Here’s the trailer for the true crime film, King Cobra! Reportedly, this film features a totally insane performance from James Franco, which is something that I’m always interested in seeing.
Here’s the trailer for the true crime film, King Cobra! Reportedly, this film features a totally insane performance from James Franco, which is something that I’m always interested in seeing.
I don’t know much about The Autopsy of Jane Doe but there are a few people, with whom I casually interact on twitter, who saw this film at TIFF two weeks ago and they swear it’s the scariest thing that they’ve ever seen.
Take that for what you will. I’ve lost track of how many horror films have been described as being “the scariest thing that has ever been seen.” Go read a few of Stephen King’s reviews and you’ll notice that he apparently thinks everything that has ever been written and/or filmed is “the scariest thing that he’s ever seen.”
Beware of hyperbole, I’m saying!
That said, here’s the trailer and it looks like the movie might be pretty scary…
It’s true!
Just check out this trailer for his 1972 film, The Year of the Yahoo!
RIP, to Herschell Gordon Lewis. Here’s a few of the Lewis films that we’ve reviewed here on the Shattered Lens:
Over on his own site, Trash Film Guru Ryan has reviewed The Wizard of Gore
And here’s Gary’s tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis.
There’s no way that I can do a post about the passing of Herschell Gordon Lewis without including this famous scene from Scum of the Earth. If you’ve ever gotten a DVD from Something Weird Video, you know this monologue by heart:
Two days ago, Paramount released five very short but rather intriguing teasers for Ghost in The Shell! And here they are!

Here’s some of the trailers that have come out over the past two weeks! Sadly, none of those trailers involve kitties! Meh!
Fifty Shades Darker
They’re back! And this time, Ana’s in charge.
Miss Sloane
The good news is that a flame-haired one, Jessica Chastain, is in this film. The bad new is that the script for this film was on last year’s Black List. The Black List is supposed to be a list of the best unmade scripts in Hollywood so why do Black List films almost always end up sucking?
Nocturnal Animals
I thought this movie had to be about kitties but instead, it’s about Jake Gyllenhall and Amy Adams! But the trailer still looks really good and supposedly this movie is going to win all sorts of Oscars!
Annabelle 2
The scary doll is back!
Christine
This looks like a great role for Rebecca Hall but will probably be too depressing for humans! Meh!
The Bye Bye Man
This could be scary but it’s coming out in January and nothing good comes out in January.
Smurfs: The Lost Village
I ate a smurf once. Meh!
The Eyes of My Mother
This looks scary!
Allied
Some people are saying this movie led to the upcoming divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie! The flame-haired one says she’s Team Jolie all the way. Meh!
Passengers
Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence in the same movie!? And it’s from the director of The Imitation Game. Some people say that this is going to be a big Oscar contender! I think it needs more kitties.
Remember that old game where you would go up to a stranger’s house, ring the doorbell, and then run off? It’s one of those simple games that really shouldn’t be that much fun and yet, strangely, it is. The thrill of the game really doesn’t come from the fact that you’re making someone open the front door for no good reason. Instead, the thrill comes from seeing if you can run away before that door opens.
You Can’t Escape, the latest short film from Rubbish Rebel Media, opens with a child (Rayce Zatye) walking through an apparently suburban neighborhood and doing just that. He runs up to houses, he rings the doorbell, and then he runs off. As he does this, we can’t help but notice that the neighborhood appears to be deserted. Where are all the other people? Does anyone ever actually answer their door? From the way that the film is directed, we get the feeling that someone may be watching the child but who?
And when the child returns to his own house … well, I won’t spoil the film. Let’s just say that it concludes with a surreal bang.
You Can’t Escape lasts just a little over 2 minutes and the end leaves us with just as many questions as answers. That’s okay, though. The key to horror is the fact that not all questions have easy answers. Director Renner Zatye emphasizes atmosphere and, despite the film’s short length, he captures several uneasy images. The scenes of Racye Zatye walking through that deserted neighborhood are undeniably creepy. A scene where the child walks by several trees especially made me nervous. This is one of those films that asks you to consider what could be hiding behind those trees and whether or not you’re ever as safe as you think.
You Can’t Escape should be getting a release in a few months so be sure to keep an eye out for it!
(For the past three weeks, Lisa Marie has been in the process of reviewing 56 back to school films! She’s promised the rest of the TSL staff that this project will finally wrap up by the end of today, so that she can devote her time to helping to prepare the site for its annual October horrorthon! Will she make it or will she fail, lose her administrator privileges, and end up writing listicles for Buzzfeed? Keep reading the site to find out!)
