Day 2: Bound to Vengeance (2015) 1h 33m

I don't know how to start this post, let alone talk about this film.  It's not as if I was floored by it.  Far from it.  If I write the basic plot on here then it sounds like an interesting concept.  The issue is that Bound to Vengeance doesn't execute it well.

Bound to Vengeance follows Eve, a woman that was kidnapped but she turned the tide on her captor and has the chance to escape.  While going through the house she's in she comes across photos of other girls that are kept around town.  She forces her captor to lead her to the other kidnapped women in an attempt to free them.

See?  That sounds like a decent plot.  It's not even an issue of acting or directing as everyone plays their part well and some of the shots are really well done.  The issue comes with the overall script and presentation.  I find myself not caring after the second of the freed girls is found.  It tries to out-twist itself and, rather than keeping my interest, it goes off the rails in that horrible train wreck form... a train that was carrying orphan babies. TRAIN BABIES!  TRABABIES!!

I give Bound to Vengeance 1 bound erotic Tarzan out of 5:

Cut 4 Begins! Day 1: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010) 1h 29 m

There are some films that don't get the attention or notoriety they really deserve.  Maybe it's the subject of two "hillbillies" being the actual heroes of the film, maybe it's the fact that this film pokes fun at a lot of the foundations of the slasher genre, or maybe it's just because it has an actor from Firefly on it and that only carries an association with the more nerdy circles of movie fans... regardless, T&DvE really doesn't seem to get the love it deserves.  That includes from the studio because they shelved it for three years before releasing it.

Tucker & Dale focuses around two groups of people.  There are our title characters (there to fix up their new "summer cabin") and the other is a group of college kids that blatantly break every horror rule ever laid to celluloid.  After one of the girls gets startled by Tucker and Dale she almost drowns but gets rescued by Dale.  Her friends see the end and misunderstand the situation and think Tucker and Dale are kidnapping their friend for some hillbilly horror scene.

That right there is the crux of this film.  Everything that really happens is because the college kids have these preconceived notions that the country folks in this West Virginia area must all be some sort of inbred rednecks.  This is only bolstered by the story that one of them tells the others about a massacre that happened in those woods in the past and was blamed on country folk.  We find this later to be untrue, but it's that mindset that leads to the actions of all of the college kids.  It does help though that it seems like the person that owned the cabin Tucker and Dale bought seems to have been Ed Gein... but that's something else entirely.

This film is a lot of fun.  The kills are gory but all believable accidents.  Tucker and Dale are both charismatic and fun leading characters and you dislike the college kids from the start... especially Chad.  Fuck Chad... Chad-ass fuckin' Chad!  There is also a great nod to Texas Chainsaw Massacre where Tucker accidentally hits a bee's nest while chainsawing and this leads to him running through the woods like Leatherface.  This makes much more sense than Leatherface just standing in the middle of the road swinging a chainsaw like an asshole.  Was it that he was getting attacked by a bee trap the girl set before jumping in the back of the truck?  Was it the dogs with the bees in their mouth that shoot bees at you when they bark?!  I'm digging deep for that Simpson's reference...

I give Tucker & Dale vs. Evil 5 'Merica trucker hats out of 5:

Turkey Day Special!! Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006) 1h 43m

Happy Turkey Day!!  Nothing celebrates that more than a horror film about a fast food chicken restaurant!  In truth, my internal dialog of deciding what film I should review for Thanksgiving lasted all of five seconds.  It was pretty much me thinking of Poultrygeist, deciding to do Poultrygeist, and then five minutes later realizing I could do Thankskilling instead but I had already committed my body to Poultrygeist.

I've brought up Troma films at least 20 times on this blog.  If you're not familiar, or you're just joining us here at 30 Days of Plight, Troma is an independent film company mostly known for having made the Toxic Avenger films.  They also put out some non-Troma Studio films such as Cannibal the Musical (a college film done by Matt Stone and Trey Parker).  At its core, Troma carries a brand of low budget and offensive toilet humor that only a B-movie addict can love.

Truthfully, I forgot about how offensive this film really is at times.

The plot of Poultrygeist revolves around a fast food restaurant that is built upon what used to be a native burial ground and thus becomes cursed.  Our main character, Arby (it's all fast food chain names and puns) gets a job there after he runs into his girlfriend protesting the chain.  She had just left for college and suddenly become an overly political lesbian.  That's kind of par for a teenage male.  Do something dumb as an act of revenge in order to win love...

As the film rolls on, staff keep getting killed, patrons become chicken zombies, there are a lot of tits and gore, a gay character (Paco Bell) gets pulled into a meat grinder after jerking off into the meat and comparing it to an act of Che Guevara-esq rebellion, and we find out the protest and lead lesbian was doing it all as a ruse to promote the restaurant.  That's a fucking long sentence of random shit.

Oh, did I mention this is also a musical?  Because it is.  The songs are actually well written even though the lyrics are middle school boy humor.  In fact, as far as Troma films go, it seems like Lloyd Kaufman must've pulled some decent scratch together for this one.  The costumes, effects, even the title sequence showed some backing and thus a greater sense of effort.  This is not a slam on Troma's other films, it's just a big step up.

All in all, while I'm sure some of the things I brought up in this review have probably turned you off from ever watching it, Troma was my first and my continual personal motivation toward the idea that I could make a horror film.  It's not about big budget, big effects, big names, big bullshit... it's about making something fun and having fun.  I know from Lloyd's book that making a movie isn't easy, but these films make it seem attainable.

