Movie Scum

Written by: PBF MacGruber , if you didn’t already know, is a Saturday Night Live sketch that parodies a little show called MacGyver, which ran from 1985-1992. It was beloved by Americans and Bouvier sisters alike. MacGyver never used guns, but rather he would fashion some sort of weapon out of every day items. This premise begat several phrases, such as “MacGyver it.” The SNL sketch usually lasts 30-90 seconds, and involves MacGruber and his partner Vicki St. Elmo trapped in a room trying to defuse a bomb. Hilarity ensues and the sketch ends with an explosion, as MacGruber is unsuccessful at his task. This is the latest addition to the sketch-turned-movie universe, which is quite a mixed bag of good and bad. The premise of the movie is fairly basic. Dieter Von Cunth steals a nuclear warhead and wants to destroy Washington D.C. Cunth killed MacGruber’s wife, so the task of stopping him becomes personal.

A few episodes ago, PBF and I talked about movies inspired by true events and I was rather dismissive of this film. Yes, The Blind Side is at its core a film more oriented towards female viewers that goes over the top with sentimental gestures of faith and love. But it does feature football and statistics have shown that approximately 94% of men either love or are interested in football. So, how does a sure-fire date movie turn into a Best Picture nominee? Michael Oher is a wayward young who has bounced from home to home after being separated from his mother several years earlier. He comes to study at the Wyngate Academy, a private Christian school attended mostly by the families of upper crust in society. His presence is an annoyance to his teachers due to his academic challenges and he stays mostly isolated from his affluent, caucasian classmates. After Michael is befriended by her young son, Leigh Anne Tuohy realizes that Michael has nowhere else to go and brings him home. Ove

War movies are an interesting beast. Having never been in these situations, I am sure the real life events of these movies can range the broadest spectrum of emotions from anger to fear to relative happiness. Rather than stick with these basic, primal emotions, recent films (especially those on the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) have attempted to interject politics and the hand-wringing of whether it is right or wrong, mostly to the detriment of the film (at least for what I have read on movies like Redacted). Just like zombie movies, some films are made with a social commentary and underlying thought interwoven in the story while some are just straightforward tales about the subject matter. I am truly happy that Hurt Locker took the latter approach to telling a story about three men in an army of thousands who are just trying to make it through each day. The vast majority of the movie takes place with the company of three men, each a member of the Army’s Explosive Ordinanc

Written by: PBF Satan’s Little Helper is a delightful little film in which you can hear the word Satan uttered at least 20 times, see a cat used as a paintbrush, and hear a young boy’s desire to marry his sister. Dougie, I am going to have to assume is retarded, delusional, or just an idiot. He is a young boy who is quite obsessed with a game called Satan’s Little Helper. He plays it on his computer and this really odd looking portable gaming device that I bet even WiFi Pirate has never seen. Dougie is also wearing a costume at the film’s opening, that was made for him, of Satan’s Little Helper. He is on the way with his mother (Amanda Plummer) to pick up his sister Jenna, who for some reason he says that he wants to marry. Jenna brings her boyfriend Alex home, and Dougie does not care for this. All Dougie wants to do is go trick or treating with Jenna and find Satan. And he will be damned if Alex is going to cock block him (he really only mentions marrying his sister twice, but

If ever there was a case of an entire film being sabotaged by its final act, it is Martyrs . It begins ever so forcifully like a deleted scene from High Tension , Inside , or other French survival films and quickly ratchets up a good amount of scenes between the two lead girls. However at the one hour mark, an odd detour and shoehorned exposition turn a great horror film into random scenes of senseless violence. I have nothing against violence if it serves a purpose in a film. Here it just destroys the previous sixty minutes' good work.

Written by: PBF The movie Dead Alive is called Braindead in every country but the United States. So, you know, if you find yourself in another land, and want to rent this, call it that.

Whenever you turn around, zombie movies are fornicating as they seem to breed more bastard offspring than most other genres like Irish-assassins or Die-Hard-on-a-blank movies.

Now, I get that this is a really broad generalization encompassing over a hundred different actors but the Nightmare on Elm Street series seems to have been a showstopper for many an actor. All one has to do is peruse through the IMDb pages of the various films in the series to see several who have stopped working, taken extended hiatuses, or have been relegated to brief TV-show appearances or DTV movies. While this phenemonon is also apparent in other long-running slasher series as well, for now we are talking Freddy. So let’s dig in. Lin Shaye: Random Teacher (Original) Being the baby sister of the studio head can’t hurt but Lin Shaye has managed to carve out a pretty decent resume. She was in There’s Something about Mary, Snakes on a Plane, both Dumb and Dumber movies, and Boat Trip? Okay, I didn’t say these movies were good but at least a good chunk of her appearances make a (albeit probably brief) appearance in theaters says something. Breckin Meyer: Spencer (Freddy’s Dead)

