstream, that is, if that's what she wants. Give it a watch and let me know what you think.

ACTING --3-- HUMOR --2-- BLOOD/GORE --1-- NUDITY --3-- CINEMATOGRAPHY --3-- GRINDHOUSENESS --2--

OVERALL RATING --3--

Friday the 13th (2009)

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It must be the fact that I’m a new-age movie watcher but I really liked this movie. I really, really liked this movie. I had heard some mixed things about it from K-Fleet and Smokeskrene and I didn’t get to catch it in theaters so this was my first viewing experience with it and I wasn’t disappointed.

The one thing I can’t figure out is why people have been telling me it’s the first 4 movies put together into 1. With the exception of a few scenes like his shrine to his mom, and listening to a character that only has a passing resemblance to Mrs. Voorhees, there wasn’t too much else that I saw and just thought to myself “holy crap that’s from one of the original movies.”

This has to be one of the better movies in the series and if you ask me it probably ranks in the top 5. This takes Jason and makes him a badass, don’t get me wrong he was freaking awesome before but something about the way he does things this time around; the way he kills people is a million times better than any other movie they made. He just seems more brutal and visceral in this movie than any of the others.

Oddly enough, no one had ever mentioned the fact we get to see Jason’s “house” in this movie. It caught me by surprise when it was first showed, but I do approve of it. For some reason the question of where Jason lives when he’s not out killing people or being stuck in the bottom of a lake never crossed my mind, but after seeing his lair it just seemed natural. I don’t want to ruin anything if you haven’t seen the movie but it’s like the bat-cave for a machete wielding psycho killer.

Also, if you though there was nudity in the other movies, you haven’t seen anything compared to this bad boy. Not only do we get to see 3 pairs (which ties the record for most in one movie in this series I do believe) but we see one girls set for more time than all the boobs in the first 4 movies combined. Don’t hold me to that as a real fact, I’m just saying you have a really good idea of what they look like by the time she’s dead.

I don’t know how much CGI was used in this movie, but nothing struck me as particularly CGIish. In my review for Freddy vs. Jason I talked about how it just seemed like they used CGI instead of trying to actually film some parts but I just didn’t get that feeling here. So either they didn’t use it as much, or they got a lot better in the time between the films.

This movie also really sucked me in. I’ll admit that the later in the series I got, the less the movies made me feel any emotion or hold my attention at some places. This one did just that though, I honestly at one point wondered how long I had been watching so I moved my mouse to show the time and I was at an hour, didn’t even feel like 30 minutes had passed. It’s just done in such a way that you never really get bored watching it, it just sucks you in.

The one negative thing I will point out is in the gas station. When they show the clerk, the things behind him are out of focus. Not something that would normally catch my eye, as it’s done in a lot of films because it keeps you focused on the character, but these are way out of focus. It’s like they used a funny lens just to distort them more or something. The same thing is done a few other times during the movie, but that scene really sticks in my head.

ACTING --3-- HUMOR --4-- BLOOD/GORE --4-- NUDITY --5-- ENDING --2-- DIRECTING --5--

OVERALL RATING --4.5--

Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

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Not sure how well this review will cover the Freddy side of things, I haven’t seen those in a while and don’t really remember how well it follows the whole Freddy lore. It does have Robert Englund in it though, so it can’t be all too bad.

Freddy vs. Jason starts off with a brief re-cap of the Nightmare on Elm Street series of movies. We learn that Freddy killed kids, then the parents killed him and that he then came back in dreams to kill kids until they learned that by not believing in him he loses all his powers. He makes a reference to Jason being his ticket out of hell (also a throwback to “Jason Goes to Hell”) and we start in on the movie itself. Just like most of the early Jason movies we have a counselor that get’s nude, runs through the forest, and then gets killed. It’s at this point Freddy appears as Jason’s mom and tells him he needs to get to Elm Street and start killing people in order to make them feel fear again. Jason takes off and we roll the quick intro credits.

