BURT MALONE LETTERS: Zombies STILL all over the small screen...

People like Malone have been 'binge watching' before there was a term for it, and no surprise, he has been devouring all things zombie that the idiot box has to offer.  So here we go in another edition of "Malone takes on TV Zombies".

[...]

Hey asshead.

Since you just copy paste my letters like the lazy buffoon that you are, I'm going to structure this letter a little more like the rest of your dumb posts where you chronicle the moronic banter of those two tools.

[...]

I'm going to interrupt this, actually to say... HARSH.

[...]

Most people probably come here for Malone anyways.  So give the people what they want.  Alright. So I've been combing the depths of Netflix for more TV Shows with zombies that I have checked out yet.  My search came up, to my surprise, with some totally adequate and competent television.

iZombie, from 2015, is into its third season at this point, and I have to say, maybe it's because I went in with a super low bar, but this thing delivers.  Funny, for the most part, when it tries to be, and a cast of actors that I actually want to keep watching.  Characters that I want to root for!  Look, some of it is a bit lame, and not ALL of the jokes land, but the story and hook to the show is original enough to keep me engaged, and I ended up wanting to go back for more.  Three out of four!

Moving along.  I finally got around to watching Ash vs. Evil Dead.  Bruce Campbell dusts off the old Ash role and slaps it on like a nice comfy old pair of jeans.  Ash seems to be a bigger asshole than I remember... but maybe it's just been that long since I've seen the original movies.  Honestly, seeing him reprise the role, and for an ongoing, well produced, well written TV show... I mean, it give me a bigger joy boner than seeing Ford do Han again.  And believe me, that was a big boner.  Speaking of big boner, damn, Ash is a huge dick.  Three out of four as well.

At some point I knew I'd get to one I didn't like so much.  this brings me to The Returned... an A&E (?) production that is the fourth (?) re-ash of the same story.  I know the French one "Les Revenants" was based off a French movie, so this is the second or third level in of "based on based on based on" or something.  Not a bad show. But how about just doing one that hasn't already been done.  Lump this one in with Spiderman and Batman in the "I DON'T WANT ANOTHER VERSION WHO EVEN GIVES A SHIT IF ITS GOOD" category.  Two out of four.

My journey through Netflix, thankfully ended on a high note.  The Glitch is fucking cool.  It does bear some similarities to the above mentioned re-hash of a re-hash, but it is its own thing entirely.  I won't spoil anything, but it is well written, well acted, and at times, creepy as you want it to be.  FOUR ON FOUR.

There.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Love, Malone.

[...]

Great.  Now I have more stuff to add to my list of things I want to watch but probably never will have time to.  See you on the other side.

Maniac Cop 2.

Another Lustig movie about a vigilante… I definitely know that Lovelock and Starkwell head into this one with the expectation bar at least somewhat raised.  They enjoyed the first installment, and they definitely like some of writer Larry Cohen’s other endeavors, such as “The Stuff”.  While they found “Uncle Sam” to be a bit of a stinker (I mean, how many times can you re-brand the same movie), this one came in well before that, so maybe it won't feel quite so tired.  Also, I mean, come on, Bruce Campbell is in it.  So, yeah.

[...]

[Bruce Campbell fights Maniac Cop.]

Starkwell: I always thought Campbell was kind of a Streisand, but he’s rocking the shit in this one.

Lovelock: Wait what?

[Maniac Cop drives a truck off a pier with Campbell hanging onto the side of the truck.]

Lovelock: WOAH!  STUNTS!

Starkwell: I miss watching movies where you get to spot the stunt doubles.  Nice wig!

[...]

If you haven’t seen the first one, all you really need to know is that Maniac Cop is a vigilante zombie cop who just don’t know when to quit.  Something tells me that, although he just took a huge pipe through the chest, he’s coming back.  The something telling me that, is that this is called “Maniac Cop 2” and we are only two minutes into the film.

[...]

[Maniac Cop stops an armed robbery, but kills the clerk and gives the gun back to the perp.]

Lovelock:  I don’t get it.

Starkwell: What’s with all the smoke?

Lovelock: Will there be a story in this movie, or… ?

[...]

Bruce Campbell and Blondie are arguing with the police commissioner about whether or not the Maniac Cop really is the undead dude they think it is.  Blondie starts FREAKING OUT.  Then five minutes later they kill Campbell and the guys are all “DA FUCK”.

[...]

Starkwell: Is it really necessary to focus on the dead naked girl’s boobs for so long at the morgue?  They’re there to identify Bruce Campbell’s body…

Lovelock: I’ll allow it.

Starkwell: Dude, weak.

[...]

There doesn’t seem to be any real method to Maniac Cop’s madness.  I mean I get that he killed Bruce Campbell, but the guy in the corner store?  Now a cop towing away some douchebag’s car?  What the shit?

[...]

[Maniac Cop throws Blondie through a window and then she goes after him with a chainsaw.]

Starkwell: What does she expect to do with that?

Lovleock: I don’t know but she has some seriously crimped hair.

[Maniac Cop immediately breaks her neck.]

Lovelock: Hashtag chainsaw fail.

Starkwell: Never again, please.

[...]

Then the Police Psychologist Woman, handcuffed to a car’s steering wheel goes flying down the highway… on the outside of the car.  Say what you will about the movie, but there are some pretty righteous car stunts littered throughout.

[...]

[Strip club scene.]

