Joe Begos’s VFW is a satisfying action-horror exploitation homage to the work of John Carpenter and bears an undisguised resemblance to that director’s excellent Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). In a similar siege scenario, the trouble starts when a girl named Lizard (Sierra McCormick) steals a backpack’s worth of dope from spikes-and-leather-clad local kingpin Boz (Travis Hammer) and takes refuge in a VFW post. Zombie-like addicts known as “hypers” soon descend on the unsuspecting veterans in the bar, throwing them back into action and forcing them to draw on their military experience in order to stave off the psychotic horde. (“An army of braindead animals is still an army,” one of the characters remarks – almost as if commenting on current events.) The cool “old but still runnin’” cast includes Stephen Lang as barman Fred; William Sadler as titty enthusiast Walter; Martin Kove as used car salesman Lou; David Patrick Kelly as Doug; and the always likable Fred Williamson as Abe. Cheers fans will also appreciate getting to see George Wendt perched at a bar again in his brief role as Zabriski. VFW’s pacing is brisk; the atmospheric look of the film is on point; and Steve Moore’s electronic score capably captures the Carpenterian evocation of the impending. The earthy screenplay, with its lines like “‘Sorry’ don’t feed the bulldog” and “What in the cocksucking fuck just went on in here?”, is nothing special; but admirers of the 80s action and horror genres and VHS culture will appreciate moments like the weapons preparation montage and the nocturnal excitement of it all.
4 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that VFW is:
[WARNING: SPOILERS]
War-ambivalent or disingenuously antiwar. Fred has a serious moment in which he laments all the comrades he saw die in Indochinese mud, but some of the messaging as well as the mostly flippant ultraviolence of the proceedings – with guns, axes, bats, and a circular saw employed to dispatch disposable antagonists, not to mention the scene in which a musclebound brute uses a drug addict’s head as a battering ram – undermine earnest consideration of the human costs of war. There is arguably, too, a neoconservative content to the sequence in which Lou seeks to negotiate with the narco-terrorists and is killed for his trouble. The screenplay leaves it to a villain to describe soldiering as glorified “murder”.
Midly anti-capitalistic. Lou, as a used car dealer, stands as an unflattering avatar of the business mindset.
Drug-ambivalent. An info-blurb at the front of the movie mentions the current opioid epidemic, and early on a dead-ender jumps to her death. Other substances receive more favorable or at least ambiguous treatment, however. Fred drinks and drives without comment during the exposition, though later Lizard snatches a bottle from his hand, telling him, “This is bullshit” and calling him a “pussy” for boozing when things get tough. Sadler smokes “shitty cigarettes” while Doug smokes “science weed”. Abe calls marijuana “poison” and sticks to liquor until, just before the final battle, he snorts a fistful of the bad guys’ dope to give himself a martial edge.
Civic nationalist. Veterans in the film regard each other as worthy comrades regardless of race. “They gonna feel the might of the American military!” Williamson declares, and one of the hypers even gets a flagpole shoved down the gullet.
After enduring a brutal seven years of imprisonment and learning of his mother’s death from cancer, “hardened, rusty nail” Cain Burgess (Scott Adkins) breaks out and seeks his vengeance against those responsible for his torments. At the top of his list is his loan shark brother Lincoln (Craig Fairbrass); but before arriving at the climactic confrontation, the viewer is treated to a series of nasty flashbacks to prison brawls, police beatings, and other fuming catalysts for Burgess’s hate. This British film is surprisingly violent and bloody and ought to satisfy those looking for something tough, dumb, and full of broken beer bottles and spite.
3.5 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Avengement is:
5. Anti-police. Police and prison guards are mean, insensitive, corrupt, or resort to unnecessary brutality.
4. Reformist. Cain, despite having no prior criminal record, is thrown into prison with extremely violent convicts after botching a robbery. He emerges as a hardened killer, the film seeming to suggest that the criminal justice system only breeds more dangerous menaces.
3. Racially suspect. Lincoln’s black accountant, Stokes (Terence Maynard), is a family man, listens to classical music, and would be classic exemplar of Africanus cinematicus if not for also being described as a “crooked fucker”. The overwhelming majority of the rowdies Cain has to fight in prison are white, with only a couple being black, and no racial self-segregation into gangs seems to occur in this apparently postracial penal institution. An impersonal board of officials responsible for Cain spending longer behind bars, however, is multiracial, with a “fuckin’ ponce” of East Indian origin presiding. It must be said that the sight of a row of brown bureaucrats casually signing off on punitive extensions of the white protagonist’s sentence hardly presents the new, globalized Britain in the most positive light. A gangster (Nick Moran) also has this to say about Mexican justice: “In Mexico, you know what happens to people that behave like that? They string ’em up under a bridge, cut off their dick, and shove it down their mouths […] you know, they’re savages.” This statement is left unchallenged, but the general savagery displayed by Britons throughout the film may be intended to serve as an implied and relativistic rebuttal.
2. Anti-usury. Cain gets back at his loan shark brother by redistributing the money in his bank accounts to those he has victimized. Lest this idea of debt forgiveness be interpreted as somehow even vaguely skirting the edges of crypto-anti-Semitism, however, the screenplay makes sure to mention that one of those whose lives were ruined by the predatory loans is named Silverman.
1.Pro-family. Cain loves his mother and, living up to his name, goes after his brother only after being betrayed. Lincoln’s sin, meanwhile, is prioritizing his business interests over family ties. Never believe a bent copper over your own flesh and blood!
Adios – the “final” piece in constructing the “Columbine Matrix”?
