Tag Archives: Arkansas

The EVIL Experiments of Dr. Frankenstein’s Great, Great Grandson in “The Hideous Bog Monster” reviewed! (Cheezy Movies / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Fouke, Arkansas is a small town about to have big problems when a maximum security hospital maniac escapes and now roams loose in the woods.  Disguising himself as the infamous hairy bog creature of local lore, the lunatic embarks on a killing spree, massacring the local game hunters, and collecting their dead corpses for the unholy experiments of Dr. Frankenstein, the fourth generation heretic from a long lineage of conducting evil scientific practices.  Together, the lunatic and Dr. Frankenstein plan to use a stolen ancient Vatican book, not meant for the eyes of man, for his sadistic work of defilement, but a supernatural warrior, an elite team of Vatican assassins, and the local yokels seek to join forces to stop evil at all cost. 

Backwoods horror has never been more backwards when trying to absorb James Baack’s escaped lunatic killing, Satanic cult worshipping, slasher-esque aping, demon slaying, rootin’-tootin’ “The Hideous Bog Monster” released in the most backwards, backlogged, backache year of the global pandemic of 2020.  By now, you’re probably thinking you’ve never seen so many backs in one sentence in all your life, but James Baack, who wrote and directed the 2020 film, is no stranger repeating himself at the helm of homemade schlock and title pulpy horror as the filmmaker has made a career behind the 70’s-inspired horror entitles, such as “Dracula’s Orgy of the Damned” and “Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate.”  “The Hideous Bog Monster” is a production of Baack’s Chicago-area centric The Great Lakes Artists Group, using the Arkansas folklore of the Fouke Monster of Boggy Creek as a foundational backdrop for more sinister practices, shot in nowhere near Arkansas, but all over tarnation in Illinois.

Movies similar to “The Hideous Bog Monster” usually involve a tightknit troupe of cast members that have performed in some way, shape, or form in previous James Baack productions in a kindred melting pot of close friends and family members.  Tina Boivin is one of those actresses who has had a role in every James Baack film to date.  This time, Boivin braided her red hair and hiked up her booty shorts resembles a redneck version of Dave Thomas’s Wendy in Sally Bell, a foul-mouth, uncouth, hayseed maiden caught in the mix of all hell breaking loose in and around Boggy Creek.  Sally Bell is joined by her equally unsophisticated friend, Flunky (James Baack), and the elite Vatican hitwomen, The Sisters of St. Tommy Gun, to do the Lord’s work with disparate to the story planetary names in Sister Saturn (Bianca Baack), Sister Venus (Jenna Aboukamar), Sister Jupiter (Tanya Raz), and Sister Mars (Suzy Streske).  As what seems like a climatic clash of a good versus evil showdown, the action is sorely subdued to little excitement, exhilaration, and enthusiasm to the spirited adversaries who are eager to destroy, but barely use the zapping powers, automatic rifles, submachine guns, and hand-to-hand combat blades they’ve been so graciously armed with and, instead, Baack weaponizes only the wit of Sally Bell to verbally assault otherworldly demons. Hasn’t the filmmakers heard of sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me? Depth is also lacking behind the eyes of every one-time use characters, especially in Herbie Savages’ deranged killer dressed up in a Spirit Halloween bought gorilla outfit to exude his insanity and obsession with the Bog Creek monster. The remaining cast rounds out with Andrew Baack, Wendy Pierson, Kandace McVickar, Steve Galayda (also producer), Nicholas Baack, Evan Pierson, Tom Ziellienski, and Pete Alessi as Dr. Frankenstein.

“The Hideous Bog Monster” follows no rhyme or reason story structure that ultimately feels, at every possible angle, very arbitrary coming to ahead. Paced like a slug riding a sloth dragging it’s long-nailed feet through the strong winds of category five hurricane, a resembling randomizing character generator also creates pop up characters adding to the enigmatic puzzle dish of cryptic and longwinded exposition and then disappear in the blink of an eye in a fueling the flame to only be quickly extinguished in a heap of plot-choking smoke moment. Between pillaring principle leads are the Witch, Lumpy, the Apprentice, and even Dr. Frankenstein, who exceed the amount of allotted strain in following these half-built story arcs, causing a major slow down of the story progression. Partnered with run amuck scenarios that have little-to-no links of connective tissue also dampens the likelihood of seeing “The Hideous Bog Monster” from beginning to end without feeling either confused on just about everything thrown at the audience, hoodwinked by the decently illustrated poster art, or exhausted to the point of surrender in keeping up with James Baack’s four-letter word spouting clunker. Much like many urban legend spun horror films, the Fouke Monster has had about the same amount of butchered luck down the cinematic avenues as Big Foot and there have been better films, such as “The Legend of Boggy Creek” in 1972 to “The Legacy of Boggy Creek” in 2009, inspired by the nefariously elusive swamp creature since the mid-70’s after it’s so-called sighting in Fouke Arkansas.

