VOD Review: 31 (2016) #31daysofhorror

"Alright, Rob Zombie. That's Better."

*SUBMITTED BY: Me, because kicking off our 31 Days of Horror binge-watching with a brand new Horror flick called 31 sounded perfect. 

Here's the thing: I truly think that Rob Zombie is a one-note filmmaker who peaked with The Devil's Rejects. The guy's got vision, and he's definitely got a unique and compelling visual style, but man the dude can't write to save his life.

Zombie really needs to direct a movie that someone else wrote and conceptualized, and he needs to leave his wife out of it. I've said it before, and it still stands.

I loved House of 1000 Corpses, even though it was far from perfect; and I truly think that The Devil's Rejects is a modern-day classic. Since then though, he's had a run of films that have gotten gradually worse.

Halloween (Review HERE) was a good remake of a classic film that was almost impossible to remake. He did more right with this one than he did wrong. Halloween 2 (Review HERE) was so shitty that it made me physically angry. It was this movie that really showed Zombie's flaws, and in a big way. The Retarded World of El Superbeasto (Review HERE) was painfully bad. Great animation, but everything else about it was shit. The Lords of Salem (Review HERE) was an incoherent mess that felt more like a self-masturbatory project than it did a movie.

Looking back, maybe it was Bill Moseley and Sid Haig that made his first two efforts so damned entertaining. I don't know.

So being that we've gone from fans of Rob Zombie's movies to absolute haters over the course of his 6-film career, we didn't expect much at all from 31. I'm happy to say that while he still sucks a s a writer, that 31 is his best movie since Halloween, and we really liked it for the most part.

On Halloween, 1976, a gang of raunchy carnies are heading through the remote countryside in a Winnebago when they're attacked by some guys in striped pajamas. Everyone is killed except for Charly, Panda, Roscoe, Venus, and Peter Periwinkle, who are taken to some old warehouse complex, chained up, and forced to play a game called 31 by an old dude and two old chicks who are dressed like Olde English Aristocrats, wigs and all.

WHAT ARE THEY ON ABOUT?

Every year, these aristocrats (Father Murder, Sister Serpent, and Sister Dragon) kidnap a gang of losers, and force them to survive for 12 hours while being hunted by maniacal killers called Heads. Not sure why any of this happens, or what the moniker of "Heads" mean, but then neither is the guy who wrote the movie, so, moot point.

AND WHY ARE THEY CLOWNS?

So, the game of 31 begins with a midget clown dressed in Nazi gear named Sick Head. Then we get Crazy-Head and Zany-Head, two chainsaw-wielding bothers who are pretty adamant about fucking all of Charly's holes. Then come the super-tall German dude in a tutu, Death Head, and his tiny girlfriend, Sex-Head. When all of these heads prove to be inefficient at killing the carnies, Doom-Head gets the call, and everyone is fucked.

YEAH, THIS GUY MEANS BUSINESS.

The single thing that made me really dig this movie was Richard Brake. His performance as Doom-Head was brilliant. It was a bit over-the-top thanks to some of the dialogue that Rob Zombie wrote for him, but holy hell was he ever an excellent villain. He opens the movie with a bang, and when he shows up later on to begin the final hunt, he owns every minute of runtime until the credits roll. I would honestly love seeing a sequel about the exploits of Doom-Head. The dude owned this movie.

Gotta say I liked the way it ended too.

Seeing E.G. Daily on-screen again, especially in such a sexy & sinister role, was great too. In the 80's, she was an adorable little pixie who had supporting roles in a bunch of movies that we loved, and she's still got that special thing about her.

31 also excels in the gore department.

THE REST OF THE CAST WAS SOLID IN THIS ONE TOO.

Up until the carnies get attacked and kidnapped by the dudes in the striped pajamas, it was business as  usual for this Rob Zombie movie: Bad dialogue, swearing for swearing's sake, bad dialogue, trashy characters with silly names, bad dialogue...

THAT NAPKIN THAT SHERRI MOON IS WEARING WAS PRETTY COOL THOUGH.

Where do these names come from? Schizo-Head? Psycho-Head? Sex-Head? Venus Virgo? Panda?

Come on, man. Do you know how stupid that shit sounds?