Starkwell: Why is this scene so long?  Why are the strip club scenes always so long?

Lovelock: Like you don't know.  More important is, who is this fucking guy they are focusing on?

[This movie is developing a side story now, even though the main story is barely developed.]

[...]

So the guy at the strip club is a Serial Killer who’s been killing strippers.  As he is about to kill another stripper in her apartment, Maniac Cop show up, throws the girl into a wall and saves the Serial Killer from the police.  Seriously, what the fuck, they become buddies and plan to kill together?

[...]

Lovelock: I feel like the theme from “Perfect Strangers” should start playing, at this point.

[...]

Then there is a flashback to how Maniac Cop died in prison, and for whatever reason, it just had to be in “stabbed while naked in the showers by some shirtless inmates”.  So we get plenty of Robert Z’Dar ass shots and some almost side peen.  Why did it have to be in the shower?  And why were the prison showers so dark, open and cavernous?

[...]

[The cops go around to some neighboring strip clubs to look for the guy.  They find him at the first strip club they go to.]

Starkwell: How convenient.

Lovelock: How did this guy manage to kill so many strippers and get away with it if he is so dumb?  FUuuUUCK the cops in this movie’s universe are inept.

[...]

Then Maniac Cop goes to the police station and kills basically everybody and frees his Serial Killer Buddy.  It’s a fair amount of bullet action and gore, but I still don’t really see what his end game is, other than killing everyone that potentially put him behind bars in the first place.  Also random people.

[...]

[Maniac Cop and Serial Killer steal a prison bus and break into prison… ?]

Starkwell: So, no one reported that the prison bus was stolen and that MAYBE the prison souldn’t let the bus in?

Lovelock: Remember what I said about the cops in this universe?

[So I guess he is going after the people that shower-shanked him in prison.]

[...]

After a pretty sweet fire stunt, Maniac Cop kills his killers and flies out the window down a bunch of flights into a bus, which then explodes.  It’s THE DEFINITION OF BLAZE OF GLORY.  The story may have lacked some imagination, and had a whole slew of useless bits, like the Serial Killer Guy (why was he even in this?), but man, the action and stunts were tight. Can’t wait to show them part 3.

Shock Waves.

I can't really be sure if you could say that this is the original Nazi Zombie film, especially not if you count something like "They Froze Hitler's Brain".  And certainly Zombie Soldiers had previously been tackled.  But "Shock Waves" did that with Peter Cushing, so COME ON that must get it some extra brownie points.   Anyways, this was essentially cloned two more times with "Oasis" and "Lake", so let's see what all the fuss was about.

[...]

[Narrator explains that the Nazis did experiments on corpses, to create SUPER SOLDIERS, and that this squad of invincible soldiers was NEVER CAUGHT.]

Starkwell: I just got goose bumps, did you get goose bumps?

Lovelock: Is that the same things as shitting in your pants?  Because if so, I just had explosive goose bumps.

[...]

After the opening credits roll, it cuts to a woman floating out at sea on a rowboat, and being rescued by a fishing boat.  She narrates the story, and begins explaining, as they begin showing just how she got there.  In the flashback, she's on a boat with Captain John Carradine and some dude with a crazy mustache.  I think there are lots of other people too.

[...]

[There is a married couple, and an old crotchety cook, and dude who seems to like making castles with cards.]

Lovelock: If that cook saves the day, then this it TOTALLY where "Under Siege" got all of its ideas.

Starkwell: I don't see that happening.

Lovelock: Why are they on this boat?

Starkwell: I don't think it is to find undead Nazi super soldiers…

Lovelock: But that is EXACTLY what they're going to do.

[...]

Then they run into a huge ghost ship that appeared out of nowhere, and then disappeared seemingly into thin air.  In the morning, they row to a nearby island.  Carradine seems to have disappeared.  Then they find him, dead. They walk the island and find an old abandoned hotel resort of some kind.  There they meet Peter Cushing.  I can't tell yet if he is a good guy or a bad guy.

[...]

[Zombie walks around on the ocean floor and then pops out of the ocean.]

Starkwell: So… he was just hanging around the coral reef?

Lovelock: Probably looking at the fishies.

Starkwell: Apparently looking at the camera too.

Lovelock: Excellent.

[...]

[Nazi Zombies rise up out of the water and walk onto shore.  The cook goes out to fish up some food and one of the zombies drowns him.]

Lovelock: There we go.  Off to a good start.

[The rest of the group find his body and see two of the zombies slowly walk away.]

Starkwell: Wouldn't they be hiding or something?

Lovelock: They're not ninjas, guy.

[...]

Peter Cushing seems to be a good guy, NOW, in the sense that he tries to warn them and tells them they need to leave.  But he does explain that he is the one that created the super soldiers during the war and has tried to keep them on this secluded island, hidden way… but says that they are now ON THE LOOSE and out to kill.  Then he runs into the forest and one of the zombies drowns him.

[...]

Lovelock:  SO… MANY… underwater shots.

[...]

There was a scene where nerdy guy named Norman was surprised and drowned without making a peep.  Lovelock shouted out "quietest death ever" and then both he and Starkwell laughed for five minutes re-watching the scene several times.

[...]

[Main character Rose takes off one of the zombie's goggles and he dies immediately, because of the sun… I think.]

Lovelock: Some super soldiers… they can't take their goggles off?

Starkwell: Was this thing filmed in a library?  People are being attacked and dying and zombies are dying and LITERALLY no sounds are being made.

Lovelock: Those goggles must be seriously awesome.

Starkwell: They don't have guns, and move real slow.  Just run up to them and take their goggles off.  How hard is that?

Lovelock: You'd think if the scientist can create a super soldier whose only weakness is LIGHT, he'd figure out a way to make those goggles more permanent.  Those elastics are usually flimsy.

[...]

[The Nazis continue to hunt/drown the survivors.]

Lovelock: So the only way they know how to kill people is drowning them?

Starkwell: Doesn't seem like a very threatening force.  Pretty useless in a gunfight… How could they have been a death squad in World War 2?

Lovelock: Maybe they used to carry around buckets of water.

[They drown one guy in a pool, the other girl in a fishtank.]

Lovelock: Lucky for them there was a fish tank in that room… otherwise where would they have drown her?

Starkwell: Why would he have been walking in the pool?

Lovelock: "The zombies seems to hide in the water… so I think I'll go for a swim."  These people are all getting what they deserve.

[...]

Then Rose sails off in a rowboat.  The end.  Lovelock made some jokes all throughout about this being where "Lost" got all of its ideas, but Starkwell and EVERYONE ELSE agrees that it makes no sense to say that.  Lovelock likes to think everyone is ripping everyone off.

Love After Death.

I have no idea what the fuck this is gonna be about.  The film starts off at a guy’s funeral.  Though he looks dead, he appears to still be able to see what is going on, as his wife, doctor and friends look down at his corpse in his casket.  Then he’s buried.  Is he dead?  Is he alive?  Who knows?

[...]

[The wife, and other men at the funeral, look at each other and smile.]

Lovelock: Ummm…. ?

Starkwell: Wait the title says it’s called “Unsatisfied Love”?

Lovelock: Usually movies with many titles are terrible.

Starkwell: And that’s based on?

Lovelock: Nothing I guess.  Well… this movie, so far.

[...]

After an incredibly long driving scene, we see Montel (the dead guy) rise up out of his grave.  It’s pretty funny because you can see that the actor put cotton balls in his ears and nose so that no dirt would get in it.  But on a whole, it’s a pretty cool scene, especially for the late sixties.

[...]

[Cut to the widow, having her boobies felt up by the doctor, she told the doctor that she is A VIRGIN.]

Lovelock: Montel probably died from blue balls.

Starkwell: I don’t think you can die from that.

Lovelock: You can if you blow your fucking brains out.

[...]

At this point there is an incredibly long and drawn out scene where Montel knocks a girl out in an alley, breaks into a nearby house, undresses her, feels her up and kisses her body parts, at which point she wakes up and… tells him to screw her?  But then he runs away… Seriously it’s a REALLY long scene.  Starkwell leaves.  Lovelock stays, confused, alone, scared.

[...]

[Montel hides in a dressing room and watches a transvestite SLOWLY undress herself/himself.]

Lovelock: Umm…?

[Cut to, an apartment, two women are making out and undressing each other.]

Lovelock: Right because that’s super relevant to the story.  Oh wait, there is no story.

[The lesbian scene lasts, a few minutes, then Montel hides in the closet.  The lesbians find him and want him to join in… but he runs away… scared?]

Lovelock: Dude.  Seriously?

[...]

At this point Lovelock realizes that there has been insanely little dialogue, and that most of this movie has been people groping one another.

[...]

Lovelock: What’s with the close-ups on the eyes and/or lips?  Why are they holding the keys like that?  HE JUST MET THAT WOMAN ON THE STREET, why would she invite him in and then strip?  What planet is this?

[...]

Sometime after another five minutes of Montel pulling off a woman’s panties and fondling her butt, it looks like he actually finished the job this time, and did sex all on that woman.  And then they finally developed more of the story.  It turns out that the bitch wife buried him alive… on purpose.  So… he’s not a zombie?

[...]

[Montel breaks into an apartment, watches a couple do it, then he… knocks the guy out and does the girl?]

Lovelock: Did she not notice that it’s a different guy?

[...]

Montel eventually tracks down his widow, kills the doctor, and then starts… raping his former wife?  And she’s into it?  Oh wait, he’s not into it anymore, he slaps her in the face and eventually chokes her.  But then… twist ending… he vanishes into thin air.  So... he was dead?  FUCK THIS SHIT.  It's a late sixties soft core porn living dead film that isn't good at being a soft core porn or effective at being a living dead film.

The Crow: Salvation.

The sequel to “The Crow” was essentially a mockbuster, of itself.  This looks to take the myth in a different direction, so at least if it’s horrible, it won’t be horrible and unoriginal.  Well, it will still be somewhat unoriginal since it’s the third movie based on the same comic book.  And chances are it will be extra horrible.

[...]

[Guy is sent to the chair for killing his girlfriend, who he did not kill.  The guy who did kill her, THE MAN WITH THE SCARS on the arm, is there watching.]

Lovelock: And that’s why I’m against the death penalty.

Starkwell: Mature.  Surprising.

Lovelock: Yeah, I believe in Thunderdome.

[...]

[He revives almost immediately, in the morgue.]

Starkwell: The crow is working fast in this case…

Lovelock: He’s still smoking!

[He pulls off his melted face and heals, but somehow has “The Crow” 'makeup' on.]

Starkwell: Well, that’s one way to do it… I guess.

