A Siren In The Dark

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Mystery / Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.2 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 3/5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

OK I admit it, I have a problem. Ever since I got some sick and perverted joy out of watching Vampire Boys I’ve been trying to find a movie that elicits similar feelings from me. I mean, things like Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island were fun and all, but this is just ridiculous. Made on a shoe string budget (and a rather frayed shoe string at that) with half a dozen people who don’t have an iota of acting talent between them, all this movie does in its 80 minutes of runtime is subject you to a constant stream of narcissistic, anorexic sluts and so much penis you’d think you were at some kind of perverted deli. The editing is so choppy at one point I thought my laptop was actively rebelling against the film and more than once I had to stop and wonder whether I’d popped this movie in or some strange gay porn DVD I didn’t even know I had. Seriously, if you ever come across this anywhere, take the DVD and throw it under a passing truck. The world will never, and should never, be ready for something this horrendously bad.

It’s all fun and games until someone develops Stockholm Syndrome.

We begin our rather sordid tale in the car of policeman Cameron. He’s picked up some strange female on the side of the road and is taking her back to her house. After some wooden dialogue and excessive ponytail shots we are teleported back to Cameron’s house. Cameron has a distinctly Asian brother who likes to spend his time mostly naked, lying in Cameron’s bed and Skyping an equally Asian friend of his. After a rousing round of ‘my dick’s bigger so you’re the bitch’ over Skype, Cameron comes home and promptly ejects the Asian brother from his room. Penis displays over, the brother explains to the friend that Cameron is in a rehab programme because, when he was 11, he was made to have sex with a 9-year-old girl. None of this is at all even remotely important to the movie’s progression, but since I had to sit through it I’m making you guys read it. Because I’m mean and vindictive like that. Anyways Brother of the Asian Persuasion goes back into Cameron’s room, gives Cameron a massage (what a strange brotherly bond they have) before Cameron gets a phone call and has to race out the house.

“He was a little retarded, but oh so willing.”

So then we’re taken to the back and beyond of nowhere where Cameron (who’s apparently a psychic now) is interviewing a ginger, flamboyant, lisping, poverty-stricken man’s Jake Gyllenhaal about some or other murder case. We’re told something about some guy getting it on with his retarded brother, another sister who’s deaf and yet another sister who seems to have had some kind of drug problem. I tried desperately to connect all these puzzle pieces to the other parts of the plot but came up empty-handed. Nevertheless this fool then goes on to describe how he’d picked up this pretty little boy on the side of the road, fallen in love, done some terribly things to him sexually, and then run off with a bag full of drugs.

Even the photos are having sex with one another.

After that we are subjected to yet another story about this strange boy on the side of the road, this time from the perspective of Ginger Gyllenhaal’s boyfriend (but not actually told by him). Taking the concepts of desperation and neediness to hitherto unexplored extremes, Boyfriend meets this guy (who I’m guessing is the movie’s eponymous Siren) on the side of the road, goes back home with him, plays some shocking games of ‘bend over and be my bitch’ and falls madly and passionately in love. All in the space of two days. He’s absolutely smitten with the Siren and can’t imagine his life without him. Of course it can’t all be sunshine and butterflies and hardcore BDSM so the feelings of the Siren are cast into doubt by the fact that, wait for it, he doesn’t eat. Never. Not a thing. Except that weird soup on the stove. Soup plays a large role in this movie, along with booze, cocaine and barely hidden or totally exposed penises. What exactly is Cameron trying to find out? What secrets can Ginger Gyllenhaal expose about the Siren? Who will live and who will die in this deadly game of hide the sausage? I don’t know, and quite frankly, I don’t care.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Sex and doughnuts are a good way to show a policeman your appreciation.
• If you’re not gonna have sex with a woman don’t even bother rescuing her on the side of the road.
• You’re never so far out in the sticks that you can’t order Chinese takeout.
• Water is not a viable soup substitute.
• Lesbians have x-ray vision to spy on gays getting it on in the shower.
• One of the perks of being a psychic is that you can telepathically watch other people having sex.
• Drinking all day is much like ramming a gerbil up your arse.
• A cup of cyanide tea really helps a person to unwind after a long day.
• Breakfast goes best with vodka.
• It’s virtually impossible to mug the devil.
• It’s quite easy, however, to tie the devil up and do bad sexual things to him.
• Every guy a slut wants to bang is either gay or the devil.
• Holding a knife to someone’s neck is a sign that the lesser spotted woodland gay wants to mate.

