Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre

"I don't think moose SCAMPER!"

Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre is a 2005 adult comedy-horror film. The film was released by Wicked Pictures and stars Stormy Daniels, Jessica Drake, Eric Masterson, Tommy Gunn, Voodoo and Nicole Sheridan.

The presentation of this feature is top-notch. The image quality is pretty fantastic and the camera work may not be extra-ordinary, but it is leaps and bounds above the amateurish attempts that many independent studios are capable of in producing a horror film given the same basic budget. But what of the acting you say?

Surely the acting in a pornographic film has got to be terrible. Well, the acting is actually pretty good here as well. I mean, any movie where Voodoo makes an appearance isn't going to be Oscar worthy, and there's some clunky dialogue that characters like Jessica Drake is forced to read through, but all-in-all it's far better than what you'd find in a low-budget horror flick. You're as surprised to hear that as I was to say it.

The gore does take a back-seat in this film, so even though it is most assuredly an adult feature, the movie's focus is not directly on the horror. Why should it? These are supposed to be "designed for couples" (or lonely single men). Nearly every single normal person out there does not want to see blood and gore interspersed with sex scenes.

In terms of the horror, it's all tongue-in-cheek (that was not intended to be a pun). The film molds itself after Scary Movie more than it does Scream or something serious like The Ring, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, however it does take a lot of inspiration from the last two listed. You see, Kristen (Stormy), Jessica (Jessica Drake) and Rayford, Todd and Josh (Eric Masterson, Voodoo and Tommy Gunn respectively) are all headed to a Metalicide concert when they accidentally hit a homeless drifter that Kristen first believes to be a hurt Moose. Trouble ensues when they tie the dead man to the roof and then get lost in the woods.

Randy Spears makes an appearance as the town's sheriff, and I came extremely close to laughing until I puked. Can we get him in every movie please? Oh and going along with that horror movie staple, nearly every single person who has sex dies immediately afterward.

The video is historic in a way, as it is the first adult film to be released on the HD DVD format. The run-time is roughly 2 and a half hours. Oh, and please be 18 before enjoying this.

Best Speech in a Movie: Henry V

Today is Saint Crispin's Day. 596 years ago today, one of the most important battles in the history of the world occurred with the French defeat by the combined forces of the British and Welsh at the Battle of Agincourt.

What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

So this Friday night I sat down to catch a horror flick. As you can tell by the date, it's that time of the season. Well, what better than a film called Poultrygeist, right? That's gotta be a good horror film, right? Wrong. Somehow this piece of dreck got a "fresh" rating of 64% on Rotten Tomatoes.

This "film" is a Troma Entertainment release from 2006 directed by Lloyd Kaufman. It is apparently supposed to be a satire of the fast food industry in which a character by the name of Arbie is hired by "American Chicken Bunker" to get back at his ex-girlfriend, turned activist lesbian, Wendy.

Okay, this film seems to get a lot of praise from the underground, low-budget aficionados out there. To be completely fair, many would lump me directly into that group of people. I love schlocky, low-budget horror films. The problem is, one reason why I like "terrible" horror movies is because they were almost always not meant to be terrible. Most of those filmmakers seriously tried to make a legitimate horror film and failed. Like a guy who thinks he's funny but is terrible instead of a guy who doesn't know he's terrible and funny.

While watching Poultrygeist you can plainly see the entire crew knew they were making a schlocky film, and it comes off like a bunch of friends getting togther to shoot footage in their backyard and then crudely stringing it together with some "fart" sounds for added effect. I simply don't see the allure of that if it's clear that you aren't putting any effort into something you should otherwise be passionate about. Lloyd Kaufman has been making movies for decades, the final result looks like a poorly realized student film.

This movie is nothing but a box of bad puns and cliches wrapped with a bow of terrible acting, flat singing and terribly unfunny scenes. I was willing to give it a chance, but after 20 or so minutes of virtually nothing interesting, funny or seriously horrible going on (just "comedy gore") I gave up. I kept watching though, hoping it would get better. Spoiler: it didn't.

After watching a lame parody of Subway's Jared (who was morbidly obese in this film) paint the restroom in feces, ending with a "smaller," skinless version of himself ripping his way out of his skin, I couldn't take much more. Perhaps the film could improve and find some kind of direction, perhaps it could re-find the plot and get on with it instead of dabbling with terrible vignettes.

I made it to the scene where the director makes a cameo when it finally hit me - this movie is terrible. Terrible script, terrible acting, terrible direction... and everyone involved knows it. It's a lower budget version of the already low-buget Asylum films.

