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Another week, another Lucky 13! This week, we examine the greatest Serial Killer flicks ever created. Its up at Brutal as Hell. And dont' forget to flip on over to Vault of Horror for the second half of this week's in-depth review.

Stabbity-stab-stab!

      

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Yes, its that time again. Time for the Lucky 13! This week, its the best of Werewolves. Werewolves that are not half-naked Indian boys. Try to pay attention, regardless.

      

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Some more horror goodness in the form of Rec 2! Review now posted at Brutal As Hell. The review is a precursor to a Q&A session I had with the directors of the film, which will be posting soon.

Check it out at Brutal as Hell!

  

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Yes, its that time again. Time for another Lucky 13 at Brutal As Hell! This week, we celebrate the holiday by giving you our favorite Psychological Horrors!... in retrospect, holiday themed horror movies might have been the better sub-genre. Eh, fuck it.

Brutal as Hell!

       

Scrappy sinks her teeth into Twilight: Eclipse!

Its time for a woman's perspective!
A first for the ol' Pop Aristocrat here: A guest reviewer! I can't be bothered with Twilight myself, not after the first film's lack-of-quality-to-box-office-take ratio nearly drove me to suicide. I prefer to stay ignorant. But, Twilight is such a large flash-in-the-pan... er, excuse me, social phenomenon, I don't think it should not be covered.


So, my friend and ally Jessica Brumm, Texas law student and sass-mouth extraordinaire, offered her services as my Twilight reviewer. We'll call her Scrappy, just the way she likes it. So, armed only with a pitcher of beer and a resilience to the soul-crushing power of chick flicks that only a vagina can grant, she braved Eclipse and brought us back these words of wisdom.


{And I also added my own snarky banter because, hell, its still my goddamn blog.}


With no further ado, take it away Scrappy!

 Eclipse teaches young teenage girls a wonderful lesson: don’t agree to get married unless you try to have sex first. Edward proposes several times to Bella, but Bella only agrees to marriage if Edward will try to have sex with her. This is the most bizarre romantic twist to a storyline of star-crossed lovers that has been avoided by Shakespeare and Jane Austen for a reason: it’s a lame and completely unbelievable.

{“ Juliet, wilt thou marry me?” “Oh Romeo, yes, but first I must feel your thrust twixt my nethers, lest we marry to find our coupling unsatisfying. Take me, ravage me now.” “Ew, no. Mine father has said the whipsering eye of a lady 'tis slimy and weird.” “Um...” “It means your vagina.” }

It’s sad really. I’m not a fan of romance films in general—but there are several films and storylines filled with believable romantic antics {because you can't spell romantic, without antic! }that can be appreciated by all: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, What Dreams May Come, Life is Beautiful, and most importantly, Shaun of the Dead. Believability is the key to any good story. A beautiful headstrong girl meets beautiful headstrong boy. Chaos ensues and causes various mishaps between the ill-fated characters. Eventually the couple reconciles and they live happily ever after—or in Romeo and Juliet’s case, they die—but either way, the couple ends up together one way or another, right?

Twilight does add a few interesting elements to the familiar star-crossed lovers’ story—it includes an ancient mutant “vegetarian” vampire, Edward, falling in love with a plain-looking, clumsy, 17 year-old girl, Bella. {Because she smells delicious, don't forget that. I hope to meet a girl one day that is clumsy and plain, but smells like Del Taco, so I can take her home... and then proceed to not have sex with her. In retrospect, I suppose just about any girl who works at Del Taco would fit this bill. I need to go down the street and order up a fresh plate of infatuation. } A “veggie” vampire is, of course, a vampire that loves humans so the vampire only drinks the blood of animals. This veggie vampire is part of a veggie-vampire coven considered enemies of an evil, ancient underground vampire government. Veggie vampires are also hunted by horse-sized werewolves capable of transforming at anytime—regardless of the moon’s cycles. As scores of other films and books prove, werewolf and vampire battles are normally intriguing. But this bizarre and unbelievable Mormon-written romance buries all the awesomeness a supernatural war could possibly bring. { Could Edward's love of Bella be considered a food-fetish? }

I will concede to the Twilight fans, the film has its moments. It is not completely “twi-tarded.” I’d say maybe an hour of the film is watchable for those who are not “twi-hards.” Bella’s father is actually not too bad. He plays the awkward father in charge of the awkward teen romance quite well. One of the veggie vampires talks about how she died after being gang-raped by her former fiancé and his friends {That is also pretty awkward}. There is a quick glimpse of how her revenge on those men played out—which is twisted and very cool.

One of the coolest characters in the entire series, Jasper, gets a small amount of face time. He describes how in the South, during the Civil War, he participated in vampire turf wars by building up large vampire armies to take out other vampire armies {Westside Story comes to mind}. The idea of a vampire turf war between vampire armies sounds amazing and it’s a shame only a few minutes of the film were dedicated to Jasper.

