A STITCH IN TIME SAVES YOU... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT IT WILL COST YOU ABOUT 86 MINUTES...

Stitches (2012) UK/Ireland

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.

You all know what I hate worse than seeing a bad horror movie once, right? Seeing it twice, of course. BUT This movie had been described as a good horror/comedy movie, with each slaughter being inventive although I didn't see anything special. Okay guys, I'll take another look but I warn you, I'm still reeling from Hitler in a jar-o so I'm gonna be a bit picky. Get ready... But first, let's check the IMDb on Google shall we?

Huh. That movie sounds AWFULLY familiar... I'm thinking massively popular, there were three of them, its' star is still a total hottie... oh well. 

I wonder who the incredible idiot was who first thought that putting a man in horrid clothes with a ton of makeup on his face would be entertaining for little kids. Sit down Braveheart, I'm not talking about you. Although a painted Mel Gibson IS pretty freaking scary. Actually ANY sight of Mel Gibson is freaking scary. No, I'm talking about the ones with the real big red noses, the ones who get right in little kids' faces and FORCE them to laugh... or wet their pants, either one.



So. Richard Grimble (Ross Noble, a stand-up comedian in his first acting role - which he does surprisingly well) is a clown who goes by Stitches. He has an egg with his likeness because all clowns MUST have an egg in a jar-o (Oh God, flashbacks!) to keep in some mausoleum in one of those monk-chanting type ceremonies that this little boy can conveniently see from a telescope in his treehouse (apparently this town is so freaking small he can see EVERYTHING from it).


Here's your Hey-I-didn't-ask-why-are-you-telling-me lesson for today: The practice of painting each clown's face on an egg is REAL. I shite you not. This is thanks to a website The Straight Dope at  http://www.straightdope.com/ :

The tradition began in the U.K. around 1946 at what was then the International Circus Clowns Club but is now called Clowns International. A member named Stan Bult started recording clown images on chicken eggs with the insides blown out. Clown Bluey became chairman of Clowns International in 1984. This time a professional artist was used and the faces were painted on china-pot eggs instead of chicken eggs. Over the years, many of the lost older eggs have been reproduced, and new eggs are added frequently.

In the U.S. collection, the faces are eggs-pertly hand-painted on goose eggs (more durable than chicken eggs), and decorated with various materials (such as clay, wire, felt, tiny flowers, glitter, etc.) to obtain as accurate a representation of the clown face and costume as possible. The collection is meant to preserve the uniqueness of each clown's face makeup. Quoting from the Department of Clown Registry information sheet: "It is an unwritten law among clowns that one must never copy the face of another." 

Stitches isn't a great clown. He isn't even a really good one - he's shite (look it up). He shows up late for Tom's (the boy with the telescope) birthday party and tries his tricks but kids are really jaded and they mock him and mess with him instead. And since we know this is about a zombie clown who gets revenge on the ones who killed him, he gets his eye non-comically (which is hard for a clown) impaled on a large knife sticking up in an open dishwasher (because everybody leaves them open with sharp implements sticking up around small children).

Stitches dies after spurting a couple of gallons of fake blood all over the damn place. I am not exaggerating. Through the WHOLE MOVIE it tries to tell you that most of the body's blood supply is in the head. Duh. Nice effect of a knife through a split eye though. After a clown funeral (which Tom watches with that magic telescope - MAN that town is SMALL!) everyone pretty much forgets Stitches, who lies, nicely preserved in his grave. 'Cause his egg is still intact. Does that even make a lick of sense? No? Well, I must have the right movie then.

Because the movie says so, time fast forwards to Tom turning 17. He wants just a small party with his best buds - you know, the fellow clown-killers? But they have other ideas - and a huge party containing more people than are probably in the whole bloody town are going to show up - including a girl Tom liked as a kid when he watched her... say it with me... SAAAAAAY IT.... THROUGH HIS TELESCOPE.



Now I'm going to stop for just a moment... HEY GET BACK HERE YOU COWARD!!!!  A moment with something I noticed and thought it was a nice nod to Wes Craven. Either that or they couldn't think of something original so hey, copy copy copy away, right? Since Tom was traumatized by the clown incident, he is now on medication. That medicine is called Hypnocil. That sounded verrrry familiar so I looked it up and yup, it is what the kids in Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors AND Freddy vs. Jason were dosed with so that they wouldn't dream. Cute. Fake, but cute.

