Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation (2008)

I bet if this had been called Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation Of Christ, it would have been a fantastic movie.  Someone should make that. But as for Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation... Well, the good news is that this "sequel" doesn't have Tom Hanks. For that, we must all be grateful. The bad news is that the transvestite is also not in it. Actually, I don't think any of the original characters return.  The writers are back, but none of their characters could make it.

This movie starts with that awful scene where a guy is going to ask a girl to marry him in a restaurant, but the waiter puts the ring in the wrong dessert, and it ends up with some black woman who refuses to give it back because she's excited at the prospect of getting married. Give me a break. When Ron takes it off her finger, she attacks him. And somehow he and his girlfriend, Melinda, get arrested as a result, which makes no sense.

There are awful dirty diaper jokes early on. And every married couple we see is one shade or other of horrible. 

Todd, Melinda's sister's husband, is jealous because Melinda's father takes a shine to Ron. So it's Todd who has the bachelor party idea with the plan to get Ron in trouble so that the wedding will be called off. He also sets a spy on Ron to uncover some dirt. Todd wants to be next in line in the family company.  It's more than a bit ridiculous.  And there are plenty of bad scenes as a result.

There is a long, boring golf montage (even with the nudity, it's boring).  For some reason there is a dance contest, a lame hot tub joke that goes on and on, and other pointless nonsense that makes this 84-minute movie a 104-minute movie.

But there are good things about this film. First off, Sara Foster, the girl who plays Melinda, is beautiful (and also a decent actor).  Also, in the hotel is a Sex Addicts Anonymous party. Two of the guys think SAA stands for Sales Association of America, and that actually leads to some pretty funny dialogue as they try to pick up two girls. (Betty, the girl one picks up, is cute, by the way.)  And there are some other funny lines, even if they're not completely original. Like Harland Williams says of women: "They pretend they like sports the same way we pretend we like talking to them. The only sports you're going to get when you're married is Little League T-Ball. And I've seen that stuff, and trust me, Ron, most of those kids really fucking suck."

And, okay, I love the Nazi stuff.

Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation stars Josh Cooke, Sara Foster, Warren Christie and Harland Williams.  It was directed by James Ryan.  This was his first movie. He was twelve years old.

Skeleton Man (2004)

This is really the worst of the worst. This movie is so boring. There is absolutely no story whatsoever. I swear, there was no script. It's just a guy in a cheap skull mask and an even cheaper black cape killing people, most of whom we're not introduced to until they're killed. Sometimes Skeleton Man is on foot; sometimes he's on a horse. That's really it. And it's all in daylight in the woods, so every shot looks like every other. This movie could have been five minutes, and it still would have been too long.

A military team led by Michael Rooker is out looking for some army guys who have gone missing. We get that horrible scene where the team members introduce themselves to each other. But it happens when they're already out in the field. Didn't they meet earlier when the team assembled back in civilization? Wouldn't that have been the time for introductions? Or during the ride in whatever vehicle took them to the woods? In addition, as each person introduces himself or herself, his or her name appears on the screen, with the sound effect of a typewriter typing the name. As if this is really important information (it's not).

They're in the middle of the woods. They go to great pains to explain this is the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization. But suddenly there is a scene where a guy walks out of the woods and steals a truck, and then the truck explodes. Then back to the woods. No explanation.

The group finds two people. One of the men pulls an ID from one of the people and then announces, "Deer poachers." Wait, what, does it say "deer poacher" on his driver's license? Or did he have a special Deer Poacher business card made up? It doesn't matter. Skeleton Man kills both of them a moment later.

This movie is a complete pile of shit. I've never been less involved in a film than this one, never been less interested in what might happen. And it's so poorly shot and edited. Like we see the group from the killer's perspective, and the shot is above them, from a distance. As if the killer is in a tall tree. Then we get a reverse shot of the killer, and he's on the flattest ground imaginable. Nothing cuts together. A guy is fishing (even though we're in the middle of nowhere, some guy has come out here to fish), and he's seated at the top of a waterfall. He must have a very long line. Anyway, he's attacked from the front - so the weapon must have come from somewhere above the water. But again, in the reverse shot, Skeleton Man is on his horse in the woods. Were the filmmakers even trying?

