Elimination

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Horror / Action
IMDB Rating: 3.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 2 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

It’s movies like this that make you lose faith in the whole premise of film making. I mean, you want to believe that film makers are trying their best to put out high quality, original movies, and then this rather blatant Saw ripoff comes along and makes you question everything. Yeah, we all know that none of that’s true, but Elimination isn’t even subtle in what it’s trying to piggy back on. Granted, it has some of the cheapest CGI I’ve ever seen in a film and each and every actor could’ve easily been outperformed by a paperclip (which unintentionally gives it its entertainment value), but I spent my whole time sitting in front of the TV just waiting for someone to say “I want to play a game.” But I guess this is what you get from a movie that has unnecessary breasts thrown in front of the camera before the 1 minute mark has even been passed.

Whatever you do, don’t show any emotion…

As I’m sure we’re all painfully aware, we live in the age of reality television, and the Good Lord knows that they’ll stick a camera in front of anyone and follow them around. Everyone wants to be famous, right? Well, so does our bunch of generic clichés (and there’s a lot of them – latino, latina, jock, bitch blonde, bitch blonde’s caring boyfriend, street thug, smart hot girl in a cardigan etc.). They’re all about to audition for a brand new online reality show called Spotlight. They don’t really know what it’s all about or where it’s being filmed, but there’s a $1 million dollar prize at the end of it for the winner, so I suppose the finer details might not be at the forefront of their tiny minds.

Featuring a special guest appearance by My Friend The Killer Clown Movie.

After getting together in a parking lot and meeting one of Spotlight‘s crew members, the gang is bundled into an unmarked van, stripped of their cellphones, drugged, and taken to an unknown location in the middle of the desert. None of them seem to find any of this particularly disconcerting, so they all make their way through to the audition room. Here they meet Jigsa… I mean the Executive Producer… via a live stream. He explains to them that the game they’re about to play might be a tad bit more extreme than they were planning on, and that it may or may not cater to an audience who likes watching snuff but doesn’t want to call it that. You see, Spotlight involves the gang running through various zones in an attempt to make it to the end. They’ll be pursued by a psychotic clown and an Amazonian warrior (who, again, has two breasts) who will try to brutally murder them. Since none of this is entirely above-board the kids can’t really back out on contractual technicalities, so it’s off into the labyrinth of doom for them.

Imagine the permits you’d need to have that installed…

Whilst the pseudo-Amazon and the clown provide some real-life threats, there are also stock dangers like machine guns, giant blades, giant furnaces and oversized food blenders to watch out for. To balance out the rather steep danger curve, the zones also have several hidden immunity statues, granting the holder 15 minutes where the clown and Amazon can’t kill them. Also, if a spotlight appears, anyone who stands in it is also safe from the executioners. But whilst the executioners and the oversized food blender are certainly areas of concern for the group, their greatest threat will be one another. Only one person can make it to the final zone and win the $1 million prize, so every clichéd character is going to underwhelmingly bring out their worst character traits in an attempt to make it out alive. If you’re like me, dear reader, by the time it comes to the final showdown, you too will be rooting for the oversized food blender.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• It’s never a bad idea to give your cellphone to a creepy old man and climb into his unmarked van.
• Kids these days are incredibly whiny about being drugged and taken places against their will.
• It takes years of Tae Bo training to effectively kick a man in the balls.
• Research indicates that modern killers don’t really concern themselves with their victims’ comfort when building their killing contraptions.
• Rampaging murderers are easily thwarted by an empty cardboard box.
• Even murderers edit their footage to make their shows more dramatic and increase their ratings.
• Even psychotic executioners are part of a union.
• Psychotically deadly situations really bring out some people’s inner narcissist.

ELIMINATION TRAILER

Amazons And Gladiators Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2001
Genre: Adventure / Drama
IMDB Rating: 2.8 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 4 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Here at the B-Horror Blog we pride ourselves on our varied and eclectic taste in terrible cinema. Whether it’s a terrible monster movie, various kinds of weather wreaking havoc on small towns, questionably scientific escapades, the Twilight franchise, or horrendously Historically Inaccurate movies, you know that Tropical Mary and I will be there. To give you an idea of just how historically inaccurate Amazons and Gladiators (which, by the way, contains no real Amazons or gladiators) is, here’s a run down of the plot: just after the Punic Wars, a man named Crassus (or, in the movie, Crassius) takes down Spartacus, the leader of the Third Servile War against Rome. Under the leadership of an unspecified Caesar, Crassius must do battle against a band of unruly Amazonian women. When the Amazons defeat Crassius, they band together with the Visigoths to bring down the Roman Empire. Now, for a timeline:

• Third Punic War (presumably what the movie is referring to), fought between the Carthaginians and Romans from 149 to 146 BC.
• Third Servile War, led by Spartacus and fought from 73 – 71 BC.
• Marcus Licinius Crassus, lived c. 115 – 53 BC.
  
