Piranhaconda- Jim Wynorski

     I love creature films. I always have and I always will. I am a bit to young to have enjoyed the heyday when they were always at the drive in but even as a kid in the eighties I would get some thanks to horror hosts and VHS. I loved all the atomic era films even if I didn't live through them. In the last few years we have gotten a slew of them thanks to companies like The Maneater Series, The Asylum and Roger Corman getting back in the game. These are shclock. You don't watch them expecting to be changed, you watch them because you want to have fun. I know 2 Headed Shark Attack didn't change the face of cinema. You know what it did do? Gave me a huge nerd boner and made my day better. Is that so wrong?
     Piranhaconda, like Sharktopus starts out with an amazing theme song. This time it is a rockabilly song with the voice of an angel basically telling us what we are in store for, as if we didn't know. We meet up with Michael Madsen who is looking for eggs with his team. They quickly get the shit eaten out of them, hell the Piranhaconda even takes down a helicopter.  My question is why did the pilot think he could get away from a monster in a helicopter? Hasn't he seen Lake Placid or Mega Shark? They love to eat flying food.  I just want to point out that this is at four minutes  and fifteen seconds. Yeah! You get to meet the monster before the five minute mark and it devastates people. Thank you Mr. Wynorski for giving the people what they want. We then meet up with the rest of the bunch they are making a movie called Head Chopper which from what I can tell might be a sequel To Carnage: The Legend of Quiltface. A movie that I would love to see within a movie I am loving to see. Today is awesome. Well quickly some of the crew becomes fish snake.  food. Now that we have gotten some action it is time to bring some more story in. To accomplish this Michael Madsen gets kidnapped and the movie crew joins him soon after. Now Piranhaconda can really fuck some shit up.
     This movie delivers exactly what you want in a movie called Piranhaconda. The pissed off snake eats the shit out of so many people leaving nothing but limbs flooding the beach. The characters are all pretty entertaining  and the dialogue is pretty quick witted. You have all the classics. The airhead actress with a rocking bod, the smart unattainable final girl and the stud who happens to be the stuntman that plays Head Chopper and let me tell you he would make Steve Railsback jealous with his skills. The bad guys are pretty cliche but that is OK. They are just food for the snake.
     In the end like most of these you now whether you are interested in seeing it. I for one am usually happy with these and add a name like Wynorski and it pretty much means excellence. This guy continues to roll out fun and entertaining films for us to enjoy in spite of the whiny critics who can't figure out he knows what he is doing. It is not that he is incapable of making a "great film" it is that he doesn't give a shit and he just wants us to have fun on a Saturday night.


3/5


Tromeric

Easter A Go-Go: A Story of Rabbits, Torture, and Booze

     So Jesus may be my least favorite cryptozoological creature, I mean he ain't got shit on Bigfoot or  Chupacabra, but any excuse I can use for a marathon at the house of grog I will take advantage of like a Grandmother with alzheimers.  I wanted to do an all day/night marathon but by the time I got done serving people their bullshit Easter lunches and got home and got in the zone(sat on my porch with shots and smokes) it was already eight o'clock.  Peter Poison and I started off by giving ourselves res-erections with one of my favorite sequels that doesn't take place in college.

Critters 2: The Main Course- Mick Garris

     We meet Brad who has come back from the big city. Coincidentally the bounty hunters along with the town drunk Charlie are also stopping back in town to kill some mother fucking krites. We meet the townspeople who consist of Lipshitz from Whoopee Boys, Brad's grandma who teaches kids the right way to BM, the sexy small town reporter who in the words of Brad is "Jimmy Olson with breasts." Well I have a boner. These are just a few of the townsfolk. The town punk trades some eggs he found off the set of Poultrygeist for beer and Playboys because he knows what you need to survive. These eggs start hatching like an alligator in a sewer and the krites start unleashing their awesome. There of course are some casualties, not just the humans either. The krites have some pretty epic death moments. A dad steps on one of the eggs right before it hatches and it looks like the worst case of whiskey swamp butt ever, he isn't concerned though. He just thinks it's a Cadbury egg. That is just in the beginning. I will get to the rest. We gotta get back to the bounty hunters. They get suited up, and by that I mean turn into a Playboy model and yell "Kill Krites" a lot. The Krites are now causing so much tomfoolery you know shit is going down. They take over Shitlip's restaurant and turn it into their very own Good Burger. They love cheeseburgers more than those cat memes. Lots of them meet their demise here. One becomes licking good fried while one get's his hair shot off. While some take over the burger joint a bunch of others take on the rest of the town fucking shit up like they are the racoons from the Great Outdoors. This all just keeps escalating until we get one of monster cinemas best creatures. Critterzilla!
     Critters two is one of my favorite sequels, in fact it is just one of my favorite eighties horror films. It is not perfect but the effects created by my favorite Killer Klowns are a blast, the story is fun and as far as Easter themed horror it is at the top of the list. That should be a special category in the AFI.

