15 Second Review: Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights (2004)

Yeah that’s right, Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. Got a problem with that? I have seen virtually all the teen dance movies going – the best is clearly Step Up 2: The Streets, which has absolutely on competition. However, Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights is awesome, albeit in an entirely different way. The dancing is not all that spectacular. The plot is a hideous mess of West Side Story and ham-fisted attempts at political engagement (viva la revolution!). The dialogue becomes worse with every line: the final voice-over is a brazen display of unforgivably crass scriptwriting. Most cheesy and distracting of all is the score, which occasionally morphs into an acoustic guitar version of “I Had the Time of My Life”. The elements are all so atrocious that they are enormously and delightfully entertaining. In sum, Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights is the No Retreat, No Surrender of dance movies. Recommendations do not come much higher than that.

Human Centipede 3 Casting

According to EW, Eric Roberts have been cast to star in the forthcoming Human Centipede 3, which is a bit of a boon given that Six's films do not typically feature "stars". I'm looking forward to seeing Roberts in it - although he has been in dozens of better and worse  productions (ranging from The Dark Knight to Sharktopus) , I most prominently remember him as Alex, the lead protagonist in Best of the Best. Here's hoping for a side of ham with the 500-person centipede we've been promised.

 

 

 

 

Also cast is porn performer Bree Olson, so Six may be planning to take "torture porn" more literally this time. I'm sure you'll all remember Bree from such classics as Chloroform Bondage Silences Feisty Females, No! Please Don't Tickle Me There, Lord of Asses 9, Prying Open My Third Eye 2, Scooby Doo: A XXX Parody, and Jam It All the Way Up My Ass 4. Sure, it sounds like I'm making it up...

TesseracT: Altered State (2013) Full Album Stream

Brit-Prog-Djenters TesseracT are currently streaming their new album in full on YouTube. Well worth a listen. I am a big fan of artists offering a 'try-before-you-buy' streaming system: the music should be enough to persuade punters to part with their cash. In TesseracT's case the album is a grower, so it especially benefits from this kind of exposure. Altered State also works well as one continuous piece, as it is presented here.

Poster: Squirrels (Horror Movie)

This will either be great or awful - I doubt there is any middle ground with a concept like killer squirrels.

Cultural Oddities:Chistopher Lee's Metal Album

Christopher Lee has it all wrong... April Fools Day was last month. what is this sickness?

15 Second Review: Banana Motherf***er

Banana Motherfucker is every bit as silly as the title suggests. That is not to say there is no method in the madness. In the first instance, the ludicrous B-Movie title and content plays into and augments current trends towards nostalgic, neo-grindhouse themes. What the filmmakers achieve within that framework is impressive. The editing is such that the fruit seems genuinely menacing at times. The filmmakers take advantage of the human willingness to anthropomorphise and imbue inert objects with agency. Of course, as the title suggests, this is all treated with an overt sense of silliness. Over-exaggeration is the order of the day, and the idea that fruit can come alive is matched by the actors’ hysterical over-acting.

 

This combination of ridiculousness and retro-horror pastiche means Banana Motherfucker is equal parts appropriation, revision, and mockery. Unlike the cannibal films Banana Motherfucker draws upon, the jungle itself comes alive here. This move is shrewd, allowing the filmmakers to bypass and lampoon the offensive racial stereotypes that were so often drawn upon by its 1970s predecessors.

If you want a copy, you can buy the DVD for only 5EUR from http://www.clonespt.com/index.html  The DVD features some deleted scenes – the microwave sequence is possibly funnier than anything in the main feature.

Short Film: Elm Street Fan-Film Double

As fan films go, Chris Notarile's Krueger films are pretty good - they are extraordinarily light on plot and the sound/music could be better, but Lombardi is far more convincing as Freddy athn Jackie Earle Haley was. Chris was originally planning a trilogy, so hopefully the third installment will be with us soon.