The Cheap-Arse Film Review Remake.

RATING: 15.

RELEASED: 1989.

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: VALERIE BERMAN.

STARRING: ADAM SANDLER, SCOTT LAROSE, BURT YOUNG.

GENRE: TEEN COMEDY… I GUESS.

BOUGHT FROM: CEX.

PRICE: 50p.

If there’s anyone you can rely on to divide a roomful of cinephiles, it’s Adam Sandler. He’s like Jim Carrey turned up to 11, which is to say that some people think he’s a genius and worship the ground he walks on, and others think he’s everything that’s wrong with modern mainstream American film comedy and should be shot on-sight. Me? I’m a boring middle-of-the-road white guy, so I have a boring middle-of-the-road opinion- he’s alright. He’s done some stuff I enjoy, such as “Happy Gilmore,” Billy Madison,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” “50 First Dates” (which I really like, for reasons I’m attributing entirely to Drew Barrymore) and the (in my opinion) criminally underappreciated “Little Nicky.” But he’s also been involved with some stuff I don’t particularly get the appeal of, like “Big Daddy” and “Reign Over Me.” In a way I admire him a little bit more than Carrey though, because whereas Jim seemed to just burst onto screens a fully-formed star, Sandler seemed to pay his dues a little more, playing second fiddle in the likes of “Airheads” and “Mixed Nuts,” and appearing in smaller flicks before he got the chance to become what he is today. Smaller flicks like this one.

I’ve been aware of this movie for years, it’s a staple of every pound shop in existence. Everytime I ventured past the DVD racks, there it was staring back at me, that front cover art of a bare-chested Sandler shrugging and pulling a “WH-HUH?” face. I knew that one day I’d end up watching it, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to buy it, partly because I always had the feeling paying a pound would be paying too much. However, once I saw it for 50p, it was game over.

If you’ve not figured it out yet, here’s my usual process for writing these things- I’ll watch a movie, take a few notes, then I’ll watch it again at the same time as I’m writing the review, so the flow of the piece feels like I’m commenting on things as they’re happening. That’s the style I intend to use for all my reviews.

It is however a style that would be borderline impossible to use covering this flick.

This movie caught me totally off-guard. I was expecting this to be your typical Adam Sandler movie, just on a smaller scale. There’d be some gross-out humour, some sentimentality, a love interest, bizarre secondary characters, and he’d get to punch someone. And it’d take place on a boat, obviously. That’s what I was expecting. What I got was one of the most batshit insane movies I’ve ever, ever seen. Doing a linear review would be absolutely pointless, because I know for a fact that I’d get lost or forget something or not be able to justice to just what the hell I’m seeing, so I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to give you a taster, just a taster, of what this movie is like…

1. The opening credits. Yes, even the opening credits are going to get a mention. When boiled down to a one sentence description, they don’t sound so strange- they appear as voice bubbles spoken by an animated Adam Sandler as he stands in front of a brick wall, as if doing stand-up. However, calling this “animation” would be giving it too much praise, as the only thing that really moves all that much is Sandler’s head and face, and that doesn’t so much move as morph and contort into a variety of grotesque positions and facial expressions. It’s almost as if it’s been done by one of those caricature artists that usually loiter around beaches and theme parks. It’s disgusting and disturbing.

2. At the start of the film, Sandler’s character, Schecky Moskowitz, breaks the forth wall and addresses the audience. He’s basically the voice of the filmmakers- he explains a little bit of the plot, tells us that it’s taking place on a boat full of hot women because they somehow have access to both, and then says that this is a no-budget movie, as opposed to a low-budget movie, and then demonstrates this by doing some “Star Trek” earthquake acting. The first time spoke to camera, my response was, “Um… okay.” It was weird and out of left-field, but I accepted it, as it seemed like the writer had something she wanted to get across. But then he keeps doing it. And it doesn’t really advance the plot, it’s just Schecky casually chit-chatting to the audience. I watched this the first time with my friend Winston, and the second Sandler started to talk into the camera, he complained that he hated all this self-referential stuff, and that it’d been done to death by now. I was more forgiving, willing to let it slip by once, if for no other reason that Sandler’s likeable enough to get away with it a couple of times, but by about fourty minutes in, I felt like screaming, “STOP DRAGGING ME OUT OF THIS MOVIE!”

3. The beautiful women are portrayed as beauty queens. I’m not 100% sure if they really are or not, although the fact that we see a pretty white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes wearing a sache that reads “Jamaica” tells me they might not be. They too get to talk into the camera, by way of informal interviews that sometimes seem scripted, but sometimes seems like the director just asked them questions and filmed their responses documentary-style, like where they see themselves being in 10 years. Other than a couple of instances, there’s no reason for these to exist.

4. This one actually details a bit of plot (such as it is). Schecky’s desire is to quit being a waiter on the boat and become its comedian. Sadly, the boat already has a comedian, Dickie Diamond, played by Scott Larosa, a crude, hairy, sleazy man, whose act seems to consist berating his audience and making incest jokes, whereas Schecky’s comedy tends to be more light-hearted and observational. This could be a decent starting point for some real conflict the audience could get into, were it not for the fact that neither man is particularly funny. I mean, they’re both written to not be that funny, but surely if you’re supposed to root for one over the other, one should show a little more talent, right? Also, Winston believes this was supposed to be a commentary on the popular comedy of the 80s, that the writer clearly hated the lewd, confrontational style that was popular at that time and was using this movie to comment on it. I… think he’s overthinking this.

