Hello to all those faithfully reading and hopefully enjoying this effort to make even the worst horror movie more watcha... aw, screw that - I'm not that good. If a movie makes you cringe because yet another batch of unlikable teens that are pushing 30 are inching toward their deaths, having a party no one does anywhere ever, a paranormal movie is boring you to tears with unending pans of empty rooms, or thanks to CGI technology when people finally bite it, their blood squirts everywhere except on the victim, the ground, the people next to them... you're in good company and this is the right place for you.
IMPORTANT ADVICE - DIE AMERICAN
Shadows aka Hellgate (2011) Thailand
They should have kept the name Shadows for this one - do you know how many variations of the word Hellgate make up movie titles? Well, neither do I but I know there are quite a few of them. And the main baddie in this story, the tale of the spirits supposedly called 'Asurugai' was nowhere to be found in any wiki or Thai site so whether they just made that crap up or the close captioning misspelled it I dunno - I got a headache and stopped looking.
Accidents happen every second. There's probably not a single one of us who does not know of or love someone they have lost to an auto accident. We go into shock, we grieve, we get depressed, we continue living. Not in Thailand apparently, or so this movie would have us believe. But it takes two Americans in Thailand to tell us this?
A successful man and his family are in Bangkok and there's a horrible traffic accident, which kills the man's (Cary Elwes, looking old and sad) wife and child. He's in a coma for weeks but finally wakes. Funny (funny strange) but he just can't feel anything - he can't cry, he doesn't grieve. And he starts seeing things. In America it's called the five stages of grief. But this American is in Thailand so hey, here it means his 'soul' is split, and it's mostly clinging to the still stuck souls of his wife and child. How freaking depressing.
Because of this he has very little time left - soul travel is on a tight schedule. Like a freaking vampire, he's losing his reflection in the mirror (That means 'soul' why now?) so his hospice nurse, very disappointed that her patient didn't die and now she's stuck with him (just kidding, lighten up) has her aunt try to fix him up - she fails and now they need more powerful help. Well they're in Thailand so they go to... William Hurt. WTH?
He plays some kind of shaman/surfer bum who's white as a sheet with a neato tat on his neck and lots of wisdom - especially about these things I couldn't find - the ass guys - who are supposed to be feeding on our... ya know, skip it. I think the Thai people should stick to their tradition of laying in coffins to get rid of the bad and let in the good, uh, karma? (they do, I have seen that) and not rely on Americans who think they're Thai people now.
So since Elwes is losing it - he sees dead people (so old I can't even think of a joke) and they can actually hurt him - reluctantly Hurt decides to use some wango-tango on the dude and takes him to some monks who take him further out where there's a 'gate' he's got to go through to pull himself together (sorry, couldn't resist). This is the only redeeming part of the film and that's only because of the beautiful countryside and gorgeous shots you briefly get to enjoy before going back to Elwes fighting Gollum - umm - I mean the ass guys and, uh, heal? Grieve? I dunno.
With the help of his nurse who suddenly is willing to risk her life for him (ick) you have the typical 'fighting your demons' type of scenes that drag until yes, he finds his family (and the rest of him) and we have the prolonged goodbyes. Trust me, I'm not being insensitive to either Thai tradition or people's need to grieve, what I have a problem with is this movie - harping on an overused theme and using Americans in the main roles as the problem and the problem fixer. So, finally, Elwes is whole and he can now cry. And we can breathe a sigh of relief because the movie is over.
OUR FIRST CONTENDER FOR THE YEAR FOR WORST MOVIE EVER - AND IT'S ONLY JANUARY...
Hellgate aka A Porta Do Inferno (1989) US/South Africa
You remember what I said about wanting to be able to unsee certain movies? This one just went to the top of the list. We have an incredibly cheap and horribly made movie starring the late Ron Palillo (Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter) starring as the oldest college student ever. When this movie was made, he was 40. That's probably a record, I dunno. I do know this could hold the record for worst makeup, worst special effects, worst story, worst acting, worst attempt to recreate items from yesteryear... yeah, this sucked so loud my ears rang by the time the thing ended. When you have to go clear to South Africa to make a movie - don't.
Why did I even attempt it? From those famous but often misleading claims on the movie poster. This was supposed to be made by some of the same people who made Hellraiser. Now when they make this kind of claim, you have to wonder - do they mean the people responsible for the effects and storyline or the people who stood around running errands and making coffee? If I had to guess, it would definitely be the latter.
The non-story: In the 50's a motorcycle gang called the Strangers (This 'gang' was four guys on three bikes, supposedly 50's Harleys but they were neither from the 50's nor were they Harleys. They sounded like weak Hondas - still not from the 50's.) kidnap a girl for fun and... more fun I guess. The premise is they murder her, but actually it's her dad's fault - he throws an axe into one of the biker's heads and since he's still on a running bike, it hits the girl and plows through a brick wall - made, I'm sure, of nothing but plastic the way it blew right through it. One biker survives and for some reason the father doesn't go after him. Yeah, that would happen.
Years later one of the father's employees finds a crystal which is supposedly the great zombie crystal of.... I dunno, Convenientville? He of course raises up his daughter who now just wants to seduce strangers and then kill them - adding to the zombie population I guess. He certainly doesn't seem to mind when she's undressed in front of him. Just her being nude around her dad was sufficiently creepy.
Sigh, this is so awful I can't even make you listen to the whole story. Needless to say, having Ron as a lead, romantic, heroic or otherwise is NOT going to work. The makeup is awful, the effects were just an overuse of wax and bad gore, having these four 'college students' insist on solving this mystery like they typical Scooby Doo type of group for no reason whatsoever... It just keeps getting worse and worse.
How does it end? Ron and his probably equally old girlfriend are the only survivors and somehow get out of the town of horrid zombies (Horrid 'cause they look awful, not 'cause they're zombies.) without getting blown up by the crystal (oh yeah, it does whatever they think of at the spur of the moment). And I've just lost another 91 minutes of my life. Lesson? Don't watch zombie movies starring Horseshack. Nothing good can come of it.
