Caught this terrible movie on TCM today. I saw it on it's first release in 1965, and hated it then. I was 14. Later in my life I became friends with Tony Curtis, who had nearly nothing good to say about this abomination of a 2 hour and 40 minute live action cartoon. The only thing Tony told me about this bad timewaster was the difficulty in not getting hit in the "famous" pie fight. I believed him. Jack Lemmon swallows the movie screaming about everything as the notorious Professor Fate, one of cinema's worst annoying villains until the Prince of Whatever appears in a double role for the aformentioned screaming Lemmon. Nothing in this movie is good, although it had a big budget and star power. Tony was very nice when I asked about this movie experience, mostly by saying it was a paycheck and he liked working with Natalie Wood. He also enjoyed the animated sparkle his teeth got a few times when he had a smiling closeup. Don't waste your time with this stupid exercise that wanted to cash in on "Around the World in 80 Days". Big, noisy, and mostly stupid for the160 minutes running time. Ugh.
Reviews
16 Reviews
Meg 2: The Trench
(2023)
Stubble power can stop a gazillion ton megalodon.
13 September 2023
Warning: Spoilers
This movie stinks like three day old fish in the back of your refrigerator. Jason Statham's famous stubble (and a well placed leg) can hold back a rampaging prehistoric shark. Uh-huh. This is a waste of anyone's time, the script is nothing but tired action tropes stitched together. Sullen but sassy teen? Check. Cute little dog escapes being eaten by speedy CGI reptiles. Check. Why is there a luxury spa retreat hotel on an island that is crawling with these aforementioned reptiles? Check. A giant octopus last seen in 1955's "It Came From Beneath the Sea" makes an appearance and has a Ray Harryhausen fight with the megalodon that was held back by The Stubble. Double check. Not a real thriller/action/comedy, and worst of all, boring. Wait for this to turn up in the DVD bin at a Dollar General near you.
F.W.Murnau's "Nosferatu" is the better depiction of this material.
31 August 2023
Do yourself a favor and watch the great grandfather of all vampire movies, F. W. Murnau's "Nosferatu". Murnau's depiction of the doomed Demeter and it's crew last only about two minutes on screen, but it's far superior to this nearly two hour exercise in tedium. As a "reimagining" of great source material, "Demeter" comes off as needless pandering to today's audiences with extraneous characters and the dumbest sailors ever seen. Murnau really captures the horror brought on board, in the scene where the vampire rises and stalks the remaining crew. This film, while pretty to look at, is a feeble attempt to start another franchise...which you know if you managed to make it to the last bit before the credits. Four stars for being nice to look at, if you managed to stay awake. Another needless rethinking of a classic book and the fright film that started it all.
Babylon
(I) (2022)
Damien Chazelle attempts being Ken Russell and fails.
7 March 2023
Warning: Spoilers
"Babylon" forced me to come to IMDB and write a few things. First, I want the 3+ hours I spent watching this total hot mess back. At it's core, "Babylon" is a terrible version of director Ken Russell's notorious 1971 outrage, "The Devils". Russell, always the enfant terrible of the 70s brought authentic and palpable hysteria to everything he touched, leaving "The Devils" as his masterpiece. Damien Chazelle hasn't the insight to channel Russell in any sense, which is obvious from the first orgy/party sequence in "Babylon". Russell provided authentic dialog, costumes, makeup, settings and a world class cadre of actors who knew what they were doing. Chazelle has Pitt, Robbie, Maguire, Flea, Smart, and about 2000 others who don't fit the period, anachronistic costumes, speech patterns, music, etc. It's a stroke movie for people who are hot for soft core porn featuring a plethora of bodily fluids. Still, it's pretty from time to time. It does go off the rails in the third act as it turns into a horror movie, but manages to give the viewer the best thing in the movie, Toby Maguire as a crime boss who drinks brandy and ether cocktails, Lord of the A**hole of LA. A jaw dropping performance that was necessary to wake the audience up. Nothing needs to be said about Pitt or Robbie, he's basically playing himself, while Robbie sucks up coke, wears little to no underwear, and fights a rattlesnake for absolutely no reason other than to begin a lesbian affair. Her performance is energetic, but I was happy when she wasn't on screen. Only Diego Calva brings some much needed centering to this overblown tale of phony debauchery. A far better treatment of Hollywood's excesses was already done, Netflix's "Hollywood, The True Story of Scotty Bowers" (2020). In closing, I think Ken Russell is somewhere laughing his a** off. He could bring the madness that Damien Chazelle can only dream of.
