Skeeter

Year of Release: 1993
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 2.8 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0.5 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Let me start off by saying that watching this movie was a mistake. Not a mistake in that I regret watching it but rather a mistake in that it wasn’t the movie I was thinking of. I remember back when I was maybe 13 or 14 I watched a movie about killer mosquitos and remembered this box cover from the video store I used to go to. I remember watching this one (albeit very vaguely), but I was really excited to watch the other one, so this was a major let down. It was also quite a surprise; you wouldn’t think there were that many movies about giant mosquitos. Skeeter is not fun, although if you’re in the mood for some spectacular 90s hair, music and men’s wedgie-inducing jeans then you’re in for an absolute treat.

Intense observation.

It was a dark and lonely night when the trucks carrying loads of toxic waste rode into the outskirts of the little town of Clear Sky. It’s a tough time for the little town, what with all the modernisation and skyscrapers and internets going up. Not caring for the town’s plight in the face of the advancing city folk some evil corporation decides that it needs to dump its toxic waste somewhere and that the best place is in one of Clear Sky’s old abandoned mines. Nobody mines no more, work’s all done with them there fancy computers and cellphones as big as your arm, so nobody’s going to notice the waste in the old abandoned mine. That is until two boys head out that way on their motor bikes and land up mysteriously dead, the blood drained right out of their bodies…

Intense manliness.

We need to tear ourselves away from all that for a minute to meet Roy Boone, the coolest and manliest policeman in these here parts. He’s so manly, in fact, that he out-right refuses to ever button up his shirts, whether he’s on duty or not. Boone’s noticed that something very strange is going on in the little town of Clear Sky (the fact that entire herds of cattle are turning up drained of blood and looking like unwrapped mummies may have been a clue) and has called someone in to look at the water in the town, thinking that this might be the problem. The water guy’s more than happy to be there but sheriff Ernie and businessman Drake are not. Ernie and Drake have some kind of deal going on while Drake’s busy turning the desert into a never-ending stretch of luxury houses and they don’t want anyone interfering in their plans.

Intense shirtlessness.

Of course mother nature, when combined with vast quantities of toxic waste, has a rather big way of saying “fuck you!” to people who want to develop luxury housing estates. At this point the movie’s worth watching just to see the mosquitos. I’m not sure what they’re made of but I’m guessing they’re models with either very limited movement or a lot of stop animation. These creatures are now flying around drinking the life force out of absolutely anyone and anything they come into contact with and sheriff Ernie’s not interested in hearing any of it, so Boone’s infinite manliness makes him a far better person for the job of saving Clear Sky. To help him out his Native American friend Hank will tag along for the ride. Will he be able to save the town from the monster mosquitos and the encroachment of 20th century conveniences? Will he be able to prove his love for Sarah and make her see the error in wanting to live in a place with tarred roads? All this and so much more (unnecessary chest hair) on the next screening of Skeeter!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Funeral parties are known to materialise out of nowhere in the blink of an eye.
• A pastor’s job at a funeral is to be bleak and ask God to kill us all.
• One of the prerequisites of being a politician is having a freckled belly.
• It’s never a wasted trip if you can find a karaoke bar.
• Native American policemen are useful for checking if a crime scene has bad juju.
• Doomsday predictions aren’t particularly powerful when delivered in rhyming couplets.
• Morgues in a desert town have no need for air conditioning.
• A parent’s job is to make their children feel terrible for wanting a better life for themselves.
• If you’re sleeping with the sheriff it doesn’t matter who you abandon in the desert without supplies.

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Birdemic: Shock and Terror Feat. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 2 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Oh sweet mother of God what the fuck just happened? When Tropical Mary and I sat down to watch an awful movie (and we’ve seen a lot of shit together) we never would have thought that something like this could happen. This makes Syfy movies look like Oscar contenders. Bad CGI is one thing, but never in a million years did I think I’d see a movie that used clip art for the “monsters”. If nothing else Birdemic: Shock and Terror is an excellent argument for atheism: if there really was a God, He would never have allowed something like this to be made.

There really isn’t enough plot to do a proper review for this one, so instead I’m going to give a very brief rundown of what happened and then I have taken Tropical Mary’s live tweets from the movie and turned them into a helpful little walkthrough.

The movie centres around Rod, the most wooden and bland man you’ll ever meet. One day at a coffee shop he spies a woman named Nathalie who he was once in school with. After some brief stalking and one whole date the two fall madly in love with one another and plan on spending the rest of their bland, wooden lives together. That is until the clip art eagles attack (that’s another thing: the only birds in this movie are eagles, so it’s really more Eagledemic than Birdemic…). Rod and Nathalie will have to blandly fight their way through the eagles, saving and killing a few friends and children along the way.

That really is all there is to it, but the 90 minutes worth of movie really do feel like an eternity has passed by and a few limbs have been hacked off your body in the process. If you own this movie burn the disk it’s on and then anything that was used to play and watch it. Fire is the only way we can cleanse the earth of this foul menace.

