Keeping up with the Satanisms

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Mother of Tears - The Third Mother (2007)

Some jokers unearth this old urn, but something about it freaks out the local Catholic muckamuck so he sends the urn to Rome to get it checked out. (What doesn't freak out the Catholics? My mom's boyfriend nearly had a heart attack once because I was eating a Big Mac on the wrong day of the week or something.) The cat in charge of Esoteric Horseshit is out of the office though, so two bimbos open the package instead and naturally one of them bleeds all over the thing and suddenly the whole city is going crazy and every witch with enough frequent flyer miles is showing up to get in on the fun. Which makes Rome sound like the place to be, until you remember that 98% of witches are lesbians, and the ones who aren't are already going out with a guy who's in a band. And judging by the witches in this movie, that band is Cinderella.

Meanwhile, the mega-tasty Asia Argento is right in the thick of it, but she's so busy being chased around by hipsters, cops, gothic lolitas, and monkeys that she barely has time to expose any nipple much less figure out what to do. Eventually though she realizes that she's the main chick, so she decides to take down the queen witch once and for all, which turns out to be surprisingly easy. I'm not kidding, it takes me longer to open a bottle of beer with a cigarette lighter than it takes Asia to trounce this bitch.

I wouldn't have expected a 1000-year-old witch to look so much like one of the
Bangles. Not that I'm complaining. (Hair by Ken Paves, fake tits by Satan.)

So the end's a fizzle, and there are some pretty stupid parts along the way – like when Asia nearly drowns in raw sewage, then two seconds later doesn't have a drop of poo on her – but there's also a head crushed in a door, eyes gouged out, a spear up the cooch, a guy set on fire, an arm whacked off with a machete, a surprising amount of infanticide, rioting, vandalism, some lesbo action, and plenty of tits, so really, I got no complaints.

Asia Argento, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.

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For more witchy goodness (and badness), check out my latest film guide Hex Crimes: The Worst Witch Movies Ever Made, free on Amazon June 20 through June 22, 2016, and only 99 cents after that. Cheap!

Beneath the Mississippi (2008)

There are two groups of people who can never be succinct: conspiracy theorists and low-budget moviemakers. Seriously, there is no reason for this Blair Witch-on-a-boat nonsense to be nearly two hours long, but I'm a sucker for movies that take place in flooded/submerged towns (I actually paid to see Hard Rain, in the theaters), so here I am again, wading (heh) through another badly-made shitfest just because it toggled one of my weird, highly-specific triggers. (Other bizarre, specialized triggers I instantly respond to are: cute Asian chicks dressed as ladybugs; any movie where someone has sex, willingly or otherwise, with a tree; and anything involving giant bees). Unlike giant, Asian bee sex however, this movie is completely incomprehensible. The picture looks like shit -- alternately too dark or super washed out -- pretty much 100% of the time, which means that while you could say that you've watched this movie, you can't honestly say that you've seen it.

Beneath the Mississippi - the thrilling climax. I'm totally not kidding here.

You can't hear a goddamned thing either, because the sound is usually completely muffled, except of course when they suddenly get one sound effect or scream right and it blows out your speakers because you had them cranked to maximum to hear the dialogue. (Maybe their microphone guy was recording the dialogue portions from... beneath the Mississippi! Ha ha! Seriously though, I wouldn't be surprised if that really was the case.) Hell, even the size of the picture keeps changing: it's like watching two people with dueling remotes fight over what aspect ratio they want to watch the movie at. I kid you not, the only way a movie could be any more visually and audibly inaccessible is if it was shot by tying a video camera to the back of a truck and dragging it around the parking lot. At night. And of course it's too fucking long, even for a movie that wasn't a fucking torture-chore to watch. (The back of the DVD case says that it's 109 minutes; when it reached the 110-minute point and still wasn't over I'm not ashamed to admit that I started crying.)

