St. Trinian's (2007)

This movie is total rubbish. I was in the mood for a bad movie, but i'm never in the mood for something this awful. This is one of those movies that sends up multiple flares warning you that a joke is coming. And then upon the joke's belated and annoying arrival you want to take the writers of the film (it took two morons to put together this script) and drill holes into their skulls and then fill the holes with some of your own fecal matter. And only then can you really laugh.

This is also a movie that thinks itself a pretty clever little thing. It actually has a dog that is named Mr. Darcy, and that dog repeatedly humps Colin Firth's leg. Oh, so funny. Enough with the Mr. Darcy references. The entire country of England should be ashamed. The good thing is the dog is killed an hour into the film.

The one slightly amusing joke is that the artistic masterpiece the girls plan on stealing is a painting of Scarlett Johansson from Girl With A Pearl Earring (which isn't a very good film either, but much better than this horrid festering disaster - Colin Firth is in that one as well - this movie really loves to make references to Colin Firth's other work).

Most of the movie i spent waiting for Stephen Fry. His name is on the back of the DVD box, and is the main reason i bought this thing. He's in only two scenes. The first time he shows up is at the fifty-one minute mark. So it's best just to start the film at that point if you feel a burning need to watch this one. His second scene starts at the one hour eleven minute mark.

Stephen Fry actually says in the film, "I just wonder if I'm wasting myself doing this platitudinous drivel." Yes, absolutely. Now if only Hugh Laurie would quit playing an american doctor, the two of them could get back to doing some excellent comedy.

But really, this movie is just an obnoxious mess. There is a scene of the girls walking in slow motion toward the camera for no reason whatsoever. Then we see it again, in split screen. Then again, with closeups of different girls. Fuck off already. There is even a makeover scene.

If i ever meet the writers of this film, i will cut off their hands so that they will be unable to write or type any more of this nonsense, and tear our their tongues so they won't be able to dictate it to someone else. (Holy shit, they actually made a sequel to this movie.)

Druids (2001)

Wouldn't you feel like the biggest bastard on the planet if you made a great actor like Max von Sydow utter lines like, "The magic of his death must teach us the lesson of his sacrifice"? Of course you would. And yet, that's just what Jacques Dorfmann did in the terrible film Druids (also known as The Gaul, a title which makes a hell of a lot more sense).

Druids is one of those films that's incredibly frustrating because it has some good elements. The locations are good. The costumes are good. They hired some good actors. But this is one of the most poorly structured films ever made. It seems like mistakes were made and scenes were inserted in the incorrect order.

Vercingetorix (played by Christopher Lambert) is forced into a giant battle that he didn't want. (This battle scene is absolutely awful, by the way.) He loses the battle to Caesar's army. Then there is a scene where Caesar talks about how he is sure that Vercingetorix will avoid a decisive battle. Uh, wait, Caesar, the decisive battle just happened, and you won it. Clearly these scenes were somehow inverted in the editing, and no one caught it.

A bit about the title. It's called Druids, but the druids are only in the very first scene. After that it's mentioned that they've all been killed. Max von Sydow survives, but doesn't really do anything for the rest of the film, so his survival doesn't matter. And some supposedly amazing female warrior also survives, but again, she plays no part later.

Actually, that's another truly irritating thing about this film. Vercingetorix wants revenge for his father's murder, which he witnessed as a little boy. He tells Max von Sydow that he's going to go take care of that now (it's been how many years?), and Max tells him he's not ready. He says he must take him to a great master. So Max leads him approximately twenty feet into the forest, and there she is: the great master.

We then get one of those terrible scenes where the master tells the pupil to attack, and of course the master easily defeats the pupil. Now those scenes usually lead into the long training. But in this film, at the end of the scene, the great master tells him he's ready. What? After being easily defeated? Okay, whatever.

Also, in that fight scene, she moves with superhuman speed, clearly possessing some magical talents. Then later during that decisive battle scene, she is there, but does no fighting, and is easily killed with a spear. So much for setting up that magical ability. The movie is full of crap like that.

Like right before the big battle scene, some of the women begin taunting the Roman soldiers by showing their breasts. The soldiers then break formation as Caesar watches, and begin efforts to climb the walls - not to fight, but to fornicate. The soldiers place tall ladders against the wall and begin climbing. So of course while watching this, i'm wondering, okay, what is the women's plan? Are they going to dump oil on the soldiers or what?

Well, guess what, we never find out. The battle begins, and we never get another shot of those soldiers on the ladders. Who knows? Maybe they made it over and were having their way with the women during the entire battle. Hell, maybe that was the women's plan - maybe they were just horny. It doesn't really matter, because the filmmaker tells us that it doesn't really matter.

Also, in the decisive battle scene, Vercingetorix never lifts his sword. He does no fighting whatsoever. Some leader. The only shots of him are slow motion shots of him looking around at everyone dying. In fact, basically everyone is slaughtered but him. What a jerk.

One other thing: the music in this film is seriously irritating.

