All posts by Rod Lott

Evil Bong (2006)

I find pot humor to be the anthesis of funny when it pops up in comedies, so imagine 83 minutes of it. And I do mean imagine, because you shouldn’t waste your time on Charles Band’s Evil Bong, unless you’re 13 years old and just looking for some quick nudity for masturbation purposes. What was Band smoking when he came up with this bargain-basement Full Moon production?

That was rhetorical. Alistair (David Weidoff, looking like Matt Damon with a butt cut) is a college chem major and resident square among a bunch of frat stoner dudes who always say “bro.” According to one of them, the pad they share lacks “a killer bong,” so they order one advertised in High Times that’s “shaped like a woman, bro: tits and a vag.”

When each guy smokes it — only Alistair doesn’t partake — he’s transported to the Club Bong strip club, where the fake-breasted dancers sport carnivorous chests that kill the dudes in real life. (All the movie is set either here — with animated ganja smoke around the edges of the frame — or at their home, which looks like the set of a sitcom threatening to burst into a porno.) Tommy Chong saves the day and runs toy cars up and down said man-made mammaries.

Highlights includes a cheerleader insulting the jive-talking bong (“It looks like an old molden dick. I ain’t suckin’ that shit”), a grandmother type being referred to as a “dusty old vaginal scab,” the phrase “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about” uttered thrice within three minutes. Hey, I didn’t say they were good highlights. You also get cameos from fellow Full Moon characters The Gingerdead Man, Jack-in-the-Box from Demonic Toys, Trancers cop Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) and more, not to mention an end-credit embedded trailer for Evil Bong II: King Bong. I’ll pass. —Rod Lott

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8213: Gacy House (2010)

A wannabe Blair Witch Project sharted by the hacks in charge of The Asylum, 8213: Gacy House purports to be footage found by the Del Plains Police Department near the remains of the six people who shot it in the abandoned, supposedly haunted home of notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy. They were out to capture, in one’s words, “hokey-pokey usual ‘Ghost Hunter‘ shit.”

It appears to have been made by a fraternity and a sorority during a moment of relative lucidness, featuring half a dozen douche bags who take time out to fuck. There’s also a busty psychic with a trout pout (Diana Terranova, which sounds like a readymade stripper name) who, while performing a spell, conveniently gets bitten on her very large and presumably surgically enhanced breast, which she has to unbutton her shirt to reveal. (Fear not, fake-tit fans: Gacy Ghost later rips her top and bra clean off.)

The paranormal activity here amounts to flickering light bulbs, closing doors, billowing curtains, strange noises, moving bedsheets and EVP instances of “kiss my ass.” Ooh, dat’s spooky! Speaking of speech, Boobs Psychic says, “Put it near your root chakra. … It’s two inches above the groin area.” Some Douche says, “We are gettin’ some kick-ass shit, knowwhatI’msayin’?” Another Douche, Maybe Even the Same Douche says, “Holy shit! Something just caressed my back!” And Yet Another Douche, Quite Possibly That One reasons, “The problem is not that there’s a demon scratching. The problem is that we’re overly tired.”

No, the problem is boredom — so much that 8213 rates a zero. At the 57-minute mark, there’s a scene in the basement where the entirety of the dialogue is: “Shit. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Oh, you fucking piece of shit. Come on. Fuck. Frank! Hello, turn the fuck on, shit, come on. This is not a good time. Come on. What the fuck! Oh. What the fuck. Okay! Hey! Fuck. Come on. Aw, fuck this shit. Gaw, fuck. Got it, come on. Why is this — shit. Fuck, man. Fuckin’. Shit. Oh, fuck! Franklin, Franklin, Franklin! Franklin!” Throw some sniffles in there, too.

It could really use a pedophile clown. —Rod Lott

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The Last Godfather (2010)

The Last Godfather is intended to be a comedy. It stars and is written and directed by Hyung-rae Shim, who, by all accounts, is quite popular in his native South Korea, even if there’s no real evidence of such here.

See, it’s about this … well, you see, there’s this … ah, to hell with it. I’ll let screencaps from the movie say it all.





You get the picture. —Rod Lott

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Giallo (2009)

After the super-hot, high-fashion model Celine (Elsa Pataky of Fast Five) disappears one night in Italy, her almost-as-hot sister, Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner, Mrs. Roman Polanski), persuades goateed FBI inspector Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody) to help find her. In a voice that apes Columbo, he agrees, but only because he suspects she’s been abducted by a serial killer he’s there to track.

Said slayer is known as Yellow, so dubbed for his jaundiced skin that’s a shade or two away from full-on Oompa-Loompa. He’s a cabbie who dresses in a hoodie and an Axl Rose bandana. He sucks on a pacifier, reads pornographic comics and talks like Gollum. He only kills young, beautiful, young foreigners, making them ugly in various ways, like planting a hammer to a forehead. You know, the
get-shit-done stuff.

Giallo was greeted with critical scorn, but I believe if it had any other director’s name affixed but Dario Argento, response may have been better. Not that it’s great, but it’s more serviceable than your average Hollywood killer thriller. Plus, all of the horror maestro’s signature touches are intact: vivid colors, uncomfortable close-ups, unflinching gore.

Okay, so the ending is anticlimactic, and Yellow a real goofball of a villain, but nothing so awful that Brody need bad-mouth it to the press and attempt to have his name removed from it. Of all the misbegotten projects he could have disowned after winning an Oscar — The Village, The Jacket, King Kong — and this is the one he sticks his nose up at? And that’s one prodigious beak! —Rod Lott

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