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

BUY A SIREN IN THE DARK AT AMAZON.COM

Goth

Year of Release: 2003
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 3.4 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 3 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

You really have to love those amazing horror movie collections you can find at your nearest grocery store. They lurk at the very depths of the bargain movie bins and you just never know what you’re going get, but whatever it is you know it won’t be good. Goth comes from just such a collection. Made on a shoe-string budget with a hand-held home video camera and actors who look like they’re freshly flunked out of drama school, this movie goes to show just how evil some directors can be. IMDB’s little blurb tells us that “Goth blurs the boundaries between reality-driven horror and the hallucinatory style of Requiem for a Dream…” It really doesn’t. It may blur the boundaries between reality and insanity (in a ‘I can’t believe I’m watching this crap’ kind of way), but any pretence that this movie attempts to follow in the heels of a well made film is an utter joke. I am proud of myself for watching it, however, because Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole and the Occult Specialist had to turn it off when they watched it together, proving once and for all that I am very hardcore 🙂

Goth, spelled G-A-Y C-L-U-B.

Come along and join us for an evening of gothic delights. Meet Crissy, the most girl-next-door goth you’ll ever meet. Crissy doesn’t say much in the beginning, but that’s because when she opens her mouth nothing but weird shit comes out. She’s going out with her boyfriend Boone, who’s gothic in a gay hipster kind of way. They’re super excited to be going to a concert at the local hell hole (note to the director: 20 drunk emo high school kids in a bar does not a concert make) where they’ll take an assortment of drugs, drink absinthe and have a generally gothic good time. While at the club Crissy meets her newest BFF, Goth. That’s her name: Goth. Why? Because she’s goth. I make the point that Goth is a goth because the movie itself likes to drive this point home every bit as emphatically. Goth is trying to find other goths who are as goth as she is. After saving Crissy and Boone from being mugged Goth gives the pair a drug called White Light and the party really begins to get underway.

Like, OMG! We’re, like, so TOTALLY goth right now!

After accepting a strange drug in a skull container from a complete stranger named Goth Crissy and Boone seem surprised to find themselves waking up in a strange van miles away from the club they started out at. Goth’s van is very goth, with skulls all over the place and a variety of drugs just littered about in old pizza boxes. Now the reason for this minor kidnapping is that Goth wants to see just how goth these two new goths are. This is because there are apparently two types of goths: goths like Goth, who are more akin to Satanists than anything else, and goths that are really just angsty teenagers who wear a lot of black. Goth has several goth rules that all goths should live by, and tonight will be a goth test to see if goth Crissy and goth Boone can be every bit as goth as Goth. You following me? Good. Thrown in at random intervals amongst all this gothness are several flashbacks to Crissy with her sister in a decidedly less goth fashion, just to keep you in suspense.

Mmm, AB negative, my favourite!

The evening begins to take a bit of a downward turn (or a turn for the better, depending on how goth you really are) when Goth decides to go all goth on people and telling Crissy that she needs to kill some people and that Boone needs to have sex with fat hookers. Why? Because that’s the goth thing to do. In essence what Goth is actually getting at is that you need to behave like a petulant child with a sharp knife, but somehow defining this as ‘goth’ will make it a lot more hardcore than it really is. Boone has his reservations about all this, but apparently Goth threatening to kill a room full of hookers is enough to change his mind. Crissy doesn’t question anything and is all game to go along for the ride, timidly chastising Boone whenever he cares to voice a thought. But the flashbacks keep coming at us, and it becomes somewhat clear that Crissy has ulterior motives for going along with all this and Goth (and her red pleather mini skirt) will have to watch out or suffer the wrath of a Crissy scorned.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Gothic sex tastes better when you have it on a dirty floor.
• Goths are really leading the peer pressure drive when it comes to taking mysterious drugs.
• Punk gothic dominatrixes are really trippy.
• Be on the lookout for gothic drug delivery vans, coming to a neighbourhood near you.
• Becoming a goth requires more intense training and dedication than becoming a Tibetan monk.
• Having a knife poked in your eye and pleather rubbing against you really isn’t a turn on.
• Being gothic is about experiencing true love and learning to tolerate people from all walks of life.
• Embracing the darkness includes having sex in front of a  gathering of goths and hookers.
• You can’t be a true goth if you attempted suicide and failed.
• A goth lesbian’s vagina is a portal to memories of happier times.

