Gross Movie Reviews #406
Wild Card (DVD) – Jason Statham plays a security consultant named Nick Wild in Vegas. He helps protect rich people when in town playing the slots or hitting the town. Nick is known throughout Vegas and is respected but he wants out of the scene but always finds him broke and still doing jobs. Things change when he takes a job protecting a boring dude and the guy just wants to know what is it like being a consultant and Wild’s girlfriend gets beat up by a wanna be mobster. She wants revenge and wants Wild’s help to do it. The movie is and not in ways your typical Statham action flick. A couple cool cameos but the film focuses more Nick Wild not getting out of Vegas than him just busting skulls on a regular basis. I give it 2 ½ stars.
The Ambulance (VHS/YouTube) – First let me just thank Jon Cross for digging this beautiful unknown feature out of obscurity. A Larry Cohen flick about a man played by Eric Roberts who works for Stan Lee by the way who obsesses over a woman he sees at lunch everyday but hasn’t talked too. So he does today and she has an issue after trying to shake off Roberts for several blocks and paramedics pick her up to rush her to the hospital or so it seems. Roberts’s character searches all the New York hospitals and nothing. Again obsessed he tries to track down what happened to her exactly. James Earl Jones who plays a police detective gets sucked into the mystery when Eric Roberts keeps popping up at disappearances talking about a strange ambulance picking up victims with diabetes. Just another example of Cohen’s work being brilliant as I give this must-see obscure flick 3 stars.
Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (DVD) – A “USA Up All Night” staple that came from Troma in 1989 that will forever be known for having Billy Bob Thornton before he was famous and the fun Don Calfa. A woman biker gang (Cycle Sluts) arrive in a small town of Zariah looking to get laid and cause chaos! Unbeknownst to the young motorcycle ladies Don Calfa aka Ralph has been experimenting with humans and turning them into zombies. He hides or imprisons them in the old mine where he found some nuclear shit that he uses on unsuspecting humans to make them zombies. After eating a kid the zombies have broken loose and want to feast on the town. The only people that can help the small town survive are the Cycle Sluts! Bikers vs. Zombies! This simple but great Troma flick doesn’t get as much press as some of the other popular Troma titles but is a 4 star film all the way!
Garbage Pail Kids (DVD) – Finally after many years I sat down to watch this flick that I thought I would have seen in its heyday? I was 10 or 11 and collected the original Garbage Pail Kids cards. I have a dresser that holds extra shit in my basement with some these stickers still on it! But somehow I missed there even being a movie out in 1986 that starred these fun gross things. When I first stumbled upon this movie existing in the mid-90s I thought it was a joke but so did everyone else when it was released in the 80s. Thought to be a massive failure, it wasn’t as the budget was only a million bucks and most of that went to costumes and effects of the Garbage Pail Kids who built by John Carl Buechler. The creations or locked in a magical garbage can in antique store where a teenager works for a crazy weird dude who tells stories constantly. One day being bullied the garbage can falls over and oozes out and poof we have several Garbage Pail Kids! They help the young teenager get over being bullied and try to impress a girl. In return the kid must go find the supposedly other Garbage Pail Kids who were taken away for being “ugly”. Watching it now and thinking back to when these were big in the mid-80s I still would like to know whose idea it was to make this a movie because there really wasn’t a backstory to these cards to begin with. They appeared one day and became part of 80s pop culture for a short period of time. But reading into why this wasn’t a bigger budget film and its issues it had coming to the big screen I would have loved to see John Carl Buechler’s vision of this being a horror movie. Now that would have been a much better movie as I give this 1 ½ stars.
Zombie Fight Club (Blu-ray) – How to best put this movie is it’s like ten zombie movie concepts all jammed into one. Or a better description would be ‘The Raid’ meets ‘The Horde’ with some CGI but a ton of gore. More than anything this movie reminds me of a violent anime cartoon come to the big screen. Tough sell but another worthwhile flick for the zombie film die hard out there as I give it 2 stars.
Don’t Breathe (Blu-ray) – So it is Detroit and a threesome of young hoodlums wanna break into bootleg ‘Blind Fury’ Rutger Hauer’s house? Supposedly he got a huge settlement a few years back and is just sitting on it. One of the hoodlum’s father works for the security firm that protects and put in all the alarms for what’s left of Detroit. They use this to get in and get out clean of places. But this is different once inside because bootleg Rutger Hauer ain’t having any this breaking in bullshit and just happens to be keeping a teenage girl chained up in his basement! I wasn’t super impressed by the movie but at least entertained and understood this movie was literally directed to the 16 -25 age bracket… For that I give it 2 ½ stars.
