#56 House of the Dead (Wes)

House of the Dead

So it was Tuesday night again, and I found myself watching a bunch of hugely unpleasant looking monsters, foaming at their mouths and trying to scare anyone watching with the unintelligible noises coming from their mouths. It was at this point I noticed the time and had to turn off the UKIP conference footage and put on our latest movie, House of the Dead. Now regular readers of this blog will know by now about my general dislike of movies based on videogames. I’ve covered this all before as we’ve now watched several movies based on them, Streetfighter, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever, and most recently Alone in the Dark. Whilst the first two were bad, but had their fun moments, Alone in the Dark was truly awful with nothing to recommend it. I put the blame on that firmly on the shoulders of the director Uwe Boll, which made the next movie on our list particualry torturous. That’s right, another video game adaption, by Uwe Boll and suddenly knew the true meaning of terror (again)…

 Five college kids are desperate to get to a rave being held on an island when they miss their boat. So they charter Captain Kirk’s (Jurgen Prochnow) boat to take them. When they arrive on the island, they find everything deserted and in a mess, so naturally they decide to go and look for everyone, instead of getting back on the boat and going deep sea fishing instead. Some of them find a house which has some survivors of the rave hiding inside, who tell them that the rave was attacked by zombies. By this point some of their other friends have already been killed (including Kirk’s first mate Salish (Clint Howard), who I was convinced was called Salad due to Kirk’s German accent), and the boat is now full of zombies for some reason. So Kirk goes and finds a stash of guns that he conveniently has buried and they decide to head back to the house. Some more people are killed, they blow up the house and find some tunnels and  finally there’s a Spaniard called Castillo (David Palffy) who is the first zombie (end of game boss), who fights them with a sword, and I just really give up at this point. But it’s ok, because it seems that the embodiment of Errol bloody Flynn has survived, so we now get to see some swashbuckling in exactly the same style as the gunplay we watched earlier. Meanwhile my will to carry on with this list is slowly buckling too.

Starting off with a voiceover that made this movie sound like the worst Halloween special of The Wonder Years you’ve ever seen, you knew this movie would have the sort of script that would make your average porn movie sound like it was written by Ernest Hemingway, and I wasn’t proven wrong. It contains such classic lines as “You created it all to be immortal. Why?” “To live forever!”.

The zombies (I’ll use that word even though they’re not created by black magic, as it’s the easiest way to describe them) in this movie really are amongst the worst I’ve ever seen. Some of the make up/costuming is actually ok, on the more ancient zombies anyway, the freshly dead look abysmal. What really makes them bad is that Boll just doesn’t understand what makes a zombie movie work well.

The main problem is he uses fast zombies. Now whilst this may be fashionable in movies nowadays, I don’t think it works as well as the traditional slow zombies. Zombies on their own are dangerous, but easy enough to avoid, in groups however they suddenly become a massive threat. This has always been what makes them scary in movies. Fast zombies really don’t have that same feel about them and only seem to be there to appease a generation of idiots who want everything immediately (three exceptions here. The Dawn of the Dead remake, 28 Days Later and ·Rec, although the last two weren’t technically zombie movies).

To make matters worse, the zombies may be fast, but they also hang around in the background not attacking. You can’t blame the extra’s for this, as they would only be doing as they’re told, so once again Uwe just proves that he has no idea how these monsters should be acting. In any zombie film you watch, no matter how low the budget, or inexperienced the director, there is one thing that they have in common. The zombies relentless pursuit of food, and the fact that they will always try to grab it whenever they can.

  

It doesn’t stop there though. There are points in this movie where the zombies show rudimentary intelligence (like those in the George Romero movies they use basic tools), and also acts of strength. One uses an axe to hack through on characters legs in a matter of seconds as she’s trying to escape through a window, but then seemingly can’t use the same strength to break down the flimsy piece of wood, propped up by a small twig that one of the other characters uses to barricade the hole (I keep saying characters, as by this point I’d lost all interest in them and only remembered the Captains name).

But having inconsistent zombies isn’t the only thing that can break a movie, and that’s where Uwe’s absolute lack of talent truly comes into play. He tries desperately to give the movie a sense of style with ridiculous camera shots that may work in a video game, but just look totally pointless in a movie. Not only does Uwe use the predictable slow motion guns firing, at one point, whilst the heroes are involved in a mass shoot out with the zombies, each person individually gets a shot of them firing their guns whilst the camera pans around them for 360 degrees. It just looks like Uwe wants you to choose which character to play and just looks completely out of place in a movie. This is made worse by the same angles being used in the final sword fight too, where it looks even more out of place and as poorly conceived as The Matrix: Revolutions.

  

Can it get worse? Of course it can. Uwe also decided to put in loads of clips from the original game, which is just a distracting and terrible idea. If I’m watching some people fight off zombies against overwhelming odds, I really would like to see a bit of gore and exploding heads, this is a zombie movie after all. What I really don’t want to see is a clip from the game of a similar zombie getting shot. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if the game was released on a console with the graphics capabilities that are available now, but the original game was released in 1996, so whilst the graphics were good, they were still very cartoonish, and just look completely out of place.

I think that Uwe Boll truly must have thought that he was The Matrix of the zombie genre. He really tries to make this movie look flashy and stylish, but he’s trying to pull off Gucci on a Primark budget. He doesn’t have the talent or knowledge to make a successful horror movie, and I honestly can’t fathom why people keep giving him money to make these awful films. When the most positive thing you can say about a movie is that it stars Clint Howard (who’s weird face always makes things a little brighter), then you know it’s a bad movie. This movie stinks more than the walking dead it portrays and like all Uwe Boll films, it should be buried face down at a crossroads at midnight, so it’s shambling corpse has no chance of ruining your evening.

#56 House of the Dead (2003) (Colin)

The next movie on our list is based on a video game. This is nothing new for us as we’ve already had the bullet-fest style over substance, Ecks vs Sever; the camp but fun Street Fighter; and the not very scary, Alone In The Dark, which, was directed by a chap called Uwe Boll. Unfortunately our next movie is also directed by Uwe Boll.

