Spartacus - Blood and Sand....episodes 3-6

Well I've stuck with it so far, its now reached the half-way stage, thought I'd give it another mini-review...so after the initial 2 hours of excessive violence, cheese and nudity I'm pleased to say SPARTACUS has continued to audaciously vomit all over the boundaries of good taste and decency in a way not seen since the jaw-dropping glory days of OZ. That's a good thing. The acting is still flinch-inducing, its still amazingly camp, and has, as Mrs Gi-Bag shouts frequently, "Too much penis!" But almost despite itself, after six hours of pecs, sex and decapitation its managed to gather some momentum and actual narrative, and it has actually improved significantly as it's progressed.

The actors are still contending with some truly ludicrous cod-classical dialogue flecked with jarring invective and as most of them seem to have been cast purely on how well they fill a codpiece as opposed to any oratorial skills, they are probably doing as well as possible within their limits. It's thankfully moved a little closer to Rome than 300/Gladiator story-wise, and a second series is already green-lit..

It will struggle in the long-term...primarily because Spartacus himself is one of the least interesting characters on the show...but in the absence of Rome, this will do. Sure, maybe that's like getting a full-body massage from a chimp instead of a woman, but as long you're not looking for a happy ending, then perhaps Spartacus will fit the bill.

Cabin Fever 2 Spring Fever - the kids are not alright

Do you remember the original Cabin Fever? I f**king do, it introduced us to that bellend Eli Roth. It was quite grim and generally unsavoury plague-core with some crude humour and one of the worst endings ever, but Quentin Tarantino took a shine to this dashing young turk and decided to act as kingmaker to the present patriach of "Torture-Porn". Hostel followed and...actually I'm boring myself here. F**k Eli Roth, he's got nothing to do with this in-name-only sequel so adios Eli, don't get mangled by a killer whale, that would be awful.

Shameless cash-in this, disowned by it's director and apparently heavily f**kified in the editing suite after he did a runner. But it's actually quite entertaining, in a gross, squishy, icky way. It shows it intent in the first 5 minutes, when the only survivor of the original movie - now infected by the virus and looking generally unhealthy - staggers out in front of a school bus and well, explodes like a tomato. I laughed. In fact I laughed quite a lot despite myself.. Then again I thought Poultrygeist was hilarious even though I also recognised it was terrible s**t.

So the movies skimpy running time consists of a bunch of pre-prom horny students developing the flesh eating lurgy in various unwholesome ways...I recommend finishing all consumables before the movie gets too far...unless you think you'll really want that last slice of pepperoni pizza after watching some poorly pox-ridden pubescent pulling on his pus-pulsing pecker. Pass the sick bag vicar. We've got heads smashed in with fire-extinguishers, infected characters de-limbing themselves using bench saws, messy uteral splashdowns, blood gouting from every imaginable orifice...There's also a hilarious scene involving a chubby chaser and an enormously obese girl (a species strangely absent from normal american high school movies) getting it on in a swimming pool...it looks like a scene from a f**king greenpeace fundraiser.

So check it out...good craic if you are the right (very wrong) frame of mind. Definitely not a date flick. Unless you are dating yourself. Which is a good idea, don't want you getting a disease now do we? But wear a rubber anyway you sexual tyrannosaurus you.

REC 2 - demonios!!

I had been looking forward to this. If you'd seen either the original REC or the almost instantaneous american remake Quarantine (which was almost shot for shot identical...which meant (a) it worked almost as well as the original and (b) it was as pointless as a tampon in a men's prison) you know what's on offer here. Epileptic handheld camerawork, people screaming and zombies running amok. It was fast, smart, scary and pretty bloody with a high body count. The sequel continues mere seconds after the first film ends with a team of heavily-armed SWAT members accessing the f**ked building along with a government official on some vague rescue/recon mission.

The build-up would seem to suggest machinegun-filled carnage( The head, shoot em in the head!)  but if you are imagining a 90 minute live-action version of Left4Dead that's not gonna happen. For the first 30 minutes, the sequence following the SWAT team does seem to suggest that direction....viewed through interchanging video feeds on their helmets, it's quite reminiscent of "Aliens" . The FPS-style SWAT vs "infected" scenes are quite cool but there's not a lot of that. The movie stumbles a bit when a bunch of expendable and irritating teenagers are introduced, in fairness they are probably needed just to boost the bodycount a bit. Compared to the first REC it's also got a lot more unnecessary exposition and background...

There's no weird space virus or military experiment gone tits-up here, the infection is demonic in nature...something only hinted at in the first movie. Satan, that s**t, he's at it again! Strangely, at the very end the movie shifts again and drops in a totally f**king unnecessary scene reminiscent of excellent and criminally underrated 80's sci-fi The Hidden. So there you are, it's exactly the same as the first except it has demonic possession, hidden dimensions, exorcisms and sci-fi parasitic body horror. Er. It still could be fairly accurately described as a load of screaming spanish people running up and down some stairs for an hour and a half. Still recommended as an action/horror hybrid, it's just not as good as the first. Clear indications of another sequel, but no more shaky handicams por favor. Muy bien.

