Defenestration Week: Day 4

If you guessed that yesterday's defenestree was Kristen (Patricia Arquette) from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, then you are the fucking bomb. That l'il Dream Warrior sailed out the window and right smack into the hearts and minds of audiences the world over in 1987. She dreamed us all into a beautiful dream!

And yes, in all likelihood I made up the word "defenestree". I'm just that cool.

OK, it's time to up the ante for all you smarty pantseseses out there. Take this!

NAME THAT DEFENESTRATION!

Defenestration Week: Day 3

Yessir, those big white bellbottoms surely gave it away- yesterday's diving lassie was none other than Sally (Marilyn Burns) from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ('74). The poor tormented thing was so hardcore she had to jump out of a window on two occasions to get away from Leatherface and Friends. At least she made it out with all her pretty pretty teeth.

OK, here's the next diver...there's a major clue in the photo that should help you get your Jessica Fletcher on and solve the mystery!

NAME THAT DEFENESTRATION!

At this time, I'd like to extend Happy Valentine's Day wishes to everyone- I've got a super secret Valentine's crush on all of you, except of course for the three of you I really can't stand. Raise a glass, and let's hope no one ends the day stuffed into a dryer at the laundromat.

Defenestration Week: Day 2

Thanks to everyone who played along and a big congratulations to all the smarty-pantseseses out there who correctly guessed the answer to yesterday's Defenestration Mystery. 'Twas the faire evil twin Tina (Camilla More) tossed out yon window by Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Pat yourselves on the back!

Oh, and by "evil", of course, I mean "slutty". Same dif.

At any rate, here's today's mystery photo. This one is so easy, even Stevie Wonder could guess it!

NAME THAT DEFENESTRATION!

Defenestration Week: Day 1

Whether it's self-imposed or not, defenestration is a slasher movie staple. We've seen it a million times- most often it's some girl in her underwear who goes flying out the window in slow motion. Let's celebrate breakaway glass and mannequins, shall we?

NAME THAT DEFENESTRATION!

I'll start you off with a fairly easy-to-guess flyer- I'll fill you in on the answer tomorrow.

indulgence

Who loves The Internet?

Answer: we ALL do. Today at Final Girl I'd like to give you a peek behind the magical, pixelated curtain of The Internet in a game I like to call These Are Some Google Search Terms People Have Typed In And Subsequently Found Their Way To Final Girl. Yes, I'm aware that it's an awfully awkward title and I promise I'm working on that.

Given that this is a horror-themed blog, you'd think that people would find me after typing in something like "Laurie Strode" or "My Bloody Valentine", and yes, occasionally that happens. More often than not, though, people type in some weird-ass shit and somehow end up here at the pristine, sweet, sugar and spice and everything nice Final Girl. Here's a big fat crop of my favorites, exactly as they were entered into Google:

scary things (a guy takes his coat and leaves and something pops up)

-My, that would be scary! It's even scarier if you type it like this: "something" pops up.

naaaaaked women

-Yes, with 5 letter As. When you say that out loud, you have to rub your hands together menacingly at the same time.

the girl was restrained and forced fat on her

-I'm...confused. Did a fat person sit on the restrained girl, or did they make her eat fat, or...did they, like, put fat on her head...?

mom hiding spot for a dildo

-NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO times 5874896362148533545632563226.

If I misunderstood your intent and you're considering using your mom as a hiding spot for a dildo, add 23 to the above number.

how to frig a girl

-If you're calling it "frig", chances are you'll never have the opportunity to use any info you might learn.

gimme that big ass girl

-Is this a rap song?

waylon flowers and madame

-I'm so fucking proud of that one.

George Clooney tighty whiteys

-This one has Harlequin reader written all over it.

fannys big holes

-This one is interesting because the meaning changes drastically depending on the punctuation. Consider: "fannys; big holes" vs "fanny's big holes"

does Holly Slattery smell of poo poo?

-I'd think you wouldn't have to ask.

Courtney Thorne-Smith flogging movies

-This is the high water mark of my blogging career. I'm sorry, but if someone types in "Courtney Thorne-Smith flogging movies" and the results have anything to do with me, I feel my work on this planet is complete.

I'm not kidding.

shirley maclaine masturbates

-JESUS FUCKING LOUISEUS. Yes, I'm sure she does, has, or will and why the fuck do you want to know about it??

girls having six with animals

-Phew! Almost thought they meant something else.

As far as I'm concerned, girls can have six with animals all they want. Having four or five is another matter entirely, however.

There you go, a wonderful look at the human psyche. What surprises me almost more than any of those search terms is the fact that there are still many many many people searching for Shannon Tweed info every single day. Of course, I realize that the world don't move to the beat of just one drum.

Now then...how did YOU find me? Really, I'd like to know, especially from people who found Final Girl and keep coming back. The Internet is such massive monstrosity, it still blows me away that anyone's found me at all. So what's your story? And all you lurkers, de-lurk for a moment and chime in, I won't bite.

I save all my flogging for Courtney Thorne-Smith, anyway.

Mini-Event Day 2: The Cavern

You know, if today's movie, The Cavern (2005), had arrived with its other title, WIthIN, plastered on it, I may have skipped watching it on principle and saved myself some pain. Yes, "WIthIN". I don't know who ends up making these decisions, but I really can't fucking stand it when movies play with fonts in an attempt to be clever and edgy. For example:

Dear David Fincher,

Your movie is called Seven, not Se7en. You see, Se7en is pronounced "sesevenen", and that makes no sense.

