Justice (Predator Puncherz)

 

There is definitely a disease going around on this planet (not just here in this country of the US of A) and it's name is pedophilia. It seems every single day this infection gets worse and worse with no signs of a probable cure or stopping it entirely. Everyone that has a child that has become or will become a victim of this sickness will want some kind of vengeance or revenge, and that's where the boys of Predator Puncherz come in. They want justice, we want justice and the children and their families will have their servings of wrongs being righted-and it will be through the construct of this newly formed group that physically made me think they all looked like the members of Alice In Chains at their peak in the 90's and energy wise took me immediately to the realms of Chris Hansen when he was steeped in the bowels of hosting his own show doing this very thing titled To Catch A Predator. If you somehow have never seen that or sat through any episodes and want to check this thing out, I strongly suggest you do so before you watch Justice/Predator Puncherz. Clocking in at only thirteen minutes and forty six seconds, this piece directed by Bobby Nair really just gets to the point and has no fat to trim and no finicky tendons to cut through when trying to sell and tell it's story. Basically the Predator Puncherz (as I've already stated) is a modern younger group of guys that employ a female decoy (you need a female decoy to do this, right?) who they use to lure these filth bags with out in the open so they can what else-punch these predators in the fucking face. With justice, the law and outright just ruining their lives. I'll be honest, I wish this short was way longer than it actually is just so we could actually witness some predators getting punched in the face, but unfortunately we do not. However, arrests are made, social transactions are read out loud to embarrass the hell out of these fucking losers and to expose what vile things they say and think about getting with minors and they get booked the way they should be. Hard. The first guy in the forest with the Metallica hoodie-done. The second guy in the parking lot of a Waffle House-cooked. The third guy is a bit tricky-he was eating cold pizza at his place before he finally took it upon himself to meet up with this young girl that he had been talking to online for awhile, and he had something hiding under his clothing for "his own protection" that I'm not at any sort of liberty to expunge because if you do in fact watch Justice/Predator Puncherz after reading this review, it wouldn't be a surprise. It did actually take me by surprise because nothing like what happens here with this cold pizza eating, Edgar Allen Poe looking asshole has ever happened on a show like this before or since, and it's a crazy ending to a positive group that just wanted to help people and to hinder this ever growing virus known as "wanting to have sex with minors". Every time someone steps up to try and take the reigns on this malady to turn it around, something always happens that puts it right back where it was before. I wanted more preds to get punched. I wanted more of these slimebags to get served. There has to be more. There needs to be more. Also, I need to say that I really enjoyed the music for the score quite a bit and the cinematography was exactly where it should have been. It was spazzy, all over and conveyed the energy that it needed to and I enjoyed it a lot for serving up the in-your-face context that it needed to here. I dug this short immensely and if you have a chance to see Justice/Predator Puncherz sometime or somewhere while it's floating around in the film festival circuit, do yourself a favor and take the fourteen minutes out of your time to absorb this-I'm very certain you won't regret it. I didn't regret at all watching the screener of it. Just wish it was longer.   

Rockula

 

Rockula is a silly very early 90's take on a vampire story where Ralph is down and out and always fighting with his inner dialogue through a mirror. Now that in and of itself breaks convention when it comes to vampire lore and what you're supposed to expect from this sort of thing because we all know that vampires can't see themselves in mirrors as well as anyone else. But Ralph going back and forth with himself about how he really feels against what is happening in the film really is funny and it's a different way for us to see into what's going on with the main character as apposed to the normal bindings that we would normally get. Rockula is sort of a vampiric/musical hybrid of a movie where there are songs that explain some of what's going on, but also it ties into the fact that Ralph needs to break this curse where every twenty two years he has to try and save his girl Mona who was killed some four hundred years ago by a pirate with a rhinestone peg-leg and a giant hambone. She was supposed to be his girl forever, but he couldn't save her, so now he's cursed to having her being killed and reborn every twenty two years until he finally builds up the courage to actually stop this menace of time and to keep her as his for the long haul. The time is finally right during the events of Rockula and we get all sorts of whacky people and characters employed here-we get to meet his mother, her boyfriend Boom Boom Williams (The Terror of Tennessee) Axman (played by Bo Diddley) Chuck The Bartender, and of course-his man guy, his main villain and the weirdo that's in Ralph's way-Stanley. This guys ends up becoming the pirate towards the third act via some advice from "his psychic" where she tells him to dress up pretty much exactly like that pirate that Stanley tried to extinguish some four hundred years ago when Mona was killed in the first place, and it makes him even more determined to break this cycle and to be bonded to his beautiful Mona. I don't blame him. Not being able to bang your girl for over four centuries would fucking suck. That's one thing I do have to mention about Rockula is that it's extremely light hearted in the fact that there is basically no cussing, no sex, no nudity, no real violence, gore-nothing extreme or dark in the way that would make this unwatchable to anyone. This is a flick that quite literally anyone could watch and have a good time with-unless you straight up just don't like 80's/very early 90's music, fashion, hairstyles and generally just like having a good time. That's the absolute best thing that I can sport on about Rockula is that even if you're not really into vampire flicks or musicals (which I'll be upfront here in saying that I really don't like musicals all that much) this piece will still suck you into what's going and you'll still have a fun time with it. Going back to what I said at the beginning with breaking conventions about what we all expect from something that has to do with vampires, there's a couple of scenes that made me laugh about just that very thing-the first one is where Ralph is contending with himself in the mirror in his bedroom about trying to go out to find Mona during the day in broad daylight, and his reflection doesn't want him to do it because of reasons we all know about-but he says "don't worry, I'm protected" and shows him a bottle of sunscreen. Good stuff. The other one is where Stanley is wearing this massive necklace made from these gigantic cloves of garlic and instead of Ralph being repulsed by it and leaving when he smells it, he says "smells good" and Stanley asks him "you know what this is right?" and Ralph replies "yeah-I cook with it all the time". This sort of energy and plane of comedy runs through the entire runtime and I really enjoyed it. If you're looking for something more on the lighter side right now instead of a lot of the more serious and darker toned films that have been coming out as of late, just sit your ass down and watch Rockula on Tubi. If you don't enjoy the music, the characters and the overall charm that this film has to offer, than you can kill my wife and I'll have to try save her every twenty two years after she is reborn. I don't want to have to do that and neither does Ralph. Also, that rosary looks like it's from the 18th century, not the 19th-but who's really keeping track.

