Podcast Episode 28

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In Episode 28 we are talking westerns and cyborgs. First Adam continues his "Class of" retrospective with the second in the series, "Class of 1999". Then Mike reviews the 1964 spaghetti western Sergio Leone classic, "A Fistful of Dollars". We also talk about what we've been watching and recent news items including "Mad Max Fury Road" and "Walking Dead Season 5". Enjoy!

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Joy Ride 3: Roadkill - Review

Joy Ride 3 sees Rusty Nail return with his trusty tractor trailer to run down a new set of victims. This time his sights are set on a group of young street racers on their way to Canada to take part in a competition known as the Road Rally 1000.

The original Joy Ride is a movie that surprised the hell out of me when I first saw it. Filled with suspense, likable characters, good acting, a simple premise and a frightening antagonist it was easy to be sucked into the story and come out at the end satisfied. That’s why it’s so disappointing to see this become nothing more than a modern slasher franchise that utilizes characters we can only barely like, features kills that feel like rejects from a Saw movie and seems to be positioning Rusty as a wise-cracking slasher in the vein of Freddy Krueger rather than an ominous presence hidden behind the wheel of his truck.

The film opens with two meth heads in a motel room, high as kites and having sex. They run out of meth so they come up with the bright idea of calling a trucker on the CB radio and robbing him of cash and drugs. Of course they call up Rusty Nail who proceeds to tie them to the front of his truck and tell them that if they can hold on for one mile he will let them go. You can see why I make the Saw reference as most of the kills are setup in a way to torture the victim and draw out their death. So right from the opening scene we have two characters being killed by Rusty who fully deserve what they get. Seeing them be run over by his big rig is satisfying rather than terrifying. I will say that Ken Kirzinger chews up his role as Rusty Nail and is a good fit for the role but setting up the audience to root for him is a mis-step.

After this opening we are introduced to our main cast of characters. They include two incredibly annoying women and a bunch of completely underdeveloped male characters. We are simply supposed to define them by the fact that they race cars. The only character I found myself even remotely liking was Austin and that was because he makes a Large Marge reference which I can totally appreciate. It’s the only scene in the movie where I found myself smiling.

As you can imagine the remaining run-time is filled with the racers running afoul of Rusty and he kills them off in various creative ways while they continually make horrible baffling decisions. He ties onecharacter to the top of his truck and drives full speed under a bridge. He places one characters head between a lift and the bottom of his truck slowly crushing it. He sets up an elaborate contraption where one characters head is slowly wrapped with a chain and impaled. There are a few others as well but most involve some sort of elaborate setup. Again, this is why I make the Saw comparison. He puts in so much work to kill these people when all he has to do is run them over with his truck.

I don’t have much more to say about the movie. It’s from the director of Wrong Turn 3, 4 & 5 which I have yet to see but haven't heard many good things. Hopefully the Joy Ride franchise calls it quits at 3 and we aren’t exposed to any additional sequels though I doubt it. Overall it’s a formulaic run of the mill slasher movie with unlikable bland characters and an unoriginal uninspired story that left me bored. There are some good gore effects, decent car chases, and the acting’s not half-bad but that’s hardly enough to save this movie.

Score: 1.5/5

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Podcast Episode 12

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It's all about monsters in episode 12 and we cover a wide variety beginning with a tour of the English countryside in Clive Barker's "Rawhead Rex" from 1986. We then tear into John Carl Buechler's "Cellar Dweller" from 1988 and finish up with a stomping from 2001's Godzilla, Mothra and King Gidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack! Who will come out victorious??? We also list our top 5 all time monster fights. Enjoy!

Curse of Chucky Review

I Spit on Your Grave 2 - Review

From its initial announcement I was vocally unenthusiastic of I Spit on Your Grave 2. I Spit on Your Grave was a film that I felt didn't require a remake let alone a sequel to the remake. After watching the movie I can say with confidence that I was correct in my initial reaction. This movie is trash. Not trashy like John Waters because that would be a good thing. It's just trash. Garbage.

The plot follows a young woman named Katie who moves to New York City from the mid-west with big dreams of becoming a model. Of course she struggles right out of the gate and is told that she has a lot of potential but her portfolio needs work. Out of desperation she contacts a photographer who offers free professional photos to models. The trade-off being that they are able to use the photos in their personal portfolio and make money off of them. She heads on over to this guys studio and there are three thick accented Bulgarian brothers who are all kinds of shady. She opts out of the photo shoot once things get weird but unfortunately she has garnered the attention of Georgy who apparently has a penchant for serial rape. Predictably he stalks her, eventually breaks into her home, murders her friend and brutally assaults her. Georgy calls his brother who decides they have to clean up the mess. This entails drugging Katie, shipping her to Bulgaria, finding a John who will pay a wad of cash to do what he wants to her, murdering her and disposing of her body. That's in a nutshell but there is a ton of sexual violence that happens in that span of time from an additional rape to cow prodding. It's brutal, graphic and difficult to watch. As we expect she survives and exacts revenge upon her abusers.

V/H/S 2 - Review

Horror anthologies have always been a favorite of mine ever since I watched Creepshow and more recently Trick R Treat. I also love found footage films, D]despite many people’s tendency to shit on them, and think there's a lot more new and creative things that can be done with this genre. In no film is this more evident than in V/H/S 2.

V/H/S 2 is comprised of five segments, unlike six in the original, one of those being the wrap-around story. This, however, is a welcome change as it allows the directors plenty of time to flesh out their stories, one of which runs 40 minutes and is definitely worth the extra time. If there’s one part of the first V/H/S that I thought was most lacking it was the wrap-around story. It followed a group of troublemakers as they recorded themselves causing mayhem and ended at a creepy house where they have to find a V/H/S tape. Of course they slowly begin to disappear as the viewer is treated to each new story. It wasn't terrible but you didn't care about the characters at all because they were assholes and it felt like it was thrown in simply to provide a reason for all of these films to exist together. This time around, we follow a sleazy private detective and his partner on their search for a missing student when they come across.... you guessed it, a pile of VHS tapes that they can’t help but watch. I found this wrap-around story to be much creepier than the original film as the tapes actually affect them in strange ways and we can see someone else in the background watching them. In the original V/H/S we’re not given many hints to the origin of the tapes but in V/H/S 2 we are given a few more clues, though they still remain vague. The ending was a big step up from the first as well and turned out to be a bit of a surprise.

Podcast Episode 3

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Texas Chainsaw "3D" - Review

Texas Chainsaw 3D is a complete mess from beginning to end. I had heard it was bad but stayed away from reviews knowing some day I would watch it. I am having a hard time finding even a single redeeming value about this "film". I feel like I have lost an hour and a half of my life that could have been better spent doing other things. Unfortunately, I can't take this experience back so I may as well review it. This is a long review as it's pretty hard to cover all of the flaws in this movie without getting into some length.
The film opens with a quick montage overview of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For a quick moment I thought to myself, maybe I should just watch that, but I pushed those thoughts out of my head and forged ahead. This film picks up directly where the 1974 film ended. This sets the film up to exist in a brand new universe where none of the sequels exist. The sheriff shows up at the Sawyer household which is now inhabited by several family members. Here is the very first problem with the film. I have seen the original chainsaw. There were four people in that house and there were no women and no babies. Did they all decide to rush over to the the sawyer house for a family breakfast after they had just slaughtered a group of innocents and let one escape? If they had been there