Love,
Final Girl

Yes, and as you may have noted I said "saved myself some pain"- it takes a rare movie to suck so hard that I cop to that old complaint "Well, there goes 80 minutes I'll never get back", but The Cavern surely fits that bill. Oh, to be suddenly stricken with rampant polydactyly so I could flip this movie off more than twice at a time.

The Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue (plus one nerd) heads to uncharted territory (hundreds of miles deep into Nowhere, Kazakstan) to explore some caves. No one knows they're there, of course, because "secrets travel fast in the caving world". I get the feeling that the group will run into trouble in the caves and no one will be able to rescue them because of this secret-keeping, but who knows. Maybe I'll be wrong!

The night before the expedition, the group sits around a CGI campfire expounding about the mysticism of caves and past tragedies and blah blah blah and who cares because I just said CGI CAMPFIRE. You know what? I don't give a fuck how infinitesimal your budget is, I'm pretty sure you can afford a real fucking fire. If a Cro-Magnon can afford it, then I think it probably falls within your budget.

As you can see, The Cavern and I were not off to a particularly good start. Things continued along the downward spiral as two characters got up in the middle of the night to screw in the mouth of the cave. Gratuitous sex scene in a horror movie? OK, yeah, I'll give you that. But if you're going to add an overly obvious, blatantly gratuitous sex scene to your movie, at least have the characters take off their clothes!

Boy, this review is gonna contain many, many italics, I can tell you that right now.

Once the group enters the cave system, they come to a giant opening in the floor. Because this is uncharted territory, they get to name everything they find; I was hoping they'd call the hole "The Great Minge", but no- they call it "Hell Pit". Ooh, scary.

They descend into Hell Pit and then we, the audience, are in for some of the worst filmmaking I've ever seen in my life. I can only assume that writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi was trying to be artistic with this film, and that's not an ignoble goal, necessarily. I mean, The Shining is a visual masterpiece, but the set pieces and deliberate shots never overpower or outshine the proceedings. Besides, Stanley Kubrick knew what the fuck he was doing. "Artistic shots" in The Cavern means a soft focus effect to the point of haziness (a la the Cybill Shepherd-cam in Moonlighting), jump cuts galore, minimal lighting, shaking cameras, upside-down shots...it's like watching a seizure. In fact, during one sequence in the movie, I actually developed epilepsy and had 36 Grand Mal Seizures in a row.

Minimal lighting in a dark space can be a very effective technique (ahem...The Descent); however, when you choose to use headlamps as the only light source, it's probably not a good idea to constantly have the characters moving towards the camera, because you end up with a whole lot of this:



Am I supposed to tell what the fuck is going on in this movie, or am I being asked where I was last Tuesday around 9pm?

The Cavern had 10 good seconds in it: there was a moment where the group stopped and stood perfectly still because they heard a noise. It was a well-done 10 seconds and it was actually creepy. Then the group was attacked by something and the jumpcuts, screaming, yelling, running, and upside-down trickery began again.

Yes, people continue to get picked off one by one by something indeterminate, some evil force within the cave that has moved a huge boulder over the Hell Pit opening, blocking the way out. The group descends farther into the cave and they decide to lay a trap for the evil force- if they can kill it, they can concentrate on navigating the labyrinth without fear. They lure the evil force into an open area and pump it full of lead- yes, they brought guns- and it seems the evil force is actually some sort of "wolf/bear hybrid".

Sadly, the "wolf/bear hybrid" isn't dead and the group continues to dwindle. When their headlamp batteries go dead, they all resort to using camera flashes in an impossibly rapid succession, bringing on Grand Mal Seizures 37-61.

Eventually, the two female members of the group are the only ones left alive. They find daylight, and as they're crawling towards it we hear "RARR!" and then "EEEEK!" and the screen goes black.

I thought it was over. I thought I could live again, but no...

The girls wake up next to another CGI fire, this time somewhere in the cave. They're naked but for animal pelt blankets.

They spot a big pile of hiking gear and begin to riffle through it, quickly determining that they're not the first victims of the "wolf/bear hybrid" after all. They find clothes, photographs and...an airplane wing. They find some food and water and act like beasts, cramming crap in their mouths and literally going "nummmm nummmnum numm grunt grunt". Then they discover they're eating a person and they barf.

The "wolf/bear hybrid" returns and we learn that it's not a "wolf/bear hybrid" at all- nor is it an evil force. It's...a...

...dude. It's a dude. It's a fucking dude wearing animal pelts and a cow skull!

In a 15 second Grand Mal Flashback, we infer that he lost his family in a plane crash when he was a child and he took to living in the caves. Apparently this means he became Super Cave Man, able to rip men in half, move boulders, climb walls, and survive being hit with a full clip of ammo.

Super Cave Man snaps out of his reverie, kills one girl and rapes the other. The End.

No really, the movie ended in mid-rape. The movie ended in mid-rape!

I try...I've seen some bad movies, as you well know, dear reader, and it's not often that I hate a movie so much that I want to go brush my teeth immediately after viewing it. Even when a movie is bad, I try so very hard to be...smartly critical of it, even when I'm totally taking the piss. The Cavern, though...I can't even rate this movie. I honestly hated this movie. All I can say is fuck this piece of shit movie, I want my 80 minutes back.

This weekend, I'm taking The Descent out to a nice dinner to apologize. I'll buy it candy and flowers and beg its forgiveness, promising never to leave its side again.

