Dawn of the Dead (2004)

There are so many just God-awful, shitty zombie movies out there that the entire genre has become a running joke. Check out Netflix if you want to watch an example of how truly terrible and cliché a movie can be. Now that statement may make you think that I don't like zombie movies.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When a zombie movie is done right, it's a thing of true beauty. Romero introduced the zombie flick to shine light on how disgusting and base human beings can be. When those truths are at the foundation of the movie, nothing is better than a quality zombie flick.

Romero introduced the zombie formula in Night of the Living Dead, but he perfected the formula in his version of Dawn of the Dead. Similar movie to the remake, although not the exact same story; it still takes place in a shopping mall and involves a group of survivors of a zombie apocalypse, but it also holds the distinction of having the WORST zombie make-up of all time. Green faces, my ass!

Fast forward to 2004's version of Dawn of the Dead. 28 Days Later introduced the innovative idea of "the fast zombie," something that revitalized the zombie genre. It was the perfect innovation for the new millennium where everything had to be bigger, better, and faster. Fast zombies. It seems like such a simple idea now, but at the time it really was something that totally transformed the genre. Now a single zombie became a threat whereas before a solo zombie was a joke. It just made the stakes that much higher.

Even now nearly ten years later, Dawn of the Dead is a terrifying and blood-soaked movie that holds absolutely nothing back. It opens with a zombie child taking down a grown man and then it's just a sprint to the finish from there. It even answers the question of what happens if a pregnant woman gets bitten by a zombie (Awesome scene, by the way).

Everything else is very routine by today's standards. We have a diverse group of survivors (including a jacked up Ving Rhames and the dad from Modern Family) all meeting up at a shopping mall as they attempt to survive a zombie apocalypse. The other humans become the main obstacle to survival. Ridiculous reasons to leave the safety of the shopping mall arise. People make poor decisions that get them killed. But it's all done in such a fun and gory style, and there is certainly some creative stuff thrown in along the way. The "Hollywood Squares" game that is played by the dude at the gun shop and the other survivors is still one of my all-time favorite horror movie scenes. Oh, and that ending? How great is that ending? What better statement about mankind than to have everyone die in the end?

Does the movie make the same powerful statement about humanity that Romero's zombie movies made? No. But goddamn it's a fun movie.

In today's film industry, it seems like everything's been done before, but sometimes all it takes is a small (or at least smart) innovation to turn something that had become cliché into something that feels fresh and exciting. For me, Dawn of the Dead represents that film that brought the pure zombie creature feature back from the dead...ha!

Why It's Awesome:

Two words: zombie baby.

Best Quote:

Michael: So what's the plan?
C.J.: The plan is you drink a nice tall glass of shut the fuck up.

Hellraiser (1987)

Who knew that demons could be kinky, too?

Hellraiser is another cult-favorite horror movie that I had never seen before. My only connection to this movie is that my son is named after the title. I figured it was a typical demon-attacks-humans flick focusing on some dude with nails stuck in his head.

I was wrong.

This movie reminded me a lot of the original Evil Dead. A man and his wife move into an old house and accidentally resurrect the man's brother who escapes from an S&M club in Hell (the brother is also the wife's former lover). The brother comes back as a gross fetus zombie and needs the wife to kill horny businessmen in order to fully resurrect. The S&M demons (including Pinhead, who is never called Pinhead, by the way) want the brother back for more leather-clad spanking so they're not happy about the whole thing.

It's another flick that proves low-budget special effects from the 80s are far superior than big-budget CGI. Brother Frank is absolutely disgusting in his fetus zombie form. He's skinless and bloody and veiny. Then you've got the truly disturbing S&M Cenobites (Pinhead and his kinky BFFs). They're clad in leather with pins and needles sticking out of their faces all totally hardcore and shit. There's even the upside-down hotdog monster that lives in the wall of the hospital that looks pretty creepy.

