Drive Angry (2011) Dir: Patrick Lussier

Old Horse face is back, this time sporting a spectacular mullet and an even more impressive 'Hellgun."
The plot: Nic Cage is a haunted man. Having lost his wife and daughter to a cult led my an olive skinned Lothario by the name of Jonah King, he is a man on a mission: to wreak bloody and violent revenge on those that took all that was important to him.
Coming across as part Machete, part Ghost Rider, this is cartoonesque to the point of the redundant.
Smacking as 'based on a graphic novel' even though it ain't no suj fang, this is wantonly over the top and ridiculous, each scene delivered with a knowing wink to the audience: Yeah, this is daft, but it's one heck of a lot of fun, isn't it?
Morally reprehensible - not one character portrayed has any kind of ethical standard or worth - this is excess in the name of entertainment, pure and simple and, for the most part, it works. Hands are lopped off, human femurs are jutted at the 3D screen, blood squirts hither and thither and tither and, the whole time, a vaguely doom metal guitar chugs along in the background, part Sabbath, part Danzig, all red meat.
And by all the Christ's it is violent.
Supremely so.
Utterly preposterous, utterly offensive on so many levels, this is nevertheless entertaining fare, elevated mightily by the august presence known simply as William Fichtner, a man so beautiful to look at and with such on screen charisma he would surely turn even the most homophobic of heads.
Far from perfect, far even from any good, I nevertheless enjoyed this for the duration.
Set brain cells to dormant, and enjoy

3 out of 5

Dr. Moreau's House of Pain (2004) Dir: Charles Band

You know, I had a dream a while back in which I opined the paucity of
movies featuring bare breasts and half human, half pig hybrids. "Why oh
why oh why," I cried, "Can we not see more breasts and pig men?" Well,
fear not my fellow brutarians, Dr Moreau is here to answer all of our
prayers.
Directed by Charles Band, he of low budget horror legend status,
unhealthy obsessed by killer doll movies (Blood Dolls, Puppet Master,
Dollman vs. Demonic Toys) here he takes a stab at the film noir genre,
bringing us a tale of human / animal experimentation in Prohibition era
America.
All the noir trappings are there: smoky streets, illuminated only by
atmospheric streetlamps, wiseguys in brimmed hats, broads in fur coats
and shawls with cigarette holders stuck between their well rouged lips,
and automobiles relevant to the period and, it must be stressed, for a
low budget movie he does a remarkable job of 'placing' the movie.
Whilst the plot is a fairly silly one, involving a young man searching
for his brother who went to Dr. Moreau for treatment and was
transformed into half man, half big cat, the trappings surrounding it
work very well.
Whilst hardly Orwellian, the script is nevertheless effective enough,
and the acting more than passable.
So, if you, like me, find yourself yearning for those hybrids anytime
soon, you could do worse than check this out