All posts by Rod Lott

I Am Omega (2007)

Officially, I Am Omega is not based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. Yeah, whatever, but po-tay-to fucking po-tah-to: It’s totally based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. After all, we’re talking a production of The Asylum, which specializes in taking popular movies to Kinko’s and then Liquid Paper-ing just enough names to satisfy legal.

This one, of course, only exists to coincide with Will Smith’s end-o’-the-world blockbuster I Am Legend of the same year. But Omega star Mark Dacascos is no Will Smith — and thank God for that, because this last man on Earth gets to do what America’s favorite Man in Black did not: train with fighting sticks and practice martial arts, not to mention beat the steering wheel of his crappy car like a drum kit while listening to generic stock rock on cassette.

I expected Omega to suck completely, because it kills the MILF within less than two minutes from starting. But all is mostly forgiven by the time Dacascos is beating back the undead with nunchucks. Sometimes when he fights zombies, Itchy & Scratchy music squeals away on the soundtrack.

Anyhoo, Dacascos’ character is not the last human alive, of course. A video feed reveals there’s an undernourished but not unattractive out there. She’s being sought by rednecks for the antivirus that lives in her blood. Don’t get too excited, viewers, because her high-pitched, whiny voice mitigates any good looks. Speaking of voices, don’t zombies realize they’d be more successful if they didn’t announce their arrival with a cry of “ROWR!” each and every time? —Rod Lott

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George A. Romero Presents Deadtime Stories: Volume 1 (2010)

George Romero has been associated with some diabolically fun horror anthologies of the past, including Creepshow, Creepshow 2, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie and Two Evil Eyes. Do not add Deadtime Stories to that list. Neither writing nor directing, Romero just collects a paycheck as host. Sitting in a chair with his signature TV-tube-shaped, black-rimmed glasses nearly as big as his head, he introduces three incredibly amateurish tales with zero star power (this not being 1985, Nick Mancuso does not count), not to mention any power, period. Hell, they can’t even be bothered to keep the typeface consistent.

In the first, “Valley of the Shadow,” a woman assembles a South American jungle expedition to search for her husband, who’s been missing for three years. Once there, one team member finds trees bearing strange fruit that look like extra-veiny testicles and squirt Aim toothpaste; but pay no mind, as this discovery has nothing to do with the story. They arrive at one island where not one of them thinks to say, “Hey, what’s with all those bloody heads on the pointy sticks?” Moral of the story: White people are stupid assholes.

“Wet” is just that. Despite warnings not to, a fat, bearded ginger pulls a mermaid head out of a box and buries it with her other parts. She comes back to life, crawls into his bed, and bites off his wiener. Then he turns into a merman. It’s like Splash meets … oh, say, a Turkish prison toilet. Moral of the story: Mancuso is starting to look an awful lot like Howard Hesseman.

Tom Savini directs the final chapter, the old-timey-set “House Call,” in which a frenzied woman summons a wizened old doctor to her home because her son thinks he’s a vampire — shades of Romero’s Martin — and he is. Moral of the story: I shan’t waste my precious time on Volume 2. —Rod Lott

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Macon County Line (1974)

After The Beverly Hillbillies went off the air, Max Baer Jr. couldn’t find work, so we wrote and produced his own vehicle in the Southern-fried scare tale Macon County Line. The Hail Mary pass worked and, by gum, Jethro, you done made yourself a fine picture show!

Supposedly based on a true story from the early 1950s, the AIP hit follows the bad-boy Dixon brothers (real-life siblings Jesse and Alan Vint) as they drive oft-shirtless through the Deep South, up to no good. We first meet them as one is screwing someone’s old lady for six bucks, then watch as they ditch a diner check, pick up a free-spirited girl (Cheryl Waters) headed for Dallas, and have to spend some downtime in the titular Georgia site when their car suffers some mechanical failures. They’ll be lucky to leave alive.

For the first two-thirds, the film plays like a redneck quasi-comedy that might be titled The Felonious Misadventures of Cooter and Banjo. Then it takes a sharp right turn into thriller-ville as the town’s racist sheriff (Baer) gets mighty pissed when his wife is raped and murdered, and goes after the Dixons, even though they had nothing to do with it.

As the unapologetically flawed man of the law, Baer gives a great performance, as does lil’ Leif Garrett as his son, not to mention the brothers Vint. Enjoy that acting while the plot seemingly meanders, because admittedly, it takes a while before anything of significance happens. Once it does, however, it makes for some memorable, tension-filled moments that are hard to shake. —Rod Lott

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The Yes Men (2003)

Oh, I assume World Trade Organization execs may hate it, but I find it difficult to believe that most people who can think for themselves would fail to get — at the very least — a chuckle out of The Yes Men, a documentary about a pair of political pranksters. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno comprise the titular twosome, who use a grant from musician Herb Alpert to help them travel the globe to speak about anti-globalization in the most outlandish ways.

It all begins when visitors to their WTO parody website don’t even read the print — fine or otherwise — and extend invitations to lectures at international conferences as WTO reps. The Yes Men are all too eager to accept, and the film follows them hatching their (mostly) harmless plots and executing them in public.

This includes demonstrating a prototype of the “future leisure suit,” which contains an inflatable, phallic appendage containing a screen on which corporate heads can monitor their workforce remotely. This outfit and accompanying suggestion that slavery was a good thing aren’t questioned by anyone. At least a classroom of collegians is sharp enough to turn on a supposed WTO/McDonald’s partnership presentation in which Americans’ feces would be piped to Third World countries and recycled into “reBurgers.”

My only complaint about The Yes Men is that 83 minutes just wasn’t enough to satisfy me. I laughed out loud too many times to allow the culture-jamming fun to end so soon. It’s directed by the geniuses behind American Movie, perhaps the greatest documentary ever made, so you know you’re in good hands with this one. —Rod Lott

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Police Academy: Assignment Hell

Recall, if you will, how difficult it was to sit through a Police Academy movie in theaters.

Now imagine sitting through all seven of them in a row at home.

Yet this test of he-man resilience is exactly what Louis Fowler and I subjected ourselves to on a sunny Saturday in spring. The idea was simple: Would we be able to watch all 612 minutes — that’s 10.2 hours — of painfully simple slapstick and belabored set pieces? And could we do it without cracking? And just how much Steve Guttenberg can one man take?

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