The ABCs Of Death.

The anthology film has seen a dramatic comeback in the lower budget regions of the horror genre in the last few years.  No doubt because it is a way for several directors to pool together resources… also it caters to short attention spans and doesn’t require writers/directors to come up with an actual movie’s worth of story time.  Lazy?  Maybe.  If done right, these can be a lot of fun.  Think “Creepshow” or the original “Tales from the Crypt”.  But then I think “V/H/S” and I get worried.  As do Lovelock and Starkwell.

[...]

[You know what the big issue here is already… they see that the movie clocks in at two hours and ten minutes.]

Starkwell: I think we should skip some letters.

Lovelock: Is ‘Z’ for zombie in this case?  Can we just go right to there and make this a five minute affair?

Starkwell: Oh God, I hope zombies show up before ‘Z’.

[...]

Can I just say, this movie is fucking insane?  I mean REALLY insane.  Different concepts, ideas, styles, animated SWITCH to live action, different genres, Hell, even different Languages… There’s a claymation segment for God’s sake… The two sat there looking happy, but like they were also being kicked in the balls.  At many points, I thought we would definitely lose Starkwell… FoxLady with tits, aminated shit, dudes jacking off… There eventually were some zombies that showed up in ‘W’ (I'm still surprised they hung on for that many letters...).  Clown zombies to be precise.  It was a bad segment.  But by this time they were totally fucking speechless.  The film would get higher marks if it weren’t so damn offensive (unnecessarily so), and basically pointless.

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.

Doomsday Book.

Well, it seems like found footage films are finally starting to go somewhat out of style, and that the new trend is going to lean towards anthology films.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, but we've yet to come across a recent anthology film that we didn't all FUCKING HATE.  Well, straight from Korea, comes this new anthology pick about the end of the world, basically, in different ways of ending.  Lovelock is, as always, upset about having to read subtitles.  The first is a story called "Brave New World".

[...]

[Nerdy guy complains to his family and then his mom tells him to take out the recycling.]

Starkwell: This dude is INSTANTLY loveable.

Lovelock: And that's why, I don't recycle.

Starkwell: Seriously?

Lovelock: His reaction to smelly and moldy trash is SPOT ON.  I can relate.

[...]

After gagging a boatload of times, eventually the nerd finishes his chore and dumps a mysteriously moldy apple into the "food waste" disposal bin.  We follow the Apple's journey through the composting process, into cow feed, that cow is killed, butchered, made into a meal, and probably has horrifying mad cow disease.  It's like an episode of "The Polka Dot Door" on acid.

[...]

[Nerd Guy is on a date with a girl at a Korean BBQ place, eating BEEF.]

Lovelock: Do you think they call it Korean BBQ in Korea?  Or is it just BBQ?  Or like, REGULAR RESTAURANT?

Starkwell: Just… stop.  Now.  Please.

[...]

[Nerd Guy gets in a fight with two teens… but suddenly sees all red and KICKS THEIR ASSES.]

Lovelock: If that's what being a zombie is in this scenario, SIGN ME UP!

Starkwell: From zero to hero.

[The dudes that Nerd beat the shit out of seem to be regular zombies and attack a young couple in the park.]

Lovelock: Hmm… maybe I want to take back what I said.

[...]

It seems that those infected initially become very angry and violent, like something out of "The Crazies", but then they eventually go full zombie.  I believe it was Lovelock who yelled out "MULTIZOMBI!!!!!"

[...]

[We see news footage, as several programs explain the outbreak of the violent "flu".]

Starkwell: This is so fucking cool, it's not even funny.

Lovelock: Doing it right!

[Everybody will be dancing and we're doing it right.]

[...]

The comedy works.  Several ROFLs could be seen and heard from the crowd.  Nerd guy's family comes back from their vacation and finds their place wrecked and their son/brother infected.  He them promptly starts eating his mom and dad.

[...]

[Full on zombie apocalypse.]

Lovelock: This movie, makes me happy.  How did they manage, in a short segment, to do more with zombies than most films can in a full running time?

Starkwell: Writing, acting, directing, character development, having a point and an actual story… should I go on?

[...]

