Movie Scum

Written by: PBF My first impression of this film was that it was like a zombie film made specifically for Cinemax to air at around 3am. There was plenty of (somewhat justified) nudity almost immediately. However, it vanished just a quickly as it had come. FYI: If you are going to make a marginally engaging film, try not to blow your nudity wad all in the first 15 minutes. It leaves nothing much else to pay attention to. Brain Dead, directed by Kevin Tenney, doesn’t really show us anything new in its zombie story. Not that it is trying to. It’s the story of 6 random people (actually, 3 random groups of 2 people) who for one reason or another end up in an empty fishing lodge. We have Bob and Clarence, who are brothers and escaped prisoners. They arrive first, and end up holding the others hostage. Next to arrive are Claudia and Sherry, who were hiking and swimming naked. Last is Reverend Farnsworth and his assistant Amy. The Reverend would like to pork his assistant. What these peopl...

Since this site’s inception about a year ago, our top search keyword has consistently been Scum , the 1979 British-made movie from director Alan Clarke . Considering that previously I knew nothing of a movie called Scum, going into this review, our 200th by the way, I had vague knowledge of the basic story but little else other than it caused a bit of controversy in the UK when it was released. Taking place in a British borstal, a youth detention facility designed supposedly for rehabilitation and education rather than punishment, Carlin and two other new arrivals to the center are exposed to verbal and physical abuse from both the guards and the other detainees. Carlin, previously the “daddy” of his previous facility, finds it hard to maintain a low-profile as Banks, the leader of the wing, targets him specifically because of his previous internment. He meets another “trainee” named Archer, who sets out to passively cause trouble for the guards by refusing to eat meat, wear shoes,...

Unbeknowst to me, the property Babes in Toyland was originally based on a 1903 stage performance that yielded two feature films in 1934 and 1961 with a made-for-TV movie which is our entry today. 11-year-old Drew Barrymore is Lisa Piper, who on the way home with her sister and friends in a blizzard, is thrown from the car into a tree rendering her unconscious. The majority of the movie takes place in Toyland, a fictional town from Lisa’s subconscious filled with Mother Goose characters, walking, talking animals, and a sinister man named Barnaby Barnicle who wishes to rid the world of toys. After interrupting the marriage between Barnaby and Mary Contrary (Jill Schoelen), Lisa meets the citizens of Toyland and is caught in a web of lies and deceit as Barnaby tries to implicate his nephew Jack-be-nimble (Keanu Reeves) in a nefarious cookie heist to take control of the town and the domain of the Toymaster (Pat Morita). With the help of Georgie Porgie (Googy Gress), Lisa, Mary, and Jack ...

Written by: PBF The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is quite a different film from its predecessor. I hold the original in very high regard for reasons that were absent from this film. That does not make it a bad film, however. Through some narration, we learn that Sally, the only survivor of the previous film was able to tell the story of what happened to her, her brother and friends, but goes catatonic afterward. There was a search conducted but no trace of the Sawyer family (Leatherface, et al) was found. However, there continued to be gruesome chainsaw related killings across the state of Texas for thirteen years. That brings us to the present. Two high school kids are travelling through Texas, drinking and shooting road signs. They call a local radio station that they are listening to and start bothering the DJ, Stretch (Caroline Williams). They play chicken with a truck and run it off the road. Hours later, the kids call Stretch again and while on the phone are stopped by the sam...

Nora Ephron typically makes a certain type of movie. That movie: one which I do not care about. Her most acclaimed films run the gammit between romantic comedies starring Tom Hanks to other romantic comedies starring Tom Hanks. A bit of filler movies with Will Ferrell and Meryl Streep fill in the gaps. The thing I was most excited about with Mixed Nuts was Parker Posey, who I learned to love in Scream 3. Sadly, she appears with Jon Stewart in roughly 80 seconds of the movie. At least I had another Scream series vet to bide time with. Mixed Nuts centers around a crisis hotline on Christmas Eve. Phillip (Steve Martin) runs this help center although needing some help himself with an immanent breakup, a pending eviction, and stupid people surrounding him. His neurotic co-worker Catherine (Rita Wilson) has a friend of sorts Grace (Juliette Lewis) who is potentially nine months pregnant by her seven-month paroled boyfriend Felix (Anthony LaPaglia). The other hotline worker is Mrs. Munchnik...