After Alone in the Dark, it is fair to say I’m not a Boll-iever. He took a video game, stripped the scary stuff out, removed the suspense and deleted the excitement. It was poorly cast, badly written and was a massive disappointment. Surely lightening could not strike twice? Unfortunately, our next movie, ‘House of the Dead’, was made 2 years before ‘Alone in the Dark’, so I was not filled with much optimism…..

It’s fair to say, I don’t remember to much about the Sega game, ‘House of the Dead’, but I do remember seeing it in arcades and 'thinking that’s pretty cool'. It had light guns, which made it stand out from the other arcades and it also had zombies, lots of them and the aim? Kill as many as you can!

It didn’t have the complex story line and emotion found in modern games such as ‘The Last of Us’, which leads me to a problem. I can imagine a movie based on ‘The Last of Us’ as it basically is a movie with an awesome game thrown in for free. But making a movie based on just shooting a lot of stuff? Could that really work?

We start the movie by meeting wave after wave of uninteresting characters, who we basically know are all going to be zombie fodder. Nevertheless, we meet college bods Simon (Tyron Leitso), Greg (Will Sanderson), Alicia (Ona Grauer), Karma (Enuka Okuma) and Cynthia (Sonya Salomaa) who all want to shag each other and are all making their way to a rave which is being held on a remote island.

Unfortunately they miss their boat and are unable to go, so they head back home and save us the pain of this movie. Off course not, they bump into smuggler Victor Kirk (Jürgen Prochnow) and his lackey Salish (Clint Howard) and he offers them a lift in his boat. When they get to the island the rave looks deader than Piers Morgan’s CNN leaving do.

With nothing much happening, Greg and Cynthia realise that we are 20 minutes into a teen horror movie and no one has been killed whilst making out yet. They decide to put that right and whilst waiting for Greg to give her some sweet lurve, Cynthia gets killed by a bunch of zombies.

The rest of the team find a house and meet some more zombie ready-meals, Rudy (Jonathan Cherry), Liberty (Kira Clavell) and Hugh (Michael Eklund). These characters are just as dull as the original 5 and you just want the zombies to hurry up and find them already. Unfortunately, they don’t just yet, but they do find Salish and are over generous with the love bites.

The group of no-bodies, (soon to become no-internal organs as well), find Greg who is debating whether or not the now zombiefied Cynthia was still going to put out. Cynthia then decides to have a quick snack before getting giggy with Greg and kills one of the dull characters. Another dull character arrives and kills Cynthia and at this point I have completely lost track of who is who, what is what, and why oh why I’m still watching this crap.

The hapless group decide to get back to Kirk’s boat and to make like a tree, (leaf), but this is foiled when they discover that the boat is now full of brain-dead zombies, (a bit like the boat was when they travelled to the island). Kirk suddenly remembers he has a small arsenal hidden away in the woods and so they make their way there. En route some are killed, some are not and some make it to small arms factory; they then go back to the house and en route some are killed, some are not and some make it to the house, (I realise this is getting technical, but bear with me).

When Kirk learns that Salish is a zombie, he decides to blow himself up. The rest of the group, unfortunately, do not. We are now down to a handful of morons and I can sort off remember who these are. Alicia and Rudy find a tunnel and decide to scarper, Simon finds a barrel full of gun powder and decides to blow himself up. This kills a few zombies as well and destroys the house.

Oh, I forgot, Karma also got killed. In my defence, for me, she is easy to forget as she is not a very nice character and I really did not like her. Karma is a bitch.

I think we are now left with Alicia and Rudy who escape only to be captured by Castillo, (David Palffy), a Spanish chap from long ago whose fault this whole movie is. You see he discovered an immortality serum and from this knocked up the first zombie many years ago, (I mean created the first zombie, not made the first zombie pregnant. That would be weird but at least would have spiced up this lame movie).

A very slow sword fight breaks out between Castillo and Alicia. Castillo wins by stabbing Alicia through the heart. This pisses off Rudy and he promptly chops off Castillo’s head, but the head is still alive, (oh yeah, the immortality thing). The day is saved though when a mortally wounded Alicia finally kills Castillo by stamping on his decapitated head. Rudy then gives Alicia the immortality serum so they can all live happily ever after.

This is normally the part of the blog in which I try to dissect the movie and offer an opinion on it. However, with this movie it is really difficult as nothing happens at all throughout.

As I mentioned before, the original game was just about picking up a gun and shooting things and in many ways this movie is exactly like that. A bunch of people we know nothing about, who we care very little for, pick up a lot of guns and start shooting zombies. Now whilst this may sound fun, unless you pick up the gun yourself and start shooting, this is in actual fact very dull.

I've never enjoyed watching other people play games and it amazes me how popular YouTube channels are in which you just watch some pasty faced geek playing Minecraft for hours on end. I hate it because I want to be that geek and I would much rather fire up my XBox than watch someone else playing theirs.

Normally I would rant about how different the movie is from the original video game, but this time my issue is that Boll has made a movie which is very similar to the game. And that’s the issue, there is not enough depth in the original game to pad out a movie and so the movie feels like a dull video game.

The characters for example, are virtually all the same, but with different clothes and hair. It does remind me old arcade games and Alicia or Rudy could have been called ‘Player 1’or ‘Player 2’. They are shallow, we do not know their backgrounds and there is nothing of interest that makes us worry if they survive or not. Who lives? Who dies? Who fucking cares?

In terms of acting, all the ‘actors’ had to do was scream, run and make sure the guns had the hollow bits facing the zombies. The script was non-existent so they didn’t really have to learn any lines, but what little they did have was clichéd nonsense which was cut and pasted from the script of any 80’s horror movie. Therefore I can not judge as there is nothing really to judge. Let’s just say the Royal Shakespeare Company won’t be scrambling for their ‘talent’.

