Showing posts with label MST3K. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MST3K. Show all posts

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is the greatest movie of all time


Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. Horribly reviewed when it came out in 2015. 44% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audience score isn't much better. I fucking loved it. 10 out of 10. These people don't know what the fuck they are talking about. It had me LOLing which doesn't happen often. It's got everything. Gore. Yucks. Zombies. Strippers. Zombie strippers. Like I said, everything. It is the greatest movie of all time. 


Pros: Humorous. Mostly solid practical effects. Manage to do a lot with little. The kids and the stripper: super solid. If you like this type of comedy horror flick, then it is nearly perfect. 

Cons: Sure, it's kind of juvenile, but what do you expect? 

Here's the gist. A camping trip gets cut short for a trio of boy scouts when zombies take over their town. With the help of a local stripper, the boys with their ingenuity save their "cooler" classmates who are at a rave getting crunk. The movie stars Logan Miller (Carter) from Love, Simon (never heard of it), Joey Morgan (Augie) whom I've never seen, and Tye Sheridan (Ben) who is the lead from Ready Player One, as the scouts. The film was directed by Christopher B. Landon, son of the late Michael Landon of Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven fame, who previous directed Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones and has since done the flick Happy Death Day which I loved. Landon, in my opinion, is a rising star whose career I will definitely follow closely. Also appearing in the movie are Blake Anderson aka the frizzy haired guy in Workaholics, Sarah Dumont as the stripper (not to be confused with the zombie stripper), David Koechner (Champ from Anchorman) as the scout leader, Halston Sage (Kendall: sister of Carter, crush of Ben) who was the love interest of the two main frat bros in Neighbors, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's kid Patrick as the dick boyfriend of Sage's character. 

The movie draws you in quick with the Workaholics dude working as a janitor in a hospital. He goes to a quarantined area while the doctor leaves to get a snack from a machine. There, alone, going where he shouldn't, dude thinks he kills the zombie patient zero and attempts CPR which smashes his rib cage. This wakes the zombie up and they go at it. You can see him flying around behind the doctor's back who can't hear him through the sound proof windows. Dude eventually comes back and eats the doctor who has his hand up the vending machine that just ate his dollar and his snack. Ok. I'm in at this point. 

We see pretty early on that these are the Dawn of the Dead  zombies that still go through the motions of being alive and doing what they did in life. In that movie we saw them head to the mall in droves. Here we see the scoutmaster returning home from the woods and a stripper doing her whole routine including a disgustingly gory and extremely hot (kidding) pole dance. We also get some honking of a big tittied cop zombie that loses her shirt on a fence. 

Favorite scene is sort of a tough one. The opening is great, as is the strip club sequence, as well as the ending. Ultimately, it's one where the trio, now accompanied by the lone surviving stripper, head to Carter's house to find his sister's diary to find out where the big party is going down. While there in the sister's upstairs bedroom, Ben ends up confessing to the stripper that he has a crush on Carter's sister, Kendall, and how he is nervous or about making a move or whatever. The stripper, though, is like "you just need some practice," and they start making out. It is a weird turn, for sure, but while that is going on, you sort of notice something in the background: a zombie jumping on a trampoline just behind them. Once shit goes down and they all have to flee, they end up using the trampoline to clear the wall into a neighbor's yard. All of them bloop down from the window and boing over the wall no problem until they get to Ben who sees the diary they are looking for. In the time it takes to grab it though the trampoline become overrun with bouncing zombies. He grabs onto the only thing he can which we see is a zombie in a robe's dick, much to his horror. My female companion laughed nonstop like a wild woman the whole time that was going down, which seemed like too long. 

Best kill, in my opinion, comes when the old cat lady that lives next door, wanders over and attacks Carter. She attacks him by pulling his past down and biting his ass but doesn't have her teeth in so just keeps gumming him. It is gross but hilarious. He ends up turning the tables on her though and smashes the window and slams it down on her neck, decapitating her. It is sick. Her cats attempt to avenge her though as they have all turned to zombies that look and act just like hobgoblins from one of the best MST3K riffs, Hobgoblins

MVP of the movie, for me, has to be Landon as this is the second of his films I have seen that are totally my type of flick. He's on a list of newer directors (along with Jeremy Saulnier and Ti West) whose shit I will eagerly anticipate. Having previously wrote those Paranormal Activity movies (which were meh), dude wanted to do something more upbeat with a bit of humor which is more in line with his personality and sensibilities. "I'm kind of a goofy dude and so this felt very much like a reflection of my personality and the stuff that I grew up watching. When I read the first script, I was like, 'Wow, I can actually make a gory R-rated version of The Goonies and Gremlins or even Monster Squad,' and so that was the big appeal for me." Yeah, I think we should totally hang out. MVP for sure. 

Overall, the movie is fun as hell and has a kick ass ending. They basically get to the dance and use all of the ingenuity they learned scouting to build killing machines that they use to great effect. The carnage is gnarly and extreme and they come out to "Rock You Like a Hurricane." Shit is dope. 