Well, here we are! It’s taken nearly four weeks but we have reached the conclusion of Back to School Part II! I started this series by taking a look at Teenage Devil Dolls. Along the way, I’ve reviewed everything from Andy Warhol’s Vinyl, A Clockwork Orange, Animal House, and Can’t Hardly Wait to Hollywood High and Keith. I’ve even found an excuse to review four different Degrassi films! I’ve had a lot of fun but, with October approaching, I’m happy to be finishing up this series of reviews so that I can concentrate on the TSL’s annual horrorthon!
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!
Everbody Wants Some!! generated a small flurry of excitement when it was first released back in March. Not only was it Linklater’s first narrative film since the critically acclaimed Boyhood but it was also advertised as being a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused. Like Dazed and Confused, Everybody Wants Some!! was a period piece that would follow an ensemble of Texas teenagers over the course of one long weekend, the big difference being that Everybody Wants Some!! would take place in 1980 (as opposed to 1976) and it would deal with college freshmen (instead of high school juniors). There were even a few articles that pointed out that several of the actors in Everybody Wants Some!! physically resembled some of the actors in Dazed and Confused.
(Seriously, Glen Powell looks like he could be Matthew McConaughey’s younger brother.)
The film was well-reviewed by critics, even though few of the reviews were as rapturous as the reviews that greeted previous Linklater films like Boyhood and Before Midnight. As for the audience reaction … well, Everybody Wants Some!! was not exactly embraced by audiences. I saw it at the Alamo Drafthouse and the theater was nearly deserted. (Considering that the Alamo’s audience prides itself on embracing independent film, a near-empty theater for a showing of a Linklater film is not a good sign.) The few people in the theater seemed to feel that the film went on for too long and that it needed a stronger plot. That’s a complaint that I’ve heard a lot of people make against Everybody Wants Some!!
It’s not a complaint that I agree with. Those who complained that Everybody Wants Some!! was essentially plotless obviously haven’t seen many Richard Linklater films. Though Linklater has made his share of commercial films, his more personal work — like Everybody Wants Some!! — is often plotless. That’s actually one the keys to Linklater’s aesthetic. He’s more interested in recreating a specific time and place and observing how different characters react to their environment than he is in telling conventional stories. A film like Everybody Wants Some!! is less about telling a story with a definite beginning and end and more about capturing a very specific experience.
And, on that level, the film definitely succeeds. Watching Everybody Wants Some!!, you literally do feel as if you’ve stepped into a time machine and you’ve been transported to the past. Jake (Blake Jenner), a college freshman who is attending fictional Southeast Texas College on a scholarship, may be the main character but, ultimately, he’s not that important. More important is seeing how people lived, interacted, and thought in 1980. Everybody Wants Some!! is a time capsule film.
(Apparently, it’s a bit of an autobiographical film as well. Cinema snobs like me tend to forget that, before he became a filmmaker, Linklater was a jock who, like Jake, attended college on a baseball scholarship. As much as we may not want to admit it, not all artistic geniuses spent high school writing angsty poetry about eating disorders. Some of them played sports.)
Everybody Wants Some!! follows Jake and his fellow baseball players over the course of the weekend before classes begin. One night, they end up in a redneck bar. Another night, they end up at a punk club. They go to a drama department party. They practice baseball. They all drink. Some of them smoke weed. Some of them get laid. And, at the end of the weekend, two of them sit down in their first class of the semester and promptly fall asleep.
One problem that I did have with Everybody Wants Some!! is that, as good as job as it does of creating a time and place, it didn’t necessarily convince me that it was a time in which I would want to live in. As I stated earlier, Everybody Wants Some!! was promoted as being a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused. However, Dazed and Confused featured a greater variety of characters. Practically everyone of note in Everybody Wants Some!! is a member of the school’s baseball team. True, some of them are smarter than others. Some of them smoke weed. Some of them are ultra religious. But, ultimately, they’re all jocks and they’re all frat boys. How much you enjoy hanging out with these characters will depend on how much tolerance you have for jocks, frat boys, and their hyper-masculine rituals. Whenever I’ve seen Dazed and Confused, I’ve thought to myself that if I had been alive and in high school in 1976, I would have wanted to be friends with at least a few of the characters. On the other hand, if I had been alive and in college in 1980, I would have gone out of my way to avoid that baseball team.
(And, as a result, I probably would have missed a chance to meet Richard Linklater! There’s a lesson to be learned there.)
