Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood is the worst movie of all

Good god. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the one where the wheels come totally off (i.e. where the magic happens). Finally moving past the character Tommy, who was the survivor boy in the previous three installments, this one pits good old immortal Jason Voorhees, played by Kane Hodder for the first time (he would play Jason in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday), against telekinetic Tina Shepard who brings him back to life with her mind which results in the death of mother, shrink, and the teens that have come to Crystal Lake to celebrate this idiot bro's birthday.

This one was originally conceived as a potential Freddy Vs. Jason but was too ahead of its time. While we would get that flick 15 years later, New Line, the production company behind the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and Friday the 13th's Paramount, couldn't get their shit together in 1987. Nightmare was at the height of its popularity and the deal that Paramount brought to the table didn't impress Bob Shaye, CEO of New Line. What they offered was they would keep creative control of the film as well as handle domestic distribution while New Line would retain international distribution, which was basically offering them next to nothing. New Line would pass, going on to make Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master which was also trash.

That having fell through and with the series pretty much DOA, Paramount decided to brainstorm other famous foils that they could have Jason go toe-to-toe with. The screenwriter, Daryl Haney, basically just threw ideas at the producer until something stuck, saying "I notice that at the end of these movies there’s always a teenage girl who’s left to battle Jason by herself. What if this girl had telekinetic powers?" Hence this is the one that sort of became known as Carrie vs. Jason which is insane.

Pros: Another giant leap toward comedy. One solid kill in the infamous sleeping bag death. The telekinesis stuff has some potential.

Cons: More or less completely diverges from the previous films (though Jason does sort of hold it all together). Out there in a bad way. It's bad acting, irritating character, and a crappy plot even by Ft13th standards. Shitty kills and very little nudity.

Same damn person

Notes: If I've said it once I said it a million times, or maybe never, but franchises really start to peak around part seven. In that vein, in this part seven we get telekinesis for no reason. Fuck it, man. We get it with the survivor girl who is a small child at the beginning of the film. Her dad is being an abusive asshole. He beats the mom and is just a dick in general. The little girl goes out on a little boat to get away from him and when he follows to the edge of the dock, she psychokinesises the platform, sending him into the lake where he drowns. She immediately regrets it although her dad was a raging dickhead. She ultimately grows up to be the girl from Road Trip (Amy Smart, who is also a very pretty lady).

Part of what makes this movie so bad were all the horrendously unimaginative the kills were. Most of the kills are just Jason grabbing and stabbing. At several points in the film, Jason does the thing where he just walks up behind someone and you think, "huh, this is too obvious, of course this isn't how he is going to kill this person," and then he does. The only really memorable kill is the infamous sleeping bag death. In this one, Jason first kills the dude, Dan, with a machete by, of course, just walking up to him and murdering him. Meanwhile, the girl is getting ready for bed in their massive 30 person tent when Jason walks up. She sees him and her dead dude, maybe, and decides this is too much, she needs to hide. Going on instinct, I guess, she zips herself up in her sleeping bag. Jason grabs her, walks her over to a tree, and smashes her into it. Fuck yes.

Not a lot of nudity in either. We get a skinny dipper who just swims in place when Jason comes at her, then we get one other set of breasts from the stoner chick late in the movie. Both the chicks are super attractive though. Speaking of swimming, I guess we are just gonna ignore that Jason is now an excellent swimmer. The kid drowned and in every movie now we see him fly by Michael Phelps.

The movie also has some of the most irritating characters in the whole franchise which says a lot when alumni include Kevin Bacon, Corey Feldman (who did a fine job), Crispin Glover gyrating about, the character with the lowest self-esteem in all of cinema, a guy that walks on his hands, a mother-son neo-Nazi duo, a rapey coroner (giving us a bad name), and a punk chick who only gets screen time so that she can do the robot. The two worst offenders are the desperate homely girl and the fucktard writer guy. First we'll start with the less offensive homely girl. The dude she is interested in, some rich dude, maybe the writer dude, I don't remember, goes with someone else. Most the people are dead at this point and everyone else is dead drunk. She decides this is an appropriate time to try to make an all out effort to get the dude to notice her. She gets completely dolled up at like two in the morning and goes out looking for him. She is just like wandering about saying his name. It's the weirdest and craziest thing I've ever seen. No wonder she is single. She ultimately dies alone.

Now for the writer dude. Fuck this guy. The writer dude has to be in the running for the most irritating character of all time. This rich bitch, Melissa, played by Susan Jennifer Sullivan (who was long rumored dead but is in fact alive and well) who is Jenna from 30 Rock except serious, leads him on and makes out with him to make this other guy who is more interested in the telekinetic chick jealous. When she finally tells him, "hey, I'm not going to have sex with you," he loses it and says some down right weird shit. "I know about rejection," he says at one point, "I've been rejected by the finest science fiction magazines in the continental United States!" Then he goes down stairs, opens the birthday dude's gifts, and, thankfully, dies.

Though the shit I have already mentioned has already ruined my opinion of the movie, I sort of don't mind the telekinesis stuff. I'm sort of in the if you have an unkillable zombie who has magically learned to swim despite originally drowning (maybe) that has the ability to teleport (unconfirmed until Part VIII), then fuck, I can buy psychokinesis. Her psychic ability, on the other hand, is basically useless. She sees the future but is either unable to change it or she fucks it up and doesn't because she is an idiot. Like when she sees her mother die and then she dies like in said vision. This leads to some ridiculousness. Psychic girl flees her cabin when she finds out her like live-in shrink or stepdad or whatever is fucking with her head. The mom and said shrink or whatever start chasing her so she hops in the car and takes off, ultimately crashing it when she has the vision of her mom getting killed. She then heads to the cabin to find her love interest to help. When she gets there, she says to him, "I just saw my mom; I have to find her," which is nonsense. She could have just stayed where she was since her mom was just looking for her and came up to the car immediately after she ran off.

So they go out to find her. The asshole stepdad or what-have-you throws the mom in front of him so that Jason kills her instead of him--what a guy!--but he eventually gets his when Jason walks up on him (maybe teleport) with a buzz saw and disembowels the prick. The chick finds her mom and is pissed. Comes up on Jason just sort of moseying down the street. The girl sort of telekinesises Jason into a mud puddle and then downs a power line that electrocutes him with the infamous 80s blue lightning. Doesn't work though and they end up back at the cabin somehow. She also smashes a house on him around here. This only causes mild irritation.

Down to three survivors now. The psychic, the love interest dude, and the rich bitch. Rich bitch has no idea what's going on and is obviously not long for this world. Awfully late in the movie to be alive and clueless and a bitch. She tells Melissa what is going down but Melissa is like, "uh, this is fucking crazy, let's go, guy," and she goes to leave. And... she's dead. Axe to the face. Not coming back from that. Now Jason comes at dude and psychic chick. She mentally keeps chucking shit at him like couches, potted plants with severed heads in them, bits of cabin, so forth. Eventually she smashes his hockey mask. The straps cut into his skin. It's all puss filled and fucking gross. Made my stomach turn a bit. They get it on. Jason dies and comes back like six or seven times. Eventually explode the cabin with him in there. Again, redness and slight irritation.

So Jason has the girl cornered at the edge of the dock. She is fucked. He has his knife raise and ready for that sweet, sweet final kill. But the girl has one last trick up her sleeve that comes about when she is freaking out as she unconsciously summons her dead father. He bursts up through the dock--looking surprisingly good for being dead in a body of water for over a decade--and pulls Jason down into the water, chaining him at the bottom of the lake. Man, didn't see that ending coming because it is insane and is completely out of nowhere. That is the whole movie. Insanity out of nowhere. Three more to go before Freddy vs. Jason. Fuck.