    Now that Critters was over it was time to change the tone of things. We switched the disc over to the film that holds the award for most Jesus beating. The Passion of the Christ. Intoxication was fully set in by this point and the munchies(snacks not the Gremlins rip off) had set in. I attempted to make some popcorn but my drunk ass didn't bother taking the plastic off and just melted shit all over my microwave. I got my shit together and got some corn popped, grabbed some pop rocks and made another drink and sat down to watch this shit.

The Passion of the Christ- Mel Gibson

     We meet Jesus in a set more fog machine engulfed then a youth group stage production. He is taken to the guys from the California Raisin's Christmas special where they tell him he is crazy and a blaspheme. He is then set upon his journey to carry a cross, get beaten more than a girl in a Max Hardcore film, be whipped so much that I kept waiting for the Romans to tell him his name was Toby, run into some creepy ass kids that chase Judas like it's Hostel, see what Zelda Rubinstein looks like as a baby and run into the devil who happens to be the singer of Midnight Oil.
     The Passion is two hours of Jesus walking up a hill. It is like Lord of the Rings but more exciting. Along the way we also meet his mother who is a foot fetishist, Mary Magdalene who took a break from getting raped for nine minutes to be Jesus' whore and some of his disciples that sell him out quicker than a Mondo poster. Jesus just keeps getting beaten. Over and over. There is also lots of falling. He get's beaten then he falls. This film has more falling than a Julie Cruise song. This goes on and on with a couple quick breaks to teach us that Jesus built the table and his mom is a fucking idiot. This is all building to the climax which......Spoiler Alert. Jesus gets crucified, I am fine with Jesus getting crucified but did I really need to see his moose knuckle? After he is crucified they stab him just in case the hours of Jesus beating wasn't enough. That is a great moment as it reigns blood all over the crowd. This is where the film could of gotten even cooler but I will save that for another time.
     All jokes aside the passion is an excellent film. It is beautiful, powerful and well shot. The effects are some of the best I have ever seen. While I gave up Dungeons and Dragons years ago I still can appreciate this as a great movie as powerful as it is exploitative.

     At this point I am beyond drunk. I have left reality. Steph Infection shows up with Pizza and a "special" peanut butter that is exactly what I needed to add to the intoxication. Now that the Jesus beating was over, I had something in my stomach aside from alcohol and added peanut butter that would send me to a new land it was time for gigantic killer bunnies.

Night of the Lepus- William F. Claxton

     In this alternate reality where Janet Leigh survived the shower she has to take on a bunch of giant rabbits that have a taste for crayola crayons.
    I love giant animal movies. It's no secret. This is one of my faves. They use cutting edge technology known as the mother fucking zoom button to create these beasts. These giant rabbits wreak havoc on everything from horses to Warwick Davis' house . They chase trucks down(where was the "objects may be closer than they appear" joke?) and get shot with paintball guns as if it was Friday the 13th part 6.

    This was  a perfect way to end the night. I wanted to keep going but to be honest by this point I wasn't even sure what planet I was on. Next year I will have to start earlier so I can add Easter Bunny Kill! Kill!, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, Subconscious Cruelty, and Begotten to the Easter fest.


- Tromeric

2 Headed Shark Attack- Christopher Ray

Let me start this off by setting the scene for movie night in my house.  We gather the kids, get comfy on the couch and pop in 2 Headed Shark Attack.  It’s family movie night with all the blood and tits that entails.  We have a long tradition of watching all the Asylum movies we can and this one is up at the top of the heap.  You know when your 8 year old son is laughing his ass off because some dude just got ripped in half that the movie is doing something right.

