Zombeavers

Director: Jordan Rubin (2014)
Starring: Lexi Atkins, Rachel Melvin, Cortney Palm, Robert R. Shafer
Find it: IMDB

I hope you like 'beaver' jokes, because you'll be hearing a lot of them. Recovering from one of their number's bad breakup, a group of girls take off to a relative's cabin in the woods for a weekend of boozing, bitching and setting the world to rights. What they don't count on is the arrival of two groups of uninvited guests - their dipshit boyfriends and the titular zombeavers; zombie beavers.

Yeah, zombie beavers in a movie that is (a) not a fake trailer, and (b) stretched out to feature length. There are only a handful of filmmakers I can think of offhand capable of making a halfway watchable film out of such a concept. No matter the talent involved, there's no-one could make Zombeavers worth watching - not at 85 minutes, anyway - and Rubin doesn't disappoint in that respect; it makes the jump from harmless distraction to far too fucking long in a remarkably short space of time.

The plot, as it is, sees zombified beavers attack when a pair of careless truckers accidentally dump toxic waste in a river teeming with the little fluffy bastards. What follows is like American Pie crossed with Cabin Fever, complete with all of the stupid juvenile humour that entails. Expect, then, gratuitous nudity, an obsession with lesbians, brainless behaviour and endless 'beaver' gags. YES, I GET IT, BEAVER IS A EUPHEMISM FOR 'VAGINA'. Robert R. Shafer pops up to offer the film some of its few genuinely amusing jokes and the kids do die pretty horribly, but it's an otherwise worthless affair.

The beavers themselves look intentionally horrible and shoddy, but the joke is lost in translation by the film also being (unintentionally) horrible and shoddy. It's like the new Grindhouse movement all over again - you have to be very good to pull off a great bad movie, and Zombieavers is just a bad movie. Honestly, if it were between watching this again and Mrs. Brown's Boys D'Movie, I would give serious thought to the latter...

...before watching Zombeavers again, because fuck that noise.

In spite of any good intentions it may have had, Zombeavers is a wretched mess. Unfunny, irritating and badly made (both purposefully and not) it's a dam waste of time.

K3: Prison of Hell

Director: Andreas Bethmann (2009)

Starring: Suzi-Anne, Candy-Sue, Bianca Germany

Find it: IMDB

Describing the plot of K3: Prison of Hell to a relative, I may have accidentally given off the impression that I am something of a psychopath or serial killer in training. In fact, as I tried to tactfully describe this movie to my Dear old Dad, the question "it's not a snuff film, is it?" may have been asked. It didn't help my case that K3: Prison of Hell was delivered to me via a friend, ordered from Germany and given on a nondescript DVD-RW. "It's definitely not snuff," I insisted, "snuff doesn't have an IMDB page."

That said, you won't find K3: Prison of Hell on Amazon, less because it's a snuff movie, (honest Dad, it's not) more because of all the giant cocks being sucked all over the place. Also, what with all the hardcore sexual violence, it's probably illegal here in the UK. Not snuff, though. The word 'torture porn' is bandied around horror movie territories with depressing regularity (not by me, except for when I use inverted commas) but in the case of K3: Prison of Hell, that's about right. This movie consists of nothing but torture and pornography, neither of which is particularly well done. 

The plot has lots of women in prison (it's never explained why) while the guards go around raping them all the time. I had never seen a Prison Exploitation movie before (apparently The Shawshank Redemption and Schindler's List don't count) so I Googled Prison of Hell to see what I was in for. One of the first pictures I found was of an arm shoved all the way up a poor lady's arse. Most of the action consists of things going up arses or erections going into various other orifices (usually the face). This is brought to us by infamous exploitation director Andreas Bethmann; responsible for a number of other horror/porno movies, most of which have 'rape' in the synopsis. Also involved is special effects maestro, occasional director and chum of Uwe Boll, Olaf Ittenbach. The gore effects, when they come, are decent enough - there's a reasonable head explosion scene - but otherwise, Prison of Hell is just plain boring. If you've seen one cock sucked, you've seen them all. The mix of sexual violence, titillation and torture is horrid, but that's the point. The film knows its audience (Fetlife friends, aficionados of hardcore cinema and probably Mel Gibson) very well, and everyone else won't even know it exists in the first place. Given that I don't really enjoy pornography, I was doomed from the start.  

K3: Prison of Hell is unpleasant, ugly and dull. While it will appeal to those who enjoy that sort of thing, everyone else will be either horrified or nonplussed or both at the same time. It's not really the type of movie you assign a star rating to (unless you're in the business of reviewing pornography), but I'll do so anyway. Mostly so my Dad, in case he's Googling this, can be totally sure that I'm not a lunatic nutcase who gets off on that Andreas Bethmann's prison pornographies.

Look Dad, no stars:

Judge Dredd

No, he isn't.

Director: Danny Cannon (1995)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Armand Assante, Rob Schneider

Find it: IMDB

With the reportedly not-bad Karl Urban chinned Dredd imminent, Sly Stallone's infamous 1995 adaptation no longer stings quite so much. It's still a stinky hunk of dystopian dung, but like Batman & Robin in the wake of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, it feels a little more harmless now. Danny Cannon's Judge Dredd makes perhaps the biggest mistake a comic book movie can - it makes the thing less about the character and more a star vehicle. In this case, the star is Sylvester Stallone and the vehicle is a Lawmaster with a pissy seat.

Despite having the body and chin for the job, Stallone couldn't be more wrong for the role of Judge Joseph Dredd. He spends a total of ten minutes wearing the (fibreglass) helmet. Comic book Dredd has spent nearly 40 years wearing it, and we've still not seen his face. Not that it really matters in this case. Stallone in the helmet looks like Sylvester Stallone in a helmet. We all know what Sylvester Stallone looks like. 

In the year 2139, what remains of the world has been split up into 'Mega Cities', which are ruled by fascistic "Judges" - tough guys with the authoritah to arrest or execute criminals on the spot. Judge, Jury and Executioner as it were. Judge Dredd (Stallone) is the very best of the Judges. He establishes his dominance by saying things like "I am the law", which is fine, and "I knew you were gonna say that," which is not fine. Judge Dredd has more catchphrases than Little Britain, none of which are in any way amusing. As mumbled by Stallone, he sounds more like Marion Cobretti in a stupid fibreglass helmet than Judge Dredd.

