Freddy vs. Ghostbusters

 

2004 USA

****

The nephew of Egon Spangler (Ned, if you must know) teams up with his old friend Neil and their buddy Eugene to establish a Denver chapter of the legendary Ghostbusters. Neil’s been having horrifying nightmares involving that burnt-bastard with the razor-tipped glove (I mean, every town has an Elm Street) and Ned is ready to help. After the three buds become celebrities in the area, Ned realizes that Neil’s mattress is haunted by Freddy Krueger but they’re a little too late to save Neil’s deadbeat roommate. Ignore copyright and jump on in for one hell of a fun fan film that has those backyard vibes I dig and a prevalent love for everything it’s aspiring to emulate which makes it super easy to overlook the shaky acting and obvious budget. But don’t think it’s some cheapjack bullshit, nope… there’s some impressive effects considering what was being worked with. The trio running around Colorado, filming when they could, just has me grinning like an asshole. Some humor fails, some humor works and the low-budget send-ups to famous scenes are clever enough to be memorable. There’s a Jason Voorhees cameo and Subway Jared gets murdered as well… so good for them! This movie makes my heart smile and it’s only 35 minutes long… can’t beat that.

Body Keepers

2018 USA

***

In Colorado, two children go missing. Seemingly vanishing into thin air from their kitchen while their mother went to answer the door. They aren’t the only ones. Also in the news is the shifting of an elderly man’s corpse from a liquid nitrogen facility to a local backyard shed in Nederland, Colorado. The body of “Grandpa” will be kept cold with dry ice. What does all that have to do with the missing kids? I’m not quite sure but since it was front page news on the newspaper that spun across the screen during the opening credits, I can only assume it will be important. Anyways. The missing siblings are never found and neither is another boy who vanished. Two years later and a mismatched group of youthful dopes who mostly hate each other are all speculating what happened to a local girl who has gone missing. On her walk home from the local hang, The Pioneer (where she denied head jock any goth-girl-fun), Audrey runs into multiple suspicious characters before making it home. A drunk teacher who is definitely a creep, a police officer who is also a creep, a dog who is not a creep and is a very good boy, are all met on her nighttime trek. Before she can make it into her house, some heavy-breathing weirdo she recognizes approaches her and snatches her up. An argument about the missing girl forces the teacher to put all the arguing students together on a team for some festival competition. They ain’t happy about it. There’s a couple socially awkward nerds (Jack and Brianna), the bitchy cheerleader Heather, her cheating jock boyfriend Tanner, her sassy gay friend Tristan and the missing goth girl’s bestie Ivy who looks like a teenage girl cosplaying as Saraya from AEW or WWE’s Paige if that’s more your speed. They get together to discuss how they’re going to win the annual wheelbarrow race they’ve been teamed up for. They need a wheelbarrow (obviously) and they know of one by “Grandpa’s” shed that the “Body Keepers” use to switch out the dry ice. We also get filled in on the history of this Grandpa guy who was a professor that figured out how to transfer souls in a gambit to live forever. He was stopped by being frozen alive… makes sense. Dismissed as bullshit by some, the group land on stealing the wheelbarrow from Grandpa’s shed. The fools open up the coffin in the shed and things go south is the budget-retrained way one should have expected. The group stay by Heather’s house for the night and Jack (who got touched by the corpse in the casket) grows ill and is visited by the spirits of one of the kids who warns him that Grandpa’s touch is pretty much a death sentence. The Body Keepers grab Jack that night and spooky-shit nightmares serve as dire omens for the others. A trip to a psychic at the high school Halloween festival (I didn’t know that was a thing, Colorado be wild) leads to Ivy, Brianna and Tristan getting warned about the doom coming their way. They ignore the psychic premonition and their missing friends and go to party by Heather’s house where they play a drinking game to Jenga… Colorado, yo. While this game goes on there’s a song playing that sounds like Red Hot Chili Peppers mixed with The Spin Doctors… I had no idea there was a way to make something sound worse than the Red Hot Chili Peppers but wow. Ivy and Tanner go back to the shed because they believe it may hold the key to what happened to the missing goth girl. There’s a silly twist waiting to be revealed, audio issues that hit at the most inopportune time, acting performances from actual locals, a hilariously awful ending and a lovely level of backyard effort that just warms my heart.