For a review of Scrooged, I could just point you to the first ever Movie Scum Episode up to the 2:45 mark and that would about summarize my thoughts on the movie. Based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Bill Murray assumes the role of Scrooge as Frank Cross, a deplorably inhumane man who thrives on the mean-streak that everyone else would just as rather ignore. As the president of a major television network, he takes great joy in firing those who rub him wrong and being miserly when we assume that he has all the wealth in the world. Frank is warned of his depraved ways by his late boss (John Forsythe) who also informs him of the coming of three ghosts. The ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future all show Frank something he either wanted to forget or wanted to ignore in the hopes of turning him into less of a douchebag. PBF said this was probably one of his favorite Murray movies ever (Bill, not the other brothers who turned up here) and I couldn’t agree more. This is class...

I briefly considered watching the 1959 movie Santa Claus as originally intended for the Christmas Scum Marathon but the shoddy transfer and awful dubbing turned me off within about four minutes. I was fortunate enough to see that the geniuses at MST3k saw fit to bring their special blend of absurdity and humor to this horrible, Mexican-produced, nightmare-inducing tale of Santa as he battles the Devil. Needless to say, I watched the MST3k version. While there are several notable episodes that I haven’t seen, I don’t think I’ve laughed so much at an MST3k episode before. Featuring the creepiest Old St. Nick I’ve seen yet, Santa Claus begins with a tour of the jolly old fattie’s celestial castle featuring cliques of children from random ethnicities and 1950s high-tech gadgetry to spy on little boys and girls. As Santa is about to set off on his all night journey to apparently only three houses in Mexico, the Devil is called upon by Lucifer (umm, what?) to rise up and turn all the child...

Black Christmas is often lauded as being one of the pioneering films for many slasher movie staples. The menacing phone calls, the killer’s POV shots, or the general atmosphere of suspense have all been copied and ripped-off countless times to make watching Black Christmas for the first time is a rather odd experience. On one hand, you pretty much know what is going to happen, beats and all throughout the film, but the fact that it predates even the seminal classic Halloween makes it the template to which most all other slashers were created. Other than true horror buffs, the slasher subgenre is laughed upon and Black Christmas, while an admirable feat in some ways, did not set a very high standard. Had I watched this movie twenty years ago, I would have been bored senseless. This was during the “dark ages” of my life that I considered Halloween 2 better than the original due to its higher body count. Even now having the appreciation for slow and methodical horror films that don’t re...

Written by: PBF You could call Altered States a love story, because that’s what it is, but you would be doing director Ken Russell and writer Paddy Chayefsky a disservice. For the actual love story parts of it are merely the filler in an absurdly religious and cosmic journey that you really aren’t supposed to take seriously. It wouldn’t be the first disservice done to Chayefsky (at least in his opinion) in regard to the film; he had a some kind of dispute with the film’s first director and he later changed his name (to his real first and middle names) on the film due to his disapproval of it. Professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) is studying schizophrenia using sensory deprivation tanks. At some point he places himself in the tank under the observation of his colleague, Arthur Rosenberg (Bob Balaban). After having hallucinations in the tank and reliving the death of his father,  he becomes obsessed. Fascinated with religious experiences, he becomes consumed with finding the “fi...

Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure why I picked Ernest Saves Christmas as part of the inaugural 12 Days of Christmas Scum Marathon. Perhaps it was because Jim Varney was quite comical as Slinky-Dog in the first two Toy Story installments. Or maybe it was nostalgia from the annual tradition of watching it around this time just before the long winter break in middle school. While I can safely say it was much better than Elf Bowling, Ernest’s antics were nowhere close to my fond remembrances of them. I was shocked to learn (due to my extreme indifference toward him) that Ernest P. Worrell (Varney) was conceived as a local personality for television commecials which progressed into a TV series and no less than ten feature films. Having seen only a handful of those other movies, I cannot speak for the notion that Ernest is an almost self-aware, buffoonish caricature on purpose because his character merely comes off as a combination of annoying and “special.” Here we follow Ernest as he meets S...

Writer, Director, Producer Blake Edwards passed away Wednesday at the age of 88. His death was a result of complications from pneumonia. Some of his most notable films were Breakfast at Tiffany’s , The Pink Panther (and it’s many follow ups) and 10 . He was married to Julie Andrews, who appeared in many of his films. She was with him when he passed.

Written by: PBF You could call Altered States a love story, because that’s what it is, but you would be doing director Ken Russell and writer Paddy Chayefsky a disservice. For the actual love story parts of it are merely the filler in an absurdly religious and cosmic journey that you really aren’t supposed to take seriously. It wouldn’t be the first disservice done to Chayefsky (at least in his opinion) in regard to the film; he had a some kind of dispute with the film’s first director and he later changed his name (to his real first and middle names) on the film due to his disapproval of it. Professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) is studying schizophrenia using sensory deprivation tanks. At some point he places himself in the tank under the observation of his colleague, Arthur Rosenberg (Bob Balaban). After having hallucinations in the tank and reliving the death of his father, he becomes obsessed. Fascinated with religious experiences, he becomes consumed with finding the “firs...

In an effort to shy away from the mainstays of Christmas movies for this marathon, I turned to Netflix to deliver a nice package of obscure holiday fun. What it delivered was quite possible the most painful movie I have ever experienced. Fuck you movie! Elf Bowling is apparently based on a computer video game of the same name that I have never heard of. In the game, Santa is pissed at his unionized, striking elves and apparently uses them as bowling pins. Seeing 82 minutes of that would have been far more entertaining. In a bastardized retcon of the origin of THE jolly old fat man in a red suit, Santa transforms from the captain of the Stinky Toe into ol’ Saint Nick that we know him as after his crew stages a mutiny and pushes Santa and his brother Dingle Kringle overboard into the freezing ocean waters. After thawing, Santa enters into a contractual agreement with the native elves on the North Pole to deliver the toys made by the elves as long as working conditions are happy. Dingle...

So, I finally sat down and watched A Christmas Story. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say I finally sat down with the express intention to watch A Christmas Story in one continuous sitting. Without the distractions of wrapping presents or the extended-family-induced alcohol coma, I was able to actually appreciate the movie without it being beaten into my head every two hours courtesy of cable TV. Directed by Bob Clark, the genius behind Porky’s and Baby Geniuses, the story centers around cute little Ralphie who wants nothing more for Christmas than a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle despite the numerous warnings of shooting an eye out. The treasured BB gun is merely the common thread that holds together the various segments about Ralphie, his slightly deranged parents, and the dreams and crushing realities of being a nine-year-old. What always got lost in the barrage of the Christmas Story marathon is the perfect way this film captures what it i...

I hate to quote the same thing in less than a week but Digger posited in his previous marathon that Predator is “without a doubt one of the greatest action movies of all time.” Die Hard certainly deserves a spot on that list as well and perhaps not coincidentally is directed by the same man: John McTiernan . You all should know the story very well so I’ll keep the synopsis short. John McClane is a NYPD cop. His estranged wife lives in L.A. and works for a powerful foreign firm. McClane flies in for Christmas. Terrorists take over the building which houses a shit ton of money. Pure entertainment for the next two hours ensues. It may not be your go-to movie for Christmas like Elf or the Muppet Christmas Carol but Die Hard is not only an awesome Christmas movie in its setting and references but also a damn near flawless action movie. In fact, I would almost consider this the anti-action movie in that the normal conventions and clichés that are commonplace today are nowhere to be fo...

