Tag: Kansas Bowling

MURDERCISE (2023)

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Directed By: Angelica De Alba and Paul Ragsdale

Written & Edited By: Paul Ragsdale 

Cinematography: Carlos Rodriguez

Cast: Kansas Bowling, Nina Lanee Kent, Jessa Flux, Ginger Lynn Allen, Drew Marvick, Luis Maya, Bryan Hurd, Adriana Uchishibia, August Kyss 

Phoebe is an obsessed fitness nerd who gets her big break on a sleazy workout video. After being ridiculed by her co-stars, Phoebe befriends a mafia princess wild child, who teaches her how to murder her way to the top.

This is a low-budget independent horror comedy. That takes place in the 1980s and is made like a straight-to-home video horror film Of That Aesthetic. However, some of the characters being covered in tattoos feel a little more modern-day. Either way, it feels like a lost USA UP ALL NIGHT movie 

The film is full of exploitation and just has an overall trashy tone. Though it is actually a fun and ridiculous film. That won’t be for everyone or their tastes. Though if you go with it, you won’t be disappointed. 

The film is filled with violence, sexual innuendo and plenty of nudity as well as acting that isn’t always perfect, yet fits the film and milieu like a glove. 

What works for the film though is that you can tell that the filmmakers. Truly have a love of these types of movies and showcase their passion for them. While making the movie their own. No matter how silly the film might be. As truly at times it feels like it is only a very short distance from using the same script and easily making it into a more adult-minded film. 

Especially in one scene where a character played by the hilarious Jessa Flux not only wants to have sex but show her breasts and have people look at them. When to her horror the man she was about to hook up with refuses to even look at them and she has a breakdown. 

The film is inventive with not only a serial killer on the loose but a main character who seems to have a mental break and can’t help killing others in her path. 

What helps the film is that most of the actors are so dedicated to their roles that they win you over with their characters and performances. Especially the lead played by Kansas Bowling.

The film never goes over the top to shock or disgust. It seems more devoted to keeping the audience interested. It moves fast enough to not ever be confusing. Though stops off for some extended comedic bits at times. 

This film came together from it appears crowdsourcing (going by how many associate producers are credited)  to make it become a reality that shows a lot of love and trust went into the film. It seems to have given all those who believed in it, what they asked for and expected. As it delivers that to a specific audience and hopefully gains more wandering eyes along the way. In this instance choose not to give it a grade. As not to dim any light on creatives and filmmakers out there whose sensibilities might be a little more singular. 

In the end, you get what you expect. This film was never made to win awards and gives the audience exactly what they expected and hopefully what they came for. It’s an homage while also being a film that could have easily fit in, in the time period showcased. 

CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS (2022)

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Written & Directed By: Joe Begos
Cinematography: Brian Sowell 
Editor: Josh Ethier 

Cast: Riley Dandy, Sam Delich, Jonah Ray, Dora Madison, Jeremy Gardner, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Abraham Benrubi, Graham Skipper, Kansas Bowling 

It’s Christmas Eve and Tori just wants to get drunk and party, but when a robotic Santa Claus at a nearby toy store goes haywire and begins a rampant killing spree through her small town, she’s forced into a battle for survival.

A punk rock trashy horror film, that indulges in all that is a naughty bit of violence and gore excessively. That plays as a slasher massacre for an hour.

While the first thirty minutes is what seems like an endless set-up of characters. As the reason for the killer, Santa Claus comes and goes so fast that it’s almost an afterthought. Then the film just goes forward with nary a hint of backstory.

It is obviously meant to be more of a love letter to 80’s horror films set during the holidays. Though it seems more like a quick exercise in excess.

A kind of anti-Christmas movie that does match the director Joe Begos’s style and interest. Which I am usually a fan of, but oddly doesn’t feel like it works this time all the way through. 

The Death scenes are more excessive than creative or too noteworthy. Luckily the film moves quickly and might remind the audience of a kind of rock n roll Rob Zombie horror film only without the more artistic flourishes and visions of grandeur. Though the director Begos does add slight sci-fi flavor or b-movie indulgence by making the killer Santa practically a more terrifying Terminator, only in a horror film. 

The film is modern but could be made in the 1980s trashy. So that it feels a bit retro. It seems like It’s going for fun at least in the first half of the film. As the first 20 minutes seem like exposition little of which ends up mattering. 

It seems an attempt to explore a friendship on the verge of becoming more. 

The film has low-budget action that keeps the audience interested with a high body count. That proves that no one is safe or sacred.

