In short: The Zero Boys (1986)

A bunch of survival game mad college idiots going by the moniker of “The Zero Boys” under the leadership of one Steve (Daniel Hirsch) – easily identified by a lack of facial expression that I suspect is supposed to read as cool but doesn’t – their girlfriends, and Jamie (Kelli Maroney), the girl whose presence Steve won from a Nazi regalia wearing Jew (please don’t ask), are invading a backwoods area. Because that’s the kind of people our heroes are, they make themselves at home in an empty house and are more than just a bit surprised when the local crazy backwoods killers – counting among their number Joe Estevez hiding under the nom de plum of “Joe Phelan” - start stalking them.

Alas, the Zero Boys are carrying “perfectly legal” semi-automatic uzis, and the backwoods folk are some of the most incompetent of their kind.

Welcome back to the wondrous world of Nico Mastorakis, where at least half of the lines the characters have to deliver make little sense, and the other half sound utterly ridiculous, where a bunch of stupid teen survivalist assholes are supposed to be our heroes, and where not enough of said assholes die. The last bit is somewhat understandable, for to make more then a half hour epic out of the adventures of our protagonists – such as they are – the killers really had to be written to show as little competence as possible too. Getting through Zero Boys means watching a backwoods slasher where not just the meat are the expected idiots (and by gawd, they are), but where the killers act so incompetently they’re probably temps working the backwoods beat while the more competent cannibals and crazy people are on vacation in Ibiza.

To add insult to injury, Mastorakis doesn’t even bother to give his characters at least slasher character shorthand traits, so it’s difficult to remember anyone apart from Jamie and Steve. In fact, I’m not even sure anymore how many members the Zero Boys had, an hour after watching the thing. I should probably have taken notes like a responsible blogger but the film probably should have had a script beyond some notes scribbled on a napkin, so I’m still good, I believe.

This isn’t too say The Zero Boys isn’t fun to watch. In typical Mastorakis fashion, the bullshit flies hard and fast, with hardly a scene going by that doesn’t contain at least some low level bit of adorable nonsense or a “what the hell were they thinking” moment like when Jamie and Steve have a heart to heart about her boyfriend that’ll have you gasping for air. If that’s not enough for you, apparently this was shot on the same locations and sets as the 3rd Friday the 13th film and definitely contains many a bad Jason reference to really rub our noses in it, so you can really feel at home.

In short: The Haunting of Pearson Place (2013)

Incredibly obnoxious yuppie couple Gwen (Tracy Teague) and Steven (Ken Arnold) have bought up a run-down old house out in the boons to prep it up as a bed and breakfast place, or rather, Gwen bought it and Steven’s supposed to do most of the work because she already provided all the money. Alas, there’s a reason the house came quite as cheap as it did: the realtor’s a weird Joe Estevez thing, the country people around it are crazy, and oh, there was a murder in the house some time ago – after the time when it was used as a Soldiers’ Home for victims of the first World War, with all the suffering that entailed. Consequently, the house is as haunted as all get out, and it doesn’t take long until Gwen and Steven encounter all sorts of bizarre stuff: the realtor just pops up at the most curious times and places saying meaningful things, a couple of female ghosts get rude, and there’s never a quiet moment in the house.

Things come to a head when Gwen’s best friend Katherine (Julie Price) and her husband Michael (Regen Wilson), who is even more obnoxious than the other human characters, come to help with the renovation: ghosts get nude, hands get grabby, and Jim Shoemaker “from the County” wants to kill two birds with one stone. Two birds; one stone.

One thing I have been missing in the age of indie horror is the propensity of old local horror movies to just be plain, freakishly peculiar. Michael Merino’s The Haunting of Pearson Place jumps into this particular breach with exhilarating enthusiasm. The resulting film isn’t the least bit creepy, spooky, or whatever else you might expect from your haunted house films, but its very peculiar and curiously specific weirdness make up for that little problem with no troubles at all.

Well, at least if you’re like me and love to puzzle out if any given scene is actually meant to be funny, or just becomes funny through the combination of – I might have used that word to describe them before – obnoxiously bickering characters, dialogue that’s always a little (and sometimes very) off, and line deliveries that often leave one staring at the screen with a mixture of puzzlement and delight. For most of the running time, I had no problem understanding what was going on on screen but was utterly unable to explain why The Haunting of Pearson Place was going about showing what’s going on in this highly strange manner. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

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