Scarecrow, S.I.C.K. (Serial Insane Clown Killer) and The Transmorphers! Reviews of some crappy direct to video movies I rented.

I finally got around to updating this website with a new article. I saw a couple of movies that were SOOO BAD that they deserved an article on my small corner of the world wide web.  

While I patiently wait everyday of my life until to win the lottery I like to waste some of that time searching the shelves at my local Blockbuster Video for a movie to watch to waste those day in between now and my eventual disappointed death. I almost always pick up a new release because if a movie has hit cable and escaped me up to that point I never cared about in the first place.

Life has been pretty boring lately allowing me to rent everything at the store already so I was going for some desperation picks. You know, movies for the the sake of watching a movie. Luckily there is a whole market of films just for this kind of consumer in the world of movie rentals. Direct To Video sci-fi and horror movies!

For all those people who already saw the Simpsons, Spider-man 3, Resident Evil part 39 and the folks who could give a shit about No Country for Old Men, there's videos with interesting titles and sweet cover art that peek your curiosity even though you know they'll probably suck if you rent them. They peek your curiosity just enough to give them a shot hoping you'll see something ridiculous and mildly entertaining because no matter how many awards Michael Clayton was nominated for, you know that will be boring too.   

I picked up three of these "films" recently.  

S.I.C.K.

  It had a cool cover with a demented killer clown. S.I.C.K. is short 
  for Serial Insane Clown Killer. There has to be something 
  redeeming about it? Wrong. It was super low budget and looks
  like it was filmed with a camcorder but strangley enough the
  credits at the end had what had to be close to a hundred names.
  That many people put together something his cheap and awful?
  The only talented person connected to this project like many direct
  to video movies turns out to be the DVD package's art director for
  designing cool covers. I guess they needed something to put in the DVD case so they slapped this shit together to sell it. 

The movie is about some yuppies going to a country house for a weekend and while there are stalked by an obese demented psycho in a clown mask. You never saw the killer clown until the end which had a retarded twist.  It had some hot chicks in it, always good for a horror movie but ultimatley was a waste of time I mainly fast forwarded through.

My only true thought to share on this DVD is that I bet if I got a camorder and cheap video editing equipment I could make a flick this bad and get it released too. These a-holes did and its on the shelves of nearly every Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, not to mention Netflix. It would honestly be hard to make a worse movie and I wouldn't even need a hundred people in my crew to make it.

Screw this website, maybe I found my new calling in life.

Anyway, as for the rentals, so far strike one!

TRANSMORPHERS

   An obvious knockoff of the Transformers made by a company 
   called The Asylum. I later found out The Asylum makes knockoffs
  of other big movies, like War of the Worlds, 30,000 Leagues
  Under the Sea,  Pirates of Treasure Island (a Pirates of the
  Carribean ripoff) and Snakes on a Train.  

   So how did it do ripping off my beloved Transformers? Badly! .  
   The CGI robots, in this case called Z-Bots looked lousy but at least they didn't use a camcorder to make this one. I was expecting bad s/fx and didn't mind but I didn't get to see enough of them. Instead the whole movie is about a bunch of underground freedom fighters in the future (ripping of the the Matrix) after the Decepticon like Z-Bots from outer space have taken over earth. The first 45 minutes of this movie is filled with monotonous dialouge to fill the 90 minutes to qualify this as a movie, talking about going into battle against the invaders.

None of the characters are interesting despite have some fairly attractive chicks. From all the mistakes already made and the constraints of a low budget show off what you do got, HOT CHICKS! With little action going on the pervert in me was trying salvage something from this wreck sneaking peeks of some of these girls boobs and butts but got very little. PAN that camera down!

I also don't think I've ever watched a movie before and said "wow the sound the sound editing on this movie is terrible" but that's how bad Transmorphers was. I commented on its place in the lamest Oscar category. Really, who pays any attention to that, and why do they even give awards for it? Half the time the voices weren't synced with the characters lips as they were talking.

Strike Two!

SCARECROW! 
 

 Probably the coolest cover of the lot. An evil Scarecrow. I liked  
 this one even though it was stupid, it had a neat little story. A picked 
 on teenage nerd who lives in a trailer park gets killed by his mom's
 abusive boyfriend and his spirit transfers to a Scarecrow on the farm
 his dead body layed where he comes back to life taking revenge on
 everyone in town including some chick he felt dissed him with some 
 nice boobs.

Scarecrow kills a whole bunch of jocks, hot chicks, and his mom's boyfriend making puns like a third rate Freddy Kruger.

This one also had no budget, looked like it was filmed with a camcorder, the acting was terrible, the directing sucked and was a bit dull at times but it was entertaining despite itself. I imagine the screenwriter of this movie probably had loftier ambitions when he wrote it because it comes off like a good movie almost completely ruined by retards. I felt bad for the geek before he was killed and took glee in his cornfield vengence.    

