Bunnyman

Year of Release: 2009
Genre:  Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Low
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Oddly enough, for a movie called Bunnyman with a psycho killer running around dressed in a bunny suit, this movie wasn’t half bad. It has a sort of Wrong Turn feel to it, but without the rampant inbred lunatics. The guys in this movie are just your regular, run-of-the-mill, possibly slightly inbred lunatics. It’s main failings are in some of the characters the audience is meant to sympathise with, and it’s a problem that befalls many movies like this one: in an attempt to create an atmosphere of tension and fear amongst the characters the outcome is a group of 5 people who are constantly sniping and bitching at one another. But before you make up your mind on whether to watch this or not, let’s have a look at what happens.

What the Easter Bunny does to fill the other 364 days of the year.

As with any great story about a maniac killing off random victims we have to travel out into the middle of absolutely nowhere, miles from civilisation where nothing but desert and a mysterious forest thrives. Evil stalks this part of the world, and that evil is dressed in a bunny suit. He finds young women along the highway and stores them in enormous cooler boxes before letting them run around in an abandoned junk yard where he slowly stalks them for fun. On one particular day the girl hides in the back of his truck, which suits him just fine. He drives out to a little bit of forest, ties her to a tree and the truck and drives off, ripping the poor girl in half before going out to look for more victims.

Fortunately victims are in abundance along the long stretch of empty highway. When our little group of friends tries to overtake the bunnyman’s truck they severely piss him off, whereupon he tries to drive them off the road. They pull over, hoping to apologise for whatever it is they’ve done, but this only seems to infuriate our killer even more. Apparently unable to appease his anger, the bunnyman drives on to set a trap for our little group of co-eds: just a little bit up the track he parks his truck with half of it sticking out into the road. Noticing it too late the kids crash their car in an attempt to avoid the truck and the bunnyman drives on, his day of tormenting these kids having only just begun.

Riverside picnics are never as romantic as books would have you believe.

So when one of our little group decides to try and fix the car the bunnyman returns, smashing into the back of the car and crushing the young man underneath. This is when the group figures out that they’ve run into more than just another pissed off trucker and they need to find a phone and try to make it back to civilisation. But the woods are a dangerous place filled with drunken, gun-toting hicks, upside down crosses, bags of human bones hanging from trees, weird log cabins and one oddly seductive woman with serious anger management issues. And, of course, chainsaw wielding lunatics in bunny costumes rarely work alone and our group of constantly bickering friends is about to discover that they’ve walked into a demented family affair and it’s gonna take all their best survival skills to get out of this forest in (literally) one piece.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• If someone tries to drive you off the road you should be sure to apologise for pissing him off.
• Some women have no fight or flight instinct. Their only instinct is to faint.
• The easiest way to check if a car is broken is to see if it’s dirty under the hood.
• There’s always a logical explanation for bags of human bones being hung from trees.
• If you can’t identify whose bones they are it’s perfectly alright to hang them from a tree.
• There’s not much you can do to help a dead friend.
• Even psychopaths in bunny suits listen to classical music to centre themselves before beginning their daily torture rounds.
• Psychopathic women may have their issues but one thing they won’t stand for is a slut.

BUNNYMAN TRAILER

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The Video Dead

Year of Release: 1987
Genre: Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 4.9 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium – High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

I’m rarely at a loss when it comes to deciding how bad a movie is, but this one had me stumped. Judging by its IMDB rating I was under the impression that this one was going to be good (because I have low standards and most things over 4 are quite watchable in my opinion). It wasn’t. I’m not sure if ‘good idea’ is quite what I’m looking for, but it certainly was an interesting idea. Where did it go wrong? Sometimes you get movies where the actors have all the acting capability of a plank of wood but in The Video Dead the planks of wood were outperforming the actors and sadly it wasn’t the kind of bad acting that you can make fun of. At the end of the day it’s not a good b-movie, but it’s not bad enough to make you squirm with discomfort.

That was one helluva party!

