October Hacks: Hellweek (Dir by Eddie Lengyel)

Posted on October 16, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s open season on frat boy douchebags in 2010’s Hellweek!

And seriously, who’s going to complain about that? Seriously, I’ve watched a lot of low-budget slasher films and I’m usually willing to cut them a lot of slack, especially when it comes to the generic characters who tend to populate them. I mean, that’s just the genre. Most of the money in the budget is going to go to fake blood and plastic body parts. The gore comes first in movies like this because the gore is what people are going to remember. For the most part, the casts of these films are made up by either regional actors or complete amateurs. Sometimes, they’re likeable and I always appreciate that. But, at the same time, I’m not going to make a big deal out of a less-than-compelling performance in a low-budget slasher film. That said, Hellweek featured some of the most repellent characters that I’ve ever seen. Seriously, this is a movie where one guy loudly announces, “It’s pussy time!” before jumping on a bed. It’s a movie where two other guys say, “Let’s go talk to these cumbuckets,” while at a party. This film features some of the least likable characters that I’ve ever seen. Of course, most of them end up dying but still….

The killers in this particular film are a family of inbred hillbillies, who all wear masks and kill anyone stupid enough to enter the warehouse that they call home. “Let’s show her some Southern hospitality!” the patriarch of the family announces at one point. One member of the family wears a clown mask and plays an organ. Another jumps up and down and claps whenever someone is being tortured. They’re not really a family that you would want to live next to, though for a bunch of weirdos roughing it in an abandoned warehouse, they’re clothes were remarkably clean. This isn’t like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where you looked at the family and automatically imagined the odor of sweet, blood, and chicken feathers. Instead, you look at the family and you wonder which local community theater donated the costumes.

It takes a while for the film’s victims to make their way to the warehouse. Nearly the entire first hour is padding, with the frat boys arguing amongst themselves and with their girlfriends. One of the girlfriends describes a disturbing dream that she had. Another has a flashback to a murder that happened when she was younger. They argue amongst each other. They go to boring parties. They have too much to drink. At one point, they visit a psychic. It doesn’t really add up to much because it’s just there to pad out the running time.

The second hour (and this film runs for an unwieldy 117 minutes) is an improvement on the first, if just because the killers show up and finally give the plot some sort of direction. Again, this is a low-budget film and it’s obvious that the majority of the budget was spent on the gore. Some of it is effectively icky. Some of it is so obviously fake that I couldn’t help but laugh once I looked up from the pillow I was hiding behind. The warehouse is an effectively creepy location so I’ll give the film some credit for that. I’ll give it another point for featuring a lead character whose hair was red just like mine.

Overall, Hellweek is forgettable, even by the low-budget slasher standards.

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Savant (dir by Sherri Kauk)

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I swear, I will sit through the worst films for the promise of an Eric Roberts cameo.

Roberts is only featured in about two minutes of 2019’s The Savant. According to the credits, he was playing a character named Lonnie. At one point, he called the film’s hero, police officer Nick Tantino (Frank Giglio), and had a nonsensical conversation with him while he was arresting a random person. I’m not really sure who Lonnie was supposed to be and the scene had very little to do with the film’s story. In fact, the scene just randomly occurred. I’m going to guess that the film needed to be padded out and someone said, “Let’s call Eric Roberts and add another name to the cast.”

Eric Roberts is not the only familiar face to show up in the film.

Martin Kove plays a literature professor who is also a sensei. One of his former students, an evil District Attorney named Zane Carroll (played by Eric Etebari), calls him for advice.

Former TV actress Joyce DeWitt plays a detective. Her partner, who tells a lot of bad jokes, is played by comedian and former Howard Stern flunky, Jackie Martling.

Veteran genre actress Julie McCullough plays a judge, who screams at a defense attorney.

Thomas G. Waites, who was one of The Warriors, plays a police chief.

Robert Loggia shows up as Dr. Reno, a psychiatrist who bellows at everyone and who explains how the savant mind works. Of all the “names” in the film, Loggia gets the most screentime. Interestingly enough, Loggia died in 2015 and The Savant was released four years later. I’m not sure when The Savant was actually filmed but considering how messy the film is and how many plot points are brought up and then abandoned and also the fact that the characters often look totally different from scene-to-scene, I’m going to guess shooting went on for a while.

As for the film, it’s about an autistic savant named Anthony (Miguel Jarquin-Moreland) who beats up a bully. Nick, who has been assigned to work as a glorified security guard at Anthony’s high school, takes Anthony under his wing and trains him to be a MMA fighter. It turns out that the secret of communicating with Anthony is to speak to him in Spanish so we get several scenes of Nick calling him a “pendejo” in order to get Anthony to fight. The entire film builds up to a cage match between Anthony and his bully just for Nick to suddenly cancel the match and instead enter the ring to fight Zane, who is not just a district attorney but also the sensei of his own karate school.