One thing to keep in mind about this movie is that it sucks, but in the greatest way possible.  Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for the genius that goes into making an unabashedly bad movie that works on almost every level.  It just goes to show that if you acknowledge what you’re working with and use it to it’s fullest you can make a fun movie, and that‘s all I can ask for.  There’s no pretense or delusion about what’s been put on the screen and I love the film makers for it.

The movie kicks off with a great kill right off the bat and lets you know what to expect and it never fails to deliver.  The shark effects are actually pretty decent for these low budget creature features, right up there with Sharktopus. Now that doesn’t mean the effects are anything close to good, but do you really want them to be? Personally I prefer the dirt path that somehow changes into smooth plastic when it cracks and the explosions that look like they were rendered on a PS2 and added into the movie with a 10 year old version of photo shop.  It just adds to the fun.

Pretty soon we’re introduced to our cast of usual players.  You have the d-bag bro and his loyal followers, the nerd, the crazy bitch that won’t shut the fuck up, plenty of big titty sluts, sassy black girls, and let’s not forget the tough girl with a chip on her shoulder.  All of them play their parts perfectly and you just can’t wait for them to die in the worst way possible. 

Special mention should be made for Carmen Electra, she really turns in a stirring performance as the most believable doctor I‘ve ever seen.  I also want to take a moment here and thank Asylum for offering an outlet for washed up celebrities to desperately cling to any fleeting bit of fame they can without having to get double teamed by Bret Michaels and Flava Flav on VH1. 

The real star of the show though is Jerry O’Connell’s brother Charlie.  I really believed his pain when he broke his leg and just made the same groaning sound over and over for the entire movie.  Frank Stallone had better watch out.

Soon the students, oh yeah they are on a semester at sea boat, have to abandon the boat and head to a nearby atoll.  Which the titular shark manages to run into hard enough to get it to start sinking.  Let me just say that the science in this movie is tight as shit, but again not really why you’re watching this movie.

Now the real reason you’re even thinking about watching this is for the kills and oh baby are there kills.  I won’t go into too much detail because it’s more fun to just experience them, but have no fear they rule.  Nice and bloody and completely ridiculous.

In closing, watch this movie.  If you have enjoyed any of the recent low budget monster movies this is right up there with Mega Piranha and Sharktopus as one of my favorites. Plus it has what may just be the most romantic onscreen kiss I’ve ever seen.  So really it’s the perfect Valentines Day movie for you and that special someone. 

This movie has tits, blood, and a 2 headed shark. Do you need to hear anything else? Two times the heads, two times the awesome.

