David Dubrow

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Attack from Planet B Movie Review: Mafia Women 2

February 19, 2020 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I wrapped up my three-fer of reviewing Patryk Vega movies with Mafia Women 2 at Attack from Planet B:

Olga Boladz, who played the protagonist from the first film, probably didn’t want to have her name attached to this monstrosity because her character was murdered, off-camera, in the first minute of Women of Mafia 2. Says rather a lot, doesn’t it. Other surviving characters from Mafia Women, however, do continue their stories here, even if they don’t intersect or affect each other. The overarching plot, such as it is, involves a drug deal between Nanny’s drug gang and a Colombian cartel that goes terribly wrong, and the fallout that results from it.

I really need you to click to read the whole review to make me feel better about watching this film. Please.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: attack from planet b, mafia women 2, movie review, patryk vega, poland

Movie Review Resurrection: Killbillies

February 14, 2020 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

(When the much-missed horror site The Slaughtered Bird closed its doors some time ago, a number of my movie reviews fell into limbo. As some of the reviews are worth retrieving from that dark and empty place, I am posting my review of Killbillies here. I don’t hate all B-movies. Just the really bad ones.)

Killbillies is touted as the first horror film to come out of Slovenia, which makes it historical, after a fashion. I didn’t know where Slovenia was before I looked it up (I mean, I knew it was in Europe somewhere). To save you a Google search, just imagine a small, irregular splotch just to the right of the top of Italy’s boot, and there you are: Slovenia. Judging from the movie’s cinematography, Slovenia is a beautiful, wooded place with mountains and valleys and a nightmarishly dark urban center where you’re as likely to be served distilled cerebrospinal fluid in the dive bars as you are a refreshing Slovenian beer. (I don’t know if the latter exists, but I imagine it does.)

The title says it all, and that’s where this movie shines. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than an homage to films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance. The plot is admirably uncomplicated: a pair of beautiful models, their photographer, and a makeup artist go into the wilderness to take pictures; they meet up with some seriously inbred primitives; death and horror ensue. You don’t go to see a film like Killbillies for the existential angst.

If that isn’t enough reason for you to run, not walk to the nearest Killbillies-purveying establishment and put your fat fingers on a copy right away, here’s another: it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch. The style of filming brings a freshness to the subject matter that goes beyond the expected blood, gore, and shrieks. Screenwriter Tomaz Gorkic makes us care about what happens to these poor victims, despite how unlikable most of them are, and once the real terror stops, it doesn’t let up until the closing scene.

The two heavies, Francl and Vintlr, are entertainingly vile. Vintlr is particularly disgusting, with his horrible teeth and drool and overall demeanor, while Francl’s facial deformity, with its peeling scabs and bloodshot eye, makes one want to turn away whenever he’s on screen. Putting Francl in lederhosen was an inspired choice, adding a soupcon of black humor to his lumpish, menacing figure.

Don’t expect boobs, because you won’t see any. You will see a lot of blood from a number of lens-splattering gore effects, which is great because the breathtaking outdoor scenes can only carry the film so far.

So what are you waiting for? Do you really want to pass up the opportunity to see the first Slovenian horror film? Francl’s waiting, after all, and his rusty old axe is pretty thirsty.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: horror, killbillies, movie review, slasher, slovenia

Attack from Planet B Review: Mafia Women

January 14, 2020 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Who doesn’t like mob movies? Not me. That is, I do like them. Yes. I hope I’ve made myself clear. Anyway, I reviewed the Polish mob movie Mafia Women for Attack from Planet B:

Several of [writer-director Patryk] Vega’s characters were lifted without attribution from older, better intellectual properties. The bald police captain has a Kojak-like penchant for eating lollipops. The mafia boss is given to experiencing Tony Soprano-style panic attacks. The boss’s teenage daughter is the worst singer in Warsaw, but everyone applauds her cat-strangling efforts. Et cetera. Basically, law enforcement and crime families in Poland are the same as American cops and goons, except the Poles eat pierogi and the Americans eat pizza.

Oh, but does it coalesce into a delicious kielbasa stew, or is it as bad as Vega’s Botoks? Only one way to find out, and that’s by clicking!

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: attack from planet b, feminism, mafia women, movie review

Attack from Planet B Review: Botoks

December 18, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

When the much-missed horror site The Slaughtered Bird closed its doors, the site’s proprietor, with my enthusiastic permission, gave my oeuvre of book and movie reviews to the site Attack from Planet B, who, over time, has been reposting them. This includes older gems like the unbelievably awful slasher flick Red Christmas, for example. Sometimes giving a terrible movie a negative review is revenge for wasting my time.

