The Hazing Review

Whorticulture Reviews The Hazing

Tonight I watched The Hazing, starring Brad Dourif (the voice of Chucky from Child's Play) and my homegirl BFF (read: I met her once and she signed a DVD of the Night of the Demons remake) Tiffany Shepis.  Tiffany Shepis is pretty much the best modern day scream queen, so big shout out to her.  When your dear old Uncle Eddie was just a little girl, she dreamed of growing up and doing terrible, bloody, tits-out horror movies like this. 

Anyway, this movie is about a group of sorority & fraternity pledges stuck overnight in a house with the evil spirit of their professor who possesses them and murders them one by one. 

Okay let's be honest.  It's pretty fucking bad.  The acting is pretty lousy for the most part.  Brad Dourif isn't great in it.  Tiffany Shepis is probably the best.  It's fairly reminiscent of The Telling which was a huge steaming pile.  And it's all kinds a bastardization of the original Night of the Demons.  There are so many similarities I can't even.

HOWEVER!

It's actually a pretty fun romp.  It's bloody, it's got a delightful amount of boobs.  The story line sucks pretty hard but it's entertaining.  So congratulations, it's so bad it's good!

There are some stand-out moments - like watching a possessed tongue perform oral sex on Nectar Rose.  Come on, that's pretty quality.  That's some Re-Animator shit right there.

You might look this up on IMDB and see that Brooke Burke is credited second but don't get your hopes up.  Bitch dies in the first three minutes.  OF COURSE SHE DOES.

Go ahead and watch this if you're bored.  It's pretty fucking dumb, and you might hate me for it, but I liked it. 

6/10

Insidious

Whorticulture Reviews Insidious

I'm still catching up from spending the past two billion years pregnant, so pardon me while I watch movies tons of you have already seen.  I finally got to see Insidious yesterday, which stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne.  If you've followed this blog you know I have a pretty strict NO BIG NAMES attitude when it comes to horror.  Obviously every rule has an exception and Insidious is about as close to that as you're going to get.

Insidious is about a little boy (NOT the little boy in the poster - that's his brother, who really has very little to do with the movie) who excels at astral projection, gets lost in "the further," and is subsequently attacked by demons and other beings trying to enter his spiritless body.

I heard pretty mixed reviews ("Inshittious" to quote my buddy Alex) so I was ready for this to suck pretty fast and hard. 

It didn't.

Imagine that Poltergeist and The Shining had a baby.  That baby is Insidious.  I remember seeing the demon in the commercials - you know, the one who's painted up like Darth Maul - and I thought "that's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen."  It's used pretty well in the movie, however.  And there is some WEIRD shit that goes on.  It was pretty obvious but it wasn't entirely bothersome.  I dunno, I dug it.  There's no gore, no boobies, but I was entertained.  Lin Shaye was in it as well, and we should just consider her a veteran horror actress at this point.

I do have one complaint.  Rose Byrne, I'm sorry but you'll forever be Jackie Q to me, and girl you just did NOT sell this role.  I'm a mom ("the fuck!?" said so many of you) and I just wasn't buying the level of fear that should have been there.

Anyway, this review sucks, but the movie was pretty good.  8/10 on pure entertainment value.  If you've seen it I want to know what you thought.  Will you see the sequel?  What do you hope happens in the sequel?

V/H/S

Whorticulture reviews V/H/S

V/H/S is an anthology of found footage videos, each depicting some kind of horrible death, strung together by a story about petty crooks robbing an old dead guy.

So basically, these thieves are paid by an unknown source to steal a rare tape, but they have to watch all of the tapes to know which one is the right one.  They choose to do this in a room where they've found a dead guy in a chair because hey, wouldn't you? 

The first one we get is Amateur Night, and it's pretty good. 
We meet three huge douchebags who have spy glasses and a plan.  What could go wrong in picking up some drunk chicks from a bar, having sex with them (while wearing the spy glasses), then selling the tape to an amateur porn company?  Let's shake it up by picking up the creepiest girl there - and her hot slutty friend, which is a bonus.  It's got the trio - boobs, blood, and beasts.  This one is probably my favorite.

