What? Oh, right, plot. So the princess, who's been dethroned and replaced by an evil clone, is in charge, which is strange since she really isn't bossed around by her creator, some wizard guy who uses magic only three times in the film. And he's sleeping with some villainess and the princess clone is jealous, and all ready it seems like the evil plans of the sorcerer were hastily put together. Deathstalker runs into amazons, and in a scene that is supposed to evoke comedy, fights a heavyset woman in a duel (see, we at least got a duel) to the death. Sure, it wasn't funny to begin with, but since this scene goes on for about seven minutes, I really started to miss the nonsensical evil scheme.

Anyway, after plot points are introduced and thrown away and generally do nothing, a big battle occurs between the amazons and the bad guys and Deathstalker defeats the sorcerer. Also lightning comes out of nowhere and hits people, but it seems pretty random, and no one seems to be casting a spell. So either lightning just happened to be hitting people or some wizard showed up off camera and decided to randomly blast people with lightning. The good guys win, and we're informed that this is good and Deathstalker marries.

Frankly, Deathstalker is an extremely annoying character. Aside from a line about wanting to see women getting beaten if they deserve it, he's constantly smarmy. I mean, Jeff Conaway smarmy! (Go back and read our review of The Sleeping Car). This guy is constantly amused by himself and thinks he's really awesome. It also doesn't help that he sleeps with one of the villains in his love interest's bed. (Sure it was the evil clone, but he darn well knew who he was sleeping with.)

The dialogue is also confusing. At the beginning of the film, in an attempt to be cute, Deathstalker steals a magic item, and the evil villainess says: "I'll have my revenge on Deathstalker too" and then the credits say "Deathstalker 2". I thought this was odd, because she really needs revenge on one other thing before she can get her revenge on Deathstalker as well. Later, I found out that she actually said she'll have her "revenge AND Deathstalker too". This confuses me as well, since she seems to want revenge on Deathstalker. I mean, since she's going to try for revenge on Deathstalker, why does she want him as well. I mean, if you have revenge on Deathstalker and you have Deathstalker, are you going to keep him after the revenge so that you'll still have him? Or are you addressing an unrelated matter of revenge that we are not privy to and also noting that you'll have Deathstalker? Frankly, I'm a bit confused by the logic of the statement.

I also take issue with the sorcerer who uses magic THREE times and none are very interesting or important to the plot. The first is when he appears in ethereal form and tries to taunt the hero (it was a pretty weak taunt) while he's caught in the classic "walls that move toward each other and crush things and have spikes for some reason". (Really, that's just pointless. That's like throwing someone in a vat of lava and throwing a few knives in there "just in case".) Then he brings his hot henchwoman back to life with an annoying strobe light. Then he makes a potion so that if the real princess dies, the other won't be affected (which is a plot point that does not effect the plot in any way). Do something interesting! God!

I guess, I should point out that the writer of this movie went on to write Sea Ghost and Busty Cops. Jeez, the direct to video market isn't even trying anymore. Yeah, good luck with Sea Ghost. I hope you can cash in on the popularity of Ghost Ship.

The main character's name is Deathstalker. Deathstalker II, to be precise. I think he's the son of the original Deathstalker, who was a tax accountant from ancient Michigan. He raised his son poorly, being too busy calculating the net worth of grain silos and what have you. For example, within ten minutes of this film's fraudulent credits, Deathstalker II sees a woman in a tavern get smacked and says, "Ordinarily I don't mind seeing a woman get a good beating, if she deserves it." Zang! Then a bar fight breaks out. Those names in the credits are definitely fake. Nobody wants this movie on their resume.

There are three seperate spit takes in this movie. I think the guy who wrote it has a "spit take" key on his computer, and when he can't come up with a witty comback he just hits "spit take". Then Deathstalker II spits on a guy and a fight breaks out. The movie almost writes itself, and arguments could be made that it did just that.

More than once (maybe even more than twice) a sword fight comes to an end by Deathstalker II's opponent getting sliced daintilly on the back of the leg with a plastic sword. And they don't just give up. They die instantly.