3.5/5

Jacob VonKlingle

2 Headed Shark Attack- Christopher Ray

     Anyone who follows my nonsense knows that I am unashamedly obsessed with creature movies of all kinds and the badder the better. I am pretty sure I have some kind of split personality disorder as I love both sides of the spectrum when it comes to film, and I mean that in a severe way. One day I will watch David Lynch, Terence Malick and Luis Bunuel then the next switch to anything with The Asylum, Full Moon or Maneater logo on it. I am a glutton when it comes to film, and booze and drugs and music and well you get the point. Well today I woke up and went on a hunt. I was like Jeffery Dahmer  looking for a little boy. I started in one corner and worked my way through. 2 Headed Shark Attack was nowhere to be found. I wiped the tears from my eyes and gave in and just rented it. I luckily live Portland where I can go to the store where coincidentally the writer works and rent this bad boy. It's not the same. It's like when you call for a hooker from Craigslist and think you are getting the one in the picture and Edith Massey shows up(actually if Edith Massey showed up I would do unspeakable things to her while she talked to me about eggs), it's still sweet but not quite the same. Well I guess it was fate as when I got home with my rented copy in hand I found out I randomly won a copy from The Asylum. Now with all this excitement it was time to put this bad boy in. So what are the results?
     2 headed shark is a no bullshit movie, or an all bullshit movie I guess depending on how you look at it. It starts right of the bat with some dickbag kids getting the shit killed out of them. We then meet a group of students on a boat, said 2 headed shark fucks up their boat so they go to an island. Well it's not really an island but that is besides the point. Gabe Nye can explain the difference to you. I don't give a shit. Sound kind of familiar? Well it is and that is the fucking point.  This is where you decide if you are gonna like this movie. Are you going to argue logic, originality and quality? If so why the fuck are you watching an asylum movie. These guys know what they are doing. They are possibly the smartest filmmakers out there. There is a time for art and there is a time to just have a good time. Do you fall in love with everyone you sleep with? If so you probably fell for that super long joke all those one syllable dudes in sandals wrote and you are probably too busy watching Bibleman with Buddy to watch awesome movies like this anyways.   OK, I am ranting as I am sleep deprived, less then sober and well it's what I do. What I am trying to say is you know by the name and cover if this is something you would be interested. No one is going to pick it up and think it is based off of the work of Francis Bacon.
      I will just get to the point. I loved 2 Headed Shark Attack. I love Shark movies and my math is tight enough to know that two is better than one. Most of the characters are insanely stereotyped, Carmen Electra is a Dr. and the Shark either looks like the Jaws NES game or the Lobster from Multiple Maniacs. I say all of these things in highest regard for everyone involved. This movie is self aware, sure in a different way then something like Scream but more in like an Expendables way. They give you everything you could possibly want in a film about a two headed shark. The kills are all fun as hell and will probably make you spit beer everywhere. My one complaint is that this shark is kind of a prude. One thing I have learned in all my years of creature film watching is that while being evil they still will stop unspeakable acts, for instance crocodiles and alligators always stop rape. They have some built in rape sensor that works better than their eyes. I assume Gabe Nye could explain the science behind this so I will have to get back to you on that, but I promise you it is true. Well what I learned today is that two headed sharks hate threesomes. This also leads me to believe that they are the true dicks of the ocean. You don't interrupt a three way.
   
3/5

Tromeric

The Eden Formula- John Carl Buechler

    John Carl Buechler has made some pretty fantastic movies. Ghoulies 3: Ghoulies go to College is well dare I say a masterpiece. Miners Massacre is so bad ass he could give Harry Warden a run for his money and we can never forget all the amazing effects work this man has done. Friday the 13: The New Blood is one of my least favorite of the series but the Jason effects in that are right at the top of the list. Hatchet gave him a chance to shine again and he got to drink his own pee. Awesome.
     The Eden Formula I am sad to say is not at the top of the list of awesome. You had the elements there. Dinosaur, Tony Todd, John Carl Buechler, and the Lawnmower Man himself Jeff Fahey. The dinosaur looked like it was from Sifl and Olly. That of course is not a bad thing. I enjoyed the dinosaur. Every time he picked someone up and ate their head off, cinematic gold. There were some good effects and some awesome moments but it suffered from the way to fucking long for its own good syndrome. If it had been about half the length and they cut out all the unnecessary heist crap out it could of went right there on the list with Miners Massacre but by about an hour I was pretty god damn bored.
     I have seen worse, if you have the time and are pretty intoxicated there is some enjoyment to be found you just will have to suffer through a bullshit heist movie that happens to have a bad ass puppet dino that eats bitches.


