The CRATE of DEATH

appy-polly-loggies from the staff here at crate of death. things have been hectic and we've been slacking on the updates.

in the meantime, a question for all you b-movie fans...

setup: we were watching poultrygeist, and then reading some imdb reviews. one called lloyd kaufman the "king of b-movies". now lloyd's a cool guy, and troma gets major credit from me for cheerfully producing shlock and surviving making only schlock. but "king of b-movies"? really?

so we got to talking. i of course nominated william grefe. gil said "don't forget ed wood and roger corman"

so guys, what do you think? who's king of the Bs?

i have to say, i think william grefe, tho maybe not as prolific as some, gets mucho credit for making not only strange cheapie low budget flicks, but for not sticking too close to a formula. i mean, really, how much does "sting of death" have in common with "impulse" other than being set in grefe's stomping grounds (florida).

versatile. i like that.

thoughts?

Okay, I'm schnockered. I am PLEASED to declare our Bottlefield: ERTH drinking game a success.

Here are the rules that we followed (the other rules are CRAP- don't listen to THEM, we are your FRIENDS...):
1 drink whenever anyone says:

• "rat-brain"
• "man-animal"
• "leverage"
• "piece of cake!"
• "blow the dome"
• "home office"
• "crap"-anything (crap-lousy, craphole, what the crap, etc.)

1 drink whenever you see:

• a "wipe" transition

Starts out slow, but you'll be completely smashed within an hour of John Travolta's antics.

I swear it's taken me an HOUR to write this for y'all.

THE NIGHT OF A THOUSAND CATS (1972)
Rated R
Directed by Rene Cardona, Jr.
Avant Films

...Have you ever read the videogame webcomic CTRL+ALT+DEL? Some people read it for the jokes- which I feel is akin to clawhammering your head until diamonds fall out- but I feel it's one of the finest horror comics currently out there. Seriously. Anytime anyone in a CTRL+ALT+DEL strip points out a logical conundrum in a video game, they're stabbed or decapitated- their heads worn a la Ed Gein. Check the archives. It's like taking a nap on Elm Street, or having sex around Jason Voorhees. The Crypt of Terror wished it was that moralizing. In fact, the brutality of a CAD death is directly proportionate to how much of the game's logic you question. So let's all hope and pray that the Mexican horror film Las Noche de los Mil Gatos is never made into a video game, for the holes in its script are profound enough for the overly-sensitive nerd that writes and copy-and-pastes draws CAD to detonate a nuclear warhead.

...I'm sorry. That was an awful and slanderous thing to have said up there. I shouldn't have said that Las Noche de los Mil Gatos had a script.

Just in case you don't speak Spanish, La Noche de los Mil Gatos translates to... well, it used to translate to The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972), but new scientific discoveries- specifically, research showing that this film is nine hundred housecats shy of its titular quota- has proved that it actually means We Have A Helicopter; Look At All The Things We Can Do With Our Helicopter. And if I need to explain this joke to you, you haven't watched enough international low-budget horror films from the 1970's, where padding (or, if you're a fan of international horror, "atmosphere") was king.

Still the video box stands by its erroneous translation, not once... not twice... but triply professing how dangerous the cats are en masse. "Alone, only a harmless pet... one thousand strong, they become a man-eating machine!" It's the kind of PR that would make Karl Rove bury his head in brown paper.

...You see it coming, don't you?

...I CAN HAZ HUMIN FLESH?



HA HA! Ah ha ha HA! Whew! Okay. Now that THAT'S out of my system...

"Now Yogi- take my hand before you cross the street."



This is Hugo. He's got it all: a monastery he inherited and thus turned into a swanky mansion, a private chopper, a metric buttload of cats in a wire pen, and a big, bald mound of monk mutton named Dorgo (um... that's Dorgo! "D"! I know, that threw me off too!) But since none of this makes him happy, he takes to chopping off the heads of the women he loves and storing them forever in glass cases. Why? Because his ancestors also liked to collect things.


(....)


...Well that's the reason the MOVIE gave us. ..YOU don't get any special treatment. Get off your high horse!

After Hugo murders a Playmate of the Month, he disposes of the remains by feeding them to his yowling horde of cats while Dorgo incinerates the body. Oh and I guess Hugo and Dorgo are also cannibals, but the movie forgot about this suggestion ten minutes in so it's only logical that I should follow suit.

