This cover may not be as bad as the first two installments in this occasional series… but on the other hand, it might.
No description at Amazon, but do you really need one?
Nathan Shumate is the proprietor of Cold Fusion Video Reviews and the publisher of Cold Fusion Media.
#1 by The Rev. D.D. on May 19th, 2010
I think the first of the series is still the worst, but this one is a match for the second.
It looks like a vampire hooker/stripper movie, but this cover makes it look dull as dirt.
Of course, I just picked up a DVD a couple weeks ago mostly because it had a pretty terrible cover, so I might be tempted. (Although having never heard of it and it being $3 were also factors.)
#2 by Read MacGuirtose on May 19th, 2010
Oh, I think this one’s definitely worse than the second. At least that one had a tagline, a title display that showed a <little more thought had gone into it than "Ooh, let's use a spooky Gothic font!", and a background that wasn't just a generic gradient. I'm not saying the second one was good, mind you, but I think it was head and shoulders above this slapdash endeavor.
The first in the series, however, is still the worst; agreed there. Granted, it also has a background and a tagline, but its sheer goofiness and cheapness more than make up for that.
#3 by Cullen on May 20th, 2010
Man, that cover bites.
…
…
…
Yes, a twelve year old would have been too embarrassed to go there. I should be ashamed.
Should be.
#4 by Read MacGuirtose on May 20th, 2010
Incidentally, this movie’s IMDb page doesn’t have any sort of plot description, either… or much of anything else. The only facts that could be gleaned from it that would even come close to qualifying under the loosest definition of “interesting” are that it is a comedy (which I wouldn’t have been sure of from the DVD cover) and that it features a character named “Mrs. Van Helsing”.
Oh, wait, one other thing I just noticed… the title of the movie on the IMDb and the title of the movie on the DVD cover (and on Amazon) don’t match. That’s… odd. At first, when no movie with that exact title came up, I’d assumed I’d just mistyped it, but no, I typed it right; there is no movie on the IMDb titled “Vamps And The City”. But, comparing the cast lists, I’m pretty sure “Vamps In The City” is the same movie. Either that or there are a lot of actors who appeared in the same year in two different low-budget movies with remarkably similar names.
Huh. You’d think that a wrong title on the IMDb is the kind of mistake they’d want to get corrected. (Or, if the IMDb title is correct and the title on the DVD case is wrong… well, even more so.) Then again, if the amount of effort that went into that DVD cover is representative of the effort they put into other aspects of their production, maybe it’s not too surprising that they let that error slip by…
#5 by Read MacGuirtose on May 20th, 2010
OK, then again (and I promise this is the last comment in a row I’ll post here), now that I look again the run times don’t match… the IMDb lists it at 85 minutes, Amazon at 60. So either one of those is wrong (which wouldn’t be at all surprising), or the DVD for sale on Amazon is actually a cut-down version (in which case the renaming may be intentional–though I wouldn’t bet on it). Or they really are two different movies that happened to be released in the same year with most of the same cast and almost (but not quite) identical names, I guess…
#6 by Braineater on May 20th, 2010
I see the potential in this series for a particularly painful roundtable down the road.
#7 by Nathan Shumate on May 20th, 2010
In that case, I apologize preemptively.
#8 by MatthewF on May 20th, 2010
But will it actually be worse than the new Sex and the City? I mean, c’mon, honestly?
#9 by Nathan Shumate on May 20th, 2010
There is that.
#10 by Braineater on May 20th, 2010
I hope I never find out.
#11 by rjschwarz on May 20th, 2010
If they are gonna play on Sex in the City they could of at least found four girls for the cover. Or perhaps the one with the big mouth is one of the four. Can’t really tell.
#12 by Read MacGuirtose on May 20th, 2010
Egad. Turns out I was actually in a movie with an actor who was in this. (At least, assuming, again, that this is the same movie as “Vamps in the City” on the IMDb—the actor in question isn’t mentioned on the Amazon page.) Granted, it was a low-budget “experimental” independent movie that practically nobody who wasn’t in it has probably ever seen, but still… I’m not sure how disturbed I should be at this.
#13 by Braineater on May 20th, 2010
Oo! Another new roundtable idea: “Six Degrees of Read MacGuirtose”. At this rate, we’re going to put the poor gibbon out of business.
Anyway: trailer. Not safe for work… or human consumption. So, Read: anybody you know?
#14 by Read MacGuirtose on May 20th, 2010
I’m not 100% certain (we weren’t in the same scene in the movie we were in together, and my interaction with him on set was pretty minimal, so I don’t remember him all that well), but I’m pretty sure the guy in the cow suit at about 0:14 was the guy I was in a movie with.
Though, honestly, the world of low-budget films in Los Angeles is small enough that this isn’t all that unusual; I wouldn’t be surprised to find that I’d been in movies with people who’d been in other movies reviewed by the B-Masters, as well. This may just be the first one that for some reason I decided to go to the Oracle of Bacon to check.