Revenge Of The Rats

What can i say about this terrible film? A firefighting helicopter pilot lands his chopper in the city and saves of the life of a young girl. For this, he is demoted from helicopter pilot to rat catcher by the city's mayor. He knows nothing about rats (though he does fire his handgun into the toilet to kill one early in the film - geez). Yet he becomes the leader of a team of rat killers, and in fact comes up with the plan to kill them. (The movie takes place over the course of three days, so this guy learns very quickly.)

The city has a garbage problem, because the garbage folks are on strike. So the rats come up from the sewers and have a bit of a celebration. Rats from different rat clans have all gathered together for some reason. Also, they have some new disease, which is deadly to humans. Also, they are intelligent (well, sometimes they are).

The helicopter pilot/rat catcher has a thing for a female doctor (who isn't really a doctor - she hasn't completed her training - but whatever, they need doctors, so...), and they go on a date and clearly have no chemistry. She ditches him before their meal even arrives (which is a good thing, because the restaurant's kitchen is overrun with rats). Yet of course they end up together. No good reason for that, really.

Anyway, the woman's landlord got the rat disease, and she brought him to the hospital. A little later, there is this bit of dialogue (as close to it as i can recall):

Woman: "I admitted a patient earlier."
Main Doctor: "Yeah? So?"
Woman: "I wanted to check on his condition."
Main Doctor: "Interesting. He's dead."

The DVD is dubbed in English, and i'm sure that's part of the problem. But really, even if that bit of dialogue had been in subtitles, it would have been just as awful.

So what's good about this film? Well, it's hilarious at times, though never intentionally so. And of course the dubbing adds to the humor. But is it worth watching? No, not really.

Hammerhead

I love bad shark movies. I do. And Hammerhead is a bad shark movie. In fact, they don't get much worse.

The scientist's son gets cancer, and the scientist learns that sharks are immune to cancer. So he introduces some shark cells into his son's body. The good news? His son's cancer goes into remission in two weeks. The bad news? His son turns into a shark.

So then the scientist makes a wonderful decision. He decides to create a race of beings that are half shark, half man. The problem is he's having trouble getting his son to mate. Rather than bonking the women he's presented with, Paul tends to eat them.

Also, the scientist wants to have revenge on some colleagues for... Well, i can't remember what for. That's really not important. He tricks them into coming, tells them his plan, and then tries to kill them by feeding them to Paul. That's basically the story.

This is one of those movies that seemed to have no script supervisor. There are continuity issues throughout, and i don't mean little "Hey, his collar is now up" continuity errors. I mean huge errors. In fact, i was convinced for a long time that there were at least two shark men because Paul was simultaneously in the ocean and in a tank in the lab. But hey, whatever. Later he's in the ocean at the bottom of a cliff devouring a scientist, and a moment later in the forest. (Did i mention that because he's half man, he can live on the land as well as in the water? Yet characters are still yelling at each other to stay out of the water.)

Also, there is a character who is sometimes a hunchbacked Igor type character, and sometimes a normal scientist type character. At first he stands normally, but after two of his fingers get bitten off, he develops a hunched back. Go figure.

So what's good about this movie? Not the acting. Not the script. Not the special effects. Not the cinematography. Some of the sets are actually interesting. And come on, the idea of a dad turning his son into a shark and then trying to find him a suitable mate - that's cinema gold.

Troll (1986)

Okay, right away i want to make clear that Troll is actually not a bad movie. It's not. But for some reason a lot of people think it is. As of tonight (10-23-10), it has a 3.6 on IMDB. That's ridiculous. This movie has so much going for it.

First of all, it's hilarious - and intentionally so. I laughed out loud many times while watching it. The scene with Michael Moriarty dancing around to Blue Cheer's version of "Summertime Blues" is wonderful. Really, it's worth watching the movie just for that scene.

But then you get to watch Sonny Bono turn into a jungle. Seriously.

Besides that, Gary Sandy is in this movie, and he's wonderful. If you're having trouble placing the name, think W.K.R.P - he's the guy that moved from town to town, up and down the dial.

Then you have Julia Louis-Dreyfus as some warped version of Titania. And her fellow SNL pal, Brad Hall, plays her boyfriend.

On top of that, June Lockhart is the sexiest older woman ever, and she has a talking mushroom. And clearly there's some attraction between her and the boy.

And the boy... his name is Harry Potter, Jr. That's right. Michael Moriarty is Harry Potter. Noah Hathaway is Harry Potter, Jr. And Harry Potter, Jr. - get this - wants to be a wizard. Some crazy bitch totally ripped this movie off and wrote seven books. But Troll is the original Harry Potter movie.

I don't want to spoil this movie for you, so i don't think i want to tell you any more about it. No, one more thing: there is a scene with monsters singing. Okay, is that enough to make you want to see it? Seriously, Troll is a really good movie. I'm not kidding.