Ultimately, though, Everybody Wants Some!! succeeds because, even if the characters aren’t particularly likable, the film itself does capture the feeling and the excitement of having your entire future ahead of you. Admittedly, there’s a hint of melancholy running through the film. One character is revealed to be a 30-something imposter who regularly uses a false identity to enroll in different colleges because he loves to play baseball but he knows that he’ll never succeed in the major leagues. Throughout the film, there are hints that none of these baseball players are ever going to be as successful as they are during that one particular weekend. But, ultimately, the film tells us that the future doesn’t matter. What matters is that, for that one weekend, they had their entire future ahead of them and it seemed like anything was possible.
Everybody Wants Some!! may not be Linklater’s best but it definitely deserves to be seen!
(And that concludes Back to School! Thank you everyone for reading! Love you!)
(For the past three weeks, Lisa Marie has been in the process of reviewing 56 back to school films! She’s promised the rest of the TSL staff that this project will finally wrap up by the end of today, so that she can devote her time to helping to prepare the site for its annual October horrorthon! Will she make it or will she fail, lose her administrator privileges, and end up writing listicles for Buzzfeed? Keep reading the site to find out!)
When I was going to college, I was actually encouraged by quite a few people to join a sorority but I never did. What can I say? I fancied myself as being an artist and an intellectual. I had no interest in conformity and, to me, that’s what sororities and fraternities represented. Why would I want to waste my time with that when I could spend my time writing poems about death? (Add to that, why go through all the trouble of joining a sorority when I knew I could get into all the good parties, regardless of whether I was a member of one or not?)
Seriously!
So, I made my decision to never get involved in any of that and I think I probably made the right choice for me. But occasionally, I’ll see a film on Lifetime that will make me change my mind. It seems that every year, there’s a few dozen Lifetime movies that are about something strange happening in a sorority. In the world of Lifetime, sororities are full of dark secrets, constant melodrama, and, more often than not, a murder or two. Lifetime makes sorority life look … well, if not exactly fun, at least entertaining!
Consider for instance, the film Sorority Nightmare! Sorority Nightmare aired on July 21st and, in the best Lifetime tradition, it totally lives up to its name. All you need to know about Sorority Nightmare is right there in the title. It deals with a sorority and, oh my God, is this place ever a nightmare! (According to the imdb, the film’s non-Lifetime title is Twisted Sisters. That’s a good title because these sorority sisters sure are twisted!)
As the start of the film, first-year college student Sarah (Sierra McCormick) is a lot like me. She’s an intellectual, a free thinker. She’s not really interested in being a part of a sorority. She’d rather hang out with her snarky roommate, Jodi (Sarah Kapner). Add to that, Sarah still blames herself for the death of her older sister, Jill. Jill was driving Sarah home after Sarah got too drunk at a party. When Jill attempted to pose for a selfie while driving, she ended up crashing the car and dying in the process. Sarah survived but, for obvious reasons, she’s no longer interested in getting drunk at parties.
But, her mother was a member of Psi Kappa and she insists that Sarah actually check the place out. And since Sarah is a legacy, she’s asked to pledge. Even though it means losing whatever credibility she may have with Jodi, Sarah decides to join.
It quickly turns out that Psi Kappa is more of a cult than a sorority. The cult is led by Daisy (Cassidy Gifford), who is friendly, perky, intense, and more than a little frightening. Daisy not only decides that Sarah is her new best friend but she also suggests that maybe Sarah shouldn’t have any other friends. When Daisy isn’t trying to control everyone’s lives, she busy popping what she says are breath mints but are actually “diet pills.”
OH MY GOD, DAISY’S A SPEED FREAK!
Anyway, Sorority Nightmare pretty much plays out exactly how you would expect it to but that doesn’t matter. As played by Cassidy Gifford, Daisy is literally a force of nature. She’s a nonstop tornado of manipulation and malicousness and it’s a lot of fun to watch. Sorority Nightmare is one of those wonderfully over the top Lifetime films where it’s obvious that the cast and the crew is in on the joke. Sit back, don’t worry, and enjoy the melodrama!
(For the past three weeks, Lisa Marie has been in the process of reviewing 56 back to school films! She’s promised the rest of the TSL staff that this project will finally wrap up by the end of today, so that she can devote her time to helping to prepare the site for its annual October horrorthon! Will she make it or will she fail, lose her administrator privileges, and end up writing listicles for Buzzfeed? Keep reading the site to find out!)
How many times can the same thing keep happening to the same people?
That’s a question that you may be tempted to ask yourself while watching Neighbors 2. Neighbors 2 is, of course, a sequel to the original Neighbors. In the first film, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne played Mac and Kelly Radner, a married couple who are struggling to deal with the fact that, as new parents, they are now officially adults. When a crazy and wild fraternity moves in next door to them and refuses to tone down their partying ways, Mac and Kelly are forced to take matters into their own hands. Occasionally hilarious mayhem ensues.