#15 by Read MacGuirtose on May 20th, 2010
Okay, you know what? I’m gonna have to sorta take that back. Aside from the fact that, of course, this movie wasn’t technically reviewed by the B-Masters at all, I’d neglected to take into account the fact that the B-Masters don’t actually review that many very recent low-budget productions. Thing is, while at any given time the world of low-budget non-union films in Los Angeles is relatively small, it also has a high turnover rate… relatively few actors stay in it for long before either getting into SAG (and therefore no longer acting in non-union films) or giving up and quitting the business. So while the chances are not too bad of overlap in actors between low-budget non-union movies made within a year or two of each other, they decrease sharply with a bigger distance in time. (Plus, of course, all this only applies to low-budget movies made in Los Angeles to begin with, which a lot of the relatively recent low-budget non-union movies reviewed by the B-Masters weren’t.)
That being said, I did run across at least one other movie reviewed by the B-Masters that had an actor I’d been in a movie with, though it wasn’t exactly a low-budget movie: The Mist. Though the actor in question was credited there only as “M.P.”, so I’m guessing he didn’t exactly have a huge role. There may be others, but I’ve decided it’s not worth the time to look. Granted, this is something I probably should have decided before I started. (There were a few cases I found where I’d been in a short with someone from a B-Masters-reviewed movie, or where I’d been in a movie with someone who had an uncredited non-speaking role in a reviewed movie, but I’m not counting those.)
#16 by Read MacGuirtose on May 20th, 2010
There is one thing I ran across in my search that may not be entirely relevant to the current discussion but that some people may find interesting (and then I’ll shut up), that being that the IMDb page for the Plan 9 remake Nathan posted about last year has been deleted. Normally, I’d suppose this means that production got cancelled, but the company’s website still exists, and as of a month ago they made the claim that the movie would go into production in Fall 2010. So my guess is that apparently they’re still planning to make the movie, but this isn’t enough for the Powers That Be at IMDb to consider the prospective movie notable enough to list.
(The IMDb page for the other movie mentioned in that thread is, however, still up, though it hasn’t been updated since November…)
#17 by Braineater on May 20th, 2010
That seems to be mostly Nathan’s bailiwick. It certainly isn’t mine. I think it takes special reserves of stamina, forbearance and grace to deal with modern ultra-low-budget film-making. Deal with it fairly, that is. It’s easier to make fun of movies when their creators already have established careers. It’s even easier when they’re dead.
Last year I went to a film festival midnight movie, where they showed an independent zombie flick. There were only about seven of us on the audience, real die-hards… a more sympathetic bunch of film fans you couldn’t hope for. Anyway, the movie started… and within 3 minutes the nervous giggles from the audience gave way to a stunned hush, followed by the sound of jaws hitting the floor. By the ten minute mark, everybody in the audience (myself included) was helpless with barely-contained laughter. By the end, we were howling. I left the theater burning to review that travesty — not only because it was one of the most intolerably bad movies I’d ever seen (yeah; let that statement sink in), but because I was furious at the festival for programming it without having watched it first… It did the movie no favors at all to program it alongside so many pro and semi-pro (or at least watchable) movies, and then to charge top-dollar for tickets.
In the end, in spite of the overwhelming urge, I ended up not reviewing the film… because I found out the writer/director was still basically a kid, and I felt it would be downright mean-spirited to vent my spleen on him. Now imagine riding that emotional roller-coaster over and over again, and you see why I think dealing with very recent stuff can be so difficult.
#18 by The Rev. D.D. on May 20th, 2010
Why did I watch that? Now I want to see it, even though I’m sure it sucks.
(That’s even considering that facial…*shudders*)
#19 by Braineater on May 20th, 2010
Makes you appreciate the relative care and craftsmanship that went into the DVD cover, doesn’t it?
#20 by Nathan Shumate on May 20th, 2010
Yeah, that was the point at which I, even I, said, “Life is too short.”
#21 by The Rev. D.D. on May 21st, 2010
Between thinking I might want to see this and the recent spate of movies I sat through on Chiller, I don’t believe I’ve hit that point yet.
More fool I, I suppose…
#22 by Nathan Shumate on May 20th, 2010
If you’re shy about revealing the name of the movie in a public forum, you can use the private mailing list. But you MUST tell.
#23 by Braineater on May 21st, 2010
I don’t want to speak its name, for many, many reasons, but mostly because I feel sorry for the poor thing. Imagine a home-made cross between Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Versus with just a hint of Left Behind, featuring dialogue that would have Stephenie Myer begging for mercy, and shot using amateur actors by a guy who desperately wanted to be the next Todd Sheets but didn’t yet have the skill. Yeah.