Mini-Event Day 1: The Cave

When two films similar in plot emerge on the scene in the same year, who or what is to blame? Is it a matter of imitation or is it IdeaSpace- the notion that ideas float around in the ether of our collective consciousness, waiting to be plucked out? These types of questions arise when you notice a trend in filmmaking, such as the 2005-6 spate of spelunking-gone-awry flicks that hit screens, including The Descent, The Cavern, and The Cave. I’ve practically got an event week on my hands here!

The Cave has probably drawn the most comparisons to Neil Marshall’s The Descent- both feature people, caves, and the monsters who dwell in them- and while it’s fun to read posts on IMDb about which movie would win in a cage match (“I give The Descent a 7 and The Cave a 3.5!” “R U stoopid? The Descent wasn’t scary and The Cave had better monsters!”), the similarities end at the superficial.

A long time ago (30 years) in a galaxy far, far away (Romania), a group of surly…uh, people…find a church tucked away high up in the Carpathian Mountains. Their ultimate goal, however, is the enormous cavern underneath the church. They bust out some TNT and blow a hole in the floor; this, of course, leads to an amazing CGI avalanche / cave-in once they’ve descended underground. The fools! Oh, and by “amazing”, I mean “fake-looking”.

Suddenly we’re back in the present where another group is excavating the church ruins. When the flooded cave system below is discovered, it begs to be explored, which can only mean one thing- it’s time to call in the Elite Supergroup of Cave Diving Scientists! No, wait, not them- we want The hot, twentysomething Elite Supergroup of Cave Diving Scientists! The group, including Jack (Cole Hauser), Charlie (Piper Perabo), and Super Scientist Kathryn (Lena Headey), head into the depths to explore, take pictures, and…explore. This leads to such scintillating exclamations as this, from Charlie: “Did you get a shot of that? It’s sick, dude! Totally rockin’!” Thank god Piper Perabo was hidden behind a mask when she uttered the line- how could she possibly say that with a straight face?

It becomes apparent that the group is not alone in the caves when some large albino tadpole things swim by; when the tadpoles go on the attack, one plot device leads to another until the tunnel collapses and our Sexy Supergroup is trapped. Elder statesman Dr. Nicolai (Marcel Iures) suggests they wait for rescue as they face 90 miles of tunnels to emerge on the other side of the system. Jack reminds him that they are such an elite Squad of Super Sexy Cave Diving Scientists that no one in the world is qualified to rescue them- they can only rescue themselves. Onward they go, swimming towards their inexorable fate.

At this point, you might think “Uh, yeah, ok- The Descent much?”…you might also think that “inexorable fate” makes the movie sound all existential and shit. You might also think “Hey, didn’t Piper Perabo and Lena Headey fall in love and make out in that featherweight same-sex romantic comedy Imagine Me & You? Maybe they’ll make out here!” You’d be right to think any of those things, but allow me to clarify.

First, after the cave-in, this flick really departs in plot from The Descent, and not only because this group of cavers largely comprises muscly men (and because the characters are so thinly written, they tend to solve their problems by punching each other)- the monsters are quite different, which I'll touch on in a sec. Second, I could fill the rest of this review with Camus quotes and big words and this movie would still be little more than sci-fi fluff. Third, no, Piper Perabo and Lena Headey do not make out in The Cave, but if they did, the movie would be at least 23% better.

With the help of Lena Headey’s microscope, we come to learn a few things about the monsters dwelling underground and how they got there- the real monsters, you see, are teeny-tiny parasites that enter the bloodstream and transform the host organism into big, toothy, slimy, pasty, swimming, flying monsters- the monsters stalking our Sexy Scientists are, in fact, the very same surly people who discovered the cave 30 years ago. When a monster scratches Jack, Jack gets infected and very slowly transforms; this gives Cole Hauser a chance to wear funky contacts, glare, and sweat a lot throughout the remainder of the film.

The parasite-transforming-the-host angle isn’t a terrible idea, really, and it even seems somewhat realistic. The Cave, however, takes a good idea and blows it in a simple case of bad execution. I mentioned earlier that the characters are thinly written- that’s probably an understatement. They’re at once both extremely one-dimensional and implausible- they’re in their mid-20s, yet they’re the world’s most elite cave divers AND they're ex-Special Forces? Oh yeah, and they’re "scientists", too. While the men are simply pumped up testosterone cases who argue and punch each other, the women serve to 1) say things like “Totally rockin’!” (Charlie), or 2) get incessantly hit on (Kathryn). I mean, I’m not a Red Cross-certified CPR Artist or anything, but was it necessary to cut open Kathryn’s wet suit to give her mouth to mouth?

Speaking of wet suits, that reminds me. The Cave is chock full of elements that left me scratching my head in wonder. After they’re trapped by the ceiling collapse, Jack instructs the Sexy Supergroup to leave behind any items that aren’t essential to getting out of the cave alive; why, then, does each person change outfits at least twice? In fact, I counted no less than four getups on Piper Perabo on this expedition.

The cave system itself is…in a word, fucking ridiculous. There are sheer rock faces that are so high- thousands of feet- that when a character plunges off one it reminded me of that scene in Lord of the Rings, you know, the one where Gandalf fights that big monster and they fall for 3 weeks. At one point, the characters inexplicably find an icy, glacier-like passage…

…and LITERALLY right around the corner is a giant room I came to call The Flaming Knob Palace.

"I'm gonna learn how to fly- HIGH!"