So I give Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead a solid 3 drumsticks out of 5:

30 Days of Plight Special Halloween Post!

30 Days of Plight on Werewolf Ambulance!!

Hello to any Werewolf EMTs that made their way over after listening to the latest Werewolf Ambulance podcast.

As I mentioned earlier, I joined Katie and Allen to record an episode focusing on one of my favorite horror-comedy films, Murder Party.  The episode is officially out and you can find it on iTunes under the Werewolf Ambulance podcast or go to werewolfambulance.libsyn.com to listen to this and previous episodes of their podcast.

Just a reminder, despite being on break between Cuts right now I will be doing a special Halloween post next week.

Also, if you haven't yet, you can go over to Facebook and like our page on there.  I will occasionally post related updates between Cuts and any other 30DoP news.  Just click on the banner to the upper right or go to facebook.com/30daysofplight

See you in a week!

3rd Cut Wrap-Up

Holy shit!  I'm actually getting around to doing a wrap-up this time.  Before I jump into that I want to say "thank you" to you, the readers.  30 Days of Plight passed 3000 views during the course of this Cut and I can't help but be amazed and grateful.  When I started 30 Days of Plight I wasn't even sure if anyone other than my fiancé would read this blog, so seeing that people do read this make me know I'm not just torturing myself with awful movies.

Next, I want to let everyone know that I recently was a guest on the fantastic horror podcast Werewolf Ambulance.  We discussed one of my favorite horror comedy films, Murder Party, and I will post a link to it once it's up in the next few weeks.

Finally, I want to do something special for Halloween. While I'm trying to narrow things down, I haven't come to a conclusion just what yet.  So I'll have a post then, but otherwise I will begin the 4th Cut the last week of November/first week of December.  I promise this time to post as consistently as possible.  I know this Cut has had some large gaps.

So without further ado, here is the rundown of the last 30 films I've watched and what I rated them.  My overall recommendations from this Cut are Baskin and Hush.  They're definitely worth it.  Also, I guess I fucked up this Cut and did two films as #23.  So bonus film?

1. The Vampire's Coffin (1958) 1/5
2. Necrofobia (2014) 0/5
3. Mercy (2014) 1/5
4. Cam2Cam (2014) 0/5
5. Hangar 10 (2014) 0/5
6. Splatter (2009) 2/5
7. Baskin (2015) 4/5
8. Convergence (2015) 2/5
9. The Fog (2015) 1/5
10. Dementia (2015) 0/5
11. Kill Zombie (2012) 2/5
12. 12 Days of Terror (2004) 1/5
13. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) [didn't rate because it wasn't a horror film despite it being listed as one]
14. Para Elisa (2012) 1/5
15. The Abandoned (2015) 1/5
16. Spiders (2013) 2/5
17. Curve (2015) 1/5
18. Exit to Hell (2013) 3/5
19. High Lane (2009) 1/5
20. The Diabolical (2015) 3/5
21. Killennial (2016) 3/5
22. The Barn (2016) 4/5
23.1. He Never Died (2015) 3.5/5
23.2. Indigenous (2014) 0/5
24. Odd Thomas (2013) 4/5
25. Hush (2016) 5/5
26. Bloody April Fools (2013) 0/5
27. Final Destination 3 (2006) 3.5/5
28. V/H/S/2 (2013) 3/5
29. Exeter (2015) 3/5
30. The Amityville Horror (2005) 2/5

Day 30: The Amityville Horror (2005) 1h 30m

I don't mind remakes if they're true to the source material and don't go too off the rails.  However, a big part of the original movie was that George Lutz ran back in the house to get the dog, fell through the steps, almost into the hell portal, and the dog helped pull him up.  In this one, George fucking killed the dog about a third of the way into the movie.  Also, what the fuck was the deal with the huge push of John Ketchem in this one?

I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I've had an affinity for the Amityville Horror house.  Hell, I've been to the damn house!  Look at that picture!  That's me!  That's the house!  Although they did change the windows in the attic to try and keep people from doing what I am literally doing in this picture.  Oops.

 

Me in front of a spooky house during spooky Christmas!

Going back to the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror, this movie kept its foundation around the original story.  A man goes insane and kills his entire family.  He claims he was possessed and heard voices telling him to do it.  Jump ahead many years and the house is for sale, cheap.  Enter the Lutz family, who buy the house and move in.  After a series of frightening events they eventually leave the house one night, fleeing for their lives.  They claim to never return and leave all their crap.  We know of the story because they recorded audio tapes of their encounters in the house and sent them to an author that made the bestselling book of the same name.

While this movie had a lot of shirtless Ryan Reynolds to look at, the rest of it wasn't anything really interesting.  They seemed to add a story of the ghost of Jodie (the youngest from the murdered family) making friends with the girl because she was lonely?  The youngest daughter did claim to have an "imaginary" friend named Jodie in the real story, but this additional emotional attachment to the spirit was unnecessary for this film.  Add in the fact that they decided to have this "remote" house being used as a sanctuary that Rev. John Ketchem was using to torture Native Americans?  First off, John Ketchem was lightly mentioned in the book and really isn't related to any of this.  More than likely he is just there to add a spooky "devil worship/witchcraft" factor to the story.  Also, you see that house, and there's nothing remote about it.  There's an equally huge house built prior to it also in this picture!  That was a huge community!  Remote my fucking left nut!

I mention and complain about all of that because at one point George starts having visions of these torture rooms and then busts through a wall and finds them?  I don't even know.  I don't even fucking know here.  The moment George killed the dog, this movie went off the fucking rails in a bad way.  The acting was solid though.  That's what's really disappointing with this re-imagining of this film.

I give The Amityville Horror (2005) 2 photos of the house's lame kitchen out of 5: