2010s – Arkham TV

Super Detention (2016)

⭐⭐⭐ 84min TV movie that tries to resemble Sky High

Recap

So there are these super kids who go to super school and end up in super detention. At the very same day there is this super hero coming to super school to pick his super successor. Only that he doesn’t feel like retiring, so he’s

The official slogan is It’s X-Men Meet The Breakfast Club, and that of course is a lot. The Uncanny X-Men are one of Stan Lee’s finest inventions, and in the 90s there has been a time when it was commercial suicide to publish a comic book without the letter X in the title. And The Breakfast Club sure was one of the 80s’ most iconic movies and even today is still THE teenage movie. So in one review someone said it was more like the TV movie version of Sky High, and that’s so much more like it. So if you are a super nerd who just has to watch everything super, things are a bit complicated. First thing is that you must lower your expectations. Forget about X-Men and The Breakfast Club, this movie is NOTHING like them, it’s not even like Sky High. Only after you stop expecting anything great you can start to enjoy the movie. I’m not even talking about the limited fights and special effects, one of my favorite superhero movies is The Specials, and that one has some really crappy FX near the end and a single fight scene that is much shorter than its dance scene. However, The Specials was written by James Gunn, and this one was not. So this one is basically working through a list of tropes and clichés, and only after you lowered your expectations you can start to try and enjoy the story and sympathize with the characters. So, this movie is barely okay, only slightly better than mediocre.

If however, you are not a super nerd eager to watch everything super, then it’s easy: just skip this movie unless you want a nice little TV movie without anything special to it.

Oh, and talking about The Specials: that one happens to have the best dance scene in a superhero movie ever. In the audio commentary they emphasize that it could have been so much better with more time and more money and actual dancers as extras. Yet this dance scene as it is is much better than the whole Super Detention movie: https://youtu.be/v-zK1TKajlo. The green alien by the way is played by Sean Gunn who currently works as Rocket Raccoon for the MCU.

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Movie

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Info

youtube

imdb

Blessed Are The Children (2016)

⭐⭐ 98min Indie movie that introduces the abortion topic to the slasher genre

Recap

***Spoiler Warning. No wait, is it a spoiler when I say that Jason and Michael are the slashers in Friday The 13th and Halloween? ***

So there are these three women, and one of them has two men in her life and a mother and she is pregnant. When she makes her choice she becomes the target of Anti Choicers with babyface masks who do not even pretend to be Pro Lifers and start slashing everybody who has more than one line of text.

It’s not uncommon that the slashees in slasher movies are shallow, uninteresting, daft, dull and expendable. In this one, however, they take their slasheeness to a new level. For some part of the movie I actually thought that the writer/director was an Anti Choicer himself. But then, when the slashers were portrayed as even more degenerated than the slashees, I developed an alternative theory: maybe he hates his mother (did she tell him to find a day job?), the three women represent the women who rejected him (one prefers intellectual stimulation, one prefers women, and one prefers jerks, I mean jerks that are jerky in a way that he isn’t),and the men of course represent those men who “scored” more women than he did.

Anyway, the first third of the movie is just girl talk. Think the TV show Mom, think the movie Catwoman. Yes, it’s that bad, even worse, half of the time the pregnant woman talks to herself. Then there is one third of absolute average, uninspired slashing, one almost sees the slashers yawning beneath their babyface masks. At least the last third offers a decent amount of suspense. Which means that yes, you can watch it. It’s far from being the worst slasher ever. However of course there are MANY movies that are so much better. The best reason to watch this however is its unique selling point: this is the first abortion slasher that I have heard of. So while the writer/director is not so good at writing or directing he sure isn’t too dumb when it comes to marketing. If you want to have an opinion on abortion in slasher movies I guess you will have to watch it.

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It’s Just A Game (2018)

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 70min. Lowbudget slasher featuring a merry band of depraved satanists.

Recap

Of course I know that the americans are weird. But this movie starts with a girl in the bathtub with her underwear on! WTF?

So there are these girls on a sleepover, and you know what it’s like: do you dare to stand in front of the mirror and say “Doofenshmirtz” three times? And since this takes place in Alabama, there are a lot of ghosts hanging in the neighborhood, like the Skull Girl from the movie poster. As Brianna, tired of being a teenager called Brianna, summons Mother Murder to kill her bully, a gang of depraved satanists rush in to save the day and the movie.

Yes, it’s true: the movie starts dumb, but eventually it becomes weird and original and entertaining. Thumbs up!

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Movie R

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The VelociPastor (2018)

He is on a mission from god. At least that’s what he says. 75min imdb

Recap:

Velocipastor is like the child of love of Bruce Banner and Frank Castle: after his parents are murdered, pastor Doug Jones goes to mourn in China where he is bitten by a radioactive artifact. From now on he HULKS into a Velocipastor who PUNISHES the evildoers. And that’s only the first 15 minutes of the movie. He kills the murderer of his parents in the confessional, a hooker that he has saved persuades him to become a freelance vigilante, his pastor friend wants him exorcised, a bunch of (chinese?) ninjas have an evil plan to drive people into the arms of the clergy, and Doug’s brother shows up.