4. A rock star, his girlfriend and his manager have a brief two minute scene talking about action figures. This serves no point to advance the plot, as Schecky himself admits in a to-the-camera aside.

5. Billy Zane plays Neptune, King Of The Sea, and appears to Schecky to boost his confidence after Dickie is believed to have died falling over the side of the boat (he hasn’t, his hat blew overboard and he got trapped in a toilet. The guests and crew hold a funeral for him seemingly five minutes later). Even though I knew he was in this, as he’s mentioned on the box, when he appeared, my reaction was still, “HOLY SHIT, IT’S THE PHANTOM!” And then the first thing he does is make a joke about the size of Sandler’s nose. And the way he appears to Schecky is awesome- it’s not presented in any way magically, he just climbs over the side of the boat and sneaks up on him whilst he’s doing another direct-to-camera.

6. Billy Bob Thornton is in this movie, playing Bob, a construction worker who heckles Schecky during his first gig replacing Dickie. My reaction to seeing him was similar to seeing Zane (“HOLY SHIT, BAD SANTA!”) But this time I actually was slightly surprised, because even though I had been told he was in this, he’s not mentioned on the box, and I had no proof other than the word of a few friends, who could easily have been messing me around. He looks amazingly youthful here, and even in a small role, he exudes charisma. He was obviously going to be a star.

7. Oh this one, this is the big one…

… at the start of the movie, we see a man looking over some videos. Porn videos, to be specific about it, with titles like “Blondes Prefer Cucumbers,” and “Rub Me Raw,” (NOTE: THIS MOVIE WAS WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY A WOMAN) before deciding to watch a video with Adam Sandler’s gurning face on it. This was easily the most relatable part of the movie for me, I think I’ve probably made this very decision myself a couple of times. So, he puts the video in, and the movie begins. As it’s going on, we cut back to him seemingly watching the same movie we are. Okay, so this is going to be some kind of framing device, I thought. That’s unusual, but so is everything about this movie, and I’m sure by the end it’ll be explained. Well, I didn’t have to wait until the end to find out what’s going on- during one of the beauty queen interview segments, Miss Australia starts giving her opinion on General Noriega. Yes, that General Noriega, the man who was at the time the military dictator of Panama. Her entire critique of him is that he probably smells like pizza and that girls don’t like him because of it.

As she’s talking, the man watching removes his shoe, removes his sock, and then sniffs it. It is then revealed that the man watching this movie is, yes, you guessed it, General Noriega. Who promptly pauses the film, calls Miss Australia “A piece of Kangaroo vomit!” and then orders two henchmen, who are credited on IMdB as “Terrorist Without Shirt” and “Terrorist With Mustache” respectively, to go and kill her. Which doesn’t sound too strange, until you see them sailing on this little barge, in order to reach the she’s on, along with the rest of that film’s cast. So… the movie the General is watching is actually happening in real time, and now the two goons he’s sent after Miss Australia are now in it?

Oh, and General Noriega is played by Burt Young, AKA Paulie from the “Rocky” movies.

And this is where I’m going to stop. I’ve barely scratched the surface, believe me, but if I don’t stop here, I’ll be going all night. From the production side, there’s really not much to say. There’s not really much real acting going on, everyone’s just mugging for the camera, although I will say that Sandler has presence even at this stage in his career. I wouldn’t have picked him to one day become one of the highest paid comedic actors of all time, but I also wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he continued working if this were all I’d ever seen him in. The only other thing I take exception to is the description of this as a no-budget movie, as I’ve seen some truly no-budget movies doing this already, and this isn’t one of them, even though it’s clearly not up to the standards Sandler enjoys today.

Now we come to the tricky issue of what the fuck I’m going to do with this thing. I’ve gone back and forth over this a hundred times, it feels like. I hadn’t really made up my mind when I started writing this. I should bin it. I should. And yet…

… I can’t. Because one day, I’m going to have a few friends over. We’ll be laughing and joking. We may have too much to drink. The conversation will turn to movies, as it always does, and somebody will ask, “What’s the weirdest film you’ve ever seen?” And I will tell them about “Going Overboard.” And then I’ll want to show them it. It’s not a good film, in many ways it’s a terrible film, but for being so completely and unapologetically unhinged, I find myself admiring it.

Just like I do Adam Sandler.

Until next time, I’m The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and I’m very very sneaky.

RATING: 15.

RELEASED: 2001.

WRITTEN BY: SHANE BITTERLING, JUSTIN STANLEY & CHUCK CONSKY.

DIRECTED BY: CHUCK CONSKY.

STARRING: BRIAN WIMMER, LYSETTE ANTHONY, PATRICK BERGIN.

GENRE: MONSTER THRILLER.

BOUGHT FROM: CEX.

PRICE: £1.00.