Since watching this I saw its two sequels Scarecrow Slayer, and Scarecrow Gone Wild where Scarecrow hacks up some coeds at a beach party. Niether captured the magic of the first piece of crap in the trilogy. If I ever win the Lottery I'm going to remake Scarecrow as a big budget movie. It could have been a legitimatly good film if it had a budget and anybody with any talent attached to it.

I bought this movie to add to my collection as a testimate to that dream!

BATMAN GOES TO THE SUPERMARKET!

Many of the articles and reviews on this show showcase my conflicting love/hate for Batman, who has through good times and bad, been my favorite superhero. From month to month his comics have been great (many issues from the current Paul Dini run on Detective Comics) or complete crap (the current Grant Morrison run on Batman and Frank Miller's All-Star Batman and Robin).   

Batman has gone through many incarnations since his first appearance in 1939. He's gone from being a spooky avenger of the night to colorful jovial crimefighter with a sunky sidekick to a completly brooding butthead who everyone else in the Justice League doesn't want to sit with in the cafeteria. 

                                     
   I always liked him best when he was potrayed as just a dude in  a
   bat costume who beat up colorful villans. In the comics in the 70's
   and early 80's he was well into his crimefighting career and   
   seemed to be over his parents death and fought crime because he
   was rich and could. Not as a demented weirdo who probably thinks
   about their death even when he's watching Simpsons reruns as he 
   is portrayed today.




Old School 80's Batman!

Some people may love that version but that's not who the action figure I grew up playing with was.

Everyone thought the ending to The Sopranos sucked and had their own idea of how they would have liked it to end. Personally I would have like it if Batman busted in through the ceiling and slapped Tony around, gave him a bat kick to the nuts and hauled him off to jail.  

Maybe that will be on some special edition DVD in the future. I can only hope.

Stuff like this video completely redeems why I ever loved the Caped Crusader in the first place.

GI JOE (Marvel 1988)

August 17, 2007

Recently I was feeling a little depressed so like always whenever I’m feeling down I drowned myselfin the world of comic books to cheer me up. It was going to take a special comic to warm my soul. I already read this weeks new releases and I couldn’t just read some mediocre time wasters like the new Flash series, or Green Arrow. They’re fine if nothing is on TV, but I was feeling pressure from “the man” keeping me down. I needed utter comic book joy. I had to break out the reserves in the long box.

For years I used to buy more comics than I could read because they used to be cheap. That was a long time ago, but I still have a stock pile of reads not yet read. I found some real beauties in the box though that chased by blues away (and probably chicks too).

GI JOE #72-76. Old school GI Joes baby. The cover date under the issue number said May - back in the day! 1980’s nostalgia from my childhood is like crack for me, and GI Joe comics are a primo fix. Each issue reads like an ad for the toys making you crave them, illustrating all the battles you should be having with them in your backyard. In fact I had to get my figures out and line them on my desk as I read these. Okay, they were already on my desk, I was playing with them last week.

I fished this complete arc about a Cobra civil war out of my long box of forgotten gems. To summarize it, Cobra Commander is feuding with Serpentor so they bust out into a war against each other on Cobra Island. GI Joe shows up and has to side with Serpentor on orders from their superiors to take down CC at all costs. Most of my favorite characters are in the battle and just about every vehicle. The best part of the story is when Serpentor uses the sexy Baroness as a human shield against her lover the Cobra Commander, tied to his tank. It ends with Serpentor getting killed, shot in the face with an arrow by Zartan.

Gnarly!

I haven’t read the new run of GI Joe by Devil’s Due, but it couldn’t be better than this. It was five straight issues of fighting. No comic book out there today matches the action in any single old Joe issue. Not to say the series was mindless either. I love the war tactics and the politics of the four feuding sides of this great battle. Four? Besides CC’s guys, Serpentors guys, and the Joes, I forgot to mention Destro shows up with his droogs to get him some too, namely his object o desire, the Baroness!

A TRIBUTE TO HAWKMAN
July 27, 2007

  


Some superheroes just don’t get the recognition they deserve. One I feel in particular is HAWKMAN. I don’t know much about him, and who really does? He’s either a reincarnated Egyptian or from another planet. I read is history on Wikipedia and I can’t figure it out. It doesn’t matter.

Hawkman is a muscle bound shirtless bad ass with wings who carries a mace and hangs out with a hot chick who shares his unique fashion sense. When I lie in my bed before I go to sleep at night wish I was that cool. I think for such an awesome character, Hawkman is being horribly squandered.
 
  
GI Joe is a bitch!

I’ve known of Hawkman my whole life, starting back with the Challenge of the Superfriends show. I even had his Super Powers action figure, but paid little attention to him like most people. I was first aware of his coolness in issue #2 of the new JSA series though. He shows up at a family picnic besieged by Nazi super villains and starts kicking their asses. Sweet! I thought to myself, WOW, Hawkman is pretty much the guy you want to show up in a situation like that. It really had my mind going from there.

