NAZIS IS THE CWAZIEST PEOPLES FINAL CHAPTER

The Devil's Rock (2011) New Zealand

I didn't intend to do two WWII movies together, but as the fates and Netflix would have it, here we are. Once again, we are back in time but this time instead of zombies we get demons. Oh goody. I insert massive sarcasm here because after seeing the last effort, watching this slow, incredibly boring version of a Nazi horror movie was even more excruciating than it would have been if I'd just picked it up one day.

And this IS boring. Massively boring. Soooo boring it has about a hundred different movie posters for it - mostly with sex for a selling point although there is none. For one thing, we have very few people in this movie. It's a WAR for crying out loud - where the hell IS everybody? This is their intro: June 5, 1944. The eve of D-Day. Allied commandos carry out sabotage raids on the German occupied Channel Islands (off the French coast of Normandy), to draw Hitler's attention away from Normandy. Setting: Forau Island, 5 miles northeast of Guernsey.

DAMN that Campbell's tomato soup!

So we have TWO guys paddling to the shore of the island, and realizing they're in the wrong place. Duh. After almost getting blasted by a hidden mine they somehow make it inland. They then hear screams and gunfire. So someone besides Germans is on the island. <sigh> Okay, I'll bite - who's there? Well reader, you're not going to find out for a while, so relax. We have to go through personal issues between the two, listen to their histories and THEN they find a bunker where out pops a young German uttering the typical 'Gott im Himmel' before bazooka barfing all over. Doesn't keep them from killing him though.

They're just supposed to set some dynamite, set it off and leave for the Germans to gather to the site, taking them away from Normandy beach I guess. But one of them just can't leave - some of the screams are definitely female. Why that should matter in war time I have no idea but he can't let it go. So against orders both venture inside.

He won the coin toss to get out of this movie early...

There's not much to see - the typical cheap tunnel sets with signs in German that they didn't bother to translate (they said things like 'gas hazard' and other cautions) and, besides the occasional scream, all they hear is a radio with German codes transmitting. The curious one quickly gets his buddy killed so now all we have in this whole damn movie is one NZ soldier, one Nazi and who or whatever is making all the noise down in a room somewhere. The Nazi spoke perfect, non-accented English (DUH) and the NZ soldier spoke in 'an Australian accent with that gutteral nuance'. Their words, not mine.

Wait - she looks like his wife and he DOESN'T want to shoot her?

So now we get to the <YAWN> point of this terrible movie - yet another take of the Nazi agenda to use the occult to control the world. This is repeated so often they could do a cartoon about it - Scooby Doo And Those Darn Nazi Occultists or something. 

Yup, they've found a special grimoire (from Barns & Noble no doubt) and have summoned a femme varou - that's 'red female looking demon with no clothes on' to you. And she's worked her way, despite being held by a 'special' chain to a wall, through the guts of pretty much all the Nazis in the compound. 

Don't get too excited about the gore though - when the Nazi goes to 'feed' her from the guts of one of his former colleagues, it definitely was sausages and some other animal meats. The blood is almost rust colored and I kept thinking he looked like he'd spilled a can of tomato soup on himself. Yuck. And boring. 'Cause for most of the rest of the movie the two argue about the demon, because to the NZ dude she looks like his late wife (shapechanger, pfft) and she's nice to him so... what? 

Oh, right - they've got to 'send her back' because the Nazi has had a change of heart (and probably more than a few pairs of underwear) and knows she needs to be, uh, unsummoned. That's not a word, I know.

So the two set up the ritual but OH NO THE NAZI WAS PLANNING TO SACRIFICE THE OTHER GUY THIS WHOLE TIME WHAT A SHOCK I NEVER SAW THAT COMING WATCH OUT GOOD GUY WHOSE NAME I CAN'T REMEMBER BECAUSE YOU SUCK AT ACTING AND THIS MOVIE IS WORTHLESS... whew. Sorry about that.