(I really don’t have fond memories of this review. For a start, it originally went up late. This was only partially my fault- I went on vacation to Scotland for five days, and during my trip I intended to write the thing and get it up. As you can see, I even had a Scotland-based movie in place. This plan went totally out the window the second I got there and discovered the holiday camp I was staying in didn’t have Wi-Fi, or any kind of internet access on-site. IN TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT. I suppose I could have found somewhere in town, but that would’ve meant altering the plans of our trip, and that wasn’t happening. So I just resigned myself to the fact that this review was going to be late. By the end of the trip, I had many more things to be angry/concerned about anyway- the room we were given looked like a prison sell; we had nothing to cook with; no hot water until we asked nicely for it; paper-thin walls, which is great when you have neighbours who’ve decided that their idea of a fun trip away consists of bringing the entire clan out to the shared hallway and screaming at the top of their lungs; and most alarmingly, the fact that I seemed to be genuinely allergic to Scotland in general, spending every night there curled up in the fetal position with crippling stomach pains, that miraculously went away the second I touched foot back on British soil.

So yeah, a disaster on all fronts. On the plus side, I got to eat Haggis)

This movie had me onside with the title, really. Of all the legendary creatures, Nessie’s really been dragged through the mud over the years. The only one I can think of that’s maybe had it worse is Bigfoot, whose reputation has a massive “Harry & The Hendersons” shaped dent in it, but he/she/it has somehow managed to maintain an aura and mystique. Nessie at this point is just kiddie fodder, after too many cartoons, too many stuffed toys, too many children’s books and too many heartwarming family films starring Ted Danson (well, it was only one, but that’s still one too many). So just calling your movie “The EVIL Beneath Loch Ness” gets a thumbs up from me. And my spirits remained high when, after a brief credits sequence, the greatest thing you can ever begin your schlocky monster flick appeared. You guessed it… a Bible quote.

HE MAKES THE DEPTHS CHURN LIKE

A BOILING CALDRON AND STIRS UP THE SEA…

NOTHING ON EARTH IS HE EQUAL-

A CREATURE WITHOUT FEAR.

-Job 41:31

Awesome. Sadly, were it not for one scene later on, this is where the film would have peaked. And when you’ve made a creature feature where the second best thing in it is white text on a black background, something’s obviously gone wrong.

We open with an intrepid team of divers, mostly American (of course), exploring Loch Ness in order to prove that it was at one time a prehistoric breeding ground. Whilst down there, a massive underwater earthquake occurs, killing Gus, the team’s leader and the only seemingly Scottish member of the crew. And there’s my first complaint- the first kill of this movie isn’t even caused by the monster, it’s caused by Mother Nature. Since when has it been okay for these kinds of movies to have people die by way of tragic accidents? I mean, we get a brief shot of the creature, but it’s not implicated that he had anything to do with Gus’ death. It’s just… there.

Following this, we meet Case, who was once a member of Gus’ team, but decided to jump ship because he believed he was “chasing myths.” He’s called in from some dig thing in Afganistan (oooh, topical!), to finish the job by Elizabeth, a bitchy and annoying British woman who’s helping fund the project so she can turn the findings into a TV show. Incidently, this woman looks exactly like Brigette Nielsen would if you left her in the dryer too long. Right away we’re not-so-subtly alerted that there’s some sort of tension between these two, and we later discover that they were (GASP!) married. The scene in which that’s revealed is hilarious, by the way. They actually do the, “She slaps him, he kisses her” thing that’s been parodied so much I didn’t think it was possible to do anymore with a stright face.

When Case arrives, there’s some fighting between he and the rest of the team, with him asking what they were doing letting a 58-year-old man perform such a dangerous dive in the first place. This is actually a fucking good question, which they of course refuse to ignore, all the while blaming Case for not being there, because you know, how dare this guy not want to risk his reputation hunting monsters.

It’s at this point I was starting to wonder where Patrick Bergin was. You’re probably asking, who’s Patrick Bergin, and why would I wonder where he is? Well, he’s an actor, obviously, probably the biggest star in this thing (Christ, there’s a dubious compliment) and the movie you probably have the best chance of remembering him from is “Sleeping With The Enemy,” where he played Domestic Violence Terminator. And apart from just asking myself where he is casually in everyday life, he actually recieves top billing on the front of the box, along with Lysette Anthony, who plays Elizabeth, which lead me to believe he was playing one of the main characters. I actually had him down as playing Case in an earlier draft of this review just because I wasn’t paying attention. He doesn’t play Case, that honour goes to Brian Wimmer, the only other actor here I sort of recognise but couldn’t tell you what else I’ve seen him in. Eventually he does appear, playing Blay, a crazy local whose son was killed by the creature, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here…

The team eventually goes back to the Loch to perform another dive in order to find Gus’ body, and have a near-miss encounter with the monster. At the same time they’re doing this, another bunch of Americans (seriously, how many Americans need to be in this? This film may as well be taking place in Iowa for all the Scottish accents I hear…) who run a Nessie fan site rig up a fake monster in order to scare a bunch of tourists so they can film it. Of course, they end up getting attacked when the real thing shows up. I feel the need here to comment on just how shitty the special effects are. I’m not one of those critics who seem to just hate CGI on principle, okay? I don’t sit around wishing all technological advancements in filmmaking had ceased is the 1950s. But it only works if you can afford to use it, and the people behind this film very obviously couldn’t. Absolutely everything looks fake, and I don’t just mean the creatures, I mean everything- the rocks, the cage they dive in, everything. It all has that plasticy, overly-polished look that all bad CGI has. If you’ve sat through at least one Sci-Fi Channel original movie, you know what I’m talking about.

