happyendingrocks

Even though I nearly walked out of the theater in sheer frustration when I first beheld the astonishing idiocy of this "only true" sequel, my loyalty to the series these film-makers told all Halloween fans to pretend no longer exists compelled me to take another look with fresh eyes. What they saw was a movie even stupider than I remember, but my revisit did allow me to pinpoint precisely why this obtuse wasted opportunity is such a crushing disappointment.

The big selling point here is the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, who escaped Michael Myers during his original 1978 Halloween night rampage. Nevermind that Curtis has already reprised the role in 3 previous sequels, and her character was definitively killed off in the 2002 installment- -none of those movies happened now because H2018 director David Gordon Green said so, remember?

But here's the thing: if everything after the first Halloween is erased, then Laurie is not a woman who has been tormented for 40 years by a merciless supernatural Shape impervious to death who repeatedly resurfaces without warning to terrorize her and everyone in her family; she's just someone who once had a chance fleeting encounter with a serial killer that was promptly arrested and institutionalized and has never seen the light of day since.

Consider the recent flurry of coverage on the Golden State Killer, whose malevolent shadow crossed the paths of over 100 people; many of his surviving victims have come forward to articulate enduring far more horrific atrocities than those perpetuated by the fictional Michael Myers, and while their souls are enduringly marked by those appalling events which occurred in their youth, all of them have gone on to build otherwise reasonable lives for themselves, refusing to allow their lone encounter with a monster paralyze them with fear forever- -and they did so while their scourge remained unidentified and at large and still conceivably an active threat, not safely locked away with no chance of release.

None of them turned their homes into gated survivalist compounds equipped with basement death traps and spent decades stockpiling an arsenal of weaponry, all in anticipation that one day their tormentor would return for a final confrontation. Yet the Laurie Strode we're supposed to root for here is an admitted paranoiac basket case who devoted her entire life to doing exactly that, all based on what amounts to a few harrowing hours when she was a teenager; she's not the noble heroine we've been cheering on since 1978, she's a pathetic drunken recluse who exists in eternal mortal terror of a sixty year-old mental patient she hasn't had any contact with for four decades.

That's not to mention the numerous other times this film trips over its own amended lore, such as when the most obnoxious character in the movie unveils the historic Shape cowl to Michael and declares, "this is part of you!" Dude, no it's not; if none of the other sequels took place, that piece of rubber is not a pivotal talisman, it's just some $3 mask that Michael stole from a hardware store in 1978 and wore that one night- -likely chosen at random because it was the day of Halloween so the shop only had a few options left in stock.

Even stripped of these existential issues, this is a wretched mess of a film brimming with more inane elements than I have room to list here, most notably a sudden third-act swerve which ranks as one of the lamest and most nonsensical plot twists I have ever seen in any movie, ever. The teenaged ensemble is uniformly vapid and annoying, even by disposable victim standards, yet we're still forced to spend long segments of the already padded running time following their mindless subplots. The adults aren't much better either, except for a steely Sheriff who delivers perhaps the only pragmatic line in the film when Laurie announces that she has been praying every night for Michael to escape custody: "Well, that was a dumb thing to pray for." The one consistently intelligent and enjoyable character here is an elementary school-aged kid, who helps liven things up during the movie's sole truly effective suspense sequence but sadly never materializes again after the movie spirals back into a deluge of nonsense five minutes later.

There have been plenty of weak Halloween flicks, but this abysmal entry marks the absolute nadir of the entire franchise. And if you've ever heard me rant about how execrable Rob Zombie's contributions to the series are, you'll know that's saying a lot.

Featuring a threadbare plot that seldom makes sense, a cast of actors who seem to have forgotten to read the script before shooting their scenes, and some of the least convincing karate ever committed to film, this incomprehensible bargain basement action flick might very well be unwatchable if it wasn't so rife with unintentional humor. Lucky for us, there's oodles of the latter, so what Death Machines lacks in white-knuckle thrills it more than makes up for with its deluge of sheer giggle-inducing lunacy.

Though the title refers to a trio of assassins who spend the movie lumbering from one quarry to the next, the central villain here is unlikely underworld crime boss Madame Lee (Mari Hanjo), whose already massive beehive wig seems to swell even larger from one scene to the next, and whose basic inability to form complete sentences renders at least half of her dialogue completely unintelligible. It's a good thing we don't ever need her to clarify her nefarious plot, since she doesn't have much of one to speak of. The general idea is that she has concocted some sort of mind control serum which transforms her three hand-picked Death Machines into mute and mindless killers who are impervious to bullets and will carry out her orders without question, then sets these lethal mandroids into motion against her enemies.