Cheater Cheater

 

I'm not a Cheater Cheater, but I have been cheated out of many hours of my precious time here on this earth due to SRS pictures and the vast majority of their releases. Over the years since I've been doing this, they seem to distribute either the most boring, petrified, wooden pieces of 'horror' celluloid I think you could possibly imagine, or they're just absolute clunkers that no one should ever strap on their backs to carry around with them for the rest of their lives. Cheater Cheater is a film that literally made me fall asleep somewhere between the second and third acts from the very adrenaline being syphoned out of my veins-by the time the credits started rolling up on my pc monitor, I hit the snooze button on my phone probably three times just to try and jolt my ass back into reality. My hands and forearms were numb from leaning so hard on the arms of my chair that I felt like a paraplegic who lost both of those particular extremities from a major world war, and I couldn't even use the mouse or keyboard to make this thing stop when it came time to write this. Okay, I'm embellishing and overexaggerating a bit-this flick wasn't that horrendous overall, but it did commit the ultimate sin of any sort of art or media which is that it is in fact fucking boring. I could feel how sludgy and slow to stand Cheater Cheater was going to be pretty much right after it started, and none of the characters here have any energy or personality about them. I wanted to give them all some espresso or cans of Red Bull or something because everything here just drones on so painfully slow that time may have started going backwards, which if that were possible, I'd put this flick on again to go back to when I was in my very early 20's or maybe even my late teens to repair some things that wisdom makes you realize should have never happened. We all have regrets, and I don't completely regret sitting through Cheater Cheater, but man I should have never put this film on my list to review. We have Joseph and Peter who start at the beginning of this piece as the usual high school jackasses that want to act a fool on Halloween night and go into the Saps antique store and ask the owner for cigarettes and other stupid shit, he kicks their asses out and at the same time that's happening there were five murders committed on that particular night-and of course-the town of Yakima, Washington is a sleepy town where nothing ever happens. The structure here is just so bland and blah that honestly there isn't a whole lot to push around in terms of certain events building up to the reveal at the end about who killed everyone and why and all of that. It just left a very gray, neutral taste in my mouth and now I need some Listerine to brighten things up again-but after five years, Joseph comes back after completing his AA program from becoming an alcoholic, his parents go missing, his cousin Peter (who I initially thought was just some bizarre close friend that never, ever leaves Joseph's parents house) gets stabbed, Joseph's friend Amber gets stabbed, her fiancé Shane gets stabbed-everyone gets fucking stabbed by someone in a rubber jack-o-lantern mask from either Walmart or the cheapest Halloween store you could possibly find and then you find out who is killing everyone and why-and that's about it. There also is a solid reason why this flick is titled Cheater Cheater, but I'm not going to give that away if you do actually want to plunk your ass down in your chair to watch this because that does give way to some brevity that this piece might garner, but it's pretty weak and predictable to say the least. I really didn't hate Cheater Cheater, but it definitely wasn't memorable or great either. Until next time SRS-I'm sure we'll meet again, and hopefully next time I'll be the one wearing the cheap pumpkin mask so I can stab you instead of you stabbing me. Although, that time travel thing might come in handy-show me how to go back. Show me how to make a film so damn slow that time starts to reverse itself. I think we all need that slice of genius right about now.