Bad Movies Ratings Key

Much like threat levels assigned to such heinous things as terrorism or nuclear attack, so do bad movies have their own threat levels. For bad movies, the higher the threat level, the more pain they inflict and we must endure.

Threat Level: Midnight- Movies don't get worse than this.

Sure, we stole that title from The Office, but it's funny as hell, and even more appropriate. On The Office, office boss Michael writes a screenplay which is truly atrocious, called Threat Level: Midnight. He makes his employees act it out, and it's just horrendously bad. Bad movies on this level are beyond any taste or comprehension.

For our purposes, it's a fun way to say "run while you can!"

Threat Level: Stingray- This is gonna hurt.

If you've never seen Undefeatable, it's the kind of movie that makes you wish harm on people, hence the Threat Level. The movie contains on of the absolutely worst fight scenes of all time, between the villain Stingray, and Cynthia Rothrock and some other just as lame hero dude. This stuff is painfully bad.

Threat Level: Nukie- More pain than pleasure.

Threat Level: Nukie represents those bad movies that are fun, funny, and yet they still make you want to push a small child down icy stairs by the time you're done watching them

Threat Level: Vanilla- More Pleasure than pain.

Threat Level: Vanilla is the borderline between pleasure and pain. These movies are God awful, and yet you can't help but hold some affection for them. It's almost as if your laughter takes away some of the pain while watching.

Threat Level: Buddy- So bad you can't help but love it.

Threat Level: Buddy represents those movies that suck so bad that you can't stop laughing about them, sometimes for the rest of your life. You quote them, fondly remember their scenes, and smile every time they come to mind. Also, they make you cry sometimes.

This is the good kind of suck. Mostly.

The Moth Diaries (2012)

(aka OMG! She's my friend, not yours!)
Release Date: On VOD now; In Theaters 4/20.
Written by: Rachel Klein (Novel.)
Directed by: Mary Harron.
Starring: Sarah Bolger, Lily Cole, Sarah Gadon, and Scott Speedman.

When I first heard of this movie, I thought to myself, "It's probably about some killer moths." That confused me though, because how do killer moths keep a diary? Then I saw the poster and was like "Maybe the moths are like a metaphor for a schoolgirl's blossoming sexuality." Again I was confused, because is the movie about a sex diary?

Overall, I guess I was just confused.

Apparently, she's confused too.

The Moth Diaries is the story of Rebecca, a sixteen-year-old Schoolgirl who has some intense feelings of "friendship" for her roommate, sixteen-year-old Lucie. When a creepy walking tree named Ernessa arrives at school, Rebecca becomes all kinds of jealous that Lucie is all about the new girl, and not her anymore. She decides to keep a diary about it. Oddly enough, the diary kinda doesn't have anything to do with the movie, unless the whole movie is the diary, then who cares.

"Let's pretend we're moths, and scissor-kiss."

Rebecca is just sure there's something odd about this lanky new girl who looks like a goth version of E.T., but she can't prove it. She comes to find that Ernessa is a Vampire -who isn't a Vampire these days- and she's trying to steal Lucie's soul or something (by having sex with her?) No one believes her, and everyone thinks shes paranoid.  Not even her creeper Teacher is on her side, and he really spends a lot of the movie trying to smooth up in her.

"I wanna put my poetry in you..."

What we have here is another movie about angst-ridden Teenagers who act shitty to one another and mope around, because they aren't the center of someone's attention. I don't know if the novel that the movie is based on was any good or not, but the movie just ends up being kind of pointless. It's well made, pretty to look at, and the actors do a decent job, but unless you're 12 and the biggest issue in your life is being possessive and/or obsessive about someone, this movie may not do too much to satisfy you.

This picture is a good analogy for the whole movie.

The movie was heavy with lesbian undertones too. Granted, there's a girl-girl sex scene in the movie, but the main character never goes full-on gay for her friend, rather she just spends a ton of time gazing longingly at her, and really, really, "valuing their friendship." Mary Harron could have laid that issue out in the open and done something with it; at least then the movie would have felt like it had a purpose. This is the woman who gave us American Psycho for crying out loud... she knows how to translate books to film!

The lesbian choke-out scene?

