Roar: The Most Insane Film Ever Made

You all remember Timothy Treadwell, from the greatest docukino, Grizzly Man? Well now imagine he had fuckoff money and was married to a classic Hollywood A-lister, and made his own little Apocalypse Now, except set entirely in the Kurtz compound and starring himself as Dennis Hopper's spaced-out photographer character, and instead of people the inhabitants of the compound were lions.

Yes.

That is, roughly speaking, what Roar is. Noel Marshall was the nutter, Tippi Hedren his equally deranged wife, and a young Melanie Griffith their IRL daughter. Along with two sons from a previous marriage, they form the family at the heart (of darkness) of the most window-licking movie venture ever funded. If Aguirre-era Herzog and Kinski had been pitched this idea, they would have thought it was too nuts. The picture proudly proclaims in its opening credits that no animals were harmed (which I doubt), but cheerfully omits to mention that seventy members of the cast and crew were injured by the said felines, including DP Jan de Bont (who would go on to do Die Hard and Speed) who was fucking scalped by one of the beasts.

U N T R A I N E D

Marshall plays a version of himself called Hank, and Hedren plays a version of herself named Madeleine. This version of her evidently doesn't remember The Birds, which should have given her a healthy fear and loathing of nature on its own. Their kids, however, all play themselves, or at least use their IRL names, possibly in case they needed to keep in any personalised screams for help that might have occurred during filming.

*Record scratch* *freeze frame* I bet you're wondering how I got into this position...

I'd like to think it goes without saying that getting up close and personal with lions (and tigers, and various other dangerous beasts) is one of the worse ideas you can come up with, but this has never occurred to Hank, who goes off on a boat trip leaving his family to arrive unsuspecting at his compound which is now empty except for the hundred and fifty ravenous predators he likes to pal around with.

What's the worst that could happen?

His way back is further complicated when a couple of his tiger friends hop on the boat and capsize it, which I'm not sure was meant to happen, which is something I can say for most of the events in this film. I say this because the animals literally get writing credits for their improv skills, because Noel "One Flew Over The Lion's Den" Marshall doesn't know the difference between improv and the fact that a fucking animal doesn't know it's on a movie set and is only interested in food, rutting, and mayhem.

Except this one which is really into skateboarding.

Meanwhile, Hedren et al spend a lot of time running and hiding from the lions. The sons lock themselves in various things and Hedren loses her top, tries to pull a lion off her daughter by its TAIL, and gets a jar of honey or something drop on her face. I thought this was going to be a plot point that would lead to one of the animals trying to lick/eat it off her, but it never pays off, so it's just another small moment of inexplicable derangement in the midst of what is certainly the best movie no one should have ever even thought of making.

After this she steps on a rake nine times and falls into a cactus.

There's a subplot about two guys who get mauled at the start of the picture coming back to shoot some lions and tigers, which takes care of itself when the one antisocial lion, Togar, whom we can recognise because he's always covered in blood, shows up and mauls them to death. If they weren't in the movie at all it would make absolutely no difference.

"Yes, this looks like a sensible animal to put in a home movie with my family" - Noel

In case getting chased, sliced up and otherwise harassed by the pride wasn't enough, Tippi Hedren then gets in a fight with an elephant.

The woman has no luck at all with animals.

It's worth noting that the film score seems to have been grafted on from an entirely different project, as it's all feel-good family comedy stuff, bookended by two utterly emetic hippy type pop/folk/rock songs about harmony and loving one another and suchlike, all of which is so tonally dissonant with what we're watching, which is definitely funny, but like the Darwin Awards are funny, and laced with a healthy dose of cringe as at any moment you're afraid one of the improv stars is going to improv biting the face off a cast member. Apparently Griffith actually sustained a facial injury and needed reconstructive surgery. Bet you don't think your parents were so mean now (unless you were molested).

Ceiling Cat fucking told you not to masturbate. Now he's sending in the big guns.

Fortunately Roar is never boring and if you look at it as a sort of surrealistic satire it's a pretty great work of art. If you look at it as 100% sincere it's kind of even better because it's a glimpse into madness at the opposite end of the social spectrum to the guy that sits next to you on the bus. Either way, check out Roar.

Here is an article that goes into a bit more detail on the film's background.

Vermintide sketch

Fatshark Games' account tweeted a request for fanart yesterday so here's what I came up with.

Say cheese lolololololololol

I made the neck thicker to support the proportionately bigger head but idk if it's Rob Liefeld tier, especially since the rest of the frame is pretty standard size. But it's a fictional monster so whatever. Should I quit my job and become a mediocre DevianTART drawfag? LMK what you think.

