Inglorious Basterds

Wow, look at that trailer. See how much action is displayed, pretty fucking sweet right? I mean the movie has a run time of over 2 and a half hours I don't know how they can keep the action going. Unfortunately, like most movies the trailer has given this movie a reputation it cannot live up too. Sad thing is, it doesn't even try, that 2:20 trailer has 95% of the movies' action scenes in it.

Lets get one thing straight, I love a "talkie" Quentin Tarantino is an expert in this field and I've yet to see a bad flick from him, until now. However when you run your ad campaign for an "Action Movie" around Brad Pitt and the rest of the bastards and they have a total of 19 minutes of a 2 and half hour movie I have a real problem with it.

Sad thing we all know Quentin can do an action scene, Kill Bill and Dusk til Dawn are awesome and still incorporate good dialogue. Inglorious Basterds is just one long conversation that centers around the owner of the movie theater that the trailer mentions. Basically the theater owner is a run-a-way jew who attracts the attention of Germany's version of Sgt. York, who has a movie made about him and wants it premiered at her theater.

Sounds like a good drama, but this in an action flick! Remember the guy with the baseball bat, yeah that's his one scene. The scene with the pillows over the face, yeah that is about it.

{SPOILERS}
This movie is full of failure, nothing promised in the trailer is delivered at all. But the worst part of this movie is the historical inaccuracy. I love history especially world war two history, and I appalled at the movie's ending that the entire German High Command including Adolf Hitler is killed in the theater. I do not get the point of changing history just to make a film. I can almost bet in a high school classroom someone has written that Hitler was killed by two Jewish American Soldiers brandishing machine guns.

This movie is horrible and I am glad it is the only Tarantino flick I've rented without purchasing. Thank god, I would hate to waste money of a pile of shit like this.

Trailer Trash

Got to hand it to the film industry if they do one thing right in the film making process its making the audience want to see a movie due to an awesome trailer. Ads for a movie create the buzz that gets folks talking and in the seats at the movie theater or purchasing movies as a new release. Normally the hype isn't lived up too, but the movie is at least decent. The problem lies in horrible movies with great trailers.

Take for instance Taste of Flesh: Reviewed here


This is the trailer for the movie:


Based upon that trailer alone I shelled out $14.95 (US) on Amazon to get the movie the day it came out and my hands shook with glee as I tore into the plastic wrapping and for some reason 3 anti-theft devices (online purchases shouldn't have to worry about shop lifters). I now understand the need for the wrapping and security devices I was about to open up Pandora's Box of Crap. The movie looks NOTHING like the trailer, blood and guts would have been a plus instead we get a stunt double for Jabba the Hutt eating thigh bone on wonder bread.


Another great example of this in the horror industry is Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. (review to follow later) check out the trailer:



Robert Englund,in a "Evil Dead" type movie with the sprinkling of a Troma flick. Here is my money now, send me the Bluray when it comes out. Can I have my money back? I've seen better special effects in high school movies shot on a camcorder with paper plates on a string for UFOs. For the love of god, LOW BUDGET DOESN'T HAVE TO EQUAL CRAP. Play to your strengths and hid your weaknesses.

Its not just low budget horror that does this with its trailers either.

Do we really need to go into G.I. Joe or the Transformers movies? Play to the nostalgia factor get the audience in the seats and spoon feed chicken shit. Rinse Lather Repeat.

Zombie Death House

Zombie Death House (1987)
Studio: Double Helix Films – AIP Home Video
DVD Release Date: 2004
Directed By: John Saxton
Cast: Dennis Cole, Anthony Franciosa, John Saxton
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars


Not many people know this about me but for a brief time I worked in a prison. Besides watching horror movies I love watching prison movies such as Caged Heat, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, I must say however Zombie Death House is as close to a real prison as I have seen to date. Where to begin, with a title such as Zombie Death House I knew I was not going to be sitting through the next Citizen Kane, I was however pleasantly surprised. This movie is at times very slow and like most 80s “action” movies relies heavily on stock film and sound effects but the plot is there and it is fairly well acted. Speaking of the title, this movie was credited on its first release as “Death House” the Zombie was added for the DVD release.