When the dead come back to haunt the living there’s always an Institute for Studies in the Occult involved somehow. This time all these people have done is place their trust in a delivery company that haven’t the foggiest idea how to deliver a parcel, but when you’re dealing with zombies and demons and ghosts (oh my!) you really need to have your ducks properly in a row. The delivery company is currently in possession of a haunted TV that appears to be a portal to the dark side but, instead of delivering it to the Institute for Studies in the Occult they obviously read the address incorrectly and delivered the TV to an alcoholic writer in a leafy suburb instead. Now bear in mind we have travelled back to 1987, a time before coffee cups had to come with warnings that stated ‘contents of coffee cup are hot’, so the haunted TV certainly doesn’t carry any kind of warning sign or advisory label saying that it contains 6 or 7 cannibalistic zombies. Our dear writer is not amused with the TV because all it seems to play is this random black and white zombie movie that never wants to end so he turns it off and walks away. The TV’s persistent though and wants to play its movie, even if you pull the power cable out of the wall. Being the rather devilish TV that it is as soon as you turn your back it starts getting up to mischief, spewing out zombies left, right and centre who killing our poor writer.

Hi, I'm from The Dead with a special TV offer for YOU!

3 months later and with all that murderous unpleasantness behind us we get to meet Jeff and Zoe, two young siblings who move into the old writer’s house to get ready for when their parents come back from overseas. Now, as a warning to all my readers, neither of these kids is particularly good-looking and this movie makes excessive use of close-ups so you might want to start looking away after the first 30 times. Jeff, being the younger and more inquisitive brother, discovers the TV in the attic when it whispers through the dark that it wants to do some terribly PG-13 things to him and moves it into his room. This time, instead of channeling zombies, it channels a demonic naked blonde woman who tantalises the young boy before disappearing right back inside. You see it can’t channel the zombies because the zombies never went back inside after they killed the writer, which means that they’re still out frolicking somewhere in the woods surrounding the house. When these undead hooligans start to make a nuisance of themselves a strange man named Joshua Daniels rocks up at Zoe and Jeff’s house to help them out before they land up becoming a light snack.

DO NOT fuck with the zombie bitch with a chainsaw in her hand!

Now this is the point when you really have to put your concentration cap on and pay attention because you’re about to be schooled in zombie psychology. For a mobile decomposing corpse these zombies are remarkably complex creatures that experience a surprising array of complicated emotions. Jeff isn’t the brightest spark out there and Zoe, being a woman, shouldn’t be out chasing after zombies so to defeat this horde of the undead you need to know exactly what you’re dealing with. Firstly, put mirrors up everywhere. Zombies are very self-conscious and don’t like looking at their own reflection to the point that they’ll run away from it. Secondly, zombies don’t like it when you express any fear since they themselves cannot express emotions so keep a constant grin on your face. Thirdly, zombies like to think that they’re still alive so treat them in the same way you would treat any living member of the human race and they might be a little less inclined to eat you. Lastly, a zombie is very good with a stick so avoid dangling from a tree with a chainsaw that they can get hold of and use against you. Follow these simple rules and you might just survive an attack of the video dead!

Speaking of The Video Dead, as a technical point, at no point is there a video, be it Beta or VHS, anywhere in sight but, at the end of the day, that really is the least of your worries walking into this one.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Younger brothers often walk like the dead.
• Women take their degrees in aerobics and music videos very seriously.
• Skunks don’t like to mate with poodles.
• Poodles are kinky and like being sprayed on by skunks.
• Zombies have a very simple but strange sense of humour.
• Zombies can only die when they think they’re alive. In this way when you attack them they will think they are injured and convince themselves that they are actually dead when they really aren’t because they can’t experience pain. They will remain ‘dead’ because they’re fooling themselves into thinking that they are until someone points out to them that they’re not in which case they’ll get back up and try again.