On Hitler’s birthday, April 20, 1999, the abrasive German electronic pop group KMFDM (depending on the source, either “Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode” or “Kein Mehrheit Furh Die Mitleid,” which means “No Pity for the Majority”) released what was supposed to be its final album, Adios. This would be a comparatively insignificant footnote in history if not for the fact that this was also the day of the Columbine High School massacre. Eric Harris, a fan of the band, took notice of what he seems to suggest is something more than a simple coincidence. “Heh, get this,” he wrote in his journal. “KMFDM’s new album is entitled ‘Adios’ and its release date is in April. How fuckin appropriate, a subliminal final ‘adios’ tribute to Reb and Vodka [i.e., Harris and Klebold], thanks KMFDM…”
“The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, amid pressure over the long delay in publishing their investigation’s findings, released a report in May 2000 including over eleven thousand pages of lead sheets, ballistics and eyewitness reports and other attack-related media,” Evan Long states in the introduction to his essential documentary challenge The Columbine Cause. “The length of these reports did not lend them to rapid digestion, and the 9/11 attacks and overall shift in the American political climate of 2001 obscured many of the pressing domestic troubles facing America,” Long continues. “Perhaps the dust of the Twin Towers has settled enough by now for the people of the world to take a fresh look at the attack launched on Columbine.”
Was the “Trench Coat Mafia” something other than what mainstream media outlets reported it to be in 1999? Was the Columbine massacre something other than what it appeared to be? “Now, as far as the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency or some type of brainwashing network, we have to be careful here in terms of avoiding that which our convictions may prejudice us to believe,” Michael A. Hoffman II cautions in “The Columbine Matrix”, a lecture he recorded shortly after the event.
In other words, a good researcher doesn’t act a priori. He doesn’t establish what he wants to see in a story and then look for those things. But rather, he goes to a story with an open mind, even if that report, even if the news details, contradicts his own convictions about something; and, therefore, to the very best of my knowledge, I have not yet seen evidence of an organizational brainwash going on against these two boys. In fact, I think we need to understand what happened in Littleton at a higher level of mind control than what has been previously put forth.
Note the KMFDM hat.
Notwithstanding the absence of concrete and credible evidence of intelligence agency involvement, Long, using material released after Hoffman delivered his lecture, presents a compelling case for a cover-up of testimonies concerning disturbing aspects of the Columbine event. The details are beyond the scope of the present essay, which the reader should supplement with a viewing of The Columbine Cause. A further quotation may, however, whet the appetite:
According to an unnamed individual in the JCSO report, the attack had been “the big rumor for two years.”
And Martin Middleton, who had been in the Jefferson County area in the mid-90’s, at that time encountered an individual talking about the attempted bombing that would take place on Hitler’s 110th birthday who also told him that the Trench Coat Mafia which would be attempting it was not just a bunch of lonely depressed kids, but something much larger.
Indeed, we were told after the attack that the Columbine attackers had planned to not just shoot and maim a few dozen students, but to kill 500 people, level the school with bombs, hijack a plane from Denver’s New World Airport and, despite their total inexperience with aviation, fly it over 2000 miles where they would perhaps lodge it into skyscrapers in New York City, a plan which may have sounded foreign to audiences of 1999 but which today seems all too familiar.
Natural selection, a concept that interested Harris in the social Darwinist context, is also referenced in “Rubicon”, a song by KMFDM, one of the boy’s favorite music groups.
Original artwork for the Coup’s album Party Music. A few promotional copies of the CD were sent out with this cover before the official release.
Those acquainted with 9/11 conspiracy lore will be aware of the theories of eerily prescient content in the entertainment media during the years leading up to that event. Such films as The Siege (1998) and Fight Club (1999), in addition to the notorious pilot episode of the short-lived Fox TV series The Lone Gunmen, furnish examples of these alleged indications of foreknowledge of the World Trade Center attack, as does the scrapped artwork for rap group the Coup’s 2001 release Party Music, which depicts the Twin Towers being remotely detonated. Similarly, with Columbine, conspiracy-oriented researchers like Hoffman and Long have pointed to the proliferation of a violent trench coat goth image and sensibility in Hollywood productions like The Crow (1994), The Basketball Diaries (1995), Blade (1998), and The Matrix (1999), which was released a mere three weeks before the shootings in Littleton, Colorado.
As with Warner’s Party Music, the cover of TVT Records’ suspiciously synchronized KMFDM release displays a startling parallelism with the events of that day. Mimicking comic book artwork, the Adios imagery created by Aidan “BRUTE!” Hughes shows two gunmen being rammed and run over by a scowling driver. The content of at least one of the songs is strangely relevant to the Columbine massacre, as well. The lyrics of one track, “Full Worm Garden”, go in part as follows:
Tincture of lead be said with no remorse full of confusion
Wish to enjoy this weightlessness lay me out full worm garden
A noose-knit put on sweater tie it up around the arm
Looks to grip along the trigger down the barrel of a gun
KMFDM’s Sascha Konietzko models the trench coat look.
Another song on Adios, titled “R.U.OK?”, concludes with these interesting lines:
For a moment you might question what you see
For a second your whole world will disappear
This is mind control and you know it
This will shut you up and you know it
Mind control
This is mind control
Mind control
This is mind control
Mind control
This is mind control
That’s all you get
It’s all you need
“That’s All”, meanwhile, features the enigmatic phrases “Get defamed in isolation two plus one negate divine”; “News-print news-peak nevermind”; and “Free the hostage situation taken as a simulation”. “Rubicon”, another of the tracks on Adios, has this to say:
Violence for inner-peace
Bombing for therapy
Terror is everything you need
Cross the dotted line
Fake your destiny […]
Natural selection is based on deception
The ignorant elder empowers the youth
KMFDM fans
Both boys were known admirers of the group and were photographed wearing KMFDM apparel. Eric Harris made multiple references to the group’s body of work in his writings, and it is difficult, in retrospect, to listen to KMFDM’s output in the years leading up to the Columbine massacre without psychologically hyperlinking much of the band’s imagery back into the Trench Coat Mafia’s “Columbine Matrix”, as Hoffman terms it.
