Tasty Toast

If you’re going to do a remake you have to bring something new to it. But it can’t just be something new, no no. It has to be new and good. Really, really fucking good. Otherwise, you have no business remaking anything because you just look like an asshole. What did the remake of Psycho bring to that piece of original cinematic genius? A weird trip scene for no apparent reason and Vince Vaughn jacking off.

That’s not enough.

I read a review (I believe it was in the New York Times) referring to this movie simply as plagiarism against the original (and amazing) Hitchcock Psycho. I absolutely could not agree more. It was like Gus Van Sant saying “I’m a big fancy schmancy director, but I know I’ll never make anything near as good as a Hitchcock movie. So I might as well just do the exact same movie shot for shot, but act like I put some of my own thought into it rather then just stealing everything from somebody who’s dead and can’t sue me, so I’ll put in Vince Vaughn choking the chicken. Yep, that sounds like a great idea.”

Sorry Gus Van Sant. You lose. And you’re an asshole.

Tasty Toast Says:

The Final Rating:

Oh Johnny Depp. My dear Johnny Depp. I just don’t get you. There are some amazing movies you’ve been a part of. ‘Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas’, ‘Benny & Joon’, ‘Cry Baby’, ‘Sweeney Todd’, ‘Donnie Brasco’, ‘Ed Wood’…. the list is really quite extensive. And nobody would say you’re a bad actor. In fact, you’re a marvellous actor.

So why in the hell, do you insist on taking really, really bad god-awful vomit-inducing movies upon yourself? I just don’t get it. It can’t be the money, and I can’t fathom that your representation is so bad that you get stuck with them. So why?

This was one of the worst stinkers that Johnny Depp has done, and unlike a fine wine, in 10 years since its production, it has not matured or appreciated. It doesn’t hit the so bad it’s good mark. It doesn’t hit anything.

First of all, I can’t imagine how somebody writes a movie that’s about the devil, a cult, and the supposed “mystery” that is to ensue in such a boring fashion. It’s like somebody woke up several times, half scribbled down something, and then tried to form a coherent movie out of it. And booze. I think there was a lot of booze on behalf of the writer and the script editors. Because there’s no way anybody sober with an ounce of talent in their body could have produced this movie. In fact, a drunken eight year old would have written a better script. At least that way there might have been a bit of imagination in it.

But it’s not just that everybody concerned with this film (from preproduction to post) must have been drunk (because that’s the only logical excuse), but I don’t think they gave a shit about it at all. I mean, christ, not only is the script boring, but boring radiates from the very fabric of being of this movie. I can just see everybody standing on set yawning, shaking their heads wondering how they got tied up with a movie like this. With a bottle of Jack Daniels in their hand.

At the end I literally shouted “what the fuck, that’s the end?” (much to the amusement of Mr. B upstairs who I heard laugh at my apparent anger towards to absolutely asinine “conclusion” to this movie). In fact, to call what happens at the finale of this movie an “ending” is in actuality an insult to every other ending of any other story ever written.

Tasty Toast Says:

The Final Rating:

You know, where I do begin with a movie like Blood Feast?

No really, I’m kind of at a loss as to how to start due to the sheer plethora of horrible movie badness to go over.

Maybe how I’ll start this is by describing it in the most relatable way, and how I often find myself summing it up for people I’m talking to:

Blood Feast makes Plan 9 From Outer Space look like Citizen Kane.

There has never been, and never will be, a worse movie then Blood Feast. This movie is absolutely the epitome of what a bad movie is. Everything from the camera work that makes the viewer feel like they’re watching a home movie made by a blind aunt, to the acting (I’m pretty sure HG Lewis just dressed up some homeless people and told them to act – he probably paid them with booze too) to the horrendous dialogue and really, really crappy “special effects” (I know it was 1963, but COME ON!).

I have to tell you what this movie is about. It features an insane food caterer (absolutely serious) by the name of Fuad Ramses who is chopping up young women left and right in order to have a “Blood Feast” (there’s the title) for his “Egyptian” goddess, Ishtar.

Let’s start with the most obvious thing. If you were going to write a movie about a horrible crazy food caterer (FOOD CATERER, are you comprehending the fact that this movie is about a crazy FOOD CATERER and how ridiculous that is? I mean, it’s hardly integral to the “plot” and I’m really using that word generously), that’s supposed to be a part of some crazy ancient Egyptian cult, wouldn’t you do the least bit of research and pick, you know, an Egyptian goddess, and NOT a Babylonian one? Why in the holy hell would you pick a goddess that wasn’t even from that culture? I mean, somebody had to theoretically write this movie, and that means that at least some thought – no matter how minuscule it was – went into that writing.