Okay, let's just end this farce. The NZ guy wipes out the Nazi, feeding him to the demon who obligingly eats his head (the one with the brain in it you perverts) and, knowing that a whole slew of Nazis are on their way to the island for... whatever - oh yeah, D Day, sorry -  he tells the demon he's giving her freedom to, uh, eat as many heads as she can hold and then afterwards he's coming back with the fancy book to really banish her. He sets the key close to her shackle and leaves. We then see scores of the nasties coming by ship, plane, hovercar... wait, no, it was just ship and plane, and we know that she's gonna be gaining some serious weight before he comes back. But I won't be watching for a sequel.

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NAZIS IS THE CWAZIEST PEOPLES



Stone's War aka War Of The Dead (2011) US/Lithuania/Italy

I've stopped calling movies that use 'Of The Dead' Romero ripoffs 'cause he doesn't seem too terribly to mind and there are so many now they're not even associated with Romero's zombie movies anymore. This one is set in World War II which I confess I have little knowledge of, having had decent teachers and a good school but no head for history (I only memorized stuff long enough to pass tests) and thus had to look a lot of stuff up to understand what this was about (and whether stuff was legit or not), as well as try to enjoy what was surprisingly a decent zombie movie with minor complaints.

The movie starts by stating this: In 1939, along the Russian border with Finland, Nazi Germany begins secret underground "Anti-Death" experiments on captured Russian soldiers. Two years later they abandon the experiments. All records are destroyed overnight by direct order of Adolf Hitler. The test subjects are piled into mass graves, and buried. Finland, 1941: A small, elite unit of American soldiers is dispatched to assist a Finnish task force in their fight against the Russians. Their mission: to destroy the Russian bunker. This much is true.

Okay, back to me. Now the hubby is a lot more savvy at this kind of thing than me, and immediately said 'Finland? They were part of the WWII Axis.' I just looked blankly back at him (I'm good at that) but did a little research to get the ole' gray cells working. There were three countries that signed a Tripartite Pact - Germany, Japan and Italy. Later Finland became what was called 'co-belligerent' meaning, I guess, that although they didn't sign anything, they sided with the Germans. For a while.

This is a problem for the movie 'cause the whole point is that a platoon of American and Finnish soldiers are on a mission to blow up a German bunker. Since Finland sympathized with the Germans this is... not quite right - but let's get to the good part. Despite what might have been little inaccuracies (discounting the Finland one) in uniforms, weapons, etc. this was actually a solid zombie movie and was fast paced from beginning to end. Captain Stone and his American troops together (for the movie) with Finnish soldiers need to find and destroy a bunker in a German forest. 

Well they seriously underestimated things and most of the soldiers are wiped out in the first few minutes, leaving only a few who actually make it to the bunker. They find a young German soldier who surrenders, offering to help. Why? His girlfriend lives in a small village near the bunker and he wants to get her out of there. He kind of has an idea what's going on. Very quickly we have one American, one Finn, and one German with his girlfriend. And we find out what's been happening.

Even though the three made it to the bunker over the bodies of scores of soldiers, all of a sudden they are attacked by those same soldiers. Who don't go down when shot - unless it's in the head. Maybe. The bunker was a center of experiments and the soldiers 'juiced' with something that made them even more dangerous dead than alive. It plays on the constant theme that Adolf Hitler, heavily into the Occult, managed to overrule death and make super soldiers out of dead ones. That's stupid but hey, this is a zombie movie so, yeah.

Set in Russia, this movie was actually filmed in Lithuania and was the most expensive film ever made there. So expensive that they ran out of funds (it was shot in 2007 but only released in 2011 when they had the money). Uh, yeah, I guess it would be. The gore is decent but the zombies were badly done and looked very lazy. 

As for who shot what kind of weapon, the 'good guys' mostly had, from what I could see, something close to (not actually) a Russian PPSH41 sub-machine gun (without a pistol grip) with a ventilated shroud. What's puzzling is why it took eight years and many cast and crew changes to finish this movie. This wasn't the bloody Lord Of The Rings trilogy after all - it is what it is - a decent if not great zombie flick in a sea of stupid zombie flicks and worth a look if you're bored.

