Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!

WHen I were a lad I recalled a Saturday morning cartoon show named "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes"...
... to which this image does not relate. However, around the same time I saw a movie a few times that was pretty much in the style of Airplane or Naked Gun about the aforementioned Killer Tomatoes. I had never seen anything of the movie or the series for many moons until one day my wife and I were perusing the "These movies really suck so we're selling them for a buck" section at a local movie rental store and saw the movie "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes" on sale!
I remember thinking that it looked too old to be the movie I recalled as a child but really, how many movies could there possibly be about these Killer Tomatoes?

Apparently at least two, as I discovered on watching the movie that it was not the movie I recalled but was clearly related to the movie I had seen. The movie I had seen had been a sequel of all things! I dunno why anyone made a sequel, the movie "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes' was a relatiuvely amusing enough concept but a fairly unfunny film (it had moments), but I do recall that the film I recall was actually rather amusing, so my search continued...

Until just recently when I spotted "Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!" on sale at Wal-mart!
"There couldn't possibly be three movies about the Killer Tomatoes, could there?", I stupidly thought to myself and snatched up "Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!" and begun to watch! Only to discover that this was actually a sequel to the movie I had seen!
"There's a fucking Killer Tomato trilogy?!", I hear you scream...
Well, not quite because there is yet another one named "Killer Tomatoes Eat France"

So, four films and a T.V. series and as far as I can tell the only one that was any sort of funny is the one that doesn't seem to be on sale anywhere I go, "Return Of The Killer Tomatoes"

Four films? I mean, really...
Both of the films I've seen (recently) have been relatively funny ideas, but overall very unfunny films with only a few laughable moments...

A great disappointment for my childhood, which eagerly awaits the remake which is comign out next year

Yes, five Killer Tomatoe films will be in existence as of next year (So they say)! Five!!! How do Killer Tomatoes manage to scrape together a fan-base to somehow sustain themselves over five films?

It's because of me, isn't it?
I'm the one sad lonely bastard soul out there buying Killer Tomatoe films in the vain hope of somehow, one day, finding the elusive Killer Tomatoe film I so fondly remmeber from the realms of yester-year...

Undead

Undead is an Australian film-makers' take on the age old tale of brain eating zombies...


It's not completely typical, and doesn't feature the same old lumbering zombies that we see in many other hundreds of thousands of movies featuring our undead friends (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it is still nice to see some originality spring up from time to time).
The zombies in this film were much more like the bad guys (They weren't zombies!) in Evil Dead. They don't speak though, but they just seem so much more capable and are definitely stronger than your average Bub...

The film-makers clearly have good vision and a fair amount of talent when it comes to getting nice slick looking shots and the gore effects (Which, let's face it, are very important when regarding a zombie flick) are really awesome in places. All the parts are acted well, especially considering this is a fairly low budget film and at first glance I figured they probably spent all their budget on bottles of blood. Altogether a very enjoyable film...

My only complaint (I had to have one) was in the editing. It all felt (especially during "action" scenes) like it was chopped together a bit and was kind of hard to follow exactly who was hitting who or who was running where in certain scenes... I think though, when I think about it, that I've sort of felt the same way about most Australian films I've seen so it's possible that it's just a different "style", or almost like an accent in film-making that makes it just seem a little different and maybe a "typical" British or American film might seem a little weirdly edited to an Australian viewer... maybe? Now that I think about it, sometimes Japanese films are also edited a little strangly, in a completely different way... maybe it is a movie accent thing... a little certain something that different countries' film-makers pick up on when they start making films...

Or maybe this film was confusing because of the sudden arrival of a science fiction plot arriving about half-way through the movie for no reason...

Whatever.

Go see it!


Or like, pick it up from the discount bin at Wal-mart or whatever.



Undead - the movie

The Reaping

Don't read this review if you haven't seen The Reaping! It contains spoilers...