In appreciation for Attack from Planet B rescuing my reviews from (perhaps deserved) oblivion, I’ve agreed to watch and review a new spate of independent and/or foreign films. My newest is a review of the Polish medical drama Botoks:

zasłony wołoweThe clumsy, shrill feminist message running throughout the film is undercut by the plot. A female urologist’s husband tells her that he wants a divorce because he finds her vagina hideous to look at. He even uses the term “beef curtains.” (I don’t know if that’s an exact translation; all I can do is read the subtitles.) Later that day, the understandably unsettled doctor with the unappealing genitals insists that a male patient provide a semen sample by masturbating in front of her. After she gets fired for this piece of questionable professional behavior, she becomes a pioneer in vaginal plastic surgery, and even has her own female parts prettified. Today’s woke feminism would, no doubt, have her shouting her pride in her, ah, “beef curtains” instead of having them adjusted according to sexist male standards of attractiveness.

Please read this review. PLEASE. Don’t let my suffering go unwitnessed.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: attack from planet b, botoks, curtains, medical, movie review, poland

Movie Review Resurrection: Strip Club Massacre

October 3, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I used to write book and movie reviews for the now-defunct but much-missed horror site The Slaughtered Bird. While many of the movies I watched for review were absolutely horrible, some were terrific. After you’ve seen enough bad, zero-budget indie horror films, you really find an appreciation for those few movies that can transcend their lack of funding, creating well-written or otherwise unique films that you remember.

Strip Club Massacre is not one of those movies. But I did enjoy writing a review of it in the same way that one might enjoy digging out an ingrown toenail. Once it’s over, you feel better. Here’s my review, rescued from erasure.

—

If you’ve ever wanted to break into indie filmmaking, read on because you’ll find what I’m about to say uplifting. Strip Club Massacre, co-written and directed by Bob Clark, proves that anyone, regardless of skill, equipment, money, or talent, can make an independent film and find a distributor for it. So grab a camera, get out there, and start filming: the light is green.

The best thing about Strip Club Massacre is the title, because it perfectly sets up exploitative expectations. Where things sort of fell apart was in all aspects of the execution: the substandard B.P.M. (Boobs Per Minute) and the actual massacre itself, which may set a record for the slowest, most tedious mass murder in cinematic history. The poor B.P.M. rating isn’t a crushing disappointment, as at last count there are more websites devoted to the exposition of bare bosoms than there are stars in the sky, but what I found odd was the casting choice: none of the strippers with speaking parts actually, well, stripped. Or danced very much. In any other genre this wouldn’t be an issue, but this is an exploitation movie with Strip Club in the title, so it’s a problem.

The protagonist Megan is having the worst possible day: she gets laid off from her desk job, comes home early to find that her hateful boyfriend is banging her roommate, and subsequently gets thrown out in the street. So she goes to live with her friend, whose hateful boyfriend is the co-manager of a strip club. With few skills and no money, what’s a woman to do? Why, work at the strip club, of course. Things go from white-trash to worse in short order, what with the homicidal strippers and the awful customers, culminating in scenes of vengeance that might have been horrific if the special effects hadn’t been handled by Chef Boyardee.

The acting and writing are what you might expect from such a movie. Memorable lines include, “You can choke on your fucking bagel,” and, “What are we gonna do with this scrawny little twat?” What, indeed? (I did laugh at that last line because it’s always funny when someone says “twat.”) The shaky, often out-of-focus camerawork; mid-scene iris adjustments; poor color balancing; bizarre framing where the actors talk to the right edge of the screen from the right third; clumsy scene changes; specks on the lens that follow the action from scene to scene; and horrible sound editing suggest a certain lack of familiarity with video production, to be charitable.

There’s plenty of violence, though the vast majority of it is pointless, glacially-paced, and poorly-performed. One girl’s eyes are removed with a corkscrew (quite a feat, that). A guy gets his penis sliced off, and the trauma of the event is such that he dies immediately afterward (wouldn’t you?). People are shot with plastic guns and die. In the most entertaining scene in the movie, a man is raped with a crowbar, and bloody chunks of rectal flesh and/or fecal matter dribble out of his abused anus onto the floor in reddish plops that look exactly like canned spaghetti and meat sauce, down to what might have been strands of pasta in the mess.

