The Frankenstein Theory

A halfway decent concept that just got ruined by the execution.

There's not much to say about The Frankenstein Theory except to say that the plot and idea was original but the execution was boring and snooooooooooooore.

Basically a brilliant professor is a long lost descendant of the guy who actually told Mary Shelly about that whole "Frankenstein" thing and it's a true story that was fictionalized and omg we're going to look for the real Frankenstein.... in the Arctic circle.

Okay, not bad. It's okay. It's all good. Except for the part where absolutely nothing NOTHING happens for the first 40 minutes of the movie. It seriously lags and tries to do a "build up" but fails and is very dialogue driven in the beginning.

I guess it's supposed to be suspenseful when the crew that is camping out in the middle of the Alaskan/Canadian wilderness hears wolves all the time------ but it's not. At all. Here's a fucking shocker- You're in the Canadian wilderness. There's wolves. Relax. But the characters freak out like they've never heard a wolf before or never heard a wolf howl or never heard a wolf howl from 10 miles away or never ever ever ever ever ever entertained the fact that if they're hanging out in the Canadain Wilderness..... there may be wolves that are 10 miles away and howl. Seriously they freak out like there's a zombie Nazi about to eat their baby over a fucking wolf howl and that provides the "scary" for the first 50 mins or so.

Lame.

Just to get it out of the way- the dude is right, Frankenstein is there, you never see him really, you never get a good look, you never do anything. The movie is an "OK" styling of the "found footage" genre but it doesn't add anything really. It's mostly dialogue forever, there's no real scares, no real shocks. It just sorta drags on and yeah there's a bit of scary here but not much. It's interesting enough as a concept though that really could have been done a lot better had this movie not been entrusted to a flip phone and a budget of $20 and a 6 pack of Coors.

The characters all lose their minds for no reason, they all freak out, it's loose and stupid. Eventually Franky shows up and our brilliant professor talks to him (off screen of course) and dies. Then he kills everyone (shocking). And hey, Bigfoot/Frankenstein of whatever you want to call him lives.

It's an OK movie. There's some decent acting, some OK parts but for the most part it REALLY doesn't deliver and is probably worth skipping.

Two BMC's cuz it's OKAY.... but mostly eh.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

 

IMDB Summary: Hansel & Gretel are bounty hunters who track and kill witches all over the world. As the fabled Blood Moon approaches, the siblings encounter a new form of evil that might hold a secret to their past.

Okay so if you're looking for a quasi-steampunky style Handsel and Gretel story complete with dope automatic crossbows, foul language, and Gretel spending the movie stuffed into tight leather pants and a corset then here it is.

The "basic" story of Hansel and Gretel is intact... insofar as they kill a witch as kids. That's pretty much where the similarities end.

Flash-forward a few years later and H&G are the biggest, baddest Witch Hunters on the planet, delving out the smack down with martial arts, badass weapons, and quippy one-liners.

So our story brings us to a crappy little town where a bunch of chill'un have gone missing and as it turns out the Witches are planning a big sacrifice then requires a child born from each month of the year, a blood moon, and the heart of a white witch. This ritual will make witches impervious to fire (which is apparently the best way to kill a witch but who didn't know that already right?)

No prob for H&G right? It's a fairly hokey story from there on out that includes some cool moments such as Hansel's need to inject himself periodically because when he was a kid a witch forced him to eat so much candy he got "the sugar sickness."

There's some fairly typical characters as well:

There's the nerdy fan boy who loves H&G (particularly G but who doesn't?) and has been keeping track of their career because he wants to be a witch hunter himself one day.

There's the local sheriff (Peter Stormare who always delivers) who's probably corrupt and resents H&G honing in on his turf and getting all of the glory. (Note: He gets his head squashed by a troll)

And of course there's the darkly attractive badass super witch with a capital B who acts as the main antagonist played by Famke Janssen.



Hot in that "I could devour your liver in a moment if I wanted to" sort of way



Through their adventure they come to find out that H&G's mother was a white (good) witch who ushered them away because the aforementioned Super BWitch up there wanted to carve Gretels heart out to use in their blood moon ritual years ago.... I'm seriously starting to find her less appealing now..