But the thing that really grates me about this movie is the constant editing of the original video game into the movie. For some reason, Boll keeps throwing in 1-2 second clips of the original game at regular intervals throughout the movie. It’s weird, it does not belong and it just makes me want to switch of this movie and dig out my old light gun and play the original video game!

Boll may think he is being clever, but it just interrupts the flow of the movie. Nothing ever gets established or going as there are this constant flashback to the arcade game. It feels like you are watching the movie on VHS and some sod had taped over parts of it with his home video of game playing.

So yes, lightening did strike twice and this movie has confirmed my fear that Boll can not take a video game and make a good movie based on it. He failed with Alone in the Dark and his earlier effort House of the Dead is just as bad, if not worse.

Overall the movie feels like a fan tribute to the game ‘House of the Dead’ on YouTube. The only issue? There are probably a million YouTubers who could have done a better job.

House of the Dead? House of the Dead Bored more like.

#57 Glitter (Wes)

Glitter

There’s a line in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice that is often misquoted by people as “All that glitters is not gold” (the original line uses the word “glisters” which means the same thing anyway, so it’s only really the pedantic who care). This is a good thing to remember in case you ever find yourself in the Californian hills prospecting for gold, and don’t want to get all excited every time you find a piece of iron pyrites, or when unwrapping presents from your Christmas stocking and happen to reveal amount of gold foil covered chocolate coins and think you have extremely generous friends, or most importantly of all, if you ever come across the Mariah Carey movie Glitter. Bearing this in mind I was prepared not to be expecting pure gold when I watched this movie, but I’m not sure I was quite prepared enough.

After she is dumped in an orphanage by her mother, Billie (Isabel Gomes) meets a muscular man who is convinced that he’s the real Santa Claus (Hulk Hogan)… No wait… That was a few films back. Let’s start again.

After she is dumped in an orphanage by her mother, Bille (Isabel Gomes) grows up to become Mariah Carey (strangely she’s seemingly abandoned in the 1930s and reaches adulthood in what looks like the 80s/90s, but we don’t get to hear much of this extremely long childhood). But Mariah Carey isn’t that superstar singer who you know has sold loads of records, but can only name “All I Want for Christmas is You”, she is still just a backing singer/dancer for Sylk (Padma Lakshmi). When club DJ Dice (Max Beesley) realises that she is really singing whilst Sylk lip-syncs he buys her contract from her manager Timothy Walker (Terence Howard), and becomes her producer. After an underground club hit, Dice manages to help Billie get signed to a major label who try to make Billie more into a sex symbol than a singer. This doesn’t sit well with Dice who doesn’t believe in professionalism and has started dating Billie. Dice grows ever more jealous as Billie’s career grows (her song gets played a bit more basically) and eventually they split up. Billie writes a song about it, but honestly it sounds the same as every other song she’s written and I just wish they’d go back to the orphanage with the muscular Santa who sings All I want for Christmas is you. Oh no. Wrong movie again.

I would say that liking this movie probably really depends on how much you like Mariah Carey, but seeing as it did so badly at the box office, while she sells shed loads of records leads me to believe that not even her fans like this movie. If that’s the case for people who like her, what about the people who think that her singing only just rates above the noise of a dentists drill (and that’s only because you don’t get the smell of burning teeth to accompany it)?

I detest Mariah’s music. I have a very wide taste in music, and learnt the important lesson from listening to the legendary John Peel Show that you should never judge a song just because of the genre it’s from, or even from the artist. Like films, I believe that you should at least give something a go before criticising it, but for every Mariah Carey song I’ve ever heard I’ve hated it. It’s amongst the worst kind of bland, soulless chart crap that I can think of. Music for those that want to put on the radio to a station that merely provides familiar background noise. So having to listen constantly to her bland caterwauling in this movie was sheer torture.

It’s funny as I’ve often heard people criticise metal, or punk bands for all sounding the same. Whilst this is true to an extent (for example I honestly have trouble distinguishing between different death metal bands), I think it’s true of a lot of different types of music, especially if someone has a distinct sound (be that artist or producer). Mariah’s music though takes it to another level. The day after watching this movie I honestly had to ask our guest reviewer Jo if there was more than two different songs in the movie. There’s a club song and a slow song, but I honestly couldn’t tell if there was more than one of each. I still don’t know. It doesn’t help that Mariah has the weirdest singing range. She either mumbles her words so they become completely intelligible, or she just screams for seemingly no reason other than to show that she can make a high-pitched wail. If she could act, she’d make a good casting choice for Siryn if they ever wanted to bring her properly into the X-Men movies.

As for the rest of the cast it’s a regular who’s who of people that have never been heard of in Hollywood again. The only actor I even recognised was Max Beesley, and that’s only because Colin reminded me where from (an advert for a jobs website. I forget which one). In a movie where the lead actress is as convincing as Sean Connery’s Spanish accent (or Russian, or Irish, or English, or… Well you get the point) you’d think that may give some of the other actors a chance to shine and make even an average performance look good. Seemingly not in this film though. It’s like the other actors were so afraid of upstaging Mariah that they tried their best to be just as bad as she was.

Carey and Beesley have so little chemistry between them that they still believe that all matter is made of earth, air, fire and water. They make Madonna and Adriano Giannini in Swept Away (see here) look like Romeo and Juliet. They make Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in Gigli (see here) look like Anthony and Cleopatra. Hell, they even make Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen look like Lee Norris and the Chimp in Surf School (see here). If they spoke their lines to each other whilst starring in separate movies I’d be more convinced that they were a couple.

One last thing needs to be questioned before I wrap everything up here, and that’s why was the movie called Glitter? The director Vondie Curtis Hall, seemed to try to address this point by occasionally throwing some glitter in the air (during Mariah’s video shoot), or by showing some glittering fireworks, but this really doesn’t explain things very well. Is glitter supposed to be a sign of success? When I was in junior school I used to enjoy making pictues with dry macaroni and glitter, does that mean I was well on my way to becoming a superstar in the art world but just didn’t follow my dreams hard enough? It really doesn’t make any sense.