Of course, I’m not Tomb Raider or anything and so maybe such a thing is possible, who knows. It was ludicrous enough to make me laugh, though, and that’s probably not a good thing.

Actually, I laughed quite a bit during The Cave, so take that for what you will. There’s underwater knife-vs-monster fights, midair knife-vs-monster fights, there’s terrible dialogue, and an ending that simply cracked my shit up as Kathryn reveals the parasite eyes hiding behind her Foster Grants.

While, as I said, both The Cave and The Descent feature people, caves, and the monsters who dwell in them, that’s where the similarities end. The Cave is more action/sci-fi than horror, and as it’s PG-13 it’s a largely bloodless affair. While The Descent delves into psychological horror as well as monster horror, the only thing about The Cave that will make you think are the head-scratchers I posed above. If you’re looking for a bad popcorn monster movie, you’ve found it! I give it 4.5 out of 10 maybe next Piper Perabo and Lena Headey should team up in an antagonistic buddy-cop flick, where Piper Perabo plays a feisty, hardened NYPD detective who’s recently lost her partner in a shoot-out with a scum-sucking drug dealer and Lena Headey plays her new partner, an uptight British import. They don’t get along, of course, and Piper Perabo calls Lena Headey some name like “Buckingham” (for the Palace, natch) and Lena Headey will scold Piper Perabo for going against regulations and breaking the rules. Then the movie will kinda ripoff Ladykillers (starring Marilu Henner and Thomas Calabro) and the duo will have to investigate a series of murders at an exclusive Chippendales-style strip joint, that way there could be lots of musical numbers wherein screaming ladies wave dollar bills at breakdancing cowboys. Eventually the girls solve the crime and bag the perp, Lena Headey has learned something about New York bagels, Piper Perabo has learned something about clotted cream, and they’re not only partners but they’re also now besties. The film ends with a freeze-frame of a high-five and “Paradise City” by Guns-n-Roses starts blaring over the credits. Oh yeah, and they make outs.

love to love you, baby

Do you read The Horror Blog? Well, you should because it rocks. All the cool kids are reading it. You should definitely check it out on Fridays, wherein various folks from the horror blogosphereouniverse come together for The Horror Roundtable to expound on the weekly topic of choice. I've laughed, I've cried, I've made like a zombified Dorothy Parker.

This week's topic is "Name Your Favorite Erotic Scene from Any Horror Film"- go read the results and chime in with yours. I am curious (about your choices).

Animals Run Amok Week: Day 5

Another Super Spectacular Event Week comes to a close here at Final Girl, and what better movie to end the week with than Gnaw: Food of the Gods 2 (1989)? There's surprisingly little info on this movie out there on The Internerd, which I find more than a little shocking. At the film's end, as the tape rewound, I ruminated for a bit on how I must now be one of the cool kids who's seen this flick- surely the entire world adores it as I do, and now I belong! Judging from the 2.1/10 rating on imdb, however, it seems that I'm in a Club of Me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Gnaw is good, oh my heavens no; what I'm saying is that Gnaw is a total Mellencamp- and for those of you not hip to my lingo yet, that means this movie hurts soooo good.

After a short scene introducing us to a group of loudmouth animal rights protesters at Some University, we cut to an...uh, I think it's supposed to be an asylum of some kind out in the woods. Dr. Treger (Jackie Burroughs) has placed a frantic phone call to Dr. Hamilton (Paul Coufos of Chopping Mall) at Some University- she desperately needs his assistance right this second and can he please come over and please hurry! Ham arrives on the scene and in the biggest cinematic surprise since Jaye Davidson's sausage and eggs played peek-a-boo in The Crying Game, this happens:

Yes, a 14-foot-tall 8-year-old comes bounding around the corner...then there's this exchange:

Dr Treger: Bobby, I'd like you to meet my colleague, Dr. Hamilton.

Bobby: And I'd like you to get the fuck out of here! Get out, you bitch!

Honestly, I was laughing so hard I had to stop the VCR. Minutes, yes minutes later, when my laughter subsided, I considered stopping for good- I'd just seen the perfect 120-second movie. How could the rest of the proceedings top a foul-mouthed 14-foot-tall 8-year-old? It didn't seem possible. There was more supersized goodness waiting to be had, though, and I soldiered on...but not before I made out with the movie box for 15 minutes.

Dr Treger explains that Bobby was treated for a growth deficiency with an experimental growth hormone and oh, no one should play God! Look what we have wrought unto ourselves! Not only is Bobby 14-feet tall and growing, he's becoming increasingly belligerent. Today he's swearing, tomorrow he could be punching necks! Ham agrees to try to find a cure ASAP.

After a night in the lab spent tapping computer keys, pouring things into beakers, and lighting bunsen burners to the strains of some hardcore 80s synth action music, Ham has identified the problem in Bobby's cell structure. He uses the synthesized growth serum to...make some tomatoes get really big. But then he's totally gonna set about finding the antidote!

To find a cure, however, Ham is forced to experiment on rats, even though he's dead set against it because 1) he prefers to experiment on vegetables; 2) he has a pet rat named Louise whom he loves very much; and 3) he's dating one of the aforementioned animal rights protesters, Alex (Lisa Schrage, "Mary Lou" of Prom Night 2), and she would be so pissed if she found out. She does find out and lectures Ham about playing God, but then she takes him home for a little nookie. It's a largely unappetizing affair, as we're treated to shots of Ham making out with Alex's chin intercut with shots of rats eating tomatoes.