For some reason there's nothing creepier than a middle-aged crazy chick. Frank must have a ten-lb. cock because Julia is willing to straight-up murder three or four strangers with a hammer for a dude who doesn't even have any skin. You also get a nice view of her naked arse and some side boob which is something you would never see in a modern movie from a chick that age.

Overall it's a fun flick. I'm convinced that the lack of funds forced these directors to compensate in other areas and that's what make these low-budget horror flicks so damn great. The story is fun, the acting solid enough, and the special effects creepy. This movie gave birth to a whole line of much shittier movies so you have to give it credit for that.

JESUS WEPT!

Why It's Awesome:

Opening a Chinese puzzle box opens a portal to a demon S&M club. Just one more reason why the Chinese are fucked up.

Best Quote:

Pinhead: No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.

Piranha 3D (2010)

If there's one thing Hollywood has proven time and time again it's that you can't purposely make a bad movie.

Take Piranha 3D (or 2D if you're not lucky enough to see all the boobs in 3D) for example. It's a contemporary tribute to the B horror movies of the past, but, unfortunately, it lacks all the charm of those movies that attempt to make a decent movie and just fail...in epic fashion. This movie just fails.

An earthquake opens up a cave housing a species of prehistoric piranhas during Spring Break. Perfect story for a B horror movie. Sounds like an alley-oop for an easy slam dunk, right? WRONG!

This movie contains all the elements of a great bad movie: cheesy special effects + scary creatures eating stupid kids + boobs. It even sports the greatest cast of any B horror movie ever with the likes of Richard Dreyfuss (in a tribute to Jaws), Christopher Lloyd (in full Doc Brown mode), Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Jerry O'Connell (Sliders is still one of my favorite TV shows ever), and a plethora of porn stars. With all these arrows in its quiver, how could this movie not be good, right?

The only problem is it's not...not even close. I feel like this movie was made for teenage boys to whack off to, and that's its only purpose. It has all the elements of a bad movie, but it has too much of them. The cheesy piranhas look almost too good. The dump of decent actors makes me think the acting should be better. There are plenty of creative, gory deaths, but there are so many creative, gory deaths that eventually they just stop having any kind of effect at all. There's like a 20 minute massacre of spring breakers that I actually left in the middle of to go to the bathroom and get a snack and when I came back it was STILL going on and I STILL didn't care.

The truly perplexing part of Pirahna 3D's failure is that (and I can't believe I'm actually going to write this) there are too many (seriously, I NEVER thought I'd write this)...sigh...boobs. There are too many boobs in this movie! How could that be possible?! But strangely, impossibly, it is! I remember watching the old Friday the 13th movies where there would often be a topless young woman skinny-dipping or having sex with some guy with a perm and there'd be a few seconds of bare booby. And I remember my breath catching in my throat and my hand instinctively rubbing the inside of my thigh, and that image would stay with me for weeks. Piranha shovels boob after boob after boob onto the screen without any discretion or shame, and, like the gory deaths, there just came a point where I didn't care anymore and for that, I can never, ever forgive this film. It made me indifferent to boobs.

Of course, I can't mention this film without mentioning the underwater lesbian nude scene set to opera music. The scene is the movie's only salvation and indifferent is the last word I would use to describe my feelings toward it. So for that, Piranha 3D, and that alone I salute you...from the waist down!

Why It's Not So Awesome: It tries to be a good bad movie and just ends up being a bad bad movie...which is as bad as it gets. And too many boobs! Boobs should be shown with discretion to maximize their impact. Think Fast Times at Ridgemont Hight, which uses boobs better than any movie in cinematic history.

Best Quote:

Andrew: It's never cheating when it's with another chick.

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

Ugh.

The sequel to one of the most shocktastic movies ever made (The Human Centipede) showed up on Netflix's instant watch so I forced myself to watch it. I didn't want to. I really had to psych myself up to watch it - like psyching oneself up for a colonoscopy. It was bad but not I-have-someone-else's-lips-stapled-to-my-asshole bad. No wait! It was that bad.