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Vampire Boys

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Horror / Romance
IMDB Rating: 2.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Oh dear, watching this back to back with Hookers in a Haunted House really wasn’t my best idea; between the two of them I’m not sure I have a sexual orientation anymore. With such high-profile stars as Jason Lockhart (of Aliens VS Avatars fame) and gay porn star Dylan Vox you can only begin to imagine the ride this movie’s 70 minutes are going to take you on. With all that said, provided you can withstand being constantly bombarded with naked torsos and the occasional penis, this movie is a great laugh; it’s so completely (and unintentionally) over the top you can’t help but roll your eyes and giggle at the sheer ludicracy of it all.

This is not what rock 'n' roll looks like.

Caleb’s just your regular young gay man moving to California to get away from the close-mindedness that is the American midwest. Being a trusting young thing he’s moving in with Paul, another conveniently gay man who just happened to be looking for a roommate. Caleb’s eager to leave his tarnished past as an all-star swimming champion behind and dedicate himself solely to pursuing a degree and finding the ideal spot for drinking herbal teas for hours on end. Paul has other ideas, but a more immediate concern for Caleb is what the enigmatic Jasin has in store for him.

It's just a routine lice inspection mother!

As a sign of the age we live in Jasin is considered an incredibly ancient vampire since he’s about to turn 100. Vampire law dictates that on his centenary Jasin needs to take a life mate, but finding this person is proving to be rather tricky. Up until this point Jasin and his flamboyant coven were convinced The One was Tara, a lovely, if somewhat desperate, young lady. This all changes when Caleb rocks up in town and Jasin starts to have visions (of a sexual nature) of him. Intrigued by this turn of events Jasin decides to court Caleb to see how open to being turned into a vampire he might be.

There I was, minding my own business, when suddenly: penis!

But of course since we’ve introduced all these other characters so we need to do something with them. Caleb becomes instantly smitten with Jasin, leaving poor Paul out in the cold. Not one to simply accept defeat Paul resorts to whining and well placed topless guitar playing in an attempt to seduce his would-be sweetheart. When this and more direct methods fail Caleb storms off and Jasin, sensing his boy toy is displeased, sends the shirtless coven to take care of business. One would hope that this would take care of the problem but soon there is dissension in the ranks. Fighting against gay vampire rights Logan, Jasin’s right-hand fang, insists that Tara should be chosen as The One. When Jasin refuses to listen Logan abducts Tara, hoping to draw Caleb out into the open so he can kill him. Can Jasin save Tara and keep the love of his life? Does Caleb love Jasin enough to be turned into a vampire? Will anyone ever come out fully clothed? You’ll have to watch to find out.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Herbal teas are sometimes the best idea a person can ever have.
• Male vampires do enjoy a spot of synchronised sun tanning.
• Roommates should feel comfortable enough with one another to walk around virtually naked.
• Gay vampire seduction is infinitely more awkward than straight vampire seduction.
• Living in a more enlightened age means that vampires can now freely hunt members of either sex to bolster the coven’s numbers.
• Men just give in to their girlfriend’s requests to have a threesome under a sunflower bush.
• Gay vampires are incredibly worried about disappointing their mothers.
• All star swimming champions are worshipped as gods in the midwestern states.
• Herbal tea has a gargantuan calorie count.
• Stray bullets tend to put a dampener on an otherwise perfect afternoon.
• Vampires communicate with mortals through tongue-on-tongue action.

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2-Headed Shark Attack

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Horror / Action
IMDB Rating: 2.8 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 1.5 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

OK, I’m gonna put an idea out there and you can all tell me what you think. Four things made this movie standout when I first heard about it: 1) It’s made by the Asylum, 2) its leading ladies are Carmen Electra and 3) Brooke Hogan and, of course, 4) it’s about a giant 2-headed man-eating shark! Now, when one considers all these things, one might expect that this would be a belly full of laughs from beginning to end. One may just be disappointed. Perhaps it’s because I watched it back-to-back with Terror at Blood Fart Lake and nothing was going to compare with the awesome insanity of that movie but this little nautical nightmare just wasn’t as much fun as I was hoping for. Don’t get me wrong, it’s highly amusing to watch, but it just doesn’t have that b-grade x-factor that would let it go down in memory as a totally satisfying experience.

This woman is a doctor.

Now, if I understand this movie correctly (which is difficult since it all just seems so unlikely), Charlie O’Connell is a university professor taking his class out to sea to investigate something or other. What they’re investigating hardly seems important since they can’t even master the use of a compass, so we’re not really expecting them to turn out to be anything spectacular later on in life. He’s accompanied by his wife Carmen Electra, a brilliant doctor who’s dedicated her time to help any wary sailor out and cure whatever it is that may be ailing them. Everything’s going wonderfully until the boat manages to get a dead shark lodged in its propellers, bring the little exploratory expedition to an end. Thankfully there’s an atoll (which isn’t really an atoll) nearby where the group hopes they can salvage some materials to fix the boat.

