Mongo Nation

The best sci-fi/slasher/buddy comedy/exploitation/road picture of the decade thus far?

By Jeremy Azevedo

Anyone who knows me could tell you that I spend a great deal of my time watching relatively obscure movies. In my pursuit of those rare gems that get skipped over on account of everybody’s too busy watching “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”. I most often find myself eyeball deep in some real shit.

The problem with most B movies is that they often realize halfway through production that the original idea wasn’t that great to begin with and just give up, resulting in a half-hearted mess. Either that or they try to hard to be an A picture because they don’t know their place. Oftentimes, the best that you can hope for is that the film would at least be unintentionally funny. But every once in awhile you see a B movie that is executed flawlessly by people that:

1. Understand the wants and expectations of the B movie audience and…
2. Actually have the chops to pull it off, without ever looking like they’re trying too hard, to appear is if the humor (intentional or not) came to them effortlessly, and to capture the spirit of fun that makes people want to make and watch these kinds of movies in the first place.

“Dahmer Vs. Gacy” is one such movie.

Directed by cult favorite Ford Austin, “Dahmer Vs Gacy” is, on the surface, a horror/comic take off on “Freddy Vs Jason”. You’ve got your two serial killing icons, you make up some excuse for them to exist in the same time and place, and you see what might happen when the two finally meet. As the kind of kid who collected serial killer trading cards to piss my parents off, I was quite pleased to see two of my “favorites” as the titular characters. And as a Guns N’ Roses fan, I gotta say I was pleasantly surprised to see original G N’ R drummer Steven Adler make a cameo as well!

Born in a lab as part of a secret military program to breed soulless super-killers, a freak accident allows the two maniacs to escape and go on a massive killing spree across America, ultimately culminating in the showdown that we are promised by the film’s title. Along the way, they garner the attention of a bloodthirsty media, in a nod to more “serious” (though some would argue, equally campy) serial killer fare like “Natural Born Killers”. They also attract the ire of Ringo, a holy soldier to whom God (voiced by Harland Williams) speaks to through the power of crazy, as well as a shit ton of ninjas.

Yes, ninjas. Read the rest of this entry →

We have photos of the stars of the new film, Bitch Slap.

Bitch Slap is one of the best cult movies I’ve seen this year, for six very good reasons. Can you spot them in the photo below?

“Bitch Slap” is the story of 3 hot babes that stole some diamonds or something, not that it matters. There is a story here with secret agents, gangsters, double-crossing and a “Memento”-style plot rewind, but the crux of the film is watching these broads beat the shit out of each other, then make out, than beat the shit out of each other again (in slow motion). As an appetizer to the film, which will be in theaters January 8th, we’ve got some pics of the film’s three sexy stars for your one-handed viewing enjoyment.

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Dahmer plus Gacy, plus clowns, plus ninjas, plus Steven Adler = AWESOME!

By Jeremy Azevedo

When two of the most notorious killers of all time are cloned in a secret government experiment, you can be that nothing good will come of it.

Unless by “something good”, you mean Dahmer Vs. Gacy, a bloody serial killing spree the likes of which haven’t been seen since Freddy Vs. Jason! But whereas Freddy and Jason are fictional characters, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy are clearly the real deal!

Loose in a world filled with victims, Dahmer and Gacy engage in a horrific race to prove who is the better serial killer. When the government can’t stop them, they send ninjas. When ninjas can’t stop them, they send Steven Adler, the original drummer for Guns N’ Roses. When even that fails, everyone is pretty much f**ked until the two monsters inevitably take each other out.

Check out the awesome trailer right here:

Dahmer Vs. Gacy is currently showing at The American Film Market and is coming soon to late-night theaters and DVD!

Epic clash of the weirdo-comedy lovers

Johnny Firecloud Vs. Jeremy Azevedo

I recently caught a screening of the new Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) film Gentlemen Broncos, and found that I had vastly different feelings about the movie than another of our writers, one mister Jeremy Azevedo. Things got a bit heated in our point-by-point exchange, but the character assassinations and personal attacks shouldn’t be taken as anything more than hard-fought opinion flag-planting, dear reader. We do it for you. It’s all for you.

JOHNNY: I didn’t enjoy the film nearly as much as I’d hoped to. Gentlemen Broncos isn’t terrible, or even bad really but it seems to aim specifically for the 8 year-old boy demographic. The comedy of it isn’t lost on me - the Yeast Lords sci-fi fantasy world is hilarious, especially when co-opted and completely gayed out by Dr. Ronald Chevalier.