I just have one question: Why, Michael Rooker? Why? Why? Why? What dirt did the director have on him to get him to sign onto this piece of shit? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Dear Frederick Bailey, so-called writer of Skeleton Man, if I ever meet you, I am going to smack you across the face. And you know you deserve it. In fact, if you're reading this (if you're able to read), please go ahead and smack yourself. Hard. And again. Also, Johnny Martin, director of Skeleton Man, you deserve to be beaten and humiliated in front of everyone you've ever known. Actually, you should be forced to eat every copy of this DVD.

Everyone should avoid this movie. There is nothing good about it. Nothing.

Jolly Roger: Massacre At Cutter's Cove (2005)

Oo-wee, what an incredible mess. I had given up on this film before the opening credits were finished. That's due to the fact that there is the worst rock music playing over them - toward the end of the credits, the music becomes a blatant rip-off of an AC/DC song. And the title sequence itself is incredibly annoying, like a cheap, shitty version of something from That '70s Show.

Anyway, the film opens with a group of teenagers camping on the beach. Right away we get the annoying "get a room" line when two of them are cuddling. (I call for an end to using that line, not just in films but also in real life.) And then the game starts: Who is the worst actor of this film? A case can be made for every single one of them. But early front-runners are the guy that plays Tom and the woman who plays his girlfriend. They have some dialogue about ghost stories that is unbelievably laughably bad. Granted, it is not just their delivery that is atrocious, but the lines themselves.

Meanwhile the two that went looking for a room instead find a treasure chest. In fact, the guy says, "Hey, check it out, it looks like a treasure chest." Indeed. Inside it, he finds a human skull, which he plays with for a moment, then throws into the ocean. Typical response to finding a human skull. But both of them are killed soon, so whatever. The girl does take her top off before getting killed, which is sort of nice. And she smiles at the pirate just before he kills her, which is sort of weird. Yeah, the killer is a pirate.

Another couple back at the campsite are talking about college. Alex tells his girlfriend Jessie that he doesn't want to go to college. He's saved up money and is going to buy a boat. Holy shit, what job did he have during high school? I worked all through high school, but there was no way I had enough money for a boat. Not even a canoe. Anyway, he gives Jessie his school ring, and says this sweet bit of dialogue: "Yeah, my mom just got it for me. I don't really like wearing these things, but I love you, and I want you to have it." Seriously.

The guy playing Tom really wants the "worst actor of the film" award, and to get it, he actually runs toward the pirate after the pirate kills his girlfriend, then stands there waiting to be killed with a perfectly retarded look on his face. Incredible.

Bad acting is far from being the film's sole problem. One scene I love is the What The Fuck Time Is It scene. It starts in a room where there are three clocks on the wall behind some guy. Now usually when there are multiple clocks, it has to do with different time zones. However the three clocks are set to 8:40, 12:20 and 5:40. Sorry, time zones don't go in twenty minute increments. The secretary has her own clock. Hers says 10:35. And when the guy moves over to another clock, it says 4:56. Now the entire scene takes place in only a few minutes. So you too can play What The Fuck Time Is It.

There is also the Miraculous Surveillance Footage scene. After the pirate kills a couple of people in a strip club, the cop asks to see the surveillance tape. So the club manager pops the tape in. First of all, the point of view of the surveillance camera is that of someone at a table in the club - it actually looks up at the stripper. Then it cuts to a point-of-view shot of the pirate approaching her. And the camera moves. It's incredible. The tape not only gets multiple angles, but has been magically edited together to mimic the scene we just saw.

The cop keeps watching the tape in fast forward. He then squints, as if he's catching something we might have missed. But we never learn what that thing might have been. By the way, none of the police work is the least bit believable in this film. I love the incompetent cop. The main cop tells him, "Do the best you can." He says that to him at least three or four times.

The cops think that Alex and perhaps Jessie killed their friends. And they continue to think this even after several other witnesses back up their story about the pirate. In fact, even after the main cop has watched the surveillance tape, he still warns the female cop to not approach Alex until backup arrives. This doesn't make a lick of sense.

Meanwhile Alex and Jessie try to solve these crimes by getting on the internet at their high school. When she logs on, Jessie exclaims, "I'm in!" as if she'd cracked some code at the Pentagon. By the way, the girl who plays Jessie is a prime candidate for Worst Actor Of The Film. She loves doing her out-of-breath thing, even if she's only run like two feet or is looking at pirates on the internet. Clearly, everything exhausts her.