The movie opens with our main character Derek (Cole) who just returned from working as a member of the special forces and like most veterans who have been trained only to kill he finds it difficult to find a job. This problem is solved when he is offered the job of driving the towns mafia boss Vic Moretti (Franciosa) and his wife around town, where one applies for this position I don’t know but if you put schematics aside it moves the plot along. It isn’t long before Derek sticks his hand in the cookie jar and the boss’ wife starts banging him on a regular basis. Needless to say when Moretti finds out his is beyond pissed. In true mafia fashion Moretti kills his wife and frames Derek for murder sending him to the Township State Penitentiary’s death row. All of this happens in about 14 minutes with three really tasteful artistic boob shots, and 3 exploding cars and a car chase that lasts all of 15 seconds.

When Derek gets to prison he learns that the inmates on death row are being injected with some type of virus given by the CIA to help control anger issues. After the CIA’s agent in charge Colonel Burgess (Saxton) concocts a new more potent virus it is injected into two inmates which sets off a chain reaction which causes the inmates to start turning into “zombies”. The next hour is then spent trying to escape prison without being infected, killed or shot by the US Army which has the prison surrounded.

So let us get everything straight. This is a 80s movie with: CIA, Prison, Mafia and Boobs what more could anyone ask for? Make-up and special effects would have been nice, but with the dark camera lighting I don’t really think it would matter. This movie to its credit does not take itself too serious and appears to be John Saxton trying to make a horror movie for fans. This is the proper way to do a low budget horror movie. No zany one liners in this movie just action from about the 12 minute mark until the very end. This movie will not make you laugh, it will not make you cry but it will entertain the hell out of you for 90 minutes what more could you ask for?

All in all I can’t rate this movie above a 4 simply due to it being so low budget along with the fact that the special effects just are not there to warrant such a “perfect” rating. Not sure what is on the DVD as this was an online rental, but I am going to purchase it anyways due to the fact of the movie being so good something that doesn’t happen very often. It is worth a view.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9kObXPD6rA

Frankenstein Book Series

Frankenstein: Prodigal Son (Book 1)
Written by: Dean Koontz and Kevin J. Anderson
Published by: Bantam Books
Released: 2005

The first book of Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein trilogy is by far the best in the series. As with most trilogy stories the first book sets the stage, introduces the characters and most of the back story. It also helps that Kevin Anderson who has written many other novels that I like was a co-author on this book, both Dean and Kevin each have their own way of describing a scene and making the reader imagine what is going on, this cannot be said of a lot of other authors of the past 20 years who leave out a lot of detail (in my opinion).

Frankenstein: Prodigal Son takes place in New Orleans, and follows two city cops Detective Carson and Maddison who are working on a serial killer case where someone is going around killing and removing body parts from their victims. As the story progresses a new character meets them named Deucalion who is a huge hulk of a man with one half of his faced tattooed and who claims to be the original Frankenstein monster. His claim gets even more peculiar when he states that the original Dr. Frankenstein is still alive and is creating an army of super soldiers called the New Race. The book has a lot of twists and turns as the detectives not only find out that Deucalion is telling the truth but find out there is more than one surgeon!

This book is very well written and is in my opinion the better of the three. If you like cop drama and paranormal stories this is a really good read, though the rest of the series is a bit of a let down.



Frankenstein: City of Night (Book 2)
Written by: Dean Koontz and Ed Gorman
Published by: Bantam Books
Released: 2005

Book 2 of the Frankenstein series is entitled City of Night. In a change of pace, Kevin Anderson has been replaced by Ed Gorman in the co-authoring department and it really shows.

City of Night has a LOT of potential and story it just can’t live up to the first book in my opinion. We get the conclusion of the surgeon story arc as well as the near death attempts on Carson and Maddison by the New Race. Also told throughout the story is the followings of one of the New Race experiments by Dr. Frankenstein in which he purposely created an autistic new race member who is obsessed with tracking down Detective Carson’s little brother Arnie who also has autism but was seen smiling in a newspaper story. There is even the beginnings of a love affair between our detectives which was vaguely hinted at in the first book.

The most surprising arc of the entire book however is the first confrontation between Frankenstein and Monster in over 200 years, as well as the near total chaos beginning as members of the new race are starting to go haywire. This action book of the series but it kind of jumps from character to character rather quickly with some ideas started only to never be finished. I think a little more detail was needed but as I said in my review of book one, I am a Kevin Anderson fan and enjoy reading his books, so it may just be a biased opinion.

