This short film is so frigging stupid I promptly fell in love with it when I stumbled on it on YouTube. Written and directed by Dane Boedigheimer (aka Daneboe), the dude shown here at the left sharing his nipple with us, the film stars a dozen eggs and a gal named Theresa. Daneboe seems not only to have been a Clutch Cargo fan as a kid, but is an Adobe After Effects specialist as well. He's made lot of talking foodstuff horror and comedy short films, including a number that are entertaining riffs on the same basic idea as Eggs such as (among others) Terrified Corn Cobs and Marshmallow Murder. Dane is also a productive producer of Goth Art, as can be seen here at his website.
According to the website of Gagfilms, which he co-founded in 2005 with some other expats from his home state, Dane was raised in Harwood, North Dakota, a town of 696 inhabitants and which, according to the town website, is “a quiet, rural community surrounded by vast open farmland, rich soil, fresh air and is filled with friendly people with Midwestern values who care about their neighbours.” (No wonder the lad seems to have such a weird sense of humour—the place sounds like a David Lynchian nightmare.) Having a lot of free time on his hands when he was growing up, he began to make short 8mm films with his younger brother, “many of which are only funny to him[self]." It is perhaps inevitable, then, that Daneboe ended up in California, where he is still determined to make “the perfect short comedy film” that “will end all social problems and bring laughter to all the children of the world.” In the meantime, he earns his rent, beer and condom money making commercials.
In a case of what one could call synchronicity, a guy named Eric Bickernicks made a similar if somewhat more primitive film called Scrambled Eggs in 1984.
As an added attraction, you can Clutch Cargo – Space Stationhere.
Dr Gore aptly states the initial appeal of Demon Slayer when he, pained at being suckered once again during his never-ending search for the perfect B film, states in his review of the film that "Once again, the video box cover sings me sweet love songs only to have the movie break my heart." The seductive DVD box sang a Circe song to the hearts at A Wasted Life, too, and while the film did not make us shed the tears of the broken hearted, it did piss us off about as much as a skanky bitch in heat with the invisible drip does two weeks after the drunken fact. There be good horror films (see Dark Remains [2005 / trailer], among others), there be good lousy horror films (see Creepaziods[1987 / trailer], among others), and there be truly crappy horror films; take a guess what Demon Slayer is. Yep, despite some titty bits—a rarity nowadays that usually helps redeem the worst of films—Demon Slayer is an example of true, irredeemably pointless direct-to-DVD crap that, much like such films as Museum of the Dead (2004) or 7 Mummies (2006 / trailer), leaves the viewer with an inner-emptiness that is caused not by the feeling of wasting a life but by the feeling of not having a life at all. Demon Slayer is the directorial debut of James Cotton, who has since gone on to make the western horror Sugar Creek (2007 / trailer) and the 2nd-tier actor employment project La Linea (2009 / trailer). Cotton's debut is basically a remake of Michael B. Bruxman's unknown flick from 2000, The Doorway (trailer), but without a name star (the original version had Roy Scheider for the top-billed, five-minute appearance), which explains Bruxman's writer by-line in the film credits. Having never seen the original, it is hard to say which version is better, but somehow it is difficult to believe that The Doorway can be any worse than Demon Slayer. For Cotton's version of the oft-told tale, The Doorway's college students earning extra cash have been changed to troubled teens doing community service and the house with the gateway to hell has been moved from New England to L.A. The five troubled teens (all orphans) of Demon Slayer are deposited at the deserted hospital with a bloody past (built upon a former brothel run by john-killing demon worshipers) as part of their court-ordered community service. They are to spend three days cleaning the structure in preparation for its conversion into a community center. The film stretches out such genre staples as infighting, bonding, false scares, kids walking around alone, screaming, teenager sex and so on for way too long before finally ending with ten minutes of Meet the Demons and Die. Along the way, the Priest in charge (Robert Eaten) is revealed to have a hidden agenda and another Priest (Joaquín Garrido) pops up from nowhere for a few minutes of ridiculousness before proving to be an ineffectual demon slayer. The best (and only) scenes of mild note are the bathtub scene (titties!), the death of the tertiary character Mr Cobb (Layon Gray of Hood Angels [2003 / trailer]), and a screwdriver in the forehead episode; the rest of the darkly shot film is pretty easy to sleep through. The first present-day scene of Demon Slayer (which follows the pointless and poorly staged opening scene of the past killing of a security guard) actually raises one's hope initially, for not only does it involve a short but effective tracking shot that seems to promise some directorial standards, but the introduction of the film's fodder—Alicia the Goth (Michelle Acuna), Tyson the Gang Banger (Howard Williams Jr.), Claudia the Bitch (Hanna Lee), Tamara the Bitch's Friend (Monique Deville) and Phillip the Punk (Adam Huss of El Mascarado Massacre [2006 / trailer] and Resurrection County [2008 / trailer])—seems to infer a subtle sense of irony. Regrettably, Cotton not only quickly proves to have the directorial standards of a hack, but the expected sense of irony reveals itself to simply be a basic inability to construct a suspenseful or interesting narrative. Perhaps Cotton was hoping to milk some humor from the hackneyed plot and action, but with the possible exception of the scene in which the exorcist priest tries to dispel demons by calling on "the name of God and Frida Kahlo and [etc]", Demon Slayer instigates less smiles or laughter than it does derisive raspberries. (It would seem the only genre Cotton has less control of than horror is comedy.) Take heed of these words of wisdom: even though you can always write it off to the beer afterwards, much like you really should avoid that easy (male or female) skank at the bar, you would do well to avoid Demon Slayer.