The pirate is killing the descendants of the town's founders. How convenient that the descendants all live in the same town, and still have the same last names. So stupid.

So what's good? There is one good moment in the strip club where a stripper gives the pirate a lap dance. She says, "Is that a musket in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" He replies, "Aye, it's a musket." That's actually funny. And it's the only intentionally funny bit in the entire film.

The mayor character is wonderful - well, when she's in focus, that is. I'm not sure how she was elected mayor. She's clearly bonkers. And yes, the focus puller was on acid ("Sure, it's in focus. In fact, things have never been more in focus for me. I am the camera"). Just one more problem in a film full of problems.

Jolly Roger: Massacre At Cutter's Cove was directed by Gary Jones.

Rottweiler (2004)

Rottweiler is certainly a bad movie. But it has something wonderful in it. However, first the bad stuff...

The movie begins with a prisoner getting kicked and beaten. We don't know who he is, or what he's done. Later, on a chain gang, another prisoner is stung by a scorpion, which somehow allows this prisoner to escape. A metal dog chases him, but he manages to elude it. At least for a few minutes. Soon a bounty hunter who works for the prison catches up to him. The dog, apparently, is his, for he has the dog with him.

We then get a flashback of the prisoner - whose name is Dante - on a boat with his girlfriend. It appears to be a boat full of refugees, but Dante and the girl (named Ula and pronounced Oola and then later Ola), say they're infiltrating. No clue what they're infiltrating. But infiltrating all the same. But the boat is stopped, and they jump overboard.

Back to the present, Dante tricks the metal dog into looking at a rabbit, then kills the bounty hunter and the dog, and escapes. He takes the guy's boots. The next morning he sees a metal skeleton of a dog on a hill and shoots at it, but it's just an hallucination. This leads him to find some drug runners in a cave. They share their food and a Cheech & Chong-type joint with him, but when they ask for his boots in return, Dante says no.

Meanwhile the dog comes back to life because of a smoke machine (and possibly because of a scorpion). And the dead bounty hunter also comes back alive long enough to tell the dog, "Find him, kill him."

Anyway, Dante is trying to find his girlfriend. He shows a picture of her to the drug dealers, and then we get another flashback. The two of them swim to shore, where they're caught. They're immigrants with no papers. They explain that they're playing a game called "Infiltration." Yes, seriously. They describe it as roleplaying in the real world. The next morning when Dante wakes, the drug runners are gone, and so are his boots.

Moments later the dog kills the one with his boots, clearly mistaking him for Dante. But then he somehow gets on Dante's trail. Dante is swimming, and the dog goes after him. Dante taunts it, "I can outsmart you any day of the week, you fucking dog." And then he runs, naked, through the woods. Which gives us time for another flashback. Ula is being raped in a truck, and some blonde asks Dante for a light. That's the entire flashback.

Meanwhile a little girl is afraid of monsters in a cellar on a farm. Anyway, naked Dante arrives, and is given pants by the girl's mom, who then immediately takes them off and fucks him in the Jesus room. Seriously, check out the neon blue glowing cross - it looks like a beer sign - and the Jesus portrait over the bed. Who says Christians have no sense of humor?

The scene where the dog tears the mother apart in front of the daughter is great. The girl is in the cellar, looking up at her mother, whose blood drips down onto her. Wonderful.

But the best thing in this film (and one of the best things I've ever seen in any film, no exaggeration) is the rooster's reaction shot to the dog jumping out of the cellar. The rooster is by far the best actor in the film. This shot is amazing. Dante managed to get the dog into cellar (after getting the little girl out), and locks the door. But the dog is jumping up against the door, banging on it. The rooster looks over at it, curious and a bit nervous. Then the dog springs out of the cellar, and the rooster's reaction of terror is incredible. I can't stress this enough. It is one of my favorite moments in the history of cinema. Again, I am not exaggerating. It's worth owning this movie just for this moment. I watched this scene a dozen times, and it cracked me up every single time.

But eventually we had to let the movie continue. A shame, because we get another flashback, where his girlfriend is finished being raped. Dante tells her it sounded like she was enjoying it. So at that point we want Dante to be killed by the dog. What a bastard. He wanders into a graveyard, and a dead guy from the boat leads him to believe his girlfriend is dead. Suddenly Dante is in the red light district, trying to find Ula (now Ola). Anyway, more stuff happens. But who gives a shit? As soon as the movie was over, we went and watched the rooster a few more times. Amazing.

