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Apr

Uninvited (1987): Kitty Carnage On The Open Sea!

Categories: Uncategorized and Uninvited (1987)
Tags: abandones at sea, Alex Cord, animal testing, bikini, biologist, blood, Cat, cayman islands, Clare Carey, Clu Gulager, corporation, creature, criminals, feds, feline, geezers, George Kennedy, Gore, Greydon Clark, kingpin, kitty, money, Monster, mutant, ocean, old guys, radiation, Shari Shattuck, straight to video, teens, the caymans, tip, Toni Hudson, toxic, Uninvited, vomit, white collar, yacht

Uninvited poster

“Nothing’s going to stop me from getting to The Caymans!” George Kennedy as Mike Harvey in Uninvited

a Primal Root written review

Man, what I wouldn’t give for a trip across the deep blue sea in an enormous private yacht with a few bikini clad women by my side taking us all the way to the Cayman Islands for a bit of the old social distancing from a world falling apart at the seams. But, as it turns out I’m not a wealthy criminal scum bag, so this will have to remain a fantasy rather than beautiful reality. Thank goodness there are movies like 1987’s direct to video schlock classic, Uninvited, to help indulge me in this minor dream of paradise. Well, except there happens to be a radioactive mutant cat on board that’s vicious and has a bite that’s fatally poisonous and there is a trio of criminals running the yacht as fast as possible to the Cayman Islands in order to pick up a ton of money they garnered from their illegal white collar crimes…Okay, besides the boat, the trip and the bikinis…and possibly the fresh fruit platter in one of the early scenes, there’s very little this movie has in common with my current quarantine fantasies.

Anyhoo, Uninvited was directed by none other than the legendary master of low grade cheese, Greydon Clark, who is a familiar name to any trash cinema connoisseur or Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan, having lended is immeasurable skills to such classics as 1979’s Angel’s Brigade aka: Angel’s Revenge, the 1985 Joe Don Baker vehicle Final Justice, the 1983 arcade sex comedy Joysticks and the 1977 Satanic classic, Satan’s Cheerleaders, so you know what you’ve signed up for if you’re sitting down for a viewing. The rest of you better hold on to your pussies.

uninvited

The film begins with the opening credits unspooling over some guys in lab coats waving a syringe around a fluffy British Shorthair kitty. They inject the cat with some mysterious radioactive elixir and can makes a break for it out the OPEN DOOR to their top secret experimental laboratory. The kitty makes it’s way to the stairwell where it barfs up a monstrous, bigger, poisonous version of itself, which lays waste to a half dozen gun toting security team guys sent to capture the kitten, leaving the stairwell walls covered in blood. The mad scientists grab their guns and try to track the cat down in the parking garage only to be ripped to pieces before the cat gets into the air duct, unscrews a grate and escapes to the streets.

Uninvited_001_grande

Meanwhile, two incredibly fuckable young ladies, Suzanne (Shari Shattuck from 1989’s Death Spa) and Bobbie (Clare Carey from 1988’s Waxwork) show up to a fancy pants resort and are immediately spotted by wealthy criminal business man, Walter Graham (Alex Cord, probably best known for the TV series Airwolf) who buys the two ladies dinner then invites them to a private party on his yacht. Of course, the guy has money and has bought them food, so they are more than eager to slob his knob and live the highlife for a bit until Captain Moneybags grows tired of them and throws them overboard for a younger model. First, Graham must have a business meeting with his goons, Mike (George Kennedy, from The Naked Gun and Just Before Dawn) and Albert (Clu Gulager, from Return of the Living Dead and A Nightmare on Elm Street part 2: Freddy’s Revenge, who is wearing a really goofy set of Bubba teeth in this role which really sells his…colorful character) so they can drown a business associate in the yacht’s hot tub.

In the meantime, our poisonous mutant cat is roaming all over town murdering assholes, which seems to be the plague cat’s M.O. The kitte seems friendly to those who feed it, but takes pleasure in dealing out violent, bloody radioactive death to those who hurt those who are kind to it. Several scum bags end up shredded to ribbons, poisoned an/or exploded in their cars before the kitty makes it’s way towards the marina where Graham is docked…

Cut to the next morning where we are introduced to three dorky guys sitting at the same marina where Graham has his yacht and Suzanne and Bobbie are staying. These three dorks are Martin, Lance and Corey. Martin is a biologist, Corey a yuppie and Lance is just a huge dork in a Hawaiian shirt looking to get laid. They sit around sipping orange juice until Suzanne and and Bobbie show up in their fetching bikinis and invite them to join them onboard Graham’s yacht for some fun.

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Okay, I have a few issues with this already. Not with the cat barfing up a furry, fanged, radioactive monster, but with the human interactions on display.

Number One: When does this ever happen? Two women make a b-line straight to three obviously horny doofuses and invite them to party with them? No names exchanged, no greetings, just “Hey, you’re cute, want to party and protect us in the case a millionaire criminal might possibly decide to assault us? ” They actually mention that, by the way. “You look like you’ll be able to protect us if Graham tries anything.” Huh? Who are you and what are you talking about? Are you paying us? Are you prostitutes and we’re having to pay you? What is the situation, here? At least tell me your name before we head to some strangers yacht! Which brings me to…

Number Two: Who in their right mind invites strangers to the abode of someone you’ve just met? Without even clearing it with them! This is the epitome of shitty manners which shows no consideration and total disrespect for the person who extended their hand and invited you and your friend, and only the two of you, aboard their yacht. Imagine you’ve invited just a friend or two over and without telling you they invite a group of folks over to your house that you do not know and just show up with them. Not asking you, just showing up at your house with strangers. It’s a fucking jerk thing to do and I already can’t stand anyone in this movie.

Number Three: WHAT ABOUT THE PRIVATE PARTY! There’s all this talk and build up to the awesome party on this yacht and WE NEVER GET TO WITNESS IT! Apparently it’s going to be this blow out event on the yacht, probably with booze, debauchery, topless ladies, donkey shows, etc. But the audience is not important enough to join the festivities. We just weren’t sexy enough to invite. Fuck these guys.

Anyway, on with the review.

kitty2

Of course, the eager young guys accept the invitation and head out to the rich guy’s yacht with the two bikini clad beauties, one of which discovers our dangerously cute and cuddly radioactive science experiment monster cat at the marina. Suzanne clutches the kitty against her ample bosom and decides the kitty is coming aboard Graham’s yacht for the pleasure cruise, despite the cat obviously not wanting to go anywhere, let alone be held, as it squirms desperately trying to get out of Suzanne’s bubble blonde clutches. Young biologist Martin notices the kitty has a testing facility tag on it, but tosses it aside assuming the cat is fit as a fiddle and SURELY hasn’t been experimented upon with some terribly virus or toxic chemicals that will kill himself, his friends and these bodacious babes. We’re young, YOLO, let’s get this party started!

I-Mockery.com | Uninvited - A Horror Film About A Mutant Killer ...

We learn quickly from the yacht’s young captain, Rachel (Toni Hudson from Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and School Spirit) that during the party we never witnessed, Graham lost his temper, berated the crew, and they all quit except for her. Which works out well, since these new, uninvited guests climb aboard THEY can earn their keep by being the new crew as they flee for The Cayman Islands as Albert delivers the news that The Feds are closing in on the yacht! So, this motley crew or young kid who just want to eat, dance and fuck, the old geezer criminals who cannot stop talking about getting to “The Caymans” and the poor little captain with heart of gold and a deep desire to own the yacht that once belonged to her Father but was purchased away from the family by the evil, greedy, Graham, tries her best to keep all this shit under control.

Cat Rifftrax Uninvited GIF by RiffTrax - Find & Share on GIPHY

But it doesn’t take long for it all to go right to shit as Albert takes over Captain duties for about fifteen minutes in which time he manages to get wine drunk and take the whole voyage way of course before spitting wine all over the monster kitty and paying the ultimate price for his rudeness when the little kitty opens it’s jaws and lets out the malicious mutant cat…living in it’s stomach? The science really made abundantly clear, but Albert gets a good potion of his throat stripped out, but what remains begins to pulsate violently before he falls overboard to become shark food. Soon, the trip to The Cayman’s has been delayed as Rachel makes the call to go back and look for Albert, which lead to Mike pulling a gun on all these”young punks” and proclaims “NOTHING IS GONNA STOP ME FROM GETTING TO THE CAYMANS!” before the vicious monster cat nearly bites his foot off. Mike lays on the couch for a while as everyone screams at each other, which is hysterical, because all through the scene you hear George Kennedy’s deep voice moaning and groaning as everyone else argues and it sounds just like he’s getting an incredibly good blow job just off screen. That is, until his stomach starts pulsating and something starts emerging just beneath the skin. The entire group gathers and huddles real close over Mike’s warped body as something inside his stomach begins rising up like an eternal boner, and it looks like we’re about to get another Alien chest burster sort of scene, but Mike dies, the internal stomach boner subsides and we are left wishing we had gotten to see a blood geyser and head into the rest of the film feeling more disappointed than we were when we missed the yacht party earlier in the film.

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The monster cat is known, the remaining crew of the SS Evil Pussy is dead in the water after the engine over heated and shut off, emotions are running high, food and fresh water are running out and it’s only a matter of time until the Toxic Kitten…starts to get hungry…

Uninvited_005_2400x (1)

Uninvited is a shockingly fun little monster movie which relies heavily on it’s great cast of talent who genuinely make the film way better than it has any right to be, selling a killer rubber furry cat monster puppet like it we JAWS. It’s goofy fun that doesn’t make a lick of sense, but as the characters grow more desperate an unhinged aboard their stranded, doomed yacht, their performances really come to life and they totally sell their dilemma, which I know few of us have ever experienced in real life. The effects are rudimentary, but add the charm of the overall experience, which I can guarantee, you will never go through outside of Uninvited. It’s a one of a kind horror of the high seas survival film with an obviously minimal budget, but a cast and crew willing to go the distance to deliver. Only drawback, and it’s one of the greatest detriments to the film, the are absolutely no tits in this film. None of the actresses are willing to bare anything in this low rent straight to video horror film. I turned to my wife about three quarters of the way through this flick and mentioned it, “Man, I honestly don’t think we are going to see a single bare breast in this thing!” Sure, the girls tease the boys and the audience with the promise of tits to come, but the moment never occurs. And honestly, I almost didn’t notice because the movie is such a strange voyage into absurdist horror that I was thoroughly entertained to the point of not really caring. I wanted to see where the story was going and what was going to happen to this lively group of teeny boppers and AARP members with the pussy punisher roaming freely aboard the ship. For a films to have me nearly forget about boobs is a pretty amazing feat. Plus, there is something eternally endearing about watching cats terrorize and kill people.