The segment ends on a poetic note, quoting the Bible and eating from the tree of life.  I'm not sure if they're saying we should all be vegetarians, or if it makes perfect sense, or if they're saying recycling is bad, but I think it's awesome.  Starkwell IS a vegan, Lovelock's favorite food is pepperoni so… split decision in that sense.   But for the segment overall, it's unanimous… FANTASTIC.  They still watch the other to "non-zombie" doomsday scenario segments, but their conversation keeps to a minimum.  The second segment involves a robot takeover, whereas the third sees the end of the world due to a meteor strike.  All three are solid, but the zombie segment is clearly the critics' choice here.   American anthology films TAKE NOTE.  Please.

FILM FEST: The Unwatchables - Netflix Edition Vol. II (With a Touch of Redbox).

Part Redbox, part Netflix, all unbearable.  I present to you: More recent zombie SHIT.  I feel bad launching an onslaught like this onto Lovelock and Starkwell, but to make an omelet, you gotta break a few eggs.  In this case the omelet is documenting their conversations and the eggs are their spirits, brains and patience.  The quality ranges from “could only get through five minutes” to “almost able to watch most of it”. 

[...]

[ The Dead Reborn (2013). ]

Starkwell: Wait… is this just three other movies chopped up into one “anthology”film.

Lovelock: Why is the video quality so bad… it looks as though they filmed a TV showing the film.

[Seriously, the first segment is from The Dead Hate The Living, which they already watched (well they started it and stopped in the middle of it).]

Starkwell: So it’s a new movie, but it is just a mash-up of three other movies that are over ten years old.

Lovelock: PASS.

[Has anyone in the world actually ever watched this thing all the way through?  It’s an hour and forty-five minutes…]

[...]

[ Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection (2012). ]

Lovelock: I thought Herbert West was in this…

Starkwell: No you’re thinking of “Night of the Living Dead: Reanimation”.  This is “Resurrection”.

Lovelock: ToMAYto – toMAHto.

Starkwell: More like tomato and NOT a tomato, because it’s not the same movie.

[They did have to admit that, at the very least, a little more love and care seems to have been put into this one.]

Starkwell: It’s actually quite nicely filmed.

Lovelock: It’s like a really good high school project.

[Obviously it’s not exactly faithful to the original, but at least they try to shove some social commentary in.]

Starkwell: If they took this quality and applied it to an actual original idea, they might have something… but attempting to remake a classic… BOLLOCKS.

Lovelock: Agreed.

[Honestly, if this was anything other than a remake, this would have made it out of unwatchable territory, easily.  It would have just been regularly terrible.  Slow moving, and a touch boring.]

[...]

[ Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation (2012). ]

Starkwell: This is officially the third ‘night of the living dead’ that we have now watched, that is NOT the original, and will now likely abandon LONG before the runtime expires.

Lovelock: I can’t wait to see how long into this one we decide to leave.

Starkwell: I’m guessing not long…

Lovelock: Can we at least wait and see Herbert West?

[Mortician guy kills a zombie and some guy in the cemetery.]

Starkwell: Well, the effects here are definitely on par with the rest of this lot.

[One of the characters was watching “White Zombie” on a laptop.  Starkwell threw up everywhere.  Lovelock has fallen asleep and informed us to wake him when Jeffrey Combs arrives.  We ended up waking him up as the Mortician cracked open a zombie head with a shovel.  Then Combs’ character is introduced.]

Lovelock: Hooray!  And he has a sweet mustache!

[Jeffrey Combs with a mustache is in fact probably the highlight of the film.  Then there’s a really lame Sara Palin joke.  Don’t get me wrong, I fucking hate her guts, but it’s a four year old stale joke, and to spend this much time making fun of her is a huge waste of time (she is 100% irrelevant now).  Starkwell puked again.]

Starkwell: I’ll be back later.

[Lovelock went back to sleep, he eventually woke back up to watch the mortuary employees share a joint with a zombie and then the Goth Girl dry humps a corpse to a really bad blues rock soundtrack.]

Lovelock: I should have stayed asleep.

[THIS MOVIE IS FUCKING AWFUL.  They even work in a way to get the Sarah Palin character to the mortuary so she can get killed by a fat woman zombie.  Yeah.  Really.]

Lovelock: If Troma tried even less, this is probably how it would turn out.

[...]

[ Scary or Die (2012). ]

Starkwell: Another fucking anthology film?

Lovelock: If you think I’m sticking around to see the zombie segment, you are mistaken.

[Fine.  I’ll just fast forward to the zombie segment.  Turns out there are two.  One involves a zombie clown that makes other people turn zombie clown, and another about a dead boyfriend coming back.]

