Ghost Storm

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Sci-Fi / Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.8 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from the ungodly experiment that is the B-Horror Blog, it’s that anything the Asylum can do, Syfy can do a thousand times better (except for those few times when the Asylum makes the Syfy movie). They’re both good staples: The Asylum if you want a movie that’ll be easy to throw insults at, and Syfy if you want some guaranteed cheese. Ghost Storm will give you everything you need so far as cheese factor is concerned, and it even throws in a little soft science just to make the final product that little bit more saccharine-sweet. By the looks of things the people behind this movie had a fairly decent budget to play around with, and gradually these people seem to be coming to grips with making CGI monsters that aren’t so bad they’re insulting. I recommend hanging onto this one for one of those really rainy Sunday afternoons when you want to chase away the approaching Monday blues.

No good will possibly come from this.

What is it in a teenager’s genetic structure that draws them to creepy cemeteries like moths to a porch light? Science should really look into that. Anyway, as you may have guessed, our story begins with a group of bored teenagers in a dark and spooky cemetery – during a lightning storm, no less. Wherever the hell their hometown is, it would appear to be on a tiny little island, so I guess you gotta get your kicks where you can. Everything’s going absolutely fine (guys scaring girls, ominous thunder) until a bolt of lightning strikes the memorial for the people who died during the town’s now-infamous mass-suicide. The lightning, through means I should check with my Occult Specialist, releases the angry spirits of the departed, who quickly go about turning one of the teenagers into a grey piece of human jerky.

Run Generic Background Character, Run!

Thankfully, Officer Dad (AKA Hal, father of Daisy, one of the girls that was out in the cemetery) is on the case. There must be a logical, rational reason why Daisy’s 18-year-old boyfriend’s corpse went from looking like the Crypt Keeper to being a pile of mulch in a matter of hours. Of course, the problem here is that they’re stuck on an island, and how exactly would you report this kind of incident to the authorities back on the main land? This of course is only the beginning of the town’s problems – you see, these aren’t your regular pissed off, vengeance-seeking ghosts. These ghosts are smart – why hunt individually when you can join together, form a supernatural storm system and blight the inhabitants of the island all the more faster?

Dammit, it’ll take forever to get the Redrum off the windows….

So, with the angry spirits swirling around the island in a giant, lightning-filled vortex, it’s up to Hal, ex-wife Ashley, and Daisy to come up with some kind of way to defeat the ghosts before they turn the entire town’s population into little piles of dust. They will be aided by a seafaring ghost hunter who happened to rock up on the island just as the storm formed. They will need a combination of a lot of random electrical equipment, some occultist knowledge, Ashley’s meteorological know-how, a lot of salt water, a fire extinguisher, an old diary with some town secrets, a weather balloon, a gun, a lot of jumper cables, some cans of silicon gel, half a dozen rolls of duct tape, an ancient talisman and a cellphone tower if they’re ever going to be able to stop these ghosts. Then, of course, there’s the mysterious old priest, and Ashley and Daisy’s old, but not forgotten, family history that ties into the whole affair…

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Lightning storms are a tremendous turn on for randy teens.
  
• The new iSpirit app is very useful for knowing when there are vengeful spirits in the area.
• Exhuming bodies is nothing but good, small town fun.
• It’s very expensive to build a machine that’ll let you speak to a storm cloud.
• Salt water is the best thing to use to soak up spilled evil.
• A good old-fashioned witch hunt usually eases the tension when you’re being held hostage by ghosts.
• Always make sure that your ghost complies with regulatory electrical standards.

GHOST STORM TRAILER

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The Legend of Bloody Mary Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.7 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 1 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Every now and then you need to get together and celebrate the works of a fallen sister; it’s for this reason that Tropical Mary settled on watching The Legend of Bloody Mary with me – I was just there for the emotional support. Turns out we needed a fair bit of it, because this movie was both horrible and, for the most part, highly non-sensical. Take my word for it – it can be very difficult watching a ‘current day’ scenario running alongside a protracted flashback, both of which have another flashback embedded in them. This confusing scenario is tethered together with some atrocious acting, oddly placed mini-skirts, a skate boarder who never skates, and the rampant abuse of a blue filter that serves no purpose whatsoever. Watch it if you dare!

Dat angst!

