Sloppy the Psychotic

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 5 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 1 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with that feeling that something is terribly wrong? I had that the other night. I was sleeping soundly, fantasising about buying bed linen made from Egyptian cotton, when I was suddenly jerked awake with this feeling of absolute dread. Not two minutes later my phone rang, and there was My Friend The Killer Clown Movie, sobbing on the other end. We’ve been friends for so long, but as usual we haven’t seen one another in ages (in fact, not since all those frat boys were murdered over on Hell Island). I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I told him to dry his clownish tears and get on over to my place ASAP.

That’s some poor judgement right there…

By the time he arrived I’d just managed to throw on some seductively manly pyjamas and make hot chocolate with marshmallows. After a lot of hugs and comforting words, My Friend The Killer Clown Movie was finally calm enough to tell me what was wrong. Turns out this recession has hit everyone pretty hard, and even great movie concepts like my dear friend has had to resort to whatever it takes just to pay the bills. That’s how he landed up starring in Sloppy the Psychotic, a decidedly z-grade movie about a once-lovely clown that goes a tad bit off the rails. He explained to me that, while it looked good when he read the script, when he got there there was neither the acting talent to make it somewhat credible, nor the humour to make the constant barrage of shock tactics even remotely entertaining. Poor guy, I don’t know how much more his dented ego can take.

See? No good will come from buying illegal cigars.

So there me and My Friend The Killer Clown Movie sat, under a blanket with me braiding his neon green hair, and I asked him to give me a run down of this movie that pushed him to the brink; a good friend needs to understand what’s he dealing with before he can provide any kind of help. It’s a simple enough story: Mike was a nice guy with a dream – all he ever wanted to do was be a clown and entertain all the children of the world. Now, times are tough, and the world of clowning is cut-throat. Turn you’re back for one moment and a mime will be trying to take away all your business. But if you love what you do, as Mike does, then none of that really matters. Nothing, until you’re victimised by a group of pool partying white trash that make fun of your life long dream. Oh no, dear reader, that’s when you push a clown one step too far.

Do I really need to explain this?

Just telling me this much got My Friend The Killer Clown Movie all weepy again, so I ran him a candle-lit bubble bath and put some Enya on in the background so that he could really relax while he told me the rest of this movie. At this point I was still on board, but I could see that things were going to take a very sharp downward turn. Oh boy, did they ever. Apparently one bottle of vodka is all that it takes to turn a mild-mannered clown into one that’s shoving a dead hooker in a trunk. And then there’s all those repressed emotions: anger, fear, rejection, sexual drought, and somehow all that’s gotta come out. As is often the case, these feelings manifest with Mike becoming a cannibal, poisoning some small children, barbecuing other small children, running over mentally handicapped individuals, amputating penises, using fish hooks on prostitutes, running a lawn mower over teenagers, decapitating housewives, and doing unspeakable things to men with a very large candy cane. Yeah, that’s what being under appreciated at work will do to a person.

I think that between the hot chocolate, hair braiding, and the bubble bath, My Friend The Killer Clown Movie has just about regained the will to carry on doing what he does best. The important thing is to focus on the good – I reminded him that this movie has a rather epic version of Pop Goes the Weasel playing in the background quite often, and that’s something at least. After he’d toweled himself off we lay in bed for a while reminiscing about all the good times we’d had together, and as the sun slowly dawned on the horizon he decided that he’d best be heading home before the wife knew he was out. She never has approved of our friendship – neither of us can figure out why. This time, however, we promised not to let so much time go by before we got together again.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Coulrophobia in small towns forces many clowns to live out their lives in secrecy and shame.
  
• It’s a risky career move to hedge all your bets on being a clown.
• Any clown company worth its salt has a fleet of vehicles ready to transport loads of emergency rubber chickens at a moment’s notice.
• Recently retrenched clowns and vodka are a deadly, deadly combination.
• Secretly, every woman wants to have sex with a man in full clown costume at least once in her life.
• Hobos have only two natural enemies: hungover clowns and puddles of their own urine.
• Death by anal candy cane isn’t a way that anyone wants to go.
• There’s no length a hooker won’t go to if there’s $500 on the line.
• It’s rude to discuss your sex life in front of a hired clown.

SLOPPY THE PSYCHOTIC TRAILER

BUY SLOPPY THE PSYCHOTIC AT AMAZON.COM

11/11/11

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.6 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

As someone with siblings, I know how important it is that all children should be dealt with fairly and equally. Because of that, I knew I couldn’t watch 12/12/12 and just ignore its slightly older sibling, hence me suffering through 11/11/11. I will say that this movie isn’t as ludicrously put together as 12/12/12, but oddly enough that isn’t actually a saving grace for this film. Whilst 12/12/12 was so bad that I was reduced to laughing like a crazy person, 11/11/11 is nothing more than an hour-and-a-half of tedium that makes you want to bash your head against the wall. As the Asylum’s answer to 11-11-11 (see how clever they were in making sure the name of the movie was different), this movie combines elements of The Shining, The Omen, Misery, and any number of possessed children films, but sadly does not have the budget or the people with the technical know-how to pull any of it off. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who may be prone to throwing things at TV sets when a movie becomes frustrating.

Yep, we got demon ‘coons…

The Vales are just the most wonderfully dull family you’ve ever met. Jack, the dad, is a professor of something and is moving his family to a new town to take up a job at the local university. Melissa, the mom, is decidedly bland and doesn’t really contribute much to the film outside of her ability to run to things, look shocked, and then run back. Nat, their son, is (partially) mute and doesn’t do an awful lot of talking. Why? I don’t know, but apparently it adds to the suspense and the DOOM! that’s about to rain down on all of us. What the name of the town they’ve moved to is I don’t know either, but as a general warning just don’t go there. Everyone’s a Stepford Paedophile and, somehow, Nat’s the only kid in town, so you can imagine how they’re all flocking to see him…

That’s a mighty sharp fence you have there…

After the family’s moved in it quickly becomes apparent that they have a little problem: along with the Stepford Paedophiles, they also have a run-of-the-mill Crazy Cat Lady living next door who seems more than a little interested in the fact that Nat will be 11 on the 11th of November 2011. She also seems to be quite free in handing out poisoned lemonade. Then there’s Nat’s Nanny, the poor man’s Megan Fox, who seems to be quite comfortable showing Nat the best way to set a butterfly on fire and how to do malicious damage to private property. Not that Jack notices any of this: he’s too busy hiring nurses to look after his pregnant with pre-eclampsia wife and working at the town’s one-room university. And then there’s all the townsfolk who keep staring through the windows and getting together in the back of the minivan…

Bitch! This isn’t The Asylum’s best nanny race!

So what has all of this got to do with the price of eggs? The Lord alone knows, but therein seems to lie the problem. It would appear that the entire town’s population of 7 are Satanists, and due to his birth date and some bizarre prophecy I wasn’t paying attention to back in 2011 Nat is going to be Satan’s ticket into our world. Whilst the towns people represent the forces of evil, the Crazy Cat Lady represents the forces of good: if she manages to kill Nat before his birthday, the apparently not so omnipotent Devil can’t take over the world, but if she fails to kill him its all going to get a bit hairy for us down here. It’s all up to Jack to try and save the world and his son, which to be quite frank means that we’re probably all boned. Melissa will contribute to this battle by moaning a lot and occasionally slapping her nurse, but ultimately it all comes down to Nat. Can an 11-year-old partially mute kid with clear anger issues ward off the Devil himself? Which and be underwhelmed to find out!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Families bond best when they run down an opossum/cat hybrid.
• Little orange tabby cats can freely change their sex at will.
• Demon spawn are far more accurate than any pregnancy test on the market.
• Painting gutters is always easier when you use a hammer.
• It’s quite common for doctors to drug a woman in early pregnancy up to the eye balls.
• In their attempts to get new jobs, prospective nannies are more than willing to kill off the competition.
• Butterflies are highly flammable creatures.
• Apocalyptic prophecies are now being distributed as children’s books – because it’s never too early to know when the world’s gonna end.
• Giving a child cereal is a decent punishment for walking around the house with a butcher’s knife.
• Small-town cults usually hold their meetings in mini vans.
• Nothing is more powerful than a mother’s drug-addled, demented frenzy.

11/11/11 TRAILER

BUY 11/11/11 AT AMAZON.COM

Underground

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.8 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Movies like this are the reason you should always double-check IMDB. When I got my copy I checked IMDB and it had a rating somewhere in the vicinity of 7 so I got it thinking that I could watch it one night when I was in the mood for a real movie. About 15 minutes into it I started thinking to myself, “none of these characters are at all likeable”, and my b-movie senses started to tingle. I checked IMDB again and to my delight it now had a 3.9 rating. My guess is that the people involved in making it hopped on and gave it the original good rating. Shame on you! I’m no stranger to bad movies but it’s not nice to catch someone off guard; I didn’t at all have my game face on. So far as the movie’s concerned, should you find yourself about to watch it, imagine The Descent but with less likeable people and a few Nazis thrown in for good measure.

Aim it at the movie!

If we are to believe this movie then everyone in the world enjoys nothing more than getting bombed out of their skulls at a little rave. While this applies across the board the people who are most likely to enjoy a rave are soldiers returning from fighting the war in Iraq. At least this is true for Eric, Storm and Mira. Luckily this particular rave is being held at a mysteriously abandoned US military base so the three should feel a bit more at home and they’re accompanied by a few others whose names completely escape me. Names aren’t particularly important anyway; every character is just a distinctly overdone cliché. Eric’s the badass sergeant type who’ll never leave a man behind, Storm is Latino so he’s obviously a gangster and Mira is the tough girl who, despite all her bravado, needs a man to help her through everything she does.

A fair attempt at doing Mariah Carey's whistle register.

While everyone’s getting jiggy with it on the dance floor some guy gropes the arse of one of Storm’s friend’s girlfriend. The friend is obviously upset and gets into a little tiff with the man that’s twice his height but, since Storm is Latino and therefore obviously a gangster, it suddenly gets taken to a whole other level. I accidentally blinked at this point and when I opened my eyes again people were lying sprawled on the floor, knives were on people’s throats and guns were being fired at random. The guns must’ve been the final straw because the next thing you know Eric and Co. are running for their lives and taking shelter behind a rather heavy-duty door. The opposing Latino gangsters have the attention span of a fridge magnet so they quickly leave but Eric decides that they need to find another way out rather than facing what’s on the other side of the door. Poor guy, you’re in a horror movie! It’s what’s on your side of the door that you need to worry about.

Good upper body strength, but she needs to work on her core.

Before this point you know that there are bimbos in this group but now you learn that they’re the constantly whining variety, which becomes very irritating very quickly. Unfortunately for them (but luckily for us) there are some demented creatures running around in this mysteriously abandoned military base that might just do away with them soon. You see, back in the day when World War II was coming to an end, the Nazis had a doctor especially trained in horrifying genetic experiments. Not seeing why the fall of Nazi Germany should bring an end to his work the American government brought him over to see what he could cook up for them. By using a few kidnapped women, lots of piping, a gas mask and by combining the DNA of humans, a crocodile and a few other select beasties he managed to create a species of hominids that think like soldiers, have the teeth of crocodiles, are afraid of nothing, are amphibious and remarkably good climbers. Eric and Co. will have to fight their way through the dark labyrinth of the base if they ever want to see daylight again while fending off fear and monsters with a taste for flesh.

Since everyone in the movie is irritating as hell I was personally rooting for the monsters, but you can watch for yourself and decide who you want to win.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• At the slightest sign of any trouble the US military will just abandon its bases and leave all their weapons behind.
• Despite being 3 stories underground a military base can still have windows that let in plenty natural lighting.
• US military bases are relatively uniform and dead easy to escape from.
• Women think it’s a much better idea to run off alone into the darkness than stay in a group for protection.
• There’s a huge market for well-trained but unemployed mad scientists with a Nazi background.
• You can ram any amount of tubing into a pregnant woman’s belly without there ever being a risk to the baby.