Bobo... umm, I mean Baggy Britches... dammit I mean Bozo... <grits teeth> I. Mean. Stitches. Stitches the clown comes back to life because, uh, because the movie says so. That's their story and they're sticking to it. With one eye stitched up (GET IT????) he decides to join the party. He still has his red clown nose which is good 'cause he now only has a hole where his nose used to be... sometimes. Most of the time it is VERY obvious that his nose is intact. Duh.

Totally random, just thought this was a cool shot...

Now I was going to make my usual sarcastic remarks and ream this film out for its stupidity but soooo many horror sources say these killings were soooo inventive that instead I'll go through the characters then and now because each killing is supposed to be inventive and ironic. Names are not necessary 'cause who cares, right? We just want blood and gore. This movie tries to rival Dead Alive (Braindead) in amount of blood and guts, but also in trying to make the gore funny.

Kill #1: Male bully - at the party he made fun at the clown when he tried to perform a trick. First he gets his ear ripped off. When he swings (with his right arm), he misses and turns around for another swipe (with his left arm, duh). Stitches pulls the arm out of the socket and... very bloody, very gory - or is it? 

Stop the frame when the socket is shown. The top is clearly a half circle of plastic that is either stapled or stitched (no pun intended) to the shirt and there is definitely some sort of pin holding the gore to the plastic (that's the wrong kind of gore for a shoulder socket anyway) so a B- effect goes down to a C-. 

Good effort, sloppy effects. Stitches messes with him some more before kicking off his head. The head flies off and lands in a pond, eyes wide open. 'Kay. But when the head resurfaces, the eyes are shut. Sigh.



Kill #2: Homosexual friend - at the party he flung a scoop of ice cream at Stitches. He loves to eat. He shuts himself in the pantry and eats can after can of strawberries in light syrup. Urp. Stitches opens up his skull with the can opener and scoops perfect little balls of brains into a bowl. Too bad they show one of the balls bounce when it hits the bowl. Rubber brains? Sure, why not. Oh and as the kid dies, for whatever reason these 21st century kids suddenly listen to and sing along to Cutting Crew's I Just Died In Your Arms. That was popular in the 80's guys. Sheesh.



Kill #3: Female bully - she flipped him off at the party. She's the only one who puts up a fight and impales his neck with a shoe heel. He pulls it out and she attempts to get away. He throws his umbrella and it impales itself through her skull, pinning her eye on the end and shoving it into the camera. If this had been 3D this would have been a perfect shot for it.



But. The eye is perfect and blue. No ganglia, no gore. The pupil constricts. Uh, no. Fail on that one. But wait - now she falls backwards, shoving the rest of the umbrella through her eye socket and tons more blood shoots out. Huh, no eyelashes. Weird. Also when the camera pans out, no blood except for a bit on her face. Huh. The perfect eye pops off the end of the umbrella and she swallows it. The dead can swallow? Huh. That part was the hubby's favorite movie trick of the week. The umbrella opens and she is saturated with black... guck. Black? Really? Did they run out of red already? Huh.

Should we even talk about the fact that the model they used when shoving the umbrella through had no eyelashes, or that the 'patch' job they did to make it look real was so bad that it looked like a teenager had fun with Photoshop? No? Enough? Okay, let's go on...

Kill #4: At the party this boy wanted a dinosaur shaped balloon animal. When Stitches made a dog, he popped it. Stitches now slashes the boy's stomach open, does a little taffy pull (lots of blood and gore) and slices himself a section of intestine (now clean and pink). He makes a balloon animal out of it. The boy, guts hanging at his feet, tries to run away.



Stitches isn't done with him yet. He takes his balloon pump, shoves it into the boy's skull and pumps. The boy protests and yells as his head looks like... you guys are probably too young to remember Big Trouble In Little China, huh? 'Cause boom goes the dynamite and his head blows - twice. Guess they wanted to get their money's worth. Sparks are visible from the charges they set to get such a big spray - all blood, no skull, brain or other icky stuff.