It’s a tale as old as time: Amish girl gets pregnant by “immaculate conception”, town fathers hold an inquiry, no one owns up to impregnating girl, town fathers conclude it was immaculate conception – but by the devil, girl is punished for her vanity by being tied to a tree, cut with knives and forced to look at herself in a mirror while it’s happening, douche lord that actually impregnated girl does the most stabbing, girl succumbs to wounds and Hell’s fury, girl’s spirit becomes entrapped in the mirror and haunts stupid teenage girls for the rest of time. Her spirit will roam the world’s mirrors forever, her gradually decaying flesh calling out in a raspy voice that all she actually wants is some camphor cream and a lozenge. That is the story of Mary Worth.

When vague, blurry shadows attack…

Flash forward to the present day and meet Ryan (or Brian, we couldn’t really decide). Ryan’s about as interesting as a plank of wood and as useful as a knife with a sharp handle. Thankfully, although he’s nominally the main character of the movie, he actually has very little to do with all of it. His sister Amy was killed when the two of them were kids (and, despite him being a white, blue-eyed adult, when he was a green-eyed, hispanic child). Since then he’s been haunted by nightmare visions of Bloody Mary, so he enlists the help of Father O’Neil (aka Indiana Jehovah). Indiana Jehovah is as useless as Ryan/Brian, and the majority of his scenes are spent focussing on his eyes for reasons that aren’t immediately apparent.

Bitch, where’s my Halls?

The majority of the story, if that’s what we choose to call it, happens during the flashback to Amy’s encounters with Mary. Essentially it’s all a teenage game gone wrong (which is probably how Mary landed up pregnant in the first place): by writing her name, and the names of her friends, on a mirror, Amy has invoked Bloody Mary’s wrath, and she’s out to get all of them. To do so, Mary transforms into some of her more hi-tech alter egos, including Thrust Pack Mary, Hoverboard Mary, and Hover Shoes Mary. In some bizarre way this loops back to the present day and somehow involves a mass grave, some diaries from the 1600s, Mary’s mirror, and the most inept game of hot potato you’re ever likely to see. All of which, I must reiterate, could’ve been avoided if someone just gave the demonic bitch a lozenge.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• American Green Cards allow a person to change their race.
• 1 corpse is enough to designate an area as a mass grave.
• Carbon dating can be done in a single day.
• Games can have placebo effects.
• Nothing says casual Friday like a professional mini-skirt.

THE LEGEND OF BLOODY MARY TRAILER

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House of Blood

Year of Release: 2006
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.7 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0/5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

As any semi-regular visitor to this blog will know, I’m up for pretty much anything. Extraterrestrial vampire whores, sharktopodes, gay vampires, killer cartoon characters, shit monsters (no really – monsters made out of shit), I’ve seen it all and lived to tell the tale. Even with this experience under my belt, rarely have I encountered a movie as utterly banal as House of Blood (aka Chain Reaction). As often happens I could totally see what they were going for (a kind of The Village meets Triangle meets The Shawshank Redemption kind of vibe), but it was so poorly and unoriginally put together that all you’re left with is this steaming pile of self-righteous movie filled with characters fond of using big words but having no idea what they actually mean. Also, it’s a bit longer than your usual crapfest: at just over 100 minutes, it drags the pain out a lot more than most movies would dare to do.

Eye, speaketh like a tool doth I.

Douglas Madsen is just a regular doctor who frequently laments the loss of his parents roughly 50 years ago when he was but a wee lad. That is until one day when Fate decides to throw him a curve ball and Douglas lands up with a set of completely different, but somehow interlinked, problems. Going out on his rounds (in a densely wooded area with no people) Douglas finds his car plowing head first into a truck transporting criminals to another prison. After a small shoot out and the brutal death of several policemen the criminals abduct Douglas, thinking that he might be useful in treating one of their own who has been shot. The criminals steal the dead policemen’s clothes and run into the forest to make their escape. Why they didn’t just POSE as policemen in the outfits I don’t understand, but this seems to be the path the director wanted to take.

Lamb’s blood gravy, just like mama used to make it.

When the criminals went down to the woods that day they didn’t realise they were in for a big surprise. They thought that the rundown, seemingly abandoned cottage in the middle of the forest with no electricity and hidden by a dense and mysterious fog would be their salvation; shockingly, it wasn’t. In this cozy little cottage that would’ve sent Goldilocks running for her life lives a quaint little family that speaks a dialect of Ye Olde English that would irritate the most hardened of Renaissance Fair goers. Despite the obvious language barrier between the residents’ archaic tongue and the criminals’ constant screams of “shut the fuck up!”, with a little persuasion (at gun point) the family can be rather hospitable and agree, under duress, to help the guys out with their wounded friend.

Sweety, you’ll never find a husband going around looking like that.