• Julius Caesar (presumably the Caesar in question), lived 100 – 44 BC.
• Visigoth invasion of Roman Empire, successive invasions from 376 – 382 AD.

And yet this all happens in the space of a few years in this movie. Yeah, can’t say much more about the historical inaccuracy than that. Plus there’s the regular things like appalling acting and not much of a budget, not to mention the thinly veiled accents, although the breasts were really out in force for this one, so that might count for something.

TWO breasts? No Amazon in her right mind would have TWO breasts.

• Wow, Paramount really let itself go with this one…
• Amazons and Gladiators presents: A remedial child’s attempt to learn Linear B.
• Lord Smarmacus has arrived.
• Zanobia, Gwyneth and Serena? Where the hell are we?
• Damn it, she’s still giving gradual chase!
• Connor? Seriously, where the fuck are we?
• Gallo – master of the tuning fork.
• God I love some thumpin’ Roman techno beats…
• Ooh, it’s the Dance of the 5 Veils!
• What a delightful push-up bra this one has on.
• You know, freedom would look really good on you.
• A two-boobed Amazon spy? OK, sure…
• The basic rule of Amazon camp is ‘midriff OUT!’.
• It’s rare to come across such masters of ancient Amazonian pleather.
• Dahlia and Ariel? No seriously guys, where the hell are we?!
• Finally, an answer! We’re in Transylvanian Rome.
• This is the tiniest colosseum you’re ever gonna see.
• Your fate was sealed with a broken ankle.
• Seriously? A broken ankle? Three goddesses dedicated to deciding how people die and they picked a broken ankle? Fuck, that’s a shit way to go…
• Grey Haven? In Transylvanian Rome? With Zanobia, Gwyneth, Serena, Dahlia, and Ariel? I’m so confused…
• Quickly! Kill them with wheat!
• I condemn thee to death by Cornflakes!
• Croissants? In Transylvanian Rome? With Gwyneth and Serena? I’m even more confused.
• The Battle of Grey Haven? Must have missed that somewhere in my 7-year education.
• There’s no better dog than the Roman Alsatian.
• What gorgeous French manicures these Transylvanian Roman whores have.
• Behold! The most underwhelming death of them all!
• The End.

She got a fright from her own nipples.

SCENE FROM AMAZONS AND GLADIATORS

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Sloppy the Psychotic

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 5 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 1 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with that feeling that something is terribly wrong? I had that the other night. I was sleeping soundly, fantasising about buying bed linen made from Egyptian cotton, when I was suddenly jerked awake with this feeling of absolute dread. Not two minutes later my phone rang, and there was My Friend The Killer Clown Movie, sobbing on the other end. We’ve been friends for so long, but as usual we haven’t seen one another in ages (in fact, not since all those frat boys were murdered over on Hell Island). I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I told him to dry his clownish tears and get on over to my place ASAP.

That’s some poor judgement right there…

By the time he arrived I’d just managed to throw on some seductively manly pyjamas and make hot chocolate with marshmallows. After a lot of hugs and comforting words, My Friend The Killer Clown Movie was finally calm enough to tell me what was wrong. Turns out this recession has hit everyone pretty hard, and even great movie concepts like my dear friend has had to resort to whatever it takes just to pay the bills. That’s how he landed up starring in Sloppy the Psychotic, a decidedly z-grade movie about a once-lovely clown that goes a tad bit off the rails. He explained to me that, while it looked good when he read the script, when he got there there was neither the acting talent to make it somewhat credible, nor the humour to make the constant barrage of shock tactics even remotely entertaining. Poor guy, I don’t know how much more his dented ego can take.

See? No good will come from buying illegal cigars.

So there me and My Friend The Killer Clown Movie sat, under a blanket with me braiding his neon green hair, and I asked him to give me a run down of this movie that pushed him to the brink; a good friend needs to understand what’s he dealing with before he can provide any kind of help. It’s a simple enough story: Mike was a nice guy with a dream – all he ever wanted to do was be a clown and entertain all the children of the world. Now, times are tough, and the world of clowning is cut-throat. Turn you’re back for one moment and a mime will be trying to take away all your business. But if you love what you do, as Mike does, then none of that really matters. Nothing, until you’re victimised by a group of pool partying white trash that make fun of your life long dream. Oh no, dear reader, that’s when you push a clown one step too far.

Do I really need to explain this?

