Shredder

Year of Release: 2003
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 4.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0.5 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

There’s a special place for many kinds of movies in my heart: cheesy disaster movies, disastrous monster movies, monstrous 80s horror movies, but there’s also something very special about the early-2000s slasher movie. The harsh makeup, the proliferation of pseudo-lesbionic characters, the jocks with the bleach blonde hair and ebony eyebrows, the strange overuse of animal print – it all makes for a delightful assault on the eyes. Shredder doesn’t disappoint on any of these criteria. It reminds me of another classic I reviewed, Do You Wanna Know A Secret, but on ice. With a soundtrack that would rival the best porno, a decent assortment of sluts and bitches, and such riveting dialogue as “What country are you from?” “Europe”, I would thoroughly recommend giving this a watch if you’re in the mood for a good laugh.

Thank God, I thought I was the only one who bought that hat.

The joys of being a 30-something college student with rich friends: you get to go to deserted ski resorts whenever the mood takes you. This is exactly what Kimberly Van Arx has in mind for the weekend – daddy wants to buy an old ski resort to further bolster the family’s already considerable assets, and she’s gonna go up and check the place out. She sells this to Cole, her boyfriend, as a romantic get away for the two of them, it’s just that two actually equates to seven people. But it’ll be fun! Plus, the more men that go along, the more chances Kimberly has of prancing around in the snow in a high-waisted, leopard print bikini, so it’s all for a greater good. Of course, none of these kids heed any of the traditional warning signs about going on such a holiday – things like all the locals in the bar creepily staring at them, the fact that the resort’s entrance has been bolted shut, and the fact that there’s a lot of brand new ski equipment in the lodge, with no owner around to be found.

I’ll be good! I’ll be good, I swear!

But all of these things are trivial when the main goal is to get blind drunk, high as a kite, and bang more people than a hooker on payday. For Kimberly, the main goal will be to land Christophe, a blonde gentleman of some vague European abstraction that they picked up along the way. Sure, he won’t tell anyone where he comes from, he becomes oddly uncomfortable when the police are around, and he seems to know this area very well, but surely that doesn’t mean he’s up to anything shady, right? Then, of course, there are also the legends surrounding this resort, the story of the young girl who was killed in a snowboarding accident, and now her wrathful, angry spirit roams the mountain seeking her skiing revenge on any snowboarder she finds. But of course, that’s just a myth…

Now take two of these, get plenty of rest, and you’ll be back on your feet in no time.

But if it’s just a myth why are so many people in this little group landing up dead? And not snowboarding accident dead, like murdered by the mysterious skier dressed all in black dead. And apart from him, there’s also some extra kinds of weird going on around here. Like the random skiing chick who likes to ski naked or have men’s hands down her parka while sitting on the ski lift. And there’s her crazy father who keeps screaming on about the dangers of snowboarding. And what’s with all the pamphlets about the proper use of the skiing slopes? To these kids, very little of it matters – there’s sex and some extreme snowboarding to be had, so by the time they actually wake up to the fact that there’s a problem they’re already up to their necks in it. Well, at least the ones that still have necks are. It’ll take all their combined, underwhelming abilities to make it off this mountain alright and, if they’re lucky, one member of the group might just be that right combination of hardcore and bi-curious to get them all to safety.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• When going on a ski vacation, it’s essential that you pack enough bikinis.
• Women peeing needs to be documented for future generations.
• Smart kids carry their own jaws of life with them wherever they go.
• European men speak only in innuendos.
• With enough ass waving and a spare pair of knickers any sheriff will be putty in your hands.
• It’s very dangerous for your blood/alcohol level to surpass 10.kajilion.
• The best way for a man to thank a woman for saving his life is to invite her to a bisexual threeway.

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Smiley

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

There is no better feeling than that occasional time when I go into a movie thinking that it’s going to be awful and I walk away from it being pleasantly surprised. I’d read a few things about Smiley, none of them particularly good, but I found myself loving this movie for all the reasons that the critics panned it. Granted, I think it’s the kind of movie that only a child of the 90s can truly appreciate – it has the same kind of feeling that I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend and Scream had. Since those were the movies of my era, I thought Smiley was awesome for being able to capture that feeling, although I suspect it may fall a little bit flat with the kids of today. I would thoroughly recommend you watch this both for the 90s slasher vibe and for the fact that the whole movie is an elaborate tapestry of interwoven awkward moments that somehow come together to form a cohesive film. So many awkward moments, so little time…

In my day we didn’t have the internet! Weed? Well that’s another story…

Ah, college life. The beginning of adulthood where those years of toil and slog in high school finally pay off and you can begin to pursue a path of education that will help you become a productive member of society. Yeah, that was Ashley’s plan until approximately 3 minutes after she met her new housemate, Proxy, and then the training wheels came off in a big way. Proxy’s going to a party that’s been completely organised online by anonymous strangers, and she wants Ashley to go along. Ashley’s never done a bad thing in her life, or heard of a computer by the sounds of things, but she’s willing to give anything that good old college try. Drinkin’ them drinks and smokin’ that wacky tobacky…

Ermahgerd! Merdehr!

