I remember hearing about this movie when my mom and stepdad went to go see this in theaters in 1997. It started out promising enough but by at about the midpoint everyone in the theater was cheering for the snake to kill everybody and I think I see why. It’s not that the cast is that bad, quite the contrary, it’s a solid lineup including; Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Jonathan Hyde, and Jon Voight, but there’s something that’s undeniably satisfying about watching all of these people get murdered by a big ass snake. Anaconda, unlike many of the other film’s I’ve reviewed recently is a fairly competent production it just all turned out really campy, but hey that doesn’t mean it can’t be entertaining.

A National Geographic film crew headed by director Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez) is heading out to the Amazon River to shoot a documentary about a long lost indian tribe that we never learn anything about. The film crew includes; Steve Cale (Eric Stoltz) a dashing anthropologist, a stereotypical black cameraman Danny (Ice Cube), a production manager Denise (Kari Wuhrer) who’s got a serious thing going with sound engineer Gary (Owen WIlson), Mateo (Vincent Castellanos) the ship’s captain, and Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde) who appears to be some sort of David Attenbourough-like documentary host. During a storm on the Amazon the crew encounters a mysterious Paraguay snake hunter Sarone (Jon Voight) who’s been stranded on the river. I don’t really know what people from Paraguay sound-like but Jon Voight sounds exactly like Mandy Patinkin from The Princess Bride and that’s awesome, he’s easily the best part of the movie with his eccentricities and burning desire for the hunt.

What the crew doesn’t learn until later is that all Sarone cares about is tracking down and killing a giant Green Anaconda that’s been terrorizing the area. Sarone then takes control of the crew after team leader Eric Stoltz is stung in the throat by a wasp and goes into a coma for the rest of the movie. So why is Eric Stoltz in this at all? He has about 15 minutes of screen time if that and then he’s out like a light, what’s the deal? At least the film is pretty quick to the point when it comes to the reveal of the Anaconda. We see it early on and all the time as it seems to hunt down and kill off the crew one at a time. It’s funny that the crew is supposed to be hunting the snake after Sarone takes over but it’s really the other way around. Though I don’t blame the fact these people have so much trouble hunting this anaconda cause the thing practically has superpowers. Every time it shows up it just seems to whip around at incredible speeds almost like it’s flying from one place to another, it’s insane.

Anaconda was made in that strange transition period from animatronics to full CGI so it’s a little odd. The animatronics are good enough but all the CGI is just so terrible they should of held back a little. We may see the snake a great deal, which is fun but at the same time it’s one of the film’s biggest downfalls. Take Jaws, clearly the inspiration for this knockoff, you practically never saw the monster and it was terrifying. The snake attacks in this film are just so ridiculous that you can’t take any of it seriously. Though that all aside this isn’t a terrible movie it’s just really dumb, though what do you expect it’s about a giant snake that kills people.

Here’s an awesome scene of the anaconda killing Jon Voight.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen with Tobe Hooper’s (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) adaptation of this second tier Stephen King short story. Though Hooper’s career had been on the decline throughout most of the 80s this seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for his career in mainstream cinema.

The film was The Mangler, originally a short story published in Stephen King’s 1978 collection Night Shift. I’ve read and enjoyed Night Shift for many years but I’ve never understood why all the movies that have been adapted from stories in Night Shift have been so disappointing. Sometimes They Come Back (1991) was underwhelming, Graveyard Shift was a bust despite a sweet theme song, “The Ledge” and “Quitters In.” got crammed into the forgettable 1985 anthology film Cat’s Eye, “Trucks” became the campy King directed Maximum Overdrive, Lawnmower Man became well you know, but that’s okay the story wasn’t very good either, and Children of the Corn (although notable) has never been anything special.

Is Night Shift cursed when it comes to adaptations? Take King’s 1982 short story collection Different Seasons. Three of the four stories have become films and you know what they were? Apt Pupil (enjoyable), Stand By Me (awesome) and The Shawshank Redemption (also awesome). What’s wrong with Night Shift? And why did The Mangler have to get made?

To start, The Mangler is far from one of King’s best stories. He’s a gifted writer but even he has been guilty of going too far every once in awhile. By that, I mean off the deep end from creepiness into plain silliness, and I always thought this story was a little odd. The premise is that there is an industrial laundry folding machine in a factory that is possessed by a demon. That’s right, a laundry machine… Sure it’s a cool setting and we’ve probably all had that moment where we imagine an intimidating inanimate object coming to life, but come one, a laundry machine? Though at least when King did it, it was just in a quick short story, this is an entire movie that’s as dull as Dilbert and never seems to end.