More than one of the songs included on KMFDM’s 1995 album Nihil conveys an angry anxiety coupled with a lack of agency. “Flesh” declares “I am the thing that I can’t control”, while “Beast”, the following song in the album’s sequence, screams “I got no choice / I’m out of control / And the kids just love it”. The listener can only expect to “get respect / When you’re kickin’ ass,” the singer explains. “Some people call them terrorists,” says the sample of an unknown man’s foreign-accented voice that opens the track “Terror”; but “these boys have simply been misguided.” Repeated lines in the song describe a fragile mental state: “I’m close enough to trip the wire / I cannot keep my hate inside.” “Our societies are saturated with bloodlust, sensationalism and violence as a result of alienation from oneself’s reality,” explains another of the sampled voices in “Terror”. Nihil’s next song, “Search & Destroy”, asks, “Are we victims or winners / Believers or sinners? / Do we sit in the saddle / Or are we just cattle?” Here again, as would be the case with much of the public discourse that followed the Columbine massacre, the lines separating automaton and deliberate actor, victim and brutalizer, are blurred.
KMFDM’s 1996 effort Xtort declares itself the “Industrial soundtrack to the holy wars” and, in its opening number “Power”, prescribes the use of “Excessive force”: “The children of fear / Are not alone / Rivers of tears / Flesh and blood / An eye for an eye / That’s all we’ve got”. “Craze”, a particularly evil-sounding song on this same album, is especially interesting in consideration of Hoffman’s advancement of his theory of “Revelation of the Method”, or “Must Be”, as James Shelby Downard termed it, according to which a shadow establishment openly mocks its intended audience, both confirming and strengthening its control over a population by “telling you what they are doing to you”. “There’s nothing like giving the game away / All the people are feeling the same today,” asserts a demonically processed voice in “Craze” that goes on to command, “Take a hammer and break a bone for me / There’s nothing like giving the game away”. Whether intentionally or not, the song expresses the wicked delight an elite manipulator would presumably feel in dropping such cryptic hints as to his doings and intentions. Also notable on Xtort is “Son of a Gun”, which describes a “Massive attack” by a “Son of a gun” who has been “Born to kill”. “All are equal” to this “Superhero #1”, who exercises “No discrimination” in his murders – a characterization that prefigures Salon writer Dave Cullen’s description of Harris and Klebold: “They were equal-opportunity haters, railing against minorities and whites, praising Hitler’s ‘final solution’ – and then ranting against racism.” Harris said “Son of a Gun” was one of his favorite songs.
The song “Stray Bullet” from KMFDM’s 1997 album Symbols is known to have been of interest to Eric Harris, who made reference to it on at least one occasion. A “Stray bullet / From the barrel of love” is both an eroticized explosion of violence and an apotheosis: “Stray bullet / From the heavens above […] I’m the illegitimate son of God”. “Megalomaniac”, another track from Symbols, declares “Terrorism our trade” and “Chaos our mental state”. “Anarchy”, a song from Symbols mentioned in Harris’s entry in classmate Nathan Dykeman’s yearbook, evokes a character motivated by revenge who has “made a God out of blood”. Had Harris and Klebold, as Hoffman suggests with reference to the desensitizing content of The Matrix, taken their “MKULTRA marching orders” from KMFDM?
Konietzko
KMFDM snarler-songwriter Sascha Konietzko has complained that “a giant shitstorm came down on KMFDM” after the Columbine horror, and it is entirely possible that Konietzko is justified in his outrage at the band’s being falsely implicated. It is not this essay’s intention to charge that the personnel of KMFDM or Rammstein or any other group are Mossad or Central Intelligence Agency contractors bent on programming America’s youth for commission of acts of mass murder. Easy answers may never be forthcoming where the Columbine massacre is concerned, with more mystery and convolution emerging the more one examines the case. This essay is purely exploratory.
A lack of conclusive information does nothing to dispel the number of anomalies and bizarre circumstances surrounding the event, the release of Adios being one of many of these. Evan Long cites “an unnamed individual in the reports [who] called up accounts of a Denver-area culture well outside the bounds of humanity.” He continues:
This individual, who attended another high school in the area, related that he had been to parties attended by goths and Trench Coat Mafia individuals in their 20’s across the area, and that most of the Trench Coat Mafia individuals were out of school and that there were not very many who were still in school. He stated that they were into bloodletting, cutting and violence.
He also was questioned on sexually explicit photographs found in his backpack which were homosexual in nature, and stated that he had been to the house of an individual known to some in this circuit as “Pedophile Bill”, a homosexual man who was, quote, “not nice sexually” and had given him these pictures and also showed him photo albums which made him sick to his stomach. The albums, he said, contained sexually explicit photographs of small children up to the age of fourteen.
Who was “Pedophile Bill” and what was his connection, if any, to the events at Columbine High School? How extensive was the Trench Coat Mafia, and what was its organizational structure – if indeed it had any to speak of? If Long’s film The Columbine Cause demonstrates anything, it is that the public does not know what happened April 20th, 1999, in Littleton, Colorado, and that further research, much of it on the ground, must be conducted before the case can be closed to any critically conscious observer’s satisfaction. As Sheriff Ted Mink’s reported destruction not only of weapons and shell casings from the crime scene but also the infamous “Basement Tapes” of Harris and Klebold indicates, the authorities are determined that no independent investigator will ever be able to challenge establishment narratives with the aid of this key forensic and psychological evidence.
Weirdo and generally sleazy San Francisco character Graeme Whifler began his directing career in music videos, specializing in bizarre outings for Ralph Records artists like the Residents. His other credits include directorial dabblings in television documentary programs like Ancient Prophecies and the original screenplays for Sonny Boy (1989) and Dr. Giggles (1992). He also wrote and directed the notoriously extreme horror project Deadly End (2005).