Hellraiser
(2022)
Weak reimagining of a classic.
8 October 2022
So. "Hellraiser" 2022 rears it's pin-encrusted head. It's a listless weak version of both the original Clive Barker story and the 1987 classic, this overly long reboot wears out it's welcome by at least 30 minutes. It's actually dull, which came as a real surprise. This lacks the vicious undercurrent that made the first iteration of Barker's "The Hell-bound Heart" so visceral. Sure, there's the gore factor here, but it's all done in some fashion shoot style. There's nothing here that makes your skin crawl. It's not dirty enough, whereas the original had blood, sweat, tears, and grime in abundance. Add to the general ennui a cast of actors who don't bring any authentic fear of the situation they're in, especially the lead actress who sets the whole shebang in motion. Even the Priest comes off as a collectible figurine, there's no terror to be found when the character finally appears.
Sad, it could have been so much better.
Sad, it could have been so much better.
The Munsters
(2022)
Frightening, but not in a good way.
29 September 2022
Whoever gave Rob Zombie the money to make this terrible exercise in nostalgia must be yanking their hair out. We get it, Rob loves Halloween. A lot. He loves retro imagery, right down to the classic Beistle cardboard pin-ups I used to see in my fourth grade classroom in the 50s. Interesting that this movie was evidently shot in Hungary, far from the watchful eyes of the financing folks. The Munsters never was a very good TV show, relying on the collision of the Universal monsters from the 30s and 40s with "normal" people. It never had the wry writing that the Addams Family had, yet the original cast (Gwyenne, De Carlo, and Lewis) played their parts well, bringing some gravitas to their characters. Here, Zombie goes for the jugular and attempts to hammer the thin premise of scary vs regular in a comedy that just isn't funny. It's so frantic and loud (especially actor Richard Brake) that there's no let up or time to enjoy any of the jokes that might land where they should. Sherri Moon is equally annoying here, although she must have watched all the original Munsters TV episodes to attempt copying Yvonne De Carlo's Lily, down to the hand gestures, but she's still a bad actor. It's sad indeed that the brightest spot in this junky mess is the use of "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein"(1948), arguably the first and best horror/comedy. No wonder Universal just sold this to Netflix for a handful of stale candy corn. Meh.
The Great Ziegfeld
(1936)
Amazing kitsch amped up to the nth degree
11 September 2022
This overblown biography of Florence Ziegfeld is still the epitome of Hollywood kitsch. While a long, and often tedious biopic, it's worth the watch to see MGM do what it did best: turn everything up to 11 on the amp and drown the audience in spectacle. The sheer enormity and creative power of the machine that was MGM at the time would never be more jaw-dropping than the "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" sequence. If you've never seen it, you should. This colossal showstopper is a testament to the many individuals who made it happen. Rumored for many years to be a one-take sequence, it isn't. There is a break in the flow that is pretty visible, but doesn't detract from what's occurring. The huge machine that powered the revolving tower of costumed players must have been an engineering marvel. How the whole shebang was brought to life without modern special effects or CGI is something special, the likes of which we'll never see again. Kudos to whoever figured out the manufacture of the enormous curtain that revolves around the tower, especially when it descends to end the whole enterprise. That sequence alone is worth sitting through, with the opportunity to see the real Fanny Brice sing. Spotting the "Oz" gang is also fun, Billie Burke, Ray Bolger, Frank Morgan would go on to appear in a true MGM classic only three years after this ponderous marvel of kitsch. Judy Garland was too young to appear here, but went on to star in "Zeigfeld Girl" some years later. Louise Rainer won an Oscar for her performance doing pretty much nothing but moping around and obsessing over Flo as a displaced French chanteuse.
