The Arnold Project, Part X: Mas

I haven't done anything to advance the Arnold Project for more than a year now. As a penance (gift-hungry children must do penance to get out of the Naughty list by Christmas, right?), it's more than fitting to take a look at the one movie often held as the very worst Arnold ever did: 1996's holiday classic Jingle All The Way!



Jingle All The Way, directed by Brian Levant, comes from the notorious period in Arnold Schwarzenegger's career when he tried his hand in playing the everyman in several family movies and comedies. And since Arnold isn't as much an actor as a presence, this was a horrible idea to begin with. He is as ordinary as a purple hippo dressed as Batman using the subway.

In this one, Arnold "plays" Howard Langston, a career dad who's never there for his son Jamie (Jake Lloyd, the worst actor ever to play Darth Vader). When Howard misses his son's important karate practice, he has to resort to making thin promises to win him back. In this case, he promises to get Jamie an action figure based on his favorite television super hero, Turbo Man, for Christmas.

The Finnish title for this film translates as "My Father is Turbo Man". FYI.

But as it happens, he doesn't remember the whole thing until Christmas Eve. He rushes to get the doll, even though he had promised his family to take them to the annual Christmas Parade. While Howard is gone, his sleazy next-door neighbor Ted (Phil Hartman) moves in to woo his wife Liz (Rita Wilson). Howard finds almost every departement store cleared out, since the action figure has been a major hit. Along with another desperate dad, Myron Larabee (Sinbad), they find a drastic measure after another to get their claws on the figure. But their quarreling and fighting over it foils the plan for the both of them again and again.

This is a very zaccharine-coated, plastic Hollywood dreck at its worse. But even though it's constantly annoying, it is also quite entertaining. Phil Hartman (RIP) could do funny in his sleep, and his considerable talents keep any scenes with Ted afloat, even if he hams it up. At least hartman seems like he's having fun. Arnold grunts and moans his way through. It is always fun to see Arnold in pain, and there's plenty of comical violence to go around here.

This is a film where there's two scenes where Arnold punches a midget so hard he flies all across the room. Arnold also fights mall santas, super villains, and punches Sinbad plenty of times. If he'd also kick Jake Lloyd's ass in some point then this parade of Arnold vs. considerably weaker opponents would be perfect. (He also fights a giant Super Santa played by WWE wrestler Big Show) The money shot is when he knocks out a reindeer. In the next scene he's feeding his neighbor's hot-tempered, certainly dangerous reindeer some beer. Y'know, because alcohol certainly soothes the wild soul.

At some point during the writing process of the movie the point must have been satirizing the commercialization of Christmas. The most astonishing thing, and simultaneously the most interesting thing about the film in general, is how the final product totally dismisses this idea. So while the film features adults fighting tooth-and-nail over the possession of a mass-produced, branded toy, the film doesn't give any alternative as to why they shouldn't be doing this. Instead, Howard feels remorse as to not have been a well enough father to spend his money on corporate Christmas presents earlier.

The measure of a good father in the movie is how good one keeps his promise. So, when one promises to give a certain branded, mass-produced action figure for Christmas, nothing else will suffice. So, in other words, if the child doesn't get exactly what he wants, it's the fault of the parents and they should feel guilty. I have a feeling Howard's kid will grow up to be kind of an asshole.

I detest many American Christmas movies, because they give such a plastic, saccharine, disgustingly commercial coating to a holiday that should be about love. The message of love is always ham-fistedly put to the film in the most obvious way possible, when it's clear that the shiny lights and wacky, easily sellable hijinks are what's the emphasis.

The oddity of the film makes it certainly watchable, and ironically funny as well. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it for anyone, but it's certainly in the same league as Batman & Robin as Arnold movies so terrible you have to see them to understand how tasteless film entertainment can be.

★ or ★★★★★

Merry Christmas from The Last Movieblog! Stay Classy!

Xmas Special: Grey Christmas

Yay, Christmas! Last year, I raised holiday spirits throughout the world with my classic Killer Santas post, which took a look at murderous Kris Kringles. With this year, of course there was no comeptition as to what to write abou. Why, take a page from Dangermouse's playbook and mix up the darkest Beatles and lightest Jay-Z's of Christmas movies. It looks as though this Christmas will be very white here in Christmas, so we'll go through this chronologically.

White Christmas (1954)
Director: Michael Curtiz

This is a classic Christmas tale by none other than by the director of Casablanca! It's one of those musicals that is based on a pre-existing song everyone knows and tells the story as to why there's special power and meaning within it. In this case it's of course the titular Yuletime clambake (the movie's exact phrase) that's rather touchingly covered by Crosby in the beginning, and again rather cheesily in the final scene by the whole cast.

Captain Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) is a WWII soldier that aims to boost the morales of their fellow brothers-in-arms by arranging a Christmas song concert. This act is soon shot down by his commanding officer. Soon after, private Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) saves his life at the expense of a broken arm. Wallace asks if there's anything he could do for Davis. As it happens, Davis saw his concert and has written a number of songs for a duo to sing. When V Day comes, and the war ends, the duo becomes a successful song and dance -act, touring the United States.

The entertainers meet a sister act, Betty (Rosemary Clooney) and Judy Haynes (Vera-Ellen). Davis wants to play the match-maker, but Wallace is a bit wary of their charms. The both pairs are booked into the same hotel for a Christmas show, Vermont Inn. The lodge is about to be demolished, and since their old war General is the current owner, they all agree to raise the money to keep the hotel opened.

This film certainly has some of that old-time charm that's hard to imitate. The colors, sets and acting talents are very old-fashined but still quite stylish. That being said, the romantic comedy angle runs along quite familiar tracks and raise few smiles any more. Most of the songs are also pretty forgettable. The film is salvaged by the charisma and talent of the leading actors, and the charms and talent of the leading ladies. It's not one of the most obvious Christmas classics, since it has plenty of un-Christmas related material thrown in, but it's well worth a look anyhow.

★★★

Black Christmas (1974)
Director: Bob Clarke

Bob Clarke's original Christmas horror movie is a clear inspiration to John Carpenter's Halloween, from the killer's POW shots to the ominous holiday set-up. It has plenty of innovative ideas and good scenes, but the problem is that they don't really band together to be a tight enough whole.