What does Whifler have to say for himself? “All I wanna do is get inside people’s minds and fuck with ‘em and make them feel and think things that they’re not supposed to feel or think,” he confesses, “so I know, when I’m writing, if I’m doing something right, I’ll start giggling like I’ve just, you know, taken a shit on the floor and I’ve done something really bad […]”1 Whifler prides himself, indeed, that he has done something “really bad” with his horror opus Deadly End, as he boasted to one interviewer:
Our last victim was in France, some poor psychologically frail young woman required hospitalization from watching my little movie, but she’s fine now.
Deadly End might never have been released if it weren’t for some guy going into a seizure during one of the film’s “heavy” scenes. It was playing in a huge theater; part of Montreal’s Fantasia Festival, and this guy starts croaking like a frog and flails about on the floor. Well, thank God, sitting right next to him was Stuart Gordon of Re-Animator fame. Stuart rushed to the lobby to get help, found a young woman selling popcorn, told her what happened in the auditorium, and all she said was “cool”. The guy made it to the hospital okay, but Stuart was so impressed by witnessing Deadly End’s deadly power that he vowed to find the film a distributor, which he did, thank God.
The guy who had the seizure wrote me an e-mail months later saying he liked what he saw and was wondering how he could get a DVD so he could see how the movie ended. I sent him one, hoping to score my first fatality. But truthfully, the film isn’t that gory or bloody, less than a cup in the entire movie. I do employ certain other small psychological triggers so that as they add up, they give most a fun ride. For the weaker and less fortunate, it’s Darwin time. […]
Graeme Whifler
Irwin Keyes – horror fans know this name – came to a small screening at my home, and he brought his girlfriend. Half an hour or so into the move, Irwin’s gal snuck out of the room. I found her 45 minutes later, outside, in the rain, crying. After the film finished she came back inside, cold, wet, and pretended that nothing was wrong. What can I say, Deadly End squeezed some sore somewhere deep within her. The part that set her overboard was the radio talk show announcer’s rap, “God’s greatest gift to man is pain” (I stole that line from Harry Crews). She told me she’d never heard something so sad.
Irwin’s girlfriend reacted kind of like the 20-year old woman in a Phoenix theater who left the Deadly End screening sobbing to take refuge in the little girl’s room. She said the old people in the movie reminded her of her grandmother and it was just so sad she couldn’t take it anymore. Then there was the autistic guy in Calgary who I caught in the lobby trying to sneak out of the theater fifteen minutes before the movie’s big ending. He looked upset and he told me he thought something really bad was about to happen. I scolded him for leaving before it was over and assured him the film had a happy ending. He shuffled back into the theater. I saw him after the movie was over and he didn’t look too good. The movie really burrows deep and upsets some, the weak, the lame, der untermenchen. Deadly End is a sort of psychic crematorium for those of unsettled minds.
Just kidding. […]
When people ask me “Graeme what kind of movies do you like?” I answer “I like movies where people get hurt.” Of course, that includes tragic drama and good comedies. But what I don’t like is seeing people getting hurt in the same ways over and over and over again. Most all the “genre” product is so tired and so lame. I’ve pretty much given up going to the movies unless I’m hungry for popcorn, but recently I’ve noticed they are starting to put something in the butter topping at the theaters that’s making me sick.2
Expendables 3 has hardly begun before the titular crew of mercenaries is massacring prison guards to liberate murderer Wesley Snipes. Typically for the series, the film simply expects the viewer to take for granted that the “good guys” would never shoot anyone undeserving of death. (Speaking of which, no Expendables review would be complete without the obligatory reference to how close to death some of these guys appear. “Relax. You’re gonna give yourself a stroke,” Stallone is warned before his upcoming adventure.)
This entry in the franchise does, however, evince more of something approximating a heart or emotional center in its plot involving renewed conflict between Stallone and treacherous ex-partner Mel Gibson, whose presence does much to enhance part 3. Gibson, now an arms dealer, has been deemed a war criminal, and CIA honcho Harrison Ford, in a role alluding to his turns as Jack Ryan in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), hires Stallone to retrieve him from Central Asia for trial at the Hague.
What ensues is tons of dumb fun, with better action scenes that dispense with the gallons of CGI gore on display in the previous outing. The viewer almost forgets what villains the heroes’ real-life counterparts are. A campy charm attaches itself, admittedly, to the wince-worthy scene in which Ford, providing air support for the beleaguered Expendables and obviously embarrassed by the unimaginative dialogue, half-heartedly mumbles, “Drummer’s in the house.” Expendables 3 is worth a rental for that moment alone.
4 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Expendables 3 is:
7. Disingenously anti-torture. In one of the movie’s biggest unintentional laughs, CIA creep Harrison Ford complains that Gibson is responsible for the torture and killing of two of his men. As Gibson later says of Stallone’s character, “He thinks he’s the good guy.”
6. Pro-drug. There is a lighthearted feel to a scene in which Kelsey Grammer’s flying is impaired by his drunkenness. The Expendables get together to drink in celebration of a successful mission, while Dolph Lundgren, whose combat readiness is unaffected, just likes to drink for the picturesque hell of it.
5. P.C. Snipes objects to Stallone using “spook” with reference to a CIA agent.
4. Feminist. Ronda Rousey plays a tough-as-nails bouncer-cum-soldier whose looks conceal deadly fighting prowess. “Men,” she huffs with contempt before fatally shooting a man.
3. Anti-family. “If you’re lookin’ to go the family route, it’s the wrong job for you,” Stallone admonishes Rousey. “There are different kinds of family,” she replies. “And when my life is on the line, that’s my family fighting with me.” In other words, a gaggle of ragtag cutthroats is no less valid a pillar of personal and national stability than some old-fashioned assemblage of the biologically related.
2. Multiculturalist. In addition to two black Expendables and an Asian one, this third installment adds a Latino as a nod to that group’s demographic ascent, with Antonio Banderas providing some odd comic relief as a lonely acrobatic weirdo desperate for an excuse to machine-gun people.