I am awarding Uninvited with THREE AND A HALF out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets.

Uninvited is a furry, slimy, straight to video trash schlock fest well worth the voyage. I do recommend if you’ve got a fondness for puppets, great character actors and sense of adventure. A sense of humor will also help you out tremendously. Half a nugget eduction for lack of nudity.

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Apr

The Taint (2010) Filth Beyond Your Wildest Dreams (NSFW)

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: The Taint (2010)
Tags: 10, 2010, abortion, America, American flag, animation, apocalypse, armageddon, barf, beating, black comedy, blood, boobs, brains, castration, coat hanger, cock, comedy, condom, contamination, crush, cum, Dan Nelson, death, dick, Drew Bolduc, Drive-In, end of the world, experiment, feminist, filth, fucking, full frontal, Gore, graphic, gruesom, guns, head, horror, independent, John Waters, Lloyd Kaufman, men, Midnight Movie, misogynist, Monster, murder, music, naked, Nekkid, nudity, panties, penis, piss, puke, score, semen, sex, shit, shooting, skull, skull fucking, tainted, The Taint, tits, Trash, vomit, water, wine, women

a Primal Root written review

“No one’s going to stop anything ever again!”

Gang, in the world of current Trash Cinema I am seldom supremely impressed anymore. It’s easy to shock people or gross them out, but to entertain while doing so? Not since John Waters or Lloyd Kaufman have I seen a filmmaker who can pull it off so seamlessly. Enter, filmmakers Drew Bulduc and Dan Nelson and their exemplarily slice of down and dirty filth, The Taint. Not since Pink Flamingos have I been this genuinely entertained and repulsed by a movie. Here’s the low down…

The Taint is the story of a very different kind of apocalypse. The world’s water supply becomes tainted by a mysterious chemical which affects only men, making their cocks grow ridiculously large, spew goopy man milk through the air, and drives them to homicidal rage towards women, whom they dispatch in graphic, nasty, hysterical ways. We learn of this taint through an excellent opening credit sequences that explicitly shows the spread of the chemical agent through our world and just how vast it’s reach is. I’m not going to spoil it, but we do get to see just how and why this chemical agent was created and how it ended up contaminating our water supply. Trust me, it’s a story well worth witnessing.

As society collapses a handful of survivors must come to terms with this new world of brutal violence, constantly hard, violently ejaculating cocks and men who have become monsters, constantly looking for female skulls to crush. Two survivors, Phill O’Ginny (Drew Bolduc) a man-whore teenage skater who’s too cool for school and Misandra (Colleen Walsh) a shot gun toting, take no prisoners feminist badass must band together in the heat of this armageddon to do battle with the hordes of psychopaths, both tainted and un-tainted, and face down their personal demons in order to pave their own way in this terrifying new world order.

The Taint is the most brashly wonderful and original piece of trash cinema I’ve seen in what feels like an eternity. It is a film of uncommon grotesqueries to match it’s extraordinary intelligence. The jokes and gags are made so much stronger due to the wit behind them. Sure, you’re witnessing mindless death and destruction filled with puke, piss, shit, tits and dicks, but it’s all handled with such confidence and savvy, that it is goddamn impossible to not be thoroughly entertained. I could not wait to see where this fucking madman of a movie was going to take me next. The score, which is fucking spectacular and composed by Drew Bolduc, feels like a beautiful mix of John Carpenter at his very best mixed by Daft Punk and then fucked an 8-Bit video game.

The Taint never lets up, never slows down and is never short of incredible concepts, savage strangeness or fantastic energy. It feels like the most amazing backyard movie project ever filmed. There’s even an underlying and interesting subtext broaching such subjects as post-feminist society, misogyny and misandry in American culture. We watch as women are killed, their blood spraying through the air as men jerk off and laugh while watching. In another scene, a woman mentions how all men will eventually turn into this a monster, lusting after the destruction of women…and then we can;t help but laugh as a rock hard cock gets shoved through her skull and out her face before a young man packing heat blows the cock off and calls the cock wielder a misogynist. It’s ludicrous and hysterical but at least it’s trying to strike the conversation up. And for this, I totally commend The Taint.

I am in love with this film. I am going to go buy a copy, abduct people, tie them to the couch and make them watch it. Well, maybe just continually invite a steady stream of my Trash Cinema loving friends over to witness The Taint‘s greatness. If we still lived in a world with art house cinemas and drive-in theaters, The Taint would be an instant Midnight Movie classic. Why The Taint is not a sensation, I have no clue. But I will preach the gospel of The Taint to my last dying breath. Gang, this is Trash Cinema at it’s very finest. virtuoso filmic filth. YOU MUST SEE THIS! Find a copy, come over to my house, or attend a Trash Cinema Night at Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack one day when we screen it. IF you love what Drive-In Movies once were, witness the second coming. The Taint is one of the funniest, nastiest, most ceaselessly entertaining flicks I’ve ever seen.

FIVE out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets! INSTANT TRASH CINEMA CLASSIC!

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Mar

Pieces (1982) Bastards and Bloodshed

By primalroot 1 Comment

Categories: Pieces (1982)
Tags: 1980's, 1982, 82, ass, balls, blood, boobs, breasts, chainsaw, Christopher George, cock, college, comedy, cops, corpse, crime, cult, death, destruction drugged, detectives, dismember, Edmund Purdom, female, Frank Brana, Friday the 13thm video store, funny, girls, Gore, horror, humiliated, Ian Sera, invetigation, Jack Taylor, Juan Piquer Simon, karate, kill, kung-fu, low budget, Lynda Day, Lynda Day George, male, mean, murder, mutilate, mystery, naked, nude, nudity, pants, Paul L. Smith, pee, penis, Pieces, piss, pissed, Pod People, police, pool swimming, pro, puzzle, red herring, ridiculous, rip, saw, sex, slaughter, slsher, Spanish, splatter, stabbed, stud, suspects, tear, tennis, tits, vomit, women

a Primal Root written review

Slasher films were a dime a dozen back in the 1980’s. Once “Friday the 13th” dethroned “The Empire Strikes Back” of it’s number one slot at the box office and proved just how ludicrously profitable this low budget sub-genre that had once been relegated to Grindhouses and Drive-In’s could be, big studios suddenly hopped on the bandwagon draining every last drop they could out of the fad before leaving the lifeless, dried up corpse of slasher cinema to rot and fester. Yes, it was a glorious time filled with blood, breasts, beasts and masked madmen. Every weekend brought the promise of a new holiday themed slasher film, a new ensemble cast of lovely young people too stupid to stay out of the woods, or the mines, or the haunted house. We hollered our wise advice at the silver screen week after week but to no avail, and we wanted it that way! Boyfriends getting their heads crushed and tossed through windows during the final chase, young actresses we rarely ever heard from again got their quick fifteen minutes of fame as they whipped out they bouncing sweater puppies only to have their throats slit and their sticky, Kayro syrup blood sprayed all over their ample young bosoms. My God, it was a glorious time to be alive.

Of course, I was only 8 when the by the time the 1990’s ushered in the end of that glorious era of the 1980’s. A new cycle of horror began and many pop culture critics considered horror dead which was pretty goddamn stupid of them seeing as “The Silence of the Lambs” swept the Oscars in 1991 and that fuckers one Hell of a horror movie. But it was true in terms of the slasher genre. The well had run dry for the time being and, like long suffering Momma’s Boy Jason Voorhees, went to rest for a while until some new blood could get pumped into the proceedings. THANKFULLY, at this time in my life there was a plethora of these establishments called “Video Rental Stores” where you (or your parents) could get a membership and you would have an entire collection of movies on VHS right at your finger tips! This, Gang, was where my horror education began.

As a kid I spent countless hours with my butt planted in the Horror aisles picking up every case there, admiring the artwork and reading the descriptions. I was particularly fascinated with the “Friday the 13th” franchise and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” flicks. But one tape at Turtle’s Video always caught my eye. On the front it featured the stitched together corpse of an attractive young blonde with a chainsaw perched over her. “YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO TO TEXAS FOR A CHAINSAW MASSACRE!” it boldly proclaimed. I was sold. It would be several years before I was able to convince my Mom to rent it for me, but once she did and I popped that sucker in my VCR my life was changed forever.

The movie was the 1982 Spanish splatter flick “Pieces” and it was everything I could have ever possibly hoped it would be. A goofy Who-Done-It plot set on a college campus, incredible over the top performances, unintentionally hilarious dialogue, gallons of fake blood and chainsaw dismemberment, impromptu karate instructor attacks, a plethora of nude women including full frontal and a bit of wiener for the ladies, and one of the greatest, strangest, mind blowing jump scare endings I had ever witnessed. My little preteen mind was rocked. When the tape finished I immediately hit rewind and watched that sucker again.

“Pieces” begins in 1942 where we witness a young boy piecing together a puzzle in his playroom. When his Mother discovers that the puzzle is of a naked woman she goes ballistic, calling the young boy’s absentee Father a filthy, perverted, degenerate and that she’s going to search all through the house and burn everything that features female nudity. She even strikes her son and repeatedly calls him stupid as she slips further into her suitable for Lifetime Television hysterics. But her young son is having none of it, when she has her back turned he grabs an axe that’s bigger than he is and surprises her with several well placed chops to the noggin’. Soon after the murder of his mother the boy grabs a hacksaw and goes to town pulling his dead Mom apart. Yes, the boy finishes his puzzle by the time the police barge in and are side stepping meaty chunks and pools of coagulated lady blood He cries, blames a “big man, big man” and everyone buys his story hook line and sinker. It’s a nasty. bloody, and darkly comical note to begin “Pieces” on, and it only gets better from there.