It should be tight enough to not be able to breathe.

A sorority house is emptying up as the girl students leave off for the holidays. Only a few young women stay to spend Christmas there. Shown to the audience, a deranged murderer is staying at the attic of the house, spying on its occupants. While lounging around in the sorority house, the girls start to get ominous phone calls that sound a bit weird to come from a sheer pervert.

Unknown to most, Jess (Olivia Hussey) is pregnant to her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea). She wants to get an abortion, yet he is adamantly against the idea. Meanwhile, the local police Lt. Fuller (John Saxon) investigates the death of a 13-year-old runaway and starts to get more and more worried that the sorority girls might be the next victims.

The film is very patchy. Especially the extended comedy segments are very dated just dire. The film dwells so long on a rookie cop spelling the name of a captured hooker F-E-L-L-A-T-I-O, that the audience dies of boredom before the punchline. Even Carry On films would be ashamed of that scene.

No! No! No Fellatio jokes!

Clarke forgets tension building to extended periods, but doesn't offer much in place, and can't pick up on where he left off.The opening is very effective an puts the audience into the right mood, but waiting for the next thing to happen is direly long. The killer lurks the whole movie in the attic, while tensions build between characters downstairs. At the risk of spoiling a little, in the end, he still kind of lingers on. The idea of evil remaining is nice, but in this case the missing out on any closure doesn't help when it feels like nothing much had happened anyway.  At least several characters resolve their differences.  

You better not fight, you'd better watch out...

★★ 1/2

Black Christmas (2006)
Director: Glen Morgan

Horror remakes with minimum effort are a plague nowadays, and usually not even worth a glance, let alone 90 minutes of precious time. Since the original Black Christmas is so dull seen by modern eyes, it would be at last one where an update potentially has the chance for improvement. Well, the modern version certainly isn't better, but it isn't completely worthless, either. That is, if one happens to like Friday the 13th sequels where there is little interest in characters or plot, but heavily on how gorily people can be offed.

The modern Black Christmas has a very similar story in that it also features a killer preying on girl students spending their Christmas at the sorority house. But this time, the murdered has a more detailed history, not to mention a skin condition that makes him look like That Yellow Bastard segment from Sin City. He is Billy Lentz, a maniac that killed his whole family in the early 80's. Now, he's escaped from the local lunatic asylum and arriving back home to Christmas. While he doesn't like the girls inhabiting his beloved house, at the same time he has an obsession on family, and wants to make the girls parts of his new family.

Writer-director Glen Morgan can't build tension worth shit. The first half of the movie is simply horrendous, giving a needlessly detailed back-story to the serial killer on the loose, and having seemingly endless discussions between its bland main characters. All the charisma and interesting characteristics of the original BC have been surgically removed from the girls, but this time around there are plenty of more of them, and no focus on the police.

Things take a turn for the better when a deranged killer starts baking Christmas cookies made from human flesh. From there on, the film takes a firm tongue-in scene twist. The paper-thin characters turn into paper maché, since otherwise the kills would make absolutely no sense. Thus, an icicle falling from the roof can pierce an adult's head, a skate thrown at a close range can split a head into two, and people can be impaled on a Christmas tree. This stupidity carries the rest of the movie somewhat funnily, even if there are no signs of any originality at any point of this thing. All in all this really contains little anything that wouldn't be available elsewhere more entertainingly. Best stick to your old-school slashers for the holidays then, kiddies.

★★

Xmas Special: Killer Santas

Ho Ho Hos! It's almost Christmas, so I hope you all have been good little boys and girls. For Santa Claus may seem like a jolly old man on the outside, but you should also remember that he sees you when you're sleeping and he knows when you're awake. So you better watch out, you better not cry and you better not pout. I'm telling you why. Santa is one word away from Satan and he's coming to YOUR town.

Christmas Evil a.k.a. You Better Watch Out a.k.a. Terror in Toyland (USA, 1980)
Director: Lewis Jackson

Better Watch Out... Better Not Cry... ...Or You May DIE!
OK, let me start out by saying that Santa Slashers are actually one of the sleaziest subgenres this side of pornography. They gleefully destroy what you like about Christmas (such as love and a feeling of safety) and are usually of a pretty bad taste. So much so that this one that started the whole genre is one of the favorite movies of John Waters himself. But unlike you would imagine, Christmas Evil is not actually just a carbon copy of Halloween with the killer of teenagers just dressed up as Santa Claus. It is mostly a movie about a middle-aged man breaking down.

Our lovable protagonist.

As a young boy, Harry Stadling Jr. loves christmas. He stays up with his younger brother Phil, and mother to see Santa Claus putting toys in their stockings and give gifts. But Harry's Christmas takes a turn for the worse, as he later at night stumbles downstairs to find Santa (actually his dad) giving mum cunnilingus. Phil tells him Santa isn't real, but he doesn't want to believe so. In the end Harry cuts his hand with a broken snow globe.

Years later, the adult Harry (Brandon Maggart) works at a toy factory. He's obsessed with spreading Christmas cheer, and in particular about whether children have been naughty or nice. He dresses up as Santa and spies on children. When he realizes his coworkers think of him as a "schmuck" for trying to make the best toys for good little children, and that they exploit him for their own benefits, Harry has a total mental breakdown. He goes on a big murder spree dressed as Santa, killing a bunch of obnoxious yuppies he finds to be "naughty", and starting to break into peoples' houses. The only one that can stop him is his brother Phil (Jeffrey DeMunn).

They whole film is shot very smutty and has a feeling of being made as a B-feature for a drive-in theatre. The pace is also very slow, and we have to endure longs scenes of middle-aged soul-searching and sleazy mind-melting and voyeurism. It is a very cynical film, seeing that Christmas magic is not seen to have any place in the adult world. Christmastime is dark, with ruthless yuppies having all the fun, and the poorer class confined in the misery of huge workloads. In that, it is an attack of middle-class America. But as a comedy, it is a failure and not that funny. It is also not very memorable in any way. I've seen the movie three times, the last time about a week ago, and I still had to check the film's plot elsewhere.

★★ 1/2

Silent Night, Deadly Night (USA, 1984)
Director: Charles E. Sellier, Jr.

