| 1. History of the World According to Real High Shool Students |
Collected answers, by real high school history teachers from exam answers by real high school teachers, over many years of face-palming frustration. You can either laugh or cry...
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures.
In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.
Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark.
One of their children, Cain, asked, “Am I my brother’s son?”
God got tired of creating the world, so he took the Sabbath off.
Noah built an ark, which the animals came on to in pears.
Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night.
The Jews were a proud people and throughout history they had trouble with the unsympathetic Genitals.
Sampson was a strongman who let himself be led astray by a Jezebel like Delilah. Sampson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the apostles.
Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients.
Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics.They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert.
Afterward, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Ammendments.
The First Commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple.
The Fifth Commandment is humor thy father and mother. The Seventh Commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery.
Moses died before he ever reached Canada.
Then, Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol. The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him.
David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar.
He fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in Biblical times.
Solomon, one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
When Mary heard that she was the Mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta.
When the three wise guys from the East Side arrived, they found Jesus in the manager.
Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption.
St. John, the Blacksmith, dumped water on his head.
Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to others before they do one to you.
He also explained, "Man doth not live by sweat alone."
It was a miracle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tomb stone off the entrance.
The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 decibels.
The epistles were the wives of the apostles.
One of the opossums was St. Matthew, who was by profession a taximan.
St. Paul cavorted to Christianity.
He preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage.
A Chistian should have only one wife. This is called monotony.
The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.
In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java.
Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him.
Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.
Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: “Tee hee, Brutus.”
Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw.
Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
In midevil times most people were alliterate.
The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.
Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.
Queen Elizabeth was the “Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted “hurrah.”
It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood.
Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies,comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo’s last wish was to be laid by Juliet.
Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote.
The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.
Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim’s Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers.
Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps.
Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.
Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress.
Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence.
Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against itself cannot stand.."
Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands.
Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation.
On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.
Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.
Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t have any children.
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is In the East and the sun sets in the West.
Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.
The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine.
The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history. |
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| 2. Australian Twenty Questions |
This game is what my Aussie girlfriend calls Twenty Questions, but it's nothing like the version of Twenty Questions I grew up with. For one thing, players often have to rely more on their own experience and creativity than on general knowledge in coming up with answers. For another, I find this game a lot more fun!
It may sound kind of lame when you read the rules, but believe me: I've nearly lost control of certain vital bodily functions from laughing so hard while playing this game with a group of just four other people. (You should have at least four players for this; six to eight seems optimum.)
Australian Twenty Questions takes a little time to prepare beforehand:
1. This game is timed in five-minute rounds, so have a timer — an egg timer, electric timer, the timer on your watch or phone, or even an alarm clock — handy. If you don't have a timer, players can take turns keeping an eye on a clock — but it's much easier to have a timer go off while you concentrate on game play.
2. In a hat (or bucket, or bowl, or some other opaque container), place the 26 letters of the alphabet. You can pull all 26 letters from your Scrabble set, or write each on a separate slip of paper, or get fancy about it and print the alphabet from your computer and cut the letters out individually. It doesn't matter, as long as you have all 26 letters (no duplicates), and something to put them in, which nobody can see into. You'll be drawing these at random, and you don't want to be able to see what they are.
3. Draw up a list of questions that have more than one answer. This is simpler than it sounds — but can be a difficult task, so you'll want to think out your list well before the game.
Some sample questions (OK, they're not questions, but directives):
1. Name an animal indigenous only to Australia.
2. Name a movie in which at least ten people die.
3. Name a popular tourist attraction in the United States.
4. Name a breed of dog.
5. Name an actress who's still living.
Continue until you have 20 such questions. You'll want to do this on the computer, because next, you'll need to print out one copy per player of ALL the questions. Leave some room under each question, since each player will be writing his/her answer on his/her copy.
4. Pass out a copy of the list of 20 questions to each of the players, along with a pen or pencil. Keep all lists face-down until the game begins.
5. Have someone (anyone can start) reach into the hat (or bowl), and pull out a letter. Announce the letter to the group.
6. Set the timer for five minutes. The second the timer starts, everyone turns his/her list of questions face-up, and attempts to write an answer to each question with a word beginning with the letter that was pulled out of the hat. This is done in COMPLETE SILENCE! There is no discussing the questions, any possible answers, or anything else, until the timer reaches the five-minute mark.
The goal is two-fold: 1) Answer as many questions as possible within the five-minute time limit. 2) Come up with answers NO ONE ELSE will think of. This is harder than it sounds — but this is how you win: If no one else comes up with the same answer to any question that you do, get a point for that question. If even one other player comes up with the same answer as you (for the same question), you both get zero for that question.
7. When the timer signals that your five minutes are up, everyone stops writing. Someone (it doesn't matter who) reads the first question aloud; then, in turn around the circle, each player reads aloud his or her answer to that question.
8. With each point you earn (more about scoring below), put a "1" next to that question. If you don't earn a point for that question, put a "0" next to it.
9. When everyone is finished reading off his/her answer to the first question, repeat the process with question #2, and so on, until all the questions and answers have been read aloud.
10. At the end of the round, add up your points. Whoever has the highest number of points pulls the next letter out of the hat.
You can repeat the game with the same set of questions and a new letter, or pass out a new sheet of questions (and pick a new letter). We've found that the same set of questions will work just fine for many rounds — in fact, in a group of five players, we went through 10 different letters of the alphabet for the same set of questions, before tiring of the questions and writing up a new set.