THE VIDEO DEAD TRAILER

Dead Snow

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 6.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise! – Low

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

This movie deserves its place in my vault of terror for nothing else other than the way that I found out about it. Apparently many people were well aware of this movie because of its original story, its funny little quirks and its high Nazi content. Not me. I found out about this movie through Linni Meister, Norway’s answer to Paris Hilton (or, where I come from, Patricia Lewis). You see, for some unknown reason, Dead Snow is promoted throughout her song ‘My Ass’. Now what the Nazi Zombies and this chick’s ass have to do with one another the gods alone know, but this is how I came across the movie. And the movie really eats at me because for most of it I really was enjoying it, but there were still points where I tilted my head and gazed at the screen blankly. I think it might have had something to do with the dodgy subtitles my version had, but it’s not my job to make up people’s minds – I’m just here to poke fun at movies when they start getting silly 🙂

Outhouse sex: Proof that men love sex so much they'll do it before wiping their asses.

Seven medical students (Vegard, Erlend, Chris, Martin, Roy, Hanna and Liv) have decided to get away from it all for the Easter holidays and take a little vacation somewhere in the back and beyond of Norway where Vegard’s girlfriend Sara owns a little cabin. Sara left before the rest of the group to get to the cabin and has subsequently gone missing since she was chased down and attacked in the movie’s opening sequence. Unaware of Sara’s fate, the rest of the group enjoys a fun night of jokes and drinks until a hiker appears at their door. After drinking and insulting their organic coffee he decides that the students need to be enlightened about the history of the area. During WWII Standartenführer Herzog and some of his cronies were stationed in this area where, for 3 years, they were the cruel and sadistic overlords that one would expect a Nazi to be. When Germany began to fall the soldiers began looting the town and planned on going into hiding in the surrounding hills and forests. The townsfolk decided they weren’t having any of it and ambushed and killed most of the Nazis. Herzog and the few remaining survivors escaped into the hills and were presumed dead. But as we all know, bad shit refuses to stay dead for long…

Mein Führer Zombie Action Figure. Zombie Minions sold separately.

After that delightful little tale the hiker goes on his way and, the following morning, Vegard decides that he needs to go and look for his girlfriend. While he’s out on his little journey he manages to fall into a snow-covered cave where he lies unconscious for several hours. While he’s doing that the rest of the gang back at the cabin find a mysterious box under some of the floor boards. The box is filled with gold coins, one of which Chris pockets for herself. While on her way to the outhouse to have some steamy sex with Erlend she drops the coin and awakens the zombie Nazi horde who begin to lay siege to the cabin. As groans are exchanged, brains craved and blood splattered the students manage to barricade themselves in the cabin and survive until the morning in hopes of devising a method of escape.

Admittedly one of the coolest zombie killing sequences ever...

Vegard, meanwhile, awakens in the cave and, upon some investigation, discovers where Herzog and his cronies were hiding out in their last days. In amongst the remains and Sara’s severed head he does manage to find a variety of firearms. While he investigates his choice of weapons and his girlfriend’s head he is attacked by a zombie and badly bitten but, fortunately for him, these zombies don’t transform you when they bite and he manages to kill it before making a stylish getaway on his snowmobile that he has now equipped with a machine gun. Back at the cabin those that made it through the night decide that their best chance of survival is to split up (when will people learn?). What follows are some of the most awesome zombie chase and kill scenes as this ragged little group tries to make it off the mountain before being eaten – all because of a single gold coin. I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a good gory, silly and occasionally cheesy zombie movie.

I have decided not to post a trailer for Dead Snow. Instead, I would like those that haven’t seen yet it to discover it the same way that I did. Scroll down to watch Linni Meister’s music video for her hit song ‘My Ass’ (I promise that you will never be the same after watching it…)

THINGS I’VE LEARNED:

• Molotov Cocktails should be thrown out the window, not against the wall.
• Strangling people is an excellent way to show appreciation for their hospitality.
• Telling people that the place they are holidaying at used to be a Nazi outpost dedicated to torturing local people really brings the mood of a party down.
• Your girlfriend may not think being smothered with a pillow is a kind of foreplay.
• Never trust a women with outhouse-sex on her mind with a cursed gold coin.
• Being murdered in an outhouse’s cesspit is a shitty way to go.
• A joke isn’t funny unless it has poop, pee, or semen in it.
• There is nothing hotter than getting it on in an outhouse.
• You will never be as hardcore as the guy with a machine gun on his snowmobile.

LINNI MEISTER: ‘MY ASS’