After the attack, and seeing a blurry video of the creature taken by the fakers, Case and his team decide to contact the authorities in order to get the Loch closed. This doesn’t sit well with the condescending, sarcastic local police Constable, who doesn’t want all that tourist money to just go away. Whilst it’s nice to finally see a Scottish character on-screen, I can’t say we really hear a Scottish accent. It’s laughably bad. I personally think it sounds more Liverpudlian than anything else. I half expected him to burst into a rousing rendition of “She Loves You,” at any second. It’s during these scenes that Mr. Bergin finally graces us with his presence, almost exactly halfway through the movie, vaguely telling Case that he can help him, only to get blown off by Elizabeth with the words, “We really don’t need any help from anybody around here.” Of course you don’t, why would you possibly want the help of somebody who’s presumably lived in the area their entire life? What could they possibly know that you don’t? In any event, that whole bit is pointless, because the very next scene is Case recruiting Blay to be part of his team. It’s also worth mentioning that Bergin at least has a good go at doing a Scottish accent. It’s not great, but his effort is appreciated.

Things take an unexpected turn when what appears to be Nessie is discovered dead, washed up on the shore of the Loch. The Constable of course shows off the body in an attempt to convince people the problem (which was never officially announced to begin with, remember) has been dealt with, which causes Blay to have a fucking conniption and scream, “THAT’S NOT THE MONSTER! THAT’S NOT NESSIE!” Which would be all well and good, were it not for the fact that moments later it’s revealed that, after illegally examining the body, Case and his team decide that this creature probably was Nessie, and the thing they’ve been following was something totally different. Infact, it’s Blay himself that leads them to believe that the thing they’re actually hunting is a Leviathan when he makes reference to the Bible quote from the beginnng of the movie. So, wait, just moments ago, he was convnced they were looking for Nessie, to the point that he’s basically pointing at Nessie’s carcass and saying, “Thas no real,” but then without any real prompting he then decides it is, and then hints that he knew all along that they were looking for another creature? WAT.

But I can forgive this after what comes next. Hell, I can almost forgive this movie all its transgressions. I was going to make mention of the fact that there were no overly offensive Scottish stereotypes in this movie, partly because there are so few Scottish characters in it, and partly because all the characters are so stock and bland. But then Blay appears dressed like Mel Gibson in “Braveheart,” brandishing a harpoon. He then dives into the Loch wearing one of the protective suits, still wearing the facepaint and holding his weapon. It’s like “Braveheart” meets “Moby Dick” meets “The Abyss,” and it’s so ludicrous, if you don’t crack a smile when you see it, you’ve no soul.

Case goes down to attempt to bring him back up, and it now becomes a race against time, as the local authorities have agreed to start using heavy duty explosives to try and kill the creature, so they have to get out of there before they get eaten, or blown up, or… actually that’s about it. I suppose they could run out of air or something. This is the first time I noticed how badly done the underwater scenes are. Nobody’s moving like they’re under water, their movements too fast and precise. Wimmer’s the worst offender, moving around like he’s lighter than air. I also noticed every time the Leviathan appears, they use the same piece of CGI, like an episode of “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.” Only less roboty and awesome.

Case and Blay trap themselves in tunnel the creature was using to get into the Loch, only to discover that it’s an active nest, causing Blay to have another seizure and start killing the unborn Leviathans (Leviathi?) whist screaming, “YOU KILLED MINE, I’LL KILL YOURS!” This of course angers Mummy, who promply attacks Blay, who uses his last moments to blow the fuck out of everything with a depth charge. Case of course miraculously survives when he’s found washed up on the beach by a ginger biker, and surprises the rest on his team, sneaking up on them when they’re mourning him by seemingly skipping stones. Elizabeth hits/kisses him, and that’s that.

I’ll be honest, this was a really difficult film to review. I mean, it’s a bad film, if you haven’t realised that by now I don’t know what to say, but it wasn’t bad enough to get the juices flowing. It’s just your average made-for TV/direct-to-video flick, nothing more, nothing less. I struggled to get through it the first time, and watching it again just now was just a chore. Above everything else, it’s boring, and it’s hard to be entertaining about something that bores you.

FINAL VERDICT.

BINNED.

Until next time, I’m The Cheap Arse Flim Critic, and I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick arse… and I’m all out of bubblegum.

RATING: 18.

RELEASED: 1999.

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: BRAD SYKES.

STARRING: JENNIFER RITCHKOFF, MICHAEL TAYLOR, TIM YOUNG, BETHANY ZOLT, COURTNEY TAYLOR.

GENRE: SLASHER HORROR.

BOUGHT FROM: POUNDLAND.

PRICE: £1.00 (DUH).

