'Forceful geiser of shit': Fat Slags (2004)

As previously chronicled here, my father and I very much enjoy a Bad Movie. They quite often unite us. Here is one that threatened to divide us. My father thought this was a funny movie, and in fact mailed it to me by surprise mid-week. Despite it being one of those covers I remember seeing for years and years in video stores (God, remember those things?!), it never lured me enough. I watched this movie for my dad, and I am glad I did, because had it been for any other reason, there may have been something seriously wrong with me, as I realised within the first five minutes.

I was unaware of the Fat Slags strip in Viz magazine, though I knew of the magazine. It was a few years before my time, really, so I had no fan-based motivation for liking it. It should also be established that I very much appreciate silly/gross-out humour, so there was no reason for me not to like it, right? In theory, that's absolutely correct, but what materialised before me was so far from humourous that I feared my face may disappear into my shoulders from cringing.

Sandra and Tracey (I don't know which is which) are two fat slags living on Shit Street somewhere up north. They are randomly selected by post to appear on a guest spot of a talk show entitled 'Why are tarts up North so fat?' This title, and what it really says about the North when you can randomly select suitable candidates for such a show successfully, were pretty much the only amusing elements I detected in this still-too-long-at-75-mins shitheap.

Following a blow to the head, megatime businessman Sean Cooley (Jerry O'Connell - oh Vern, you've let yourself down) sees the show during a meeting and becomes obsessed with the Fat Slags, promising he will make them the next big thing. Perhaps ten years ago, before the Reality TV thing had really taken off, this would have seemed like a terrible premise. But now, in the era of the Kardashians, and strings of promiscuous, air-headed ugly 'businesspeople' from Essex and Newcastle and Chelsea, it is really nothing out of the ordinary. I shudder at the thought of people who actually aspire to be like these brainless morons, when there are great artists, philosophers and scientists to admire.

I really needn't say more on the plot; it's been done to death by many a movie nearly as bad as this. It made me think of the abominable Keith Lemon: The Film. But the Slags are even more dislikable than Lemon. They are loud, obnoxious, and exhibitionist about their various bodily functions. They are so over the top with their fart gags, with their shit gags, that it is well and truly repugnant. It definitely takes something special, like American Pie or There's Something About Mary to pull off a genuinely funny bodily fluid joke. Although many loved it, I was thoroughly repulsed by the scenario in Bridesmaids. Yes, maybe it's that I just don't like to see women degrade themselves with such trash. I don't want to get sucked into some sexism row, but I just can't watch women do toilet humour. It grosses me out, and not in a good way.

The fat suits are terrible, the tits are waaaaay too perky to be on these two, and I don't like either of them at all. I especially dislike the dark-haired one (Sandra? Tracey? I dunno), whose whiny voice regularly breaks into a really irritating growl-type thing. The 'plot' is a fucking insult, the appearance of the wonderful Anthony Head makes me weep for his dignity, and the terrible role written for Geri Halliwell (and a couple of her terrible solo tracks) makes me hate my favourite Spice, which is just not acceptable.

Oh, I forgot the only other funny thing. A subplot involving two slimy Northern guys hitching rides back home when they are detained by Immigration, who spend considerable time trying to figure out which far off country the incomprehensible men are from, before shipping them off to Afghanistan. I would by far have preferred a movie about these fellas.

This movie is so shockingly bad I can't even begin to express it. I cannot believe that professional film makers, with decent resumes, never looked at the forceful geiser of shit spewing in front of their cameras and decided that perhaps they should, in the words of Juno MacGuff, 'nip it in the bud before it gets worse'. Surely Jerry O'Connell, who I fondly remember as little chubster Vern in Rob Reiner's Stand By Me, must be ashamed. He is so much better than this. I am glad to see this movie firmly cemented in IMDb's Bottom 100. It belongs there, and only because you can't abort a living movie.