With three survivors, Tom realizes that the only way to splat this clown good once and for all is to smash Stitches' egg. 'Kay. They make their way through the cemetery and Tom goes into the mausoleum and finds... hundreds of glass cases with eggs in them. This was actually a pretty elaborate set, and since the egg was on the top shelf and Tom knocks the whole thing over but nothing breaks, each case must have been plexiglass or something.

But inevitably, the egg is smashed and so then is Stitches in a scene that somehow was grosser than all the blood, gore, and body parts in the rest of the movie. Finally his yolky body is spread all over and we fade out to...

Tom is moving - down the street. Wow. His now-girlfriend Kate gives him a bigger telescope so he won't miss her bedroom which we assume not only can see the entire town, but can also see around corners, buildings, and whatever else is in the way of her bedroom window.

Meanwhile the high poobah of clowns is busy with brush and glue carefully putting Stitches' egg back together. Well, they couldn't afford all the King's horses and all the King's men... ahem. Sorry about that. We're done here.

https://www.facebook.com/dumbandboringmovies

STILL WAITING FOR THE FUNNY




Evil Ed (1997) Sweden

Being in the mood for some lighter horror I tried a couple of movies labeled comedy/horror thinking I'd actually get that - a big DUH goes to me for trusting a movie synopsis. While Chop had some, um, interesting aspects, this was just one big thud of 93 minutes waiting for the punchline to the joke. It was supposed to be full of side-splitting humor. Maybe to the Swedes. This was their first splatter film. I think it's probably their last - at least the market isn't saturated that I've seen...

The really sad part is that they honestly thought they were paying homage to American horror films (Evil Dead, Evil Ed - get it?) and even had their Swedish actors dubbed into English badly on purpose to make it funnier. Nope. And the fact that the credits running at the start are slicker and better done than the movie itself was just sad.

The story is the pretty basic. At the beginning we see some schmuck, bald and with some awful skin condition (and no pants) going nuts cutting up film and laughing like a hyena. The boss yells for him to come out and when he doesn't has the door cut open (bad acting doesn't even begin to describe his performance). There are posters of real movies on the wall - I point that out because it's the only time you're going to get a glimpse of a real movie - this is more like somebody's failing drama project.

They break the door down and the wild man puts a grenade in his mouth, blowing himself into a bloody mess AFTER which he's fired. Now we see a mild mannered bored looking Ed editing some black and white yawn fest. He is approached by his supervisor who tells him they are sending him to a different department to edit a series of slasher movies titled Loose Limbs (apparently like some franchises they plan on making them indefinitely). The producer tells Ed the sex and nudity has to go, but keep the violence and gore. This was supposed to be making fun of the Swedish censors but unless you know that... well, even if you DID know that this still wouldn't be funny.

The movies are apparently about a mad doctor who likes to chop things up (hmm, sounds familiar) and are supposed to be the most splatter filled series ever. Ed, a meek man is shocked by what he sees and ends up editing more than just the nudity - he wants the ick out too. This angers the producer who tells him to do them over again. By now Ed is starting to hallucinate - seeing violent images, a badly made rubber monster in his refrigerator... but if I had to review movies that bad I'd start going mad too... uh, wait...

Anyway he eventually loses what little marbles he had and in his mind he is now the fiendish doctor of the movies. This transformation (which really wasn't) seems to make him almost superhuman, as he's shot, hit, you name it yet he keeps on ticking. He kills his boss and several other employees, wounding one and spreading the blood and guts without seeming to feel pain.

He continues his carnage until his wife, visiting his workplace to find out why he hasn't come home, sees he's a total psycho and finds a gun lost by another character now beheaded (heads roll several times in this one) and shoots her husband. Still alive (He'd already been shot in the face and arm so what's a chest wound or two?) he's rushed to the hospital fighting like a champ until they sedate him.

Conveniently, after they patch him up he starts hallucinating again and goes on another rampage and my interest really kind of... died. The rest of the film is basically a chase scene between him and law enforcement and a couple of ancillary characters, all wounding him repeatedly as they run through this hospital. It was actually a relief when they finally killed him (the wounded employee uses a shotgun which is finally effective after half of Ed's head is blown off and the employee, for some reason, cocks the shotgun yet again AFTER Ed is dead) and this sad clunker of a movie was over.