So what is it actually about? Well, since you can barely see or hear anything there's really no way to know, although the front and back of the DVD promise a flooded/haunted town so I guess that's what all the muffled assholes on screen (whoever they are) are looking for. (Of course, we never actually see this submerged town, because that might actually be interesting.) There was this ominous musical sting every so often, so I guess whatever was going on at those specific moments was supposed to be ominous, but it never seemed particularly ominous to me. Usually it was just washed-out blurs standing around mumbling. There's no sting when the audience (but not the characters) sees the first dead body though, something most people would consider pretty ominous, so maybe that's the key: maybe this entire cunt movie was made on Opposite Day, so that's why it has sound you can't hear and a picture you can't see and is ostensibly entertainment but in practice is simply waiting for it to be over. Honestly, it's all so jaw-droppingly incompetent that eventually I was just grateful that the picture was right-side-up most of the time. (Yes, at one point it isn't. But that was on purpose, probably.) 

I'm not one to engage in hyperbole and shit, but everyone who worked on this movie deserves to die.

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Want to avoid bad movies like this one? Mr. Satanism can help.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Truth be told, I kinda like Keanu Reeves. Oh, he's a shitty actor (in any given role a potted plant could do better), but he's charismatic, in his own way, and he seems like kind of a nice guy. So I decided to go into this movie with an open mind, basically by ignoring everything I know about computers and, like the producers, pretending that the Internet really is an actual alternate dimension as portrayed in movies like The Lawnmower Man (1992) and Tron (1982) (and, inexplicably, again in 2010), and not merely a convenient conduit for thirteen-year-olds to call me a faggot on Reddit. Besides, the guy who wrote this movie basically invented cyberspace, so let's face it, anything he got wrong, fuck you, no he didn't.

Why?

So, Keanu plays portrays acts... Fuck. Okay, just accept that he's this guy, alright, this guy who's got computer hardware in his head and hires himself out as a sort of cybernetic courier. Basically, you upload information into his noggin and he smuggles it to another location where it can be safely downloaded. How this is preferable to just shoving a thumb drive containing the data up his ass is actually explained, but how it's easier than simply encrypting the information and e-mailing it to the intended recipient isn't. No matter, I said I'm giving this one a chance, so fine, I'll buy their (stupid) premise. It's fucking stupid though.

"He has the eyes of one who never awakes."

Naturally some bad guys are after the information in question, but Keanu's biggest problem is that the data currently loaded into his brain is 160 gigabytes over his personal capacity, which we're told is extremely dangerous. This is probably supposed to generate some additional suspense, although if Keanu Reeves shorted out half his brain I doubt we'd notice any change in his behavior whatsoever. There's plenty of violence; lots of trench coats; Ice T and Henry Rollins appear, apparently competing with each other to see who can give the most embarrassing performance (Rollins wins); the fashions are hilariously out-of-date 1980s futurisms (I can't remember the last time I saw so many people who looked like they were auditioning for the band Split Enz); the main chick is exceptionally hot and has a terrific ass; Keanu's mid-movie rant about wanting a club sandwich is fucking hilarious for all the wrong (and therefore right) reasons; and the thrilling climax, which involves a crossbow fight with the Yakuza, a junkie dolphin reading Keanu Reeve's mind, a last-minute rescue by an electronic ghost, and He-Man being cooked alive, is so delirious you can't help but love it.

Hey, baby, don't cover up on my account.

Ultimately, Johnny Mnemonic is no dumber than The Matrix (1999), and unlike The Matrix it doesn't blow its entire wad twenty minutes in and then just flail around for the rest of its running time plus two even-worse sequels. In short, I liked it. And no, I'm not being sarcastic or ironic - I actually liked it. Scout's honor.

You can see my eyes, you can tell that I'm not lyin'

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Brilliant movie reviews for a fraction of the cost. Check out the Mr. Satanism Library here.

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

Terrorist John "Die Hard" McClane travels to Russia, where he commits a carjacking, kills dozens of civilians during an ill-advised car chase through crowded city streets, helps an accused criminal elude the authorities, and causes untold property damage. Whenever someone questions his behavior he responds with his new catchphrase ("I'm on vacation!"), shoots them, and then sodomizes their corpse. We know Die Hard's really a good guy though, because he is willing to share the occasional "moment" with select Russians -- as long as they speak English -- and he speechifies his regrets about being a dick in the past, although this doesn't effect any of his current decisions to be a dick. Nevertheless, a few folks do try to kill Die Hard in return by shooting at him with machine guns and, at one point, a military-grade helicopter. He always manages to duck though.

A scene from one of the Die Hard movies, probably.