The zombie makeup was actually surprisingly good, as were the gore effects; but you never really got to see them. I remember there was one achingly lovely close-up shot of a little girl’s face… but other than that, it was a mess.
My loathing of the film may have been exaggerated by the venue. After all, I haven’t seen many straight-to-video amateur zombie films in a real theater, and I don’t want to see any more: it’s a jarring experience. It’s on the IMDb with a rating of 8, and the external reviewers and fans on the movie’s official site seem to have loved it. Go figure.
#24 by Read MacGuirtose on May 21st, 2010
OK, couldn’t resist searching IMDb to see if I could find it based on the limited information you’ve given. And I think I may have succeeded, but I’m not sure. Since you don’t want the title revealed, I won’t mention the title of the movie that I think might be it, in case I’m right, but just to check: Do some characters use swords against the zombies, and does the title include the word “has”?
#25 by Braineater on May 21st, 2010
A sword, yes. A… samurai sword. You’ve fallen upon the correct movie.
#26 by El Santo on May 21st, 2010
Whenever some callow youth with more enthusiasm than ability offers me a screener of the film he and his pals just got through shooting, I always make a point of warning him that since he’s treating it like an actual movie, I’m going to as well. That way, if it turns out to suck on a galactic scale, I needn’t feel any qualms about kicking its richly deserving ass.
#27 by Braineater on May 21st, 2010
… which, considered dispassionately, is exactly the right approach. Unfortunately, I’m a sucker. Rather than preserve my integrity, I figure I have a couple of ways to go with a really poor screener:
1. I could highlight the good points of the movie (assuming there are any), and gently point out the things I think need some work. After all, everybody at every stage of their craft can use some constructive criticism; and besides, let’s face it: I’m just an armchair reviewer. Put me behind a camera and I doubt I could do much better.
2. When the movie seems to have few (or no) redeeming features, I could tear it to shreds… which will make me feel better, I suppose, but probably wouldn’t help the kid with the camcorder do better next time (sure, some movies REALLY deserve to be savaged, but those are mercifully rare).
3. I could ignore it completely, pop a copy of the latest Asylum flick in my DVD player, and relish the art of Institutionalized Bad Movie Making… an easier but much more deserving target.
4. I could say, Screw ‘em all! and go looking for movies in unsubtitled Telugu.
I usually end up with Option 4.
#28 by Nathan Shumate on May 21st, 2010
I suppose I alternate between 1. and 2., depending on a couple of factors:
a) Does the movie really, really piss me off? Like, more than it could inadvertently, did it go out of its way to deliberately get on my bad side?
…Okay, one factor really.
#29 by Jen S on May 21st, 2010
Oh, dear God. Why does this movie exist? Why? I’m sorry I stole that bubblegum in the second grade!
I’ve gotta say that one vamp who crushed the guy’s wrist looked convincingly mean, though. She could crack walnuts with that jaw.
#30 by Thomas on May 22nd, 2010
Now I’m trying to think of a way of blending Stalker with a zombie film and not just having it turn-out like Invaders from Mars (or another rip-off of the Colour Out of Space). If you could splice the weirdest, most interesting bits of both films (and somehow hold on to the theme of faith and the idea of wish-fulfilment from the former), then you’d probably have a pretty good movie. But I’m guessing the unnamed film was mostly just drawn-out and pretentious instead.
Damn.
#31 by El Santo on May 22nd, 2010
Or you could hybridize the premises by having the main characters just hang around for three hours complaining about their lives in a stretch of woods which they repeatedly assure us to be zombie-ridden, even though we not only never see a zombie, but never see even the most indirect evidence of their presence, either.
#32 by Nathan Shumate on May 22nd, 2010
There’s a challenge: write a screenplay for a zombie movie in which no zombies appear.
(I’ve always wanted to write a script in which the camera was the main character’s POV, and no other people appear in it. Probably just as hard.)
#33 by Blake on May 24th, 2010
Interestingly enough, there’s a Japanese movie called “Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo”, which supposedly features absolutely no monster footage whatsoever. Instead, it’s about how a small town in Japan would react to the news alluded to in the title.
#34 by Braineater on May 24th, 2010
“The Monsters are Due on Japanese Maple Street”?
#35 by rjschwarz on May 22nd, 2010
Auditions would be easy in that case wouldn’t they.
Now imagine combining the two ideas. A zombie movie from the main character’s POV with no other people or zombies appearing in it. You could call it Grass Grows, Paint Dries.
#36 by Baron Scarpia on May 23rd, 2010
There’s a recent Doctor Who adventure that’s basically set in only one location (the passenger area of a transport vessel) and with no monsters at all. Everyone there, apart from the Doctor, is human.
It’s called Midnight and it’s generally considered to be a classic.
#37 by DamonD on May 24th, 2010
Yeah, Midnight is tremendous. A bottle show, and some of those are amongst the best of various series because it forces the writer to really concentrate on character.