Besetment (DVD/Vimeo) – A young woman named Amanda is in a tough spot. Having a tough time finding a job, mom acts like she is still a drunken teenager, and Amanda wants to move out. Amanda gets a weird phone call from a woman for a hotel about 160 miles away. She of course goes there to take the job at the Oregon Hotel. All goes well until the mom/son combo freak out and are pissed she went out for the night around town. Now they have her tied to the bed, impregnate her; sew her mouth shut as mom has plans for Amanda and her son. The film is shot wonderful, the characters are great, enjoyed the effort put into the project but we have seen this story before and sometimes it can be only told so many times? I give the movie 2 out of 4 stars and more about it can be found at www.facebook.com/octobercoast .
Safari 3000 (DVD) – Eddie Miles is a US stunt car driver looking for a ride in the African race called “Safari 3000”. J.J. Dalton is a reporter for Playboy magazine who is covering the race but needs a race car and a driver to get her around the course for the story. Together they steal an engine and try to avoid traps set by Christopher Lee and his associate during the race to finish it and get the story. Eddie Miles is played by David Carradine in this entertaining bootleg of a bootleg of “Cannonball Run” and Roger Corman had nothing to do with this flick as I give it 2 stars.
Screams of a Winter Night (VHS/YouTube) – A late 70s thriller about several friends go to an old cabin to tell stories to scare each other. Or the movie I am going to put on now when I have trouble sleeping because this shit was horribly boring! Avoid unless you have trouble sleeping as I give it zero stars.
Alien: Covenant (Theater) – Believe me I am still torn that they decided it was better to do prequels instead of sequels but I wanna see these alien creatures fuck people up. These movie creatures have always gotten my imagination rolling with where or what they could do next? But saying that, this film picks up ten years after the forgettable ‘Prometheus’ and a ship is out there with 2000 colonists that happen to get a rogue call or image from a nearby planet. They investigate their options as they are carrying 2000 colonists. Go check out this planet that was somehow overlooked by the company during scans or continue their voyage to this planet that is still over 7 years away in space travel? Of course they go to this planet and find it habitable until a couple crew members get sick and these creatures pop out of them and start attacking the crew on the ground. Then a dark figure happens to come by and help and it’s the android from the Prometheus and explains somewhat what happened… sort of? I am still mixed on the film for the mere fact it tries to explain where and how the aliens are made but also I can watch 28 different versions of “Aliens” movies and still come back for more. The film will still leave fans questioning some things but I do prefer this more than the last prequel. But for the love of Lance Henriksen gimme fucking sequels 20th Century Fox! The stories don’t have to connect just give me an “Aliens” flick every two years? I don’t hate it, I don’t love it but glad I checked it out at the theater as I give it 2 stars.
Scared Shitless (DVD) – Jim Roberts gave me a couple movies from his early filmmaking days and this is one of them as he teamed up with another young dude in Travis Schaffer to make a movie about a killer named “The Red Reaper”. Jim Jones lost his mother and sister to this “Red Reaper” a year ago and tonight is the anniversary and just wants some help from his friends. The friends show up, some fun poker playing begins, order the pizza, and then the killing also begins. As the killer is back trying to kill Jim Jones all because a pet fish died! Between that and seeing a young Jim Roberts in braces making one of his first projects entertained me. Now it isn’t “Mummy Sleepover Massacre” but still enough fun to watch as I give it 2 out of 4 stars.
Mark of Insanity (DVD) – Is another project from a younger Jim Roberts and his filmmaking buddy Travis Schafer where this story takes place at a Western Shop. A young guy named Wayne is quiet and just likes to be left alone to do his work. But after being picked on constantly about his family history and anything they can think of he snaps. After Jim has been pushed past his limits is when a masked killer shows up to start killing employees off. We even get a Leatherface dance from the masked killer in the film. Not as good as ‘Scared Shitless’ but still worth the watch to see the passion in Jim and others to get the project finished and out there. I give this Indy flick 1 ½ out of 4stars.
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