| MISTER TRASH PRESENTS... |
       
MISTER TRASH PRESENTS...
Boy howdy – I strike out fairly frequently when I am digging through the cinematic wastelands of yesteryear, but rarely as badly as this. Here are two odorous piles of VHS crap that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Enjoy?
A lonesome loser named Warren (Joe McDonald) is so hopelessly horny that he watches videos called "The Manly Art of Seduction" while looking at wank mags in his apartment. He's so pathetic he even spectacularly fails to pick up ugly chicks at a smoky disco on ladies night. Worse yet, he gets a little creepy about his social retardation - when his roomate manages to score, Warren brandishes a steak knife in his room and breaks a mirror with his fist. Not exactly a catch. The next day, Warren goes to work at the library and wrestles homoerotically with a co-worker while complaining about his failure to get laid. Could this possibly be any more transparent?
When a new chick starts on at the library, Warren gets even a little more creepy still, but alas she has a policy not to date co-workers. Suck it, Warren! One night, while perusing the most arcane archives in the library, Warren comes across a mysterious text about mind control, which interests Warren insofar as a form of rape that can’t be legitimately prosecuted, because he is a disgusting creep. Now equipped with mad mind control powers, Warren is able to take sluts home from the bar. Huzzah! (He also uses his new abilities to help his even dorkier pal solve his Rubik’s Cube. Twice.)
Okay, so the movie is half over now and little progress has been made. Eventually we get into some nonsense about the guy who actually wrote the manuscript, some machine he built to supplement it, and how he died in his mother’s basement as a result of his experiments on controlling chicks’ minds. Yup, mother’s basement – this entire movie is about pathetic failures at everything.
Meanwhile, Warren starts turning into a monster a la From Beyond, with pulsating skin and stuff probing out of his brain. Pretty soon he’s looking like The Leader from the Hulk comics and terrorizing that chick in the library, the only one to resist him of the whole two women he’s used his powers on! Anyway, his brain crawls out his head, attaches itself to the girl, and controls her for a few minutes before getting knocked off and growing new limbs. As for the machine, the roommate brings it home, hooks it up to his head, and then shoots lightning out of his damn finger at the brain monster, effectively making it explode. That’s it. What the hell, guys? This movie is a steaming turd. Virtually nothing happens at all for the first third of the damn thing, and even when it does pick up it’s just so mind-killingly stupid...wait a second – that’s not a title, that’s a fucking warning. Seriously folks, I am a professional. Do NOT try watching shit like MindKiller at home.
Highlight of the Film: It was only an hour and a half. Could be worse.
TWICE DEAD (Bert L. Dragin, 1988)
So, back in the 20s this insane stage actor named Tyler Walker cackled maniacally while dancing with a mannequin in his dining room. When the men from the bank came to tell him they were taking his house, he cackled some more and hung himself. Oh noes! Now, in 1988, some annoying kids and their dad have inherited the old Walker place and you'll never guess what - it's frigging haunted. It's also full of punk kids in leather squatting in the joint, to which the dad instantly responds by demanding the kids get his shotgun out of the car. He's proactive!
Well, the fuzz chases
the squatters off, allowing the eldest son to wander throughout the
dark house at night unhindered, at which time he finds both Walker's
mannequin (read: love doll) and the noose still hanging from the ceiling.
(Come on - really?!) The next day, the kid protects some local
youths from having their basketball stolen from the punk squatters,
The upside to all of this is that one of the kids being harrassed is Todd Bridges from "Diff'rent Strokes," and I think that's hilarious for some reason. Later, said hero goes to the library to do some research on Walker and finds out that Willis works there, who helps him out but disappoints with no one around to ask him "whatchoo talkin' 'bout?". Following this is a ridiculously long sequence dealing with the kid and sister/girlfriend running away from the bullies in a hearse to a not-so-rockin’ cock rock soundtrack. Um....I signed up for a ghost story, you jerks. Well, not anytime soon, at any rate.
The punks break into the house again, but the kids pull some Scooby-Doo bullshit by rigging up a bunch of special effects designed to make the house look like it’s haunted. Even though it already is. Allegedly. The only thing that comes close to saving this part of the movie is when a sock puppet frightens one of the tough punks so badly that he jumps through a closed window.
Jesus wept, this is a painfully awful movie. Would you believe that the punks break into the house AGAIN the following night? They blast bad music and pour coke on a pizza! What rapscallions they are! The fat guy even rides his motorcycle inside the house! Now that they’ve finally taken control of this house that they mysteriously desire so damn much for no reason ever given, some supernatural shenanigans start going down in the last 15 minutes of this atrocity. There is a death by dumbwaiter, some of the most terrifying fake boobs I’ve ever seen, a possessed motorcycle, a haunted lamp, and a shotgun that loads itself and forces a dude to shoot himself in the face. With all of the punks dead, our intrepid heroes spend the rest of the film arguing over whether or not it was the ghost of Tyler Walker that rescued them. Even the film itself doesn’t know if it’s a ghost story! I feel like I’ve been punished. Megafrownies! Highlight of the Film: Woken in the middle of the night by the sound of a cat meowing, the daughter of this thoroughly retarded family begins wandering the house and yard calling out in cat-language. "Meow? Meow! Meow?" Seriously, I hate this movie and everyone in it with an intensity that will never fade as long as I live.
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