Example Round:
Let's say the letter pulled out of the hat is "P". This is how my answers might go for the five sample questions above:
1. Name an animal indigenous only to Australia.
Platypus
2. Name a movie in which at least ten people die.
The Poseidon Adventure
3. Name a popular tourist attraction in the United States.
Point Reyes
4. Name a breed of dog.
Papillon
5. Name an actress who's still living (last name/surname).
Paula Prentiss
Now, let's say my friend Tina answers the same questions this way:
1. Name an animal indigenous only to Australia.
Platypus
2. Name a movie in which at least ten people die.
The Poseidon Adventure
3. Name a popular tourist attraction in the United States.
The Pentagon
4. Name a breed of dog.
Pointer
5. Name an actress who's still living (last name/surname).
Amanda Peet
As you can see, we've duplicated one another's answers for questions #1 and #2 — so neither of us gets any credit for either question. But each of us gets one point for question #3, one point for #4, and one point for #5 (assuming no other player duplicated any of my answers or hers either).
Now, there will often be some discussion (which is encouraged!) on whether or not an answer is valid. If the only "P" word a player can think of for "breed of dog" is "Pooch," the other players can (and should) disqualify that answer.
As you'll quickly learn, answers are often very subjective. The first "popular tourist attraction in the United States" that came to my mind was "Point Reyes" — which is indeed a popular tourist attraction, but may not be familiar to anyone outside Northern California. So, if the majority of players think my answer of "Point Reyes" is invalid, I wouldn't get a point for that answer (even if I still think it's valid!).
If you go a second round with the same questions, have the winner of Round 1 pick a new letter out of the hat, set the timer, and go again!
Let's see, a breed of dog starting with the letter G... |
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| 3. Gilligan's Amazing Island Grace |
Sing this at your next party — no matter how bad your voice is, your guests should be distracted by the, er, interestingness of this odd little phenomenon.
Did you know that the lyrics to the theme song from "Gilligan's Island" are interchangeable with the words to the old standard hymn, "Amazing Grace"?
Try it. Sing the words to "Gilligan's Island," but to the tune of "Amazing Grace," and vice versa. It takes a little practice to get the rhythm down, but if you can rub your belly with one hand while patting your head with the other, you can do this.
Here are the lyrics to each, interspersed to help you get the rhythm right:
Amazing Grace
Just sit right back
How sweet the sound
And you'll hear a tale
That saved a wretch like me
A tale of a fateful trip
I once was lost but now am found
That started from this tropic port
Was blind, but now I see
Aboard this tiny ship
T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
The mate was a mighty sailin' man
And Grace, my fears relieved
The skipper brave and sure
How precious did that Grace appear
Five passengers set sail that day
The hour I first believed
For a three-hour tour (a three-hour tour)
Through many dangers, toils and snares
The weather started getting rough
I have already come
The tiny ship was tossed
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
And Grace will lead me home
The Minnow would be lost (the Minnow would be lost)
Now, here's where it doesn't work so well — "With Gilligan / The skipper, too," etc. — so you might just want to skip the "Professor and Mary Ann" part of the Gilligan theme, and go to the lyrics sung during the end credits:
The Lord has promised good to me
Now this is the tale of the castaways
His word my hope secures
They're here for a long, long time
He will my shield and portion be
They'll have to make the best of things
As long as life endures
It's an uphill climb
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail
The first mate and his skipper too
And mortal life shall cease
Will do their very best
I shall possess within the veil
To make the others comfortable
A life of joy and peace
In the tropic island nest
When we've been here ten thousand years
No phone, no lights, no motor cars
Bright shining as the sun
Not a single luxury
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Like Robinson Ca-ru-soe
Than when we've first begun
As primitive as can be
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
So join us here each week, my friends
That saved a wretch like me
You're sure to get a smile
I once was lost but now am found
From seven stranded castaways
Was blind, but now I see
Here on Gilligan's Isle! |
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| 4. How to Fold a $20 Bill to See the World Trade Center & Pentagon Burning |
This totally freaks out anyone who's never seen it before. (It's a big hit in Australia, too.)
I first saw a guy do this at the Parkside Cafe's fast-food counter in Stinson Beach many years ago. He freaked out the chick behind the counter, and she continued to freak out everybody who stepped up to order a Mame's Way burger that afternoon.
1. Get hold of one of the "new" U.S. twenty-dollar bills. You know, the one looks like a cat peed on it, and Andrew Jackson looks like he just got a makeover from Carson Kressley:
With the reverse (that's the back) facing you, fold it in half, lengthwise, like so:
2. Now find the exact center (you can fold it in half again to crease the center point), then fold the part that's in your left hand upwards and in back so it looks like this:
3. Do the same thing to the half that's still in your right hand (don't worry, it's easier than it sounds). Now you can see the Pentagon on fire:
4. Flip the bill over, and you'll see the twin towers on fire:
Freaky, eh? |
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| From: Party Games And Other Stupid Human Tricks/How to Fold a $20 Bill to See the World Trade Center & Pentagon Burning |
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| 5. I Have Never |
This party game can reveal secrets about your fellow players — and about you!
It's one I (JR) first played as a kid at slumber parties, but works just fine among a group of adults... and, in fact, is a lot more fun in an adult setting, since the play is a lot more adult in nature! The example questions given here are quite innocent (which is why this game is great for kids) — but the directions this game can go in are limitless... with a little imagination!
You can play with or without betting — but wagering provides an easy way to keep track of who's winning the game. (Of course you don't have to bet real money — you can use poker chips or peanuts or whatever you like.)
How it works:
It's best to have a minimum of four players (any less, and somebody will almost always win every round).
Players sit in a circle (either a round table or the floor is best, if you'll be betting), and choose somebody to go first. (Flip a coin or something.) Play proceeds in a circle (it doesn't matter if you go around the circle clockwise or counterclockwise — just go in order).
The first person up (let's say it's YOU) makes the statement, "I have never..." followed by something you have never done. For example:
"I have never been to Canada."
"I have never driven a car with a manual transmission."