There was just too much here that just didn't make sense; Ernessa spends the whole movie urging Rebecca to kill herself, but why? If you're a Vampire, why not just kill her yourself? You killed just about everyone else around you... and for that matter, what was all of the alluding about the two of them being so similar? If she's a Vampire, she's a very different kind of bloodsucker. Ernessa felt more like she was a vengeful ghost, if anything at all... It just felt as if a lot of the story was missing.

There will be rain! And blood! And confusion.

Look, this isn't a terrible effort, it's just too disjointed to be considered a good one. Too much of the film focused on the Teen Angst aspect of things, and it never went to the places that it teased us that it might. The Moth Diaries is worth a look-see, especially for the younger crowd, but most Horror fans will be left unimpressed with it, I'm afraid.

C

As creepy as it may seem to most normal folk, this movie was a Schoolgirl lover's dream. Then again we're Horror fans, and we're creepy to begin with, right? Now that all of that's been established, here are the Schoolgirls of The Moth Diaries. The main three, anyway.

DVD Releases for March 20

At first glance, this week's DVD releases seem like a crazy pot luck of low budget risks, but upon closer inspection, you'll see that a few gems exist amongst the... fodder?

With the release of The Hunger Games this Friday, tons of interest should be swinging Battle Royale's way. On DVD for the first time ever in the U.S., Battle Royale is the story of a group of teenagers who are forced by the government to participate in a game in which they must kill each other to win... sound familiar? It is. And kiddies, Battle Royale was around long before Katniss Everdeen was, so stop your moping about it. The two stories are more than just a bit similar. On its own, BR is a must own for horror fans; a true classic.

Next on the list is last year's A Lonely Place to Die, which was one of our 10 best of 2011. It's a fun, taut little backwoods thriller, with mountain climbing and Mmmelissa George thrown in, just to add some extra flavor. This is also a must see.

Creature made just about everyone's 10 worst list of 2011, as it was pretty bad. We didn't hate it with that much venom, mainly because it has some pleasant eye candy going for it, but it's a rent at best. For most people, it's probably more like a skip.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 and Satan's Slave are re-issues of older flicks.

Every other movie on the list is a big question mark. Claustrophobia looks interesting, as does Jarring, but like the rest of them, they could be bad movie traps. Of course, being the fools that we are, we'll probably see most of them. We will probably regret seeing most of them too.

 As always, click the pics for more info on the flicks.

What will you rent, buy, or avoid?

Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010)

As Horror Documentaries go, this is one of the best we've seen.

Never Sleep Again covers ever film in the Nightmare Universe, from the original Wes Craven masterpiece, all the way through Freddy vs. Jason. Just about anyone who has ever been involved with the films sat down to discuss them all, and at length; the thing runs for four hours!

Doc's like this are great, because Horror fans are generally rabid enough to sit through behind the scenes looks at their favorite fright flicks. NSA is particularly great because it doesn't gloss over the less popular entries in the series; every film gets the in-depth expose' treatment, and it's all a ton of fun.

Uncle Wes.

Before seeing this, I never realized how overtly gay Nightmare 2 was. I never knew that Renny Harlin pretty much improvised most of the kills from Nightmare 4 himself, because the script was such mess. It was crazy to see how so many of the stars we grew up watching in these movies have turned out, and how some of them look like cabbage patch kids now. (You'll understand when you watch it.)

The man behind the mask.

It's worth watching alone to hear the ever amazing Clu Gulager say "I didn't get a blow-job on the set, if that's what you mean" It's just full of great moments like that. Tons of them. Everyone has great stories from their respective movie sets, and not all of them are nice ones. Some are even sad, as we see how some of our beloved Horror icons hit rough times or didn't have much of a career after these movies.

You won't find the likes of Johnny Depp or Patricia Arquette giving interviews here, but fuck them, they should have shown up. NOES gave them their start, and they should give back some love.Near everyone else is present though, and it looks like they loved sitting and talking about their involvement.

True love forever.

This is a must have for any Elm Street fan, no matter how casual. At four hours long -eight if you count the 2nd, four hour long disk full of bonus features- this one will satisfy fans on every level. You should own this. Own it and love it, we say!

A+

Of course we have to close this out with a look at some of the hotties of the Nightmare movies. We've even included the girls from the remake, even though a lot of people hated it. Chicks are chicks, man.