Obviously the movie doesn’t take itself seriously, and nor should the viewer. Will you be entertained by Strip Club Massacre? Can’t say. Maybe it falls under the So Bad It’s Good category, and I missed the intent of both producer and distributor. You’ll have to decide if its runtime is an hour and 41 minutes you’ll regret spending at a screen, and make your life choices accordingly. Let us know either way at The Slaughtered Bird.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: horror, movie review, slaughtered bird

HiT Movie Review: Loqueesha

July 31, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Loqueesha is a movie heavily freighted with controversy before it was even released. So I couldn’t wait to watch it and then review it for Hollywood in Toto:

Loqueesha’s low budget makes itself known early on: the lighting is drab, most of the scenes are shot close up, and the few bits of green screen are so terrible that they should have been left on the hard drive. (It’s the 21st century, so I can’t say “cutting room floor” anymore.) None of the actors looked happy to be there, and delivered their lines with an awkward kind of affect that accurately reflected the script’s leaden dialogue. Unnecessary, expository scenes involving radio execs took the viewer out of the story, and montages of average people listening to Loqueesha’s sage advice on the radio fell flat. Sometimes you have to decide that the baby is ugly early on so you can stop putting it in front of the camera. Nobody in production had the wit to do that.

You should read the whole thing.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: hollywood in toto, loqueesha, movie review, race

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"It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church." --Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

"Squop chicken? I never get enough to eat when I eat squop chicken. I told you that when we sat down. You gotta give me that. I told you when we sat down, I said frankly I said this is not my idea of a meal, squop chicken. I'm a big eater." --John O'Hara, BUtterfield 8

I saw the 1977 cartoon The Hobbit as a little boy, and it kindled a love of heroic fantasy that has never left me. Orson Bean's passing is terrible news. Rest in peace.

Obviously, these young people have been poorly served by their parents, but the honest search for practical information should be lauded, not contemned.

You shouldn't look at or use Twitter, and this story is another perfect example. There's so much that's wrong here that it would take a battalion of clergy, philosophers, and psychologists to fully map it out, let alone treat the issue.

This is the advertising copy for Ilana Glazer's stand-up comedy special The Planet Is Burning: "Ilana Glazer‘s debut standup special is trés lol, and turns out - she one funny b. Check out Ilana’s thoughts on partnership, being a successful stoner adult, Nazis, Diva Cups, and more. Hold on to your nuts cuz this hour proves how useless the patriarchy is. For Christ’s sake, The Planet Is Burning, and it’s time a short, queer, hairy New York Jew screams it in your face!" This is written to make you want to watch it.

In the midst of reading books about modern farming, the 6,000 year history of bread, and ancient grains, I found this just-published piece by farmer and scholar Victor Davis Hanson: Remembering the Farming Way.

"I then confront the decreasing power of the movement in order to demonstrate the need for increased theorizations of the reflexive capacities of institutionalized power structures to sustain oppositional education social movements." Yes. Of course.

You should definitely check out Atomickristin's sci-fi story Women in Fridges.

As it turns out, there may yet be some kind of personal cost for attempting to incite a social media mob into violence against a teenage boy you don't know, but decided to hate anyway because reasons.

One of the biggest problems with internet content is that the vast majority of sites don't pay their writers, and it shows in the lack of quality writing. It's hard to find decent writers, and harder to scrape up the cash to pay them. This piece is a shining example of the problem of free content: it's worth what you pay for.

If you're interested in understanding our current cultural insanity, the best primer available is Douglas Murray's The Madness of Crowds. Thoughtful, entertaining, and incisive.

More laws are dumb. More law enforcement is dumb. The only proper response to violence is overwhelming violence. End the assault. There's a rising anti-semitism problem in New York because Jews who act like victims are being victimized by predators. None of these attacks are random. Carry a weapon and practice deploying it under duress. Be alert and aware. I don't understand why the women Tiffany Harris attacked didn't flatten her face into the pavement, but once word gets around that the consequences of violence are grave, the violence will lessen.

When are you assholes going to understand that this stupidity doesn't work any longer? Nobody gives much of a damn if you think we're sexist because we don't want to see a movie you think we should see. It only makes us dislike you that much more, and you started out being an unlikable asshole. Find a new way to shame normal people.

The movie Terms of Endearment still holds up more than 35 years later, and if you're looking for a tearjerker, this is your jam. One element that didn't get a lot of mention is, at the end, when Flap, with a shrug, decides that his mother-in-law will become the mother of his children once Emma dies. He abandons them, and nothing is made of it. This always troubled me.

You need to read this story the next time you feel the urge to complain. And if you need a shot of admiration for another family's courage, check this out.