Snoozefest deluxe
6 April 2022
How did this ultra-dull movie get financed? How did the director manage to make one hour and eighteen minutes seem to drag on...and on...and on? Did the several actors appearing in this stupid "Lovecraftian" tale drink codine cough syrup before every take? Everything moves in slow motion, the cult members are wearing cheap hooded taffeta costumes from Party City, and there are about 20 seconds of creature effects which you can see in the trailer. Avoid, this stinks like Cthulhu farts. One star, which is being generous.
Viva Las Vegas
(1964)
George Sidney's love letter to Ann-Margret
25 February 2022
Just watched this dreary movie on TCM. I lived in Vegas for 25 years and had contact with many people in the entertainment industry. I made an acquaintance with George Sidney, the legendary director from MGM who ended up his work at the studios with this crummy Elvis drive-in junk. The only thing you really need to know is this: Mr. Sidney had the hots for Ann-Margret. Major hots. He was also a photographer and had hundreds of photos of Ann-Margaret in his studio. From casting her in "Bye Bye Birdie" to this vapid Elvis project, his strange obsession with Ann-M is on full display. Look no further than her warbling early in the movie wearing a yellow bathing suit ensemble that's fairly pornographic. He had already dressed his obsession in yellow for the opening and closing sequences of "Birdie" where Ann-M shows off her charms. Elvis is actually pushed aside to let Ann do her thing by uncontrolled dancing every ten minutes. Songs in this movie stink, only the title tune has any life in it. The "day date" sequence in this movie must have been funded by the Chamber of Commerce in Vegas, it's a tiresome commercial for all the fun things you can do in a day while visiting: scooter races, Wild West shoot-outs, water skiing, personal helicopter rides, singing and dancing. Yeah, it made money but let's not forget that Elvis ended his career in Vegas, a bloated entertainer at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1972. Sad. George Sidney directed the Hollywood elite but this movie was nothing but a showcase for his obsession, Elvis be damned.
Penny Serenade
(1941)
Tissue time
22 December 2021
So. I'm a 71 year old movie maven, and I've seen "Penny Serenade" many times. As a fairly crusty old guy, George Stevens's soaper still has the power to make me reach for a Kleenex or two. This might surpass Spielberg's "ET" as the most manipulative weeper of all time. Director Stevens is more astute than Spielberg though, he brackets the sorrow with happiness, which makes the emotional blows a bit harder to process. While this soaper boasts great performances from Irene Dunne and the first Oscar nomination for Cary Grant, there are two better turns on view here. One is from veteran Beulah Bondi as the adoption manager. The other is a superlative performance of the massively underrated Edgar Buchanan as Applejack. It's his scene in which he shows Dunne how to bathe the baby that always makes me reach for a tissue. When he calls the baby "Peanut", I'm a goner. Just saying. Highly recommended for those who want to see great actors do what made them great.
Bird Box
(2018)
Don't look now.
29 December 2018
Well, "Bird Box" was one big disappointment due to the hype surrounding it. Like most "original" movies thrown to the public via Netflix, it was a complete waste of two plus hours and never lived up to the word of mouth that it was "terrifying". Perhaps in some other dimension this flick is scary, but not this one. Let's sort out the weak excuses here by the ten star reviewers, OK?
"Bird Box" is another end of the world stories, there are many to choose from. BB's closest new cousin is "A Quiet Place" replacing not making noise with not looking at the whatever it is causing all the trouble. Both are based on books, with "A Quiet Place" getting the nod for getting to the public first. It in itself wasn't an original idea, based on a book called "The Silence" that came out some years ago. In that story, nasty little reptile-birds were released from a hidden ecosystem and devastated humans by their sensitive hearing. This idea appeared in the Fifties in the book "Day of the Triffids". At least in both those books we were allowed to see the problem, but in "Bird Box" we're expected to believe a woman with two children can overcome major physical trauma to reach a safe place that probably isn't so safe. Roll credits.