Lovelock: Damn straight.  What the hell was going on in that one with the Asian guy?  It looked awful.

Starkwell: What is it with this new wave of anthology films?  They’re not good.

Lovelock: Seriously.  And don’t say “V-H-S”?  More like “SHIT-H-S”.

[Clown from kid’s birthday party bites main character drug dealer guy’s leg.]

Lovelock: Well, that’s something at least.  But why is the clown still acting all clowny and shit?

Starkwell: Why is this segment only like twenty minutes but feels a year long?

[Main Character slowly (emphasis on slow) turns into a flesh eating clown.]

Starkwell: Well that’s different.

Lovelock: They’re trying to make it all dramatic but the guy turned into A CLOWN.  What the fuck?

[The clown makeup actually looks pretty freaky.  They don’t bother watching the last segment.  It seemed to be about a bitch coming back from the dead to catch her man banging some girl in his back seat.]

[...]

[ Potpourri (2011). ]

Starkwell: The movie is about people tripping balls on bad drugs.  Let me guess, some stoners were stoned and were all “if you like translate potpourri it like means ‘rotten pot’ man, so like maybe that’s all potpourri is, like bad weed”.  And the story grew from there.  They may have even smoked some actual potpourri and then wrote the movie.

[...]

The film opens with a pretend vlogger reviewing the movie (so part of the actual film is a guy watching the actual film... I'm guessing they didn't have enough footage for a full length film, so they filled in the holes with this garbage).  Kinda lame.  Anyways, then we have some law enforcement types at the scene of a drug deal gone awry.

[...]

[Cut to a college class.]

Lovelock: Those are supposed to be college kids?

Starkwell: And they’re asking their teacher about “Back to the Future”?  College kids today weren’t even born when those movies were released.

[Seriously, it’s either dumb, or lazy, or both.]

[...]

After a few close-ups of pages of what may or may not be an actual university level physics textbook, Lovelock fell asleep.  Periodically it cuts back to the vlogger… who explains everything, in case the audience couldn’t follow.  That was enough for Starkwell to take off.  I waited a while to wake Lovelock up.  There was a stupid scene of people doing fake drugs, and tripping hard.  There was even a part when the vloggers fast forwarded the movie to ‘get to the good parts’.  Ironic, since Lovelock is now doing the same thing.  There are puppets, medieval forests, musical numbers, cartoons, and all sorts of weird shit.

[...]

Lovelock: So… it’s just a movie about “college” kids getting high and hallucinating?

[...]

To their credit, the filmmakers don’t resort to gratuitous tits and ass.  But if this eclectic and schizo film making style (potpourri-like, if you will) was applied to an actual story, it might have actually been something to remember.  There are zombies, and ample amounts of cheap looking gore, but overall it looks and feels like something Troma would shit out, probably after eating potpourri.  Alright, I think that’s enough torture for one sitting.

Chillerama.

Zombies are obviously a huge fad at the moment.  A smaller fad that has popped back up in the horror industry is the 'anthology' picture.  Most, if not all, that we have watched thus far have failed to ever capture the magic of “Tales From the Crypt” or even “Creepshow”.  “Chillerama” was one that was well received, and features five directors, one for each segment.  The bad news is, only one of them contains zombies (and it turns out to be the central story that plays in between the other segments).  The worse news, the whole film is two hours long.  I smell a fast forward request around the corner.

[...]

[Guy digs up his dead wife and tries to rape her corpse in the graveyard.]

Starkwell: Ummm…

[Wife re-animates bites off his balls.]

Starkwell: Why did they have to show his nutsack?

Lovelock: Why is his blood blue?

[Guy walks away and goes past a drive-thru, and it shifts focus on the attendees therein.]

Starkwell: Why did they say ‘Otis Redding’ was on when it isn’t ‘Otis Redding’?

[We’re in for a long ride.]

Starkwell: Oh I get it… he had blue balls.

Lovelock: I must say, I opening it up with a shot of a hairy nutsack being gobbled is… umm… BALLSY.

Starkwell: Stop. Just stop.

[...]

Gobbled-Up Ballsack Man works at the drive-in theater, and I guess the drive-in is going to be what we see for the ‘segue’ sequences in between segments.  Some faces are recognizable, it’s not entirely filled with amateurs, and so far it seems quite competently made.  The acting and dialogue are decent, but I have to admit, Starkwell is having issues with the subject matter already.

[...]