As if the bastardisation of Dredd himself wasn't enough, Rob Schneider and Diane Lane are on hand as comic relief and love interest, respectively. Lane does okay as Judge Hershey (although someone a little stronger might have been better, such as Sigourney Weaver) but there's no excusing Rob Schneider. I'm a massive Rob Schneider apologist (I actually love his Big Stan) but his pissing all over the back seat of Judge Dredd's (flying) bike is indefensible. 

Armand Assante does better as clone brother Rico Dredd (who doesn't look like Dredd or Fargo, the man they are both clones of) but isn't given much to work with. It's standard villain fare, and the finale is more than a little reminiscent of Stallone's own Demolition Man. Despite the silliness, some of the characters do actually look the part - particularly the Angel Gang (one of whom is Hershel from off've The Walking Dead) and ABC Warriors' Hammerstein. The Angel Gang sequence is actually pretty good, even if it is disappointing that they don't eat Schneider. Hammerstein looks good but lacks any personality whatsoever. Which is a pretty accurate summary of the rest of the film, actually. Mega City One looks great; exactly as I'd imagined it reading the comics. It's very Blade Runner influenced, but that's no bad thing. Likewise, the opening bit is a lot of fun and a solid introduction to the character. Unfortunately, it's all spoiled as soon as Judge Dredd takes off the helmet.

Judge Dredd is an awful film, a missed opportunity and terrible waste of the character. Thankfully, this year's reboot looks to undo at least some of that hurt. With that in mind, maybe we can enjoy Judge Dredd on another level or two, like Batman & Robin or Daredevil. Ironically enjoyable? I knew you were gonna say that.

Fifty Shades of Grey

I write this review following one week relaxing on the sunny beaches of Kusudasi, in Turkey. As per any beach holiday, some properly trashy beach literature was required. I brought with me I, Partridge (the brilliant Alan Partridge autobiography), Double Dexter (reasonable, but not as good as the telly series) and a William Shatner Star Trek novel. This is not a review of any of those books. As I ran out of reading material, I turned to my lovely ladyfriend's collection of digital books. Enter a sweaty, sordid three days during which I read all three Fifty Shades of Grey books.   

Fifty Shades of Grey makes for incredible holiday reading in that it is complete bollocks (fifty shades of bollocks, in fact). It is to mothers what The Da Vinci Code is to your dad. It lends itself to skim reading because one can skip entire paragraphs pages chapters of the book without losing any sense of what is going on. And the reader's brain only has to put up with but a limited number of words, since EL James just uses the same ones over and over again. I don't think I've ever seen anyone's mouth ever "twist into a line" and yet Mister Grey's does this on practically every other page. Ditto, his ragged breath and Miss Steele's repeated acquiescence.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a book about a student (Anastasia Steele) who, after her tenacious journalist friend (we know she's tenacious because she is described as such many, many times) falls ill, steps in to conduct an interview with mysterious multimillionaire Christian Grey.  She falls over and calls him gay (Fifty Shades of Gay); he sneers at her and acts like a dick. It's a horrible interview; mostly because Ana Steele is a moron and Christian Grey is a cunt.  

But if Twilight has evidenced anything, it's that a large proportion of women swoon for fictional shitty men. They'll lust after the likes of Edward Cullen, Mister Darcy, Sawyer from LOST and Christian Grey whilst at the same time complaining that all men are bastards. If the relationship between Ana and Christian seems very similar to that of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, that's because it literally is the same. Fifty Shades of Grey began life as Twilight fan-fiction (titled Master of the Universe), with EL James just changing the names for publication. So Team Jacob is now a character called Jose Rodriguez. Mexican is not the same thing as Native American, but "whatever", James thought, "they're both shades (GET IT) of brown." Ana Steele is a little too reluctant to feel like the wet, naturally submissive Bella completely, but James has the lip-biting and falling over down pat. Grey is supposed to seem cool and desirable - but this is undermined by his listening to The Kings of Leon and owning a Fight Club poster. The attempts at pop culture are laughable. As is Grey referring to Ana as 'baby'.

It becomes clear immediately that Christian and Ana are drawn to one another. But Mister Grey has a dark secret: he's into BDSM in a big way, and wants Ana as his 'submissive' rather than his girlfriend. Where most men would realise that you might want to be subtle with that sort of thing (a girl is more likely to let you tie her up if you introduce the idea in a sensitive, charming manner. Or, er, just ask first), Christian saunters into the shop where she works and gets her to sell him some cable ties, rope and duct tape. But Ana is a naive soul thick shit and merely assumes that Grey is doing some decorating. James tells us repeatedly that Ana is a highly intelligent, smart-mouthed character, but her dialogue and actions suggest otherwise. Grey wastes little time in stalking Ana; tracking her phone, having her followed and pretty much kidnapping her at the end of the night. Christian Grey is Bruce Wayne if Bruce had dedicated his life to wanting to fuck his dead mom instead of trying to avenge her. I can imagine Grey's own personal Lucius Fox, sweating away in the basement, fixing up some neat new stalking tools for Grey. Grey actually calls himself a Dark Knight at one point.

Morally (and probably legally) it's a pretty shitty thing to do to, manipulating a girl's obvious crush on you by dictating that the only relationship she can have with you is an abusive one. And so when Ana 'misbehaves', she is violently spanked. But it's fine to hit your partner when she 'misbehaves', because you're doing it in the name of kinky-fuckery. Grey justifies his physical and emotional abuse by saying "Ana, I'm fifty shades of fucked up". I escaped a boring relationship once by pretending to have a mental breakdown. I'm just saying, sometimes describing yourself as "being fucked up" is an easy way to act like a bell-end without repercussions.

Because apparently being "fucked up" (albeit in a tremendously emo way) will justify any errant or abusive behaviour on your part. Ana accepts that Grey is "fucked up" and lets him repeatedly control, beat and humiliate her. We all have to put up with things we don't like in relationships (I once watched The Tourist), but the use of phrases like "fifty shades of fucked up" is a hard limit for me.    

