Now some of the purchases I have seen before, but I had to add them to my collection: Trick r Treat, Deadgirl, Slither, PontyPool, Home Movie, The Children and The Blair Witch Project. As far as I am concerned, I actually saved money buying these because $5 each is a freaking deal. Two of the purchases were specifically because of the actors in them: Simon Says stars Crispin Glover and Sasquatch stars my darling Lance Henrikson. Everything else was purchased based on their covers except for 666:The Demon Child and The Card Player, they deal with children and poker respectively so I was like why the fuck not.
So here I have decided to share with you my reactions from the first batch of the Port Hawksbury treasures:
The Blackout 2009
It's Christmas Eve, the city goes dark, and the few remaining tenants of The Ravenwood find themselves trapped in their building. And they are not alone.
So this was one of the puppies that I bought soley on the cover because seriously, hello Aliens? SIGN ME Up! Although, I did have the tickling sensation that the plotline was a little familar, I was like nah... I would have TOTALLY remembered something with aliens that cool in it. Right?
Right. See the thing is that the aliens aren't actually that cool in the movie. They are more like men in very tight purple spandex with some tongue depressers stuck to their heads with giant
green ping pongs for eyes. If I could sue the production company for their lies of marketing to get my $5 back that I spent on this piece of shit, I would. And what really sucks, is that the characters suck. So you can't even be happy when the little fuckers die because they are just being killed by other fuckers.
So its Christmas Eve. There's a family settling down for their dinner with a drunk stinky uncle sleeping on the couch (seriously, they specifically reference those traits) and then there is a party going on next door. Off and on all day there have been these mysterious tremors that make the power flicker and no one can really explain but whatever, its Christmas. Mom and Dad fight about Stinky and then decide to have make-up sex which is interrupted by their children who want to join. Its a weird joke that doesn't work either time it happens. Anyways, the parents decide to send the eldest to get a present out of the basement so they can finish up. Now right here, an alarm bell rings off in my head.... soooo the power has flickered EIGHT TIMES, each time getting worse and you are sending your child to the basement of an apartment building on Christmas Eve? So you can have sex? Really? Really.
So of course, the kid goes missing. And of course the parents don't really notice until after they finish having sex and the power goes out and stays out. So daddy of the year takes the OTHER kid which is a little girl and goes to find her brother. Daddy gets distracted somehow in the hall and the child who was obivously not raised very well, goes to THE ELEVATOR and presses a button and goes to the basement. Now the best part about this, is that the father doesn't immediately run back to the apartment to get at least ONE other person to help him find her.
Ridiculous.
Anyways, they don't do too bad with the alien monsters in the beginning. And seriously, I am all about low budget, but I really think they shouldn't have showed the spandexies. It completely cheapened the entire feel of the movie even more than the bad acting. Either you put that purple bastard on the front cover and make the little weird horsecrab thingys look just as bad, or you use your brain and maybe not show the entire costume in a shot. I cannot think that they thought that it looked that great while they were shooting it because it fucking looked bad. Someone probably said ohh it will look different onscreen, or someone somewhere spent the fucking money that was suppose to go to postproduction on this puppy, because I seriously do not understand how a producer could sign off on this piece of shit.
Watchability: Yeah after I pretty much turned it off 2/3s of the way through because I seriously couldn't handle the spandex anymore.
Gore: Not really. Not that I can remember.
Worth the $5: I am seriously considering writing those gyus about false advertising.....
FEED 2005
An Interpol cop from Sydney, who has his own demons, pursues a man in the United States who liberates women from the cultural norms of thinness by feeding them to gross weights. He also shows their photographs to Internet subscribers. But what else is he up to? The Aussie suspects murder or worse. The cop, Phillip Jackson, and his mark, Michael Metszencalmpf, are in a game of cat and mouse - but which is the cat?
Now I actually watched this film first when I got home because when I bought it, the guy at the counter felt compelled to warn me that the film is very gross and disgusting, to which I laughed and asked him if he ever seen Deadgirl and he said no, so I told him to check it out. I hope he did because if he thought FEED was gross, he will be having nightmares after watching Deadgirl.
To put it in perspective, you know that scene in Se7en? Where the guy is forced to eat until he exploded? Well its not that bad because no one ever explodes, unfortunately. Their actual big gross out trick is nothing more than a few minute scene in Fight Club, big bags of fat dripping on stuff and then people touching it accidentally or eating it. Unless of course, he was talking about the 600lb woman who was almost naked on screen for most of the time or the guy that randomly goes all 9 1/2 weeks on her. And I do mean on her. Is it actually gross enough to warn someone who is in the process of buying 10 dvds that are all horror films? No, I would actually warn her about Deadgirl and tell her that although it is a fantastic film if you can stomach it, that its pretty gross or that by watching The Children, she may never want to have kids again.