As an aside, when we first put this movie in the vcr, it immediately spit the tape back out. Me and Stefan exchanged a questioning glance, then tried again, and the second time it worked fine. But this is why god can't be bothered helping out the world. He tries to give us little hints, and we just ignore them. I'm surprised he doesn't just smite the whole lot of us. He could use a flood, or drop some pillars of salt on us while we're looking up at the sky.

Now, where are these Busty Cops I've been hearing so much about? Do they go undercover at the beach? I'd be willing to give that my critical appraisal.

And while it is nice to have a series of clips, some of the scenes are also questionable. Namely, the scene from the forgettable Jason goes to Hell. They got it right by showing a clip of Freddy's first appearance on screen, and the Hellraiser clip... but why didn't they show the shower scene from Psycho, instead of spoiling the classic ending. Sure everyone knows that Bates is the real killer NOW, but still, spoiling a priceless ending is uncool. I mean what if an uninformed horror fan saw this. Frankly, the shower scene would win them over better, and it wouldn't give away an ending that works the best with the whole danged film.

Frankly we saw this on video, and that was clearly a mistake. This was made to be on DVD more than anything, and I found out the commentary track was provided by Robert England (Freddy Krueger himself) -- That would have won me over, but I foolishly rented the video. At least it had a couple cool clips and some trailers. Still the disc is also supposed to give a clip from Jack Frost 2. THE FUCKING SEQUEL TO JACK FROST. And suddenly, the Leprechaun looks a little less pathetic. But only a little. Jesus. Leprechaun and Jack Frost the killer snowman. And for this they left Pumpkinhead, the Alien, Regan (the Exorcist), the Thing (Carpenter), the Fly (Cronenburg) and probably some other great villain I'm forgetting. Jeez, some companies have no sense of heritage.

This is a seriously great idea: A compilation of nothing but kill scenes from horror movies. The only problem is that there aren't enough of them. There should be about 200 in 90 minutes, and when you're done watching you should feel like you've just gotten back from Hell. And the only way to reconcile the terror you've seen is to become that terror, so you'd have to go out and kill some people. But to make up for the lack of excess, this compilation includes interesting facts about each horror movie villain, some of which I will share with you.

1. Pinhead: This death was really cool and gross and made me want to go watch some Hellraiser movies. It was a guy getting torn apart by a bunch of chains with hooks on 'em. The only downside is that this was the coolest death of the whole lot, and they gave it away first. It should have been the finale.

2. Freddy: This was kinda cool. I can't remember what kill this actually was anymore, since in my notes I just wrote "kinda cool". Still, at least he wasn't just throwing lawn furniture around like in Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2.

3. Wishmaster: I seriously have to take better notes. All I wrote was "eg". What the fuck is "eg"? It doesn't matter anyway, because the Wishmaster is gay. He always twists what people say and never gives them what they want. Here's an example:

Guy: "I wish I was worth a billion dollars!"

Wishmaster: "You want me to impail you with razor blades?"

Guy: "Yes. What? No! NO! NOOOOOO!!"

But it's too late, because the guy gets impailed with razor blades. Fuck the Wishmaster.

4. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: I've never seen this flick, but it seems weirdly cool and crappy at the same time. I'll definitely have to track it down. And it has an awesome trailer. That little high pitched whine sound they play at every cut is really creepy. As for this scene, a dude got run over by an 18 wheeler, and that's good enough for me. In my notes, I wrote "Yeah!"

5. Ghostface: Goddammit, the late nineties sucked shit for horror movies. The first Scream was a solid premise, but it had no tits, very little blood, and really no balls to speak of. Thank god for Ginger Snaps. Even though no one outside of Canada got to see it in the theatre, it was definitely the harbinger of a return to cool, violent horror films.

6. Leprechaun: The Lep kills a guy with a pogo stick, pogoing on his chest until the guy dies. That takes some serious agility, so it gets points from me.

7. Chucky: Chucky kills a school teacher with a ruler. Not his best moment, but this is still one cool-ass franchise. Remember at the end of the first one, when Chucky said, "I thought we were friends 'til the end?" You know, 'cause that's the slogan of the Good Guys toy line? And then the kid says, "This is the end, friend." Holy fuck that's a tough line. And remember in part 2 when Chucky is turning human, and he gets his hand stuck in that grate? So he pulls it the fuck off? And there's blood and gross stringy flesh hanging from his stump, so he takes the handle off his knife and drives that motherfucker right into his own stump!? Fuck that was cool! Then he duct tapes it on and has a knife hand! Holy shit! Chucky is hard as fuck!