Compromise in this case means Ana doing whatever Grey tells her to do, and him hitting her slightly less. He even consents to let her have vanilla sex when he takes her virginity, because he's all heart, that man. Approximately two things happen in Fifty Shades of Grey, interspersed with a number of softcore sex scenes and some mildly kinky bits of bondage and spanky-panky. Throughout, the pair speak in atrocious dialogue (the whole thing reads like the script of a particularly dire pornography) as Ana converses with her own subconscious and - most irritatingly - her 'inner goddess'. This is a cheap way of showing that Ana secretly likes what Grey does to her and makes little sense. You can't talk to your subconscious, Ana, because it's your fucking subconscious. The whole point of your subconscious is that you can't hear it.

I suspect my subconscious is a bit of a moron, since I find it hard to dislike Fifty Shades of Grey. Make no mistake, it is one of the worst books I have ever read. It's better than Twilight, though. And much better than Pride and Prejudice too. Is it romantic? Not remotely. It is, however, the funniest thing I have read in a long time. I laughed more at Fifty Shades of Grey than I did my Alan Partridge autobiography. The book actually reminded me a lot of The Frightened Woman, without any of that film's arty weirdness.

Still, I'm hardly the target audience. People evidently like this sort of thing, and if that leads to a flush of kinky moms, then I suppose it's a good thing (aside from the fact that Grey is the worst poster boy for any lifestyle, ever). It's no revelation - it's just a crappy piece of erotica with passable sex scenes but a truly terrible story, characters and writing. For all of Christian Grey's fifty shades, I would argue that Ana is equally fucked up. What sort of imbecile, after all, continues to date a man who forbids her from doing as she wishes, dictates when she should eat (Christian's obsession with food is hilarious) and chastises her constantly for biting her lip? The pair deserve one another.

The Hike

Director: Rupert Bryan (2011)

Starring: Zara Pythian, Lisa Marie Long, Barbara Nedeljakova

Find it: IMDB

A group of friends retire to the woods for the weekend to indulge in a little camping (or glamping, as I believe the technical term is nowadays*) and the terrible delivery of rubbish lines. There is a little hiking in this film called The Hike, but a lot more camping. In an attempt to replicate The Descent, the characters are all female and are intended to be perceived as 'strong'. But where The Descent showed strength through good writing and characterisation, The Hike simply has its characters kick the shit out of Tamer Hassan during the film's opening moments.

And where The Descent was wonderfully acted, The Hike features the biggest display of group incompetence I have ever seen in a film. Even Shauna MacDonald is terrible during the one scene in which she appears. Of the women, they're mostly indistinguishable from one another. The only characterisation is given to Lady Rambo (whose dead army boyfriend backstory is ridiculous) and the glamour model who happens to be dating Tamer Hassan. Tamer Hassan gives the movie's best performance. If that isn't a damning indictment of The Hike, then I don't know what is.

The horrible acting becomes less noticeable during the horror and action sequences. But maybe I was just distracted by all the rape. Where most backwoods horror flicks tend to give their Hillbillies or their monsters a more colourful motive (usually cannibalism), The Hike is just a rape film. Rape is to The Hike what a chainsaw is to Leatherface. The Hike is a film in which four main characters are raped; with three of those rapes happening at the same time. And one of those victims is actually dead at the time. It's incredibly unpleasant and tremendously dull. It's like Deliverance, except there's no underlying point to any of it, it lasts about twenty minutes and the rapists all deliver stupid monologues as they go. Also, Deliverance was good. This is not good.

What does work: there's a nice twist just before the film gets all rapey. Tamer Hassan (in one of his two appearances) calls a man a fuckin' slag. The poster is really funky. The woods look really nice. You'll actually see a male penis at one point (and not in the context of a rape scene). Whilst I'm not a fan of peni, I do like to see them in horror films, as a counterbalance to all the boobs (mind you, this goodwill is spoiled somewhat by the amount of sexual violence directed towards the ladies later on). Oh, and then I watched The Descent afterwards. Anything that makes me watch The Descent again is a good thing.

Awfully acted, intolerably scripted, offensive, dull and stupid, The Hike is a disappointment. Take a hike, The Hike.

*Amongst idiots

The Bunny Game

Director: Adam Rehmeier (2010)

Starring: Rodleen Getsic, Jeff Renfro, Norwood Fisher

Find it: IMDB

This is the film that The Human Centipede 2 wishes it was. Hearing that it was denied a UK release by the BBFC immediately put it on my radar. Like that other infamous film, August Underground, I wish I hadn't bothered. When the film opened with a sloppy blowjob scene, I knew it wouldn't be my cup of tea. I prefer my tea without spermatozoon, thanks.

Like The Human Centipede 2, the film is entirely black and white and features characters performing bizarre sexual acts on one another. There's shit in The Bunny Game that they'd even balk at on Fetlife. Prostitute Bunny (the aptly named Rodleen Getsic) accepts a lift from a deranged trucker. You don't need to be Jeremy Clarkson to know that this is a bad idea, but hey, Bunny is desperate. The trucker spends the next few days torturing Bunny and making her play his sick, depraved games. He's a terrible antagonist, crying and screaming, huffing plastic bags like a low-rent Dennis Hopper. She meanwhile, gets by far the worse end of the bargain, all ball gags, crappy haircuts and ridiculous masks. To criticise is unfair though: don't hate the playa, as they say, hate the game.

As I watch more and more of this nonsense, it becomes increasingly difficult to review films like The Bunny Game. I mean, there are only so many ways to write "she gets tied up and tortured". Occasionally I have to say things like "newborn porn" or "the centipede goes up his arse" or "he puts a stupid rabbit gimp mask on her head" but mostly it's like reviewing the same film over and over again. It's a sad state of affairs when the edgiest thing a horror movie can do these days is have a happy ending. Just for once, I'd like to be able to write something along the lines of "and then the bad man realised that he was acting like a bit of a dickhead. He let the nice prostitute go and sought psychiatric help. Then he apologised to the S&M community for perpetuating negative stereotypes."

