Found(ational) Footage

 

Following the somewhat pleasant surprise of 2006's The Gravedancers, I found myself surfing the options on Amazon Prime and landing on a whole other batch of low budget aughts horror. My defenses slightly softened, I figured why not take a chance on one starring Cordelia Chase and Parker Lewis?

Quick Plot: In 1951, a group of early cosplayers reenact The Sandlot with deadly consequences. One boy brings his bullies a baseball signed by Babe Ruth, prompting a home run directly to the door of the dreaded Wicker House. The kid decides a suburban legends is a safer gamble than abusive father, so he heads over to retrieve it before being taken by something unseen.

Cut to the present (in this case, 2010) as the crew of Sinister Sites is prepping their next shoot at the same location. The network show is hosted by the jerky Quentin French (Corn Nemec), slicked back ponytail helping to tell us everything we need to know. He's assisted by an equally jerky producer Tom and an exhausted team slightly refreshed by the presence of new cast member/psychic Heather (Charisma Carpenter).

It doesn't take long for the house to make some moves. One PA disappears almost immediately, as real deal Heather becomes nauseous as she gets otherworldly visions (JUST LIKE CORDELIA CHASE). The house quickly traps the group inside as things get bloody.

Directed by Jeffery Scott Lando (best known to me as the man behind Decoys 2: Alien Seduction), House of Bones has its moments. Nemec is having fun being awful, and the early stabs at 'reality' TV are occasionally quite clever. But House of Bones isn't interested in committing itself to the horror comedy category, and it never comes close to being actually scary. When you combine mediocre staging with mostly awful characters, the result loses its charm.

High Points

Maybe because its budget was never going to push it into real scary territory, I can happily say that I did chuckle several times at House of Bones' jokes. There are far more successful Ghosthunter parodies out there, but the early setup of Sinister Sites' opening credits and Nemec's commitment to playing a tool go a long way in keeping the film's sense of humor clicking

Low Points

There's a mild attempt to explore something interesting in the house's history of enslavement, but sometimes, ambition simply exceeds skill and you find yourself thinking, "are you the right team to tell this kind of story?"

Lessons Learned

You don't plant slime in walls

So long as the Wisconsin Convention Center offers you more than $10K for a comic convention, you're still a star

Wikipedia can make you look very cultured

Rent/Bury/Buy

House of Bones isn't good, but it entertained me well enough as I made my grocery list for the week ahead. There has to be an IMDB tag for that, right? 

Parker Lewis's Daughter Can't Lose

Besties. You think I'm not going to watch a movie called Besties?

YOU DON'T KNOW ME.

Quick Plot: Sandy is an awkward 14 year old obsessed with her sexy older neighbor and former babysitter Ashley.  When her dad (Corin Nemec!) goes away for the weekend, Sandy lets Ashley throw one of those terrible Mike's Hard Lemonade catered high school parties that quickly ends with the cops showing up to lazily investigate a noise complaint.

After Ashley flirts her way out of a police report, her paroled ex-boyfriend Justin shows up and begins to put the statutory rape-y moves on a smitten Sandy. Before you can check what's on Lifetime, Sandy and Ashley are bashing the fella over the head with a frying pan...to death.

There are worse ways to go, but then again, there are a whole lot better means, too. This is what happens when you turn down your only real friend’s invitation to try out her new panini maker. 

The girls move into action, dumping Justin's body a few miles away but forgetting that his car is parked right in front of Sandy's house. Clearly, these young ladies have not been watching nearly enough Pretty Little Liars.

Besties is an odd little indie written and directed by frequent Gotham contributor Rebecca Perry Cutter. Less a Lifetime flick and more a lighter spin on thirteen, it's an incredibly uncomfortable, often awkward look at what it means to be a 14 year old girl (spoiler alert: it sucks). In that respect, it's actually kind of strong. As Sandy, Olivia Crocicchia is not the kid sister you want. She's quiet and shy, snippy to her actual friend and creepy to her obsession. As I've said before with #Horror and The Sisterhood of the Night, no woman is at her best in middle school.

Likewise, Madison Riley's Ashley isn't necessarily a heartless mean girl, but more an ambitious teenager who has learned how to leverage her looks to overcome a less than ideal home life. As a character study of two very different, but very real teenage girls, Besties offers some genuine insight.

On the other hand, as a murder coverup, it has some issues.

Besties isn't a particularly well-plotted film. The very idea that these girls MURDERED A MAN is ultimately treated with the same weight as that time Kelly and Brenda wore the same dress to the Spring Fling. The pacing is odd, the investigation is barely humored as actually happening, and the film leaves the story in a place that is supposed to be a moment of victory with hints of a cliffhanger, but that felt more like you drove to the top of a mountain and suddenly your car disappeared and you have no idea where you were planning on going anyway.

