Scare Package / Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In

 

So I had already watched this on a Saturday afternoon with Joe Bob's commentary, but I never got around to writing a review. Big anthologies are often a problem to me because so many are involved, with so many moving parts. Reviews/write-ups become It novels. And, here lately, my reviews can stretch out way too long.

"Cold Open" is a really fun opening story for "Scare Package", an ambitious project directed and written by multiple people. With the likes of "V/H/S" and its films, and "The ABCs of Death" and all its films, there does seem to be a hunger for the anthology again over the last decade or so. For the most part, I did enjoy "Scare Package", and, per usual, some of the tales are more preferable to others. I agreed with "Rad" Chad (Jeremy King), who operates the VHS store, "Rad Chad's Horror Emporium", that perhaps Mike Myers (Jon Michael Simpson) might turn a few off with his ultra-meta "Cold Open" script about himself as a "setup character" in films looking to break from the norm and be a more important character involved in the stories instead of just serving as a very brief initiating factor in how the horror will eventually surface. He's the realtor knowingly selling a house possessed by an Onryō to a couple or the road worker hammering an arrow on a sign incorrectly so a group of young adults drive towards a mental institution instead of away from it. He's not really all that involved in the ongoing story, so he decides to interject himself in the lives of babysitting friends (on Halloween night, of course) after cutting a line to their power. He just wants to talk to them, but their understanding of his responsibility for cutting the line results in them hoping to hold him at bay with weapons so he can do them no harm...they actually hurt themselves by doing so with plenty of spurting blood making matters altogether worse. A closed shears goes into a throat, pulled from the neck by Mike and indirectly into the other babysitter, who unwisely removes the shears from her chest, unleashing a geyser. Played for comedic effect, "Cold Open", ironically on purpose, serves as the cold open for the anthology. 3/5

"One Time in the Woods" has the serial killer in the woods with evil intentions, a very talky victim of some sort of body melting wasting disease in need of silver in order to halt the process of gooey deterioration (with a bite that will cause anyone bitten to also waste away into multi-colored puddle of goo), and an assortment of "wrong place, wrong time" victims. The serial killer crushes a much larger victim with a "deceptively strong" hug, while also exploding the head of a victim (who impaled her mouth on a protruding tree branch!) with a basic rock throw. Poor Stephanie Thoreson, and, especially, Jessie Tilton are covered in lots of blood spray and viscera (I'm talking soaked in blood and meaty bits) while trying to avoid the psychopath known as the backwoods butcher (or slayer, I forget as the story moves at quite a clip). One "hunter" (although he's terrible at it, as Tilton tries to tell the guy the killer's behind him, but he just won't shut the fuck up) has his legs "detached" (as the first victim said, this guy is deceptively strong) and beaten with them by the killer! This also has one passerby walking right into a mountain ax to the crotch...how another falls headfirst on the very ax by slipping on body melt goo is inspired, to say the least. This is for those really wanting that gore fix. 3/5

"M.I.S.T.E.R." (Men in Serious Turmoil, Establish Rights) with Noah Segan features a group of men in need of consultation due to being pussy-whipped by the women in their lives...ultimately, they are werewolves planning a hunt, but Segan has a surprise for them. Segan informs the werewolf leader he's already part of a pack...and they practice Satanic worship. At the home of Segan and his wife, they have a sign on the wall that says LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE. At least he has those werewolf fur skins to please his missus. Didn't do much for me, this tale. Even the football field murders by Segan lack real punch. I like Segan a lot, but this is just lacks oomph. 1.5/5

"Girls' Night out of Body", found by Rad Chad's new employee at his video store on the shelf under the listing of POST MODERN FEMINIST SLASHER REVENGE BODY HORROR, features three girlfriends who grew up together hanging out at a cottage (it reminds me of one of those "love dins" seemingly structured towards honeymoon hideaway types). One among them stole a pumpkin-colored skull-shaped lollipop from a store that warned against taking it because she's a klepto. When the three lick from it their faces take on the form of that very lollipop, "encouraging" psychomania (and pillow fighting with plenty of feathers flying in the air). The elderly Asian lady at the store they took the lollipop can only giggle (though her mouth barely moves) in a deep, dark tone when called up by them. Eventually a serial killer looking in on them from a window doesn't stand a chance against them after their transformation. This is a whole lot of nothing to me. It doesn't have a lot to say or do. It isn't really all that long, either. It sort of comes and goes and I felt absolutely nothing. Just a lot of nope. The room is very pink and the music from the record on the turntable does have an ethereal quality to it. The breathing killer on the outside of the building has no real purpose to the story besides representing a slasher marker. I could see why some might find value in this as a type of homage, but I am one of those that really felt it needed something more just not present. I think you have lots of options out there right now besides this that do such a homage ten times better. 1.5/5