"I have never watched even one episode of 'Friends.'"
The trick is to come up with something you have never done, but one or more of your fellow players is likely to have done. "I have never watched 'Friends'" would be a good statement, because it's highly likely at least one other player has watched an episode of "Friends."
Scoring
Scenario #1: If any other player admits to having done the thing you haven't done, that player antes up (a penny, a poker chip, a peanut) into the pot (i.e., into the center of the circle) — and after going around the entire circle, the pot is split among the players who can make the same "I have never..." statement as you.
Example Round:
Player #1: "I have never been to Disneyland."
Player #2: "I've been to Disneyland." (throws a chip into the pot)
Player #3: "I've been to Disneyland too." (throws a chip into the pot)
Player #4: "I've never been to Disneyland either." (go to next player)
Player #5: "I've been to Disneyland." (throws a chip into the pot)
Player #6: "I've never been to Disneyland either." (round ends)
Players #1, 4, and 6 split the pot.
Scenario #2: If you are the ONLY person who can make an "I have never..." statement (e.g., everyone but you has watched "Friends"), YOU collect the entire pot.
Example Round:
Player #1: "I have never been snorkeling."
Player #2: "I've been snorkeling." (throws a chip into the pot)
Player #3: "So have I." (throws a chip into the pot)
Player #4: "So have I." (throws a chip into the pot)
Player #5: "So have I." (throws a chip into the pot)
Player #6: "So have I." (throws a chip into the pot)
Player #1 collects the entire pot.
Scenario #3: If NO ONE ELSE in the circle has done the thing you haven't done either (i.e., if everyone can make the same statement, "I have never..."), then YOU ante up one chip to EACH player who can make that statement.
Example Round:
Player #1: "I have never written a book."
Player #2: "Neither have I." (go to next player)
Player #3: "Neither have I." (go to next player)
Player #4: "Neither have I." (go to next player)
Player #5: "Neither have I." (go to next player)
Player #6: "Neither have I." (round ends)
Since everyone can make the same statement as Player #1, Player #1 pays EACH of the other players one chip.
Strategy
The best strategy is to come up with something you're pretty sure at least one other player has done at some point in his or her life.
Of course, all players are allowed to bluff. But if any other player can contradict your bluff — and provide a reasonable explanation as to why they know you're bluffing (e.g., "You DID write a book! I remember — it was a Nancy Drew novel you wrote in high school, and forty-seven publishers rejected it before you gave up!") — then the bluffer has to ante up to EACH of the other players.
All this explanation may seem like overkill, but it can be a tad confusing to understand how this game works before you play. Once you start playing, however, it will make perfect sense.
And — trust me — it's a lot of fun! |
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| 6. Regular Twenty Questions and Celebrity Head |
There must be someone, somewhere in the world, who's never played the standard version of Twenty Questions, so, for the record, I'll outline how it's played where I come from.
This is, by the way, a great game for two people to play on long motor trips!
1. One person thinks of something. Anything. A rock, a cow, a person, a book title... Basically, any noun or proper name.
2. The other person asks "yes-no" questions (questions that can only be answered with a "yes" or a "no") in order to deduce the thing the first person is thinking of. Person #2 gets 20 questions, and if he/she can guess correctly before running out of questions, he/she wins. If he/she can't guess what the thing is by the time he/she asks twenty questions, Person #1 wins.
It doesn't get any simpler than that!
Strategy:
Traditionally, the very first question asked is "Animal, vegetable, or mineral?" This, of course, at least narrows things down to a very general category.
JR's Style:
I don't care much for the "animal, vegetable, or mineral" variety of Twenty Questions — I find it kind of boring, and frustrating to learn I went to all that trouble to identify the word "house."
Instead, I like to play Twenty Questions using celebrity names only. From the very start, both players know what they're concentrating on — and Celebrity Twenty Questions can actually be harder, for both players, than Regular Twenty Questions; it all depends on how much you know about a particular celebrity.
Let's say Tina is the one thinking of a certain celebrity, and I have to guess who it is. My questions usually start with the obvious:
Me: Male?
Tina: No.
So, I know the celebrity is female.
Me: Living?
Tina: No.
So, I know the celebrity is a dead female.
Me: Actress?
Tina: Yes.
The celebrity is a dead actress.
Me: Mostly in movies, as opposed to television?
Tina: Yes.
The dead actress was in the movies.
And so it goes, until I either guess who this dead movie actress is — or hit my 20-question limit, whichever comes first.
Where it gets sticky is when I start asking questions about whether or not the celebrity was ever married, has kids in the business, and other details about his.her life. Sometimes the person answering the yes-no questions won't know if, say, Elizabeth Taylor, for instance, was married more than five times. (For the record, she was.)
And when I play, I very seldom stick to the rule of 20 questions only. I just like the game play, and I don't really care who wins or loses. (So I don't keep score.)
Celebrity Head
Another version of Celebrity Twenty Questions is Celebrity Head. This is a party game in which everybody gets to answer "yes" or "no" to the questions the guesser is asking. And the reason everybody (except the guesser) knows the name of the celebrity the guesser is trying to figure out is that the name of the celebrity is written on a Post-It™ note (or other sticky note paper) and plastered to the guesser's forehead, so everybody except the guesser can see the name. |
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| 7. Hostel (2005) |
Backpacking across Europe, Paxton (Jay Hernandez), Josh (Derek Richardson) and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) meet up with a Dutch businessman (Jan Vlasak) who tells them about a hostel in Bratislava jam-packed with hot women who love Americans. Like the three horny young idiots they are, they take a train to Bratislava. On the train is this creepy guy (whom we'll call Creepy Guy) who seems to be coming on to Josh. (He's not creepy 'cause he might be gay or something — anybody who tries to feel anybody else up on a train is just creepy, period.)