GOTH TRAILER

BUY GOTH AT AMAZON.COM

Dracula 3000

Year of Release: 2004
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 2 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Holy sweet mother of God my brain… I’m not much of a vampire fan, my preference has always been with zombies. None of this intelligence nonsense, just eat the damn human and be done with it. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this prejudice, which is why Dracula 3000 is actually quite heart warming: a vampire movie that was clearly made by a horde of mindless zombies. This isn’t so much a movie as it is 86 minutes worth of shots of a storage / boiler room with various morons running around in it. If they were going for a Jason X kind of vibe they missed the mark horribly. I honestly cannot think of a single person I would recommend this movie to. If you are unfortunate enough to come across it expose it to sunlight (or a blowtorch) and wait until it melts.

This man needs an intense moisturiser, stat!

In the year 2950 the spaceship Demeter was just cruising through the universe when it ran into a spot of bother. After picking up some cargo the ship’s crew all became mysteriously ill and the captain began to lose control of the ship as all the guidance systems began to fail and the engines failed to fire. I’m sure the captain’s wife had very similar complaints, but that’s a story for another day. When the ship’s emergency distress signals would no longer go out the Demeter became lost in space for the next 50 years. In the year 3000 Captain Abraham van Helsing and his ship, the Mother III, are also cruising through the universe and just happen to stumble upon the Demeter. Given the size of the universe the fact that you would stumble across anything at all is quite remarkable, but here we are.  Claiming salvage rights on the Demeter van Helsing and his crew board the stricken star liner to see what happened to it and just how much they can make off with.

Casper van Dien is tired of your shit!

Accompanying van Helsing is the most useless crew space ever has or ever will see. Aurora is the token blonde who’s an uncomfortable cross between radical feminist and sex kitten. Mina is the whiny female intern that tries to do stuff but can only accomplish things with the help of men. Our on board professor is a cripple who actually seems to know very little about anything other than whining and hiding under things. Then we have our two stock black characters: the pot head, 187, and the take-no-shit-and-kick-your-puny-white-ass Humvee. Points must be given for their collective intelligence: as soon as they discover the very first rotten corpse tied to a chair with a crucifix in its hand they have this sneaky suspicion that something may have gone wrong on the ship. Van Helsing’s the loose bolt in the fine machine that is the collective intelligence of the crew since he’s not going to let one little rotten corpse and rooms littered with crucifixes frighten him off from collecting a little scrap metal. He’s far too manly for that kind of thing.

Stabbed through the heart, and you’re to blame. You give love a bad name.

So what could have possibly happened to the Demeter? Well, you see, what happened goes a little something like this: while cruising through the galaxy the ship received a transmission from the planet Transylvania in the Carpathian star system. No I’m not making a joke, that’s really where they were. Since none of this set off any alarm bells the Demeter’s captain obviously wasn’t going to question why he was transporting over a dozen coffins through space towards Earth. Turns out that Transylvania is a vampire planet (gasp, shock, horror) and Count Orlock, the head vampire, wants to be taken to Earth for a little snack. Oh, if only now, 50 years later, there coincidentally happened to be the descendant of some of the best vampire hunters in history on board the Demeter! If such a hero were here then perhaps he could save the day and defeat the evil Count? Even if he had to do so while being surrounded by useless professors, whiny women and stereotyped black men. To be fair I didn’t see the ending coming. The flip side of that coin, however, is that the ending is awful and makes you want to throw a brick through the TV. You have all been warned.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Women dream of a life where they can work alongside sweaty men for no pay.
• Lacking a sustainable blood source, vampires transform into beach sand and hibernate.
• Vampires make whooshing noises whenever they move.
• Most intergalactic starships come equipped with a modest speed internet connection.
• Only white people suck other people’s blood.
• Women should be tied up and held captive whenever they offer advice that may save your life.