Like so many other controversial slash banned movies, The Bunny Game is perfectly competent. It's well acted, looks good (in a surrealist sort of way) and has a properly unsettling vibe. Had it the bravery to tell a story about something other than rape, I would probably have enjoyed it. It's a great film wasted on a shitty story. There are only so many stories one can tell about perverted men acting out their fantasies upon unwilling victims. And I don't want to see any of them. Dude, she's a prostitute. If you were to just pay her, I'm sure she'd let you tie her up and do whatever anyway.

It's easy to see why the BBFC wanted none of this. Since almost every moment of the film features some variety of sexual violence or other, there's literally nothing that could have been cut, save for ten seconds in the middle where our dirty trucker leans against a wall for a bit. There's a time and a place for pieces like The Bunny Game. Maybe an art gallery or Chris Brown's dressing room. These aren't films to be enjoyed; they're here to be endured. I have a friend who loves rollercoasters but hates horror movies. I hate rollercoasters but love horror movies. She asked me how I can bear to watch the gory bollocks I do. To me, horror movies are like mental rollercoasters. You have nice log flume rollercoasters (like Scream or A Nightmare On Elm Street), fast rollercoasters (Saw, Hostel) and then you have the fucking horrible ones (The Bunny Game, August Underground). Just as you don't ride a mental rollercoaster to look at the scenery, you don't watch The Bunny Game if you like films. I watch this shit to see if I can. And The Bunny Game beats Hostel in horror Top Trumps any day.

I doubt The Bunny Game is going to corrupt anyone. It won't damage anyone's mind (unless you happen to be epileptic. There's some pretty crazy flashing imagery) nor will it inspire any copycat killings. It sure damaged my liver though, for all the drinking I had to do to make it less boring. The only interesting part of the film was The Bunny Game itself, whereupon both characters wear stupid gimp masks and run around in the desert like it's a really gross episode of Star Trek.

As games go, The Bunny Game is not a particularly fun one. It's like playing Twister with the smelly weird guy who invited himself to the party. This is an intelligent, thoroughly artistic movie with far more attitude than your average torture flick. But fuck it, if this is the game, I don't want to play anymore.

Captivity

Director: Roland Joffe (2007)

Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gillies, Pruitt Taylor Vince

Find it: IMDB

The movie that made a lot of people realise just what a tiresome subgenre torture guff was. Until Craptivity, we'd gone along with the likes of Hostel, pretending that we were being clever and arty by watching films in which kids wear ball gags and find themselves carved up by weird foreigners. For myself and many others, it was a case of the emperor wearing no clothes: Hostel was shit and its imitators are shit too.

So along came Craptivity and outraged everyone by putting its silly posters up even after the MPAA said not to. People began to realise "actually, films about torture and ball gags are a bit wank, aren't they?" But worse than shitting in its own bed, Craptivity tried to ruin it for the rest of us too. It gave horror a bad name. It made people say things like "won't somebody please think of the children" and made us horror fans seem sick in the head, the sort of people who enjoy putting gruesome posters opposite schools (which is admittedly quite funny). And that's partly why I hate torture movies and I hate the phrase "torture porn". But mostly it's because torture movies are boring, stupid self-serious nonsense.

24 star Elisha Cuthbert plays celebrity model Jennifer; object of a crazed stalker's affections. I didn't recognise Cuthbert at first, since every time I saw her on 24 she had a piece of duct tape or a hand over her mouth. It takes about ten minutes before somebody covers her mouth with anything in Craptivity (in this case a leather glove, Giallo style) but it's still her most kidnappy movie so far.

She wakes up in a gloomy basement and is repeatedly set upon by a shadow-dwelling figure, who gasses, chloroforms, buries and forcefeeds her face over and over again. Eventually, Jennifer realises that she is not alone - enter Gary (Gillies) who claims also to have been kidnapped. If you believe that for so much as an instant, you're even stupider than Jennifer. Before I'd ever watched Craptivity, I was reading a Fangoria story on the film. "I bet this Gary bloke is in on it," I thought. The Gary bloke is indeed in on it, using the torture dungeon like his own private Plenty Of Fish.

An actual screencap from Plenty Of Fish's 'success stories' page.

There's nothing to Craptivity but suspenseless torture scenes and Elisha Cuthbert looking hot. For a girl who endures days and days of violent torture, she comes out of it all as fresh as a daisy. After half an hour on the bus I look like a wreck, let alone a week in a torture dungeon. What I wouldn't give for Elisha Cuthbert's T-zone.

After drinking a smoothie made up of body parts and being forced to shoot her own dog, poor Jennifer is trapped in a little box that rapidly fills up with sand. She needn't worry though - like a Brazil nut in a bag of museli, she just rises straight to the top. Earlier, there's a scene where she communicates with Gary by scratching messages into her side of the glass. Bless her, she fails to realise that she needs to be writing backwards (as you would to read something in a mirror) in order for Gary to read it properly. It's a movie that hopes to distract the viewer with gruesome tortures and sexy Elisha Cuthberts.

It doesn't have the unintentional brilliance of I Know Who Killed Me, nor the intelligence of the few torture movies I happen to like (an exception to the 'all torture movies are terrible' rule; look under subsection 'hypocrite'). Other than the fact that I like Elisha Cuthbert and it has Pruitt Taylor Vince in it, Craptivity has few redeeming features. It's anything but Captivating.

Porn Shoot Massacre

Director: Corbin Timbrook (2009)

Starring: Robert Ambrose, Naomi Cruz, Shelly Martinez

Find it: IMDB

Sure, a movie called Porn Shoot Massacre was never going to win any Oscars, but that doesn't excuse the fact that no-one tried to make it even watchable. But then, I don't enjoy pornography, so perhaps it was lost on me from the start. In a bunch of barely connected scenes, director Malfini (Ambrose) tries to make a pornographic film whilst some sort of Jason Voorhees slash Leatherface rip-off wanders around offing his 'actresses' in the background. Twist: Malfini is in on the scam and is actually making a snuff movie rather than a porno. Which doesn't explain why half of the kills happen offscreen and without a camera present.

