Movie Scum

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...

Now I can cross another classic teen 80s movie off my list. For this, The Breakfast Club , and others, it was not as though I was actively trying not to see them. My younger days normally reserved for mostly harmless fare like this was instead spent watching 70s and 80s horror and action movies instead. Yes, I saw the entire franchises of Nightmare on Elm Street , Friday the 13th , and even Maniac Cop before getting around to some of the more relatable films of my generation. So sue me. I now have seen it. I would imagine that everyone else has seen Better Off Dead so I will keep the synopsis short. Lane Meyer is for the most part a typical adolescent. He has really random daydreams, a crazy family, and a typical teen's awkwardness. After meeting Tina, err Beth, he seems to be on a straight path up the popularity ladder in high school. When she dumps him for a 23-year-old-looking-professional-skier-turned-high-school-student, Lane is downtrodden enough that he attempts to k...

Written by: PBF The most important thing that I learned from Phantasm IV , is that being an ice cream man is a trade. Whatever you have to tell yourself, Reggie. Phantasm IV picks up at the end of part 3. Reggie was being held up in the air by dozens of spheres by the Tall Man. The Tall Man releases him, telling him that there is a final game to play. We get some flashbacks as Mike is driving somewhere and as Reggie is driving somewhere. Jody (Mike’s dead/alive/sphere brother) shows up and tells Reggie that he is going to get Mike. Reggie doesn’t want to have anything to do with this, and even tells Jody that he is done with the whole thing. In his defense, I would be tired of it too, having just come out of part 3. After an encounter with an undead cop, Reggie decides to take Jody’s advice and head south west. Mike ends up in Death Valley and wanders through time trying to find out where the Tall Man came from and how he can stop him. You’ll be happy to know that Reggie still m...

Meinhardt Raabe, the Munckin Coroner that pronounced the Wicked Witch of the West dead with the following lines: As coroner, I must aver I thoroughly examined her And she’s not only merely dead, She’s really, most sincerely dead! He died today of a heart attack. He was the last surviving cast member of the entire film with any significant dialogue. Malcom McLaren, manager of the punk band Sex Pistols also died, after battling cancer. He left us yesterday, April 8th. McClaren appeared in The Great Rock and Roll Swindle and The Filth and the Fury, both films by Julien Temple, thus securing my ability to make a post about him on am movie website. McLaren, formed the pistols as a “product” that he would use to make a significant amount of money. Often times, the band would actually be paid to leave their current record label due to their drunken anti-establishment (mostly just drunken) acts. McClaren also formed Bow Wow Wow, managed the Clash for a bit, and produced television show...

Written by: PBF What a surprise, I am reviewing a Coen Brothers ’ (Joel and Ethan) movie. The hell you say! Movie Scum is nothing, if not consistent. A Serious Man is a glimpse in to Larry Gopnick’s ever unraveling life. As of late, he has been plagued with quite unpleasant yet sometimes amusing (to us) events and he is struggling to figure out “what’s going on.” This is a re-telling of the story of Job, set in the 1960’s. Job’s faith is tested through a series of events (stemmed from a wager between God and the Devil) and though he may question why he is being tested, his faith remains intact. You will need to watch the film to see how Larry fairs. In the library of Coen films that exists, I have seen much better. The film is still “good” in the sense that the acting was extraordinary and the story was very interesting. But somehow, these did not mix together into a what should have been an awesome picture (despite the Best Picture nomination). I think the film was directed ...

Written by: PBF Rule of thumb when making a film about drug addicts: I have to care about someone for it to work. I don’t really have to like them or feel sorry for them, but I should not feel indifferent toward them. Cocaine Angel has us following Scott, who is a drug addict, as he wanders around town looking for Mary and drugs. We basically are thrown into his life, stay for a spell and watch him (though a very shaky camera) interact with a few characters (all addicts, with the exception of his ex-wife and daughter), and then taken back out of it. It really is no different from the dozens of other movies that exist about this subject. The last point in the above paragraph is part of the reason that I didn’t really care for this film. It does nothing to distinguish itself in a sea of addict movies. Another reason that I did not like it is because I didn’t care about anyone. Not even Scott’s daughter. The acting was certainly not good enough for me to be anything but indiffere...