In Neighbors 2, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne again play Mac and Kelly Radner, a married couple who are struggling to deal with the fact that, as parents who are awaiting the arrival of their 2nd child, they are now officially adults and may have to finally move into a more family friendly house in the suburbs. When a crazy and wild fraternity sorority moves in next door to them and refuses to tone down their partying ways, Mac and Kelly are forced to take matters into their own hands. Occasionally hilarious mayhem ensues.
Yeah, it’s all pretty familiar. Not only are many of the same jokes from the first film repeated but they’re often repeated at that exact same spot in which they originally appeared. To the film’s credit, it does occasionally acknowledge that it’s repeating itself, though it never quite reaches the self-aware heights of something like 22 Jump Street. Even Zac Efron returns and, again, he is initially the Radner’s enemy before eventually becoming their ally.
That said, the familiarity is not necessarily a bad thing. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne both know how to get laughs, even when they’re telling the same joke that they told a year ago. Zac Efron tends to try too hard whenever he has a dramatic role (like in The Paperboy, for instance) but he’s got a real talent for comedy.
Ultimately, though, the best thing that saves Neighbors 2 from just being a forgettable comedy sequel is the sorority. As opposed to the first film’s creepy fraternity, the sorority in Neighbors 2 is partying for a cause greater than just hedonism. Shelby (Chloe Grace Moretz, finally getting to have fun in a movie) starts her independent sorority in response to being told that official sororities are not allowed to throw parties and, instead, can only attend misogynistic frat parties. When Shelby and her sorority buy the house, it’s not just to make trouble. It’s because they need a place where they can have a good time without feeling that they’re in constant danger from drunk and perverted frat boys. A subtext of empowerment through partying runs through Neighbors 2 and it elevates the entire film.
Neighbors 2 is an entertaining film, even if it never leaves as much of an impression as you may hope. (I have to admit that, whenever I try to list all the films that I’ve seen this year, Neighbors 2 is one of those that I often have to struggle to remember.) That said, it’s not a terrible way to spend 97 minutes and it’ll make you laugh. And, ultimately, that really is the most important thing when it comes to comedy.
As for the question of how often can the same thing happen to the same person…
Well, I guess we’ll have to wait for Neighbors 3 to get our answer!
Yes, you read the title of the post correctly. No matter how much that title sounds like a Lifetime movie–it isn’t. I’m not sure how Dean McKendrick beat Doug Campbell to that title.
This time around we have one of those good old misleading posters.
Death also gives top billing to an actor who is well-known, shows up for one sex scene, and then is killed off. Better than the cameo appearance from Amy Lindsay in Carnal Wishes (2015) that probably accounts for 80% of the views I have on that review. She had as much importance in that movie as Colonel Sanders did in The Phynx (1970).
That is to say, next to nothing.
That country road is also not to be found in the film. The car of course is impossible to be in this film considering it is a late night cable movie about a hitchhiker who kills her victims after having sex with them. There just isn’t enough room. You will also only see her hitchhike once in this film. However, she does pretty much look like that.
Anyways, the movie opens up with shots of the beach, including a seagull that is here to tell us Dean McKendrick also edited the film in addition to writing and directing it.
Then we find out that Dean McKendrick and Sal V. Miers joined forces to bring us this movie.
Does that mean we are going to get a genre spoof with progressive politics mixed together with sex? Not exactly.
Once the credits are done, our deadly pickup appears on the side of the road.
That’s Breezy played by Carter Cruise. They call her that because the movie was written by Dean McKendrick.
She is picked up by Josh (Michael Hopkins). He is headed for the local state university. She plays along till they have killed enough time for a sex scene to happen.
Once the scene is complete, she sticks him with a poisonous ring, and he dies.
She then makes a rather pitiful attempt to wipe the car of prints. That’s a little bit of the humor I would expect from Sal V. Miers since because it is softcore, there wouldn’t be the kind of DNA evidence you would expect from actual sex.
Now we meet a couple–Brian and Traci–who have a room for rent and are played by William F. Bryant and Kira Noir respectively.
Maybe it’s just because I recently read someone else’s review of Clueless (1995), but I took one look at her, and thought: Porno Stacey Dash. It’s actually kind of clever what they do with her. She will only have sex with her husband, which in turn, foreshadows the ending of the movie. The instant they are done having an exposition conversation to setup the plot of the film, Breezy shows up at their door.