The boys get off the train and check in to the hostel, where, to their delight, they end up sharing a room with a couple of women who are very hot indeed: Svetlana (Jana Kaderabkova) and Natalya (Barbara Nedeljakova) — which, I know, sound like names you'd hear in a Rocky and Bullwinkle / Boris and Natasha sketch — but, hey, I didn't name these characters.
After a night at the disco, Paxton and Josh find Oli missing (well, they find he's not around — you can't exactly find someone who's missing, can you?). They're approached by another trekker, a young Asian woman named Kana (Jennifer Lim), who's looking for her missing friend, Yuki (Keiko Seiko).
A series of clues pops up in short order; f'rinstance, Kana has a photo/text-message on her phone, presumably sent from Yuki; the photo is of Yuki with Oli, along with the sign-off, "Sayonara."
That's not a good sign. A far worse sign, however, is the photo/text message our not-so-horny-now young men receive: a picture of Oli's severed heard and a similar "goodbye" message.
Now, you'd think even the most testosterone-charged young men might go to the police, or even just get the hell out of Dodge (or, rather, Bratislava). But, nooo — they're compelled (compelled, I tell you!) to stay an extra night on the chance they'll do the four-legged boogie with the hostel hotties.
They get what's coming to every dope who lets sex trump sense: a roofy at the disco.
Josh wakes up, not in the arms of Svetlana or Natalya, but strapped to a chair in a dark, grimy, dungeon-like room, and... guess who's there? Yep! Creepy Guy from the train, who proceeds to torture Josh — using a power drill on his foot, slicing his Achilles tendons... you know, the sort of thing you've gotten used to since overcoming your initial shock at the Saw movies, and all the other torture-porn features since. (Well, okay, maybe you haven't gotten over this sort of thing yet, but I have. The ookier the cooler, I say — as long as what I'm watching is fiction, and not, say, The Snowtown Murders, which pales in comparison in terms of sheer gore / buckets-o'-blood thrown at the screen, but which is far more disturbing, 'cause Snowtown really happened.)
Anyhow... Creepy Guy finally kills Josh outright, and we turn our attention back to Paxton, who finally has the sense to go to the police. That doesn't do much good — but, come on, really, do you expect Slovakian cops to give a whit about a stupid American tourist, especially after the U.S. dragged Slovakia into the War on Iraq? (Paxton probably has George W. Bush to thank for the cops' little interest in his plight, or that of his missing friend.)
Paxton eventually catches up with Svetlana and Natalya and demands to know where Josh is. Surprisingly (or not), they show him exactly where Josh is (or was, anyway): in a big, old, abandoned, factory-type building, where Paxton finds Creepy Guy cutting up Josh's body.
Before you know it, Paxton finds himself in Josh's position — not dead, but strapped to a chair in a dark, grimy, dungeon-like room. He's been sold to the highest bidder of a secret, international club (the "Elite Hunting Club," we later learn) of horrible rich people who pay to torture (and kill, if they desire) the foreigners of their choice. A Mengele-sort-of German enters, and, in a series of missteps in cutting off Paxton's fingers, cuts through Paxton's straps, and (what a dope!) slips and wounds himself with the chainsaw he was planning on using on Paxton.
Paxton gets the upper hand (so to speak), getting hold of the German's gun, which he uses to shoot its owner, and then the guard who enters to see what all the ruckus is about.
Escaping the room, Paxton makes his way to the makeshift morgue of the building, shoots another guard dead, and then finds his way to a sort of locker room, where the rich-and-undeserving club members prepare for their encunters with their paid-for torture victims.
There he meets an American "hunter," who assumes Paxton is another "hunter." The Yank makes small talk, while Paxton plays along. Suiting up as a "hunter" himself, Paxton gains access to the rest of the "club," and rescues Kana (the Asian girl, remember?) from her own torture cell after killing the American "hunter." (Well, sort of — Kana has already been tortured beyond belief; one of her eyes is, like, well, dropping out of its socket, and Paxton has to cut it off from its dangling... uh... Did I mention that Hostel is among the worst — or "best," depending on your particular POV — torture-porn films, like, ever? Okay, well, I have now.)
Grabbing a car, Paxton whisks Kana away, and— whaddya know! They run into Svetlana, Natalya, and the dude who recommended the hostel to the boys in the first place, all walking together down one of those narrow, twisty, European streets. "Run into," literally, that is. As any normal person would do (well, any normal person who'd just lost both his friends and was nearly tortured to death by some frustrated Nazi, and who's transporting a hysterical, half-blinded Asian girl to safety would do), Paxton runs them down and creams them into the pavement (or maybe cobblestone).
Paxton gets Kana to a train station. Good idea, right? They can both get away, go home, find comfort in the bosoms of their respective families, right? Well, yeah, maybe, exept that when Kana sees a reflection of her mutilated face, she throws herself in front of a train.
Poor Kana.
Meanwhile, Paxton hears a familiar voice — that of Creepy Guy from the train. He follows Creepy Guy into the men's toilet, where Creepy Guy is taking a poop. Creepy Guy really takes a poop when Paxton slips an "Elite Hunting Club" business card under the door of Creepy Guy's stall. When Creepy Guy leans down to pick up the card, Paxton grabs his hand from under the next stall, and uses a knife to saw off his left ring finger (with a wedding band on it, you'll notice — it's always those upright married men who get caught in the toilet stalls — and, yes, Larry Craig, I'm talking to you!).
Creepy Man screams and screams while the blood flows like the Trivoli Fountain. Paxton bursts into the toilet stall and half-drowns Creepy Man in the toilet, then yanks Creepy Man up so he can see Paxton's reflection in the chrome toilet-paper-protector dispenser on the walll — just before Paxton slashes Creepy Man's throat. Paxton leaves Creepy Man's corpse with its pants down, its head in the toilet, and its finger lying on the floor — as the "Elite Hunting" business card floats merrily in the gathering pool of Creepy Man's blood flowing across the restroom's floor tiles.