The most famous of Santa Slashers steals a lot from Christmas Evil (which had by then fallen into obscurity) and your basic heirs of Halloween and holiday-themed horrors. While Christmas Evil at least had high satiric ambitions, the ambition for Silent Night, Deadly Night is to make loads of money with minimum effort. And it worked, there has been four sequels to the thing, and I think a remake can't be far behind in today's world. I recently reviewed Part II, that actually re-hashes most of the key scenes of this film.

Christmas Eve 1971 sees young Billy Chapman with his family (including Baby Ricky) driving to a old folk's home to meet with his grandfather. The old man seems to be a total vegetable, not speaking to any of the adults. But when Billy is alone with gramps, the oldster is found to be very much alive, foul-mothedly warning Billy about being naughty. Santa is watching, you see, and will leave no bad deed go unpunished. Billy takes this threat to heart. On their way home the family stops to pick up a hitch-hiker dressed as Santa who has had car trouble. But the man is actually an robber on the run, killing Billy's dad, and raping his mum before slitting her throat. He attempts to kill Billy as well, but the boy manages to get away from him.

Billy grows up to be an unbalanced youngster in an orphanage, drawing pictures of carnage. This gains unfavorable attention from the Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin). Billy happens to see a nun having sex with the janitor in the cupboard. Mother Superior wovs to avenge such a sinful act and tells Billy too that bad deeds will be punished. Even later, as an 18-year-old toy store assistant, Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) is having a tough time having to play the store Santa at a christmas party. When he finds a coworker attempting to rape a cashier, he snaps and becomes a axe-wielding maniac bent on murdering those he views to be "naughty". Which mostly means those having sex.

"I'll take my sexual frustrations out on topless girls in never nude-shorts."

One really can't say that Silent Night, Deadly Night is in any way suspenseful, or even that well-made. But as in Christmas Evil, the film is meant to be heavily ironic, almost a black humour slapstick comedy. So we have a topless girl being impaled on wall-mounted a deer head's antlers, and a sledder arriving downhill with his head cut off. The kills are stupid as all hell, but all the while entertaining. The film does take a while to get going, as it relies on two seperate flashback sequences. Fortunately, these scenes are as fun and dumb as the rest of the film, and entertaining even when there aren't any Christmas-themed killings going on. It's a high regard for a B-grade slasher in my opinion. There's also loads of comedy of the police being stupid enough to not recognize the Santa killer, thus killing innocents. The opportunity for a sequel is opened in the final scene.

★ or ★★★★★

Santa's Slay (USA, 2005)
Director: David Steiman

A more modern take on the comedic Santa murders comes from 2005, when someone convinced production companies that a Brett Ratner-produced film where WWE wrestler Bill Goldberg plays Santa as the son of Satan would be a good idea. It has a very off-putting ironic aura around it that makes many modern comedies such a chore to watch. But it does have a share of so-bad-they're-good jokes and one or two genuinely funny ones, too.

The film's version of Santa lost a wager with an angel way back when, and thus has had to give out presents for a 1000 years. But that time has now passed and Santa is free to wreck havock at Christmastime like the Son of Satan he is. The teenaged Nicolas Yuleson (groan... played by Douglas Smith) finds out his grandfather is actually the angel that tricked Santa before, and thus the family becomes the target of Santa's revenge. Nicolas and his girlfriend (Emilie DeRavin) have to find a way to stop the monstrous Santa before he kills them. The film's kills include someone getting a candy cane punched through the head from the back and then slammed to a wall, and a guy getting choked with a Christmas wreath and a nifty wrestling bodyflip.

"This'll make a great gimmick for my match against The Iron Sheik and André the Giant!"

Like you can see from the title, the film loves various Christmas-themed puns. As those bad puns also kill people, it's almost as if The Joker had written the film. The viewer may die too, not from laughing, but from punching him/herself on the head too many times. But if one can manage a film with roots so deeply in obnoxiousness, it may even be reccommendable. For one, the opening sequence sees Fran Drescher getting burned alive and then drowned in a bowl of Eggnog, and Chris Kattan getting impaled. James Caan also cameos, but wisely left his name off the credits. And I have a weird love for WWE wrestlers on film, no matter how bad they are. There's got to be at least some asskicking involved, after all.

★★

The Saint (Sint, Netherlands, 2010)
Director: Dick Maas

All countries don't get visits from Santa Claus. In the Netherlands, gifts are given by Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas. And wouldn't you know, they got a comedic horror film where he's an evil beast of the night, wrecking havock and murdering innocents. But this is done on December 5th. The resulting film was the most watched in the history of Netherlands.

In the film, Niklas was actually a murderous pirate who liked to dress up as a priest in the 15th century. Getting fed up with his crew's blood-filled pillaging, the citizens of one village burned all the pirates alive. But his evil remained, and the undead Niklas begun to seek bloody vengeance every year when their death date happened on a night of full moon after that. In 1968, the rampaging Niklas, riding on his fire-breathing, flying horse, brutally murders hundreds. Among the victims are the entire family of young Goert, who happened to be out when it happened. In the modern day Goert (Bert Luppes) is now a police officer. He tries to warn his colleagues and people that Niklas's bloody crusade would go on on December 5th, but he's not believed.

Meanwhile group of college students are having their usual troubles of who loves who and whos fucking who. Frank (Edgbert Jan Weeder) is particularly popular with the ladies. At December 5th he's earning extra money with his friends moonlighting as St. Nick and his Black Petes. But they get lost, and his friends get brutally murdered. While Frank survives in the nick of time, he is arrested as he's suspected to be the holiday killer. Goert has to find a way to recruit him to help him stop the terror of Saint Nicholas once and for all.

"It burns! But, since this is a promotional image of the film, I can't possibly die here, right?"

The film has too many characters, and suffers for a lack of focus. While we should follow Frank's journey, we often find ourselves where-ever The Saint happens to be butchering people. Niklas (Huub Stapel) is not seen enough and is too distant to become a horror movie icon who could pull a main character role as well as being an antagonist. The film is one of the kind that pays tribute to numerous 80's flicks, and in particular the Evil Dead trilogy seems to be close to Maas's heart. The flick is well-staged and looks very good indeed. There are explosions and flying horses that look as good as they would in any modern Hollywood film, if not better. Maas also manages to raise some suspense from his ridiculous idea. But as in many horror-comedies, when one of the sides work somewhat, the other doesn't work at all. The comedy in the film is quite bad, with it being too much in love with its mythological background. Even Santa's Slay managed to handle a complicated back story and enough gags better. The kills are suitably bloody, but not really Christmas-related. All in all, best stick to Rare Exports, even if that film's quantity of Evil Santa screentime is lacking.