Did I mention that this “Egyptian” goddess is in fact a poorly spray painted mannequin with some really cheap shitty fabric draped haphazardly across it? And most importantly, what’s with the hat?

And then, THEN, the link to all these grizzly murders is that our FOOD CATERER wrote a book on religious rites called, and I absolutely shit you not “Ancient Weird Religious Rites” that each of his victims had. WHAT?

Mr. B put it best, “every aspect of this movie leaves you thinking WHY? WHY did the filmmaker do that?”

Why is the book called “Ancient Weird Religious Rites?” “Why is Ramses repeatedly spelt wrong?” “Why is that thing that’s supposed to be a tongue obviously a bulls penis?” “Why does that loud tuba blast supposed to signify a woman dying?”.

One thing I do know for sure, that this movie is the absolute best of the worst. You will laugh until you piss your pants at the many, many ridiculous and inane things that occur throughout this movie. If you didn’t know this movie was made in all seriousness, you’d think it was a spoof. In fact, this movie is what started the slasher horror genre. That’s right, this movie is what spawned a whole industry of multi-million dollar movies. It kind of blows the mind.

And now, I leave you with the scene which shows the best of the acting in this whole movie. Sit down, you’ll be amazed.

Tasty Toast Says:

The Final Rating:

Holy shit. What the hell happened? No, I’m not trying to be funny.

After sitting through this movie, rolling my eyes and yelling at the screen all the way along, I had the distinct feeling that I had in fact lost two hours of my life. For a brief moment I considered writing to Mr. M Night Shyamalamadingdong demanding those two hours back. I have never experienced a black out or “lost time” event, however, I imagine that it is much like watching “The Happening”.

I had naively thought that perhaps this would be a somewhat interesting movie. The trailers promised me mystery and gore. A bunch of people killing themselves for no reason? That sounded like a mildly entertaining concept. For anybody with the brains enough to write a good script, it actually could have turned into a mildly entertaining movie.

For a movie with “Happening” in the title, one would expect something to, you know, actually happen. But nothing does. There’s some people running, wooden performances, and some sort of ill-conceived “point” that Shyamalan does piss poor job of getting across. Not that the point doesn’t come through mind you, in fact it comes through too clearly and all together too soon in the movie. The audience totally gets what the deal is, because the characters actually SAY what the fucking deal is, and then after the characters have outlined the cause for all this random mayhem, the characters then turn to one another and actually ask each other what’s going on.

But wait, no, no no, you just fucking said, like 10 minutes ago, what the hell was going on. Everybody got it. Why in the FUCK are you asking what’s happening now??!!

Oh, that’s right, because the writing is so freaking bad that apparently the “writer” (that’s Shyamalan, he’s about the only person capable of writing a script this incoherent) forgot what he had written 20 pages earlier, and now we’re back to square one with the characters not understanding what’s going on.

WHAT?

At one point Zooey Deschanel, after we have fully established that people are killing themselves left right and centre, turns around after hearing a group shooting themselves and asks Marky Mark “what’s happening?” What the shitballs do you mean what’s happening? For 45 freaking minutes we have been privy to people killing themselves, and NOW you ask what people are doing? Holy merciful god in heaven.

This movie absolutely stinks of b-grade film school dropout project, and not in the good old-school Kevin Smith way.

And another problem with this movie: I was promised gore damnit. In the trailers we see all these people killing themselves for an inexplicable reason, and to boot, by really strange ways (a woman ramming a sharp pointy thing in her neck is one, and guy laying under a lawn mower is another). That promised gore could have been the ONE saving point of this movie, at least giving the audience something to groan at besides the asinine dialogue. But no, every time the gore was about to ensue, the camera cut away, and all we saw were crappy reactions from actors.

And on top of all of that; the absolute worst part of this movie is the acting. A defining point of a director is what s/he can get from their actors. A great director can get great performances from sub-par actors. A bad director gets bad performances from good actors. Shyamalan fits into the later category. Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel aren’t bad actors, but you wouldn’t know it from this movie, especially with Deschanel’s “deer in headlights” look that she wears for the whole movie, and Whalberg’s “stiff as a board” apparent speech impediment that he adopted for this movie.

The whole movie was 90 minutes long, and it felt like at least double that, and throughout the whole thing, beginning with the large “Written, Produced, and Directed” credit Shyamalan gives himself, there’s a definite air of his egotism that permeates the entire movie. It feels like he’s saying “if you don’t love me, you don’t get it”.

No, I get it, it just sucks.

Tasty Toast Says:

The Final Rating: