Week of Reel Whorror!: Dead is Better Day 6

 ***The following review is an encore presentation for the Week of Reel Whorror! ***

 

Attack Girls' Swim Team Versus the Undead


Release: 12.09.08
Rated UR
1 hour, 28 minutes


A Netflix Night


It takes a special kind of cinephile to even consider a movie titled, Attack Girls' Swim Team vs the Undead. By the way, it's also known as Joshikyôei hanrangun in its native Japan and Undead Pool by IMDb and the international community. My interest was spawned by a trailer preceding the film, Siren. Never heard of it? Both are Japanese horror films starring adult video (AV) stars. Interested now?

Attack Girls features AV star Sasa Nada as Aki, an orphan raised by a madman and trained as an assassin. Aki wanted more from life; specifically, she dreamed of being a normal high school girl. One night she escapes the complex and slips into a nearby high school. She makes fast friends with a student who encourages her to join the swim team. It just so happens, one of their members has fallen ill and they'd have to forfeit the meet without another swimmer.

Aki agrees and everything seems to be going great. Aki even discovers that her new friend shares a similar birthmark on her chest, leading them to realize they were twin sisters separated at birth! Nothing good comes without a price, however, as the sick swimmer was not an isolated incident. Most of the students and teachers have fallen ill. The strange disease causes those aflicted to turn into shambling, flesh-eating zombies. For reasons unknown, the rest of the swim team seem unaffected by the virus. Under Aki's leadership the girls go on the offensive, trying to stay alive long enough to find a cure.

Is that plot dense and crazy enough for you? If so, don't worry about the hateful swim coach who is brutally murdered only to return unscathed as the nicest teacher on campus. Or let's not ponder why one teacher, when zombified, only speaks English (and yet still gets subtitled)! Attack Girls is a pool of insane ideas that forms a gooey, gushy, sexy, steamy, awkward mess instead of congealing into a poorly executed film. Problems range from minor ones like Aki's vanishing 'birthmark' to a crazy corkscrew mindfuck of a third act where absolutely anything, and I mean anything, goes.

Dirty Undies
Attack Girls is also a misnomer for our band of high school heroines. They should be called Attacked Girls because they are just a group of swimmers who join forces under the leadership of Aki, the only girl with any true fighting skills. Aki does get in a few solid blows, but director Kôji Kawano seems more inclined to have Aki recollect the flute-induced sexual rutting her old mentor gave her at the complex.

The steamy bits aren't all bizarre rape sequences. Any shamelessly exploitative movie rife with teenage girls wouldn't be worth its salt if it didn't include some girl-on-girl action.

The gore and zombie effects aren't much to write home about either. There's a good deal of heavy makeup and colored corn syrup splashed about, but it's all so hokey it could never be considered cringe-worthy.

The Money Shot
I've only scratched the surface of all the problems Attacks Girls suffers from. That said, it's the kind of twaddle that you can't appreciate without having seen it. I recall feeling it was confusing, never-ending crap as the credits rolled, but since then I've found myself smirking at the outrageous silliness of it all. Sometimes terrible movies reach a noteworthy plateau of their own. Would Attack Girls' Swim Team vs the Undead qualify as one of those? You decide.

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Abu Dhabi Don't

Sex and the City 2


Release: 05.27.10
Rated R
2 hours, 26 minutes


Group Rental



At the end of the previous movie, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker, Smart People) is in wedded bliss with Mr. Big (Chris Noth, Cast Away), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon, The Babysitters) regains a balance between career and family, Charlotte (Kristin Davis, Couple's Retreat) realizes her goal of giving birth, and Samantha (Kim Cattrall, The Ghost Writer) is back to fucking any hot hunk within reach. Two years later it's a tale of be careful what you wish for as Carrie finds the routine of married life too mundane, Miranda's boss infuriates her, Charlotte's kids are driving her bonkers, and Samantha's menopause threatens to end her desire to ride the broncos. Samantha finagles an escape to a luxury resort in Abu Dhabi for the foursome, hoping the sun, sand and some stiff drinks will be the stress relief they all need.