Present Day 1982 and we’re on a college campus when women start falling prey to a chainsaw killer. A girl gets decapitated while she is out in the park reading, another young woman gets quartered by the swimming pool, and so on… but this shadowy figure dressed in black doesn’t just kill his victims, he collects body parts. We discover early on that whoever is doing the killings is, in fact, the same little boy who killed his mother all those years ago and is sawing a trail of blood drenched terror through this college campus as he begins putting together a new puzzle.

There’s a rouges gallery of suspects which includes the creepy, shifty eyed caretaker Willard (Paul L. Smith, Bluto from 1980’s Popeye) a quiet, odd duck anatomy teacher, Professor Brown (Jack Taylor) the uptight Dean (Edmund Purdom) and even the dorkish campus stud, Kendal (Ian Sera) who every woman on campus wants to bang for no readily apparent reason. Well, perhaps it was that lovely singing voice displayed in “Pod People?” Ah, who am I kidding, it STINKS! The suspect pool always seems to be hanging around nearby whenever a murder occurs and never fail to act sketchy as Hell no matter what’s going down.

Two detectives are put on the case, the good natured detectives, Ly. Bracken (Christopher George) and hard case Sgt. Holden (Frank Brana), and they’re both equally clueless. One of my favorite moments with these two is during their investigation of the poolside murder and mutilation of a young college girl. She’s been sawed into a pile of about 6 or 7 hunks of flesh and a bloody chainsaw is laying on the floor next to this tall pile of woman. Lt. Bracken asks Proffessor Brown if he believes the chainsaw might be the murder weapon, to which Prof. Brown replies, after a close examination of the chainsaw, that yes, even a layman can see that this was the murder weapon. Damn fine police work, Bracken!

But these two have a secret weapon! They put two of their very best into action as undercover agents. Tennis Pro and party time law enforcement official, Mary Riggs and possible suspect Kendal, who spends most of the investigation either fucking coeds, trying to get into Mary’s pants or showing up too late to prevent murders or apprehend the suspect. I understand, he’s just a college guy, but the man’s kind of an idiot. Hell, ALL the good guys in this thing are idiots. It’s hard to root for these folks when they’re all so grossly incompetent at what they do for a living! It’s uncanny how they always seem to show up about thirty seconds too late to save the chainsaw killer’s nubile young victim. But it’s never to late to repeatedly scream “BASTARD!” at the top of your lungs. Well, despite the fact that they all suck, they are at least fun to watch bumble their way through one of the most brutal crime sprees ever to take place on a fictional college campus.

After the climactic final murder that takes place in a women’s locker room, and yes, you get to view the boner trifecta (Boobs, Bush, buns) where a woman is chased topless by our chainsaw toting lunatic into a bathroom stall where she pisses her pants in closeup as he chainsaws his way in to seal her doom, Kendal and Sgt. Holden get some Wendy’s take out and start going through a bunch of files hoping they just might come across something, and oh boy, do they ever! Kendal ends up cracking the case and figuring out who the killer is, but will he and his detective pals get there in time to save the lovely Mary Riggs? And why in the fuck is Kendal allowed to join the two detectives as they kick down to door into a suspected serial killer’s abode? sure, some idiotic, unarmed, college kid wants to come and hang out in this possibly deadly situation? Yeah, sure! Why not. Trust me, Kendal pays the price for being a dipshit.

Once the killer is revealed and meets his end “Pieces” drops two of the coolest, meanest, most disturbing shock endings on it’s unsuspecting audience. I am really struggling not to tell you what happens, as it’s one of those ingredients that really clenches “Pieces” as one of my all time favorite slasher flicks. You’ve really got to see it to believe it. All I can say is, Kendal’s stud days are over.

I cannot express my love enough for this deeply trashy slice of early 80’s exploitation sleaze. “Pieces” is one of those rare cases where every weakness it has manages to bolster the film up and make it watchable. This movie should be a failure, the last thing it should be is entertaining. But despite all it’s flaws it still manages to keep me entertained from beginning to end with it’s total lack of class, it’s crassness and it’s heart warming lack of politcal correctness. Also, all that nudity sure helps the trash go down smoothly, too. It’s like a Friday the 13th sequel on steroids. It’s simple, it’s mindless, it’s filthy and it’s the perfect serving a of junk when you need that Trash Cinema pick me up.

I give “Pieces” FIVE out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets! Classic Trash Cinema!

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Oct

Root’s Top 5 Tales from the Crypt

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Top 5 Tales from the Crypt
Tags: 1980's, 1990's, 5, 80's, 90's, adult, beasts, Bill Paxton, blood, boobs, breasts, censorship, code, comic book, comics, content, Crypt Keeper, Death of Some Salesman, dirty, distubing, episodes, favorite, favorites, five, For-Sided Triangle, full episodes, Gilbert Adler, Gore, graphic, grotesque, Halloween, Haunt of Fead, HBO, horror, Jam, list, Mary Lambert, morality, music, nudity, opinion, original, Patricia Arquette, People Who Live in Brass Hearses, Priml, recap, review, Richard Donner, Root, series, sex, sexy, showdown, stories, story, summation, suspense, tales from the crypt, television, thought, tits, Tom Holland, top, TV, Vault of Horror, violence, vomit, What's Cookin, yarn, youtube. Home Box Office

The Primal Root’s Dirty Thoughts

Greetings, Creeps! It’s your ol’ pal The Primal Root here, getting into the groove of another Halloween season. Recently Ms. Bootsie Kidd and I sat down to enjoy a marathon of the entire series run of HBO’s original series “Tales from the Crypt” based on the old and incredibly popular 1940-1950’s horror comic book series of the same name. The comics featured gruesome morality plays where evil doers always ended up of the gory end of karma’s comeuppance. The comic book series, including such title as “Tales from the Crypt” “The Vault of Horror,” “The Haunt of Fear,” “Two Fisted Tales” and “Sock SuspenStories” were censored into oblivion by the Comic book Code, which blamed the aforementioned comics as the prime contributors to our nation’s juvenile delinquency problem, were all resurrected in the late 1980’s as an HBO series entitled “Tales from the Crypt”, which adapted stories from every horror/action/thriller comic at some point or another. The impact of these comic books left a huge impression on the the talents who came together to breath new life and pay tribute to these once thriving graphic novels. Filmmakers such as Robert Zemeckis, Richard Donner, Tom Holland, Mary Lambert, and countless others all were dying to take a stab at their favorite stories and turn them in twenty five minute long short films. The show didn’t always knock it out of the park, but when it did, it was glorious. and, Hell, even their weakest episodes proved to be interesting, at the very list.

What I did find myself doing, however, was constantly saying “Oh, this is a great!” or “This is one of my favorites!” just about every other episode. That’s when I decided I really needed to sit down, do some soul searching and make a list of my Top Five Favorite Tales from the Crypt. It was a tough process whittling it down to only five, but I must admit, I was chomping at the bit to see which ones would make the CUT! So, without any further a due, let’s see which Terror Tales made the final CUT! AAARRRGGHHHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha…

5) “People Who Live in Brass Hearses” dir. Russell Mulcahy (Season 5, Episode 5)

Who knew the ice cream truck industry was this depraved? Bill Paxtion plays a scumbag ex-con Billy DeLuca, who enlists the help of his emotionally stunted younger brother Virgil (Brad Douriff) to pull of a heist that will even the score with ice cream truck driver and excellent puppeteer, Mr. Byrd (Michael Lerner) and Billy’s old boss Mrs. Grafungar (Lainie Kazan) after they sent Billy to prison for stealing from the till. When everything goes wrong and their heist ends up in a blood bath leaving the brother’s with nothing, they must turn to desperate measures in order to get the money Billy feels he so richly deserves. But, as per usual with the Tales from the Crypt formula, nothing is as it seems, and this sick puppy has a twist ending that comes somewhere out of left field and pegs you right in the gob. This is among the strangest episodes of Tales from the Crypt in my book and the fact that it features such an excellent all-star cast makes it every bit stranger. Once our players are established the tale hits an insane pace that feels almost like an action story, but then the meat hooks start being gouged into people’s skulls and folks begin having their skulls chunked all over the dining room from well placed shotgun blasts. Trust me, even with all these gory goodies, the episode still manages to whack you over the head with it’s sleazy, disgusting and inspired conclusion. You’ll laugh in disbelief as soon as you pick your jaw up off the floor.

4) “Four-Sided Triangle” dir. Tom Holland (Season 2, Episode 9)

I’ve always been an admirer of down home horrors and “Four-Sided Triangle” is one fine example of horrific wages of dysfunctional rednecks. This episode is a small, intimate one featuring three players on a isolated farm. Old married couple, the limping, strict, and stern Luisa (Susan Blommaert), her lecherous, scheming and alarmingly horny husband George (Chelcie Ross), and their young, voluptuous, sexy as Hell captive farm worker, Mary Jo, (Patricia Arquette). As you might expect, the story revolves around George trying to get his monkey tail down Mary Jo’s sweaty bloomers. In fact, the very first scene features George’s wide eyes peering into the chicken coup as Mary Jo bends over and writhes around as she sexily, yet innocently, collects eggs for her white trash captors all while displaying her ample bra-less bosom in a tiny tank top and her robust booty in a pair of well worn, skin tight pair of LEVI’S. After a failed rape attempt in which Mary Jo gets the living snot beat out of her by George, she stumbles into the corn field where she hallucinates that a scarecrow reaches down to help her. Her brain must be batter, because she becomes obsessed with the scarecrow and declares loudly and frequently how much she loves him while singing songs about how she doesn’t care about chicken pot pie. Anyhoo, Luisa is on to George’s lustful yearnings for Mary Jo, even going as far as to threaten him with performing the same procedure on him that they do when they want to change a bull into a steer. As we all know, these threats typically fall on deaf ears when it comes to horny rednecks and “Four-Sided Triangle” culminates in a conclusion that is both bloody and inescapable. We can see where the story is headed but the tale is so well directed, staged and acted, you feel every bit of suspense and horror and the doomed “Four-Sided Triangle of the title meet their doom. This was among the first Tales from the Crypt episodes I ever saw and it made a lasting impression on me. And introduced me to Patricia Arquette, for which I am eternally grateful.

