I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

TWO VERY BAD MOVIES EXPLOITING THE DISABLED



House Of Bodies (2013) / The Tenant (2010)

Just what are the odds of finding two (awful) horror movies in a row that feature deaf characters? In one it's a convenient plot device. In the other, it's criminal because not only are they deaf, they're small children. In either case it's an extra slap in the face of the movie goer as they have to sit through these two abominations.

House Of Bodies: This immediately had the kiss of death - 'based on real events'. So you know the movie is total BS. The only 'real' part of this movie is probably the fact that serial killers exist. Yet for some unknown reason, this movie actually had Peter Fonda, Queen Latifah and Terrence Howard in it. How the hell does that happen? This movie was, in a word (but you know I'm going to give you a lot more), ludicrous.

The premise is that a man committed a series of atrocities on young women in his house (YAWN). Now, struggling college students trying to pay for their expenses have rented the house, and turned it into torture-porn-for-profit website. Each girl who rents a room has to perform a very disgusting (and fake) scene of being killed by torture, just like the girls who were actually killed in the house. Oh yeah, that's enlightened thinking.

One girl is a bit shy of taking it all off so some other actor can off her (sorry, I mean kill her). Enter a young man who had Ménière's disease when he was 12, causing him to lose his hearing. When people started making fun of his speech, he stopped talking. Looking for something, uh, that teenage boys like I guess (and apparently having a credit card) he logs onto the site and gets our shy girl, Kelli. She is the usual idiot, saying things like 'What's the matter, you a deaf-mute or something?' Sheesh. He should have come back with 'Hey what are you, a a dumb blonde skank or something?' It would have been only fair. So despite both not being the sharpest tool in the box they strike up a friendship - as close as you can get for one on the internet, for money.

Queen Latifah? She plays some sort of, uh, online counselor? She's supposed to be there if he needs anything - when she's on her shift. Uh, okay. So she's available... part of the time. Groovy. Peter Fonda? He plays the incarcerated serial killer who is being grilled throughout the movie by detectives because, darn it all, here he rots in jail but women are still turning up dead, killed just like he supposedly killed them. How come? Uh, 'cause they have the wrong guy? Pfft, we're not going to get answers that quickly, they have a 78 minute movie to make.

So we get a lot of dumb S&M which, because you're smart too, quickly becomes very real as each girl is picked off by the REAL serial killer - the one that Peter Fonda is in jail for. Because it's his son. Duh. Is there a happy ending? Ya know, I can't exactly remember, it was. Just. That. Bad.


The Tenant: This was just inexcusable for exploiting four supposedly deaf-mute children that were signing like they were in training to be mimes or something. My apologies if they actually WERE deaf-mute but somehow I really doubt it. The basic premise is that a doctor is running experiments instead of taking care of his mental patients. What a surprise. He wants to be able to 'fix' genetic errors that cause disabilities in the womb. When his wife, pregnant with twins (sigh) insists that he quit immediately or she's gone, he does - but his faithful assistant gets his wife back by injecting the doc's latest attempt into her womb just before she gives birth. Needless to say... life sucks and then you die. She does.

Doc plays with Moe, Larry & Curley

A bus carrying stupid people and the above mentioned children breaks down and it's pouring. Now, instead of staying with the bus, which would keep them out of the rain and be there when someone drives by and can help them, they run through the rain and break into the now-abandoned mental asylum (Why why WHY are there so damn many abandoned asylums? Can't they turn them into libraries, or schools or something?) for shelter that they already had if they had stayed on the damn bus.

Somehow I don't think they want him as a spokesman...

You've got the rest figured out, I'm sure. The baby that got the dose of the doc's experiment is a grotesque monster, living in his own filth in the hospital. The assistant now brings him... I dunno, elephant meat? Little bits of dog meat? Whatever she brings, it's gross which I guess is appropriate. So these idiots roaming the halls get picked off one by one (not the little ones) until a girl is left to find out that hey, she was adopted and the monster is her twin brother. Wow. I. Am. Not. Impressed.

Again the ending is... the ending and you don't have to worry about the movie any more.