Medusa (2020)

 

Look, I didn't expect to much when I originally placed this version of Medusa on my review list at the beginning of the year because it just looked stupid-and for the most part, I ended up being correct. Medusa 2020 ended up being the most perfect example of a purgatory flick I could have possibly imagined because there just isn't anything here that would make anyone in their right mind want to pay another visit sometime in the near future. Basically everything contained here is extremely bland, mid, meh and completely forgettable. There are a few things that do stand out however and for starters, we have to talk about the atmosphere and the score of this film because they are both very good. The overall music implemented at certain points here really make you feel like you're a part of what's happening and you just don't want to be there and that's a fantastic feel for the score of any film to have. When if feels dark and depressing, so do you. When it feels creepy and oppressive, so do you. I really enjoyed the music written for Medusa 2020 and it's unfortunately the only great thing about this flick I can really point out besides the acting itself because it really went for the overall feel of what the film was supposed to be, which was a darker and more serious tone. I really think that this flick would have been so much better if it was what I thought it was going to be, which was some kind of cheesy, shitty, horror comedy type of deal-but it wasn't. It was basically the antithesis of that, and I personally think that it drug this picture down way further than it should have been. Also, one last thing that was pretty solid was the cinematography. The shots and lighting were really good and I had no complaints about that. Deep reds were used sparingly, but it served well to what was going on and to giving the audience the vibes it was supposed to. Now, everything else-yeah. Medusa 2020 sucked. I mentioned earlier that this was the most perfect example of a purgatory flick because it ticked every box that it possibly could for being boring, for garnering lackluster characters and for the entire build-up and overall situation to just leading down a path that no one is going to remember. Nothing incredibly exciting happens. Hell, I'm already forgetting certain details about what happened here as I'm writing this and I really wish that wasn't the case. There are two scenes that do stand out however and the first one I'm going to mention is when Carly finally starts shedding her skin getting towards the end of this thing and she looks like a snake-you know-because Medusa is the queen of snakes? The practical effects for this scene were really great and I wish there were more of them, which leads me to the second scene I'm going to point out which is the ending. The ending first of all is stupid. I'm not even going to say what happens-all I'm going to say is that it's really fucking dumb and the CGI used when Carly starts having the snakes in the back of her head come out because she's fully starting to transform into Medusa is legendarily bad-I'm talking here that you can actually see the line around her head where the animation of the snakes begins and ends and where it was placed in post when it was edited. Not even joking. It was baaaaaaddd. So, how does all of this even play out? Basically, Carly lives in this absolute trash trailer park in the middle of Australia somewhere and the way that these women make money is turning tricks. Yeah. And Carly's boss (or whoever this asshole is-he's basically a pimp) is a cocaine smuggling piece of shit that shows up whenever he needs something or to bring men to this little sex ring. Hi name is Jimmy. But one night for whatever reason, Jimmy takes Carly to this Dennis Rodman/Simon Phoenix looking guy's place and he tells her to ask for some woman named Alexis. Except Alexis isn't a woman-it's a snake. A snake. So Carly and Dennis Phoenix end up getting freaky a little bit and then Alexis bites her in the leg a few times, which of course slowly through the rest of the film turns Carly into Medusa. Beyond everything that I've mentioned here good or bad, Medusa 2020 is the straightest purgatory movie of all time. I never thought that I would ever run across the flawless version of that type of a film, but here I am still embarking on this quest. If you're interested, give this a shot. You'll probably see it as nothing more than a movie sporting a button up light blue shirt with it's sleeves rolled up. It always puts the work in, but it's never going to make it to the top. Or just listen to the Anthrax song titled Medusa. I'm done now.  

