Can you guess what movie or TV show we’re watching? We’ve turned on subtitles (when available) not to give you a clue, but to enhance that WTF effect! Leave your best guess in the comments to prove your true Flick Attackosity!
Zombie High (1987)
Popular legend has it that when Zombie High was (very briefly) released to theaters, its distributor printed the negative with the reels in the wrong order and nobody could tell the difference. True or not, there’s no denying the film has a jagged, unfinished feel to it that is simply too strong to be overcome by its talented cast and a plot ripe with satiric potential.
Virginia Madsen — at the height of her Virginia Madsen-ness — plays a scholarship student at a prestigious prep academy, which has just started admitting female students (including her roommate, Sherilyn Fenn, only then at the cusp of her potential Sherilyn Fenn-ness). Despite its reputation and successful alumni, there’s something definitely off about the students at the school. Turns out, they’re all emotionless zombies whose brains have been drained to provide the serum necessary to keep its ageless faculty members alive.
Despite acknowledging the comic possibilities of its plot in the third act, Zombie High ends up being a dry, flaccid movie that completely fails to take what it has and turn it into something entertaining. As a result, the few moments that do stand out seem to have happened more by accident than design. That it ends with a bizarre animated sequence apparently inspired by similar sequences found in Savage Steve Holland’s Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer only adds to the confusion.
A horror/comedy that is never frightening or funny, Zombie High is one of those films that prove that an interesting concept is ultimately powerless against a terrible script and incompetent execution.—Allan Mott
Eurotrip (2004)
Found National Lampoon’s European Vacation too mature and sophisticated? Then Eurotrip is for you. Not only is it from the producers of Road Trip, its plot seems like a discarded draft of Road Trip. After being dumped by his girlfriend on the day of his high school graduation, Scotty (Scott Mechlowicz) receives an e-mail from his German pen pal, who suggests some face-to-face consolation. Wrongly believing Mieke to be a guy, Scotty tells his online friend to “fuc off,” only to learn that Mieke (Euro pop tart Jessica Boehrs) is, in fact, a hot blonde. His hasty reply results in her blocking his e-mails, so he foregoes a summer internship to hightail it to Berlin to explain himself. (Couldn’t he just have e-mailed her from another account?)
Accompanying him is the requisite annoying/horny best pal, and because no Hollywood teen-trip movie is complete without crazy shenanigans and hee-larious misunderstandings, they also encounter enraged soccer hooligans, a robot mime, a creepy Italian guy (SNL’s Fred Armisen), lots of scraggly naked fat dudes, oft-topless hookers and, most belabored, the Pope.
Eurotrip aims for crude laughs and earns some in gags involving a cymbal-playing monkey, David Hasselhoff and the aforementioned Armisen. But much of it is just being vulgar or stupid for vulgar and stupid’s sake. I guess either you find a near-incestuous encounter between inebriated brother and sister incredibly humorous or you don’t. Ditto a kindergartener who apes noted Jew-killer Hitler, or a impoverished girl peeing while standing up on the sidewalk. I’m sure the kids will eat it up.
It’s worth noting that minute for minute, Eurotrip contains more gratuitous nudity than any movie of recent memory; the film is bustling with breast-rubbing, barely dressed prostitutes and public sexual encounters … and, unfortunately, dozens of uncircumcised Europenises in full view. Not since The Exorcist has the big screen seen such horrors. How in the hell did they get Matt Damon to cameo? —Rod Lott
The Card Player (2004)
Call it Dario Argento’s adaptation of Video Poker. Just don’t call it slow to get going. In the first scene, its simple plot is already in place: A madman has invited policewoman Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) to play a game of online poker. The stakes? The life of the young woman he’s nabbed, bound, gagged and set in front of a webcam. The rules? First to three hands wins. And for each hand Anna loses, he “will amputate something.”
This being Argento, la polizia initially lose, and a nude corpse soon washes ashore with a joker card stored in her vagina and a seed shoved up her nose. Oh, well — better luck next time, newbie!
After wising up, the cops recruit a young poker expert (Silvio Muccino) to spar in future matches, which comes in handy when the chief’s daughter is one of the unsuspecting victims. Horror elements aside, The Card Player is really a mystery — more CSI than Suspiria — and one not too terribly tough at figuring out. The draw — no pun intended — is seeing what Argento does with it. Sad to say, but few shots carry his once-magic, instantly recognizable touch. Anyone could have directed this telefilm (but, it should be noted, a telefilm with nipples, pubic hair and “fuck!”).
That said, his script tries to make up for a lack of suspense with a few
perverse touches. Some work (howdy, spiked trap door!); others don’t (watching two people on train tracks play poker on a laptop is as dull as, well, watching two people play poker on a laptop). Argento nearly squanders all goodwill with this Player‘s final line/shot. Cliché alert! —Rod Lott
Cold Sweat (1970)
Charles Bronson is Joe Martin, a happily married Army vet whose black-market/ex-con past comes back to haunt him when a former associate breaks into his home. Joe shoots him dead, but he and wife Fabienne (Liv Ullman) have trouble getting rid of his corpse the same way Batman does oceanside bombs.
Before long, bigger trouble arrives in the form of Joe’s other criminal comrades, led by the gruff Capt. Ross (James Mason in a Gilligan hat) who’s come to get what they’re owed. Ross takes a shine to Joe’s boat, which Joe doesn’t like, so they kidnap Fabienne and their daughter instead. Joe doesn’t like that, either.
You know how this all will end, because the first two words in this review are “Charles Bronson.” But hell, it’s fun watching all that come down. Plus, you’ve just gotta hear Mason enunciate “Indochina.” It’s classic, and so is Bronson’s real-life wife (Jill Ireland) as a free-spirited hippie who burns reefer on the open highway, telling him she likes “to smoke what I like, to ball who I like.” To each his own, right?
Given this French-lensed flick can be found on many a public-domain collection, you’d expect it to suck, but really, it’s pretty action-packed. After all, the director is Terence Young, who’d just come off helming three of the first four James Bond films. Most notably, Cold Sweat climaxes in a life-or-death car race against time topping out at over 140 mph — watch a poor cyclist run off the road do a head-over-handlebars front flip — and takes the energy straight to the final moments. —Rod Lott