Lovelock: I’ve been robbed of another rise from the grave scene.  Robbed I tells ya.

[...]

So we meet Kirsten Dunst who is apparently dead girlfriend’s sister.  And The Crow immediately goes on a manhunt for the people that framed him.  He starts with a random junkie, and then moves on to a crooked pedophile rapist cop.  The rest on the list are also crooked cops.  Apparently the crooked cops hang out counting their crooked money in the upstairs of a shady sex club.  A crooked sex club, obviously.

[...]

Lovelock: None of the actors in this film look tough at all.  Is it just me?  No one is menacing.

Starkwell: Nah, I feel the same way.  Hell, even The Crow looks like he wants to help me pick out linens at Sears.

Lovelock: This is what The Crow would be if he was played by Michael Cera, or Jesse Eisenberg.

[...]

I think Starkwell said something about how everyone looked like Mormon accountants.  Makes sense since this was filmed in Salt Lake, apparently.  Meanwhile, Kirsten Dunst finds out who The Crow really is, and starts to believe his story.

[...]

[The Captain is apparently involved.]

Lovelock: Remo Williams is a bad guy?

Starkwell: He’s Scar-Arm?

[The captain is played by Fred Ward.]

[...]

Kirsten Dunst finds out that her father knew about all of thsi shit, the whole crooked cop thing.  Maybe her dad is Scar-Arm.  The main problem that Starkwell and Lovelock have with the film is that, much like in the shitty sequel and UNLIKE the original classic, we don’t give a shit about the main characters, AT ALL.  Not The Crow, not Dunst, NO ONE.  The film makers made no effort to develop any characters ever forever, NEVER.   Anyways, The Crow figures it all out, goes to the sex club and kills everyone, leaving only Remo.  Eventually he finds Remo, her crazy girlfriend and their weird torture chamber.  Seriosuly?  He catches Remo and brings him to the electric chair.  Remo dies, The Crow wins, and the audience loses about an hour and a half.  The end.

Hellgate.

There ain’t a whole lot out there about “Hellgate”, probably because it’s a bad movie.  But from a director who started his career with “Blackenstein”, what can you expect, really?  Starkwell and Lovelock don’t really know what to expect. 

[...]

[One dude and two girls sit around in a cabin telling scary stories, one starts to tell the story of the Hellgate Hitchhiker, and then it cuts immediately to the pansiest looking biker gang EVER biking along the highway to REALLY lame ‘50s music.]

Starkwell: Are the beards and denim vests supposed to make them look threatening?

Lovelock: It would work better if they had something on under the denim vests.  And weren’t so scrawny.  And that there weren’t two guys on one bike hugging each other so closely.

[...]

The quality of the picture and sound is atrocious.  The mixing is so bad that you can barely hear the dialogue over the shitty doo-wop music.  Not that you’re really missing out.  Anyways, the biker gang goes to a diner grabs one of the waitresses, rips her skirt off and pulls her out in her panties.  It cuts awkwardly back and forth from the “teens” telling the story and the actual story, being shown.

[...]

Starkwell: We already know that she is telling the story.  They don’t need to cut back to the cabin.

Lovelock: What?  And miss that great acting and dialogue?

[...]

Luckily for Starkwell, and the waitress, the bikers do little more to her than pick her up wrestle her a little, and chase her around in her underwear.  BUT THEN… The girl’s father shows up (luckily) and throws a hatchet at the gang leader’s head while simultaneously getting the gang leader’s chain wrapped around his arm.  It all happens in slow motion.  Lovelock and Starkwell both sat motionless and quiet, not sure whether to laugh, cry, or leave the room and shut off the NETFLIX MACHINE.  Oh, the daughter dies.

[...]

Lovelock: Can we just take a moment to talk about how amazing the father’s mustache is?

Starkwell: You just took a moment.  So why bother asking?

[...]

[The other girl starts telling another story (I stopped paying attention, so I don’t know what the relation to the first story is), and it involves a scene where some old guy swings at a toy bat (like a flap flap flying bat, not baseball bat) with a shovel.]

Lovelock: Watch out for that fake bat!  It’s alive!  It appears to be held up by a wire of some sort!

Starkwell: I think it’s SUPPOSED to be a real bat.

[...]

[Old Guy finds what looks like Kryptonite in the cave, which shoots a light beam at the dead bat and the bat comes back to life.  Turns out he works for the father, he brings him the magic rock and tells him about the bat.]

Starkwell: Yeah.  Cuz it worked out SO WELL in “Pet Sematary”.

Lovelock: Maybe they never saw it.

[Old Man zaps a dead goldfish, and then it turns into a huge slimy puppet, and then explodes.]

Starkwell: So he sees that happen and then decides, “LET’S TRY IT ON A TURTLE”?

Lovelock: Why isn’t the turtle exploding?

[Turtle explodes, old man has heart attack, the magic rock starts melting his face.]

Starkwell: WHAT IN THE FUCK.

Starkwell: So he sees all of this happen and then IMMEDIATELY decides, "Let's go to try this on my long since dead daughter.

Lovelock: Why is the daughter frozen in carbonite like Han Solo?

Starkwell: Why is it when the father imagines his daughter, he pictures her running in a field in a dress, and like, the straps of the dress are falling, and you almost see her boobs?

[...]