The silliness abounds from the opening montage, during which Madame Lee carefully chooses her three subjects by observing them in combat. After a lengthy kung-fu exchange, one of the future Death Machines simply pulls out a gun and shoots his opponent to death at point blank range, which sort of negates the entire purpose of the demonstration. Elsewhere, the squad's results are equally successful, and their methods are equally unsubtle. They engage one of their disposable and nebulously-designated victims by driving a truck into the restaurant where he's eating, wait until another target boards his helicopter and level it with a bazooka instead of just offing the dude when he's all alone on the ground, and massacre an entire karate class for the sole purpose of taking out the instructor.

While each of these vignettes technically qualifies as an action sequence, their clumsy execution instead renders them some of the funniest parts of the movie. Swords that don't come within four feet of striking anyone somehow produce mass casualties and end up sheathed in blood, while other foes are felled by knock-out punches that are visibly swung well above their heads, so on most of the occasions these untrained performers engage each other on the screen they look like they're trying their hardest not to accidentally hit each other.

Since most of what happens in Death Machines is utterly extraneous, watching the film unfold creates the sneaking impression that the producers filmed everything they had scripted, then scrambled to concoct various random things for their cast to do once they realized they had only logged about a third of a feature-length offering. That's really the only way to explain the presence of a restaurant owner who eats up several of the movie's lean 90 minutes bragging about how good his spaghetti is. Furthering that effect, the film also introduces a grizzled detective to track the eponymous killers, though he doesn't make much of an effort to actually hunt them down and most of his screen time is instead spent getting yelled at by his Lieutenant for falling behind on his paperwork and not attending some mandatory civics class.

An even larger chunk of real estate is devoted to the recovery of Frank, the lone survivor of the afore-mentioned karate school slaughter, who struggles to adapt to a whole new way of life after having his hand amputated in the skirmish. As the spree's only living witness, Frank is immediately tagged for a follow-up attempt on his life to stop him from aiding the police; however, he mostly keeps himself busy plotting revenge against the slayers who butchered his dojo buddies. Frank also mopes a lot, which his nurse evidently thinks is super hot, because she is shoehorned into the ensemble for a romantic subplot with him. After a decidedly awkward tableau that suggests the duo engaged in some highly unsatisfactory sex, they adjourn to the bar where Frank works, at which point a wild brawl promptly breaks out, ostensibly because there hasn't been a proper fight scene in several minutes. Despite his abiding commitment to martial arts, Frank gets summarily beat down by a drunken codger who looks to be in his 70's, a head-scratching turn of events that doesn't go very far in establishing him as a credible foil for the invincible Death Machines. This turns out to be a moot point anyway, since the vengeance half the film is squandered setting up doesn't actually take place; Frank never has a second encounter with Madame Lee's assassins and instead spends the climax battling her.

I could go on and on. There's also a tacked-on biker rumble at a mom and pop diner that one of the DMs gets into for no apparent purpose, which occurs following an extended diversion involving him being captured by the police and escaping custody, none of which has any bearing whatsoever on the story. Not to mention the fate which befalls a father-of-the-year-candidate bank manager who refuses Lee's demand that he quit his post even after he's informed that her minions have kidnapped his daughter and will inflict all manner of horrific carnal debasements upon the poor young lass if he doesn't comply (his response, essentially: "well, daughters come and go, but do you know how HARD I worked to get this job?!").

Suffice to say, Death Machines is an incompetent mess. But thankfully it's the kind of incompetent mess that is a giddy blast to behold for anyone who fancies themselves a connoisseur of ridiculously awful cinema. Once you factor in the awesomely schlocky Radio Shack synthesizer score, what we have here is a certified classic that fans of this particular subgenre should not sleep on.

Although the nifty but obvious twist at the end overtly announces the instant potential for a sequel, that augured follow-up never did arrive. What a shame; hell, I'd watch an entire franchise of these.

Contrary to all of the scathing reviews I read, the worst thing about The Sidehackers isn't the senseless title, the numerous extraneous scenes that pad the running time, or the schmaltzy execution of the romantic subplot. The biggest drawback here is that there's actually a pretty decent movie buried in this slog that could have been extracted and polished into something worthwhile in more capable hands.

