The three professional law enforcement agents, who are
Overlooked, Forgotten and Dismissed The Price is Life
This issue: Lance GeTs cauGhT in The ’neT
DEATH TUBE Cinema Epoch
What would you do if you came across a live video-streaming website where you could watch people being killed in bizarre ways? Chances are you’d check it out for a while and then debate with your buddies about whether it was real or not. Death Tube is a Saw-inspired Japanese splatter spectacular about a website where people become unwilling contestants in a vicious game show where the losers pay with their lives. Unfortunately, most of the games are
rather ludicrous, such as having to solve a Rubik’s Cube or finish an obstacle course while being harassed by a guy in a cartoon bear costume. A morality play at best, a lame Japanese game show at worst, Death Tube is ultimately a disturbing look at modern voyeurism. BODY COUNT: 12 LAMEST DEATH: Donut poisoning
Reap What you Saw
DEATH TUBE 2 Cinema Epoch
Basically a retread of its predecessor, this outing follows another group of peo- ple trapped inside the internet-based game world of Death Tube. Though most of the games are just as lame, such as playing musical chairs or spinning a hula-hoop, there are some particularly vicious ones where players have to commit suicide in order to save the lives of their children. As the game pro- gresses, contestants discover that they’ve been brought together because of
the crimes of their pasts, just like in the Saw movies. While it’s definitely a darker outing than the Death Tube, the only original thing in the whole flick is three guys in bear costumes dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” – but I’m not quite sure if that’s a good thing or not... BODY COUNT: 14 LAMEST DEATH: Whacked by a wrecking ball
Undress For Success
CAM GIRL Chemical Burn
Mary O’Brien is a sexy college student in desperate need of rent money. But instead of handing out resumés, she decides to become a webcam girl – men pay to watch her strip online. Working out of her home, the DIY pornographer discovers that she’s being stalked by a deranged killer who’s been breaking into her house, videotaping her in the shower and leaving notes and flowers on her bed. Shot almost exclusively on one set with only two actors, Cam Girl
is a boring affair that suffers from a rambling narrative and long, tension-killing musical interludes. Usually I wouldn’t piss on a film that features a hot naked chick in the first 41 seconds, but in this case I’m willing to make an exception. BODY COUNT: 1 LAMEST DEATH: Murdered by a priest
LAST CHANCE LANCE RM 42 C I N E M A C A B R E
armed with handguns, are reduced to quivering messes by a 60-something German man with a straight-razor. There’s no expla- nation as to why, though. His vic- tims are lone women, and his crimes take place in secluded lo- cales. Nothing indicates freakish strength or supernatural powers. It’s all meant to be told by the cops’ reaction, and it simply does- n’t work. As more characters begin appearing out of the woodwork, the killer becomes outnumbered and outgunned, and yet no one uses this to their advantage. Further, each one finds some excuse to leave the group. You can guess what happens next. This is not a call for consistently airtight logic in horror
films. This is just a case in which a film fails to apply a bare minimum of common sense. The shame is that Fall Down Dead is otherwise only a few crucial notches short of being a solid modern giallo.
TAL ZIMERMAN SLOW BOAT TO NOWHERE
KILLER YACHT PARTY Starring Maggie Marion, Becky Boxer and Eric Clark
Directed by Piotr Uzarowicz Written by Alex Silver and April Wright Troma
You know those douches who stand in line for hours out-
side night clubs just so they can pay a cover charge to get in, even though there’s no live entertainment inside? Ever wonder what their lives are really like? No, me neither. Now there’s a horror movie about them. Interested? No, me nei- ther. But I have to write a review of it. We spend most of the first half of Killer Yacht Party getting
to know a group of the aforementioned douches through interminable footage of their dreary lives unfolding in a re- ally mundane Hollywood dance club. They hook up, break up and squabble over drug debts, then start over again. The sole exception to the rule is Jane (Maggie Marion), who is a Good Person, which we know be- cause she’s a sensitive aspiring singer/songwriter from Iowa who doesn’t dress slutty and never does coke or ecstasy. Just for a change of pace, the d-bags in question (and Jane) take a night off from the club to attend an exclusive party on a yacht, which of course happens to be
(allegedly) haunted, providing for a trawlerload of red her- rings when people start getting murdered. Sadly, the mur- ders – which are both PG-13 tame and poorly staged – don’t even begin until about the 45-minute mark, by which time we’ve been rendered uncomfortably numb by all the foregoing sub-90210 drama. Performances by the largely unknown cast are uniformly
solid, but don’t make this turgid cheapie any more palat- able. The experience left me feeling as if I’d stood in line for hours, paid a cover charge and entered a club to find nothing going on. It’s enough to make you feel like... well, a bit of a douche, really.
JOHN W. BOWEN
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