1.5/5

Tromeric

Coons! Night of the Bandits of the Night- Travis Irvine

     Troma is a company I have been watching since I was dick high. USA up all night introduced me to many of the classics and my VHS scores of The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke em High were watched more than my copy of Ramboner, and that's saying something. When I found Cannibal the Musical that fateful day I could not stop watching it. When DVDs started making their way into my house in the late 90's early oughts Troma was a label I would look for right along side Criterion, Anchor Bay, and Something Weird. Terror Firmer, The Tox Box, Tromas War were a few of the first ones I remember picking up, at one point I considered buying the complete Troma catalog off their website. Then something happened, I bought Rockabilly Vampire. There I said it. This was a very traumatic day in my life, I remember it like it was yesterday. I got back to the dungeon of doom, cracked open my 40 lit a smoke and put in what I assumed was gonna be my new favorite film. I waited and waited for something amazing and as time went on I realized I was being tortured. The Iron Maiden doesn't have shit on Rockabilly Vampire. I am pretty sure Werner Hezog should of made a movie about this instead of Dieter Dengler. I don't wanna take away the impact of his torture but he never watched Rockabilly Vampire as far as I know. I realized that while if it had Lloyd' s name on the director line I could count on it to rule my balls but just having the Troma label meant nothing anymore. Buying a Troma movie became like having sex on the bed your were raped on, sure there were exceptions. Teenage Catgirls in Heat, Redneck Zombies, Monster in the Closet but most of the time I ended up watching some Bullshit like Butt Crack that scared me for life. I am rambling, let me get to the point. Coons! Night of the Bandits of the Night is  far better than it has any right to be.
      Some may say that Coons is sophomoric and tasteless. Well I can't argue with that. I will say for a movie made with a budget comparable to a German skat film and some of the worst acting and costumes and effects you will ever see its not half bad.  I am not saying this is the new Citizen Kane by any means but it does have racoons that shoot guns, make your mom jokes and throw shit at people. The racoons are just really old victims of taxidermy on a stick but they are fucking hilarious. The characters are all insanely over the top and poorly executed yet you can't help but enjoy it. The writing is surprisingly fun albeit not what many would describe as "good."
     You probably should have a lot of drinks if you watch this. You should probably avoid this is you don't tend to enjoy wallowing around in your own shit. If like me you sometimes don't mind rolling around in last nights tequila and stir fry pick up this little turd nugget and launch that shit straight in your DVD player.
    

1.5/5

Tromeric


     
     

The Uncanny- Denis Héroux

     Animals in movies are amazing. When they kill they are even cooler. When they are cute as shit cats that fuck shit up they make my shit rock hard.
      The Uncanny is kind of like if Creepshow 2 took out the first and third story and added some more. It even has somewhat of a animated opening, or at least some really bad Bob Ross like paintings of cats being awesome and having fangs. It is an anthology movie where Peter Cushing is a writer and tells a publisher some stories about cats murderizing people to death while a white cat that looks like it got a frying pan to the face listens. 
     The first story is a tale of greed. Some douche finds out his bat shit crazy cat lady aunt is gonna leave all her money to her cats instead of him. He sends in his mistress to get the will so he can get that money to buy tea or some shit.  She goes and the cats straight fuck up her day. She has to go into survival mode and make cat food sandwiches. Its gross.
     The second story is kinda like The Good Son except its a daughter. A girl has to go live with her aunt and uncle as her parents went down in a plane and didn't have a Chilean soccer team to eat so they died. She also encounters her cunt of a cousin who makes sure she knows who's in charge and its not Charles.  This of course also goes with the cat that she brought. Cousin cunt wants to play with the cat, but this is a loyal cat. When she can't play with the cat she gives into the temptation of receiving many virgins and  try's to fly a plane into her cousin. Her aunt then decides that she had to deal with dead parents so a dead cat shouldn't be a big deal so she sends it off to the local PETA, or at least I assume that's where its going. The cat shows back up and the girl get her moms old magik book out, the kind with a K none of this douche bag Chris Angel magic with a C bullshit. She shrinks her cunt cousin down to the size of a mouse(that's convenient) and you know this cat is gonna have some fun now. A battle with a giant projection screen ensues and the cat gets weird puppet hands and slaps the shit out of this bitch.
     In the third and final story Dr. Loomis watches his wife die in an accident on the set of The Pit and the Pendulum in an act that Brandon Lee would rip off twenty years later. They hire her double who is so similar to her that Loomis accidentally has sex with her a lot. You know the dead actresses adorable kitty doesn't take kindly to mariticide. Dr. Loomis also decides that he is going to flush the cats five kittens down the toilet. I guess in England they have crazy huge toilets because if I tried to flush five cats down the drain I would be seeing yesterdays bottle of tequila coming back to visit for the third time.  They then come up with as many cliche sayings about cats to use and that just pisses the cat off more till it kills the shit out of them. 
    Peter Cushing tells all these storys and leaves and the cat exploits his owner and it ends.
    If you even kind of enjoy killer animal movies this is a must have. It should sit on your shelf right next to your Night of the Lepus, Orca the Killer Whale, Squirm and Day of the Animals. 

3/5


Tromeric