The film feels more like a film to watch to pass the time. A popcorn movie of sorts may be nice to play in the background. As it is easy to follow visually.

The film isn’t too inspired or inspiring. It actually feels like a quickie. It’s a movie, movie.  Nothing too deep is meant to be taken seriously. 

The conversations feel like Twitter-type ones. Where the dialogue is supposed to be cool but it never does. Even with hip characters. 

These horror films are supposed to be Empowering for women. All these skilled so-called warrior men in horror films. Who can barely stop the monster or slasher, maybe not even cause a dent, but a so-called regular woman who uses her head ends up defeating them in the end. Becoming the final girl. 

That character used to be kept virginal to make them Saintly or sex but diluting thoughts or bloodstream as well as a duality that was special or made them different. Usually, a way to please religious rights or moral codes is by being exploitative but the one pure makes it to the end. Even after the trauma of losing friends and/or family with great losses. A weird extreme scared straight. Here the female is sexual 

In the end, this should be a fun dream fantasy project, but it’s bogged down in bad dialogue. To lead to some uneventful hookup and a long introduction for disposable Characters where only one truly lasts.

Grade: D+

VEROTIKA (2020)

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Written & Directed By: Glenn Danzig 
Cinematography: David Newbert 
Editor: Brian Cox 

Cast: Sean Kannan, Ashley Wisdom, Alice Tate, Kayden Kross, Natalia Borowsky, Kansas Bowling, Rachel Alig

Follows the surreal and bloody trilogy of erotic horror stories culled from Danzig’s comic.

Wow!!! I was warned about this film beforehand, but I couldn’t really have expected this. Some people, they will love this film for how bad it is. Nothing truly prepares you for this film. 

Where you have to wonder was it planned this way. As it is hard to take anything seriously. Though that might sound like fun. This is a movie that is not fun to sit through at all. Unless maybe you are just into seeing onscreen nudity. As very little throughout this movie makes any sense.

All the women in most of the roles look like professional topless or naked models. Other than making the film overtly sexual at all times 

In the first story for instance the main female has eyeballs where her nipples are why? As it is never explained and then somehow the albino spider becomes human-sized and then proceeds to murder women for no reason. He is obviously in a latex suit that looks like a bad Halloween costume. Though only strikes when the lead female goes to sleep. 

Every character in this first story has a foreign accent for no real reason and they come off as sex objects mroe than characters. As they are all scantily clad for little to no reason. 

The acting is horrible throughout like in an acting class. The bad dialogue doesn’t really help even when it includes it’s influences with many scenes where the camera just stays and lingers and the characters awkwardly stand around really doing nothing or their last action over again such as a head shake. 

There is a TV reporter who is dressed more like a private detective in the first story. Just as to why in the first story does the lead female go to a porno theater and photoshoot after her roommate is murdered. Then while at the porno theater falls asleep and is groped and nearly raped and once she wakes up just gives the guys a nasty look.

Throughout the film women are the only ones killed. Most of the characters wear wigs for no real reason. 

The film Has modern touches but an old school culture and scenery like the third last tale which is basically the tale of Elizabeth Bathory who believed that by bathing in the blood of virgins she would stay looking young forever and that is exactly what happens in the third story she picks her victims strip them (young women) then bathed in their blood in what feels like real-time. Then will slice open a throat and there to get blood sprayed on her face that is the whole story.

Any lack of nudity in the first story is supplanted in the second and third stories. Only in the second, we get another, what feels like real-time, dedicated to watching strippers do routines in a club That looks almost like a huge basement. 

This is the only segment of the film that feels serious as it is a thriller about a stripper who cuts off faces to put on her wall because she is disfigured and wears a mask when she performs. This is also one of the only segments with an actor of note Sean Kanan from KARATE KID 3 playing the detective on the case. 

I can understand this film is supposed to be more inspired by gothic old-school macabre horror anthologies but it comes across as more ridiculous than inspired. Even the first scene where we are introduced to our host seems there more to shock than to make sense.

The film is low budget and you can tell as it comes across more like a failed student film. This feels like a modern-day Ed Wood movie.

The tales don’t offer a moral or any kind of irony and definitely no twists but they leave room for the anthology host to make ghastly bad joke punchlines for the endings and not even deliver that creatively 

The only reason I could even see this film truly getting financed and recognized is that rock star Glenn Danzig directed it and seems to price the soundtrack. 

Even at 90 minutes, this film feels indulgent. It’s not even the type of film you can have fun picking apart. This movie isn’t fun to watch or sit through. This is one of the worst films I have seen this year and maybe one of the worst ever 

Grade: F