It would have been great if when I was getting beat up on the school bus back in elementary school, Hawkman would have swooped down out of the sky, ripped open the safety hatch and wacked that little latch-key kid bastard who was slapping me around in the skull with his mace. If it were Spider-man, I imagine he would just break it up andmake wisecracks, or Superman would give a stupid lecture.


A spokesman for Hostess Cupcakes!

I think Hawkman would dispatch punishment on them bullies with extreme prejudice. To me, Hawkman is Chuck Norris with wings. Screw all that Thanagar, hanging out with Adam Strange on Rann garbage. DC’s outer space stories are never all that entertaining.


Real men carry maces!

DC could make a superstar out of him if they put this dude into a Vertigo series taking on the evil in the gritty real world. He’s a lawman right? I want to see Hawkman join the NYPD. He could be the new transfer and teamed up with a slacker Jim Belushi in Red Heat type partner. How about Hawkman busting up a white slavery ring, laying the smack down on those perverts with his spiked ball and chain? Or how about the Winged Wonder smashing a board room full of stuffed shirt war profiteers in Haliburton. Compton California wouldn’t be overrun by the Crips and the Bloods if a swarm of Thanagarian Hawkman were there. Hawkman could contribute to the community on his days off teaching underprivileged inner city youths how to fly on his days off and then go home to make sweet sweet love to his Hawkgirl. Now we’re talking!
"Hawkman don't like drugs on his city streets sucka!"


Hawkman has battled sci-fi aliens and super villains with Hawkgirl and the JSA for long enough. That approach has left him a third stringer for over sixty years. A new approach might invigorate the character and actually gain him a following. I don’t want to break my arm patting myself on the back but I think if DC let me have him, I could write the best Hawkman stories ever told. You listening DC Comics? Drop me a line.

- MIKE

KILL THE JOKER!
July 17, 2007



It’s time Batman killed the Joker….

Batman is my favorite superhero but he’s got the biggest plot hole in comics. I mean seriously, Joker killed his adopted son, Robin #2 Jason Todd, paralyzed Batgirl, and murdered scores of other people in grisly demented ways with poisonous fish. DC took his maniac shtick way too far over the years and painted themselves into a corner. In a scene where it all made sense to beat the clown’s brains in once and for all in said issue, we get the lamest speech ever about how Batman can’t kill because he would be no better than the Joker. COME ON! Cops are good guys and shoot deranged criminals all the time. Are they going to hell for that? No! They’re doing their job protecting the public.

Batman keeps dropping the ball every time he doesn’t put a batarang through the Clown Prince of Crime’s skull resulting in the deaths of more innocent people every time this nut goes on another rampage. That’s why cops have to shoot psychos!

In Batman #850 The writer Judd Winick (better known as that dude who helped kick Puck out on the Real World crapping that show’s only interesting season) or the editors couldn’t write Batman finally trying to choke him to death but somehow the Joker escapes? How hard is it to think of that more plausible scene? Instead he comes up withthe most insanely illogical speech and accidentally stabs Jason Todd who was rightfully, out for his own vengeance. It would have been the ultimate time to have killed the Joker right there. Hell when Gwen Stacy died Spidey wasted no time looking for the Green Goblin aiming to kill him, and he had a cold! Gobby died accidentally but that’s before Spider-man would have killed him.

Alright, I KNOW he’s a cash cow and you can’t really kill The Joker, that would be bad for business, but comic book characters always come back from the dead. In a comic coming back from the dead is plausible. Superman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Green Goblin did. Right now Bucky is back and the Red Skull currently inhabits some Russian guy’s body and everybody is praising Ed Brubaker run on Captain America for that work of silliness. Oh yeah, Cap is dead too, but we all know he's coming back also.

Sure Batman is no killer but can DC please make it a point that he at least is trying to make his arch nemesis dead for the greater good. What’s morally wrong with that? Killing the Joker could also be a big publicity stunt and sell buttloads like when I previously mentioned the croaking of Superman and Jason Todd. Think of all the stories they can squeeze out of bringing him back to life. Harley Quinn could dig up his carcass and take it to a mad scientist making a Frankenstein Joker. How about a clone Joker or a Joker from an alternate time or dimension from a time portal found on Dinosaur Island? He could constantly haunt Batman only to be killed and killed again by a vengeful Dark Knight finally taking some friggin’ initiative. Gotham City would be safer from killer clowns if the Punisher lived there, that’s for sure.

The Joker showed up again in Detective Comics #826 and that abysmal Batman #663, and recently for some more serial killing in Detective Comics #833-834, where Batman again didn’t put an end to The Joker once and for all. Batman quit being a wuss!