The ABCs of Death (2012)

Okay, here it is, the ultimate anthology movie - twenty-six fucking stories. The gimmick is that they found twenty-six directors with nothing better to do (not difficult), assigned each one of them a letter, let them pick a word that starts with that letter, and then each one had "complete artistic freedom" to make a short movie about death that has something to do with their word. The end result is kinda like Harlan Ellison's "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet" only way shittier, or, alternately, like Harlan Ellison's "From A to Z, in the Sarsaparilla Alphabet" only considerably less shitty. That's right, Ellison, I said it. Start lawyering up.

This is one of the first pics that came up when I searched my
image provider for "lawyer". If that chick on the left was my
lawyer, I'd totally bang her. What do you think?

Highlights include the letter A (that was a lucky break); the letter N (sorta funny); the letter P (legitimately good); the letter Q ("Let's kill this fuckin' duck."); the letter L (pretty fucking twisted, should've been a whole movie); and the letter B (nice tits). Lowlights include the letter D (for "dumb", apparently); the letter R ("retarded"); the letter E (It's an urban legend. Write your own shit, you lazy hack.); the letter G (Lazy, again. Probably took this guy an hour to shoot.); the letter H (creepy furry bullshit); the letter K ("copremesis" starts with a C, idiot); the letter W (I see someone's familiar with Shadoe Steven's Shadoevision. Also, "WTF" isn't a word, jackass.); the letter X (I know X is hard, but "XXL" isn't a word, either.); the letter Y (starring Fantastic Four nemesis the Puppet Master); the letter Z (Nonsensical, self-indulgent horseshit. Gross though.); and the letter F. Especially the letter F. Seriously, you're allowed to pick any word in the entire English language and this lowbrow butt-sniffer picks "fart"??? This entry is so bad that even Japanese teacher-schoolgirl statutory lesbianism can't save it, making it a serious contender for single worst thing ever filmed, ever, including snuff movies and every episode of Hee Haw Honeys except the one where they all got naked, if that happened. Here's a better F word for you, director Noboru Iguchi: fuck off.

Hollywood will embrace him with open arms.

As you can see, there's more bad than good (just like the real alphabet), making the overall experience pretty wretched. It's a great argument against "complete artistic freedom" though.

A sequel is threatened.

----------
All the letters that appear in this movie are also featured in my books. Available here.

Return of the Killer Shrews (2012)

The first Killer Shrews was made in 1959, which means that this sequel came out over fifty years later. And it's not just some phony-baloney johnny-come-lately sequel-in-name-only either, like Food of the Gods 2 or The Phantom Menace; it's a legitimate continuation that even stars one of the same actors as the same character! (It's all such a mindfuck that for a while I completely forgot that the original Killer Shrews sucked a fair amount of ass, so why the hell was I watching a sequel to it in the first place?) Too bad our returning "hero" seems to be channeling Rosco P. Coltrane (his other "great" role) instead of... er, whatever the hell his name was in Part 1. Not that it matters, since his entire role in this movie can be summed up as "reaction shot". The set-up is lazy and uninspired (They're shooting a reality show on killer shrew island? Yawn. Oh, and fuck you.); their cartoon shrews actually look worse than the cheesy-ass costumed greyhounds of half a century earlier (nice advancement in visual effects, fags); the token bikini "babe" is a complete butterface; the bulk of the dialogue, which is apparently trying to be funny, is rage-inducing in its aggressive stupidity (example: "I think we're gonna need a bigger goat."); the only likeable character is the superficially ambitious blonde (at least she has motives and a personality); and stunt-casting half of the surviving dramatis personæ from The Dukes of Hazzard is such a cloying move that you'll want to kick in every dick in the place. It's a complete waste of everything (except of course talent, because there's none of that evident), and the most probable reason why all John Schneider movies are illegal in the alternate future of 2199. In short, fuck the killer shrews, fuck their return, and fuck this witless shitpile of a movie.

"Narf!"

Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983)

A smarmy-looking dork (nice hair, you fucking guido) raids this ancient keep, where he's forced to brave impenetrable booby traps (by "impenetrable" I mean "What the hell just happened, exactly?"), vultures, wolves, snakes, crossbow-wielding ghosts, and, naturally, pterodactyls. Why all the effort? To obtain a magical key that opens the little pop-top adorning these four magical crowns. What, no one knows a locksmith? Or has a penknife? Anyway, the next step, it seems, is to acquire all the crowns. See, the good guys only have the one, while this uncooperative evil cult is hoarding the other two. The fourth one? Oh, there is no fourth one anymore; apparently the Arabs broke the fourth crown years ago, and didn't even have it insured. Stupid assholes.

Not this guy again.

