Monthly Archives: April 2010

Blame it on the boogey

boogeyman3BOOGEYMAN 3

2 Stars  2008/15/91m

“She left for college and terror followed.”

Director: Gary Jones / Writer: Brian Sieve / Cast: Erin Cahill, Chuck Hittinger, Mimi Michaels, George Maguire, Matt Rippy, Nikki Sanderson, Elyes Gabel, W.B. Alexander, Jayne Wisner, Kate Maberly.

Body Count: 9


Boogeyman 2 successfully managed to untangle the wretched mess left by the 2004 original film by turning the crappy CG-laden horror-for-kids premise into an on-point slasher film with some brutality to it. Unfortunately, Boogeyman 3 enters the party, trips over the table and sends all the nicely rearranged apparel over the floor before slipping over and landing on it, crushing anything good that may have survived.

OK, so it’s still better than the first one but out goes the guy-in-a-mask and in steps another ‘genuine’ monster (looking like a zombie Alice Cooper), which has followed Tobin Bell’s daughter back to the college dorm where she lives (and subsequently dies) and proceeds to kill off her group of friends.

boo3

The trick here is that the moment you believe in the curse, you become susceptible to it and so the only way to survive is not to believe – difficult when your pals are turning up dead. Even with the body count scenario, this is a lot more like The Grudge films than a slasher movie with the usual stereotype characters led by ex-Power Ranger Cahill’s not-so-competent final girl, atrocious special effects work and wobbly acting, making it a chore to sit through.

A couple of minor chills shouldn’t prevent you slamming the closet door shut on this franchise.

Blurbs-of-interest: Brian Sieve also wrote the previous (better) instalment; Gary Jones directed Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter’s Cove and Axe Giant.

Ungraded…the only thing worse than a fail

final-examFINAL EXAMINATION

1 Stars  2002/94m

“You fail. You die.”

Director: Fred Olen Ray [as Ed Raymond] / Writers: Sean O’Bannon & Kimberly A. Ray / Cast: Kari Wuhrer, Brent Huff, Debbie Rochon, Amy Lindsay, Richard Gabai, Robert Donovan, Jason Schnuit, Belinda Gavin, Winton Nicholson, Kalau Iwaoka, Kim Maddox.

Body Count: 7

Dire-logue: “Just spell my name right, it’s Shane with a C…” what!?


A girl drives off the end of an unfinished bridge. Five years later, a cop busts a drug dealer and is then reassigned to Hawaii as a reward. In Hawaii, the sorority sisters from Big Island University have gathered for a reunion sponsored by a glamour magazine, which they are being photographed for by a wasted Rochon. Someone tries to murder them – failing, more often than not – reassigned dick and Kari Wuhrer (remembered by me as the “not J-Lo” female in Anaconda) investigate.

That’s Final Examination for you. It has nothing remotely to do with exams at all, bar the staggering two sorority victims found with test papers marked ‘Failed’ floating nearby. Instead, Fred Olen Ray’s (shoulda known!) dismal little flick is a thinly disguised softcore skin flick. The only examination present is the one the camera oversees while various starlets take showers or just walk around topless…

The cast look ridiculously bored and the police procedural plot (far outweighing any horror) is like a really boring episode of NCIS. There’s an equally insipid backstory unfurled to do with co-ed pregnancy, dirty tricks and cover ups that relate back to the dead chick and bitchy sorority alumnus Kristen – who doesn’t even die!

Ray overcompensates boredom with too many twists, none of which even flirt with being exciting. Turns out there are but three killers, all siblings of the dead girl and between them they manage to off a massive four people. Pathetic.

Chuck in a lieutenant named Hugh Janus and a scene where Kristen brandishes a gun several minutes before the killer busts through a door and attacks her friend. Does she shoot him? No. She hits him with the damn thing. The film finally ends with the dialogue “uh…yeah,” which appears to accurately sum up the opinion all involved likely have when asked about the film.