                              

A KEY REASON NOT TO PISS PEOPLE OFF





Chop (2011)

Have you ever had someone mad at you or even hate you and you don't have the slightest idea why? Usually I know why someone doesn't like me. I'm a bit of a nitpicker, and on Facebook I've lost more than a few people 'cause I can't stand rumors, false statements or scams - and other people seem to love 'em. I usually just hit them with the appropriate Snopes link and man do they get pissed! I even had one person thank me (in total sarcasm) because I had the 'time' to do the research and she just didn't so she hit 'share' because it was faster. Um, what? 

In other words, she was telling me my time was worthless and so was I and she was just too busy and too important to take five seconds (that's not an exaggeration either) to check with Snopes or any of the other scam and rumor busting websites. But I've also had people 'dump' me on Facebook and not had the foggiest idea why. I remember in high school, my best friend just, out of the blue, one day decided not to talk to me or acknowledge my existence. To this day I have no idea what the hell I did.

What does this have to do with Chop? It's the extreme example of what might happen if you piss the wrong person off - even if you have no idea what the hell you did.


Lance (Will Keenan) is not a good man, even though it seems he has a great life. One day while driving, his car breaks down. Thankfully, a man in a pickup soon drives by and gives him a ride home. On the way, while Lance is bitterly complaining about his brother ripping him off by selling him a lemon of a car, the man asks him if he remembers who he is. Lance has no idea. This enrages the guy who now asks Lance if he had a choice, who would die - his brother or his wife. 

After being threatened, Lance chooses his brother. The man takes him to his brother who is bound and gagged and hands him an axe. Under threat of death himself, Lance sinks the axe into his brother's head. Lance is then told his car was fine, his brother hadn't ripped him off, the stranger had cut his gas line. The man again asks him if he remembers him. Lance, scared as hell and totally confused has to say no. The man is again enraged and shows Lance pictures - apparently his wife and his brother had been going at it behind his back.

However the man says he'll spare him only if he does one thing: He must treat his wife with the love and kindness he'd show if he didn't know of her cheating. The man tells him he will be watching and listening to everything he does. Three weeks pass - Lance, despite what he knows is doing his best not to just strangle his wife and get it over with. Finally she unknowingly causes him to break and he yells at her. Instantly he gets a phone call - sure enough the man heard him. 

Before he knows it the man is there and shoots Lance's wife. Lance wakes from being drugged - his wife's body is gone and so is his left index finger. By now two police officers are staking out his house, his brother's body has been found because he broke the 'deal' and they suspect him and now his wife is missing. But Lance being arrested would foil the mysterious man's plans and so they end up dead as well. Lance wakes up from being drugged (this happens a lot) and is now bound to a table in the mysterious man's garage. He now has no fingers, just thumbs (A bit of clumsy effects here - his fingers are clearly visible underneath the bandages.).


The man explains he knew everything because he had replaced Lance's glass eye (yeah yeah I know) with one he bought on eBay for $89.99 which came complete with camera and microphone. He asks if Lance remembers him yet. Lance, in desperation, thinks back to the time when, needing drug money badly (told you he wasn't a good man) he ran over a drug dealer to steal his money. Figuring this man must be him, he apologizes profusely which makes the man that much more furious - he's not the drug dealer. But since Lance gave him the dealer's name, he calls him up and makes him a deal - the drug dealer is allowed to cut Lance's leg off for $1500. However the dealer (who lost his leg because of Lance) and his companion are such freaks that the 'normal' psycho tells them no deal and kills them instead. But to be fair, he cuts Lance's leg off himself.


Lance, in his stupor and getting smaller by the minute decides that it must be about the man's dead daughter who he thinks was a prostitute he regularly 'visited' who on one occasion he underpaid and when she complained he accidentally broke her neck, killing her. No I am not making this up. No one should have. The man is again outraged - he was talking about his young daughter who died of cancer. But, contacting the female lover of the prostitute, he invites her over for her 'pound of flesh' which is probably heavier than that since it will be Lance's other leg. She arrives and goes at it with gusto - the gore gets thick here because she's not interested in a clean cut and mangles it pretty good before if finally comes off.