'Ridiculously Flawed' - Texas Chainsaw (2013)

I think it's a fair statement that after an original that couldn't be bettered, several sequels and prequels of fluctuating effect and forty long years, nobody really wanted a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The solitary draw of this movie, for me as a huge fan of the original, was cameos by Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface) and Marilyn Burns (Sally Hardesty). These two really knew how to terrify an audience. If only these miniscule cameos had been extended into fuller characters, the unsure plot, mood and meaning might have been redeemed. This movie is so ridiculously flawed in so many ways, from major factual errors to horrifically cheesy one-liners, and so, I give you--- the ***SPOILER ALERT***.

The opening scene of the movie picks up where the original movie left off in the summer of 1974. Sally has escaped the Sawyers' (it took me this film to get the joke there) house of horrors, and the local police, along with every yokel in the state, turn up, where they really would have been of better use say, twelve hours earlier. Inside the house are Leatherface, Gas Station Guy and Grandpa, plus half a dozen other family members never seen before, who surely just turned up if we are to believe anything. Among these is a woman with a baby. A massive torches-and-pitchforks riot ensues, and the locals massacre the Sawyers and steal the baby.

In present day, we meet a hot young thing, Heather (Alexandra Daddario), who finds out her parents 'adopted' her and that she has inherited a massive estate from Grandma Verna Sawyer (Marilyn Burns) in Texas. She and her equally hot and young friends kit up the van and drive on down to Texas where they are met at Heather's new mansion by a lawyer, who gives her the keys and a letter, with strict instructions from the deceased that the letter be read. Too bad Heather's loudmouth tagalongs are preoccupied checking out the new pad, complete with pool table and shit loads of silver plates and candelabras (you know - the kind that belong in a Swag Bag). She forgets the letter, and apparently her common sense, when the suave hitch hiker they picked up (a stark contrast to Edwin Neal's grotesque freak) only a few hours earlier is allowed to be left alone in the house while everybody else goes for groceries totally unnecessarily. I mean, send two people at the most. Definitely bring the stranger with you!

Well, the Swag Bag comes out, and said silver plates and candelabras go tumbling in, but Hitch Hiker is too freakin' nosy for his own good. He finds a secret door in the kitchen, which leads him down an eery dark staircase into a creepy basement with burning candles and lots of stuff made of iron. There's yet another door, which he obnoxiously tries to open every which way possible, before ol' Leatherface comes bursting through and rips the guy to a pulp.

The group of idiots return and are soooo shocked to find that they've been burglarised, and that the sexy culprit is gone. Here I should elaborate on the group slightly: we have Heather, and her boyfriend Ryan, her best friend Nikki and other guy Kenny. Heather and Kenny are occupied in the house, and Nikki lures her best friend's boyfriend out to the barn. Earlier at the grocery store, it is alluded to that they had a 'one-time thing' that Heather cannot find out about. Well, don't history repeat itself?! Ryan is hardly resistant, and the two proceed to fuck in the barn.

Meanwhile inside, Kenny also skulks too far and unwittingly forces Leatherface from the basement, and so his rampage begins. Heather finds her thoroughly demolished friend at Leatherface's feet, and starts screaming and running for her life (at least she is sensible enough to run outside), at which point the adulterers come out of the barn to see what's going on. All they see is a menacing silhouette in the darkness, which starts coming at them with a chainsaw. So, of course, they lock the wooden door and stand back. The immediately unlikable tart Nikki grabs a shotgun, and says - here comes the first of several notably terrible lines - "Welcome to Texas, motherfucker," before shooting through the door at their aggressor. Firstly, whoever this motherfucker is, he's probably in a better position to welcome you to Texas, y'old City Kid - you just got here! Secondly, what's with the contrived cockiness? You are being advanced by an unknown chainsaw-wielding psycho, it's perfectly acceptable to be terrified.

