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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare: The Edge of Hell

Watched October 13, 2015

1987
Starring: Jon-Mikl Thor, Jillian Peri, Frank Dietz

The Tritonz, a heavy metal band from the US comes to a farm house in Canada to write and record their new album. But what they don't know is that the family that lived in the house previously was attacked by some mysterious demons, and the demons may still be around.  All the band members bring their wives and girlfriends as support. The drummer has a weirdly fake Australian accent. John (Jon-Mikl Thor) the lead singer of the band and his lady take the master bedroom of the house, which has a bed made to look like a piano. 

All the bandmates settle into the house. The bands manager Phil (Adam Fried) makes them dinner then they all head to the barn to record some songs. While Phil is rocking out in the control booth to the awesome sound of The Tritonz, a cyclops demons that looks like a penis spits in his drink. Phil unknowingly drinks the demon spit and things begin to get weird. He goes down the basement to find some extra drum sticks. One of the bitchy girlfriends shows up and comes onto him. But she turns into a demon and bites him on the shoulder. 

The band leaves the barn to find the van is gone, so they think Phil took it since they can't find him either. All the couples take this opportunity to make out. Later that night a bunch of groupies come to the house.  Demon possessed Phil shows up again and tells them to show him their boobs, but they freak out and leave. The drummer guy gets demon possessed too but becomes a better lover because of it. The couples keep dying but not before the keyboardist hooks up with a guitarist and have a long drawn out gross sex scene. Then John and his woman have an equally long and gross shower sex scene. Eventually every one is presumed dead except for John. In the barn, a huge demon comes to kill John. To combat the demon, John reveals himself to be the Angel Triton and he concocted all the people and the story that we just saw to get the demon to come out. There is no band, it was all an elaborate ruse, with lots of sex scenes. John fights the demon, as the demon throws demonic starfish at him. They lock arms and try to overpower one another. In the end, John doesn't beat the demon, the demon just decides to leave the house.

There is a ton of filler footage of the van driving down highway on the way to the house. They also show the house and the moonlit night many many times, trying to get across a mood of spookiness. There are lots of boobs and super gross too long sex scenes. All the acting is really bad. All the mini demons looks like dick worms. The fight with the main demon at the end is pretty great because it's so bad. It's super terrible, but kinda fun in that regard.


Wednesday, November 18, 2015

American Anthem

Watched October 6, 2015

Starring: Mitch Gaylord, Janet Jones, Michael Pataki

It begins with a montage (the first of many) cutting between shots of the New York City skyline and the mountains of Flagstaff, Arizona. It's a very confusing start because we haven't been introduced to the main characters yet. Steve (Mitch Gaylord) has a job welding in a motorcycle shop and it seems like a pretty good job. Steve's dad has been out of work for a year after being laid off. and is very angry about it. Steve had a college football scholarship, along with being a very talents gymnast, but then his dad broke his arm and Steve couldn't take the scholarship.

Julie (Janet Jones) is a gymnast from New York who comes to the TOPs gym in Flagstaff to train for the upcoming competition to try out for the national gymnastics team. Even though Steve no longer is training in gymnastics, he still comes to watch some of the other gymnasts.

Steve and Julie meet and have a montage of falling in love, or something like that. At the gym, Julie is being pushed harder than she has ever been before. She happens to have a cousin, Arthur (Andrea Bianchi) who lives in Flagstaff. Arthur's main hobby is playing crazy synthesizers ever since his legs were damaged in a car accident that killed both his parents. Julie really like the songs that Arthur composes and she tries to incorporate them into her floor routine, but her coaches aren't into it.

Julie convinces Steve to come back to gymnastics. He agrees, but has a hard time juggling practice time with his job at the motorcycle shop. Plus his dad has some real rage issues.

At a practice meet, Steve tries a crazy move on the high bar and falls onto his spotter. The spotter is pushed into a table, his face broken and covered in blood.


When he's not at the gym, Steve has set up a bar in the woods between two trees that he practices on. One night, he's on his tree bar when it's raining and he falls off the bar after doing some crazy move. I'm not sure if this helps him realize that he needs to stop practicing in the woods or that he needs to focus more on his life goals.

After a falling he decides not to take the bus down with the rest of the team for the big competition in Phoenix. He comes home to his parents fighting, it seems like his dad is in a mood again. Steve tells his brother to run from the house., So his little brother gets on a trike ATV and races off. Then Steve chases him on his motorcycle. It's a very strange chase, but the little brother won't seem to stop. The brother falls off the ATV before it runs off a cliff. The brother almost falls off the cliff too but Steve gets there in time to save him. After some indecision, Steve decides to head down to Phoenix to compete after all. He runs into his mom on the way and invites her to come watch him.