Just telling me this much got My Friend The Killer Clown Movie all weepy again, so I ran him a candle-lit bubble bath and put some Enya on in the background so that he could really relax while he told me the rest of this movie. At this point I was still on board, but I could see that things were going to take a very sharp downward turn. Oh boy, did they ever. Apparently one bottle of vodka is all that it takes to turn a mild-mannered clown into one that’s shoving a dead hooker in a trunk. And then there’s all those repressed emotions: anger, fear, rejection, sexual drought, and somehow all that’s gotta come out. As is often the case, these feelings manifest with Mike becoming a cannibal, poisoning some small children, barbecuing other small children, running over mentally handicapped individuals, amputating penises, using fish hooks on prostitutes, running a lawn mower over teenagers, decapitating housewives, and doing unspeakable things to men with a very large candy cane. Yeah, that’s what being under appreciated at work will do to a person.

I think that between the hot chocolate, hair braiding, and the bubble bath, My Friend The Killer Clown Movie has just about regained the will to carry on doing what he does best. The important thing is to focus on the good – I reminded him that this movie has a rather epic version of Pop Goes the Weasel playing in the background quite often, and that’s something at least. After he’d toweled himself off we lay in bed for a while reminiscing about all the good times we’d had together, and as the sun slowly dawned on the horizon he decided that he’d best be heading home before the wife knew he was out. She never has approved of our friendship – neither of us can figure out why. This time, however, we promised not to let so much time go by before we got together again.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Coulrophobia in small towns forces many clowns to live out their lives in secrecy and shame.
  
• It’s a risky career move to hedge all your bets on being a clown.
• Any clown company worth its salt has a fleet of vehicles ready to transport loads of emergency rubber chickens at a moment’s notice.
• Recently retrenched clowns and vodka are a deadly, deadly combination.
• Secretly, every woman wants to have sex with a man in full clown costume at least once in her life.
• Hobos have only two natural enemies: hungover clowns and puddles of their own urine.
• Death by anal candy cane isn’t a way that anyone wants to go.
• There’s no length a hooker won’t go to if there’s $500 on the line.
• It’s rude to discuss your sex life in front of a hired clown.

SLOPPY THE PSYCHOTIC TRAILER

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Raptor Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2001
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 2.6 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 2 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

There are few things in life that can guarantee as much fun as an early 2000s movie with cheap animatronic dinosaurs brought back to life by a mad scientist, Eric Roberts and all of his self-importance in the lead role, and a sex scene that we could have sworn was on a perpetual loop. I present to you, dear reader, Raptor, perhaps one of the most glorious achievements of b-cinema I’ve seen yet. I gathered my most of my elite team of movie watchers for this one: Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole, and our newest recruit, Plaas Meisie. There are no words to describe the sheer awesomeness and cheesiness of this movie, but if you’re a fan of b-horror you absolutely NEED to watch this as soon as is humanly possible.

Officer Mom Jeans and Black Cop consult on the case…

As is often the case in these movies, we’re thrown into the middle of some little town in the middle of absolutely nowhere where the most thrilling crime that probably takes place is a little old lady having her dentures stolen. Eric Roberts is the local sheriff, and this gives him the right to practically smear himself with smarmy and then roll around in a vat of self-produced and bottled egotism. Armed with two belts, a pair of mom jeans and a token black deputy, Eric’s ready to find out what happened to those poor drunken teenagers out the middle of the desert – because something ate them up good. Thinking that it was something reasonably standard, like a bear, a cougar or a shark, he’s joined on the investigation by Busty Blonde Animal Control Lady (hereafter referred to simply as ‘Busty’), but she’ll be damned if she knows what killed the kids. Maybe it has something to do with the recent spate of mass-chicken murders happening all along the county’s various highways?

This was just unholy and unnatural…

Over at the Eunice corporation (nominally a chicken manufacturing plant, whatever that may be, and which is still running blue-screen DOS computers by the looks of things), something’s more than a little amiss. There are far too many crazy scientists in would-be berets pushing far too many flashing buttons on control panels for this to be a simple chicken farm. Of course, for the omnivident viewer, we know that the trucks transporting enormous numbers of chickens is simply a cover up – that’s how Eunice Corp. is transporting all of its raptor and t-rex eggs between its different facilities after one of the raptors escaped into the desert. Being a team of maybe four people, however, means that the people at this particular facility aren’t doing a great job keeping track of their genetically re-created little monsters, and more and more are starting to wreak havoc on the little town.

Disco T-Rex is getting down tonight!

