DEADGIRL (2008)

I've heard nothing but positive things about this film - about how it's perverted and brutal and vile etc. - so I excitedly sat down to watch it and it's slow as fuck! WTF? Why were people jacking their dicks off over this turd?! The only thing brutal about this film was the amount of cock it manages to gobble down.

Two teenage friends are messing around in an abandoned building after school when they find a naked female zombie chained up to a gurney. Naturally they never strongly question where the fuck this monster came from and just decide to make the best out of a bad situation and keeps the chick as a sex slave. Of course things spiral out of control, but it's all telegraphed so far ahead that you can guess the entire movie after 15 minutes.

The other thing that pissed me off, besides the complete lack of imagination on the part of the writer, is the ridiculous loose ends [SPOILERS!!!] you're telling me that 5 students from the same high school can all either die or disappear (because they are dead) and the police are never going to get involved?! Horseshit! Also where the f did the zombie come from and why didn't whoever put it there come back and claim her? That would be truly scary, cause whoever's behind this has to be completely evil.

Maybe the entire film is some kind of weak fairy tale allegory bullshit about fantasies, feminism or who knows maybe even homoerotic desires? Cause I damn sure don't want to stand behind some dude just staring at him humping on some dead broad.

Ehh, fuck it. The movie blew, but not bad enough to not watch it. If you're into necrophilia cinema then check it out, but not until after you watch AFTERMATH, NEKROMANTIK (PART 1 only, PART 2 was weak), VISITOR Q and KISSED first. Hell, even I'LL BURY YOU TOMORROW was better. I did like the look of the film though, it reminded me of Larry Clark's straightforward style from BULLY and KIDS...hey, I just had a cool idea: think how badass this film might have turned out if Larry Clark had directed it! Now that would have been interesting to see.

THE COUNTERFEITERS (2007)

Before the War, Salomon Sorowitsch was "The King of the Counterfeiters". He lived the life of a rich playboy in Berlin, but in 1936 was arrested for his crimes and then pushed along through different labor camps until he ended up at a Nazi counterfeiting operation that was intent on bringing down the economy's of both Britain and America.

While watching this movie I kept thinking the story was interesting, but the direction was stale. There were images on the screen, but no tension or passion, it was just kinda blah. Afterwords I looked the film up on IMDb and saw that it won the Academy Award of Best Foreign Film! I was shocked. But the real shock came when I looked up the director and it's the guy who made ANATOMY and ANATOMY 2! Hahahahaha!!! No fucking wonder this movie felt so lifeless, cause that guy couldn't direct his way out of a wet paper sack. Those movies both blow rhinoceros penis.

Insults on this guy's lack of talent aside, THE COUNTERFEITERS is a watchable film and worth checking out, but just don't expect any stirring of emotions and definitely don't expect a heist movie, which the title kinda leads you to believe.

Nice vintage dresses.

APRES LUI (2007)

Well, this film just disappointing the fuck out of me. The back of the box says something about a mother's 20-year-old son dying in a car wreck and then in her sorrow she develops a strange relationship with the son's best friend. To me that sounded really interesting and a great chance for the filmmakers to delve into some of the darker depths of human behavior. Catherine Deneuve is one of my favorite actresses and since she already had such success exploring human sexuality in Bunuel's excellent BELLE DE JOUR I naively though that maybe in a film with such a powerful subject (grief and sexuality) she would give a ground shattering performance. I was wrong.

Denevue's performance is good, nothing more, but the story is dead in the water right from the beginning. The son is never properly introduced, except in a brief scene as a annoying dork and then he's dead.  Bam! Eight minutes into the film he's croaked on over to the other side and I feel nothing at all. Deneuve quickly takes interest in the friend and turns him into her pet project: giving him a job and getting him back in school.  Soon she starts with the stalking, the touching and the acting like a crazy person, but not crazy enough to make it interesting. Other boring stuff happens but it's all unimportant and the entire film just drags along like a two-legged turtle in quicksand until the disappointing ending.

Unless you're just a hardcore Deneuve fan then I cannot think of any reason to watch this film.

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964)

I don't know what Criterion's, uh, criteria is for picking movies, but they need to put THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG out on Blu-Ray. Preferably with a ton of extras including an audio commentary by Catherine Deneuve.

Teenager Genevieve (Catherine Deneuve at her hottest) is in love with a local boy, Guy, who works at a mechanic's shop. Neither have any money, but they are madly in love and want to get married. Genevieve's mom understands how hot she is and won't let her meal ticket hook up with just any ol' guy, he's got to be rich! I think you can see where this is going. But the story is just one of the things that's great about this film...

The first thing you'll notice is all of the vivid colors, the next is that everybody sings everything. Just like in that "Buffy" episode in Season 6, even the most trivial things (ordering a drink, talking about an oil change) are put to music and it works beautifully. Even after numerous viewing I love every minute of it...right up until the end where I think director Jacques Demy made a huge mistake: [MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD!!! SO DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM!] everybody remembers the heartbreaking final scene at the gas station where Deneuve and Guy have a chance meeting and then part ways. I never liked that scene at all. I like them meeting, but I wished that they had hooked up with Deneuve telling Guy by speaking, not singing, that she still loves him and then the picture fades to black as she reaches out to hold his hand while they look into each others eyes. Personally I think that would have been much more satisfying, but hey I'm not a director so what the fuck do I know?!