Anyway. About now would be the time when I tell you not to bother watching the movie (don’t. It’s boring and Mariah won’t stop singing), and make some crappy pun related to the movie itself. But this week I thought I’d give you something different. As I said earlier Mariah either mumbles or screams her way through her songs, so the words she’s singing really do get lost along the way. Well I’ve decided to try to help out here and give her some lyrics in case she ever feels the need to make Glitter 2: No Dice…

Colin, Jo and I watched a movie called Glitter,
We took the piss out of it on Twitter,
Whilst the actors were bitter,
As they flushed their careers down the shitter.
Need to make the words fit-a,
And hire a baby sitter,
As I run out of words that rhyme-a,
Making movies this bad should be a crime-a,

Mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble, SCREEEEEEAAAAAAAAMMMMMM!

#57 Glitter (by special guest viewer Jo)

Firstly, a confession, I wanted to like Glitter, I REALLY did.

It’s so obviously a Mariah vanity project, yet I was still expecting (hoping for) a cross between Flashdance and Coyote Ugly. The poor girl with unsavoury background shakes off childhood heartache and orphanage education to become and star and find a man. Come on, the movie is called Glitter, this should be a camp feel-good extravaganza. I mean it’s likely Mariah is going to sing a lot and potentially ruin it, but who knew she would only sing one song, over and, over and over again throughout?

It’s starts off with a young Billie (Mariah) joining her struggling musical artiste mother on stage, in what looks like a 1920s jazz bar. Although we can only assume it’s actually meant to be the 70s, shame no one let the costume department know. In fact the only consistent theme throughout this movie is the inconsistency of which decade it is supposedly set it. Anyway, the first gig goes well, the mother dumps her in an orphanage soon after.

Skip forward to the 80s, or 90s, or 60s, who even knows, certainly not the costume department. Billie’s outfits skip from early 2000s Destiny’s Child, you know the days when Beyonce‘s mum was out the back running them up on a sewing machine out of chiffon and bacofoil, to TLC circa the 90s and back again. The outfits never quite manage to appear in anyway 80s. It’s distracting, but then I suspect that is a good thing.

Billie is now living with two friends in the Big Apple and whilst wearing outfits from the future, they form a girl band, but are soon relegated to backing singers. Billie doesn’t’ really seem to mind this until Kelly and Michelle (Yes, I am using the names of past Destiny’s Child members because I can’t remember the character’s names) point out that she is wasting her mothers gift, which is apparently her voice. 

Billie seems in more of a hurry to bag a man, which she does with customary ease. In rolls Dice (Max Beesley, no I don’t know why he is in this film either). There is at some point a sex scene, if you could call it that. I’ve witnessed more chemistry in the waiting room for a smear test.

Having snared herself a hapless international superstar DJ boyfriend, she then decides she really does want to be a star. In Glitterland that seems to mean singing the same song, over and over again until somebody finally caves and agrees to let her sing at Madison Square Gardens.  Oh, and she absolutely must track down her long lost mother.

With the Madison Square Garden’s gig somehow, on the back on one single, firmly in the bag, she can of course ditch the boyfriend. One staged limo argument later Dice is dust. Freshly dumped, the hapless international superstar DJ ex-boyfriend manages to get himself shot in the most unconvincing music turf war since 50 Cent and Ja Rule. Now Dice really is dust.

Despite being so upset about her missing mother she almost sang a different song at one point, Billie manages to walk straight past her in the street, leaving her there, homeless crack-addled and forgotten. This might be as likeable as Mariah’s character ever gets.

Un-phased by her murdered ex-boyfriend and homeless mother, the show at Madison Square Garden’s must go on. At least I think she goes through with the show, I have started trying to scratch my own eyeballs with popcorn kernels at this point.

Life goal unlocked, she goes back to the quest for her mother. Naturally Billie’s mother, having seemingly completed the worlds fastest and most successful rehabilitation program is now sober and living in a big house in the country.  They hug. The film ends. Thank fuck.

#57 Glitter (2001) (Colin)

We are fast approaching the half-way point of our list and several themes are emerging.  It appears that if you want your movie to end up on our list then they need to be a sequel, based on a video game or star a singer who thinks she’s an actor.  This is why when I saw that the next movie on our list fulfilled one of these criteria; I was not in the least bit surprised.

Our next movie was written by and stars Mariah Carey.  I have to admit I am no fan of Mariah Carey and do not know much about her or her work.  I do know that she is regarded as a diva which to me is a polite way of saying she’s a heartless bitch who stomps around acting like she owns the place.  I don’t care how famous or successful someone is, I have no time for people who think they can treat others like shit just because they’ve shifted a couple of records.

I am no fan of her music either, (I would rather smash rusty 6” nails into the little fella), so it is fair to say Ms Carey has got off to a bad start with me without having to potentially ruin my Tuesday evening with her self-obsessed movie project.  But, I put all of that behind me and watched it anyway so that you don’t have to.

The film is set in the 1980s and centres on dancer and wannabe singer, Billie Frank, (Mariah Carey).  Billie has a tough start to life and was abandoned by her mother who put Billie into a foster home.  She becomes friends and grows up with Louise, (Da Brat) and Roxanne, (Tia Texada) and they all become club dancers.

The trio get the opportunity to become backing singers for a singer called Sylk, (Padma Lakshmi).  Whilst recording the single, the producers notice that Billie’s voice is far stronger than Sylk’s and so up Billie’s vocals and quietly turn down Sylk’s.  The group go on to play a club.  I say play; I mean Sylk mimes to Billie’s vocals whilst Billie and friends flap their arms about as if they are trying to flag down the 56 bus into town.

Resident DJ, Julian ‘Dice’ Black, (Max Beesley), is impressed with Sylk’s voice but confused.  He seemed to remember that Sylk was more Whitley Bay than Whitney Houston, but all becomes clear as Billie sings the song a capella.  Realising Billie is the true talent, (and I am using the word talent in its broadest terms), Dice tries to buy Billie's contract from manager Timothy Walker, (Terrence Howard).  They settle on $100,000, a bag of salt 'n' shake crisps and a free go on Dice's BMX.