TRAIN - Revenge of the Fat Controller

If, like me, you've experienced a five hour train journey involving intense stomach cramps, a broken toilet door and an old woman staring at your penis then you will agree that there is definite horror potential involving public transport. This shameless load of old c*ck however is an example of exactly how not to fulfill that potential. After being relatively benevolent with the last crop of movies to mysteriously materialise on my hard drive it's time to put the boot in again. And what better recipient of a internet-based shoe-ing than another cheap and graphic Hostel rip-off? It's a group of hapless american travellers who start to get graphically dismantled by sinister sweaty eastern european villains, who bring the hapless victims to a dungeon-like room where they cut bits off, except this time...IT'S ON A TRAIN...HENCE THE TITLE. "TRAIN". YEAH? BRILLIANT.

It stars Thora Birch, who I though looked familiar, so I had a look at the Internet Movie Database thing to view her "oeuvre" (french for "egg"). I vaguely remembered her starring alongside Scarlett Johanssen in a strange indie-ish movie called Ghost World a few years back. While Ms Johanssen and her large breasts have inexplicably become incredibly famous and has a perfume named after her/them, the rather more bovine-looking Ms Birch is doing Hostel on a Train.

And it's BAD.

Badly written, shambolic, gore-onically graphic ripoff that's so spectacularly gratuitious that it would be borderline offensive if it wasnt so laughably bad. Not as berserk as Grotesque but it's pretty hard core. Could be even bloodier, as it looks like some of its more explicit scenes have been crudely cut, but maybe that's just the editing style and par for the course...you can't polish a turd, even if you pop it in the freezer first.

Choo choo!

DAYBREAKERS - I hope you all get gingivitis you bloodsucking freaks

Hurrah...more vampires! There's no escaping the feckers these days. Every time you turn on the  idiot-box there's a new crop of the bitey c**ts strutting around in their insufferable "we're better than humans and we know it" way. This one seemed to slip under the radar, but it's an enjoyable take on a vampire-dominated future where a class war rages between upper class yuppie bloodsuckers and a feral mutating underclass of blood-starved vampiric chavs while the price of blood skyrockets due to dwindling stocks of humans.

That's right, they are using us like massive hairy battery hens while a few surviving free-range humans skulk in the shadows led by a sleep-acting Willem Defoe. Where's Blade or even the Frog brothers when you need them? The appropriately ageless Ethan Hawke play a vampire scientist searching for a blood substitute to ease the plasma draught while Sam Neill plays some bastardly vampire version of  Warren Buffet. These arent cool and sexy vampires like the ones posing their way around Bristol or Bon Temps, they are just ordinary looking accountants, doctors, policemen, tramps...they just happen to be immortal beings with a fairly allergic reaction to the sun, and have built a fully functioning futuristic society around these points.

Iffy, can't-really-be-arsed acting and the occasional "why the f**k would they do that?" moment aside, it's good clean undead fun, although the end's a bit odd...after a truly spectacular bloodbath involving dozens of blood-enraged soldiers ripping each other's giblets out the movie just....ends. So it's a bit of a mess, heavy handed allegory and shameless plugs for Chrysler abound, but it kept me conscious and semi-engaged and it's got enough exploding heads, eviscerations and overall mayhem to get a thumbs up from me.

TOWN/BLOOD CREEK - horse vs shotgun hilarity

So this is where Joel Shumacher's been. After camply violating Batman in such a prison-rape manner that the entire franchise was aborted and started from scratch it seems poor old Joel's cred dropped a tad (no one really seemed to escape unscathed from the cataclysmic clusterf**k that was Batman and Robin....Batgirl and Robin disappeared entirely, possibly to hermit-like existences on remote islands far from any televisions or dvd players, and only George "Teflon" Clooney seemed to keep a career going, although his acting seems now to consist of being slightly fat and intense, or just playing himself. Which he is, admittedly, very good at.) And Joel? Despite being famously derided by drug-fueled megaproducer julia phillips as "a better window-dresser than director" in the highly enjoyable marathon bitch-fest autobiography that was "You'll never eat lunch in this town again" he's actually turned out a few decent flicks among the dross. Falling down? Lost boys? Joel...youre okay by me. So Town Creek..a troubled production, shot in eastern europe on a clearly limited budget, and has been sat on a shelf for a couple of years, hidden away like a paedophile uncle in a family photograph. The omens are not promising.

But....it's alright. Its a solid, if unspectacular horror siege flick, mainly concerning a couple of ex-military brothers and a family trapped in their farm by a cenobite-y nazi necromancer that lives in their root cellar. Its not gory or scary enough to generate any t'internet buzz, but its fast, nicely shot and contains an absolutely brilliant scene where a freshly-resurrected zombie horse breaks into the kitchen and gets shredded by multiple shotgun blasts at close range. Something I havent seen before, at least recently.

Bit of irish interest in the cast as well, with Dominic Purcell (the butch older non-gay brother in the interminable Prison Break) and Michael Fassbender (the posh english officer in Inglorious Basterds, the unfortunate chavling- fodder in rather unpleasant brit horror Eden Lake) It's probably not high on their respective cvs, but if you fancy a mildly diverting 90 minutes of shouting, whispered plot development and more farmyard carnage than a PETA video, check this one out.