Oh, wait...I get it now. Yeah, that's wicked symbolic.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Alex's uppity protesting cohorts have broken into Ham's lab. Before you can say "What? No WAY!", the cages are tipped over and all the injected rats are scurrying about. They promptly set about eating the face off the lead animal rights protester.

Omigod WAIT...now I totally get THAT. Gnaw: Food of the Gods 2 is so totally fucking deep!

The next hour goes pretty much as you'd expect: giant rats run around eating people, a cinematic trick achieved largely through the use of Rat Eye View and big puppet rat heads. At times, however, the next hour goes not at all as you'd expect: the proceedings are decidedly gory and there's even some completely gratuitous synchronized swimming thrown in for good measure. As if attempting to solidify its B-Movie status, Gnaw features a visible boom mike in several shots and Alex's hairstyle changes from scene to scene (and even sometimes within the same scene).

Eventually, of course, the SWAT team is called in to dispatch the giant rats with their machine guns. That's all well and good, thought I, but what of Giant Bobby, whose size and anger issues still hadn't been cured? As if the videocassette had peeked into my brain as I was a-wonderin', our focus shifts back to the asylum in the woods. A giant hand- yes, praise Jesus, a giant hand- lays the smackdown on Dr Treger and suddenly Bobby is loose. Sadly, this is where the film ends. What a fucking tease. Considering it was 13 years between Food of the Gods and its sequel, I can only hope that we may yet see The Story of Giant Bobby on the screen someday. I can even hear his swear words, if only shouted in my dreams.

Gnaw is one of those movies that begs the question "Is this bad on purpose?"- at times it seems delightfully self-aware, and I thought perhaps it was supposed to be a comedy. At other times, however, the material is treated with a dead seriousness that leaves you confused. It really doesn't matter; any movie that features a giant fake hand hitting someone is like a gift from the gods. Like Food of the Gods...holy crap, I totally get THAT! I could write a thesis on this movie! I give it 7 out of 10 Who wants to join The Club of Me?s.

Animals Run Amok Week: Day 4

Ahhhhhhhhhhh. You hear that? That's the sweet sweet sound of a sweet sweet sigh of sweet sweet satisfaction. Sweet sweet, I say, for lo...I have seen Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), and lo...it was goooooood. In fact, I enjoyed this flick more than just about any other I've seen in this wonderful little subgenre- yeah, it was that good.

Right from the get-go, we've got one of the most bizarre-yet-fucking-awesome movie theme songs ever: country crooner Dorsey Burnette's "Peaceful Verde Valley". The lyrics are completely inappropriate for the flick that's about to unfold, but it matters not: it's the 70s, every movie must have a theme song, and this one was rad.

Poor Arizona. Having barely survived the giant rampaging bunnies of 1972, the state finds itself fending off hordes of angry tarantulas a mere five years later. It all begins on the farm owned by Walter Colby and his wife Birch (Woody Strode and Altovise Davis), where we watch their cow get attacked by...hmm...things that are awfully low to the ground. People, I am not even lying when I say that the cow gives one hell of a performance. It turns its head and looks at the camera, it stops chewing on cue as if it's just heard a noise...I'm telling you, watch this and you will believe a cow can act! Most horror movie actors can only dream of putting in performances like this.

The calf soon dies and local veterinarian "Rack" Hansen (a surprisingly restrained William Shatner) is stumped. He sends some blood samples to the University for analysis, and soon enough the sexy city-slicker entomologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) is on the scene. I mean, really, can you stand the hotness?

The hair! The dazzling smile! The sunglasses! The neckerchief! GOD, I LOVE 1977!

Anyway, Ashley quickly figures out that the calf died from a massive dose of spider venom, an idea which Rack dismisses- a spider couldn't kill a cow! Silly, silly woman. As more and more animals go missing or turn up dead, however, it seems that Ashley is right- and Verde Valley has got itself a nasty spider problem; that goes double for poor Farmer Colby. The spiders have built themselves a nice big hill on his land, and this Spider HQ is home to thousands of the critters. Our team decides to burn the mound to the ground to stave off the threat...the problem is, another 20 or so mounds are discovered.

The hothead Mayor (Roy Engel) wants to douse the countryside in DDT, but Ashley warns him that it's pesticides that have made the tarantulas act so aggressive in the first place. The Verde Valley County Fair is coming up, though, and far be it from a public official to listen to reason when money's on the line. He orders the crop duster to take to the sky; unfortunately for the pilot, a few spiders have come along for the ride. The pilot screams like a little girl when he's attacked (I'm not kidding, he really does and it's awesome), the plane goes down, and we chalk up a victory for the spiders.

From this point on, Kingdom of the Spiders really kicks things into high gear. The spiders go on an all-out assault, turning the town to complete chaos. Farmer Colby drives off a cliff; his wife shoots herself in the hand because there's a spider on it; townspeople are getting cocooned left and right- the spiders are storing people as food for later- the webbing, like Tupperware, seals in the freshness.

Rack, Ashley, and a few other survivors are holed up in a lodge against the onslaught. Can they fend off the threat and survive?

Well, they survive the night, anyway. But Kingdom of the Spiders won my heart when it didn't pussy out at the end- as our plucky survivors wake to the dawn of a new day (and the strains of "Peaceful Verde Valley" once again), they look outside to see...the entire town has been cocooned in the night. The spiders have won, people; the spiders have won. Yes, the last shot of the film is side-splittingly, hilariously bad (we see the newly cocooned town, sure, but umm...it's a painting), but it doesn't matter. Any movie that has the balls to kill off mankind is fine by moi.