★★ 1/2

So sorry if I scarred you for life with this, and have a truly peaceful and wonderful Christmastime. Peace out!

The Worst of the Worst

Well, I've reached 100 blog posts with this text. Much as I hate to be self-congratulatory or celebrate meaningless milestones, I still figure it's as good time as any to do something cool I've wanted to do for a while. The clip here (by Schulte Fiajo) has been watched in YouTube for over 2 million times – and that's just for this crappy-quality version. The scenes in it are certainly amazing, but how are the actual films? Luckily I've seen every one of them, so here's the rundown. Hope you haven't stuffed up on Thanksgiving, because there's a big plate of Turkeys coming your way right here!

Enter the Ninja (USA, 1981)
Director: Menahem Golan

This film was actually one of the first reviewed for this blog (back when I had little to no idea where to go with it). So it stands to reason to take a fresh new look at it. Actually, compared to most of the other films on the video, Enter the Ninja is quite coherent. In fact, even compared to Golan's two other ninja films starring Sho Kosugi, Enter the Ninja is practically art.

Franco Nero stars as army vet Cole, who has decided to join a ninja academy. Because he's white, he dresses up in a white costume. Disposable evil ninjas dress in red, and Cole's chief rival Hasegawa (Kosugi) dresses in the classic ninja black. The film begins as Cole runs through a forest, killing off red ninjas and outsmarting Hasegawa. Cole's goal is to fake-assassinate the school's sensei. He succeeds, earning him to graduate with flying mark. This earns him the envy of Hasegawa.

And with these ten opening minutes, we have nearly all the ninja content that is actually contained in the film. The rest plays more like a western, with Cole helping out his land-owning war buddy Frank Landers (Alex Courtney) in a ranch in the Philippines. As it happens, the evil plantation owner Charles Venarious (Christopher George) wants the land and sends groups of thugs to persuade Landers to change his mind or die. When Cole always beats 'em up, Venarious comes up with more and more nefarious plans, finally just hiring Hasegawa.

There isn't much note-worthy about the film. It's an OK friday-night film if one doesn't expect anything much. Characters float in and out of the picture with little to no explanation. Cole gets away with a lot of assaults and murders, but then again, the police force in the Philippines is either non-existent or owned by Venarious. Franco Nero has laughably horrible dialogue, but manages to pull the character off. Nero proves himself to be multiple times cooler than many other Golan-Globus main actors such as Chuck Norris, for example.

★★ 1/2

Scene and context: Worst Death scene

This is a big spoiler as it is what happens just before Cole's final showdown with Hasegawa. Venarious has his usual main-bad-guy threat-speech while Cole is lurking behind a corner. But Cole proves that a ninja star is faster than a revolver. My DVD version had this scene cut shorter. I suspect it is a cut version, which would explain why the film never showed what happened to the fat, one-armed thug boss.

Alluda Mazaaka...! (a.k.a. Alluda Majaka, India, 1995)
Director: Satyanarayana E.V.V.

As mad as Bollywood films might be, they hold no cake to the cheery insanity that goes on in the films made in the Southern Telegu territories. Chiranjeevi is the biggest star of the area. During the mid-90's he was so popular that his fans threatened to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire in front of movie theatres if his new film would not be released. The problem with Alluda Mazaaka was not it's magnificent action scenes, but rather the sexually suggestive banter. The film's plot itself was pretty hard to understand (for me, at least), so I have to rely on second-hand sources to make sense of it.

Sitaramudu (Chiranjeevi) is the son of a village leader and the owner of a kick-ass moustache. One day in the countryside, he encounters the two daughters of a wealthy businessman. The city girls are spoiled, snotty and picky, so he decides to teach them a humiliating lesson. While he's playing around with them, both the girls fall in love with Sitara. At the same time, Sitara's sister Malliswari (Ooha) has gotten pregnant with a sleazy lawyer Shivaramakrishna (Giribabu). This makes Sitaramudu's father kill himself, and the boy to vow revenge and to get the two legally married. But Shivaramakrishna is only after the lands owned by the family, and plots to get rid of both brother and sister. Malliswari is framed as a prostitute and Sitara as a cop killer. Sitara thus decides to disguise himself as the wealthy Mr. Toyota to find out Shivaramakrishna's plans and which of the girls truly loves him.

The three-hour film has so many plot twists, scheming and romantic relationship tangles that it's hard to keep up. It also moves along at a lighning speed, and only stops to have some pretty funny coreographed song-and-dance numbers. They also pretty liberally borrow from western music, and it's worth to hear at least the Indian version of Queen's We Will Rock You. But all of the film's action stunts are absolutely fantastic, with some very cool stunts, explosions, car flips and horseback chases you wouldn't see in any Hollywood film (one of the reasons why is probably because the horses have to do pretty painful-looking falls). It is constantly inventive, crazy and badass. Another very popular scene is the tractor stunt. The film climaxes in a boat chase so massive and so cool, thet Face/Off and Miami Vice pale in comparison. The film is nothing short of amazing during these scenes, but after the mid-film break, there is a little too much talking and following of the too-hard-to-follow plot. The comedy in the film doesn't really work for me, altough I do know people who laughed their asses off even to those.

★★★★

Scene and context: The worst stunt

The stunning chase scene which features this stunt, starts off the film. The chase itself also features a number of other fancy things you can do with a horse. There's also incredible car flips and explosions so big, even Michael Bay would think they'd be overkill if he wasn't so busy masturbating. At the beginning, Sitaramudu (Chranjeevi) in police custody. When he hears the girl he loves is about to marry, he does a daring escape to stop the wedding. We then step back in time to see how we got to that point.

Troll 2 (Italy, 1990)
Director: Claudio Fragasso (as Drake Floyd)

So legendary is this film in badness, that documentaries have been made from it. While director Claudio Fragasso (of Zombi 3 and Scalps fame) claims that his film is strongly ironic, what is clear that the cast and crew of the film had no idea of it at the time of the shoot. Blame the language barrier between Italians and Americans, but we got some of the worst acting, weirdest logic and oddest looking creatures and set-pieces in entertainment history.