I must admit that I really liked this movie. It must have something to do with being part of the new generation as K-Fleet calls it, because I also thought Rob Zombies re-make of Halloween was great and him not so much.

One of the things it does well is cover the whole Freddy/dream side of things and how they cover it up like they do in the Nightmare series. Very early in the movie the police try to keep the kids from even thinking of Freddy, this is one thing I do remember from the Nightmare films. This movie also incorporates the rhyme used while jumping rope and the little girls in the white dresses, both awesome nod’s towards the original movies, and something that had to be there or the film would have been horrible.

This movie also takes Jason and puts him on a new level of badassitude. In particular the scene where Jason walks through the rave and kills about 4 or 5 people over the course of 1 minute. Again this might just be me being part of the new generation of movie watchers but I loved this scene.

There were a few things about this film that I just didn’t like however. First off is Freddy becoming real. I can remember something about him being real in a few parts of the Nightmare movies, but I don’t remember him walking around and just killing like he does here. Also, some of the kills and some of the effects were just too CGI heavy. Don’t get me wrong, watching an Alice in Wonderland-Freddy-worm thing smoke a hookah is pretty sweet, but did it really need to be done? My last big problem with the film is the ending. If you do much research into the film, you’ll find out that about 4 other endings were considered at one point or another for the movie…..and all of them were better than this crap. Imagine that the ending was Freddy and Jason getting sucked down to hell and fighting in an arena of sorts, with the devil in the background watching. Now think of what the ending is here if you’ve seen the movie. Which one seems like a better ending to this movie?

ACTING --3-- HUMOR --4-- BLOOD/GORE --5-- NUDITY --4-- ENDING --2-- DIRECTING --4--

OVERALL RATING --4--

JASON (VS. SPACE) X

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There are not a lot of great movies from the horror genre that venture into space. When described to anyone the plot of this movie can only be interpreted as absurd. Jason is found stored away. He is taken aboard a space craft full of half wits and adrenaline junkies. He is accidentally upgraded. He slaughters everything on board in real life and virtual reality. There is nothing great about this movie other than it doesn’t take it self seriously. It takes the general flaws of the already far fetched series and stretch them even farther with no intent other than to be amusing. And it is. The problem is that you will walk away with nothing more than a few chuckles. This movie didn’t ruin the series by any means but it doesn’t carry on the tradition of trying to be serious while being ridiculous. Its just ridiculous.

ACTING --0-- HUMOR --3-- BLOOD/GORE --3-- SCRIPT --0-- JASON BADASSNESS --5-- DIRECTING --2--

OVERALL RATING --2--

JASON GOES TO HELL (ALONG WITH THE SERIES)

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I’ve already covered that I don’t like people cancelling out movies of the Friday the 13th series because of plot twists. Having said that, this is probably my least favorite of the series. There’s going different directions and there’s leaving the atmosphere which this does. The idea of having the government trap Jason was good. But having him pass into other people’s bodies was a little to “Twin Peaks” for me. I could of dealt with this happening once. But this being repeated was just too cheesy. If this movie had been an idea on its own that had nothing to do with the series I still don’t think it would have been enjoyable.

I think this was the first movie of the series where they really invested a great deal of money trying to capitalize on the other’s success. The feeling is similar to that of Clerks 2 in that the product was so much better when it wasn’t over thought. Bad actors is what made slasher’s great. Monster’s in masks and topless girls was the formula that made us what to cheer on kill scenes of the annoying archetypes we deal with in our everyday lives. Trading that for body jumping and slithering nonsense was just nonsense. Obviously the studio new this as they abandoned this as quickly as they took it on. The only really great moment of this movie was the dick tease ending with Freddy’s claws pulling the Jason mask to hell. After sitting through this again the idea of getting to do a review for Jason Vs. Space almost has me optimistic.