3) “What’s Cookin’ ” dir. Gilbert Adler (Season 4, Episode 6)

One of the smartest, sickest, most wonderfully depraved episodes of Tales from the Crypt, “What’s Cookin” features a great comic turn from Superman himself, Christopher Reeve, as a struggling restaurant owner named Fred. See, his restaurant specializes in one thing and one thing only… Squid. Yes, squid. As you might expect, the restaurant he runs along with his wife Erma (Bess Armstrong, from My So-Called Life) is way overdue on their rent and hasn’t seen a customer in weeks, well, with the exception of officer Phil (Art LaFleur) who drops by for coffee from time to time. Their busboy, shady drifter, Gaston (Judd Nelson) keeps prodding Fred to try out his family’s classic barbecue recipe, but Fred won;t stand for it. The man’s got a dream and refuses to give up on it. That dream nearly ends when Chumley (played in a bit of truly inspired casting by Meatloaf), the landlord, shows up and evicts Ed for being over two months late on rent. The following morning, as Fred and Erma begin to shut down, Officer Phil comes in for coffee and eggs. To Erma’s astonishment, there are a half dozen fresh steaks in the fridge than Gaston brought in from his own, private supplier. Erma cooks this up for Phil, and just as he takes his first bit Gaston reveals to Fred just who is supplying the steaks. Yep, there in the meat freezer, to Fred’s dismay, hangs the corpse of Chumley. Soon, Fred and Erma’s Steakhouse is an overnight sensation with everyone in the city stopping by for a bite of their delicious, hand cut steaks. Only problem is, the police investigation into Chumley’s death is paving a pth right to Fred and Erma’s restaurant and as Fred’s feet get colder and colder Gaston begins plotting a double cross. “What’s Cookin'” is one very macabre and gruesome episode with a wicked streak of dark comedy. The performances are great and the final twist in the end, in typical Tales from the Crypt fashion, will leave you just as satisfied as one of Fred and Erma’s steaks. Is it wrong that this episode always makes me hungry?

2) Showdown dir. Richard Donner (Season 4 Episode 8)

Originally created as part of a three piece pilot for a rejected pitch to FOX for a “Two-Fisted Tales” spin off series, “Showdown” spins the tale of Billy Quintaine (Neil Giuntoli), a hardened, remorseless, legendary gunslinger who is cornered in a small desert town by an equally notable Texas Ranger Tom McMurdo (David Morse). After a facing off in a shoot out in which Billy murders Tom, he enters a nearby saloon for a drink, and after ingesting some snake oil from a traveling salesman, realizes he might not be as victories as it might seem. Showdown is one of the most poetic and beautiful episodes of Tales from the Crypt and manages to pack in a plethora of themes including the inevitable outcome and price of violence, the inevitability of death and our current irreverence for our own bloody past and re-marketing it as family friendly, tourist bullshit. Character actor Neil Giuntoli gives a hauntingly human performance as gunslinger Billy Quintaine, as he becomes slowly and painfully aware of his own fate we watch this cynical, callous, man breakdown before our very eyes reminding us that the most despicable character is, at the end of the day, also a human being. “Showdown” is frightening in it’s implications on a far deeper level than it’s Tales from the Crypt brethren and deals with life and death on a far more thought provoking and meaningful level than the typical epsiode. All that said, “Showdown” ends on a moving, up lifting note leaving us with the hope that when we shed this mortal coil, when all these pretenses are dropped, perhaps we can all finally ride off into the sunset as brothers.

1) “Death of Some Salesman” dir. Gilbert Asler (Season 5, Episode 1)

Good God, this episode is revolting. It’s a buffet of loathsomeness where, as a viewer, you ill wonder if you should laugh, cringe, or go for the barf bag. “Death of Some Salesman” is the story of Judd Campbell (Ed Begley Jr.), a charismatic, sleazeball con-man posing as a cemetery plot salesman. The man is a gifted liar, using his skills to con old widows out of their inheritance and even to convince nubile young waitresses to “drop their panties” by pitching love and escape. The man is a scum bag that you know will be paying for his trespass and the man get’s his rotten just desserts in the form of The Brackett family. By blind luck, Judd ends up knocking on the door of Ma and Pa Brackett (Both played by Tim Curry). Judd’s invited in and the sale seems to be going incredibly well as Pa and Ma Brackett head down to the basement to get Judd the money for two none existant cemetery plots. That is, until Judd discovers the decaying corpses of several dozen salesmen who previous had the misfortune of knocking on the Brackett’s door. Judd is captured with Pa Brackett intent on killing him, but Judd sees a way out if he can only convince Winona Brackett (also played by Tim Curry), Ma and Pa Brackett’s comically hideous daughter that he loves her. This is the pitch of Judd’s life as he must chock down the bile and try to convince the skeptical Winona that he does, in fact, love her. the lengths of which Judd must prove is unwavering devotion is extrodinarily and will have you groaning and laughing on your couch. Tim curry gives the performance for the ages as The Brackett family, managing to blend mirth and menace in equal amounts. And the always game Ed Begley Junior should have received the medal of valor for this things. “Death of Some Salesman” encompasses everything I love about the old E.C. Comics horror anthologies. Sick humor, nasty violence, a damn fine twist ending, and a fantastic morality tale. Curry and Begley Jr. who are performing what is basically a two man show, give such phenomenal performances it practically MAKES the episode. It’s a stomach churning, hysterical tale which taught me at a young age that deceivers and liars will invariably find themselves in a world of hurt.

Well, kiddies, there you have it! My Five Favorite Tales from the Crypt! A mixed bag, but a damn good time, if I do say so myself. Feel free to let us, here at The Trash Cinema Collective, know what your favorite episodes are! Have a Trashy Halloween!

-Root

Aug

The Conjuring (2013): Home Ownership: a Cautionary Tale

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Conjuring; The (2013)
Tags: 13, 1971, 2013, 70's, basement, Bishara, blood, Chad Hayes, chilling, Conjuring, creepy, dad, dark, Darkness, daughters, Dead Silence, dread, ed, evil, Fall, family, Farmiga, fashioned, Father, fire, ghost, Ghosts, Gore, Halloween, hanged, haunted, haunting, home, horror, house, hung, Insidious, James Wan, Joseph Bishara, Lili Taylor, Lorraine, mom, Mother, old, Patrick Wilson, piano, possessed, possession, reality, Ron Livingston, Salem, Satan, Satanist, saw, school, sleep. sleep walking, spirits, story, subtle, suicide, summer, suspense, tale, tension, Terror, the, true story, Vera Farmiga, vomit, Wan, Warrens, witch

a Primal Root written review

edited by Bootsie Kidd

I’ve always loved a good ghost story. I was raised on the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” anthology, watched Tobe Hooper’s “Poltergeist” on a near constant loop, on the weekends talked my Mom into renting copies of black and white classics like “The House on Haunted Hill” and “The Haunting”, and looked forward to the segments of TV’s Unsolved Mysteries featuring “true tales” of the poor crackers who crossed paths with nocturnal spirits and ghastly apparitions. The chills were plentiful, but as you grow up you realize just how cheesy a lot of this stuff can be, and it only really gets down to spooking you once it sinks in on a cerebral level much later… when you’re at home, going down that darkened hallway you’ve walked down countless times before and your mind suddenly begins wondering what inexplicable, otherworldly presence could be lurking behind each door, just biding its time before it springs out and cause you to shit your pants, lose your grip on sanity, and keel over dead from cardiac arrest.

It’s been a long damn time since I’ve seen a movie about a haunting that has actually frightened me beyond the terror felt over wasting money on a movie that promised chills and delivered yawns and moderate chuckles at the lameness of it all. From “Paranormal Activity” and its endless sequels, “A Haunting in Connecticut” to James Wans’ own “Dead Silence” and “Insidious”, they all just come across as either lazy and predictable or over the top, cheap student films. I usually wind up joking with my viewing buddies and waiting for something to happen rather than having my pants scared off of me, a rare occurrence that always leaves me breathless and fellow viewers stunned, as I typically go commando.

Okay, where’s the fire place?

I’m getting side-tracked. Okay, “The Conjuring” begins on an creepy-enough note telling the tale of The Warrens’ encounter with what a group of roommates assume is a possessed doll from Hell going by the name of Annabelle. This thing looks like the aborted, fossilized remains of Bozo the Clown and post-face-tightening Nicole Kidman’s love child. Why in the world would ANY schmo would bring this doll home is beyond me. But hey! you get what you pay for, and the doll begins writing on the walls in blood-red crayon, seeming to running around the place on her own (although, unlike your favorite Good Guy and mine, we never get to see her scurry), leaving little love notes of “Miss me?” around the house to be found by the horrified occupants, and banging on doors so loudly your testicles would probably rise into your throat with abject terror. Anyhoo, we never see these three moron roomies, again, and it’s on to establishing Ed and Lorriane Warren, the real life team of hardcore paranormal investigators (portrayed by Patrick Wilson and the unfathomably lovely Vera Farmiga) just now decided their most terrifying tale of a supernatural encounter is ready for public consumption. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, they present to us, “The Conjuring.” Ed and Lorraine are leading a pretty action-packed life, as they traverse the country ghostbusting, debunking red herrings as rusty pipes, and giving lectures while leaving their little daughter at home… with an entire stock of possessed and evil artifacts from their many ghost hunting expeditions. But don’t worry! These artifacts are locked behind a door, because nothing keeps the power of evil at bay like a bolted door… It also becomes apparent that Lorraine has in the not-too-distant past encountered something during one of their investigations that has shaken her to her very core. Something that her ever-loving husband, Ed, concerned about bringing his highly sensitive telepathic wife into the ghost hunting fold again.

I get this reaction frequently when women look into my trousers.