8. Candyman: "Sorta cool." Why do I even write notes? "Sorta cool"? That's no help! Fuck.

9. Simon: Who the fuck is Simon? I have no idea, but his kill was "kinda cool". Yep, there's those notes again. I can tell you one thing: New Zealanders do not have the best accents. I can't imagine any of them being tough. I can't even quite see them being gay, because they're so wussy sounding that I presume they would lack the ass-toughness needed to truly queer it up. I could be wrong.

10. Fisherman: FUCK. Whatever problems I had with Scream are aplified a thousandfold for I Know What You Did Last Summer. Worst movie ever. The only reason I watched it was because of the Jennifer Love Hewitt's Breasts website, which claimed her breasts were hypnotic and ever-present throughout. They were seriously exagerating. Now Lindsay Lohan's mammoth knockers in Mean Girls, that's a different story. Not that Mean Girls is a horror movie, but I was thinking about Lindsay's massive tits just now.

11. Camilla: This had a tree woman who could only be hurt by attacking a blood tree that grew out back, which spurted blood when injured. That was cool.

12. Dentist: Eh. That tooth came out way too easily. And why did he do the full cleaning? She was just in for a checkup three months ago, I don't think she needed the whole thing done again.

13. Tallman: The blood is yellow. Weird.

14. Blade: When I was a kid I loved the Puppet Master movies. Blade and Torch were the house favorites, but I always liked that Jester guy. He never did much, but I just thought he was cool. Maybe that says something about me.

15. Bates: What can I say that hasn't been said before? Digledoomo-zip-zipper-yapyap. Christ, that was weak.

16. Jason: I love Jason. He's the best guy ever. He doesn't talk, because he doesn't need to explain the joke. Which really isn't a joke so much as a murderous rampage. This particular clip sucked, though. It's from Jason Goes to Hell, he doesn't kill anybody, and they don't even show the army shooting him.

17. Michael Meyers: He got punked out by Jamie Lee Curtis pretty easily, but he did do an Undertaker / Kane zombie situp, which was cool.

The film is about a young boy named Mike who discovers a man known only as "the Tall Man" is digging up corpses, putting them in his mausoleum and turning them into zombie dwarves in druid outfits (and yes they do look like Jawas, so no need to bring that up again). Things get even freakier when Mike's brother Jody discovers that the mausoleum is guarded by a sentinel in the form of a small metal ball with spikes and a drill, and a hole in the back to spew out all of the victim's blood. Only Mike, Jody and Reggie the rockin' ice cream guy (don't question it) can stop them. Even worse, Mike and Jody fear their Dad, who died a while ago, might be one of them damned zombies!

The movie gets more and more fucked up. In one scene, Mike has one of the Tall Man's fingers in a box. When he looks at it later, he sees that it's transformed into a crazy furry toothy monster that goes nuts and tries to kill everything, not letting the fact that it's two inches tall stop it. That thing is freaky! There's also an old psychic woman and her daughter who try to give Mike a message not to fear or else darkness will consume him... which isn't helped by the fact that they die screaming later in the movie when the damned Druid zombies attack. I mean, I'd be scared too, but jeez lady, follow your own advice.

Not all of the weird stuff comes from supernatural events, however. For reasons never explained (or that I missed) Mike's always spying on people for no reason. First he spies on the Tall Man, then he spies on his brother trying to score in a bar. Jesus, this kid's creepy. (Looking kinda like a girl doesn't help either.) Then there's Reggie the ice cream man. He's the coolest Ice Cream Man ever, whether he's jamming with Mike on his guitar playing lite rock, or planning to stomp the ass of an invincible tall guy, Reggie is always awesome. He's the guy you want in your corner! He even escaped the freaky midget zombies. Man, Reggie is so cool. Sure he's balding, but his rockin' pony tail makes up for it. Train me Reggie, train me to be as cool as you when I'm a 40 year old ice cream man.