Anyways, the questions continued for a while.  We got to see zombie daughter for the first time.  Apparently she has super powers involving making her eyes glow and draining Matt’s car battery.  Matt is a guy on his way to the cabin to join the others.  At some point it just jumped from the old story back to the present day… I think.  Unless there is time travel involved.

[...]

[Matt picks up zombie girl Josie and brings her to Hellgate, which is apparently an amusement park full of dead people that the father has brought back.  Behind this amusement park, is her mansion.]

Starkwell: Why did the director use SO MUCH SMOKE?  Seriously, half the budget must have gone to smoke machines.

Lovelock: The other half went to the shitty doo-wop band that scored the film.

Starkwell: Why did they get rid of the father’s mustache?

Lovelock: Probably so we would know that it’s actually the present day.

[...]

This movie is really dumb.  This Matt guy is probably the dumbest of all the dumbs (or maybe just the most horny).  He brings Josie back to her mansion and follows her inside, where she (easily) seduces him.  The ridiculous operatic score is even more distracting than the doo-wop was earlier in the film.  The father walks in on a topless Josie having her breasts fondled by Matt.

[...]

[The father chases Matt out shooting laser beams out of his magic rock.]

Starkwell: Wait… now itr ’s a regulalaser, not just a resurrection laser?

[Matt makes it back to the cabin and his girlfriend asks where he’s been and says she wants to hear “all about it”]

Lovelock: You might want to leave out the part about the waitress you were hitting on and the whole Josie boob groping-kissing.

[Matt actually tells her about Josie, minus the boobplay, she gets momentarily upset, but then they bone… again.]

[...]

Starkwell: SOMETHING FUCKING HAPPEN.

Lovelock: Did you not see the flesh eating exploding turtle and the melting farmer?

Starkwell: That’s not what I mean.

[...]

Matt decides to tell everyone that he met the “Hellgate Hitchhiker” and says he wants to help Josie, that she might be in trouble.  Starkwell thinks he’s just under the spell of the boobies.  Anyways, the rest of the dialogue was hard to hear over the painfully annoying doo-wop music.  Eventually Matt and his girlfriend go exploring and come across a zombie member of the old biker gang.  There was a short fight.  It was made longer by the inclusion of (once again) tons of slow motion.  After the short fight, Matt and the zombie biker have a civilized conversation and Matt tells him he’s going to Hellgate again tonight.

[...]

Lovelock: So… who are the good guys?  And who are the bad guys?  I don’t get it.

Starkwell: I wish I could say this movie had some sort of message… but it doesn’t.

Lovelock: I think the people who made this film are the bad guys.

[...]

[Matt takes them deeper in Hellgate territory on a quest to find Josie.]

Starkwell: What’s his game plan?  What happens when they find her and Josie is like “remember when you kissed my boobies”?

Lovelock: I guess he ditches Pam and resumes the booby fondling activities.

[...]

Anyways, the father wakes up all the zombies and they start closing in on the Get Along Gang.  It’s pretty tame, but at least there’s a decent number of them.  The faces are REALLY blue, which is either insane, or a nod to “Dawn of the Dead”.  Either way, it kind of gives them a vintage look.  Starkwell approves.  Lovelock wants to see them eat people.  It doesn’t happen.  Eventually the non-Matt guy and his girl die and become zombies, and I think there’s like a cabaret show at one point in a zombie saloon that ends with slow motion dancing and a girl being choked out… I mostly fell asleep.  This is a real mess.  There is a pretty sweet stunt at the end though where a topless Josie is thrown out of a window (in slow motion of course) that made Lovelock applaud momentarily as well as a car crashing into a building and exploding and a flaming dude walking away from the wreckage.

[...]

Lovelock: So the blonde biker guy is the hero?

[The father tries to zap them in their car, but the beam hits the rear view mirror, and bounces back towards him and explodes a building.]

Starkwell: But they’re still alive… so?  Umm…

Lovelock: Of course more doo-wop.

[...]

The end?

Wicked Little Things.

For a short period of time, it seemed like THE thing to do in “scary” movies was to have creepy kids doing creepy things.  I’m not sure when and where the trend started, but it seems to have been a lazy and fashionable way for writers to slip in some added creepiness… have a ghost kid singing some creepy lullaby with lots of reverb.  This movie puts all of its eggs firmly in that basket, in that the main antagonists are to be a group of undead children.  The director seems to have a career that started in the eighties and ended with this movie, which is really not a promising sign.  Unless it’s so good that he was like “I’ll never top that” and then retired.  We’ll see I guess.  After four hundred previews, the movie finally starts.

[...]

[Children are worked like slaves in a coal mine.]

Lovelock: Lousy kids… taking jobs from hard working blue collar adults.

Starkwell: Are you for real?

Lovelock: It’s only a matter of time before they start taking white collar jobs too.

[Mine collapses, kids all die.]

Lovelock: Well, not THOSE kids specifically.  But other kids maybe.

[...]

We are then introduced to a widow and her two daughters.  They are moving into her late husband’s family’s house, out in the sticks.  It’s creepy as balls, and the store owner tells them “ain’t no one been up there in a long time.”  It only makes it seem creepier.  And then he was like “WE DON’T DELIVER FOOD THERE.”  

[...]

[They get to the house, the door is open, the lock is broken, no electricity, no water.]

Lovelock: Wait, so they just go in and let the little girl run around?  Zombies and ghouls aside, what about like racoons and bears and shit?