1. Neoconservative. Like the other Expendables films, this third entry continues the work of conditioning the American male to accept overseas hellraising and mass murder as an exciting career opportunity, or at least as something deserving of their patriotic admiration. “I am the Hague,” Stallone says in triumph, alluding to his famous line from Judge Dredd (1995). In other words, the United States as the indispensable superpower and global force for gay, is exceptional in that it constitutes in itself – and even through the acts of its lowliest mercenaries – the world’s judge, jury, and executioner. “Very tribal,” Gibson says of the Expendables’ penchant for ritual murder – leaving the viewer to determine which Tribe he has referenced in his remark. As usual with this sort of movie, too, there is a dig at nationalist Russia, with Gibson spending some time there and giving the impression that Putin’s New Nazi Germany Russia is some sort of haven for evildoers.
The CIA no longer even cares if Americans know it conducts dirty wars through mercenary proxies. “This one’s off the books. I’m not even here,” says Ford, clearly thinking himself very cute. Those incorrigible Central Intelligence scamps! Oh, well – boys will be boys. Maybe a couple of decades from now, Hollywood will be making action movies celebrating the “ISIS” scam and the takedown of the evil Assad regime. “We killed a lot, but we saved more lives than you can possibly imagine,” Gibson excuses his days as a hired assassin for the Company. Whatever.
Sorority sisters, haunted houses, and nights of revenge are all typical slasher movie elements; but Killer Party this is decidedly not. A Canadian blast of cold gore porn, The Scarehouse is a story of two competing horrors: the tortures inflicted by its vindictive protagonists, on the one hand, and the vapid “21st century party monster” mentality of their bevy of victims on the other. As to which is more appalling, that is for each viewer to decide. Co-ed sadists Corey (Sarah Booth) and Elaina (Kimberly-Sue Murray) are out of prison and out for vengeance after taking the rap for a sorority prank that resulted in an involuntary manslaughter. Determined to torment their fellow sisters, the pair has designed a haunted house attraction to mask the actual torture laboratory within.
The lighting and atmosphere of the film should satisfy devotees of the genre, and genuinely homicidal psychos should also be entertained. The lead performances, particularly Booth’s, are strong; but The Scarehouse, like other torture-oriented horrors, suffers from lack of likable characters. The backstory explaining the night’s motivation is never sufficient emotional justification for the shocking degree of onscreen brutality, and serves only to ensure that even the screaming victims of the atrocities garner little audience sympathy. Occasionally humorous, The Scarehouse is more often disturbing, and this reviewer would much prefer to have seen a movie about these two characters not killing people.
2.5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that The Scarehouse is:
4. Homosexuality-ambivalent. From the perspective that there is no such thing as bad publicity, The Scarehouse is pro-gay for featuring homoerotic flirtation between young women; but the portrayal of the lesbian lead as a psychopath is hardly flattering.
3. Anti-Christian. Jesus freak Jaqueline (Katherine Barrell) stands for the film’s contempt for “fire and brimstone shit”. Other irreverence takes the form of the sadists’ appropriation of crucifixion symbolism: Corey has a cross tattoo on her back, while Elaina at the end can be seen wearing a crucifix.
2. Anti-drug. “You might want to stick to water.” Drinking, along with a rufie, results in the accidental death that sets the plot in motion, and drunks are also more susceptible to the torture porn treatment. One of the songs on the soundtrack also refers to alcohol poisoning.
1. Anti-feminist. Whatever The Scarehouse’s intentions, it shows something of a divided mind with regard to its array of targets. Elaina and Corey advertise no overt ideological motivation for their murder spree, but do demonstrate a distaste for traditionalism as it takes on grotesque, hypocritical forms. Jaqueline’s Christian good girl moral code is a lie, so she must be punished. Similarly, Katrina (Emily Alatalo), for “Frankensteining” herself in an exaggerated devotion to a male chauvinist’s hourglass figure ideal, must answer for her betrayal of her sorority oath to embrace woman’s “inner beauty”.
Corey and Elaina, if they are supposed to be radical feminist progressives, discredit their cause with their violent antics. The moon phases pictured on Corey’s tank top may mark her as merely a walking, talking, rampaging case of PMS. “Why does everyone think I’m a lesbian?” she wonders aloud, to which Elaina replies that “there is some truth in it”, the implication perhaps being that the political agenda of Corey and her type is motivated more by sexual frustrations than by reason or fairness. Elaina blunders through the sorts of clueless academic abstractions that cause social experimenters’ projects to fail. “You know I only have textbook theory,” she frets. “I built this place on a lot of theory, and this is a test run, so give me a frickin’ break on a few minor flaws.”
The fact that horny, drunken fraternity men appear as the gullible victims and not the perpetrators of murder and sex crimes undercuts the popular misandrist myth of an ubiquitous “rape culture” on college campuses. Women’s degradation and endangerment appears as their own doing in The Scarehouse. The sisters only degrade themselves by calling each other “cunt” and “bitch”. As women’s femininity has been eroded, their pedestal toppled by political empowerment, they no longer enjoy their previous freedom from violence and sexual mutilation at the movies. (“I am going to punch her in the box,” Corey threatens.) Just as a man can be kicked in the crotch with the utmost casualness, as has been the case for decades, “liberated” (i.e., dehumanized) women are now more apt to see their breasts removed or their eyelids ripped off on the big screen. A satirical indication of the degeneration wrought by the sexual revolution comes when the sight of the bloody and ravaged Katrina makes one character wonder if this is a “sex party”.
