V/H/S/2.

I quickly explained to Lovelock and Starkwell what the concept of the original “VHS” film was.  After this rough synopsis, they looked at me and said “another fucking anthology film?”  I doubt that they are the only ones thinking that at this point, and highly doubt that they are the only ones to go into this film with exceptionally low expectations.  The “frame narrative”, as it is called on wikipedia, is about a couple of private investigators that come upon a stack of VHS tapes while looking for a missing person.  They go through them.  The tapes make up the film’s segments.  The “frame narrative” story, if successful, creates an uncomfortable and tense atmosphere as we go from tape to tape. The first segment involves a clinical trial gone wrong where a dude can like see ghosts and shit.  It’s entirely filmed in first person view.  Lovelock and Starkwell complained about this saying “if I wanted this shit I’d play a video game”.  But the second one is a zombie story. 

[...]

[Girl throws another tape into the VCR.]

Starkwell: Why would these videos even be on VHS in the first place?  No one would go to the trouble of taking their digital mountain biking helmet cam video and transferring it to a VHS tape.

[Biker on tape runs into a bleeding vomiting girl, she turns into a zombie, bites him… The ‘footage’ keeps cutting from the camera on the mountain bike to the one on his helmet.]

Starkwell: So… in this found footage universe, someone found his helmet cam AND his bike, uploaded both videos, edited them together complete with music, and transferred all of this to a VHS tape and then… sold it to the guy who’s apartment they are in?

Lovelock: So… you’re not even going to try?

Starkwell: It doesn't feel like they did...

[...]

Now the dude wearing the helmet cam falls over, vomits, dies, starts turning into a zombie.  So yet another first person view segment… with bad acting.

[...]

[Dude gets up and starts eating people.]

Lovelock: Alright, that’s sort of new.

[He bites off fingers, now he’s trying to eat the guy’s leather wallet.]

Lovelock: ZOMBIE NO LIKE LEATHER… Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp.

Starkwell: Just what I was thinking.

[Now we get some footage from a video camera filming a girl’s birthday party, and helmet cam zombie shows up and start eating people.]

Starkwell: Okay, so they found the helmet cam, his bike cam, which is now miles away in the woods somewhere, AND some random person’s video camera and edited ALL THE DIFFERENT FOOTAGE together before transferring it all to a VHS tape?

[...]

[Helmet zombie picks up a gun and blows his brains out after getting a call from his girlfriend saying “I LOVE YOU”.]

Starkwell: Wait… what?  Suddenly he’s himself again?

Lovelock: And can operate a gun?

[Well, that’s the end of that segment.]

[...]

[The next segment is another zombie-ish one involving a satanic cult where a dude and his girlfriend give birth to Satan, I think.]

Starkwell: The segments are definitely a mixed bag.  This one rigth now is head and shoulders above the first two...

Lovelock: Agreed.

[Like the other segments, it looks less like “found footage” and more like a very nicely edited short film.]

[...]

Anyways, the next segment continues down the found footage avenue, but involves a bunch of kids getting abducted by aliens.  It’s actually pretty sweet.  The segments got progressively better as the film went on.  All in all, this turned out to be a pretty good anthology film.  The segments themselves are a huge improvement on the original, but the first “V/H/S” tied its segments together in a better and creepier fashion, or at the very least, in a way that made the title more relevant. When you tie the whole thing together as if these are old VHS tapes hanging around some apartment where a guy collects snuff and whatnot, it seems to me they should do a better job in making the segments look like shit that would have been on VHS in the first place.  If you just want to make a found footage anthology, find another way.

[...]

[The “frame narrative” concludes with an undead (?) kid (the guy who’s apartment they’re at) and a possessed girl (the girl from the beginning who randomly dropped dead after watching some VHS tapes) attacking the private eye guy.]

Starkwell: Wait… what?

[Undead dude gives thumbs up to the camera, roll credits, and ROCK song.]

Lovelock: Jumping the shark right at the last second.  Bravo.

[...]

The end.  Lovelock and Starkwell seem slightly more confused than usual.  I believe Lovelock called it “V/H/S Poo” at one point.

