"The Landlord"(2009)d/Emil Hyde

With August about to dawn on us,I thought I'd say goodbye to July with a good old fashioned low budget independent horror comedy that fell into my lap courtesy of Massive Ego Productions,and wrter/editor/director,Emil Hyde,a personable gent indeed,possessing of the raw materials necessary to press ahead in filmmaking,and given the proper ingredients like a budget,some actors,skilled makeup effects technicians,I can easily see him going on to make memorable movie experiences that leave genre fans ranting long afterwards.Everybody starts somewhere,and I'm guessing this film marks Hyde's starting line to some degree,and to his credit,he has completed his first race,as it were,and the finished product is a likeable comedic romp with ample gore and surprisingly good digital visual effects contained therein.
On the negative side,the budget really shows in some places,most notably the makeup effects which for the most part look like pre-bought Woochie latex appliances and foam rubber severed body parts from the local Halloween store.The acting,which I'm guessing is supplied here by family and friends and/or walk ons,falls a little flat in moving Hyde's original and funny script along from scene to scene.All-in-all though,I can't say I wasn't entertained.

Just look at that mess. Forget about getting your deposit back now.
Enter Tyler(Derek Dziak),the titular chubby landlord of an apartment building that happens to be frequented by a demonic duo,Rabishu(Rom Barkhordar),who's addicted to Hawaiian shirts and late night infomercials,and Lamashtu(Lori Myers),his bitchy hell-queen whose face closely resembles a fox terrier.Together they've been materializing at inopportune times and eating Tyler's tenants,usually before he can even collect rent out of the poor bastards.His sister,Amy(Michelle Courvais),a beat cop who's been conducting an extramarital affair(cunnilingus in a squad car is a kick I haven't tried YET) with her partner, as well as feeding local dirtbags to a crew of vampires(!) in exchange for money and valuables,is aware of the netherworldly couple,and helps her haunted sibling out whenever she can.

"Skyyyyrockets in flight! Afternooon deliiiiight!"
Donna(Erin Myers)shows up at Tyler's door one day,running away from an abusive old man and an unwanted pregnancy,looking for a divorce,an abortion,and cheap room and board after trying her luck at a fleabag motel full of hookers,johns,and drug addicted weirdos who rub danishes on their nipples,overseen by an acid-tongued manager(Emil Hyde himself)with an itchy trigger finger.After a romantic evening of karaoke at the local dive bar,our pudgy protagonist takes a shine to the troubled girl,which only complicates matters at home,where Lamashtu hankers to eat her unborn infant(!!!).How can Tyler keep Ribishu from buying useless junk with his credit card,keep the detectives off the bloody body trail,keep his sister out of trouble with the vampiric vagabonds,AND keep his new love interest off the menu?You'll have to find out what goes down in the knock-down,drag-out brimstone-baked finale for yourself.Contact the folks behind http://thelandlordmovie.com/ and score yourself a copy of this quirky horromedy.Remember,the more you support independent,original horror, the less you'll be wasting your time with brainless Hollywood remakes.

These mirror-gashes are gonna do wonders for your eyes,sweetie!
Despite its budgetary shortcomings,Hyde's film boasts of some impressive force fields,flaming portals to Hell,supernatural witchcraft battles,baseball bat beatings,broken bottles to the labonza,brain-ladeling,and obligatory limb-munching.You could do a lot worse than this one during the week,believe you me.Barkhordar has done acting and voice work in television and videogames while Courvais acts in the Windy City.Hopefully we'll be seeing more in the future from Mr. Hyde and company.Give it a shot,droogies.

Whoa,maybe I should've stopped at four double-dipped blotters.

"Prom Night"(2008)d/Nelson McCormick

We've gone from dogs to dog shit today,folks, marking a truly historic day at Wopsploitation, the very first movie to merit a zero wop rating thus far.We've reviewed some pretty bad films over the past two years, but none so completely meritless that I've had to lay the golden goose eggs upon it.Until now.Not to be confused with the superior one wop film of the same title(which we looked at in November of 2007 here),make no mistakes about it, this is no remake,nor is it a sequel,hell,it's barely a horror movie by the loosest of standards.Director McCormick,who cut his teeth directing television,broke his teeth here over-utilizing jump scares,false scares and obsessing on closets and vanity mirror shots,all used minimally to full effectiveness by quality genre directors like John Carpenter in Halloween(1978).If they took an hour and a half long episode of Gossip Girl and made it into a bloodless,scareless horror film,this would be it.And if you're a horror fan who looks for that type of movie,you're on the wrong website.Afterwards,I actually reminisced about the original Prom Night(1980), wishing this chocolate ass-bundle were at least good enough to be as bad as that.It isn't, by any stretch of the imagination.