This woman is the brains of the outfit.

The boat’s been a little bit more damaged than the group initially realises since the shark lodged in the propeller blades soon became a snack for the massive 2-headed mutant swimming around these waters. Being a rather messy and enthusiastic eater the 2-header smashed the boat’s hull and the ship’s starting to take on water and any of the crew members who try to fix it end up mysteriously eaten. Back on the atoll the students are doing there utmost best to be morons and go about being general asses and bitches. Some lesbian experimentation and threesome action comes to an abrupt halt when all concerned land up being eaten (although not in the way the one guy originally intended). Oh yeah, and the atoll’s sinking. The group’s gonna have to hustle themselves and fix the boat quickly before the land disappears from underneath them.

These women are just doing what comes naturally.

Thankfully Brooke Hogan’s here to save the day. Now, it’s not so much that she’s a genius as the rest of the group would lose a spelling bee to an amoeba but, in times of mutant shark attacks and atoll sinkings, one cannot afford to be picky. With her mannish good looks, straw-blonde hair and breasts that are forever threatening to fall out of her bikini, Brooke successfully manages to fix three separate boats AND figure out what’s drawing the sharks’ attention. It would appear that the creature’s two heads make it more sensitive to noise in the water, thus making it rather tricky to escape by boat. With land becoming an increasingly rare commodity and spare students that can be used as shark snacks running out Brooke and Co. will have to find a way of either teleporting off the island, sinking the main boat to send out a distress beacon or pull together a MacGyver-style plan to kill the 2-headed beast.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• It’s better to be safe than someone’s dinner.
• You have no chance of surviving at sea without a long, pointy stick.
• An all-over tan requires that a woman’s breasts be thrust forward at all times.
• Women are constantly on edge, just waiting for a man to dare them to strip naked.
• A woman only gets a limited number of chances to be a lesbian in her lifetime.
• Being eaten by a shark is not the ideal way to get a threesome going.
• Good quality lighters will continue to work even after being submerged for hours at a time.
• A small metal net and half a barrel of gas is all you need to electrocute the entire ocean.

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The Evil Woods

Year of Release: 2007
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.1 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Z-grade horror movies and I have a love-hate relationship with one another and over the years I’ve put up with a lot from would-be directors who can’t direct and “actors” that can’t act, but his one crossed a line. This movie has all the ingredients that go into making a horrible piece of cheese: non-existent budget, actors that can’t act, weak plot and weak writing, but if I’ve learned anything from reviewing horrible horrors it’s that there’s one thing that’s essential to making them: a blonde woman. And there isn’t one to be seen in this movie! Really guys? Aaron Harvey and Jason Melling, you should be ashamed of yourselves…

The most tragic thing to happen to horror movies yet...

So we begin our tale with no blonde woman in the parking lot of a high school / university (movie isn’t entirely clear on this one) where Jamie, John and Mindy are getting ready to go camping. Out of nowhere Steve, John’s weed supplier, and his girlfriend Shannon rock up with a car packed with food and camping supplies. After begging to go camping with the threesome they all head out in Steve’s Land Rover to what was once the most amazing party spot in the woods. It was probably awesome because there were blonde women there before, but not anymore. Something has obviously happened over the years because the site isn’t all that great anymore and, judging from the opening scene of the movie, there’s a killer on the loose somewhere. This isn’t important, of course, because all our little guys are interested in is drinking lots of beer and lighting up for 2 days.

Don't worry, he's unarmed!

Clearly nature isn’t good for you because it seems to break down millions of years of evolution and leaves people with only the most base things to talk about: sex, pissing and farting (either by setting it on fire or doing it while receiving a blowjob). Oh, and the need for beer. John’s the main irritant here, with the three girls being whiny and dumb in their own little way. If you want to imagine John just picture Homer Simpson but without any of the things that make him funny. Once camp has been set up and 36 beers have been downed with amazing speed, everyone sits back to enjoy some more beer, some smoors and some weed. But, as every b-horror fan knows, if you’re out camping somewhere there’s a creepy old man waiting to tell you the dark and horrible past of the particular forest you find yourself in, and The Evil Woods is no exception to this rule. Only to the ‘must have a blonde woman’ rule.

Being stalked by an inexperienced killer can be really awkward.

