VOD Review: Freaks of Nature (2015)

"Dumber than it needed to be, and better than it had any right to be."

Back in October, Freaks of Nature opened quietly in about 100 or so theaters, made around $100k, and then was gone.

Maybe Sony saw how funny other, better Horror Comedies like Deathgasm, The Final Girls, and What We Do in the Shadows were, and decided this one wasn't going to reach the same comedic level, and just didn't bother to promote it. Or do much of anything with it, other than bury it.

That's a shame, really, because even though Freaks of Nature wasn't perfect, it didn't deserve such shitty treatment by its own Studio. 

The small town of Dillford is an odd place, where humans coexist peacefully with vampires and zombies. The vampires are at the top of the social pecking order (because they're basically superhuman); the zombies are at the bottom (because they're basically mentally handicapped); and the humans are stuck somewhere in the middle, because they're ordinary in most respects.

I know, it sounds kinda silly, but it's a movie. Let's just accept it and move on.

YES, ZOMBIES EAT CANNED BRAINS.

Dag is a High School kid who is in love with the class whore, Lorelei... who is sleeping with Milan, the sexy, Edward Cullen-like vampire bad boy... who the sweet and naive Petra is so in love with, that she's willing to become a vampire to be able to stay with him forever... and then there's Ned, the socially awkward genius who doesn't have anybody. They're all about to have a bad week.

SOMEHOW, THEY ALL END UP NAKED TOGETHER.

When an aliens (the space kind, not the kind that Donald Trump hates) descend upon Dillford, it's a free-for-all between the vampires, humans, and zombies, as they try to survive the impending Alien Apocalypse. Of course, Dag, Petra, and Ned are caught in the middle, which provides for all sorts of hi-jinks and hilarity.

QUICK, PULL OFF HER BRA AND USE IT AS A WEAPON!

As messy as this movie was in places, we actually found ourselves enjoying it for the most part. It's not side-splittingly funny or anything, but it does have some genuine laughs throughout. It's not overtly gory, but then again, there's no shortage of blood and guts to be had here either. It even has some moments of straight-up romantic teen drama present, but then even that was only sometimes.

I guess it's not a bad movie in general, but it sure is an uneven one that suffers from trying to do too much all at once. A tighter script could have made it something special.

ALL THAT POTENTIAL...

Denis Leary did his usual funny thing here, as did Keegan-Michael Key, but it was Bob Odenkirk who stole the show, humor-wise. We genuinely laughed our asses off when he said "Why does it have a German accent?!?" The guy has perfect comedic timing. 

Vanessa Hudgens played one hell of a sex-bomb, and she provided a really nice visual distraction throughout the movie. We're actually kinda surprised at how decent of an actress she is. We're not at all surprised that Mackenzie Davis is a good actress, because she's great on AMC's Halt and Catch Fire, and so it's natural that the QT was probably the best actor of the bunch in this one.

It was also fun, and genuinely odd as hell, to see famed director Werner Herzog providing the voice of the alien leader. Where in the hell did that bit of casting come from?

BLOOD IS DEFINITELY HER COLOR.

Aside from the tonal inconsistency, and the fact that the movie wasn't as funny as it could have been, the only part of the whole thing that really didn't work for us, at least in a major way, was the zombies. There wasn't much about the zombies that was funny, and some of the undead bits were just painfully un-funny. Had the movie gone a different way with them, like not let them speak or try to act human at all, it probably would have been fine, as they could have played a great straight man to the comedic Human vs. Vampire antics.

DID WE MENTION THAT THE VAMPIRES IN THIS MOVIE EXPLODE WHEN STAKED? BECAUSE THEY DO.

Someday, aliens will arrive on Earth, and kill us for our fast food. Also, Denis Leary is awesome, and he really needs to be in more stuff.

MAN DO WE EVER MISS TOMMY GAVIN.

Freaks of Nature, which was originally titled Kitchen Sink, suffers from exactly what that original title implies; there's just too much going on in this one, and it's basically an exercise in underwhelming chaos. Had it been scripted tighter, the humans vs. zombie vs. vampire vs. alien storyline might have worked better than it does here.

As it stands though, if you can excuse its clutter, then you'll probably find Freaks of Nature about as enjoyable as we did... which is to say, mostly. 

C+

Freaks of Nature is available now on VOD.

Vanessa Hudgens and Mackenzie Davis make for a perfect pair of sexy vampiresses.

VOD Review: Bloodsucking Bastards (2015)

2015 has been good to us as far as Horror Comedies go. What We Do in the Shadows, Deathgasm, The Final Girls, Cooties, Scouts Guide, Krampus... that's one hell of an enjoyable, funny crop of flicks.

Of course some of this year's Horror Comedies missed the mark completely. Movies like #Horror, L.A. Slasher, and the abysmal The Human Centipede 3 all made us cringe more than they did laugh.

Bloodsucking Freaks falls somewhere the middle of those two groups; it's not as good as most of the year's best, but it's also enjoyable enough so as not to be a total misfire.

