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Ice Scream: The ReMix (2008)
Crime against humanity
Before I begin, let me make something very clear. I have a special place in my heart for B movies. To my mind they can be fun, cheesy goodness. A happy place where over-acting is encouraged, so as to give the more laid back amongst us a cheap laugh. I have found a way to enjoy innumerable B movies, and I thought I would be in for a treat with this one. I WAS WRONG!
The main cast of this movie look like they are fresh from a soft-core porn set. In fact, a good deal of the ladies in this movie have done exactly that. This is not a bad thing, however. It serves to give you something to stare at while enjoying line deliveries that only porn actresses can pull off. You can get even more cheap laughs out of Richard Van Vleet's character who looks like a middle-aged man thats been trying his whole life to get into the porn industry, but never quite made it. This cast could have added up into one glorious train wreck of awesomely bad acting. Which is exactly what I wanted. But then Ryan Click came along.
With God as my witness, I have now sat through the absolute worst thing I EVER could have imagined. Ryan Click plays this annoying, little teenager who is meant to be the "bumbling moron" but only serves to be a character so bad, so painful to watch, that it feels like my brain is in a cheese grater. Now, I know that B movie characters are meant to be bad. But they're meant to be laughably bad. This guy... I.. I can't even say how I really feel about him, because there's too much profanity going through my head. Lets just say that its like someone tried to clone Jim Carey, but only succeeded in getting the annoying bits. Then just for good measure, threw in the annoying parts of Michael Cera, just to make us hate him even more. His performance is so mind-bendingly horrendous, that there are several scenes of wonderfully pointless nudity, that are decimated by the mere presence of Click. This man is one of the few people capable of mustering a performance that can make Pauly Shore look good. And that is not a statement that I make lightly.
What Click does in this movie is so terrible to watch, that I actually consider him to be a great and blinding insult to the mentally handicapped community. Oh yes! I am not kidding. People who require assistance to button their shirts in the morning should be offended by this guy.
This movie was never destined to be something great, or even something good. But with Ryan Click's performance it becomes one of my most hated movies of all time. I'v watched some films that have been completely carried by a single actor. But never have I seen one where just a single member of the cast drags it down to such a low level.
Avoid At All Costs!
ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009)
Shaun of the dead? No. But not a bad attempt
This film offers no real surprises.
Thats pretty much this movie in a nut shell. Its your typical zombie fare with just a few extra political and social themes thrown in to try and give you characters that aren't the norm for this kind of flick.
The plot is kept simple, in this film, the zombie virus is used by terrorists as a biological weapon (I know, its the animated Resident Evil plot. Just go with it) Stupidly, its unleashed on a small ISLAND community... Isn't that kinda the worst possible place for this kind of thing? If you wanted to kill a lot of people, wouldn't you release it on the mainland or a major city so it can spread? Anyway, I digress.
The meat of the film is nothing special, typical zombie outbreak with a few gay jokes thrown in to give the slower members of the audience a giggle. But this film does deliver where its needed, its a true B movie, with ridiculous and one dimensional antagonists. Along with main characters who were clearly written with the thought "How can we get the most puns out of these guys?"
Really, the true and honest glory of this film comes towards the end, when one of the cardboard villains mentioned above (I won't spoil who) gets attacked by a zombie, who rips his arm off and proceeds to beat him to death with it. I kid you not, I watched that scene at least 4 times.
I wouldn't say that this is a zombie flick that you HAVE to see. But you could definitely do worse. It knows what it is, and sticks to just how corny the writing is and delivers what anyone with brain would expect from a film with this kind of budget. Go watch it, but don't expect to fall in love with it.