And
That's
IT.

The rest of Tenemos un Helicóptero; Mira Todas las Cosas Que Podemos Hacer con Nuestros Helicópteros is Hugo flying about Mexico City in his whirlybird, harrassing beautiful women by flying low and flinging their personal belongings about with the windforce of his propeller. After a couple of these fly-bys, the ladies decide that they have to have his head between their thighs.

"Does this bug you? Does this BUG you? I'm not TOUCHING you..."



One such lady is... someone. No, I don't know. No, I never learned her name. YOU can go to iMDB; I'm writing here. I watched his movie maybe eight times to write about it and I'm not watching it again. What makes it worse is that Hugo's romancing another woman at the same time, and they both look alike. South of the border there's a completely different take on stalkers than up here in the States, because Girl #2 gives Hugo her phone number via outstretched fingers while he's still in the cockpit.

...Yep. That about sums up my feelings towards this movie.



...Well, she is integral to this review, so I'll just call her "Lucky Chick". You see, after Lucky Chick had movie sex with Hugo... you know, "Movie Sex"...? Where the guy lies unmoving atop the woman and kisses the hell out of her neck while she makes faces like she's lying on a Tasmanian Devil? Right.

Anyway, as Hugo was about to show Lucky Chick "something only two people in the world know about" (which is the cue for her to see the heads and get snuffed), a stranded doctor knocks on the front door. With the mood killed, Lucky Chick leaves Hugo to return home. So she's Lucky Chick. The doctor of course got fed to the cats and added to Hugo's collection. Oh- why did Lucky Chick return home? Because her "little girl is home alone"(!) That's right. Numerous times in this movie, little Cathy is left unattended around her parents' mansion and spacious swimming pool while Lucky Chick gets her rocks off. Lovely.

Just tell her parents that you couldn't watch her because you were too busy SMOKING MARIJUANA.



So yeah, the only likable characters in this 88-minute slog are the poor cats, who yowl a lot and make up 1/3 of this film's dialogue (the other two-thirds are human dialogue and the idling of internal combustion engines). In fact if you hate cats, you might enjoy this film- one cat's flung over the twenty-foot-high cage. Later in the film, Hugo dunks him in a swimming pool. (It's the same cat. Maybe it's a stunt cat. Whatev.) On a related note, some doves get shot in a Dick Cheneyian display of excessive riches on Hugo's estate. For real. Ah, the love I have for this film simply grows and grows.

Fortunately the cats get their moment to shine when Lucky Chick foils Hugo's attempt to kill her. The pen cage gets torn open, allowing the 1,000 minus 900 cats to devour Hugo while Central America's Shittiest Mom escapes with her life.

...Oh yeah, there's Dorgo, but he doesn't have much to do except lose at chess to Hugo. Then Dorgo wins, but then he's thrown into the cats and his head is added to the collection.

"Uhhh. Good game, boss." ...Hey! I made a joke! Hugo! BOSS!! HA ha ha ha ha! I wish I was dead!!!



So. Why does Hugo decide to collect human heads? Dunno. Why does Hugo have so many cats? Dunno. Why does Hugo turn to cannibalism? Dunno. Why does Hugo add the heads of strangers to a collection of heads of intimate partners? Dunno. Why does Hugo go to the trouble of chopping up corpses into cat food when he has an incinerator? Dunno. Why doesn't Hugo collect just any human heads, since he's got a helicopter and thus the means to travel anywhere? Dunno. Why is Lucky Chick's husband not bothered by the stalking Hugo just sitting on his bike in their driveway? Dunno. Why is no one bothered by low-flying helicopters on their property? Dunno. Why did Lucky Chick find Hugo attractive even though her husband is obviously rich and handsome? Dunno. Dunno, dunno, dunno.

...The Night of a Thousand Hours Cats. Oh wait, there was a flashback explaining why Hugo turned to killing- nope, never mind; it only explained that he's always been killing beautiful ladies; fuck it!

This review was a long time coming- and not just because I missed last week. Our friend Tom of Dark Destinations gave this film to me years ago on the condition that I review it. Um... yay? That was about four years ago and I'm still trying to see the benefit of this "deal".

"Here, Gil! It's a box jellyfish! The nematocysts in its tentacles will painfully kill you in four minutes! You can have it- but only if you drape it over your face!"
"Sounds great, Tom!"