I like to say that when you have neither the budget nor the skills to make an actual movie, you can still go for a silly comedy. Of course, many filmmakers do just that, and of course the results often are, well, a little underwhelming. Still I say that this is the right thing to do, because a failed movie helps nobody, while a substandard trash comedy can still be loved by stoners and/or nerds. This is why I was confident when I watched this movie, because how bad could it get?

Actually this one is very good! Yes, this one is cheap, literally. One minute into the movie they substitute the VFX of a car on fire with the words “VFX: Car on fire”, and that of course is a bold move. From this point it could go down quite rapidly, but it doesn’t. The movie keeps its level quite steadily, the filmmakers know what they’re doing, taking all these movie tropes over the top without ruining them. I am not going to praise this as the best movie ever, those who do this are obviously either stoners or hipsters, but full of postmodern irony in any case. What I do say however that this is a very good movie and definitely worth watching.

(What I would like to know, though: why is the hero called Doug Jones? In real life Doug Jones is an actor/mime who often works for Guillermo del Toro, like in the Hellboy movies or in El laberinto Del Fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth.)

(Even more important: according to imdb this is a 75min movie. So why is the YouTube edit both 70min AND age restricted?)

Short film 2011

Movie 70min

Trailer

Iron Wolf (2013)

The entourage of a has-been punk rocker pees on a swastika and burns a barrel of nazi stuff. But in a horror movie, no good deed goes unpunished. 93min imdb

Recap:

So there is this nazi research facility that since the end of world war 2 has only been entered by one single bum who seems to think that the eerie noises behind the metal door are not worse than anything else that germany has to offer. But then one day this has-been punk rocker arrives with his entourage because punk. Postmodern irony says that a former nazi research facility is just the right place for a reunion concert. Trouble is that in a horror movie no good deed goes unpunished. In Friday, The 13th the slashees are punished for smoking weed and playing strip monopoly, and in Iron Wolf they pee on a swastika and burn a barrel of nazi stuff. So there is this result of genesplicing that you maybe can call a weresheperddog (half werewolf, half german shepherd) and that does what wereshepherddogs do. In the end there is a cliffhanger for a sequel, and it seems that the filmmakers have watched too many Marvel movies, because there are 12 (TWELVE!) minutes of end credits with mid credit scenes with a cliffhanger for a sequel (don’t tell me. I know that this is a total of two cliffhangers, it’s just that the filmmakers didn’t seem to care).

This is an independent movie, which means that it looks dreadfully cheap (I was astonished to see that the production values include nazi flags, a military-looking vehicle and some sort of a cannon). It also means that there are no actual actors in it, and it doesn’t help either that their lines were in english. The violence is reduced to a bare minimum. I’ve seen indie “slashers” with even less blood, but still I say that you shouldn’t be cheap on the violence especially when your film has nothing else to offer. Interesting characters? Suspense? New ideas? Nil return! Oh and in the end they actually show the Iron Wolf which is not a smart move because he is something between furry, cosplay and Halloween fancy dress.

I guess that they thought that it was enough to have nazis in it. There are so many movies with nazi zombies in them, there was Yoga Hosers with nazi wieners, there was Iron Sky with nazi men on the moon… Nazis are definitely the trope of choice for lazy filmmakers who want to attract an audience without putting too much effort into their movies. However this movie just doesn’t deliver, and also I dislike how the exnazi is the smartest and the most sympathetic of the slashees while the bigmouthest (does this word even exist? Now it does) of the antifascists is the dumbest douchebag.

Why do only the dumbest and trashiest of these movies get made? Germany’s currently greatest novelist and cartoonist Walter Moers once tried to raise funds for a movie about his Adof Die Nazi-Sau (Adolf The Nazi Swine), but as far as I know nothing ever came of it.

Movie 95min

Trailer

And this is how a nazi movie should look like in my opinion:

All About The Money (2017)

Three losers looking for luck in a situation way beyond their control. With Danny Trejo 90min imdb

Recap:

So there are these three losers, all of them in trouble deep, but the dumbest of them comes up with a “plan” to finally become successful: all they have to do is to capture the head of a drug cartel and cash in the reward. So they fly to Columbia without even knowing that this is not a city in Mexico.

Okay, so here we have another loser comedy, and I’m cool with that, I can relate. Oh, and there is Danny Trejo in it. And yes, there are some funny jokes in it. And no, nobody is wearing their kid gloves. There is a whole lot of “language” in it and drugs and violence and blood, so you cannot say this was made by whimps who are too whimpy to go over the top. They even gave the part with the full frontal nudity to a transperson with some parts of the surgery completed and some parts not.

So what we have here is a very decent comedy. It is not the greatest innovation since sliced bread. I mean like, will it surprise you that the dumbest person in the movie is an exmarine? But it is very watchable and fun.

And by the way: the part of Denny Trejo is neither big nor superfunny.