It’s never a good sign when a DVDs opening menu manages to annoy you, is it? I put the disc in my player, sat through the opening title cards, and up came said menu, looking halfway decent for a discount DVD, it has to be said. I didn’t see any of the four onscreen options highlighted, so I started pressing up and down on my remote, hoping to spot the cursor. This, to speak Internet, was a fail. Okay, I thought to myself, no problem, my player was obviously having a brain-fart. It’s done this before, and in the past I’ve been able to fix it the same way most electronic equipment can- turning it off and on. So I did that, sat through all the bullshit again…

… and still nothing.

At this point I was starting to think I’d bought a defective disc that I’d have to throw away without even reviewing, but I wasn’t beaten yet. I had to be missing something. I decided to get a better look by putting my face up as close to my TV as possible (think how close you used to get as a child just before one or both of your parents yelled at you). This wouldn’t be a problem were it not for the fact that my entertainment set-up has my TV mounted on a wall in front of my bed, meaning I have to stand on the blasted thing to do this. So I do this, feeling silly and more than a little undignified, and start pressing buttons on my remote again. That’s when I saw it. There was a cursor. The words did become highlighted… in the palest shade of yellow I had ever seen, almost imperceptible to the naked eye. Then I clicked to start the movie, and found it turned to an equally-slight shade of baby blue.

I don’t get it. How can you screw up the main menu of your DVD this badly? Here’s a hint to anybody looking to put out independently-produced DVDs- MAKE YOUR MENUS EASY TO NAVIGATE. Yellow? Blue? This is a horror movie. What’s wrong with, say, BRIGHT RED? And when you actually select something, how about, I don’t know, A DARKER SHADE OF RED? And I know there are people out there reading this who are saying, “Well, maybe you’ve got the colour and/or brightness settings on your TV wrong.” And maybe they’re right. But that’s not the point, the point is, I don’t have to alter the way I have my TV set up for any of my other DVDs, so why should I make a special exception for this one? Christ that annoyed me. It was at that point I decided to watch all the DVDs I review on my laptop.

Anyway, movie.

The film opens with two bird watchers walking through a forest, the guy played by easily one of the sleeziest-looking men I’ve ever seen. The woman babbles about birds a bit, notices the guy staring at her arse, they flirt (“You’re supposed to be looking at birds, not me.” “Can’t I do both?”), before they launch into… actually, I don’t know what to call it. I really don’t want to call it a sex scene, because neither of them make any attempt to remove anything from the waist down. I don’t even want to call it a dry humping scene, because they’re not moving around that much. We see boobies thought, which is the only thing this scene (and in many ways this movie) has going for it. This goes on forever, by the way. At one point she is literally straddling the cameraman, rubbing her chest and reaching down as if to stroke his cheek. I can remember when this would’ve been the height of erotica. I miss being 12. Shortly after this, they’re both dispatched with by The Clown from Slipknot. I’m not joking, that’s exactly what he is, just in a dark gray jumpsuit instead of an orange one. I’d be more ashamed about knowing what The Clown From Slipknot looks like if I wasn’t so distracted by the fact that I’m bored shitless with killer clowns. Can’t another circus act get a look in? How about a lion-tamer that kills people by throwing lions at them. MONEY.

Following this, we’re finally introduced to the main characters/sacrificial lambs of the piece. You’ve met them before- there’s the woman who doesn’t think this is a good idea (we know this because she reads about the missing girl in the paper and pretty much says, “I don’t think this is a good idea”); her boyfriend, who does, because he thinks it’ll be good for their strained relationship (which didn’t seem so strained five minutes ago when they were fucking in the shower) (we don’t see the woman’s breasts in that scene by the way, which leads me to believe she’s somehow related to the director in some way); his arsehole friend (who we’re shown is an arsehole when he goes through the entire movie barely uttering a line that isn’t in some way dickish); and his spoilt, bratty girlfriend (who we know is spoilt and bratty because she takes a huge case she can barely carry camping, and also dares to take pride in her appearence). Note that I’m not using their names. I’m doing that for two reasons- 1) it really doesn’t matter what they’re called, they’re drawn with such broad brushstrokes their names may as well be Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy, and 2) on a more serious note…

… I barely know who these characters are. And I don’t mean I’m unaware of their hopes and dreams or anything like that, I mean I barely know their names. One of the first rules of screenwriting is, you need to get the names of characters into the heads of your audience as soon as humanly possible.They actually don’t start off too badly in this regard. We’re not given names for the two birdwatchers until the very end, but even by slasher standards they’re just meat, so it doesn’t matter. We also find out that the name of the male lead’s character really quickly, as the female lead screams “STEVE!” into his face the second he pulls back the shower curtain. After that though is where it starts to go wrong. The next scene has two people in it, and is intercut with a scene featuring another person by way of a phone call. When the sequence starts, I can only name one of the people on my television. When it ends, that’s still the case. I can however name te Arsehole’s girlfriend (“Nicole”). So the movie sees fit to name characters that aren’t even in the sequence I’m currently watching, but I have no idea who’s talking? That boys and girls is a perfect example of bad writing. Infact, it get worse; we don’t actually get the main female character’s name (“Tricia”) until we’re over 15 minutes into the movie and she’s been in 4 scenes, 3 of them dialogue heavy, and (I’m not making this up) we don’t get a clearly audible mention of the secondary male character’s name (“Jay”) until we are over 31 minutes in. And this is a 72 minute movie, credits included. I know what probably happened, the guy’s writing the script and, because he’s writing character’s names down every time they say something, he’s forgot to have those names come out of people’s mouths. It’s an easy mistake to make, but at some point somebody should have realised this and fixed it. How hard would it have been to have had somebody just say someone’s name? It’s even more unforgivable when you take into account the fact that they did this with a few characters, including the crazy old man who tells them to stay away from Camp Blood, who says his own name within thirty seconds of being on screen (“Thatcher”).

