One Star Classics

Sometimes, Netflix will, in what I can only assume is a rage of xenophobia, present a foreign movie like it is kind of a guilty pleasure; one to watch while laughing in a detached ironic fashion.

I somehow doubt that was what the (many) production companies had set out to unleash on the UK with Truth or Die. Yes, this is a British movie, and it was probably released as a pretty standard horror flick over there, which, any way you look at it, it is.

It’s not a bad movie, nor is it a good movie. It is probably one best enjoyed on a Sunday afternoon in the daze of a light hangover. You don’t need to pay too much attention, yet it still holds your attention. Sort of.

The plot consists of preciously little: A group of friends drunkenly humiliates some poor freak during a game of truth or dare, and when they six months later are invited to his birthday party, they soon learn that he actually had killed himself after receiving a postcard saying… surprise, surprise… “truth or dare.”

I bet you can’t guess what kind of game the poor guy’s brother puts on for those who were invited to the party, one of which he suspects of being the sender of the postcard.

That’s one thing to remember if you’re in a horror movie: If you’re invited to a party at a huge mansion, and there only are two cars there… Turn around and leave.

But yes, as you well can see, this gets very predictable, and it’s hard to get too creeped out by the “game master”. I mean, you can be as much of a bad-ass ex-soldier as you want, but if you have the mustache of a 13-year old, you’re kind of DOA as far as creepiness goes.

Truth or Die is left as a plain movie, one that could have been so much more. It lacks the playfulness of Would You Rather, while never being ballsy enough to go particularly far on the freak-out scale. Stuck in the middle, it’s just bland, though I will admit it ended up being less predictable than I had feared.

And! There is a great drinking game in there! Take a shot every time someone says “truth or dare”. Take an additional shot if it’s suffixed with “bitch”. You’ll be blasted after half an hour.

The movie, in the end, is just kind of ridiculous. Who sent the card, why it was sent, the relationship between the brothers, how all of this came to be… I’m as big of fan of All My Children as most, but Truth or Die is actually more of a soap opera than anything I can ever remember watching. Fair is fair though: The soundtrack is rocking.

The Trailer

There are B-movies and there are C-movies, and there are even D-movies, all being the type of films we gleefully cover on this site. Then there’s The Tomb…

Here we have a true one star classic; a movie that didn’t just receive the coveted lowest rating on Netflix, but also hit 1.5 stars on IMDb. It was directed by one Ulli Lommel, who, until I discovered was in his sixties, had assumed to be a college student. I mean, had The Tomb been made by high-school students, I would probably have commended them, encouraging them to follow their dreams of making commercials for local television.

Anyway!

The Tomb is, according to Herr Lommel, based on H.P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name. This, of course, is quite the lofty claim, and it’s fairly obvious the director just wants his name mentioned in the same sentence as the legendary author. Hey, good job–I just did!

The plot is sort of a lazy man’s Saw: Two people wake up in a… I think it’s supposed to look like a tomb, but it’s more reminiscent of COSTCO… where they’re supposed to… do something; the sound quality was so awful I couldn’t quite figure out what… to survive. All while their captor laughs maniacly over a loudspeaker, with an ever so evil “mwahahaHaHaHAHAHAHAHA”.

Let’s talk about the titular COSTCO tomb. It must be, I don’t know, about 600 square feet in size, and still the victims cannot find their way out of it. “We’re back where we started!”, they scream in angst, after walking the full perimeter for two minutes.

There were some attempts to make the place look like a tomb, mostly by decorating a few shelves (in the olive oil aisle by my estimation) with props from Hot Topic. Adding to that, every indoor flashback was obviously filmed in the same location, though credit where credit is due: Herr Lommel did try to come up with some creative solutions to that restriction. COSTCO can, if you squint hard enough to the ceiling, look like a hip loft-apartment, and he thus uses it as such.

The antagonist, a sort of lazy version of Saw's Jigsaw, is known as “The Puppetmaster”… I say “lazy”, as while Jigsaw came up with fairly clever reasons for picking his victims, the Puppetmaster takes a more pragmatic approach: Don’t get me wrong, killing off a used car salesman who, and I quote, “sold [him] a lemon” is something we can all identify with. Who does’t hate a faulty car heater? (I’m not sure I’d go as far as renting a COSTCO and kidnap a bunch of people just to prove my point, but Puppetmaster has his standards.)

I was surprised to learn Herr Lommel kept making movies after this–The Tomb is from 2007–and I can only assume he actually was pretty proud of this film. To me, if nothing else, it does cement him in an important position: Pinocchio’s Revenge is our patron-saint movie, and I can without hesitation say that Herr Lommel is now our patron-saint director. In my world, the perfect scenario would be for him to re-make Pinocchio’s Revenge.

While I wait, I notice Netflix has plenty of Lommel classics for us all to enjoy. I truly cannot wait to go through all of them–I'm sure you feel the same.

