Witch’s Sabbath

Year of Release: 2005
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.6 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 10 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Wasn’t sure that the Breast-O-Meter was actually going to be able to handle this movie. The many rats and hamsters that keep the machine going were just about to give up on life but thankfully the movie ended just before their little hearts could give out. It really was just 85 minutes of boobs and breasts and jugs, oh my! In amongst this breast-induced haze I do seem to recall that there was some form of a plot tying all these breasts together, although to be honest you really can’t expect an awful lot from a movie with Comic Sans credits.

For the Bible sayeth, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live in a neon house!'

Alright, let me see if I can remember how to put the pieces of this movie back together. The movie begins with two fools looking for a party that some random female invited them to in a neon house on the top of a suburban hill. Despite the fact that they are the only guests, the neon house is creepy as hell and it has a butler that can’t speak, walks funny and is wearing a leather mask, the two go against their better judgement in the hopes of having sexual relations with a woman that evening. The one guy seems to have some semblance of a brain and insists that they don’t eat or drink anything they’re offered, but when a foursome of buxom women offer to take them into a dungeon all common sense goes out the window. These women are witches and for the life of me I can’t remember the names of the three lesser ones. I do remember that they are led by a woman named Auriana, the breastiest witch of all. As they say, one thing lead to another that night and before the men knew it their heads had been ripped off their bodies and burned as an offering to some malevolent being.

That awkward moment when a witch mistakes herself for a vampire.

Now of course there’s a very clever reason for all the beheadings going on. This particular coven of witches is dedicated to the worship of a very unspecific and vague anti-God and they need to sacrifice 666 souls to him. The deadline for the sacrifices? Halloween (aka All Hallow’s Eve, aka The Devil’s Night). See? I told you the people behind this movie were clever. So now the witches need an extra clever and subtle way to lure people into their dungeon to sacrifice to this Grey Lord. They decide to go for the most obvious solution and open a very loud strip club called Sin n Skin with a very angry bitch at the door and a very classy clientele of Hell’s Angels rejects. Now in this club there are many, many breasts of varying sizes and silicone content, but the very best incident comes when a policeman goes undercover and tries to arrest one of the witches for prostitution. Not one to go down lightly (pun intended) she rips the man’s arm off and beats him to death with it. Auriana is less than impressed because now the man can’t be sacrificed (something about quality standards) but young witches do tend to get carried away, so you can’t stay mad forever.

The glue that holds the movie together.

Now the plotline that’s desperately trying to hold this movie together like a pair of elastic pants involves Damian (I think) and Eliza and their two friends whose names also escape me. Whatever their names are Damian (?) and Eliza have been together for a while and Eliza’s pissed that Damian’s been going to Sin n Skin. The only obvious solution to this is for Damian to drag Eliza to Sin n Skin and show her just how classy a place it is. Damian’s buddy (possibly one of the biggest douchebags horror has yet to produce) and Eliza’s friend tag along for the ride. Once they get there one of the witch strippers is on the pole and her and Eliza connect in an otherworldly way involving flashbacks that make no sense and are never explained. After the show the four are invited back to the neon house for a party and the beginning of the movie basically runs through itself again, just with different people. Will the four survive? Well, I can’t tell you that. But know this: THERE WILL BE BREASTS!

As a final thought, one of the best parts of this movie involves a cameo by Ron Jeremy as a bible salesman called Craven Moorehead. Craven Moorhead. See? Really clever and witty people were involved in the making of this movie.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Following a beheading witches will often make out with the head.
• A real man is always prepared to knock on a door.
• Real men enjoy beer, chicken and porn before noon.
• ‘Hgrrrrrrrrr’ has a wide variety of meanings.
• Witches have kaleidoscope vision.
• A good Satanic chant requires excessive breast fondling.
• Strip clubs are notorious for doubling up as witches’ covens.
• Satanic sacrifices come with a lot of rules and regulations.
• Some people just aren’t paid enough to be torn apart in a Satanic ritual.
• Witches have an amazing false prophet radar.

