The Curator of Schlock #244 by Jeff Shuster

Mandy

This is some weird shit. 

It’s October, the time of year when your Curator of Schlock becomes the Curator of Shock. Over the next few weeks, we will be showcasing only the most spine-tingling of tales. Last year, I ended October with a review of The Wicker Man, the one with Nicholas Cage. After I sent that review off to my editor, I laughed uncontrollably for about five minutes. Maybe it was that scene of Nick Cage screaming about a doll that got burned or him drop-kicking Leelee Sobieski into a shelf of pottery or that scene with the bees. Point is that it’s performances like this that cause many people to dismiss Nicholas Cage. Those people haven’t seen Mandy.

I am so impressed with Mandy that I’ve prepared a letter of consideration to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:

Dear whomever it may concern at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,

This is Jeff Shuster, the Curator of Schlock. Maybe you’ve heard of me. I’m the champion of all those movies you routinely ignore each year in favor of movies everyone pretends to like, but never bother with looking at again in five years. Except for L.A. Confidential. That was a good Best Picture nomination because I got to see Russell Crowe dunking some guy’s head into a toilet. But now I’m getting sidetracked. My point is I have seen the best picture of 2018 and will now proceed to cram my opinion down your throat. The name of the movie is Mandy from director Panos Cosmatos. He should get best director just for having such an awesome name.

The movie stars Nicholas Cage as Red Miller, a lumberjack and devoted boyfriend to Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough).

Mandy is like the coolest girlfriend ever. She reads pulp fantasy novels and listens to Black Sabbath. There’s a tender scene where Red and Mandy are talking about their favorite planets, Mandy’s being Jupiter and Red’s being Saturn. My favorite planet is Uranus. Oh, and there’s this creepy Jim Jones style cult that wants to add Mandy to their congregation at the request of Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache). He used to be a folk singer before the heavens reached out to him and told him anything in the world was there for his taking.

Jeremiah summons some bikers who got all messed up in the head due to some bad LSD. He offers them a rotund member of the cult (for eating I guess) in exchange for help in kidnapping Mandy. With Mandy firmly in the cult’s clutches, Jeremiah attempts to seduce her by playing one of his albums, but she just laughs at how bad his music is. Jeremiah doesn’t like that one bit so he ties up Red with barb wire, pierces Red’s side with a spear, and hangs Mandy while setting her one fire before the eyes of poor Red. One of the cult members declares that “Whores burn the brightest.” Then they leave Red with the charred remains of his love.

The rest of the movie features Nick Cage going on a revenge tear that makes Charles Bronson look tame by comparison. He makes this wicked axe with a spear tip that he shoves down this one cult member’s throat and you can see the blood gushing everywhere as he mutters how Mandy is burning in hell. There’s a chainsaw fight, Nick Cage lighting a cigarette off a flaming skull, cocaine, LSD, PCP, and just a bunch of righteous kills. Plus, you get to see Nick Cage screaming while sitting on a toilet in his underwear. If that isn’t best picture material, what is? Please consider Mandy for various Award Nominations including Best Picture. Don’t even stick it in that new Most Popular Film category. Everyone knows that’s going to Black Panther.

Sincerely,

Jeff Shuster

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #236 by Jeff Shuster

47 Meters Down

Mandy Moore in a shark cage.

July 2018 came and went, but brought with it a many splendid thing. Like the trailer for that new Aquaman movie. He’s not wearing the orange trunks, though. He could also do with a shave and a haircut if you ask me, but maybe he’ll work his way up to the Aquaman we know and love.

Still, what July didn’t give us was James Patterson’s The Zoo Season 4. How could they do this to me? In the finale of Season 3, an army of hybrids stormed the wall protecting the remnants of human civilization. I guess James Patterson was too busy palling around with former President Bill Clinton to be bothered to get on the horn with the head CBS to save the greatest summer show in the history of summer shows! James Paterson just doesn’t care. I’ll repeat.  James Patterson just doesn’t care.

But we care here at The Museum of Schlock. Don’t bother with TV shows. They’re a waste of time. Cinema is where it’s at. Tonight we’re watching 2018’s 47 Meters Down from director Johannes Roberts.

It stars Mandy Moore and Matthew Modine. It’s about two sisters, Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate, having a fabulous vacation at a Mexican resort. Or they would be having a fabulous vacation if Lisa wasn’t moping about her ex-boyfriend. Apparently, he left Lisa because she was boring. Details weren’t giving, but I would hazard to guess it had something to do with Lisa’s refusal to wear the Raggedy Ann costume on their anniversary.

Kate and Lisa meet a couple of local boys who tell them of a crusty, old sailor who takes passengers out to the middle of the ocean, fits them with scuba gear, sticks them in cage, and dunks them in the water so they can see killer sharks up close. Lisa thinks this is dangerous, but Kate reminds Lisa of how boring she is and how boring girls don’t get the guy. Plus, if Lisa posts pictures of herself underwater in a shark cage, surely her ex-boyfriend will come running back to her.

The crusty, old sailor is played by Matthew Modine. His name is Captain Taylor. And unlike Captain Phillips, he remains the captain throughout the entire movie. There are no emaciated Somalia pirates trying to steal his vessel, mainly because it’s a hunk of junk. Captain Taylor asks them if they are certified scuba divers. Kate says she is. Lisa isn’t a certified scuba diver because being such a thing might make her less boring, but she lies and says she’s certified.

After boarding the boat, Lisa has some trepidation about going into the cage since it’s rustier than her Spanish language skills. Captain Taylor insists that it’s safe.

A man named Javier (Hey, it’s my Spanish namesake!) proceeds to chum the water with rotten fish parts and blood. Lisa points out that it’s illegal to chum ocean water. Javier asks how else should he get the attention of the sharks? Should he call them? “Hey sharks!” he screams.

Yes, we hate Javier at this point.

The girls get in the cage and under the sea they go. It’s a magical experience filled with blue luminescence, colorful fish, and aggressive sharks. And then the cage falls 47 meters down. I’m not trying to sound negative, but even Ethan Hunt couldn’t get out of this mess. FYI, this movie is actually adapted from Matthew Modine’s debut novel, Boring Girl Gonna Die in the Shark.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #231 by Jeff Shuster

The Last Exorcism Part II

Nope. There’s no sequel when something is the last of anything!

I’m sorry, but if we can get The Last Exorcism Part II, we can get The Last Starfighter Part II. I’ve been waiting over three decades for a follow-up. I want see Alex Rogan face off against the maniacal Xur once and for all. Maybe we’ll even see a resurgence of the Ko-Dan Armada.

How about that? Looks like The Last Starfighter was turned into an off-Broadway musical back in 2004. I’d rather see that than Hamilton. I’m just saying.

Tonight’s movie is 2013’s The Last Exorcism Part II from Ed Gass-Donnelly. The enticing Amazon description states, “The evil force is back with horrific plans.” Huh? When did the evil force leave? The Last Exorcism ended with a satanic cult pulling a demon named Abalam out from a pregnant Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell) and then tossing said baby demon into a bonfire where the flames caused it to grow into a GIANT DEMON. Reverend Marcus gets burned alive and the satanic cult butchers his camera crew.

I assumed that the demon then proceeded to create hell on Earth or maybe he got a cushy job over at Lucasfilm. Regardless, Abalam didn’t go anywhere. He was made flesh and doing damage out in the world.

The Last Exorcism Part II forgets all of that. Abalam is non-corporeal again and stalking an amnestic Nell. She ends up being taken in at a home for wayward girls run by Frank Merie (Muse Watson), a therapist who doesn’t believe in demons. He even convinces Nell to reconsider the whole religion thing. Nell is enjoying her new life with the other wayward girls, especially since the girl’s home is located right in the middle of New Orleans. Party time! Seriously, you can hear jazz music being played live at four in the morning in the Big Easy! I’ve been there.

I wish I could be a wayward girl living in New Orleans.

Things are going well until strange things start a brewing. While Nell is working at a chambermaid at a local hotel, she hears Reverend Marcus trying to warn her about Abalam through an old radio. A boy she’s interested in calls the house, but all she hears on the other line is a crying baby. She keeps seeing her dad, and I can’t tell if he’s real or a ghost.

He warns her that Abalam wants to join with her and then he’ll be unstoppable or some such doomsday mumbo jumbo. I think one of the other wayward girls, Gwen (Julia Garner), is also possessed by Abalam because her eyes keep going all black and she keeps smiling a wicked smile.

All is not lost. A secret society known as the Order of the Right Hand wants to kill Abalam by transferring his essence into a chicken and then killing the chicken. Sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo voodoo horseshit to me.

The ceremony goes awry.

Abalam joins with Nell and she goes on a killing spree.

The movie ends with New Orleans being torched by hellfire. Now you don’t have to watch the movie.

You’re welcome.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #230 by Jeff Shuster

The Last Exorcism

The Citizen Kane of found footage demonic possession movies.

So I’m on the Interweb and take notice of an upcoming motion picture called Death Kiss? The title sounds familiar. It stars Daniel Baldwin and some actor I’ve never heard of, a Robert Bronzi. Still, the name Robert Bronzi reminds me of another actor celebrated at this establishment. And then I watch the trailer. Daniel Baldwin is playing some kind of shock jock radio host, keeps talking about how someone needs to deliver the “Kiss of Death” to the criminals terrorizing our society. Out from the shadows steps a man:

I am crying tears of joy. Everything’s come full circle now. We’ve come home, folks.

Anyway, back to Satan Month. This week’s feature is 2010’s The Last Exorcism from director Daniel Stamm. Now, the first thing you’ll notice is that this looks like a real documentary. It’s professionally shot. The camera doesn’t shake all over the place. There’s no zooming in and out unlike some other found footage movies that will never be mentioned on this blog again. The movie centers around a skeptical preacher named Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) and a teenage girl named Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell) who may or may not have the devil inside her.

Here’s where I’m at with horror movies. I’m ecstatic when they’re great, but those are rare. Many are good and I’m fine with good. And even a bad horror movie is better than watching Young Adam or The English Patient. The Last Exorcism is a good horror movie and good is good enough.

What makes it good is the best horror movie protagonist I’ve seen since Ash from the Evil Dead films, Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a preacher from the Louisiana Bible Belt. Reverend Marcus started preaching the good word when he was a boy, groomed by his father. Reverend Marcus is an exorcist, but there’s just one problem: he doesn’t believe in demons anymore. When he reads a news story about a young autistic boy who gets suffocated to death during an exorcism, he decides it’s time to expose exorcism for the fraud that it is.

With a documentary crew in tow, he heads to the backwoods of Louisiana, interviewing yokels about the Satanic cults and UFO sightings. We laugh at the rubes, but maybe we shouldn’t. Reverend Marcus has been summoned to the Sweetzer farm, where a teenage girl named Nell is supposedly possessed by a demon named Abalam. With his linen suit and Jimmy Swaggart swagger, he convinces her God-fearing father, Louis, to let him perform an exorcism on Nell, emphasis on perform since it is a performance.

Reverend Marcus has an exorcism kit complete with an MP3 player filled with demon sound effects, a crucifix that emits smoke with the press of a button, and other instruments of fakery. A shaky bed and an avalanche of quotes from The Exorcist, and presto, Reverend Marcus has convinced Nell and her family that she’s no longer possessed. But that isn’t where the movie ends. Nell starts to act really strange, drawing pictures of Reverend Marcus on fire and the camera crew hacked to pieces. Oh, and then Nell mutilates the family cat. The cameraman wants to leave, but not one listens to him. I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say that fire and brimstone may be involved.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.