No real explanation is given for the whatever it is that causes immediate suicide in reasonable people. We never really "see" it, other than the not so special effects that indicate the whatever is adept at moving bushes in a forest. People invest in a story, so naturally they're unhappy when they don't get any bang for their buck. Myself, I went to sleep about 45 minutes into this silly movie and woke up about ten minutes before the end. I was better off asleep.
Silly, non-plausible, badly directed, and yet another TV outing featuring Sarah Paulson. She's great in AHS but does she need to be in everything? Yawn.
"Bird Box" is another end of the world stories, there are many to choose from. BB's closest new cousin is "A Quiet Place" replacing not making noise with not looking at the whatever it is causing all the trouble. Both are based on books, with "A Quiet Place" getting the nod for getting to the public first. It in itself wasn't an original idea, based on a book called "The Silence" that came out some years ago. In that story, nasty little reptile-birds were released from a hidden ecosystem and devastated humans by their sensitive hearing. This idea appeared in the Fifties in the book "Day of the Triffids". At least in both those books we were allowed to see the problem, but in "Bird Box" we're expected to believe a woman with two children can overcome major physical trauma to reach a safe place that probably isn't so safe. Roll credits.
No real explanation is given for the whatever it is that causes immediate suicide in reasonable people. We never really "see" it, other than the not so special effects that indicate the whatever is adept at moving bushes in a forest. People invest in a story, so naturally they're unhappy when they don't get any bang for their buck. Myself, I went to sleep about 45 minutes into this silly movie and woke up about ten minutes before the end. I was better off asleep.
Silly, non-plausible, badly directed, and yet another TV outing featuring Sarah Paulson. She's great in AHS but does she need to be in everything? Yawn.
Scooby Doothulu
8 December 2017
Who thought that turning H.P.Lovecraft's brooding cosmic horror into fodder for kids tweaking on Lucky Charms was a good idea?
"Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom" is a sequel to "Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom", and as bad as the first foray into kiddie dimension hopping was, this second go-round is even worse. The use of the word "Frozen" in the 2016 first feature title was nothing more than a marketing tool to sell this substandard animated feature to unsuspecting parents at Toys 'R' Us. Now we have the terrible sequel, which has faint echoes of Disney's "Atlantis", or "The Little Mermaid" (little Howard is here seen turning into a fish and becoming an acolyte of the sea-god Dagon). Try explaining all this to your seven-year old.
The title character, the young Howard Lovecraft is presented as a waifish snaggletoothed Goth kid complete with black raccoon eye makeup stolen from Robert Smith of the band, The Cure. Little Howie runs between dimensions trying to save his mother, his father, and his pet Spot who is in reality the elder god Cthulhu. The dread, horror, and insanity found in H.P.Lovecraft's tales of fear have been dumbed down to Scooby-Doo levels rendered in terrible animation that went out of fashion decades ago. What kid could follow, or understand the storyline here? It's all a sugary sort of nightmare in pretty colors and faint echoes of Harry Potter uttering spells that stop monsters in their tracks.
I watched this simply for the same reason people slow down to see a bad accident on the freeway. Some part of your reptile brain knows better than to watch, but you do it anyway. Whoever gave the go-ahead to make a Saturday morning TV cartoon out of one of literature's greatest visionaries should rethink their career arc. This stupid exercise in kiddy occultism was many things, but magically delicious wasn't one of them.
"Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom" is a sequel to "Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom", and as bad as the first foray into kiddie dimension hopping was, this second go-round is even worse. The use of the word "Frozen" in the 2016 first feature title was nothing more than a marketing tool to sell this substandard animated feature to unsuspecting parents at Toys 'R' Us. Now we have the terrible sequel, which has faint echoes of Disney's "Atlantis", or "The Little Mermaid" (little Howard is here seen turning into a fish and becoming an acolyte of the sea-god Dagon). Try explaining all this to your seven-year old.