I knew this film was in trouble when a very emotionally tender exchange of vows between Stanford (Willie Garson, Fever Pitch) and Tony (Mario Cantone, TV: Sex & the City) was cut at a breakneck pace to give Liza Minnelli (The Oh in Ohio) time to perform her rendition of Beyoncé's Single Ladies in its entirety. The scene was an unnecessary extravagance, completely extraneous and not pertinent to the plot. Very little of the content of the two and a half hour film actually has any bearing on the plot. Instead, writer-director Michael Patrick King (Sex & the City) makes Sex & the City 2 an exercise in indulgence.

Fans might argue that the tale of four Big Apple gals had always been an excuse to savor the latest fashions and trends. However, the show had a knack for balancing plot with the glam. The plot of Sex & the City 2 was nothing more than a mirage in this glitzy desert. King toys with preaching about cultural tolerance and marital compromise, but aside for one poignant conversation between Miranda and Charlotte, the movie is little more than a hodgepodge of hi-jinks and insulting pseudo-vocabulary.

Dirty Undies
Flesh, in various states, is prevalent. Alice Eve (She's Out of My League) plays Charlotte's beautiful, bra-less au pair. If bouncy boobs aren't your tastes, there's a whole kiwi-smuggling team of soccer hooligans lounging poolside for you to ogle. As always, Carrie dares to bare and I found myself drawn to her ample bosom, which saved me from having to stare into her freaky-harsh features. Even Samantha was looking pretty haggard; her sparkly new beau Rikard (Max Ryan, Death Race) was more comely.

The Money Shot
Experiencing Sex & the City 2 is like riding a carousel as an adult; you buy a ticket and hop in the saddle, anxious and excited. The music blares, lights flash and a world of bright colors surrounds you. But it's not as fun as you remember. You exit, exactly where you started, wanting to punch the money-grubbing carnie (and yourself) for believing you could relive your fond memories.

Cheesy Times at Slaughter High

This post is part of

brought to you by Stacie Ponder of FINAL GIRL.

***

Slaughter High


Release: 11.14.86
DVD Release: 04.14.09
Rated R
1 hour, 30 minutes


A Netflix Night



Today is Marty Rantzen's (Simon Scuddamore) lucky day, or so he thinks. Carol Manning (Caroline Munro, The Spy Who Loved Me), the hottest chick in high school, has a waterslide between her thighs and she's looking for Marty to dive in head first... if you get my meaning. She lures him into the showers of the girls' locker room for the water sports to begin. But wait, Marty! Isn't today April Fool's Day? Had he remembered that, he would have realized Carol's clique snuck in with the school's audio-visual equipment to prank him, not to film their own version of Deep Throat. They film his flaccid noodle and give him kegstand swirlies until the coach breaks up the mischief.

As if his birthday couldn't get any worse, the ring leader, Skip (Carmine Inannaccone), tampers with Marty's science project, which explodes. Marty is trapped in a burning room, a bottle of acid explodes in his face, and he melts his hands to a scalding graduated cylinder. I thought having my twelfth birthday party at Putt-Putt rained out was crappy, but this was one seriously fucked birthday!

Ten years later, the eight pranksters are invited to their ten-year high school reunion. It's wild because they've barely aged a day since high school! The event's being hosted at the old school, which has been boarded up for years. They sit around until nightfall trying to figure out where the rest of their graduating class is. With a shrug and a laugh, they head inside to start the real fun.

Slaughter High reminds me why it was a good idea to skip my ten-year reunion. Less than an hour into the party, someone beer bongs some acid, spilling their guts by the snack table. Next thing you know, one of the old buddies finds a functioning bathtub in the abandoned school and guess what; more acid! It seems as if the strangely absent Marty may not be absent and may actually be carrying a grudge, though the group doesn't seem to understand why. After these two gruesome-looking deaths, the rest of the group are picked off like the bitches. The killer, a creep dressed in Marty's nerd duds and Skip's old jester mask, gets bored with symbolic acid mutilations and just starts hacking and electrocuting anyone that moves while the dwindling crew search for a way out of their sealed tomb.

As ridiculous as it sounds, multiply that by two. The logic these folks employ to survive is baffling - they are high school graduates, right? Still, as preposterous as the deaths are, the ending ties everything up in a way that actually justifies most (not all) of the insanity. Skip's death actually makes less sense in the plot's context, but I found it to be the most entertaining.