AND WHAT'S WITH THOSE DASTARDLY, OLD-TIMEY GOONS!

Lots and lots of bloody goodness throughout this one to make Gorehounds smile.

THAT GIRL TAKES A BEATING...

There's some nudity in this one, including an appearance by 80's Porn superstar, Ginger Lynn.

AND SEX-HEAD WAS SUPER CUTE.

There's plenty not to like about 31, and if you're not a fan of Rob Zombie's movies, then you pretty much already know what those things are, but he's made a step back towards the good side of the film-making fence with this one. For me, it's worth seeing for Richard Brake's performance alone, but it's got enough going for it to make it worthwhile overall.

It's definitely worth a rental. 

C+ or B-. Not sure which. Either way, 3 heads out of 5.

31 is available now on VOD.

The ladies of 31.

VOD Review- Deadly Weekend aka Zellwood (2014)

"At least Sara Underwood is hot..."

See that girl on the poster there? The perky blonde with the sinful body? That's Sara Underwood.

She's a sexy little Playboy Playmate of the Year with elf-like features, who used to be on Attack of the show, on the now defunct G4 Network. On AOTS, she'd read the news, sometimes she'd co-host, but most of all, she just showed up and looked sexy.

We loved the show, and she was a fun part of it.

Turns out that she's also the star of her very own Horror flick called Zellwood, which has since been renamed Deadly Weekend. Not sure why they decided to give the movie a new title; sure, Zellwood is pretty lame as movie titles go, but is Deadly Weekend any better? Sounds really, really generic to us.

Point is, we've been fans of Sara Underwood's since her G4 days, so we were naturally excited to see her not only star in a movie, especially since it was a low-budget Horror flick. She's bound to get naked in a low-budget Horror flick, right?

Wrong!

The movie opens up with a bunch of statistics about how shitty of a place Zellwood, Florida is to live in, mainly because it has so much crime. Apparently, you're more likely to get burgled, assaulted, or murdered in Zellwood than anywhere else in the U.S. To illustrate the point, the opening shot of the movie is a mortally wounded guy trying to crawl across someones lawn, we're assuming, to escape whoever mortally wounded him.

Why are you looking into the camera, QT pie?

Cut to Sara Underwood having a crazy dream about a threesome that ends with a dude getting his joint cut off with a bolt cutter, and waking up screaming. After some "acting" takes place, we see a group of friends getting ready to go camping, because that's what groups of friends do in Horror movies. We also see a family getting ready to host the campers, and give them an Airboat Ride. Then there's some driving, and some more "acting," and then a lot of walking.

LOTS of "acting."

20-some minutes more of walking, camping, over-acting, and everyone being pissed-off because "Sara Underwood is a whore" later, things get really crazy when one of the friends pushes a little girl on the ground, and then gets hit in the head with a baseball bat by her sister. Then, everyone drinks some iced tea and takes a nap.

"Did I just get roofied... again?"

When everyone wakes up from their nap, they find themselves tied up and about to be tortured to death. Sara Underwood also gets to play hide-and-seek too, which only serves to add to the tension of it all. At this point in the movie, watching her run for her life while wearing a skimpy outfit is all we have.

They are perfect. We'll let you decide for yourself exactly which "they" we're talking about here.

The main problem with Deadly Weekend, is that it takes forever for anything to happen in the movie. Aside from a quick scene at the beginning, and a "dream" that felt like a cheap add-on, nothing even remotely horrific happens until about 49 minutes in. When we say that, keep in mind that this movie is 83 minutes long. So basically it's about 50 minutes of melodrama followed by about 30 minutes of some decent torture porn and gore.

We thought things were about to get better when the man characters all drank some poison and died... until we realized that it was only tea with some sort of knockout drug in it, which means that they woke up, and the movie continued.

Sorry, Sara, but you know we're right.

Had the movie focused more on the part of the plot that involved the family, and made the group of friends the "secondary" plot, it would have been much better for it. The whole family dynamic of Deadly Weekend, while not perfect, was at least more interesting than the dynamic of four morons walking through the woods and arguing/pouting for most of the movie's runtime.

