Obscure Slasher Week

Hey all.  This week I am going back to my roots of epinions and thought it has been a while since I saw girls in the underwear fleeing a lunatic with a cadre of unusual weapons at his or her disposal.  Yes I am referring of course the slasher sub-genre of horror films.  So expect isolated timbers, useless law enforcement and girls that could out wail a banshee.   I shall endeavor to not pick it apart as I did back in the day...  See how I have grown.

Damn that is a nice car.

Hey all.  Just touching base on a cult following that could only be rivaled by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off show Angel.  I refer to those pesky kids, the Winchester boys.  Driving in their father’s ’67 Impala these two very different lads dispense justice for the victims of the monsters that go bump in the night.   So sharpen your stakes, pour your silver bullet molds and above all don’t be a douche nozzle.   This is Supernatural Season 1.

Spoilers are all around us man!

Our pilot opens with a happy prosperous young man Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki of Gilmore Girls, House of Wax and Friday the 13^th) pre-law student, straight A’s and hotty for a girlfriend Jessica (Adrianne Palicki of Lone Star, Legion, Wonder Woman and Red Dawn) and over all life is feeling good.  The two lovebirds have a little celebration nookie and fall asleep (No fellas, this is CW so no skin on that level) when Sam hears a noise in the apartment, goes to investigate and handle the burglar.  After a fairly intense fight choreography we can see Sambo has had some training only to get tossed on his butt by…his little big brother Dean (Jensen Ackles of Dawson’s Creek, Still Life, Smallville, My Bloody Valentine and Batman: Under the Red Hood).   After nursing a few egos and bruises, Dean tells Sam their dad has gone hunting and hasn’t been back in awhile.   Feels all coded in front of girlfriend Jessica.  Reluctantly Sam joins Dean in pursuit of their wayward father because you see folks the family business is hunting…monsters of all shapes and sizes.

Ahh spoiler you say?  You had 8 years!  Catch up!

Now given that John and Jane Public thinks monsters are nothing more than the work of fiction, cinema and tween writers, our would be heroes have to go incognito.  So on top of less than legal firearms, credit card fraud and posing as Federal officers, our lads do battle with the nastiest freakiest creatures this side of Sunnydale.

The storyline unfolds on what could have made these two seemingly normal guys into hunters of the preternatural and extra-dimensional.    22 years prior the boys’ mother died in a mysterious fire and their father, a Marine recon Vietnam vet could not save her in time.   Finds out there are creatures of myth and legend and they are very real.  To keep his boys safe he will instruct them how to survive, fight and win.  From hand to hand combat, firearms and blades these two could probably be dropped on the F.B.I.’s most wanted list if they wanted to go on a killing spree but they remain knight errants and do what they must to spare families the hell that is their lives.

Admittedly I went into this show kicking and screaming foul to preceding shows. Kolchak: the night stalker Poltergeist : The Legacy, Friday the 13^th The Series and X-Files all dealing with the ghosts and ghoulies so I felt yeah YET another less than original idea.  This bleak, dark background story unfolding simultaneously with the current events quickly changed my mind and established this is a dialogue driven story arc as much as it is character based.   A dysfunctional family that shows their breaking points, their flaws and strengths gives scope to the show and guest stars galore.  Only complaint from the man here, not enough reoccurring eye candy for hetro boys.  

Toxic Zombies..or Why Some Should not star and direct.

Well it wouldn’t be a zombie film a bit of gore and cheesy comments but this one takes the cake on music steals, bad dubbing, and yes even sound effects’ timing is off.  So grab your bug out bag, machete and solid rifle.  This is Toxic Zombies.

Spoilers can only be destroyed if you get the brain.

Charles McCrann is our writer/director/lead actor brings us the depths of this utter hell that this film is.  Violence with no real explanation nor any real attempt at character development and all back stories consists of people babbling about events we have not seen or these people should not yet have knowledge of.  Citizen Kane this is not.  Hell I wouldn’t even give it Citizen Toxie.   With a cast of no one I could recognize other than John Amplas (of Martin, Day of the Dead, Creepshow and No Pets) and he is not even a lead part.  He remains in the shadows of obscurity.  To start us on this journey; pot growers are using government land to score 2 million big ones in grass and have no qualms about killing officials to keep their crops.   We open this film up with what I thought was two hunters with rifles.  I mean commonly you see two guys decked out in flannel and hiking boots you would come to that conclusion too.  Cut to a topless bathing scene?  Well of course there’s one.  We are two minutes and forty seconds into this flick we got to keep the male audience or their attention span might wander.  So we get spliced cut shots of hunters and back to topless sudsy goodness.   After a quick dress she is informed the two hairballs with rifles are federal officers, she tries to bail and they shot her in the back…well the back of the neck according to her cheesy flesh wound.   No sooner have these crack officials realized they shoot a woman, that by the way was their only concern.  Not that they just shot an unarmed person but the fact she happened to be female.  Stay classy, movie.   Two hippies do in the officials and the frigging knifing sound effect is about a second and a half off from the strikes.  Yeah this is not exactly quality entertainment.   

Establishing from Commander Exposition and Junior Plot Point; two other officials realize the only way to tend to this problem is to release an untested chemical on the government land and thus destroying the pot.   With the help of a drunken sot of a pilot the chemicals are released and the hippies turn more yellow than a colony of vegans.   Suddenly more violent tendencies are occurring in the hippies and they proceed to do away with anyone that is not as messed up as they.

Our hero/writer/director acts his way into the paper bag and cannot leave there as he and his wife’s passionate lovemaking turns night to day and vice versa with fade scenes.  Random campers and their children are not safe in these insane making woods as they are laid siege upon. 

Now let us step back and observe for a second.  These zombie like folk are wielding hand weapons, rocks and even mastered fire for torches again and all without the aid of Dr. Rickles from Day of the Dead teaching them, so not exactly certain how to describe this lot, other than all messed up.   Most of the music for this flick has been lifted from Day of the Dead, a sped up version of Halloween, Dawn of the Dead and a mutilated version of Jaws as well.   I am not certain but I can manage some disgruntlement.  Go enjoy your evening outside or sit in with a book.