For those who don't want to sit through the first fifty-five minutes of the film to get to that moment, here is a link to the shot on You Tube: Rooster deserves Oscar.

Enjoy.

Nail Gun Massacre (1985)

Nail Gun Massacre is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's incredibly bad, a total mess from beginning to end. It begins with a woman being raped by a group of guys. We don't know who this woman is; we don't know who any of the men are. Then it cuts to a guy in a shack who is angry because he doesn't have a clean shirt. Just as I'm starting to relate to the guy (I need to do laundry), suddenly the killer appears - in a camouflage outfit and a motorcycle helmet, and carrying a nail gun. We can only assume that the guy with dirty shirts was one of the rapists. And that the killer is either the girl who was raped, or a relative of that woman.

And yes, the killer is going after all the rapists. The problem soon arises, however, that there just aren't enough rapists to fill the length of a movie. So the killer kills a lot of other people too. People who are introduced halfway through the film only to be killed in the same scenes in which they're introduced. Women as well as men. So is it really about revenge? One of the victims tells the killer that if it's money he wants, he's out of luck because he's broke. The killer says he's not after money. He wants revenge. Okay then. Only problem is that this guy just arrived in town in the previous scene. Revenge? And apparently he dies from a nail through his hands.

Which reminds me... Another victim is killed on the highway. The cop and the doctor arrive on the scene and the doctor says that none of his wounds were fatal. What? He's dead, isn't he?

This film suffers from some of the worst acting ever in the history of film. There is an old lady playing a store clerk who is so awful that I joked that it must be the director's grandmother. My friend Ryan guessed that it was the actual clerk of that store. Turns out we were both right. She flubbed one of her lines, then corrected herself, but apparently that was the best take. The entire scene was done in one take, with no coverage or anything, even though many of the lines are inaudible, and there's a radio playing.

So is this movie so bad it's good? No, not quite. But it is strangely a bit of fun. You'll have fun filling in your own dialogue during moments when the actual dialogue is inaudible because no one was miked properly. You'll have fun trying to figure out who the main characters are. There is a group of characters living in a house where someone was killed, and for a while the film focuses on them. But then suddenly they disappear. And for some reason it's the doctor who has to solve the case. He does this partially by calling another doctor he knows in Dallas and asking for his help. Does that other doctor help? We don't really know, actually. And how would this doctor help, given that he has no details about the case? Is the cop the main character? Sometimes. Does he solve the case? No. But at least he shows up at the end.

There is an interview with the filmmaker as a special feature on the DVD, and he said that because of problems the 80-page script became a 25-page script. The movie is 85 minutes long, which means that an hour of it was improvised. Yikes. It's rather obvious. I almost felt bad for the director while watching that interview. He had this to say: "It's a very enormous experience to undertake. I mean, trying to make a movie is just very, very hard to do. You gotta have a bunch of people." Indeed.

The movie feels like it was written by a twelve-year-old boy. There is an early nude scene, and the guy suddenly has to leave because he promised his friend he'd help him chop wood that day. The woman complains because she thought they were going to play doctor all day long. Seriously. She says that. She also says her breasts need attention. And the camera zooms in and then lingers on her large breasts. (By the way, it turns out this entire scene was shot later because the distributors asked for more nudity. That explains the problem the scene creates - the next scene is the wood-chopping scene, and in that scene the dialogue makes it clear that is it in fact the friend who is there to help this guy chop wood. It doesn't matter because both wood-chopping guys are soon dead anyway. And the nude woman is left to play doctor by herself.)

There is another sex scene in a car. Well, it's not really a sex scene, because the two never quite get their pants off. The guy is between the girls legs, and he keeps pulling at her pants. But really, unless he moves he's never going to get them off. And he never does. A terrible song is playing on the car stereo, and when it's over, the radio DJ says it was a request. Apparently, it was the only song the filmmakers could get the rights to, because it then starts playing again. Did someone else request it? I certainly didn't. Fortunately the killer arrives before we get too far into that song again and kills the two people.

So, what's good about this movie?

