Dodgy Film Club: Thankskilling

Thankskilling is a low budget, self aware horror comedy about five college students on a road trip home for Thanksgiving, who are set upon by a murderous, eh, fowl-mouthed (sorry) Turkey.

Where has this movie been all my life? As much of an homage as a satire, it features a classic set of horror characters, including:

• The Jock (comes with football)
• The Redneck (comes with chin beard)
• The Nerd (comes with health issues)
• The Dumb Slut (comes with sex puns)
• The Good Girl (comes with additional 'Sheriff Dad' character)
• The Weird Old(ish) man (comes with ability to show up at any time)

Here are some highlights and things to expect:

• The opening shot is of an exposed breast, belonging to an inexplicably topless mom-aged blonde woman, in, we are told, 1621.
• Soon after we are introduced to the turkey, who can not only wield an axe, but can also deliver one liners like an anachronistic action movie star. (e.g. the line 'Nice tits, bitch', which is totally the language turkeys in 1621 would use, should they be able to talk)
• Surprisingly little nudity, given the open shot
• Vague Increasingly strong homo-eroticism
• A punk and metal dominated soundtrack for some reason. I mean, it's sweet, but why would these 5 people be listening to it?
• 'Turkeyologists'
• Awful puns!
• Graduates of the Alan Bagh school of acting
• A lead character named Johnny (reference or no?)
• The line 'Gobble gobble, motherfucker'

(Image Source: amazon.com)

Zero Charisma: Compact Movie Review

A games master in need of a good therapy session loses what little control he has on life when a hipster joins his table. Role-playing games provide the background to a dark comedy-drama about mental illness. 8/10.

Dodgy Film Club: Season of the Witch

A meeting of two actors who seem to have trouble turning down work! Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman are Crusade knights, who are tasked with escorting a ***SPOILER ALERT*** witch demon to a trial by monks. Oh and the witch demon is possibly responsible for the plague.



This was added to our watchlist as it featured on How Did This Get Made? and I may have a bone to pick with the good podcasting folks. Admittedly, they saw it upon its release, but this film doesn't even work as a bad horror movie. Don't get me wrong, it is bad. Highlights include

• Fluctuating accents 
• Historical and cultural inaccuracies
• Ron Perlman playing himself!
• Nic Cage in a glorious wig
• Phrases like 'let's get the hell out of here' and 'shit'..in Crusade times..
• Bad CGI
• Wolves werewolves vampire wolves? with an apparent death wish

Some good old fashioned Crusade-era banter. And hair.

So basically the Church sent these guys to kill all the non believers. Nic Cage is fine with this until he kills some woman and he is suddenly hit with righteous remorse. Nic and Ron leave the army, only to be eventually captured and held in a cell. They then agree to transport the 'girl' (witch/demon) to her trial by monks. There's a demon (satan?) involved, who looks like something out of Doom and sounds like a pantomime villain. In the end religion wins and the plague goes away. Yeah...

On the plus side, Claire Foy, who plays the oddly attractive Adorabelle Dearheart in Going Postal, is 'the girl' and by gods there is just something about her in this too.

Punktual Library: The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero

  
THIS BOOK. Everything you wanted to know about the making of The Room, and more! Take away the greatest bad movie ever as the subject matter and you still have a captivating, creepy, gripping, funny, vaguely unsettling, curiously optimistic page turner.

For every answered question there springs forth another half dozen fresh questions. We learn much about Tommy Wiseau; mainly that he is a secretive, confusing enigma, even to someone as close to him as Greg Sestero.

Seriously, if you have any interest in The Room, psychology or weird characters, buy this book now.. Things we learn:

• Where Tommy is actually from (sort of!)
• How Tommy made his money (kind of!)
• Why Greg and many of the cast got involved and more importantly, stayed involved
• What it's like to be roommate with Tommy!
• Seriously, just read it

There are also photos and lines from the original script including such classic broken English as:
“Promotion! Promotion! That’s all I hear about. Here is your coffee and English muffin and burn your mouth.”

Read my interview with Greg Sestero AKA Mark here

Jingle All The Way Drinking Game

JINGLE ALL THE WAY DRINKING GAME 

'tis the season!