The young Joshua Waits (Michael Stephenson) is listening to a  bedtime story told by his Grandpa Seth (Robert Ormsby). He hears about the bloodthirsty goblins (there are no actual trolls in the film) that use trickery to lure people into their forest. There the foul creatures can magically turn their captives into half-man half-vegetable hybrids and eat them. The next day, Josh's family is going on a vacation to a country village called Nilbog. While Josh tries to warn that goblins may be after the strange countryhouse deal they've got, no one listens to him. Why? Well, Grandpa Seth has been dead all along and Josh has been talking to a g-g-g-ghost!

At the same time Josh's sister Connie (Holly Waits) is struggling with her boyfriend Elliot (Jason Wright). While she would want to just have sex with him, Elliot prefers to wear micro-shorts and hang out in a trailer-van with his buddies. Nevertheless, the teenaged boys follow the family to Nilbog, but soon most of them are preyed by the evil shape-shifting goblins and their queen Creedence Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed).

If the film has a message, it wants to say that vegetarism is bad and inhuman, and the only way to save the world is to believe in fairy tales and go straight for a baloney sandwich. Every time someone eats a vegetable in the film, something bad happens. Some campiness can be deducted from some character names (Sherrif Gene Freak?), but it's all so badly done, it's hardly relevant whether the makers had their tongue in cheek or not. The acting varies from incompetent (all of the Waits) to manic overacting in a Helena Bonham-Carter drag (Reed). The troll masks look like they were made by kindergarteners, and in every shot they're in it's fun to spot the single troll mask that has goofy eyeballs in it. The film is pretty funny to be watched with a couple of beers and a group of snarky friends. But as I've seen the bloody thing for three times, I can promise that it reduces in charm with every viewing.

★ (or ★★★★★)

Scene and context: Worst reaction

Arnold (Darren Ewing) is the horniest of the film's teenaged boys. When he sees a young girl running for her life in the forest, he attempts to tackle her. Only when he realized she's being chased by blood- (or sap-)thirsty trolls does he realize that they should run. They seek refuge in Gielgud's house and get a glass of fruit juice to drink, courtesy of their hostess. The truth is soon revealed as the girl melts into a pile of goo upstairs, and Arnold grows roots which render him immobile. Then the trolls come out...

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (USA, 1987)
Director: Lee Harry

While a little less known than Troll 2, SNDN2 has also the dubious honors of being named one of the worst horror films ever made. While I wouldn't actually go that far, it is better to not have seen the first film in the series in a while while watching this. For the first 40 minutes or so, Silent 2 is little more than the clip show equivalent of a horror film, reminiscing everything that happened in the first.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (which I will also be reviewing soon) ends as the killer santa is shot at the feet of his kid brother, Ricky Caldwell. This of course hinted at a sequel already. We open as the all-grown-up Ricky (Eric Freeman) is already captured and interviewed by the criminal psychologist Henry Bloom (James L. Newman). He reminiscens his brother's kill spree and his traumatic childhood, being terrified of the color red, sex and Santas. When he grew up, he also had a girlfriend, Jennifer (Elizabeth Kaitan). When jealousy takes the better of him, Ricky starts to kill everyone around him, until he is arrested by police forces. But while he has told the story, Ricky has also managed to escape from the interrigation room by figuring out how to kill Bloom. As it's Christmas, the recently released Ricky  decides to attempt to kill the one person in his background that he or his big brother never managed to kill yet: the sadistic Mother Superior (Jean Miller).

The Embodiment of Evil.

The film has two major problems which attribute to it's bad reputation. First is of course the pacing. At first the film seems to be the cheapest ever made, as it only contains two people sitting in a room and clips from another film. There are long, unnecessarily lingering shots that seem to only exist to waste time. It takes 40 minutes before there are any major new scenes. Fortunatelly, the film picks off from there. There's a sweet car flip and explosion which show that there was some money in making this, but perhaps they ran out of it in the middle of the shoot. The film also manages to have a good share of inventive and funny murders. A yuppy gets toasted with a car battery so his eyeballs pop. A guy is impaled with an umbrella, which is then opened. Not much of it has anything to do with Christmas.

The biggest problem is that Eric Freeman is a horrendous actor. He has two different methods in the film: one when he's supposed to be normal and thus tries to not react to anything too much. The second is when he's a manic killer, going as over-the-top as he can, spurring one-liners in a Duke Nukem voice or having a mocking tone. The end half of the film is still funny enough and close, oh so close to being so bad it's funny. At times this is still almost unwatchably terrible.

★★

Scene and context: Worst line-reading ever

Ricky has just killed off her girlfriend and her yuppie ex-boyfriend brutally. When a cop tries to arrest him, he turns his gun back to his face and shoots him. As he now has a gun, he goes off in a kill spree around the neighbourhood, cackling to himself.

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (Israel/South Africa/USA, 2002)
Director: David Worth

I know this post has so far had a lot of "it isn't really that bad". Well, try this on for size. This is a film so hilariously bad that it deserved two entries to the video list, and even one of them features three actual deaths. There have been a lot of shark-themed exploitation films, but this has got to be the most inept, the most brain-numbingly stupid and the most hilarious of them.

It's hard to be the white girl when all the ethnics get eaten around you.

Beach patrolman Ben Carpenter (John Barrowman) discovers a giant tooth in an underground cavern on the Mexican coast. The shark researcher Cataline Stone (Jenny McStone) becomes interested in the case and arrives to study. When her research ship and it's surfer boy crew is attacked by a gigantic shark, Carpenter must come to the rescue. It becomes clear that the shark in question is a prehistoric Megalodon, a huge shark with a never-ending appetite. But the greedy holiday resort owner wants to keep this quiet for fear of loss of money (as is always the case). He also has a local cable company in his back pocket, which has already lost a number of employees to the shark. Yet they are still adamant to keep a luxury cruise fundraiser for the rich and powerful. A lot of silly hijinks ensue.

I feel like having Mexican for dinner tonight.