Movie 90min

Trailer

The House On Cuckoo Lane (2014)

The hunt for a mysterious video destroys the life of a horror nerd. 82min imdb

Recap:

So there is this dude with a huge collection of horror VHSs and DVDs, and since he has a small bedroom in a big house we assume that he lives with his parents. Having seen about everything, he now wants to watch The House On Cuckoo Lane, a movie that may well be extremely bad, but who cares since it is extremely rare. He talks to a lot of people to get a copy, but that’s just runtime padding because it’s a dream that leads him to a copy hidden in an abandoned farmhouse. From now on on he is addicted to this movie, his life goes down the drain and his girlfriend leaves him. So he returns to the Hawk, one of the video dealers who did not sell him a copy.

The movie looks promising until you take a closer look. The hunt for an obscure video sounds interesting, just as a movie which is so disturbing that it takes control of your mind. Oh, and there are people with animal masks in it. I like that.

I think that this could have become a dirty, disturbing trip into the depths of madness and addiction, even with its low budget. However the director/star/coauthor of the movie refuses to go to where it hurts. It may be a lack of either inspiration or dedication, but it’s probably both.

The best thing I can say about this is that it made me want to watch The Last House On Dead End Street (1973) which is the 78min edit of The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell, an obscure 180min horror movie that may well be extremely bad, but it was shown on one festival and then never released, so of course everybody wants to watch it.

Movie 80min

Trailer

Same title, but so much more interesting:

Nick The Feature Film (2913)

A day in the life of America’s favorite sweetheart Nick Alex, with Robert Benfer and Chris Alex, directed by Jason Steele. 74min imdb

Recap:

Nick is America’s favorite sweetheart. In fact he is the perfect embodiment of nickness. After his birth, he was kept alive by white rabbits for seven full months before he was returned to his parents. His favorite drink is one half root beer, mixed with one half other brand root beer. Now that his nickness has been discovered by filmmaker Robert Benfer, we are treated to a day in the life of Nick. Trouble is that he is stuck in a toxic bromance with Chris, who is obviously the world’s best Monopoly player, and I guess that says a lot. God, how I hate Monopoly.

After seeing this, the obvious thing to do is to praise this excellent movie as a life changing experience, adapting the attitude that Benfer shows in this one. Well, yes, this movie is excellent indeed. Trouble is that most scenes are not quite as good as they are long. More and shorter scenes would have done this movie so much good. And yet, in its own way, this movie is a revelation. All writer/directors of microbudget movies should be forced to watch this, because this one shows exactly how it’s done. Having no budget is just not an excuse for delivering a cheap movie.

Movie 74min

Related movie:

How Not To Make A Horror Film (2015)

Docu 60min

Trailer

Mathew J. Wilkinson’s documentary about the failure that his first feature film was. 61min imdb

Recap:

Now this is one promising title, isn’t it? I expected an hour of footage from abysmal movies, making fun of them, explaining why they don’t work and maybe how they could be done be better.

However, what we get is a rather sad film about a man who goes to the desert with A$ 30k, tries to shoot a movie, loses his lead actor, has both makeup girls involved in a car crash and spends a total of not 30k but 57k to finally come home with film footage that indeed in a way resembles the movie that he wanted to make. Too bad though that the camera did not react well to the weather, and ruined much of the film stock.

At this point of the docu, the lesson that I had learned was: when you don’t got the knowledge nor the experience nor the funding, then you better don’t make a feature film, especially not in the outbacks. What’s wrong with shooting in your neighborhood? What’s wrong with making short films? Sure, few people watch short films, and yet they are shown on festivals, so they can bring you not only experience but also reputation. And after showing them on festivals you can upload them on YouTube where you reach all the people who actually watch short films. Also I will never forget just how much Following (1998) has impressed me. It’s not a great movie, not at all, but it works. It was done without a budget, carefully scripted around the locations and props they had access to, and in the end they had a movie that really worked and didn’t even look cheap. Because they knew what they were doing. And that’s why Christopher Nolan is doing big budget stuff today.

Mathew J. Wilkinson, however, was positively destroyed and in debt after his first attempt as a movie maker. And then there is this plot twist: Wilkinson keeps saying things like that he’d rather be a failure at what he loves than a success at what he hates, the success of indie film makers is not money, it’s the next gig, and the film is the filmmaker’s baby that he wants to show to the world, no matter how many people will call this baby ugly. Which proves that Wilkinson is a clever man indeed, because now we all sympathize with him, and we are eager to watch The Nullarbor Nymph (2012) which he shills as his first actually published movie… Which doesn’t even seem to be true, because there’s also Don’t Show Mother (2010),but that’s about domestic violence and probably too depressing to fit the narrative, while everybody is ready to watch a T&A exploitation flick to show some sympathy for him (well, I am anyway).

All in all it was an interesting look into the world of independent film making, and it makes reviewing indie flicks even harder. I guess I have mentioned once or twice my admiration for people who make movies because of their love for the cinema and not for the money. Also there are quite a few nobudget flicks that I watched but not reviewed because I admired the filmmakers but disliked their films. I will have to learn how to emphasize the good things about indie films without lying about the bad aspects.