Naturally the smarmy dork is enlisted to obtain the four three two remaining crowns, so to facilitate this he rounds up a theatrical drunk ("If it doesn't come in a bottle, I'm not interested!"), a circus strongman (his gay lover, the clown, is less than enthusiastic about his participation in this ridiculous scheme), and a sexy trapeze artist with a highly spankable ass. The magic key, meanwhile, apparently has a mind of its own, and actually tries to escape, even using ESP at one point to destroy an entire cabin. The sequence where they break into the cult's secret publicly-disclosed headwaters to steal the crowns is pretty disappointing compared to the acquisition of the key (there aren't even any pterodactyls), but the final showdown is a laugh riot, full of people with cartoonishly spinning Exorcist heads, magical jewels that shoot fire, and exploding... well, everything. Seriously, so much shit fatally explodes at the end of this movie, and for so long, that it looks like a municipal fireworks display gone horribly awry, leading to hundreds of lawsuits that eventually bankrupt the city. And don't even ask me to explain the very last scene, which makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

Dumb as hell, completely awesome, and at least 10% better than Indiana Jones III.

----------
Treasure of my four six awesome books. Tons of reviews. Dirt cheap. Collect them all.

Tim Riggins of Mars

You know what? I am done with movies where you have to crank the sound up whenever people are talking, and then turn it back down every time there's music or something explodes, over and over again, for the entire fucking running time. I watch movies to veg; if I wanted entertainment that was interactive, I'd play a video game or buy a hooker. Seriously, sound engineers, if this is the best you can do, maybe you should stick to the soundboard down at the beach bar, where you'll do less damage. Jimmy Buffett and Dave Matthews suck at any volume.

"Yeah, but these go to 11."

So, this multi-billion-dollar studio-killer (seriously, if anyone besides Disney had bankrolled this, you'd be using their stock for toilet paper right now) is about a character who is literally decades past his expiration date, and to make things worse it opens with a completely unnecessary scene on Mars, wholly undermining any potential sense of wonder we, the audience, might have experienced when John Carter actually arrives there. Oh, and get this: he's played by goddamned Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights, which might have worked if the assclown didn't act like he was still playing Tim Riggins. Seriously, I'm surprised he wasn't knocking Martians out with well-aimed footballs and shit. Nice range, idiot. Get me another basket of chicken fingers and tell your soundboard guy he's over-amping this hippie's butchering of Tom Petty:

If it weren't for Sublime, this guy's playlist wouldn't have changed since 1978.

Of course the plot is fucking garbage, starting with a scene where the author of the actual book this movie is based on first reads the story he wrote as a "true account" in someone else's journal. Hollywood loves this gimmick, because the idea that anyone could actually make up an original, entertaining story out of whole cloth is utterly foreign to them. Hell, if Hollywood had its way, all movies would be nothing but one long, speaker-blowing explosion, punctuated every ten minutes or so by references and farting. This flick goes the opposite route though, with enough clumsily-presented backstory to make Dune (1984) seem coherent. Take that, you fucking art snobs, always demanding some sort of "context" for your farting. Plus: a comedic relief alien dog, Tim Riggins jumping around like the Hulk (it looks just as ridiculous as it sounds), and a running time that's longer than my first marriage.

Are you kidding me? How many fucks can one production not give?

On the plus side, I would totally bone their Princess of Mars:

Oh, yeah... how do you like that Mars probe, baby?

----------
For more out-of-this-world... Meh, I can't even say it. Just buy my books.

Broken DVD Rage

I never got to watch it, but upon reflection this is probably the best thing that could have happened to my copy of Funky Monkey.

Around the World Under the Sea (1966)

Okay, so they spend the entire first half of this flick recruiting scientists, and of course every single one of them is a complete blowhard who just has to show off his or her new invention. There's a guy who's invented a way to talk to dolphins, a guy who claims to have invented rabbits that can breathe underwater but the rabbits he shows us clearly aren't underwater so I don't know who he thinks he's kidding, and a chick who's invented having a nice ass & legs combo. Well, maybe she didn't invent it, but she did find a solid practical application. Once everyone's been collected the real story finally begins: it seems there's been too many earthquakes lately (thank you, Al Gore), so these jokers are gonna tool around the world in a submarine and plant fifty earthquake detectors on the ocean floor. Apparently fifty is plenty because the detectors are super sensitive, even more sensitive than the kid from my high school who cried whenever someone pronounced his name wrong. Remember that pussy? Dick Smocker? Anyway, there's no real trouble to speak of along the way (a few minor disagreements; some inconsequential pussy poaching; a giant eel that doesn't even come close to eating anyone), which means this movie just keeps buying endless rounds of boring all the way through to the boring wrap-up. "Remember that time we traveled around the world under the sea and absolutely nothing happened?" Why am I even watching this??? The only part I liked was the very end, where they show the guy who lost his girl to another crew member holding a couple of gerbils. Ha ha! Enjoy your weekend, buddy!

"Squeak! The horror... Squeak!"

----------
Buy my books.