HIGHER EDUCATION WILL KILL YOU





Thankskilling (2009)

Technically this IS about college students on break and they DO die, so this, uh, film kind of qualifies. I've been told about Troma type films - this, while not made by the company itself certainly was made in the spirit anyway. The acting is awful, so are the special effects but I think they're supposed to be. What else can you do with a script that has the turkey saying 'I'll drink your blood like cranberry sauce.'? Or a film that tries to copy the 'Alien' scene by having the turkey burst out of one of the student's stomach? The total budget was $3,500.00 which, if you watch this 66 minute abortion about a demonized turkey, you will totally understand. A small investment gave it the push into distribution.

The best thing to do with this movie is get together all the people you hate the most, lock the door, make them drink cranberry sauce and eat stuffing, then make them watch this movie. Several times. Who knows - you just may have a few dying just trying to get out of there. It sure won't be from laughing. And hey, a sequel has been planned so if you wait a bit you just might have a double torture feature for them.

Fin.



                              

HIGHER EDUCATION WILL KILL YOU

Red Hook (2009)

This, my darling children, is a warning. You may be interested in this movie since it has no rating, it is newer and is supposed to be a horror movie about college students participating in a scavenger hunt with tragic consequences. YAAAAAWWWWWN. When ordinary people with no reason to do so write a review of their own saying just how much a movie sucks, that's usually a challenge to me. I got halfway through.

Jenny is a freshman in a New York college who basically gets the 'Carrie' treatment. Does she deserve it? This chick has 'VICTIM' tattooed on her forehead in incredibly large letters. As a young girl she witnessed the murder of her older sister. Why this matters, dunno. The actress they use for the grown Carrie - uh I mean Jenny is a mousy, underfed woman who looks like a stiff breeze could blow her down the street. 

She has no personality to speak of, no outstanding characteristics at all. The only guy who'll talk to her is a boy who also lost a sibling (DUH). They are roped into a freshman scavenger hunt with the promise of White Stripes tickets.

Watch this - it's far more 

interesting than this piss of a movie...

Now here's the thing - this is a far as we've gotten into the movie and there's NO HUNT YET. It is over 30 minutes into the movie. That's how much DUH we've had to wade through hoping the movie will start. Finally it does. Slowly. Jenny's new friend doesn't show and doesn't call (GASP!) and she has to start the hunt alone. The others split off into the boroughs of NY to find their objects, we're now 45 minutes into the movie and... sigh, I just can't take anymore. 

Jenny still can't find her partner, the cop who killed her sister's killer is now following her for some unknown reason and the... ya know what? Screw this. If you want to be incredibly bored and endure another hour of this just to see why this was sooooo scary go right ahead. Nobody died (they intimated that maybe one did but you see nothing) and... some movies were just not meant to be seen I guess.

Oh, the IMDB says she has to save her 'boyfriend' from whoever has taken over the scavenger hunt. Uh, one he's not her boyfriend, they've seen each other what, three times? Two.... I just don't care.



                              

HIGHER EDUCATION WILL KILL YOU









April Fools Day (1986)

Who says a mystery horror movie can't be fun? Actually I find a lot of them fun because they're so stupid. This movie gives us a huge wink to let us know that yes, it's going to be stupid so enjoy the ride. Before you had 'spoofs' about horror movies, there was this. Starring a lot of characters you'll recognize if you watched any 80's movies at all (and some into the 90's) this bevy of familiar faces is in this story of college students visiting an heiress who inherited an island and a huge house for a big party. Of course you know (and they seem to keep using the same scene just about every movie) that if there's an island involved it was probably filmed in British Columbia. 

So we have a whole group of 80's talking, clothes wearing, hair blown dry mid twenty somethings playing college students per usual. They're spending spring break at the house of Muffy (sorry, that's her name) St. John. One boy (played by Griffin O'Neal, beleaguered son of Ryan O'Neal) starts the party off with a gag that has him faking being stabbed and falling overboard. He's fine but as a result, Buck, a deckhand, suffers a gruesome accident trying to get the boat tied to the pier.


Muffy has set the group up with the typical April Fool's jokes - whoopee cushions, dribble glasses, collapsing chairs, all the stuff of good fun. They then retire for the night. And that, she said in an ominous tone, is when things go wrong. One goes missing, others, after finding weird stuff in their room as if being taunted about their pasts also start to go missing one by one. Eventually their bodies are found and the rest are desperate to find their way off the island. 


But things just get worse, the body count rises and... I hate to give away the ending. This is one of those movies that is better seen than read. I'm not saying this is a good movie, it's just - original. For the 80's anyway. Check it out if for nothing else to see who you can recognize and see how silly those of us old enough for the 80's were about clothes and hair. The ending is different and a good end to a silly entry into the world of college horror.




                              

HIGHER EDUCATION WILL KILL YOU

Plasterhead (2007)

Here's a tip: When you go to (mumble mumble) College and you're taking a break in Florida, stay on the highway. I don't care how bad the traffic gets, STAY ON THE FREAKING HIGHWAY. Of course if college kids did that, about 2/3 of today's horror movies would... well, they'd have to be written better, wouldn't they?

This story takes place in West Virginia in (mumble mumble) and I'm going to give you the backstory now instead of making you wait half the movie like this pile does - the longest movie I've ever seen I swear. In this (mumble mumble) town where they won't even deliver gas (but food seems to be okay), a large black trucker weary from a long drive stops in for a drink. 

Since he's a brother of another color, of course all the locals see is some Friday night fun - they beat the crud out of him (doubtful, since he's supposed to be huge and these guys are the size of mosquitos) so badly he's unrecognizable. They then dump his body in a deserted (albeit perfectly clean - not a dust mite nor a cobweb) house and the local sheriff covers for them. The man becomes Plasterhead - covering his face with bandages since, well, his face really isn't there anymore.