[First segment is about a guy who takes a fertility drug and ends up with gigantic sperm.]

Lovelock: Well, it’s crass, but at least it’s…funny?

Starkwell: Yeah, I don’t know about that.

Lovelock: Well, it’s gross, but at least… it’s… funny?

[Doctor tells him to jerk off whenever he is aroused, so he does so in the bathroom of his date, right when he shows up at her house, but the sperm he releases continues to grow, has teeth and tries to burrow up the date’s crotch.]

Starkwell: Dude, it’s like it was written by stoned fifteen year olds.

Lovelock: Not quite there...

Starkwell: Stoned fifteen year old Troma fans?

Lovelock: There's the missing piece.

[...]

So the sperm gets away, keeps growing and starts eating people.  And then it really gets ridiculous.

[...]

[Giant sperm looks at statue of liberty and sees her shaking her ass and bare breast.]

Starkwell: How is this a movie?  And I don’t mean that in a “it’s so edgy” kind of way.  I literally mean how is this a movie.

Lovelock: So many innuendoes… SO FUCKING LAME.

[...]

Off to a rough start.  This makes Troma movies look mature.  It’s too bad, because it is relatively well made in terms of its look and feel.  No seriously, it’s well filmed and looks really cool.  It’s just that, we’re only one segment in and we’ve seen dudes beating off three times, and now, in between all of the lame and predictable sex jokes, we’re being treated to a lame musical number.  I guess they’re parodying beach movies in this next segment.

[...]

Starkwell: Alright, I get what they’re doing here.  I get the homage that they are going for.  Very clever, now can we fast forward?

[...]

Seriously, it’s a shame because there are some good ideas here.  But they KEEP covering those ideas in dick jokes.  Also, in the beach party movie... gay jokes?  Then in the next segue they bring in the big guns.  FART JOKES!  Starkwell just keeps getting more and more angry.   The next segment is “The Diary of Anne Frankenstein”.  It involves Hitler reviving a dead Rabbi who comes back to life and starts killing Nazis.

[...]

Starkwell:  I think these film makers REALLY want to be EDGY.

Lovelock: I just don’t think they know where the edge is.

Starkwell: Their edge is probably covered in dick and fart jokes.

Lovelock: And… Jewish jokes apparently?

[...]

So Lovelock and Starkwell are finally realizing that the zombie segment is actually just the stuff that they are showing in between the other segments.  Apparently the blue blood semen mixture that ended up in the popcorn is turning everyone into flesheaters.  The final segment called “Deathication” is one long fart and shit joke.  And there are a lot of boobies.  Starkwell gets up and leaves.

[...]

Lovelock: Actually, it’s kind of getting to the point where the shit joke is beaten so badly that it’s actually starting to really be funny.

[...]

Starkwell left just in time.  Once “Deathication” ended, it cut back to the drive-in and it was one long montage of people butt blasting one another and eating each other while butt blasting each other and people jerking off and so on and so forth.  Then they showed a girl pulling out her husband’s cock and ripping it off while spraying her husband with blue breast milk… in front of their baby, which they then ate.  It sounds even worse than it is.

[...]

Lovelock: This is like those action movies, where the film makers think if they just show shit blowing up for two hours that it’s EVEN better than actually trying to write a fucking story.

[All killer, no filler?  What a bunch of malarkey.]

[...]

Don’t get me wrong, it’s the best horror movie parody I’ve seen in a long time.  But that don’t mean shit, really.  The film makers clearly love movies, and a lot of the same movies I love.  Unfortunately, they seem to love dick-fart jokes, racial and and religious and sexual stereotypes, and boobies and shit even more.  The movie ended with the four filmmakers leaving a theater showing “Chillerama”, which they then made fun of.  Nice touch I guess. One guy was wearing a Newbury Comics shirt, which, admittedly, is pretty fucking cool.

The Dungeonmaster.

I apologize in advance for the length of this documented conversation.  It was impossible to get around.

-----

This film was at one point called “Ragewar: The Challenges of Excalibrate”, which to me is a much cooler and more descriptive title than “The Dungeonmaster”.  But apparently the title was changed to try to trick “Dungeons and Dragons” nerds into checking it out.  Wow.  This is an anthology picture, sort of, since it features different sections each written and directed by different people.  Seriously, there are like eight writers and directors.  Charles Band (who? exactly.) leads the way. The overall narrative is that a computer programmer and his girlfriend get sucked into an alternate universe and have to deal with seven-ish different worlds, or “levels” if you want to make it sound like a video game… something I’m certain the producers were going for, given that this was produced and released in the wake of “TRON” and its popularity.  Who doesn’t love a good mockbuster!?!  Answer: In general, Starkwell doesn’t, neither does Lovelock.  Let’s see how this one holds up.