The story for the sequel is basically a fan letter to the original. A psychotic and retarded midget (not joking) named Martin is so obsessed with the original movie that he decides to make his own human centipede but instead of three people, he's going to make a 12-person centipede! The only problem is he has no medical background so instead he uses everyday tools like a hammer, pliars, and a staple gun to make his creation. Yeah, it's gross...

After watching the sequel, I actually enjoy the first flick more than I originally did (which was not at all). At least that one tried to have a plot. This one had none at all. The first half of the movie was Martin collecting people to make the centipede (he manages to collect associates who had wronged him, total strangers, a pregnant chick, and even one of the girls who starred in the first movie!) and the second half is him actually making the centipede (which is surprisingly not difficult at all).

As expected there are some truly disgusting moments here:

- Martin caving in his own mother's skull with a crowbar and then eating breakfast with her corpse
- Martin knocking out a dude's teeth with a hammer
- Martin stapling people's mouths to others' assholes with  a staple gun
- A dozen people having explosive diarrhea into each other's mouths in the worst conga line ever

But the most detestable scene involves a pregnant woman waking up in labor pains who manages to escape Martin's warehouse. She gets into a car, farts out the baby onto the floor, the baby's head slides under the gas pedal, and, in her hurry to escape, she slams on the gas pedal and squishes the baby's skull. C'mon...

There's NOTHING redeemable about this sequel. Martin isn't as fun as Dr. Heiter, there's no attempt at a plot, and, for some reason, 12 people just seems like overkill. Why didn't they just jack it up to a respectable five or six-person centipede? Where could they possibly go from here?

Why It's Dog Shit:

The worst part of the movie is that it's almost cartoonish at times. No one ever tries to escape the warehouse or wiggle away. Martin goes around bonking people on the head with his crowbar, which instantly knocks them out. I almost expected there to be birds circling their heads at times. And the shit splattering the camera during the diarrhea conga line was just plain silly.

Best Quote:

Me: They couldn't possibly make another one...could they?

Dead Snow (2009)

There are horror classics like the original Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Saw...pretty much anything that spawned 37 sequels was probably good in its original incarnation. In honor of Halloween, I decided to review the complete opposite of those movies - that is, a complete crapfest.

And on that note, let's discuss DEAD SNOW, a Norwegian film that gives us not only zombies and not only Nazis but NAZI ZOMBIES! Who could ask for anything more?

Here's the ridiculous premise: A couple of the dumbest medical students on the planet spend their Easter weekend in an isolated cabin in the mountains...little do they know that the mountain is infested with NAZI ZOMBIES who pretty much straight up murder anyone who steals their stolen Jew gold (it's kind of like Pirates of the Caribbean but instead of pirates you have Nazis and instead of Johnny Depp you have some Norwegian janitor who wandered onto a movie set).

Let's do the totally awesome cheesy horror flick check list:

- At least three scenes of people taking a dump...CHECK!

- Absolutely no explanation as to why the Nazis are zombies...CHECK!

- At least five examples of unnecessary and logic defying decisions to "split up"...CHECK!

- Some girl swinging from a mountain by a Nazi zombie's intestines...CHECK!

- A chick having sex with a fat guy WHILE he takes a dump in an outhouse during which she LICKS THE GUY'S FINGERS that he just used to WIPE HIS ASS...that's a big CHECK!

This movie directly lifts scenes from much better movies such as Friday the 13th, Evil Dead, The Descent, and even Shaun of the Dead. And forget about following standard zombie rules. These zombies make use of cheetah speed, binoculars, and camouflage. I guess Nazi zombies are different from your non-fascist zombie varieties.

On a final note, this movie contains the greatest Molotov cocktail FAIL in cinematic history. Watch below and enjoy your craptacular Halloween!

