THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009)

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL can proudly take it's place in "The Hall of Shitty Horror Movies That Are All Build-up and No Payoff" alongside such timeless turds as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and 28 DAYS LATER.

Samantha needs money to help pay the rent. (I just described the first 30 minutes of the movie.) She takes a job babysitting an old woman and everything goes fine. Now we are at the 75 minute mark. No bullshit. Finally some shit happens and...it's nothing we haven't already seen 40+ years ago in ROSEMARY'S BABY. The End.

When I hear the name HOUSE OF THE DEVIL I'm thinking there's going to be some serious shit going down. I mean, the fucking Devil lives here for Christ's sake! But no, not much happens. Some bullets are fired, a little blood is spilled, a pizza is delivered and a few pentagrams are drawn. Sounds like what I would imagine a normal afternoon at Phil Anselmo's house would be like.

From what I read before I saw the movie, it was filmed to look like an old 80's horror movie. That really excited me...until I remember that most 80's horror movies sucked. Yeah, there's some classic 80's fashions and great female hairstyles, but you need a goddamn story! Then, after watching it, I discovered the dude behind THOTD is the same guy who made CABIN FEVER 2 and it all made complete sense. This guy blows. He's 0 for 2 in my book and, who knows, maybe one day he'll do something great, but from what I've seen so far I don't think he couldn't make a good horror movie to keep his dick from falling off.

Barely any blood, zero scares, unoriginal story, loooong build-up, zero nudity, zero gore, zero suspense. Fucking skip it.

Special Thanks to Goatse and Tubgirl huh? Maybe they should have written the script. At least then you'd know there'd be one Hell of a payoff! Most likely it would have been a payoff about buttholes, but still it's something.

200 POUNDS BEAUTY (2006)

Hanna has two jobs: a phone sex worker and a ghost singer for a famous pop star, but even worse than her lame jobs is...she weights 200 pounds! Oh the horror. Anyway, because of her tremendous weight, Hanna is extremely depressed and even tries to commit suicide a few times.  Things change though when she falls in love with a music producer and blackmails one of her phone sex clients (who is a plastic surgeon) into giving her a full-body makeover.  Naturally, before going into the hospital (for a year!), she throws her dog off a bridge. Twelve months later, Hanna has now become Jenny.  An attractive woman who weights less than 200 pounds.  Unfortunately, she's even more mentally unhinged than she was at her original weight.

For a light-hearted romantic comedy, 200 POUNDS BEAUTY is alright, but there's some really fucked up shit going on in this movie.  First off, the entire self-worth based off of body weight is straight fucked.  Added onto that, there's zero romantic chemistry between the Hanna / Jenny character and the producer who seems like a violent scumbag.  Multiple scenes where people are randomly punching and abusing one another.  One innocent guy even gets beat up and then falsely accused of attempted rape!  Jenny drives while playing with her phone, then she sees a taxi in her way (stopped at a red light) so she simply closes her eyes and crashes into it!  A stalker (who secretly videotapes Jenny) is smacked around and used as a comedic device.  Three different times Hanna / Jenny's own father gabs her ass.  There's more, but the tossing the dog over the railing thing was too much for me.

Worth a watch, I guess, if you're into this type a movie, but honestly, I would hate to meet any of the characters in this film in real life. What a bunch of self-centered assholes.

TREMORS 2: AFTERSHOCKS (1996)

Good news: the Graboids are back! Bad news: they only brought along a budget of $4M (the original, 6 years earlier was $11M) and Kevin Bacon is nowhere to be found.  That sucks.

An oil company down in Mexico has a Graboid problem, so they hire Burt Ward, Michael Gross and their new dingleberry assistant/ Andrew Dice Clay impersonator Grady to hunt them down. Thanks to a bunch of heavy firepower, things start off promising enough, but then the worms start mutating into a smaller and more agile land walker that looks like a Chicken McNugget with legs.  After that, things kinda just meander off. Also, the new Graboid mutation don't hunt by vibration, instead they use a heat sensor (much like Predator).

Fun movie, but nothing stands out as being particularly badass. It would have been more fun with a bigger budget, zero crew sightings (instead of, at least, three!), a completely different script and Kevin Bacon still onboard, but you can't have everything. So instead, let's just enjoy it for what it is and be thankful they made a sequel that didn't piss all over the original.

Part 1 - Tremors (1990)

Part 3 - Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001)

Part 4 (prequel) - Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004)

Part 5 - Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015)

Part 6 - Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018)

Part 7 - Tremors: Shrieker Island (2020)