Even if I didn't like the ending, [END OF SPOILERS!!!] I still love this movie and highly recommend it. The two DVD versions that are out there now are good, but I think that Criterion could really do something amazing with this movie.
Nice fan made video, but it gives away too much of the story. Watch at your own risk:

TURBULENCE 3: HEAVY METAL (2001)

I don't even know if there is a TURBULENCE 1 or 2 and after watching part 3 I don't give a fuck to ever find out. A 12th rate Manson ripoff is going to perform his brand of shit rock on a airplane for some of his ugliest fans and also live on the internets. After the first few (horrible) songs the lead singer dude goes to the shitter and is knocked out and replaced by a Satanist that is hellbent on taking over the plane and wrecking it into a small church in Kansas because he believes that that will bring on the Antichrist.

Down on earth there's an FBI agent chick who just happens to arrest a hacker at the moment he gets access to the rock guy's website video feed, so together they figure out that the plane is under terrorist control and then they contact (via more hacking) the real rock star and talk him into being Harrison Ford from AIR FORCE ONE. Here's a classic line from the movie: "Let me get this straight, Kate: you want the hacker you went to arrest to virtually guide the rock star through the plane so that he can overpower the armed, Satanic hijackers?" Honestly, I need to quit working on this shitty website and start writing movie scripts. There's no way, no way that I would write anything worst than that!

The whole thing is just so ridiculous and full of holes that you can't help but just laugh your ass off. I watched this with some friends and we laughed and giggled like fucking idiots. But I can only image that watching it alone would be fucking torture.

What a hacker might look like.

What a rock concert might look like.

What a dork might look like.

What a...what the fuck is that?!!

ANATOMY (2000)

Well there's not a lot to say about this one. Some chick gets into a prestigious medical school and finds out that a couple fellow students are going around shooting people up with some shit that paralyzes them and then doing autopsies on them while they're still alive. Naturally she never buys a gun or manages to get the police involved. Worst of all she actually gets out of harms way a few times, but for some unknown reason just keeps going back and getting chased all around the place again.

If you're really, really goddamn desperate for a horror movie than I guess this is better than nothing, but not by much. Very little blood, no gore, no tits, no hot chicks and zero scares.

FORTRESS (1993)

For a medium-budget 90's actioner FORTRESS is entertaining and the story is fairly imaginative. John Brennick is thrown in prison for some bullshit, so naturally he's gotta bust out of this jizzhole! But that's easier said than done cause he's in The Fortress a superbadass underground prison that has overhead cameras that can read your dreams and cyborg guards with frickin' machine gun/flamethrowers as hands! Yikes! And if that isn't bad enough, on your first day they plant a small device in your intestines that will "intestinate" you when you're bad and explode when you're really naughty.

I'm normally not a Christopher Lambert fan (his voice get's on my nerves), but he doesn't have too many lines here and director Stewart (RE-ANIMATOR, DAGON) Gordon keeps everything going at a nice speed. The supporting cast was impressive with Clifton Collins Jr. and Jeffery Combs (who have both been in around 17 million movies apiece), Tom Towles and even Vernon Wells who I'm sure you remember from COMMANDO, WEIRD SCIENCE and THE ROAD WARRIOR.

It's not going to change your life, but it'll keep you happy for a few hours. "Random intestination!!!"

Tom Towles and Vernon Wells

Jeffery Combs and Tom Towles

PIT STOP (1969)

Hot rodder Rick Bowman is one bad mother. While the opening credits roll we see Bowman getting ready to whip some nerd's ass at street racing. But wouldn't you know it? The fucking spazz he's racing wrecks his crate into somebody's crib then the pigs show up and throw Bowman in the slammer. Race promoter Grant Willard (played by the great Brian Donlevy) sees this as his opportunity, so he bails out Bowman and convinces him to do some Circle 8 Racing with a promise that if he does good maybe there's a spot for him over at his racing outfit California Customs.

Just in case you don't know what Circle 8 racing is it's a race track with an intersection in the middle! Director Jack (SPIDER BABY, SWITCHBLADE SISTERS) Hill filmed a lot of exciting real life footage for the racing scenes and it's great! These wrecks are the real deal and it gives PIT STOP a cool historical feel to it.

Even though the racing scenes are fun to watch the other thing that makes this movie so good, even 40 years later, is the story is actually interesting and the actors are good! The biggest surprise is a young Sid Haig who actually shows some range! I've only seen him in the horseshit horror movies he cranked out later in his career so I figured his entire career consisted of standing around with his mouth wide open, but I was wrong, because in PIT STOP he closes his gaping grin and does some honest acting...and he's good, damn good in fact. I'm going to have to do a little investigating and see if he turned in any other serious roles early on before he got pigeonholed into low budget horror Hell.

If you like hot rod flicks then this is a really good one and a lot of fun to watch. Also look out for a young Ellen Burstyn. Highly recommended.