LOOK (2007)

HEATHER HOGAN ON THE RIGHT. ASHLEY "MACHO MAN" SAVAGE ON THE LEFT. I THINK.

I liked it. A lot of different, seemingly unrelated stories that do eventually tie in together in a Gus Van Sant Elephant-like way. Some stories are played for laughs and don't get much screen time, others are deadly serious (and ultimately devastingly tragic) and make up the bulk of the film. Like real life, there aren't always happy endings to these stories, and the absence of any Hollywood stars makes you believe these characters are real. Well, no stars yet. But let me be the first to start an appreciation society for Heather Hogan, who starts the film off with a bang (no pun intended) and I pray isn't at all related to Brooke and the Hulkster.

BABY BLOOD (1990)

AND YOU THOUGHT THAT BIG DUMP YOU TOOK LAST NIGHT WAS ROUGH!

BABY BLOOD, quite simply, is so bad, it's good. Woman with David Letterman teeth goes on murderous rampage because her squid-baby needs blood, attacks driver who picked her up hitch-hiking and crashes Benny Hill-style into a wall. Mom follows goopy trail of Baby Calamari into a bus of soccer hooligans, COVERED IN BLOOD AND GRUE FROM THE CRASH. Bus driver doesn't seem to notice and welcomes strange girl onto bus, but warns her not to wake the soccer punks because they tend to get "rowdy" around women. Bus driver never questions why mom's drenched in human carnage. Needless to say, soccer boys wake up, get instantly aroused by the sight of a bloody mama with a dental gap the size of Cleveland, while Octobaby attacks driver in what might be the single most hilarious baby attack since the plastic hand puppet in ITS ALIVE. Really, this movie is so inexplicable that you stop looking for plot holes 30 minutes in and start questioning why you're watching this fucking thing sober. A half dozen Black Russians and I'm sure BABY BLOOD looks like BLADE RUNNER. And it might even start to make sense.

HOW THE HELL DID THEY GET RAE DAWN CHONG IN THIS MOVIE?

IT'S ALIVE! (1974)

CHANCES ARE IF YOU SPENT GOOD MONEY ON THIS FILM, YOU DID WATCH IT ALONE.

Elisabeth Hasselback is pregnant again. Now that's a baby that scares me a thousand times more than the sock puppet in ITS ALIVE. Not a good sign when the DVD cover is scarier than the actual movie. Followed quickly by ITS ALIVE 2 - PLACENTA OF DEATH.

JESUS CHRIST, ANOTHER FUCKING KARDASHIAN?!?

CANNIBAL FEROX (1981)

NOT NEARLY AS SEXY AS IT SHOULD BE.

Umberto Lenzi must HATE New York. Or New Yorkers, I should say. Here are four and a half of the most reprehensible, self-absorbed and downright STUPID people you've ever seen outside of a Pauly Shore movie, and they're all "New Yorkers" (though they sure don't LOOK like it, with their mullets and bad perms). Needless to say, these Sarah Palin wannabees pretty much have to PROVOKE the cannibals into doing what they do, and it all really makes NO sense at all. They HANG OUT in the cannibal village, forgodsake, and then act SHOCKED when the men return. If you like gore, there's plenty of it here, though most of the violence and dismemberment toward the humans is very fake looking (freeze frame the castration scene - whatever latex was used looks NOTHING like what it's meant to be). But yes, like the other reviewers said, there are several animal deaths, some very cruelly staged and THOSE are hard to watch if you like small woodland creatures. I do, but at the same time, I REALLY hate stupid people, so CANNIBAL FEROX was kind of a toss-up. Animal killings bad, stupid people dismemberments really satisfying. Some decent nudity by the blonde, and thank God the brunette keeps her clothes on. Three stars then, right down the middle. With a MACHETE.

HEY, CAN I GET A HAND HERE? NO, I MEAN LITERALLY.

ULTRAMAN TIGA (2000)

ONE STEP CLOSER, ULTRAMAN, AND I WILL SHOP-VAC YOU, I SWEAR!

My God, 30 years later you'd-a thunk this "new" Ultraman would've been able to improve on the original 1960's version. You thought men in rubber suits was cheesy? Well fuck, just wait'll you see the awful CGI effects that absolutely ruin Ultraman Tiga! Everything about Ultraman Tiga suggests it was filmed with a budget of $20.87 per show. And that's after taxes. This doesn't compare to the original Ultraman, or Johnny Sokko or Space Giants even. What it does compare to is Power Rangers and Teletubbies. Granted, most of the monsters in Tiga look better than the ones in the original series, but what's so sorely lacking here is creativity. There's no giant oil-sucking starfish bat here, or a mummy-loving winged dragon horse, or even a giant Abominable Snowgirl ghost, so clearly the makers of Ultraman Tiga weren't licking acid tabs as much as the creators of Ultraman 1960s. They were probably mainlining saccharine, from the looks of this.

THE KILLING OF SATAN (1983)

"Satan, where are you? Come out and fight! You're yellow, Satan!" No wonder the Prince of Darkness takes time off his busy schedule to star in this Filipino schlock film - who could possibly resist a challenge like that? I swear, they spent less money on this movie than Rush Limbaugh spends on diet pills, and yet, even if the special effects are laughably bad and the editor looks like he spliced the film with a lumberjack's axe, still - you gotta love the ambitiousness and inexplicability (if that's a word) of it all. A man runs directly in front of a slow-moving styrofoam boulder and instantly becomes a bloody pancake, and yet his head (which curiously did not get flattened) is still able to warn the hero, "Stop that boulder!" And don't let that Frank Frazetta fanclub cover art fool ya either - the hero of the film looks more like a balding forklift driver, and Satan looks more like a guy who got turned down by the traveling production of Mummenschantz. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Because now they got things like, I don't know, cash. And technique. And plots. Does that really say this was filmed in 1983? Sweet Baby Jesus, it looks ten years older even by third world standards! This is freeform Filipino cinema at its finest. Satan, where are you? Come out and FIGHT!!!

CUT HIMSELF SHAVING. WITH A CIRCULAR SAW.

SATAN'S MINION? OR A RARE EARLY PRESS PHOTO OF GILBERT GOTTFRIED?

NO NO, YOU TWO GO TO LUNCH WITHOUT ME. I'M KINDA WATCHING MY WEIGHT.

DONKEY PUNCH (2008)

KIDS TODAY ARE SO DARN SERIOUS!

Call it The Real World: Death Yacht, I like that. That's about right too - a bunch of semi-hot spoiled British brats go out on a boat and frolic and make out and force you to activate your subtitles option just to make out what they're mumbling. Then something bad happens centered around the titular "donkey punch," a quick shot to the back of the head during anal sex for those of you who don't know (and God bless you), and suddenly the kids turn on each other, because, hey, that's what spoiled kids do. And if you thought Paris and Nicole had a falling out, you ain't seen nothing til you've seen Nigel and Ian and Emma going at it here. Comparisons to KNIFE IN THE WATER, DEAD CALM or, jeesus, any good movie are completely unjustified - this is basically THE RULES OF ATTRACTION crossed with BATTLE ROYALE if MTV filmed it. But hey, the cast is pretty and they get naked, so if you don't expect Sir John Gielgud and Kate Winslet to show up with an axe, you should have a good time for an hour and a half. If only the cast of Jersey Shore would start killing each other off like this...

SHE'S UP FOR A LITTLE DONKEY PUNCH OR TWO.

HAND IN GLOVE, THE SUN SHINES OUT OF OUR BEHINDS...