Ghost Storm

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

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

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

No good will possibly come from this.

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

Run Generic Background Character, Run!

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

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

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

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

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

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Raptor Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2001
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 2.6 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 2 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

There are few things in life that can guarantee as much fun as an early 2000s movie with cheap animatronic dinosaurs brought back to life by a mad scientist, Eric Roberts and all of his self-importance in the lead role, and a sex scene that we could have sworn was on a perpetual loop. I present to you, dear reader, Raptor, perhaps one of the most glorious achievements of b-cinema I’ve seen yet. I gathered my most of my elite team of movie watchers for this one: Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole, and our newest recruit, Plaas Meisie. There are no words to describe the sheer awesomeness and cheesiness of this movie, but if you’re a fan of b-horror you absolutely NEED to watch this as soon as is humanly possible.

Officer Mom Jeans and Black Cop consult on the case…

As is often the case in these movies, we’re thrown into the middle of some little town in the middle of absolutely nowhere where the most thrilling crime that probably takes place is a little old lady having her dentures stolen. Eric Roberts is the local sheriff, and this gives him the right to practically smear himself with smarmy and then roll around in a vat of self-produced and bottled egotism. Armed with two belts, a pair of mom jeans and a token black deputy, Eric’s ready to find out what happened to those poor drunken teenagers out the middle of the desert – because something ate them up good. Thinking that it was something reasonably standard, like a bear, a cougar or a shark, he’s joined on the investigation by Busty Blonde Animal Control Lady (hereafter referred to simply as ‘Busty’), but she’ll be damned if she knows what killed the kids. Maybe it has something to do with the recent spate of mass-chicken murders happening all along the county’s various highways?

This was just unholy and unnatural…

Over at the Eunice corporation (nominally a chicken manufacturing plant, whatever that may be, and which is still running blue-screen DOS computers by the looks of things), something’s more than a little amiss. There are far too many crazy scientists in would-be berets pushing far too many flashing buttons on control panels for this to be a simple chicken farm. Of course, for the omnivident viewer, we know that the trucks transporting enormous numbers of chickens is simply a cover up – that’s how Eunice Corp. is transporting all of its raptor and t-rex eggs between its different facilities after one of the raptors escaped into the desert. Being a team of maybe four people, however, means that the people at this particular facility aren’t doing a great job keeping track of their genetically re-created little monsters, and more and more are starting to wreak havoc on the little town.

Disco T-Rex is getting down tonight!

For Officer Mom Jeans the problem becomes personal after his sweet, innocent little girl is attacked by one of the raptors after getting it on with a man twice her age and squealing like a little pig while they did it on the back of his pickup truck. But how exactly does one small town sheriff take on a giant company like Eunice Corp.? Infiltration and a Busty sidekick – that’s how.  The two of them are determined to get to the bottom of what’s going on, but there’s a little more going on behind the scenes that they don’t know about. Apparently this whole dinosaur resurrection process originally began as a government military operation for fighting overseas, so they also want in on the action when they realise that their supposedly cancelled project is back online. Can Eric Roberts’ seemingly infinite supply of self-satisfaction conquer the might of an angry, resurrected mother T-Rex? Do silicone boobs move at all? Why are everyone’s intestines in this movie brown? Watch, dear reader, and have all of these questions answered.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• ‘Whatever happened, happened here’ is usually how most police investigations start.
• Deserts can be right quirky creatures sometimes.
• Character enhancement is best done with copious amounts of silicone.
• Surprised raptors shed their toenails like geckos shed their tails.
• If it’s not as intense as black ops, and at least 2 black guys are involved, it classes as dark ops.
• Most companies have emergency spaceship entrances installed in their elevators.
• Clones can be pulled out of thin air and given all the memories of the original person.

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Metal Shifters

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 3.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0/5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

First off I just want to put it out there that this movie is far more awesome if you watch it under its original title, Iron Invader. Metal Shifters might create the illusion that it’s a spin-off of something like Ice Road Truckers. Like the other Syfy movies I’ve watched lately (see here, here and here) this movie was quite fun, but you have to be in a specific mood to watch it. I’m not quite sure what it is but when a movie has a giant, lurking creature stalking a small town it somehow puts itself in a little niche that isn’t quite as accessible as aliens invading the planet through a tornado. Nevertheless, should you be in the mood to spend 80-odd minutes watching an averagely CGIed metal monster stalking a little town with a complimentary side of fateful lovers, then you could do far worse than this little gem.

Searching for inspiration for the movie’s script.

Welcome to the town of Redeemer, a quaint little place where you can raise a family. Well, you can raise the family if you aren’t most of the townsfolk who’ve had their homes foreclosed and are now poverty-stricken and presumably living in a box under a highway bridge somewhere. Those that remain in the town are good, hard-working, salt of the earth kind of people. Brothers Jake and Ethan are carpenters of some sort and they work on restoring all of the town’s historic buildings to their former grandeur. Given that they’re flat broke how they do this is somewhat of a mystery, but who can really say how things in small towns work? Everything’s going swimmingly well for the two until Amanda, Jake’s high school sweet heart who he’s never gotten over, rolls back into town after a messy divorce. Oh yeah, and a Russian satellite falls out of the sky and crashes in a farmer’s field.

You be Iron Invader’s friend?

