The MacGuffin

I would try to explain to you how 3D pornography blurs the line between awesome and horrific, as well as disgusting and hilarious, but I can’t. Suffice it to say, it isn’t arousing. It wasn’t arousing in the ’70s, and watching a movie from the ’70s in the 2010s STILL isn’t arousing. However, watching adult films with 100 other people in a large mainstream theater IS pretty awesome. (This isn’t the first 3D “blue movie” I’ve watched with a large crowd of people, sadly.)

Primeval is a film about a bloodthirsty alligator, based on a supposed true event. The giant alligator is wreaking havoc throughout Africa, and the villagers are getting scared to go in the water, despite it being their life source. Some American journalists are sent over to do a story on it and to capture the alligator, but the beast isn’t having it.

starts with a group of fisherman dumping barrels of what I assume is something toxic into the ocean/bay. The fish are eating this toxic stuff and then a shark swims up and eat the contaminated fish. Flash to an awful montage of CGI sharks eating the fish, then a larger shark eating that shark, and so on (while the opening credits are flashing on the screen). Ridiculous start to the film.

Hobo With a Shotgun is a grindhouse film about a transient man (played by Rutger Hauer) who rolls into a town under the control of Drake—a really bad guy. Rutger blasts his way through the town, despite the townspeople having turned on him. With the help of a lady friend he meets, Rutger dishes out some serious vigilante justice.

The film opens in the rural countryside of England, present day (which appears to be the 8’s, even though the film was shot in 2003). An SUV pulls up to a mansion and out pop four hot blonde women dressed in sheer outfits—guess who? There are bad bad people inside talking about this group of female assassins right as they break into the mansion and apprehend them with all kinds of weird gadgets like James Bond. The ladies are looking for a hard drive with the plan, to erase the whole thing. What they don’t know is that one of the bad guys is from Indiana Jones.

The Seduction of Dr. Fugazzi is a Troma film starring Faye Dunaway. (How did that happen, again? Does Lloyd Kaufman have dirt on poor Faye and blackmailed her into this film?) Mr. Carducci is talking to a shrink about being a pedophile. The shrink is Dr. Fugazzi, and she is helping Carducci get help, since he abducted two young Jewish girls last Halloween. Somehow, he appears to be out and walking around instead of in jail. Fugazzi’s assistant thinks he should be locked up. Consequently, Dr. Fugazzi is basically a dark-skinned Indian dominatrix type of shrink—you don’t run across that everyday. Then again, I haven’t gone to a psychologist, so maybe this is more common than I realize.

A guy with a sweet perm-mullet is a professional street fighter, but is too rough with his lady. His lady talks to her shrink and the shrink convinces the lady she should leave the guy because he’s a total douche. She leaves the guy (who claims he’s “undefeatable”) and the guy goes on a killing rampage—after spray painting two red skunk stripes in his mullet-y hair. He attacks any girl he sees in a flowery dress because his mind tells them it’s his long-lost lady. It’s actually an easy mistake, being that all of them have gi-normous 80s mall-hair and pretty much looked the same back then. He mutilates the ladies, after killing them kung fu style. It’s kind of a bummer for the ladies, frankly. Things get really bad when mullet-psycho-dbag kills and gouges out the eyes of the world karate champ, whom everyone in the world recognizes like he’s a common household name. This is only the tip of the iceberg for things that are simply not believable in this film.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is one of the best films I’ve seen in a really long time. Combine Earnest Goes to Camp with Friday the 13th and you’ll have this masterpiece. Tucker is the more macho of two hillbilly best friends, and he’s a really nice guy who has spent his entire life savings on a vacation home—a super rundown cabin in the woods where he and his best friend Dale can drink beer, go fishin’, and just get away from it all. These college kids have shown up and are ruining things. Eight frat/sorority kids go to the woods to drink and have sex (like most college kids do in the movies). There’s the standard campfire legend of “killers in the woods” to set the stage, and then the kids decide to go skinny dipping. One girl falls off a rock and knocks herself out. These two hillbillies who are vacationing in the area and happen to be fishing in the area see she hasn’t come up for air and rescue her. The frat kids think the hillbillies have captured their friend and they go after them.

Mega Piranha begins with an American senator being killed in Venezuela in a suspicious manner, and Fitch (played by Paul Logan) is sent there (somehow, in just a few short hours) to figure out what happened. There are American scientists (including 80’s pop star Tiffany—who’s now a beefed up soccer mom) genetically altering animals in the jungle to increase food production, and one of the experiments got out of hand. Fitch also has to worry about this crazy military general doing some sort of operation in the jungle that he doesn’t want people to know about.

The Troll Hunter—In this Norwegian homage (I think) to The Blair Witch Project, a set of video recordings shows up at a film studio anonymously. It shows footage from an amateur film crew from a college in Norway following Hans, a Norwegian troll hunter. Like Blair Witch, it is all handheld shots, with long sequences of running, screaming, and mysterious sounds. However, this film has TROLLS instead of a “witch.”