And now it's just poetic justice that H&G have returned here, unknowingly to their hometown, to do battle with a huge gaggle of witches. A huge battle ensues, the witches grab the last child they need to complete their 12, and Hansel winds up grabbing onto a witches broom and getting carried across the countryside whereas Gretel does battle with big bad witch and while I won't say she gets her ass kicked she doesn't exactly come out on top. Undaunted she goes searching for her brother only to be ambushed by the sheriff and his men who proceed to beat the hell out of her until a nearby troll shows up and basically makes soup out of her attackers. Badly beaten the troll carries her to a nearby spring and proceeds to clean her up and tend to her wounds. Gretel, somewhat shocked by this asks troll guy why he helped her.

To be honest, I was really expecting an answer like "I used to be a handsome woodsman but the evil witch turned me into a troll and now I serve her... but when I saw the bad men attacking you it stirred something inside of me, a sense of justice and right and I could not allow it to happen."

Instead the Troll gets up and walks away muttering "Trolls serve witches."

So now you're thinkin' he did the right thing but has to leave her now because Trolls serve witches and he'll get in trouble if he's caught helping the witch hunter, right? RIGHT??

Sigh....things are not looking good to this point. Gretel got her ass beat down twice and now Hansel's hanging in a tree in the middle of the forest where he presumably fell or was dropped by the witch he was ridin' dirty with.

BUT WAIT!...

Early on in the film H&G stop the local sheriff from killing a poor innocent woman who he accused of being a witch (you can see her in the background picture up there), well it turns out she WAS a witch!.... a white one...

Wait... no....

THIS ONE!

 

 

So she just happens to be in the forest where Hansel's hanging and after he falls quite un-cat-like out of the tree she brings him to a nearby spring of healing water to tend to his wounds.....Right so she and Hansel get freak nasty in the water (no real nudity to brag about btw) during which Hansel has no idea if his sister is still alive or not but oh well if hot peasant girls wants to get freak nasty who's he to say no. She unveils her witchy ways to him, casts some spells over Hansels arsenal and he prepares to do battle with the witch crew with only white witch and nerdy fanboy in tow.

 

A big battle ensues complete with H&G kicking ass, taking names, and white witchy up there on a spelled up, super magic Gatling gun that just tears down some bad witch ass.

 

Of course the bad witch escapes the carnage and they give chase only to return to where it all began: The Candy House where it all began. Where H&G bagged their first bitch, er, witch.

 

 

H&G's reaction upon seeing the ol' place again: "You've gotta be fucking kidding me."

 

 

So, big showdown ensues, and big bad witch is not happy.

 

Okay I am seriously not finding you appealing anymore...

 

 

Who wins? Who do you thnk? Complete with quippy one-liners they dispatch the evil witch once and for all and restore peace to the shithole town!

 



 

H&G, Troll Guy, and Nerdy Fanboy metaphorically ride off into the sunset and an epilogue scene shows the foursome are travelling the world dealing pain and good riddance to any witches they may find. Happily Ever After? Maybe. But a sequel is in the works.

 

 

This movie actually had a budget. Like, a real one. Fifty million to be exact so it's not surprising that the look and feel of it is a bit more movie-like then a lot of made-for-tv, direct-to-video "bad" movies out there. There's some star power in Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton (H&G), Peter Stormare is a very reliable, accomplished character actor, and Famke Janssen has been in everything from Bond Movies to X-Men so this is not a list of no-names here. A-List? Not quite but solid B+/A- list actors for sure.

 

At it's heart it's a steampunky type, over the top re-telling of the fairy tale with a lot of campy moments and overdone fight scenes but it's supposed to be that way. It's like the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale had an orgy with The Matrix, The Wizard of Oz, and American McGee's "Alice" and this was the result. There's a mix of modern language, weapons, and more in an old world setting that just sort of works and the movie, while nodding to the fairy tale and of course drawing inspiration from it, doesn't at all try to be something it's not.

 

What it IS is just flat out fun with some good fight scenes, quotable quips and one-liners, very above average special effects for a "bad" movie, and some decent acting as well.

 

If I have but one critique it's that the movie is lacking a little bit in character/plot development and hurries along at a pretty fast pace. The total runtime of the theatrical release is just under 90 minutes (and realize a few minutes of that is opening and closing credits) and I feel that with a solid 10 minutes more or so they could have fleshed out the plot and the characters a little bit more. As it is it's pretty one-dimensional on all fronts which is mostly fine for a movie like this and perhaps the planned sequel will delve into the characters a little bit more.