To spell it out for you in case you, like me, are hell bent on seeing ’em all: Final Examination is not a good bad film, it’s really, really, REALLY boring, which is a far worse sin than simply being shit.

Blurbs-of-shame: Belinda Gavin was in Scarecrow. Ray also directed Scalps. Debbie Rochon has been in American Nightmare, Bleed, Blood Relic and Head Cheerleader, Dead Cheerleader.

The Hills Have Glam Metal, Big Hair & Swedish Accents

btBLOOD TRACKS

1.5 Stars  1985/18/85m

“The mountains echoed with the screams of terror.”

Director: Mike Jackson [Mats Helge] / Writers: Mike Jackson & Anna Wolf / Cast: Jeff Harding, Naomi Keneda, Michael Fitzpatrick, Brad Powell, Harriet Tobinson, Peter Merrill, Tina Shaw, Frances Kelly, Karina Lee, Helena Jacks.

Body Count: 18

Dire-logue: “Look at their women – evil! They deserve to die.”


I love 80s nostalgia. Even though I can’t remember much before 1987, I always look back and smile, while listening to We Built This City. However, all rose-tinted hindsight is usually just a front for some black clouds, for us: Thatcher, yuppie-culture, the Sinclair C5 and Spandau Ballet. The legions of straight to video horror films that also belong in this category can also include this dismal Swedish affair, Blood Tracks, which uses one of the lowest form of horror cliches – thrash metal – as the centrepiece for a Hills Have Eyes-rip set in the mountains.

Solid Gold, a bad marriage of Kiss and Aerosmith on a bad hair day, are to shoot their new promo video in the snowy mountains of your stock small town where, forty years earlier, a woman stuck a knife in the back of her abusive husband and fled to the hills with her sons.

These socially-starved freaks, naturally now deformed and homicidal, aren’t too impressed by sheer amount of trespassing hair – likely causing a solar eclipse – and set about doing away with Solid Gold and their entourage, including their airhead dancers/girlfriends after they are stranded by an avalanche, which fails to stop the female cast members prancing around nude.

Why are there no remotely interesting horror movies about heavy metal bands and death? Seriously, none of them are any good. To make things worse, the film has been developed with such a low exposition that it’s near impossible to see what’s happening nor tell any of the characters apart. The band all look the same, as do the dancers and everyone else dies so early on it makes no difference.

Badly dubbed into English, I later read that Solid Gold were, in reality, a real life band called Easy Action! I wonder if even they still possess a copy of this turkey.

I can forgive Sweden for this faux pas; they gave us Volvo’s, ABBA, Roxette and decent Eurovision entries most years. I expect multiple copies of Blood Tracks are stacked up in a sauna somewhere…

Icky ways to go: Folding Bed Back Break

From the camp-tastic Freddy vs. Jason, A-holey boyfriend Trey, ahem, “finishes” with his g/f Gibb and immediately dispatches her to the shower: “Babe! You know I don’t like to be touched afterwards!” Usually, it’s the chick in the shower who is doomed but in this instance, Jason rightly chooses to teach nasty Trey an interesting lesson about having sex in your girlfriend’s best friend’s dad’s bed…

fvjIndicative of the tone the film adopts, it’s a new one for the J-man, who, incidentally, kills almost all of the cast, leaving Freddy just one slaying.

Pant-Soiling Scenes #9: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

The first slasher film I ever saw was A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 when I was about 11. Brown pants and bad dreams. I flat out refused to watch any other Freddy films until I was 19. Oddly, it was my second viewing of the original Elm Street that creeped the hell outta me.

There’s mucho scariness in the film; the nightmare scenery is classic stuff but I personally find this moment – lasting just a matter of seconds in the run up to Tina’s uber-frightening encounter with Freddy Krueger – to be ingeniously terrifying. ‘Tis the stretchy horror wall…

pss-elm-streetHe’s like…coming through the wall for Nancy!! It’s so horrible! I want to cry.

1 2 3