But the intentional awkwardness that made Napoleon Dynamite great is far too heavy-handed here, and while the characters are hilarious, the whole thing just seems too deliberate. The comedy is way overplayed, and the best parts of the film were in the trailer (except the snake shitting on that dude - that was pure gold). The book cover art is totally awesome and the use of Ray Lynch’s music was brilliant, but I felt like I had a brain-STD after the movie.

JEREMY: Deliberate? Overplayed? This, coming from a guy that’s a card-carrying Tim Burton fan. So T.B. can make 300 variations of the same goddamn movie, but Jared Hess isn’t allowed to employ a similar style more than once?

Personally, I find his style unique and refreshing when compared to nearly everything else out there. How many Star Wars/blowjob gags can we tolerate from Kevin Smith? How many times is Judd Apatow going to have some fat guy tell us the same dick joke? Gentlemen Broncos was consistently funny, while at the same time giving us a glimpse into a world that very few, if any, moviegoers have ever looked in on. I can’t believe that Hess is more or less the first person to successfully turn a camera on the one weird kid that everybody remembers from school, but never actually met, and tell his or her story.

At the very least, you have to admit that 100% of the fantasy sequences were incredibly awesome, and that Dr. Ronald Cheveliar was an instant classic character. Did you notice that he was always wearing a Bluetooth earpiece, but that he always spoke to people on a regular phone? Broncos was filled with little touches like that which warrant a re-watching. Like Napoleon Dynamite, it will require repeated viewings to fully appreciate the depth of humor beneath the dryness. Maybe you just need to watch it again.

JOHNNY: Card-carrying Tim Burton fan? You cheap fucking swine - my initial response to your “do you like Tim Burton?” bait question was “not really, no” - before admitting that some of his work is good. But it’s too limited in vision, he rides Johnny Depp’s rod a little too hard for real appreciation and those freaky Indian-midget oompa-loomps were horrible. I won’t deny that.

That said, Gentlemen Broncos would definitely be a unique and refreshing tale, if Napoleon Dynamite hadn’t existed before it. I won’t argue that Kevin Smith is more overrated than Judd Apatow, whose fetish for fat underdog protags is only worsened by the fact that he casts his shrill, haggard wife in every goddamn thing he does.

Yes. The fantasy sequences were fantastic. Once I regressed to my 8 year-old self I laughed like hell, and I’m sure I’ll appreciate it more on repeated viewings, but it’s gonna take some fantastic fucking weed. Chevalier’s bluetooth was hysterical, however, as was Sam Rockwell’s gay lisp. But dear Christ, that Pedro wannabe with the big grin was terrifying and horrible. I was also bothered by the fact that he never got his teeth kicked in for writing a check post-dated for the following year, but I digress.

JEREMY: Whatever. You probably have a “Jack Skellington” tattoo on your bicep. You don’t gotta lie to kick it, dude.

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Like Deliverance, only with fewer banjos and more zombies.

By Jeremy Azevedo

Midnight Movies is an irregularly occurring feature whose purpose is to showcase little-to-no budget films that play at late night theaters in the slums of America and the bombed-out megaplexes of the former Soviet Republic Eastern Bloc!

Even if you’ve never heard of Drac Studios before, you have no doubt seen quite a bit of their work. They have done special effects and makeup for everything from X-Men, Pirates of the Caribbean and Titanic on down to Ugly Betty, Friends and Power Rangers. These guys have had their hands in everything, and are just about unparalleled when it comes to the lost art of live SFX. It’s only fitting then, that they should dabble in a little full-scale production of their own.

Trailer Park of Terror, which is based on a comic series by the same name, is the first feature length, in-house production to come out of Drac Studios. As you can imagine, a horror film made by a shop that has been nominated many times for achievements in makeup and effects makes a lot of sense. Even on a smaller budget, it is possible for them to use their own resources to give make a horror picture look like it had a multi-million dollar effects budget. Horror fans expecting gruesome thrills, explicit torture scenes and horribly disfigured zombie/demon monsters will not be disappointed in the slightest.

Director Steven Goldmann, himself a country boy and a comic fan, took great care to infuse Trailer Park of Terror with actual Appalachian bumfuck Ozark American flavor, gathered in his experience as a prolific country music video director. Granted, much of that aesthetic was already present in the comics. But little touches, like the way one character is injected with salad dressing like a turkey about to be roasted, or more noticeable elements like the soundtrack, come from Goldmann’s influence.

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