Evan is a pathetic bastard who is down on his luck. Not only is he stuck in a dead-end office job, but his girlfriend just dumped him, and his boss has given the promotion that he's been hoping for to an old College nemesis of his. Now, that old College nemesis of his, who just so happens to be handsome and debonair, is not only his boss, but is out to bang his ex, who by the way is the office HR representative.

"YEAH, I'VE MISSED YOU TOO."

And then there's the little matter of his new boss being a vampire, and how he wants to create an office full of bloodsucking slaves... because he's really dedicated to to raising productivity, and apparently vampires are extremely efficient workers.

The type of wacky hi-jinks that you'd expect from a plot Ike that ensues.

THESE TWO WERE THE BEST PART OF THE MOVIE.

In a year full of stellar Horror Comedies, Bloodsucking Bastards falls a bit short. It's reasonably funny in parts, and generally amusing the entire way through, but it just wasn't as funny as many of its 2015 Horror Comedy peer group. It felt just safe and pedestrian enough for us to enjoy it though, so no harm, no foul.

It's also a fairly bloody movie, at least towards the end. We wish that the vamp killing had started a bit earlier though.

THE RED VIPER AND FREDDY RUMSEN, TOGETHER AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME.

It's really the cast who make this one work as well as it did. Pedro Pascal and and Joel Murray were great as the bosses, but it was Joey Kern who brought most of the laughs to the proceedings. Now, you might not know his name off of the top of your head, but you'll definitely remember his face from Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. He's got great comedic timing, and he was easily our favorite character in Bloodsucking Bastards.

"WHO, ME?"

There's really not a lot of bad things to say about this movie, other than it was obviously lower-budget which may have hindered it a bit, and it wasn't exactly uproariously funny. You could also say that it took a while to get going, which it did, and that it could have benefited from a quicker pace and far more vampire screen time.

It wasn't bad overall, it just want as good as we had hoped it would be.

IT'S BEEN A ROUGH DAY AT THE OFFICE.

Vampires make for really well-organized and efficient office workers. Also, office romances are never a good idea.

ALRIGHT, IT'S BEEN A REALLY ROUGH DAY AT THE OFFICE.

Bloodsucking Bastards is a slightly above-average Horror Comedy that putzes around a little too much for its own good, but even with its imperfections, ended up being a movie that amused and entertained us. At least for the most part.

If you think that the trailer looks fun, then it's probably worth renting. If not, it will probably be on Netflix soon enough, so you can just catch it there. Either way, it's not a bad way to kill 90 minutes.

C+

Bloodsucking Bastards is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

Don't you dare call Emma Fitzpatrick and Yvette Yates bloodsucking bastards, because they're ladies! 

The Best of... Vampire Horror!

As Halloween draws ever closer, the next stop on our Best of... journey leads us to the most fearsome and revered movie monster of them all: The Vampire. They're evil, they need to feed, and they want our blood. That's about as terrifying as it gets.

Ever since Dracula and Nosferatu first terrified audiences nearly a century ago, the vampire has arguably been the most prominent of all  movie monsters. There have been too many incarnations of the bloodsucking menaces to count (Dracula himself has been brought to cinematic life at least 170 times himself, with more surely to come), and so picking only 30 of them to represent the sub-genre as a whole was no easy task.

The vampire movies that we tend to love the most are the exciting ones, the darker ones. The ones that put a welcomed twist on an overly-familiar story, or the ones that just play it straight and give us exactly what we expect from a vampire story. Depends on our mood. Luckily for us, there are more than enough vampire movies to fit any mood, at any given time.

We love vampire flicks. I mean, one of the coolest vampires of all-time is our mascot, so that pretty much goes without saying, but we really do love them. What other movie monster can be so suave and yet so terrifyingly deadly at the same time? *Hannibal Lecter doesn't count.

• We know that to many people, certain vampire classics of the 1920's, 30's, 60's and 70's take precedent over some of the later efforts included here, but as kids of the 80's, movies like Salem's Lot, Fright Night, and The Lost Boys were our vampire classics. In that way, this list will be more subjective than most, at least for us.
  
• We purposely left many of the Hammer Vampire films (and their 60's/70's ilk) off of this list, for the sake of variety. Had we not, many of the newer and more obscure movies included here would have been discarded, and that would have been bad; for us, variety counts nearly as much as quality itself does, especially when that variety is of high quality in its own right.
  
• This list, and especially the Top 6 and the Honorable Mentions, could easily be rearranged, more so than any other list we've done so far. So take those "rankings" with a grain of salt, as many of the movies here could easily be moved up and down in position.

If you're in the mood for a truly quality Vampire Flick, any of the movies in our Top Six will do you right. The Lost Boys and Salem's Lot are probably our all-time faves, but then they all bring their own unique and terrifying vision to the bloodsucker Sub-Genre.
Below are the rest of our 30 Best Vampire Flicks, and of course, a few Honorable Mentions thrown in for good measure. Keep in mind that no "Best of" list is ever perfect, but merely a solid starting point for anyone looking to watch some great flicks.  *Most of the links go to Amazon so that you can stream or grab yourself a copy of the movies; our review of the movie (when applicable); or in the case of some of the older & more obscure titles, IMDB, because they simply aren't available to stream or purchase.