Cherry 2000 to Blade Runner 2049: The Decline of Western Civilisation in Two Robot Waifu Kinos

This smudgy, low-res piece of shit was the only copy of the film I could find, but trust me, it's kino.

As you know, yesterday's scifi is today's reality. Cherry 2000 is a 1980s motion picture starring Melanie Griffith and some guy in a highly 80s neon and synth-obsessed dystopia in which romantic relations between the sexes have deteriorated to the point men are turning to sex robots while """"real"""" women are exacting contracts before sex and dating can commence. It's set in 2017, making this literally the most accurate prediction of the future in any B-movie, ever. Coincidentally or otherwise, 2017 was the year another neon robot waifu kino, Blade Runner 2049, was released. In my ongoing effort to replace academia with shitposting, I offer you a comprehensive breakdown of these eerily similar films and what they say about our IRL dystopia.

Don't you hate it when your wife short-circuits?

So the plot is kicked into motion when our bland everyman hero's robot waifu gives out during foreplay in the suds from an overloaded washing machine. She's the eponymous Cherry 2000, a high-end model powered by the latest technology: a mini-disk. Our protagonist, who I'd swear had a name but whatever, sees his relationship with her as real and meaningful, even though she basically repeats a few phrases monotonously with a smile on her face. Maybe the subtext is that he's as boring as her, so he can't really tell there's anything missing. To be fair though, this relationship appears to be better than the alternative.

What if I told you I was in Apocalypse Now? No really, I was.

Yes, that's Larry "Morpheus" Fishburne (again, eerily presaging his later role by wearing these reflective sunglasses. IRL Matrix confirmed) as a lawyer/pimp/chaperone who arranges dating contracts like in that one Chappelle Show sketch between men and women at a bar. Do you think Hollywood comes up with these ideas because they think the rest of the world are as degenerate as them?

Anyway, Protagonist resolves to get a new body to house his waifu's mini-disk. There's only one problem: the only waifu bodies left in that make and model are in storage in Las Vegas, deep in Zone 7 which has descended into the sort of neo-wild-west setting you'll recognise from 800 Mad Max ripoffs. The major difference is that the villainous gangs that run this wasteland are preppies instead of punks:

The feared warlord Lester (yes).

This idea is funny, and it's just one of a number of imaginative quirks that make Cherry 2000 kino. So to help guide him through this hazardous desert, Protagonist enlists the help of "E" (Melanie Griffith), a manic-pixie-dream-girl-haired qt who I guess is like a Stalker from the movie of the same name, but for preppy post-apocalyptic California instead of Bumfuck USSR. Not, however, before visiting this hotel, where they have a cat in a bottle on the front desk:

Yes.

So E leads Protagonist into the Zone where they're picked up by a large magnet on a crane and shot at with rocket launchers, presumably to avoid damaging the road surface, which makes this a more forward-planning-oriented gang than most.

>tfw no rocket launcher having post-apocalyptic mpdg qt gf

Naturally E and Protagonist Guy fall in love, but a romantic comedy contrivance has them fall out and press on to find the robot body and more hijinks ensue. Eventually they go to Vegas, just like in BR 2049.

Vegas is always a e s t h e t i c after the world ends.

Of course, this is two human beings going in search of one robot, whereas in BR 2049 it's two competing replicants (K and Luv) and a hologram (Joi) going in search of a lone, aging human man in hiding. Quite the demographic reversal in the 32 years between 2017 and 2049.

In both movies the male protagonist has a choice between an artificial relationship with a "real" woman (the prostitute in BR 2049 and the bar thots with the contracts in Cherry 2000) and a relatively real relationship with an artificial woman (Joi/Cherry). Of course in Cherry 2000 he ends up with E, but this only adds another layer of depression to the experience, because E, as a manic pixie dream girl, also represents something that doesn't actually exist. Real-life "random" women with unnatural coloured hair are far closer to the contract thots than to E in the movie.

What do you mean I'm not the girl of your dreams, cis-pig?? This is hash tag why we need SocJus!

What both movies recognise is that a Cherry or Joi is just going to be the go-to choice when the alternative is this Lego-eyebrowed Boris Karloff looking turbothot and others like xir. Cherry 2000 cheats by offering the possibility of a good woman as an alternative, but as Mark Sandman once said, a good woman is hard to find*.

However there is a a teeny tiny whitepill to be found in this morass of depression, in the form of best girl Luv.

