Echozeichen im Radarschirm ::ping::

Movie Night : 18.Oktober.05
Herr R berichtend an...

Tonight we embark on yet another less than spiritual journey into the realm of truly tasteless and ultimately talentless film. We've three "movies" on the docket, each sounding worse than the prior.

First up is "The Hollow," which stars Nick Carter, who I'm told is from one of the boy bands. My money is on N*Sync, and by money I mean not money at all, because I would never wager losing money on someone so ridiculous. The plot is supposed to be a __ years later tale of the town of Sleepy Hollow when the Headless Horsemen makes his return for the kin of Ichabod Crane. Not only does the plot sound contrived, but it made its debut on ABC Family, which never bodes well for a horror movie.

Average: There was a surprising amount of decapitation and (briefly) nipple for an ABC Family movie. This was the best of the three, without a doubt. Not only was superstar Nick Carter in the film, but also veterans like Stacy Keach and Judge Reinhold. The Headless Horsemen is tormenting the Crane line 50,000 years in the future. I'm not actually sure on that timeline, but Stacy Keach said that it had been 20 generations since the Horsemen nearly killed Johnny Depp. Since then, the Crane lineage got wiley and changed their last name to "Cranson" and then eventually "Cranston" (no word on a Lamont yet though). Nevermind the fact that the Horsemen wasn't technically hunting Ichabod Crane to begin with, now he's pissed and out for vengeance. He rides around with his pumpkin head and military sabre decapitating the hapless Nick Turturro and Stacy Keach. Judge Reinhold was attacked by the horsemen, but he must have been saved by Axel Foley or Beethoven's 5th in a cutscene, because he survives a sword attack without even a scratch. After a brief horsechase wherein the Horsemen's horses hooves were miked most intensely, our hero manages to parry-toss him onto the bridge he cannot touch (though it was the bridge he couldn't cross in the Irving tale). So obviously he bursts into flames. In closing, Nick Carter doesn't die, but he does wear shoulder pads throughout most of the film in a desperate attempt to look like a big badass onscreen. Also, someone compile a list on non-private Highschools that offer fencing as an elective, it's a good bet that they'll be the ones we need to turn to should the Horsemen extend his reign of pumpkin-tossing terror nationwide.

Second we have "Day of the Dead 2: Contagium." From what I gather after reading several plot synopses, this is a cash-in from the lucky bastard who managed to wrestle the rights of "Day of the Dead" from George A. Romero & co. Apparently they actually explain why the zombies are here, or more precisely, where they came from. Not that I was a big fan of the original Living Dead trilogy, but one of the things I always enjoyed about them was the relative ambiguity as to where these flesh-eating, walking corpses came from...and why. I'm sure the purists are screaming "sacrilege!" over this one, but that'll only last until "Day of the Dead 3: Bankrupt" comes out...

Awful: This movie takes place in 1968 for the first 10 minutes, then 2005 for the final hour:30+. For being a "sequel" to Day of the Dead," in which the world was more or less overrun by zombie hordes in the 1970's, people seemed shockingly unprepared for an outbreak of 20 or so undead. No attempt at an explanation for how we go from Day's missile silo to Day 2's mental institution, nor how the aforementioned zombie hordes were thwarted some 30 years ago. The explanation given for the current controlled outbreak of zombie-ism is contained in a little, green thermos that one of the mental patients opens. Upon doing so, he drops what would appear to be an alien suppository onto the ground. It releases what can only be described as zombie pixies, which in turn infect the 5 people crowding around the affected area. Upon "transformation" into the undead (which remarkably has similar symptoms to sleep deprivation and sunburn), the Infected 5 find themselves becoming a hive mind, or collective, if you will. They even feel the pain of the other. Why this was incorporated, I'll never know. I wanted to see zombies, not overwrought empaths. Two of the five super-zombie-empaths refuse to eat other people and begin working on a way to either find a cure, or at the very least stop the others, who have regressed into some sort of demon-zombie hybrid. The cure was simple enough, the male "good guy" zombie puts a gun in his teeth and pulls the trigger, thus effectively killing the other 4, including his girlfriend. Zombies escape, the threat begins anew, yadda-yadda.

Lastly, a movie that I'm not all that familar with before hand. It's called "Dark Harvest 2: ___________." There is a tagline meant for that blank, but I'll get to that in a minute. The company and I watched the original "Dark Harvest" some time ago, but for the life of me I can't remember a thing about it. All I know is that it entails teenagers and a killer scarecrow or two. The follow-up entails both of those things and adds one more item to the mix: a labyrinth. Where on earth one can still stumble upon a labyrinth is beyond me. Not since Minos have I heard mention of one, though I've heard David Bowie is proprietor of a magnificent specimen. Here is where the tagline comes in, and it's a mark of true genius. The movie is aptly titled, "Dark Harvest 2: The Maize." Brilliant...only Alan Smithee could think of such a poignant title.

Negative Awful: There was no scarecrow. There was no killing. There was no plot. A man has psychic visions in his home which happen to look like the "Ripple" special effect found on any PC movie editing program. From these ripples he sees his two daughters dying, or not dying, or, just standing around in a cornfield...I don't know. The whole movie was so terribly shot that the viewer can't tell what they may be looking at at any given time. So, our main character calls his wife, tells her to find the kids in the corn maze (they were there for Halloween), she can't, he rushes out of the house, gets to the cornfield, various shots of mud puddles, corn and waists ensue. It seems like hours until the main character does anything other than stumble around blindly in a clearly daylit CORN MAZE looking for his daughters. I just can't feel claustrophobic when I can not only see through the "walls," but trample them underfoot and make my way out. Unfortunately the two little girls didn't consider this as they ran for their lives around corners and into mud puddles aplenty. Luckily I had my finger on the Chapter Skip button. After about 3 hours of watching him bumble around like a twit (read "20 minutes"), I skipped ahead, more corn, I skipped again, more corn, again, corn, again, night corn, again, credits. No one died, no corn thresher was used on anyone, nothing. If you value your time spent, it is best spent far, far away from this movie. P.S. There was a scarecrow on the cover and on the DVD menu...that was 2 times as much scarecrow as there was in here.

::Endpunkt des Berichts::