The Revenant.

So apparently this one involves a back-from-the-dead soldier, who behaves a bit like the zombie sidekick in "Dylan Dog", from what I gather, and he apparently comes back and starts helping his friend deal with drug dealers and clean up the streets.  Potential is through the roof.  So let's just see how badly they fuck that up. The film clocks in just under two hours, so it just may be a long ride… We start with a group of soldiers travelling in the desert who are suddenly ambushed.  Bart is shot and killed, and then we cut to his funeral, along with some annoying overbearing orchestra music that sounds like the kind of music they play during the parades at Disney World.

[...]

[Bart's girlfriend Janet and his buddy Joey talk shit about the Priest's sermon at the funeral.]

Lovelock: What's with priests using main events where they FINALLY have a crowd to lay a guilt trip everyone who isn't a regular?

Starkwell: Seriously.

Lovelock: "Welcome to Christmas mass... I see a lot of unfamiliar faces."

Starkwell: Lame.

[Joey and Janet start furiously making out.]

Lovelock: Ummm…

Starkwell: Well they certainly weren't listening at church today.

Lovelock: Sinners!  Bart's not even buried yet.

[...]

That night, Bart rises up out of his coffin, startled, scared, confused, and ZOMBIE.  Much rejoicing was had by both Lovelock and Starkwell, as Bart discovered his rotting face in a mirror and began cutting the stitches holding his mouth together.  He goes to see Joey, who, understandably, is freaked out.  Good dialogue and the jokes actually work.

[...]

[Bart tries to eat a slice of pizza, vomits black tar everywhere.]

Lovelock: That's why I always prefer pizza same day.

Starkwell: You're nuts! Cold pizza is the shit.

[At the end of the night Bart collapses, and is full dead again.]

[...]

The 'wiccan' nurse of the group, Mathilda, thinks that he is a vampire.  Joey makes fun of her repeatedly, and then she leaves and tells Joey that he needs to chop off Bart's head and drive a stake into his heart.

[...]

[Night time comes, Bart wakes up again, Joey feeds him breakfast and he pukes black tar.]

Lovelock: They don't seem to be learning.

Starkwell: So… much… vomit…

[...]

Bart goes to a hospital to steal blood, and he's caught by a nurse, being played by the woman that played nurse Haleh on "E.R.".  This of course led to Starkwell and Lovelock ignoring the film for at least ten minutes while they, for whatever reason, talked about the final season of "E.R." and Noah Wyle's character.  Meanwhile, Joey and Bart figured out that if he drinks blood, he feels much better.  But he still "dies" when the morning comes.

[...]

[Joey figures out that he is not a vampire, but rather, he is a REVENANT.]

Starkwell: I appreciate the attention to detail.  Most movies would be lazy and just be all "you're a zombie ZOIKS!"

Lovelock: Zoiks?

Starkwell: Yeah, you know, all like "Derrrrrrrp".

Lovelock: When in the shit are they gonna get to the crimefighting?

[...]

Then they get mugged, by some Latino dude, and Bart gets shot a bunch.  But, since he's already dead, he gets back up, they knock out the mugger, drag him into the car, and Bart drinks the mugger's blood.  Bart ends up feeling much better.  Not quite crimefighting, but an acceptable start, according to Lovelock.  Janet finds out he's undead (finally), and they spend some time together (like five minutes), but then Bart heads right back out with Joey (because I guess he doesn't really give a shit about Janet?).

[...]

[Once again, they get mugged, this time in a convenience store, by a black guy.]

Lovelock: Remind me not to live wherever it is that they live.

Starkwell: Also… racist much?

[...]

Then they stop a white crackhead who's robbing a black guy.  Starkwell felt this was a 'convenient' way to resolve his earlier concern.  So, now they've upgraded from "self-defense after randomly being mugged" to proper crimefighting.  As Bart kills and sucks the blood from criminals, they also start a serious gun collection, and they make the news.  Bronson style.  Except severely less tough.

[...]

[Joey gets shot, Bart sucks his blood.]

Lovelock: Certainly was a short-lived partnership.