 

In conclusion this is a total "just go with it" film. You can definitely judge this book by its cover. It's a movie titled "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," you sort of know what you're getting yourself into. It's entertaining and it knows what it is.

 

"We learned a couple of things while we were trapped in that house. One, never walk in to a house made of candy. And two, if you're gonna kill a witch, set her ass on fire."

 

 

Four out of Five Crusader Dudes.

 

 

 

 

 



Sasquatch / The Untold 2002

 

 

 

 

Billionaire Harlan Knowles (Lance Henriksen) runs a big bad techie company whose private jet is on its way to a shareholders meeting when it inexplicably crashes in the Pacific Northwest. Onboard is a brilliant scientist and, of course, his daughter. DUN DUN DUN!!!!!!

 

 

Blah Blah Blah they can't find the plane, blah blah blah Lance sets out with a team of his own to find his daughter. Blah Blah Blah they're stalked by Bigfoot.

 

 

Okay first off half of this movie was filmed on a flip phone. I think they were going for "eerie" and "disjointed" but it just seemed out of focus and badly edited at times.

 

 

The movie is slow moving but does actually build up some good tension as there's plenty of "what was that??" moments before you actually get a good glimpse at the ol' furry guy. Sort of like the original Jaws where you only saw brief glimpses and evidence of the beast before the big "you're gonna need a bigger boat" reveal. This movie does deliver a very similar experience.

 

 

Of course you find out that while ol' Lance does indeed want to find his daughter he might be a liiiiittle more interested in recovering a piece of technology that his company was going to reveal at the shareholders meeting which just so happens to be a super duper instant DNA analyzer which can basically tell you anything about anything so long as you have a DNA sample. Somehow this feels familiar... like Lance Henriksen's primary concern isn't the person.. but the technology....Hmmmmm

 

 

NO RIPLEY! YOU MUST LET ME HAVE IT!



 

But I digress....

 

So there's the usual breathtakingly original characters:

 

1. The nerdy computer guy who works for Lance who's along because he's the tech guy and conveniently just happens to be a bigfoot buff

 

2. The celebrity outdoorsman who supposedly is like the John Wayne of outdoor survival and hunting and tracking but turns out to be a big fake and doesn't really attempt to prove otherwise as he spends the entire movie drinking and generally being incompetent. AKA The guy you know in the first 5 seconds is going to die. (Hint: He does).

 

3. The token "hot chick" with ulterior motives who want to bang Lance for personal gain but mostly incurs the unwanted advances of nerdy computer guy.

 

4. The local guide who is far more competent than the celebrity outdoorsman. AKA the guy you know is going to live (Hint: He does).

 

5. The token smart, not really hot chick who... honestly I'm not sure what purpose she serves. She lives though.

 

So slowly but surely the group starts to come around on the whole bigfoot thing after a series of OMG moments (one of which being token hot chick gets dragged off into the wild) and they realize what they're truly up against.

 

They find the plane, everyone's dead, but the piece of technology that Lance wanted is still intact and they piece together that the plane went down for some reason (dismissed as some kind of electrical failure with no explanation), hit a bigfoot on the way down, and then were stalked and killed by other bigfoots for revenge but NOT before Lance's daughter shmeered some dead bigfoot blood into their fancy machine and more or less proved the whole "Bigfoot is real" thing.

 

So daughter is dead, tech is recovered, time to go home right? No, Bigfoots mommy... or daddy... or brother... cousin? Whatever, is out to get them for revenge and because that piece of tech and the proof of their existence can not return to civilization.

 

Oh and token hot chick decides to rip off Lance and grab the device and book it like hell 1,000 miles back to civilization without the guide and without any training to do so.... right, okay, she gets beat down by Big Bad Bigfoot Brown.

 

Lance basically vows that the device has to get back to his company or his company is done for while his remaining companions- token not hot chick, nerdy guy, local guide dude plead with him to leave the device behind because then Bigfoot will let them live.

 

Indiana.... Let it Go....

 

 

...Which he of course doesn't and goes off charging through the woods on his own, the billionaire badass with a sniper rifle, firing wildly into the air while Bigfoot is stalking him basically taunting him to come out and get some....

 

 

Which he does.