At the little gathering is a small group of hackers, hacktivists, active hackers, hackers in training and a mild sprinkling of hipster hackers. From this group Ashley seems to learn her first urban legend – the one about Smiley. Now, Smiley’s a man who sowed his eyes shut and carved a smile into his face so he looks like a rather macabre emoticon. The legend is very similar to Bloody Mary, except this one involves the internet. If you go onto a video chat with a stranger, imagine Smiley killing them and type in ‘I did it for the lulz’ three times, Smiley will actually appear and commit the crime. But that’s just urban legend, right? Nobody actually believes this stuff do they?

Ah yes, she’s mastered the ‘bosoms forward’ death pose…

Running with that thought, Ashley and Proxy decide to test it out and see what happens. After trolling the internet for the most revolting individual they can find, they tease him for a bit and then type in the fated words. Suddenly, a wild Smiley appears, uses knife stab and it’s super effective. This is understandably a little frightening for the girls, but how exactly do they go about reporting it to the police? It all seems a little bit strange, and it certainly doesn’t help that Ashley has a history of mental disorders. The only thing to possibly remedy this situation is more partying! But soon Smiley starts to break the rules of the game – instead of just going after people he’s sent to, he starts coming for those that did the sending, and Ashley needs to decide whether it’s her mind playing tricks on her or if something more sinister is at work.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• 12-year-old girls really shouldn’t be on sites where men take their pants off.
• Broadband has now reached a point where serial killers can download themselves into your house.
• Entire research teams are now looking into the intersection of the strange and the retarded.
• There’s about a 50/50 chance of either God or the Chupacabra actually being real.
• At some point all the internet’s evil is going to coalesce and manifest itself as a disfigured serial killer.
• There’s nothing quite like a roofied walk under the stars.
• Filing cabinets in academic institutions are there solely for the purpose of storing various types of booze.

SMILEY TRAILER

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.

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Beware

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Low – Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 2.5 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

How I detest movies like these. There clearly wasn’t the budget to pull this off effectively, but somehow they managed to make it alright enough to escape being ridiculous. Everything was just a little sub par, but not enough for me to raise my eyebrows in confusion. I don’t like these movies that fall into that grey area of being neither good enough to be enjoyable nor bad enough to be funny. A movie watched is a movie watched, however, and people need to be warned that they’re in for a somewhat boring / mildly entertaining time should they decide to dedicate 95 minutes of their lives to watching this.

Yes, this is Officer Melted Face. How can I help?

Some terrible things have been going on in the little town of Shady Grove, a bizarre mix of a community comprised of Americans, Latinos and British people. A decade or two back a drunken, useless father came home to find his wife in bed with another man. The wife, being a Latina and therefore distinctly cocky, rubbed it in the man’s face that her affair had been going on for ages and that the son the two of them had been raising was, in fact, her lover’s child. In a fit of rage the man kills his wife and her lover and buries them out in the woods. To ensure that the child is suitably punished for choosing the wrong father to be born to he is tied to a tree with chains and left there for many years, gradually becoming more and more animal-like. The chains also begin to fuse into his arms. One day is one day and two young people who’re freshly engaged are getting it on in the middle of nowhere when our killer crops up out of the woods and brutally murders them. The case, however, is never solved and the murderer never brought to justice…

I would never review anything that wasn't appropriate for a family audience...

All of this was five years ago, and the storyline must move on. Five years on and five Latino individuals are making their way to an unnamed destination for a last weekend together before growing up, with some going to college and others going to play soccer in Europe. As soon as our main female Nella takes the wheel the car, of course, breaks down and the group needs to stop over in Shady Grove.  Parts need to be ordered and non-white people need to be looked at with suspicion. Our group has two options: sleep in the mechanic’s garage or hike 10 miles to the nearest seedy motel. Thankfully a third option materialises in the form of Maria, a quite Latina who kindly offers to drive these 5 complete strangers to her house and let them stay the night until the car is fixed. Once at the house burgers will be fried, sausages grilled and intense games of Guitar Hero will be played. All in all, a fun evening.

I'm completely cornered at the top of these stairs! What you gonna do now!?!