   

In The Willows (6th Chamber Pictures/Ian Messenger)

 

I have in the past ingested and reviewed other works from Ian Messenger such as his Friday The 13th short films Friday The 13th: Revenant and Friday The 13th: Legacy as well as his found footage flick titled Wendigo Falls. The video on my Youtube channel for all of those in one fell swoop is still there if you're at all interested in checking out my thoughts on any of those, and once again on good ol' Instagram, I was contacted by him to review the new slab sewn together by him and his crew-In The Willows. I want to say thank you right away again for thinking of me to write something on my site for this because there's already so much I want to watch and review, but I will always make the the time to review someone's work in the indie scene if they ask me to. So, for this piece it was directed by Ashley Messenger (which may be his sister or wife? I'm not actually sure) but just having a film like this directed by a woman is really cool and adds something a little different to the mix-sure, this sort of thing has happened before in the past to a greater extent, but it's still awesome to see to switch things up a bit. But In The Willows focuses on a group of friends that want to help their pal Jackson with his addiction issues, so instead of staying in the city and trying to help him grind it out with every chance and convenience he's used to by way of getting some smack or whatever his drug of choice is, they take him literally in the middle of nowhere to some downtrodden, beat-the-hell-up farm/survival resort place for him to "be away from the wi-fi and to get some fresh air". Sounds like a great idea, right? It wasn't. Because at the opening of In The Willows we have three guys fishing and shooting the shit in some lake or pond in the area of where these "rehab" grounds stand, and in between them drinking and talking about God knows what, a couple of weirdos in burlap clown and jack-o-lantern masks appear out of nowhere and start snuffing them out. I was intrigued right away because who are these fellows and what's their purpose? I mean, this is a dark backwoods styled slasher so what else are they going to do-they're going to kill people. That's what. After the three randoms are sent to heaven or hell here in the beginning, we meet all of our main squeezes and really the people you will be spending the most time with are Jackson and Gabby-they have this whole past that starts getting dug into because they dated previously and Gabby starts shouting all of the sacrifices that she made for Jackson to his face to try and save him and to get him clean-but what do junkies do? They don't want to do that-they want to wallow in their lifestyle and hide in the corners so they can keep up with their habits. There is an underlying layer to the weird people with the masks wanting to kill all of them-and very quickly, my favorite of them was actually the overweight, Leatherface looking guy named Father Abner I believe-he was the only one that actually talked a couple of times and he shot one our main characters with an old school single shot shotty. So that was a good time. But with these killers with the masks and the woman with the little bell that she keeps ringing-I think that they are some kind of physical manifestations presented to all of them maybe as what they're afraid of or some kind of spirits to make them pay the toll for their sins? I don't know-maybe I'm looking to far into that aspect and maybe they're just a cannibal family looking for some lunch. Whatever is really going on here with In The Willows, I'm going to sit here and say that I enjoyed it quite a bit and I'm also going to state that I want a second part to this or even a full 80-90 minute feature so we can dig in a little more. I as well as you want to know more about our main group, we want to know what happens to them after Gabby is choked to death by the guy with the clown mask and what does happen after Father Abner carries the woman with the bell through the fields and into the end credits. Yeah-hear me 6th Chamber Pictures-I think a sequel or a full length version is in order here. Because Jackson needs to get sober and he needs to get back with Gabby again. Dug it. 

  

Revenge Of The Red Baron

 