<3

For while Joi (Jerk Off Instructions) and E (ecstasy) are both essentially fake stimulants, Luv (love) is real, and love hurts, and the relationship between K and Luv is the realest one even though it is largely antagonistic, because at base she wants Ryan Gosling's BAC (Big Autistic Cock), making her what weebs call "tsundere". Although a replicant, Luv has internal conflict and this makes her more human than the basic bar thots and the mascots such as Joi and E. Luv represents the SYNTHESIS between the loving waifu and real (complex) wahmen. This is what is meant by her catchphrase, "I'm the best one".

Now That's What I Call Kino (Vol. 344)

Despite the crieing of many, this is NOT at all an unattainable standard for wahmen to aspire to. You can even keep your straight bangs.

Do you like how I solved dystopia??? Leave a comment!

*Note that when your entire sex gets BTFO by Morphine you can never recover because Morphine is the best 90s-core band, at least tied with Hum. If anyone still clings to muh feminism in the face of the Morphine argument, they may be dismissed as irreparably basic and broken down for spare parts.

Thank God It's Friday The 13th: Friday the 13th Part 2!!!

Every Friday the 13th two things happen: Jason goes on a killing spree, and I write an article in tribute to him. This time our subject is arguably the best film in the entire series, Friday the 13th Part 2. This article contains spoilers and gluten.

The movie opens with Alice, the sole surviving camp counsellor from the first instalment, who is still haunted by nightmares of her ordeal at Crystal Lake. This seems to have been done mostly to pad the movie out to feature length, which is always a good way to start. Alice gets a call from her mother, who is as concerned as you might expect. This is an interesting point because the dialogue suggests she still has unfinished business at the lake, setting her up to be the protagonist again. This is, of course, an effective fake-out which, like the mystery element from the first film, is sadly no longer effective. Nowadays, we all know she's about to get whacked.

Another story tragically cut short because it would require character development.

So Jason kills her with an ice pick to the temple, which presumably he found in her abode, since it's unlikely he keeps one in his shack in the woods. Had she been staying in a hotel he'd have had to order room service to get something to kill her with. But first he pranks her by leaving his mother's rotting head in her fridge, the absolute madman.

I've got worse in my fridge tbh

With his mother's killer now avenged, Jason returns to his woods to live a quiet life of contemplation and ease. Unfortunately a new batch of camp counsellors decide to set up shop by Crystal Lake, so he pretty much has to kill them all too. I mean, it was that or not kill them, and keep being a hermit in peace, and, really, what kind of choice is that?

Given the state of Jason's cabin, his motive may just be the search for new piss bottles and cum socks.

Sack-wearing Jason aside, one thing that elevates this movie above the pack is the Final Girl, Ginny Field, played by the legendary Amy Steel.

Literally waifu tier.

Ginny is by far the smartest and most resourceful of the Friday the 13th Final Girls, and beats Jason with an uncanny knowledge of psychology the writers made up. It's her analysis of Jason that basically sets the template for our understanding of the character: he's a child trapped in a man's body, unsure what to do without his mother's guidance. You can kind of argue that the reason she is able to survive is she's the only one who cares to try to understand Jason, which is a pretty interesting idea. She also wails on him with a chainsaw at one point, which is pretty sweet.

She also pisses herself during the final chase scene, but nobody's perfect, unless you're into that.

But then there's also the fact that Part 2 is scary, which puts it in rare company with Part 1. Zombie Jason was never scary and from Part 5 or 6 (depending on how much you credit Part 5 for intentionality) the series became more of a broad comedy with gore. Part 2 uses the innate scariness of the woods to good advantage and the hallucinatory atmospherics of the ending are still effective.

Next Friday the 13th we'll cover Part 4, which isn't really scary but is atmospheric and the last "good" instalment. After that things get real retarded real quick, but as the 80s wore on, the distinction between retardation and brilliance wore, at times, extremely thin.

my first gondola :)

Gondolas are an island of peaceful contemplation in our times of trouble. I have made a Gondola to try to bring some comfort to my introspective brothers and sisters.

If everyone watched a daily Gondola, the world would be a more thoughtful place.

UNHINGED is KNHO!

Many and varied are the slasher flicks that thick-rimmed-glasses-bedecked bloggers will claim are the great overlooked classics of the genre. Some will cite The Initiation, with its apparently hilarious penile costumes. Others will proclaim the impeccable gore effects of The Prowler/Rosemary's Killer, or the masterful twist ending of Happy Birthday to Me. But they are all objectively wrong, because the greatest slasherkino you've never heard of unless you are a virgin at 47 is Don Gronquist's 1982 masterstroke Unhinged.

Unironically kinography

What makes Unhinged kino is the same thing that makes Kwaidan kino: it is so slow and boring that when something finally happens it's twenty times as shocking because the film had lulled you into near-sleep. I mean this entirely seriously: the film is not le-so-bad-it's-good in the usual sense. Rather, it is so bad it's actually really good.