Next shot: Paxton is staring out the window of a departing train.
The End.
Followed by:
Hostel: Part II (2007) We need a spoiler!
Hostel: Part III (Straight to video, 2011) We need a spoiler!
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| 8. You'll Like My Mother (1972) |
"Anything simple, Kathleen does quite well."
Francesa Kinsolving (Patty Duke), young, heavily pregnant and recently widowed (husband Matthew was killed in Vietnam), travels to an equally pregnant— er, heavily snowed-in town in Minnesota to meet her mother-in-law. ("You'll like my mother," Matthew often told her.) Arriving in town, it's not lost on her (or us) everyone she meets registers shock when she mentions the name "Kinsolving." Despite her misgivings, she hitches a ride up to the Kinsolving mansion.
Matthew's mother (or is she?), Mrs. Kinsolving (Rosemary Murphy), gives her a less-than-warm welcome. In fact, the old gal is simply a hostile bitch, who makes it clear she does not want Francesca there.
Also greeting Francesca (and much more warmly) is Kathleen (Sian Barbara Allen), Matthew's sister and Maria Kinsolving's daughter, who is obviously developmentally disabled. Francesca and Kathleen hit it off immedately, despite Kathleen's extreme speaking diability. (This, by the way, is probably Allen's finest performance.)
Mrs. Kinsolving (or is she?) feeds Francesca dinner and offers her own bedroom to Francesca for a lie-down, planning afterward to drive Francesca back to catch the next bus out of town. But with the snow comes a bad freeze, and Mrs. Kinsolving (or is she?) can't get her car started.
Mrs. Kinsolving (or is she?) convinces Francesca she would be rash in attempting to leave the house during such inclement weather, and puts Francesca up in Matthew's old bedroom (against Mrs. Kinsolving's wishes) on the uppermost floor. Surely, the roads wil be cleared tomorrow... or the next day... or the next...
As you might expect, Francesca goes into labor. Mrs. Kinsolving (or is she?) — who has already shot Francesca up with horse tranquilizers (or something) — delivers the baby (she's a retired nurse, see). Through her drug-induced haze, Francesca sees Mrs. Kinsolving (or is — oh, for fark's sake, you got the idea many paragraphs ago) whack the newborn on the butt several times, producing no response. The. Baby. Is. Dead. (Or is it?)
Francesca sits in bed in an understandable state of depression, until Kathleen — whose face, by the way, has exhibited a series of bruises more serious by the day — unlocks the door of the bedroom in which Mrs. Kinsolving has by now imprisoned Francesca. Kathleen leads Francesca up to the attic, and — voila! — there is Francesca's baby girl, all nicely swaddled and comfy in an open trunk. Still snowed in and with no means of escape, Francesca sneaks back and forth from her (Matthew's) room to the attic to feed and cuddle the little one.
From what we can tell, Mrs. Kinsolving probably did think the baby was dead; i.e., even this hostile bitch would not murder a baby. Well, we'd like to think that, anyway.
However, there is someone in the house who most likely would murder the baby — and/or anyone else he thought would get in the way of his freedom: Matthew's cousin Kenny (Richard Thomas, who's so good when he plays evil instead of John-Boy) — whom we "met" early on, in a painting of him as a boy, hanging on Mrs. Kinsolving's bedroom wall. (Uh, the painting is hanging on the wall — not Kenny.)
Kathleen manages to get it across to Francesca that Kenny is in the house (Mrs. Kinsolving — or is she? — has been hiding him in a basement room), and Kenny is the one who has been knocking Kathleen around (which is a big part of the reason Kathleen has hidden the baby — she knows what Kenny is capable of).
Kenny, Francesca learns when she finds an old newspaper clipping, is a sociopathic rapist-killer who has recently escaped from a mental hospital.
Meanwhile, Francesca has found an entry in the family Bible showing that Matthew's real mother, Maria, died six days after Matthew was killed.
The morning the snow is cleared and she is due to depart, Francesca also finds a letter from Matthew to his mother, while the fake Mrs. Kinsolving — who, you know by now (if not earlier, by which I mean: "if you scored zero in reading comprehension"), is not Maria, Matthew's mother, but Maria's sister, and Kenny's mother — had said she never received any letters from Matthew, including the one Matthew sent the night he and Francesca were married.
The fake Mrs. Kinsolving announces that George, a local auto mechanic, will be on his way to pick up Francesca and drive her to town to catch the bus.
While Francesca is trying to figure out how to get her baby out of the house, George the mechanic turns out to be Kenny.
Excusing herself from the breakfast table (where "George" is waxing ecstatic over his coffee), Francesca retrieves the baby from the attic and slips out of the house — but not unnoticed. Seeing her flee, Kenny bolts from the mansion and tracks her to the carriage house (a garage for carriages — real horse-drawn carriages — bigger than the actual home you grew up in, unless you grew up Mitt Romney-rich).
After a nerve-wracking chase, Kenny corners Francesca in a carriage, yanks the baby from her arms and puts the infant aside, and then does what comes naturally: he slobbers all over her, trying to rape her.
Just when we think all is lost, Kathleen appears and plunges a pair of scissors into Kenny's back. Kenny lurches outside into the snow; next thing you know, the fake Mrs. Kinsolving, now full-bore crazy, kneels next to Kenny's dead body, and says to no one in particular:
"I'm afraid my son's had an accident. Won't you come into my house and have some coffee... perhaps some tea? Kathleen can get it for you. Anything simple, Kathleen does quite well."