"Let’s get some bottles to make Molotov Cocktails like at school." (Statement made by some zombie fodder during the climactic scene.)
A productive filmmaker, Franco has made films that are surreally great, such as A Virgin among the Living Dead (1973); films that are intriguingly bad, such as Succubus (1968 / trailer) or the celebrated Vampiros Lesbos (1971 / trailer); and films that are simply shitty—Oasis of the Zombies is the last. It is an exercise in patchwork narrative and padding, and regrettably plays like one. According to most sources, the legendary Italian filmmaker Jess Franco was given this project after he left the equally ridiculous but oddly more entertaining Euro Z-zombie flick Le Lac des morts vivants / Zombie Lake (1981 / trailer). The legendary French filmmaker Jean Rollin ended up finishing Zombie Lake, which has longed gained a rightful reputation as one of the most laughably engaging Eurotrash fiascos. To put it simply, Franco bailed from a slow, hilariously crappy French film to make a not very hilarious but still crappy and slow and very boring European film. (Twice over, in fact, as he filmed this flick in two versions at the same time, one French and one Spanish, with minor cast changes.) As hilariously bad as Zombie Lake is, it pales in comparison to Oasis of the Zombies, which is far from amusing even though it is dumbfounding bad. Going by the location, number of extras, trucks and explosions, Oasis of the Zombies probably even had the bigger budget of the two films, but Oasis of the Zombies also has worse dubbing, more consistently inane dialogue and plot development, less gore, less breasts, less zombie action—or action in general—less continuity, less logic, and less anything else that might help make it an enjoyable viewing experience. Oasis of the Zombies begins with a short intro scene of two young female tourists wandering around an oasis in their nylon disco shorts and tank tops. Although the zombies only attack at day-for-night for the rest of the film, here they do away with the girls in broad daylight and without even ripping off their tops—in fact, for a Eurotrash film of the 80s, remarkably few tops get taken off in this film. Once the credits are over, we meet Kurt (Henri Lambert), a former Nazi colonel out to locate a shipment of gold lost in the desert. He goes to see Captain Blabert (Javier Maiza), gets the information he wants and promptly kills Blabert. Following some stock footage of London, we meet Blabert Jr, Robert (Manuel Gélin), who returns to the family house when hearing about the death of daddy. Going through the family papers, Robert learns of both his roots and the oasis in a long flashback that reveals how his father fought the Nazis during the war and barely escaped with his life; saved by Bedouins, he was nursed back to health by Aisha (Doris Regina), the daughter of his host, Sheik Mohamed Al-Kafir (Antonio Mayans). As thank you, he popped her cherry and returned to war, only to return two years later to find Aisha dead and himself a daddy. Oh, he also learned that the oasis is damned and that those who die there never really die. (Only half true: of all those that died there in the war scenes, it seems that only the Nazis came back.) The flashback over with, the flick returns to the 70s where, even as Robert and his privileged school chums are deciding to blow their final exams to hunt for the 6 million, back at the oasis Kurt barely escapes the clutches of flesh-hungry Nazi zombies that munch on his wife Ingrid (Myriam Landson) and his two helpers, one of whom shouts “Stop or I’ll shoot” but never does. (The zombies sure have remarkably modern haircuts under all that grime. But then, just like in Zombie Lake, temporal reality is a moot point in Oasis of the Zombies: the Babert son Robert, for example, is only around 20 when simple math should have had him in his mid-30s.) Robert and company arrive in Egypt (?) and the film is padded with some "exotica" shopping scenes and such before they meet up with another team of Europeans also in search of the oasis, the blonde Erika (Juan Solar) and Professor Konrad (Albino Graziani). Tagging along with them to a hospital, they arrive in time to see Kurt's prolonged and over-acted death scene during which Robert drills him about the location of the oasis. A badly shot topless swimming scene later, the two groups leave on their separate ways in search of the secret oasis (which, oddly enough, was on the map of the two gals killed at the start of the film). Robert ends up finding his grandfather, Sheik Mohamed Al-Kafir, who shows him the way to the oasis although he knows it means sure death for the teens. At the oasis, they find an injured Erika and Prof, who babbles about the living dead before passing out. The next day, however, the sun shines and everything is fine so everyone giggles and laughs and digs for treasure. The sun goes down, and after a badly shot sex scene the zombies come for dinner, announcing their arrival (as always in the film) by snorting like pigs.... The climactic scene is not very exciting to say the least, made worse by the bad cinematography, editing, focus, sound and everything else. The gore is truly gore light, so any and all money shots are as anticlimactic as they are unimpressive. Most die, a few get away, and then, thankfully, the film ends. To give credit, at times the background music, particularly when it is so slightly tinged with an Arabic flavor, is very good—much better than the film itself. But the interludes of good music are rare: most of the time it sounds like an atonal organ being played by a five-year-old. The film lacks any and all suspense or tension, and visually it can best be described as an ocular accident; Franco's patented style of Doris-Wishmannesque intercut objects, pan shots to nowhere and meaningless zooms (often out-of-focus to out-of-focus) do little to improve things. When it comes to oasis zombie flicks, skip this turkey and watch Dawn of the Mummy (1981 / trailer). Dawn of the Mummy might be a pretty lousy film in itself, but in comparison to Oasis of the Zombies, it is a masterpiece of filmmaking.