You see, ladies and gentlemen The Reaping has (drum roll, please) a twist ending!!!

Whatever will they think of next? A huge twist at the end that flips the whole film on it's head! How brilliant and original...
That was a little sacastic...
Don't get me wrong, a film has to have some surprises at the end, otherwise it just sort of fizzles out but I am absolutely sick of endings that make you are supposed to make you think "Oh! I'm sooooo shocked! What brilliant innovative wonderously sexy masterpiece of a director made this film? I must know so I can offer myself to him sexually", but alas most twist endings are forced and entirely and completely unnecessary.

This film did not need a twist! (Here come the spoilers), if the silly little bitch at the end had turned out to be Satan as was implied and flat-out said all throughout the film and was just playing a vicious Satan-like trick on the silly cynical cow that starred in this pile of tripe, all would have been good!
Hilary Skank would have then slaughtered an entire innocent village and fled with the child of Satan into Safety! Brilliant!
But, oh no, she has to go and discover the truth that the whole village is evil and in fact God has been punishing them with these plagues and they weren't coming from the little girl... wah wah wah...

If that's the case though, and it was God who was doing all the big magic plague shit, then why did "God" decide to let that priest who was trying to help Skank explode to death in a rather unnatural fireball? That made sense when you thought Satan was up to his old tricks but God wouldn't have done that would he? Maybe God lost his shit for a moment there and forgot how the film was going to end...

I don't know...

I do know this film wasn't as good as it should have been



The Reaping's Website

Lost Boys: The Tribe

I had the amazing good fortune to see long (non) awaited sequel to cult vampire flick The Lost Boys last night!

I think it's important to note that I love The Lost Boys. Every second of it... if I were to review the original Lost Boys here you'd have a 5000 word essay detailing exactly why it's the greatest film ever made and should be awarded every Oscar from every year in every category from now until the end of time (Not really, but I did think it was pretty cool, k?).

That being said you'd think that I would have a deep seeded sense of loathing and detest for anyone who would dare decide to make a sequel.

You'd assume that I would like nothing more than to find the sorry son-of-a-bitch and smother him with a pillow while he sleeps.

You'd also probably think that my absolute rage at their very existence would make me then move on to hunting down every crew member and gutting each and every one of them, one by one... each one getting a death slightly more gruesome than the last...

My blood-lust unsatisfied you may feel that I'd probably then have to seek out the fucking rat bastard who allowed the rights to The Lost Boys name to be sold and made into a sequel.
They would pay the worst of all... you'd assume

And you may have been right! The film was quite abysmal... in fact, I'd stretch to say it was absolutely the worst vampire movie I've ever had the misfortune to witness (And I saw the Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie...).
I'd almost consider it torture to my eye balls who were forced to burn the images of The Lost Boys: The Tribe into the back of my retina (or however eyes work).

And yet, even though the film is atrocious on every level...
The plot... wafer thin...
The effects... gory, yet utterly predictable
The boobs... needless and many
There was a glimmer of hope in that the film makers at the very least had the good sense and decency to get Corey Feldman in on the action.
Corey Feldman is by no means a great actor but there is a certain something about him that makes you know that this couldn't possibly be a real sequel to the Lost Boys if he weren't there...
And in spite of his lack of great acting (I'm not saying he can't act at all, in fact he was the best actor in the entire movie, honestly... just he's no Tom Cruise... shit, did I just say that?) Feldman does seem to realize that the only way anyone is going to sit through this absolute shit-pile of a movie is if his character, the surfboard carving vampire killer is the most over-the-top ridiculous character there could possibly be...
Toting ridiculous lines like "Who ordered the stake?" and generally looking a bit like a suburban commando. I have no doubt in my mind that it was Feldman, not the director, who decided his character had to be so ridiculous because the director failed to do anything else right at all...

So I'll give Lost Boys: The Tribe two smiley faces but know this Corey Feldman, both of them are for you...