Cool as Ice

Okay, this situation is starting to really get grisly. I mean what am I supposed to do, go see THE NINJA TURTLE MOVIE? That doesn't seem like an awesome life choice, and I just hope it doesn't come to that. Not that their weird little Shrek ears aren't endearing or anything I just... if Vanilla Ice isn't in the movie then really what's the point. Hmm... okay, fuck it, since I'm grasping around for ideas about a movie to talk about, and now I'm thinking about Vanilla Ice, let's just commit and do this thing...

...oh good god this is the worst tagline ever.

"When a girl has a heart of stone, there's only one way to melt it. Just add Ice."

COOL AS ICE

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

No problem indeed.

"No pulse? No problem."

Hello friends, welcome back to another hopeless walk through the trackless desert that is September, a month that has thus far proven to be a cinematic death march into the fall season. I mean really what's taking me to the box office this month? I guess A Walk Among the Tombstones (aka Taken 2.5)? Maybe the Maze Runner? I guess I shouldn't complain too much, as October will bring Left Behind, a movie based on the long running series of novels about the end times. Why am I looking forward to this ridiculous guaranteed shitpile? Because it stars Nicholas Cage, and that means that Thanksgiving is coming early for this boy. So there's at least a light at the end of this tunnel, and that light is the flames from the lake of fire I guess. Enough of that though, today I'm here to talk about mediocre and under-promoted movies about paranormal detectives. As an expert of mediocre paranormal fiction it seemed only fitting that I deliver the prognosis for Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. This was a movie that I'd initially intended to review over a year ago, when I first saw it, but I became occupied with movies that were more pressing, so it ended up on the back burner until the world class famine I have on my hands now. In case you aren't really into Italian comic books (how weird!) Dylan Dog is a long running Italian horror comic (started in 1986) about the eponymous Dylan Dog, an investigator who is an expert in dealing with the nightmarish and bizarre. In the film adaptation this holds true, with a few changed details (namely his assistant is not a Groucho Marx impersonator, and I personally am really grateful to whoever made that executive decision, because that sounds terrible). Dylan works in New Orleans instead of London, that makes sense, this is an American movie after all and we couldn't possibly have an UN-AMERICAN HERO, that's insane. Along with his undead buddy Marcus (Sam Huntington, also known as the werewolf on the U.S. Being Human) Dylan doesn't just go around blowing the faces off of the things that go bump in the night. Rather he also acts as an intermediary between them, working to maintain the uneasy peace that exists between various groups.

Chopping Mall

Nothing like this happens. Ever.

"Where shopping can cost you an arm and a leg."

Greetings from the dark underworld of movies, it's time for more Tagline! Today I decided that it was a fine time to explore the wide world of B-movie garbage, and so took to the archive. This brought me into striking range of the dross produced by Roger and Julie Corman, and eventually to Chopping Mall. You might suspect from the name that Chopping Mall is a horror movie about a serial killer or ax murderer in a mall killing people. Maybe you'd think it was about a mall where people are chopped up, in some sort of bizarre dystopic world. You would be wrong in both cases, as this movie is actually about killer robots! Originally released in '86 as Killbots, I guess that wasn't punny enough so they re-released it as Chopping Mall, and it did a bit better afterwards. The premise of the movie is not super complicated. There is a mall. Then there are robots. The robots start killing people in said mall. That's about all there is to it. I mean, I guess I can go into more detail about the highly scientific way that the robots get to this point.

Cyber Seduction

Really took the time to make this legit.

"He's with hundreds of women every night... without ever leaving his computer."

Good morning my friends, and welcome. Normally its all shits and giggles up in here, but today I want to talk about a very serious epidemic that's sweeping the 2005 nation: Boys looking at mostly covered up boobs on the internet. Yes that's right, it's no joke, boys the nation over are giving up otherwise productive lives so they can almost see a boob on the internet, but not quite. They start drinking energy drinks, and will drain your credit card dry, just to pay for an almost glimpse at part of a boob maybe in some leather bikini. It's horrifying to imagine but we can't just turn a blind eye while the terrifying internets suck the souls from the still living penises of teenagers everywhere. Yes I really typed that sentence, looked at it, and thought "yup, let's go with that." That's not the point though. Okay it kind of is the point of today's movie actually, which is the often lauded and truly informative CYBER SEDUCTION: HIS SECRET LIFE, a made for Lifetime movie about a teenage boy who discovers internet pornography, and is then sucked headlong into a world of desperate jacking off, that ultimately destroys him almost.

Troll 2

Troll squared? What are you trying to tell me.

"Be afraid... be TWICE as afraid!"