Kathleen hands the baby to Francesca. Roll end credits.
Our take: Well-worth-it little thriller — and not only because we love Patty Duke, Sian Barbara Allen and Richard Thomas. (Incidentally, when this film was made, Thomas and Allen were real-life boyfriend and girlfriend. I recall reading at the time that their shared scenes were most difficult to perform; that's understandable, as all their scenes together consist of Kenny abusing Kathleen, always emotionally, sometimes physically, and never without extreme cruelty.)
You might think Patty (or, rather, Anna) did better work in The Miracle Worker (and why not, as she won a well-deserved Oscar for that), or in her own made-for-TV biopic Call Me Anna (for which she should have won a Emmy — how many of us could play ourselves at our very worst?) — but Duke's performance in You'll Like My Mother is nicely understated, conveying the growing sense of dread both she and the audience feel from the beginning.
It's also refreshing that the part of Francesca is written with intelligence; Francesca is not the sort of damsel-in-distress so oblivious to the danger around her that you find yourself groaning at her idiotic missteps; Francesca does everything right from the moment she senses something amiss (which is immediate); only circumstance, and not she herself, is responsible for the nightmare she can't escape. That may not sound like such a big deal, but it was rare in 1972 to see a smart female protagonist in a movie — and especially one who was not only self-sufficient, but bound and determined to take action. (For contrast, see the 1971 TV movie, Five Desperate Women, in which the title characters run around like idiots incapable of thinking, let alone protecting themselves. As my friend Charly says, they should have titled it A Dead Dog, A Dead Broad, and Four Hysterical Basket Cases.)
— JR
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| 9. The Snowtown Murders (2011) |
a.k.a. Snowtown
Preface: The Snowtown Murders is based on a true story also known as the "Bodies in Barrels" murders. In short, John Bunting, considered Australia's most prolific serial killer, seduced a ragtag group of degenerates into torturing and murdering men the virulently homophobic Bunting knew or suspected were gay. (There was also at least one female victim, the wife of one of Bunting's minions, apparently to stop her from telling anyone what she knew of the gang's murderous activities.) Although none of the victims was killed in Snowtown, the bodies of most were warehoused there — in acid-filled barrels inside an unused bank building.
The Snowtown Murders is best viewed with a more thorough understanding of the story than the film provides. For that, The Crime Library offers one of the best retellings. The story is not an easy one to read, but practically necessary to avoid confusion while watching the film.
Finally, I must warn you that The Snowtown Murders is one of the most disturbing, thoroughly depressing films you may ever see (and would be just as disturbing even if the story were not true). First-time director Justin Kurzel delivers an excellent piece of work, capturing perfectly the grim, pointless existence of a group of psychopaths with no goal in life but to maim and slaughter — and therein lies the horror.
As one IMDB commenter wrote: "...[H]aving, what I can only describe as, endured 'Snowtown' for the longest two hours of my life, I feel compelled to put to paper what an extraordinary accomplishment it is. ... On the other, I damn the director, writer, producer and actors for making it. Or at least, making it so well. ...
"By the time it had finished I felt as though I was complicit — that having merely watched had turned me into an accomplice. On more than one occasion I was close to switching it off. But such is the masterful direction, the suffocatingly silent screams of emotion and need to see whether the boy will escape from the hell he is zombie-footing towards, you feel you owe it to him to ride it out. ...
"The torture scene itself is abhorrent, yet disturbingly hypnotic. Where I would usually look away, I couldn't and found myself glued to what was unfolding; mentally pleading for it to stop. It, in itself, is a reduced study of everything John Bunting pursued. ...
"The stench of death truly is palpable, of both flesh and society. It doesn't make you want to hide behind your sofa, it makes you want to claw at your sofa so that you can curl up and hide inside it. Recommending this film to your friends would be a bit like recommending hard drugs to them. It may open their eyes — but at what cost? It is something that should not be your choice, you don't need the responsibility. ..."
I couldn't have said it better myself. I can't "recommend" The Snowtown Murders either; rather, I feel that in spoiling the entire movie, I might save a few sensitive souls from stumbling into it unprepared. As another IMDB commenter wrote of Snowtown: "You don't enjoy it; you experience it." Whether or not it's an experience you want to have is up to you.
That said...
Teenage Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway) lives with his depressed, dowdy mother Elizabeth (Louise Harris) and his two younger brothers in a lower-class suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, which can only be described as grimy and bleak (everything actually looks grey, even when it's not raining).
When Elizabeth's boyfriend du jour has the three boys pose for naked photos, Elizabeth kicks him out of her life, and soon takes up with John Bunting (Daniel Henshall), a man who instantly insinuates himself into the family's life; when we first see him, he is cooking a meal and expressing a genuine interest in the boys — especially Jamie. John seems the perfect father figure.
John leads the boys on a vandalism spree against the home of Elizabeth's now-ex-boyfriend (who lives just across the road). At first, the damage is limited to thrown eggs and spray-painted slurs on the man's window. Things take a darker turn when Jamie finds John outside with a pile of small, dead kangaroos (yes, real kangaroos; animal lovers will hate this scene, as well as two others involving a dog and a dead rat being fed to a snake). John decapitates the roos one by one, throwing the heads into a bucket — the contents of which he then has Jamie mash to a bloody pulp. The two take the mess across the street and throw it all over the ex-boyfriend's porch. Next thing you know, the ex-boyfriend is packing a trailer and moving out.
Meanwhile, John spends his time playing husband-father to Jamie's family, while holding court with a group of neighbors as he rants and raves about the evils of homosexuals and pedophiles — who, he believes, are one and the same. The neighbors buy into his homophobic tirades — including, bizarrely, one who is obviously transgendered (or possibly just a cross-dresser), and whom John accepts as a friend.