[...]

[The film starts with absolutely no set up of characters or story.  We see a guy waking up on a hospital bed of some kind, and he sees a girl in lingerie.  He unplugs himself, follows her, outside in slow motion, and chases her around outside.  Eventually they end up in a strange hallway, and in a dark room.  Now she’s naked and they start with the foreplay and the full frontal.  Somehow she’s on a bed.  Then, weird goblinesque creatures come into the room in some kind of submarine door and take the naked girl away, into some kind of foggy room.  Then the opening credits roll.  The music is EXTRA dramatic and intense.]

Starkwell: …

Lovelock: Is… ummmm… what?

[...]

Turns out, that was a dream… I think.  Some nerdy programmer wakes up at the office.

[...]

[Paul has a talking watch, and he goes running after work.]

Starkwell: And the award for brightest red hot pants goes to… Calculator-watch Eighties McNerdenstein!

Lovelock: The character SAYS he runs every day, but that actor has clearly never run before.

[Cut to an aerobics class for like five minutes.]

[...]

[He has a talking computer he calls “CAL”.]

Starkwell: Seriously?  Cal?  Sounds a little like Hal... Oh I get it.

[Aerobics instructor Gwen is his girlfriend.]

Lovelock: What could she possibly see in this guy?

[He wants to marry her, and says he ran it by his computer CAL, and that she, the computer, thought it was a good idea.]

Starkwell: Ummm… So… he invented a computer that thinks for itself… and he uses it to find recipes and give him relationship advice?

Lovelock: He's so dreamy.

[...]

Anyways, Gwen doesn’t want to marry him, because he is CLEARLY obsessed with his computer.  Then there’s another crazy dream sequence that makes no sense and Starkwell and Lovelock spent the whole time laughing at Paul's in-dream outfit.  My favorite was Lovelock asking “why is he dressed like Smoke from Mortal Kombat?” to which Starkwell responded “I was thinking Gay Mad Max.”  Obviously Gwen was in the dream, basically naked again.  At some point, even though he woke up, he was still in the dream… or it’s real now… or… anyways.  The girl is still in her underwear.  Then we are introduced to the Dungeonmaster (?), and he magically zaps Paul, and then he is wearing the Sub-Zero outfit again.  I think the Dungeonmaster is named Mestema, and refers to himself in the third person.  Also, he is Satan.  He raises his sword and says by the power of Satan, in an OBVIOUS nod to “He-Man” shouting “by the power of Grayskull”.  All of this happened in the span of about three minutes.

[...]

[Dungeonmaster knights Paul and tells him his name is “X-CaliBR8”.  He is apparently going to be a worthy match for Satan.  Gwen is still chained up, but is no longer in her underwear.  Apparently Dungeonmaster has waited centuries for this...]

Lovelock: Seriously dude, what the fuck is going on?  Did somebody put something in my club soda?  Are we on "Candid Camera" or something?

Starkwell: I want to run, but, I can’t look away.

[...]

Then there’s a flash of light, and Paul is suddenly in the wilderness and his magic bracelet, or POWER GLOVE is being stolen by two dwarf cavemen who, for whatever reason, sound like hyperventilating chipmunks.  Then a giant stone monument comes to life and chases Paul, shooting lasers out of the jewel in his forehead.

[...]

[Giant Stone Creature explodes when Paul shoots the jewel in its forehead.]

Lovelock:  Obviously he knew exactly where to shoot it, and how to aim with his forearm band.

Starkwell: If there’s one thing computer nerds know, it’s how to beat the boss at the end of the level.

[Cuts immediately back to Paul in cave with Dungeonmaster.  No Underwear Gwen  this time.]

Starkwell: As much fun as I am having… this all seems a little… what’s the word I’m looking for… fucking pointless what the fuck is going on.

Lovelock: That’s two words or more.

[...]

After an argument with Mestema about where Gwen was, Paul is warped to some foggy cave full of warrior zombies.

[...]

[Paul gets philosophical and waxes existential to defeat his zombie self, instantly warped back to FIRE CAVE.  Gwen is here this time.]