It's not long before Billie signs with a major record label and has recorded her first single.  Billie, ever loyal to her friends Louise and Roxanne, drops them like a bad smell when they are deemed not sexy enough for her music video.  Their fame growing, Billie and Dice celebrate their new found smugness by going to dinner.  Dice then invites Billie back to his for coffee and the inevitable happens, they get giggy with it for all of 5 seconds.

Billie's happiness and success is in stark contrast for her sadness at being given up by her mother.  She writes a song about her mother called 'You Bitch', (or it might have been 'Reflections', I was zoning out by this point and pretty much making things up to keep myself amused), and tries to track her down but with no success.

Whilst performing at the USA Music Awards, (she really does ride the success of 1 single), she meets a fellow musician, (again, I'm using musician in its broadest terms), Rafael, (Eric Benet) and they both agree that they should write a song together.  Dice infers this as 'should make whoopee together' and kicks up a storm.  He orders Billie home, kicks Louise and Roxanne out of the limo and writes a very stern letter to his MP.

Ultimately Billie forgives Dice's bad behaviour as she is grateful for him believing in her and giving her the opportunity.  However, when Timothy comes round to the flat and threatens Billie for non-payment of $100k and the go on the BMX, Dice sees red and beats him up.  He gets arrested and tries to apologise to Billie, but she is having none of it and leaves him.  He does protest, but Billie says, 'Sorry, but no Dice'.

Billie tries to put all this behind her but can't and realising she has made a mistake rushes back to Dice's flat.  Dice is not there, but Billie decides to break in anyway and whilst nosing around finds a piece of music Dice has written for Billie.  She has a cry, kisses the sheet music and then cleans the toilet with his tooth brush, (OK the last one may not have happened.  Remember, I was zoning out people!).

Dice notices that his breath smells funny, despite the fact the he has just brushed his teeth and also discovers lipstick on the sheet music.  Realising it is not his colour, he suspects Billie has been round and has read the music he wrote for her.  Thinking, 'I'm back in there' he rushes off to find Billie so we can all have a happy ending.  Timothy has other ideas and shoots him dead.

Billie learns of the murder just before she is about to go on stage and sing.  Distraught, sad and upset, she shows compassion by carrying on with the show so that the spotlight is all on her again.  She mutters something about not taking things for granted and then belts out her one and only hit, (or it could have been another song, it really is difficult to tell!).

Billie finds a note from Dice which he had conveniently written just before meeting his maker.  It tells her that he loves her, that he might have to try a new toothpaste and that he's found Billie's mother.  The movie ends with Billie finally re-united with her mother and I'm finally re-united with my dinner.

So the first question I have to ask is, ‘does anyone know which decade this movie is supposed to be set in’?  We are supposed to start off in the 80’s, but it looks like the 50’s, we then move to the early 90’s, (I think, or it could be late 80's), but despite the 10+ years Carey has not aged one day and everyone is walking around in the background with mobile phones.  (Yes, there were mobiles in the 80’s but those few which owned one, had to carry them around in forklift trucks with a trailer attached for the battery).

If we don’t know which decade this is set, then Max Beesley does not seem to know which country he is from.  I’m guessing by the occasional twang in his voice, he is supposed to be American, but it really is hard to tell.  Maybe he tries to be too specific in his accent in that I think he is trying to do a NE USA accent, possibly New York and I’m probably splitting hairs as he has only just missed the mark.......by about 3,500 miles east of New York.

If you can differentiate which decade they are in or Beesley’s accent, then congratulations and your next challenge is to differentiate between the songs which Carrey sings throughout.  The songs in Glitter are like 90’s group Rednex’s ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ and ‘Old Pop in an Oak’, or 90’s band Biohazard’s albums ‘Urban Discipline’ and  ‘State of the World Address’ or anything Coldplay have ever done in that it all sounds the bloody same!  From what I have read, there are at least 6 different songs, but there is no discernible difference; they are all bland diva ballad pieces of crap.

The songs are unoriginal and dull, but then again, so is the acting.  Frequently it feels like we have just walked onto a set where the ‘actors’ are reading their scripts for the first time.  You want to say to them, ‘sorry guys, shall we come back when you’ve rehearsed the lines for a bit’, but you know the response will be, ‘No, it’s OK, this’ll do’.

In fairness, the script isn’t great anyway.  It’s full of clichés and holes and does nothing to help with the character development.  Without doubt, this leads to the biggest problem with this movie, which for me is the main characters, Billie and Dice, and their journey throughout the movie.

Firstly Dice, why and how did he turn from a really nice guy into an arrogant, nasty, control-freak?  There is nothing in his character throughout the first half of the movie which would suggest this is going to ever happen and it is totally out of character and completely unbelievable that such a massive transformation could occur.  I can understand that you want the audience to be surprised, but you need to build the character in such a way, that it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he could turn.  You wouldn’t make ‘The Piers Morgan Story’ and have him turning out to be a thoroughly nice bloke.  Who on earth would believe that?

Lastly, Billie, and it is this character, the main character, which is the single biggest problem with this movie.

I get the impression that we are supposed to feel sorry for Billie, with her ‘difficult’ childhood, being abandoned by her mum and being fostered.  I then get the feeling we are supposed to cheer, when, against all odds, Billie becomes a successful solo artist.  The problem is, however, that throughout the journey, Billie comes over as a self-obsessed, ego-centric, diva.

For example, when Billie learns of Dice’s death, does she break down in grief that the man who helped her on her career, her true love, has been brutally murdered?  No!  She thinks, ‘wow, this is a good time to sing my new single.  Should shift a few copies’.  Whilst I exaggerate for effect, this hardly warms the audience to her.  I believe this movie is supposed to be semi-autobiographical and that’s the problem, Billie, like Carey, is an easily unlikable character.