-The Gil-Monster

Buy me!

...to keep you all amused while we work up the latest review... it's kinda one of those movies that should only be attempted by trained professionals wearing hazmat materials...

(note: this is by the same crew that brought you "godmonster of indian flats". we haven't yet seen "roseland" but rest assured, when we do, you all shall be in on that pain! heheheee

wait a sec... is that my career lying in a bloody pancake on the asphalt?

movie: impulse
name: matt stone (sorry, no partner in crime named trey)
real name: gigolo tiberius kook
hometown: somewhere in florida
likes: garish patterns that make your eyes bleed, collars that touch your shoulders, money, murder
dislikes: balloons, kids, flashbacks
memorable quote: "people like you oughtta be ground up and made into dog food!"

ah, imdb and (name censored)- twin enablers of my bad movie fixation. i discovered impulse almost by accident- way back when tanqueray still made "malacca". boba and i had a shatner-off. he smugly thought he was a shoe-in with "incubus". i HAD to do what i could to one-up him. a bit of time on imdb turned up "impulse". i wandered off to (name censored). couldn't find it on the shelves. guy at the counter who knew us said "you're not renting anything tonight?" increduluously. we explain we're looking for a very specific movie. he pulls up imdb. then he vanishes into the back, comes back with an unlabelled vhs cassette, pops it into a tv/vcr combo, plays a couple minutes and says "is this it?" i don't see shatner yet, and i have NO idea if this is what i'm looking for, but i say "ok, we'll take it"

so yeah- incubus was pretty bad, but in a snoozy b+w esperanto kind of way. "impulse" on the other hand... well not much beats shatner as some kind of gigolo with a traumatic past who has a habit of sucking on his pinkie a la doctor evil whenever he's stressed. he also wears fabulously 70s outfit and chases harold "odd job" sakata through a carwash, with intent to kill! to spill the beans any more would be to spoil the fun, although, sadly, last i knew, the film is pretty much out of print and you'd have to dig up a bootleg of it or come visit us crate of death owners to check it out.

ahhh, william grefe. you are an overlooked genius in your own very special b-movie way. i'd watch a dozen of your films over one m night shamalamadingdong piece.

MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION (1997)
Rated PG-13
Directed by John R. Leonetti
New Line Pictures

I'm a big fan of the Mortal Kombat games. I realize that this likely throws any and all Street Fighter II fans into a tizz like that of the True GamerTM, enticing some to berate me for favoring flash over substance and being void of skills- sorry, skillzzzzzzzzzzz. It's true. To the disappointment of all, I prefer copious gallons of blood and gore over Japan's hilariously racist perception of different cultures- though to be fair, every Russian I've met does have bad hair and a network of body scars, and does travel the world in red Speedos, looking for people to wrestle. As for the gaming prowess required for Street Fighter- which involves flinging Fireball after Fireball after Fireball after Fireball after Fireball and then busting the unblockable anti-air attack when your opponent, sick of watching the health piss out of their life bar, tries jumping over the flames- I can do that, but I just can't summon up the chi required to be a DOUCHEBOWL.

...You SF types are just jealous because the Mortal Kombat movie, while not quite The Return of The King, utterly smokes the big-screen adaptation of Street Fighter, where Jean Von Damn Clam, Kylie Minogue, and a guy whose name everyone mispronounces "RYE-oo" must stop the evil M. Bison from making the beloved actor Raul Julia make his last movie on Earth a shitty one. (SPOILER ALERT: They fail.) To cap this Flawless Victory, we needed a Finishing Move- which was the release of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997). Unfortunately finishers in MK are tricky affairs, requiring multiple joystick and button inputs to pull off in a short time limit. The sight of a failing fatality is that of a ninja jumping around in place for no damned reason in the company of a dazed man- which sums up the viewing of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation precisely.

Weird crap starts going down the second your movie player fires up- which is just as the heroic, baggy-shirted Liu Kang, the beautiful but dull Princess Kitana, Lieutenant Sonya Blade (we know she's a lieutenant because her short shorts are khaki-colored) and their fellow martial arts warriors are about to get jiggy for pwning the evil Shang Tsung in the first MK movie.The Shaolin temple goes asplodey, purple lightning cracks the sky, Shang Tsung's CEO Shao Kahn turns up with a delightfully unintimidating extermination squad of centaurs and brightly-colored chunky ninjas...