John is also grooming Jamie — not as a potential lover (although one is compelled to suspect that Bunting, like the most rabid of homophobes, is secretly homosexual himself), but as another member of his killer gang.
He's also eliminating what appears to be the sole threat within, and the smartest member of, the family: the middle son (whose name escapes me), whom John forces to wear a dress and stand on a chair in the backyard while holding a pair of bricks out at his sides. Elizabeth, perhaps knowing of the ongoing murders and worrying about the boy's safety, finally sends the boy away (to where, I'm not sure, but probably to live with his father.)
Eventually, Jamie tells John he has been sexually abused by his older half-brother Troy (Anthony Groves). (Early on in the film, we witness Troy raping Jamie; the unblinking eye of the camera in a static shot taken from a distance — as well as the matter-of-factness of the rape, and Jamie's motionless submission to his rapist — lends a sort of emotionless detachment to the scene, which makes the ordeal even more disturbing than it might be with a more traditional depiction using close-ups, basic editing and/or sound. This technique, however, is what makes The Snowtown Murders work, and work so horribly well; the whole film plays like a docu-drama — or the world's sickest reality show.)
John, of course, decides Troy must be killed. As Jamie looks on, John and accomplice Robert Wagner (Aaron Viergever) pin Troy in the family bathtub and handcuff him to an exposed pipe. After beating Troy to a pulp and then going to work on him with a pair of pliers (in one of the most seemingly interminable scenes ever committed to film), the two garrot their victim, repeatedly bringing him back to consciousness, only to strangle him again and again. Unable to witness the torture any longer, Jamie jumps into the tub himself to put Troy out of his misery once and for all.
Jamie is now completely under John's control — which he realizes, and which tears him apart inside, but he is too weak to do anything about it (even when he brings himself to shoot John's friendly, trusting dog for no good reason other than that John tells him to).
Having passed the point of no return by killing Troy, Jamie helps John commits a few more murders (with most of the violence taking place off-screen), including that of a mentally disabled young man (presumably in an attempt to collect the victim's disability payments).
Finally (and this is where one loses any last shred of sympathy for Jamie at all), Jamie visits his older stepbrother, Dave (Beau Gosling) — whom John dislikes (and perhaps believes is gay, despite Dave's live-in relationship with a girlfriend) — on the pretext of telling him about a computer Dave might like to buy. Jamie has Dave drive him to Snowtown to see the nonexistent computer and lures him into the empty bank building, where the two are met by John and Robert. Dave realizes something is amiss just as Jamie closes the door behind him... and the screen fades to black.
Before the end credits, we're told that police found eight bodies in the barrels; that Bunting, Wagner and Vlassakis were sentenced to prison for life (with Vlassakis eligible for parole in 26 years); and that Elizabeth died before she could be brought to trial for her suspected role in the murders.
— JR
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| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles S/Snowtown Murders, The (2011) |
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| 10. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) |
In her last week of life Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) smokes a lot of cigarettes, does a lot of drugs, has sex with a lot of men and finds out who BOB really is: her father, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise). She's brutally murdered and then shows up in the Black Lodge where she meets Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and gets her angel.
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| 11. Submit A Movie Spoiler |
To make a comment or submit an addition or correction to an existing spoiler (here's a good example of an addition/correction for Contact), just use the comment form provided for the existing title.
To submit a new movie spoiler, please email it (yeah, we know, email is sooo 2003, but we don't want anybody to see any potential spoilers by accident) to JR at our domain. (Pssst! Our domain is amuseyourself.com)
In the body of your email, please include:
A. The title of the movie you're spoiling (duh!);
B. The spoiler (double-duh!);
C. Your name as you want to be credited on the site ("Joe Blow," "Fred the Parakeet," or whatever — you don't have to use your real name; just keep any aliases clean);
D. The full URL of the website (if any) you want linked to your name when (or, sometimes, if) we publish your spoiler. Read more about that in item #2, below.
Send it off, and then check back (usually in a day or two) for your spoiler under its title. (New stuff is always marked with a  icon, which fades to kinda pinky-ish as time goes by.)
Things to keep in mind:
1. By submitting a spoiler (or any comment), you agree we have the right to publish your spoiler/comment in any form (even on the side of a blimp), forever. You still own the copyright to your submission, but you're giving us the right to reprint it. You also agree that we have the right to edit your spoiler/comment (which happens rarely, and usually only for clarity, brevity, spelling, grammar or removing naughty words that would get us in trouble with various Net Nanny-type censorship systems).
2. We can't offer you any compensation other than bragging rights and worldwide fame (and we don't promise the fame part). We would like to say thank you in the one way we can: If you would like to plug your own website / Facebook page / Twitter feed, include the full URL after the end of your spoiler, and we'll be happy to live-link your name (or alias) to the website of your choice. There are some conditions: We will not link to spammy commercial sites or sites promoting racism, homophobia, porn, radical politics of any stripe (so, sorry, no "DraftPalin2016.com" sites), or anything else that would offend our moms. (We do check all sites before publication.)
3. Yes, we will print one-liner spoilers (especially if they're really funny), but we prefer at least a little detail, and we really love a lot of detail. Our spoiler for Camille consists of just two words, and the one for The Sound of Music just ten; both are pretty funny, and for films practically everybody not currently in utero has already seen. But we really prefer more substance.
It's not necessary but it is nice to summarize the entire movie in a few words. Our spoiler for The Last Voyage, for example, summarizes the film from start to finish in the first three sentences, while with Wait Until Dark or The Last of Sheila, there is no real explanation of the film's plot; this sort of "where I came in" spoiler is more for readers who have seen a given film, but have forgotten the crucial plot points.
Examples of extremely detailed spoilers include American Gothic, [REC], and Shutter (to name just a few). Such detail isn't at all necessary, but it is fun (for both the reader and the writer — if you've never written a spoiler before, you won't believe how addictive it can be!).