The title character, the young Howard Lovecraft is presented as a waifish snaggletoothed Goth kid complete with black raccoon eye makeup stolen from Robert Smith of the band, The Cure. Little Howie runs between dimensions trying to save his mother, his father, and his pet Spot who is in reality the elder god Cthulhu. The dread, horror, and insanity found in H.P.Lovecraft's tales of fear have been dumbed down to Scooby-Doo levels rendered in terrible animation that went out of fashion decades ago. What kid could follow, or understand the storyline here? It's all a sugary sort of nightmare in pretty colors and faint echoes of Harry Potter uttering spells that stop monsters in their tracks.
I watched this simply for the same reason people slow down to see a bad accident on the freeway. Some part of your reptile brain knows better than to watch, but you do it anyway. Whoever gave the go-ahead to make a Saturday morning TV cartoon out of one of literature's greatest visionaries should rethink their career arc. This stupid exercise in kiddy occultism was many things, but magically delicious wasn't one of them.
The Gracefield Incident
(2017)
Eye see aliens!
23 July 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Idiotic sci-fi, from someone who's attempting to escape the "found footage" label by crossing over into "found eyeball-cam footage". See? These two things are not the same at all! Are you blind, or what?
Spoilers:
Our director.Mathieu Ratthe, takes the lead acting honors as "Matthew", a man who becomes involved in an auto accident as he takes his pregnant about to give birth wife/girlfriend/ partner/ whatever to the hospital. Crash. No baby, but Matthew survives, as does the significant other. Months later, he sets up his empty eye socket (evidently a souvenir from the earlier accident) as a camera! He's going on an outing to a remote luxury cabin with his recovered gal pal and other friends (all of whom are millennial douches) for some relaxation.
All the men in this waste of time look alike. Scruffy half-beards bristle, but none of that five o'clock shadow can save them from their own stupidity. They reach said remote cabin and party! Party! Party! While getting down, a something whizzes overhead. Meteor? UFO? Bottle rocket? You can guess. Idiot eye-cam guy and his unshaven pals follow the whatsit into the woods. In a scene directly lifted from 1958's "The Blob", our bristly guys find the flaming something and handle the object without protection, because they're excited to have found this unknown visitor. No one pays attention to what might happen.
Later in the evening (this whole mess occurs during one night), the party monsters are subjected to scary noises and TVs that keep broadcasting a mysterious image. Stupid people wander around in the dark following said noises and fleeting glimpses of well, aliens. You knew this already and hope the whole mess you're watching is over soon. Did you figure out that the freezing "thing" the beard growers found in a dark hole in the woods was an...egg? Yes! Some CGI alien evidently dropped it's frozen progeny from a spacecraft (how that happened is anyone's guess)and is just trying to get Junior back on the spaceship. Mr. Eyecam and Co. run around breathing heavy and acting afraid, until the end, when the alien gets Junior and beams up. Months later, Mr. Eyecam and his gal pal have a baby! Will there be a sequel?
A terrible waste of time which is why fast forward on any device was invented. Shaky cam, ridiculous behavior from all the characters, stolen ideas from "The Blob", "Signs", "The Blair Witch Project" and other, more inventive scare-flicks. I should have known better when I saw the "Gracefield Incident" title, which is another way to lure viewers who instantly think this might have something to do with the "Cloverfield" franchise.
Recommended only for those with five day stubble who look like their bro pals and their whiny girlfriends stuck in the woods and have no sense. Stay away from this crap, the only innovation is the eye-cam, which ultimately serves no purpose other than a novelty. That point of view disappears about halfway through this paste-up of other, better and more compelling movies about wandering in the woods with a failing flashlight.
Spoilers:
Our director.Mathieu Ratthe, takes the lead acting honors as "Matthew", a man who becomes involved in an auto accident as he takes his pregnant about to give birth wife/girlfriend/ partner/ whatever to the hospital. Crash. No baby, but Matthew survives, as does the significant other. Months later, he sets up his empty eye socket (evidently a souvenir from the earlier accident) as a camera! He's going on an outing to a remote luxury cabin with his recovered gal pal and other friends (all of whom are millennial douches) for some relaxation.
