TheRowdyMan

One of serval direct-to-video tapes by exploitation king, Charles Band that showed gory highlights from films distributed by Wizard Video. The framing of this clip show centers around various women who are drawn for one reason or another to the El Rey theatre where an audience of zombies are watching clips from different zombie movies.

The warp-around segments featuring the women in trances and rubber masked zombies are goofy Halloween style fun. The clips are a spoiler reel of the highlights from grindhouse titles like Zombi 2, Zombie Lake and The Astro-Zombies. The clips themselves condense the films into a 5 to 10 minute highlight-reel of the gore and the nudity with very little plot points.

If you grew up a horror fan in the 1980's, this may have some nostalgia for this kind pre-internet "best of" film. And while some what entertaining, its serves nothing more than a interesting curio from the VHS-era.

I'm not sure whether you can blame COVID-19 for this lazy cameo episode. I'm sure this idea could have been a winner if it was in the hands of Cinemassacre. One thing it does finally settle - even when James is phoning it in, he's still much funnier than Bores.

Cats isn't just bad because of the distractingly bad CGI gaffs. While these did take me out of the film, the film's biggest problem is that it's boring. For such a fantastic approach to its character design, the film is painfully milquetoast. There little cinematic atmosphere and other than basic dramatic lighting. It feels less like a musical and more like a recording of a stage production or a with better costumes.

Other than the weird CGI, the cats themselves are either annoying or forgettable. Francesca Hayward's Victoria maintains the same bewildered look throughout the film. Rebel Wilson and Jeremy Corden's jokes are out of place and seem like a desperate attempt to appeal to a non-musical fans. A highlight is Ian McKellen, who knows to give the material a bit of camp and ham that it needed.

McKellen aside, I had I hopes that this would be a secret so-bad-it's-good gem. Sadly, due to its overall blandness, it doesn't even work on that level.