A very hard to understand Ted Levine stars as Officer John Hunton, a surly detective investigating an accident at a laundry service owned by the eccentric Bill Gartley (Robert Englund) who has weird crutch legs. When a dark aura surrounding the factory starts to get to Hunton he turns to his hippie brother-in-law who is like “It must be a demon.” There isn’t any reason to ever believe this but Hunton does and they spend the rest of the movie trying to exorcise the machine while uncovering it’s dark past.

It’s all very dumb and very dull with the only highlight being Robert Englund giving an entertaining performance as the eccentric Gartley. I’ve always felt kind of bad for Robert Englund, sure he’s made a name for himself playing Freddy Krueger and for starring in other notable horror roles but he’s actually a very good actor. He’s classically trained and yet he’s been stuck to doing mostly subpar horror movies his whole life. Just a thought.

Maybe The Mangler could have worked as a short hour long  TV special, maybe. Unfortunately, we got this pointless schlocky thriller trying to capitalize off of King’s name. I didn’t like this movie it made me feel.. unclean.

Countless sequels to popular franchises seems to be a staple of the horror genre, not a good one, but whacha gonna do? It’s wedged in there and it always will be. So what franchises come to mind? Well there’s Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre to name a few, and then there’s others like Leprechaun. What separates Leprechaun from these other films? Maybe it’s the fact that not even the first installment of this franchise is good. I just recently watched this tragedy of a film and was stunned to learn there are now six installments of this series. Seriously? What is the appeal of this film? I don’t know! I guess They are probably cheap, no one’s gonna care if they are bad or good, and Warwick Davis is a nice guy so he’ll probably take the paycheck most days of the week I mean there’s only so many roles for dwarf actors. I suppose most Leprechaun fans (if that’s a real thing) come back for Warwick. It’s by no means a well written character but he clearly has fun playing this limerick spewing little shit. Maybe they just want to see how far they can take it? I mean he’s been to Vegas, space, and the hood (twice!) Though enough of me trying to grasp this madness I’m just here to talk about the first one.

The film opens with a man who’s returned to his wife claiming to have caught a leprechaun. Naturally she doesn’t believe him (as any rational person should) but he says he got one and he’s locked him up in a suitcase. So the woman opens it, the Leprechaun gets out, the Leprechaun kills the woman and the man locks him up again. Honestly I think you could of cut out this whole scene and no one would care, it goes on far too long and is not in anyway exciting. Ten years later we are introduced to J.D. Redding (John Sanderford) and his daughter Torry (Jennifer Aniston, everyone has to start somewhere) as they’re moving to some crappy farmhouse to the summer. Torry complains about going to some crappy place in “New Mexico” to which her father corrects her by saying “It’s North Dakota.” Now I get it she’s supposed to be snooty, she doesn’t know about anything about the rest of the country but come on, those places are nowhere near each other. It’s with lines like this that we begin to prepare for an endless series of jokes in the script that also misfire spectacularly.

On the farm we are introduced to some painters, including Torry’s strapping young love interest Nathan (Ken Olandt), his wisecracking kid brother Alex (Robert Gorman) and their mentally challenged friend Ozzie (Mark Holton from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure). Maybe it’s just me but I find the inclusion of this kid and his retarded friend to be very strange for a horror movie. The two seem to share a kind Of Mice and Men relationship and often make me forget I’m watching a horror movie. Combined with the cartoonish premise Leprechaun feels more like a Disney Channel original movie (with some blood and occasional profanity) than anything else.

So how does the Leprechaun come into play with these characters? Well the retarded guy finds the chest the Leprechaun was sealed in and releases him. Upon his release the Leprechaun is relentless in the search for his gold which somehow the retarded guy has already found following a rainbow. So it’s a search for gold complete with terrible Lucky Charms jokes! This sounds like it could be hilarious but most of the kills are surprisingly bland and nothing really funny or interesting happens, it’s just a big unlucky failure pile. Son that note I’ll see ya again tomorrow, if I haven’t already blown my brains out after digesting this travesty.

Few film’s legacies have so greatly benefitted from the fact that the film itself was bad. The fact that Troll 2 is so memorably bad probably has done more for the film than if it was even just okay. In recent years Troll 2 has given other crappy classics a run for their money as the best worst movie. There’s even a documentary about Troll 2 called “Best Worst Movie” but more on that later. Like many of the best worst classics Troll 2 finds that perfect balance between awkwardness and incompetence, complete with camp, cheese and all the stuff that your worst nightmares are made of. It is a film that is in fact such a calamity that it actually becomes something so delightfully absurd that you simply cannot look away. If someone made a shortlist of the bad movies you needed to see before you die this is a film that may now even be number one, it’s really something you have to see to believe.