BIRDEMIC WALKTHROUGH:

Credits at an incredibly steep angle. Filming and driving is dangerous.

Open movie with stop/start dialogue using Special Olympics cast members.

Rod and Nathalie have business cards. Now they’ve swapped cards.

And he’s driving, and he’s driving, and he’s driving, and he’s indicating, and he’s finally stopping.

Suddenly, fashion shoot of the Asian persuasion.

Rod: “I have rabies for you.” Nathalie: “Thank you for getting me the kid.”

Rod and friend get together for unneccessary hip thrusting.

Rod’s got a rose and Nathalie’s wearing nothing but a t-shirt.

Rod and Nathalie are a match made in duuuhhhhville. Commence smile-and-nod date.

Phrases like “dancing in the clubs” are being thrown around willy nilly.

Romantic walk with giant slow motion humming birds from Alice in Wonderland followed by dancing in a green screen club.

Meeting Nathalie’s ‘I forgot my lines’ mother.

She-male in orange bikini.

Clapping. Chair thrusting. More clapping.

Rod loves his plug-in, hybrid ‘stang.

Handkerchief dress and Asians imagining peace.

Art & pumpkin festival.

And they’re driving, and they’re driving and they’re fucking driving!

In the pub. initiate two-man party while doing the stupid robot. No extras for this scene.

Same room, different sex.

Suddenly, birds making fighter jet noises, coat-hangers as weapons and space invader formation birds.

Kill one bird with 5 bullets, twice!

During an avian onslaught it’s very important to take time for lunch with the family.

Driving again (to heroic music).

Bottomless ammo clips and birds with acidic shit.

The nuclear family goes a-looting.

Not enough rain in the water.

Asian she-male was imagining peace but was roused.

Kamikaze eagles.

World saved by whited doves without olive branches.

THE END

The most epic scene ever filmed.

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Killjoy

Year of Release: 2000
Genre:  Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 1 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

For a horror fanatic Halloween is that one really important day that you want to spend with those closest to you. For me there was no one I would rather spend the day with than My Friend The Killer Clown Movie. We go back a long way and I hadn’t seen him since we went camping together in June at the beautiful Camp Blood. Since it had been such a long time I thought I’d give him a call and arrange to get together in a bad neighbourhood to have a sit down and a catch up. Now, if weird shit’s going to happen to anyone it’s going to happen to My Friend The Killer Clown Movie, so while we sat at a little corner café drinking very manly lattes he began telling me about the movie Killjoy, a movie that had made him feel more like a fool than many others he’s been forced to star in.

...and then I stuck my finger in the outlet...

What a lot of people don’t know about My Friend The Killer Clown Movie is that, while he is a bit of a psychotic lunatic, he’s very much in favour of equal opportunity. When he heard that Killjoy would be set in the hood with gangsters and guns and the like, he thought that this would be an amazing opportunity to prove that he isn’t a racist. Hindsight is an amazing thing and he now feels like this movie has set the civil rights movement back by about 50 years, something that brings a tear to his eye. After I wiped away his tears he told me the basic outline of what happened in the movie. Michael is the local nerd that no one likes, and he has a very big crush on Jada. Jada already has a boyfriend named Lorenzo, and he’s pretty thug. When he catches Jada speaking to Michael he gets his friends T-Bone and Baby Boy to beat the crap out of Michael. Rising above the situation Michael decides to perform a little black magic and summon a demon clown, the movie’s eponymous Killjoy, to take revenge, but Lorenzo & Co. kill Michael before the spell can be properly enacted.

Minimalist seances were all the rage back in 2000.

Being so close to My Friend The Killer Clown Movie I could tell that recounting this acting experience was very hard for him, so I decided to let him take his time. To put him more at ease we finished our lattes, ordered another round, took a few minutes to finish polishing our guns at the table and started taunting the odd old lady that walked by with them. This seemed to cheer him up a little and he continued with the story. A year has passed and Jada has since broken up with Lorenzo. She’s now romantically attached to a man named Jamal, a much sweeter man who knows how to treat his bitches and hoes right. Lorenzo & Co. are still around being thugs, but things are about to go rather badly for them. It seems that Michael’s spell was a slow-release one and has just kicked into effect, summoning Killjoy to our reality and letting him loose on the world. His ice-cream truck is a portal to his own dimension and Lorenzo & Co. are none too bright, so Killjoy lures them into the truck with promises of illegal drugs and discount ice-cream. Once trapped he then kills them in a number of ways that can only be done on a minimal budget before sending their bodies back to our dimension.

It's terribly sad to see a killer clown in the post-stroke phase of his life.