Really, Megalodon doesn't seem at all different from a regular great white shark, except it is a lot bigger and meaner. It's size also hilariously varies during the course of the film. The shark scenes are just clips from nature documentaries and the film has a whopping three different ones at its disposal. When the shark is just peeking from the water, this is silly, but when thesame scenes are used with CGI to show the shark eating someone or something, it looks truly ridiculous. The only fully CGI scenes at the very end of the film look too horrible to be from Playstation 1 game demos.

The film's real gift to the world is the totally incredibly bad dialogue, which is delivered even worse than in Troll 2. Here, I don't think the filmmakers can back off from their creation by claiming they're doing a satire. This straight-to-video film is as much exploitation as they come, not content of feeding off just from the popularity of Jaws, but also from the really minor success of its rip-off Shark Attack. Needless to say, this sequel has nothing in common with the first two films of the series. Barrowman in the lead role seems to have quite a lot of fun. Getting a vacation in Mexico while pretending to be a dude that looks at bikini girls? No wonder.

★ or ★★★★★

Scenes and context:
Most random line ever:

Carpenter has been shown from the beginning to be both really horny, and a real asshole. Stone has pushed off anyone trying to get close to her so far in the film, but it appears that she has finally fallen for Carpenter's charms(?). Sorry, I really got nothing. This comes from out of nowhere. If you want to watch the film, I suggest that you don't watch YouTube clips and save it.

Worst CGI


The two sleazy businessmen are having their fundraiser interrupted by Megalodon attacking. Stone and Carpenter haven't made it to attack the beast yet, so it starts eating rich people like popcorn. The shark also has an uncanny ability to teleport from place to place. How else can you explain that it's already waiting for its escaping prey like a hungry Droopy Dog?

Into the Wild Blu-ray Wonder

I finally purchased a HD-TV and a PS3. It was about time as I had a pile of Blu-ray films piling up but nothing to watch them with. Now as the equipment was gathered, I can take a look at a few films I've recently watched on Blu-ray.

The Fall (2007)
Director: Tarsem

This was one of the biggest omissions from my list of the Best Fantasy Films of the 2000s. It's good to finally see the film. The Fall worked wonders as a test Blu-ray. The image is crisp, clear and well-lit. Purists will say that it doesn't look like film. Well, every decade has its own look to cinema and this clear Michael Mann-style image will be the one for this one. I found no problems with the image. For instance, in desert scenes the mountain cliffside looks just as magnificent as it does in real life (watching from a distance of course).

The film itself is a little like The Princess Bride in that it's a story-within-a-story told to a sick child. The Fall, however is a bit darker. It takes place in an early 20th century hospital, where a wounded soldier tells a story to an annoying little girl to get her to bring him drugs. His story concerns bandits from different parts of the world planning revenge on a crooked governor. It is an excuse to show off magnificent looking landscapes from all around the world. As it happens, the events which unfold in the real-world hospital start bending the story world accordingly. This mixture of story and reality is nothing new and the same characters popping up in both has been around since at leat The Wizard of Oz. Yet, director Tarsem keeps his strings well in his hands and the fantasy is well likeable. The various locations where this has been shot are simply gorgeous. I just wish there wasn't so much footage of that goddamn crying kid.

Film: ★★★
Picture: ★★★★★


House of the Flying Daggers (2004)
Director: Zhang Yimou

I had fond memories of this film, and Zhang's films are really beautiful visually, so it was a good idea to test this out as a blu-ray. But the results weren't as good as the expectations. For starters, the film seems to be just an upscaled DVD, there are grainy scenes and the image isn't that much clearer. It's good that most of it is set in a bright light, so it doesn't matter that much. I expect it would in a more moody film.

The film itself is a pretty straight-forward romace/escape story. It wasn't even as beautifully shot as Zhang's Hero, but then again it is easily explained, because Hero had Christopher Doyle, the greatest living cinematographer, working on it. HOTFD is still not by all means bad. The fight at the bamboo jungle in particular is great. I just wish the film would be shorter. All the fights are pretty similar and the romance kind of blah. The crime from which the main couple are chased is also a bit petty for my western taste, yet maybe the chinese understand it better. After all, it is pretty strongly anchored to a particular era of which I know nothing about.

Film: ★★★
Picture: ★★


Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection (1989-2008)
Director: Nick Park

I think stop-motion animation is well suited for high-definition. It is usually rich in detail, so the clearer the image, the more small things one can pick up from them. This of course rings also true to this collection of animation masterwork from Aardman Studios. I've seen every short film on this disc numerous times, yet the clear image helped me to pick up new things here and there. For instace, the newspapers Gromit reads are now clear enough to see the article headlines. I also like how the fingerprints and other unevenness is seen in the character designs. There area few a bit grainy bits, particularly in the moon sequence in A Grand Day Out, but mostly this transfer serves the films very well.

The biggest masterpiece on this disc is, of course The Wrong Trousers. It is still about the closest I've ever seen to perfect filmmaking. It is exciting, funny and even heart-breaking at times. The characterization is wonderfully deep, even though Wallace is the only character that can speak. The story is well constructed: there are no continuity errors or plot-holes and everything is set up nicely during the early minutes of the story.
I'm surprised to find that my second favorite is the latest film, A Matter of Loaf and Bread. It is another hitchcockian mystery film that is as fine-tuned and doesn't have an ounce of fat in its running time. Everything is well-spent. The weakest link must be A Close Shave, as I've always believed that it has too much going on. Four characters is usually the maximum you'd need for a good Wallace & Gromit yarn, yet this one boasts five major ones, and a flock of sheep to boot. It is still by no means a bad one, it's still funny and exciting and Peter Sallis does perhaps his best work as the voice of Wallace. It just that it has a few flaws such as deus ex machinas and other plot holes.
The first one of the batch, A Grand Day Out is a little different from the others, and is clearly a story of two halves - one made by Nick Park about alone, and the other in collaboration with Aardman Studios. The story, and especially the climax are of a lot smaller scale than others, yet it has a certain simplistic charm the others cover by true virtuoso craftmanship.