Well anyhow, after a major plotline like 'cheating boyfriend and best mate' is thrown in, we expect some kind of follow up, right? I mean, Heather has to find out, and comeuppance will arrive. Apparently not. Observe: after some graveyard-related shenanigans, the three remaining friends rendezvous and wisely hit the road. However, male idiot wants to ram the colossal iron gates, because they don't have time to get out and open them, having overtaken their chaser at 50mph on a very long driveway. Female idiots disagree, but hey, he's driving, so smashed-to-shit engine, here we come! Now they are forced to get out and open the gate anyhow, after the obligatory few minutes of stalling and key-turning and aggressor gaining on them, and get a few hundred metres before the whole freakin' vehicle does several spins and is well and truly wiped out. The dickhead boyfriend is killed, the dickhead friend is found hours later twitching in a chest freezer, Pam-style. The secret dies with them and Heather never finds out about their affair. What the hell?!

Leatherface chases Heather to a local funfair, where people are unperturbed to say the least. Despite the vast lengths of open space on every side of her, Heather gets herself not-cornered, and just has to grab onto the rotating ferris wheel and dangle while it turns, inevitably back round to the ground, where Leatherface has strategically moved from one side of the ride platform to the other, saw bared. She escapes with the help of a young copper, who gets her back to the station and she uncovers her real family's case files. Here she realises the locals killed the Sawyers and kidnapped her. So she sneaks out with one of those bullshit 'Murderers' written-in-lipstick statements, to go back to the house. Good idea!

Just to add to the film's ridiculous nature, when Heather changes out of a crop top, she puts on a shirt done up with a single button. Classy lady!

The sheriff sends an officer (yes, that's correct, singular!) to the house to investigate all the murderous goings-on, with the typical opposing force beside him, who wears a different coloured suit and gives the officer stupid instructions with obviously disastrous consequences. The ensuing sequence is by far the film's best and most effective, yet it is the key to the entire plot's undoing. The officer follows the trail of blood into the basement, and in order for his superiors to bear witness to his imminent grizzly death, whips out an iPhone and goes on video call. The granulated picture adds to the creepiness, and it's a brilliant sequence. But wait! iPhones, video calls. This must be set in real present day. Like, 2007 onwards, at the very least. But Heather is very young, about 20 years old. She was a baby in 1974, yet she's 20 in 200-. Wow, that doesn't add up in the slightest.

IMDbers have given ridiculous trollish answers to this: They just took the original and set it in the '80s instead; this one is set in the '90s cos my dad says iPhones were around then (never mind the actual video call element); there is never any mention of the opening incident actually taking place in 1974. Alas, there is, and it was, because that's when it was made. You can't take the very same day with all the same events, and just say, "Oh, no - this is 15 years later for no reason." So this is just a glaring chronological error in a movie which was surely produced by professionals intelligent enough to detect such a fault.

Anyhow, it turns out everyone's in on it, even the handsome young cop, and they go out and recapture Heather. There is a cringeworthy scene where she's trapped in the back of the cop car, the handsome cop driving. It has been revealed he's the son of the local tyrannical asshole, and the usually sweet and composed Heather starts pulling all this stary-eyes, weird-turning-of-the-head, psycho-face shit that is just utterly unlike anything we've seen her previously do, and obviously an attempt to look intimidating and insane to her captor. "So you're a Hartman?" she coos at him. She stabs a dagger at the screen between them, and says, "I'm a Sawyer!" Ohh fuck off, seriously! No you're not. You're an average but really hot city girl who came to the state only hours ago on a road trip that went astonishingly awry, who literally just found out that she's related to a family of murderous psychos.

She's dragged off into an abandoned factory full of large and dangerous-looking machinery, and chained with her arms above her head. Needless to say, the goth act is long gone, and she's back to screaming. About time for Leatherface to cut open the large-breasted woman's shirt for no apparent reason. OK, so some pretty amazing boob shots here, but he then notices some birthmark on her chest which advises him that she is his long-lost cousin. With this, he decides not to kill her after all. But what if he hadn't ripped her shirt just so we could enjoy her massive boobs for a while?