There is a nice bit when a guy who is having sex with some girl against a tree is shot in the head with the nail gun. (Though the long shots of them having sex before that bit will completely try your patience.) I love that the two roads in this town are called The Main Road and The County Line Road. For some reason, that makes me laugh. Sometimes The County Line Road is described as a dirt road, and sometimes it's a paved road, but that doesn't matter.

The end of the movie is completely retarded, but by then you have totally given up not only on this film, but on film as a medium, and begin to consider fingerpainting as high art.

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back (2008)

The first big problem with Rest Stop: Don't Look Back, the sequel to 2006's Rest Stop, is the idea of The Old Highway, a highway that is not on any maps. First off, it's already called The Old Highway in the 1973 scene. Now it's thirty-five years later. Are we really supposed to believe that AAA is still unaware of this highway? And what about Google Maps? And the road has clearly been maintained. Who has been taking care of this highway all these years - the ghosts in the RV?

Another problem is that these characters are definitely not likeable, at least not at first The main guy is the brother of the character from the first film, and this one starts off with him getting home from overseas, where he's been serving in the military. So there is a party for him to celebrate his safe return. At the party, his girlfriend says, "I gotta get out of here or I'll go Columbine." Seriously. I mean, this guy has just returned from military service, and this blond bitch casually threatens to shoot his entire family. His response should have been, "Fuck you, bitch. These people are my friends and family." Instead he takes her on a road trip to find his missing brother.

A dorky friend tags along on the trip - but following in his own vehicle - because (and this might be the most stupid motivation for a character ever in the history of cinema) he's in love with Nicole, the brother's girlfriend who is also missing, and has been missing for a year. He figures that if he saves her, she'll let him fuck her.

Anyway, we get that typical gas station scene with close-ups of every odd little artifact that the set dresser found. We've seen this gas station in basically every horror film that takes place out in nowhere. And why is the attendant always so reluctant to help? Wouldn't he be happy to finally have a customer? And why is the place so filthy? What has this attendant been doing all this time to earn his pay? If I ever make a horror movie with a gas station in the middle of nowhere, it will be the cleanest gas station ever, with the nicest, most polite attendant. "So good to see you I've just been cleaning this place for the past fifteen years since my last customers came through."

But there are some good things. We do finally like the blonde later when she puts a gun to the gas station attendant, demanding information. And the attendant's reply is pretty cool. And there is some seriously fucked up gore. Of course, it's all tied up in the ridiculous concept of sin.

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back does manage to capture that great nightmarish feel of nothing and yet everything being real, with the characters wondering if anything they do has any effect.

Top Of The Brine (2011)

Top Of The Brine is an odd little entity. This film is a strange collaboration, the product of several film buffs. Done in the manner of the exquisite corpse. Each filmmaker was instructed to do three ten-second shots. At least one of them clearly couldn't follow these simple directions. Each filmmaker only saw what the previous one shot, not the entire piece - and had to continue the story based on what he saw. So of course, there really isn't a story.

But there are some cool shots, and some great moments. The opening is actually pretty cool, with some insane shots of a person's mouth. The movie actually starts with a man being punched until the phone rings. The man doing the punching answers the phone, and says "That's why water is poison," and that leads to the next filmmaker's section. Several shots of water, presumably poisonous - rain, water running in a kitchen sink, a man drinking a glass (this is a filmmaker that did more than three shots).

It's the next section that I love. A man turns off the television (on which the movie thus far has been playing), and then turns to the figure seated next to him and begins sawing his head off. Totally random, deliciously gory, with plenty of blood spurting out. The best bit is when the doorbell rings, the man spits some of the other man's blood out of his mouth. At the door is a bloody (and shaking) package, which one filmmaker gets to open, and which the next filmmaker reveals to be a silly hand puppet. The film went from horror to comedy, with some not-at-all-convincing screaming from a man with his hand taken off.

The final section takes place in what is referred to as "Damon Packard's meth lab." The presence of Damon Packard, playing himself - well, a fictitious twisted version of himself - is wonderful. Most people know Damon Packard from his 2002 film Reflections Of Evil. But he has quite a list of films to his credit, including The Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary (2003) and SpaceDisco One (2007). Anyway, in Top Of The Brine, Damon watches over a couple of topless meth slaves who are mixing chemicals for him in the kitchen. And who is that weirdo in the surgical-looking shorts?

There are seven sections, including the opening/title section. So seven filmmakers. Is the result a film? Not really. But it's only a few minutes long. So relax.