[Joey wakes up the next night as a revenant too.]

Starkwell: But wait… wouldn't that mean that all of their victims would be waking back up?

Lovelock: Confused.

[...]

With both of them as revenants, they go even harder on the crimefighting quest.  Aside from the Starkwell-mentioned plot hole, it makes literally no sense at all that Janet hasn't wanted to see Bart again since she realized he was undead, and vice-versa with Bart basically ignoring that he ever had a love interest.  They've basically not talked about her at all.  It's a little weak and unexplained.  Especially since you just know they are OBVIOUSLY going to have the whole "Joey slept with Janet" thing come around to screw things up.

[...]

[Mathilda finds out what they are doing, Joey kills her.]

Lovelock: Well this took a grim turn.

Starkwell: They took forever to get to this point, and now they're cramming the entire story into the final act.

Lovelock: And suddenly they give a shit about Janet again?

[...]

Then Janet feeds Bart some of her blood and it's all sexual and Lovelock and Starkwell are fully uncomfortable, and confused. Bart, obviously, goes too far and sucks her dry.  Then Joey and Bart have a gun fight and they part ways.  Joey is heading to Vegas and Bart chops off Janet's head, and then gets arrested.

[...]

[Joey gets pulled over and grabbed by a band of criminals led by the original Latino dude that they killed.]

Starkwell: Well, they actually wrapped that plot hole up nice and neatly, I guess.  Good on you, movie.

Lovelock: So wait… everyone that they killed is out there being all zombie? COOL!  I think...

[...]

Bart escapes the morgue and finds a package at his door… it's JOEY'S HEAD.  He's still alive and talking (well, he can only talk with the help of a vibrator).  Bart smashes his head, puts him out of his misery, after finding out that basically everyone that they killed are likely about to come after him.

[...]

Starkwell: Wait, there's another fifteen fucking minutes?

[Montage of Bart trying to off himself in various ways.]

Lovelock: Looking good today buddy.  Looking real good.

[...]

After all that, I guess Bart gave up entirely on even trying to be good, and kills a random woman on the subway.  He exits the subway and there's a SWAT team waiting.  For some reason, the SWAT team starts shooting and kills about two dozen civilians.  It really doesn't make any sense.  Bart gets up and runs away.  The film ends with him being captured by people in HASMAT gear.  Then it cuts to a research lab where some woman is explaining a bunch of shit about the revenants.  Unfortunately, they decide to show us full frontal fucking dude and lady nudity.  All of the undead people are to become super soldiers I think.

[...]

Lovelock: Must suck to be that old actor, whose credit in this film likely reads "old zombie that hangs dong".

[...]

Good movie.  Too long, though, and a bit confused at times.

Stalled.

This is probably the fourteen hundredth zombie film to come out this year.  The box promises that the film is a “worthy successor to ‘Shaun of the Dead’”.  I find that hard to believe.  A lo-budget UK film apparently centered on a janitor fighting for his life at an office Christmas party while the zombie apocalypse begins in full swing.  At the very least there is potential for some good office humor.

[...]

[Maintenance Guy enters bathroom to fix stuff, he goes to fix the speaker in the ceiling, a rat falls out and hits him in the face.]

Starkwell: Maintenance Guy is kind of a Jack of all trades.

Lovelock: That’s likely to come in handy when all of dem zombies come gunning for his yummy guts.

[Janitor, after handling the dead rat, pukes in the TOILETTE.]

Starkwell: Gross.

Lovelock: That’s why I don’t touch dead rats.

Starkwell: That’s why?

Lovelock: Also, disease.

[...]

Then two girls dressed in bikinis (for some reason) enter the bathroom, and rather than spying on them, Maintenance Guy starts playing poker on his phone and falls asleep.  He wakes up when they start kissing and undressing and decides to spy on them after all.  “Fair enough”, said Lovelock.  The movie keeps it light, in that they don’t show boobies and whatnot.

[...]

[Bikini Girl #1 suddenly goes full zombie and eats Bikini Girl #2.]

Lovelock:  Cheap, but effective.

[Other office dudes barges in, all zombie.]