 

 

1,000 year old Lance Henriksen gets into a tango with what is essentially The Hulk but with a lot of hair and somehow doesn't get destroyed. Instead after getting knocked out, Bigfoot drags him to the burial sight of his fallen comrade to which Lance puts two and two together and realizes they're an advanced society that only killed his people (and daughter) out of revenge for what happened to his kin. Lance, having a fatherly moment, realizes this, puts a bullet through the device and leaves it behind. Bigfoot lets him leave.

 

Epilogue: Lance, token not hot chick, nerdy guy, and local guide dude make it back to civilization. Nerdy computer guy starts saying they were attacked by Bigfoot, everyone else denies it and basically has him committed, Bigfoot is still a legend and undiscovered as far as the world knows.

 

 

Aaaaaaaand scene.

 

 

First off, the movie is fairly decent despite the really bad choice in camera work and editing as mentioned above. Other than that the acting is all pretty decent. Lance Henriksen is no stranger to the acting game and delivers a solid enough performance given a limited character to work with. He's his usual sorta quiet, soft-spoken self for the most part. He's a reliable actor and no problems there.

 

 

The rest is all decent working actors that play their parts, albeit they're all pretty much stereotypes of various characters but hey, it's a B movie.

 

 

Here's my boggle.... Bigfoot knows that the device is dangerous to them?

 

Well, no, one character offers "He might not know that the device is dangerous but he senses danger from us."

 

 

.....right... sooo he still doesn't know the box they're carrying is dangerous, right?

 

 

Apparently he does because Lance takes off on his own, device in hand, while the three other survivors escape unmolested..

 

 

Except for the part where the device was hanging out inside the downed plane for two months and ol Biggie could have gotten to it at anytime....

 

 

Or when token hot chick grabs it and takes off, Bigfoot beats her rotten.... and leaves the device right there laying next to her.

 

 

But I guess ol' Size 19 needed Lance to understand. Sure.

 

 

Overall not too bad of a film I guess, except for the crappy editing it more or less delivered with decent acting, albeit not great. Some of the scenery was very nice indeed, and when you finally see Bigfoot it doesn't just look like a dude in a big monkey suit.

 

 

Very brief boobs, but nothing to write home about.

 

 

 



Three out of Five Caped Dudes. Mostly because Lance Henriksen delivered, the supporting cast was adequate, and the Bigfoot makeup didn't suck.

 

 

 

 

Scourge - 2008

 

IMDB Plot Synopsis:

 

An ancient pestilence called The Scourge has been set free in a small town after being entombed in a church's masonry for a century and a half. As bodies rapidly pile up, nothing stands between the spawning Scourge and the rest of the town except our young heroes Scott and Jessie who rediscover their love for each other in the process.

Okay, just to kick things off here's something plucked from the asshole of Netflix. These days my Netflix recommendations read like back page of Fangoria magazine. That is to say stuff you've never heard of... or God Bless you if you have.

The plot summary up there pretty much sums it up. It's got all the makings of your typical horror movie. You've got the bad boy who wants to get his life around but of course once people start turning up dead the local sheriff (who's shockingly corrupt and has it out for him) thinks he's gone on a killing spree, the hot (eeeeehhhhhhh) chick who's feelings are rekindled for him and is the only one who believes him, and a lot of people farting and belching.... ew.

Basically this squidly looking thing (the "scourge") enters through your belly and makes you want to eat... a lot... although it's implied that you'd like to eat people instead of sticks of butter (which one guy does) but hey... whattayagonna do AMIRIGHT?

Once you're infected.... I guess because it went in through your belly it makes you belch and fart and want to eat a lot... btw this is not supposed to be a comedy so the sophomoric humor of everyone going around making toots is sort of lost as they play it pretty straight. Except when the hero and a hot chick get infected of course. Seems the makers decided that hero and hot chick shouldn't fart and belch lest the audience not take them... I dunno, seriously?

So this is sort of a possession / parasite / ancient evil / body snatchers kinda movie which kind of holds up pretty well despite mediocre acting, so-so effects, and a pretty unoriginal plot.

 

Regardless, it's not a BAD bad movie but it's nothing special. The plot sort of just moves along with a lot of suspension of disbelief that's pretty common in these types of movies. "Oh people are dropping dead and bleeding from their eyes and disintegrating? This small town kid must be responsible for it!"

 

Because that's how every small town 20-something chooses to kill people... With his special eye-bleedy melty powers.