Starkwell: “Go ahead sweetie! Touch stuff!  Touch everything! Especially the rusty stuff!”

[...]

The little girl sits in one of the bedrooms and there are old dolls and stuffed animals and actual rats, and the family is super sad and depressed.  The daughters hate it and the mother essentially looks like she hates life.  It makes one wonder why, if you’re already sad, you would leave everything behind and go to a creepy, run-down house in the middle of nowhere.  Starkwell and Lovelock stayed pretty quiet, as the mother has one of the scariest nightmares ever about a miner kid driving a pickaxe through her gut.

[...]

[Creepy sounds of child whisper can be heard.]

Lovelock: Using incomprehensible reverby child whispers is kind of like using clowns… It’s a little bit of a cop-out.  An easy way to get scares.

[...]

The mother doesn’t seem to notice that people keep hinting at the fact that there is something seriously wrong with this house.  The plumber said “I’m sure as Hell not sticking around here come nightfall.”  And Lovelock laughed.  Anyways, she’s clearly oblivious, since she didn’t notice that her younger daughter, Emma, just left the house and headed towards the woods and found the old mineshaft. 

[...]

Lovelock: Mother of the year.

[...]

[Emma and Mother are now lost in the woods.  At night.  And they can hear children’s voices.]

Lovelock: If I heard voices and my daughter said “don’t worry it’s just Mary and the others”, I think it would only make me more afraid.  MUCH more afraid.

[...]

Anyways, then the plumber dies at the hands of a Zombie Kid.  Guess he didn’t leave early enough.  The mother and daughter end up at some creepy shack and decide to go in!  They meet a creepy dude named Mr. Hanks, who once again says weird cryptic shit that alludes to the fact that BAD SHIT WILL HAPPEN IF THEY STAY AT THIS HOUSE.  The mother just stands by her idea to stay there.  Then she lets her older daughter go out with random townies that she just met and knows nothing about.

[...]

Lovelock: Mother of the decade.

[...]

[We see the whole lot of Zombie Miner Kids.]

Lovelock: Sweet!  Too bad they don’t have like guitars and shit.  In those outfits they’d make a rad Black Metal Collective of some kind.

Starkwell: Dude, they’re like ten.

Lovelock: Never too young to start being metal.

[Teenage Daughter hangs out with townies, listen to terrible music.]

Lovelock: The Black Metal Zombie Kid Collective's music wouldn't sound anything like this shit… the way I picture it, it's more like “Sunn 0)))” meets "Cathedral" being sung by “Alvin and the Chipmunks”, mixed with just a small dash of hipster shit like “Arcade Fire”.  And they mostly sing in Norwegian.

Starkwell: You realize that you’ve now made up an alternate reality in your mind wherein this band is real?

Lovelock: If that’s wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

[…]

Then the Zombie Kids violently axed a pig to death and ate it, and Lovelock did a jumpkick.  There’s like a rich asshole dude who wants to build a ski resort on the mountain, and we slowly get more details about the Kids.  Lovelock wished it moved just a bit faster, but agreed with Starkwell that it was effectively creepy.

[...]

[Zombie Kids hack the shit out of one of the teens.]

Lovelock: Speaking of irresponsible parents, it must be messed up to let your kid be in this movie and bludgeon a dude to death and then eat him… even if it’s make-believe… the gore is real looking enough that I’d assume the actor kids can’t possibly come out of this well adjusted.

Starkwell: That’s a surprisingly mature statement.

Lovelock: Holy poopoo! Did you see the one kid eating the guts!  Hee hee hee!

[Lovelock started playing air guitar and singing “Minor Threat” by “Minor Threat”, apparently changing‘Minor’ for ‘Miner’ in an awful play on words.]

Starkwell: … weak.

[...]

[Obviously, the Mother loses track of Emma, again, and takes her other daughter into the woods.]

Lovelock: Mother of the century.

[...]

Anyways, it’s the rich asshole the kids are after, because his ancestors are the ones that killed the kids and buried them in the mine in the first place.  So eventually they axe him to death and the Zombie Kids go away… FOR NOW!  The movie resolves itself and ends really quickly.  It’s like all of a sudden the family is California bound and intent on pretending that nothing ever happened.  It’s not a bad film, but there’s definitely something missing.

[...]

Starkwell: Those girls are going to need loads of therapy someday.

Lovelock: Mother of the MILLENIUM FOREVER INFINITY.

Bruce Lee Fights Back From the Grave.

The film opens with a shot of Bruce Lee’s grave.  Then, there’s a very quick shot of LIGHTNING FLASHING.  Then a Bruce impersonator explodes out of the ground in front of the “Bruce Lee” gravestone.  Cut to a title shot that, for some reason, has a very ‘Star Wars’-ish font.  Then there is a still shot of some kind of painting of Bruce Lee uppercutting some kind of half man half gargoyle with a scantily clad woman watching.  This whole thing lasted twenty seconds.  Lovelock and Starkwell re-watched it twenty-five or so time.

[...] 

[After the Gargoyle Punch Painting shot, it cuts very abruptly (the music even completely changes) to an airplane flying.]

Starkwell: Is it Bruce Lee on board?

Lovelock: Is he out for vengeance?  

[Honestly, we never find out.]

[...]