It's not the most beautifully written analogy, but I'm trying to channel my inner 14 year old.

High Points

It doesn't make for pleasant viewing, but Besties really does find that horribly uncomfortable tone that is the life of middle schoolers

Low Points

I mean, they kill a dude. But that's neither here nor there

Lessons Learned

Nobody misses gross people

Showers wash off DNA and stuff

Nothing celebrates turning 15 better than a murder confession and bouncy house

Everyone needs to learn how to take a compliment*

*Note: just because something is said by a jailbait hunting ex-con does not make it fantastic wisdom to bestow upon an insecure  teenage girl

Fun Fact

Crocicchia also had a small part in a Lifetime better-than-it-should-have-been thriller called, quite magically, I Killed My BFF. What pleases me most about this is imagining Ms. Crocicchia 50 years from now explaining to her grandchildren what the titles of all these films meant 

Legally Required Bratz Reference

Because any opportunity to discuss Bratz: The Movie is one that must be taken by this blog, I’d like to inform you that Madison Riley played “Trendy Girl.”

Resume non-Bratz: The Movie talk now. 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Much like the very different, but somewhat thematically similar #Horror, I wouldn't recommend Besties to most readers. Aside from the fact that it doesn't really have anything to do with the genre I usually cover, it's also a rather awkward film about incredibly awkward people doing very awkward things (awkwardly). That being said, I myself have a very odd affection for films that tackle female tweenhood, and Besties certainly goes there full force. Those who are curious can find it on Amazon Prime. Those who aren't should remember that seriously, it's REALLY HARD TO BE 14.

One Good Cop Dog

To say my expectations were high for 2008's Cop Dog would be an understatement akin to dubbing Clive Owen okay-looking or nachos a mildly enjoyable snack or this picture of bulldog puppies kinda cute.

Kinda?

C'mon: based on the kind of WTF trailer that defies any sense of ‘typical kids film,’ my heart was set on canine thespian Kuma’s title role to change my life.

Let us see if it did.

Quick Plot: Poor Marlowe looks awfully bored sitting in a cage at a K-9 training center, where all his four-legged friends are busy running through hoops and practicing scent trails. Some fancy editing tells us that Marlowe’s human police partner died nearly one year ago and his widow and son Robby are still picking up the pieces.

Not of the dead guy, at least, not literally (though the fact that he died in an explosion does lead me to now wonder). Robby has become moody and weird, leading his mom to consider stashing him away at some form of Cuckoo’s Nest-y juvenile facility. To perk him up, she agrees to adopt Marlowe who would otherwise be put out of his misery/boredom by going to a glue factory.

As a housedog, Marlowe isn’t a champ. He takes a liking to chewing up shoes, running amuck, and chasing the sexy lady dog.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, we know she’s a lady dog because she has pink bows on her ear, which actually has more of a weird schoolgirl porn star feel but what can you do.

Also on Marlowe’s list: catch the bad guys who killed his partner AND stole his Rick Grimes-meets-the-urban-sombrero hat.

As worn by Parker Lewis himself, all grown up with a shaggy Bill Paxton circa Titanic haircut.

Step back, Clive Owen. There's some fierce competition brewing...for my heart.

The bad guys--Parker Lewis and his lackey, a doofus whose sole character trait is that he chews more gum than Violet Beaureguard--are obsessed with unlocking a Lost-like hatch in the backyard of Robby, the same locale where pops saw his gruesome end. Of course, you would suspect that said Lost-like hatch is hiding something super secret and important, and I'm almost positive we do eventually discover what said super secret and important secret is. Except it's now been 18 hours since I've watched Cop Dog and like Guy Pearce in a sports jacket, I can't for the life of me remember what it was.

I think I drink too much.

In one of his typical acts of blatant bad behavior, Marlowe runs away from Robby to chase the loitering bad guys and promptly gets hit by a truck (meta-ly played by the film's director, John Murlowski, he of the vastly different Golden Christmas and Freeway Killer). Despite Robby's cries for WATER!, Marlowe joins his late partner in the heavenly afterlife...or does he?

In the world of Ghost Cats and Karate Dogs, one would think that "Cop Dog" was enough of a title hook to serve as a film's premise. Clearly, one is not familiar with the fanciful machinations of screenwriter Steven Palmer Peterson (he of the spectacular Lifetime original Murder On the 13th Floor, a 'thriller' that manages to obliviously insult career women and the African American race in a rather adorable manner). My completely uninformed understanding of the screenwriting process for Peterson went something like him saying this: "Sure, a COP DOG is neat, but what the kids REALLY want from their cinema is more GHOST COP DOGS. Now hand me another Zima!"

At Marlowe's funeral, his sad lieutenant bestows upon a despondent Robby the dog training whistle his dad used to use on Marlowe. Before you can say, "Oh! Is this a MAGIC whistle that will summon Ghost Cop Dog to aide Robby in the investigation of his dad’s murder," allow me to point out the fact that a dog training whistle might have come in handy a week earlier when THE DOG WAS EATING FURNITURE AND RUNNING IN FRONT OF TRUCKS.

But I digress. Robby soon discovers that it is indeed a magic whistle that will summon Ghost Cop Dog to aide him on his investigation, and the plot kicks in.

Because Robby's best friend's dad is a paranormal investigator with a stable Skype connection, the kids learn that they must solve the mystery of dad's passing within one year of his death or else pops and Ghost Cop Dog will be trapped in a horrible netherworld limbo (that is hopefully nowhere near as painful as the film Netherworld) forever. That's a lot of pressure to put on a kid during his summer break, but thems the breaks when Parker Lewis is rocking an urban sombrero.

Thankfully, his pal Deb is willing to do whatever it takes to catch these rascally villains, including participate in the strangest montage yet to grace Animals Doing Human Stuff month. See, after the kids discover one of the bad guys has an annoying--yet convenient--habit of leaving chewed up gum at the scene of the crime, Robby concocts a genius/really gross plan in 5  steps:

1-Collect recent receipts from nearby convenience stores that carry various chewing gum

2-Identify which flavor and brand of chewing gum has been left behind

3-Cross-check the findings with the receipts to identify which store the assailants have been frequenting

4-Hang out at said store until the bad guys come in and purchase the precise chewing gum pattern order

5-Kill them? In truth, the fifth step was foggy.

The real question you're wondering, of course, is how did the kids match the chewing gum to the receipts? The answer is simple:

Montage of two preteens pulling out sticks and spider eggs from days-old discarded gum to identify its flavor.

Maybe that's why my macaroni 'n cheese dinner wasn't as tasty as I expected it to be.

Much like Patrick Swayze after his tutorial with Vincent Schiavelli, Marlowe can occasionally harness some corporeal powers to attack the bad guys or, as revealed in the greatest coda of all time, impregnate a porn star terrier mix. In other words, it all ends happy with Robby NOT going to the juvenile crazy house and Marlowe spreading his seed to give us more ghost cop dogs for eras to come.

High Points

KUMA!

Low Points

Aside from one of them being Parker Lewis, the villains in Cop Dog offer nary a note of being interesting. Perhaps my standards were raised to unreasonable heights following Craig Ferguson’s glorious turn in Lenny the Wonder Dog, but I don’t even remember what the bad guys actually wanted (other than gum)

Lessons Learned

Guys are handsome, not pretty

Sometimes people LEAVE and they DON’T come back

Contrary to popular belief, giving a dog that just got hit by a car water will not bring him back to life

After you have a nervous breakdown, you can see the world more clearly

Standard Animals Doing Human Stuff Trope Tally

New Kid In Town: X

Recent Dead or Divorced Parent: Check OBVIOUSLY

Montage: Check. And gag.

New Friendship: Check

Potentially Inappropriate ‘Friendship’ Between Child & Unrelated Adult (Human): X. 
Evil Corporate Enemy: X. Parker Lewis answers to no one.

Original Song: I wish.

Bully Comeuppance: X

Small Town Values: X

Back To Nature Moral: X. 

Overall Score: 3/10. But it has Kuma, so let’s adjust to 30,000,000,000,000,000,007/10 for more accuracy.

In Conclusion...

I'd like to thank all of you that hung around for this Animals Doing Human Stuff month, especially those rock stars who contributed their own reviews. I imagine most of my readers generally come here to learn about homicidal dolls and killer refrigerators, so I apologize if these past 30 days didn't quite satisfy your bloodlust. With a few years of blogging under my collar, I wanted to experiment a little more with some new types of cinema and as you can probably tell, the only things I enjoy nearly as much as horror is are good old fashioned terrible movies or, on the flip side, bizarrely misdirected gems that don't understand their audience. The ADHS genre is bursting with such treasures, some of which we got to ravage like a cat from outer space at an orgy, others that left us wanting, well, wanting more ghost cat. Ultimately, we had our montages, troubled kids, divorced/dead parents, bully comeuppances, and in a few glimmering moments, original songs that could possibly bring about world peace or destroy the music industry once and for all. It's a gamble really.

October begins tomorrow, and with that will come a full month exclusively devoted to the horror cinema you've come to expect from a blog about...you know...horror movies. So long as I keep that balance of candy corn and pumpkin beer at a manageable level, expect much.