CLUB DREAD (2004)

[This review is for the original 104-minute version.  The unedited 119-minute version has a slower pace and is nowhere near as entertaining.]

Comedy slasher film CLUB DREAD is a better slasher movie than 40% of legitimate Slasher movies (I'm looking at you Jason Goes To Hell, you pigfucking piece of shit.). The story is about a Slasher movie-style murderer killing the dick out of everybody on a private resort island ran by a 3rd-rate Jimmy Buffett burnout named Coconut Pete, brilliantly played by Bill Paxton. The Broken Lizard guys are all employees on the island.

After the standard Slasher movie opening kill scene, we're introduced to Lars (who is a new employee) arriving with a new boatload of vacationers. The boat leaves and now they're all alone on the island with no way off. Partying ensues. Before too long the killings are discovered by the employees, but, with their only radio destroyed, the staff are forced to keep the murders secret (or risk starting a mass panic) and catch the killer themselves.

That might sound serious, but it's not. The entire movie is the Broken Lizard guys up to non-stop crazy (and hilarious) shit.  Fast pace, solid direction, entertaining story, mild tit action, tons of quotable lines. I've seen CLUB DREAD probably 25 times over the years and it's still a fun watch.  Recommended for sure.

It'd make a great double-feature with THE SLAMMIN' SALMON.

Not part of the review: It'd be funny if the Broken Lizard team made a CLUB DREAD 2, but made it 100% absolutely serious as shit.  I'm talking INSIDE-level viewer trauma. Keep the same silly title font, lighthearted poster artwork and upbeat opening credits, then just brutally eyeball fuck the audience to death. Give 'em a really extraordinary case of the wonky britches.

WRONG TURN (2003)

"We are never going into the woods again!"

A traffic jam on the main highway causes some not so bright city slickers to make the unbelievably bad decision to drive down an unmarked road in the deep woods of West Virginia.  Booby traps on the road put their vehicles out of commission.  Now on foot, the group head off in search of a phone or a ride. Instead, they find a fully functioning family of freaky fiends who fancy feasting on human French fried fritter flanks and furiously fucking their funholes. Your standard kill-chase-hide-fight story happens next.  It's fun.

For a light version of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE / THE HILLS HAVE EYES story, populated with some of the younger familiar faces of the time, WRONG TURN isn't too bad. There's never any extreme violence or over the top tension, but the pace is nice and the acting is good.  Zero gore, zero nudity, the source for a sound clip used in Splatterhouse's "Night of the Creeps", the red-haired chick looking hot as fook(!!!), scary-looking mutants, lots of tight shirts.

Nothing special, but you could definitely do worse.  I've watched it a few times over the years and it's always entertaining.  Check it out.

Part 2 - Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
Part 3 - Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)
Part 4 - Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)
Part 5 - Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012)
Part 6 - Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014)
Reboot - Wrong Turn (2021)

SOURCE CODE (2011)

The last thing Army helicopter pilot Jake Gyllenhaal remembers is being on a mission in the Middle East. Suddenly he wakes up on a commuter train in America and there's some hot chick sitting across from him talking about life and shit. He understandably freaks out. Then the train blows the fuck up and he instantly wakes up in a strange pod like thing that kinda looks like a cockpit. A woman in military clothing appears on a screen and starts asking him about the details of the mission. Jake has no idea what the f is going on and she explains to him that he is on a mission to identify the person who planted a bomb on a train this morning, in order to prevent an even larger explosion that is going to maybe happen very soon. With this in mind Jake is thrust back into the mission over and over while at the same time trying to figure out what exactly is happening to him. Most likely you've already guessed the twist ending and you would be correct. The "twist" is about as shocking as when George Michael announced that he was gay.

I saw SOURCE CODE at the theater, but when I sat down earlier to rewatch it for this review I couldn't even remember what it was about. Director Duncan Jones seems to be a mildly talented young director, good at creating interesting visuals but I wish he would really try to beef up his character development skills. Both this film and MOON had very interesting premises and visually looked really good, but both films lacked the kind of strong character investment of say the films of Stanley Kubrick.

Worth watching, but after the initial viewing I cannot imagine wanting to watch it over and over.