Why it's Awesome: The only movie ever to marry two of the greatest villains in cinema...Nazis and zombies. Really the movie should have just been called Nazi Zombies. Dead Snow tells me nothing and it's stupid. How can snow be dead? Hell, I don't even know what I'm getting with a title like that, but Nazi Zombies...I know exactly what I'm getting and I'm into it...hard!

Best Quote:

Roy: Where the fuck did you get a machine gun? (after seeing his friend show up with a machine gun strapped to the front of his snowmobile).

The Fly (1986)

If you've ever wanted to watch Jeff Goldblum's face melt off while he's vomiting on donuts, have I got a movie for you!

This is a great and underrated (and disgusting) horror movie of the 80s. The make-up effects put any CGI bullshit to absolute shame. Check out the picture below...(wait for it)...psych! That's not from the film, you dumbass! But it's still a sweet picture nonetheless.

Here's the story: Scientist Seth Brundle (Goldblum) has perfected the world's first working teleportation pods...WIN! So one night after his fuck buddy (Geena Davis) goes to buy some tampons, he gets all drunk and decides to test his pods on his first human subject...himself! Little does he know that there's a fly in the pod with him when he teleports so the dumbass computer fuses Brundle and the fly's DNA together, thus causing Brundle to slowly transform into a giant man/fly hybrid.

I learned a lot about flies from this movie:

1) Flies are all world-class gymnasts and highly adept at the high bars.

2) Flies love candy bars, donuts, and coffee with forty scoops of sugar.

3) Flies can fuck for hours and like cheap sluts who wear jean jackets.

4) Never arm wrestle a fly because it'll rip your bone right out of your fuckin' arm!

5) Flies are totally pro-life conservatives...who knew?

The ending of this movie is pure conservative bullshit. Geena Davis realizes she's pregnant with Brundle's baby and she's afraid she's going to fart out a larva so she goes to get an abortion. Brundlefly is a total pro-lifer so he and Sarah Palin go and kidnap Davis from the evil abortion center. Instead, he plans on fusing he, Davis, and the baby together into a single body so he doesn't have to buy a larger vehicle for family vacations. This is actually something conservatives are trying to get passed. They're pro-life AND pro-fusion.

Why It's Awesome: The film won an Academy Award for Best Make-Up...and with good reason. Watching Goldblum (who is great in this) transform into the fly is truly hideous as he jettisons body parts (including his ear, fingernails, teeth, and eventually his wang) at an alarming rate.

Best Quote:

Brundlefly: I'm saying I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over...and the insect is awake.

Dead Alive (1992)

OH...MY...GOD!!!

If aliens ever visit Planet Earth and ask for a definition of the term "fucked up," I would simply pop in a DVD of Dead Alive...and there it is.

To think that this movie was made by the same director as the man who made the greatest trilogy of all-time is simply mind-boggling. Wow. Yes, I love the Evil Dead series and Re-Animator has its moments, but Dead Alive, even though it's another zombie/horror/comedy movie, is in a class of its own. This is scientifically proven to be the most gruesome move OF ALL TIME!

Here's the classic Tolkien-esque story: When the mother of a mama's boy is bitten by a RAT MONKEY and turned into a zombie, the mama's boy must hide her in the basement and take care of her even after she starts eating people's dogs and turning people into zombies.

This is one of those movies where you see something and you think, "There's no way they can top that," and five seconds later there's something even more disgusting and disturbing and completely over-the-top.

There's rat monkey head-squishing, puss eating, zombie fucking, dog eating, head blendering, hedge clipper decapitations, priest karate, baby zombie birth, a lawn-mower zombie-slicing finale that will never be topped, and a reverse birth...and that's about an 1/8 of the sickness. Writing about it is, truthfully, a waste of time. You must watch it to understand...but not during dinner.

Why It's Awesome: The documented bloodiest movie of all time...need I say more.