But then, Malfini sucks as a director. I doubt he's ever seen a pornography in his life, since what he does manage to film is softcore at best. And his snuff movie isn't much better. He's desperately ill informed as to the intricacies of adult cinema, dubbing his stars "Fetish Queen" and "Fetish princess", despite the fact they don't do anything remotely fetish-y. I didn't spot a single bare foot, mashed potato, gas mask or whatever it is people fetishize these days. He then hires a dominatrix to have her tied up and menaced. The dominatrix seems fine with it though, so I guess neither of them know what a dominatrix actually does.

The atmosphere is impressively cheerful, making Porn Shoot Massacre a hard film to truly dislike, despite its screamingly obvious flaws. By which I mean everything else. The acting is atrocious, the script consists entirely of clunkers, the music annoying and obtrusive, the special effects shonky and the nudity tiresome. Tiresome nudity is the worst kind of nudity. I did manage a cheap laugh at the midget with the dildo, though.

I watched Porn Shoot Massacre hoping for something as fun as One Eyed Monster (the Ron Jeremy comedy-horror) but instead got something as bad as real pornography itself.

The Roommate

Director: Christian E. Christiansen (2011)

Starring: Minka Kelly, Leighton Meester, Cam Gigandet, Billy Zane

Find it: IMDB

Within 12 seconds of its starting, I realised that I would probably hate The Roommate. 2 minutes later, I started to hate The Roommate. One of the earliest scenes takes place at a frat party, which is a very good indication of its quality. Its lead character is Sara (Kelly), a girl who names The Devil Wears Prada her favourite movie. Of all time. And the stalker character (Meester) looks up to this moron as a role model. They deserve one another.

The Roommate has the worst soundtrack I've heard in years, all softcore American rock and the sort of thing you might expect to hear on The OC. But that's fine, because it has the worst acting, worst script and worst wardrobe department I've seen in years too. The Roommate is Single White Female dumbed down for teenagers too badly educated to realise that Single White Female exists.

Whilst everyone and everything else about The Roommate is atrocious, it does have Billy Zane, which was a nice surprise. He plays Professor Roberts, a lecturer on our heroine's fashion course. Although she's a late entry, he lets her on the course because she has good fashion sense. Which wouldn't be particularly remarkable were it not for the fact that she has this on her head at the time:

Which would be like me getting on to an English Literature course even after telling a lecturer that Twilight is the greatest book of all time. The stupid hat is not relegated to just the one stupid scene. She wears it in a nightclub at one point. But even with her ridiculous choice in headwear, Sara manages to bag Ethan (Gigandet). Ethan introduces himself by telling her how he and his fraternity buddies use spiked punch to essentially date rape girls. Charming fucker.

Meanwhile stalker Rebecca menaces Sara's friends, beats up Billy Zane and murders a kitten in a washing machine. But there's no explanation as to why Rebecca should so quickly become fixated with Sara, especially given how utterly uninteresting Sara is. Some of Rebecca's loonier actions raise a smile (a tasteless tattoo, a sketchbook and a scene in which she beats someone up in the shower whilst wearing a waterproof jacket) but its every moment feels derivative and stupid. There's even the whole angle where Rebecca starts dressing like Sara, wearing her perfume and dying her hair like Sara's. She goes so far as to steal the hat. Imitation, I suppose, is the sincerest form of flattery. By that logic, Single White Female should be very flattered right now.

The Roommate is vacuous twaddle that should be of no interest to anyone who has seen Single White Female, Cable Guy, Play Misty For Me or any other stalker movie, ever. It's reminiscent of other such dumbed down toss like Swimfan and Homecoming. Single Shite Female, more like.

13. The Tourist

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (2010)

Starring: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton

Find it: IMDB

One of the more unpleasant moviegoing experiences of the past ten years. The Tourist is directed by somebody called Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and is exactly the sort of film that you'd imagine somebody called Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck might direct. It is an atrociously bad movie, attempting to do something stylish and European but instead it flounders and becomes a flowery, incomprehensible, smug self-consciously pretty affair.

Holidaying American Frank Tupelo (Depp) is visiting Italy, hoping to mend a broken heart. On a train, he crosses paths with Elise (Jolie) a fugitive on the run after doing something not very interesting but nonetheless illegal. Something to do with her criminal mastermind lover, who may or may not be 'The Englishman' (Rufus Sewell). She is pursued by cops Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton. Frank and Elise dance around Italy looking pretty and aggressively flirting with one another. Pursued by the police and gangsters, there are rooftop chases and boat chases and a host of other scenes in which the characters are chased for reasons mostly unclear. At one point, Frank is chased across a rooftop in his pyjamas. Depp does his Jack Sparrow mince on a number of occasions, as well as the Jack Sparrow face and the Jack Sparrow voice. I fear Mister Depp has started to go native.

I watched The Tourist in the pursuit of sex, at the cinema. The Tourist was so rubbish that even she wanted to leave halfway through. We stayed, because I am a movie fascist and I never leave the cinema halfway through, sex or no sex (no sex, if you must know. The Tourist is so terrible that it causes impotence). The Tourist is the worst thing a woman has ever made me do, even worse than shaving my balls. Those hoping that The Tourist might offer a variation on Mr. and Mrs. Smith's sexy thriller will be very disappointed. The Tourist is neither sexy nor thrilling. Both Depp and Jolie act as though half-asleep or tranquilized, neither particularly interested in the stupid story and script. There's a ridiculous twist at the end, but not all that much worse than the preceding 100 minutes.

The Tourist made me want to never leave home again.

Creature

Director: Fred Andrews (2011)

Starring: Mehcad Brooks, Serinda Swan, Sid Haig

Find it: IMDB

A movie that The Internets hate even more than they hate Catwoman #1, Creature is garnering some truly awful reviews and a sense of scorn usually only reserved for Uwe Boll and Rob Schneider. Upon hearing that, it shot straight to the top of my must-see list. Having watched the thing, I can't say that it deserves all of the hate it's been receiving of late. Creature is far too much fun to dislike. Beware, this review is quite spoilerish:

Make no mistake though, Creature is a bad film. As I get older, I find myself becoming less and less interested in plot synopses that begin with the sentence "vacationing college students..." which is a big problem if you're a fan of horror. Creature is indeed about vacationing college students, and its opening moments see a car full of them pull up at a backwoods gas station only to have the locals take an immediate dislike to them. Presumably because the kids are overheard calling said locals "backwards" and generally insulting the place. It's film-making like this that makes me always side with the chainsaw-welding yokels. At least they have manners.