Horror House (2012)

Recap:

Since he no longer produces movies, Lloyd Kaufman is a real estate agent now, and he tries to sell the Horror House to you by telling five stories that have happened there. Of course, being a former movie producer does not automatically qualify you for a movie cast, but I did like his performance. It may well be that they were very careful about not asking too much of him, but I still say that he’s the highlight of the movie. And when I say that Kaufman is the highlight of a movie, maybe you get a hunch that this one is not so super special.

Each of the five stories starts either more or less interesting, some build up a bit of suspense and some don’t, but none of them really convinces in the end. By the way: the most predictable of the endings includes a practical effect that was quite decent. And that’s about it. No violence, no gore, no nudity and few special effects. Of course a movie can be great without all of these, but this one isn’t. Not that it’s bad, it’s just the most average movie I can think of right now. No, wait, that’s not strong enough. Let me try this: it’s the averagest movie ever. Or how about this one: this is the Mount Average of movies. imdb

Chokeslam (2016)

At high school he was a loser and totally messed it up when he wanted to get out of his crush’s friend zone. Today she is a pro wrestler, and he is still a loser. With Mick Foley in a supporting role. 102min imdb

Movie 102min

Trailer

Recap

The movie starts with a delicatessen holdup, and Curtis, the guy behind the counter, treats the robber just like a customer, even though he recognizes his old highschool bully Luke. Then there is Sheena, Curtis’ old highschool crush who ditched him when he really, totally, unbelievably and unbearably messed up. She has become a prowrestling badass, but now that she’s coming back for the 10 year highschool reunion she is not doing too great careerwise.

So looking at the first few minutes this one looks like one of the best and most underrated comedies ever. Pity that that they can’t keep up the quality and it looks like they didn’t even want to. There are so many interesting supporting characters, each of them deserving more screen time and character development, and yet they decided to make a romcom. However it still is a very good movie, so much better than every romcom except of course Shaun Of The Dead.

A few words on the casting. The cast includes Harry (son of Davey Boy) Smith and God. Yes, Mick Foley is God. Period. Also, they had Chelsea Green, a pro wrestler, and you know that you can’t become a pro wrestler without being an at least decent actor. So I wonder why Sheena is played by an actress who obviously had some wrestling tutorials and then had to leave the actual chokeslamming to a stunt woman. Dumb with a capital d.

Head (2015)

Conventional slasher story about happy campers at the site of vicious murders, diligently filmed by nerds who love to play with puppets. 61min imdb

Movie 62min

Trailer

Recap:

So there are five young people camping in the forest where they meet a sixth one who tells them that this was the site of gory murders a few years ago. When they finally decide to leave, they find out that they no longer have cars.

So all in all it is a very conventional slasher story. But that in itself is not a big problem. We are used to conventional slasher stories. We are happy if there is something new, something original about them, or if they are extremely well done, or if they at least don’t totally suck. And guess what, we have a winner. This one is done by people who love what they do, and what they do is playing with puppets. And this is enough to make a conventional slasher story look fresh and new and interesting. Of course it’s not scary, not a bit, but it’s fun. I want more.

The Bad Samaritan Must Die! (2012)

Lowbudget indie flick about a real life “superhero” who is into violence and all kind of substances. 50min imdb

Movie 49min

Trailer

Recap:

She is an annoying and dumb brat and calls herself The Orphan because her father is dead and maybe she wishes that her mother was, too. She is looking for a father figure and hopes to find it in the Bad Samaritan, a real life “superhero” who is into violence and all kind of substances. Because she is a dumb brat her strategy to get his attention is snatching a handbag. Spoiler: he rejects her, and because she is a dumb brat her plan B is to kill him.

So what we have here is a grim movie, all nihilism and hopelessness. Nice. The least unsympathetic character in this is the hippie copper who is assigned to hunt the vigilante, he is the Bad Samaritan’s only friend and the voice of reason in this movie, but how trustworthy is a man who hangs with a junkie skinhead?

The real problem here is that this is not really a movie. It’s more like an episode of a miniseries that has a story with an ending but also a cliffhanger which leads nowhere because the sequel God Save The Bad Samaritan has not (yet?) been released. However it is nice that this one is not like all the other. And while the star of this movie certainly is not a new Adam West or Christian Bale, at least he’s so much better than Ben Affleck.

The Color Out Of Space (2010)

A meteor crashlands on earth and disappears, poisening the soil of a farm and sealing the fate of the farmers. 86min imdb

Movie 85min

Trailer

Recap:

***SPOILER WARNING*** In the last 19 words of this I tell what a color out of space looks like.***

The son of a WW2 soldier hears that his father has gone back to germany, so he follows him. In germany he meets a german who who tells him how he met his father after the war. Then he tells him what happened before the war: there was this meteor crashlanding downhill of the Gärtener farm. Scientists examined it very diligently until they could declare with scientific precision that they were positively clueless about the nature of this meteor which over time had dissolved, it’s ingredients poisoning the soil of the Gärtener farm.