The bad guys come along to kill them both, and when she escapes, Heather goes back again to help Leatherface, who is being beaten rotten, and does so by hurling him his chainsaw (undoubtedly one of the very infrequent shots to be put in 3D to justify there being a 3D version) and yelling (get ready to wince) "Do your thing, cuz!" Ohhh, ohhh the shame! So they kill the bad guys, go back to the blood-spattered mansion and enjoy each other's company. Heather finally reads the letter which tells her about her harmless-really cousin in the basement, and how to look after him. Deciding the maniac who just an hour or two ago murdered her best friends and almost killed her several times is family after all, the movie ends with Heather staying in the death mansion in Texas. What the hell?!

So there's your basic run-through of probably the most professionally produced but most laughably amateur installment of the TCM franchise. What is there to say about it that's worthwhile? There are many allusions to the original '74 movie, which itself was amateur but notoriously effective, such as meat hooks, chest freezers and little red short shorts. Our old pal Leatherface, who Hansen first created so devotedly, is portrayed for the sixth time by a sixth actor (this time Dan Yeager), and is emphasised more as an anti-hero who we are supposed to sympathise with. There were definitely moments of real character in the first movie, particularly just after Leatherface has killed Kirk and Pam. He hits things in frustration and sits, head in his hands, obviously upset and confused, as the burning red sunlight seeps through the windows onto him. It's one of an almost constant stream of breath-taking sequences that constitute the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Aside from the aforementioned iPhone scene, there is very little memorable about this movie.

OK, the kills are pretty brutal and leave some bloody big messes. However, one of the most efficacious tricks about the original's making is that no actual violence is ever explicitly shown. We never see the meat hook pierce Pam's flesh, nor do we ever see the trauma caused to Franklin's torso. All we get is the victim's reactions to their own pain. We create the violence in our minds, which is infinitely scarier than any amount of on-screen blood. No such imagination is ignited by this movie. But if nothing else, it periodically reminds us of our own common sense, by recognising its general lack of quality. The picture looks good, but there is negligible thought or creativity exercised. The actors aren't really required to do a convincing job due to the poor and unbelievable script. The dialogue is terribly contrived, decisions are stupid, thought processes abandoned and nothing really fits.

As a die-hard Hooper Original fan, I was left thoroughly unsatisfied by this film. The two captivating cameos that lured me to the movie lasted a mere few seconds each. Gunnar's handsome Viking figure, finally unmasked, is on-screen briefly three or four times during the opening shoot out. Marilyn's lovely face eventually graces us minutes from the end, and again, very briefly. Sadly, Marilyn Burns passed away a couple of weeks ago. I would most definitely have preferred some forty-years-later sequel between Leatherface (Hansen) and Sally (Burns), no matter how unnecessary that sounds, in place of this forced trash.

You know what, just as I write this, I have reminded myself of how terrible a film this is, and that I would advise any reader that they would only watch it if they were holding a...Bad Movies Marathon. So I will, in fact, also add this review to my Bad Movies Marathon page too.

End of rant.

'Emaciated From Roth-Deficiency' - Hostel Part III (2011)

The first was somewhat definitive of an era and mark of a change in horror movies, the second was a poor clone of the first with the genders switched, the third is just a freakin' joke.
Horror contemporary Eli Roth, creator of the riotous Cabin Fever, brought us Hostel in 2005, as a half softcore porn, half guts'n'gore slasher which took explicit violence to a new level at the time. Despite the obvious 'exploitation,' it was quite bravely made and with quite decent technique.

And then, 6 years later, here we are with the straight-to-DVD addition to the gruelling series: Hostel Part III. Emaciated from Roth-deficiency, this chapter dives straight in with a bunch of typical idiots, on a typical idiot stag party, with one moderately good-hearted Groom, one disgusting, cheating little sex pest, and a bunch of other guys to fill in the gaps. They all have names, but who cares? That's incidental. These generic men are just pawns in the generic horror flick that is Hostel Part III.

Out of Europe all together, the movie is set in Las Vegas, with the idiots instantly trusting the most obviously wrong kind of people, allowing a dodgy silent cabby, whose meter is broken, to drive them to the middle of goddamn nowhere, where there is obviously a party going on, and inevitably get taken out by the same crew of rich freaks who pay to kill strangers in James Bond-style cocktail lounges that we remember from Parts 1 and 2.

It took me a while to decide whether to make this a regular, but low-rated review, or a Bad Movies Marathon entry, as there were traces of decent work. There were one or two examples of interesting camerawork, and there were one or two examples of doing the exact opposite of what you expected. But in the long run, these things didn't matter, nor did much else. The aforementioned dodgy cabby is given a lengthy introduction and involvement, but it never comes to anything: he is never mentioned again. The fate of the  vanished girlfriend of one long-time prisoner is never revealed either, despite her always being brought up.

I also have a serious bone to pick with the way the writers cop out when it comes to the actual horror. So, the creepy little sex pest gets done in pretty well, but then the first pretty girl, complete with cheerleader outfit, is put on a table with a few dozen cockroaches. Her actual death comes from her ridiculous screaming, allowing the bugs to crawl down her throat and suffocate her. Laughable. Had she not been stupid enough to welcome the plague with her hysterics, what had been the bad guys' plan exactly? A tub full of bugs is hardly slow painful torture ending in imminent death. This was terribly thought out.

Similarly, when the Groom is inevitably the last man standing versus the bad guy, there is copious "You sick motherfucker!" followed by duelling with various butcher's knives, and finally they resort to several good old fashioned punch-ups. And all of this terrible, predictable action is punctuated by horrific CGI where it's not needed.

Serials, especially the horror ones, are getting old. There is rarely a sequel better than its predecessor, and they usually screw up everything that was once so great about the original. Here we have a nice example. What Eli Roth created as a shocking, but refreshing slasher movie has been reduced to cheap tack, shoddy writing and being known as "one of those shitty series." It's a shame.

'The Worst Sequel Ever Made?' - Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

In my first Bad Movies Marathon review, I mentioned Exploitation Film, which seems quite often to be the category that such Bad Movies fall into. This one features no random lesbian orgies or barb-wire and sulphuric acid. The only exploitation going on here is of Michael Caine's talent and image.

"How the hell does a shark follow people to the Bahamas?!" I once heard a young blonde demand on an old episode of Hollyoaks. Indeed, Jaws: The Revenge's notoriety is widespread, seeping even into the everyday chit-chat of hot young Chester folk. Teresa McQueen is one of many who can't quite get their heads around the idea of a great white shark, with no less than four American-born predecessors in this franchise, following one woman from the US to the Bahamas, and all in the same time that she makes it by plane!

So, what do we have in terms of a forth Jaws installment? Well, Lorraine Gary returns, rather worse for the wear, from retirement as the now widowed Ellen Brody. While she is hugely paranoid and neurotic, despite having been the only Brody to get no close-up Great White action in the series, her sons Sean and Michael seem undeterred by their past horrors. When Sean is killed (three guesses how), things carry on as normal: Ellen is now even more paranoid, and Michael more keen on the water than ever. Go figure! So, the traumatised Ellen goes to stay with Michael and his family in the Bahamas, where he works in some open-ocean-related role.

Having had her family tangled up with sharks (let's not forget- different, unrelated sharks) several times now, Ellen grows convinced that this specific shark is getting revenge on her. For what, I don't know. Why, I also don't know. "Is this shark the nephew, or the cousin, or the next-door-neighbour or what?" Siskel and Ebert joked in their 1987 review. Why would this particular shark want revenge for the deaths of other sharks? Unless some Pussy Riot-style protest is taking place, it's probably fair to say that this concept is pure paranoia on Ellen's part, and terrible screenwriting by the creator.