ACTING --3-- HUMOR --0-- BLOOD/GORE --2-- SCRIPT --0-- JASON BADASSNESS --0-- DIRECTION --0--

OVERALL RATING --1--

Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

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To be honest, I didn’t remember a single thing about Part 7 until I read Stalls review, and even then, I had to wonder if I’d ever seen it all the way through. So, to refresh my memory and see how it might have tied into Part 8, I watched the beginning and then the end. As I mentioned before, the whole idea of Jason in the city seemed bogus to me, and although I wondered how in the hell he got to Manhattan, I never gave it a second thought, and just brushed this off as the "lost Jason film." Lost in so many ways that is! Besides, it’s not like anyone would pick him up if he was walking on the side of the road.

The camera starts out on the grimy streets of Manhattan, but we’re quickly taken to Camp Crystal Lake where a couple of teens have snuck off on a boat to make out on the lake. Unbeknownst to them, Jason lies chained and dead below (covered in lake sludge), but is brought back to life when the boat anchor pierces an underwater power line. WTF? The lightning rod from Part 6 was a little far-fetched, but still more believable than resurrection by mind power (Part 7), or by a fluke electrical incident. But, Jason’s alive and kicking once again, takes a couple of lives, and then floats on the boat where he catches a cruise-liner full of freshly graduated teens. Jason needs a vacation too ya know.

So, rather than drink a Mai Tai and kick back and relax, Jason does what he knows best, KILL. All but five people get whacked, including the captain, and once they realize the ship can’t be saved, they hop on the rescue boat, a scene somewhat reminiscent from Titanic, but instead of Leonardo DeCaprio’s sad demise, the teens and their chaperones manage to make it to Lady Liberty. But, so does Jason, whose swimming abilities have improved since he was a kid.

So, with Jason now in the crowded city, he aims to clean up the streets, the subway (where he has a near-death scene by electrocution), and the sewer system, where the nightly toxic waste dumpage gets the best of him, and melts off his already deformed face.

This movie was a disaster, and even with the return of Kane Hodder as Jason, it was still a waste of time. Some would say Kane was the best Jason, the one that gave him personality, but that definitely wasn’t the case in this film. I also read that people were really pissed off after they saw Part 5 because it wasn't really Jason killing, shit, I’d have requested my money back if I paid to see this on the big screen. Even the director, Rob Hedden, doesn’t have a single worthy credit to his name, and this plays out like another film riding on the franchise's jock. Plus, that lame ass trailer says a lot too.

There wasn’t even a single kill that I felt good about. Death by guitar, death by hot sauna rock, death by mirror shard, how f-ing snoozy. And, the fact that young Jason continues to appear, both deformed and not, is ridiculous. The coolest character, but coolest in the lowest sense, is the all-wise deckhand who warns that “Jason has returned” and “death is near” numerous times.

After 25 minutes, I was ready to turn it off, at 54 minutes, I wanted to burn it, and at the end, I realized I just wasted and hour and a half of time that I could've been watching Sanford and Son reruns. Jeez, the sacrifices I make for the Side Show Review fans…

This film did have familiar faces, though, like TV veterans Peter Mark Richmond and Warren Munson, who you probably wouldn’t know by name, but by face, and you probably couldn’t name a single thing you’ve seen them in, even though their credits are vast. And, lead teen cuties Scott Reeves and Jensen Daggett pretty much stayed on the TV circuit after this film too.

This movie was garbage, and possibly the saddest entry into the series, and with only one boob and two bare butt scenes, my interest kept was minimal. Even with 17 kills, when there's a lack of blood and gore, you have to offset that with naked people (preferably women), and humor, that’s just how it is. But, if you have a lame story, crummy acting, ridiculous kills, minimal blood and gore, little to no skin, and almost no humor, then your film is bound to suck, no matter if you have Kane Hodder (or anyone else at that) donning Jason's mask. Shame on whoever wrote this piece of crap and tried to pawn it off as a Friday the 13th film. I know new ideas are hard to come by, but I’d have much rather seen old regurgitated stuff, than a far-fetched idea that sucked. Shit, "Jason plays poker," or "Jason takes a crap in the woods" would have been much more entertaining.

