Monday, November 12, 2007
Halloween: Resurrection
I know I’ve been spending a lot of times writing negative reviews, anyone would think I hated horror films, it’s just that I’ve not seen a genuinely good one for a while. I thought I’d give “Halloween: Resurrection” a go, big mistake! If you remember the end of part 73, or whatever they’re up to (even the film-makers have lost count so stopped putting numbers on the end), Jamie Lee Curtis decides to give Michael Myers head and body a premature divorce with an axe. Turns out Michael had swapped places with an ambulance driver and Laurie Strode has spent the last 2 years in a nuthouse having gone mad through guilt at killing an innocent man!
Of course she’s not mad, she’s just been biding her time (think Linda Hamilton in “Terminator 2”) and seeing out what was obviously a contracted appearance in a prologue that kills her off and renders the rest of the movie pointless. Wasn’t Michael’s motivation to kill Laurie? Anyway, in the meantime a TV company has plans to film a reality TV show in Michael’s old gaffe so he chooses that particular night to go home and becomes a reality TV star (I’m reliably informed he’ll have a single out by the end of the year that could be an outside bet for the Christmas number 1 spot!)
Believe me when I say that there’s not enough Polyfiller in the world to sort out all the holes in this plot. Right from the opening murder (off screen Michael kills a policeman and in the space of ten seconds manages to incorporate his head into the third spin cycle of an industrial washing machine, not to mention the bloke who discovers it trips over the rest of the body when walking backwards, despite the fact he would have had to have stepped over it to get there in the first place) to the final scene this is a master class in bollocks. Why has the Myers house, deserted for 30 years, not been torn down in an affluent residential area? Why does nobody notice one of the technicians getting butchered ON CAMERA? The place is in disrepair yet seems to be a fortress from which there’s no escape, when one of them finally gets out, why does she re-enter the house on the top floor, a worse position than she was in to start with? Why is Tyra Banks in it? Why is it even called “Resurrection” when he apparently never died in the first place? If her mobile Internet thingy works, how come the only person she tries to text is a nerdy kid and not get help? The list goes on…The film’s worst crime is leaving it open for another sequel, now that really is frightening. As long as Busta Rhymes isn’t in it (thankfully Tyra Banks gets gutted) I know I’ll end up watching that one as well. John Carpenter, what have you created…
"Beware the moon and stay on the path..."
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Zombie Flesh Eaters 2
We all know that Lucio Fulci (god rest his soul) wasn’t the best director in the world, but at least he knew how to bring the dead to life. At least I thought he did until this unholy mess found its way onto my TV screen courtesy of those fine folk at Zone Horror. Straying dangerously close to the Ed Wood school of ‘so bad it’s good’ film-making, it’s hard to explain just how crap this film is. That said, I can’t say I was bored.
The ‘plot’ concerns the theft of a deadly poison, imaginatively called “Death 1”, by the world’s most ineffectual terrorists (matched only by the SWAT team sent to stop him who couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a Banjo, instead shooting open the case containing the aforementioned poison). For reason’s unknown the SWAT team, despite shooting him, manage to lose him and he walks a full two miles back to his hotel room, unopposed, where he proceeds to infect the rest of the building. The army find the terrorist’s body and burn it in a massive kiln, the ash infects the birds (!) that become zombified, attack everybody else and the undead virus spreads further. This film is blessed with the kind of dialogue that would make porn fans blush (“I’m feeling much better now but I’m thirsty…thirsty for your BLOOD!!!”), especially when the army captain dismisses scientist fears over the ash infecting the air as science fiction when they’ve just managed to re-animate the dead!
Couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo
Gore wise it’s not much to write home about, Zone Horror gave it a ‘15’ rating, but it does have a couple of good decapitations, face rippings, gougings and the obligatory flesh munching scene.
All in all I can only describe “Zombie Flesh Eaters 2” as utter bollocks and a bit of an insult to the master of zombie mayhem. Now where did I put “Zombie Flesh Eaters 3”?
"Beware the moon...and stay on the path"