For Officer Mom Jeans the problem becomes personal after his sweet, innocent little girl is attacked by one of the raptors after getting it on with a man twice her age and squealing like a little pig while they did it on the back of his pickup truck. But how exactly does one small town sheriff take on a giant company like Eunice Corp.? Infiltration and a Busty sidekick – that’s how.  The two of them are determined to get to the bottom of what’s going on, but there’s a little more going on behind the scenes that they don’t know about. Apparently this whole dinosaur resurrection process originally began as a government military operation for fighting overseas, so they also want in on the action when they realise that their supposedly cancelled project is back online. Can Eric Roberts’ seemingly infinite supply of self-satisfaction conquer the might of an angry, resurrected mother T-Rex? Do silicone boobs move at all? Why are everyone’s intestines in this movie brown? Watch, dear reader, and have all of these questions answered.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• ‘Whatever happened, happened here’ is usually how most police investigations start.
• Deserts can be right quirky creatures sometimes.
• Character enhancement is best done with copious amounts of silicone.
• Surprised raptors shed their toenails like geckos shed their tails.
• If it’s not as intense as black ops, and at least 2 black guys are involved, it classes as dark ops.
• Most companies have emergency spaceship entrances installed in their elevators.
• Clones can be pulled out of thin air and given all the memories of the original person.

RAPTOR TRAILER

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12/12/12

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 2 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 1.5 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Right, it’s official: I’m giving up my dream of gradually taking over the planet by being the world’s most efficient paper-pusher and applying for a job at The Asylum. I want to earn my living by spending my days high on crack and writing stories, because I’m pretty sure that’s what happened before the cameras started rolling on 12/12/12. Even by Asylum standards this was horrid, and whoever was behind it doesn’t seems to have even the foggiest idea about how anything in the world actually works. That being said, I watched this alone, and if I’d seen it with my elite squad of movie watchers I think it could’ve been a lot of fun. So, dear reader, grab a seat, grab a beer, grab your crack pipe, and let’s get this review on the road.

The gooey, bloody, possibly back-alley miracle of birth.

Everyone gather round and meet Veronica. Veronica’s in terrible pain – she’s about to have her first child delivered by the country’s most inept team of doctors. I guess this is what one should expect when you decide to have your baby in an emergency ward that has a park bench outside it and an entrance that looks like some dingy club’s back alley. Not that Veronica notices; she’s too busy screaming out in pain / orgasming in her vain attempts to give birth. The doctors can’t decide what to do, and baby daddy Carlos seems to think that the best plan of action is to lunge violently at every nurse that comes his way. After a lot of comings and goings the very independent baby climbs out of Veronica’s womb and promptly attacks, strangles, nibbles and kills the entire surgical team. One might think that this would be cause for alarm, but mommy’s tired and doesn’t seem to think much of it.

Hold on honey! Mommy’s chest is coming!

Things seem to be going OK until Veronica and Carlos bring little Sebastian home. Sebastian looks a bit like Baby Sinclair from Dinosaurs, but this again raises no concerns from his parents. Despite only being 6 days old he also tends to bite a lot with his razor-sharp little teeth, is quite capable of crawling on his own, and has this bad habit of compelling people to do terrible things via telepathy. Things like making his dad drink water from a kettle that’s just boiled, or making the delivery boy slit his own throat open. Sebastian’s taken into child protection after the death of Carlos and Veronica goes to stay with her sister, vowing revenge upon the government for trying to protect the country’s children from harm.

Amen brother.

At some point our characters make the transition from blind confusion to blinding insight so far as Sebastian’s demonic origins are concerned. By now Sebastian looks like Baby Sinclair after he was involved in a tragic cooking oil incident, and his blood lust (and his desire to throw his nappies everywhere) has become insatiable. Couple this with the group of satanic doomsday prophets who are looking for Sebastian to use him in some rite or other, dear Veronica really has her work cut out for her. She’s aided by a policeman who’s constantly sucking on a lollipop, and her sister who has some serious issues that are never really explained to us. Will Sebastian spare his mother when the devil arrives to take over the world? Will Veronica ever stop running around the city and causing teen suicides? Will 20-somethings ever stop taking night hikes along deserted highways? All this and much less will be revealed when you watch 12/12/12.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• No one ever talks about Satanic monks.
• You can still give a woman an epidural even if the baby’s crowning… and then again when the baby’s half way out.
• You can still perform a caesarean section even if the baby’s half-way through the birth canal.
• IV equipment can be manually set to ‘murder’.
• You don’t need to provide any kind of anaesthetic before performing a C-section.
• An umbilical cord isn’t a weapon you should underestimate.
• Any woman can lose all her pregnancy weight by the time the hospital discharges her.
• It’s perfectly normal for a 1-week-old baby to have teeth like a piranha.
• Police protocol dictates that 1-week-old babies should be considered suspects in murder trials.
• Vaginal baby suffocation is still a serious problem in modern society.
• The custody of a child can just be thrown from person to person, willy nilly.
• 6 Vicodin will usually take care of the pain from a small cut on your thumb.
• Police always use their sirens to let people know they’ve arrived.
• You should always be on the lookout for perverted babies – you never know when one’s watching you in the shower.
• Strangulations are always more fun when your hands make whooshing noises.
• Police these days are almost always psychic – you don’t need to tell them where you when you call.
• Priests and homeless people are equally adept at spotting the Anti-Christ.

12/12/12 TRAILER

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