In this case, it's less the locals the kids have to worry about and more the movie's titular Creature. Handily the Creature is illustrated on the poster, so you can't say that you weren't warned when you complain about how shitty it looks.

There's a silly urban legend at play, some incest, a woman getting eaten by a white alligator (MOBY DICK, GEDDIT) and Sid Haig doing his very best with material only marginally more tolerable than a Rob Zombie film. And by 'tolerable', I mean utterly hilarious. The Creature's origin story has a man called Grimley go mad and kill a white alligator with his bare hands and then eat it afterwards. Oh sure, as origins go, it doesn't have the charm of Hatchet - but it does have a man killing and eating a white alligator after it murders his sister slash wife.

And the unintentional comedy doesn't finish there. There's a gratuitous lesbian scene that seems to come out of nowhere, followed by a man killing a snake and squirting its blood in the aforementioned occasional lesbian's face. Meanwhile, The Creature (unseen until well past the halfway mark) skulks in the bushes making clicky Predator sounds. When it finally does appear, it looks like the Alien from the end of Alien: Resurrection.

There's an almost constant force of unintentional hilarity. Sid Haig punches a woman in the face. After failing to get jiggy with her too-drunk friend, the Sometimes Sappho finds a man in the bushes and randomly starts jerking him off. But we shouldn't begrudge this bisexual babe her pleasures of the flesh; after all, she has rather a raw deal from Creature. Kidnapped by Haig and his Hillbillies, she suffers Texas Chain Saw Massacre bondage (complete with burlap gag) and winds up with her feet cut off.

Given Creature's incompetence, misogyny and thorough cheapness, it's beyond me how it managed to stagger past the Sy-Fy channel and into cinemas. The acting is good, I suppose, even if Sid Haig does look like he should be wearing clown makeup. Mehcad Brooks does a sterling job as the film's hero. His earnestness in the face of Creature's stupid rubber monster is truly admirable. It looks a lot like an episode of True Blood, so maybe they were trying to coast on that film's glory.

"Guys," one of the characters exclaims, as she wanders out of her tent wearing not much, "this isn't funny." I beg to differ.

Naughty Bear

How exactly does one fuck up a premise like Naughty Bear? Essentially Friday The Thirteenth with teddy bears, Naughty Bear sounds on paper like the Best Thing Since Ever. In reality, it isn't. It's actually one of the worst games I've ever played. What should be Manhunt with teddy bears ends up as like Rugrats (that version for the PS1) with teddy bears. Naughty Bear, despite its adult ambitions, is every bit as facile, boring, stupid and essentially unplayable as a children's game.

Disclaimer: Naughty Bear is nothing like Rugrats for the PS1. I actually really enjoyed Rugrats on the PS1. Especially the golf minigames. And I was something like 15 at the time (what, mother wouldn't let me play Resident Evil). What I'm saying is that Rugrats was good and this isn't.

I played the first two levels of Naughty Bear and gave up after that. In the first level, you discover that all the teddy bears on, idunno, Teddy Bear Island, are holding a party and Naughty isn't invited. Despite Naughty Bear being a naughty ol' bear, the other bears treat him pretty shitty. So they got it coming. Anyway, the purpose of the game is to punish the bearstards who've wronged you by terrifying them out of their fur and killing them one by one. Like Arkham Asylum except not good or fun or playable.

So you're encouraged to stalk your victims and scare them into either insanity or suicide. You do this by breaking windows, sabotaging their teddy bear electronics and screaming in their faces. Actually, the screaming is the best bit. You sneak up on someone, grab it (occasionally even holding a blade to its neck) and scream into its face. Makes me LOL every time, despite the amount of shit you have to put up with to get to that point.

The graphics are pleasant but unpolished. The voice acting and animations are amusing but in no way worth sitting through for the repetitive, dull and glitchy gameplay. It's frustratingly difficult - or at least, you won't want to give the time it takes to become good at it - and the levels are linear and samey. You'll spend about half an hour trying to force yourself to like Naughty Bear, but all in vain. It defies likeability.

Do not let anyone or anything fool you into thinking otherwise: Naughty Bear is not a good game. Don't listen to that nagging thought in the back of your mind that says "it's got a teddy bear murdering other teddy bears with a fucking axe". Don't even let the fact you can unlock a hockey mask sway you. I really wanted to love it, but Naughty Bear is just unBearable.

Scary Movie 3

The Charlie Sheen semi-blogathon continues

Director: David Zucker (2003)
Starring: Charlie Sheen, Anna Faris, Leslie Neilsen, Pamela Anderson
Find it: IMDB, Amazon

The last quarter-way tolerable Scary Movie and the first to dip to a PG-13 rating. Heralded the coming of other kiddified Movie Movies. Stars Charlie Sheen and the late great Leslie Neilsen. A mixed bag, then. By which I mean a mixed bag of shit.

Charlie Sheen plays the Mel Gibson role in this spoof of Night Shyamalan's Signs (coincidentally, his last tolerable movie too) whilst the indefatigable Anna Faris mugs about for a Ring bit. That they couldn't even get a Wayans brother to appear in this Movie speaks volumes for its quality. They managed Leslie Neilsen, Charlie Sheen and the fat black guy from off've Transformers though, which is far more than is deserved. We'll take Anna Faris as a given, since she'll appear in literally anything. And yet I don't have the heart to dislike Anna Faris. I'll forgive her even My Super Ex Girlfriend.

The 'jokes' range from Anna Faris falling over a lot (HA) to someone mishandling a corpse (HA HA; and done a lot better in Drag Me To Hell) to Leslie Neilsen mistaking disabled people for aliens (HA HA HA). I feel sorry for all of the actors involved, except for Charlie Sheen, who obviously doesn't give a fuck. If he had been in Signs instead of Mel Gibson, it would have made for a much better movie. Some jokes are funny. Some are amusing. Most of them aren't. Few of them are horror movie related. The Simon Cowell cameo is horrible, even if he does get shot. And the 8 Mile skit is horrible. Hot Shots: Part Deux this ain't.