The horror! As the mother goes insane, the Gärtener family retreats to solitude, avoiding contact with the villagers, having nowhere to go, awaiting their fate…. This by the way is quite similar to The Secret Of Marrowbone (which unfortunately is not available on YouTube), a movie that I recently watched. It was so overwhelming to watch the story unfold because we only were slowly, bit by bit, exposed to just how terrible the fate of the Marrowbone really was. The Gärteners in comparison are quite annoying. This movie so totally resembles a german made for TV movie, insofar as the storytelling is sluggishly slow, the cast desperately avoids overacting to a point when they stop acting altogether and just say their lines, horror elements are reduced to the bare minimum and then some more, and of course the storytelling has to happen on three timelevels, present day, after the war and before the war, because one of the time levels is important and the other two are perfectly fit to do nothing for the story. The horrible fate of the Gärteners could have been a truly soultearing experience if only the makers of this movie had not decided waste this opportunity and to make a detached, uninvolved, merely observing and describing document of lameness instead. Purple. They shot the movie in b&w so that purple would look sufficiently like a color out of space.

Trick (2019)

It’s that time of the year when the slashers come out, and Trick keeps on coming up with new, well, ideas. 100min imdb

Movie 96min

Trailer

Recap:

So there’s this guy whose name is Patrick “Trick” Weaver or maybe not, because it may very well be that he casually switches identities whenever he sees fit. One evening he poops a Halloween party by killing pretty much every guest before he gets hit himself. He gets emergency surgery and survives, escapes, falls out of the window, survives and disappears, probably by jumping into the river, which of course means certain death, doesn’t it? Everybody except for one single cop believes that he’s dead, and that’s why everybody except for one cop is surprised that there are more Halloween party massacres in the following years. However, the slasher seems to think that his strategy does not draw enough attention, so one year he starts cop killing during the week before Halloween.

I say that the first Halloween party massacre was a good way to start the slasher movie, the bit with the cop who is the only one who believes in his theory is not new, but good enough to work for this movie, and some of the the cop killings are quite innovative. Then however, there is the Finale, and I think that it is not as good as it is long, and when there is the surprising plot twist, I did not foresee it, but at that point I just didn’t care anymore.

This movie sure is okay. Not really good, but I have seen much worse, and it surely is an adequate choice for a holiday related movie night.

Call Girl Of Cthulhu (2014)

Everybody wants Riley (or R’lyeh?) because she has not only an impressive personality, she is also the Callgirl that Cthulhu wants as a mother for his avatar on earth. Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. 92min imdb

Movie 89min

Trailer

Recap:

What people want: the artist Dexter wants that very special escort lady, the cultist wants the very same escort lady for a ritual to bring Cthulhu to earth, and the professor wants Dexter to forge a nameless tome (the Necronomicon?) to prevent the ritual from working.

So much for the plot. The first review I read was quite salty, claiming that the movie was not true to the spirit of Lovecraft. This is true in so far that it doesn’t show the undepictable, it doesn’t give you a glimpse of the sheer size and emptiness of space and the futility of human existence, it doesn’t even show things so beyond the capacity of the human brain that the beholder will inevitably go insane (good thing, too).

Instead, it’s a parody, it’s loud and fast and trashy. However, this parody was clearly made by people who have read and love their Lovecraft. It wasn’t made with much of a budget and it wasn’t made by the most skilled movie makers, but it was made with diligence and with so much love for the spoofed that I even call it a hommage. Just look at the details: two important characters in this movie are Erica Zann (a musician) and Richard “Rick the dick” Pickman, the condom brand is “Deep Ones”, the febreeze is “Cool Air” and the viagra is “Celephais”.

This is a perfect example for a very good movie. It may not be great, but it’s so much better than just good. What bothers me is that the version I watched is shorter than the official length according to imdb. It may very well be that some of the funnier and/or grosser takes were edited. That would be a shame. But even this version is very good.

Adventures of Power (2008)

Underdog comedy about air drumming as a metaphor for life. With a guest appearance by Neil Peart (1952-2020) as himself. 89min imdb

For starters:

For laughs:

Movie, 89min (VPN:USA)

Trailer

Recap:

On the day they buried his mother, Power had a date with his fate: he turned on the radio, and they were playing Tom Sawyer.

Roughly 20 years later he is a hapless air drummer, and moments before the important strike in the copper mine starts, he loses his job, disappointing his father again. Now that nothing holds him back anymore, he goes to Mexico and competes with the toughest of illegal underground air drummers. Since he is an autodidact, he has never seen anybody anybody play air drum before (very much like Jeff Healey never saw anyone play the guitar), so he doesn’t know about the importance of the stool, and yet he manages manages to stand his ground, drawing the attention of Carlos who leads the best air drum group of New Jersey. So Power goes to Newark, where he falls in love with the deaf daughter of a once-rocknroll-slut-now-religious-nutcase woman. And together with Carlos and his team he prepares for an air drumming contest in New York with a cash prize of $2000.

Did you know that Phil Collins actually once did something right? I didn’t. For me he always was just the ugly little dwarf from the bubblegum pop music charts. So I was wrong. I ignored a song of his which is the soundtrack for one of the most important and most impressive sequences in this movie, and it works. Oh yes it does.