According to Box Office Mojo, the 1994 kids’ sports movie Little Giants grossed a meager $19 million in its theatrical release. Why is this movie relevant in a review for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare ? The Rick Moranis and Ed O’Neill PG-rated family movie had the distinction of being released within a week of New Nightmare . As such, I saw New Nightmare at least seven or eight times in theaters via Little Giants. I also had a VHS copy of Man’s Best Friend , the Ally Sheedy-starring Cujo-ripoff just because it was the first with a preview for Nightmare 7 before its release. For the record, I believe I watched the movie once and the opening previews at least a few dozen times. You see, somewhere between 1990 and this film’s release in 1994, I became very obsessed with horror films (healthy for an 8-year-old, huh?). When I first got wind of the newest Freddy film involving Heather Langenkamp and Wes Craven , likely through some random issue of Fangoria, I was excited. When watching it

Written by: PBF I am not sure if this poster is from the new A Nightmare on Elm Street. In a similar fashion, I really was not sure what I was watching when I saw the film. I would like to say that the only reason I am reviewing this, as opposed to Puck, is because I just happen to have seen it first. Puck has given us an incredibly insightful and brilliant analysis of the original franchise thus far, and I am eager for the remaining installments. I also, having not had a computer for a while, have not contributed anything to the site as of late. So, with Puck’s approval, here is my review. I will spare you a plot synopsis, as it is the same story. Freddy hunting and killing teenagers in their dreams as revenge. Between the 8 other movies that feature Freddy and Puck’s recent reviews, if you are not already familiar with the plot, I question your comprehension skills and you will not find this review helpful at all. So, I guess the thing that bothered me the most about this

Way back when I rewatched and reviewed Hatchet , I commented on how most movies that attempt a combination of horror and comedy (in any percentages) usually suck ass. Now upon watching Freddy’s Dead for the first time in quite a while, I feel that above statement may be too harsh for some other films that may try horror/comedy but fails. This is because Freddy’s Dead also tries that combo but fails EPICALLY! There is a theory about long running franchises and how the first film you see in theaters ends up being your favorite. While that holds true for James Bond, Freddy’s Dead was the first Nightmare film I saw in theaters and that just makes me more angry. I would also like to apologize to Nightmare 2 as I previously held it tied with Freddy’s Dead for worst of the series. Nightmare 2 is brilliance dedicated to film comparatively. Where I may have been able to enjoy Part 5 due to some effort that was put forth towards it, every single person involved in this movie seems to be o

I will admit that I was not looking forward to A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 as part of this ongoing game of catch-up with the original films. Previously, I have been more or less ambivilent to the film as it is not the worst, is not the best, but falls into that middle ground also safely occupied by its predecessor. Due to the extreme condition of diminishing returns over the life of the franchise thus far, I had expected it to fair quite poorly, especially compared to the commercially-acclaimed Part 4. While this is in no way a good film, director Stephen Hopkins and at least one of the three credited screenwriters on this film had their hearts in it. Yes, I know that this movie is rated in the same league as Freddy’s Dead and Part 2 as far as quality goes but I felt this movie at least tried to not only stay within the growing cannon but also return to tension and scares over goofy puns and elaborate death scenes. Notice I say tried because for all the praise I could give this

So now we come to the fork in the road. Nightmare 3 has ended. A sequel is greenlit. I would imagine the head honchos at New Line sitting in the conference room thinking about how to best continue the series. I would guess by this point Freddy had become fairly mainstream if I, a six-year-old at the time, had seen a fair amount of merchandise, television promos, and previews for the last films. So, instead of continuing on the path of relative excellence established by the previous film, Bob Shaye turns Freddy into a laughably bad stand-up comedian on a beach, presumably to click with more teens and more dollars. One might say this was a good choice as this film more or less launched Freddy into stardom, but it was at the expense of a good series to that point. For some reason, I have historically really liked this film in spite of the about-face in technique. It was, and to a point still is, a pretty fun movie to watch but man did it piss me off this go around. I chalk that up to

I would have to say my first real viewing of anything Freddy related, other than brief snippets, was Dream Warriors . I vividly remember fighting my brother for the VCR rights to record the horribly-tv-edited version while he wanted to record wrestling. That resulted in the VCR being thrown down the stairs and a hole being kicked into a door. Was it worth it? Fuck yea! At that time (I was probably about eight or so), Freddy was still savage, gruesome, deadly, and appeared in good (relatively speaking of course) movies. This installment is more or less the true sequel to the original. Certain things were different from Freddy’s inception but the story line actually progressed instead of stalling out like Kristen running in that goop while trying to escape Freddy. Here we get a little more backstory on his origins but the pleasant thing was they did not seemed to be shoe-horned in by studio dictation into an already completed story line. These plots points added nicely to the overall