Next we watch Second Honeymoon. 
Pretty self explanatory; a couple on second honeymoon in the wild, wild west.  I can't really go much farther without ruining the whole thing.  This one gets a C+.  The gore was decent, but the story wasn't really that great and had a lot of filler.  The ending was stupid and kind of killed the whole thing.  It was about as scary as an episode of Snapped.

Tuesday the 17th 
Okay honestly, if I would have known that was the title before I watched it, it would have ruined the whole thing.  As you might imagine from the truly asinine title, a group of teenagers go camping at a lake and get murdered.  Title aside though, it was pretty good.  The acting was sub-par but the gore was delightful.  You guys know I'm down for the cheese so this one was definitely pleasing.  One thing though: the girl who runs back to the killer once he's fallen to ask him questions?  YOU DESERVED TO DIE.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger
I can't even with this one.  Fucking what?  Aliens?  I don't care.  A moderate level of gore - enough to make you uncomfortable.  I thought it was a ghost story.  That would have been better.  Oh, boobs though.  Pretty sad boobs couldn't make this one better.  Sorry, Joe Swanberg, this one is bad and you should feel bad.

10/31/98
A group of guys going to a Halloween party find some sick shit going on in an empty house.  No gore and no boobs, but a story that was interesting as hell.  Also really fantastic effects that made it suspenseful and fun.  This is the only one that could have been made into a successful full length motion picture.  Second favorite of the bunch.

After each of these, we go back to the frame narrative of the criminals invading the house, although I found their story (credited as Tape 56) boring.  And that's how V/H/S leaves us.

I don't know if I can recommend this to you guys or not.  It's so uneven.  I guess I will because the ones that are good are really pretty good and you should see them, but the ones that are bad make you sad you wasted your time.  I don't even really know how to rate this.  Giving it a low rating isn't fair to the ones that were so good.  Second Honeymoon was so middle ground and I'm pretty much going to have to ask for my 15 minutes back on that alien bullshit.  So let's see...

6.9/10

I'm sorry, I can't give it a 7.  But take the time to watch it and tell me what you think.

Dagon

Whorticulture.com Reviews Dagon

I've wanted to see Dagon for some time because I thought the cover looked pretty bad ass (yes, this is how I choose movies in the video store).  So I watched it yesterday on Netflix, and I'm still trying to figure out if I regret the decision.

Dagon is too good to be mediocre, and too mediocre to be good.  That's really the best I can say.

Quick Plot Outline: 4 American tourists are shipwrecked in a village in Spain, and they have a real bad time with the fishy villagers.

There were some really awesome aspects to this movie.  I haven't read the Lovecraft book this is based on (The Shadow Over Innsmouth - NOT Dagon) but I really enjoyed the plot.  I know the director, Stuart Gordon, made some drastic changes, so if you're a fan of Lovecraft you may not appreciate this film.  All of the computer generated effects were totally lame, but the gore effects were pretty decent. 

See?  Totally lame.  Are you vomiting tentacles at me?

There's a scene where an old man loses his face, and it was legit almost too much for me.  And the fishy people were pretty good.  I was certain I was going to have nightmares about them last night - not because they were scary, but because they were fairly disgusting and I couldn't shake them out of my brain.

I really appreciated that they gave us the back story of the village and how they came to worship the Philistine god Dagon.  However, I would have liked the back story of the character Paul, and how the hell he...well I can't say, that's a major part of the plot.  But if you watch it, you'll know what I mean.

Speaking of Paul, the majority of the film is him running from fishy villagers.  Seriously, for like, an hour.  And you get really sick of it.  Where the hell you gonna go, Paul?  I'm bored.  Hurry up and get caught so this shit can progress.

The ending is really abrupt, too.  I mean, it makes sense and all, but it just comes out of nowhere - BAM it's over.

My favorite character was Uxía, played by Macarena Gomez.  Gomez really gave off the vibe that she was enjoying herself, where the other characters fell flat a lot of the time.

I would bang a fish if she were this hot.

I'm going to give Dagon a 6.5 out of 10.  That's a C+.  I was bored AND into it at the same time.  If anyone has seen it I'd love to hear what you thought.  And if you have some time to kill, check it out on Netflix.