So what is so bad about Jaws: The Revenge? Is it the ridiculous plot, below-amateur production and laughable accents? The shark with the $20 budget? How about Lorraine Gary's ghastly haircut and high-waisted trousers? All of the above, and the countless accompanying errors, like Michael Caine climbing out of the ocean with a dry shirt, Ellen remembering events she didn't witness, and the shark actually roaring, before supposedly standing vertically in the water long enough for a boat to impale it.

If 99% of this movie's audience can be annoyed by the plethora of plot-holes and poor production, why oh why could the considerable crew involved in its making not realise that their project was a pile of shit, and either make the necessary changes or scrap the whole thing. I mean, aside us 'art fags,' they do make movies to make money, right?

Oh boy, it's one hell of a disaster. "So bad it's good?" one IMDb user asks? No, so bad you don't know whether to laugh or cry. But it's not a wonder that the once-radiant Lorraine Gary went quickly back into hiding after Jaws: The Revenge. It's truly shocking.

'The Critter from the Shitter' - Ratman (1980)

Exploitation film spans a wide range of subgenres, and every now and then you get a good one. You get a lot of bad ones. And then you get those that are so below amateur that it's funny. This kind of exploitation movie  are the kind that have been dug out of attics and re-released by Shameless Screen Entertainment in a range of bright yellow cases. Shameless sports a colourful and ridiculous portfolio of titles, such as Don't Torture A Duckling (1972), Satan's Baby Doll (1982) and Love Goddess of the Cannibals (1978). When out for a cheap laugh, my Dad and I spotted Ratman. We were somewhat shocked to see full nudity on the cover, and when we noticed its subtitle- "The critter from the shitter!"- we had to check it out.

So, let's start with the basics. Ratman is your typical cheap exploitation film- Italian makers, shot in South America, badly dubbed, and plenty of gratuitous nudity. Then throw in your title character, the result of an inconceivable experiment fertilising a rat ovum with human sperm, who is played by the World's Smallest Man, Nelson De La Rosa. Of course, the little guy escapes and starts running rampant around some holiday resort, picking off supposed fashion models, who are dumber than usual by not thinking to pick their attacker up by the scruff of the neck and tie him in a pillowcase! They have clearly never modelled before either. If not because they dry their hair without turning the drier on, for their frenetic technique. Instead of posing for hours at a time in carefully crafted positions, they prance off in unknown directions and gesticulate wildly while an equally unprofessional photographer tries to keep up. Female horror victims making dumb mistakes is pretty standard, but these girls are dumb on a whole new level!

When one of said bimbos goes missing, her sister travels to the island in an attempt to identify several bodies.  She meets your typical B-movie hero when she shares a cab with him, and within minutes he is accompanying her to the mortuary, because he's a writer looking for new material. As you do.
They slowly follow the sister and pursuing Ratman's trail by a series of inexplicable realisations, while the sister happens upon Ratman's creator and takes a ridiculously caressive shower, before making a string of dumb-ass moves that leave only a fridge between her and her newborn-sized attacker.

Ratman has an 18 certificate, and I can't see any material worthy of such a classification. There is some American Pie-level nudity, and some Scary Movie-level violence. If anyone as young as 12 had nothing better to do with their youth, they could watch Ratman with minimal permanent damage, except perhaps shame on the filmmakers' behalf. The cast are sterile of any acting talent, the story jumps from point to point without seeing the need to explain the journeys in between, cinematography is lazy and unimaginative, and dialogue is just implausibly bad. Dad and I joked about holding Bad Movie Marathons, stocked by Shameless and hosted by Elvira. Her quick-minded double entendres would bring this trash to its knees, and would make it all the more mockable.