Aw, look at that face. So cute. Just want to cuddle him.

Tour de Pharmacy is the greatest movie of all time

Tour de Pharmacy is Andy Samberg's second hilarious 30 for 30 style HBO mocumentary, the first being 7 Days in Hell, that knocks it out of the fucking park with raunchy humor, faded sports stars, and big name comedians. While 7 Days in Hell lampoons the 1980s and 90s tennis rivalries of John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg as well as Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras, Tour de Pharmacy takes on doping in cycling that has tarnished the careers of pretty all within the sport's ranks in the same way that Fred Armisen and Bill Hader's Documentary Now! pokes fun at Grey Gardens with the episode "Sandy Passage". 

The film gives a fictitious account of the 1982 Tour de France where all but five cyclist are disqualified after Orlando Bloom's character, JuJu Peppie, causes a massive pileup following he attempts to grab the boob of a female spectator. This causes a free-for-all melee which climaxes with John Cena's character, Gustav Ditters, also one the "Fab Five", more on that in a minute, ripping off a dude's unitard and picking him up around his shoulders, screaming like a wild man. This ultimate leads to an investigation where it is determined that Union Cycliste Internationale president Ditmer Klerken, played by Kevin Bacon, took $50,000 bribes from cyclists in order to skip their drug screenings. The only athletes to not partake in the bribes--Adrian Baton (Freddie Highmore), Ditters, Marty Hass (Samberg), Peppie, and Slim Robinson (Daveed Diggs).

All the members of the Fab Five all have their thing. Baton is a woman pretending to be a man. Ditters has suddenly gotten huge. Hass is a white American who went to college in Nigeria and now claims the whole continent of Africa, Peppie dies on his bike because of the many drugs he has taken (and leads the pack despite being dead), and Robinson (nephew of Jackie Robinson) is determined to break the color barrier in some sport but by that point has very few to choose from. All are also suspected of taking PEDs.

Pros:Turns a pretty serious subject into a pretty funny farce. Fantastic cast. Light and colorful, everything I ask for from an 80s period piece. It's super short (so just the right length).

Cons: Lance Armstrong. No. We aren't there yet, dude. Pretty silly in a way that could be irritating. Parts drag a bit.

Notes:  The easiest chuckles the film gets are from the present day versions of the remaining Fab Five which are all just funny visual gags. Basically, these are people that could play their dads (or mom) on a normal program. In the contemporary interviews you get Danny Glover wearing a fake afro playing the Robinson character (who SPOILER ultimately won the race), Jeff Goldblum playing Samberg, Dolph Lundgren playing the older Cena, and Julia Ormond playing the female one.

The cameos are nice little surprises. In addition to the ones already mentioned we see J.J. Abrams, Phylicia Rashad from The Cosby Show (she knows something about people tarnishing their images and what have you), Mike Tyson who explains his first love was cycling, and Chris Webber (the former Michigan Wolverine that was part of a different "Fab Five"). And also there was Lance Armstrong.

Ok. We have to talk about Lance. He is in this. He plays a huge role in it. He is very funny. His presence sort of ruins the movie. Hear me out. It's not that dude denied taking drugs, it's that he came at everyone who accused him so hard and forced his teammates to also take drugs and continually lie about it, or get his wrath. Not ready to see this guy joking around about being such a huge dick and not being sorry about it.

Overall, though, the movie is solid but I was glad it ended when it did. As long as Samberg keeps putting these things out, I'll keep on watching them.

Dr. Carver's Auteur Autopsy directs Return of the Living Dead

I did my second video thing!!! This time with better equipment and a better movie, Return of the Living Dead

Dr. Carver of Auteur Autopsy presents one of the greatest, Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs

Dr. Carver of Auteur Autopsy presents one of the greatest, Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs. 