Films: ★★★★★
Picture: ★★★★

Pixar Short Films Collection (1984-2007)

The other little animation studio that could, also boasts with its own short film collection. Yet unlike Aardman, Pixar hasn't always strived for pure quality. One can see from the early films that the point in them was just to test different computer programs for lighting, surfaces and so on. Particularly the first one, The Adventures of André and Wally B, is pretty horrible. One can't blame George Lucas for selling the studio based on that short. The first really good one is 1980's Knick-Knack. Too bad the film on the disc is the 2003 Special Edition, which has cencored some balloony babe bosoms. That's a real shame, as cartoon boobies would've brought a real new layer into the story and strengthened the main character's motivation of breaking out from his snow-globe. Some films are clearly extra material for the DVD releases and don't hold out so well on their own (Jack-Jack Attack). Still, there are plenty of corcers on the disc (For the Birds, Boundin', One-Man Band...) to make it worth you while. After all, it only lasts less than an hour.

The picture quality depends from film to film. The early ones wouldn't look too good on any format any more, but the later ones, which have proper textures, look great. I think I might continue my Pixar collection on Blu-ray.

Films: ★★★
Picture: ★★★★

Gremlins (1984)
Director: Joe Dante

January 13th has traditionally been in Finland the Day of Nuutti, in which and evil man-goat comes to homes taking Christmas away with it. Suitable viewing for that day was Joe Dante's mischievous fantasy film, in which nasty little monsters wreck a small American town's Christmas. It's been a favorite of mine since childhood so getting it as one of my first blu-rays was a no-brainer. There can never be enough live-action Looney Tunes-resembling films.

It was good to test out Gremlins on blu-ray, as it is a little more darkly lit film. Most of the previous films in this article were shot in bright daylight, which usually looks great on blu-ray anyway. The key to a good movie experience is how much mood can the technology create. Gremlins works sufficiently good. The Chinese bazaar, Billy's dimly-lit room and the school's labratory still work in creating tension. Yet the picture isn't that much clearer than in a DVD. It had probably just been upscaled. Yet I traded my cardboard-cased vanilla DVD for this and don't regret it for a second.

Film: ★★★★
Picture: ★★★

Amadeus - Director's Cut (1986)
Director: Milos Forman

This music epic is as historically inaccurate as they get. As anyone probably knows, it's about Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) confessing about how he orchestrated his rival Mozart's fall from grace and subsequent death. In real life Salieri may not have created masterpieces that last through the ages, but he was still very popular and rich. It is the same as saying that Justin Bieber orchestrated the death of Michael Jackson. But the point of the movie is not to depict historical events, but to tell a story about envy and where that can lead. In that aspect Forman succeeds very well. The film is never pandering or too openly moralizing. Salieri is almost symphatetic as the villain as Mozart (Tom Hulce) is depicted as a lewd womaniser and shrugging the notion of hard work until in the end. The classical music pieces fit the film's mood like a hand in glove. The three hour running time of the Director's Cut is about the 20 minutes too long, which were later added to the film. But this Director's Cut is by no means a travesty like some other later cuts.

Amadeus is a film which would also suit testing out Blu-ray equipment mighty fine. It has a lot of well-light scenes at luxurious palaces, which have a lot of details, scenes from operas, which have luscious bright colours, and candle-lit moody parts that take place in the dark. Unfortunately the picture quality is merely adequate. Some things, like the texture on clothes, comes out very good, but background details don't seem too clear and the dark scenes are a little grainy. I wouldn't upgrade a DVD, but otherwise this works fine.

Film: ★★★★
Picture: ★★★
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I like to do these Blu-ray digests as they remind me of the Weeklies I used to do when this blog started. As it's very important to know how a Blu-ray looks before making the purchase, I figure I could do a bit more of these, too. They shouldn't take too long to write, anyway.

A Christmas Story Medley

'Tis the season, and thus the time (and the only time) to watch some Holiday films. Rather than to rewatch the same old classics each year, I prefer to always watch films I haven't seen before (though I can rewatch Die Hard, Gremlins and Nightmare Before Christmas just about endlessly). So, here's a medley of Five Festive Films ranging from classic to crap.

Christmas Story (Joulutarina, 2007)
Director: Juha Wuoljoki


No, not the comedy about the bespectacled kid wanting a BB gun for christmas (we'll get to that). This finnish fairy tale is relatively recent, but already gets steady airtime in finnish TV. The film does like many Hollywood franchise starters like to: goes to the roots of a particular legend. But as anyone who has seen Santa Claus: The Movie or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians knows all too well, Santa isn't usually a very good protagonist on celluloid.

The premise of Christmas Story itself feels calculated. For the information of my foreign readers, Finland has a strange obsesion to prove Santa Claus is Finnish. As an example, they poured a shitload of government money to this movie, which is little more than a travel advertisement to Lapland. There are long, lingering shots of beautiful landscapes, but a boring story and theatrical acting. It's just like most other finnish films made today, then. No wonder we usually do so badly at international film festivals.

Santa grows up as a little boy called Nikolas, who goes to live in different houses each year in his poor village. As the switch to a new house happens in Christmas, he leaves presents for the children of the house. As time goes on, he gets more and more obsessed of giving gifts to all the children.

It's nice that Santa has also shades of grey in his character, but for a fantasy film, everything happening in the film is pretty mundane and way too realistic. All the magic is left to the imagination of the viewer, which sounds like a good idea, but is executed poorly here. Where did Santa hire his elves? Where does Mrs. Santa come from? Why is Santa obsessed with children being naughty and nice? Why does he watch us while we are sleeping? And why does he lust after mommy? These are just some of the questions the film has no intention of answering. For a cheery christmassy feel-good film it sure the plot revolves a lot around sorrow, pity, regret and obsessive behaviour.

If you will watch only one Finnish Santa Claus movie, I recommend Rare Exports. At least that one was based on the actual Finnish pagan god, not the German saint who was developed into a marketing figure in the United States. Santa is multi-national, not in any way Finnish.

★★

A Christmas Story (1983)
Director: Bob Clark



This is the more popular Christmas Story in most of the world, yet I suppose not in Finland as I had never seen the film before recently. This cult comedy is about little Ralphie Baker (Peter Billingsley) who gets ready for christmas in a small American town in the 1940's. The preparations, toy lists, wait for Santa, everything is told from a prespective of a child pretty well. It seems children in the 40's weren't that much different from the children in the 80's when this was made, or in the early 90's when I was that age. They all felt enthusiastic, anxious and a little fearful around Christmas just because they hoped they would get everything they wanted from Santa. Ralphie's misadventures in school, in the playground and at home are narrated by a much older Ralphie, played by Jean Shephard.

