Coons! Night of the Bandits of the Night

COONS! NIGHT OF THE BANDITS OF THE NIGHT takes us deep into the dark underbrush, revealing the terrible truth about the suspiciously-masked critters of the title. These furry freaks have begun to attack and devour their human neighbors. Now, mankind must fight for the survival of the species.

Enter Ranger Rick Danger (Brian Kamerer), and a host of colorful characters including: A hippie, hillbillies, Jeezuz-hugging bible boys, and a rock band. How they will be of any use in the aforementioned struggle is anyone's guess.

This micro-budget horror / comedy makes up for its total lack of funding with a barrage of idiot humor. Just wait until you see the raccoon / human hybrid zombies!

Recommended for lovers of the blissfully moronic...

I thought maybe this would be a funny movie, but about 10 minutes into it I realized that I was dead wrong. I wanted very badly to leave the theater in which this dreadful movie was playing, but I was sitting in the center and didn't want to appear to be rude. I just felt like it was a waste of everyone's time, and afterwards discovered that other audience members seemed to agree. "Coons" is supposed to be a comedy, but it's really more like some kids playing pretend and wishing that they were funny. This movie got a lot of local press because it was made by some teenagers -- quite an embarrassment when everyone realized that they had made a big deal over an amateur high school movie! The kids who made this movie need to attend film school, because they just don't get how to do it right. They want to be like Monty Python but all they're doing is making Monty Python look like Shakespeare. Anyway, don't bother with this.

I saw this movie at Ohio University. I couldn't believe how horrible it was. It was dreadful. Put it this way: it's no different than watching a bunch of high school boys get drunk and make fart jokes. Not funny, not scary, not good. Waste of time! Don't even bother with this mindless adolescent trash. If you really have a desire to watch high school students act like children, then just go to the mall. It's unbelievable that the producers of this movie didn't realize how horrible this is, unless they were children. This sets a poor example for young boys, and most importantly, it is a slap in the face to filmmakers who actually take their work seriously. For a better satire, go watch Monty Python, Mel Brooks, or David Zucker. "Coons" isn't satire, or parody. It's like being in the center of a really bad party. This is not a movie!

Travis Irvine is a director to watch out for. Not necessarily because he might hit it big with the next Hollywood mega-hit, but just because he can make a damn good Troma movie. By that I mean more than one usually expects. Usually, for example, movies released by Troma don't have stories that one can actually follow or care to follow, and the pacing sucks like a Mega-Maid vacuum. Irvine's approach, not too unlike that of Trey Parker with Cannibal: The Musical, is to be a good storyteller while *also* taking to task everything he can in the most childish ways imaginable. God, this movie is funny and fun as hell, even if it's main gimmick are raccoons who fling their own poop and can fire guns and communicate in similar immature talk like their human counterparts. I should also mention they're all taxidermed raccoons who are puppeted like Jim Henson Creature Shop drop-outs.

Cool, huh? It's about the town of Independence, in any-state USA, where Ty and his friends are settling in to party hard at a campground (and, you know, maybe Ty will lose his virginity, see what happens with the hot girls around). There's lots of Beer (name-brand "BEER") and plenty of bad-fake mustaches, and also a very real menace: raccoons prowling and attacking people any chance they get, with the people either dropping dead or becoming rabid themselves. A Hippie and a Muslim named Al-Jazeera try to combat it and get the kids and authorities involved, but to not much avail - that is until the raccoons take lots of names. And there's blood, and intestines, and puke, and feces, tons of everything, and did I mention cheesy fake blood and attacks that include raccoons that swing into action from vines from trees?

So yeah, you should know it's not Antonionni going in (then again maybe rabid raccoons were just what his career was missing), and that it's chock-full of what I've mentioned above. And there's a little more though, like actually really hilarious stuff, not just unintentionally funny, like a musical number done by the camp teens about fighting the Coons with the end of song and the reveal of who these guys are pointing their guns at to be a perfectly timed satirical gag that would make Spike Lee pee himself laughing and/or in anger (and until the end it's the only real racial humor used at the expense of the title).

The raccoons themselves are super-cheap, but it goes with everything else- the acting, the jokes, the fx, the beards and mustaches and stock footage of planes flying and well-timed fireworks. No stone is left unturned when it comes to being as stupid as they want to be, but the difference this time as opposed to cheaper and dumber Troma fare (i.e. Cornman) is that there is a good sense of pacing from the director, and for everything that's as cheesy as Wisconsin it's always a good yarn thats main limitations are with cost and talent. Mr. Irvine could go places - at the moment he's living' the dream of low-budget horror-comedy filmmakers everywhere. Go wranglers!

If you like low budget, genre mocking, self deprecating movies, I think you'll enjoy Coons! We saw it at a local screening and spent the rest of the day quoting it and laughing about favorite moments. For a group of people hanging out on a rainy afternoon, it was a great conversation starter. If you missed it, and this type of movie strikes your fancy, I encourage you to rent the DVD, pick up some beer and pizza, and have some friends over for a movie.

If the above does not apply to you, you will think the movie is terrible. But then, I thought Titanic was terrible some people saw it 10 times in the theater, so personal preference matters a lot. Enjoy!

I should add the preview for the director's next movie, about running for mayor of his home town, looks pretty entertaining.