Lovelock: Wait so by saying that he is reality and he makes reality what reality is reality, then we learn that reality is real and therefore there is no zombie except for that in which there is in Dungeonmaster’s mind which is Paul’s mind which is my mind?

Starkwell: Shhhh… you’re missing Electric Dragon fight!

[Then there’s an electric dragon fight between Dungeonmaster’s electricity dragon and Paul’s electricity dragon.  They disappear just as quickly as they showed up, and served no purpose. Neither dragon won or lost, they just vanished.]

[...]

Lovelock is being surprisingly forgiving, since that is likely to be the only zombie content in this whole movie.  Then the Dungeonmaster said “Do you fancy music?  This is a piece of my own composing" TOTALLY out of the fucking blue, and he made them listen to his music.  Then, Paul used his bracelet to start playing shitty synth 80s rock to drown out Dungeonmaster's 'composing'.  It was a rock off of sorts, except no one was rocking AT ALL.  Then Dungeonmaster warped Paul to a shitty underground hair metal band’s rock show.  I should mention that it took about twenty minutes to get through this five minute scene, because Lovelock and Starkwell kept falling unconscious from laughing too hard, and I kept having to pause and rewind.

[...]

[Band plays, Gwen is held captive on stage.]

Lovelock: Dude, that’s fucking “WASP”!

Starkwell: In reality there would be a lot less women in the audience.

[WASP singer rubs a sword on Gwen and licks said sword.]

Starkwell: And that's why.

Lovelock: That’s also why WASP sucks.

[...]

Then his Super Bracelet tells him how to defeat WASP and he does.  Back to FIRE CAVE.  Momentarily.  Then he is zapped to an ice level.

[...]

Lovelock: I hope he fights a snowman!

[...]

[Instead, the ice cave is full of frozen PEOPLE OF HISTORY.]

Starkwell: I don’t really get why Dungeonmaster would have Albert Einstein and Jack the Ripper…

Lovelock: I guess it’s all of the most important villains in history… like… wait is that a Werewolf?

Starkwell: Why is Einstein a villain?

[Historical figures start attacking Paul.]

[...]

Then they rip a shiny spiky iceball out of Einstein’s hand and throw it at the other bad villains.  It blows up like a grenade, obviously.  And scene.  And back to firecave.

[...]

Lovelock: This must be where Bill and Ted got all of their ideas.

Starkwell: Also, Captain N.

[...]

[Dungeonmaster offers Paul freedom and three sexy women in exchange for Gwen.]

Lovelock: Dude, take the deal!

Starkwell: It actually looks like he’s contemplating it…

[...]

Then Gwen disappears, Dungeonmaster lets out a groan like he’s letting out a huge turd, and Paul wakes up in an alley next to a dumpster and a dead girl.

[...]

Starkwell: It’s hard to believe that we’ve only been watching this for forty five minutes.

Lovelock: There’s still another half hour… I can’t even imagine what’s in store.

[...]

[Paul jumps out of the back door of a cop car.]

Lovelock: I’m pretty sure the back doors of a squad car don’t unlock and open from the inside…

Starkwell: See, that’s normally the kind of observation I would make about continuity errors… but at this point…  

Lovelock: I guess it’s hard to really have any rules at all when you can literally make your character do anything, and make anything happen at any time.

Starkwell: The “X-CaliBR8” bracelet is the ultimate tool for the lazy screenwriter.  “How will Paul get out of this Jam?  Oh I know, his bracelet makes the cop car go away! And then things blow up. EXCALIBRATE!”

[...]

[After solving a crime in New York City, they’re back, and for some reason Dungeonmaster doesn’t know what the word ZAP means.]

Lovelock: Seems odd since half of this movie is stuff being zapped, with zappy sound effects.

Starkwell: Also, why would it matter at all that he doesn’t know the meaning, and why would Paul tell him it’s a “magic” word?

Lovelock: You know that with this movie, that will never come back as anything relevant.

[...]

Now Paul is at the mouth of a cave full of THERMO-NUCLEAR activity, according to his Power Bracelet, but he ventures in, since he can hear Gwen crying for help.

[...]

[Goblin thing gets smushed by a boulder.]

Lovelock: Holy shit, dude, they really threw a boulder at the poor actor wearing that rubber goblin suit…

[Goblin turns into an angel in lingerie.]

Starkwell: Well, that makes sense.