So anyway, they meet up with their guide, get to the camp, there’s some making out, some horseplay on a swing and some shots of The Clown From Slipknot seemingly riding a bicycle. It’s all basically filler until the good stuff starts, which is the second they step out of their tents the next morning to find their guide seemingly barbequed. Cue lots of screaming, infighting, some vomiting and some truly ludicrous assumption provided by Tricia (“IT WAS THE CLOWN!” “THIS IS A GAME TO HIM!”). If you’re thinking this will build to The Clown From Slipknot toying with them in an evil, cerebral manner, separating and killing them one-by-one, well, you’d be wrong. He thinks it’d be a much better idea to COME RUNNING AT THEM FROM OUT OF THE UNDERGROWTH. And then gets PUNCHED IN THE FUCKING FACE, BEFORE LEGGING IT. I laughed so hard. It was at this point that I looked at the timer to see this movie only had around 20 minutes left. 20 minutes to kill at least three people? This is going to rule.

So things go at a breakneck pace from here… Steve heads off in hot pursuit of The Clown From Slipknot… there’s an awesomely bad knife-fight, complete WITH “SWOOSH” sound effects for the knife swings and a slow-motion effect that’s just that thing you can do with your camcorder that makes it skip every other frame… Steve bites the big one (it’s difficult to feel for a guy who decided to chase after the known killer with the really big knife rather than take this opportunity to flee for his life)… Nicole is kidnapped when The Clown From Slipknot just casually walks up behind the others when they’re bickering… we get this movie’s lone fairly creative kill, when Jay accidently stabs Nicole himself when she sneaks up behind him having somehow escaped. In a better movie, this would actually have been a great moment… Jay gets a good, old-fashioned neck-snapping… Thatcher from right at the beginning is shown to be in league with The Clown From Slipknot… Tricia manages to save herself by GRABBING THE BLADE OF THE KNIFE WITH HER BARE HAND (which baely seems to hurt), and then the film becomes the most obvious rip-off of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” She’s literally running down the street covered in blood, screaming, with the killer making chase and swinging his weapon around. All that’s missing is the “BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ” sound-effect. It all comes to to a glorious climax though, as Thatcher runs over The Most Obvious Dummy You’ve Ever Seen Dressed Like The Clown From Slipknot, before getting hacked to death. It’s then revealed that the killer was the guide all along.

OR WAS IT? Well… I dunno, really. The ending really doesn’t make any sense, and makes less sense due to the fact that all three main cast members return playing THREE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS. I really don’t feel like going into it, I think I’ve written far too much about this film already, and I’m not done yet.

From a technical standpoint, the best way you could describe the production value here is cheap and nasty. There’s one scene set around a camp fire where the story of The Clown From Slipknot it told (girlfriend fucks around on him, he goes insane, he kills them both, starts wearing a clown mask for some reason), where the sounds of the crickets and general forest life goes up and down depending on who’s talking. The effects aren’t good, but they were trying, I’ll give them that, and the first killing of the movie, where the guy gets stabbed through the chest and the blade comes out through his back, isn’t too bad. It’s hard to pass comment on the acting too, as nobody is given anything to really sink their teeth into beyond their expected cliches. I suppose the best I can say is I was never embarrassed by anyone, even though I was occasionally embarrassed for them.

There are also some really major logic and continuity errors that should be mentioned. In the scene where the group meet their guide and discover it’s a woman named Harris (yeah, the killer ends up being a woman, despite looking like a heavy-set man and having the strength to snap people’s necks with a flick of the wrist), Jay is all, “You’re Harris?” and even says that he wouldn’t have hired her if he knew she was a woman, but then he also says during the exchange that he spoke to her on the phone. So, he spoke to her on the phone, but couldn’t tell she was a woman? There’s some really confusing stuff that come out of the two birdwatchers being killed at the beginning, too. For a start, the newspaper mentions that the woman is missing, but makes no mention of the man. Was he just so smarmy that nobody missed him? Also, and this is the big one, less than ten minutes into the film, the woman’s carved-up, barely alive body is discovered by two hunters. Let me get this straight, she was missing long enough for it to make the papers, but not long enough for her to, y’know, BLEED TO DEATH? It’s also mentioned that her car was found near the forest, so the area was presumably searched, but they didn’t find this poor woman crying and bleeding out in the middle of a stream? WAT?

But in the end, none of this matters. I could have saved myself all this effort. Because this film could have looked great, had award-worthy performances and been written by a genius, and it still would’ve failed, for one simple reason…

… it’s not scary. Not for a second. There’s no suspense, there’s not a moment when you want to cover your eyes, there’s not even a moment when you jump a bit. Part of this is becase it’s mostly filmed during the day, probably to save money on lighting, but I think it’s mostly because it was written and directed by a man who doesn’t understand what scary is.