UNDERGROUND TRAILER

The Blackout

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 3.6 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Ah, Christmas. It brings to mind happy memories of carols, huge lunches, family get togethers, presents and 1000 carefully hung decorations. This movie has all some of those things and giant, man-eating monsters thrown in to sweeten the deal. The Blackout was truckloads of fun because it was a perfect example of a b-grade monster movie. The acting is incredibly sub par, the story’s hanging in there by its teeth and the monsters look like something the 50s threw up and applied a little basic CGI to. All in all, a very pleasant 80 minutes that I recommend everyone watch while opening presents with the smaller children. Because I’m a little twisted that way 🙂

I think my talent went this way honey...

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all across LA hell was slowly breaking loose. It’s Christmas Eve and there are quite a few power surges going on followed by the occasional earthquake. We begin our story with Elizabeth and Daniel Pierce, a loving couple living a simple life with their two children, Kyle and Ashley, with Daniel’s seemingly drunk brother Dylan on the couch. Thankfully the earthquakes haven’t effected them too much yet because at this point they only have the intensity to shake the camera man around a little bit; every thing else stays pretty much where it is. As the evening draws on, however, the earthquakes begin to get a little stronger (water in a glass may give off a ripple or two now) and the power cuts are getting a little longer. Of course this is quite normal and is certainly no indication that some form of monster is on the loose.

It turns out whipping your hair back and forth isn't a viable escape method.

Now bless them, Elizabeth and Daniel don’t seem to be the brightest couple. This is best illustrated by the fact that they try to initiate sexual relations despite the kids still being awake and their bedroom not having a door. To distract from a situation that could have been very awkward when the kids walked in Kyle is sent down to the basement of the apartment block to find a vague something in a locked chest. When he gets there he hears things scuttling around in the dark. Upon closer inspection these turn out to be strange creatures resembling a helmet with a tail. They, however, are the very least of Kyle’s problems and, with little time to react, something jumps out of the enormous hole in the wall and makes a very quick snack of him. The moral lesson? Parents who expose their children to sex will have their children eaten alive by monsters. Moving along…

This will only hurt a little. Then a lot. Then forever.

This is the part of the movie when the enormous monsters in the basement start to make a nuisance of themselves for humanity in general. When the power cuts entirely not only are Daniel, Elizabeth and Dylan inconvenienced, but it brings a very awkward Christmas party next door to a bit of a stand still. Thankfully one of the monsters decides to liven things up by eating several of the guests. The guests quickly make their way to Daniel’s apartment (with the use of brute force and a gun) and the group then tries to decide on its next course of action. The loose arrangement is that they will all make their way downstairs and then break off, the guests heading out the door and Daniel & Co. going off in search of his kids (Ashley has since gone off to find her brother). You might think that this is a water-tight plan and that nothing could go wrong, but you’d be sorely mistaken. Dylan, while surveying the outside world, has seen one of the monsters in another apartment block, there’s sulphur leaking out the earth at a rate of knots, the power’s out and enormous chunks of the Earth are being thrust to the surface. How will our plucky young group survive all this horror? I strongly encourage you to watch and find out!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Standing by your family sets a terrible example for your young children.
• Women need to provide daily blowjobs if they want their men to support them.
• Men express anger at their girlfriends by taking expensive champagne to Christmas parties.
• Marriage problems can only be sorted out after the Christmas holidays.
• ‘Trollop’ is an outdated way of calling a woman a slut.
• When an alien’s trying to eat you and your girlfriend the most logical thing to do is propose marriage.

