Shudder Crud

Shudder is the only paid streaming service I allow to have a place in my life. In addition to a big fat library of scary bullshit, it’s also home to The Last Drive-In, a watch along show where Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy The Mail Girl talk to me about the movie I'm watching so i don’t have feel alone in the sawmill where i live and collect bones. I appreciate the aspect of curation here. Whenever I try to find something on my own I usually just scroll for hours before picking something terrible.

Anyway, here’s some Shudder Crud reviews, for the 2 of you out there who also pay for it. The rad, the bad, and the cruddy.

In a violent Nature

This is an “experimental” film, which means it’s boring but you have to pretend it’s not. The gimmick is that it’s a slasher flick from the perspective of the slasher, so you mostly watch him slowly walk through the woods. 

The concept of this film is more interesting than enjoyable. It’s an experiment that deserved to be made and viewed exactly once. The one really good thing about it is the nature itself, particularly the sounds of it all. It’s actually a good movie to have on in the background. Like a relaxing woodland screensaver that occasionally has someone getting gorily killed. 

You don’t even need to watch it, you can just listen. Lots of good bird and frog sounds in this movie. Also there’s a really cool song that plays during the end credits, but you’ll probably be asleep by then. 

It’s called The Black Fly Song. I just saved you two hours. 

Donnie Darko

I remember this movie being real popular with the scene chicks in high school. If I had watched it back then I could have had something to talk to them about. But I thought it looked gay. I was a fool. This movie’s cool as fuck, and there’s a teenage Maggie Gyllenhall in it, which 12 year old me would have liked to know, but it’s shithead fans neglected to inform me of that. 

People who like this movie are the real reason I never watched it. All they ever talk about is how complex and confusing it supposedly is. Umm… no. It’s pretty straightforward. After the way it was built up, the only thing that confused me about the movie was how confused i wasn’t. 

It’s a simple story of my future brother-in-law, Baby Jake, and his perfect sister, living in a nice big house and going to a cool school where everyone moves in slow motion and listens to badass 80s new wave all the time. Then he almost gets hit by a plane and becomes friends with a monster who teaches him how to time travel so he can un-meet his girlfriend in the past and die, thereby saving her life and also incidentally letting a pervert go free. It’s not that complicated, people. Also the monster is really a man, and he gets his eye blown out. 

Apparently there’s a director’s cut, but the general consensus seems to be that it's too long and makes the movie worse by explaining too much, so screw that. I watched The Last Drive-In Cut, which also made it longer, but the extra time was devoted to Darcy’s heaving thunder-melons, which made the movie better. 

Late Night With The Devil

I watched this one twice, so it must have been pretty good. It all unfolds over an episode of a 70s talk show doing a spooky Satan special, but things get too spooky. An actual Satan shows up, and while the characters are trying to determine if it’s really really real, we the film-viewers know that of course it’s real because otherwise the movie would suck and be totally pointless. 

They did a really great job making everything look and feel authentic to the 70s late night vibe, and the actor for the host did an equally great job at being just slimy enough, but still sympathetic and likable. If this were a real guy with a real show I'd watch it.

That’s really all that needs to be said. This is a movie with a strong premise that nails everything it’s trying to do and beyond that reviewing it feels unnecessary. It’s cool, it’s scary, it’s retro and rad. What do you want from me?

Stay Out of The Fucking Attic

This movie sucked a whole pile of ass. Don’t watch it, for any reason, ever. The dialogue was terrible, the characters were stupid, the story was idiotic, and everything else about it reeked of farts.

3 movers are moving some shit from an old man's house, but the old man turns out to be a Nazi scientist who plucks out the black chick's eyeball to... do some science with it, I guess. Also he keeps a ghoul crawling around the house and i think there were two chicks stapled together at one point. I can barely remember. I don't even think i saw the attic in this movie.

The main character is covered in Nazi tattoos that he says he got in prison, only for protection. But then the Nazi scientist reveals that he actually got them before prison, making him a real skinhead after all. Then the black chick, who is strapped to a table and just got her eye ripped out, starts lecturing him about racism like it really fucking matters in this moment.

The emotions in this scene are downright bizarre. She was literally joking and laughing 2 minutes after getting her eye ripped out, like it was just a minor inconvenience. But this dude being ashamed enough of his past bigotry to hide it from her, that's what gets her yelling and screaming. Yes, the script really is that bad, and the acting sells it by being even worse.

Eventually the dude gets up from the table, tells the Nazi scientist that being a Nazi scientist is actually bad, and skins the swastika off his chest with a knife, for emphasis i guess. He leaves the one on his arm, but whatever.

Stay away from this fucking movie.