Dodgy Film Club: #SHARKNADO @riotheatre

So the (social media) world has finally caught up with dodgy horror films. Does this make me a dodgy horror film hipster? I hope not, as I am not in the least bit put out that #SHARKNADO happened, I hope it means more ridiculous films are made!

A classic case of 'if you're not sold by the poster, there's no hope for you'

Even though I have had access to #SHARKNADO for almost a month, I held out and saw it in a theatrical release in my favourite indy cinema, The Rio Theatre, in Vancouver. Against my better judgement I didn't buy my ticket in advance but was lucky enough to snap up one of the few remaining tickets at the door, before a full sell out was announced and dozens were turned away.

Inside it is clear of the reach this low budget film has attained. To my right, two STANDARD METAL/FILM NERDS discuss the surge in attendence to such showings and sneer derisively at the trivia questions on the screen. ("Uh, Zombieland? Who couldn't know that's a scene from Shaun of the Dead?"). To my left, two middle aged women, looking more like they're fans of mash potatoes than Sharknados settle in for a Girls Nite Out!!! 

As for the film itself.. It's actually pretty standard fair for The Asylum, who have made such instant classics as Sharktopus and Two Headed Shark Attack. That is to say, there is some awkward 'character development', bad acting, lots of good looking girls and some vaguely interesting camera work to get through before we hit the real action and see some goooore!

This is a real still from the film, not a photoshop

When it does (eventually) move up a gear it is still a slow burning build up, with some brilliantly bad pun-heavy one liners and some pretty cool effects including a ferris wheel massacre. The sharks are of course terribly rendered but that doesn't stop everyone in the theatre raucously cheering each time one meets its demise via bar stools, pool sticks and gunshots from our surprisingly sharp shooting heroes.

 
Once it gets to the 'all or nothing, this ends NOW' last twenty minutes, sh!t gets REAL and the lolfactory explodes with amazing gore and ridiculous action sequences. I won't spoil the best part, or the ending, but the trailer does give away part of what goes down; 'We're going to throw bombs into the tornados!'

Afterwards the director did a skype interview live to the Rio and denied that drugs had been used in the dreaming up of the monstrosity. Sharknado 2: Sharkferno is a possibility, he says.

Dodgy Film Club: Drive Angry

The plot of Drive Angry is pretty simple; Nicolas Cage has escaped from Hell to hunt down and kill the leader of a Satanic cult, who has kidnapped his granddaughter. Like most films in Dodgy Film Club, if you are not instantly filled with a desire to watch this work of art immediately, then nothing I can say will change your mind, or add anything to your boring, pointless life.

If you thought a) that sounds awesome! Or b) well, I guess I might watch that, then congratulations! This is the site, and possibly movie, for you!

Drive Angry doesn’t really go in for that sissy, time consuming ‘outlining the plot’ or ‘explaining why things happen’ rubbish that other, less amazing films do, oh no! After opening with a car chase (naturally), there is a violent amputation before the 2.30 mark. If that doesn’t sent the tone for the next hour and 45 minutes, then the first explosion, that clocks in less than two minutes later does.

Nicolas Cage isn’t the most revered of acting talents, however this is the type of ‘fists do my talking tough mofo’ characters that Hollywood mass produces, so really it’s not too much of an issue. How much of a badass is he? Well…

• He gets shot (at least twice)
• He takes out half a dozen armed men while he is drinking whisky and having sex
• He is a proficient stunt driver and alarmingly handy with a variety of firearms, often combining these two skillsets
• He escaped from Hell, people!

Such a badass!

I’m not sure if there is a real message behind all of the madness, besides a fear of cults/sense of justice. It does drag a little towards the end (1 hour 30 would have been sufficient) but there is plenty of lol etc to keep the watcher occupied including

• A naked woman being punched in the face
• Some fairly gruesome deaths
• Gratuitous boob shots
• An ‘American Pshycho’esque character, ‘The accountant’ who is setting the affairs of Hell back in order
• The classic good looking female sidekick who has one of those bendable personalities that makes her feisty, submissive, vulnerable, athletic..basically anything you need her to be! Such a varied character to portray, and yet, overlooked at the Oscars.
• A controlling cult leader who has convinced dozens he is a messiah, yet he travels in a crappy camper van

So feisty!