(giggle) Um... guys, I got this. No, really- sit this one out. I'll safeguard Earth (snigger)

...and most shocking of all (if you'll pardon that pun) Raiden- Thunder God and mentor to Liu Kang and his comrades- transforms from Christopher Lambert (KREEEES-to-phooooor-lam BAAAAAAAAAAAIRRRRRRR) into... James Remar! You know! Harry Morgan, from the awesome Showtime series Dexter? He looks goofy now, but fret not: Harry Raiden will sacrifice his immortality for both a permission slip to Outworld (I don't get it either) and a swanky Sting-style haircut.

"Shao Kahn violates the rules of Mortal Kombat- but NOT the Code of Harry!"

Understandably, Liu is kinda torqued over all this. "I thought by winning the Mortal Kombat tournament, we kept those portals closed!" You see, the reason we humans need to win these stupid contests is to keep the horrors of Outworld off Earth. Personally, I've noticed that whenever Outworld warriors are around, techno-music is playing- as if the soulless music invites similarly soulless aberrations to our world (heavy metal be damned). Somebody turns on The Future Sound of London and Cyrax shows up, hitting people. Coincidence???

(World, we could go two out of three rounds with sword-armed demons and pastel-clad ninjas for a thousand more millennia- OR we could throw all of the world's Moby and Fat Boy Slim CD's into a big-ass bonfire. It warrants experimentation, in any case...)

Hey, that's still better than Raiden's explanation for breaching the portals. "What closes can be opened again", offers Harry Raiden. Oh. Thank you. Don't worry, gentle viewers- Lt. Sonya Blade calls him on that bullshit for you. But before Raiden can explain, a new Outworld menace strides in- the destructive siren Queen Sindel. She's about the same age as her daughter Kitana, which we will forgive because Sindel, played by Musetta Vander, is carstoppingly hot.

Huh! Huh-huh! GURRLL!!! Huh-huh! Realm's yours, doll! Ah-WOOO-gah! Ah-WOOO-gah!!

Shao Kahn's presence on Earth is enough to merge it with Outworld and devastate it, which will happen in six days if Raiden and his chosen warriors cannot stop him. Retreating from Kahn and his hordes, our heroes regroup. Alas, our heroes are not ready to face Kahn. They must first discover the secret behind Kahn's power, which will prove dangerous because the script cannot make up its mind over what said secret is. Really- the Chosen One is like, twelve people, and it's never the same person twice. Utterances of "[insert name here] is the key to all of this!" almost equate the number of fight scenes in this film.

About the fight scenes... sigh. Y'know New Line, the reason we play Mortal Kombat is so we can rip the ribcage out through the eyesockets of anyone who breaks our stride. We don't play it for the fighting! This is a MATURE-rated video game! I want close-ups of freshly dripping brains in the raised fists of victorious fighters- NOT endless slo-mo choreographed backflips! Hell, Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom is more faithful to the spirit of Mortal Kombat than this movie ABOUT Mortal Kombat!

Of the fight scenes, some stand out. For example, Harry Raiden gets to fight some ninjas- fortunately his opponents are honorable enough to choose a darkened environment to fight in so James Remar's stuntman can take them down. Liu Kang fights a big ol' rubbery Baraka, which only warrants mention because when Baraka falls in a fire pit, it's actually earlier footage of the purple ninja Rain, falling in the same fire pit for cheesing off Kahn. And Sonya fights Mileena, and... well...

WE'VE turned Outworld into a GIANT MUHHHHHHHHHHHHD pit!!!

Exceeding the fight scenes in quantity are scenes of MK warriors telling Liu Kang that he is "not ready" to fight Shao Kahn. Raiden tells Liu he's Not Ready. Nightwolf tells Liu he's Not Ready. In his five minutes of screen time (no need to thank us, fanboys!) Sub-Zero makes an ice bridge, punches Scorpion a few times, and then leaves- but doubles back to tell Liu in case no one's told you, you're Not Ready. I can picture Liu getting vocally angry in front of Saturday morning television: "Yes, fuck you YES I CAN HANDLE the 'INTENSE FRUIT FLAVOR' of a Berry Blast STARBURST! FUCK you! BRING it!"