It's Thursday, and you know what that means, I've returned to haunt you with more movie reviews! Now many of you are probably at least passing familiar with today's movie, as it has been made popular at least in meme form by the internet. In particular there is one clip that frequently surfaced for a while, catching an especially shitty moment. While it is a funny clip, and certainly representative of the movie, I feel that no short length of the film can really encompass in all its grandeur the sheer insane shitty-ness of this movie. From opening credits to close this movie is sucking at 100% capacity like an industrial vacuum cleaning up a basement flooded by a burst septic system. Before I really get into the heart of the matter, I wanted to note a few things about the movie. Firstly, while the company that produced it bought the rights to Troll the first (because it experienced very mild financial success, despite also being dross) this movie has no relation to that one at all. Second, there are no trolls at any point in the movie. There are only goblins. The movie even specifically refers to them AS goblins, so that's important too. Third, the movie was produced and directed by an entirely Italian crew, and none of them spoke English, except for a set or costume designer (I don't remember which) who interpreted. Fourth, the entire cast auditioned for parts as extras, but were then cast in leading roles. Most are incredibly ashamed of this film, so I will refrain from referring to them by anything but their character names. None of them went on to anything much better anyway, so mentioning their names would only serve to further their already considerable public humiliation. Speaking of, let's talk about the movie itself.

Night of The Living Dead Live Rifftrax Special

A million Taglines!

"They keep coming back in a bloodthirsty lust for HUMAN FLESH!..."

Good morning to everyone, it's the week of Halloween so I thought I would report back about my trip to the live Rifftrax show I went to see on Thursday, where the MST3K gang (That is, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett) were picking apart George Romero's original ‘zombie’ film, Night of the Living Dead. This was the cult hit that spawned what we now consider to be the modern zombie film. Featuring an ensemble cast of unlikeable jagoffs who stupidly board themselves into a rickety old house, Night of the Living Dead is as much as social commentary as it is a horror movie. Really the movie has a lot to say about the era in which it was made (at which time it was a seriously controversial film, I’ll talk a bit more about that later). It’s always interesting to watch a movie from so long ago, and read people’s reactions to it, then weighed against my own reactions, watching it long after its creation. Consider for a minute that when this movie came out, it was considered gruesomely gory and violent. It was considered to be so graphic that it was described by many censors as being 'the pornography of violence'. To a modern audience this is hilarious, the movie is black and white for starters, and the low budget (around 111,000 dollars) meant that even in black and white the effects seem silly to someone in 2013. At the time however, the depictions of people being murdered and of ghoulish, reanimated corpses devouring the remains of their victims was terrifying. Also without a standard rating system, even small children got into the theater to see this movie, and you can imagine about how well that probably went over.

The Apple

The fact that this made it to DVD is troubling.

"A Funky Fantasy That'll Rock Your World!"

Hello and welcome to a new week of horror and confusion here at The Tagline! Today as long threatened I will be talking about a movie I was exposed to several weeks ago, the way you might be exposed to high amounts of radiation, or a deadly plague. I will say for the record that no, I did not sit through this whole movie without assistance, I was watching the Rifftrax for it, and even then this movie was so enchantingly horrible that it was sometimes difficult to focus on the riffs over all of the disco music and bedazzled packages. Made on the leading edge of the 80s (1980 exactly) when the grisly hold of disco had loosened, but not yet let go completely. This movie reminds us all of those dark times. Also it reminds us that sequined banana hammocks are not a good idea, ever ever ever. Set in the distant future of 1994, The Apple is maybe the most ham-fisted movie about the rapture ever produced. The plot revolves around a couple from Moose Jaw, Canada that sings really bad folk love songs, and attempt to win over a crowd at some sort of... music contest or something in the US? Probably sit down, the stupidity of this plot might knock you over.

Casa De Mi Padre

A joke? Maybe, I'm not sure.

Hi Everyone! I'm gearing up for a convention, and persistent snow obstacles have kept me from striking distance of a movie theater, so here's a weird one for you. Travelling into benighted, dangerous territory, I got really bored several months ago, and with the whole of Netflix's library at my fingertips, I made some legitimately poor watching decisions, even by my generous standards. One of them was this very bizarre Will Ferrell movie, Casa de mi Padre. For starters, this movie is almost entirely in Spanish, with the exception of a few interactions with American border patrol (with special guest appearance by Ron Swanson, not really but you know Nick Offerman). So that's pretty unusual, because I frankly didn't realize Will Ferrell spoke that much Spanish. Everyone else in this movie is pretty much Spanish except for Will Ferrell, who plays Armando Alvarez, a ranch-hand who has lived and worked on his father's ranch all his life. The ranch is falling on hard times, but when Armando's brother Raul returns with his fiance and money from his business ventures to settle all the ranch's debts, things seem to be taking a turn for the better. Only naturally, Armando falls for Sonia (the fiance, entiendan?) and also his brother is obviously a drug dealer, who angers Mexico's biggest narcotraficante, and what follows is a plot-line worthy of daytime Telemundo.