"I'm scratching peace symbols in your tombstone, Donna!"
Donna(Brittany Snow,who actually went on to act in Gossip Girl,mind you)comes home from a sleepover weekend with her black girlfriend,Tokenita(Dana Davis) to find that one of her high school teachers,Richard Fenton(Jonathan Schaesch),a dead ringer for Charlie Manson(where the hell do you teach,Fenton,Scumbag High?),has viciously shanked every member of her family in the labonza in a vain attempt to keep her close to him(?).He goes to a nuthouse and she moves in with an aunt and uncle.A year later,the painful memories of her family's gruesome deaths are put on the backburner,and she's preparing for her senior prom with her two vainly unsympathetic friends,unaware that Fenton has already escaped the nut hatch,murdered someone else,and donned their wardrobe,looking now like a less psychopathic Billy Bob Thornton.Before you can blink your eyes,Bobby(Scott Porter),a weird-mouthed kid who looks like the male equivalent of Kirsten Dunst, is knocking at Donna's door,and they're one typical limo ride montage away from the night of their lives.Fenton arrives at the hotel,shanks a cleaning woman in the labonza,scores himself her master key,foreshadowing a handful of bloodless murders on the horizon.

I know how you feel,buddy.I had to sit all the way through this pile of shit.
At the prom,the girls dance with their unthreatening effeminate dates to song after bad song(all with an overused and annoying toy piano effect) while Tokenita plans to win the Prom Queen title over an underdeveloped bitch character named Crissy Lynn.Oh she's bitchy alright,but not much more than our female leads so nobody cares.News of Fenton's escape three days earlier finally gets to Detectives Nash and Winn,two cops who couldn't find their own assholes with bloodhounds and a search party,and they warn Donna's caretakers and head to the prom themselves.Fenton shanks Donna's friends one after the other in the labonza(only Tokenita is lucky enough to get her throat slashed)with one of those cheesy knives that rednecks buy off of the Home Shopping Network at four in the morning,until after the cops have pulled the plug on the prom festivities,he corners her in the hotel room,only to fall for the same "hiding under the bed" ploy that she used on him a year earlier.The cops realize Fenton has assumed the identity of one of the hotel workers to leave the building and follow Donna back to her uncle's place,where Bobby is alone in her room,consoling her.Not like he'd wanna have sex with her or anything,it's only prom night,ferchrissakes.Fenton kills a cop and slashes the mealy mouthed boy's throat,before being pumped full of holes by Detective Winn just as he's upon his obsession.It's finally over.I mean,the movie.

The goriest five seconds of the movie,submitted for your disapproval.
I wasn't entertained by a single thing in this movie.Literally every aspect of it sucked elephantiasis balls from beginning to end.I'd rather sit through a chick flick than endure such a heavy-handed piece of shit like this ever again,and believe me,I'm pretty shellshocked from seven and a half years worth of awful chick flicks I've been forced to endure in the name of harmonious relationships of late.I'd advise McCormick to stick to CSI and House episodes,but unfortunately he's helming The Stepfather,to be released this October.If this film is any indication of what he's bringing to the table in his current project,avoid it like the ugly wallflower with canker sores on her lips at the dance.Congratulations,Prom Night(2008).You're not worth a single wop on the rating scale.You're a dance I wouldn't even go stag to.

Billy Bob Thornton?!! What the hell are you doing here?

