clousems film reviews, mk iii

Queen of Blood:
Imagine the movie "Lifeforce" (or Species, if you prefer. Or, if you haven't seen Lifeforce or Species, imagine what would happen if the alien in Alien, Quartermass Xperiment, Jason X, or Predator 2 was an attractive young woman. Come to think of it, why in the hell are there so many goddamn movies about humans discovering alien lifeforms and getting punk'd by the extraterrestrials solely because scientists act irrationally and don't kill the freakin' alien when it starts rampaging?). Now imagine that it was made in the 60s, with a "Pieces"-level budget.

Odds are that you've got a pretty good idea of what the movie "Queen of Blood" is like.

Starring one of the strangest trios of actors I've ever seen (Basil Rathbone, John Saxon(!), and Dennis Hopper), using stolen stock footage from the USSR, and incorporating one of the funniest costume designs in cinema history, Queen of Blood is surprisingly a watchable movie, which means it blows most movies about Martians out of the water. It's not good, mind you-- it's very not good-- but it's strange enough to warrant watching once.

Bring it On: Cheer or Die
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I'm convinced that a producer from the 80's time travelled to make this movie. Is there really any reason for such a movie to be? Nope. Nobody really cares about "Bring it On" anymore, and making absurd slasher sequels is cliche now. Yet, here we are, with a horror themed movie about cheerleading competitions. Why, god? Why?

Obviously, because of the theoretical similarities with the Lucio Fulci classic giallo "Murder Rock: Dancing Death", I had to watch it. I regret my decision immensely.

In theory, it's actually a brilliant formula. Hire the worst TV movie writers you can find (probably poached from the CW channel), and kill off the inevitably vapid and obnoxious characters that result-- the worse the characters, the better the kills. And nothing tops PG13 TV movie cheerleaders on the SyFy channel. With each line of terrible, terrible dialogue, you can feel your bloodlust grow. Ideally, in a slasher, you want to root for the heroes, but it's a post-Scream slasher filled with lame references to lamer movies (including Carrie 2, for crying out loud!) and the like*. In other words, we should end up rooting for the killer, because she doesn't talk much. She just kills unlikeable people. Unfortunately, she does a shitty job of it, even by slasher movie standards. She needed to take lessons from Jason Vorhees in Jason X. Now THERE was a fun bad horror movie. This killer just sucked. And the comedy was worse. Return of the Killer Tomatoes was wittier.

Add in the fact that they never actually had enough plot exposition to make the reveal a "twist", and it failed by any horror-comedy standard.

As a cheerleading movie, the cheers weren't great, and there weren't enough of them. They should've hired me as the cheer choreographer. I would have been wonderful. I learned how to do all that lame tumbling stuff to make fun of cheerleaders. And yet, only now, as I type a movie review for a shitty made for TV movie, do I realize the parallels between myself and Mark Wahlberg's character in "The Other Guys" . Life's funny like that.
The final cheer death battle thing was kinda funny at first, but got tiresome REAL fast.
I'd elaborate on the plot, but it's exactly what one would expect. Unlike the SyFy channel, I'm not here to insult your intelligence. Super short version: The cheer team decides to practice off school grounds for the cheer competition, then a killer attacks

Just know it's awful, but not significantly worse than today's standard horror movies. Watch Murder Rock: Dancing Death instead.

Damn you, SyFy channel! First you change your name, then Sharknado, now this? This is why nobody watches your shows. Go back to eternally showing that movie about Kate Beckinsale and the werewolves. May a flock of carnies punch every one of your executives in the face with a roll of nickels.

*Side note: One does have to wonder why characters in these movies seem to have an encyclopedic of every slasher movie, yet are unfamiliar with Randy's rules from Scream.