And what was with that ending? The whole "family get-together" thing sounded kind of interesting, and we would have liked to have seen where that would have gone. Then again we would have liked to have seen what happened to Sara Underwood's character too, but that didn't happen either. 

What did they do to Sara?!?

The acting in this one isn't so hot either, aside from the Daughters (and maybe even the Dad at times.) It's mostly the fault of the lackluster script, and most likely the direction, and maybe even the budget... but for a 170k, you can take a minute or two to coach your actors a little bit better, you know? They tried, it just didn't work out very well for most of them.

So much of the movie just felt awkward. Take for instance the scene in which a wounded Sara Underwood limps around a living room and gets tackled over a couch; we actually laughed at that, and it wasn't supposed to be funny. It felt like someone just told the poor girl "pretend someone is chasing you, and you're real scared!" and then just called "Action!"

"Just pretend that you're Googling something... and... Action!"

That "poor girl" is the lovely Sara Underwood, who despite being a former Playboy Playmate, didn't even get naked in this movie. That really begs the question: why was she in it to begin with? We adored her bubbly personality on Attack of the Show, we truly did, but the girl can't act to save her life. It's not her fault either; she's famous for being gorgeous, not acting, so we really we can't hate on her for trying.

She literally spends a 12 minute segment of the movie writhing around on the floor, and acting all terrified: She wakes up bound and alone in some sort of plastic-covered room, and she begins to whine "Why?!?" (for 12 minutes, like we just said), which mirrored exactly what we had been thinking the whole time... about the entire movie existing.

Because, Sara. Just because.

It was just a mess of a movie, kept from being truly horrible only by a few likable elements. If you think we're being unnecessarily harsh here, allow us to present to you the title card for one of the movie's stars, Patricia Morales... the one where they spelled her name wrong. Yeah.

Sorry, Particia.

There's a lot of good Torture Porn action in this one, and that of course means that its a pretty gory affair. If nothing else, this movie made the most out of some cheap practical effects, and really went for the gore.

Best scene in the movie.

We get some random dream-sequence boobs at the beginning, but none of them belong to Sara Underwood, who somehow manages to stay clothed throughout. I mean, she looks good wearing skimpy clothes, and she's pleasant to look at in general, but why was she not naked in this movie? She's built a career on being hot & naked, and yet she hardly leaned on her strengths here at all.

"No naked me, for you! LOL"

Sara Underwood is really hot. Then again, we already knew that, so maybe we learned nothing from this movie.

H.O.T.

Pro's: The "kids" in the movie were pretty good; Sara Underwood is really hot; and there's a lot of gore to be had here, most of which was pretty cool.

Cons: The acting; the bad dialogue; the poor delivery of said dialogue; choppy editing; horrible pacing; the fact that nothing really happens until nearly an hour into the 1hr 23m runtime...

Unless you're a die-hard Sara Underwood fan (and even then), there's really no need for you to see this movie. If you do happen to want to watch it, you'll at least get to see her running around in some skimpy clothes (in addition to some good gore), as the reward for your bravery. Good luck.

D-

Deadly Weekend is available now on DVD and VOD.

Deadly Weekend/Zellwood may not be a good movie, but Sara Underwood is so lovely to look at, that she definitely made it more bearable. At least now we can say that she was a Horror Hottie once in her career, and I suppose that's something.

VOD Review: Martyrs (2016)

"No. Just... no."

The announcement of a new Horror remake almost always make us apprehensive, if not flat-out angry. There are many reasons for this that we won't go into now, because we'd be here all day if we did, but mainly it's because most remakes tend to suck; especially when it's a Foreign Horror movie being remade to cater to the U.S. audience.

They seldom work out well.

Our first reaction upon hearing about thus ill-advised remake of Pascal Laugier's excellent Martyrs (2008), was that we knew that it was doomed. Alright, maybe we didn't "know," but how in the world could a remake of such a brutal, powerful movie like that ever be done justice by anyone, let alone a company that churns out cheap, generic movies on the regular, and thinks that it's a good business model? Sorry, Blumhouse, we really like some of your stuff, honestly, but you know it's true.

*If you want to know anything about this movie's plot, please check out our review of the original HERE, because I'm not breaking this one down. No, this is gong to be little more than an angry rant.

