Girls Gone Dead

What possessed me to rent this flick?I'm not per-say a T&A fan nor do I dig the current trough of contemporary,no-budget comedy/thrillers that pop-up on Thriller channel (say like "Andre the Butcher"-utter dreck which also features the ubiquitous Ron Jeremy).Or maybe it was Howard Stern regulars Beetlejuice and Sal the Stockbroker,a little but not really. Actually it was one-time scream queen Linnea Quigley that drew me to this,being a loooooong time fan of hers. She barely makes a cameo but it's nice to see her having a good time with her sparse material (playing a dive-Tiki bar owner with a fake Austrailian accent).I thought I would turn the disc off at that point,but I was pleasantly surprised.

The plot's pretty slasher-flick formula stuff.A straight-laced Christian girl joins her much more rowdy gal pals on a jaunt to a sparsely-populated Daytona for spring break.All the while,the hot-to-trot girls a stalked by a monk-like serial killer with a cherubic mask(a reference to "Valentine" maybe?).

Even someone with Beetlejuice's intelligence can figure out the killer's identity,even the weak plot twist at the end(a reference to "Scream 3" maybe?).But what matters is that you'll have fun getting there due to some truly inspired comic timing.Could this have been a better movie? Sure,with 60 x's the budget....but don't let that detract you,believe me,I've seen worse.

Like I said,a bigger budget would've improved this and the performances,while not Oscar caliber,are at least tolerable.The lead actress Katie Peterson is attractive and likable and the tantalizing Stewart and Whitford are hilariously bitchy.Other notables include ex-WWE great Jerry Lawlor as the goony sheriff,and the aforementioned Sal the Stockbroker,Beetlejuice,and as himself,Ron Jeremy,who curses aloud that he won't get his paycheck after the mayhem starts.

So rent this,get some brews,invite your frat bros to your dorm room and have a blast. I guarantee this'll put a smile on your face and it's 500x's better than "Piranha 2DD",which is more deserving of a 3.6% rating(no,actually lower)than "Girls Gone Dead".

I have a friend who believes that bad movies have to be ignored when it comes to writing a review, advising me numerously: "Don't glorify junk". I used to disagree with him, debating that even the junkest movies have to be reviewed; to learn about the different faces of "bad", to chronicle a movie despite its low quality, to spread awareness, or to register your opinion anyway.

This round, I swear, for the very first time in my life as a reviewer, I feel that he's right. Because just writing about (Girls Gone Dead) seems like a glorification of junk, rather filth!

So it's a slasher. And there are the forever usual goods: naked girls + cruel murders. Namely: nudity + gore. In more pure words: sex and violence. BUT made in the worst worst worst Z-movies' traditions!

The production is surreal. The sex factor is beyond inhuman. The performance is extremely painful. Long story short; the artistic everything is what really "Gone Dead"!

After Quentin Tarantino's (Grindhouse - 2007), as if a wave of so proud nonsense was born through many independent companies. They thought that they were making the genre badly, yet in a respected self-parodying and honoring manner. However, they impudently forgot to do anything right in the way!

The wicked subtlety was replaced by stubborn primitiveness. And parodying the stupidity was done by frank true stupidity. For little instance, some of the special effects look gross-out, not because it tries to cinematically look gross-out, but because they're actually gross-out!

The cyclopean marathon of "which was the worst?" doesn't end. I mean, was it the black midget?, was it the comedy?, was it the girls? No, it was my status while watching all of that, where "great" is deserved being said about one thing, and one thing only, in this movie: its superpower to make you vomit!

This is incredibly poor, abysmally dirty, and deadly ugly. As a horror, horror-parody, or even too-bad-it's-good movie; IT'S LOUSY. Though, to find any appropriate definition for it; I can say that it's a parody of the horror-parody, so horrifically bad, and no comic at all!

It kills you by ugliness; and what a cruel killing that is.

When did rambunctious rock and roll music replace collective and subtle horror movie synth and serve as the main source of suspense when something is happening? And for that matter, when did it become hip and fun to show dozens upon dozens of bare breasts and buttocks mindlessly in a horror film? Girls Gone Dead takes both of these things and incorporates them into a rather ordinary, yet interesting horror film, almost as if there is a good, successful film struggling to overcome the weight of the lukewarm one on top of it.

The story concerns Rebecca (Katie Petersen). a young woman who has been kept tied down with harsh restrictions and a tight religious upbringing by her mother. Rebecca and many of her friends, all of whom ex-cheerleaders, plan to vacation in Manatee Creek, a place where one of the girl's daddies owns a beach-house. When the girls discover Manatee Creek is a retirement community and there is almost no fun to be had. They get the bright idea to drive down to Daytona, Florida where celebrity Beetlejuice (played by himself) is filming "Crazy Girls Unlimited," a series where girls flash every part of their body in exchange for fifteen minutes of fame. Alas, there is a stalker who is repeatedly turning up in a red cloak and an ancient weapon straight out of a grim reaper novel, and the body count begins to start.