Another small town is on a trope-laden path to terror as “The Hideous Bog Monster” set to be unleashed upon us all in 2021 on DVD courtesy of Cheezy Movies (aka Trionic Entertainment). The region free, 110 minute runtime release will be presented in a widescreen, 16:9 aspect ratio, and will be not rated. While I can’t comment on the DVD’s audio or visual components due to the digital screener provided, the SOV-esque of “The Hideous Bog Monster” shimmies barely into the said style made popular in the low-budget 80’s and 90’s horror scene, capturing crudely the video recordings of creative horror filmmaker and despite poor output quality, regardless of a digital screener or not, but Baack was able to garnish some respectable eerie shots like the opening of the film of a young boy wondering through a desolate trailer park on a foggy day. What happened to the young boy after being chased by the phony bog monster? Nobody knows and nobody explains what happens, what’s going on, or where’s things are going as gaps continuously riddle holes in James Baack evil has come back to small town America in a slap-happy slap-comedy horror squeezed dry of terror, but pumped full of unfunny hillbilly rhetoric.Another small town is on a trope-laden path to terror as “The Hideous Bog Monster” is set to be unleashed upon us all in 2021 on DVD courtesy of Cheezy Movies (aka Trionic Entertainment). The region free, 110 minute runtime release will be presented in a widescreen, 16:9 aspect ratio, and will be not rated. While I can’t comment on the DVD’s audio or visual components due to the digital screener provided, the SOV-esque of “The Hideous Bog Monster” shimmies barely into the said style made popular in the low-budget 80’s and 90’s horror scene, capturing crudely the video recordings of creative horror filmmaker and despite poor output quality, regardless of a digital screener or not, but Baack was able to garnish some respectable eerie shots like the opening of the film of a young boy wondering through a desolate trailer park on a foggy day. What happened to the young boy after being chased by the phony bog monster? Nobody knows and nobody explains what happens, what’s going on, or where’s things are going as gaps continuously riddle holes in James Baack evil has come back to small town America in a slap-happy slap-comedy horror squeezed dry of terror, but pumped full of unfunny hillbilly rhetoric.


Purchase “The Hideous Bog Monster” on DVD by Clicking the Poster!

Nurses’ Put Up With All Kinds of EVIL in a “12 Hour Shift” reviewed! (Magnet Releasing / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

In the dwindling days leading up to the turn of the century, Mandy is about to start a 12 hour nursing shift at an Arkansas Hospital.  As a side gig, Mandy must supply fresh internal organs to her dimwitted cousin and organ mule, Regina, to earn a little extra cash to pay for her narcotic habit, a condition prolonged and sustained by a front desk colleague.  When Regina misplaces the bag full of internal organs and doesn’t deliver them to her ignoble black market boss, she returns to the hospital desperate and corners Mandy into coughing up more, even if that means killing a patient or two.   When Mandy profusely refuses, but reluctantly complies, Regina still takes matters into her own reckless hands and as the bodies begin to pile, Mandy has to stave off police interrogation and suspicion long enough to get through the long night shift of twisted circumstances and peculiar characters.

As if nurses didn’t already work tediously long hours on normal circumstances as it is, Brea Grant’s pitch black comedy, “12 Hour Shift,” is a cardiac inflamed melee of drug users, a convicted cop killer, and black market goons slaughtering it out with hapless patients caught in the middle.  “12 Hour Shift” is the sophomore film written and directed by Grant, released 7 years following her feature debut of the apocalyptic drama, “Best Friends Forever,” in 2013 as Grant also costars alongside Vera Miao as a pair of BFF journeywomen.  Now, Grant steps fully behind the camera, cherry picks real life headlines, and blends them with urban myths to inject cynicism right into our plump veins with pulpy anti-heroes and a graphic violence backdropped with a Y2K hyperbole.  Shot on location in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the film is produced by Matt Glass and Jordan Wayne of HCT Media and alongside actors, Tara Perry and David Arquette, and David’s wife, Christina McLarty Arquette. 