Well, it’s all fun and games with the exception of the raving lunatic stalking around the house. Shane is his name-o, and he has a machete in his hand and chains fused into his wrists that he simply isn’t afraid to use. Before he can kill anyone, however, it is incredibly important that the group first fragments itself to make his job a lot easier. One must cheat on his girlfriend with her best friend, the best friend must then go and have sex with her asshole boyfriend and then argue with him, and two others must go upstairs and initiate tentative sex out of earshot. Then, and only then, can Shane strike. The budget didn’t allow for an awful lot of gore, so most of the time is dedicated to telling the group Shane’s back story before he quickly dispatches his various victims. Maria and her assorted stranger-guests must find a way out of the house or run the risk of being hacked open and leaving their intestines all over the floor.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Europe is a country.
• You shouldn’t let a bloodied victim ruin a night of good sex.
• Creepy guys breaking into a woman’s bathroom are just trying to be good Samaritans.
• Men will exchange their girlfriends for not being brutally gutted.
• It’s perfectly natural for women to want to do a striptease in front of a man that’s been chained to a tree for years.

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100th Review: Bikini Bloodbath

Year of Release: 2006
Genre:  Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 3.3 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 3 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

It’s a special moment here at the B-Horror Blog 🙂 I’ve been doing this for just under a year now and this is my 100th review. To mark this special occasion I knew I had to go back to b-movie basics; I needed a movie that was not only bad but, in the tradition of true b-horror movies, was made with no budget, people who couldn’t act and had many, many breasts in it. Bikini Bloodbath just sounded like it would fit all of the above criteria, and boy did it ever. When the opening credits state that it was written and directed by ‘Who the Fuck Cares’ you just know it’s going to be bad. But it’s the good kind of bad in that it’s mindless and daft and you just watch the screen and marvel and the stupidity of the characters as they parade around in their bikinis trying not to be killed while keeping their blood alcohol content as high as possible.

Yeah, sure you are.

So we begin our bikini-laden misadventure at the local high school for late-20-somethings. All the girls are part of the school’s volleyball team and are busy getting in their final practice while being gently molested by their lesbian coach. With practice over our group of vapid females head off to the shower to wash one another off and throw used tampons at Suzy, the girl no one likes for reasons unknown. In amongst all of the scrubbing of backs and intense breast hygiene the girls decide that they should all get together that night for a final sleepover before they graduate highschool. Once they go off to college they worry that they won’t see one another again, so they really want to make this evening count and have many happy memories to guide them through the bleak years of adulthood. Only problem with all this? There’s a killer on the loose. The chef from one of the town’s favourite eateries lost it and killed most of his staff before making a run for it and is still on the loose. We know he’s close because he manages to kill one of the girls while she’s walking through the woods to get home. So let’s recap: half a dozen drunk, perky females in a house on their own in nothing but their bikinis and a killer on the loose. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong here…

A very lesbian death scene.

Not to be outdone by the women the football jocks decide that they’re gonna have their own party, and what unfolds is one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen in a movie. Clearly the area isn’t rich in the more common manly jock that we are familiar with from other movies, so instead we have a more special group of people to deal with. Most of them also appear to be at that stage in their life where they want to experiment with another guy just to see what it would be like. Twister is played, streamers are strewn, ice cream is eaten, the football coach fondles a few of his players and really uncoordinated dances are danced. The girls are pretty much up to the same thing, except they also have daiquiris and are in nothing but their bikinis. Two of the guys decide that they’ve had enough of being groped by their team mates for one evening and head over to the girl’s party for a different kind of fun.

A bible and a big stick will surely defeat this menace!

The boys’ attempts at seducing the girls is brought to an abrupt halt, however, when our killer rocks up on the scene. It all began with a throat slashing and quickly deteriorated into an evening of bloodshed as the chef makes his way through the scantily clad little group. His job is made all the easier owing to a complete lack of common sense on his victims’ part. The first issue the group must contend with is Suzy, who was not invited to the party, and as such the other girls don’t feel she has any right to either be there or contribute to the escape plan. The second issue that needs to be dealt with is when one of the girls offers to make a run for it and go get the police she insists she must make a stop off on the way to grab some tacos. This inevitably slows down the rescue process. The third and final issue is that, lacking any idea of how to make it out of the house alive (although the killer is in the house), the group instead decides to make more daiquiris and get hammered. This slows down their reaction time when they need to do battle with the killer. All in all, it was a very interesting party to be at.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Women will clap for virtually anything.
• Women enjoy being sexually harassed by their lesbian gym coaches.
• Sometimes walking through a cemetery and then some dark woods is the quickest way to get home.
• Homeless people smell like cheese.
• If you weren’t invited to the party you can’t be allowed in to be saved from a killer.
• If you weren’t invited to the party you can’t contribute to any plan that would involve saving everyone.
• The Bible can be used as a weapon against a murderer.
• Pro Crack Whore is now a viable career choice.

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