Personally I didn’t expect much of this movie. Of course I’ve spent a fair share of my life with playing air guitar, bass, drums and vocals. But when I heard many years back that there is an annual air guitar world championship I was not amused. My thought was that this kind of competition was something for losers like athletes or chart musicians, but surely not for those who rock. But this movie simply is too good to nag about that kind of thing. As a matter of fact, air drumming here is some metaphorical hyperbole analogy or however they call it. This movie is about the important things in life, and it rocks. If you don’t love it, if you maybe don’t even understand it, well that means that you just don’t rock.

Doomed (2015)

Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s the Fantastic Four (2015)

A documentary that tells the history of The Fantastic Four (1994), which was executive produced by Roger Corman.

Contains footage of Roger Corman, Lloyd Kaufman an Stan Lee as themselves. 85min imdb

Documentary 85min

Trailer

Recap:

In 1994 they finished the movie of the Fantastic Four, and while the cast and crew tried their best concerning promo and stuff, the producers Roger Corman and Bernd Eichinger made no move to release it. In fact, the release eventually was canceled. But why? The official story says that Bernd Eichinger made this movie only because his contract on the F4 movie rights was running out and he had to do something for ha renewal of this contract. This docu suggests that maybe the Fox intervened because they wanted the F4 as a toy for their new Wunderkind Chris. Columbus, and then there is Avi Arrad who claimed that he bought the movie to get it out of the way to make room for his own, bigger Marvel projects.

This documentary does ask some interesting questions, but it answers not too many. Still, it’s quite interesting to watch.

Related movie:

Tempus Tormentum (2018)

A mysterious stranger comes to town and is soon hunted and tortured by masked locals. 81min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

Mr. Mouse comes to town and rents a room in a motel whose owner seems to be interested in taxidermy. In his room, there is a typewriter that is extremely old, very cool, quite mysterious but (just as the motel owner) completely irrelevant for the movie. At the diner, Mr Mouse catches the attention of three local men. Later, they put on masks and hunt him through the night and torture him in various ways until they feel like the time is right to do what they planned.

The movie starts promising, in a way. Okay, so nothing much happens, but you get the feeling that this is not the next generic nobudget slasher padding the runtime, it feels more like they are setting up a deep and sophisticated story, and the light and the props and the camera angles all look good, signaling “don’t worry, friend, trust us. We know exactly what we are doing.” Trouble is: it’s a lie. Director James Rewucki knows very well how to create impressive images, but writer James Rewucki has no idea how to craft an interesting story. At least that’s my opinion. It may very well be that I’m just to dumb to dig a decent arthouse horror. So I guess that people who like unconventional horror may give it a try and make up their own minds. It may very well be that I’ll give it another try another time, and I’m pretty sure that I will take a look at Rewucki’s other feature film which is also on YouTube. It’s got a significantly better imdb rating, but that may be because it’s got only 93 votes so far, many of them probably coming from Rewucki’s artist gang.

⭐⭐

House By The Lake (2017)

House by the Lake (2017)

A struggling married couple try to reconnect at an idyllic lake house, but their relationship is tested when their young daughter begins to fixate on an imaginary friend that may or may not be real. 77min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

So there is this family that (temporarily) moves into the house by the lake. The parents are in the last phase of their marriage, they don’t even care to stop bitching when the child can hear them. The child, by the way, is somewhere “on the spectrum”. Being “on the spectrum” means not only that you’re an autist, it also means that the people around you believe that “autist” is a bad word. Then there is the nanny, who is a double threat to the mother: she is younger and hotter than her, and she is a trained professional with a natural empathy and establishes contact with the kid in no time. And then there is the old perv who totally ignores the mother and goes for the child immediately. All in all the situation is pretty dreadful, and nobody worries too much when the kid is having a new “imaginary” friend, the Fish Man. Not until the girl is missing, that is.

Well yes, sounds very interesting. Trouble is: it isn’t. Not really. The story unfolds, occasionally I wonder, if the kid is autistic, shouldn’t it have a tantrum in this situation?, but then I’m not an expert, and then the story unfolds some more, and I start to realize that this is not a horror movie, it’s a mystery thriller with more mystery and less thriller, and then there is a final plot twist that is not really surprising, and that’s all folks. Of course they could have added more suspense, a little creepier, maybe cut away a bit of the long winding drama stuff or make the movie longer. But maybe they just hadn’t the skills or the imagination.

Yes, you can watch it. It’s not bad, not at all. I have seen crap that was so much worse. Trouble is: it just isn’t good. Not a bit.

⭐⭐⭐

Pastor Shepherd (2010)

Heartwarming comedy about a loser who deserves some luck. With Danny Trejo. 91min imdb

(VPN:D)

Review:

Shepherd looks like the child of love of Jason Bateman and Norman Bates, a shockingly normal face with a grin that hurts to even look at, one cannot even start to imagine just how much it must hurt to display it while walking from door to door telling people that you want to freeze dry their pets and then returning home to a mom whose vital functions are reduced to donating money to TV scammers. Since he is too shy to talk to Danny Trejo’s beautiful daughter, the only thing that gives meaning to his life is what he does alone in the shed, often using a chainsaw.