And we have four college students that are not only unlikeable, they're anonymous - nowhere in the movie do we get a clue to their character, except for one of the girls is a bitch. Naturally. The other is smart - there's always one.

So in the SLOWEST FREAKING SLASHER FILM I HAVE EVER SEEN with the absolute worst soundtrack (you'll think a billion mosquitoes somehow got into your house) these four get trapped in this (mumble mumble) town without gas and decide to explore this house for, uh, about 93 minutes minus the credits. It's not worth mapping out so lets sum up:

Bitch girl gets it first, preppie boy is caught and chained up, the local sheriff takes care of the other guy by shooting him and that leaves the smart girl. Not only does she leave behind the shot guy who is NOT dead, she screams away in the cop car, hitting the preppie dude who was chained but got free. She looks at him for a couple of seconds, then drives on. Oh, smart AND a bitch. And thankfully the end of this horrid tale.




                              

HIGHER EDUCATION WILL KILL YOU









Blood Ties (2009)

Knowing that this indie film is one of those typical Scooby gang type things where college kids think they're smarter than everyone else and can solve difficult cases that police departments haven't been able to in decades I was expecting stupidity, boredom, bad acting and bad mistakes. And there were plenty. That was actually a shame though, because hidden under all the stupidity was a halfway decent mystery (I wouldn't call this horror) that if they hadn't mucked it up so badly would have actually been worth paying attention to.

Worst. Scooby gang. Ever.

Not to be confused with the Singaporean movie of the same name made the same year (as well as several others newer than this), this movie that could have been halfway decent is about a group of college students in a criminal science class wanting to do a project on the unsolved murders 20 years ago at their own college. The editor of the college newspaper exposed a major bribe scheme that caused their football team to throw the championship and was murdered because of it. 

Continuity error: his girlfriend offers him champagne from an open bottle and holding two glasses. In the next scene she OPENS the bottle - again. Whoops. But there is an interesting piece of gore as she is killed and her eyes plucked out and stuck into her mouth as she is squished on the copy machine, her mutilated face making tons of copies.

Hey, it's Elvis!

Fast forward to this project: After the students involved turn it in the ones initially responsible for the first series of murders (including the criminal professor) get together and decide to 'call' the one they need to take care of it. Trouble is, this one kills them as well as the students. A theory is brought forth (actually a lot of talking happens and little action, I'm speeding this up) that this is a 'sleeper' killer, who doesn't know what he/she is doing and kills with a trigger word. Yeah, we went from an almost interesting story to bleh.

My costume is totally original...

So slowly, so very very slowly, people die one by one. Second big boo boo: the professor who was a former cop is trying to protect himself and uses a revolver - which is clearly empty. The killer wears a cloak and a white mask (Ripoff of Scream anyone?) and though they try to make the murders interesting, by now the story is so bogged down by the twists and turns that don't make sense and the one tone acting, you're just begging for an ending.

We finally get one and good, it's over - oh wait, the twist. The killer, although pummeled with a large flashlight multiple times doesn't die and calls the remaining Scooby member... dum dum dum. And I do mean dumb.




                              

HIGHER EDUCATION WILL KILL YOU







The Hazing aka Dead Scared (2004)

I promised to do a series on the hazards of college and how parents should just save their money 'cause it doesn't matter what college your kids go to or how smart they are, all college students get into the same types of situations in which they eventually die. Within an hour and a half anyway.





This entry was a little promising - anything with Brad Dourif I'm game to watch and hey, kids I can't stand are gonna die so win-win right? Ugh. This movie was, simply put, Evil Dead With Dead Head College Kids. In fact the IMDB (which I did NOT read until after the movie) says it's Evil Dead with Scream. I wouldn't give it that good of a combination. It ripped off Evil Dead so incredibly badly that Sam Raimi should be suing by now. They even had the audacity of... well let's tell the story quickly.



Girls and guys are pledging to a sorority (Hmm, really?) that's to begin with an asinine scavenger hunt, and end with spending the night in a spooky house. Get out the Scooby snacks. First these people, who we really don't care about and have probably never seen in anything else before (I mean c'mon - one of the actress' name was Nectar Rose for cryin' out loud) search for the stupidest objects, one being a picture of Bruce Campbell (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more). When all the objects are collected, including a stolen ancient book of spells called the Necronomicon... err I mean sorry, this book really didn't have a 'title' but it has spells plus a cane for, I dunno, making the spells work I guess from a professor they think they accidentally killed (nice kids these are), everybody goes to the haunted house. Duh is certainly on a massive scale here.


We then get into dead and undead, mutilations and murder, and the camera work definitely doesn't even try to hide that it's copying Raimi's style of fast travel along hallways and down stairs as in the Evil Dead movies. What it doesn't copy, because it can't, is the sense of doom, urgency and fear that Evil Dead was able to bring to the viewer. What I felt was lethargy, boredom and a sense of c'mon, die already will you PLEASE!

But oh no, we get 86 minutes of 'whose body's got the spirit' and the surviving teens fighting against each other and themselves as the movie gets slower and slower and slower...


FINALLY the professor (underplayed by Brad Dourif) dies for real in the hospital which actually makes things worse, until the remaining college kids manage to throw his spirit (don't ask this will be twice as long) into the abyss he opened and close it. It then spits out the girl he was inhabiting. All's well, right? 

The three left alive try to open the front door - nope. It seems while they got rid of the nasty professor, they also let out all the other nasties that have been waiting their turn at the gate so to speak, and a whole new battle will now begin. Thankfully, we don't have to watch it because that's where the movie ends. Phew.

Sam, don't let them do that to your stuff again, okay?




                              

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.