I did enjoy the lead bad guy. He was like this weird combination of Patrick Bateman and Spencer Pratt but that also distracted me on a whole other level because I got to think that Spencer Pratt should really play bad guys. If he could act that is. However, there were moments in the film where he would just get all fucking preachy about how women are forced into thinking they need to be skinny and blah blah blah and he is trying to liberate them and I reallllly don't think the film needed that. Its a fucking horror film for christ sakes about people with fucked up fetishes so lets put aside the political agenda for now, shall we?
So besides the whole preachy bit, I was totally behind the plot, this guy tricks ladies into thinking he loves them and let him be their feeder meanwhile he is running this website that takes bits on when they are going to die. And the cross plot wasn't too bad, basically this cop spends his life tracking weird freaks on the internet and then tries to bust their fetish. But then its like, they could only take the idea so far and then it got all fucky. Like PatrickSpencer would do these things were it looked like he was trying to kill the lady early and then you as an audience are all like woooooah boy, aren't you fucking with your BUSINESS? Wouldn't that change the odds? Like I am assuming that betting on obese woman dying due to their extreme weight gain has to be a bit of an elitist gambling circle and judging from the type of house, car and woman he kept, he was making quite the pretty penny. so that part I didn't get.
And the ending is a bit cliche. Which I forgive it for because it did still keep me watching and it could have ended a lot worse, but it doesn't really match the same intensity as the first scene does in the film which disappointed me because I thought it was going to surpass it by the ending. But it did not.
Watchability: I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but I did enjoy it.
Gore: It has it's moments.
Worth the $5: Yes. Worth more than that? I dunno...
666: The Demon child 2004
This movie is so bad it doesn't even have a plot summary on imdb.
Basically this group of horrible actors are traveling around in an RV from the 80s with this old guy and they are doing something but you can't really tell what it was because the fucking audio is so bad you can't hear. Anyways, after a bunch of mumbled bad jokes and even worse acting, they run over this guy who happens to have this fucking huge egg. So they try to help the guy and one of them takes the egg and one things leads to another and all of a sudden the antichrist is born. Which would be fine and almost reliving in some situations, but in this situation, it just makes it worse.
Now, to set this up, the writer/director of this flick has actually worked in the special fx departments on fellowship of the ring, freddy's dead, Friday the 13th Part V11. wow, the demon child is probably going to look pretty awesome then eh? No. the demon child is a rubber baby with horns glued on him which is tossed to the actor and then the actor shakes it all over their body. I can only assume this is suppose to be a ravenging attack but it looks pathetic. And seriously, maybe if the audio was better and it was about 20 minutes shorter, I would probably enjoy it like I do Carnosaur. But currently, I don't think anyone should watch this film. At all.
Watchability: Seriously. Don't do it.
Gore: Ummm yeah... nothing that I wouldn't classify as gore. My standards are a bit higher than sprays of bloody water.
Worth the $5: Not even close. I don't even think I can put it on my dvd shelf.
The Card Player 2004
A Rome policewoman teams up with a British Interpool agent to find a crafty serial killer whom plays a taunting game of cat-and-mouse with the police by abducting and killing young women and showing it over an Internet web cam.
I have to say that I was completely impressed by this movie. I am really bad for judging films by their cover and this one did not pull me in at all and from the description, I thought it was going to be a very low budget number that was going to be deliciously horrible.
Just from watching the previews of his other films, I knew that the film was going to be good. They all seem to have a similar combination of an intiguing story, interesting camera shots and some gore. And the intro of the film did not disappoint. It might be a little too artsy for some, but the filmmaker in me was clapping their hands like a little kid who was just given a brand new bicycle.
Basically, the serial killer taunts the police with an online poker game for the life of the girl he has kidnapped. Which sounds kinda weird and serious, the online poker game looks like something right out of the first collection of Hoyle computer games. There is such an incredible a genius at work here that I know I am going to have to watch the whole thing again because I know I didn't catch everything. But anything that combines a MIDI tune, that you could only imagine the music came from the happiest level in Kirby Dreamland, with offscreen dismembering totally gets a vote in my corner.
The audio is a little weird, it was like they dubbed some of the actor voices, whether or not it was on purpose, but that would probably be my only negative to say about the film because it was a bit distracting. However, the cinematography more than makes up for it.
Watchability: I would totally recommend this and am planning on checking out the rest of his work.
Gore: Nothing really serious, most happens offscreen but you don't really miss it.
Worth the $5: Definitely.