To be honest, the story of ‘The Conjuring” is a pretty well-worn tale. A couple and their herd of children (in this instance, all little women) decide to relocate to a beautiful, rural fixer-upper that they purchased for a steal, in the bygone days before full-disclosure was a legal necessity and this particular home’s blood-spattered, demonic, psycho-bitch history was kind of left out of conversation. The family is loving, always smiling, and ready to play games at the drop of a dime. It might sound like a trite Hallmark card, but as a viewer, I couldn’t help but genuinely like this family. Sweet people brought to life by some very talented folks; Lila Taylor as Carolyn, the sweet, southern, ice tea Mother of the clan, and Ron Livingston as Roger (yes, of Office Space fame) as the hard-working, average dope Dad. On their first night in their new home they experience a few minor disturbances, many of which we might encounter in our own home from time to time, but, ultimately, nothing too serious occurs. Besides finding a boarded-up, dusty, creepy old basement under the stairs. Everyone is super happy about the discovery (YAY! MORE SQUARE FOOTAGE!) but things very quickly go to Hell as whatever was tucked down in the basement is now roaming around the house offing the family pooch and playing chilling games with every member of the family. Also, a Burtonesque, antique music box happens to present itself right next to an ancient, gnarly oak tree in the back yard. One of the daughters adopts it, and (que Amityville horror score) unleashes her new imaginary best friend! Her buddy can only be glimpsed in the mirror of the music box once the music within finishes playing. It’s a story we’ve heard and seen countless times before, but to my own shock and amazement, filmmaker James Wan (“Insidious”, “Dead Silence”, “Saw”) uses a slow, old school pace and a nice, subtle touch to really let the suspense and dread sink into the viewer. I was genuinely impressed that James Wan has grown up so much as a director. Make a few more films as intensively creepy as “The Conjuring”, and I might just become a fan!

This would make a damn fine place to hide my porn from my wife and our half a dozen daughters!

Some deeply disturbing incidences start to occur in their new home. The utmost of which involves one of the young daughters seeing something in the darkness behind her bedroom door which, really, might be one of the most horrifying and suspenseful sequences I’ve experienced in a movie theater in years (not a drop of blood spilt, no score, all acting and cinematography). Finally, Carolyn heads to a community college where The Warrens are lecturing, and literally begs them to come check out their own private House on Haunted Hill. The Warrens, initially skeptic, and not-a-little ghost-worn grudgingly but compassionately agree to check it out. Dressed in their Mod Squad 1971 ensembles, and looking quite fetchingly groovy, the two step into the house and instantly know this place is a deadly death trap of death. Lorraine has visions, Ed gets nervous, and the once the two investigate the history of the house, whose past tenants were all possessed child murdering evil-doers all in the wake of the original tenant, a witch who, to get in good with The Dark One, sacrificed babies to Satan, and ended up hanging herself from said gnarly oak tree in the backyard… Like I said days pre-total disclosure realtor ethics.

Of course, The Warrens take the case, and decide to rescue the family and exorcise the house of whatever evil is present there.

You smell something?

“The Conjuring” is really the best of both worlds as far a supernatural horror flick is concerned. The first half is expertly crafted horror in which the audience is left holding on to the edge of their seat, completely at the mercy of the increasingly crafty James Wan. The story he is unfolding, waiting for the beast to finally show itself. And, much to my delight, Wan keeps us guessing and waiting for most of ‘The Conjuring”‘s run time, allowing it to effectively chill our bones and build a truly sinister house of cards around us. Then, once the other shoe drops, we find ourselves in the eye of an ever-mounting storm of blood, horror, and chaos that, in a lesser film, would probably come off as disenchantingly goofy. Here, however, we have grown to appreciate every one of our central characters so that, once the proverbial ghost shit hits the fan, our pulse rises and we are actually fearful for our new kin. Keeping in mind that the haunted house genre relies heavily on people being too lame-brained to get out of the house the second disturbing shit starts befalling everyone in the family, but this is coming from a guy (and an audience) raised on horror and its tropes. A family in 1971, plagued by this steadily-rising level of creepy encounters might just try and explain things away until things got so bad they have to reach out for help. Plus, a family this size with only one working parent and all their money invested in this house on the edge of Hell hardly has the kind of money to be spending on stays at the local Motel 6. I guess in most horror films you have to suspend your disbelief, but “The Conjuring” is such a goddamn great spookshow you won’t waste your time questioning such things as little girls are claiming to see creatures in the darkness and the simple clapping of hands send chills down your spine.

“The Conjuring” is by far and away the best horror flick I’ve seen in the theater so far in 2013. It plays it cool, takes its time, and before you know it, you’re sitting in your theater seat, heart thumping in your chest, awaiting the next horror show to befall this poor family and the heroic Warrens. After the film was over, I found myself sitting with Bootsie Kidd totally worn out, as if stepping off a roller coaster. Both of us, catching our breath and totally awestruck by what we’d just seen. We chatted through the end credits which featured the effectively eerie score by Joseph Bishara, which rivals Lalo Schifrin’s timelessly nerve jangling score to “The Amityville Horror.” And then…we had to go home, where the evens I had seen on screen just minute prior suddenly weighed pretty heavily on my imagination. “The Conjuring” stayed with me long after I left the theater and if that’s not the mark of an effective horror film, I’m not sure what is.

Of course, this is the flick we see just as we begin looking to purchase a home together. Good timing! Jeez…

“The Conjuring” is a smartly executed , old school ghost story excellently told and well worth checking out. Hopfully it will be available to own once Halloween rolls around. 😉 I’m awarding this puppy FIVE out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets. This one is a keeper!

Till next time,

Check your home’s history before moving in and Stay Trashy!

-Root

Apr

Evil Dead (2013): If You Want Blood…

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Evil Dead (2013)
Tags: addiction, arm, arms, basement, Betty ford, blood, Bruce Campbell, bruning, burn, cabin, car wreck, Cat, cats, cellar, chainsaw, chop, chopped, creature, dark, dead, death, defibrillator primal, demon, demons, diablo cody, drugs, electric knife, Elizabeth Blackmore, emo, evil, Evil dead, Fede Alvarez, fire, flesh, Florida, foresst, Gore, graphic, gritty, hand, heroine, horror, Jane Levy, Jessica Lucas, Lou Taylor Pucci, mean, movie, murder, nasty, Necronomicon, nightmare, possession, possesssed, puke, rain, rape, rehab, rehabilitation, reimagining, Remake, review, Root, sad, Sam Raimi, scary, serious, Shiloh Fernandez, shovel, spirit, splatter, syringe, Tallahassee, Terror, vomit, weak, woods, written

“Promise, you’ll stay till the end.” -Mia, Evil Dead

a Primal Root written review

edited by Bootsie Kidd

Gang, I must apologize for taking such a dang long time getting around to typing up this review. I needed time to let the The Evil Dead remake digest, for my mind to really feel out what my thoughts were on the whole damn bloody feature. So, here goes, my thoughts on the reimagining, new take of “The Evil Dead”, “Evil Dead”. I will try and break it down as spoiler-free as possible.

Sam Raimi’s original 1980 “The Evil Dead” is the story of one man’s personal apocalypse as his friends, one-by-one, become hideous shadows of their former selves and begin attacking, brutalizing, mocking, and humiliating him. Ash (Bruce Campbell) must finally find it within himself to fight back if he wants to make it through the night alive. “Evil Dead” (2013) follows along those same lines, and though similar in a basic premise, “Evil Dead” does an intelligent job of making the material its own.

Personally, one of the aspects of the film I truly appreciated was the organizing principle. These twenty-somethings aren’t headed out to a dank, nasty, mildew farm of a cabin for a fun filled weekend. No, they are there to help their buddy kick her heroin habit cold turkey. A feat she has tried before and failed at. So, the glum bunch of attractive kids consisting of the most adorable little junkie ever, Mia (Jane Levy), her unreliable, yet studly coward of a brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) , his “just-there-to-die” girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), control freak buddy nurse Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and her bespectacled, grumpy bear of a fella, Eric ( Lou Taylor Pucci) head to the desperate fixer-upper in the middle of the creepiest forest in North America and commence Betty Fording.

And nothing can deter them, not even the fact that the cabin seems to have been recently broken into, and those who did, left a basement full of at least ten dozen skinned, rotted, feline carcasses hanging from the rafters and looking like it smells of twice-baked putrescence and burnt hair. Don’t worry, it’s all part of the pre-credit prologue. Oh, and did I mention the Scooby Gang also come across a mysterious package wrapped in black trash bags and laced in razor wire? Could this be the legendary Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, roughly translated, The Book of the Dead? I have a good feeling you already know the answer. Yes, this seems like the best option for someone trying to rehabilitate herself! I’m surprised they all don’t just pick up the habit right there to make the living situation bearable. Or at least get cope with what I can only imagine is the worst smelling cabin of all time.

Anyhoo, I’m still with this new Evil Dead film Mia begins having withdrawal symptoms and everyone else kind of just sits around waiting for their cue to don their white contacts and let the arterial blood spray across the room. Before you can say “What a fucking idiot” Eric has clipped the razor wire, and ripped open the garbage bags to reveal the Necronomicon (SURPRISE, SURPRISE!), bound in human flesh and inked in blood with the ominous warnings that has since been utilized by many Bill O’Reily published works “DO NOT READ THIS BOOK”, er, something along those lines. As if the razor wire ribbon wasn’t clue enough to leave the fucking thing alone… Oh well, the beard-o opens up the book and gets to reading aloud the demon resurrection passages and, whatdya know, he unleashes Hell on Earth. Who do you think the evil spirit picks on first? Who just might be the most weak and vulnerable amongst the kiddies at Melancholy Manor?

That’s right, Mia! Seen the first movie? Then it should come as no surprise that the young lady gets a slimy, malicious, invasive surprise from the Evil Dead right up her lady bits! Which leads to her being the vessel for this special brand of demonic spirit to wreak havoc on the rest of the down trodden crew! And oh, what a splattery, nasty night of havoc it is! There’s barfing, and tongue slashing, and arm chopping, and syringe poking, and nail gunning, electric knife wielding, oh, the list goes on and on as friends are possessed and begin turning on one another with very little haste. The second Mia is possessed, the movie kicks into hyper drive with people turning into monsters from Hell left and right, you hardly have time to catch your breath as friends must battle their newly eviled chums in order to survive!