This is my new thing with the movie stuff. Video! I'm on the YouTube as Dr. Carver. Learned some lessons on this one. Sound quality is horrible (getting a mic) and it's all a bit rough. But it's a first. Check it out.

This is the first video for the site. The audio isn't very good but now I know that I need an external mic. 

Also, forgot to credit the music in the intro. It's Feast Of The Zombie by Behold the Living Corpse.

Central Intelligence is (sort of) the greatest movie of all time

Well, it wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen and enjoyed it for the most part. Therefore, Central Intelligence gets a pass as the greatest movie of all time.  It is your typical, run-of-the-mill but solid action-comedy.

The movie features two "friends" from high school played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (a CIA agent named Bob) and Kevin Hart (Jet) who team up to save the world from terrorists who are trying to get their hands on satellite codes that do whatever and the man who stole those codes. Bob, who was overweight in school and bullied by a young Jason Bateman, hooks back up with the cool kid, Jet, who is now way past his prime who lives a "boring" life as an accountant working for Bateman's company, under the cover of going to their 20-year high school reunion. Once the pudgy "loser", Bob is now "The Rock". He needs now needs Jet's number-crunching skills to figure out who the buyer is and where he will be in order to save everyone from whatever those codes are supposed to do, some dubious doomsday scenario or something. Jet is now in it as he is humorously pulled into shoot-outs, jail-breaks, Mexican standoffs, so forth, while Bob does most the ass-kicking.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson make for well-matched comic foils, helping Central Intelligence overcome a script that coasts on their considerable chemistry.

Pros: Johnson and Hart are killer. The megastars are both very funny and solid. Basically 90-minutes of endearing and light escapist humor which is always nice.

Cons: The action is meh. The plot isn't something you can really make a lot of sense of if you start poking holes at it. A lot of these characters don't behave like real people.

Notes: Here's some stuff. Jesus Jason Bateman's character is an asshole. When The Rock is the not so popular chunk in 1996, Bateman and his crew of pricks see him dancing in the locker-room shower during an all school assembly (why wasn't The Rock there?) to honor the Jet and his many accomplishments. They grab him, still in the nude, and throw him out onto the basketball court. Jet gives him his letter jacket to cover his shame and off he goes. This moment of kindness basically make Bob a huge hard-on for Jet for the next 20 years, telling everyone, including his partner in the CIA, played by Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad, about the coolest dude in his high school. Side note, bullying was pretty nonexistent at my high school and considered social unacceptable (the few kids who tried it were ostracized and eventually asked to leave), but if this had happened there, then depending on who it happened to, people would have gone to jail.

Anyway, we later see that Bateman is all apologetic when Bob and Jet go to him to help with their little CIA thing. He even asks Bob to forgive him. But then, JK, he was just fucking with them. He doesn't give a shit and it was Bob's fault he got tooled on because he's a fucking loser. So forth. The guy is just toxic. He even reveals he is a Scientologist and that he is "clear" in one of the funniest little tidbits in the movie. Bob is still afraid of him, because he is an aggressive ass-hat, I guess. But he eventually gets his though nothing has really changed from that moment to the one at the end where Bob knocks him out.

That knocking out Bateman moment leads to a bizarre finale where Bob gets naked at his high school reunion to like overcome the past humiliation. This time, since it is The Rock, everyone loses their minds. Guys, girls, everyone, is like really into and totally comfortable with this guy being naked. That being the case, he naked dances for the last 10 minutes of the movie. It's the weirdest fucking thing. I don't care how attractive the dude is, this is still a sex crime.

The CIA stuff is a little out there but that doesn't really matter as it is basically generic action that is just a vehicle for the actors to buddy up and work toward a common humorous goal. Certain moments in this regard are less than stellar. Like when Jet freaks out about making bird noises like as a way of signalling each other, I don't even know. He just has a little freakout, which one of several and sort of becomes his "thing" and is pretty irritating. But roll with it and you'll have a good time.