If you’ve read book one and enjoyed it you might as well pick up and read book 2. I wouldn’t bother with book 3 as you will see in my next review.



Frankenstein: Dead and Alive (Book 3)
Written by: Dean Koontz
Published by: Bantam Books
Released: July 28, 2009

I waited 4 years for this?

Dean Koontz had a bit of bad luck. He wrote and had published the first two books of the Frankenstein trilogy in 2005. The second coming out in the beginning of August of 2005, having set his horror story about a new race of creatures destroying man kind in New Orleans was a GREAT idea, not knowing however that at the end of August of 2005 one of the greatest natural disasters to hit the United States (much less New Orleans) was going to happen really put a stopper on him finishing the series. Dean decided to wait on finishing the story until enough time had passed to let the wounds somewhat heal or so the story goes. I personally think he didn’t have a good way to finish the story and if it hadn’t been for fans demanding he finish the books I don’t think he would have. I personally wish he had left it alone because this book is a load of crap.

This is the third and hopefully final chapter of the Frankenstein story. There is no co-author on this one and it really show. The book picks up where it left off in 2005 but the story just does not work. He introduces a lot of third act characters that pretty much take over the story and push the characters we have followed in two previous books to the side. By this time we are all waiting on the final show down between Frankenstein and the monster, or at least Detective Carson and Frankenstein since it was eluded in the ending of the second book that he had something to do with the death of her parents. Nope, none of that shit here, just a new monster made up of free thinking new race members that leave the story just as fast as it came in, a genetic super bug that is trying to kill Victor and the return of Victors first wife who died in the first book.

This book just had the feeling of having not only a Scoobie Doo ending but was just a waste of time not only the time reading the book but the time fans have been going and checking out message boards for the fleeting hopes of reading a rumor that the book was coming out. I’m not sure if Dean was just trying to make a quick buck here or the fan pressuring for him to finish the story made him rush or what but this was the worst book of the series. The climax of the book should always try to be the best of the series. This does not always happen but an attempt should be made, I equate this to if Return of the Jedi ended with Luke taking off Vader’s mask and its Jar Jar Binks inside it is just a big letdown.

If you’ve read the other two books and have nothing better to do, my suggestion is go back and read book 1. If you really want to know what happens to the story read the book maybe if you didn’t wait 4 years for it the story might end better for you.

Attention DVD Manufactors

There is nothing that annoys me more than paying twenty bucks for a DVD/Blu Ray and having to waste time with the anti-piracy warnings on the disc. You cannot fast forward, you can not hit your menu button nothing. You are literally held hostage for a few minutes "reading" a warning that says do not copy our material and distribute it.
Thing is, if I was going to bootleg a movie I wouldn't care about a warning label I would just do it anyways.

It doesn't really make me feel like a hostage when I rent a movie either from Netflix or the Big Red Box because I have not paid for the disc only to view it. I can see where such a warning is warranted. Something along the lines of "Do not copy and distribute" on screen for a few seconds will do the trick.

Instead on any given movie you sit through this:

(15 seconds)


Black Screen for 5 seconds

(15 seconds)


And then to make matters worse we have to get it in different languages.




Why is it when you go to the theater you do not have to see these warnings? Sure every once in a while you get an anti-piracy video but I guess since your bombarded with 30 minutes worth of Coca-Cola and Ford commercials before the previews it all equals out in the long run.

In the end I submit the final image, telling you your actual rights for purchasing a DVD.

Semi-Dead

A while back Southern Fried Movie obtained an official press release from Chris Wiltz who is the writer for the Web Series Semi-Dead (located at: www.semi-dead.com) so far the show has its third episode posted and the series looks to be a major success. The shows two principal characters are Joe and Chris. Both are former military trying to make it in a zombie society. Chris has no problems with the zombies because he is oblivious to the situation while Joe is trying to cope with the entire situation the best way he knows how: Kicking Ass.

Since I do not know the final outcome of the series I will not give any episode by episode details away. But please check it out.


WWW.Semi-Dead.COM

Status of the Site

I know its been a while, but things come up that can't be avoided. To those that still follow us(me) here at Southern Fried Movie, thanks. I promise after 2010 begins the site will pick up some more and a better explanation will be given. I've got a lot on my mind today, and a review to do so stay tuned.