The only real extra on offer here is a trailer. Usually the trailer is the most useless extra on the entire disc, but this one, believe it or not, is fabulous- it’s the entire film condensed down into just over a minute. Every kill (including an absolutely hilarious decapitation), every lame line of dialogue, every scream, all capped off by an incredibly bored-sounding narrator intoning , “Due to the graphic nature of this film, no persons under the age of 17 will be permitted to wear 3D glasses.” This was so good, it was almost enough to save this disc…

FINAL VERDICT.

BINNED.

… Almost.

Before I go, a story. I was at the counter at Poundland, purchasing this picec of shit, when the nice, elderly lady working the till saw what I was buying and jokingly asked, “And how old are you, young man?”

Suddenly, I found myself mentally transported back to the days when I would go down to my local video shop and try it on with the owners by trying to rent movies like “Halloween”, even though they had my age on file and I knew for a fact I wasn’t getting anywhere.

“Ay… eighteen,” I answered nervously.

She looked at me strange.

I’m 26.

Until next time, I’m The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall- looking at this night, inhumanly patient, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off.

RELEASED: 2006.

RATING: 15.

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: MIKE LALOE.

STARRING: JAMIE MANDER, EMMA BLAKE, ROB SMITH.

GENRE: TEEN COMEDY.

BOUGHT FROM: POUNDLAND.

PRICE: £1.00 (OBVIOUSLY).

(WRITER’S NOTE: I’M… NOT A VERY BIG FAN OF THIS REVIEW. I WROTE IT BACK BEFORE I’D SETTLED ON MY STYLE, AND AS SUCH THIS ONE’S ALWAYS STUCK OUT LIKE A BIT OF A SORE THUMB TO ME. BUT HEY, ENJOY!)

This is the film that inspired me to do this, believe it or not. It’s not so much that it looked better than the films around it, it just looked a bit… different. When you’re surrounded by movies with titles like “Cheerleader Massacre” and “Camp Blood” (more on those eventually…), a title like “We’ve Got The Toaster” stood out. The cover, featuring a terrified young man in a Zippy T-Shirt set to a red background, also caught my eye. It just looked like something I’d be interested in if I hadn’t seen it in Poundland, which made me think maybe I was being a bit sniffy. And so, here we are. Thank you, “We’ve Got The Toaster.”

I should detail the plot at this point, but I don’t think I need to bother, because it’s so identa-kit to most other teen movies that you could probably fill in the blanks yourself after reading five words- Lance (Jamie Mander) is a nice, not particularly popular 16-year-old, who conspires with his porn-obsessed best friend Henry (Rob Smith) to throw a party when his parents go away, mostly in order to impress Steph (Emma Blake), a girl we start the movie seeing him stalking (there’s no other way of putting it, he’s running around town after her, hiding behind things and sneaking peeks at her). The party of course gets out of hand when more people show up then expected, the police are called, seemingly everyone gets laid except poor Lance (whose name, I’ve just noticed, is hilariously ironic)… you get the idea. It’s every teen comedy since “Animal House.” However, two things set it apart- 1) almost the entire cast actually was a teenager when this was made, as opposed to the usual average of 35 (exaggerating for effect folks. Simmer down), and 2) instead of being set in some leafy American suburb, the action takes place in Royal Tumbridge Wells, and looks like it could be happening down the road from me. Except I don’t live in Royal Tumbridge Wells. I live in Romford. Obviously.

This film is riddled with problems, the biggest being the overall production value. Basically, there is none. I can’t stress enough how small a budget this seems to have been filmed on, so in a way pointing out it looks cheap is a bit like laughing at the drummer of Def Leppard for only having one arm- it’s not his fault, and he’s still doing a damn sight better job than you could in his position. But with that said, I’ve seen movies made on aggressively tight budgets that look and sound better than this. It looks, no lie, like somebody just asked nicely if they could borrow their mate’s Dad’s camcorder and shot it in their spare time. Which is what I originally thought it was, and I was willing to cut it a bit more slack. Of course it looks like a film made by children, it is a film made by children! Y’know? So imagine my surprise when I found out the entire thing was written, directed and shot by adults, chief amongst them writer/director Mike Laloe, who in the “Production Notes” documentary on the disc says his expectations of the project were “zero,” that “we didn’t know what we were doing,” and his idea was “let’s just get a camcorder, get a bunch of kids and make a film” (too easy).

The camera work is pretty shocking, often shaky to the point that it’s distracting. A bigger problem is the sound. Now, I used to be one of those people who had a bit of a chuckle whenever the Oscar for “Best Sound Editing” was announced. I know I wasn’t alone there, too. But after watching this movie, I get it. It’s easy to laugh at the thought of somebody winning an award for sound editing, because when it’s good, you don’t notice it. Here, it’s bad, and dear God, do you notice it. It’s obvious almost the entire movie is working with sound recorded live, and this made certain scenes almost unwatchable, two scenes particularly- one with a bunch of girls walking down a school corridor, the other with the two male leads, talking and smoking near a road. I could barely make out a line of dialogue in either because of the echo and the sound of cars roaring past respectively. I had to turn the sound all the way up and sit really close to my TV to have an idea of what was being said. Again, I’m aware this was done on the cheap and these problems couldn’t have been fixed easily, but couldn’t someone at some point have said, “Y’know what, these locations aren’t working?”