All the men in this waste of time look alike. Scruffy half-beards bristle, but none of that five o'clock shadow can save them from their own stupidity. They reach said remote cabin and party! Party! Party! While getting down, a something whizzes overhead. Meteor? UFO? Bottle rocket? You can guess. Idiot eye-cam guy and his unshaven pals follow the whatsit into the woods. In a scene directly lifted from 1958's "The Blob", our bristly guys find the flaming something and handle the object without protection, because they're excited to have found this unknown visitor. No one pays attention to what might happen.
Later in the evening (this whole mess occurs during one night), the party monsters are subjected to scary noises and TVs that keep broadcasting a mysterious image. Stupid people wander around in the dark following said noises and fleeting glimpses of well, aliens. You knew this already and hope the whole mess you're watching is over soon. Did you figure out that the freezing "thing" the beard growers found in a dark hole in the woods was an...egg? Yes! Some CGI alien evidently dropped it's frozen progeny from a spacecraft (how that happened is anyone's guess)and is just trying to get Junior back on the spaceship. Mr. Eyecam and Co. run around breathing heavy and acting afraid, until the end, when the alien gets Junior and beams up. Months later, Mr. Eyecam and his gal pal have a baby! Will there be a sequel?
A terrible waste of time which is why fast forward on any device was invented. Shaky cam, ridiculous behavior from all the characters, stolen ideas from "The Blob", "Signs", "The Blair Witch Project" and other, more inventive scare-flicks. I should have known better when I saw the "Gracefield Incident" title, which is another way to lure viewers who instantly think this might have something to do with the "Cloverfield" franchise.
Recommended only for those with five day stubble who look like their bro pals and their whiny girlfriends stuck in the woods and have no sense. Stay away from this crap, the only innovation is the eye-cam, which ultimately serves no purpose other than a novelty. That point of view disappears about halfway through this paste-up of other, better and more compelling movies about wandering in the woods with a failing flashlight.
Man Vs.
(2015)
Male model in the woods playing survivalist
21 June 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Actor Chris Diamantopoulos is a handsome guy. Viewers are made aware of this from the first minutes of this earnest, yet ultimately predictable exercise. Here, our intrepid male model is pretending to be a TV survivalist dropped in a remote Canadian wilderness filming a low-rent cable series about man vs nature. He has a satellite phone with which he calls his crew and "checks in" within hours of being set loose in a wilderness that's not really very remote, or wild. In one scene, while the director is attempting to ratchet up the tension about the "something" that ends up stalking the guy in the wild, you can see cars on a road behind him. Really. Not once can you actually believe he's out in the deep scary woods. Mr. Diamantopoulos has a very nice beard, which is sort of a character unto itself. Problem is, if this luxurious face-fur is unchecked by a razor for five days, shouldn't his neck beard fill in? This guy runs around in circles in the woods for five days dodging an alien that you figured out was the mystery chess player early on. The Beard remains trimmed, although no disposable razors are in sight. Sloppy film continuity ruins this small exercise, as do bad CG effects. Our lead actor really pulls out all the stops acting terrified, but suddenly has the presence of mind to scream "checkmate!!" at the alien he's just dispatched with a weird outboard motor attachment that was shown earlier in the movie. The director just couldn't help himself, so we get a snappy one-liner that was telegraphed way ahead of its utterance. One star for the Beard, one star for the human trap set by the alien (the only really scary thing seen here), and one star for the bunny who gets field stripped and eaten.
American Violence
(2017)
Bad, bad, bad, bad...and Charlie Sheen's ex-wife
3 February 2017
"American Violence" sucks. There's no other way to say it. This is one grade Z, bottom of the barrel stinkfest gathering of some Z-list once-celebrity "actors" in a pathetic "important" message movie which went straight to DVD because it's a total bomb.
This movie can be summed up in five words: The Death Penalty Is Bad. A thinly veiled plea for mercy in consideration in the plight of those about to get the needle on Death Row. They didn't really mean to do those terrible things, they were victims of circumstance!! The viewer gets beaten over the head with you-should-feel-bad for the perpetrator of nasty behavior for the entire running time of this cheapjack Lifetime movie "event".