WITCH’S SABBATH TRAILER

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From Within

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Horror / Mystery
IMDB Rating: 5.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Low

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Again! Like the recent Vanishing on 7th Street and Plague Town, this movie was just SO close to being amazing! It has all the right elements: fundamentalist Christians, the dark arts, people who can act and Grudge-esque ghosts, but sadly these things are not used to their best effect. I think that the message it conveys is very topical: when taken to fanatical extremes religion, no matter which one it is, will result in people doing stupid, crazy shit. In that way I feel like the movie was more focussed on the aspects of the various religious nuts than on the actual horror aspect, which left me very disappointed. Never the less From Within is a very watchable movie and, given its IMDB rating, some people out there must like it. I’m not sure if I wanted the religious nuts to be even more crazy or if I wanted more horror / terror so that I would be genuinely frightened but, when all is said and done, the movie just left me wanting a little bit more.

"Your ability to think outside of my fanatical religious box disgusts me..."

Welcome to Grovetown, your standard little Anywhere USA. The skies are blue, the lawns meticulously mowed, the shops are quaint and the folk genuinely care for one another. It’s the kind of place you would want to raise your kids. If you wanted your kids to be white-supremacists with radical Christian beliefs that believe burning the witch is still your best possible option, that is, and that really is the bulk of the town’s population. The only one with her head screwed on right is Lindsay, a follower of the church but who believes that people should live and let live. She lives with her alcoholic and mouse of a stepmother Trish who has frequent visits from her somewhat-pervy truck driver boyfriend Roy. Lindsay also happens to be dating Dylan, the son of the town’s resident pastor who is about as extreme a religious nut as you can get. Her world becomes a little more complicated when she picks up Aidan (literally – Dylan beat him to the floor), the town’s local pagan. Understandably an outcast from the rest of Grovetown’s cliques Aidan has lived with his brother ever since the townsfolk burned their mother alive for being a witch. Burning the witch is about to come back to bite Grovetown in the ass.

"I'm finished! This is my 18th exorcism on an unwilling girl today."

Something very strange is starting to happen in Grovetown. While sitting on a hill overlooking the town one night a young emo couple reads to one another and tenderly embrace. 2 minutes later the guy blows his brain out. The girl, presumably a little shaken by this, runs back into town to her father’s dress shop (hip and happening designs in Grovetown, Amish paradise anywhere else) screaming that some woman is after her. Lindsay and Trish are also in the store and when Lindsay walks away from the girl the doors slam shut. When the group manages to open them they find the girl with scissors rammed in her neck. This is the beginning of the suicides that will stalk the town for the rest of the week. Gossip will be exchanged, accusations will be cast, witch burning brunches will be planned.

Ever been so tired you just started bleeding from your eyes?

As the suicide rate in Grovetown begins to climb and frequent church meetings do little to solve the problem people are starting to get a little anxious and are looking for a solution. What they are unaware of is that their beautiful little town has been cursed. While they do know about the deaths they don’t know that they aren’t actually suicides. You see just before various young teenagers and assorted older people are killed they see something that truly horrifies them: themselves. Now this isn’t the ‘wake up, look in mirror and realise you look like crap’ kind of terrified; this is ‘I’ve just seen my evil doppelgänger and it’s coming to get me’ variety of terrified. Since the entire town’s stock answer to any problem they face is ‘burn the witch! cleanse the earth with fire!’, it falls to Lindsay and Aidan to figure out what’s happening and how best to go about sorting it out. They will face fierce opposition, attempted exorcisms, angry mobs and a deranged son of a preacher man, but the fate of Grovetown and the rest of the world now rests on both their delicately feminine shoulders.

My only question, and this crops up in more movies that you’d think: if you are ‘different’ and know you are going to be an outcast and piss dumb people off, why live in a town full of them?

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• You can either be Christian or a witch. There is nothing in between.
• A preacher should never be allowed near a troubled man. It will only end in confusion and heartache.
• Christian men should only ever wear plaid shirts.
• Christian women should only ever dress in a way that would make the Amish feel like they are showing too much skin.
• Pagans should always be sarcastic, dark and twisty.
• Saying the voices spoke to you one day makes you clinically insane. Saying that God spoke to you one day makes you a devout Christian.