If you wonder why there was never a Slaughter High 2: Class Disemboweled or Slaughter High 3: School Spirits, there are probably lots of reasons. Simon Scuddamore died shortly after this film was released, making it hard to capture his wild-eyed face on camera. Over half of the remaining actors never worked again. The fact is, this is the type of cheesy horror fare that made scanning the walls of your locally owned video store/tanning salon fun. If you're like me, the playfully morbid VHS cover was enough to excite my teenage mind more so than the content within. Those were the days.

Thin as Paper, Lacking in Heart

Paper Heart

Release: 08.07.09 limited
Rated PG-13
1 hour, 28 minutes

A Netflix Night


Musician-comedienne Charlyne Yi (Knocked Up) has never been in love and believes she never will. She finds the whole romantic concept suspect. With her friend and director Nicholas Jasenovec (Jake M. Johnson, Redbelt), she travels the United States to film a documentary on people's perspectives on love. Along the way, Charlyne meets Michael Cera (Superbad) and the camera crews roll with fingers crossed that Charlyne may understand the elusive emotion.

Back in 1984, a young Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer made the highly entertaining mockumentary This is Spinal Tap under the direction of Rob Reiner. Guest has since had repeated success mixing comedy and documentary. In 2006, Scott Glosserman proved horror could work in the mockumentary style when he crafted Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. It's frustrating to watch Paper Heart attempt and fail to effectively combine romance and the mockumentary.

During her cross-country tour, Charlyne asks people young and old about their experiences and expectations of love. Their anecdotes and the paper mache reenactments provided by Charlyne and her father Luciano are interesting and entertaining. However, as the relationship between Charlyne and Michael develops, the focus blurs. The tag line reads, "a story about love that takes on a life of its own." This begs the question, why does their burgeoning romance feel so forced? The sincerity of the interviews devolves into scenes equal in quality to a poorly staged reality show.

Being a movie and not a documentary, obviously the scenes are going to be staged. If it were truly attempting realism, the director would have appeared as himself instead of hiring an actor to portray him. Paper Heart felt most real during Charlyne's playground excursion. Let's face it; it's hard to keep kids on task so that's the closest to pure, unscripted fun they achieved. My preference would have been to see the romantic elements intertwined with these authentic interactions. Instead, Paper Heart's creators seemed to make it up as they went, forgetting they needed to keep their passengers entertained.

Dirty Undies
If you have a chipmunk fetish, Charlyne's puffy cheeks are adorable. Though if you're like my wife, you'll wish she'd do her hair, wear a different hoodie, or just maintain some general minimum of hygiene. If you're looking to discover love, who better to be your beau than universally likable Michael Cera? In fact, Charlyne and Michael were an item up until the release of Paper Heart. Despite their real-life coupling, their onscreen chemistry feels less than authentic.

The Money Shot
Occasionally funny, somewhat goofy, but disappointingly dull. This flick's three elements--interviews, re-enactments and scripted love story-- mix about as easily as oil, water and a hard-boiled egg.

The Jizt: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

In this fast-paced world of blogging, tweeting and fly-by-night film voyeurism, sometimes one doesn't have the time to give a film proper treatment. More importantly, others do not always have the time to read it. Sometimes you just have to take it around back and squeeze one out in 1-2-3 quick licks. Think of The Jizt as the wham, bam, thank you ma'am of reviews.



Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Release: 05.01.09
DVD Release: 09.22.09
Rated PG-13
1 hour, 40 minutes


A Netflix Night



Cast: Matthew McConaughey (The Wedding Planner), Jennifer Garner (Catch and Release), Michael Douglas (One Night at McCool's)

The Build-up: Lecherous photographer Connor Mead is forced to re-examine his womanizing ways, A Christmas Carol-style, when he encounters his one true love at his brother's wedding weekend.

The Blurt-out: Why is it that one of the three ghosts visiting Connor is neither a ghost nor a girlfriend past?!

The Jizt: The glittering beauty of the cast may be distracting, but no amount of polish can mask the lingering stench of this turd.

Calm down, Matthew, we're not asking you to choke down THAT much Jizt!