CAPS: Scarecrow Slayer (2003)

Because words alone do not suffice.

I have been slowly working on this post for a while. With the bad internet connection, its quite the process uploading the photos. So this may be my last post for a while, unless I get a free day to write up some stuff. Here it goes...

The first thing you will notice about this movie is that they never actually go to a farm location. Composed matte paintings do the trick...sort of.

And you'll notice that Tony Todd is in it. Or that's probably the reason why you watched it to begin with.

Our Final Girl. She's cute, workable.

And her boyfriend...who wears puka shells? Still? Come on.

And the Final Girl's Best Friend who has one of those annoying gum-chewing habits.

And who has a big mouth, big hair, and is not the attractive counterpart to our heroine that we have come to expect.

This Fraternity of 30-somethings put them up to snatching the scarecrow in order to jump on the greek bandwagon. And they have all this high-tech, military equipment...

Like this!
And this!

Things start to go horribly wrong when he falls all of three feet.

And suddenly the cell phone is plagued by shotty CG imagery.

And all this special dirt gets on his shirt....

that magically disappears from shot to shot. Things sure are getting spooky.

Yes Tony, at less than fifteen minutes in...we all need a drink.

Now things really start to go wrong when an electric light show turns the boyfriend into a scarecrow

Just kidding about the electric light show, but what else is this supposed to be?

I'm pretty sure this shot was supposed to be IN focus.

Or perhaps the blurry technique was foreshadowing her upcoming descent into madness.

And she's stuck at a hospital that looks like a motel with a sky that's been replaced behind it and a police vehicle that never existed on this side of the century.

Her friend is also doing her best Linda Blair impression (and not succeeding for the record).

The Scarecrow kills Tony... or atleast kills a bunch of sheets dipped in blood.

All I can think about is, "Where did that stain on her left butt cheek come from?"


And the girls are just stupified, especially the one on the left.

Don't worry, I'm a cop. I promise that's not a sticker I pasted on to my car.


Help! Everything has a fog filter like Rambo 2 and I don't know why. It's not a style that has been established during the movie.


Good thing my friends gave me a change of clothes that were popular in the 90's and dropped me off in the middle of nowhere.


I'm sure this militaristic Frat will be able to take on a bunch of hay strapped together.


Do you mean kill the scarecrow?! No! You can't! He's my best friend!

Frat boys are dropping like flies. Electrocution.

CG blade through the stomache.

Death by being squashed when hiding behind a door?

Ok...


Well, it takes a Final Girl in a hottie shirt with a pitchfork


and a bazooka


to kill a Scarecrow.



This is the most exciting thing that's happened the entire movie.


And this is the scariest moment.

Wait. I changed my mind. This is definitely the scariest moment. Notice the red light, camera, and tripod in the left corner of the screen. Smile: You're on Candid Camera! Haha, and you thought you were actually watching a real movie!

MIA

So I have pretty much been absent from the blogging scene for the past month, but I do have a good excuse. I’m getting married in ten days! I live in California, but I’m getting married in Washington State where I’m from. So I’ve been at my parent’s house in Washington getting ready for the wedding for the past month. I never knew how much work putting a wedding together really was, especially since I’m not one of those girls who have been planning her big day since birth. In addition to the litany of daily bridal tasks, my parents have the worst internet connection and it takes me forever to do anything online. And I haven’t been able to watch many horror films either. I apologize for my lack of activity, but I can’t promise that it will get any better until after the wedding and after the honeymoon. In other words, see you in August!

You should also check out the new blog of my fiancé:
The Action Effect.
You guessed it, it’s a blog all about action films.

Hostel (2005): Idiot’s Guide to Dying in Eastern Europe

Who knew I would actually like it? Maybe I shouldn't listen to non-genre filmgoers anymore.

