MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (2008)

[Update 03/08/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

What is the point of this movie? Does it even take place in our universe or in some alternate reality where extremely dumb shit is commonplace? From what I can tell, there's this "midnight" train that leaves every night at, uh, 2:06 A.M. and every night this dude attacks the last few passengers with a large hammer until CGI blood shoots out all over the place. The train drives on to a hidden location then the driver and the killer feed the corpses to some monsters. Why? What? How? What the fuck? That's stupid. Wouldn't you think the police would become interested when the same train has multiple disappearances every fucking night?! Yeah, there's this one lone copper that's in cahoots with the murderers, but how can she cover up the hundreds of murders all by herself?

Alright lets just forget the ignorant story for a minute and concentrate on the violence...it sucks. The killer never says a word and his only facial expression is the "I'm trying to hold in a giant fart" expression. He has zero screen presence and he's not scary. Also, his weapon is stupid: a giant shiny hammer.  Jason from FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 would slaughter the fuck out of this guy in 5 seconds!

Honestly I cannot think of any reason to ever watch this movie. It's unoriginal, slow and has no personality. There is nothing here that you haven't already seen before. If you need me, I'll be in my room listening to "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".

ZOO (2007)

It's amazing how a film with such an interesting subject - the infamous "Mr. Hands" horse love video where a guy is loved to death by a stallion - could be so boring. The facts we know are some men got together for a weekend of fellowship and horse molesting, but ZOO never goes any farther than that. There are a few audio interview clips from three of the participants told over vague reenactments, but that's it! Where are the interviews with psychologists, human sexuality experts, police, family members, hell anybody that could shed some light on why a person would sink to the level of not only being penetrated by a two foot horse dong, but actually going through the trouble of finding like-minded perverts, getting together and filming it?

Very disappointing. The only interesting things I learned from this 76 minute snoozer was Mr. Hands had a cast of the horse's penis in his apartment and that one of the miniature horses on the ranch was trained to suck another horse's dick. What the fuck is wrong with people? It's a good thing the aliens in THE ABYSS didn't see the Mr. Hands video instead of Ed Harris sacrificing himself to save his wife or we'd all be dead right now!!!

Thumbs up for making a documentary about such an interesting subject, thumbs down for doing it in such a boring way.

No, you were evil before...just nobody knew about it.

NIGHT SCHOOL (1981)

Women attending (or working near) Wendell College in Boston have been turning up with their heads chopped off.  The cops get involved and a young detective is determined to solve the case.  And since he only has like four suspects I'm pretty sure he can figure it out.  A small smattering of blood, zero gore, lightweight nudity, medium pace, soft focus that gives everything a weird fuzzy look, 80's fashions, Boston locations, okay acting, zero scares.

Worth checking out for slasher completists, but it's more of a police murder-mystery than a slasher film. Still kinda interesting in a laid back, made-for-TV looking kind of way...even though it wasn't made for TV.  From what I can tell, NIGHT SCHOOL actually had a short theatrical run back in 1981.

THE BIG BUS (1976)

THE BIG BUS fails to deliver the big laughs...you see how lame that joke was? Well, that's about the caliber of nearly every joke and sight gag in this movie. I don't want to be too rough and say the movie sucked, because it didn't.  It was just weak.

The premise is fine (a gigantic bus has all kinds of problems on it's maiden non-stop cross-country trip), but the jokes are nearly all misses: A guy in a bar fight breaks a paperboard milk carton in half and uses it as a weapon; there's an on-board bowling alley and when the bus goes too fast the bowling ball and the pins slide backwards down the lane; once the bus goes over 90mph, there's no more wind resistance (for whatever reason), so Ned Beatty yells "He's breaking wind at 90!"  Yeah, those are some real knee slappers right there.

Like I said, it's not a bad film and I'm sure the film's makers had their hearts in the right place, but unfortunately they only had about 5 minutes worth of funny jokes for a 88 minute movie. On the positive side: I always enjoy seeing Ruth Gordon.

I'm curious what happened to the bus after filming was over?