But Lance, dumbass to the very end still cannot remember the stranger to save his life - literally. The stranger, realizing that he is not going to receive the justice he was willing to go to such extreme lengths to get, resigns himself to that fact. He brings out a syringe full of a deadly concoction he bought on the internet (I have GOT to find out where this dude does his shopping.) and injects Lance with it, telling him he has one minute to live. He then sits in a chair facing him and blows his own brains out. As he does, his car keys fall out of his pocket. As Lance dies, he's looking at the keys...

Lance was in a hurry and not caring to look where he was going. The stranger was walking down the sidewalk, keys out as he prepared to get into his truck. Lance bumps into him, knocking his keys to the ground. Lance then calls him a nasty name and walks off. That's it. Period. And our tale is over.

And since I've already pissed so many off lately: 

• There are NO spiders under toilet seats 
• No 11 year old shot two armed intruders 
• No sick baby or child ANYWHERE will EVER get one cent from Facebook or anyone else for sharing their picture (in fact they say most of them have been dead for years) 
• People like Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman do NOT have speeches worth repeating a million times over (they're not dead either) 
• No store on Earth is giving away free gift cards 
• You can NOT change your Facebook color (unless you use the safe program called Social Fixer that you can get from the Google store) 
• There are NO PROGRAMS AVAILABLE ON FACEBOOK that will allow you to see who viewed your profile 
• And my favorite, not because it's clever but because it is so old it PREDATES THE EXISTENCE OF FACEBOOK, the infamous Budweiser Frog screensaver virus hoax (we're talking a rumor that began in 1997 y'all)

Wake up and smell the idiots children - just because something appears in print does not make it true.

And if you knock somebody's keys out of their hands, for crying out loud be a nice little mensch and pick 'em up...



                              

DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB... ON PURPOSE





Pleasures Of The Damned (2005)

Have you ever tried to tell your friend a joke only to have them look at you blankly and say 'I don't get it.' and when you explain it to them, which of course takes away the fun they return with a soul crushing 'That's not funny.'? Apparently, looking at Netflix's reviews, quite a few just 'didn't get it'. This movie is a joke people, maybe not a hilarious one, but a joke. Anyone trying to take it seriously and getting disgusted with the 'poor story, acting and effects' are not getting the joke and you should just shrug and walk away. 

With a tagline of 'Banned for 25 years... the most shocking film you've never seen.' and knowing it was shot with a whopping $2,000 budget, I thought this was actually pretty damn good, and a lot better than some 'serious' horror films I've seen lately.

The story, such as it is (and has nothing to do with the title): A group of bikers who worship Satan (with the cheapest Satanic props possible) are looking for a fabled book to gain eternal life. They follow a guy in a cardboard Satan leader suit (no kidding folks) who changes into different people or animals, depending on the situation - or who's on the set at the time. 

The rest of the 'gang' are dressed in bad wigs and cheap denim 'gang' outfits. The film is 'dubbed' although there is no attempt to line up the dialogue with the actors, and also no attempt to keep the sound effects true to the action. Just as it's supposed to be.

I guess I should have mentioned that this film was supposedly made in 1979 by a man named Antonello Giallo, who was charged by the Italian government with 17 charges of indecency (having seen a lot of Italian films, if I took this seriously I could call BS on this alone) and was exiled. All copies of the film were destroyed - except for one. It was 'restored' and presented in all its glory. 

Of course this is total crap. Especially when you watch and notice that all the cars have Maryland plates and one is driving a Scion... which wasn't even invented until 2003. So shut up and listen to the rest of the movie... which at 75 minutes was blissfully short - this version anyway.

Using fake dubbing, fake wigs, and recycling body parts to use in every gore scene, we also are told it is shot in Psychovision - meaning you will get a visual and auditory warning when ick is going to happen. The movie that this little gimmick copies (which was awful and not on purpose) was of course Chamber Of Horrors (1966).

The 'zombies' in the movie are guys in KKK outfits (except the hoods aren't pointy) dyed black with pentagrams painted on them (hard to 'munch' on body parts when your hood has no mouth hole) and are probably just the same actors recycled as I'm sure there were only a total of eight or ten people in this movie. Oh, supposedly the good guys win - with the usual twist which is more of a frame of uh-oh at the end.