Steve makes it to Phoenix in time for the competition. It's a very long meet, we see almost every character do a full routine. Julie decides after some hesitation to use her cousin's song for her floor routine and she makes the team. Steve does too. The end

There are a lot of ADR lines especially when Steven and Julie are courting. Steve broods a lot and has lots of cut shots, he doesn't seem to be in the same scenes as people. There are a lot of blue lights around making it feel like a music video. Mitch Gaylord, a great gymnast, is not an actor. I do like watching gymnastics, but this movie doesn't make it fun. It also doesn't do a good job showing why Mitch quit in the first place. Also, why did he get a football scholarship if this movie is about gymnastics.

I liked Julie's leotards.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Witchboard

Watched September 29, 2015

1986
Starring: Tawny Kitaen, Todd Allen, Stephen Nichols, Kathleen Wilhoite

Linda (Tawny Kitaen) and Jim (Todd Allen), a young couple are throwing a party at their apartment. Linda invited an old friend, Brandon (Stephen Nichols) who is not friends with Jim anymore...but it takes some time for this relationship to be explained. Brandon is talking to some of the party guests about weird ghosts, religion and acting like a jerk. He has brought a Ouija board , that he has a lot of experiencing using. He convinces Linda to try it with him and they contact a little boy named David. Brendan seems to know a lot about the Ouija board, the history of it and how to use it correctly. After asking the ghost boy David some questions the board jumps off their laps. From outside, they hear a pop and Brandon's fancy sport car has a sudden flat tire.

Since Brandon had to leave the party suddenly he left his Ouija board at Linda and Jim's place. The next day Linda uses the board to contact the ghost David and he helps her find her missing ring. That same day, Jim is at work on a construction site when his friend and coworker is flattened by a pile of Sheetrock. Jim comes home upset about the sudden death of his friend. Linda starts to act strange but it turns out she might be pregnant. Brandon talks to Linda and tells her that she shouldn't be using the board alone. Linda thinks it's harmless until she gets trapped in the kitchen and a knife is thrown to the ground and covered in cocktail sauce.

Brandon thinks that Linda is a victim of progressive entrapment, where a ghost slowly manages to gain the trust of a person until they can take her over. He hires a crazy medium to lock out David from Linda's mind. The medium, Zarabeth (Kathleen Wilhoite) is a valley girl/punk-ish nut but it seems like she does have a real connection to the spiritual realm. They hold a séance and it seems like Zarabeth kicks David out. Brandon drives Zarabeth back home, but the bad spirit follows her into her house. In her apartment it slits her throat and pushes her out the window onto sharp sundial.

Linda and Jim go to the funeral of his construction coworker. There Jim is questioned by a detective who thinks the accident was actually murder and Jim is the main suspect. The detective begins to follow Jim.

Brandon wants to go up to Big Bear where David was killed to make sure they've been talking to him and not some other ghost. Linda tries to contact David again and he shakes her around until she is knocked unconscious. Jim takes her to the hospital but then goes with Brandon to Big Bear.  They find out the David isn't lying by looking up his murder on microfiche at the library. Jim and Brandon spend time together and repair their relationship that was torn apart by Jim's love for Linda.

They get another Ouija board to contact David  to see if he can help them figure out what the actual dark spirit that is trying to progressively entrap Linda. They take it to an old dock and in front of a bunch of tied up barrels try to contact David. It turns out that David is talking to them but there is also an old Portuguese spirit that used to live in Jim's building that is trying to possess Linda. After talking to David, the barrels are unleashed. Jim is knocked unconscious and Brandon falls into the water. Dazed, Brandon does pull himself out of the water but then is killed by an ax to the face. Jim later wakes up, stumbles around and finds Brandon dead.

Jim heads back to the apartment and it's all torn to shit. Linda is now possessed by the Portuguese old man spirit and tries to kill Jim with an ax. They tussle, spirit possessed Linda tries to convince Jim he is the opening to the spirit world and the only way to close it is to kill himself. The detective shows up and tries to arrest Jim but Linda attacks him. Jim then shoots the Ouija board and that gets rid of the spirit but not before he is pushed out the window. 

Later we see Jim and Linda get married, so it all worked out for them. The landlady is cleaning up their messed up apartment and she find the bullet damaged Ouija board and a sequel is hinted out.

All the characters are unlikable and prone to sudden outbursts of rage. Since this was made the 1980's I'm not sure if these kids are 16 or 35. Jim and Linda live in a fancy older building that has been converted to apartments. He works in construction and maybe she is a college student, but we mostly see her hang out around the house. The ghost scenes are pretty weird. They talk about progressive entrapment over and over again which is funny.