Let me start off this post with a huge, super-important reminder for everybody reading.
I'd urge you to click that link above and visit a previous blog entry on this subject matter. Reading that older post will totally get you caught up on this one, and it'll also give you the insight you'll need to fully understand how much a giant ninja-blade, CGI snake tail that chops off people's heads truly means to me.
After a great weekend, I took a quick trip to the 'ole corporation-movie-rental company to find some good films for the week. I had no choice but to pick up the 1993 Mike Meyers classic, So I Married An Axe Murderer for obvious reasons... but the second movie on my list, as it would turn out... would not be some movie with a tiny Brad Pitt in scary old man makeup as planned.
It's cool how they have all those movies set up alphabetically in there... so when I was strolling past the D's, moving towards the B's... something in the C section leapt off the shelf and cold cocked me in the eyeballs. Check out this amazing cover:
Could YOU pass something like this up??
Seriously. Look at it again next to my badass new mustache:
You're still telling me that you'd pass that movie up? Even after examining it again? Even after seeing it next to my sweet 'stache? Well, if you just answered "yes" to that question, you're dead to me.
Moving on, somehow... DMX Carnivorous was in my hand, in the truck and then in the DVD player with one swift motion.
The title of this movie is actually "DMX CARNIVOROUS." I know this because the opening credit sequence and the DVD cover tells me that it is. No, it's not just a top billing... it's the name of the damn movie. And that's only where the genius begins.
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DMX Carnivorous is a giant snake story of loss, revenge, art, bazookas, voodoo and teen love.
Because a solid 95% of you people are not going to see this movie (unless you're somehow trapped under a crashed plane or piano or something next to a TV that happens to be playing it, or maybe you've stolen some secret foreign government plans and have been captured by some Taliban guy who's in to 21st Century torture... or maybe you're temporarily blinded from an accidental battery acid spill and grabbed "Carnivorous" by mistake when reaching for season five of "Carnivále" from 2005), I'm going to save you some pain and review this plot for you.
Editor's Note: Even though you're going to call bullshit on me a few times during this synopsis, I swear on my own crotch that this is all 100% factual information. I know this because I actually thought I'd eaten some bad hot dogs or something and dreamed half this crap up myself. So I watched it a second time after a good night's sleep just to be sure I actually DID see what I saw.
It starts out as a story of love between two children. One of which can't seem to stop looking into the camera after each line. These two kids decide to "explore" at 3:00 a.m. and end up just breaking into some voodoo guy's house.
Let me be clear about this one: they just walk into some guy's house at 3:00 in the morning. There's a human skull on a stick in his front yard... and I've got to say that his yard looks really great. I mean, you immediately notice how well he's trimmed using his voodoo weed eater and spiritual push mower. Great looking yard. Even WITH a human skull on a stick.
Anyway, the kids walk in there and this guy's got tons of skulls of all sizes and an uncountable amount of lit candles. This struck me as being pretty dangerous, especially since there (for some reason) is an elderly person's walker sitting in the background. Old people shouldn't be lighting that many candles and going to bed! Unless they're up to some insurance fraud or something. I just now thought of that.
Anyway, so the kids steal this big box with a skull on it (always a good decision), just in time for the crazy hispanic-looking, jamaican-talking, mustache-having old voodoo guy wearing a hawaiian shirt to chase them off his lawn. (He also had this awesome tiny skeleton necklace on, which was awesome. I'm serious... a tiny human skeleton hung by a string around his neck. Who the hell SLEEPS in something like that? A Mexican Voodoo Priest, that's who!) Face it, readers: that man LOVES human anatomy.
The little girl jets out of there, and the little boy opens up the skull box to reveal an ink pen with a tiny alligator head glued to the top of it.
Yeah, I spelled that out right.
Apparently this is a very powerful voodoo pen that shouldn't be tampered with. (See "skull on box" for reference.)
So the kid has this step dad who's beating the hell out of his mom... so, of course, the kid draws a picture of some giant alligator dragon monster eating his dad guy, using the voodoo pen. (He gets his frustrations out, apparently, by drawing morbid pictures of monsters eating people. This is completely lucid, since I used to do this kind of thing all the time when I was a kid. Only instead of giant alligator dragon snakes, I used to draw pictures of the 1990's-era Wolverine smoking cigars and standing in very intimidating & dangerous poses.)
The stepdad guy is pretty wasted, so—of course—he decides to go for a drive. While getting in his truck, he's attacked by a giant 20'-tall shadow paired with a sound comparable to a lion, grizzly bear or the abominable snowman from the original stop-motion "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer" Christmas Special.
He's dragged off into some corn and that's that for your opening.
Now we can fast-forward into the future, where the little boy has grown up into a rough-scar-faced-balding fat guy who looks like he hasn't showered since that day his father was murdered by what could have been the smoke monster from LOST. He's married that little girl, and they appear to be living in the exact same house, 30 years later.
Here's where we meet our all-star cast. The camera cuts (very strangely) to some kitchen where a bunch of idiot college kids are gearing up for some awesome spring-break party mayhem. I would take this time to talk about how horribly written, directed and acted the scenes with the kids are, but really... does it even matter at this point? These kids make every teen character from the Friday the 13th series look like Academy Award winning actors. The lead obnoxious guy in this film makes "Teddy" from Friday the 13th part 4 look like Ian McKellan.
