Phantoms of the Year: Steel Trap

Hey kids welcome back for Phantoms of the Year Day 4 and Happy New Year!! While you are nursing hangovers, self-inflicted klutz wounds and horrible drunken texts how about we sit down and enjoy a movie? Or I could write about this steaming pile of donkey crap that pseudo-quasi passes for one. Yeah, remember I was all a grumbly about Life Blood and the vampy jiggly girls? That film is already golden compared to today's drek. No, I will not be objective today. Not after this turd fest of a flick so sit down, relax and enjoy the rant. This is Steel Trap.

Britney's skin peel may have gone too deep.

Not to be confused with the 1952 Film Noir The Steel Trap, our flotsam film hails from the oh so scary Dimension Extreme collection. Those dark, grim, rooted in reality and modern day horrors. What a load of crap.

First off, we get the BS taglines of Surviving each floor is the name of the game... which is a complete falsehood because the cinematic delight takes place on two floors, one of them the party was never contemplating visiting in the first place. This film has all the hallmarks of the typical pick off the jocks and cheerleaders because they were mean to me motif. Maybe they let Jason drown, pick Marty from Slaughter High or push the housemother in the pool via The House on Sorority Row. Whatever the main reason it is sadly one of those Ten Little Indians knockoff revenge stories that this deep and seething hatred has been building to this point. Five people are invited to this shindig along with two party crashers but thankfully neither of them are Vince Vaughn or Owen Wilson.

How did we end up on the set of Motel Hell?

Our characters are poorly conceived as they have to be hip, witty and amusing rather than be written like actual human beings. None of the dialogue's myriad of puns, snarking or witty quips are funny. AT ALL. This is piss poor writing, not a single line uttered sounds natural to be said let alone heard so awkward line are blurted out and the film drags on. Our first three murders actually occur within the first 45 minutes and then we wait and wait for the film's pace car to hit the track. Meanwhile, we have the standardized survivors yelling at one another and playing round robin with blame and accusations on who the killer is. Aside from the personality scribbled on the host's notes for the five these people have no personality whatsoever and if they caught on fire in front of you, you might consider it an improvement in the gene pool. Brought to us by writer/director Luis Camara (Ex Voto Endgame, Steel Trap and Silencio), our film drags more than Festus' bum leg in Gunsmoke, has plot holes roughly the size of Nebraska and the killer looks like he stole Chromeskull's mask from Laid to Rest. Apparently you take Saw, Slaughter High and a pinch of April Fool's Day, drop it in a blender and you get... well three trashed DVDs or VHS. Don't do that. What are you? Foolish? Just don't talk to me now.

Normally this would be the part I would tell you that the blocking was good, lighting and sound were doing their jobs but I really do not want to bolster this film at all. I mean everyone was professional here but the vibe was rush it and get it to print ASAP, pronto, PDQ and give it wings. So if you see this flick cued on your Netflix, come across it on digital cable or satellite, do the right thing and skip it.

Silver Surfer hits the club scene.

Phantoms of the Year Week: New Year's Evil

Well hello everyone and welcome to Phantoms of the Year Day 1 and let's start off the New Year right with a mediocrely shot and executed film with paltry music and the weakest collection of punks/drag queens of what is supposed to be L.A. Badasses. I envision a boy scout troop kicking the crap out of them, pocketing their collective wad of sweaty singles and fives and sending these pukes to the hospital. This is New Year's Evil

The Holiday Inn Slayer Strikes Again!!!

An obsessive fan of a punk rock DJ icon Diane "Blaze" Sullivan (Roz Kelly of The Owl and the Pussycat, New Year's Evil, Full Moon High and American Pop) has informed her that a naughty girl will die at the stroke of midnight in each time zone before eventually coming after her. Dubbing himself as "Evil" he taunts D telling her how she is a horrible person and all this blood is now on her hands. So in effect, a murder in a different city in each time zone will happen, it will be someone she knows and she is powerless to stop it. Her manager/husband Richard (Kip Niven of Magnum Force, Earthquake, Damnation Alley and Walker, Texas Ranger) is trying to coordinate with LAPD's detective on the scene Lt. Clayton (Chris Wallace of Don't Answer the Phone, Body and Soul, Dead End, The Secret and Rats and Cats) as the two try to figure out going through D's mail who the killer could be and why would he do such a thing? They couldn't afford John Saxon is my guess but hey I am not nitpicking... yet.

Stay out of Mommy's cocaine, sweetie!

To make this substantial amount of travel and murder possible we can all come to the conclusion that there may be more than a few killers working in concert for these gruesome deaths or the guy can teleport like Jumper. Actually a teleporting serial killer that leaves no trace evidence sounds far cooler and I am jotting that down. Ahem, moving right along. With each phone call that is somehow always getting connected through at this phone-in request line when you and I cannot even get our music requests in during a weekday let alone a major holiday, our killer is dropping hints to his identity to Blaze and her hamster in the wheel finally seems to be moving as she start to think that maybe she knows the killer after all. With a helping of red herring even one cell organisms can see through this thinly veiled plot, decipher who the killer is and left unfulfilled.

Now to pick on the film. Our extras at this rocking extravaganza could not have looked less lively unless they were full on Romero zombies. The milling around the dance for during Shadow's big number New Year's Evil was to die for. They would not voom if you put 4 million volts through them! Blaze gets one phone call that most would have deemed a crank call and she goes ridged the whole night convince of terror abound. Our murderer tries to remain in the shadows but we see his face most of the night and he kinda looks like Tom Noonan of Manhunter with better hair.

The nuts at the sanitarium were more bouncy than the crowd at the concert. My favorite goof is seeing a crew member kneeling behind the kitchen equipment that one of the cops walks behind and at least two boom mic appearances. The electronic voice box unit the killer uses gets old real quick. Sounds like lives are being threatened by Professor Stephen Hawking. The disco bar was more rousing and festive than the punks... that is just messed up. While all these murders are happening all around America it is quite clear that it was not in the budget to leave L.A. As I clearly saw Hollywood Boulevard "New York" and the fricking Van Nuys Drive-In Theatre. A tolerable slasher but nothing new, compelling or astounding by it. I love how the end seems to almost set up for a sequel... that never happened.

Mickey Rooney is more punk than this band!

Phantoms of the Year!!!!

Hello and welcome back my readers. No, I am not writing this from beyond the grave so put your various religious items down and cease warding my presence off. Coming back from Christmas vacation away from the computer for days on end, I barely looked at my phone. Really that was a blessing in of itself. As the last remaining days of the year are upon us it is only fitting and fair we do a tally of horror revolving around the impeding New Year... because I really could not sit through that many rom coms with New Year's as the theme. Seriously, some of those will turn your stomach as well cause your eyes to bleed out like you got a visit by the Men of the Blue Sun Corporation, two by two with hands of blue.

Mouth harps distort your voice... I guess.

  

So we will be looking at products of the 1980s as well as something a little more current. I guess the 90s were too busy cranking out alternative and hip hop to bother with New Year's horror movies but hell if I can avoid 90s catch phrases that frankly made me want to choke someone until they were bluer than a smurf, that is also a good thing and should be viewed as such. So gather around your tech of phones, tablets and computers and get ready to read how I am ranting and raving, sludging my way through this festering cinema crap for your reading pleasure. Who knows, we may actually find some entertaining films... but I highly doubt it. Ta ta.

Cindy Lou Who's trip to Manhattan ends in tears!