Thank you for helping to make Amuse Yourself! even more fun for everyone! And please keep 'em comin'! |
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| 12. Black Hooker (1974) |
a.k.a. Street Sisters
Painted Woman* (Sandra Alexandra), a sleazy hooker, who's black, leaves her illegitimate son, blonde, blue-eyed Young Boy (Teddy Quinn), with her parents, a mean preacher man (Jeff Burton) and his long-suffering wife (Kathryn Jackson), then returns to visit the old homestead occasionally, for no apparent reason but to annoy the couple.
By the time Young Boy turns into Older Boy (Durey Mason, who looks like a cross between Larry Wilcox, "Ponch" of "CHiPs," and Dean Butler, Almanzo Wilder of "Little House on the Prairie"), he's fallen in love with the (black) girl he's grown up with (Gioya Roberson, and later Mary Reed). Their love affair goes to pot after Older Boy sees Grandpa seducing Older Girl in the barn. Grandma — who up to this point has been the only person in Boy's life with any redeeming qualities whatsoever — tells Older Boy not to fret about what he's seen (Grandma's always put up with Grandpa's adultery, and there are worse things that can happen, she tells him), but (and in spite of Older Girl's plea that he stay with her), Older Boy runs away to find Painted Woman and have a normal mother-son relationship (fat chance). Meanwhile, Painted Woman is off whoring around in the city as usual.
When Grandma dies, there's a weird, sepia-toned funeral out in the middle of nowhere, for which both Older Boy and Painted Woman return. Later, Older Boy confronts his wayward mama in her bedroom, and strangles her to death. The End.
Our take: Truly bizarre, low-budget, description-defying oddity that must be seen to be believed. Despite the title, it's not blaxploitation, which is traditionally urban with a funky backbeat.
* None of the characters in this cheesy exploitation flick has a given name.
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| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles B/Black Hooker (1974) |
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| 13. The Devil Has Seven Faces (1971) |
Il diavolo a sette facce
a.k.a. Bloody Mary
Carroll Baker, Stephen Boyd, George Hilton and a bunch of Italian actors you've never heard of talk way too much while the distaff faction wears short-short flowered mini-skirts and wigs that look like somebody scared the hell out of Barbara Rush after dunking her in a vat of Jeri-Curl.
Baker plays twins Julie and Mary Harrison. All through the movie, the twin we've been following is a jewel thief; the diamond is hidden in a pack of cigarettes (which is why there are so many extreme close-up shots of the cigs).
Oh, but wait! The diamond was never actually stolen. If you're going, "Huh? Wha...?!" at this point, that's because we were going, "Huh? Wha...?!" too. It's a confusing (and boring) movie, worth it for... well, really, only for the short-short flowered mini-skirts and Barbara Rush fright wigs (and Baker's electric blue wig in one beach scene).
Bottom line: What the hay-ell was this about?
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| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles D/Devil Has Seven Faces, The (1971) |
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| 14. Twister's Revenge! (1987) |
IMDB viewer review says it all:
"Three dumbasses hatch a plan to steal a talking monster truck, and when their plan fails, they decide instead to kidnap the wife of the truck's owner and hold her for ransom. She spends the rest of the movie tied up in a cave with a stack of dynamite and a coffee maker, while Twister (the truck) and his owner drive all over the countryside knocking down the houses of the three dumbasses. The climactic duel takes place between Twister and a fully functional army tank, which happens to be sitting in a junkyard garage. Along the way, one of the dumbasses falls into a hole filled with outhouse sh*t (which a makes a good metaphor for the entire movie, by the way), and a girl band led by a heifer in blue spandex performs a musical number in a bar where the patrons wear gas masks for some inexplicable reason.
"This film is like 'Dukes of Hazard' crossed with 'Benny Hill,' except that to compare it to either of those other shows implies that it's anything other than a grade Z movie. ..."
Not surpringly, I was compelled to hum "Yakety Sax" aloud (and loudly) every time there was a chase scene. It made the experience much more enjoyable. (But not for our cats.)
Here's a clip (with captioned editorializing that's much kinder than any of the comments the Better Half and I made while watching it):
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| 15. Man-Thing (Straight to Video, 2005) |
Three-word warning label: Syfy Channel original. 'Nuff said.
We were nearly at the end of this Marvel Comics-based dumb-fest — about a swamp thing that's nowhere near as endearing as the real Swamp Thing (We need a spoiler!) — when we realized why we could barely understand the dialogue: Set in the swamps of the southern U.S., the flick was made in Australia, with Aussie actors attempting to approximate Cajun accents. It finally clicked when Rachael Taylor's pseudo-drawl fell apart altogether and she spat out the word "bahn" for "barn."
Mind you, the majority of the Aussie actors here are normally quite capable performers... when they're allowed to be Australian — which begs the question: Why wasn't the movie just set in Oz?
In any case, no matter where it was made, you could have cast Sir John Gielgud, Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep as the stars, and Man-Thing would still be crap. And not good crap. Just crap.
That said...
Man-Thing, half-man, half-vegetation, and purportedly Native American, is angry because drilling by an oil company has polluted the Louisiana bayou, so he/it starts murdering people. The new sheriff in town (Matthew Le Nevez) investigates... and, of course, falls in love with the local schoolteacher (Rachael Taylor, who, three years later, learned to maintain a much better grasp on an American accent in Shutter).
At the end, the oil rig blows up, and Man-Thing is kind of, um, absorbed back into the swamp, presumably at peace now that his home is no longer being raped by the oil company.
The End. Thank bloody goodness.
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| From: Movie Spoilers/Titles M/Man-Thing (Straight to Video, 2005) |
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