CRAP movies
III

VOODOO MOON

A year ago in Haiti, a troubled guy named Cole (Eric Mabius: RESIDENT EVIL) wandered around, and set a CGI fire that would have looked a whole lot better if he had just set an actual fire (really, did you know that you can make a fire - on the cheap - WITHOUT CGI special effects? I wish more z-movie directors knew this!).

Fire set, nothing much happens except for an ashen-faced guy who walks up, stares balefully over Cole's shoulder, and gets blasted into flames for no apparent reason. The roasting makes an old man laugh and Cole collapses in a burning ring of fire.

Ho hum. A year later Cole goes to Louisiana to visit his sister (Charisma Carpenter: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER [TV], ANGEL [TV], CHARMED [TV], VERONICA MARS [TV]) at an art gallery.

They go to a cemetery where Cole wanders off to follow a little white girl, in a pretty dress, in a spooky place. This is like bringing your cat with you to a haunted house, along with a mute friend who can only get your attention by putting his hand on your shoulder at inopportune times. I guess the little girl was a left over from better movies like GHOST SHIP, FEAR DOTCOM, MEN IN BLACK, RESIDENT EVIL, or SILENT HILL.

After a while, more CGI effects occur but nothing scary happens and Horror Thriller actors like Jeffrey Combs (RE-ANIMATOR [all], FROM BEYOND, THE FRIGHTENERS, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, ABOMINABLE) and Dee Wallace (CRITTERS, THE FRIGHTENERS, ABOMINABLE, THE LOST, THE PLAGUE) are totally wasted here.

Kevin VanHook (FROST: PORTRAIT OF A VAMPIRE, SLAYER, DEATH ROW, SANDS OF OBLIVION) wrote and directed this pathetic mess.

The Hook:
The small audience cache of Charisma Carpenter, Jeffrey Combs, and Dee Wallace.

ROOM 6

Writer and director, Michael Hurst (MANSQUITO, HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2, THE DARKROOM), had this cool concept for a hospital scene. The producer and soon to be co-writer, Mark Altman (HOUSE OF THE DEAD, HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2, THE DARKROOM, THE THIRST) loved the concept so much that he gave it the greenlight... and that was pretty much it. The scene became the trailer as well as the opening scene in the movie so once you've seen that you've seen it all.

Still, the ball kept rolling. The SFX guy knew Christine Taylor (NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2, THE CRAFT) and could get her in the flick.

With Christine Taylor in, getting nice guy Jerry O'Connell (SCREAM 2), was a piece of cake. Shane Brolly (IMPOSTOR, UNDERWORLD, UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION) was thrown in there because he needed work and the part didn't require him to actually act - yeah, I know; typecasting. But the person director Hurst was most excited about getting was Kane Hodder (HOUSE, HOUSE II, FRIDAY THE 13th PART VII - JASON X, DEEPSTAR SIX, SE7EN, 2001 MANIACS), who plays the very minor part - extra really - of a homeless demon (and is there anything sadder than a homeless demon?) in a scene that went on for far too long because, after all, "We've got Kane Hodder! OH! MY! GHOD!"

To be honest, I can identify with such fanboy enthusiasm - I wouldn't wreck my movie over it though. What could have been a decent story got totally derailed by the writer and director trying to make a movie that was out of their budget. Instead of being creative and working within it, we get treated to DVD commentary like, "Look at that special effect! Wouldn't it have looked really cool if we had the money to do it right?" And that's the kind of thing that you keep hearing over and again on the commentary.

Sheesh!

Worse, so many clichés get thrown in there that, Holy Shit, they even have a wandering little white girl in a pretty dress (Chloë Grace Moretz: THE AMITYVILLE HORROR [2005]) - which is never a good thing in a Horror movie.

Christine Taylor's character of Amy goes to the well about twenty times with screaming directly at the camera. Truly a lovely scream. But god damn, staring right at the camera and screaming every five or so minutes doesn't heighten the Horror, fright, or entertainment value. What the hell did the camera ever do to her?