By this point we were all latted out and in the mood to torment some other people than just the old ladies we threatened to shoot, so me and My Friend The Killer Clown Movie decided to go for a walk, hand in hand, through this bad neighbourhood. As we walked along he told me the rest his sad story on the set of Killjoy. Playing the clown in this movie required that he become a lot more gangsta than he really is, learning to speak the lingo and acting like he rode in on the special bus. For reasons neither he nor the director could explain Killjoy now started to go after Jada, Jamal and their friend Monique. Thankfully a homeless man appears at random and tells them exactly what they need to do in order to stop the clown from killing them and trap him in his own dimension once more. Along the way they’ll encounter the spirits of Lorenzo & Co. and Michael, who’ll do anything to stop them. With faces that don’t move and voices that don’t range, our little group must ignore these spirits and bring Killjoy’s reign of terror to an end once and for all.

And so my lovely day with My Friend The Killer Clown Movie came to an end. I felt that him telling me about this awful movie he had starred in, with such good intentions, had brought us even closer together. In the back of my mind I also thought he was a bit of an idiot for starring in the movie’s two sequels, but decided that that was a conversation for another day. After a quick hug and a grab of the ass I went home, but promised to call him soon to arrange our next get together.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• A red mustang convertible will get you anywhere with a black woman.
• Hostages should not speak unless spoken to.
• Study groups are best conducted with porno RnB in the background.
• Year old breakups that you initiated mean nothing.
• Killer clown drug distribution from an ice cream truck is a major issue in poor neighbourhoods.
• Gangsta killer clowns use some of the most foul language you’ve ever heard.
• Lack of showering is one of the leading causes of foul vaginal smells.
• A pistol can hold, on average, 24 bullets.
• Women often come out of the shower wearing nothing but a pair of high heels.
• Some boys only have a doll and satanic magic as friends.
• 3 people count as ‘many, many’ murders.
• Boxes with lead pipes often include swords and axes as an added bonus.
• Pressing down on someone’s eyebrows can kill them.

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Paintball

Year of Release: 2009
Genre:  Thriller / Action / Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.9 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Oh dear, another interesting concept with dreadfully poor execution. There’s so much more that can be done in a movie centred around killer paintball with a slight dusting of Hostel for fun, but you’d be amazed at just how boring poor film making can make this concept. It suffers from a number of things: firstly, the camera work is shoddy. The cameraman actually moves bushes where no bushes should be moving. Secondly, the camera also appears to function as the microphone and as soon as anybody moves too far away it’s virtually impossible to ever make out what they’re saying. Finally, it suffers from that terrible movie affliction where the director tries to make it obvious just how distressed the characters are but the outcome is a bunch of whiny little people who scream (unintelligibly) at one another for the entire duration of the movie. Mr Paintball director, I do ask that before you try to make another movie that you and I have a chat so we can make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

These are not sexy times, ladies.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you begin to question what it is you’re doing and what the purpose of your existence is. Thankfully many of these questions can be answered with a little intense paintball action. Turns out there are numerous places around the world that cater to individuals who just have that undying urge to shoot paint at moving targets, and our little story takes place somewhere in Europe where renegade paintball is all the rage. It’s a secret little society where the location is unknown, people are brought in blindfolded and made to rely on their teammates (who they’ve never met) and their wits. It’s an intense game of survival and only the best will come away unstained, but for some its just what you need to feel alive.

It's sad when an actor realises their career is dead in the middle of a forest.

And so our little team (whose names I can’t remember) set out on this new adventure to become the ultimate paintball champs. It takes all of 3 minutes before they start arguing with one another, debating on who gets to be leader, how to get to the flags and who can actually read a map. The situation is tense – the other team might be just around the corner and decisions need to be made quickly. The team makes their way to a spot in the forest filled with old cars and one derelict bus. They move with the precision of army commandos, but are about as quiet as howler monkeys during mating season. While searching the area the other team spots them and begins to pelt them with paint, and they duck for cover in the old bus. The action begins to diverge from usual paintball practice when the opposing team throw two smoke canisters through the bus’s window, followed shortly afterwards by a box containing a bullet proof vest. When things go quiet and the team begin to make a move they realise just how different this game really is – the opposing team has started to use live ammunition, and our little group is running in plain sight.

The ghosts of paintballers past.

Faced with this new terror our group does what they do best: panic and scream at one another. So they panic off as fast as they can, only to discover that the entire forest is surrounded by a highly charged electric fence. After screaming at one another they panic off in a different direction, but soon pause to scream about where they’re actually going. Some more panicking and screaming ensues, and nobody really knows what’s going on, and gradually they’re all being shot. Along the way there’s an Asian person who adds nothing to the story, and a few booby traps here and there to make things a little bit more exciting in this game of cat and mouse. But who would be so evil as to corrupt an innocent pass time like paintball? Surely such people have been sent by Satan himself to vilify what our dear, screaming characters once held to be so positive and character building? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t anywhere near as exciting.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Taking part in super elite, top-secret paintball tournaments is the absolute height of badassness.
• Part of staying well hidden involves screaming at the top of your lungs wherever you go.
• Part of hiding from enemy fire involves running around in the open.
• Fat guys are always the first to panic when a paintball massacre breaks out.
• Asian people make terrible paintball hostages.
• The smaller your knife, the better your throat slashing abilities.
• It’s incredibly difficult to speak when you have a machete rammed through your chest.

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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