Coming Attractions: Cannibal Lolocaust!

Something I've wanted to do since I started this blog (all five entries ago) was to chronicle the span of one of my personal favorite little film niches. A niche filled with ugly little movies of practically no artistic value, devoid of anything other than cheap (sometimes very cheap) titillation, crass sexuality and over the top, often times completely unnecessary violence and brutality.

I'm speaking of course of Robin Williams movies.

No, I'm talking about cannibal movies! Now pretty much everybody out there has at least heard of the big daddy of them all, Cannibal Holocaust, but there are a pretty sizable amount of these movies, most them pretty fucking bad, and all of them the kind of thing I talk about on this site. So I decided that, using Wikipedia as my guide, I'm gonna go through and systematically review and rate all of these fucking movies, on a not terribly objective scale, which I'll outline in a second. Now I'm certain there are more of them out there than are listed on Wikipedia, which only lists the cannibal boom canon, so to speak. If you guys out there know of others that fit the genre, lemme know. But officially, I'm starting with 1973's The Man From Deep River and finishing up with 1988's Natura Contro. Not counting any heads-up I get from you devoted readers (ha ha) that means I'll be reviewing SIXTEEN of these things. The stuff I put myself through for the four people who read this blog.

"Has Killer Forklift updated yet? I need more Avenged Sevenfold jokes!"

Now onto the format. We're gonna do a more-or-less in-depth recap of the "plot" of the movie, and then I'm going to rate the movie from one to ten on the following patented Cannibal Movie Ratings Scale!

Sex: Let's face it, these are cheap exploitation movies. In the Sex category, I'll be rating the film from Erection Rejection (0) to Pause-and-Toss (10). The more attractive the naked people and the more porno the sex scenes, the higher the rating.

Violence: Following closely on the heels of sex as the reason exploitation movies get made, the Violence rating will encompass both how brutal and shocking the violence is, and how well made and realistic looking it is. As most of these movies were made in the early 80's however, we're gonna have to be a little loose with "realistic" and judge it by the time.

Animal Death: One of the disturbing trademarks of cannibal films is that they often times legitimately kill animals on film for the shock factor. This category rates just how frequent and unpleasant these scenes are in a given movie.

Keep begging, Bonzo.

Cannibalism: Believe it or not, some cannibal films are actually a bit light on the whole "cannibalism" thing. This category will rate how much cannibalism is actually in the damn movie.

Sameyness: Cannibal Movies, and alot of exploitation movies in general, tend to be kinda....oh, let's be charitable and say "homages to other films". The Sameyness category rates just how similar to previous movies the individual cannibal flick is. Granted, this gives The Man From Deep River a huge advantage as its kinda the ur-example, unless we wanna count Mondo Cane. And I really don't feel like including Mondo Cane, because it's a completely different kind of movie.

Anyone, on Thursday I'll have the first review up, Umberto Lenzi's The Man From Deep River!
Pray for me.

Also, on a "Thusfar unrelated to cannibalism" note, I want you all to go and check out my buddy Bill's blog, Porno Paycheck. It's about the many harrowing and hysterical experiences of working at a shifty porn store. NSFW, but very very funny.

Prince of Persia is better than Iron Man 2

Movies based on video games suck. This is an immutable law of nature. The corollary to this law, that video games based on movies also suck, is no less true, but not the point of this post. Neither is the point of today's article to delve into the many, myriad reasons that up until now, there has never been a video game movie that didn't make me want to floss with razor-wire. We must simply accept that video game movies suck.

Besides, we all know the reason.

No, what I need to tell you all today is that this immutable law of nature has, as all rules do, an exception, and that exception is Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Because not only does this movie not suck, it's better than the other big summer blockbusters I've seen this year; Robin Hood and Iron Man 2.

"Take it back!"

I liked Russell Crowe T. Robot as Robin Hood. The film had some narrative missteps (like Prince John's heel-turn at the end of the movie coming completely fucking out of nowhere and not fitting the characterization the movie already gave him as a ruthless-yet-completely-reasonable leader handed the crown at a really shitty time), and it had some research failures (1199 is the turn of the 13th century, Ridley, not the turn of the 12th). But it was exciting and entertaining and at no point did I want to stab myself in the throat.

Iron Man 2 for me was a little more hit and  miss. I absolutely love the first movie, but felt the sequel didn't really deliver on the promise of the first. The special effects weren't quite as good (especially some of the times with Rhodey wearing the War Machine suit with the mask open; it looked like a really bad photoshop of Don Cheadle's face in there), and the story was sort of a head-scratcher. It didn't reach Spider-Man 3 levels by any stretch, but the plot was meandering and contrived enough to irritate me.

"I invented a new element and then hid it in a theme park to cure the poison that will be killing my son forty years from now. Don't question me."

And then there was THAT scene. That one scene that turned me into George C. Scott in "Hardcore". The scene where Tony Stark gets hammered at a party while wearing the Iron Man armor and asks the DJ (a cameo by the late DJ AM) to provide a soundtrack for a fight between himself and War Machine. Just typing that sentence hurts me in parts of my heart I long thought dead.

Being in Iron Man 2 was the second worst thing that happened to DJ AM this year.

Now I'm not saying all of Iron Man 2 sucked. Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer were great villains (even if not quite as menacing as Jeff Bridge's Obediah Stane) and the fight scenes involving Vanko were the best parts of the movies. There was just too much fluff, too much blah blah in a movie that should have trimmed all the fat. It was a C+/B- at best.

Stop sulking, Tony. You made this mess, now you gotta sit in it.

But wasn't this supposed to be about Prince of Persia? Right. Now I didn't even want to go see it. I went on a Sunday night with my girlfriend and my manager and as I sat in the theater I was prepared for a real shit fest. I liked the PS2 Prince of Persia series as much as the next nerd but I knew that they'd never make a decent video game movie. It can't be done.

But they did, somehow. I spent most of the movie really enjoying myself, more so than my companions, who were the ones who had wanted to see it in the first place. Now don't get me wrong, there were parts of this movie I HATED. HATED. In huge capital letters written across the sky HATED. Most of them involving our two main characters, Prince Smug-tits and Princess Stuck-up-McLack-o-Charisma.

"Wait...I think I see our personalities over there..."

Most of the dialogue is hackneyed, dime-a-dozen fantasy pap, with lots of talk of destiny and righteousness and *yawn*. But whenever Prince Dastan and Princess Tamina start talking to each other, it quickly takes a left turn into insufferable bullshit. They're supposed to have this smart-alecky slap-slap-kiss dynamic going on, but its neither clever or funny, and quickly becomes two smug posturing assholes slinging intolerable one-liners at each other while we try and figure out why in the holy hemorrhaging fuck they're still hanging out together.

But for whatever reason, the movie works. The action sequences are exciting when you can figure out what the fuck is supposed to be going on, and there's a nice little shout-out to Assassin's Creed early on which I appreciated. This is the kind of movie that's doing a million things at once and while it can be a headache to follow, it hits all the right notes for a dopey sword-and-sandal action flick and at no point did I desperately want the movie to end, as I did in Iron Man's drunk party/fight scene.

"Turn it off....TURN IT OFF!"