Oh, and I never understood the deal with the flying midget in the church. Then again, as in life, the flying midgets are never adequately explained.

The Hook:
The small audience cache of Jerry O'Connell, who was bigger in 2006 than he is today.

LETHAL TARGET

LETHAL TARGET starts with the moon Titan, in the year, 2268. Titan has been terraformed into a prison colony where they mine the moon for magnesium. The prisoners aren't happy and the mining goes excruciatingly slow. Nice upskirt shots though!

It seems that by 2268 humans have lost the ability to rapidly mine with machines. We can terraform a freakin' moon of Jupiter, but we've lost the ability to mine the surface of said moon (actually, Titan is a moon of Saturn, yet they got Jupiter in the sky. So I guess in 2268 we also have the tech to move moons from one planet to another, we just can't mine them). In the next moment, we are treated to lovely young white women: nothing but lovely young white women, all clad in short loose dresses and white thong underwear. They are mining this chalky white rock and the work is going slow. Believe me when I say this is as good as it gets.

Then we see a different set where an obese man with an odd and evil accent is speaking to a well dressed man. The corpulent gent is the warden (Radomil Uhlir: HOSTEL) and tells the suit (Radek Hadrovsky) that he is on the moon Titan.

I guess not everyone got the memo about Titan's move to Jupiter.

Warden tells suit that the moon is a maximum security prison colony for (young lovely white mostly blonde) women and is mined for magnesium and controlled by an evil corporation (we've already been told this, but I guess the suit didn't know. We know something suit don't know! Neener!). So the suit came here without any idea of where "here" is?

Say!

Maybe he was just released from some kind of cryogenic freezing and... nope. It's just some really stupid exposition.

Then the suit tells the Warden why he is there and the big boy endures it. I wish the Warden had laughed. With that goofy accent he sounded like he could really let go with a good

Muh! Huh! Ha! Ha! Ha!

So Nikki comes in and the suit tells her that he knows things even she doesn't know: Like

She is on a prison planet (*facepalm* - and - it's already established that it's the Moon, Titan.)!

She Mines the "planet" for magnesium (*freaking facepalm*)!

She is also still alive (*HeadDesk!*).

Actor C.C. Costigan (CAPE FEAR [1991], BEACH BABES FROM BEYOND, THE REGINA PIERCE AFFAIR) plays Nikki: a once upon a time badass who is now too weak to fight off her captors or even the suit (Oh! aka The Man! - in the credits), who easily overpowers her to deliver an injection in her neck.

The Man refers to a notebook computer that looks like its running Windows 3.0 (in 1999!) and this laptop, to regular rubes from the 23rd Century, looks like some kind of magic! Nikki is ordered to sit in a special chair and press a flatscreen computer monitor Right Up against her nose (I am not kidding) to learn what she must do.

The hell?

Is she extremely near-sighted?

Say!

Maybe there was a ferocious war and our technology was destroyed and people ... nope. It's just hideous writing (Christopher Hyde: TIME RUNNER, KILLER LOVE), direction (Lloyd A. Simandl: ESCAPE VELOCITY, KILLER LOVE, XTRO 2), production (Simandl again), props, and everything else. Except for sets: Nice, poorly lit sets.

The evil company wants Nikki to go to a spaceship that looks like it was made out of a clump of boiled and dried spaghetti spray painted grey. Said spaceship has a killer alien onboard that wiped out the entire crew - well, almost. The varmint is just a knee-jerk rip-off of the creature in ALIEN (looks like Simandl's XTRO 2 monster - another ALIEN rip-off), but it still wiped out everyone they've sent in. Nikki is their last hope and even the Suit can kick her ass.

Why not just blast the grey spaghetti ship out of the sky? Don't ask or there won't be a movie - which would have been a good thing.

There is gratuitous nudity here, but not near enough to keep this lead balloon afloat. Simandl should have chucked his half-assed SciFi aspirations out the window and made porn. It probably would have made more money.

The Hook:
Spaceship as a Haunted House in Space vis à vis ALIEN, of course.