Let me tell ya, the gore is wonderful in this flick, as are all the practical effects. Everything looks sleazy, disgusting and pitch perfect. As body parts start plopping on the floor and gruel goes splashing into character’s mouths, I got a certain sense of euphoria. This reminded me much of my self made, VHS horror education back in the late 80’s all through the 90’s, when I began renting any and every horror video I could looking for just these kind of unrelenting moments of pure, unadulterated, horror insanity. I could practically feel my inner 15 year old giving my current 31 year old spirit a high five. This was some crazy, blood-caked glory that I would have creamed my shorts to have seen in those days. Better late than never, I suppose. But, yes, Evil Dead delivers the gore-met delights.

****SPOILER WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!****

But then the film began to reach its climax…which involves the impromptu MacGuyver-esque creation of a defibrillator by David to use in order to bring Mia back to life. That’s right, he studies the Necronomicon and discovers the many ways to cure the possessed aka: many ways to kill these people who are possessed. His plan is to bury Mia alive until she dies of suffocation and then dig her up, stab her in the heart, pump her full of juice until she is jolted back to life, and then she’ll be right as rain. And to my absolute shock and dismay, THE PLAN WORKS! Not only that, but she comes back without any injuries! the woman cut her tongue in half with a rusty old knife! How in the fuck did that heal instantaneously? Are you telling me if David were to resurrect Natalie from the dead, her arms (which she loses one to her own carving knife and the other in battle with her friends) would miraculously reappear attached to her body? I’m sorry, but unless I missed a moment in the film where it is mentioned in the Necroonomicon that if a mortal is brought back from being possessed by pure evil by the use of a defibrillator all wounds inflicted during the time of possession are null and void, that’s just an incredibly manipulative plot devise that tries to deliver the audience something they didn’t see coming. I am all for surprises and going against audience expectations, but it feels so unlikely that anything like this would work, especially without ever being established that it might, it feels like a cheat. I have a hard time buying into the idea that the Evil Dead would work so hard to possess people that they would just leave a dead body once it is brought back to life. I know I’m nitpicking, but it just feels remarkably lame. Seriously, the movie had me up until the moment David brought out the spark plug treatment. Seriously, the second that fucking thing showed up, my eyes nearly rolled out of my head.

The finale of Evil Dead is a crowd pleaser as the sky cracks open, pouring blood down on the property where the cabin is (no telling if the blood rain came down on any near by farming communities) and the evil is manifest into flesh, which is basically a tall skinny, saggy breasted knock off of the final creature in 2007’s [REC]. Personally, after such an incredible lead up, I was expecting a bit more from our final monster, but that’s okay, because the monster is dispatched in the most brutally, hysterically over the top fashion, you will want to wake up the kids and show ’em.

****END SPOILERS! THE SPOILERS ARE OVER!****

Bottom line? I enjoyed Evil Dead. I thought it was far more emo and sad sacky than its source material, but that’s to be expected if the film is to be its own beast and set itself apart from its predecessor. But, to tell you the truth, did we ever love The Evil Dead for it’s organizing principal? Not really, the second demon possessed party revelers or concerned rehab friends start getting hacked into coleslaw, it all kind of turns into the same sorta film where the audience begins hooting and hollering at the screen, laughing when things get over the top and groaning when moments are teeth grindingly painful. Its the fucking Evil Dead, and it’s a pretty damn good time at the movies if this is your cup of tea. The audience I saw it with was obviously having a blast, laughing, cheering and talking back to the screen as is the case with any true gut buster horror film worth its weight in innards. It was fun despite the movie taking itself so seriously. Let’s face it, once demons are deflected by shock treatment and property begins flooding with blood from the sky, you’re flick has stepped into the absurd and is no longer the somber film about a junkie in need of rehabilitation.

Could the whole film just be an extended metaphor for how the wages of drug addiction can destroy your relationship with your family and your dearest friendships? That enabling someone to continue their bad behavior, or just ignoring the problem entirely, allows the behavior too go on far too long and ends up hurting more people? Could I be digging too deep? I suppose, but still… Mia was fighting her own demons long before she was invaded by those conjured up by the Necronomicon, and David, who we learn has run away from every major problem in his life, must finally find the courage within himself to man up and take responsibility to save the ones he loves. Of course, he waits way too fucking long to do this, but, then again, if he had been braver sooner we may not have had such an outstanding gore fest.

Evil Dead (2013) is a thoughtful and dark revision of Raimi’s classic. I appreciated the focus on the story arc of the two siblings, Mia and David, which did bring something totally new to the Evil Dead series. The only thing I wish there was more of would be Raimi’s twisted, perverse sense of humor, but that’s not what this movie’s about. Sure, yes, I enjoyed Evil Dead in a theater full of other fans. But without that gnarly, evil, dark sense of humor, will I ever break out Evil Dead on a movie night with my friends over like the original Evil Dead? Only time will tell.

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Feb

The Primal Root’s Top Five Trashy Valentine’s Day Mood Killers!

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Valentine's Day Mood Killers Top 5
Tags: awkward, boyfriend, Brood, brutal, bums, Camille KEaton, cinema, collective, Cronenberg, Cutting Moments, date, day, depressing, dirty, disgusting, disturbing, Douglas Buck, ex, five, Fly, Geena Davis, girlfriend, Gore, graphic, gross, guts, Hallmark, hobos, holiday, horror, Jeff Goldblum, killer, list, love, marriage, married, mood, movie, murder, nasty, opinion, primal, psycho, rape, relationship, Revenge, review, romance, Root, sad, sex, stalker, Street Trash, The Brood, The Fly, thought, Thoughts, Top 5, Trash, Valentine, Valentine's, victim, view, violence, vomit, weird, wrong

One of Primal Root’s Dirty Thoughts

Valentine’s Day is a strange holiday. Unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving, no one gets Valentine’s Day off. It’s not like Halloween which is renown for it’s fun frights and sugar fueled excess, St. Patrick’s day with it’s green beer and date rapes, but what of Valentine’s Day? There’s no way to avoid it. You take your special lady friend over to the pharmacy to pick up her birth control and you are greeted with aisles upon aisles of heart shaped, overpriced pieces of cardboard stuffed with enough tooth decaying sweets to put the entire population of the east coast into a diabetic coma as well as grotesque stuffed animals that play Marvin Gaye’s “sexual healing” when you squeeze the shit out of them. Like anyone wants that kind of sentiment coming from a furry friend such as a bear or a cat. The whole notion is sick! JUST SICK!

But, I digress, ANYHOO, with our collective taste in cinema, Valentine’s Day is a tricky day of the year, especially for us Trash Cinema Connoisseurs. Which is why I am compiling this list of movies that we might watch on Valentin’s Day, but might ruin any shot you possibly had at getting some Valentine’s Day love friction.

However, if you do watch these with that special someone and they still glance at you longingly as opposed to sheer terror before bolting out a closed window (ala: any 80’s/90’s action flick) followed by a restraining order arriving in the mail 30 days later…you’ve found a keeper. 😉

On with the awkward, grueling and stomach churning!

5) Street Trash (1987) dir. J. Michael Muro

Because if there’s a batch of thing you want to think about when you’re groping your lover after dinner at 4 star restaurant, it’s the aroma of a career New York City hobo. Street Trash tells the tail of the internal strife and trouble of the immense Hobo population of NYC who live in a sprawling metropolis of filth and shit puddles down at the local dump. A new threat has been introduced into their world in the form of a long lost batch of booze known as Tenafly Viper which turns anyone who drinks it into a thick, brightly colored puddle of glop. The very first unlucky victim end up slowly, horrifically and semi-comically melting into a toilet and inadvertently flushing himself down it.

Street Trash is a sick and twisted little film that comes off feeling like one of Peter Jackson’s long lost early works. the film features necrophilia, an fairly nightmarish group rape, police officer’s beating people within an inch of their lives and then puking on them, and a moment where a lovely young woman nearly gives a bum a blowjob…a filthy, stinky bum who hasn’t bathed in months and has been sporting the same pair of crusty B.V.D.’s out in the summer heat. Who in the world would put themselves through that?

As hobos melt, women get repeatedly raped and fat guys explode, Street Trash is sure to douse the flames of burgeoning passion pretty fucking fast, my friends.

4) The Brood (1979) dir. David Cronenberg

Ah, David Cronenberg. The master of body horror and making us not only feel intense anxiety regarding our physical being but basic human interaction in general. Which could be the reason he appears TWICE in my Top 5 Valentine’s Day Mood Killers List. The man have a panache for pulling the rug out from under the typical sappy cinematic notions of love, romance, sex (that’s for damn sure) and the notion of a classical happy ending. Hence, his 1979 classic embittered divorcee film, “The Brood”.

Speaking from a experience, unless you are with a partner that is incredibly confident, bringing up an old relationship or flame is a sure fire way to throw a bucket of cold water on any kind of romantic moment. I know many guys and girls are guilty of that whole past relationship jealousy trap. It’s ridiculous when you boil down, hell, you’re with this person now but for some reason you can;t get over the fact that *gasp* your lover had a life before you! You should be thanking your lucky stars their ex (girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, gimp, dominatrix, stalker, etc.) isn’t manifesting their intense bitterness and hatred into child sized, hoodie sporting, murderous minions born through saggy, goop filled abdominal pulp sacks…Really. You’ve got it good.

The Brood is one of those films that’s going to do little else than make you and your closest companion feel uncomfortable. You’ll end up watching and imagining a few psycho ex-partners and how if they could make little midget killer sacks pawns grow out of their gut fat and come after you with malicious, creeping rage and a meat clever in hand, they would not hesitate to do so. And who in the world wants that shit running through their head when you’re laying on the cough with your lover in your arms? And nothing brings on a make out session like a woman gnawing open some grotesque, dripping belly goiter and then licking the living contents clean with her tongue. No amount of smooth talking is going to get the mood back after that kind of viewing experience.