Well, the film is imaginative and creative up the wazoo, but that doesn't change the fact that this film makes no sense. We learn this as we find out the Tall Man's true scheme: To turn corpses into zombie midgets by sending them to a dimension that's hotter and has more gravity. Then... I guess he'll accomplish something by this. Now I'll spoil everything and tell you the ending: We are given the "It was all a dream... OR WAS IT!" ending, but when Mike wakes up, he finds out his brother is dead and that Reggie is looking after him. That's right, even as a legal guardian to an androgynous kid, Reggie's still awesome. The point is, the Tall Man's evil plan is to confuse the audience with nonsense. Well played, Tall Man. Well played.

Well, as for the zany deaths, they only get more and more over the top as the film goes on, and the puns get worse, such as throwing a heart at a cop and saying "have a heart" as opposed to my much better one liner "Aorta kill ya". Of course, this pun doesn't translate to text as well (it's supposed to sound like "I oughta kill ya") and requires me to mispronounce "aorta", but I still think it's hilarious! But really, that's all there is to this movie: goofy deaths and bad puns, which is bad when I can come up with better puns than a horror film. Puns aren't my strong point.

Anyway, there were a few good scenes in the film. The scene in which Giggles tests one of his newest tools on another doctor is kinda funny. But the best scene is one in which a young (and somewhat cute) Dr. Giggles is discovered to have been smuggled out of the house by his insane daddy by being sewn up inside his mother's corpse and being taken out of the house where he cuts his way out of his own Mom, which is fucked up as well as a surprisingly cool sequence. However, this scene belongs in a much better film and feels pretty out of place.

The problem with this movie is that it falls into the trap that most quipping horror villains get into: They aren't scary, and they aren't funny when they're supposed to be both. However, the film does have one of those old men who says something along the lines of "It's happening again!" and of course gets killed by the bad guy after giving the good guys some exposition. There's a great scene where he's basically telling a bunch of kids to go home with his megaphone while they're all trying to make out. I keep thinking the film would be better if whenever he talked, it was with a megaphone in an authoritative manner. That would be sweet.

I ain't got many movies that I really, really like. When somebody makes a movie that's interesting the whole way through and then wraps up into a satisfying whole, it's like a goddamn miracle. You know Darabont almost left off that final scene of Shawshank, the one where Andy and Red meet on the beach? That's the best scene of the entire movie, that's the cherry on top that makes it the greatest movie in the history of mankind.

Or what about American Beauty? Alan Ball wrote this bullshit script where Ricky and Jane go to fucking jail at the end. What the fuck? Thank god Mendes cut that shit, because it woulda killed the whole thing.

My point is that even excellent movies that seem meticulously crafted were only inches away from getting fucked in the ass. It's not just a miracle when a movie turns out well, it's fucking luck. There are so many elements that have to come together, and so many people involved that it's a simple fact of probability that all movies are gonna suck. If a movie's only a little bit good, with a couple of cool scenes, that's really all you can ask for. So when a movie is half cool and half tragically flawed, I'm alright with it. Half cool is all you can reasonably expect.

I wanted to get that opinion out in the open so that you, the reader, might understand why I'm writing a big long internet thing about the Winona Ryder movie Boys. Did I do it because I'm a big dork? Hey, who's reading this, dorky? Huh? It's you, isn't it? You're sitting here reading my goddamn webpage about Boys. That's some gay shit. That's fucking unbelievably super fucking gay, so much so that even if you're a chick, reading it would make you gay. But you're not a chick, because chicks can't use the internet. All they can use is their titties to arouse and confuse the minds of good internet webpage making people like myself.

Also, I'm writing this at work and I'm a little bit drunk. So fuck you, shitheard.

Hey, that reminds me of a funny story. You ever see that show Trailer Park Boys? Well I got news for you, Uncle Sam -- We've been watching that shit in Canada for years, and our version isn't censored with gay beeps. The power got cut off at my house last week, and we decided to say Fuck That Shit and just leave it off. So at night we run an extention cord from next door to power our tv. So we're sitting in this shitty, rustic old house with our wood stove going, watching Trailer Park Boys off of stolen power. That's some east coast canadian shit right there. That's the only way to watch Trailer Park Boys. If your one lamp doesn't dim whenever you turn on the microwave, you're not really watching the show the way it was meant to be watched. You're just jerking off with your cock in your ass.