I thought the best thing in the film, however, was not in its depiction of child culture, but rather in little touches. My favorite character was Ralphie's Old Man, Mr. Parker (Darren McGavin). The scenes where he is watching his family acting obnoxious, whether the kids are porking up their food with their mother encouraging, or horribly singing Jingle Bells out of tune, it's clear that the man would wish to be as far away from them as possible. The threat of spending the holidays indoors with them seems unbearable. For the kids the father is also a sort of Punisher, the supervisor who will straighten out behaviour that's out of the line. He is also has a soft spot for awful kitch, and is not well beloved by dogs. This all doesn not mean that the man hasn't got his heart in the right place. In the end he will give his sone the present, which will probably not be a good idea.

Seeing as director Bob Clark also directed Black Christmas, he seemed to have the right idea about the holiday. A Christmas Story is a bit too American and a bit dated for me to want to watch it every year again and a again, but it holds well even when watched first as an adult. I suspect it would go down well with the kiddies, too.

★★★

An American Carol (a.k.a. Big Fat Important Movie, 2008)
Director: David Zucker



As this happened to be one of the last films of Leslie Nielsen, Dennis Hopper and, um, Gary Coleman, I was intrigued to watch this. I didn't expect it to be good, but as even Scary Movies 3 & 4 had their moments, there was no way David Zucker could fail, even if the movie's premise sounded a little too neo-conservative for my tastes.

Yeah, right. The fact that it features a Paris Hilton cameo tells you enough about this films "quality".

It was absolutely horrible, Meet the Spartans-sized bad. For starters, even though the film is loosely based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the film itself is set around the 4th of July. As it's not actually a Christmas movie I felt doubly stupid for watching this piece of shit.

The moronic documentary directory Michael Malone (Kevin P. Farley) hates everything about America and is smelly and fat. That's why three ghosts appear to show him what America is all about. And that includes shooting liberals who don't share your views and being ready to blow up every arab there is because they might all be terrorists. And it's so absurd to think Christians might ever do anything bad to anyone with their views or actions that it's a subject of a skit.

Now, I have nothing against gross-out comedy and I can handle different political views in films (I usually embrace them, such as Charles Bronson's vigilantist films). That being said, this was not so much conservative, as so crazily right-wing it seems a campaign film for Tea Party candidates. The film begins with a joke how all arabs are named Mohammed Hussein (seriously), does plenty of bad terrorist jokes and it's all downhill from there. Eat your heart out, Chris Morris.

If it all were made with a tongue-in-cheek sillyness that would suggest that the whole film is a big joke, it would be just fine, but sadly the film is also preachy as hell. It's the kind of film that critizises Michael Moore for showing only one side of the truth in his films, yet cuts corners in just about every one of its arguments at the same time. And sure enough, like all poor conversation stirrers, Zucker likes to pull the Hitler card as an argument to anything. The overall message seems to be that because The United States of America is the world's greatest country, one is a traitor to his own country to critizise it in any way. A good citizen just accepts anything the officials tell him to. And of course that the war against terrorism is the worst threat America has faced since Nazism. It's sad to see Communism doesn't rank that high on the American list of biggest threats of all time any more. In addition to the afore mentioned dead celebrities, Zucker has lured the Hollywood conservative likes of Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight to do roles in his bug-crazy near-fascist fantasy. Seriously, the film portrays African-Americans only in a scene where they perform modern slaves (because that's what would have happened if The Civil War had been resolved with diplomatic means) and liberals wanting to seperate church and state are portrayed as deadly zombies that should be shot to the head.

The people responsible for this drivel would deserve it more. It did have one good joke, which infuriates me, as it pains me to say anything positive about this. The worst film I've seen in a long, long, long time.

★

Scrooged (1988)
Director: Richard Donner



For a much better modern adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel, I had to turn to Bill Murray. Good ol' Bill, he never fails. Except when he made Garfield, of course.

Bill Murray plays a TV executive that's a real dick to his employees, family, the poor in general and to his long lost love, played by Karen Allen. And that, of course nothing plays to the strengths of the film's lead actor than the ability to act a complete douchebag. After firing a back talking employee, putting a scary promo of a heart-warming Christmas special on air and humbugging just about half of NYC's population (including Miles Davis' street orchestra), Bill gets a meeting from a ghost of a long-lost buisness partner. Now, the film is quite close to being a horror-comedy. Yet, the ghastly sequences are done in a tongue-in-cheek manner that reminiscens Creepshow and the likes. Probably the scariest moment in the film comes when the rotten zombie ghost tangles Bill Murray from a scyscraper window and his wrist starts to rot off. For someone afraid of heights, this makes a dizzyingly terrifying scene.

Bill meets up with several more ghosts, and as the story goes, after seeing himself dead in the future, he decides to change his ways. The ending is a bit overkill in all its feel-goodiness. I would've gotten enough christmas spirit fom just Karen Allen's smile. Boy, that gal sure has a beautiful smile. But anyway, the film delivers plenty of laughs and a classic character for Bill Murray. I don's see why I wouldn't want to watch this again, come next christmas.

★★★★

Pictured: Holiday cheer.

Don't Open 'Till Christmas (1984)
Director: Edmund Purdom



I have a weird fondness of various Christmas-themed horror films. So I had to see one for this article as well. Usually it is Santa Claus who does the slaughtering. yet in this British slasher classic, it is Santa Clauses who get the axe. It has everything that a good slasher should have. Plenty of funny deaths (one santa gets impaled with a spear through the mouth when blowing on a party whistle, one has his penis cut off while urinating) and some gratitious boobs. The plot itself is the most basic one one can have, with police pursuting the killer that seems to always be one step ahead, and a heroic journalist slowly uncovering better evidence. If the film wasn't so outrageous in its violence, it would be your standard Halloween-carbon copy. Yet with the Santa theme, it is a fun ride. And the present that ends the film is quite unforgettable.

★ or ★★★★★






OK, that's enough of holiday cheer for this time. Merry Christmas to both my readers and if people should happen to stumble to this post, Happy Hanukkah, A Crazy Kwaanzaa and a solemn and dignified Ramadan to you as well! Or Happy festivus for the Rest of Us!