It’s nice every now and then to discover a movie that just tells a story that’s worth watching. I don’t know what the official definition of the term “feelgood movie” is, but I use the term for comedies that do not pile jokes upon jokes, it may be that you don’t laugh out loud too often, but in the end, well, you just feel good. Pastor Shepherd is a good example.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Bunni (2013)

Entertaining slasher for the Halloween season. 71min imdb

(VPN:D) this is the 71min version. The 73min version cannot be embedded, so there is a direct link in the picture to the left.

Review:

It’s Helloween, and two couples of twenty somethings are loitering in front of the old, abandoned novelty shop. An old man warns them that this place is haunted, so they burgle it right away. The first jumpscare, of course, is just a joke, the slashing doesn’t start before a few minutes later.

The first half our is dedicated to the exposition, the shorter part is about the slasher’s origin, the longer part is about the characterisation of Rick The Prick. Why? Because! He definitely is not the center of the movie, but his part is played by the writer/editor/director of the movie who obviously enjoyed being the dude with the infinite amount of girlfriends. I think that with half an hour this is a pretty long exposition, especially since the movie has according to imdb and filmstarts.de an official runtime of 60min. Which makes me wonder because the youtube edit has a lengthy mid credit scene.

Anyway, is it good or not so? I’ll say it’s okay. It’s got no surprising plot twists, and it’s not new or special or anything, but it’s very decent holiday related binge material.

⭐⭐⭐

All Superheroes Must Die (2011)

Lowbudget attempt to one-up superhero movies 78min imdb

(VPN:D)

Review:

Four superheroes awake from unconsciousness and find out that their powers are taken away. Via TV a supervillain explains that they must play by his rules or civilians will die. So the heroes play along and soon find out that the civilians will die anyway, no matter how much they follow his orders. That’s why the green ranger whose power is superedginess, starts murdering civilians himself.

Well, yes, there are spandex people in this, makes me wonder why. Obviously the writer, director and star of this movie wanted to do a dark and gritty hatemovie that proves what petty losers superheroes are, except for the Marty Stu of course, who is a true edgelord and badder than the baddest supervillain. Well, it’s got drama, tragedy and a bit of action and also Havoc from XMen 4. So you can watch it if you want, but as a superhero movie it fails miserably.

⭐⭐

The Claire Wizard Thesis (2018)

73min

(VPN:D)

Sound

English

Captions

English

Parody of found footage movies

watch now

Trailer

imdb

no tomatoes

Review:

So big brother David is shooting a documentary and is making fun of little brother Jacob who is shooting a remake of the Blair Witch Project and is a total prick.

That’s the story, basically. This is a parody of found footage films shot as the making of of a found footage film. The movie has its moments, thinking about it I must say that some bits are just great, and it’s certainly the best found footage movie I’ve ever seen. But most of the time I just miss things like story and sympathetic characters.

By the way: all the time I was hoping that director Ishak Issa would play the part of Jacob, but was pretty sure at the same time that he was David. So it was quite interesting to watch the end credits and find out which character he actually played.

One last thing: I can relate to most characters in this movie because I’m a wannabe myself. A wannabe critic, that is.

⭐⭐⭐

The Orange Man (2015)

96min

(VPN:D)

Sound

English

Subs

English auto

Comedy about a bunch of losers who are stalked by a slasher with a hook and sack of oranges.

watch now

Trailer

imdb

no tomatoes

Review:

Back in the 80s there was a farmer who went from door to door, trying to sell his oranges, and as he didn’t succeed, he went on a killing spree. In the present days he is still not caught, and we see businessman Gerald announcing how he will run over an orange orchid with a bulldozer. But since his wife wants a divorce, he decides to make a trip with his bestest buddies who, each in their own way, are as miserable as he is.

Yes, since the slasher (apart from a sack of oranges) uses a hook, it’s a bit like I Know What Napoleon Dynamite Did Last Summer, but I’m okay with that. This is a microbudget movie done with love and diligence, and I appreciate that very much. Also, I ‘m a big boy now, and I’ m not going to complain like “bohoo, there’s not enough blood in it for a slasher movie” or “bohoo this comedy is so inane with its abundance of pee (and peeping) jokes.”

No, this is not a bad movie, and if you watch it you will find that, whether you like it or not, at least it’s not much like other movies that you’ve seen before. This is why I give it three stars, and i tell you why I don’t give it four: I think that the script would have needed much more effort. So we think that Gerald will meet the Orange Man because he is a destroyer of orange orchids, but then the story switches to buddy movie mode. When then the friends team up against the lover of Gerald’s wife, we (or at least I) think “whoa, this is some weird film about friendship.” But eventually the film decides to be full throttle nihilistic. Speaking strictly for me: I prefer scripts with a little more coherence, and while I think that nihilism in real life is rubbish, I also think that nihilism in art is valid and can be quite cool if it’s done properly, it just doesn’t tickle my fancy too much.