I think that's why I like these Animals Run Amok movies so much- most of the time, it's a disaster that man has brought onto himself through hubris or reckless disregard. As wanton hair spray use leads to a half-naked Leslie Nielsen wrestling a bear, so wanton pesticide use leads to William Shatner fending off bloodthirsty tarantulas. These flicks, like disaster movies with all-star casts, are reminders to mankind not to be so cocky because Mother Nature can kick our asses any time she damn well pleases.

I will admit, though, that Kingdom of the Spiders is a bit tough to watch at times- not only because it's a major heebie-jeebie inducer, but also because the thousands of spiders featured are 100% real. This flick is like the ASPCA's worst nightmare come to life as tarantulas are run over, set on fire, squished, and dispatched in many various ways- what can I say, I'm a gentle, loving soul and it bothered me. What? I am.

But it didn't bother me so much that I didn't love this movie! There's rumors of a deluxe-edition DVD hitting shelves sometime in the not-so distant future...I'll buy three copies: one to watch, one to put under my pillow when I sleep, and one to put down my pants. That's how much I loved this movie! I give it 8 out of 10 I thought it was a nice unexpected twist when the hot entomologist finds a spider in a drawer and, instead of shrieking, calmly picks it up and puts it ouside...then again, she was an entomologist, so I guess she wouldn't flip out because she saw a spider. Never minds.

Animals Run Amok Week: Day 3

Once in a blue moon, a movie comes along that feels as if it sprung fully-formed from my forehead, not unlike Athena from that of Zeus. One such movie is today's feature, Night of the Lepus (1972), a movie that has so much in it I enjoy that it's hard to believe it's not a dream. A movie with a line like "There's a herd of killer rabbits headed this way!" just seems too good to be true, doesn't it? Rest assured, though, the film actually exists- and it features Rory Calhoun, Janet Leigh, and a mustachioed DeForest Kelley. Life is so good sometimes.

Arizona's very existence is threatened by an explosion in the rabbit population. Rather than simply poisoning the little bastards (for fear of throwing the entire ecosystem out of whack), the very scientific, very married team of Roy and Gerry Bennett (Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh) are called in to come up with a nature-but-not-rabbit-friendly solution.

Back at The Lab, Team Bennett starts injecting bunnies with various serums in an attempt to curb the population. Thanks to their stupid daughter (Melanie Fullerton), a doped-up bunny is released into the wild. Somehow the serum causes the rabbit to grow to a massive size and develop a taste for human flesh. How one bunny became hundreds in a day (that's fast, even for rabbits, I'm pretty sure) and how these docile herbivores became ravenous carnivores isn't explained, but I don't care! the important thing here is that there are herds of massive rabbits roaming the desert terrorizing towns and looking for humans upon which to feed!

Night of the Lepus was made in those heady pre-CGI days, and I'm ever-so-thankful for it. While I can't say the effects are "great", I find that there's something inherently charming in the approach here: regular-sized rabbits tromping through miniature sets. What it amounts to are lots of shots of rabbits running intercut with shots of rabbits leaping and maybe a big, fake rabbit paw smacking someone in the face. The secret here, the filmmakers seem to think, is that is you play weird mood music and show the rabbits running in slow motion, they'll seem big. It's hokey, to be certain, but it's also the sort of movie magic that makes me feel like a kid again. That's a rare treat, my friends.

While there is a surprisingly large amount of blood in the movie, by far the most horrifying thing onscreen is this unfortunate attack of male-pattern baldness, which I have decided to call The Dollop:

Poor thing.

Night of the Lepus is about as simple and straightforward as you can get: big rabbits attack! It's the perfect Saturday afternoon movie, to be viewed right after a morning full of cartoons. I give it 6 out of 10 footie pajamas.

Animals Run Amok Week: Day 2

"You know, this ozone thing has got something to do with it. I don't know what it is, but I can feel it!"

Why settle for only one kind of animal running around wreaking havoc when you can have them all? That's my philosophy, anyway. It's a good thing the late William Girdler (the man behind such genre fare as Abby, Grizzly, and Three on a Meathook) feels the same way, for it is he who brought the world the 1977 every- animal-runs-amok-fest Day of the Animals.

As we all know, those Jersey girls and the spray they use in their high high hair have caused a massive hole in the earth's ozone layer. What Day of the Animals shows us, however, are the (possible, natch) startling repercussions of such wanton aerosol use: without the ozone layer to protect them from the sun's rays, all the animals at elevations above 5000 feet go totally cuckoo nutso and kill kill kill! Al Gore doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

A motley assortment of hikers (including super-70s husband and wife combo Christopher and Lynda Day George, Andrew Stevens, and Leslie Nielsen) ends up stranded in the Mountaintop Animal Death Zone and must fend off raving hordes of birds of prey, wolves, snakes, mountain lions, bears, and...uh, German Shepherds. With their limited supplies running out and their disparate personalities clashing, will they make it out alive?

While Day of the Animals largely consists of animals glaring whilst ominous music plays, it's not without its cheesy charms, the biggest of which is Leslie Nielsen, whose performance is worth the rental price alone.