Glitter has to be the most self-obsessed, blandest piece of crap I have ever witnessed and the only way I can think of making this any worse, would have been to re-cast Madonna as Billie.  This is not a heart-breaking story of a struggle to the top against all odds, it is Mariah Carey shouting at the top of her voice, 'ME ME ME, look at ME, I’M the star, ME, ME, ME’.

In the end Carey did achieve one thing, proving the well known saying that 'all that Glitter is not gold'.

#58 Ator 2 - L’invincible Orion (Wes)

Ator 2 - L’invincible Orion

Like so many other movies on this list we had real trouble tracking down a copy of this film. It didn’t help that we discovered it has at least three different names. The original Italian one, Ator 2: The Blade Master and then a different cut for a VHS release that was titled Cave Dwellers. Eventually we managed to find a copy that wasn’t in Italian and I was soon wishing that we hadn’t and had just taken the forfeit of two movies from our reserves list…

The movie starts with a bunch of cavemen sitting around eating the nits from each others hair (and if you’ve read my Eegah review you’ll know my feelings about cavemen in movies, if not read it here), but soon the *cough* action *cough* moves on to Akronas (Charles Borromel), a scholar who shows his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster) a discovery he’s made, some shiny crystal thing (according to my notes) that could act as a powerful weapon. To prevent this getting into the hands of the evil Zor (David Cain Haughton), who is approaching his castle, Akronas asks Mila to find his old student Ator (Miles O’Keefe) (and if you haven’t seen the first movie, there’s a recap on his history, which seems to be pretty much most of the movies action if this movie is anything to go by). She escapes the castle before Zor invades and eventually finds Ator and his assistant, Thong (Chen Wong), who was immortalised when Sisqo wrote a song about him in 1999. The trio must then get back to the castle whilst fighting off cave-men and a giant snake to rescue Akronas and defeat Zor. I in the meantime must fight off the dreaded Snoozor and try to stay awake!

As you can see for the brief summary of the plot, this really is a by the numbers barbarian story. Important quest? Check. Ridiculously named characters? Check. Giant, deadly animals? Check. Porn star moustaches? Check. A muscular topless man who likes to wave his sword about? Sort-of check (Miles O’Keeffe does have muscles and is tall and imposing, he looks like an average gym-goer (if average gym-goers have the hair of a bad 80s soft rock star), but is hardly Lou Ferringo or Charles Atlas sized). An exciting story full of fighting and adventure? Che…. No wait. That’s what this film was missing.

As far as sword and sorcery films go, when I watch them I expect only one thing of them, and that’s to be entertained. This film failed on that front in a spectacular way. Where the obvious inspiration for this movie, Conan The Barbarian, was adapted into an epic adventure, involving thievery, snake gods, sword fighting, ridiculous names, lavish sets and costumes, porn star moustaches and the Arnold Schwarzeneggar before he was a household name, this movie missed everything that made Conan a classic.

Instead of a barbarian, Ator seems to be more of a scholar with a set of weights. Whilst this could be interesting if done with skill, it’s just boring in this movie. Even when he decides the best way to storm a castle is to take a leaf from the Ewoks book and go via a hang glider, it just seems to reek of a desperate attempt to inject some life into the movie. Also it’s more than a little confusing as to where he either got the time and materials to build a hang glider or where in his very skimpy outfit he was storing one.

Zor is also a terrible bad guy. Instead of being an evil despot who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, he spends the movie trying to show what a nice guy he is. There are many long scenes where he tries to reason with Akronas, trying to prove that even though he just invaded his castle, he really is reasonable. I’m not sure if it was the dubbing, or Haughton’s poor acting, but these scenes really do come across as though he’s just trying to flirt with Akroanas. I guess it doesn’t help that the person dubbing him sounds like Eddie Izzard playing the person serving behind the Death Star canteen.

He comes across more of a very camp politician than an evil despot. I know this was the idea, but it just doesn’t work. I can believe the high priest of an evil cult could become a powerful leader in these sort of worlds, and of course the most powerful of warriors, but someone who basically the David Brent of the savage lands? A man who’s more “do the hokey cokey” than Dothraki. It’s just totally unbelieveable.

But the disbelief in how bad this film can get really doesn’t stop there. One of bits that made me laugh at how bad it was, is when Zor’s wizard is tasked to kill Ator from afar. He says the immortal line “and now you will witness the might of my power” and throws some magic dust into a bowl. The might of this wizards power seems to be that he can create a bit of light fog in the woods where Ator, Thong and Mila are running. I’m not entirely sure how this is witnessed by Akronas, and neither myself or Colin were convinced that this really counted as might. Mildly inconveniencing the hero doesn’t seem all that powerful to me. 

The giant snake that Ator has to fight in this film comes at the point where you just expect things to keep getting worse, and you’re not disappointed by that. It’s less convincing than a snake from The Muppet Show. It’s so obviously a terrible puppet, you half expect Rod Hull to walk around the corner with his arm inside of it. I say half expect, because watching Emu attack Michael Parkinson was more believable than watching O’Keefe wrap himself in a rubber snake as he flails around.

This movie has so much padding, it’s like the training bra of Barbarian movies. Although this movie is only an hour and a half long, it’s so boring that it feels like it goes on for twice as long. The movie so bad that they named it thrice. Well I’d like to suggest another name if they ever decide to rerelease it under a different name in a cynical bid to fool people it’s not the same crappy movie. Conan the Bore-barian!

#58 Ator L'Invincibile 2 (1984) (Colin)

For our next movie, there was a very real possibility that Wes and I would have to learn Italian. This is because the next film in our list is Italian and we were having problems finding an English version. Heck, we were actually finding it hard to find this film in any language!

Our next movie, Ator L'Invincibile 2, was proving so elusive, that the dreaded prospect of having to return to our 'reserve bad movie list' seemed likely. Regular readers will know that as punishment for not being able to watch the movie on our list, we would not have to watch one from the 'subs bench', but two. If this resulted in 2 movies starring Jennifer Lopez, then there was a real possibility I would not be around to see next Christmas.