Best Quote:

"I can't watch this anymore." (my wife watching the movie while we attempted to eat)

Re-Animator (1985)

I feel like there's an entire genre of movies that often gets overlooked by movie people, the red-headed step-child of the film industry, if you will. The genre I speak of, is, of course, the over-the-top gory horror/comedy. Most of the best movies in this genre appeared in the 80s (of course!) in the likes of Evil Dead II, Dead Alive, and the movie of today's discussion, the classic Re-Animator!

This movie, a homage to Frankenstein, is easily one of the most ridiculous, gory, and entertaining movies of the 80s. The thing that makes it so great is that it never takes itself too seriously but it's not overly ridiculous either - it perfectly rides the line between comedy and horror. Jeffrey Comb's performance is particularly noteworthy, as he plays the obsessive Herbert West with as much zeal and seriousness as he can muster in a movie involving Ecto-cooler that brings the dead back to life.

Here are some of the highlights:

- A grown man fighting a cat doll that's supposed to be an evil zombified cat.

- Arnold Schwarzenegger's body double being reanimated and dispatched with a bone saw.

- A decapitated head smashing against a wall and exploding like a grape.

- A stereotypical lazy black security guard who always seems to take his breaks at the WORST possible times.

- Intestines that come to life and attack a man like a snake FOR NO LOGICAL REASON

- And the best, most awesome moment of any movie EVER...a severed head eating out some naked blonde chick!!! AMAZING!

Seriously, if you want to be entertained and listen to some guy logically explain why he placed a dead cat in a mini-fridge, WATCH THIS MOVIE! It will change your life.

Why It's Awesome: They don't make them this bad...or this good anymore. CGI has ruined the cheese factor in film and nearly annihilated the horror/comedy genre. This movie proves that you don't need fancy computers...or a logical storyline to make an entertaining flick.

Best Quote:

West: I was busy pushing bodies around, as you well know, and what would a note say, Dan? "Cat dead...details later"?

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)

Groovy...

Wow. Talk about a major difference in tone! The first Evil Dead was a straight up B horror flick (with a tree raping scene). Evil Dead II, however, is such an odd blend of horror and humor that there's literally no movie it can be compared to. Evil Dead is essentially its own genre.

I will say that The Three Stooges inspired most of this movie's humor, BUT...(wait for it)...the comedic scenes were my LEAST favorite parts of the movie. In fact, I found the first forty minutes of the film difficult to watch. We get a fast-forward retelling of the original movie in the first five minutes and then the next half hour is Ash's one man show (Ash trying to escape, Ash fighting a head, Ash fighting a headless body, Ash fighting his own hand, etc.)

The major gripe I have with the first act of the film is that it has absolutely NO direction. A story is almost non-existent until we see Annie and her brother traveling to the cabin. Ash doesn't seem to have any plan for escaping the cabin or surviving the Deadite invasion. In fact, the FIRST time the movie feels like it has any objective is when Ash and Annie need to descend into the cellar to retrieve the pages from the Book of the Dead and that's 20 minutes before the end of the movie.

Of course, this flick is a classic for a reason. The character of Ash has evolved, ladies and gentleman. We no longer have the sopping wet pussy from the first film. No, sir, Ash is a hardcore badass by the time the credits roll at the end of the second movie and yes, I will admit that when Ash attached that chainsaw to his hand and sawed off the barrel of that shotgun, I did sprout a groovy boner right there on the spot. The camera work is still mind-blowing, especially the scene where the Evil chases Ash through the cabin...another boner-inducing moment. And the gore, yes, the gore is absolutely insane. When Jake gets sucked down into the fruit cellar and a torrential spray of blood erupts from the cellar door like he's being shoved into a giant paper shredder, that was an EPIC WIN for horror gore-fans everywhere.

And the ending left me thirsty for Army of Darkness and the conclusion of the series. Hail to the king, baby!