I wasn’t sure how much entertainment I would derive from Zombie Strippers . Even though it came recommended by Movie Scum friend Kat, I’ve seen too many low-budget (and big-budget for that matter) zombie movies that are completely forgettable due to many filmmakers’ use of clichéd zombie tropes or laughable production values or horrendous acting. Zombie Strippers delivers more than I expected but not without a number of gripes. Considering the title and the presence of “adult entertainment” star Jenna Jameson , you might not be surprised to see equal amounts of nudity as in a late-night Skinemax movie. I wonder if the grand plan of writer/director Jay Lee was to make a soft-core porno but include zombies to increase the sales potential. Through the poorly attempted satiric prologue, we learn that George W. Bush is President for a fourth term, public nudity has been banned, and science has created a virus to reanimate fallen soldiers. When the virus is unleashed, an infected “sold...

When I first heard about a Predator   sequel being made, it seemed like there were daily updates for the members of production, the cast, and then the release date approximately two weeks later. I may be truncating the timeframe a bit but it came together rather quickly in my swiss-cheese-like memory. The concept had promise with the predator foe, hunting in groups, having the homefield advantage against a rag-tag gang of militants and ne’er-do-wells. Sadly, while that premise is accurate, the final product, or at least half of it, leaves much to be desired. At least, until you watch the original Predator . In his recent Monster Scum marathon, Digger proclaimed Predator to be “one of the greatest action movies of all time.” While it has been far too long since seeing the original to agree or disagree, Predators however follows its source material far too closely. Straight down to the music by John Debney which is almost a carbon-copy of Alan Silvestri’s great score from the or...

Written by: PBF David Cronenberg has said that The Brood was inspired by the custody battle for his daughter that he went through with his ex-wife. After watching this, my guess is that the process was unpleasant. Frank Carveth’s ( Art Hindle ) wife Nola ( Samantha Eggar ) is under the care of Dr. Hal Raglan ( Oliver Reed ) who practices a questionable form of therapy called Psychoplasmics. Dr. Raglan encourages his patients to “show him” their emotions, which generally will physically manifest somehow. For example, at the beginning of the film we see a session in which a man is speaking to his father (Dr. Raglan is acting as the patient’s father) and takes his shirt off to reveal sores of some kind that have developed as a manifestation of his feelings toward his father. This practice places Raglan as a genius to some, however, not to Frank. Nola, like Raglan’s other patients stay in a facility, and Candy, the Carveth’s daughter regularly visits her mother there. On one occas...

S01E06 While I am thankful that AMC gave Frank Darabont a chance to bring Walking Dead to TV screens, I have to curse their apprehension at the beginning with only a six episode order for the first season. Not only does that cut things short before really establishing the tone and direction of the show, but this episode was pretty lousy as a season finale but would have been much better if we did not have eleven months to go before seeing the next installment. Now safely inside the CDC in Atlanta, the group (they really need a catchy name like Apocalypse Avengers or something) meet Dr. Edwin Jenner, the lone scientist left studying the zombification disease after everyone else fled or checked out. At first Jenner is fairly welcoming (as much as a man carrying an automatic weapon can be) offering hot showers, food, and beds to sleep in. He explains what is known about the disease and how it affects the brain before rendering the host dead and resurrecting the brain stem to drive the...

After it came and epically failed at the box office this summer, Jonah Hex was branded as a grade-A turkey, damning the goodwill Josh Brolin has earned over the past few years and further nailing the coffin of Megan Fox ’s movie career. I started watching expecting a bad movie but upon it’s conclusion I wonder, did I actually watch a movie? Clocking in at a thankful, yet still puzzling 81 minutes with credits, Jonah Hex probably would have been a worse movie had it not been so hurried to its conclusion. For that we can be thankful I suppose. From what I gather reading about the source comic series, the origin of Hex is similar but damn if we’d know it from the movie. Under the command of Quentin Turnbull ( John Malkovich ), Hex is a Confederate soldier who breaks rank after refusing to slaughter United States civilians and kills Turnbull’s son in the process. Hex is then forced to watch as his wife and son (I think?) are burned alive by Turnbull for revenge before being scarred...