3) I Spit On Your Grave (1978) dir. Meir Zarchi

Oh boy…yeah, I guess this one really goes without saying, but if you REALLY want to obliterate a sweet, lovey-dovey evening beyond the point of no return? Meir Zarchi’s quintessential rape/revenge epic is your weapon of choice. When you absolutely, positively have to turn off every mother fucker in the room? Accept no substitute.

But, in all honesty, rape is probably the last subject you want to bring up with perspective girl/boyfriend let alone an established relationship. I Spit On Your Grave features one of the longest gang rape sequences ever committed to film. Just when you think our victim/avenger, Jennifer (the stunning and talented Camille Keaton) has escaped she runs afoul of another rape happy redneck ready to violate her.

I Spit on Your Grave is the purest antithesis of the Valentine’s Day mood setter. Between the jaw droppingly vicious rape sequences to the well deserved revenge of Jennifer’s, which reaches it’s pinnacle during a bubble bath castration sequence that just made my genitals recede into my abdomen at just the recollection of it, I Spit on Your grave is pound for pound the heavy weight champ of the awkward evening with your sweetheart. Which might be why I Spit on Your Grave has become a tradition on Valentine’s Day in the Root household. I’m kind of a weirdo, gang, it’s time you learned this.

SO! Unless you want to watch this thing out of some odd, twisted, trash cinema sense of logic like I do, I would keep I Spit on Your Grave OFF your Valentine’s Day viewing itinerary.

2) Cutting Moments (1997) dir. Douglas Buck

Ahhh, the American Dream perpetuated by the constant rotation of the Hollywood conveyor belt. The beautiful wife, the kids, the quaint house in the suburbs with the white picket fence. These are the measures of success as prescribed to us by society at large. It’s a common, cliched romantic notion that so many of us buy into hook line and sinker. But, as we have gathered through our own experiences of watching relationships and people around us fall apart due to the constant struggle to attain these perceived obligations, the dream more often than not, fails.

But on Valentine’s Day no one wants to believe in unhappy endings! that things won;t all work out for the best! One things for certain, if you do decide to get hitched, produce some hell spawn, get a mortgage and dwell int he suburbs there’s a good chance things will never reach the level of bloody desperation chronicled in Douglas Bucks’ short film, “Cutting Moments”.

I’ve seen a lot of sick, dark, depressing, stuff, gang. But never have I seen a more harrowing portrayal of an American nuclear family marred by repression, guilt, shame, secrets and lies. My god (Cthulhu) watching this not even 10 minute long short film is just about all you’ll ever need top swear off marriage forever! The majority of the film is spent in silence with nothing more than the empty sounds of cutting. Whether it’s trimming the hedges, or cutting up carrots. Hardly anyone speaks.These people are so dead inside already it’s like they live in a tomb. There’s no passion, no love, no spark and there’s even the insinuation of child molestation. My god, did that rhyme? It’s like they live in a vacuum. It’s only when wife and mother, Sarah, takes drastic measures to put the intimacy back into the relationship with her husband that the blood finally flows back into their lives reminding them once again of the flesh and blood that makes them human.

Too many folks lie to themselves and tell themselves they are with the right person in order to fulfill these empty societal ideals. They get hitched, pop a baby or two out and then either hold all their resentment and bitterness inside or get divorced and use their kids as emotional leverage against their former spouse. It’s all just as sick and saddening as what’s present in Cutting Moments. Watching this puppy on Valentine’s Day is sure to fill your head with enough “What if’s” to have you heading to bed along that night.

1) The Fly (1986) dir. David Cronenberg

Alright, now this is a love story! It really is! When watching Cronenberg’s masterful remake of The Fly it’s easy to forget about the love story at hand taking place between journalist, Veronica and Seth Brundle, the brilliant young scientist working on a breakthrough in matter transference. Veronica falls hard for the quirky, charming, and intelligent Brundle and they begin a whirlwind romance. Two smart, attractive, young people in love…what could go wrong?

Holy fuck…

The Fly is like a check list of all the things that could possibly go wrong in a loving relationship. Clingy, stalker ex boyfriend? CHECK! Being careless and doing incredibly stupid things in order to prove your love to your partner in a fit of misguided jealousy? CHECK! Inide-Out bloody monkey moosh? CHECK! These two start out as such a believably cute and perfect couple that it makes all the events that much more tragic as Seth begins his transformation from his sweet, adorable, self into a sickly, revolting monster replete with loose body parts and a need to vomit on everything. It’s a terrifying and devastating transformation as we watch, along with Veronica, her love disintegrate and go mad before her very eyes.

The Fly is one of the most epic of all cinematic tragic love stories. Many critics and commentators have weighed in on the film’s apparent HIV/AIDS subtext, and that’s a smart deciphering of the film, for sure. But The Fly is also a testament to how truly heart wrenching and deeply devastating love can be. Veronica is unable to leave Seth’s side and tries to help him, to take care of him, however she can only to end up, with all hope lost, and having to come to terms with losing the one she loved and putting the beast he has become out of it’s misery. Only someone who really feels love and compassion for another is willing to do such a thing.

Upon first viewing it’s easy for the love story to get lost under a puddle of neon green battery acid fly man digestive puke. But once you get over that initial shock and awe you begin to fully realize and appreciate the romantic tragedy that is, The Fly. By the end of the film you and your sweetheart may have a deeper understanding of the obligations true love requires. Well, this is kind of a drastic example, but you catch my drift. It’s not much of a romantic notion, but in some situations, there are no happy endings. Even if you’re in love.

Well, those are my top 5 Valentine’s Day Mood Killers! Keep in mind, these are just my picks. There are about a million flicks out there to choose from and I would love to hear which Trash Cinema Epics you recommend as the true cinematic equivalents of a romance epicac. Please, drop us a line in our comments! I would love to hear some of your favorites. 😀

Until next time, remember to wrap it up every time, don’t name it after me and love the one you’re with!HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

Stay Trashy,

-Root

Feb

My Soul to Take…eh, you can keep it.

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Root's Written Reviews
Tags: 3-D, adoption, bitch, blades, blind, blind kids climbing in second floor windows, bloody, blow-jobs, bug, california condor, cell-phones, christian, christians, cinema, collective, costumes, craven, dumb, evil, film, Florida, geek, Gore, greasy, guns, gut, handicapped, head shot, high school, horror, Jesus, jock, Kevin Cole, kill, killing, mass, master of horror, mental illness, minorities, movie, murder, my soul to take, nerd, nightmare on elm street, pool, poop, possession, Pregnant, primal, religion, review, ridiculous, Root, scary, scream, shocker, siblings, sick puppies, slahser, slasher, slut, spree, stab, Tallahassee, teenagers, teens, Trash, unattractive, useless, vomit, wes, written

A film as inspired as it's poster art...

a Primal Root written review
Man, oh, man, do I remember a time when Wes Craven was the man. When he was the sick hippie sadist who brought us flicks like the brutal rape/revenge classic Last House on the Left and the road-trip mutant fiasco film, The Hills Have Eyes. He created (althoughRobert Englund deserves just as much credit) the most iconic and important boogieman of the last 30 years in hideously scarred, murderous, dreamstalker, Freddy Krueger… He even brought the slasher film back for a post-modern rebirth with the Kevin Williamson-penned Scream franchise. But then something went horribly wrong. Scream 3 sucked. As did his werewolf flick, Cursed…Red Eye was really his last decent film before he went into producer mode and got on board the remake wagon to oversee the re-imaginings of some of his beloved earlier works with varying degrees of success…
And then, in 2010, Wes Craven came back with a new and original horror film in 2010! One that would prove once again why he is considered a Master of Horror! A supernatural horror film about schizophrenia, possession, soul collecting, California Condors, superstition, urban legend, prayer, pregnancy, blow jobs and two male leads who have terrible hair look like they smell even worse. Oh yes, here comes My Soul to Take…IN 3D!!!
As a horror fan I try to defend Wes to the best of my ability. The guy has seriously made some fantastic films, many of which he penned himself. He’s created memorable, timeless horror classics that are still viewed, still entertaining and still discussed today. He once upon a time proved that truly memorable horror didn’t just go after your guts, but after your mind as well. Sure, you can gross people out but if you really want your audience to be thinking about your movie when they go to bed the best place to attack is upstairs where their deepest, darkest fears live.
My Soul to Take was the last straw.
Our film begins with a grizzly killing spree in which a husband and father has the revelation that he is “The Ripper”, a serial killer that’s been going around town gutting folks with his super cool knife he must have ordered from swordsofmight.com. See, this fellow didn’t realize he was “The Ripper” because he’s schizophrenic…*sigh*. He calls his shrink but it’s already too late because he’s already slashed up and killed his pregnant wife. When the police arrive he has stabbed himself multiple time and is about to hack up his tiny daughter when the cops blow him away. But not very well. Because this asshole wakes up for approximately a dozen goddamn jump scares that are far more hilarious than they are shocking. The film’s prologue ends with an ambulance explosion, about five more dead bodies and three critically injured…and the killer somehow crawls off the gurney and is never heard from again…
SIXTEEN YEARS LATER!

Turns out on the night The Ripper was killed SEVEN children were born. That’s right, seven kids in this small community were born on the night The Ripper died. And on their collective birthday these kids go down to the river and perform some kind of passion play where they invoke The Ripper’s spirit and then knock over a puppet…I dunno. The cops show up just as all our stock characters are listed off. Several of them gather behind a fallen log o spend what feels like 20 fucking minutes discussing the myths and urban legend surrounding The Ripper. See, we already know everything that happened. We just saw it at the very beginning of the film. So to hear all these stories surrounding The Ripper is mind numbingly tedious.

What't the blind character looking at over there?