Which is not to say this movie is a disaster. It’s not. Well, from a technical standpoint I suppose it is, but it has other things going for it. The writing, for example, was occasionally flawed (as in sounding a little too much like an adult trying to remember what kids used to talk like, most obviously in Lance describing Steph as “the fittest thing since sliced fit,” which never failed to make me cringe), but for the most part was perfectly decent, with some good lines (“That wasn’t a party, it was half the year ten football team playing Soggy Biscuit”), and characters that, if not quite three dimensional, are at least distinguishable from each other. And when the party abruptly comes to an end and the four remaining characters find themselves trapped in the house, it actually turns into something a little bit unexpected and special, as they discuss their lives and their dreams (literally).

Most of the acting is, to be kind, rough and unpolished, with the two bullies and two indie kids at the party moaning about the music and uttering lines like, “it’s like Kurt Cobain died for nothing,” giving the worst performances of the bunch. The three leads however do alright, even though Emma Blake doesn’t have much to do except be chased after. The two best performances though go to two minor players, Will Bayley and James Green as Ralph and Ian. During the course of the film, they get thrown in a bin, decide to gate-crash the party, steal some non-alcoholic beer (and proceed to get drunk on it), drink mouthwash, show up at the party after it’s finished, and decide to end the night by hyperventilating, which they do until one of them passes out. They’re the clowns of the piece, but they’re having so much fun, and seem to be enjoying working with each other so much, that you just go with it. Bayley also gives the film it’s funniest visual- his chubby little face adorned with a Hitler mustache looking directly into camera as he tries to convince an off-licence clerk he’s old enough to buy beer. I don’t care that he’s not the main character, that should have been the picture on the front of the box. I probably would have pick it up sooner.

So what we have here is a film that, if you can get past the awful camera work, shitty sound, the occasional bad performances and a couple of lines of dialogue that ring untrue, is totally likeable. It’s like a puppy that’s missing an eye and/or a leg- it’s got things wrong with it, but you love it anyway, maybe even because of that. And so, with that admittedly slightly disturbing image in mind…

FINAL VERDICT.

KEPT.

Enjoy leaning against Marv. And don’t believe a word he says. It’s all a goddamn lie.

Off to a good start here. Maybe this was a good idea after all.Not that I was doubting myself or anything.

Until next time, I’m The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and drunk and belligerent is no way to go through life, son.

Ladies & gentlemen, assuming everybody reading this fits into at least one of those catagories, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that we’re living in financially worrying times. Whether it’s known as the actually-quite-cute-and-cuddly-sounding “Credit Crunch,” to the fire-and-brimstone of “Resession,” the effects remain the same. Across the world, people are having to change the way they live, how they feed themselves, how they clothe themselves, even how they entertain themselves.

That last bit is where I come in. Like many of my generation, I’m a pop culture whore. Music, television, video games, and especially movies, these things are my bread & butter. I’ve also in the past been something of a snob, I’m not afraid to admit. As in, I wasn’t above assuming something wouldn’t be very good just because it was cheap. However, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that I can no longer afford to be like this. Literally, I can’t afford it. I find myself living in a PPV-HD-Blu-Ray-Surround-Sound-Plasma-Online World that I’m finding myself steadily priced out of. This is what happens when you have Champagne tastes on a Blossom Hill budget.

So, with that in mind, I decided to change. I decided that, if I’m going to continue living this way, I’m going to have to adapt to the world around me. And I made this decision in my local Poundland, looking at what they had on offer in their DVD section.

I won’t lie. These didn’t look like good movies. Horror mostly, but a few other genres were mixed in there. All seemingly filmed on a budget it’d be insulting to call “shoestring,” starring people who probably only took the part as a favour to a mate. Put bluntly, stuff I normally wouldn’t touch with yours. But these are grave times. And who knows, maybe I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face. Maybe these movies were made with passion and guile, by people who believed enough to not let things like money and quality keep them from putting them out. I mean, let’s be totally honest- if “The Evil Dead” came out today, it’d go straight-to-video, wouldn’t it? You’d probably only be able to find it in the back of some old video shop next to “Jack Frost V.” So maybe a bit of perspective’s in order. And if anyone else is thinking of doing something like this, maybe they’ll need somebody to point them in the right direction, somebody to tell them, “Mate, don’t bother with that, give this a go.”

I have two rules- 1) I can’t have seen the film I’m reviewing before, and 2) it has to have cost no more than £1.00. I’ll be sticking to DVDs, because as cheap as VHS has become, I won’t lower myself to take a step back technologically. I have some standards.

I also have only two ratings- KEPT, if I feel a movie deserves a place in my collection, and BINNED, when I can’t bring myself to let it take up space in my house, even though throwing it away would be deemed wasteful in these tough times.

So that’s it. That’s the plan. So, with that said… could anybody spare a fiver?