Lovelock: Nipples!

[...]

Then he warps back to Dungeonmaster and Dungeonmaster calmly tells the story about torturing a cat as a child, and finishes it by warping them to a junkyard for old planes.

[...]

[Dunebuggy chase in the desert with Big Laser shootout.]

Lovelock: Good thing the bad guys and good guys have different colored lasers, otherwise we’d all be confused.  Oh... wait.

Starkwell: There’s just such wonderful attention to detail in this film.

[Sarcasm.  Clearly.]

[...]

[Gwen and Paul crash into another dunebuggy HEAD ON and blow up.  But then they’re back in FIRE CAVE.]

Lovelock: So… did they beat that level… because it seems like they lost that one and it should be game over at this point.

Starkwell: This movie was game over a long time ago.

[...]

Gwen, in perhaps her most supportive moment of the whole movie, tells Paul not to challenge the Dungeonmaster because “he is a giant and you can’t possibly win.”  Now that’s faith in your man.

[...]

[Paul throws Dungeonmaster into the lava… pretty easily might I add after like one minute of fist fighting.]

Lovelock: Ha!  You showed that bitch Gwen.  Dude should leave her chained up and go after the three sex slaves he was offered earlier.  I bet they’d believe in him.

Starkwell: Classy.

[...]

[Then they're suddenly back in their apartment, smoke everywhere and Gwen's in her underwear again.  She then suddenly exclaims “yes let’s get married, I asked CAL”.]

Starkwell: Wait… I thought they were in the computer… the computer isn’t evil? … wait… what?

Lovelock: So… where were they?  Why is there smoke all over the apartment?  Why is she in her underwear, but he is fully clothed?

Starkwell: Was the dream sequence from the beginning part of all of this?  Was this all a dream?  AM I DREAMING?

Lovelock: I notice the importance of the word ZAP never came up again.

[...]

The credits rolled and some random scenes from the movie replayed in the background.  It didn't help clarify anything.  Starkwell and Lovelock sat around for the next hour asking each other questions about RAGEWAR.  Oddly enough, I think that somehow, they loved it.

Tales From the Crypt.

There have been numerous mutations of Tales from the Crypt, but tonight we are watching the 1972 Freddie Francis film.  I’ve explained to Starkwell and Lovelock that not every segment will actually be about zombie(s).  They just looked at me, quite frustratingly, and said, “well then what’s the point?”  Hopefully we will find one.

[...]

[The first segment features a murderous Joan Collins.]

Starkwell: I guess by ’72 they still hadn’t figured out how to make blood look better than that.

Lovelock: Wait, she killed him?  I thought she spread red and orange paint on him.

Starkwell: Why would she do that?

Lovelock: Who knows what the British do for Christmas?

[...]

[The second segment features an adulterer leaving his wife and kids to run away with another woman.]

Starkwell: Oh, thank heavens it was only a dream.

Lovelock: Or was it?

Starkwell: Honestly, I really don’t know.

Lovelock: Or was it?

[...]

The third segment features an evil asshole young’un and Peter Cushing as on old crazy widower.  The asshole guy is so concerned with the value of his Dad’s property that he pretty much ruins the old man’s life, even though he already lost his wife.

[...]

[Peter Cushing hears from his wife via his Ouija Board.]

Lovelock: Dancer?

Starkwell: Danger, you idiot.

[...]

[Asshole sends the old man hate mail.  Old man hangs himself. And then, a year later… Peter. Cushing. As a zombie.]

Starkwell: What kind of a grown man spends every Valentine’s Day with his father?

Lovelock: A dead man!

Starkwell: Wow.  That’s a lot of orange-red paint.

[...]

[The fourth segment features a greedy woman and her magic wish granting statue, her husband dies when she wishes for money.  It gets worse from there.]

Lovelock: See that’s why I never use magic statues.

Starkwell: Yeah, that’s why.

[...]

[The fifth segment features an old military man taking over a home for old blind dudes, cutting corners, and making their living conditions much worse.]

Starkwell: I don’t know that it was necessary for the blind guys to take it out on the dog.

Lovelock: But now they’re rewarding him with a nice treat!

[...]

All of the segments featured people getting their comeuppance in some way, some form of poetic justice.  As a result, this was one of the most satisfying films I have seen in a very long time.  But as Lovelock said “yeah, but it’s not really a zombie movie, now is it?”  I think it counts.  Peter Cushing made it count.