As an impromptu justification for murdering so many people and destroying so much shit, Die Hard decides to help the CIA -- played by his son -- smuggle a political prisoner out of the county. Having lived through seven or eight previous Die Hard movies however, Die Hard Sr. knows that there's going to be a big twist, and sure enough, the bad guy they're smuggling out of the country turns out to be a bad guy. He's confident Die Hard won't arrest him though, because "You're out of your jurisdiction, Detective McClane." He's right, of course, so Die Hard Jr. tosses him off a building and into some whirling helicopter blades instead, in a comedic callback to Die Hard 1. Because how funny is it that Die Hard 1 exists? (I assume that's the joke, since merely reminding people that a thing exists counts as jokes now.) In retaliation, the pretty girl bad guy crashes the helicopter into the building where Die Hard and his son are standing, but they both escape by jumping out a window and falling multiple stories through several harmless planes of glass. The helicopter falls the same distance but explodes (three times), killing everyone on board. Then, since they're currently at the site of the Chernobyl disaster and there is literally nothing else in the vicinity to destroy, the movie ends.

A lot of people hated this entry in the series, but fortunately Hollywood doesn't care what people think and besides, what did they expect, a bunch of hugging? Two-and-a-half stars.

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The Mr. Satanism Library

Poltergeist (2015)

Of all the classic Steven Spielburger movies, far and away the most overrated is fucking Poltergeist. Not that it doesn't have some good shit in it, but there's a point somewhere around the middle where it just totally loses its mind and stops making any goddamned sense whatsoever. So yeah, remake that bitch and let's see what happens. How bad could it be? And as it turns out this is a perfectly serviceable haunted house movie. Sure, it's not as good as the original, but frankly it's not that much worse either. They do sell some of it way too hard (everything to do with the tree), but the dumbest bits from the original (like the crawling steak) have been excised completely and if you ask me most of the scary parts in this remake work. Frankly, the only major problem with this version is the family who's getting poltergeisted. In the original they were all pretty likable, you know, for white people. Here though, not so much. The dad, for example, is a jerk, but he's one of those subtle jerks that you want to punch the second you meet but you're not exactly sure why. Guys like him never beat their kids and rarely cheat on their wives, but they think about it a lot. They usually watch too much football. The wife is far from ugly but isn't good-looking either, and has the personality of paste. She's the kind of woman you forget you once had sex with while you're still having the sex with her. The little boy, realistically annoying in the original, is taken to an extreme here. He's such a detestable sissy-bitch that you'll be praying for him to actually get eaten by the tree this time. Or the clown puppet. Or anything, really. Hell, if he just died from meningitis or something that would be fine with me. The two daughters are okay though, especially the teenager. Yum. You probably knew I was going to say that, didn't you?

                     Kndra: Rents out. Brats sleepin. Cum over an lets fuck

                     MrS: Cant. Watching Poltergeist

                     Kndra: New or old?

                     MrS: New

                     Kndra: Im breaking up w you

All the shit with the power lines and the static electricity and the electronics operating on their own reminded me of original Poltergeist ripoff Pulse (1988). (This is not a good thing.) The hands in the TV are creepy. The scene with the maxed-out credit cards is good, even if it belongs in the Amityville Horror remake more than it belongs here. The bit with the comic books is heavy-handed, stupid, and, thanks to Ghostbusters ("No human being would stack books like this."), instantly mockable. Whoever dreamed up that scene must have a pop culture awareness level of zero. The dead flowers would've been a nice, subtle touch, if the dad didn't blatantly acknowledge them, completely ruining the effect. The teenage daughter has a fantastic ass. "We're gonna get in big trouble!" was perfect, exactly the reaction a child would have. I was happy to see Jane Adams show up. I've always wanted to fuck her. The dad pukes up worms immediately after drinking some hooch, as if to say "Remember Poltergeist II? This is better than Poltergeist II, right?" The drill scene isn't bad. Their use of the drone was a clever update. I didn't get the end; are they just not going to live in a house ever again? Never thought I'd hear a Cramps song in a Spielberg movie. Okay, it's a cover of a Cramps song, but this is a remake of a Spielberg movie, so close enough.

Yes, there's no defensible reason for Poltergeist 2015 to exist, but, ultimately, there's no real reason to be upset about it either. If you're a Spielberg fan what you should really be worrying about is this: Which classic Steven Spielberg movie will they remake next?

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Read about more cinematic haunted houses here.