HERE WE GO.

Where Martyrs (2008) was a veritable clinic on permeating dread that used intense brutality to illustrate a higher concept that director Pascal Laugier was aiming for, this remake feels like a watered-down Teen Terror flick about pretty girls being chased around the woods by a generic group of bad guys who want to hurt them for one silly-ass reason or another. *And yes, the girls actually get chased through the woods in this one. All three of them. And yes, there are actually three of them.

The 2008 version took our collective breath away, and it fucked with our heads in the best of ways. It was dark, disturbing, nihilistic, and hard to watch... but it was compelling enough to keep us from turning away, even when what we were seeing on screen made us want to run. It was fucking powerful, and even if you didn't like it (lots of people don't), you have to gave it to Pascal Laugier for trying his ass off and going for it.

The original worked so well because it was a well-made movie. Laugier took his time and let the story unfold naturally, letting its characters breathe and evolve into the wretched messes that they became. We felt for them, and by the end of the movie, we felt as worn and abused by watching their journey as they did actually experiencing it.

THAT'S KINDA HOW WE FELT AFTER WATCHING THE ORIGINAL MOVIE: VULNERABLE AND UNDERARMED.

This remake however has all of the intensity and emotional power of a Direct-to Video Saw knock-off. It's not particularly terrifying, or even scary (unless jump-scares actually work for you), and there's nothing shocking or repulsive about it either. It's violent enough, and its content certainly is nasty, but it feels ordinary and soulless. 

Where are the scenes where Lucie was fed that vomit-looking gruel, and mercilessly beaten until she was at death's door? Instead of Anna finding a genuinely tortured being in the dungeon and trying to help her, she finds a little girl who looks dirty, but unharmed? The skinning scene is all but gone, and the "creature" that haunted Lucie throughout the movie has been reduced to little more than a jump-scare device in this one.

Where is the impact that the original had?

MARTYR TEST?

We also don't get to see the horrifying physical and mental ordeal that these people put Anna through in order to make her into a martyr. In fact, it wasn't even Anna who was martyred in this one, but Lucie, who is actually kept alive until the end. Lucie dying in the original was the first step in Anna's destruction, which lead her to her resolution, and by changing that all around for the remake, it lessened the emotional impact of the entire thing. 

None of the martyrdom that these people were trying to get Lucie to achieve felt earned. Anna was shocked (for basically no reason, because it was Lucie who they really wanted to martyr), and Lucie had a small bit of her back skin flayed off and was hung on a cross (in effigy?), and then 5 minutes later, she was "ready." What the actual fuck? THAT was all it took to drive the girl into such a heightened state of consciousness that she could see into the afterlife? She escaped them 10 years ago, randomly stumbles back into their clutches, and then 10 minutes later, she's the one who will finally give them what they seek?

Come the fuck on.

PLEASE STOP.

The actors did fine with what they had to work with, especially Troian Bellisario, so we aren't mad at them. Some of the violence and gore was solid too, although there wasn't really much of it. It's also a well-shot movie, and looked far prettier than it should on such a small budget. The real problem here is that the entire movie felt rushed and careless, and made absolutely no effort to build its story, and make us give half a shit about the main characters.

It lacked punch, both emotionally and viscerally, and given the source material that it was culled from, that's just unforgivable. 

Had there never been a movie called Martyrs in 2008, and this was a totally original movie, we could probably go easier on it; its faults would still be present, but we could write it off as just another Horror flick that had some great potential, but just couldn't quite reach it... but there was a movie called Martyrs in 2008, and this isn't an original effort, so its many faults can't be so easily forgiven or overlooked. It had a fantastic template to work from, and it should have been better.

Better yet, Martyrs should have ever been remade. Yeah, that sounds about right.

WHAT IS THIS FUCKERY?

As bad as Martyrs was, I honestly think that I'm being overly-generous by giving it a grade of D-. It's a mess on just about every level, save maybe for technical, and not only is it a poor remake of an excellent film, but it felt like 100 other movies that came out last year, and 100 others that will no doubt come out this year as well.

Fuck this movie, and go watch the original HERE. Trust us.

D-

Martyrs is available now on VOD.

Troian Bellisario and Bailey Noble are in this.