Now Boys, this is a fine movie. Let me qualify that by saying that Boys is a really shitty movie with a myriad of problems. It's got a goddamn cavalcade of problems, but I still love it. The first time I saw it was years ago, while I was going through a Winona Ryder obsession. It's not easy, being infatuated with an actress, because they make horrible movies. Heathers was the only good movie Winona was ever in, with an honorable mention to Beetle Juice. Once you hit the nineties though, forget it. Same thing happened with Natalie Portman. The Professional / Leon was great, and everything after it? Garbage. Every single movie.

And that includes Star Wars, you fucking nerds. At least the Trek dorks know that they're outcasts and treat themselves as such. You Star Wars motherfuckers stroll around like you're not fuck ups, as the "socially acceptable science fiction fags". Well I got news for you: You're wrong. The original trilogy was a piece of shit, but we were all kids back then, so I can understand why people still like them. Nostalgia runs deep. But those new ones, those are the worst fucking pieces of shit ever made. I'm waiting for a bunch of brown coats to go to a sci-fi convention and beat the shit out every Star Wars fan there. Then all the Trekkies will run away like scared little bitches, but the Trekkers will be too fat and fucking uncoordinated to make it away, so the brown coats will boot fuck the shit out of them too. And if you don't know what a "brown coat" is, then go fuck yourself. And you call yourself a nerd... As, no doubt, do your friends and neighbors.

As for Natalie movies, I'll give points to Mars Attacks, but more for Lukas Haas than Natalie. "We'll all live in teepees, and it'll be better in a lot of ways." Haha, I mean man, that's a good line. Seriously. And those two made a great movie couple. Not quite as good as Winona and Johnny Depp, who were the greatest movie couple of all time, but still pretty good. I definitely wanted to see Natalie suck Lukas' dick, which is pretty much all I'm basing this decision on. Thora Birch and Scarlett Johanssen were a good match too. That one gives me shivers. But what made Winona and Johnny so great is that they weren't just a movie couple, they were a real couple. Johnny really did blow a load on Noni's face. Probably lots of times. And Depp is fucking hot. Shit, that's great stuff.

So I've got this eleven hour shift at work and nothing to do, which led me to renting a pile of movies, one of which was Boys. I haven't seen it in years, but like I said, I used to dig it. And I found out that I still do, so I think this bitch needs to be immortalized. Through a webpage, by me. It's a crap movie that probably never should have been made, just like every other Winona Ryder movie, but every video store has it. If that's not a testament to the fundamental crappiness of movies, I don't know what is. Nobody ever rents it, but it's there. It's just sitting there, staring at me.

The first time I saw Boys, I was really into it. Notice I said "it", not "them". I thought the Winona curse was over, and that she'd finally made another good movie. But by the end it fell apart like a chinese motorcycle, or a latter-day Simpsons episode. But the set up was so good, and some of those early scenes were so goddamn ginchy that I gave it two thumbs up. Of course, no one was around to see my thumbs because I was sitting alone in the dark at my mom's house like a loser. But I made myself a copy of the movie with two vcrs and watched it once in awhile, and it always happied me up. You remember that, you internet dorks? When people made copies of movies with two vcrs? Not with some DVD rip that they downloaded off the goddamn internet and then tossed on a spool between their donkey porn and their CTV rips of That's 80's Show. Fucking assholes.

You remember That 80's Show? I hated it at first, but by the end I totally dug that shit. Tuesday was so hot, and she was willing to take off her gear with that dweeb from the record store. They did a That 70's/80's Show crossover in my brain every night for a week where Donna was in her mid-twenties and totally dyked out with Tuesday. I don't know quite how they got to that point since I missed the beginning of the episode, but they were the only two characters in it. Well, at one point they were both sucking my dick, and I don't know how that happened, since I'm not a character on either show. But it's safe to say that that was the best crossover of all time. Two big-titted redheads mashing their naked bodies together, that's really all you can ask for from network tv.