If Chris Nolan ever needed to be consulted on a franchise, it was right after the original Nightmare on Elm Street . Granted, he may not have been up to the task at the time but he like few other directors know how to make a follow-up film to a highly regarded sequel, not by making a carbon-copy of it, but by expanding upon its original characters, story-lines, and plots. Sadly, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge did none of that. It is almost as if New Line took a page from the Exorcist II fiasco of jettisoning everything effective from the first movie for the sequel. We replace Nancy with a whiny bitch, even though he does scream like a girl. Rather than focusing on developing the characters and humanizing them to make their inevitable deaths have an impact, we have a half dozen or so lazily-written characters with almost no defining characteristics. And most importantly, instead of a definitive motive for Freddy to avenge his death by striking back at the loved

Written by: PBF I am going to warn you. This is possibly the worst movie you will ever see. I realize that I may have said that about a couple of other films. Forget about those. THIS IS POSSIBLY THE WORST MOVIE YOU WILL EVER SEE. So, college student goes to Belize for archeological dig that last through the summer. Dead body is discovered. Dead body comes to life. Kills everyone but the college student. College student comes back to college. Dead bodies come back to life and kill people at the college. Fairly simple. And yet so much damage to my soul was done. Where do I even begin with this? Well, the acting is just horrible. And not charming horrible like kids in an elementary school production about the first Thanksgiving. Horrible like genocide, or when a child is kidnapped. We here at Movie Scum, have better production values than this film. This is as low budget as it gets. The directing is ungodly. There were these really odd stretches of what looked like a show on Anim

Here we are less than a week away from the release of the latest part of my childhood to be repackaged and resold to me. Rest assured, I will be there to see Nightmare 2010 on opening day but let us forget about that for now as I cannot say I have high hopes for it. Instead, just like every other horror and/or movie related website, I will revisit the original films and see how they hold up … or don’t. It is quite astonishing that Wes Craven was able to create such an iconic character with a budget reportedly of less than $2 million. Equally amazing is that through the various production and financial issues, the original Nightmare on Elm Street still remains as a highly regarded tentpole in the slasher subgenre twenty five years later along with the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises. I would argue the Nightmare series did not fair as well as the Myers and Voorhees based ones due to studio interference and rushing production to maximize revenues at the expense of the stor

Written by: PBF I really like it when I revisit a movie that I have not seen in some time and it turns out to be actually good. Not just nostalgic good, but genuinely good. Such is the case with Critters . It was not the cheese ball horror flick I apparently erroneously remembered. We start off in space where a group of prisoners called Krites are being transported to a prison asteroid. Something goes awry and the Krites steal a ship and escape. Two space bounty hunters are commissioned to find them. The Krites land in rural Kansas and the bounty hunters follow them there. We meet the Browns, your typical family with Dad Jay, Mom Helen, and brother and sister Brad and April. Brad and April get on each others nerves as brothers and sisters usually do, and Brad tends to misbehave a bit. April is a hormone engulfed teen who just wants to bang her boyfriend Steve (a young Billy Zane ) in the hay. This invasion of Krites serves as the event that will remind them of how important it is

I love DVDs. Right after high school, I was buying at least a half dozen a week if not more. Yet there are several things that just pluck my nerves. This list is not in any particular order and certainly not inclusive. I am quite sure there could be a revisit to this topic eventually. 9. “Large Screen” Releases Essentially, these are films originally in a larger aspect ration, usually 2.40:1, that are cropped during a certain group of scenes. Not only do I despise not watching movies in their original ratios, the way this was handled for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was quite poor, and I’m not only referring to the movie itself. The jump back and forth between scenes (and even different shots within the same scene) is quite jarring. I know a normal movie-goer might not notice but it is rather annoying regardless. 8. Delayed Releases Now that Netflix and Redbox have caved to several studios’ demands to withhold new releases for almost a month after they hit DVD, the only wa

In case you were unfamiliar with it, Yo Gabba Gabba is a pretty crazy looking pre-K show on Nickelodeon. It features five characters who are toys that come to live when DJ Lance Rock places them into their playset/whatever. Thereafter ensues a bunch of singing, dancing, and lessons for our youngest members of society. I started watching this as my 3-year-old was quite picky in her television tastes and would only sit still in front of this (she has since “graduated” to Dora but I sincerely recommend DO NOT make a Dora movie). So, why would I want to see a movie based on a kid’s TV program? Simple. Intertwined with the moral stories about eating vegetables and cleaning up are some pretty funny occurrences, interesting guest stars, and trippy graphics. Surely you’ve seen the Kia commercial with the Sock Puppet and Muno (that’s the big red Cyclops thing) bowling and getting tattoos. I would imagine the plot would go in the direction of the characters are lost in the real world, they t