Starkwell: Well, at least they didn’t waste any time.

[Maintenance Guy gets stuck in a bathroom stall, armed with a screwdriver, with bunch of zombies outside the stall, and the title shot shows… STALLED.]

Starkwell: Brilliant.

[...]

The jokes, so far, are fairly juvenile and ‘silly’, but they’re done with enough flare, so far, that it still works.  And, so far, both Lovelock and Starkwell really dig the main Maintenance Guy. Then it turns out there’s a girl in the stall two stalls over from Maintenance Guy.

[...]

[Jeff from IT barges in, armed with a fire extinguisher, and plans on saving them and getting the girl.  Maintenance Guy shoots a severed finger down Jeff’s throat, Jeff chokes, Jeff gets eaten.]

Lovelock: Ummm…

Starkwell: Solid plan, Maintenance Guy.

[...]

Maintenance Guy has drawn a picture of the girl he can’t see on the stall wall and is basically having a conversation with his own drawing.  The whole thing is playing out in one small location, with only one or two characters, and it makes the whole thing feel a lot like a play.

[...]

Lovelock: I’d go see this play, if it was a play.

Starkwell: You know you’d have to put pants on…

Lovelock: Oh… well… then… PASS.

[Every time the girl talks, they focus on the drawing.]

Lovelock: That’s getting a bit weird.

[...]

[Maintenance Guy recovers his toolbox, it is full of money, then the girl throws him a pill, that he takes, and gets MEGA HIGH.]

Lovelock: This bitch sucks.

[Long scene of Maintenance Guy dancing while super stoned.]

Starkwell: Ummm…

[Transitions into a whole dance scene with the zombies.]

Lovelock: The “Thriller” dance joke, never fucking works.  NEVER.  I wish everyone would stop doing it.

[...]

As the deep, heart-to-heart, conversation continues between Maintenance Guy and the drawing on the wall, Lovelock bails on the film.  Starkwell is surprised, but nonetheless, plans on seeing it through until the end.

[...]

[While trying to get his hammer from one of the zombies, Maintenance Guy gets bitten.]

Starkwell: They’re really taking this in a sad sack direction…

[Zombie had dentures, so the bite didn’t count.]

Starkwell: Well alright then, it’s been done before, but at least there’s still hope for Maintenance Guy.

[...]

Then Maintenance Guy breaks into the crawl space behind the wall and makes his way to the girl, who, as it turns out, is not the “hot” girl he thought she was, but actually the “fat” girl she said she wasn't.  A bit of an obvious twist, but a less obvious twist is that the girl then feeds herself to the zombies while Maintenance Guy watches through a hole in the wall.  It’s totally fucked and Starkwell isn’t sure how to feel.

[...]

[The zombies start chanting “brains”.]

Starkwell: Why?  They weren’t even eating the brains… that’s just unnecessary.

Lovelock: Almost as played out as the "Thriller" dance joke.

Starkwell: And we're back?

Lovelock: I wanted to see if she was actually the fat chick.

[...]

Maintenance Guy manages to finally get out of the bathroom by wrapping himself in toilet paper, that, somehow, acts like a suit of armor (?).  All in all, it’s not a bad movie, and it is interesting that the whole things plays out in one room up until the final few minutes, but Starkwell can’t help but wish that the girl had actually made it.  I guess he’s a bit of a romantic.  The film ends with him being stuck inside a phone booth, surrounded by zombies.

[...]

Lovelock: That's why I never go to office Christmas parties.

Starkwell: Yeah, that's why.

Lovelock: Well, also, I've never had a job.

[...]

I didn't realize that there were still phone booths anywhere in the world.  I smell a sequel… BOOTHED.

One Dark Night.

I knew I recognized that name!  The guy who directed this later went on to direct the sixth installment of the “Friday the 13^th” films!  Regardless of what you may or may not think of what that film brings to that series' table, this is something entirely different, and involves a  girl trying to get into a club called (rather generically) THE SISTERS.  The Sorority Sisters? No just Sisters.  The picture looks alright on the print, but the sound is aggravatingly grainy.

[...]

[Coroners remove multiple dead girls, and one dead old guy, from an apartment.]

Lovelock: It’s like a really creepy Playboy mansion.

[Old dead dude shoots lightning from his hand.]

Lovelock: And… that’s normal to the coroners?

Starkwell: They certainly don’t seem very shocked.

Lovelock: "Hey Jonesy, we got ourselves another lightning hands!"

Starkwell: " Just a typical Tuesday in the life of... A CORONER!"

[...]

We are introduced to a bunch of high school mean girls that plan on ‘initiating’ main girl, Julie, into their ‘sisters’ club.  Meanwhile, it turns out the old dead Hef was some kind of Russian magician or something.

[...]

[Adam West escorts Russian Magician Daughter (?) out of the funeral service.]

Lovelock: Holy Lightning hands, Batman!  You married Magic Man’s daughter!

Starkwell: You get one.

Lovelock: One out of ten?

Starkwell: One Adam West joke.  You're done.

Lovelock: You're done in the cupcake wars.

Starkwell: I hate you.

[...]

Julie and her boyfriend, Steve, share a love montage at the arcade.  Playing video games, and taking pictures in the booth and all that shit.  I should mention that the high school kids all look to be well into their twenties and thirties.  Maybe it’s just the clothing, and lighting, and acting.  Then a journalist visits Magic Daughter and Batman to explain to them that he really was able to move things with his mind, due to bio-energy.

[...]

Lovelock: Psychic vampires!

[...]

So now, because Julie stole Robin’s boyfriend Steve, Robin and the sisters (consisting of only two other girls) are sending Julie to spend a night in the mausoleum as initiation.  Why any girl would want to join a three person club that badly, especially one that consists of your boyfriend’s ex as the leader, is beyond anyone.  But Julie accepts, because she is an idiot, obviously, and she is then locked in a huge building with a bunch of dead people.  It has taken nearly forty minutes to get to this point.  Slow moving would be putting it mildly.

[...]

[Julie explores the mausoleum.]

Lovelock: We get it.  It’s a mausoleum.  There are graves.  GET ON WITH IT.

[Her flashlight won’t light so she runs to the chapel to get a candle.]

Starkwell: Why wouldn’t she just set up her sleeping bag in the chapel where all the candles are?

Lovelock: Probably for the same reason that she wants to be in a club with people she hates.

[...]

The SISTERS are on their way to the mausoleum that night to ‘scare’ Julie.  Steve goes looking for Julie and can’t find her.  Luckily, he happens upon Leslie, who was just kicked out of the SISTER MOBILE for having second thoughts about this whole SISTER INITIATION thing.  Anyways, they all end up at the mausoleum, and after over an hour of NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENING, Starkwell and Lovelock all end up at BOREDOM.

[...]

[The grave of Magic Man is cracked, it glows red and makes stuff happen in the mausoleum.]

Lovelock: Fucking WEAK.

[Did I mention that we just passed the seventy minute mark?]

[...]

Finally one of the coffins poops out of it’s grave (yes, I meant to say poop), opens up and reveals a slimy-eyed undead grandpa of some kind.  It’s a rise-from-the-dead scene that makes the “Blind Dead” zombies' rise from their graves look fast moving.  Eventually, the corpse runs / floats / is-wheeled-towards-them-on-a-skateboard and Lovelock lets out a half cheer.

[...]

[Really fake looking Magic Man corpse erupts from his grave, shoots lightning from his eyes and reanimates the mausoleum’s population.]

Lovelock: That’s why I never have slumber parties in mausoleums.

Starkwell: You have slumber parties?

Lovelock: You know what I mean.

Starkwell: I’m fairly certain that I don’t.

Lovelock: TICKLE FIGHT!

[Starkwell then promptly slapped Lovelock in the face.]

[...]

While a bunch of floating dead bodies surround two of the SISTERS, Lovelock sings the Phil Collins slow jam “One More Night” replacing ‘more’ with ‘dark’ and putting an emphasis on how he 'can’t wait forever'.  This movie feels like forever. Get it?

[...]