So we tried even harder to find this movie, but it was tough. Whether this is because the movie is Italian, or whether this is because the movie seems to have multiple titles, (Ator: The Blade Master, Cave Dwellers and Ator: The Return are among the other names) or whether it is because I spent the first few weeks looking for the wrong movie, (I was looking for Ator, the movie is Ator 2!), is debatable, but finally, to loud cheers from me, Wes found a copy and we were saved!

After 90 minutes, 2 J-Lo movies didn't seem like such a bad idea after all.......

Akronas, (Charles Borromel), a wise man and teacher of great warriors has discover something called a Geometric Nucleus, a weapon so powerful that it can destroy the whole of mankind. Akronas realises the seriousness of this weapon and the devastation this could cause if it ends up in the wrong hands and makes the sensible decision to destroy it.

However, the evil Zor, (David Brandon), is already on his way to Akronas's castle, (presumably to take the Nucleus, kill Akronas and to visit the gift shop). Zor is a former pupil of Akronas, so he knows how dangerous he is. Akronas decides to send his daughter, Mila, (Lisa Foster), off to find the great warrior, goody two-shoes and only man who can stop Zor, Ator.

We then get a back story of Ator, told by Akronas, which is essentially a clip show of the original movie. Nothing really stands out for me to report to you, but it does appear that the original was incredibly lucky not to make our list.

Back to the present and with Mila leaving the castle to find Ator, Zor takes this opportunity to take control of the castle and to hold Akronas hostage. He explains he won't kill Akronas as he wants to show the world he is merciful, (which off course, he is not, as this now means we have to be subjected to another 80 minutes of this movie).

Zor's guards chase after Mila and manage to shoot her with an arrow from about 5 feet away. The arrow lodges in Mila's chest but does not kill her and she manages to carry on her journey. Eventually she finds Ator's lair and collapses on his floor. Ator, who knows blood is hell to get out of carpet, picks her up and lies her down. He then notices the arrow and sets to work.

Ator, apparently, is a fully qualified surgeon and gets to work on very slowly pulling out the arrow. Whilst it seems odd that a warrior such as Ator, should also have an encyclopedic knowledge of human anatomy, it's nowhere near as odd as Ator's assistant, Thong, (Chen Wong), putting leaves on Mila's face and then taking them off again.

This odd ritual carries on for what seems like an eternity and just as I'm about to make sure that the movie hasn't got stuck on a very slow loop, Mila recovers and all is good. Hurrah!

Mila explains to Ator that Akronas is in trouble and that Zor is about to nick the Nucleus thingy. Ator agrees to accompany Mila to Akronas's castle and drags along Thong, who has no say whatsoever in the matter.

The journey to Akronas's castle is one of boredom danger. They encounter cave folk who seem to think Ator would be look better served on a bed of lettuce with a side of Mila's liver, a cult who throw them into a pit in which they are attacked by a giant puppet snake and the world's worst Samurai warrior who, from what I can tell, defeats himself by tripping over his own shoe lace.

They eventually reach the castle and knowing that Zor's guards will be defending it in numbers, try to work out a way to storm the castle and take the guards by surprise. Luckily, Ator just so happens to have a hang glider lying around, (seriously), and so flies to the castle, dropping socks full of dynamite onto the guards, thinning the numbers, (from around 4 guards to 1, but more on the low quantity of extras later).

Ator, Mila and Thong are now in the castle and Ator tracks down Zor for one last fight. Ator defeats Zor but spares his life at the request of Akronas. However, when Zor stands up and tries to give Ator a hug with a sharp pointy thing, Thong kills Zor.

Akronas realises that the Nucleus must be destroyed and Ator rides off with it. This is when we learn that a) The Nucleus looks suspiciously like a cafetiere and b) it's actually an atom bomb and with that a mushroom cloud signals Ator has successfully destroyed the Nucleus.  The world is safe; Hurrah, (again)!

Joe d'Amato, the writer and director of Ator unashamedly tried to cash in on the success of the Conan The Barbarian films and indeed this movie has the look and feel of a film which has been rushed out quickly in order to make a fast buck. In their haste they forgot a few things: actors, action, story, drama, and anything remotely interesting.

I say actors, but I will admit that it is hard to fully assess the acting skills as the movie is dubbed. There is one issue I have though and that is the movies looks like it was shot in English, dubbed into Italian and then re-dubbed back into English. The sound of the voices does match the mouth movements, albeit out of time as if you are watching digital channel through an analogue speaker.

So as I can't hear the actor's voices, I can't really judge their acting skills. Physically, I can tell you Zor has a haircut which appears to have been done with a set square, Ator looks like Conan had Aldi been in charge of costume and from what I can tell, the actors were not taught how to sword fight. This is because all the actors seem to flap their blades around as if they had a floppy sex aid in their hands and are trying to swat a fly.

As the entire cast seems to consist of around 7 people, it is hard to judge the ensemble case. Ator and the others come across ‘heavily’ guarded areas of around 2 or 3 people. The sparseness of the outside world, (the cave does have some people grunting in numbers, but that’s about it throughout the movie), really does give this movie the budget feel. The fight with the ‘snake’ only heightens this feeling as the ‘snake’ is very obviously an oversized draught excluder. That being said, the ‘snake’ is by far the best actor of the movie.

The budget feeling continues with the soundtrack. A lot of movies in the 80’s suffered from using synthesisers as their soundtrack and today this has made some movies feel outdated. Ator is no exception but as well as an outdated synth, they seem to have also decided that an 8-bit score would also elevate this movie. The result? A horrible noise which resembles a stylophone being nailed to a Sega Master System. I would rather listen to Joe Pasquale sings Alvin and the Chipmunks through rusty barbed wire headphones than this soundtrack.

I would pick apart the story line, but there isn’t one.  I could actually have done the whole blog on twitter and still had character change to spare: Evil Zor goes to castle, kidnaps Akronas, Mila gets Ator, Ator appears on handglider, defeats Zor. This movie is shite. #100badmovies.