The Waits family is going on vacation, and what better place to stay then in the remote rural town of Nilbog (which is Goblin spelled backwards, nice!) Though the town seems peaceful enough, the young Joshua (Michael Stephenson) is contacted by his dead grandfather and warned that the inhabitants of the town are goblins. Wait a minute goblins? I thought this movie was called “Troll 2”, well I’ll get to that in just a minute. So Nilbog is full of Goblins masquerading as people so that they can turn humans into human/plant hybrids and eat them. Why these goblins can’t just eat regular vegetation I have no idea. Oh yeah and the daughter (Connie McFarland) of the family’s boyfriend also comes to Nilbog, gotta have some random characters to kill off right? So the Goblins try to get the family to eat vegetables which will turn them into vegetables, but Joshua retaliates in various ways including a scene where he even pisses on a bunch of food. “You can’t piss on hospitality!” says Michael Waits (George Hardy) the father of the family. Joshua continually tries to warn his family of the townspeople’s intentions but all hell breaks loose in Nilbog. Anymore and I would be spoiling the magic for anyone who hasn’t seen the film.

Strangely enough the film was marketed as “Troll 2” as an attempt to market it as a sequel to the 1986 film Troll. I suppose sequels make more money? The film is clearly supposed to be about goblins which was the original title. The film was also made by an all Italian crew but somehow ended up with an unknown american cast, filming took place in Utah and the rest is history.

It’s amazing what kind of cult following this film has attracted over the years and this has all excellently been captured in the entertaining documentary Best Worst Movie released last year and directed by the original film’s young star Michael Stephenson. The film chronicles the lives of the stars since the films was released (most notably George Hardy) and also gives us a peek into the bizarre fandom this mess has created. I’d recommend it for anyone who likes quirky documentaries, here’s the trailer right below.

Just when you thought nothing could top killer rabbits we have yes, killer slugs. You heard me KILLER SLUGS! At least stupid people that accidentally kill themselves in the presence of slugs. I don’t know what’s supposed to be scary about painfully slow gastropods but I there’s only so many animals to choose from.

Directed by Juan Piquer Simon (the same “mastermind” behind The Pod People) Slugs, or as the opening title card calls it “Slugs: The Movie” is about a rural town that becomes prey to a strain of toxic slugs. Thus, it’s up to health worker Mike Brady (yeah, that’s his name) to put an end to all the slimy madness.

It all begins with perhaps the lamest opening to a horror movie I’ve seen. There’s this guy fishing out on a lake bickering with his girlfriend and suddenly he gets pulled under. We fade to black and that’s it. What? Did he get pulled into the lake by a slug? Do slugs swim? Can they really pull down an entire person? This is one movie where I’m not surprised when people ignore the one guy who says “It’s slugs! The slugs are killing people!” I mean it doesn’t make sense. This leads to one of my favorite moments between Mike Brady and the town sheriff, the exchange goes a little bit like this.

Mike: So Sherif what do you think?

Sherif: I don’t know wild dogs maybe? Raccoons driven out of the hills by the cold?

Mike: I don’t buy that, something that big would have done a lot more damage to the inside of the house.

Sheriff: what’s your bright idea Mr. health inspector?

Mike: Rats, maybe?

Sheriff: Rats? You willing to go on record with that?

You think that guys explanation of rats is stupid? Yeah, killer raccoons are way more plausible, Though that does sound like a much better movie. It’s the small things that seem to invoke a subtle kind of idiocy. This movie has so much unintentionally bad dialogue that it’s no more a bad horror movie than a great comedy. So unless you’re scared of being chased by piles of what looks like dog shit you’ll probably find this film hilarious.

The kills are great and for the most part clever. Though it seems strange that everyone who dies in this movie seems to be more responsible for their own deaths than any of the slugs. People in this movie react in such irrational ways and the thinking process is nonsensical. Though I guess the slugs in this film are tricky, I mean no one ever finds any slugs at the seen of the crime. It’s as if the slugs are outwitting everyone by slinking off before the authorities arrive and that’s awesome. One last note before I go, for a movie about slugs there sure are a lot of explosions.

Here’s a montage of all the best scenes. The editing is kind of annoying but it’s all there.