Never ones to miss an opportunity to make a quick buck Jake and Ethan take the satellite to the local junk yard to sell as scrap. Since it seems to be made out of mostly chicken wire and a few old colanders it’s perhaps not surprising that the thing fell out of orbit, but the guys manage to get $800 for it anyway. Earl, the owner of said junk yard and the only man dumb enough to buy a thing like that, is busy with a little project: since it’s the town’s centenary he’s decided to take some of the trash lying around and turn it into a giant golem statue. Whilst the sentiment is beautiful the statue itself is ugly as hell and, a while after he buys the satellite, it’s also crawling with an alien bacteria that feeds on metal and can propel its host. Guess where it decided to set up shop?

Alien bacteria-infested iron statues that go bump in the night.

And the monster’s off and he’s running down the streets and he’s killing people all of the place but can he make it and kill everyone before they realise what’s going on? For such a large, clunky and noisy monster people are really slow to cotton on to what’s happening around them. This may, in part, be due to the fact that anyone the monster touches dies a quick and agonising death, but I still think that if it’s stomping around and bigger than your house you would probably notice it. As often happens in these situations the first people to spot the monster are the young folk, and no one’s really ready to believe them that Earl’s statue has come to life and is running around killing people. It’s up to Jake and biology teacher Amanda to figure out how this bacteria works, what it wants, if it can be negotiated with over a cup of tea and re-runs of Oprah or, if not, how they should best go about killing the damn thing.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• There’s always someone prepared to buy a broken Russian satellite.
• No town really needs a sheriff when you have a drunk old guy with a shotgun running around.
• The Russian alphabet can be classed as ‘strange and mysterious symbols’.
• Daughters make excellent alien bait.
• Old pick up trucks are an iron invader’s natural predator.
• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an alien bacteria in possession of an iron golem body must be in want of a blood-rich host.

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Vampire Whores From Outer Space Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2005
Genre: Comedy / Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.9 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 0/5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Well, um, uh, the thing is you see… Actually, I have no idea. I guess when the movie’s title is Vampire Whores From Space, that’s kind of the whole point. I rounded up the entire Movie Marathon crew for this and for the next 75 minutes we all huddled in Tropical Mary‘s lounge staring at the TV in an alternating state of confusion, disgust, shock and disbelief. Clearly made with a handheld video camera by 4 or 5 friends (and let’s not forget the original music by Pinky Gutterwhore), this film was utterly atrocious. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I’m still a little fragile after watching it. It’s also the first movie I’ve ever reviewed where I don’t have any Life’s Lessons Learned because, to be quite honest, I didn’t have the foggiest clue what was going on at any stage of the movie. Read on and you’ll see why.

The dangers of mixing high-powered alien technology and excessive lube.

This unrelenting pile of crap begins with a news report (filmed with a white sheet as the backdrop) where a field reporter is out investigating the claims of a redneck something or other that the fields are alive with the sound of intergalactic vampire whores. Said redneck something or other and a friend of his may very well in fact have discussed this with the reporter but, since the guy in charge of handling the mic just couldn’t be bothered to move two feet forward, we’re just never going to know. Despite the fact that the redneck has already seen the vampire whores (or maybe this is a flashback, I’m not sure) we suddenly are given a glimpse of Dracula’s mistress’s ship crashing into a forest. My bet is that it took 99.9% of the film’s budget to get someone to animate the ship for the 30 seconds it’s on the screen. Surviving the horrendous crash a posse of the ugliest whores you’ve ever seen emerges from the wreckage and, armed only with their fangs and the word ‘suck’, they’re ready to drain the blood of every single person in town (which you never see).

The first date is always the most awkward.

After the crash landing we are violently thrown into an intense scene where a man with the IQ of a hotdog bun decides to take his dog for a walk to investigate the strange thing that just fell out of the sky. You know something’s not quite right with him since he’s shouting to parents that clearly aren’t there and he’s never able to keep his dog on him for more than 3 seconds but, since he’s apparently the male lead in all of this, we’re gonna follow him anyway. Whilst out walking he bumps into some female whose hair is so greasy she could stock entire oil refineries with what’s coming off it. Immediately there’s some strange kind of bond formed between the two that I’m guessing was meant to be sexual magnetism but is really more like watching two five-year-olds fight over who baked the better mud pie. They’re attacked (and I use this word in its loosest sense) by the vampire whores but make a daring get away back home where they try to figure out how to stop the marauding and sexually promiscuous aliens.

Seems legit.

Things weren’t good up until this point, but then the movie took a sudden and horrifying turn for the worse. Ignoring the vampire whores for the greater part of the movie we are introduced to the chief of police (who looks like he’s 12) out in the forest digging up a dead body. Chances are being the chief of police would help you cover up this crime if only you didn’t stop whenever you saw another human being along the road, get out of the car, and tell them what it is you’re doing. Hot Dog Brain at one point gets his Grease Monkey pregnant and performs a back alley abortion and she spews out a very small pig (no really, it’s actually a pig). Grease Monkey develops some kind of oozing rash on her ass (which we’re told tastes funny), but whether or not she ever overcomes this particular obstacle remains a mystery. The FBI become involved in the investigation and then die at the hands (or fangs) of the vampire whores. The vampire whores’ pimp rocks up and challenges everyone to a dance off to see which species will become the all-powerful overlords of the known universe. The dance scene that follows presents us with absolute proof that the human species has no right to be at the top of the food chain. Some more stuff happens, and then it ends.

With all this insanity in mind I’d also like to point out that for the greater part of the movie the film crew is highly visible and I’m fairly sure that some of the scenes were recorded on something similar to a Blackberry’s camera. I have no words.

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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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