Super lawyer/teacher Denise Richards takes on the case of some idiot played by Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau (giving you soulful/insane bristling beard realness like 99% of the unknown actors in Hollywood). The inmate has done bad things because he was a child victim of his sweaty pedo uncle while his sweaty drunk mommy refused to see/admit her brother was doing the diddly dance with her son. Everyone sweats and the now grown victim beats uncle twiddly fingers bloody with a baseball bat. Other terrible things happen to our victim later in life while he commits violence on others, eventually goes to prison where he's victimized yet again by a warden who's obiviously got Alzheimer's. Our beardo victim gets some prison pole in the shower by party animals and eventually gets out of the Big House in time to shank the warden. He gets caught and before he can take the big sleep, Super Lawyer Denise Richards (looking like her ex-hubby Charlie Sheen did some "Winning!" on her before the cameras on this crapfest rolled, leaving her gaunt while her straggly hair sucks the last of her life out) steps in to try and get the beardo's sentence commuted. Denise looks rode hard and put away wet while eventually not saving the beardo's life. He takes the needle and cries while his wife or girlfriend or whoever it is makes an angelic visit as the drugs sap the life out of him. ZZzzz.
Anyway, this movie sucks. It's poorly shot and edited. The dialog is stupendously terrible. The acting is at least one level below community dinner theatre. Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau aka the victim is just a beard pretending to be an actor, no one will remember him a year from whenever this garbage was made. Denise Richards has lost the hot from her "Wild Things" years, almost three decades ago. Bruce Dern, the warden who gets knifed while bitching about a sandwich is a sad reflection of his glory years.
If you can watch this junk without repeatedly hitting the fast forward feature for your device, more power to you. Most likely, you'll want to commit violence of your own on the service you streamed/rented from.
This movie can be summed up in five words: The Death Penalty Is Bad. A thinly veiled plea for mercy in consideration in the plight of those about to get the needle on Death Row. They didn't really mean to do those terrible things, they were victims of circumstance!! The viewer gets beaten over the head with you-should-feel-bad for the perpetrator of nasty behavior for the entire running time of this cheapjack Lifetime movie "event".
Super lawyer/teacher Denise Richards takes on the case of some idiot played by Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau (giving you soulful/insane bristling beard realness like 99% of the unknown actors in Hollywood). The inmate has done bad things because he was a child victim of his sweaty pedo uncle while his sweaty drunk mommy refused to see/admit her brother was doing the diddly dance with her son. Everyone sweats and the now grown victim beats uncle twiddly fingers bloody with a baseball bat. Other terrible things happen to our victim later in life while he commits violence on others, eventually goes to prison where he's victimized yet again by a warden who's obiviously got Alzheimer's. Our beardo victim gets some prison pole in the shower by party animals and eventually gets out of the Big House in time to shank the warden. He gets caught and before he can take the big sleep, Super Lawyer Denise Richards (looking like her ex-hubby Charlie Sheen did some "Winning!" on her before the cameras on this crapfest rolled, leaving her gaunt while her straggly hair sucks the last of her life out) steps in to try and get the beardo's sentence commuted. Denise looks rode hard and put away wet while eventually not saving the beardo's life. He takes the needle and cries while his wife or girlfriend or whoever it is makes an angelic visit as the drugs sap the life out of him. ZZzzz.
Anyway, this movie sucks. It's poorly shot and edited. The dialog is stupendously terrible. The acting is at least one level below community dinner theatre. Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau aka the victim is just a beard pretending to be an actor, no one will remember him a year from whenever this garbage was made. Denise Richards has lost the hot from her "Wild Things" years, almost three decades ago. Bruce Dern, the warden who gets knifed while bitching about a sandwich is a sad reflection of his glory years.
If you can watch this junk without repeatedly hitting the fast forward feature for your device, more power to you. Most likely, you'll want to commit violence of your own on the service you streamed/rented from.
Knucklebones
(2016)
No bones about it...this is the acme of awful
20 January 2017
Warning: Spoilers
"Knucklebones" might be the worst movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of bottom of the barrel schlock. Let's review what's in store for the unwary who are about to give up precious minutes of their lives watching this threadbare attempt to create a killer skeleton franchise.