If nothing else, it's funnier than Two And A Half Men. But fuck you if you think I'm labelling this in the 'comedy' section.

I Spit On Your Grave (2010)

Director: Steven R. Monroe (2010)

Starring: Sarah Butler, Jeff Branson, Andrew Howard

Find it: No, really, don't.

So good a story they told it twice. Now with better acting and inappropriately competent direction. But still irredeemably shit and possibly more morally bankrupt than the original. Where Mier Zarchi's 1978 original was, well, original and saw itself as a feminist piece, this remake just looks and feels like an exercise in moneyspinning unoriginality. Zarchi was trying to make a statement about rape (not very well, I should say). This hunk of horseshit is motivated entirely by "you know what'll make us some money? Let's remake I Spit On Your Grave."

If you don't know the plot, I recommend you go away now. It'll leave your mind an infitely better place. I wish I didn't know either version of this movie existed. I resent having the plot of I Spit On Your Grave stuck in my memory. Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler) is a writer who heads out to an isolated cabin to get some work done. Instead, she runs into a gang of Hillbilly rapists determined to do what they do best. But because Zarchi's brand of 'rape, rinse, repeat' just won't cut it nowadays, we have to have torture too. Physical and psychological and with a baseball bat and a bottle and then a gun. Once all the rape is done with, revenge commences (reluctantly, I might add. Much like the original, Spit '10 is far less interested in Jennifer's revenge than it is her rape). There are 60 minutes of torture/rape and about 40 minutes of revenge. Revenge which is just more torture, really. Day Of The Woman my arse.

There's a scene 10 minutes in where Jennifer is spied upon whilst dressed only in her underwear. But the way it's framed isn't creepy or scary; it's like a scene cut from The Unborn. The camera makes us complicit with the rapists without even realising that it's doing so. It letches gleefully off've Jennifer, unironically and like any other silly horror movie would. But I Spit On Your Grave isn't supposed to be any other silly horror movie. By sleazing on her thusly - and inviting us to do so too - director Steven Monroe is as complicit in her rape as the rapists themselves. For all of its faults (and it has a fucking lot) Spit '78 is a remarkably unsexy movie. This version should have starred Megan Fox or Odette Yustman. It's designed to titillate as much as it is terrify. Which misses the point entirely.

The Hollywood sheen, rather than improving the story, more highlights its faults. With all the money and talent at hand, they chose to make this lump of shit? They chose this as a story which needed telling again? There are jump scares, twists and a creepy horror movie soundtrack. Which miss the point even more. The first forty minutes are all buildup to the rape itself. That's 40 minutes waiting to watch someone get raped and then there are about 15 minutes of the act itself. Day Of The Woman? Fuck off. Never before has that alternate moniker seemed so condescending. "Oh we just spent 50 minutes raping and torturing the girl: but it's okay, she chops his willy off at the end. BTW, she gets naked."

Admittedly, the revenge is better done than before. It'd be satisfying if you didn't just hate the film itself so much. Plus Jennifer talks a lot and her dialogue really isn't very interesting. She wisecracks far too much.

RAPIST: Fuck you.

JENNIFER: I already did that. I didn't like it very much.

[Hold for applause]

JENNIFER shoves shotgun up RAPIST'S arse.

RAPIST: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh

JENNIFER: I thought you were an ass man.

[Applause]

She's a regular comedian and nowhere near as scary as Camille Keaton, who actually seemed pissed off. Sarah Butler is a good actress, but fails to really nail anything other than kooky emo.

It's nihilistic and stupid and horrible and unpleasant (which, I suppose, it's supposed to be) and boring and offensive and literally a punch in the face to every real horror fan out there. Much as it did during the video nasty era, I Spit On Your Grave makes us all look bad in the process. It'll be called sick and depraved and people will want it banned. And fans of horror will get the blame. I expect to be on some sort of register now, simply for having watched it.

I Spit On Your Grave 1978 is a legitimate piece of horror cinema history. I Spit On Your Grave 2010 isn't. It achieves precisely one thing, which I thought no movie ever could: it makes me hate the original flick ever so (very) slightly less.

The Killer Inside Me

Director: Michael Winterbottom (2010)

Starring: Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

AKA The Horseshit Inside My DVD Player. In turns critically acclaimed and reviled, The Killer Inside Me is basically Dexter bereft of all the good qualities that make Dexter enjoyable. The allegedly talented Affleck brother plays Lou Ford, a small-town Deputy and serial killer. Like the thematically sort of similar Dexter Morgan, Lou is a mild-mannered, unassuming and friendly fellow. He spends his days working with the police (occasionally investigating his own crimes) and even manages to have friends and a hot girlfriend, despite struggling with terrible urges to do equally terrible things. Only Lou doesn't really struggle with his urges. He succumbs to the lot and is a far less interesting character for it. He's an unlikeable, unsympathetic idiot with no class or intelligence. And he has a really irritating voice. And looks kind of like Ben Affleck.

Most of my complaints are, I suppose, intentional on the movie's part. For all of Michael C. Hall's likeability, it's easy to forget that you're not supposed to root for the bad guy. Lou Ford is a more realistic serial killer. Lou is what serial killers are really like. Irritating and a little bit camp. It's exactly like Jim Thompson's novel, which is equally unlikeable and almost as banal.

Everyone other than Affleck is fine. Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson are rewarded with thankless roles (I think Alba's nude body double probably gets more screentime than she does) whilst Mentalist Simon Baker, Bill Pullman and Ned Beatty aren't given nearly enough to do, despite being far more interesting/better than the lead character/actor. The music is nice, Winterbottom's direction is competent. And, if you can get past the movie's mysoginy and banality, some of the grittier scenes pack a certain punch (no pun intended). All this, of course, depends on your level of tolerance for women being hit repeatedly in the face.

Like its central character, The Killer Inside Me is ultimately not a very interesting movie. It justifies its existence by the horrible things it does, but mostly just comes across as smug, needlessly cruel, facile and downright unlikeable.

