You Are The Shooter! Here’s The Trailer for Pandemic!

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s the trailer for the upcoming action film, Pandemic. It’s a zombie apocalypse film that is entirely shot in the first person. Judging from the trailer … well, it looks kinda awkward. Since you’re viewing the film through the eyes of a soldier, I imagine that a good deal of the film will be made up of people telling the solider (and by extension, you) to do things. I don’t know about you but I would have a problem with that. I don’t like being told what to do, I’m not good at following orders, and I think I would resent a film that would suggest otherwise.

Then again, I really loved Unfriended and that was also shot in the first person. So, I will try to keep an open eye. (Not to mention an open mind!)

(Assuming, of course, that I actually see Pandemic…)

Lisa Marie’s 10 Favorite Episodes of South Park

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I love South Park and, when I decided to list my ten personal favorite episodes, I thought this would be an easy article to write. How wrong I was. It’s hard to narrow 203 episodes down to 10 when you happen to love 193 of them. As I struggled to settle on my ten, I did a google search to see what other South Park fans had listed as their top ten episodes. What I discovered was that a lot of people had a top ten list and no one seemed to be in agreement. I guess that’s why I love South Park. It’s a show that people either love or hate, often for the exact same reasons.

I first truly discovered South Park when I was 18 and the show, itself, was either 7 or 8. Don’t get me wrong. I knew about the show and I’d seen the occasional episode (though my mom would always promptly change the channel if she walked into the room and saw it on the TV). But, as far as becoming a true “fan” of the show, I arrived late. Perhaps as a result, my list of favorite episodes is pretty much dominated by the latter seasons of the show (though I did come very close to putting Gnomes on the list).

10) The List (Original Airdate: November 14th, 2007) — Okay, technically The List isn’t really one of the best episodes of South Park but it’s always made me laugh, largely because me and my girlfriends used to obsessively make lists like the one in this episode. We also always took it way too seriously, even though the police were never called and I don’t think anyone ever ended up pulling a gun on anyone else.

9) You Got F’d In The A (Original Airdate: April 7th, 2004) — Not only is this episode of perfect parody of You Got Served, it’s also full of priceless WTF moments like the duck dancing to a song about Ketamine, Randy Marsh dancing to Achy Breaky Heart, and Butters killing even more people than usual as a result of his dancing. It also features the Goth kids at their negative best. Speaking as someone who used to have an exclusively black wardrobe even while she was fantasizing about becoming a world-famous prima ballerina, this episode gives me the best of both worlds. It was also one of the 1st episodes of the show that I ever sat down and truly watched.

8 ) Ginger Kids (Original airdate: November 9th, 2005) — Cartman reveals that along with being a racist and an anti-Semite, he’s prejudiced against redheads as well. Then he’s tricked into believing that he is a redhead and promptly organizes all the “gingers” in town into a cult. Admittedly, one reason I like this episode is because I’m a ginger kid myself and, oddly enough, this episode was first broadcast on my 20th birthday.

7) Miss Teacher Bangs A Boy (Original Airdate: October 18th, 2006) — Cartman as Dog, the Bounty Hunter. What else needs to be said? (Well, let’s not forget Ike’s facial expressions as Kyle tries to warn his parents about Miss Teacher.)

6) Night of the Living Homeless (Original Airdate: April 18th, 2007) — The homeless invade South Park and the end result is a brilliant parody of both zombie movies and liberal good intentions.

5) Whale Whores (Original Airdate: October 28th, 2009) — I like this episode for a lot of reasons. First off, the TV show Whale Wars is one of those smugly, self-satisfied shows that just deserves to be ridiculed on general principle. Secondly, it brought attention to just how barbaric Japanese whaling really is and it did so in a far more entertaining way than the Cove. But, ultimately, it all comes down to Cartman’s performance of Poker Face.

4) You Have 0 Friends (Original Airdate: April 7th, 2010) — This is the episode that made me proud to have deleted my Facebook account years ago.

3) Pandemic and Pandemic 2: The Startling (Original Airdates: October 22nd and 28th, 2009) — Yes, a lot of South Park fans disliked the two Pandemic episodes but I loved them. Along with ridiculing the current “home video horror” craze (which would later be epitomized by the ludicrous Paranormal Activity), the show also worked as a wonderful commentary on the whole series itself. From the minute Craig said, “You know, this is why no one else wants to hang out with you guys…,” Pandemic had me. Of course, needless to say, there’s also nothing cuter than a guinea pig in a pirate costume.

2) Go God Go and Go God Go Part XII (Original Airdate: November 1st, 2006 and November 8th, 2006) — There’s a lot of reasons why I like these episodes but the main reason is that, speaking as a nonbeliever, I’ve always felt that a lot of comedies satirize organized religion (excluding, of course, Islam) because it’s an easy target as opposed to actually having anything interesting to say about it one way or the other. (Hello, Family Guy.) It takes more guts to satirize something like atheism, especially the Richard Dawkins brand of disbelief. Plus, the Sea Otters. You have to love the Sea Otters.