Grade Z acting by the casting call relatives of the guy who dumped this steaming pile on an unsuspecting world. No one seen here is the age they're supposed to be, except for a pre-teen girl who didn't have enormous boobs that could be used for titillation purposes. See what I did there? Way more inventive than anything ol' Knucky can offer. The teen girls look like pole riders from a seedy bar. Of note is the 30-something "best friend" of the suicidal main character who's channeling Paris Hilton. She pouts, wears tight sports bras and booty shorts and just loves herself. Other females seen in this stupidity readily bare the bazooms and get killed by the Knucky-thing. Bad gore and the prerequisite hilarious one-liners by the skullguy. You won't understand 99% of what he's cracking off, probably because the actor person under the terrible mask has a cloth over his real mouth so you can't see his real teeth. This is visible every time Knucky gets down and verbally assaults his prey. Naturally all the activity takes place in an abandoned factory in Texas, that has occult ties to the Nazis! This is explained as "wartime profiteering". Uh huh. Spooky things are discovered, Knucky is invoked and bad juju happens. Can someone explain why the electricity is still running in an abandoned factory for decades?
The story makes no sense, and the writer/director didn't really give a damn. He gets very close to porn, which is what this whole stupid movie really wants to be. Might have been better that way, to think of it. One star for the scene in which a stud muffin, who's wearing pants, gets castrated while his top-heavy gal pal rides the about to be severed member. Knucky jams a saw on a stick up the girl's backside, cuts off the stud's junk and then cuts the cowgirl in half. Family fun! Come to think of it, Miss "Paris Hilton" gets the sharpened end of a broom rammed up her perky posterior, where it comes out of her mouth. Hmm. The director of this mess has issues. Thanks for sharing!
This isn't so bad that it's good. It's just bad. Shot on a digital camera so old it's one step away from a camcorder. The titles alone look like an old paintbox program from the late 80s. The ten star reviews here are most likely from family and friends of the director. Avoid and do your laundry or watch paint dry, either is a more fulfilling undertaking.
Grade Z acting by the casting call relatives of the guy who dumped this steaming pile on an unsuspecting world. No one seen here is the age they're supposed to be, except for a pre-teen girl who didn't have enormous boobs that could be used for titillation purposes. See what I did there? Way more inventive than anything ol' Knucky can offer. The teen girls look like pole riders from a seedy bar. Of note is the 30-something "best friend" of the suicidal main character who's channeling Paris Hilton. She pouts, wears tight sports bras and booty shorts and just loves herself. Other females seen in this stupidity readily bare the bazooms and get killed by the Knucky-thing. Bad gore and the prerequisite hilarious one-liners by the skullguy. You won't understand 99% of what he's cracking off, probably because the actor person under the terrible mask has a cloth over his real mouth so you can't see his real teeth. This is visible every time Knucky gets down and verbally assaults his prey. Naturally all the activity takes place in an abandoned factory in Texas, that has occult ties to the Nazis! This is explained as "wartime profiteering". Uh huh. Spooky things are discovered, Knucky is invoked and bad juju happens. Can someone explain why the electricity is still running in an abandoned factory for decades?
The story makes no sense, and the writer/director didn't really give a damn. He gets very close to porn, which is what this whole stupid movie really wants to be. Might have been better that way, to think of it. One star for the scene in which a stud muffin, who's wearing pants, gets castrated while his top-heavy gal pal rides the about to be severed member. Knucky jams a saw on a stick up the girl's backside, cuts off the stud's junk and then cuts the cowgirl in half. Family fun! Come to think of it, Miss "Paris Hilton" gets the sharpened end of a broom rammed up her perky posterior, where it comes out of her mouth. Hmm. The director of this mess has issues. Thanks for sharing!
This isn't so bad that it's good. It's just bad. Shot on a digital camera so old it's one step away from a camcorder. The titles alone look like an old paintbox program from the late 80s. The ten star reviews here are most likely from family and friends of the director. Avoid and do your laundry or watch paint dry, either is a more fulfilling undertaking.
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