Lovelock: One dark night.  One dark night.  One dark night… movie sucks balls takes forever.

[To that tune I mentioned.  Go on, give it a try.]

[...]

[Sister Kitty suffocates under a pile of dead bodies.]

Lovelock: Imagine filming this?

Starkwell: “Ok, we’re going to lob a bunch of fake dead bodies on you and… GO!”

Lovelock: “Did we mention we covered them with slime and maggots? No? Too bad. ACTION!”

[...]

Eventually Magic Man’s daughter shows up and flashes a make-up mirror in his face and his head melts and all the floating bodies drop.  Who needs explanations when you have no story, I guess…  And then the film ends.

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud.

The mid to late eighties had a few horror genre “sequel in name only” releases that took their namesakes and blew them to smithereens.  “House II”, “Return of the Living Dead Part 2”, Hell even “Creepshow 2”.  “C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud” is no different, and promises to be an absolutely miserable film.  I can’t wait.

[...]

[Robert Vaughn is some Colonel presiding over the hearing where they are discontinuing the C.H.U.D. research.]

Lovelock: “CHUD 2” and “Zombi 5”?  This was definitely his golden age…

Starkwell: Did that woman say the "C.H.U.D. enzyme"?

Lovelock: Who knows, I've already stopped paying attention.

[...]

Then there’s a "CHUD" that escapes his bed and runs around in the lab until they capture him by freezing him with fire extinguishers.  I think Colonel Vaughn intends on setting the "CHUD" loose in some small town.  On Halloween?  Not sure.  We were all busy bitching at how the "CHUD" isn't a "CHUD".  Then it cuts to the high school and we are introduced to Rebel Steve and Nerd Kev.

[...]

[Steve and Kev accidentally push a dead body on a stretcher out the delivery door at the school.  It rolls down a hill onto the highway.]

Lovelock: What high schools have unsupervised and fully uncovered dead bodies sitting in the storage room?

[They go to the hospital and steal a body.]

Starkwell: I’m guessing one that's run by the same people that run this hospital and leave a frozen Military-Owned "CHUD" unsupervised in a local hospital.

Lovelock: How did they get past the guards?  How did they get in the "CHUD" room?

Starkwell: How did they get out?

Lovelock: Wait… is this “Weekend at Bernie’s”?

Starkwell: Also, no one ever found the original dead body?  The one they left rolling down the highway?

Lovelock: Maybe it's still out there, rolling from town to town, getting into adventures.

Starkwell: Like "Weekend at Bernie's"?

Lovelock: "Weekend at Bernie's" mixed with "The Littlest Hobo".

[...]

Steve and Kev reanimate the "CHUD" in the bathtub.  He gets out of the tub and slips on the floor.  DEEERrrrrrRRRRrrrrp.  Anyways, then Lovelock and STarkwell got into another lengthy venting session about how this “CHUD” is one hundred percent not a “CHUD”, but instead is just an undead dude walking around groaning like a monkey and/or Tim the Toolman.  Don't smell the dog food, silly "CHUD"!  Uh oh, the "CHUD" is chasing after the dog!  Now the dog’s a "CHUD".  DeeeerrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRp.

[...]

[There’s a “Bud the Chud” theme song playing over a montage of people getting all "CHUD".]

Lovelock: Every time they refer to one of these non "CHUD"s as a "CHUD", I think a little piece of me dies.

Starkwell: I’m done.

Lovelock: Me too.

[...]

This movie sucks.  I’m fairly certain that no one involved with this hunk of shit actually ever SAW the original film. The guy who wrote this, Ed Naha, also wrote “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” the same year.  He used a different name, M. Kane Jeeves, for this one.  I don’t blame him.  I wouldn’t want anyone to know I wrote it either.  The ironic thing is that he also wrote the original “Troll” movie, a movie that had one of the most famously bad “sequel in name only” films ever produced.  “Troll 2” has no trolls in it, and let me tell you, if you’ve ever seen “C.H.U.D.” you know, this film has no "CHUD" in it AT ALL. Hate is a strong word.  And Starkwell and Lovelock agreed that in this case, it isn’t strong enough.