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.

SWING AND A MISS...






Deadly Blessings (1981)

This early Wes Craven film had the look and feel of a TV Movie-Of-The-Week. I guess it would be hard to make a horror film based on Hittites, a group of several distinctions and not a lot of modern information. The movie intimates that they are a sterner form of an Amish-type community. Not a lot of action there - unless you include the (according to this film) shunning of anything outside their community, the beatings, the one unquestioned patriarch, the lack of tolerance for any other faiths... yeah, that's about it. So I guess Wes had to come up with some groovy twists in order to keep this movie interesting. It didn't work.

Damn those Cylons... err I mean Hittites!

Martha and Jim live on a farm called Our Blessing (duh) and are happy, despite he being a former and therefore shunned Hittite. They have a couple of nice neighbors, Louisa and Faith (Lisa Hartman in her first and most puzzling role). Faith is... a little different and spends her time painting some pretty warped pictures. Jim tells Louisa they'll need her midwifing in the spring since Martha is pregnant. But not all is well in their pretty little community. 

As stated at least in this movie the Hittites are very intolerant of their neighbors and forbid any contact with them. But they do seemed to be consumed with the thought of all those outside their faith being 'incubi'. An incubus is a male demon who has sex with females, so calling all the women incubi is just wrong, wrong wrong. A resulting female from a union between an incubus and a woman is a succubus. So we have a lot of massive duhs right at the start.

There's 1/3 a brain each so...

So to get the story going, Jim is mysteriously killed by someone running his tractor - squished against a wall. No gore, and only a bit of blood. So Martha gets two of her friends to stay a bit, Lana (way overplayed by Sharon Stone) and Vicky. 

I won't tolerate those without SAG cards...

And the story just goes plbbbbt. Things that are supposed to be spooky aren't, Ernest Borgnine in his fake beard is about as scary as a cold. They dole out murders very very slowly and the plot doesn't get any clearer and the whole succubus (or incubus, whatever) angle is never explored. 

I think my panties are bunching up...

There are spiders aplenty, and a snake in my favorite scene when Martha takes a bath. Ever seen a snake go willingly into hot water and soap? Nope? Didn't think so. Ever see a woman take a bath in black panties? Nope? Geez, if they were going for the lack of frontal nudity (lower anyway) you'd think they'd at least one, try to make more bubbles or two, give her some flesh colored panties for crying out loud. I mean really. THREE TIMES they show the black underwear. It was the only laugh I got in this boring thing.

Prettiest boy I've ever seen...

Lisa Hartman as Faith really overdoes it as a massive weirdo who gets even more weird at the end of the movie. Meanwhile Sharon Stone's character keeps getting 'visited' in her dreams by what she perceives to be a demon and, yes, more spiders. Jeez. 

Eventually her friend Vicky gets flamed out while making out with Jim's brother who's rebelling against his dad because he doesn't want to marry his cousin and have more inbred Hittites I guess (somebody dumped gas on the car and lit it and she was too stupid to just open the door and get out).

Just. Get. Out. DUH!!!

Finally (and I do mean FINALLY) it is revealed that all this weirdness has been done, not by the Hittites but Louisa and Faith who are both seriously off their nut. Faith even digs up Jim and props him up in the barn, also painting a picture of Martha in her wedding dress, as she is in love with her. No no, no lesbian action in this one (sort of), during a struggle conveniently Faith's shirt opens, revealing she is actually a boy and has been in love with Martha. Umm, eww. For her very first role she sure got a gem of one. 

Why am I here? I don't have to tell you...

Martha has taught herself to shoot which is good timing because both mom and daughter/son come after her and there is a shootout of sorts. Just as Faith gets the upper hand and is ready to kill her/his beloved, a psycho Hittite (yeah, they had those) shows up with a knife, seemingly in a daze, and stabs Faith. Isaiah (Ernest Borgnine) shows up saying the incubus is dead. Why the hell didn't he tell her... never mind. The story is over, Lana goes home, forgetting all that incubus dream nonsense (how convenient) and we are done.

But no - this is Wes Craven, even if watered down horribly. She stands alone in her house when it all goes dark, her dead husband appears warning her of the incubus, and the floor splits open and a true incubus, huge and nasty but you only see it for a couple of seconds comes up and grabs her and drags her down into ???. Okay, NOW you can go.