The heroes split up. Lovebirds Liu and Kitana head off so Liu can stop being Not Ready. This goes tits up immediately: Scorpion kidnaps Kitana as Liu Kang is distracted by a wheatpenny. Meanwhile, Raiden suggests more manpower (oh, how wise) and leaves, presumably to get his foster son after Kahn. One sedative later, the Emperor of Outworld will be a blood slide behind an AC vent and Earthrealm will be saved. What can I say; I had one more Dexter joke in me.

Sonya recruits her commanding officer Jackson "Jax" Briggs, who has given himself big metal arms that can punch through walls. Oddly, Jax is played by Lynn "Red" Williams, formerly of the San Diego Chargers, the LA Rams, and American Gladiators. He doesn't NEED cybernetic sleeves. He should give those stupid things to someone with no upper body to speak of- Kate Moss, perhaps. There, Raiden. One more warrior to defend Earth.

There's really not much more you need to know than this. A lot of this movie are the Earth Warriors walking around canyons, not working together after Raiden has specifically told them to work together. There's even a stupid Sleeping Beauty-esque sequence where Kitana tries to break Shao Kahn's influence over Sindel. But it turns out to be a trap! Which doesn't trap anybody. Look, I watched it three times this week and I still can't explain that. Shao Kahn bellows a lot; mostly the word FAIL! And that four-armed Amazon up there...? Yeah, she falls to the ancient Looney Tunes Fu technique of "Squashed Under Heavy Object".

...Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. The movie's tagline is "Destroy All Expectations". I hail such truth in advertising- you should too.

...So out of the tyrannozillion characters in the MK game series, who else made the cut...? Well, Sindel's in it, and so is Sindel... Sindel, Sindel, Sindel, and of course, the MILF of videogames: Sindel. Swoon.

"Kitana, now that we're finally alone- what does your mom like to do for fun...?"


...Wait! WAIT! A purple ninja named "Rain"!!! ...I just GOT that...!

-The Gil-Monster

Buy it!

hi everyone!

welcome to a new feature. i'm calling it "weekly bad guy" cause if the interests section is any indication, lj will prolly insist on 4 words or less for a tag, and i want to keep these entries easily findable.

i'd call it "monster of the week" but i have a feeling folks like damodar and thorg will be making appearances, so in order to include both villians and monsters, i'm going with "weekly bad guy"

anyhow, here we go. the inaugural post for "weekly bad guy" is a critter that's memorably charming, in a mangy pathetic kind of way.



movie: godmonster of indian flats
name: the hybrid
real name: siphonaptera ovis aries
hometown: silverdale county
likes: yellow phosphorus, hippie veterinarian chicks, picnics
dislikes: high gas prices, cold night air, lassos
memorable quote: raurgh-huff-grunt-groan

i think the first time i saw this movie, my immediate reaction to the titular monster was "wow... so some art student found mummified animal remains in the desert, realized he had a project due the next day that he totally had NO inspiration for, and well... *this* was the result. i bet it'd've looked cooler if he started 2 weeks earlier. y'know, when the project was assigned"

this monster really has to be seen to be believed- the stills don't do it justice. imagine a bipedal... thing- covered in mangy beige wool, with a vaguely sheep-skull head. hunched over like a flea. oh, and one of its upper body appendages is kinda short and t-rex-ish, and the other is at least twice its length, nearly dragging on the ground. he must've been bred for meat- he has giant bunnyish haunches that wouldn't look at all out of place in a roasting pan with those frilly white things stuck on the ends of them. these haunches also add to the overall flea impression (he looks like he might be able to leap tall buildings with a little CGI help)

as dangerous monsters go, i'm not sure this guy warrants the whole torch-mob that's chasing him. he (fatally) scratches up some cowpoke,
scares a bunch of picnicing kiddies, and takes out a gas station and the... what, two? people there with a surgically precise hip-check to a gas pump (chevron!). needless to say, the poor beastie inspires pity. if only for the poor guy waddlling around under those 50lbs of hot moth-eaten wool.