NB Went on youtube to see if the horsey shotgun bit was on there, it wasnt...when I started typing "Horse" youtube's predictive text came up with the suggestion "Horses Mating with Humans". Try it. Not the horse-mating, the youtube search-thing. What the hell is wrong with you people?

NINJA ASSASSIN - Let the body parts hit the floor

What red-blooded slightly immature man doesnt love a bit of ninja style slicing and dicing with plentiful shuriken flinging, cool ninja posing and stealthy skullduggery? After the first 5 minutes of this you will be thinking warm sexy thoughts as an unseen almost supernatural presence graphically dismembers and mutilates a gang of nasty triad types in an almost Predator-style unstoppable fashion. It's quality. Really, we are talking top levels of the aul ultraviolence here, aided by plentiful amounts of actually quite well done cg blood spurtings and sprayings. The ninjas in this are HARD and SCARY.

Unfortunately most of the rest of the movie is pretty dull....the occasional burst of extremely graphic gore perks it up a bit - a wince-inducingly messy assassination in a bathroom, a highly enjoyable face-off between about 40 ninjas and an army of special forces near the end - but everything else creaks and bumbles along with nary a hint of intelligence wit or acting ability. Half of the movie consists of boring flashbacks to the hero's early life in some rural ninja creche somewhere. I have absolutely no idea what the main storyline involved. The action scenes would help a bit more if most of them weren't shot in almost complete darkness with spasticated editing.

The movie's star is apparently the korean  r+b equivalent of Craig David. Riiiiiiiight then. He's no Tony Jaa but he jumps around nimbly enough and has a stomach you could grate cheese on. Plus you have to love a hero who, after killing a random female ninja in a laundrette, stuffs her scrambled corpse into a washing machine, for no apparent reason whatsoever. It's very stupid, written-by-teenage-boys stuff, but I'll give it a pass for about 15-20 minutes of highly enjoyable computer-aided carnage. But next time let's actually see what's going on yeah?

Hungover Weekend January Roundup Special Omnibus Compilation Edition

I feel very poorly! So I'm going to hit these reviews fast and hard, like a nude Usain Bolt chasing a shopping trolley full of vaginas and weed.

 THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL - Your own house is probably significantly more interesting.

 I'm not very patient in general, and slow movies make me quite angry. This is my life and its running out one minute at a time, so I resent filmmakers who dont get on with providing entertainment on demand...I'm dying here! Now there's Slow, and there's Slow... and then there's THOTD. First thing that will strike you is how cleverly its been created to resemble a movie from the late 70's/early 80's. Dont run away, that's actually quite cool and really convincing, but move itself is so boring it's borderline offensive.

Story's about a cash-strapped but hot student who babysits for some strange people in a remote house by a graveyard....she strolls around, eats some pizza, listens to her walkman....nothing happens until the last 10 minutes by which time you'll probably have chewed your own feet off in boredom. Seems more like a below-par episode of Masters of Horror than a stand-alone movie, and would have benefitted from being AT LEAST 40 minutes shorter. Considering the movie is only 90 mins long, thats harsh criticism. Dozed off twice.

 GROWTH - its naaad a tumuh...

 ...its actually some horribly leechy worm things! Short but not particularly sweet body horror-thriller thingy about a mad genetic experiment gone wrong on an island populated by rubes and bad actors. The CG parasite are rendered moderately well, but the budget shows through and we see a lot more of the boring infected humans than the actual squidgy little feckers.

These mardy molluscs dont give you socially inconvenient arse-itch, but in fact make their hosts superstrong with bruce lee reflexes and lady-killing mojo powers....Women just cant resist an infected leechy lad...until they clock the hideous wormy thing hanging out of him. Yeah...what man can't relate to that? Decent intro, slow middle third, no real protagonist and the fat sheriff gets some truly fist-bitingly awful lines. Watch Slither instead.

 UN PROPHET - Je voudrais dormir! Garkon, etc

Very well received French prison thriller about a juvenile arab hoodlum who gets thrown into chokey where he gets involved with dodgy corsican mobsters. Some horrendous razor-blade-related activity early on, then it just gets a bit drawn out and dull.

I may watch it again though, it's clearly an intelligent and well-made piece that deserves better than me watching it after about seven pints and then dismissing it like a midget butler with a badly mixed martini. I will return....

DANTE'S INFERNO - Hell-o!

Based on a recent video game apparently...ask Reaper. I had some bug-eyed experiences with japanese manga in the early 90s (delightful tentacle-f**king and vein-popping fare like Uroksokidoji: Legend of the Overfiend and Fist of The North Star) and this is cut from the same bodily-fluid-soaked cloth.

Doublehard Crusader loses his missus to some twat of a demon and follows her to hell, where he goes truly medieval on armies of insectile babies, vagivourous succubi and his own mutated demonic dad. Stereotypical limited, massively-eyed jap animation with occasional CG elements, OTT voice acting and a break every 15 minutes for a end-level boss battle...still it's gory and outlandish enough to warrant a look.