Since none of the other actors are in need of a place to stay, they let her rent a room to help pay his college tuition while Traci works at a bar.
That’s when a cop shows up to discover the last sex scene.
He is played by Billy Snow, and his character is Deputy Randall.
Next, Breezy decides to take the slowest shower ever. Seeing as Traci is working at the bar, Brian is left alone to stumble upon her in the shower, and seems to be enjoying it more than the audience.
Traci gets home from work to find Brian very much in the mood for love. The plot will have to wait a bit.
Now we cut to an office, or somebodies house, where we meet Sheriff Bates played by Michael Gaglio.
You might recognize him from numerous films of this sort, but he has also appeared in and worked on other films such as Lifetime and SyFy movies. He even played Santa in the movie A Perfect Christmas List (2014).
He recognizes the M.O., and tells Randall to pull the file on a similar case in Nevada. He then sends him out to canvass the houses nearby where the incident occurred since there aren’t many in the area.
That’s plenty of plot for now, so Breezy discovers a guy named Rick (Jon Fleming) on the beach.
Lucky for them, he has a van parked nearby so they won’t have to worry about the sand. This really makes me wonder. Does she seek out people who have cars large enough to have sex in? Does she let the ones who don’t, live? Doesn’t matter, once the scene is done, he gets pricked by the poisonous ring too.
Deputy Randall then shows up at Traci and Brian’s place. He talks to them about the situation. Then Breezy walks in, so he talks to her alone. As he is leaving, we get this shot of Carter Cruise looking devious.
Now we cut to the bar where Traci works for that person who left a comment on my review of Bikini Model Mayhem (2016) that was disappointed they didn’t show the bartender more, and he didn’t have a sex scene.
That’s Charlie, played by Cody Deal. This whole conversation exists so that Charlie can’t point out the obvious to Traci. That being, that if a murderer is on the loose and a random woman showed up to live at your house, that it’s a good idea to look into her a bit.
Then we cut to the police station where Deputy Randall gets a call that they found a dead body on the beach. What?!? We just saw him alive a few minutes ago in between the two scenes above.
But seriously, he’s dead. I’m guessing something happened that I don’t recall, or they just decided they needed him killed off after some aborted plot they had in mind.
In between, Sarah Hunter shows up to make her Sophia Loren in Operation Crossbow (1965) cameo appearance.
Of course she ends up dead too. Breezy is an equal opportunity murderer. It’s a shame. I’m assuming since Sal V. Miers was involved in the production of this movie that after she broke out of prison in Bad Girls Behind Bars (2016), she lost her way, and wound up here to get murdered.
We’re getting down to the wire here as evidenced by Billy Snow’s intense look.
Breezy and Randall have a conversation at the bar. Traci goes back home to snoop in Breezy’s room. Breezy goes with Deputy Randall back to the police station because she needs to accidentally knock over his coffee. That can mean only one thing.
Since we need someone to stop Breezy, the sheriff shows up to interrupt her plans to murder him. The sheriff receives a call, and we find out Breezy’s real name is Brenda Johnson. She worked at her father’s factory that made rat poison.
Now Breezy catches Traci looking through her stuff, tries to seduce her, and is told she needs to be out by morning. Traci found some incriminating evidence, so she calls Deputy Randall. The call comes complete with flashbacks, and now Randall is out to catch Breezy.
But they save the best for last. Seriously, it’s like they were teasing the audience the whole time as to whether Charlie would have a scene. After they make good use of a pool table, Deputy Randall shows up to put a stop to the movie, so Breezy threatens to kill Charlie.
It’s funny, but during this brief scene, Carter Cruise suddenly goes from she can’t act to save her life to I want to see her in something where she doesn’t play a murderous ditz. Deputy Randall takes the shot, and Billy Snow gets to deliver a line he was probably dying for the chance to say.
Then we get what always feels weird when it happens in these movies–a happy ending I would expect from a mainstream TV Movie.
They get $50,000 for turning in Breezy, it pays his college tuition, and they decide to have children.
In summary, we have a couple who is tempted to cheat on each other by a woman who moves in with them, and it ultimately brings them closer together by resisting her temptations.
It’s not the worst I’ve seen. I’ve seen far far worse, but I would recommend some of the other late night cable movies I’ve reviewed like Bikini Model Mayhem instead. This, like Wicked Deeds (2016), seems to have been made off the heels of the film noir Carnal Wishes, but it just doesn’t come together as well, nor is as interesting. Also, if you want to see Sarah Hunter in something decent that I’ve reviewed, then watch Bad Girls Behind Bars.