ICED (1988)
Rated R
Directed by Jeff Kwitny
Prism Pictures

For our first Crate Of Death review, we thought we'd take a crack at my personal favorite movie genre- slasher flicks. And no slasher flick is complete without featuring a down-on-their-luck celebrity. In the case of Iced (1988), it's Wednesday Addams. No, not Christina Ricci- Lisa Loring. The O.G.W.A. from the awesome-beyond-awesome Addams Family TV series. Here she is, all grown up. Lisa plays Jeanette in this movie (but because we're wise-asses, we're going to continue to call her Wednesday) and she gets naked. A lot. This is one thing I'll credit Iced for- its glut of nudity. It's almost enough for me to forgive its stunning unintelligence. All right, and its lack-witted characters. But then there's its monkey-written script. And editing that seems to have been done by an enraged fiddler crab. Let's just move on...

Iced packs one of the longest prologues in all of slasher moviedom. As night falls over a ski resort, the sharp-featured and perpetually exercising Trina is being courted by two hotdoggers. Her choice of the unintelligent Cory over her whiny date Jeff predictably sends Jeff into a rage, which unpredictably means that Cory has to ski race with Jeff. 10% Pure Adrenaline commences as Jeff and Cory casually ski down the bunny slope to a thumping Casio score until Jeff actually wipes out.

Later at the ski lodge (yes, the prologue is still going) Trina is shacking up with Cory and Jeff is being verbally abused by Cory's gaggle of asshole friends- John, Diane, Eddie, Wednesday, and Carl- all of whom are thirty-somethings pretending to be teenagers. Carl in particular is a hateful and lecherous toxic-waste-dump-of-a-man. Escaping the group, Jeff confesses aloud of his treatment at a Swiss clinic and that he wishes he could kill all of them- although I don't know who could find it in themselves to kill any people like these...

I know academic decathlon members who wouldn't hang out with these guys.

Back in Cory's hotel room (yes, MORE PROLOGUE!) a schnockered Jeff kicks down the door where Trina and Cory are arm-wrestling(!) and whines "You fuckers!" Overpowered by (in a progressive touch) Trina, he begrudgingly suits up in his blue snowsuit and red goggles, out to conquer the bunny slope that defeated him. While Trina and Cory have ubernude hotel sex as loud as humanly possible, Jeff drunkenly pulls himself up the hill, the director trains the camera on his bumbling Gore-Texian backside.

I could watch this ALL DAY; thank you, movie.

This time around, the bunny slope claims Jeff's life as he slides off a cliff and chestplants himself onto a rock. As he dies, we notice that his red visor now has a jagged hole in it. These goggles are going to provide the basis for our "Killer Cam" look that every masked stalker flick is supposed to have. Whenever Iced gives us Maniac's-Eye-Vision, it's like we're looking outside the mouth of a shark with acetate dentures.

We get a 4 YEARS LATER caption and- dead jilted psychos be damned! -Trina and Cory are now married. Turns out their last name is MacGyver, but the movie never specifies if they can or can't build a haphazard machine from a mish-mash of junk drawer components (though this is the technique that director Jeff Kwitny uses). As Trina so helpfully points out by reading an expository ski brochure, the MacGyvers and all of their obnoxious friends are headed to Snow Peak (oh, original name for your ski resort) for their first ski vacation ever since what's-his-name impaled himself to death. The gang all looks exactly the same and Cory is still as smart as ever, saying things like "Ah, 'luxury'- the very word gives me shivers!" Um, EVERYONE likes that word, dumbass.

Not caring that the door to the lodge is unlocked, Cory, Trina, Carl and Wednesday settle in and wait for the rest of their friends to show up. And- as I am so fond of saying when writing about films like this- we wait with them. This gives Carl a chance to pivot a bedroom mirror and use it to snort up more snow than what's currently outside, and Wednesday a chance to both fellate a carrot (!!) and launch an irritating subplot.

Wednesday Addams always enjoys a good Chardonnay with an unwashed carrot.

It seems her boyfriend Eddie is likely an untrue slimebag, and that she should be able to do whatever she wants with her life. For example, she should be able to change her clothes on her way to showing John and Diane which bedroom they're staying in (one of my favorite of this film's numerous continuity gaffes). No man can hold HER down! Unbeknownst to the group, Eddie has already died on his way to the lodge. A mysterious man in a broken red visor and a blue snowsuit has ground him underneath a backhoe. We get a shot of the backhoe's wheels spinning in place, and- wait, what?

The Best ever Kitchen ever Scene ever in all of movies EVER.

