BLOODBATH: A TWELVE MOVIE COLLECTION OF HORROR - SO THEY SAY. GET YOUR SEATBELTS ON KIDDIES, THIS IS GOING TO BE A VERY BUMPY RIDE PART FIVE
The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine aka Garden Of Love (2003) Germany
Do you know how many movies start with 'The Haunting Of'? Enough where I have to make up some nonsense word to save my reviews 'cause there's TONS. What was wrong with Garden Of Love? Okay, weird title for a slasher film but still better.
This is one of those movies you never remember watching but after 15 minutes in you slap yourself in the head and when you regain consciousness (you did it a little too hard stupid) you say, 'Oh yeah, THAT one, GOD it was dumb.' But of course now you're stuck because while you remember the reveal, you can't remember the ending 'cause you hit your head too hard. Anyway this is the movie:
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| Merry Chris... oooh, never mind. |
A woman is in a coma 'cause her whole family was murdered and she was also stabbed but survived. It happened on Christmas Eve. Why? I have no freaking idea, stop asking questions. Oh, and this girl's 'family'? They were a commune her father put together after his success as a musician. He wanted to get away from it all and brought people with him, so her father was probably EVERYBODY'S father. Eww. We get some scenes that would have been pretty damned gruesome if it all didn't happen in the dark. So now you get some squish, some moans, some flashes of blood flying. Could have been worse. And the credits are still running.
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| Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare |
Then we have one of the investigators doing that oh-so-irritating waking with a scream from a nightmare, going to the kitchen just to find out he's still asleep and wakes AGAIN from the nightmare. C'mon guys, once is bad enough. Besides, it has diddly-squat to do with either the story or anything else.
So the ghosties of this commune want her to wake up and find the killer. WAKE UP!!! Sorry, just trying to help. She's in a coma for two years but when she wakes up she not only remembers nothing she doesn't know who she is. So the little girl gets adopted by her aunt and uncle whom she assumes is her parents, and grows up into a woman in college. Studying shock trauma to the brain. Duh. And the ghosties keep coming at her all bloody and torn up.
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| Daddy Dearest |
Now, using simple logic, IF people became ghosts after death, would they scare the person they're supposed to love the most by showing up all effed up and dripping ooze? Would the ones who care for her and want her back show her how gross they all were when they were killed? Simple logic folks, think about it. She's getting messages from beyond - not from her loving family that she lost, that would be sad, not a horror movie so she's getting 'em from a messed up bloody dude who's scaring the crap out of her. Thanks dad. And the infomercial idea where the 'host' was her dad using knives to cut people's hands off was just... stupid. And him showing up constantly with pieces of his face falling off... again, stupid.
But the acting job of the now-aged investigator of the murders made me laugh. The way he delivered his lines as he sat on his desk, I was convinced they were printed on a piece of paper in front of him or something. He describes to the now-cognizant of her identity Rebecca and her psych boyfriend in a total deadpan voice that they were 'completely slaughtered'.
Well, that's a relief. We don't want any partially slaughtered people wandering around, do we? I know I don't like it when my hamburger's only been partially slaughtered. Sheesh. And how could a guy get stabbed 46 times but nobody knew it and were killed in their beds 'later'. Later? Like what, minutes, hours? We're starting to get into serious duh territory here and it ain't gonna get any better.
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| Sorry, I ate superglue as a kid - nothing moves now... |
He takes a good five minutes of deadpan delivery to expound on what 'no clues' meant. FIVE MINUTES. No suspects. No witnesses. No criminal activity. No reason. No rhyme. No psycho killers. No Satanic rituals. No marijuana crops (what the hell does that... nope, never mind). No copycat killings. No rhythm and blues. Sorry, made that last one up - are you yawning yet? Then he ends his speech with this: It's as if the Devil crawled out of hell. Umm, what? There's a psychiatrist sitting right in front of you dummy. He's in a perfect position to get your ass kicked off the force for that kind of thing.
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| This was a guy... or maybe a girl... umm, a dog? |
Then he tells Rebecca 'We do have a video - would you like to see it?' Okay time out idiots. A little girl's family is 'totally slaughtered'. Years later she tries to remember and THEY'RE GOING TO SHOW HER THE VIDEO OF THE BLOODY MESS? Oh this just gets better and better. After telling her there's absolutely no clues, evidence, etc. he THEN tells her oh yeah, we do have the murder weapons. And fingerprints. Um, what? That's NO evidence? But one problem (actually tons but never mind) - the fingerprints are Rebecca's. Uh huh.
Then it completely jumps from dull as a stump to a bloodfest that was gorier than most whole movies. After seeing the tape she takes one cop to look at the farm. The dead 'family' quickly dispatch him and tell her they need the 'right ones' in order to, uh, stop splashing blood everywhere. She calls for help and cops go into the farm. Major boo boo on her part, she forgot they're gonna... oh well.
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| He just lost his head for a minute... |
Ghosts and cops alike are torn apart in almost cartoonish fashion. Wait, ghosts are getting torn apart, blood and guts flying. That's right folks - even if you're dead it doesn't mean you can't squirt blood and guts clear across the room. Why? This movie said so, derrr. So for the next couple of minutes the movie becomes Dead Alive all up in there and people's heads, limbs and guts spray everywhere until you can't tell who's a goopy ghost and whose a goopy cop. Fun, eh?
After all this fun she runs back to the boyfriend. And gets her just reward - namely he drugs her and she wakes to find a noose around her neck. He tells her she's gonna kill herself. Why? She's a very rich lady, since her dead father left her tons of money she didn't know about and he had 'faked' a will that left everything to him. Ah.
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| A little home improvement project.. |
So he proceeds to haul her up but guys always forget about the gonads and she doesn't so he's rolling on the floor and the drill he was flashing at her for some reason she uses for a little impromptu dental work as well as taking out an eye and generally making him not-so-pretty. She escapes to the deadpan speech maker (aka the cop) and finds her adoptive parents there (they're actually her aunt and uncle). And the truth comes out.
The aunt and uncle had HATED her dad for having all that money 'without doing anything' (that's what people think about musicians - they don't do anything). They had asked him for money but nope. So they devised a plan together with the investigator and the psychologist who later became Rebecca's boyfriend (to keep an eye on her I guess). And the family got slaughtered and they purposely let Rebecca live (umm, she was stabbed twice in the chest how the hell... sigh) so that she would be suspected. And now they'll just say she was crazy and since the boyfriend's dead, the aunt and uncle are gonna clean up.
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| Thank your father Rebecca. "Thanks dad." |
Conveniently the investigator has a girl about eleven or so, and Rebecca grabs her as a hostage and draws all of them to the farmhouse. Oh boy, here we go again. Splat, rip, squish, slop, slip - any other gross words I can use? After they're all dead and Rebecca and the little girl get injured, the daddy appears (still gooped up, nice) and she has a vision of all of them dancing in the sun. Awww.
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| Luuuuke, I am your father... oops, sorry - wrong channel... |
But this is a horror movie - no happy endings. So in the end, the little girl is traumatized and has amnesia. This may happen constantly in movies and especially in soap operas, but amnesia actually only happens very rarely. So she adopts the kid and things are well and good - until the little girl's dad appears to her in the TV set and tells her things have just begun. Oooh, they usually say that when there's a sequel to be had. Meh, I think we're safe.
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