Nielsen's racist ad exec is an absolute hoot to watch- he insults everyone, he shoves both women and children to the ground ("Get outta here, you cockroach, or I'll throw you off that cliff!"), he tries to rape Andrew Stevens's girlfriend, and then he kills Andrew Stevens when he's attempting to save his girlfriend from said rape. By the time Nielsen's bare-chested ozone rampage is finished, he's railing against God and wrestling bears in the rain.

When a swarm of rats leapt onto the sheriff's face, I wanted to marry Day of the Animals- and I did, in a quickie ceremony down at the Town Hall. Things were going great- Christopher George was punching dogs, people were falling off cliffs...I thought Day of the Animals and I would be together forever. But then...then the movie had to go and fuck things up with that ending. All the animals suddenly drop dead. They drop dead. THEY DROP DEAD! End of story- and the end of us as well, Day of the Animals. No one likes a cop out!

Still, though, flying rats and a bear-wrestling Leslie Nielsen...oh, who am I kidding. I can't hate you, Day of the Animals, but I really think we should just be friends. I give it 5 out of 10 torrid love affairs ending in ill-advised, short-lived marriages.

Animals Run Amok Week: Day 1

…or, Final Girl and the Spiders From Mars.

There are several reasons why the 2001 movie Arachnid came home with me. First and foremost, this is Animals Run Amok Week here at Final Girl and a flick with oversized spiders in it is exactly the kind of amok I’m looking for. What I was hoping would really separate Arachnid from the rest of the eight-legged pack, however, are the names attached: the film is directed by horror veteran Jack Sholder (The Hidden, Alone in the Dark, Nightmare on Elm Street 2), written by Mark Sevi (who also wrote the movie with probably the best title EVARRRR: Excessive Force II: Force on Force) (I take that back; it’s the second or third best title evarrrr, right behind Baby Monitor: The Sound of Fear (starring Josie Bissett of television’s Melrose Place) and Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? (starring Tori Spelling of television’s Bev Niner)…but I digress), and stars Alex Reid (‘Beth’, my favorite caver from The Descent). I’d have been a fool to pass this one over- a fool, I tells ya!

Of course, Jack Sholder and Alex Reid notwithstanding, the beauty of a movie like Arachnid is firmly in the eyes of the beholder. Depending on which way your tastes run, a B-Grade monster movie is either a Ronstadt (it hurts so bad) or a Mellencamp (it hurts so good); and make no bones about it- Arachnid is strictly a B-Grade monster movie. Yes, I’ve coined some sweet (if…odd) new terms there, and in my humble opinion, this flick is a total Mellencamp. Whether it was intentional or not, Arachnid is a total throwback to those monster movie heydays, the 1950s. Had it appeared on the scene then, it would’ve been in black and white and there’d be an exclamation mark in the title, like this- ARACHNID!

Our tale begins as a bad-CGI stealth fighter is zooming out over the ocean to investigate a bad-CGI waternado. When the bad-CGI stealth fighter arrives on the scene, however, the bad-CGI waternado turns invisible and the plane has a total system failure. Suddenly there’s a bad-CGI explosion, but our fearless pilot has ejected himself and thus has avoided the explodening.

Despite being far far out over the ocean, our fearless parachuted pilot has drifted over to a tropical island where he lands safely in the jungle-esque environs. As if he wasn’t having a bad enough day, he encounters a bad-CGI alien, who flickers in and out of sight and emits a sort of “wah wah wah” sound. As our fearless pilot stands and stares all mouth-agape-like, the bad-CGI alien is attacked and killed by a giant spider. The bad news is, our fearless pilot is next on the spider's menu. The good news, however, is that the spider is not a bad-CGI spider. It’s all rubber, baby, and it’s all good.

The scene shifts to another island where a man is dying from some sort of insect bites. The typical motley assortment of stock characters sets out to find out what bit the dude: Valentine (Chris Potter), the ex-marine who I think might now be a doctor but I never knew for sure…Dr Leon, the head of the island clinic...his lovely assistant, Susana…Valentine’s crack squad of gun-happy military hotheads…and the resident nerd- a scientist who’s written a handy book called Arachnid Fun Facts. Flying them down the highway to the danger zone is Mercer (Alex Reid), an ex-Navy pilot with a chip on her shoulder so big that she only needs one name, dammit. She’s a hardened woman, on some sort of solitary mission out here in the islands of the South Pacific. Will her heart melt for the “hunk” so appropriately named Valentine? Not a chance! When he tries to make small talk, she tells him in short order: “I’m not interested in companionship, a relationship, or even a hump buddy.” Ouch! Hey, Valentine- I smell smoke. Someone got BURNT!

Incidentally, I’ve added “hump buddy” to my ongoing list of completely unsexy terms and phrases, a list that also includes classics like “manpurse” and “fish mitten”.

The waternado is notably absent, but regardless Mercer’s plane undergoes a system failure not unlike that of the stealth fighter at the film’s beginning. The bitch has mad piloting skillz, though- she crashes the plane but she crashes it well and no one gets hurt.

With both the plane and the radio on the fritz, the group sets off to…well, I don’t know why they set off, but they set off nonetheless. As they’re trudging along, one of the gun-happy military hotheads gets bitten by a tick, which quickly burrows under his skin and…multiplies. Suddenly he’s very ill and he’s got all these bumps moving under his skin and it’s gross. The scientist nerd is called over to give his expert opinion, but he’s never seen anything like this before. It’s some sort of poisoning, he says, but the tick must be some sort of new species. The gun-happy military hothead then gives a response quite common in Arachnid- that is, a Completely Inappropriate Response; he pulls out a pistol, points it at the scientist nerd, and yells, “If you don’t shut up, I’LL KILL YOU!” Come to think of it, though, maybe that’s NOT an inappropriate response at all. In fact, I did the same thing just the other day when the UPS guy knocked on my door and was all like, “Sign here, please”. I mean, what the fuck, you know?