The gang's all here, and preparation can begin for the party. Check this shit out: Wednesday is sitting in what looks to be the kitchen sink, chugging wine and STILL telling everyone AND HERSELF how she deserves so much better than Eddie. On the right is Diane, chopping up carrots in a manner that can only mean death to everyone in the room (even with my defunct kitchen skills, I've seen and used a cutting board.) And Trina- remember how I said Trina was perpetually exercising? Here she is, doing modified push-ups against the kitchen counter! Later, she will actually (Zero Sarcasm) pick up a frickin' rolling pin and begin doing curls with it.

So dinner's begun, and all the friends regale each other with stories about their lives. Trina gives us a story about stuffing her bra in her youth, Carl stares at everyone's chests, Diane whimpers about how much she hates John's success as a pediatrician, and Alex Bourne- the sales rep of Snow Peak Lodge- shows up to mack on Wednesday. Here comes Wednesday's nude scenes- almost all of them featuring Alex- or should I say, Joseph Alan Johnson, the screenwriter. Oh, so THAT'S how it works; I get it.

Anyway, you're probably wondering the same thing I am at this point- didn't this movie have a psycho killer, or something? Well, John did find a newspaper clipping in his bedroom reporting Jeff's death, and blamed Carl for putting it there. "I figured you being the PERVERT you are, you'd have put it there!" Um... you're a doctor, John: how can you be unclear of what it is perverts do in other people's bedrooms? But yeah, that's been about it. The horror stuff is spaced out just enough to make you think you're watching a direct-to-video remake of The Big Chill. A remake with a bizarre homoerotic subtext, that is...

An upcoming scene from Brokeback Mountain 2: Cool Runnings.

Wednesday tells Alex about her upbringing and that her parents, while not mega-rich, were a well-to-do bunch. (I call bullshit! Gomez and Morticia were loaded!) As Wednesday and Alex swap each other's spit, she gets a call from Eddie who says he's "with Jeff now", and then hangs up. When Alex states that he invited Jeff as well as everyone else, not realizing he was dead, the shit hits the fan and the group goes into hysterics. Who made the call? Was it Eddie? Was it Jeff? File that away for later. Anyway, Alex leaves the frazzled folks his card- in case they need any more dead people invited to functions and gatherings, I'm guessing.

Night falls and the skiiers retire to their beds. We've got like twenty minutes in the film left and no one has died yet- I'm assuming the killer has napped for longer than he meant, maybe? The director prods him awake with a "HEY! RUB THEM OUT!!" and we get fatalities in quick succession. John gets ski-poled in the back of the throat while trying to start his car (I'm still working on the logistics of that) while Diane takes an icicle to the eye. That's pretty much it for the skiing-themed deaths; a fully-frontal nude Wednesday shares her hot tub with a space heater, Carl meets his maker when (gun in hand) he stumbles into a field full of raccoon traps, and Cory- ah yes, Cory- Cory gets stabbed in the chest after he's been lured towards a lone candle and a piece of pie on a plate. HAH! Wile E. Coyote has been trying to catch the Road Runner like this for how long...?

Trina wakes up, and in her search for Cory, finds Wednesday in the Jacuzzi dead- along with a message that appears to be written in coconut shavings and Betty Crocker cake icing:

It's homicidally delicious!

Thinking quickly, Trina grabs the phone and calls... Alex! That's right: Alex. He left his card, remember? ...Well who would YOU have called...? The POLICE, I'd bet. "Police", PFAH! As Alex arrives, Trina grabs the gun off of Carl's frozen body and nods off in the attic. Our blue-coated killer surprises her and wrestles Trina before she fiercely kicks him away- good thing she did all those push-ups against the countertop. Turns out our killer is... the only one left in the cast! Alex! Discovering Jeff's body four years ago, Alex traversed that deadly bunny slope and it claimed his leg. His dreams of being a world-class skiier and businessman dashed, Alex must now stalk promiscuous teens and jump out of snowmen for the bane of horror films everywhere: the Ridiculous Shocker Ending.

...Iced. Wait! You can still be a successful businessman with one leg, Alex! How much, say, tap dancing is required in that field? REALLY.

Oh yeah. Remember the phone call that Wednesday got from Eddie? Well, Eddie was dead. And it would have been Alex, but Alex was in the room locking lips with Wednesday. So who made the phone call? OR... here's a theory: are we bringing up things that the filmmakers forgot about in their quest to get Wednesday Addams naked and on top of a young budding screenwriter?

I could respect Iced for that as well.

-The Gil-Monster


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