Kaena: The Prophecy starts with the wreck of a intergalactic spaceship, has a brief scene of alien hunting alien, and then pops 600 years into the future to a small and simple folk that spend their days collecting sap for their gods. They harvest the sap from Axis, their "planet," a huge and inter-coiling plant floating mid-air in a never-ending horizon of clouds. But Axis is withering and dying, and their gods care little about the problems of the peons. But then, the gods are in reality simply a race of devious creatures—modeled ever-so-slightly after Geiger's alien archetype—led by an evil queen (voiced by Anjelica Huston) whose only goal is to destroy the glowing orb that crashed upon her planet 600 years early (that she is a stubborn being must go without saying, for after 600 years she is still trying). An adventurous young girl of the village named Kaena (Kirsten Dunst) not only has visions that there is more to life than what they know, but dares to question the gods; her actions result in her having to flee for her safety. With no place else to go, she decides to finally journey down to see what lies in the forbidden zone below the clouds... Kaena: The Prophecy is an animated film for young adults—if only because smaller children and older folks will probably not be able to follow the style of animation or the convoluted yet underdeveloped storyline. That Kaena supposedly won 2nd place at the 2003 FantAsia Film Festival in Montreal does not exactly sing praise for the quality of the movies screened at the festival. Touted as the first fully computer-animated French film, the visual style of Kaena is much too aligned with the graphics of computer-animated computer games to be in any way truly innovative or astounding, and the film probably already looked somewhat dated when it first came out. Not to say that there is a total lack of anything of visual interest—the mostly sepia-toned color scheme is something different, Kaena has nice tits (even if they are covered for all but one indistinct segment), and the talking worms in their mechanically locomotive bodies are enjoyably expressive. But the filmmakers were overly enamored by the rendition of fluid and barreling tracking shots in and out of tunnels and through branches, things that had a "WOW" effect back in the early days of computer animation but that have long become overused standards (if not clichés)—and probably weren't all that fresh in 2004, either. It would have done Kaena some good had less time been spent on the eye candy and more attention had been given to visual clarity. The story could have been a bit clearer, too—or at least a bit more clearly structured. Originally developed as a computer game, the linear and action-heavy plot development betrays the movie's roots. The film is a good 10-15 minutes underway before the (thinking) viewer is able to interconnect the various opening visual highpoints (or plot elements) into a halfway coherent narrative, and it is not until the appearance of Opaz (Richard Harris) that the strands are actually tied together. But then, to keep the story rolling all sorts of elements are pulled out of thin air (or dropped) as needed—whatever happened to the teethy, meat-eating flying worms, for example? No longer needed by the end of the movie, they simply disappear. And why does Opaz, once so set on returning home, suddenly have a turn of mind and do a "I am the last of my kind save your people" number? Where, actually, did Kaena's people come from in the first place if the "gods" were the natives and Opaz's people from space? Why does Kaena alone have the mystical link to the orb? These and dozens more questions arise when one in any way starts to take a closer look at the plot, but for all the loose ends the scriptwriters also throw in enough subplots to make the film even harder to follow if one's attention should happen to stray at the wrong moment—the queen's loyal male's desire to mate (although it means their death) and his subsequent (and fortuitously timed) testosterone-driven betrayal, for example, are easy to miss. All that occurs, however, happens around the bare bones of a story old, tried and tired: a young outsider that refuses to follow the masses and is thus expelled only to return to save the people with the help of a rag-tag team picked up along the way—and, as they say: all's well that ends well. About the only truly iconoclastic element of the narrative is the underlying thematic strand that a ruling religion can be a lie and should be questioned. Kaena is not a fiasco as a film; it simply feels as if it seems to miss whatever marks it may have been aiming for, visually, plot-wise and/or thematically. The end result is a mildly interesting but just as mildly aggravating film. The film would have been a lot better had the filmmakers simply slowed down a bit in every way.
This short film is so frigging stupid I promptly fell in love with it when I stumbled on it on YouTube. Written and directed by Dane Boedigheimer (aka Daneboe), the dude shown here at the left sharing his nipple with us, the film stars a dozen eggs and a gal named Theresa. Daneboe seems not only to have been a Clutch Cargo fan as a kid, but is an Adobe After Effects specialist as well. He's made lot of talking foodstuff horror and comedy short films, including a number that are entertaining riffs on the same basic idea as Eggs such as (among others) Terrified Corn Cobs and Marshmallow Murder. Dane is also a productive producer of Goth Art, as can be seen here at his website.