Robert De Niro stars in this gory, mean-spirited “comedy” as a glorified serial killer and sadist who, with his sad pyromaniac spouse (Michelle Pfeiffer) and two chip-off-the-old-block teenagers (John D’Leo and Dianna Agron), has moved to Normandy at the behest of the Witness Protection Program. Posing unconvincingly as an academic, De Niro and his ultraviolent spawn lay waste to the French in a nihilistic bid for the affections of the Freedom Fry aficionados in the American audience. Tommy Lee Jones, looking as wrinkly and battered as the Constitution, appears as De Niro’s long-suffering Witness Protection case worker. The veteran leads are fun to watch, but their characters live too far beyond the possibility of redemption to deserve two hours of viewers’ time. Recommended to neoconservatives only.
3 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that The Family is:
5. Anti-Christian. Pfeiffer lost her virginity in a church. A judgmental priest (Christopher Craig) becomes irate and commands her to leave his cathedral after hearing her confession.
4. Ultra-green, with De Niro’s brown tap water driving him to an act of eco-terror.
3. Feminist/pro-castration. De Niro’s daughter – surprise, surprise! – is tough as nails and delivers a savage thrashing and genital-beating in reply to a come-on.
2. Zionist, perpetuating the myth that America “liberated” France. The Family, with its story of smug, self-important Americans storming overseas and asserting themselves by destroying things, serves as a frightening allegorical normalization of Jewish-American foreign policy. Gullible audiences, The Family hopes, will internalize as good, old-fashioned Americanism and “family values” the license to commit genocide that Rush Limbaugh chooses to pretty up as “American exceptionalism”. Pfeiffer, for instance, blows up a grocery store after overhearing a perfectly justified complaint about American (i.e., Jewish) media brainwashing. Jews appear in The Family as the victims rather than as the perpetrators of organized crime.
1. Pro-torture/anti-human. Men having their bones broken, testicles crushed, being dipped head-first into a barrel of acid – how hilarious! From murder to thievery to drug dealing in a school, The Family’s attitude is that crime is cute. De Niro, furthermore, attempts to validate his admittedly “sadistic urges” by arguing that he mutilates people for a “good reason”. “You’re the best dad anybody could ever ask for,” his daughter informs him moments before he drifts into a daydream about barbecuing a neighbor’s head. “Writing is intense,” he says in another reflective moment. “I feel like I been lookin’ at myself in a mirror all day.” One wonders what hideous creatures The Family’s screenwriters, Michael Caleo and Luc Besson, glimpse as in a mirror while they ply their appalling trade.
Rodriguez’s most recent contribution to the Mexploitation subgenre, Machete Kills is exactly the movie one would expect it to be: a shallow, self-congratulatorily hip, and hyperviolent celebration of Mexican ethnic pride and muscle-flexing Reconquista. Danny Trejo reprises the role of the righteous butcher who in this sequel accepts a presidential offer of American citizenship in exchange for stopping a cataclysmic missile strike on Washington. Machete Kills is sufficiently fast-paced to ward off snores, but the cartoonish tone and the flippant approach to the violence keep it from generating any emotional interest or genuine suspense. One hopes for the sake of the future of film that this big-budget B-movie brand of Tarantinoid, winking, self-aware exploitation fetishism has almost run its course.
3 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Machete Kills is:
13. State-skeptical. “Justice and law aren’t always the same thing.”
12. Anti-military. Corrupt soldiers sell government-issue arms to a drug cartel.
11. Anti-family. A whore recounts how her father raped her. (see also no. 2)
10. Drug-ambivalent. Machete “don’t smoke”, but lights a bazooka like a bong. The drug cartels are his enemies.
9. Pro-miscegenation. Can anyone blame Miss San Antonio (Amber Heard) for being unable to resist Machete’s haggard, wrinkly, and humorless Aztec charms?
8. Anti-gun. Machete prefers blades. A campaign commercial associates Second Amendment advocacy with pork spending on military hardware. The principal villain, Voz (Mel Gibson), is a firearms manufacturer.
7. Globalist and war-ambivalent. “This isn’t about Mexico no more. It’s about the world.” Voz reveals he has installed puppet troublemakers in North Korea and Russia so as to pump government interest in his military wares. While there is truth in the notion that international bogeys are frequently manufactured as pretexts for war, Machete Kills endorses the neocon worldview to the extent that it accepts that Russia and North Korea are legitimately threatening to American national security. “Fuck world peace,” says Miss San Antonio.
6. Feminist. “Don’t call me sweetheart,” bristles Sartana (Jessica Alba) before gunning down a male chauvinist pig. Machete Kills milks the tired non-novelty of women acting tough and shooting their mouths and machine-guns, which here include weapons mounted on the bosom and crotch. Interestingly, the long tradition of sexual violence directed exclusively at the male genitalia finally seems to be coming home to haunt the feminists in the form of the sickening “pussy punch”. Only girls are allowed to play this dirty hand, however. (see also no. 2)
5. Anti-Christian. Voz looks forward to a day when “kingdom comes”. White supremacist Sheriff Doakes uses expressions like “Amen” and “Hallelujah”. Assassin the Chameleon (a shapeshifter portrayed at different points in the film by Walter Goggins, Cuba Gooding, Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderas) drives a truck called the “Holy Roller”, with kitschy religious knickknacks on the dashboard. “Preach it, Sister,” says villainess Miss San Antonio.
4. Anti-white. Whites – surprise, surprise! – are the bad guys. Those who, like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, concern themselves with America’s sovereignty and security, are represented in Machete Kills by the likes of the dopey Minutemen-like “Freedom Force” and Sheriff Doakes (William Sadler), who calls Mexicans things like “taco” and “beaner”. Voz plans to abscond into outer space with a load of Mexicans to serve him as slave labor. Blonde beauty and secret agent Miss San Antonio lives up to her hair color and turns out to be a traitoress. The decision to cast Mel Gibson, with his off-screen baggage of accusations of anti-Semitism and bigotry, as supervillain Voz reinforces the anti-white/anti-racist theme.