DRACULA 3000 TRAILER

BUY DRACULA 3000 AT AMAZON.COM

Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2005
Genre: Comedy / Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 2 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

When myself and Tropical Mary get together for a movie night you know we’re gonna go hard hard h-h-h-hard. Throw in a Stygian Mole and the party’s never gonna stop! Since we were in such a hardcore partying mood Rave to the Grave was just a logical choice for the evening’s first movie 😉 Admittedly I haven’t seen the other Return of the Living Dead movies for about 10 years so, if there was any link to the earlier movies floating around in here, I didn’t know about it. I doubt that this is important since this movie has enough of its own daft silliness to distract you. Prepare yourself for brain-hungry zombies, zombie juice, zombie drugs and Krispy Kreme obsessed Interpol agents!

The children are our future.

It’s good to see that the black market is still alive and thriving, and now’s as good a time as any to invest in barrels of Trioxin 5. The particularly powerful toxic agent turns people into zombies hungry for brains and there are a number of (presumably) Russians who want to get their hands on it to make sure that no one else is accidentally turned into a member of the walking dead. Thankfully an Eric Roberts look-alike just happens to have a few in his possession and is happy to sell them off if the price is right. The Russians, of course, are a practical people and have acquired the use of a morgue to do a little test run to see if the Trioxin is the genuine product. Four corpses later it turns out that the Trioxin really does work and one of the Russians, the Eric Roberts look-alike and a doctor of questionable morals lands up being broken open for brain snacks.

A more archaic way of relieving an aneurism...

But too many Russians can make a movie a bit too serious, so we need to take this in a different direction. Off at college Jenny, Julian, Cody and Becky are planning a little rave for Halloween. Julian’s the nephew of the Eric Roberts look-alike and suffers from 3 and a half minutes of intense grief when he finds out about his dear uncle’s untimely death. While raiding the attic at the uncle’s house he discovers a very poorly concealed room behind a very poorly constructed false wall. In the room he comes across the barrels of Trioxin and takes it to Cody to be tested. When our DJ of the Asian persuasion samples a little of the strange contents and goes on a little trip Cody decides to drain the barrel and turn it into a drug to make a little extra cash. This, despite the fact that they have no idea what’s in the barrel, the barrel is military issue, it has a biohazard sign on it and a digital lock. These can’t possibly be warning signs after all…

Even the undead need a ride from time to time.

Admittedly the Trioxin tablets, known as ‘Z’ to the hip druggie kids on the street, do send people on quite a trip when taken in small doses. Unfortunately, in the long run, it has the unpleasant side effect of turning the user into a walking corpse with a taste for brains. The transformation happens faster when the dosage is increased. Since raves are not the drug-free and safe-sex haven that some of us believe them to be a rather sizeable portion of the assembled party goers begins to turn and start looking for their next batch of brain noms. Human skulls seem to be reasonably simple to open so the zombies just go nuts and, since its Halloween, everyone else just thinks it’s awesome makeup until it’s too late. It’ll take everything Julian, Jenny and two Interpol agents dressed as lady vikings have in them to bring this terrible outbreak to an end.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Women are prone to driving their cars into their swimming pools.
• Drunk college kids are not overly different to lemmings running off a cliff.
• Fivety-five is now considered a legitimate number.
• If you can’t trust you’re drug dealer you can’t trust anyone.
• Dragons are getting tighter.
• Brains are now located in the penis.
• Pieces of skull and a clump of hair counts as zombie roughage.
• The brain and the ear have major arteries running through them.
• The human skull has a little trapdoor at the back for easy brain access.

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD: RAVE TO THE GRAVE TRAILER

BUY RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD: RAVE TO THE GRAVE AT AMAZON.COM

Subhuman

Year of Release: 2004
Genre:  Horror
IMDB Rating: 4.1 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

I did this guest review a while back while 1987 month was still in full swing and I didn’t want to disturb the disturbing flow 🙂 Never too late to read up on this little gem though – head on over to Horror Daily and then hang around to read his reviews of some other little gems floating around out there!

BUY SUBHUMAN AT AMAZON.COM