“May” star Angela Bettis jumps into scrubs as the steely junkie, Mandy, who teeters on benevolence after a streak of merciful killings of terminally ill patients for vital organs in exchange for addiction withdrawal averting cash. Mandy is stuck between a motley nursing staff, unpredictable cops, and a pair of bad guys as the coupling link scrambling to tread above water.  Bettis brings her harried eyed fortitude as a sarcastic and solitude-immersed nurse who is a jack of all trades contending internally with paper thin sympathetic motivations paralleling her self-preserving abilities.  Mandy’s calculating, on-the-fly smarts comes under threat by Regina’s halfwit, caution to the wind, sociopathy, housed under blonde teased hair sitting upon a model’s thin frame from the build of Chloe Farnsworth (“Crying Wolf 3D”) who dons crazy like a dunce cheerleader of a Renaissance slasher of an 80’s throw back, but instead of being the chest-baring victim killed while having prematernal sex in the woods, Regina is a scrappy and determined go-getter with more Cheeto dust on her fingers than braincells in her brain.  Grant paints a hefty list of colorful characters, written to ooze their own sanctimonious nature or Podunk refinement, a pair of inglorious splendor fallacies of small Southern townsfolk.  Dusty Warren plays one of those roles in the tactless ponytail wearing Mikey, the right hand muscle of the organ trafficker, and Mikey has nerveless feelings toward those that surround him except for his boss and, then, there’s Tara Perry’s Dorothy, a religious chatty-Cathy nurse who is essentially the most good, but less influential character of the whole rotten bunch.  “12 Hour Shift” cast rounds out with Kit Williamson as the cute, but hopelessly funny beat cop, Nikea Gamby-Turner as Mandy’s side hustling quasi-employer/colleague of drugs and organ, Brooke Seguin as the tireless nurse shift supervisor, and a pair of wrestlers, the only and only Mankind, Mick Foley, and the actor-turned-wrestler, David Arquette (“Scream”), who I must note is perhaps in the best shape of his life for this film.

“12 Hour Shift” comes off as like a big, crass joke on Southerners with a bloody knuckle one-two punch domino effect of disaster after disaster mayhem.  Grant satirically captures the hackneyed perceptions of a small Arkansas town from the late 1990s, complete with tube televisions and really bad hairstyles, that doesn’t the support the age old Southern mantra that is Southern Hospitality.  Every character touts an awful version of themselves.  Even Mandy, a junkie who commits unauthorized euthanasians with bleach in exchange for cash, crowns being perhaps the absolute worst of the entire character pool, but endeavors through the chaos as an anti-heroine we want to cheer for but is nowhere on the brink of amiability.  A strong point for Grant is giving every character, from scarce to principle, a once over and also touching on them periodically throughout to keep the minor parts existing in the back of the mind  Only David Arquette’s convicted death row inmate, emitted into the hospital due to self-harm, is the only role that feels half-heartedly fleshed out as a small story outlier or maverick whose dynamic is to only add another layer of obstacle fear without becoming too involved with the heart of the organ trafficking plotline.  The comedic air is dry, bloody, and not egregiously over the top in savoring enough plausibility of the abstracted truths to be told in a verse narrative that relies much on Matt Glass’ cymbal, bass, and snare drum soundtrack to provide an unique rhythm for a feminist story.  The two female leads absorb, react, and solve the issues on their own without male assistance; Mandy’s very own half-brother lies comatose for all of the duration and he’s even the reason for Mandy’s pounding addiction, but she still exhibits compassion for family, as we also see with her cousin by marriage, Regina, in the last act, and will do anything to guarantee his safety.  The attributes of the male characters are inversely heroic with qualities like whining, coquettish, uncouth, and gullible running rampant amongst the behaviors; ergo, female characters Mandy, Regina, and even Nikea Gamby-Turner’s Karen have room to grow in the timespan of Brea Grant’s “12 Hour Shift.”

 

Magnet Releasing and HCT Media in association with One Last Run presents “12 Hour Shift,” stat, releasing this Friday, October 2nd in theaters and video on demand.  The black comedy from the United States clocks in at 87 minutes of a shift from hell.  Since the screener provided was of a new theatrical release, there will be no A/V specs listed and critiqued.  The only bonus feature outside the any kind of physical release is an extended last scene after the principle credits role that encourages more hospital mayhem, but will alas leave open ended about the destruction that would ensue.   Aforesaid, Matt Glass serves as the composer on the film, but the multi-hatted filmmaker also serves as the director of photography, producing tactile scenes with a lot of rich, natural lighting on a slightly higher contrast scale and with pockets of brilliant, soft hues to exude more dastardly situations. “12 Hour Shift” goes to show you, in extreme measures and unpredictable circumstances, much like real life hospital scenarios, the rigors and pressures of nursing can be unfathomably taxing, but under the gun (literally in the movie), the nursing staff can overcome all obstacles and filmmaker Brea Grant, in her own style, honors with a gritty, black comedy for the profession that, in many instances, goes unappreciated and thankless.