Progressive political activist and children's author J.K. Rowling finds herself on the wrong side of a mob she helped to create. The Woke Sandwich she's been trying to force-feed others since she earned enough f-you money doesn't taste as good as it looks when she's obliged to take a bite.

I need you to check out The Kohen Chronicles and pray for this family. Their 5-year-old son has cancer.

Currently, the movie Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker stands at 55% at Rotten Tomatoes. Don't forget that these are the same reviewers who not only adored the absolutely execrable The Last Jedi, but insisted that you were a MAGA hat-wearing incel white supremacist manbaby for not loving The Last Jedi. So either The Rise of Skywalker is an objectively bad film, or it simply wasn't woke enough to earn plaudits from our movie-reviewing moral and intellectual betters.

It's easy to hate the older pop bands like Genesis for their popularity, but they were capable of genius, and it shows in No Son of Mine.

If you want to know which identity group has more clout, read this story of the Zola ads on the Hallmark Channel.

Rest in peace, René Auberjonois. I remember you from Benson as a kid. As an adult, I remember you as Janos Audron in the Legacy of Kain video game series. You made every role you were in a classic.

Elf on a Shelf Follies, Part 2:
8-year-old: I wrote the elf a note! I hope he writes back.
Me: What did you write?
8yo: I asked if he has any friends.
Me: What if he says it's none of your business?
8yo: *eyes grow dark and glittering* Then I'll...touch him.
Me: Ah. Mutually assured destruction, then.

Elf on a Shelf Follies, Part 1: My 8-year-old got an Elf on the Shelf the other day. The book it came with tells a story in doggerel about this elf's purpose, which is to spy on the kid and report his doings to Santa Claus, who would then determine if the kid is worthy for Christmas presents this year. The book also said for the kid not to touch him, or the magic would fade, and for the family to give the elf a name. I wanted to name him Stasi. I was outvoted.

Actor Billy Dee Williams calls himself a man or a woman, depending on whim; his character Lando Calrissian is "pansexual," and his writer implies that he'd become intimate with anyone or anything, including, one presumes, a dog, a toaster, or a baby. J.J. Abrams is very concerned about LGBTQ representation in the Star Wars universe. This is Hollywood. This is Star Wars. This is what's important to the people in charge of your cinematic entertainment. Are you not entertained?

The funniest thing on the internet today is the number of people angry over an exercise bike commercial. Public outrage is always funny. Always.

One of the biggest mistakes the United States has ever made since WWII was recruiting for clandestine and federal law enforcement organizations at Ivy League schools. The best talent pools were/are available from local law enforcement and military veterans, with their maturity and, most importantly, field experience. We've been reaping the costs of these terrible decisions for decades, culminating in a hopelessly politicized, sub-competent FBI and CIA.

Watching Fauda seasons 1 and 2 again in preparation for season 3 to be broadcast, one hopes, in early 2020. Here's my back-of-the-matchbook review of season 2.

Every day I try to be grateful for what I have, even in the face of the petty frustrations and troubles that pockmark a day spent outside of one's living room, binge-watching Netflix. We live lives of ease in 21st century America, making it enormously difficult to do anything but take one's countless blessings for granted. Holidays like the just-passed Thanksgiving are helpful reminders. There's a reason why people call the attitude of a thankful heart practicing gratitude, not just feeling grateful. You have to practice it. You have to remind yourself of what you have. It's the work of a lifetime.

Held Back: A Recent Conversation.
8-year-old: Oh, and Jamie was there, too. He was in my first grade class two years ago.
Me: Wasn't he held back a year?
8yo: Yeah. It's because he kept going to the bathroom with the door open.
Me: No way!
8yo: And girls saw.
Me: That's not right. They're not going to hold a kid back a whole year over that.
8yo: Well, that's what he told me.
Me: Sounds fishy.
8yo: I believe him.
~fin~

It's right and good to push a raft of politically correct social justice policies on everything else under the sun, but when social justice invades Hollywood, that's just a bridge too far, says Terry Gilliam. Sorry, Terry: you helped make this sandwich. EAT IT.

Rob Henderson's piece on luxury beliefs will have you nodding your head over and over again...unless you subscribe to these luxury beliefs, in which case you'll get mad.

I've made the Saturday bread from Flour Water Salt Yeast so often that I've memorized the recipe. It never disappoints. Never. The same recipe works well for pizza, too.

Liberty doesn't mean the freedom to do anything you want. The true definition of liberty is the ability to choose the good. Anything less is libertinism.

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