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HULU SNOOZE PART NEUF



Unholy (2007)

I took a break and looked over a couple of films on good ole' Netflix 'cause I miss being able to do other things while the movie is running without my system crashing, the close captioning, and the not-good-but-definitely-a-large-step-above movies offered. I'll be reviewing those a bit later, plus I decided to try Fandor since I heard it has a great assortment of cult horror as well as classic horror - we'll see. I DID watch Alice Sweet Alice (which has several other titles of course), Brooke Shield's first movie (and very brief role), as well as a musical called Jesus Christ Vampire Killer. No, that's not a typo. He's hip, he rides a Vespa, he knows kung fu, and I laughed myself sick.



But back to snoozing - I wouldn't have bothered with this one at all but Adrienne Barbeau is kind of a draw and I wondered how Nicholas Brendon (Xander to you Buffy fans) would do in a major movie role. Uh, well, neither had much to work with in this quasi-horror movie about the Nazi's experiments with the occult. No, unfortunately it's not a period piece, this happens in the present. And based (supposedly) on actual events. So it's pretty much doomed. I mean, they made a whole website trying to push this stuff on the public as a spooky and terrible thing but... bitch, please.

It starts with Martha (Adrienne Barbeau) as the mother of children in their 20's (Umm, okay), a boy and girl. The daughter begins the drama when, believing she is under the spell of a Necromancer (they kept dancing between the phrase 'witch' and 'necromancer') shoots herself. That brings her stoner brother home to take care of his fragile mother. And they start the 'conspiracy' part of the movie, making you wonder (I didn't - the movie just doesn't really cause you to care) who's part of the conspiracy and who's not. Easy to find out according to the movie. If anybody who is involved says a word, they blow their heads off. Simple. Was this a thing?



There are several documentaries that push that yes, Hitler was deeply involved in the occult and believed it to  be behind his rise in power and would keep him there forever. Whoops. This is what is said (not necessarily what actually WAS): Germany, pushing the who Nazi thing, used a swastika believed to be formed from a magical symbol. They of course were THE people on earth - everyone else was scum. So to further their cause, they decided to use the occult to make sure their will was done. Eh, okay some might be dipped in a bit of fact (Hitler WAS off his nut after all) but take it with a grain of salt and put it there somewhere a bit more believable than Bigfoot and less believable than Area 54.

The occult tradition was carried on in the Third Reich mainly by Hitler’s personal army, the SS. An occult research department was established in 1935 with SS Colonel Wolfram von Sievers at its head. With these powers in hand, Germany’s dominance would be indisputable. However, time ran out for the Nazi Party, and defeat at the hands of the allies was to have ended the research.

Or did it? That's what this movie is pushing - kind of a sleeper spy movie saying that the Nazis, before they totally disbanded managed to implant many of their comrades in the US to continue the experiments and eventually, I dunno, take over? They're really not clear on what the ultimate goal was.

So the mother and son try to find answers - but when Martha keeps finding herself waking up in the basement in a hidden room, strapped to a chair with a record running some mumbo jumbo I tossed my notes aside and just said with my arms crossed, waiting for the inevitable ending. I mean, she wakes up each time in this chair strapped down but can GET HERSELF FREE. Does that say something?



The movie waffles a lot over who the bad guys really are, I guess to keep the audience in suspense and make us believe this is a huge thing. Uh huh. So are Martha and her son in danger or ARE they the danger? Ya know, after a while, you really just hope they do the big expose' thing and end the movie. Well I'm gonna 'cause I can. Martha, meek put-upon mother of two is really a BIG Nazi spy whose brainwashed herself into believing that she's just a mother. Uh huh. And she IS the one who's been strapping herself into the chair. Uh huh. And others in the town are full supporters. Uh huh. Oh, and the ultimate goal is threefold: invisibility, time travel and mind control. Okay stop. Now I'm just freaking bored and this is freaking stupid.

Especially since it ends with Martha totally wiping her mommy persona, her son getting the 'invisibility' down and dying because of it (we assume) and her daughter comes from the past (time travel) to confront her brainwashed mom. She shoots Martha and we have the pleasure of the whole film running backwards and watching the beginning of the movie again. Oh please no. But then they cut away to Martha, quite dead and I am quite relieved 'cause this nightmare is over.