FROM WITHIN TRAILER

Terror Toons 2: The Sick and Silly Show

Year of Release: 2007
Genre:  Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 2.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

You know what? Joe Castro is a sick, sick little man. Not content to unleash just the original Terror Toons on us, he has also gone and let loose its sequel, The Sick and Silly Show. Fortunately I am an equally sick, sick little man and will sit through these things so that I may warn others of the true meaning of horror. Not Michael Myers horror (that’s the good stuff), but truly the kind of horror that makes you want to gauge your own eyes out because it would be less painful than to carry on watching. While the first movie was truly awful, it was filmed on a budget of $2 300 and with that kind of money you expect crap and you get crap. This movie, however, was filmed on a budget of $175 000. Now I have two questions: 1.) Who on earth gave them that kind of capital to make this movie?!?!? and 2.) How, when they had so much more money the second time round, does the movie still look as cheap as the first one?!?!?!?! Sadly these are questions that I will probably never get the answers to so, without further ado, on with The Sick and Silly Show!

Witches: They say they'll help you, but they REALLY won't...

We start off at the Sanders household where little Tiffany Sanders is having her 12th birthday party. At the party is one other child, a bunch of socially inept relatives and a small crowd of awkward college students. Everyone’s having a jolly good time chatting, wishing the birthday girl all the best and shoving enormous amounts of raw broccoli and yoghurt down their throats. Meanwhile, over in the Cartoon Dimension, Gretel decides to go for a walk in the woods and drags along her brother Hansel for company. After a while they get lost but happen along a (rather diminutive) gingerbread house and, being hungry, begin eating some of the sweets stuck to the wall. The sweets make them violently ill so they go inside to ask for help from the giant neighbourhood witch. At this point it was nice to see a familiar face as the witch is played by veteran B-Horror scream queen Brinke Stevens (A.K.A. Hometown Woman from Dead Clowns) and she offers the children some interesting ‘antidotes’ to help them over their tummy bug: Hansel eats a boiled rat and Gretel drinks out of a wine bottle with a large skull and cross-bones on it. The ‘antidotes’ don’t work exactly according to plan and instead of killing the children it mutates them and they land up killing the witch.

After the incident at the Gingerbread House Gretel resorted to excessive plastic surgery to mask her pain.

Back at the Sanders household little Tiffany has received a DVD (Devil Video Disc – I shit you not) of Terror Toons: The Sick and Silly Show in the mail. Now for those that have seen the first movie what happens next will seem very familiar: the now mutated and very demented Hansel and Gretel pop out of the DVD to begin wreaking havoc on the gathered family using a variety of ridiculous cartoon methods of murder. The kicker in all of this is that, after an aunt and uncle are killed, half the family run to the catholic maid’s room to hide behind her collection of crosses and most of the rest run upstairs to hide in a closet. The two main characters, Tina Sanders and her boyfriend Kevin, however, run upstairs to have sex. That’s right, sex. Sex after two insane, demented cartoon characters just jumped out of your TV and are trying to rip you to shreds. Despite their overactive libidos it becomes clear to Tina and Kevin that they will need to do something to try to survive so, after grabbing two other jocks, they run out of the front door through a cartoon vortex and into another subdivision of the Cartoon Dimension.

Captain Tight Crotch to the rescue!

Hansel and Gretel follow the group and begin to plan some rather creative ways to kill them before they can manage to escape from the Cartoon Dimension. The group breaks Horror Movie Survival Rule #1 by deciding that splitting up to find an exit is the best possible idea and then, for good measure, follow it up with a “we’ll be right back”. As Hansel and Gretel get into a very twisted game of playing doctor Tina and Kevin are left with no other option but to follow the sign that says ‘Hell’ on it. In hell, sadly, the devil couldn’t make a return appearance from the first movie but he has left us with his son Damien who, just like his father, tells the kids that to beat a cartoon character you need to become a cartoon character. Watch as some incredibly tight, shiny spandex is thrown on in preparation for the final showdown between horny college co-eds and demonic fairytale characters!

And while I have heaped a lot of criticism on this movie, if Joe Castro ever decides to make a Terror Toons 3, I’ll be ready for it.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED:

• Raw broccoli is a great party snack.
• Due to the recession, even witches have had to downscale on their gingerbread houses.
• For a child’s birthday party it’s only necessary to invite over one other child.
• Boiled rat is not a good cure for a stomach ache.
• You can survive perfectly well even after your brain has been sucked out of your head.
• Brains are similar in appearance to the small intestine.
• Excessive tickling can lead to your internal organs hemorrhaging.
• The devil’s son is an aspiring artist.
• There’s very little you can’t accomplish with a little imagination and a tranquilizer dart.
• You really can have sex no matter how dire the situation may seem.

Terror Toons 2: The Sick and Silly Show Trailer