Eventually our intrepid band comes across a small village which is all empty and totally eerie and shit, and they decide to set up camp. The scientist nerd busts out his microscope to examine a strange-looking spider (yes, he brought along a huge microscope for their jungle trek- so?) and surmises that the weird arachnids on the island are alien in origin. Like…aliens from outer space. Isn’t that the first hypothesis any good scientist would throw out there? No, you say? Well, no matter- the idea is never revisited anyway. The bite victim is getting sicker by the second and he's moaning and groaning and being a general nuisance. Soon he starts puking up some wormy egg things in a way that reminded me of the egg-puking scene in Airplane!…but much gooier. Things escalate quickly as the medical team stands around doing nothing- the dude’s eyeball explodes and huge ticks start bursting through his skin. Finally another military hothead shoots the poor bastard and put him out of his misery….this means it’s time for a Group Inappropriate Response! Essentially, the man was just exploding giant ticks everywhere and then got shot in the head, but no one in the group seems overly perturbed.





Later that night, the group is huddled around the campfire. Mercer is deeply engrossed in Arachnid Fun Facts, and I get an inkling that her newfound arachnid knowledge will come in handy at some point down the road…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here! There’s more important matters at hand, namely: GIANT CENTIPEDE ATTACK! Yes, my friends, the tranquility of the campfire is interrupted when the centipede leaps out of the darkness, makes a high-pitched “WHEEEE!” sound and flies across the screen. Now, I hate to be crude here, but it looked not unlike...a giant poo. Or maybe a big grinder. At any rate, there was a 3-foot poo flying across the screen going “WHEEEE!”. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I rewound the DVD six times to watch it again and again…and that’s when I fell in love with Arachnid.

The next morning, the group decides they’re going to stop doing whatever it is they were trying to do and they’re gonna fix the plane and get off the island. Mercer, however, wants to stay behind; now we get a glimpse into her soul, an idea of what’s happened that’s turned her heart to ice cold ice. Remember that super stealth pilot who escaped the bad-CGI waternado and the bad-CGI explosion and then saw the bad-CGI alien but unfortunately he didn’t escape the big rubber spider? That was totally Mercer’s brother! His plane went down and the Navy eventually stopped looking for him…but not Mercer. Mercer will never stop looking. She’s gonna stay on the island until she finds out what happened to her brother…then Valentine reminds her that she was hired to fly them around and Mercer says OK. Lucky for her, however, that she doesn’t have to go far to solve the mystery of her brother’s disappearance- on the way back to the plane, they find his body all webbed up in a tree. After burying her brother in the jungle, Mercer, ever the tough and noble sister, vows revenge: “I’ll find the son of a bitch who did this to you!”. The best part of that vow is that she’s talking about a GIANT SPIDER.

Meanwhile, the scientist nerd has gotten distracted by something shiny and has wandered off. He's found another giant centipede, but he's stumbled directly into the giant spider’s lair! Egaaahhhh!

By the time our group finds him, the nerd is completely cocooned up between some trees and he’s near death- he calmly explains that a giant spider injected nerve toxin into his spinal column and webbed him all up. He can’t feel anything, and won’t they please put him out of his misery? You know what that means- it’s Completely Inappropriate Response time! Upon hearing all this and seeing the nerd all webbed up, Dr Leon calmly says, “This is truly astounding.” When the nerd is finally dead (after having been injected with nerve toxin from a giant fucking spider!), again, our group is largely unperturbed.



Hanging out for long in the spider’s lair is not a good idea; sadly, the group figures this out too late and it’s time for GIANT SPIDER ATTACK! So long, Dr. Leon…truly astounding, indeed.

The group’s numbers dwindle; people do stupid things or just plain disappear. I don’t care, however, because there’s a giant spider running amok and THAT’S what I came here to see!

Eventually our very few plucky survivors head into the real lair of the spider- the underground lair. Mercer, having boned up on Arachnid Fun Facts, knows that spiders are susceptible to poisons; with a blowgun and a little moxie, the nasty giant spider problem is solved.

You know that in a movie like this, the hero (or in this case, the heroine) has to have their last line, their cool send-off to the beastie recently dispatched. The best of these quips (in fact, probably the only good one ever written) comes from MacReady (Kurt Russell) in John Carpenter’s The Thing, when he shouts “Oh yeah? Well, FUCK YOU TOO!” and ka-boom goes The Thing. Mercer’s last line is…decidedly less effective: ”Fuck. I hate spiders.” Oh well- at least she was spunky.

Let’s lay it on the table, folks: Arachnid is NOT a good movie; in fact, it's probably terrible. It’s got that 1950’s monster-movie plot that makes little sense: people go somewhere to do something and they get killed by a monster. The effects range from decent (exploding eyeballs!) to "decent"-is-a-pipe-dream (bad-CGI everything and giant flying poos), the script is nonsensical, and the acting is largely atrocious. Your enjoyment of this film will be in direct proportion to how much you like watching a giant fake-looking spider scuttle after Alex Reid down a fake-looking rock tunnel. Me? I like that… I like that a lot. It’s Animals Run Amok Week, baby! I give it 6 out of 10 hump buddies in a pear tree.