After that, they agreed there wasn’t any point in watching the rest of it.  Honestly, they didn’t miss much.  The rest of the film is pretty standard low level seventies chop-socky.  I’ve seen Dragon Lee films with better fighting, better acting and a more comprehensible story.  Ask me if I like Dragon Lee films.  Also, I’m not even sure if the character is actually supposed to be an undead Bruce Lee or not.  We the audience don't know, and I don't even think the character in the film knows.  He doesn't refer to himself as Bruce Lee, doesn't really seem to be on a vengeance quest, really, and if he IS undead Bruce, he shouldn't be teaching Tae-kwon-do.  There's also a Chuck Norris impersonator at one point who gets all rapey pervert with a girl.  If there actually was a film that featured an undead Bruce Lee coming back from the grave, the first thing he should do, is go after all of the people that tried to cash in on his death and make a quick buck imitating him with lookalikes who, for the most part, couldn't even fight or act.  Horrifying.

The Children.

Not to be confused by an early eighties zombie film of the same name, “The Children” follows the ‘at that time’ mini trend of trying to turn children into scary as balls monsters.  Usually this involves sounds of them singing lullabies with heavy reverb, or saying stuff that’s really cute followed by “TO KILL YOU” and shit.  For the most part, these movies always turn out lame, partly because, “seriously? kids?”, and partly because child actors are hardly ever convincing.

[...]

[We get introduced to a family, the teenage daughter obviously hates everyone.]

Starkwell: The daughter and the mother look like they’re the same age.

Lovelock: Also… are we really supposed to buy that THAT teenage girl likes playing video games?

Starkwell: They’re drinking and smoking and talking about rough sex right in front of the kids?

Lovelock: Eurotrash.

[Starkwell looked it up, and there is only about 12 years separating the two actresses.]

Starkwell: I guess they’re supposed to be close in age… the classic ‘originally unwanted baby’ syndrome.

[...]

One of the kids, Paul, slaps his stepfather in the face.  Maybe this is the beginning of the violence?  Lovelock certainly hopes so.  Either way, that douchebag deserved it.

[...]

[Stepfather guy talks about wanting to teach his kids Mandarin.]

Lovelock: Serious elitist Eurotrash.

[...]

One of the uncles is REALLY giving off a creepy molesty vibe with the teenage daughter.  Even just the hint of him being a perv has Starkwell STEAMING mad.  Also, the fact that the teenage daughter’s parents are clearly self absorbed selfish assholes, who put themselves first ALL OF THE TIME, is not helping with Starkwell’s rage.

[...]

Starkwell: Maybe they just want us to hate the grown-ups so we’ll root for the kids when they start getting their murder on.

Lovelock: They don’t need to try so hard.  I’d root for them anyways,

[...]

The mood is definitely set.  Looks like this one might take a while to get going since, on this first night, the creepiest thing we get is a shot of Paul watching his parents sleep.  The next day Paul sends a toboggan flying at his unsuspecting dad.  The dad reacts by spanking the crap out of him.  Meanwhile the other kids, Leah and Nicky, seem to be getting sick, and coughing up blood, and also TOTALLY messing with the one little girl, Miranda, who doesn’t seem in on it yet.  It’s all very creepy.

[...]

Lovelock: Paul, time to take it up a notch.  Please throw a knife at him next time.

[Teenage daughter goes to smoke weed with pervy uncle who stares at her legs and bare stomach.]

Starkwell: I hope Paul goes for him second.

[...]

Miranda starts having horrifying visions and now she is sick too and starts FREAKING OUT and then she attacks her hippy aunt.  Paul seems to be the evil puppet master.  Anyways, it’s a little hard to watch because Miranda WON’T STOP SCREAMING and now her father is trying to hold her down and shut her up.  Basically it’s incredibly tense and stressful and both Lovelock and Starkwell sit quietly on the edge of their seats until the kids work together to force their uncle’s face into a pitchfork (minutes later he dies), at which point Starkwell screamed a little and Lovelock nervously farted like a lawnmower.

[...]

Lovelock: The lesson is, don’t be a pervert with your teenage niece.

Starkwell: That is at least one lesson.

[...]

The acting all works.  The writing and directing is creepy as shit.  Seriously.  SO CREEPY.  The kids don’t take long before they start tormenting all of the adults.  Miranda is still stuck in between.  She hasn’t joined the evil kids yet, but seems to know what’s going on.  But then Paul gets impaled on a glass shard by his Teenage Sister, and I think Miranda turns.

[...]

[Teenage Girl finds Miranda killing the cat.]

Lovelock: Aww… they killed the cat?  Now I don’t know whose side I’m on.

Starkwell: Teenage Daughter?

Lovelock: Sure, I guess.

[...]

Anyways, Starkwell and Lovelock don’t say much more throughout the rest of this one.  They kind of just sit and watch the movie play out, silently horrified.  ‘Evil kids’ is one thing… but this movie shows the ‘Evil Kids’ brutally murdering people, and then in turn, shows people brutally murdering the ‘Evil Kids’.  I mean, they just look like normal kids, so visually, it’s totally fucked.  So yeah, this one ends on a hyper depressing note.  Also, we see that there a whole shitload of ‘Evil Kids’ in the woods… so I don’t know if that means the world is over… or… who knows?

The Crow: City of Angels.