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Detention is the greatest movie of all time


I looooooved this fucking movie. Totally one of those kitchen sink type movies, there is a lot going on. The film has lots of meta, self-referential humor,
features a slasher based on a Saw esque movie within the movie called
Cinderhella, time travel, prom, Freaky Friday body swapping that makes the old noodle hurt to think about, a vegan protagonist, a guy with fly DNA, Canadians, and even aliens. It is fucking awesome.

The basic gist of the movie is a killer obsessed with the fictitious horror franchise Cinderhella dons the costume and kills a bunch of Grizzly Lake High School students. The group of suspects/potential victims include protagonist Riley Jones (Shanley Caswell, a pretty young lady who was in The Conjuring but not much else I've seen) who is sort of a suicidal outcast with a broken leg, her love interest/buddy from childhood Clapton Davis (Josh Hutcherson who was Peeta in the Hunger Games), his love interest and her one-time homey (whose mother has inhabited her body, sending her mind back to 1991--it's best not to think to hard about this) the cheerleader Ione, the "nerd" that's obsessed with Riley, Sander Sanderson (A.D. Johnson), and the jock with fly DNA that is obsessed with Ione, Billy Nolan (Parker Bagley), and numerous others including a Canadian. The principal, Dane Cook, gives all the usuals all-day detention in an effort to keep Cinderhella from murdering anyone at prom. 

Pros: Pacing. Pretty ladies. Meta as fuck. The survivor girl is a vegetarian. Casting. Soundtrack. This movie rocked.

Cons: Sometimes it is tell what the hell is happening. There may be too much going on here (at times).

The pacing of this movie is fucking insane. It's a movie for people with no attention span and it really jumps all over the place. It's like being on Adderall. We start out with a killing, segue to Mean Girls, get some more killing, suddenly get a dude with fly DNA, more killing, get the ludicrous solution to the killings (put them all in detention) when they start watching the Cinderhella movie where they see the movie is about a bunch of kids in detention are watching a lower budget movie of about a bunch of kids in detention watching a very
low budget movie of about a bunch of kids in detention watching a possible porn movie of about a bunch of kids in detention

It is here when we get my favorite line in the movie which sort of requires a bit of backstory. For a long time my female companion and I would seek out ridiculous Canadian horror. It is a sub-genre I encourage everyone to explore. Some of these movies are genuinely good movies with lower costs to make like Ginger Snaps, Ponypool, Trick 'r Treat, or The Witch (2015). Others decide to mix in elements of comedy, these being along the likes of Horns, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, and Wolfcop. And then there are the ones that are just a train wreck that ends up sort of working, Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare and Zombie Nightmare both  come to mind here. Zombie Nightmare even had a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode devoted to it where they address this sub-genre at one point saying that the movie had "Canada's stink all over it," which is something we often say and both said while watching this movie. So it really tickled us when one of the kids in detention, watching one of these low budget slasher flicks inside of flasher flick, and so on, asks, "what is this, Canadian?" It was the first time we had ever heard this addressed and could not stop laughing. 

Another hilarious moment and reference to Canada comes near the beginning of the movie from Gord, the Canadian, is easily my favorite character (but they are all pretty amazing). He is facing off again the main girl in debate class on vegetarianism. This fucking rant he goes on is fucking golden and complete nonsense and it comes at you in that style of debate where information is just thrown at you at insane, breakneck speed with "facts" that have no basis in reality. I don't usually include fucking dialogue (or monologue or whatever) in these things but this is fucking out there. It goes thus: "Yes, I'd like to start off by saying that this girl's argument is ridiculous! Vegetarians who eat fish are hypocrites! She thinks because fish may feel no pain they don't value their lives. Absurd! And notice how she expresses almost no sympathy for chickens. That's because Americans hate chickens. For example, KFC serves popcorn chicken to assure the customers that the chicken was blown to bits, yet the meatball sub at Subway isn't called 'popcorn cow.' Americans want chickens to die! Lame! Personally, I do feel sympathy for animals, which is why I choose to only eat baby animals. They have not lived as long, and they are not leaving as much behind. Baby clams, chicken wings, baby seals - no... big... loss! If we don't eat meat, we lose out place in the food chain. Eating animals gives us confidence as humans. Vegetarians like this girl, who is only wearing one shoe, have less confidence than everybody else."

More comedy than horror, we are treated to a mullet beats ponytail battle where two dudes fight in the style of Swayze and Seagal, time traveling and freaky Fridaying (for no reason), a dude with fly DNA (again, for no reason other than referencing another horror movie), the best possible answer to "do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?" ("the easy way"), and an out there ending involving aliens and Canadians.  We get lots of meta-references like talking about how the murders at the beginning are like Scream, a cop says the goings on in the school really "nuked the fridge," and so forth. And when the vegetarian decides to eat meat again we get a dude that comes down in pieces on the grill, making the burger falls out of her mouth in disgust (noice). Movie is sweet and definitely worth your time. 

Update: My Dr. Carver Auteur Autopsy review...