The Trailer

Once in a while, not often, but once in a blue moon, there is a movie with a less than stellar Netflix-rating that could have become cult-classics, had its budget just been a smidgen higher.

Because let’s be honest here: Most movies featured on this site are deeply loved by us, yet are often skipped past by most on the Netflix-recommendation screen. Then there's Mr Jones.

This is a good movie. I don't care what IMDb and its 4.6 stars say: This. Is. A. Good. Nay. Great. Possibly. Stellar. Movie! World, you're wrong, and you should all go revisit (or visit, as the case might be) Mr Jones and understand how glorious this thing is.

It might seem like just another “found footage” movie, but even that aspect has somewhat of an original twist here: The camera films both directions, so you can also see the person filming. That means it’s double good!

The premise, too, is interesting-ish. The protagonists accidentally track down Mr Jones–a Banksy type artist–and start secretly filming him and his odd wood-figure artworks. As the documentary about him starts coming together, things start going… weird. I mean David Lynch-weird. Surreal.

And if there's one thing the Remi likes, it's the surreal.

Before long, you don’t know who’s filming what, who Mr Jones actually is, why he makes his crazy figures, and who is who and what is what and where is where and my god it gets gloriously weird…

That might all sound a bit disconcerting to some, and it probably is. In fact, even if the movie had been perfectly executed, it would not have been something for everyone. It’s the sad truth–surreal movies aren’t that popular, and I give the general population a big :( for that.

Even for those who do like the genre, though, I can see why Mr Jones hasn’t become a classic. It’s obvious that the budget wasn’t there to fulfill the promise of the original premise, and some of the acting suffers from that. That can break a movie like this–less than stellar performances in front of the camera often falter found-footage movies into something a drunk college kid could put together.

Mr Jones doesn’t hit that low, but it feels sorta sub-Blair Witch at times. I don’t really blame the actors–more money would have meant more takes would have meant higher quality.

But! For those of us who are just a little more forgiving than what we should be, Mr Jones is a true classic. It’s strange and dark and crazy and if you close your eyes at the right time, it’s a very well put-together movie.

I love this movie. Love. (Love!) And I will defend it until my death. It might not be something for everyone, but if you do like the surreal, you really should give it a shot. If nothing else, the wooden figures will remind you of Pinocchio’s Revenge, and that is at least something.

The Trailer

As it is the season, it only makes sense to have a look at the franchise the holiday was named after: Halloween. And what a franchise it is! Not only do you have six movies in the original franchise, but the next one in the series, Halloween H20, was a direct sequel to Halloween 2. Meaning you'll have the two first movies with a direct line of four sequels, then an alternate (second) sequel with its own follow-up, Halloween: Resurrection. Add to this the two movies in Rob Zombie's reboot, and you have quite a confusing mess going on here.

But, let's be purists and look at the original franchise, or more specifically the last movie in it: Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers.

There are many, many reasons why most of the world ignored this movie. For one, Donald Pleasance, bless his (75 year old) heart (which gave out during filming), really phoned it in. I mean, I guess it's hard to expect either him or his character to be particularly excited having to deal with Michael Myers yet again (the fifth time, for those who are counting), but when director Joe Chappelle edited out most of his scenes, calling them “boring”… There's probably more truth to that than I'm comfortable to admit.

The plot doesn't help a whole lot either, harping on about some nonsense cult controlling Michael and his child(!) and god knows what else. The real question to most of us at this point, is why the hell would anyone live in the Myers-house at all? Every previous tenant has been killed by Michael. At this point, shouldn’t the city just throw in the towel, say fine, and condemn the damn thing?

I know this all sounds very negative, but there is, in fact, one glorious reason to watch Halloween 6: The Curse of siiiiigh…: Sir Paul Stephen Rudd. Yes! This film didn’t just star Paul Rudd, it also introduced him. It is Paul Rudd's first feature film! Take that and shove it, Clueless!

And, somewhat miraculously, he actually looks older in it than he does today. I don't know if there’s some sort of Benjamin Button thing going on here, but the 26 year old Rudd undeniably looks older than his own 19 years elder. Bravo, Mr. Rudd. Bravo.

Don't get me wrong, though; this is not a great performance by any means–Rudd makes Pleasance look downright enthusiastic–but come on… Paul Rudd! Who doesn't love themselves a little Paul Rudd, even if it is as an older, demented version of the kid from the original movie, Tommy Doyle?

So! I am a fan of the Halloween movies. It's probably the first franchise I got hooked on way back when, and my favorite entry is still Halloween 4, an underrated-ish kinda-classic.

In that sense, giving Curse of Oi… a watch made sense to me, and it should sort of make sense to you, too. It's a relic, maybe not because of its quality, but because of Paul Rudd. This was his start, and watching it, is like witnessing Moses before the commandments.

The Trailer