Alas, all is not as it seems with the mountain-dwelling family. It’s all been perfectly civilised up until one of the criminal’s has to have his arm amputated with a machete. Things go a little awry at this point. In a move that I’m putting down to sheer indecisiveness from the script writers, the family turns out to be a group of undead-zombie-vampire-cannibals, who Douglas has to escape from. This might have been tolerable, but the joke is that this is only half the movie. Douglas does escape, only to find himself in some bizarre loop of consciousness, and the movie decides to repeat itself. The second time around he’s accompanied by a different group of criminals, but it’s essentially just watching the same movie twice with a little tweaking here and there. In summary: no acting skills, no English language proficiency, no shame.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Being shot in the arm usually means that the whole thing has to be amputated.
• ‘Friendly fire’ refers to friends getting together to gun down policemen.
• Statistically there is a one in a billion chance of a doctor crashing into a prisoner transit van.
• Sheep remain remarkably calm whilst you slit their throats with a blunt knife.
• To hell with salt – pour blood over your food, it’s just as tasty.
• You should live your life in such a way that the Count de Sade himself would envy you.
• Sociopathic lusts greatly outweigh psychopathic social obligations.

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A Siren In The Dark

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Mystery / Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.2 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 3/5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

OK I admit it, I have a problem. Ever since I got some sick and perverted joy out of watching Vampire Boys I’ve been trying to find a movie that elicits similar feelings from me. I mean, things like Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island were fun and all, but this is just ridiculous. Made on a shoe string budget (and a rather frayed shoe string at that) with half a dozen people who don’t have an iota of acting talent between them, all this movie does in its 80 minutes of runtime is subject you to a constant stream of narcissistic, anorexic sluts and so much penis you’d think you were at some kind of perverted deli. The editing is so choppy at one point I thought my laptop was actively rebelling against the film and more than once I had to stop and wonder whether I’d popped this movie in or some strange gay porn DVD I didn’t even know I had. Seriously, if you ever come across this anywhere, take the DVD and throw it under a passing truck. The world will never, and should never, be ready for something this horrendously bad.

It’s all fun and games until someone develops Stockholm Syndrome.

We begin our rather sordid tale in the car of policeman Cameron. He’s picked up some strange female on the side of the road and is taking her back to her house. After some wooden dialogue and excessive ponytail shots we are teleported back to Cameron’s house. Cameron has a distinctly Asian brother who likes to spend his time mostly naked, lying in Cameron’s bed and Skyping an equally Asian friend of his. After a rousing round of ‘my dick’s bigger so you’re the bitch’ over Skype, Cameron comes home and promptly ejects the Asian brother from his room. Penis displays over, the brother explains to the friend that Cameron is in a rehab programme because, when he was 11, he was made to have sex with a 9-year-old girl. None of this is at all even remotely important to the movie’s progression, but since I had to sit through it I’m making you guys read it. Because I’m mean and vindictive like that. Anyways Brother of the Asian Persuasion goes back into Cameron’s room, gives Cameron a massage (what a strange brotherly bond they have) before Cameron gets a phone call and has to race out the house.

“He was a little retarded, but oh so willing.”

So then we’re taken to the back and beyond of nowhere where Cameron (who’s apparently a psychic now) is interviewing a ginger, flamboyant, lisping, poverty-stricken man’s Jake Gyllenhaal about some or other murder case. We’re told something about some guy getting it on with his retarded brother, another sister who’s deaf and yet another sister who seems to have had some kind of drug problem. I tried desperately to connect all these puzzle pieces to the other parts of the plot but came up empty-handed. Nevertheless this fool then goes on to describe how he’d picked up this pretty little boy on the side of the road, fallen in love, done some terribly things to him sexually, and then run off with a bag full of drugs.

Even the photos are having sex with one another.