I read some review of this movie which describes it as a ‘Mockbuster’.  I guess had this been made today by the SyFy channel, you could have called it that.  However, the issue I have with this definition is that the Mockbusters on SyFy are actually entertaining, interesting and funny, (usually for the wrong reasons).  These are adjectives that can not be used for this snoozefest and the movie has none of the charm or unintentional humour which makes some movies so bad, they become good.

In the end, they tried to be another Conan movie and failed miserably.  This movie should be locked away in a dark cave and heavily guarded by a grand army of 3 and a draught excluder.  Ator?  Atsnore more like!

#59 Surf School (Wes)

Surf School

Surfing is a bit of a mystery to me. I sort of liked watching it when I was younger and I enjoy the culture that has grown around it, but as a sport it’s just a bit odd. At least with similar dry land sports like skateboarding or BMXing, you have the surface that you’re doing tricks on permanently there. With surfing you’re entirely dependent on the waves. I guess it doesn’t help being British. When I think of surfers, they’re either far away in California, South Africa or Australia, or they are local and own a VW Camper that proudly displays stickers about how much they "live to surf", that hasn’t moved from their driveway in twenty years. The next movie on our list was a comedy I’d never heard of called Surf School, perhaps this could enlighten me into the true appeal of surfing…

When Jordan (Cory Sevier) decides he wants to humiliate the school surfer bullies, he takes his friends, the usual freaks and misfits in school, including a goth girl, a punk, a chronic virgin and a Japanese exchange student who doesn’t speak English, and go to Costa Rica to enter a surfing championship. However since none of them can actually surf, they enrol in a surf school taught by the permanently wasted Rip (Harland Williams). As they try to learn to surf, they learn about themselves and become who they really are. Something like that anyway. Just take any teen movie about nerds trying to beat the jocks and come of age and you pretty much have the story.

The first thing I have to mention about this film is the title song. It’s obviously called Surf School, as that’s pretty much all they say in the song. It must have taken about the same amount of time to write as 2 Unlimited’s lyrically challenged song No Limits. Unfortunately the makers of this movie only seem to have been able to commission this song and another one about a “sexy monkey” (more about that later) from a band that I assume was busking outside their offices one day, and these songs crop up sporadically for much of the film. It’s as irritating as the constant repetition of the song Holiday Road throughout National Lampoon’s Vacation, but just doesn't have the rest of the charm that movie had to make up for it.

Of course an irritating song can’t completely ruin a movie on it’s own, and that’s where pretty much everything else about this movie comes into play. This movie is like someone took all the best ideas from American Pie, Revenge of the Nerds and National Lampoon’s Animal House and then discarded them all and replaced them with clichéd crudeness, without any of the wit.

Take Larry (Lee Norris) and his ongoing quest to lose his virginity. Whilst in American Pie the mishaps that each of the boys faced (especially Jim played by Jason Biggs), were cringe inducingly embarrassing or just plain crude, they made you laugh. They were also really sweet, and you found yourself rooting (not literally though) for the boys and their mission to get laid. In this movie you just don’t care. The writers were so desperate for ideas that they even resorted to adding a chimpanzee to the movie that for some reason is attracted to Larry. It all of course leads to the chimp spanking Larry in a “hilarious” twist of being spanked BY the monkey! Even Ray Charles, sat at the bottom of a mineshaft deep under the floor of The Pacific Ocean could have seen that one coming (also is it too much to point out to the makers of this movie that Chimps are APES?). Actually I’d like to think that it’s almost as though somebody didn’t quite understand the title of BJ and The Bear and thought that chimps and BJs were quite common to put on the screen together. That would be funny at least…

In general, the characters are just so immediately forgettable and their exploits are so predictable that you could walk away from the movie for half an hour and pick up the story again immediately. When they’re not so forgettable that you think they’re introducing new people to the movie every scene, they’re just plain annoying. The surf instructor Rip has a running joke (I say that, but I didn’t laugh once. Shall we call it a running catchphrase) where he keeps saying “mahi-mahi” as though it’s the funniest name for a cocktail that’s ever been conceived (or perhaps it is about the actual fish, even the writers seem confused about this). In fact even though I know I’ve seen him in other things, the only time I can ever remember a performance by Harland Williams is as the hitchhiker in There’s Something About Mary. I admit that he was funny in that, but perhaps that sums him up. A couple of scenes as an off-the-wall type character is fine, but a large part in a movie is just irritating. He’s every surf waster cliché rolled into one character and it just gets very boring, very fast.

To make matters even worse, the makers don’t just use the same ideas that have been done to death, they pretty much rip off other movies too. There’s one point where the boys are given microscopic crabs to put in the pants of the surfer bullies (and their girlfriends), a ruse that is strikingly similar to the nerds coating the jocks jockstraps in hot sauce in Revenge of the Nerds.

If I haven’t made it clear how derivative this movie is yet, I’ll leave it to you to guess what happens to the goth girl, Doris (Laura Bell Bundy). Just a small hint… Have you seen movies such as The Breakfast Club or She’s All That? Was that a yes?  There’s your answer. I’m really not sure why Hollywood is so obsessed with perpetuating the myth that people look so much better with blonde hair and a tan, but I suspect they may have been watching too much Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This film is the epitome of all that’s bad about lazy filmmaking. Instead of trying to think of something the audience haven’t seen they just wheel out the same tired old jokes that it’s like the cinematic equivalent of a clipshow episode of your least favourite tv show. The acting is sub-par as expected and the filmmakers put in as many gratuitous arse and tit shots just to keep the audience paying attention, as though even they were aware that even the terminally stoned wouldn’t have patience to sit through this.

If you want to watch a movie about surfing, then may I suggest Big Wednesday, Lords of Dogtown, or one of the many great documentaries about the sport. If you want a coming of age comedy, then there are so many out there that do the job better than this. Just please don’t waste your time with this movie. Perhaps if people stop paying to see movies like these we can finally WAVE goodbye to them for good… (Sorry. But it’s still funnier than anything in Surf School).