So if you're a drinker (or just someone who enjoys a groan worthy movie) check this one out. My favorite review is also probably fake: 'There isn't enough water in my shower to wash the filth from my soul!' That. Is. Funny. I don't care who you are...



                              

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES... SO WHY DOES THIS MOVIE MAKE MORE SENSE THAN 'SERIOUS' HORROR?

Supernatural Activity - Return Of The Spoof (2012)

Before I start this review let me make a small confession: I have seen this movie... many, many times. I have a list of quotes and 'rules' from it that I frequently refer to. Why? Because this brain dead parody of every PA type movie you've ever seen has some dead-on commentary AND facts that puts it above every one of those stupid movies. Even if THIS movie is ALSO stupid. 

Let's face it, they're here, they're que.. stupid, get used to it. We're talking paranormal movies, found footage movies, hand-held cameras, snotty noses, and those massively retarded TV shows where the actors spend the whole time trying to scare each other. They're everywhere. I'm surprised there hasn't been more spoofs than there are. I'm aware that a new one, Haunted House, is soon to be released - a Wayans take on the PA movies. So I guess this one is a little unique. Actually, I saw the Haunted House spoof and it suuuuuucked. So yeah, this is unique.

We have a documentary of a documentary of found footage of a fake TV program. That's how THEY describe it, not me. Basically what they've done is mash all the current trends together in one big mess that is only mildly funny, a bit nauseating, and 92 minutes long. But as I said, there are bits in there that I've quoted many times in many reviews since.

The crew is pretty generic, and are led by a guy who is trying to be, I'm guessing, a version of Criss Angel. We then get a pretty uneven mix of all the PA's, the Last Exorcism, The Blair Witch Project, and every other fake boogeyman filming crew movie made to date. 

The jokes are funny in spots, the movie is confusing because of the mix (you can't follow it unless you've seen all the movies parodied) and the ending is - well, just as uninspired and disappointing as any of them. Which is the point.

In other words, watch if you wanna, if there's nothing on TV.



                              

A HORROR MOVIE WITH MICHAEL J. FOX? NO, YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT IT'S ABOUT, I'LL WATCH IT ANYTIME...












The Frighteners (1996)
Bless your heart Michael J. Fox. You've done so much and even after becoming ill you continue the fight and we love you.

This one is the only horror movie I know of that Michael appears in. He plays a former architect who, after a fatal car crash that takes the life of his wife, gains the ability to 'see ghosts'.
Depressed, broke, and unable to design anything anymore he decides on a new career: Assemble some willing ghosts together, have them 'haunt' people, then be hired to show up and get rid of them, using various fake gear that supposed detects their presence.



All goes.... well, miserably for Frank Bannister (Michael) until after conning yet another couple to 'exorcise' their poltergeists, he notices a number on the forehead of the husband. Not knowing what it could mean, he gets his 'ghosts', his money, and leaves.

The husband dies shortly after. As do other people on whose foreheads Frank again notices numbers - each one an increase from the last.

It is discovered that the ghost of a mass murderer Johnny Charles Bartlett (played with silliness by Jake Busey who you can't help but have fun watching) has come back because he has learned his murder 'record' has been broken and wants to be the one with the most bodies. His former girlfriend, Patricia, who was only 14 when she helped him and so was committed to a mental institution then house arrest (played demurely by Dee Wallace), seems at first to be tortured by his ghost and also to become one of his victims but things soon turn. 

Frank also then learns it was actually Johnny who 'murdered' his wife - the car wreck didn't kill her. This Michael finally starts to remember, having been unable to remember anything about the accident before. Sure enough, his wife also had a number on her forehead as she died. The numbers on the foreheads of the victims are put there by Johnny as he keeps track of his 'kills'.

An FBI agent who is a supposed expert on cults (and a totally insane freak, sporting tattoos, scars of satanic symbols and other whacko stuff on his body) follows Frank around, hoping to expose him. This was the first movie I'd seen both Jake Busey and Jeffrey Combs (the FBI agent Milton Dammer) and have watched for both of them since then.

With terrific performances by the above, plus a role by John Astin as a very geriatric ghost, this movie tries to scare (it may to others, not me) and does have some very tense moments. The humor, however, is just as good and makes this a good choice for viewing.