3. Pro-amnesty. Machete is Mexico, observes President Rathcock (Charlie Sheen), who by offering citizenship to Machete is in effect endorsing the wholesale naturalization of everybody south of the border. “Even Jesus couldn’t get through that damn wall.” Sadly, many of the ignorant dupes who see this movie will probably be led to believe that there actually is a wall protecting the U.S. from turd world invasion.
2. Anti-human. The title says it all, with enough red splattering to paint a barn. In addition, Miss San Antonio in her pageant speech endorses “a woman’s right to choose.”
2010’s Kick-Ass advertised itself as presenting audiences with “A New Kind of Superhero”. What was new was the fact that, in that film, the hero nearly drops the ethnic disguise that crypto-Jewish predecessors – Batman, Superman, and others – had worn in winning the public’s heart. In adapting John Romita, Jr.’s comic book for the screen, Kick-Ass not only exposes but almost openly celebrates the Chosenness of its protagonist by transforming Dave Lizewski from the blond, Nordic-looking character of Romita’s creation into a curly-headed, bespectacled Jewish nebbish ably portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
Hit-Girl, too – though her name is given as Macready, and despite being portrayed by Chloe Grace Moretz, a precocious actress who claims to come from a “very Christian” background – conveys a decidedly Judaic sensibility; and the character’s Jewishness goes overt in the scene in which she watches as her father, Nic Cage, conflagrates as a one-man Holocaust.
Kick-Ass 2 (2013), like its forebear, is filthy, foulmouthed, ultraviolent, and full of over-the-top bloodletting, but only half as engaging as the original Kick-Ass. For one thing, the novelty of the DIY hero idea is diluted by the fact that Kick-Ass 2 populates New York City with whole armies of would-be superheroes and villains, none of whom are fully developed characters as Kick-Ass and Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) are in the first film.
Nor are matters helped by the fact that the entertainment-evaporating Morris Chestnut receives extra screen time as Hit-Girl’s tedious foster father Marcus, a straight-laced, sterling example of Africanus cinematicus who chides his young ward for her obscene language and institutes a swear jar penalty for every offense. Meanwhile, the toilet humor factor, as if to compensate for Kick-Ass 2’s lack of human interest, is ratcheted to the nth degree, with Kick-Ass and girlfriend Night Bitch (Lindy Booth) literally having sex in a toilet stall. The only other paltry attraction of note is Jim Carrey in his supporting turn as ridiculously mugging and slugging hero Col. Stars and Stripes.
Chloe Grace Moretz as Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass (2010)
Fortunately, Chloe Moretz is a few years older this time out, which softens the borderline pedophilia of the first film’s fetishization of Hit-Girl. Kick-Ass made explicit Hit-Girl’s forbidden appeal to older males, with her leather outfit, whore wig, short skirt, sensuous, sneering lips, and penchant for blowing kisses and using language like “cunts”, “motherfuckers”, and “giant cock”. One scene of the first film frames her against an erotic billboard advertisement with Claudia Schiffer, juxtaposing Hit-Girl’s juvenile form with that of the fully developed sex siren.
Hit-Girl inappropriately framed with Claudia Schiffer
Kick-Ass (2010) writer and devourer of innocents Jane Goldman
Kick-Ass screenwriter Jane Goldman, in the A New Kind of Superhero documentary included on the Kick-Ass blu-ray, refers cryptically to the “odd domesticity” between Hit-Girl and her father, a wording which casts a disconcertingly serious light on Hit-Girl’s meaning when she says, “I’m just fuckin’ with you, Daddy.” Kick-Ass 2 only reinforces this impression when Hit-Girl tells Marcus, “I know you see me as this little girl, but I’m not, and I never was. You’re right, Daddy did take my childhood away, but I’m not so sure that was a bad thing.”
Kick-Ass 2 (2013) writer-director-cryptographer Jeff Wadlow
2.5 of 5 possible stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Kick-Ass 2 is:
10. Anti-Arab. Hit-Girl threatens to “go Saudi Arabia on your ass” before chopping a man’s hand off. A typically hypocritical Zionist warmonger, she engages in precisely the crimes of which she accuses the enemy. The Motherfucker’s henchmen commit an Islamic terrorist-style decapitation – which, like those supposedly performed by ISIS on Foley and Sotloff, never actually appears onscreen. (cf. no. 1)
9. Crypto-antichrist. Kick-Ass/Dave Lizewsky, though substantively Jewish, affects a veneer of Christian belief for gullible audiences, attending a Christian funeral ceremony for his father (Garrett M. Brown). Lizewsky’s irreverence toward his putative faith reveals itself, however, when he affects a comical pimp disguise with gaudy crucifix bling. On his bedroom wall, furthermore, is a poster advertising Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar’s comic book American Jesus, book one of which is titled “Chosen”. Military-minded Col. Stars and Stripes, meanwhile, is a born-again Christian who shows his faith and patriotism by dishing out beatings with his trusty baseball bat and barking orders like, “Yo, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!” “I’ll be immortal, like an evil Jesus,” says the Motherfucker (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).
8. Egalitarian/class-conscious. The wealthy Motherfucker and his minions are the “one percent”, with heroes coming from what remains of the middle class. “A family livin’ in the street deserves a hot meal,” opines Col. Stars and Stripes in his role of embodiment of the schizophrenic mental retardation that is Barack Obama’s America.
7. Multiculturalist, pro-miscegenation, and pro-wigger. Hit-Girl, an orphan, is raised by an Africanus cinematicus. Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca), Kick-Ass’s girlfriend from the first film, breaks up with him and informs him that an African rival has a larger “baton”. Girls are encouraged to twerk and jerk to congoid booty-shaking beats.
6. Drug-ambivalent. Hit-Girl cut her teeth on the drug dealers she and her father targeted, but wins in the end of Kick-Ass 2 with the help of hypo full of adrenaline. Mr. Lizewsky is concerned that his son may be using drugs, but “an inebriated college girl deserves to make it home safe at night,” proclaims Col. Stars and Stripes.