Unhinged is mostly known for being one of the infamous video nasties banned by the risible joke of a country known as the UK. There's a fair amount of gore but, let's be honest, it looks faker than a Kardashian and in any case is no worse than most Friday the 13ths. I wish someone would ban the UK.

The inspiration of Psycho and The Shining are evident throughout, and I can only assume 90% of the budget went on the helicopter shots of the protagonists driving endlessly through woods. This was a good decision because it lends the picture a ton of style and sets it apart from the other micro-budgeters of its day. The lack of funds to go around also keeps the action limited to a couple of locations, which play perfectly on the combination of claustrophobia and isolation you experience when stuck in a creepy old house in the woods in the middle of nowhere.

Since almost nothing happens in the filmographeme, it would be impossible to say much more without spoilers, so I will leave you with this demonstration of the masterful artistry of the much underappreciated Gronquist, who in the Berenstein world is regarded in the pantheon of greats.

Don Gronquist made this shot scary 8 years before David Lynch.

Thank God It's Friday The 13th: Friday the 13th Part 3: 3-D!!!

It's that time of year again: October. Unrelatedly, it's also Friday the 13th, which means I'm going to be wildly autistic about one of the greatest film series about a fellow retard ever to exist*. I was going to write about parts 1 & 2, but I'm already doing a writeup of another slasherkino so let's delve into one of the dumb ones instead.

Friday the 13th Part 3: 3-D is chiefly noted for being the one in 3D, and consequently the one where the guy's eye pops out towards the camera (despite sounding potentially horrific, this is actually hilarious). My copy of the DVD only includes the 2D version, but you can still tell it was filmed in 3D because people keep shoving crap right up into the camera for no plot-related reason.

The magic of 3D: annoying everyone by invading their space like the worst kid in school.

The movie starts with a disco theme that sounds straight out of Prom Night, which instantly kills the still-effective atmospherics of the first two movies and sets the stage for the increasingly gimmicky and only sometimes intentionally funny sequels to come. The cast of hippies and other degenerates are introduced, and set about killing time at their holiday home near Crystal Lake, ignoring the warnings of everyone's favourite Eyeball Guy.

The fact that everyone forgets about this guy five minutes after meeting him proves they were never going to make it anyway.

Aside from the 3D chicanery, what makes this movie super funny is the plot (of sorts). It took me a couple of viewings to confirm this, but this is the movie in which Jason hides in a barn and people keep disturbing him until he snaps and kills them all. Because in those early days of the franchise, the writers still thought they were telling some kind of rudimentary story, Jason has things like motivation in this movie. He starts off stealing clothes from a local couple (whom he kills, because why not?), and heads to the barn to lay low, knowing the cops will be looking for him after last night's massacre (Part 3 takes place the day after Part 2, making it definitely not Friday the 13th, not that anybody cares).

Damn kids, get away from my barn!

The problem for Jason is that these kids show up at the house opposite his barn, and one by one they just keep coming in. They even incur the wrath of a local bike gang, who are also drawn into the barn. The movie is much funnier if you watch it with the understanding that Jason isn't trying to kill anyone else. He's actually for once doing the smart thing, laying low until the heat blows over and he can return to his shack in the woods. But everyone trails through his barn, and he kills them to keep from being discovered.

Finally Shelley, a fat, annoying nerd who plays practical jokes so everyone will like him, little realising that this is the reason no one likes him, enters the barn carrying a certain hockey mask. At this point, Jason has had enough. He kills Shelley, takes the mask, and wipes out everyone until the Final Girl stops him (for now).

Not many know that Jason stole his iconic look from a fat kid with a Jewfro.

The other thing that's odd about this one is that the Final Girl has a flashback to encountering Jason the year before (which would be before Part 2). In her flashback, Jason didn't wear a mask, and attacked her but didn't kill her, neither of which are behaviours we associate with Jason. Final Girl narrates Hemingwayesquely, "he had a knife...and he attacked me with it!" but if he did, he doesn't seem to have been very successful. This raises the intriguing possibility that this was how Jason learned to kill people - by trial and error. Did he knock her out and hammer her legs with the handle of his knife?

Jason is not one of life's great thinkers.

Sadly, this would be the last time in the series that the character of Jason was developed at all, even if it was in a way that made no sense. Getting the hockey mask effectively turned him from a character into a full-time icon, and in some ways that is sad. On the positive side, his wacky antics would continue to amuse for decades to come.

*I can say this because I am in fact retarded. Also, because it's a funny word and it's OK to admit that.