Movie Scum

Written by: PBF This piece of shit is the most insulting installment in the Chainsaw franchise. Without question. And if you disagree, you are wrong. I really hate Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Honestly, the specifics of the plot do not matter. It’s the same basic shit. A group of kids get lost in the backwoods of Texas for whatever reason and they run across random strangers that all end up members of the same murderous cannibalistic family with a different last name, depending on what sequel we’re in. This time the family’s last name is Slaughter. W.E. (mentioned as the only apprehended family member to stand trial in part III’s narration) is in this one, which takes place in 1994, which contradicts ONLY THE ENTIRE PREVIOUS TIMELINE. I fucking swear to God, did no one see how sloppily this franchise was put together? Also, yet again, Leatherface is here, but with a completely different family. Also, once again, there is narration referring to the events of the f

Where has this Natalie Portman been hiding? In the horrendous Star Wars prequels and the other generic rom-coms that I haven’t seen, Portman has never received much applause for her performances; they weren’t bad but nothing special either. But if you would have told me ten years ago that Padmé from Episode I would go from a wooden performance of terrible dialog to a serious contender for Best Actress, I would have laughed at your absurdity. In Black Swan , Portman plays Nina, a dancer in a prestigous New York dance company who works hard but mostly without notice. After the announcement that the lead ballerina is set to retire, the troup’s director Thomas ( Vincent Cassel ) sets out to find a lead for his version of Swan Lake. Nina is considered due to her precise dancing ability but Thomas worries about her ability to play the parts of both the pristine White Swan and the devious Black Swan convincingly. Nina ends up getting the lead role but that leads her to obsess over h

It doesn’t take long to think of a sports movie, usually based on a true story, with a scrappy underdog mounting a triumphant comeback to reclaim the respect of his love, his family, or himself. It is a tried and true formula with a feel good ending after some points of hardship for the main character. Since its release in December, The Fighter has received much acclaim from critics and associations declaring it to be one of the best pictures of the year. But the question I had going into this movie: does the world really need another one of these movies? Director David O. Russell weaves the tale of Micky Ward ( Mark Wahlberg ) as his ascension in the world of professional boxing is fraught with obstacles. The greatest is Micky’s hero and older half-brother Dicky Eklund ( Christian Bale ), previously an accomplished fighter who now is Micky’s trainer when he is not too high off crack to remember. Micky’s family is supportive to an extent but only as his mother Alice ( Melissa Le

Written by: PBF The most important piece of advice that I can offer you prior to watching Hanger is: do not take it seriously. An appearance by Lloyd Kaufman should suggest that to you, even without my advice. Rose is a pregnant hooker who is often beat mercilessly by her pimp, Leroy. Leroy has told Rose many times that she needs to get rid of her unborn child. Rose no longer wants to be a hooker and wants to have her baby. One of her regular dates, referred to as “The John” no longer wants to pay her for sex so long as she is pregnant. As this means less money for him, Leroy decides to take matters in to his own hands. Using a hanger, he extracts Rose’s child, killing Rose in the process. He then tosses the child in to a dumpster. Flash forward 18 years, and we learn that the child (named Hanger) has been living with a homeless man who found him in the dumpster. On his 18th birthday, “The John” picks up Hanger and takes him to his new home and job. Hanger’s face is usually obscu

You may be asking yourself, “who the hell is Pete Postlethwaite?”  I know I certainly did. Most recently, he was seen as Maurice Fischer in Inception and in Ben Affleck’s The Town but Postlethwaite is one of those character actors that seem to pop up in every other movie. He also played in Romeo + Juliet , the Lost World , In the Name of the Father , and The Usual Suspects . He died of cancer at the age of 64.

Suburbia is such a wacky modern invention. Regardless of what reality is, all nicely arranged neighborhoods seem to consist of people who never work, get bent out of shape over ordinances about shingle color, and gossip nonstop regardless of gender. Perhaps I have seen too much Desperate Housewives . The ‘Burbs takes place in one of these planned communities where everyone’s house is the right color, has the right landscaping for aesthetic appeal, and the most frequent daily adventures are to a neighbor’s house to chat. Well, everyone except the newest residents on Mayfield Place, the Klopeks. They own a run-down Victorian looking structure and keep to themselves except during nocturnal drives to the curb to beat the hell out of oddly-shaped bags of garbage. Their presence has attracted the attention of everyone in the cul-de-sac, especially Ray ( Tom Hanks ) and his pals Art (Rick Ducommun) and Rumsfield (Bruce Dern) who are convinced that their new neighbors are Satanists or cul

Written by: PBF I really am almost at a loss for words after watching Leatherface. I really have no fucking idea what I just watched. The film opens with a narration that refers to the event of the first film. We learn that Sally died in a mental health facility in 1977. One of the Saywers, W.E. Sawyer, was put on trial and given the gas chamber. The jury apparently concluded that Leatherface was another personality of W.E. The narration suggests that this may or may not have been correct, and if not, Leatherface is still at large. Either way, the events of 1973 were just the beginning. We are then planted somewhere between the first 2 films (from what I can gather) and meet Michelle and Ryan. They are travelling from Los Angeles to Florida to deliver the Mercedes they are driving. They stop at a gas station and meet a creepy attendant and a hitchhiker. As Michelle uses the bathroom, Alfredo (the attendant) watched through a hole in the wall. He and Tex (the hitchhiker, played by

It's a good thing that Bill Murray is naturally hilarious. As star, producer, and co-director of Quick Change , the entire film could have easily gone south in lesser hands.

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 “first

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