5. Pro-gay. The Kick-Ass queer super-friends and allies include a token sodomite. Homophobic talk, the audience learns, “makes you sound super-gay.”
4. Misandrist and pro-castration. Hit-Girl beats up and mutilates a number of men. “In a weird way, I kinda liked it,” says Kick-Ass of being on the receiving end of Hit-Girl’s abuse. More than one male groin gets brutalized. Night Bitch devotes her career as a superheroine to stopping sexually predatory men.
3. Anti-racist(i.e., pro-yawn). Would-be supervillain the Motherfucker is loose with the racially insensitive stereotypes, which he defends rather as “archetypes”. (cf. no. 10)
2. Anti-family. Chris D’Amico (Mintz-Plasse) accidentally murders his mother in a fit of rage. Then, after discovering her S&M gear, he repurposes the items as a bad guy costume and dubs himself the Motherfucker. Hit-Girl’s high school rival, a catty and unprogressive blonde bitch (Claudia Lee), only aspires to be a wife and mother. (also see above remarks on incest and pedophilia)
1. Zionist. “We were in the ultimate clique. It didn’t matter that no one else knew. We knew,” gloats a self-satisfied Kick-Ass. Supervillain and would-be “evil Jesus” the Motherfucker knows that Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl – which is to say, Zionist Jews – assassinated his father (Mark Strong) in the first film. The ‘Fucker’s mother (Yancy Butler), however, dismisses her son’s claims and insists that Mr. D’Amico simply “died in a fire.” The Motherfucker, then, stands in Kick-Ass 2 as an insulting caricature of all the disgruntled “conspiracy theorists”, a representative of the Gentile Spring and the ascendant minority of the angry and awakened gentiles who know that the Jews did 9/11.
Kick-Ass 2 contains what may be a cryptic admission of Jewish guilt for the 9/11 attacks, if considered together with the conclusion of the first Kick-Ass, which ends with gangster Frank D’Amico exploding into an orange fireball high outside a New York City skyscraper. In the sequel, the hero teams up with a new vigilante (Donald Faison) who goes by the name Dr. Gravity – a handle suggestive of the force dictating that what goes up must come down. Significantly, the scene in which “ultimate clique” member Kick-Ass and artificial force of nature Dr. Gravity beat down two street thugs with skinhead haircuts takes place outside a restaurant with a sign clearly visible at the top of the frame. “Since 1911,” it reads – a reference to 9/11/01?
China and Russia, both inconvenient geopolitical counterbalances to the implementation of a Jewish World Imperium, appear personified as antagonists Genghis Carnage (Tom Wu) and Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina), best described as a female version of Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV. In another show of Jewish storytelling chutzpah, Col. Stars and Stripes’s German shepherd is suggestively named Eisenhower and wears a tacky American flag mask. The American president and Supreme Allied Commander of World War 2 is thus revealed as the Zionists’ pet, a faux-patriot Shabbos goy attack dog to be unleashed on the enemies of organized Jewry.
Lastly, the much-abused phrase “peace in the Middle East” occurs in the script as a reference point for something incredibly complicated, in the sense in which the proverbial “rocket science” is typically used. This, of course, obscures the fact that Americans, instead of subsidizing the Israelis’ genocide against the Palestinian people, would do better to further the aim of peace by cutting off Israel’s 3.5 billion-a-year in welfare checks.
Jesus-believing U.S. Constitutionalist EXPOSING Satanic globalist SCAMS & TRAITORS in Kansas, America, and the World at-large. Jesus and BIBLE Truth SHALL PREVAIL!
More than one of the songs included on KMFDM’s 1995 album Nihil conveys an angry anxiety coupled with a lack of agency. “Flesh” declares “I am the thing that I can’t control”, while “Beast”, the following song in the album’s sequence, screams “I got no choice / I’m out of control / And the kids just love it”. The listener can only expect to “get respect / When you’re kickin’ ass,” the singer explains. “Some people call them terrorists,” says the sample of an unknown man’s foreign-accented voice that opens the track “Terror”; but “these boys have simply been misguided.” Repeated lines in the song describe a fragile mental state: “I’m close enough to trip the wire / I cannot keep my hate inside.” “Our societies are saturated with bloodlust, sensationalism and violence as a result of alienation from oneself’s reality,” explains another of the sampled voices in “Terror”. Nihil’s next song, “Search & Destroy”, asks, “Are we victims or winners / Believers or sinners? / Do we sit in the saddle / Or are we just cattle?” Here again, as would be the case with much of the public discourse that followed the Columbine massacre, the lines separating automaton and deliberate actor, victim and brutalizer, are blurred.
KMFDM’s 1996 effort Xtort declares itself the “Industrial soundtrack to the holy wars” and, in its opening number “Power”, prescribes the use of “Excessive force”: “The children of fear / Are not alone / Rivers of tears / Flesh and blood / An eye for an eye / That’s all we’ve got”. “Craze”, a particularly evil-sounding song on this same album, is especially interesting in consideration of Hoffman’s advancement of his theory of “Revelation of the Method”, or “Must Be”, as James Shelby Downard termed it, according to which a shadow establishment openly mocks its intended audience, both confirming and strengthening its control over a population by “telling you what they are doing to you”. “There’s nothing like giving the game away / All the people are feeling the same today,” asserts a demonically processed voice in “Craze” that goes on to command, “Take a hammer and break a bone for me / There’s nothing like giving the game away”. Whether intentionally or not, the song expresses the wicked delight an elite manipulator would presumably feel in dropping such cryptic hints as to his doings and intentions. Also notable on Xtort is “Son of a Gun”, which describes a “Massive attack” by a “Son of a gun” who has been “Born to kill”. “All are equal” to this “Superhero #1”, who exercises “No discrimination” in his murders – a characterization that prefigures Salon writer Dave Cullen’s 
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