⭐⭐⭐

Detective Heart Of America: The Final Freedom (2015)

74min

(VPS:D)

Sound

English

Subs

None

Puppet animation movie by Jason Steele about a plaster eagle who works as an detective.

watch now

no trailer

imdb

no tomatoes

Review:

Heart Of America is a detective who works for the police. This time, somebody is doing something fishy with bitcoin. Heart Of America has no clue what’s going on, but it very much looks like that America-as-we-know-it will soon ceas to exist.

This movie is fun! Jason Steele has created a full animation movie just by taking puppets and wiggling them, and that’s enough if and only if you are an artist who knows he’s doing.

This full-length feature is the third adventure of Heart Of America. You can watch the first installments here and here

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Related movie:

Supermen: World War (2019)

63min

(VPN:D)

Sound

English

Subs

Lois and Clark in France during WW2

watch now

Trailer

imdb

No tomatoes

Review:

Lois and Clark go to France to report on the war. Good thing, too, because some mad scientist is working on a Superman for Hitler.

So this is a fan movie, totally not canon, and I admire what these people do. They put so much work into their movies, and money that they will never see again. There is no use pointing the finger at minor flaws, this movie is so much better than anything that you or I will ever create.

(Oh, wait, I must be a cleverdig for just one short paragraph in parentheses: you don’t have to read Nietzsche to make a Superman fan film, but according to the description, this movie explores philosophies about what Superman is, so it sure wouldn’t have hurt.)

By the way, Jimmy Olsen is replaced in this movie by Donald L. Callahan who was an actual war photographer and later became the director’s grandfather.

⭐⭐⭐

The Chair (2016)

84min

(VPN:D)

Sound

English

Subs

English

Violent drama about a prisoner on death row and the sadistic and murderous warden.

Rowdy Roddy Piper’s last role.

Review

So there is this prisoner waiting for the electric chair. However, the warden and his henchmen soon turn this movie into a torture porn. In the second half it gets more dramaish with some extremely dull plot twists.

All in all this is a solid 1*, but I give it a bonus star because Rowdy Roddy Piper and Road Warrior Animal are in it. I don’t want to watch the movie a second time to find out whom Animal played (I assume he is the chubby cop who is shown in a flashback near the end), but Piper was a great wrestler, and of course a good actor, that’s part of the job description after all. This was his last movie.

⭐⭐

Inhumanwich! (2016)

Inhumanwich! (2016) 73min Englisch sound with subtitles VPN:D

⭐⭐⭐⭐

An astronaut in the earth’s orbit is bitten by a radioactive sloppy joe and turns into a horrible bologna monster.

Yes. This is a good movie. When you got no budget and no genius, you can still go for a silly comedy, and when your actors can’t really act, they can still go all the way over the top. It doesn’t always work, but in this case, it does. I love it.

Tenacious D Live In Germany 2016

Tenacious D Live In Germany 2016, 62min VPN:D

⭐⭐⭐⭐

What can I say? Kyle Gass and Jack Black were great when they first created their miniseries about two chubby wannabe rockers strumming on acoustic guitars, and today, well, I guess that Jack Black is just the rocking actor that Johnny Depp always wanted to be.

Room For Rent (2016)

Room For Rent (2016) 70min with Erin Brown. English sound with autocaps. VPN:D ⭐⭐⭐

So there is that dude who buys a house because he thinks that this is what grown people do. When he finds out that he cannot pay the bills he starts searching for a a roomier via internet. Via internet? Yes, and soon people start trolling him with stories about just how haunted his house is. So he tries to prove that his house is all right.

Well, I’m so totally not a fan of found footage movies, and I like microbudget movies only when they are well written and executed with diligence. The reason why I watched this is Erin Brown, I’m a bit of a fanboy since I saw her (as Misty Mundae) in Spider-Babe. In this film, however, she was not so convincing. She said her lines and walked across the lane clearly not knowing what she was doing there.

The really impressive thing about this movie: one of the bigger problems with this kind of movies are the unskilled actors, and here, in this movie, the sister and the friend of the hero are incredibly convincing. How come? Are they pros? Are the naturals? Well, I love to imagine that they are both awful actors, and since the author knew this he wrote parts for them that would not require actual acting, they just had to overact while being themselves. Well I love this theory and if it should be wrong, please don’t burst the bubble.

Anyways, this is definitively a 3* movie, fully okay if you occasionally watch microbudget found footage movies.

The Paranormals (2015)

The Paranormals (2015) 88min, English sound with subtitles, VPN:D ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Life was good when they were kids, they wore tinfoil hats and played ghostbusters. As adults, however, life is different. Examining the strange case of the vanishing gas station does not make you a professional ghostbuster, and Adam decides to grow up and moves to Dallas for a real job. Thomas however still claims to be a psychic and refuses even to accept a daytime job at the local public library.

Adam, who desperately tries to fit into the real world is bullied by a demonic copying machine. Thomas teams up with Dirk who knows how to run a successful ghostbuster business because he is a scammer.

This is a real “should see” because it’s really good and I give it a bonus star because it is one of my personal favorites. It happens too often that microbudget movies are trash, done completely without love and diligence. This one, however, is flawless. Yes, it’s cheap and it shows, but I don’t care, because it is so much better than many of those average Hollywood blockbusters.