1) The Imaginationland Trilogy (Original Airdates: October 17th, 24th, and 31st, 2007) — I don’t know that there’s anything left to be said about Imaginationland so I will just say that the relevance of this trilogy — in which humanity’s imagination is threatened by a bunch of thugs and bullies — became all the more obvious after Comedy Central decided to censor South Park’s 201st episode to avoid hurting the feelings of terrorists.

Review: Rats: Night of Terror (dir. by Bruno Mattei)

Posted on April 15, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Can one scene make an otherwise thoroughly useless movie worth seeing?

That’s the question that I’m pondering right now as I attempt to write this review of 1984‘s Rats: Night of Terror.

Rats: Night of Terror opens in the 23rd century. As the result of a nuclear war, Earth has been transformed into a barbaric wasteland. While the majority of humankind has retreated underground, small bands of scavengers occasionally get dressed up like a New Order tribute band before coming to the surface and driving around on their motorcycles. The movie follows one group of survivors as they scavenge for food, come across a deserted ghost town, and eventually end up getting attacked by hundreds of rats.

For the most part, that’s the movie. None of the characters are all that memorable and the so-called rats appear to be bored. For the most part, the film wouldn’t even be worth reviewing except for the Scene. After 90 minutes of languid mayhem, Rats: Night of Terror comes up with one scene that manages to be odd, brilliant, and numbingly stupid all at the same time. The Scene simply has to be seen to be believed.

Director Bruno Mattei often said that Rats: Night of Terror was his personal favorite out of the countless number of exploitation films that he directed. While it’s generally agreed that Mattei was responsible for making some of the worst films in history, I’ve always had a sneaky admiration for him. It’s hard not to love someone who defies the odds while pursuing his dream. Mattei’s dream was to make movies and he never let a thing like budget or talent to stand in his way. While Mattei is best known for taking over the direction of Zombi 3 after Lucio Fulci walked off the set, he was a prolific director who dabbled in every genre. Rats: Night of Terror is his contribution to the post-apocalyptic genre.

For a brief period in the 1980s, Italian exploitation filmmakers moved away from cannibals, gialli, and zombies and instead concentrated on making movies about post-apocalyptic bikers. For the most part, I’ve never been a huge fan of these Italian versions of The Road. There’s an overwhelming blandness to them. If the underlying goal of Italian exploitation cinema was to make movies that could pass for American studio productions, then the postapocalyptic genre is the closest the Italians came to accomplishing that goal. As opposed to the zombie films or the gialli, the only thing that was obviously Italian about the majority of these films was George Eastman.

Rats: Night of Terror, strangely enough, does not feature George Eastman. What it does feature is a lot of gerbils. We’re continually told, throughout the movie, that these gerbils are actually rats but no, they’re gerbils and they’re pretty obviously not only gerbils but cute gerbils too!

I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who has a strong phobia of rats. I can still remember when I was 12 years old and visiting my grandad’s farm in Arkansas. I was exploring an old barn with my older sister, Erin. The barn, which already smelled like death, was also full of hay and, within a few minutes of stepping inside, I stared to have trouble breathing. I stepped outside, used my inhaler, and leaned up against the barn’s wall. As I caught my breath, I heard a very distinct squeaking coming from inside the wall. I jumped away from the wall, spun around, and realized that I had been resting my head against a small hole. Staring contemptuously at me from inside that hole was a really ticked-off looking rat. No matter how many times I washed my hair that day (and, believe me, I washed and rewashed it a lot), I could not stop imagining the feeling of germ-ridden rodents running across the back of my head.

Ever since that day, whenever I’ve seen a rat in a movie (or, God forbid, real life), I’ve remembered that feeling and it still makes me shudder. It’s a reminder that, in the end, we’re all going to end being devoured by the same scavengers.

On the other hand, whenever I see a gerbil, I’m reminded of that episode of South Park where Mr. Garrison, attempting to get fired, makes Mr. Slave his new teaching assistant.

And whenever I see Rats: Night of Terror, I’m reminded of the Pandemic episodes of South Park because the gerbils in this film appear to be about as naturally aggressive as a bunch of guinea pigs dressed up like pirates.

Yes, Rats: Night of Terror has a lot going against it. The characters are boring, the rats are gerbils, and the director is Bruno Mattei. It would be easy to dismiss this film if not for the Scene. Oh, how I wish I could tell you something about the Scene without giving the whole thing away. I wish there was some way I could safely expand on just how weird and silly and oddly wonderful the Scene is.

Tell you what. My e-mail address is LisaMarieBowman@live.com. Or you can talk to me on twitter where I’m @LisaMarieBowman. If you’ve seen this movie or if you see the movie after reading this review, contact me and tell me what you thought when you saw the Scene. Seriously, it’s something that has to be discussed.

If you haven’t seen the film, I’ll give you a clue about the Scene. It happens at the end of the movie. It makes absolutely no sense and it is so extremely odd that it actually makes you wonder if maybe the entire film was meant to be somehow satiric. What’s especially odd is that most viewers usually guess what the Scene is going to be halfway through the film before then thinking, “No, no way. There’s no way that’s going to happen.”

So, to a return to the original question, can one scene make an entire film worth seeing?

In the case of Rats: Night of Terror, the answer is yes.