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.
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.
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.