We’ve all seen Wes Craven’s magnum opus, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Remember how well Freddy’s back story was handled? It was always kept in the shadows. It was whispered about and the audience learned along with our hero Nancy just who her nemesis was. This added to our interest as an audience and gave the whole film a veil of mystery and suspense. When you show your audience from the outset what the back story of your villain is there’s not much left to reveal. But, then again, we still haven’t gotten to the California Condor/ Soul Collector shit yet…
Once My Soul to Take’s opening gore soaked hilarity comes to an end and our 7 possibly evil teens are introduced the pacing slows down to a snail’s pace. After one teen is dispatched in a relatively well handled murder sequence the film, once again, takes detour into Expositionville, where it spends the majority of its running time. We get a little taste of all 6 (sorry, one dies early on) of these kids’ lives but none of them are developed. Even our lead red herring, Bug, is never clearly defined. We know he makes really cool puppets and costumes, speaks in creepy voices, likes the blonde girl but is only liked by the red headed uber-christian…I dunno, he’s the lead and I can’t tell you anything more about him than this without revealing any of the twists you’ll guess right from the beginning. Still, I will try to be a gentleman and let you figure it out on your own.
It’s apparent that the creative force behind My Soul to Take has no clear grip on what it is to be a teenager in America. All the typical Breakfast Club characters are present. The pretty one, the outcast, the nerd, the unbelievably violent jock…with the added bonus of an asian weho has 5 minutes screen time, a blind black kid who has 10 and a very attractive red head fire and brimstone religious fanatic. Do any of these character or their clichéd traits add anything of significance to the story? Are you kidding?! Of course not. They all end up as lunch meat and do little more than walk around uttering mundane, ridiculous dialog that you would never hear come out of a teenager’s mouth.
Our teeny-boppers attend a droll and disturbingly empty high school. Really, the school is gigantic yet the only people we ever see in the halls or out in the courtyard are our key players. There’s no hustle or bustle between classes and even the gigantic hallways remain empty as our teen protagonists trade off meaningless, vapid dialog for endless, yawn educing stretches.
And The Ripper himself (Which is my nickname every time I eat a helping of baked beans) is little more than a dreary, watered down potty mouthed amalgam of Freddy and Horace Pinker dressed up in a zombie Bob Marley costume. There’s also shades of Ghostface from the Scream franchise because The Ripper can’t just stalk and kill these kids. He has to give them taunting cell phone calls beforehand.

I suppose you can guess the fate of 'Blow-Job Gil' if you examine this photo. The Farter, er, The Ripper comes in from behind! Murder? Or surprise butt sex? See the movie...

Come to think of it, it’s almost as if Wes Craven put a handful of his films (Shocker, Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street) in a blender and hit puree. Hell, there’s even elements from the lesser Nightmare films to be found. Remember that lame plot device Renny Harlin used in Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: The Dream Master? The one where Alice absorbed the souls of her friends when they died and she could utilize the one character trait that made them unique (i.e. karate, strength training, um, the power to plug things into outlets and press the power button…) and used those abilities to defeat Freddy in the end? Well, a certain character in My Soul to Take has the same ability. He’s called the keeper of souls *face palm* only he doesn’t use any of their unique characteristics to defeat The Ripper, I mean what would he use? Blindness? Faith in God? Extreme Bitchiness? Constant Requests for blow jobs? These are not the weapons one needs to defeat a possibly supernatural monster intent on ripping out your lower intestine and using it as a jump rope.
No, this time around the souls help him figure out probability equations…to figure out the identity of the killer. Could it be one of the 7 kids (obviously not that one that dies in the beginning) or is it The Ripper returned from the grave? Or did The Ripper never die? The answer to this question is a lot lamer than you might initially think.
My Soul to Take is a film chock full of ideas, not good ones, but ideas nonetheless. Craven just can’t seem to find a way to incorporate all of them and leave space to realistically develop his characters or give them understandable motivations and instead just gives them endless scenes where they try and explain to the audience just what in the name of Hell is even happening. I just watched this film and I couldn’t even tell you what the sentiment was. Did Craven have anything to say? Near the conclusion of the film one characters whines out a line similar to, “People shouldn’t kill eachother all the time!” Yeah…what a message.

I swear the lead actor is channeling Jesse from A Nightmare on Elm Street part 2 through the entire film. His sister ain't half bad on the left there...

Well, My Soul to Take is a hunk of complete crap. I have to cut this review short because I could go one for another 2,000 words laying out every gripe I have with this flick. And this is coming from a guy who loves Trash Cinema. Maybe one day I will be able to laugh at this failure, but in the hands of Wes Craven, I expect more. I expect better.

With Scream 4 on the horizon let us all hope Wes Craven can regain some of the edge he once had and bring us something worth our time. I hope Craven can redeem himself. He’s an intelligent and talented man who should know what works in the genre by now. But after watching My Soul to Take, I cannot help but sense a sense of sadness and dread that one of the best lost his touch. Over a decade ago.

My Soul to Take. Your time to waste.

Stay Trashy,
-The Primal Root

Mar

Friends, Family, Chaos and Magic Squirrels : The Hot Tub Time Machine

By primalroot 2 Comments

Categories: Root's Written Reviews
Tags: 80's, awesome, boobs, chance, chaos, chase, chevy, cinema, collective, comedy, corddry, crispin, crue, cusack, dawn, eadical, family, friends, funny, glover, hilarious, hot, john, machine, magic, miami, motley, nostalgia, raunchy, red, redemption, review, rob, second, squirrel, time, tits, Trash, travel, tub, tubular, vice, vomit

a review by The Primal Root

Wow, did I just completely throw away my youth? I mean, I had fun and everything…but what about all the shitty decisions I made? The friend I screwed over? The one that got away? All the times I took the easy way out…and how would my life be now if I had the opportunity to do it all over? These are the questions asked of us and our main characters in the straight forwardly titled and beautifully executed film, Hot Tub Time Machine, a midlife crisis movie teaming with raunchy laughs, 80’s nostalgia, amputations and a surprising amount of heart.

Our story begins with Nick (Craig Robinson) digging his fingers into a dog’s sphincter to diagnose a butt itching problem at the posh animal spa he’s employed at. We are then introduced to Adam (John Cusack) who’s girlfriend just ditched him and is living a soulless, self centered existence despite having found wealth in his professional life. Also living with Adam is his nephew, Jacob ( Clark Duke) who spends his days playing Second Life in Adam’s basement but is otherwise aimless. But the ultimate screw up in our band of heroes is Lou (Rob Corddry, finally finding a role he can sink his teeth into) who is hospitalized after nearly asphyxiating himself in his garage while sitting in his running car and singing along to Motley Crue’s Home Sweet Home.

Upon hearing the news Adam and Nick arrive at the hospital to check on their old friend. The doctors are afraid it might have been a suicide attempt, although Lou adamantly denis it, and recommend that the old friends spend the weekend together in order to keep an eye on Lou to make sure he’s okay.

Our three friends bring along Jacob and head out to their old stomping ground a once prosperous ski resort town. Once they arrive in the hotel where they lived some of the greatest moments of their youths, the immediately realize the place stands a a metaphor for their lives, it’s run down, smelly, tired old wreck. They check into their suite where the commence a sad sausage fest game of quarters…in the face of such desperation the four stumble upon the impressive hot tub on their back porch. A hot tub time machine…

Male Bonding in the Hot Tub Time Machine

After a drunken night of male bonding our guys wake up in 1986. The exact year when Adam, Lou and Nick vacationed there and made decisions that would shape all their lives forever. And Jacob? Well, he didn’t yet exist…but that existence plays a crucial role here.

It's the 80's! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!

Hot Tub Time Machine isn’t the kind of film you pay to see expected anything besides vomit jokes, possibly some boobs, and good amount of belly laughs. I can report back that Hot Tub Time Machine delivers all of these and more in spades. But what I Wasn’t expecting was the amount of emotional weight the film managed to pack in amongst all the stabbings and awkward threesomes. The film is obvious wish fulfillment for all of us whose young and stupid years are slowly becoming prologue to a life that might not be exactly what we had in mind and our constant meditation is, “What could I have done differently?” It’s a bitter sweet theme dipped in pathos and capturing that often saddening thought that maybe our best years are behind us and just maybe we wasted them.

Mammoaries of a wasted youth.

Through the portal of the Hot Tub Time Machine Adam is given a second chance with the one that got away after she stabbed him the eye with a fork, Nick has another shot at his music career that went bust after a performance at a bar at the ski resort, and Lou gets the opportunity to stand up to some ski instructors that kicked the shit out of him when his friends didn’t show up for the fight. While Jacob must get the Hot Tub time Machine up and running again so they can make their way home…if he can track down the magical Hot Tub repair man played by Chevy Chase in a bizarre cameo.

Traveling through time in search of his career, Mr. Chevy Chase.

Speaking of cameos, and one that steals the entire show at that, is Crispin Glover who plays an disgruntled amputee bellhop in the present who lost his arm sometime in the winter of 86 when he was a happy-go-lucky bellhop eager to please the guests. His performance is hilarious and goofy in typical Crispin fashion and manages to generate some suspense as our main characters keep running into him in situations that could lead to him losing his appendage. This role could have been the stuff of general shrugs and disinterest in the hands of any other thespian but Crispin makes the role a stand out. Good work, sir.

Our hero, ladies and gentelmen!

Hot Tub Time Machine is nothing profound. It’s a damn good time and an excellent party movie. One that doesn’t get too caught up in all the science talk and ramifications of the time travel equations of which all their knowledge comes from films such as Back to the Future, The Butterfly Effect and The Terminator. They do change their fates and even the outcomes of several events oin 1986. Some deirectly…and some through a magic squirrel… The time travel aspect of the film is just the vehicle to bring us a great piece of trashy comedy about the importance of the relationships in our lives, those of our close friends and our family and these bonds are often more important than we can possibly fathom. The universe is ruled by chaos and we are at it’s mercy. We cannot always control who comes into our lives or what happens to them but we do have a choice in how we treat those we care about.

I’m not going to lie, Hot Tub Time Machine is funny as shit. But damn it if there weren’t a couple moments strewn through the proceedings were I got something in my eye. And I don’t mean jizz or vomit.

your pal.
-The Primal Root

Here's to good times, good friends, and good booze!

Posts Tagged ‘vomit

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My Soul to Take…eh, you can keep it.

Friends, Family, Chaos and Magic Squirrels : The Hot Tub Time Machine

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