It’s difficult to even ask Starkwell and Lovelock to watch a sequel to “The Crow”.  Will the sequel destroy the pleasant memories that they had of the first film?  Will it just make them miss Brandon Lee even more than they already do?  Given that the film is directed by a music video director, and that this was his one and only foray into 'actual' film… things don’t look so good.  BUT!  BUT!  The writer, David S. Goyer, would later go on to pen movies like “Dark City”, and the Christopher Nolan reboot series of Batman films.  So, there is still some hope that this will turn out alright in the end.  Goyer started his career writing Van Damme movies, and look where he ended up… maybe this was the turning point.  We’ll see.

[...]

[Girl wakes up in her super loft with Gabriel the Cat.]

Starkwell: So, that’s the girl from the first movie?

Lovelock: I guess she isn’t blonde anymore, also, she’s… a hooker?  That helps street kids?

Starkwell: If she wants to help street kids, it might help if she didn’t look stoned out of her mind.

Lovelock: Or like so much of a hooker.

[...]

Then it cuts to some gang of bad dudes, and a flashback of them drowning a dude and his son in a river.  All the usual stereotypes are there.  Creepy Asian woman, strung out dude with a goatee, red-haired guy with a camcorder, a naked Black Guy taking a hot shower and, of course, Iggy Pop… you know, the usuals.  I don’t mean someone that looks like Iggy Pop.  It’s actually Iggy Pop.

[...]

Lovelock: Of course she’s a tattoo artist.

Starkwell: Of course they call her “The Mistress of Pain”.

[...]

The girl playing Sarah, actress Mia Kirshner, seems to be approaching the Sara character with that, as Starkwell put it, “Zooey Deschanel style of acting”… which according to him basically means to constantly “look spaced out, scared, confused and bored at the same time all the time, also, to do it in a very hammy way.  Fuck you.”  This was before Zooey’s time though, so I guess she was paving the way for that kind of acting.

[...]

[Drowned Dude, named Ash, wakes up and emerges from the water like a Cirque du Soleil performer.]

Starkwell: How is he doing that exactly?

Lovelock: Is that the Crow or Criss Angel or Alegria?

Starkwell: Is there really a difference?

Lovelock: Compared to Brandon’s rise from the grave, that was wicked lame.

[...]

Then there’s a weird scene where Iggy Pop is dancing to an old Stooges song, and all around him topless women are licking each other.  There was some dialogue, but all that Lovelock and Starkwell took from the scene is that Iggy Pop sucks at acting, or at least that he didn’t care to try for the duration of this film.

[...]

[In a flashback, we find out that Ash’s kid wandered out in the street to witness a murder, and that was why they were both killed.]

Starkwell: What kind of kid runs out into the street when he hears gunfire?

Lovelock: A dead kid.

Starkwell: Dude, harsh.

Lovelock: And that’s why I don’t have kids.

Starkwell: Yeah… that’s why.

[...]

There’s a montage of Ash getting his gear on, and it’s as long as it is pointless.  There really isn’t very much character development, and by the time Ash finds the first gang member and explodes him, Starkwell already declared “seriously, who cares?” several times. It looks like Lovelock cares a little, because he does like exploding bad guys.

[...]

Starkwell: This movie feels like the movie that “The Asylum” would have made to coincide with the release of the original Crow movie, if “The Asylum” existed at the time.

[...]

Starkwell and Lovelock had a good laugh when they realized that the camera wielding red head was actually just Tom Jane in a bad wig and “Clockwork Orange” makeup.  But then the scene transitioned into a horribly awkward scene where he was jerking off at a nudey booth and the laughter stopped completely and forever .

[...]

[Iggy Pop finds Tom Jane dead in the nudey booth.  The Stooges play.  Again.]

Lovelock: Hey audience, look it’s Iggy Pop!  Let’s remind you every chance we get!

Starkwell: As if somehow landing Iggy Pop for the prestigious role of “Second in Command Bad Guy” adds credibility to your shitty movie.

Lovelock: It would be nice to have a theme song though, in real life... mine would be the song from "The Littlest Hobo".

Starkwell: ...

Lovelock: That's Hobo-Style!!

[...]

[Sarah paints in her enormous loft.]

Starkwell: Nobody owns that many candles, let alone has them all lit all the time.

[...]

[The score from the original film plays as Ash pulls his dead son out of the water and buries him.]

Starkwell: If they were trying to remind us of how much better the first film was… MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

[...]

Then Ash fights the Creepy Asian Woman and it’s one of the slowest and lamest looking fights ever.  Starkwell got up and left half way through saying “well, I’ve seen enough”.  Lovelock said he was sticking around to “see if they explode Iggy Pop while ‘The Stooges’ play in the background.”  Eventually there was an explosion involving Iggy Pop and his motorcycle, but no “Stooges”.

[...]

[Boss Man Judas kills crow, drinks its blood and apparently gains super powers?]

Lovelock: Well… that’s new… Also, lame.

[...]

[Ash impales Judas on a pipe, and then shoots a million crows out of his body right at Judas and disintegrates him and then the black energy (?) of Judas is carried away by said million crows.]

Lovelock: … Umm…

[...]

Anyways, Sarah dies, but at least Gabriel the cat lives.  In conclusion, from the writing, to the directing, to the visuals and set design, to the acting, and even to THE SOUNDTRACK… all of this feels like a very terrible remake of the first film.  An unnecessary remake made immediately after the first film was released.  This is just a shitty bullshit inferior imitation, with none of the heart, balls or talent of the original.  I guess it took Goyer a few tries before he was able to write something like “The Dark Knight”.  Yuck.