"The Plague Dogs"(1982)d/Martin Rosen

I've deprived the sexy young grogwenches at my local watering hole the extreme pleasure of seeing my ruggedly good-looking face for one night(at least...)to bring you another installment of B.W. goes to the movies,and as it's that time of week,we'll focus our lens on another cartoon that you probably wouldn't want your kiddies to viddy.'Course I couldn't focus my glassies on much of anything after this week's bonfire of irresponsibility,which included three bars,a case of Perroni,cod on the grill at Smith-tips' estate,and passing out sideways on the bed while listening to the local constabulary,lights a' flashing,grilling a suspect who wasn't me for a change.How sweet it is!
This week's animated feature is another grim 'toon from the team responsible for Watership Down(1978),only this one is even grimmer still!The misleading poster promises adventure,but I must have missed it in between all the death,blood,and gloomy set pieces throughout.'Course I'm just the target audience the film's makers were looking for,as I enjoy a real bummer as much as anybody.If frothing war-crazed bunnies didn't grab you,director Martin Rosen and writer Richard Adams focus on two escaped test animals from a British laboratory where scientists secretly eff with bubonic plague behind closed doors!Sound like your kind of "buddy picture" too?John Hurt is on board to lend his vocal talents,as well as Patrick Stewart(as a Major near the end,if you listen carefully enough)and 70's Brit horror staple Judy Geeson as a chatty Pekingese.If Umberto Lenzi made cartoons in his heyday they'd probably look a lot like this.

They don't come when you call, they don't chase squirrels at all...
Rowf,a lab mix, is one of many dogs they experiment on at the Lake District animal research facility.Every day they throw him in a big tank of water,and every day he drowns real good.His friend Snitter,a fox terrier who's undergone experimental brain surgery,convinces him to break the fuck out like the measles before they end up on the business end of a shovel headed for the incinerator.After their daring escape amidst mobs of screaming monkeys and schitzy rats,the taste of freedom is bittersweet when they must regress to primal survival instincts in the dismal British countryside.Snitter has frequent black and white flashbacks to happier days at his master's side before he got pinballed in front of a moving car.Once the facility realizes the dogs have escaped,they attempt a cover up of the secret tests they've been carrying out using the bubonic plague virus,and set hunters upon the fugitive animals at the same time.

Blowing your own face off with a rifle,a staple nowadays in animated features.
While feasting on the local sheepherders' stock,they befriend a fox who teaches them how to get in touch with their wild roots in exchange for shared meals,but when the sheep start dropping with regularity,the authorities take notice.Off on his own,Snitter is about to befriend a hunter when his paw hits the trigger of the man's gun,effectively blowing the poor bloke's face off(!)and intensifying the pair's status as outlaws.The research center sends out their own hunter,hoping to end the negative publicity once and for all,but their secret testing involving bubonic plague leaks out,and the hunter falls off a cliff,ending up as a meal(!!) for the escaped mutts and their foxy friend.The government shuts down the facility,sending soldiers and attack dogs to sweep the countryside for the pair of pooches,and when the fox risks himself to throw the dogs off their trail,he is killed.The dogs make it to the shore,but find choppers and soldiers at every juncture, and when Snitter wades out into the ocean believing he can see an island ahead,Rowf follows soon afterwards with a flurry of bullets hitting the surf behind him.Both dogs,near exhaustion,paddle with the last of their strength against the tide,the hardships of freedom more satisfying than either one could have imagined.

Rowf and Snitter weren't best friends to this poor son of a bitch.
Rosen's screen adaption of Adams' book leaves out a lot of human interaction,choosing instead to cover the material through voiceover narration juxtaposed over the animals arduous journey.He also nixes the tome's happy ending where both dogs reach Snitter's original master,as in the film,he is killed by a car in the street,and the dogs' survival is unlikely on the screen,but makes for a much more powerful movie,in my opinion.As it stands,the director wasn't speaking out against vivisection, but was one of the first to bring the suffering of laboratory animals to light none-the-less.As for my thoughts on the subject,I feel any unneccesary pain and suffering to these creatures should be left out altogether,unless there are very definite medical advances to be gained for humanity by doing so.As a side note,one of my crazier ex-girlfriend's online nicknames was Vivesection(sp),adding to the foul taste in my mouth that I get whenever I say the word.Plague Dogs is another stellar film to add to your collection,an uncut region two disc with the disturbing gore intact plus extras is floating around,so get your hands on it.It comes highly recommended,with the highest scale rating possible:

The doggie-equivalent to the ending of Thelma and Louise.