After that we are subjected to yet another story about this strange boy on the side of the road, this time from the perspective of Ginger Gyllenhaal’s boyfriend (but not actually told by him). Taking the concepts of desperation and neediness to hitherto unexplored extremes, Boyfriend meets this guy (who I’m guessing is the movie’s eponymous Siren) on the side of the road, goes back home with him, plays some shocking games of ‘bend over and be my bitch’ and falls madly and passionately in love. All in the space of two days. He’s absolutely smitten with the Siren and can’t imagine his life without him. Of course it can’t all be sunshine and butterflies and hardcore BDSM so the feelings of the Siren are cast into doubt by the fact that, wait for it, he doesn’t eat. Never. Not a thing. Except that weird soup on the stove. Soup plays a large role in this movie, along with booze, cocaine and barely hidden or totally exposed penises. What exactly is Cameron trying to find out? What secrets can Ginger Gyllenhaal expose about the Siren? Who will live and who will die in this deadly game of hide the sausage? I don’t know, and quite frankly, I don’t care.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Sex and doughnuts are a good way to show a policeman your appreciation.
• If you’re not gonna have sex with a woman don’t even bother rescuing her on the side of the road.
• You’re never so far out in the sticks that you can’t order Chinese takeout.
• Water is not a viable soup substitute.
• Lesbians have x-ray vision to spy on gays getting it on in the shower.
• One of the perks of being a psychic is that you can telepathically watch other people having sex.
• Drinking all day is much like ramming a gerbil up your arse.
• A cup of cyanide tea really helps a person to unwind after a long day.
• Breakfast goes best with vodka.
• It’s virtually impossible to mug the devil.
• It’s quite easy, however, to tie the devil up and do bad sexual things to him.
• Every guy a slut wants to bang is either gay or the devil.
• Holding a knife to someone’s neck is a sign that the lesser spotted woodland gay wants to mate.

A SIREN IN THE DARK TRAILER

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Trailer Park of Terror Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 5.2 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!
Breast-O-Meter: 1 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

The Tropical Mary movie train rides again, with the axe-wielding Stygian Mole acting as our bodyguard against the b-grade horror. Admittedly, going in, the three of us didn’t expect much from a movie called Trailer Park of Terror. The fact that this was our 16th movie in 38 hours also meant that the mind wasn’t as strong as it once was and the line between reality and fiction was beginning to blur. Despite these rather significant odds this was actually one of those rare gems we occasionally find in the mountain of otherwise crap movies that I’ve managed to accumulate. If, like myself, you’re a sucker for a southern woman with a penchant for murder then this movie is definitely the one for you!

Let me just put my face on quick...

You know things are gonna get really trailer up in here when a movie opens with a shot of a doily on top of a TV and a woman wearing a scrunchie. Meet Norma, a lovely young thing with blonde hair, supple body and big dreams. She’s gone done met herself a strapping young fellow who’s everything she wants in a man (ie. he isn’t old enough to be her father, he isn’t a raging alcoholic and he doesn’t sell possum and racoon meat). To be honest the standards going around are relatively low, but that’s perfectly understandable given Norma’s humble (and dysfunctional) upbringing. Before going out to a dance Norma and her beau are accosted by some of the park’s residents; one thing leads to another and the boyfriend lands up impaled on a broken fence. Norma, justifiably pissed off, makes a deal with the devil and blows everyone and the trailer park to kingdom come. The tragedy that was Norma’s life came to an end that evening… Or did it?

Angry Asian ghost. In a porcelain mask. RUN!

Flash forward to a future with a lot of missing persons posters in the area of the old trailer park and Pastor Lewis is trying to bring a few lost souls back to Jesus. What part of ‘let’s stick half a dozen troubled teenagers in a bus together in the middle of nowhere’ sounded like a good idea I’m not quite sure but they’re here now so we might as well do something with them. While travelling out of a little town the brilliant Pastor Lewis plows their bus into a strangely abandoned truck. With the rain coming down in sheets they run off to find shelter and come across a conveniently placed trailer park run by a lovely woman named Norma. Sounding familiar? Norma’s delightfully southern, in a tiny red dress and only too happy to do whatever it takes to make this little group comfortable for the night. After all, southern people are known for their hospitality. They’re also known for making cheese grits, but that’s a separate story.

Always deep fry your mortal to seal in the juices.

Of course every trailer park comes with its own ghosts, and these ones happen to be particularly vindictive. After killing the inhabitants of the trailer park Norma damned them all to haunt the place because of the deal she made and they’re now super psycho versions of their mortal selves. Red necks, angry Asian masseuses and an overly ‘voluptuous’ woman with a mild racoon meat addiction are the order of the day for our group of misguided youths. As a bunch of sex addicts, drug addicts, adulterers and cowards they’re really gonna have their work cut out for them if they’re gonna have any chance of surviving the night. Prepare yourselves for blood, beheadings and some epic undead drag racing to the edge of sanity and back!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Hold it in for too long and you will start peeing acid.
• A trailer park isn’t a trailer park if there are no pink flamingos everywhere.
• If a man is a good lover a woman’s face will actually fall off while she’s having sex with him.
• You’re overdoing a back massage when the spine starts to rip through the skin.
• Many of the undead are trained to use landmines.
• Fresh meat brings all the undead to the yard.
• Proper food hygiene is a highly overrated practice.
• You can pray for forgiveness before you’ve actually committed the sin.

TRAILER PARK OF TERROR TRAILER

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