Based on some of the extremely over-the-top reactions I have uncovered regarding this film, you'd think this was groundbreaking stuff. People are praising it in some of the most exaggerated, absurd reviews I've ever seen, so it's hard to not get that impression. Then again, "The Room" gets a lot of this fake praise too - but you know that 99.9999% of the people writing those reviews are mocking it - the "positive" reviews are nothing but false praise.

If you like it, good for you. Enjoy.

Frogs

Frogs is a 1972 "eco-horror" film staring Sam Elliott and Ray Milland featuring amphibian killing machines Hellbent on terrorizing an upper-class U.S. Southern family on their plantation home.

Jason Crockett (Ray Milland) is a millionaire who invites his family to his home for his birthday. Pickett Smith (Sam Elliot) is a nature lover and photographer down in the swamp to take pictures of nature for a magazine. Opinions collide when it's discovered that Jason Crockett kills off practically everything that enters his property by using massive amounts of poisonous chemicals. Of course, the bodies are going to quickly pile up, as the noise of *ribbit* sounds like payback is coming soon.

Frogs was probably one of my best movie watching experiences. It's fun, and schlocky, but also well made enough to enjoy as a legitimate film. Shockingly this film never made it on the MST3k chopping block, though it's sister movie, Squirm did. Squirm was about killer worms terrorizing a family and invading a small town eating everyone in their path. Frogs was that exact same plot, but on a smaller scale since the frogs, as well as the other maligned creatures, only attack a southern estate on a small island.

Considering the title of the film, it's strange that it never seems like the Frogs do any of the killing. They're appear in a role more suited for, say, a "General" sending out troops of other animals that actually *DO* the dirty work. The film itself ends on one of the most bizarre and laugh educing awkward cuts that they could possibly come up with.

Check it out.

The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files was a short lived SciFi Channel (now named SyFy) series that aired from January to April of 2007. The show was based on the The Dresden Files novel series written by Jim Butcher. The series starred Paul Blackthorne, Valerie Cruz, Terrence Mann and Conrad Coates.


Blackthorne played Harry Dresden, a professional wizard. Not a fictional wizard, but an actual one, living in a world where magic is very real, and often very dangerous. Dresden often helps solve unexplained murders, with the often skeptical Lt. Connie Murphy of the Chicago police. He is aided by Hrothbert "Bob" of Bainbridge, a spirit who he owns, and who can not leave the confines of Dresden's house. Warden of the High Council, Donald Morgan, often helps and hinders Dresden in his attempts at weeding out supernatural killers.

I enjoyed this series greatly. I was unfamiliar with the source material before watching the series, so I can not claim to know how faithful the work was to the original source. The series had some obvious tinkering, where they jammed the pilot episode into the 8th episode, which completely threw me off because the characters not only acted differently, but we were essentially being introduced to them all over again. Oh well.

The assumption through most of the summer after the show ended was that the series had been a success, sadly, disappointed fans found out at the start of August that the series would not be renewed for a second season. It ran 12 episodes.

It's October!

So I had hoped to kick off October with a "horror movie review" of the new film, Dream House staring Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz.

Well it turns out it's not much of a horror movie. Heck, it's not much of a movie, probably because going into the movie after seeing the trailer was a mistake. The movie was watchable, though a bit on the mediocre side. It was certainly not worth my time once I found out the first shift of the storyline (the first "twist reveal") which was exposed smack dab in the middle of the trailer. They gave away most of the reason why you're watching the film!

***Spoiler alert!*** This would be like exposing that Bruce Willis is a ghost, or that Kevin Spacey is Kyser Soze. Okay, that spoiler alert was lame. I will not do it again.

Had the movie used the trailer as mis-direction, and had the story be a lot more complicated than was presented (that the family wasn't dead or that his psychosis was much deeper than presented), I'd be a lot more forgiving of the final product.

I think the showings earlier in the day were so sparsely filled that they saved money by simply not turning on any of the pre-preview commercials and keeping the lights off in the theater. It was pretty sad.

That sounds terrible, but I've heard worse. My parents foolishly went to see Battlefield Earth when it was released back in 2000. It had miserably opened the previous week - was still in all the print advertisements for this theater, was still on the marquee, but the theater actually [i]saved[/i] money by not showing the movie at all. That's right. The theater was apparently empty, so it was more cost effective for them to simply turn off the lights and not run the projectors. I think they actually did finally wrangle up 15-20 people which made it worth the theater's effort to show that terrible dreck.