 

And of course there's the mad dash on our hero's part to find the latest infected person before it's too late and of course, upon finding them he calmly explains to her "You've seen the reports of people dying on tv, right? I have reason to believe you might be infected because you came in contact with the guy who attacked you that's on the ground bleeding and disintegrating 3 inches from you. Let's call 911 and get you some help."

 

....oh wait, instead of doing that thing he creepily slinks up to her and her friends, grabs her and says "you're going to die if you don't come with me" without explaining a damn thing. So naturally her friend cold cocks him and the sheriff shows up to arrest him. Which brings us to... 

 

The part where our hero gets locked up by the sheriff conveniently with the latest infected person and despite being given an opportunity to show the sheriff that shit just got real he pretty much straight up lets the sheriff get infected (btw at this point it's pretty established that despite a giant squidy thing jumping into your belly the infected people aren't aware they're infected). Oh boy, now the monster's in charge of the police force!

 

A lot of BS "why the hell would they do that?" moments but come on... it's a B Movie.

 

There's a very small amount of comic relief from a big fat reporter guy, a creepy demon slayer dude who despite showing up about 1/3 of the way through the movie doesn't lift a toenail to help anyone, and a very "The End.... or IS IT?" Kind of ending.

 

Good Points:

The acting is OK for a low budget movie considering none of the actors had many credits to their name at the time or since.

Directing, camera work, and editing are also OK considering the same could be said for the crew.

SFX are a LITTLE better than you'd expect for a movie that probably had a budget of about $20 and a handful of lottery scratchers.

I can forgive and overlook a lot in my B movies and I expect very little from them other than to be amused.

Bad Points:

Everything about the good points is just OK. Nothing really blows you away.

R-Rated Movie and no one gets naked. Seriously. One of the hallmarks of B-Movies is that you can get some hot, wannabe famous actress to take her top off but sadly none of them do. Seriously though the R-Rating pretty much comes from the language, violence, and gore- the latter of which there really isn't much of. They proooobably could have cut this down to a PG-13 without losing much. Although at one point this happens:

 

Which probably covered about 90% of the SFX budget...

 



The vulgar actions of the infected were pretty unnecessary and again, once hot chick (who's really not that hot) and hero get infected they just sorta drop that act because I suppose they realized how unappetizing it would be to have our hero farting and belching while he proclaims his love for the female lead. Likewise when the hot (ehhhhhh) chick gets infected she decides to dress slutty and go to a club to seduce a guy so she can infect him. And by the way on that- apparently everyone in this town loves blowjobs because whenever an infected, shambling, bleeding person who can't walk straight or talk comes up to them they immediately assume they're going to get blown.... And that's how the infected gets close enough to spit squidward in to their belly. Right.

So mark that down - hero acts heroic when infected, hot (ehhhhh) chick acts slutty, non-leads burp and fart, and oral sex is really popular in this town.

The movie didn't lag which is a good thing because if it was much longer than the hour and 29 minutes that it is I'm not sure it would have added much to it. The characters are more or less well portrayed, if not fulfilling their very typical movie archetypes, and the story is engaging albeit pretty typical.

Worth a watch for a decently bad movie that somewhat delivers. But don't expect too much.

Two Out Of Five Bad Movie Crusaders.

Bad Movie Crusader

Ever since I was a kid... wait, that's not true...

When I was sixteen I snuck into a drive-in movie theater... wait, that's not true either.


I was on vacation with my family when I was a kid and saw some movie on the television about aliens that looked like big brains that sucked the life out of people and wanted to take over the planet.

I guess you could say I was hooked after that.

I like bad movies. A lot.

But not just bad movies. The bad GOOD ones. The ones that know they're bad, don't take themselves too seriously, and are funny or fun, or so outlandishly over the top that they deliver the good entertainment-wise.

In other words, this aint no place for Gone with the Wind... a good movie, granted, but a good GOOD movie. Not good bad.

Here we're contending with the good bad ones... or the bad good ones. The sort of thing that SyFy runs at 4:00 in the morning or you'd find in the bargain bin at that video store that's finally going out of business after hanging on a little too long in the age of Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, etc...

Remember Blockbuster? Yeah, your kids won't.

So we will delve forth in these pages to explore some of the best and worst that is out there. And trust me, there's a lot.

This is gonna be fun.