Zane is determined to not only defeat Nick in the ring but to also destroy Nick’s career by telling the police about the time that Nick killed two men in Italy. The murders are not in the record because, according to Zane, they happened “before we had international law.” What? Anyway, Zane decides to create a false criminal record for Nick because Zane is jealous over the fact that Nick is falling in love with Anthony’s sister, a defense attorney named Cassy (Suzy Kaye). Zane even sleeps with Nick’s ex-wife to get revenge. Seriously, I love the fact that Zane is both a prosecutor and a sensei. I mean, how does he find the time?

There’s a lot of plot in this movie. None of it really makes sense but it’s hard not be amused at just how incoherent it all is. The film is full of random and seemingly unrelated scenes, like a lengthy sequence where a defense attorney argues that his client, a doctor, was performing euthanasia when he shot three heroin addicts in the head. “Free Dr. Clark!” the courtroom crowd chants. (Of course, Dr. Clark is never again mentioned after this scene. The shouts of “Free Dr. Clark” brought to mind the “Free Hat!” episode of South Park.) The Savant plays out like a fever dream, one that dares you to try to make sense of it all.

Well, good luck with that. I could sit here and spending hours write about all of the film’s plot holes. But what’s important is that this film featured a lot of Robert Loggia yelling and about two minutes of Eric Roberts. Plan accordingly.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Back to School #56: 10 Things I Hate About You (dir by Gil Junger)

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A few nights ago, my sister Erin and I watched the 1999 high school-set romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You for like the hundredth time. Seriously, we love this movie so much and, in fact, just about everyone that we know seems to love it as well. 10 Things I Hate About You is one of those films that brings people together. If you like this movie, I’ll probably like you.

(Want to see true displays of spontaneous sisterhood? Go to Girlie Night at the Alamo Drafthouse when they’re showing 10 Things I Hate About You. You will walk out of the movie with a hundred new best friends.)

Why do people love 10 Things I Hate About You? There’s a lot of reasons. I love Heath Ledger singing Can’t Take My Eyes Out Of You. I love watching Joseph Gordon Levitt at his most adorable. I love that it’s a film about two sisters, largely because I have three older sisters and there is so much about the scenes between Kat (Julia Stiles) and Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) to which I could relate. I love the film’s quirky sense of humor and its unapologetically big heart. I love the way the film’s script expertly balances cynicism with sentimentality and humor with warmth. I love the fact that movie takes in place in beautiful houses and features beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes. What Erin and I especially love about this film is that, as played by Julia Stiles, Kat is just a kickass chick.

Of course, there’s a reason for that. Much as how the superficially similar Clueless was adapted from Jane Austen’s Emma, 10 Things I Hate About You is adapted from Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew. Oddly enough, Shakespeare’s plays seem to translate well into stories about high school. Maybe it’s because his characters are so often motivated by jealousy, romance, and — it must be said about some — by pure stupidity. 10 Things I Hate About You is definitely one of the best of the teen Shakespeare films.

Taking place at an upper class high school, 10 Things I Hate About You opens with Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) arriving for his first day at Padau High School and quickly befriending the only slightly less adorable Michael Eckman (David Krumholtz). Cameron wants to ask out the beautiful and innocent Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) but Bianca’s overprotective father (played by Larry Miller) has decreed that Bianca can only date if her older sister Kat (Julie Stiles) is also dating. The problem is that all of the boys at school are scared of the outspoken Kat.

So, Cameron convinces the hilariously vapid male model Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan) to pay the school rebel, Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger, so handsome and charismatic and sexy), to ask Kat out on a date. Joey, you see, wants to date Bianca as well but Cameron is sure that he can win Bianca away from Joey…

Yes, it’s all a little bit complicated but then again, Shakespeare often is. For that matter, so is high school.

What matters is that all of this leads to a collection of classic scenes and classic dialogue. What’s my favorite scene from 10 Things I Hate About You? There’s so many that it’s difficult to narrow it down to just one. There’s the huge party where Joey continually strikes a pose and a drunk Kat ends up dancing on a table. There’s the wonderful scene where Patrick serenades Kat. Or how about when Kat reads the poem that gives the film its title. But for me, my favorite scene is that one where, after spending nearly the entire film as rivals, Kat and Bianca finally talk to each other as sisters. Bianca demands to know why Kat won’t go to the prom. Kat tells Bianaca about her own previous history with Joey. It’s a low-key and heartfelt scene, wonderfully played by both Larisa Oleynik and Julia Stiles, and I love it just because I’ve had similar conversations with all of my sisters.

I suppose this is where I should make some clever comment about having “10 things I love about 10 Things I Hate About You” but actually, there’s more like a 100 things I love about 10 Things I Hate About You.

This movie makes me happy every time I see it.

And, really, what else can you ask a film to do?