So, back in the day when this little piece of land was the most amazing party spot around and blonde women flowed in abundance, there was a particularly protective park ranger who loved the area greatly. The problem was that the kids who came here to party often left the place in a state, with beer cans and litter all over the place for the ranger to clean up after them. How his cleaning and their prank are connected isn’t entirely clear but never the less one night all the kids decide to mission up to the ranger’s cabin and lock him in it by barring the windows and doors. To make it more exciting they started shooting fireworks at the cabin to frighten him. Wood cabin? Pine forest? No one? Idiots. Of course the cabin catches fire and the kids run away but the body of the ranger is never found and now his spirit is said to wander the forest killing anyone he believes to be violating his little green acre. This story is completely lost on our gang since, when they come across the burned-down cabin, they think that they’re looking at an old meth lab that exploded but, in their defence, they are completely baked from smoking weed for 2 days non-stop.

Whether they remember the story or not the fact remains that someone or something is stalking the forest with an axe hellbent on killing off the little group in the most unconvincing ways possible. Can they make it out of the woods before they’re all killed off? Probably not, there’s no blonde woman around to distract the killer…

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• A walking stick is nature’s coffee.
• You can pay for petrol before you know how much you’ve bought.
• Respecting a woman and her opinions makes you a pussy.
• Doing anything for your girlfriend makes you a pussy.
• Dropping anything makes you a pussy.
• Murdering someone from behind is the coward’s way of being a serial killer.
• When being chased by a killer in the woods, hide behind a tree and breathe like Darth Vader. They’ll never find you.
• Blood has a syrupy consistency.
• Blood crystallizes when it dries.

Campfire Stories

Year of Release: 2001
Genre:  Thriller / Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.9 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

I like to think that I’m a kind person and, where possible, give a movie a break. This was too painful, however, and the only thing that saves it from having a rating of ‘Requires Post-Film Lobotomy’ is the fact that, although it was terrible, I was more bored than anything else. There is a vague attempt at a plot line and it does all try to come together and I give the director great credit for achieving at least that much. But for all it may get points for that this film contains some of the worst acting and horrible CGI effects I have ever seen (and I’ve seen Snakes on a Train). The movie itself is divided into four sections: the main arc features three teenagers trapped in the woods forced to sit around a campfire with a park ranger (who, judging by the way he speaks, is clearly a stroke victim with a bad attitude) listening to ‘scary’ stories, which make up the three other segments.

Story #1 starts in a mental institution where some ethically questionable doctors are conducting experiments on pain thresholds using the mental patients as guinea pigs. Now I don’t know who thought testing violent experiments on clinically violent and unstable people would be a good idea but needless to say one of the patients escapes, kills his doctor and goes on to become a grounds keeper at a local high school. Having been rendered a little slow in the brain department by the experiments he becomes the focus of taunts by four jocks (look out for Perez Hilton as one of them. Oh how I laughed…). When the jocks are stopped from beating the grounds keeper up they decide that the next best thing to do is kill him during their lunch break and, armed with hockey sticks, chase him into the woods. Of course this has BAD IDEA written all over it and soon the tables are turned as our insane grounds keeper begins to take out the jocks one by one and teach them a lesson in good manners.

Story #2 gives the audience the best lesson in saying no to drugs. Here we are given 3 fresh idiots to watch and they have apparently been going on a little murderous rampage across the good ol’ US of A. While in a little diner in the back and beyond they see an Indian come in for coffee and decide to murder him, which they promptly do after following him home. Now the Indian had been smoking something weed-like that had led him to have some terrible CGI hallucinations and the kids decide that they also need to smoke it. This leads them to have even worse CGI hallucinations. Somehow, in what is admittedly a very confused storyline, the Indian turns out to not be dead and ages the kids until they are about 80. The segment ends with them enjoying an early bird special.

The final segment brings us yet another crop of freshly farmed morons and by far the most confusing story in the movie. Here, again out in the back and beyond, we have four teenagers, 2 boys and 2 girls, who are looking to have a little fun. 1 couple are still virgins, 1 guy is a horny jock and the other girl is his ex-girlfriend (or just girlfriend, the movie switches between the two). Now the ex-girlfriend manages to convince the other girl to come up with a revenge plot (revenge for what exactly, or what they plan to do, is never really explained) for the two guys since virgin girl thinks someone is sneaking around outside. After teasing the boys with the promise of a lesbian strip show and a threesome or foursome the boys are blindfolded and told to find the girls with only their hands. Unfortunately for the group someone is indeed wandering around outside (and it’s not just the dumb deputy sheriff who crops up occasionally) and, one by one, the teenagers are taken out.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED:

• Killing sprees need to be planned around afternoon band practice.
• Schools don’t have teachers working in them.
• Football practice is best done in a grove of trees.
• Doctors always conduct experiments in the dark.
• Wolves howl like the pterodactyls in Jurassic Park.
• Killing an Indian sucks the life right out of you.
• Tequila shots now qualify as cocktails.
• You can drink tequila without taking the cap off the bottle.
• You can blast things onto the Internet.
• Revenge is a dish best served in a revealing miniskirt.