THE BLACKOUT TRAILER

You Broke It: I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

Year of Release: 2006
Genre:  Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 3.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Low
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Welcome to the first installment of You Broke It: 3 Trilogies That Went Awry. Today we’ll be looking at I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, the final (failed) installment in the I Know What You Did Last Summer series. To begin with one of this movie’s major failings is that the title is just far too long, but some people may be wondering why I’ve given it a ‘Low’ Level of Awful. In my own opinion this movie might have stood a chance at being one of those little films that you watch once, kind of enjoy and then completely forget had it not tried to follow up on its predecessors. The storyline in no way follows on from the other two and none of the previous cast makes a return, but some bright spark thought that trying to forcibly connect the two plots would be a good idea. It really wasn’t. Let’s take a look at the story…

Some movies don't take their curtain calls very well.

Somewhere between 1998 and 2006 the horrific events that centred on Julie James and her friends entered into a little town’s list of folklore tales and now, on July 4th every year, the Fisherman is said to make a return and begin killing teenagers at random. Seeing that this is a small town and high school students (in their late 20s) have very little to do with their time Amber, Zoe, Roger, Colby and PJ decide that they should do a little reenactment at the local carnival for some laughs. Roger will play the Fisherman, PJ will be the hapless victim and afterwards they’ll all get together for some laughs. Everything’s going fine until PJ skateboards up on a roof and the mattresses placed on the ground for him to jump onto are replaced with a tractor. PJ is impaled and dies at the scene and his friends, not wanting to confess to anything and risk being stuck in this little town forever, decide that they’ll hide the evidence and take the secret to their graves. It’s what PJ would have wanted after all.

Having a case of déjà vu over here!

A year passes and a lot of things have changed for our little group. Colby went off to college leaving the one-time love of his life Amber behind. Amber and Zoe, once the best of friends, are no longer in touch and Roger has gone into hiding, too haunted by the events of the previous year to deal with his friends or the outside world in general. Aah, if only wallowing in misery were so simple. As the anniversary of PJ’s death approaches Amber begins to receive a string of text messages, all of which bear a familiar message: I know what you did last summer. Suspicion inevitably sets in: who opened their mouths? Who went and put all of their futures at risk? Things are further complicated by the addition of Lance, PJ’s cousin who has had a thing for Amber for quite a while now. Soon the threats go beyond the digital realm and the Fisherman makes his presence known by killing Roger and leaving even more messages for all the others. The group now needs to band together to outsmart the Fisherman and outlive one another.

It doesn’t help, of course, that the fisherman is actually some demonic entity hell-bent on killing them all without having any real weaknesses that mortals tend to find rather cumbersome. To make this seemingly all tie back into the first two movies this Fisherman appears to be the ghost of Ben Willis, the original murderer from 10 years ago (according to the movie’s chronology). By using his history to play a prank that ultimately killed their friend and by then covering it up Amber and co. somehow invoked Ben and, in order to return to the other side, he has to do to this lot what he tried to do to the first bunch.

My final thoughts on the matter. This is not altogether a terrible movie. It doesn’t fail at being a horror movie, and there were times when I did jump a little. It simply fails at being an installment in a trilogy that it really has nothing to do with. The attempts, and there are many, to both compare it to the original movie and then to try and make the original storyline continue are completely forced and ineffectual. With a little reworking of the script to make it a stand-alone movie this might have been moderately enjoyable. Sadly this was not to be and all the horror community is left with is a movie whose title is too long and who brings a series I really enjoyed crashing to the ground.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Just because it’s legendary doesn’t mean it can’t be bought on Ebay.
• You know you’re in a small town when the college kids are holding parties in a barn.
• Hiding the fact that you murdered a great friend can really put strain on a relationship.
• A girl who receives 1 threatening message is perplexed. A girl who receives 50 of the same threatening message is terrified.
• No matter what a sheriff saying ‘hi’ is just creepy for some reason.
• Policemen are known to be incredibly flirty at murder scenes.
• When being stalked by a killer you should make sure you are alone in dark places as often as possible.
• When the killer does eventually appear you should break away from the group and run somewhere you can’t escape from.

I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER TRAILER

BUY I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER AT AMAZON.COM