About a week ago, my brother-in-law sent me a clip of this hilariously bad film on Youtube by the name of Revenge Of The Red Baron. The clip was in the middle of the movie where Tobey Maguire's character-Jimmy Spencer-has been brought into a mental facility based on the fact that his dad was murdered in his own swimming pool by his hand, tossing his giant bug zapper into the water while it was turned on, frying those little blood sucking bastards into oblivion. Except that's not what took place. Not at all. Jimmy's dad was killed by The Red Baron himself because he in fact is the one that did a nose dive right into the device and pushed it into the pool to effectively electro-shock his father into the afterlife. So the cops were called by their dumbass neighbor who can't seem to never be an asshole or have a cigar in his mouth because he's nosy, and the main detective is great because he's freaking Bob Pinciotti from That 70's Show. That's right-Don Stark makes an appearance here and I really enjoyed his candor and over-the-top leaning for this particular cameo because all he's here for is to send Jimmy's ass to either juvenile hall or some kind of shrink hospital for his rantings and ravings about a killer German Baron flying a little mini triplane from WWI. If this shit actually happened, no one in real life would believe him either because it's hilarious, delusional and of all the things to randomly come alive to try and murder you, why would it be the red baron of a German triplane from WWI. That's some serious imagination cranking there and it for sure warrants a straight jacket. But here's where the story for this starts-it's France 1918, and there's a dog fight taking place between The Red Baron and what seems to be a few American biplanes, and for my sake, yours, and a tad bit of historical accuracy, I actually looked up a bunch of photos of these types of aircraft while this opening was playing out just to see what I was dealing with in the moment and the planes that were used as American ones in this scene weren't American at all-they were British Sopwith biplanes being posed as American ones. Most people when this film first came out probably didn't realize the difference or even gave a shit (and to be honest if I was just watching this just to watch it instead of writing about it, I probably wouldn't have cared that much either) but I just wanted to point this out because I felt like I had to and it actually kind of adds to the overall cheapness and lack of quality that this film holds. In the entertainment department, I was all smiles and ridiculous cackles when it came to sitting through Revenge Of The Red Baron, but when it came to pretty much everything else-I was groaning and rolling my eyes at how inept this thing became. So at the end of this dog fight, The Red Baron himself is shot down and explodes in one of the crappiest explosions I think I've ever seen, and then after some embarrassingly bad score music, we are cut to Jimmy playing some flight simulator looking game on an NES, which looked like it should have been running on an early Windows 95 pc of the time or the original Playstation. That in and of itself is just insane because the writers and director clearly didn't know anything about video games at the time, and once again adds to just how quirky and terrible this film actually is. But the baron is brought back to life because Jimmy is sent to his dad's house where him and his Grandpa live so he can get some discipline and/or course correction because he's always fucking up at school and is always getting into fights with other students and teachers. His Grandpa ends up being the fighter pilot in WWI that shot down the baron in the beginning of the film, and his hobby now is that he builds and flies WWI era RC planes, and of course wouldn't you know it-he built the exact triplane that the baron was flying when he shot him down all those years ago and it's hanging from the ceiling on display. For some bizarre reason, he tells Jimmy to cut that plane down and one of the "American" ones, they fly them outside together and pretend to have a dog fight, when all of a sudden a storm comes and bolts the baron's plane with some lightning, and now he's alive and full of some of the shittiest German war era one-liners possible. The puppet that was used for the baron is so stupid looking and it almost made me feel like I was watching a lost Puppet Master film or something, which to be fair would actually fit into that canon somewhere because there's a whole WWII lore going on there with Toulon and all that-but I'm not going to get into any Puppet Master shit here. After all of that happening in the opening moments of the film, it's basically the baron following Jimmy and his grandpa around after he ends up in the hospital from having a coronary, trying to do whatever he can to eradicate him because he blasted his ass into smithereens back in WWI. There is a scene in here-and this is where the baron gets ammo for the guns on his plane-where Jimmy and his mom are actually trying to shoot him down skeet shooting style with duck hunting shotguns and lever action repeaters-they of course miss a million times and never hit him-but his mom goes to the gun cabinet for more ammo, she drops the whole box on the floor, leaves it there, and the baron sees it when he flies into the house to chase Jimmy's mom only to say "Ah, bullets. Danke schon." Then after that for the whole rest of the film he has seemingly unlimited ammo and ends up mowing down quite a few people who get into his way up until the very end. I normally do what I can to not spoil how any of these trash heaps end because it's just a better experience if you've never watched any of the movies that I review, but here's the ending for Revenge of The Red Baron-Jimmy uses the RC "American" plane to fly in circles until the baron finally screws up and flies into the power lines hanging above his grandpa's house, but he doesn't get electrocuted. So grandpa stands up out of his wheelchair next to the cut power box that's supposed to power those specific lines and he stretches those wires together to fry himself and the baron so this mess is finally all over and they can live happily ever after. I highly (and I mean HIGHLY) recommend looking up Revenge Of The Red Baron on Youtube because the entire film is there for anyone to enjoy and this is a rare one that was suggested to me that I actually ended up digging a lot because of how insane it was. Me putting this review together really doesn't even scratch the surface of how hilariously bad this flick is because I didn't even talk about any of the one-liners that the baron spits out or how much of a shitty teenage attitude Jimmy bares on his shoulders, his dad's dickhead of a neighbor, the hot nurse in the hospital where his grandpa ends up or piles and piles of other things that you just need to see for yourself. Go watch this and may historical accuracy be damned.