Smokeskrene believes that this film deserves at least a 3, if for no other reason than it having Kane Hodder, but I can’t be that generous. "Jason On A Boat" is not only off the charts on the Stink-O-Meter, but I kept waiting for T-Pain and Lonely Island to jump out and start singing, “I’m on a Boat, look at me (Pam), I’m on a motherf-in boat!” And then Jason breaks out into some footwork or the robot. Hee hee, that would be a great SNL or Robot Chicken skit.

ACTING --2-- HUMOR --1-- BLOOD/GORE --2-- NUDITY --1-- CREATIVITY --2-- FT13TH WORTHINESS --1--

OVERALL RATING --a very generous 2--

Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood

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When the new Friday the 13th movie came out earlier this year, it seemed like the perfect excuse for me to go out and buy all the old ones. I had seen most of them yet I owned none. So I ran out and picked up the “From Crystal Lake to Manhattan” box set and then picked up the other 3 separately. I began to watch them over the course of about 4 or 5 weeks and loved it. Then the idea for this lead up to the new movie came about and we divided the films up. I got 6, 7, Freddy vs. Jason and the new one. I sat down to watch the movies and review. It was at this time I realized something. I freaking hate the 7th movie. Can’t stand it. I honestly think it’s one of the worst films in the series. So many people bash on “Jason goes to hell” and “Jason X” but did they ever watch this one? Anyway enough bashing, on to the review.

If you never saw the 6th film, just watch the first couple of minutes of the 7th one, it pretty much runs you through everything that happened. Great way of condensing about an hour and a half into 3 minutes. The film officially begins with a flashback of Tina, our main character. We quickly find out that she has telekinetic powers when she kills her dad. Back to present time we find Tina and her mom headed back out to Crystal Lake, in an attempt to figure out completely what is wrong with her with the help of her doctor, Dr. Crews. They don’t really get along that well and at one point Tina goes running out of the house and to the end of the dock. She uses her powers to wake up Jason, who immediately sets off. All that time under water has done wonders for Jason however, as his decayed suit and flesh makes for the most badass looking Jason yet in my opinion.

I’ve decided that the reason I don’t like this movie is the whole storyline and Tina. I understand that they did it to bring something new to the table, but for some reason I just don’t like the way they took it. Something about a psychic girl using her powers to fight Jason just sounds dumb when said out loud, how in the world did they ever get a green light to actually make this movie? And the ending, dumb is the only word I can think of to describe it. I won’t say anything to ruin it if you haven’t seen it, but just be ready to shake your head and be disappointed when/if you do watch it.

Also, where in the world does Jason get the 50 different weapons he uses during the film? He just randomly appears with one thing, then he has another, and another. At one point he walks out of the woods with a power saw on the end of a pole, granted it’s a really cool weapon to use. We never once see him really pick up a weapon, with the exception of an axe, he just appears out of the woods with them.

Also, random cat…..the hell? If you’ve seen this movie you know what I’m talking about, if not then go watch this movie and you’ll figure it out when it happens. Not sure if this is supposed to be a throwback to the second movie or what but either way it just didn’t seem to fit the flow of the movie.

Negativity aside, the movie does have some really cool things going for it. Tina’s visions of people dying were kind of sweet. I particularly like the one of her mom dying in the middle of the road she has while driving. This movie also has the coolest kill ever ala the sleeping bag death, nothing better in my opinion.

This movie also brought back nudity to the series, something that was oddly missing from the 6th one.

I also really like the character of Eddie. He’s the wannabe science fiction writer. Something about the scene where he wraps himself up in streamers and says something about Mummies in space just cracked me up.

ACTING --2-- HUMOR --3-- BLOOD/GORE --4-- NUDITY --3-- ENDING --1-- PLOT --1--

OVERALL RATING --2--