Horsemen

Director: Jonas Akerlund (2009)
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ziyi Zhang, Lou Taylor Pucci
Find it online: IMDB, Amazon

There's a reason Se7en stars Kevin Spacey as the killer and not a bunch of teenagers. One, because Kevin Spacey can act and (most) teenager's can't. And two, because whingeing teenagers fucking suck. Horsemen fucking sucks, despite the best efforts of Dennis Quaid and a character called 'Stingray'. It's a stupid movie, from its Se7en-lite aesthetics to its predictable and banal use of torture. There's not a convincing or scary villain in the whole movie and it builds to a dull, highly forseeable 'climax' which is in no way apocalyptic, scary, thrilling or even interesting. Dennis Quaid looks tired and the movie's attempt at creating a teenage female Hannibal Lecter (Ziyi Zhang) is laughable. Or it would be if it wasn't so depressingly ridiculous.

It's the sort of cliched cop movie that stars professional 'that guy' Barry Shabaka Henley as a cop boss and wastes Peter Stormare as its signposted red herring. As soon as you see Quaid's hunched, depressed looking cop you can tell that he's probably suffering a dead wife (which he is) and struggling to bring up kids that hate him (he does and they do). As the thing stumbles on and on, its outcome becomes more and more predictable, more inconsequential and more stupid. It's an impressive 'thriller' that makes its villains less scary as the movie goes on. Actually, no, Horsemen is not an impressive thriller; not even in an ironic sense.

"Come and see", the movie's villains taunt, repeatedly. "Come and see." No, don't.

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams

Director: Tim Sullivan (2010)

Starring: Bill Moseley, Lin Shaye, Christa Campbell

Find it online: IMDB, Amazon UK, Amazon US

Disclaimer: I didn't watch this movie all the way through. But there is actually nothing that could possibly ever have happened in the last twenty minutes to earn this shitty movie even one Scream Queen. Field Of Screams is literally unwatchable. It makes the previous Maniacs movies look Oscarworthy and Herschell Gordon Lewis like Dario Argento. 2001 Maniacs: Field Of Screams is maybe the worst movie of 2010 so far and definitely the worst STD sequel to anything half-good since Wrong Turn 3. This isn't hyperbole or the whinings of a man incapable of appreciating cheesy splatter (I loved the original 2001 Maniacs): Field Of Screams is atrocious in every single way. It's irredeemable toss without any of the spirit, creativity, fun or Robert Englund that its predecessor possesses. I hate this movie and I hate myself for watching it.

After supplies run dry back home, the 2001 Maniacs take to the road in search of fresh meat. In a school bus. Yes, a supposed 2001 maniacs travel around in an apparently TARDIS sized school bus. I'm not sure if there are even 20 maniacs in this movie, let alone 2001. They're almost outnumbered by their Northern prey. Their victims are a gaggle of Hollywood TV types, creating a TV show that's apparently supposed to be spoofing the Paris & Nicole thing. Hilarious characterisation gets us a Jewish money-grabbing director with stereotypical sideburn things, a Mexican chappy called Jesus, some blonde bimbos and black people who constantly refer to their own skin colour. Field Of Screams mistakes edginess for racism and has its characters speak in a series of racial slurs and epithets. Thankfully, I was too busy being offended by its all-out shittiness than its racism. No-one will really be offended by this movie because no-one of any consequence or intelligence will get much further than the horrible title sequence.

I feel bad for my poor brain cells but even worse for Bill Moseley and Lin Shaye, who are far too good for the likes of this crap. Moseley gives it his all, but there's only so far talent and charisma will get you when nobody else has any. I'm genuinely embarrassed for poor Shaye, forced into a series of ridiculous costumes and scenarios.

Even when one considers its low-budget splatterpunk aspirations, Field Of Screams is a failure. It's terrible, both technically and morally. I've seen better horror, better acting and better scripting on Youtube. Every single thing about it is shit. The South's Gonna Rise Again? I fucking hope not.

Why the fuck not. Titanic 2

Director: Shane Van Dyke (2010)

Starring: Bruce Davison, Brooke Burns, Shane Van Dyke
Find it: IMDB. Not this, which sounds intriguing but is probably also shit.

So bad it's still very bad. Sometimes, with movies such as Titanic 2 and Mega Pirhana, they should just stop and leave it at the title. Everything that comes thereafter is just bound to be a disappointment. And unless Titanic 2 was to feature zombie Leonardo DiCaprio haunting that old lady for hogging the fucking raft (Mr. Cameron, the idea's yours for a small fee) or be that episode of Futurama, then it was never going to be any good. And Van Dyke's movie features no zombie Leonardo DiCaprio (to be fair, DiCaprio is probably a little out of Syfy's budget) and is definitely not that episode of Futurama. If it gains even a single Screaming Scream Queen below then that's because recalling the Titanic episode of Futurama put me in a good mood. Needless to say, Titanic 2 was not directed by James Cameron.

There are various ways in which Titanic 2 could have been a decent movie, none of which are present in the film itself. For starters, it doesn't star any notable B-movie stars and for seconds, it's not as self-aware or ironic as the title might suggest. In fact, it's nothing more than a dull disaster movie blessed with a good idea and that guy who played an asshole politician in X Men. It's not even as good as the director's own name. And yes, Shane Van Dyke is related to exactly who you think he might be.

On the 100th anniversary of the doomed liner's sinking, a cruise ship sets sail across the Ocean Blue. What happens next you couldn't make up, except someone did. A tsunami flings an iceberg into the ship's path. Cue many crappy CGI flames, long shots which sort of remind you of Cameron's Titanic and overuse of red and green camera filters. Thanks to the title, Titanic 2 will probably find itself more viewers than it deserves. Much like it has found this review a staggering 9,772 page views since September 2010. Compare this with The Disappearance Of Alice Creed's paltry 724 views and we can see how much Titanic 2 coasts along on its name alone.

Granted, those foolish viewers won't be watching more than the first five minutes, much like none of you readers will have gotten past the first paragraph of this review. Long enough to realise that Leonardo isn't in Titanic 2 and this review wasn't written by somebody worth listening to. The likes of Mega Pirhana and Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus sort of pretended to try to do something with the title; and both have a handful of scenes worth watching. Titanic 2 doesn't even have one. What it does have, is one single Scream Queen lady. And that's because the Futurama reference I wrote in the first paragraph put me in a generous mood. The rest of the movie made me want to go punch icebergs in the face.