It’s amazing that I have never seen Hostel until now. There are three main reasons I hadn’t seen this film. 1) Whenever I see “Quentin Tarantino Presents” before a trailer, it usually pisses me off. 2) Everything I’d heard about it left me with no interest to pursue it (i.e. that its torture mixed with porn, which subsequently became known as torture-porn). 3) Eli Roth bugged me in his interviews. Well as serendipity would have it, I received Hostel on Blu-Ray as a birthday gift. It took about a month for me to actually get around to watching and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised.

Meet our cast of assholes.

The first act of the film was justifying my preexisting qualms. Douchebags running around Europe in search of hot, sleazy women (or any girl that will take them to bed), poorly-executed jokes that fell flat, and the general unlikeability of these characters were not keeping me interested. 30 minutes into the movie and what do we have? A Icelandic man who cheats on his wife, a preppy wanna-be lawyer that will stop at nothing to get laid, and a whiny guy who misses his ex-girlfriend and isn’t man enough to do anything about it. Eventually, these testosterone-driven boneheads end up at the hostel of their dreams.

Dude, my grandma has that same gardening tool.

That is until they are kidnapped, thrown into a dark room, tied to a chair, and well…you know the rest. Once the torture begins, the film gets its legs. Typically during this type of horror film (survival or torture), I am usually happier during the first part of the film if the characters are well-drawn and I get anxious watching the terror unfold in the second half. The opposite occurs with Hostel, which may or may not be a bad thing. It’s not like I necessarily wanted to see these guys get mutilated, but Roth is just so much better at relaying dark humor and gritty debasement than he is at creating interesting protagonists to stroll around with. Where the film succeeds is the fabrication of bizarre antagonists—real human beings behind the masks of these masochistic murderers.

Ha ha...That's all I got.

***********
*SPOILERS*


I also appreciated the method in which the cast is killed off. We don’t even see the Icelander murdered, which is kind of unexpected. Instead, the dismal sight of his severed head lets us imagine what occurs inside the dismal chambers. The next death surprised me. The whiny boy was next; we don’t even get a long chase sequence. This stock character is usually our Final Boy, so it was refreshing to see the sex-crazed brat take charge as the lead. This is especially true because he is a better actor, more interesting to watch, and frankly he is better looking.

The gore was not what I expected. After hearing so much about the movie’s brutality, I was surprised at how little gore was actually on screen. Roth employs the more classical technique of letting us envision the horror for ourselves through implied sounds and camera angles. But yes, occasionally we do get to see the KNB EFX at their best with some great gags involving ankles, eyeballs, and chest cavities.

The ending was also greatly appreciated. In fact, it is what finally convinced me that I really did like Hostel because I think I may have still been on the fence about it. Our pretty boy takes his revenge in a public bathroom—how fantastic. It’s brutal and epic. Often times, horror characters will choose to keep running and we end the movie, hoping that they will call the police and the bad guys will be caught. Other times, the person does kill them but it’s usually a result of self-defense in the heat of a climactic battle. Here we are treated to the unbridled anger of a victim that’s not afraid to do something about it, even though he had the opportunity to just walk away. For the record, I did watch the alternate ending and it’s not nearly as good. He takes the man’s little girl away instead of killing him.

*END SPOILERS*
****************

Strike a pose.

Hostel was and wasn’t what I expected. It was a very masculine, crude film for the testosterone junkie. It wasn’t a shabby, overly explicit torture flick. I can’t say that I’m a fan of Roth quite yet, but I will be looking forward to seeing the sequel, especially since it is supposedly from a more female perspective.

Movies That Should Never Be Made

Horrible movie ideas that should never be greenlit, but I still want to see them anyway.




Sexual Predator:

He came from another planet to hunt the most elusive prey: children.



Hippopotamus:

The most dangerous animal in Africa is not the lion, the snake, or the crocodile. The true King of the Jungle, the Hippo, deserves a place in celluloid trash.



Swiss Army Knife:

Step aside Hatchet. It's time to step up to a more complex camping tool. So many implements of death to choose from. Which boyscout wields the deadly contraption?



Superman's Weekend at Bernie's:

After accidentally knocking out Superman with Kryptonite, two friends party with an unconscious super hero all weekend.