Whether you're viewing this caper under its original heading or the one that better matches the poster illustration, neither has much to do with what actually occurs in this flick. "Five the Hard Way" is the name of the song which runs during the opening credits, but that's as close as that moniker comes to squaring with the narrative. The amended Sidehackers masthead seems to be an attempt to cash in on a brief two-man motorsports fad, though this isn't much more illuminating given that the story's central protagonist Rommel is only one man and thus requires no pluralization for his sidehacking activities. Besides, while he does indeed participate in the indicated competitive pursuit, he does so by piloting a motorcycle rather than the distinctive eponymous accessory, which makes his best friend-slash-wingman Luke the only actual sidehacker we meet here; since there's only one Luke, also, no matter how you break down the title it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Further muddying this affair, the sidehacking ultimately has almost nothing to do with the plot, other than providing an opportunity to fill fifteen minutes with tedious footage of dirtbike races which are presented in such a confusing manner that it never becomes clear who, if anyone, wins. Rommel and Luke are evidently the circuit's star hackers, but this isn't really important, either. The more crucial aspect of their kinship is that Luke is the happily married exemplar who serves as Rommel's sounding board while he prepares to settle down with his fiancée, Rita. The latter couple's amorous bliss is established via an extended tableau of them frolicking in a meadow, during which the dialogue they exchange is so painfully saccharine that most viewers will find themselves wondering if writer Tony Houston ever actually had a conversation with a woman before he knocked out this screenplay.

The real story begins when we meet J.C., who is introduced as a curt and supercilious stunt rider of some sort, even though if memory serves we never once see him operate a vehicle in the entire film. While delivering his cycle to Rommel and Luke's garage for them to fine-tune it, J.C. becomes far more fascinated than we are with the concept of sidehacking, and his ardor is further piqued when he accepts Rommel's invitation to watch their next race. A brief friendship blossoms, culminating with J.C. attempting to convince Rommel to leave Rita behind and hit the road with him and his entourage. However, the more time all concerned spend in J.C.'s company, the clearer it becomes that his brash eccentricity is actually dangerous volatility; once he starts dropping N-bombs and smacking around his beleaguered gal-pal Paisley, the villain of the piece emerges in earnest. Worse, our hero faces another conflict in the form of the latter scheming abusee, who decides she's ready for a bit more stability in a partner and begins maximizing every opportunity she has to try to seduce Rommel.

But when her would-be new-daddy rejects her one too many times, Paisley resorts to some wickedness of her own, tearing her clothes to stage a sexual assault and telling J.C. that Rommel forced himself on her. Suddenly, the Sidehackers becomes an entirely different film, and the frivolous tone of its first act becomes even more befuddling, when J.C. and his goons storm Rommel's cabin, savagely beat him, then rape and murder Rita. The story quickly pivots to a bleak revenge tale, albeit one consistent with the meandering pace already set forth: Rommel decides to seek retaliation by killing J.C., but not before he has a long conversation with Luke about the immorality of vengeance, and then has basically the exact same conversation again with a previously un-introduced artist friend whose only contribution to the movie is that single drawn out and wholly superfluous scene he appears in.

Additional time is squandered on Rommel's struggles to come up with some cash to enlist the help of a musclebound meathead and a guffawing yokel to augment his punishment crew, and then some more with a handful of light-hearted passages which show the group cementing their tenuous alliance. But finally, after a long and winding track getting there, The Sidehackers eventually pays off. The last twenty minutes essay the final desert confrontation between Rommel's squad and the lamming J.C., who has helpfully bolstered his circle with several shooter-toting extras to multiply the film's body count and lend the closing action sequences increased gravitas. Despite the inept handling of the set-up, this concluding segment is surprisingly satisfying, loaded with gunplay and juicy blood squibs and punctuated with an exclamation point of an ending that might not win over a ton of fans but nevertheless serves up a memorable denouement.

Sure enough, the best moments in this outing could likely be whittled down to an episodic short, but The Sidehackers is nowhere near as worthless as its reputation suggests. While the pace is indubitably slow, that leisurely approach allows for a gradual and effective immersion into J.C.'s madness, and even though actor Mike Pataki doesn't look particularly menacing his deeds compensate for his stature. Ross Hagen's Rommel is a somewhat bland rugged everyman, yet that also works in the movie's favor, lending a sense of increased realism to the rough and gritty climactic combat. The horrific violence inflicted upon sweet, ingenuous Rita is more implied than explicit, presented via an unsettling montage of quick cuts rather than an exploitatively graphic rape vignette. And despite not fully reconciling the transformation an otherwise ordinary person would have to undergo to transition from wanting to kill the man who murdered his fiancée to actually setting forth on that mission (the only real soul-searching Rommel does here is essentially relegated to him standing in various locations gazing pensively off-camera), at least some effort is made to segue the protagonist from pathos to payback.

Make no mistake, this picture is indeed a mess. But it's a mess that mostly cleans itself up before the departing credits roll, making any cries of "worst movie ever" a stretch at best. Sweeping judgements like that are better made with a sense of perspective; in this case, I viewed the film as part of a Mill Creek box set which features four titles per DVD, and both of the movies on the flip side of this particular disc were at least ten times lousier than The Sidehackers. This missed opportunity may only have 30 strong minutes to speak of, but I've sat through plenty of flicks that don't even offer that much.