"The Night He Came Back Again! Part IV: The Final Kill" is that slasher parody that pokes a lot of fun at the always-returning iconic slasher killer, as Daisy (Chelsea Grant) is fed up with every holiday being ruined by a psychopath in a white smiley-mask (and black uniform), killing all her boyfriends and friends. Taking matters into her own hands, Daisy has a notebook with different methods of destruction, striking through every one of them that doesn't work in executing the killer once and for all! With help from two guys into her, a girlfriend and her pre-med boyfriend, Daisy will try different methods to determine how to finally vanquish the killer. Absurd and outlandish...and a hoot and a half. So they try jumper cables attached the killer's neck while electrocuting him from a battery...the shock feeds through the pre-med guy's stethoscope, exploding his head! The pre-med victim's girlfriend is strangled by severed lower legs of the killer (one of the guys into Daisy tries to use the available long intestine from the lower severed torso of the killer to free the girlfriend but this only seems to make matters worse)! Daisy and her friends even use a high-powered taser sending jolts right into the killer's head...and that only subdues him temporarily! Daisy and her friends even try firecracker rockets, shoved down the killer's throat, setting off quite a show, that still doesn't fully incapacitate him for long! Even as the killer would appear to be weakened, he still has the ability to grab a guy's throat and snap his neck! Eventually, though, Daisy takes some of the killer's head off with a shotgun blast, but that even only injures him! Even as the killer is being fed into a rented woodchipper, Daisy has a hard time with him! This is as ridiculous as it reads. By the end of the tale, Chelsea Grant is caked in film blood, her entire face a red mask. I hope Grant isn't done with horror...she looks very good in a pair of "4th of July jorts". 3/5

"So Much to Do" features Aaron D Alexander as a kidnapped guy who is bound and tossed in a car by these two cult members under these Undertaker hats with black gloves. They "mark" Aaron's forehead and toss him in a hole, burying him alive. This shining mark emerging on the hand of one of the cult members stamps onto Aaron's forehead and seems to allow him to surface from his unmarked grave as a type of spirit infiltrating nearby motorist, Toni Trucks. Aaron didn't want to die, feeling he still had "so much to do", which motivates him to return from beyond the grave, I guess. But Toni isn't about to let Aaron have her body without a fight. And they duke it out for right to her body, with Toni eventually emerging victorious. There is something to do with a program on the television Toni will be watching eventually, not wanting Aaron to spoil it for her. I'm sure these two talents are capable with better material. I have no idea what the point is with the mark on the head and the two responsible for Aaron's predicament. Big pass on this tale. 1.5/5

"Horror Hypothesis" includes the wraparound angle where a recent hire, Hawn (Hawn Tran), actually tricks Rad Chad by kerplunking him on the head, for what will be a lab experiment involving Dustin Rhodes' Devil's Lake Impaler. Hawn is a research assistant among other labrats working on "speed tracking" where a runner tries to stay ahead of a killer. The lab doesn't anticipate the Devil's Lake Impaler will get freed and starring a brand new killing spree throughout the installation (an old hospital according to Job Bob). Others taken against their will and trapped in a cell, besides horror film geek Rad Chad, are a final girl (not who Chad believes), a slut (not who Chad believes), a jock (who has the abs but lacks the strength to handle the Impaler), an African-American man (yes, Chad pulls back what he was about to say to him, as horror films of the past did kill him off early in slashers), and eventually, Joe Bob Briggs. The movie made sure to give Joe Bob the big star treatment when he shows up, ax in hand, ready for action. Unfortunately, despite Chad's fawning and hero worship, Joe Bob is thrown through a wall by the Impaler, left to die on the installation floor...let's just say Joe Bob wasn't particularly fond of Chad's "moron behavior". Chad, unfortunately, puts on the Joe Bob hat, gives off the horns hand sign, prepares for battle, and gets the Impaler's fist right through his face (and out the back of the head).

"Horror Hypothesis" has the Impaler run through practically 30 or so people. Now the lab folks (security guards and staff along with the labcoats) don't get much in the way of the Impaler's grandiose onscreen rampage, they are more or less found scattered about savagely butchered. Arms are broken off with protruding bone stabbed through necks, pipes are impaled through victims, a treadmill is thrown into a labcoat (pinning her into a wall with her lower torso and legs cleaved from the rest of her body, collapsing to the floor!), axes are stabbed into backs, and while being held upside down by his legs a victim is split in half (saying he had to split!). There is even a homage to "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter" with the stoner imitating Feldman's Tommy Jarvis! Mike Myers coming to save the day with a cigarette, running with final girl (Zoe Graham) as a car explodes, is such a neat touch...I popped for that, for sure. This would be even more fun if there hadn't been that previous slasher parody. This sort of pokes fun at more tropes that hadn't already been parodied elsewhere in the anthology. Still, if you weren't already jiving to all the blood soaking women in the cast, there is more in this tale for you! 3/5

The wraparound with Rad Chad, the rental store mainstay, Sam (Byron Brown), and Hawn is my favorite part of the anthology. I just loved that an anthology has its wraparound set at an old school rental store where the shelves are lined with DVDs and VHSs, the televisions are on the walls to consistently play horror movies, and one of those know-it-alls (like many of us think we are) who never seems to stay away can be seen obsessing over titles he might have seen and wants others to watch pronto. I actually liked that Rad Chad doesn't make it out of the installation alive, because it would have been easy to go that route. And fan service could have overridden a proper trajectory if Joe Bob had led the remaining survivors to safety and defeated the Impaler. Nope, the Impaler won't have none of that shit. So I think the route taken worked out best for "Horror Hyposis".

This really was, for the most part, made by folks who love this genre and offered a labor of love to horror. I just liked some of the tales, while others did almost nothing for me, personally. But I am but one horror fan out of millions and millions. There is something for everybody. That is what makes the horror genre such a gift (depending on what you like and don't like). 2.5/5 for the overall anthology.