Why It's Awesome: If you tell me to picture the most hardcore badass I could possibly imagine, it's a man with a chainsaw for a hand and armed with a sawed-off shotgun and that's exactly what we get in this movie.

Best Quote: Although I love "Groovy," I'm going to have to go with...

Henrietta: Someone's in my fruit cellar! Someone with a fresh sooooooul!

Evil Dead (1981)

This is what a low-budget horror movie should be.

I've never seen the Evil Dead trilogy in its entirety so I decided to make it my mission to watch Bruce Campbell's magna opus. Obviously the first film of the trilogy is the rawest of the bunch, encumbered with a low budget, poor acting, and limited locales, but, God, what Sam Raimi does well, he does very well. Some people seem to forget that before all the over-the-top violence and Ash's ascension to campy action hero, The Evil Dead was just another horror flick working on a limited budget and Ash was kind of a bitch.

Some of this movie's obvious weaknesses (the most obvious being the low budget) are also its greatest strengths. The fact that the Evil Force is nothing more than a shaky camera creates a real sense of horror in this film, most likely because Raimi is such a master behind the camera. The effects are cheesy and the gore is over the top, but the movie rides the line between horror and comedy so well that it all works perfectly.

And then there's Bruce Campbell. Really, ignoring his legacy, through the first half of this film, Campbell is painfully average until he's the last man standing and everyone else is a creepy, flesh-eating psycho. And that's when he steps up his game to LEGENDARY status because you can tell he's working his ASS OFF to make this film work in spite of all its shortcomings. At no point does he come off as anything but a complete pussy during the course of this film and yet, you're still rooting for him to make it. He gets his ass handed to him by every zombie teen in the movie until he's drenched in blood and he just keeps on ticking. Once you add in the funny one-liners, there won't be anything to stop him...

Oh, and then there's the tree raping scene. How could this not become a classic?

Why It's Awesome: The beginning of the Bruce Campbell legend, complete with a book made of human skin, tree-raping, ankles being stabbed with pencils, and dismemberment. And it only gets better from here...

Best Quote: Nope...not quite yet. We'll fill this section quite a bit with the next installment...

The Human Centipede: The First Sequence (2009)

There are some movies that should not be viewed by anyone, not because it's disgusting or violent but because the entire movie is based off an idea thought up by a guy who was drunk and stumbled out of a bar and just blurted out some random bullshit and then made an hour and a half movie based off that stupid bullshit.

In this case, Tom Six stepped out of a bar and said, "Yo, man, wouldn't - wouldn't it be fucked up if three people were connected mouth to anus and had to walk around like - fuck I don't even know what...I guess like - like a human centipede? Wouldn't that be fucked up?"

That's what this movie is about. I was told I "had to see it" so I saw it and it was fucking terrible. The acting is awful, the story is nonexistent, and the characters are stupid cliches. The one thing it does have going for it, however, is three people connected mouth-to-anus and crawling around like a human centipede. If that's something you're interested in seeing, then, yes, this movie is for you. If you enjoy things like character development, a coherent storyline, or any sense of medical realism.

The opening of the movie pretty much sums up the intelligence level of the entire movie. Two stupid American bitches go to Europe, drive around in the country without a GPS, get lost, suffer a flat tire, run through the dark woods to "safety" and the one house they finally come upon is owned by a mad scientist obsessed with creating a human centipede...and it never gets better from there.

The only bright spot is the creepy performance by Dieter Laser. For a movie about an operation involving mouth-to-anus connections, he plays the part straight-faced and comes across as a real psycho.

But seriously, this movie is just shocktastic bullshit in the same vein as Saw and Hostel. Save some time and stick your hand in the blender. It's pretty much the same damn thing.

One Bright Spot: The title tells you exactly what you're going to get: a human centipede. It's not like you can claim you don't know what you're getting yourself into.

Best Quote:

Me: What the fuck was that?! (Me after watching it.)