The film’s best moments travel outside of what was included in the book. In the book, Bella misses the big fight scene between an evil vampire army versus a united front of werewolves and mutant, veggie vampires. In the book, the aftermath of the battle is described, but the actual battle isn’t really covered. In the film, the fight scene is short—but pretty fun. The movie also goes outside the original Eclipse book to include scenes showing the evil vampire army building its ranks. {“Hey, kid, you wanna be a vampire and live forever?” “Yeah, cool!” “Allright then, but you gotta come fight a war against these giant fucking wolves. I mean HUGE.” “But they can't hurt us, right?” “Oh, they will fuck you up! You might be alive forever without arms, legs, or genitals after this fight.” “Yeah, think I'll pass.” “Where's your fucking loyalty!? I have known you for like 15 seconds and already you're refusing to go to war with me for the sake of murdering some 17 year old girl.” “Tell me again, how did you manage to attract all these followers? And why don't you just sniper the bitch? I mean, it seems like that might at least take the werewolves off guard. They tend to notice dozens of vampires moving en masse around these sleepy, suddenly bloodless, little towns.” } These semi-violent scenes of the vampire army make it watchable for those of us who do not enjoy the horrible romance between a pedophile, veggie-vampire and an annoying 17 year old kid. 

Despite these few redeeming moments in the film, Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart couldn’t act to save their lives. Honestly, the film ended for me after the vampire-werewolf battle ended. After that, it’s just Pattison and Stewart attempting to act as Edward and Bella. The romance scenes between them were drawn out with long awkward pauses, nervous glances, and weird “tweenie” moments that made half the audience giggle with glee. {Edward, the Methuselah, falling in love with a teen girl is akin to me falling in love with an embryo}

More audience squeals came whenever the half-naked Taylor Lautner appeared onscreen. It’s a bit disturbing because most of the audience is old enough to be Lautner’s mother, or even grandmother. {That guy is so ripped, even his cock has abs. And that's hot no matter how old you are. } Granted, Lautner is a better actor than Pattison. But Lautner’s CGI werewolf was completely awful. You’d think a big budget film like Twilight could afford better CGI; especially after audiences have been wowed by the effects of Lord of the Rings and more recently, Avatar . The CGI couldn’t have been more apparent—the werewolves’ fur and the way the Stewart interacted with the werewolves were just awful. Lautner’s werewolf didn’t have any great werewolf sounds either—no crazy cool growls, howls, or barks. There’s a notable whine from Lautner’s werewolf self, but other than that, the sound effects were subpar for werewolves. Honestly, the producers could have tape-recorded noises from Underworld and improved the sound editing for Lautner’s werewolf scenes. For the most part, the werewolves are just silently watching everything in the movie. Even with the werewolves standing still, the CGI effects were cheap and noticeable.

Finally, the humor in the film wouldn't even be good enough to be in a cheap romantic comedy churned out by Matthew McConaughey. The “twi-hards” were squealing and giggling constantly at the awkward tweenie humor. For me, the funniest moment happened while Edward proposed to Bella. {“Baby, you smell delicious, like the DelMacho Beef Burrito, and I can't resist you. Lets' get married.” “And I am mesmerized by you because you're a fucking vampire. I literally can't say no.” If that isn't true love, I don't know what is} The guy sitting next to me leaned back in his seat and the entire contents of his pocket emptied noisily only the floor followed by him hollering “son-of-a-bitch”. That made the film for me. And the pitcher of Shiner Bock helped out tremendously too.

Long story short, I can only find one appropriate way to rate Eclipse. As a romance film, Eclipse is worth 2.5 barf bags, with 0 barf bags being an amazing romantic film and 5 barf bags being the worst {Its like Golf, the lower your score, the better. If you don't score at all, you win. Edward the Vampire often confuses relationships with Golf}. Anyone who tries to classify Eclipse as being a sci-fi film should be shot. Good ideas for a fun sci-fi movie or horror movie are there, and that prevents the film from being completely awful. A good pitcher of beer on an empty stomach also helps the film from being a complete waste.

As long as Pattison and Stewart’s bad acting and weird onscreen romance remains, the film should never be considered as anything but an awful tweenie romance not worth comparing to really great film series such as Star Wars, Aliens, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and other award-winning and noteworthy films. Eclipse is worth watching—but perhaps at home to not only fast forward through the sappy scenes, but also to avoid the crazed Twilight fans. I’d say that Eclipse is pretty comparable to James Cameron’s Titanic. Except, Titanic had better acting, better script writing, and better special effects. {So, if Titanic were made of poop, it would be Twilight}

I’m sure Twilight fans out there will disagree with me, but please know that yes, I have read the books and they were awful. I would also like to point out that out of all the midnight movie premiers that I have attended (all 6 Star Wars, all Harry Potters, all the LOTR, countless horror films, and all the Batmans—even the bad ones), the Twilight fans were the most annoying, rude, and disagreeable bunch I have ever encountered. Women were cutting in line, being loud and obnoxious, squealing, and just being completely unattractive by losing every redeeming quality that a lady could possibly possess {There was farting AND sweating; two things my mother said ladies don't do. Color me disillusioned}. I understand that women are swept up in the romance that the Twilight story puts forth—but that is no reason to set aside dignity and grace for a two-hour film. {Now a Chippendale's dance, yes} The gathering of stereotypical Twilight fans makes the Twilight series that much worse. Call me a “hater” if you will. Bring out the death threats. But someone needs to say that if Twilight fans want to be taken seriously, they need to start acting like civil human beings, recognize the series weaknesses, and not behave like crazed fans that would slaughter their mothers for a night with Pattison or Lautner... but that's a whole other article...