Regional flare keeps me smiling and I am deeply shocked about how this group of kids are way more likable than they should be. It’s in defiance of everything I know about a teen-led horror flick. Community matters, especially when it comes to the production of a horror film that has the grasp of a great idea but just doesn’t know exactly how to communicate it. Is it awkward? Yes. Of course it is. But, man, do I respect the hell out of it. Released twenty years earlier and this shit would have a slipcase and be a Saturn Video drop.

Across the River

2013 Italy

****

While monitoring a fox he has strapped with a micro camera, an ethologist discovers a seemingly abandoned village hidden away in the middle of the woods on the Slovenian border. A heavy downpour washes away the only road out and he is forced to remain and explore the empty buildings. A mutilated boar tips him off that there is some kind of unknown predator stalking about. His apprehension grows when the isolation mixes in with some unsettling occurrences (scattered animal remains, nerve shattering wails coming from the woods in the middle of the night, animal traps have been tripped but snared nothing and some horrifying images have been captured on the surrounding trail cams). There’s a necessary but still intrusive subplot involving the search for the missing scientist and an old man who knows something about what’s going on in the remote village. Giving anything else away would be a complete disservice to anyone who has yet to discover this creepy-ass flick. Just know it’s a slow burn piece of tension building that fully utilizes the nightmarish setting.

Ajooba Kudrat Kaa

aka The Magnificent Guardian 

1991 India

****

As Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy of Gold plays unlicensed over the opening scene, a group of men brave a snowy and forested landscape. They carry torches and look with major concern at a cave opening. Concerned they should be because in this cave is the legendary Yeti and he is pissed! There’s plenty of dead Indian dudes to prove that point. The story proper begins with a gang of thugs eventually kidnapping a young girl. Her papa and his brother are told to pay a ransom in cash to get the girl back alive. While the thugs await their payday, the crafty little lass manages to escape the mountain cabin where the gang is hiding out and into the “safety” of the surrounding wilds of the fucking Himalayas. Of course, she manages to get herself under the protection of The Yeti! Yeti’s love kids. Duh! Even if she is rightfully terrified at first. Soon, she comes to discover this monster is her gentle guardian. Well, the goons decide to not let the girl’s father know that she was taken by an undiscovered man-beast and insist he pay up even sooner, claiming the girl is still in their care. They set a trap but naturally, the girl’s uncle is proficient in the Bollywood kung-fu skills that grace all of our Hindi heroes. Eventually the head of the bad guys figures an actual missing link specimen is worth a hell of a lot of money and the girl’s family realize they’re going to have to journey to the Yeti’s lair if they want the lil’ cutie back. They do, easily, but the criminals are still scheming, putting themselves in a whole bunch of danger all for that payday that seems further and further away from being an easy one. It’s all set in motion to have everyone come together with a captured big and hairy beast with a heart of gold at the center of everything. How will it all play out? I don’t know but I can guarantee there will be plenty of singing and dancing (this time with yodeling!) along the way to further confuse everything. There will also be an impressive mixture of tacky sweaters, ski suits, track suits, discarded wedding party clothes, denim jackets, studded leather jackets and LA Lakers wear. Almost nothing I would recommend for frozen cave exploration. I don’t speak the language but the basic plot is simple enough and I’ve watched enough of these bizarre Ramsay flicks to get the gist of it… the singing people are in love. There’s a level of joy I find in all of these movies and I can say that if you’re not a fan of the weirdo dance numbers and toe-tapping music, I don’t care to know you. Wretched comedy, inevitable attempted rape and repetitive plot points abound but the janky Yeti is fucking awesome (lookin’ like something pulled from a studio dumpster used by the Lost in Space sfx team) and the bad guys are suitably scummy. I’m easily distracted by gorgeous women, copyright infringement, familiar faces, song and dance numbers and troubling hairstyles… especially when there’s a monster involved. That’s just how I make it through these two hour plus expeditions into worldwide weirdness and actually manage to enjoy myself. It’s like a children’s film made by someone who only has a vague idea of what a child is but definitely did some research on bumbling bandits and the Abominable Snowman via a half-remembered drunken viewing of Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century. Why does the Yeti have what looks like flippers for hands? Why does the main bad guy traverse the Himalayas dressed like he’s on his way to perform in a magic show at some cigarette-blanketed lounge? Why are the villains singing to a caged Yeti while Indian guys in blackface pretend to be savages? Why does the uncle hero rock a pompadour and, god help me, pull it off? Fuck if I know. Truly the magic of the region’s genre output on full display. Yes. The Yeti dances, to the catchy sounds of Yeti, I Love You. So don’t you worry your cute little frozen buns.