As I scrolled through the Jesusflix offerings the other day, I came upon this gem and thought “A Michael Mann movie with Scott Glenn , Ian McKellen , and Jürgen Prochnow ? How have I never even heard of this before?” The short answer to that question is that The Keep is truly awful. Mann must have learned much in between this and Manhunter , such as how to construct a decent story. Taking place in a Romanian village in 1941, the Keep is a mysterious fortress of some sort that some German soldiers decide is a good place to hole up in. Even though they are specifically warned by the caretaker not to molest any of the silver crosses embedded in the walls, two soldiers unearth a passage to the walled-off inside of the structure only to have their faces blown off. Meanwhile, another group of German soldiers lead by Major Kaempffer ( Gabriel Byrne ), this time wearing the SS armbands which remind me I probably need to pay more attention to history, arrive after the death of many of the...

S01E05 Just as a quick recap of last week’s review, I didn’t like Vatos primarily because it was less about the great characters and more centered around silly, nonconsequential twists and standard zombie stuff you can see anywhere. Ironically, that episode was also written by the comic’s writer Robert Kirkman so I had expected much better. In fairness, it was not Flesh Freaks or Who’s Your Caddy bad but still kind of disappointing. This week though had everything I expect, want, and salivate for in a Walking Dead episode. Primarily, it centers around the aftermath of the zombie attack last week as there are not only dead zombies and dead humans to deal with but also tree-hugging Jim as an in-betweener who was bitten in the mele. Rick decides the best course of action is to head back to Atlanta (haven’t we done this before?) in hopes to find a cure for Jim at the CDC. Shane however wants to trek to a military base under the assumption it is more heavily fortified and not overrun wit...

Note to filmmakers: If you want me to almost instantly hate your movie, go ahead and begin with the Spin Doctors‘ ubiquitous song Two Princes from over a decade ago. Yes, Love and Other Drugs is a “period piece” set in the late 1990s in the background as the direct-to-consumer pharmaceuitical business starts booming with the development of wonderdrugs to treat everything from depression to male … specific problems. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Jamie Randall, a smooth-talking salesman who is likely to talk his way into your pants while buying a stereo (well, not my pants but still). In an effort to prove his worth to his medical-oriented family, Jamie takes a job as a pharmaceutical sales rep for Pfizer. In his travels shadowing Dr. Stan Knight ( Hank Azaria ), Jamie meets Maggie Murdock ( Anne Hathaway ), a young woman who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Maggie is your typical romantic comedy outcast with her art and proclivity for casual sex. However Jamie is further a...

S01E04 Thus far in the series, we have seen a good number of zombies (mostly in the first episode) but little zombie violence as necks and arteries are severed from the living buffet for the undead. I like this approach as the ending of this episode mostly came out of nowhere in what was otherwise another leisurely adventure in the apocalypse. After discovering that Merle had obviously watched  Saw  too much (or he didn’t think about cutting off only his thumb), Rick and company discover that he is wily enough to cauterize his stump, yet stupid enough to go empty-handed (too soon?) into the urban jungle filled with the walkers. While trying to retrieve Rick’s bag o’ guns, some no-good gang-like fellows pummel Daryl and kidnap Glen before Rick and T-Bone can come to the rescue. As they initiate a trade with the rapscallions, our hero group discover that these hoodlums really have hearts of gold as they fortify and protect a nursing home and its elderly denizens. Meanwhile ba...

Written by: PBF Ah, sweet 81 minute running time. How you make the pain so much easier to take. Actually, The Lost Boys: The Thirst is not as bad as The Tribe . In fact, it would be borderline not bad at all if they would just get rid of the stupid action movie hokey lines. And the crap “Cry Little Sister” cover. While Alan Frog was absent from the last film, he was referenced by Edgar who says that he knows what it’s like to lose a sibling to the undead or some such verbiage. The opening of The Thirst, shows us “5 years earlier” in Washington where a really old senator half vampire with vampire teeth dentures is about to feed on a congressman is interrupted by the Frog brothers. They save the congressman but Alan (again played by Jamison Newlander ) gets turned in to a half vampire. We go back to the present and Edgar ( Corey Feldman ) gets an eviction notice and one week to vacate his trailer. Still talking like Nolan’s Batman, he goes to a comic book store to sell some of his...