Sunday

Albino Farm

2009

Ah, farming. Rising before the crack of a summer dawn so as not to waste a precious moment of daylight. Toiling all day in the burning sun, earning manly calloused hands and sun-scorched skin, the badges of honor earned by a life of honest hard work.

It's an albino's dream!

Oh, don't worry. For better or worse, there's no farm here nor farming. Not even that many albinos.

Here's what there is: a group of smart-ass city-slicker college kids head for adventure out in the Ozarks, where they encounter inbred mutant rednecks.

How do writers come up with ideas that fresh, that original? I guess we ordinary mortals can't understand how true geniuses get their flashes of creative brilliance. 'Tis a mystery.

I started out being unexpectedly impressed with this film. The opening credits sequence is a good "hook." Two little kids ride their bikes through the eerily deserted streets of a small rural town. The amber tint of the scene gives everything a warm glow, as if we were about to watch one of those chick-flicks about finding love in the Tuscan countryside. Then something seems wrong. The amber filter gives the sky an unearthly color, and the earthly warmth seems to transmute into surreal, alien menace. The two boys stop by a rusted-out old gate which obviously marks forbidden territory. The older of the two boys is all manly bravado. He squeezes through the gate and rudely taunts his companion for being afraid to follow. "You're a pussy. I'm not afraid of anything."

If you watch a lot of horror movies, you will know that whenever anyone says, "I'm not afraid," it is a foreshadowing of their doom, which often arrives immediately, as it does here. Both boys appear to be devoured and or dismembered by horrible forces which move so quickly that we barely glimpse them and do not fully understand what they might be or precisely what they have done to the boys.

(Perhaps the albino farmers are upset by the kids having delayed their harvest?)

Then the film actually begins. We have been lured in by a teaser which told us enough to get us curious and involved, but not too much to spoil the mystery.

If the rest of the film had been as good as that opening sequence, it could have been quite a nifty little genre masterpiece. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is just a typical bit of "college kids vs mutant hayseeds" torture porn. The film's forward movement touches every single familiar point in the roadmap of that sub-genre, and does so with some sub-standard performances.

Move along, lads, nothing to see here.

There is a bit of nudity. As mandated by the genre conventions and standards, there must be nudity from both the wiseacre city-slickers and the inbred cannibal hillbillies. Alicia Lagano provides the human nudity, and Bianca Barnett flashes some mutant tit-tays. Her breasts look unmutated, but the rest of her appearance is intentionally as unappealing as possible, because that's what makes the scene work properly.

IMDb report: No votes. No score. No comments. Only one review - in German (the movie is in English).

 

 

 

The Steam Experiment

(aka The Chaos Experiment; 2009)

This is more or less a STV clone of Saw. Six people are tricked into a sealed steam room on the pretext that it's part of a love connection program. As the heat intensifies, we get to see how far their psychological deterioration will progress. There is also a framing story in which a mad professor says he will let the six people out of that room if a local newspaper publishes his theories on global warming.

The dramatic tension, if you want to call it that, originally seems to center around the survival of those in the steam room, but as time goes on, we learn that things are not as they originally appeared to be. Our interest switches to unraveling the story's mysteries: Who is the mad scientist? Is he more scientist, or more mad? Does he have confederates we are not told about? When does the steam room incident actually take place? Does the steam room situation really occur, or are we simply watching one of his delusions? After we debate these matters in our heads for 90 minutes, there is an ambiguous twist ending which renders all of our previous conclusions false, or at least uncertain. In the previous sentence, one might substitute the word "confusing" for "ambiguous," if one were so inclined.

The cast is quite strong for a STV cheapie. In fact, it would have been close to an A-list cast if the film had been made in the 1980s. Val Kilmer is the mad professor. Armand Assante is the detective questioning him. Eric Roberts is one of the six human lobsters. Given that all three of those men have turned in excellent performances in real movies, one would have to say that the cast is the film's strength.

Everything else is the film's weakness.


Sidebar: Eric Roberts is now up to 109 IMDb acting credits. He is only 53 years old, and 92 of those credits have come in the past 15 years, so he could pass 200 acting credits by age 68. How large is that number in context? Gerard Depardieu has 153 credits at age 60. He has amassed 45 of those in the past eight years, so assuming the same rate for another eight years, he will also have about 200 credits at age 68. In other words, Eric Roberts is in about as many projects as Depardieu. That's about the same as saying somebody is as good a hitter as Ted Williams.

On that strengths/weaknesses issue, I have misspoken. Eve Mauro does the wise thing in a steam room and removes her hot, stuffy old top. She has a very toned body. I reckon we have to call that a strength.

 

 

  • * Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

  • * White asterisk: expanded format.

  • * Blue asterisk: not mine.

  • No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wieners

 I noticed that four unidentified Wieners collages were omitted from yesterday's contribution. The nudity in Wieners (2008) is brief and by an unidentified stripper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ruins

2008

One of the top nude scenes of 2008, although it was not strong enough to poll in the top twenty for our list.

Laura Ramsey 1920x800 film clip. Collages below.

 

 

 

Rent: Filmed live on Broadway.

2008

Idina Menzel 720p film clip. Sample below.

Eden Espinoza 720p film clip. Sample below.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Hank is on vacation in Cape Cod.

(The lucky stiff!)

He'll be back later this week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

Potpourri day ...

The Wizard of Gore

2008

Amina Munster

Descendant

2003

Jenna Bodnar's last IMDB credit (three years later than the second to last).

Bird of Prey

1995

Jennifer Tilly

My Life as a House

2001

Mary Steenbergen

"Six Feet Under"

season 1 (2001), episode 7

Rachel Griffiths

 

 

 

 

 

 

         
   

Desert Passion

1993

A third Missy Browning film clip. This time she is joined by Carrie Janisse

 (Sample below)

 
   
         

 

 

 

 

 

Pics

Carla Ribas in Alice's House (2007)

   

Film Clips