It takes the film a good hour before even a sign of a climax appears, but in the mean time, we are bombarded with shot after shot of gratuitous nudity. It wasn't long ago I saw Piranha 3DD, a film that had me wincing at the lack of intensity, depth, and interest. All those things had been traded for gutter-minded idiocy and unnecessary female nudity. I return to my original question; when did this become a regular addition in horror films to the point where few people address it anymore? Is it just assumed from the start that audience members who will eventually pay a nice amount of money to see a horror film couldn't care less about depth and structure but more about shallow and pointless nudity? When we are finally met with consistent kills, everything happens so fast, lacks credible suspense, and becomes no different than a number of slashers that already exist. When the film does start to get mildly deep and interesting is when dialog starts to come into play during the last act, but again, the film prefers to go the way of many other low-budget horror films. That way is quick cuts, no build-up, and relentless monotony.

The characters we are supposed to sympathize with are flyweight mannequins who talk in a way that perfectly mimics stuck up girls; with a sarcastic tone in their voice and a pause between every three or four words. The dialog is solely crafted either off of redundant swear words or miserably contrived efforts to be hip in such childish insults, uttered, again, by the flyweight mannequin characters.

Girls Gone Dead could definitely be rendered as an effective piece of horror by those searching for some cheesy escapism. More power to them and I wish them a pleasant evening of viewing. The film is certainly more surprising and a tad more interesting than most straight-to-DVD titles, not to mention, the special effects work is fitfully satisfying in some parts. Its problems stem from how easily distracted it gets with scantily clad girls, its lack of suspense, how long the entire thing takes to get going, and the indifferent methods it takes to try and engage the viewer. And don't get me started on the abundance of credit cookies the film breathlessly throws at the audience after the show should be long over.

Starring: Katie Peterson, Caley Hayes, Shawn C. Phillips, Ron Jeremy, Beetlejuice, Sal the Stockbroker, and Jerry Lawler. Directed by: Michael Hoffman Jr. and Aaron T. Wells.

Watching bad horror movies is like my favorite pastime but some movies are just so bad that they aren't even fun to watch. And yes, this is one of those movies.

The problem is that this is a very self aware movie. It deliberately tries to be bad and like a B-movie, which often is an approach that doesn't work out too well for these type of movies and make them annoying, rather than fun and entertaining, as clearly also is being the case for this movie.

The movie definitely doesn't play out as a serious and straightforward slasher. It's taking more of a comedy approach, with as a problem that none of the comedy is very good or clever. The movie its most fun moments are its cameo's by cult figures, such as the awesome Beetlejuice, Ron Jeremy and Sal Governale. But of course cameos can't save a movie and I think I would had actually preferred this movie done as a straightforward slasher. That way the movie at least would had been something more entertaining and thrilling to watch and might had resulted in some better gore and killings as well. There is now far more nudity than gore or blood in this movie really.

Everything in this movie gets extremely exaggerated, which gets truly tiresome after a while. I got fed up with this movie, about halfway through and it did absolutely nothing to ever win me back.

The movie is also definitely lacking a good and likable main character in it. It's all over the place with its story and characters, as if the film-makers were having a bit too much of a good time shooting this movie, which went at the expensive of the quality and eventual end result. It's not really following a good and clear enough main storyline, which only makes the movie more annoying to watch.

Really, I can truly appreciate the passion craftsmanship that went into a bad horror production but I just can't respect or like a movie that deliberately tries to come across as a silly and bad B-movie flick. It just feels far too forced and desperate, making the movie a far from good or fun one to watch.

3/10

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Hands up if you like hot women. And hands up if you enjoy excessive violence. If you haven't got both hands high in the air, then you've got the wrong film, because babes and blood is what Girls Gone Dead is all about. Although described as a comedy/horror, decent laughs and scares are in short supply, while T&A and gore fill almost every frame.

The film sees six sexy girlfriends spending spring break together being targeted by a killer brandishing a massive warhammer (a cool weapon—part axe, part hammer). That's pretty much it as far as plot is concerned, at least until the unmasking of the maniac and we get a typical slasher explanation for their killing spree.

During the course of the film we get lots of skin from some very curvaceous cuties (blonde lead Katie Peterson and brunette Brandy Whitford are smokin'!), oodles of cool blood and guts courtesy of Marcus Koch, and fun cameos from cult icons such as ex-pornstar Ron Jeremy, scream queen Linnea Quigley, and teeny-tiny bug-eyed Howard Stern regular Beetlejuice (who gets his head chopped off!).

Obviously, it's all very puerile, but since when did a film have to be sophisticated to be fun?