Midnight Mass (2003)

Holy moly, Midnight Mass is a terrible movie. But it's in the category of So-Bad-That-It's-Good. First off, it's Christian propaganda wrapped in the guise of a horror film. And like most Christian propaganda, there's nothing subtle about it. It's about as subtle as Mel Gibson (remember him?). I expected characters to turn and look into the camera and say, "It's up to you to turn this world back to a God-fearing Christian world." They do almost as much.

That aside, this film has probably the worst group of actors ever assembled - and i'm including all groups of actors, even third-graders performing a grammar school holiday play. Clearly, it was some Christian group who got a hold of film equipment and money, but decided to do the acting themselves.

The two heroes of the film are Gwen, who is referred to as "the town atheist," and her friend Joe, a fallen priest. Will they both find their way back to the church by the film's end? Of course.

The story combines the vampire legends with the zombie scenario. Basically, the world is overrun with vampires, and there are very few people left. Society has completely broken down.

So how did Gwen, who is on the heavy side, survive this long? Seriously. She seems to have trouble walking. It's both hilarious and painful to watch her move on the screen. Her body seems to be going in several directions at once, and to add to that, she likes to flail her arms around while "acting." And the director (who perhaps subconsciously hated this poor woman) has her running in a couple of scenes, and walking on sand in another scene. And he has her riding a bicycle. Basically he does everything he can to make her look even worse.

Every time she's on screen, all i could think was, "How is this one of the few people who have survived?" She never sleeps. She carries no provisions. She has no survival plan. She has no place to hide during the night. In fact, she just wanders around at night when the vampires are out. She has no weapons (except of course for a large cross that she wears, even though she's an atheist - a cross which sometimes disappears for a few scenes, then reappears). And she can't run, or even walk well. She has no skills whatsoever. How has she survived?

The only clue we get to her survival is at the beginning of the film, when a group of humans who serve the vampires capture her (easily). They're about to put her in their car, when they see a more attractive blonde and decide to get her instead, figuring they can always come back and get the fat girl later. So basically the vampires aren't interested in her. Poor girl, you get the idea that no one has ever been interested in her.

When the characters aren't preaching to the audience (and even sometimes when they are), there are some hilarious lines in this film. Like this line from Gwen: "I'm okay. As okay as I can be sitting in a Catholic church eating stew." And there is a girl, Mickey, who laments that she used to think vampires were cool and that Anne Rice was cool and on and on, but now sees how wrong she was. And then she blurts out, "I never wanted to see a dead baby." Not that we've seen any dead babies on screen or anything, or that any have been mentioned up to now.

And it seems that Mickey, before she returned to the church, was involved in a lesbian relationship with one of the vampires' servants. The only thing more frightening to Christians than vampires is of course gay people. But Mickey is over that bit of nastiness and has repented.

This movie also has - and this blew me away - a musical montage scene where the priest and the atheist and a few other people clean up the church to restore it to a proper Christian place. They remove corpses and rebuild crosses and on and on - it's like those wonderful 1980s montages where in the span of one song, a group of characters completes some impossible task. I never expected a scene like that in this film.

And of course because uptight Christians are really doing their best to hide their repressed desires, there are wonderful twisted sex scenes with flagellation and cutting and fur restraints (which i totally want, by the way). Of course, it's the "bad guys" who engage in such behavior - but it's clear that the filmmakers really enjoyed these scenes. They seemed to take more care on these than on any other scenes. Ah, if only these silly bastards could admit their true desires, the world would be a better place.

This insane pile of propaganda was directed Tony Mandile, who also co-wrote the script and even appears as an actor in the film. Ouch. This is the only film Tony directed, amen. And this is the only film that Pamela Karp (who plays Gwen) ever appeared in. Amen again.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

I worked as an extra on the sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer. The first sequel, that is. On my voucher was the title, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. I absolutely thought it was a joke title, and that the real title wouldn't be revealed until the film was released. I actually thought it was a funny joke title. And when i met Jennifer Love Hewitt on the set, i told her so. I joked with her about it, because of course the entire day i spent coming up with other titles for future sequels, such as I Am Starting To Forget What You Did Last Summer and What Are Your Plans For The Fall?

Sadly, that was the actual title. I didn't know it until the film was released. And then i understood why Jennifer was giving me weird looks. Oh well.

Tonight i revisited the original film. It's not terrible, but it's not all that good either. It has a ridiculous ending. How did he get on the other side of a bathroom mirror? But there are some good things about it, and there are some genuine scares in the film. I actually believed Jennifer's fear in the film. Often when people scream in movies, it seems incredibly fake. Not so in this one.

And the moment where the killer rushes at Sarah Michelle Gellar in the shop is great.

This movie is full of bad remakes of good songs. It starts off with Type O Negative completely butchering Seals & Croft's "Summer Breeze." Then there is a lame remake of the Beatles song "Hey Bulldog" - done by Toad The Wet Sprocket. Then we have to suffer through Kula Shaker covering Deep Purple's "Hush." And finally there is purposefully bad version of "Fame" by Jennifer Bland.

There was a third movie in the series, titled I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. That is one title that escaped me that day on the set when i was coming up with stupid titles for future films in the series.