Anyway, they talk about going to some grandfather's "camp," but it actually turns out to be a busted old abandoned house in a corn field.
Back at the homestead, the grown-up little girl (Ms. Becky) accidentally finds the 'ole alligator-head voodoo pen, which was buried under the tool shed. Then she goes to the mailbox. While she's going through the mail with her headphones on (most likely listening to "Party Up" by DMX), the teens come barreling down the road in their gigantic ford bronco on the way to camp. There's five teens in this truck, yet not one of them notices this woman standing in the middle of the road wearing a bright pink shirt and holding a giant handful of mail.
The fat bald guy screams for her to move, but she can't hear him (y'all gonna make me loose my mind... up in here, up in here...) and is hit head-on by the bronco. Her body is thrown across the road in this awesome "could-be-a-dummy-but-probably-a-stunt-woman" shot.
The teens seem to think that they might have hit a squirrel or something, and never stop. You'd think you'd notice a dead woman laying in the road, or possibly even the old fat bald guy sternly waving his fist at them while standing over the pulverized corpse of his wife in the rear-view mirror, but they just keep driving instead.
Here's an interesting part: Rather than calling the cops or driving after the teens with a gun or a knife or something... the fat bald guy goes inside, whips out some paper and the badass voodoo alligator pen and draws this awesome picture of a giant dragon monster eating an entire bronco full of kids. Literally... a giant snake monster eating an entire bronco full of kids in astonishing detail. This dude can seriously DRAW. He's even got the likenesses of all the kids in the truck! The glasses guy, the ball-cap-wearing moron driver guy and the big boobed blonde chick in the passenger seat.
Now normally, drawing a picture of a giant dragon monster eating an entire truck load of drunk teenagers would be a nice stress reliever after your wife was brutally murdered, and then you could go to sleep after a hot cup of milk and dream about Eskimos and/or pork chop sandwiches. However, in this case... something far more sinister happens.
You see, this is a damn voodoo pen, and this fat bald guy has just unleashed hell on these kids. The giant monster awakens... in the corn field, apparently, and starts stalking these kids. After some awkward stripping scenes and boyfriend/girlfriend arguments, the killing spree begins.
You may be saying out loud at this point, "But Matt, this movie is called DMX Carnivorous. Shouldn't DMX actually be IN this movie?"
Yes, faithful reader, he sure is. In fact, he makes his grand entrance out of nowhere... chopping through the corn field with a giant machete... wearing a bullet-proof vest and cool shotgun-shell-holder bracelets. Why is he doing this? I have no idea. Where is he going, exactly? I have no idea. At this point in the story, he has no idea about the kids, the snake, the fat guy or the completely lame blonde stripper sequence going on back at the camp. He's just trucking through some corn with a machete.
He has this very determined, anxious, and intimidating look on his face. This is actually how we see him for the next hour... looking around... pissed off... ready for action with his sweet vest and bracelet things. (He never actually possesses, holds or uses any type of shotgun in this film, even though he has all those mean-looking shells.)
From here on, the movie turns into your typical giant snake movie with all the horrible, low-budget elements that make these things so awesome.
1. The snake never actually eats anybody, it just drags them off camera into the woods and/or corn field. (It's cool to see a half-naked chick getting lifelessly or frantically dragged into places out of frame.)
2. Through the bulk of the film, we never see the snake much, usually just a small prosthetic or lame CGI tail that wiggles around off screen. (Paired with the classic corn or trees shaking as it passes by in the distance.)
3. The classic over-the-top hissing / lion / screaming banshee noises that the director or sound guy thinks these things giant snakes sound like. Where do these sounds come from, anyway? I've been around a lot of snakes in my time, and even owned one for more than four years... and I never heard my snake sound like an agitated, roaring Godzilla letting the air out of a 60" monster truck tire through a police megaphone. But I guess you have to give 'em credit where credit's due for being creative with it.
However... all these elements aside, this movie has got something much different going for it. Instead of being a physical giant snake created by a mad scientist, toxic waste spill, Amazon River natural selection or a super-badass classified government weapons division, this sumbitch is made completely of magic. As DMX would later tell us... it's actually the spirit of vengeance, created for evil revenge from voodoo black magic.
It apparently appears out of nowhere when somebody draws a picture of it killing somebody. However, this could be pretty confusing for the spirit of vengeance snake monster as you plot your revenge.
What if you can't draw very well and the snake gets mixed up and kills the wrong person? For example, what if you got pissed off at the cook at McDonald's for spitting on your hamburger patty? Of course, the first thing you'd want to do is draw his picture with a giant snake monster biting his head off. But what if you couldn't get his mustache right, and the snake ended up killing the president by mistake?
What if an Elvis impersonator killed your dad? How are you supposed to draw THAT? How may Elvises are going to get decapitated by a giant snake tail and/or dragged off into some corn field or cow pasture before the nightmare ends?
I'm sure you can think of a billion other examples of how this kind of thing could go horribly wrong.
Also, this thing is actually a weird mix of a giant alligator and snake. It's head, just like the voodoo ink pen, is an alligator and it's body—just like the voodoo ink pen—is a snake. If it were in proportion, this thing could look super mean and really cool. Unfortunately, the alligator head is huge and the snake body is really thin. Meaning the actual monster looks just like an ink pen with a huge alligator head glued to the top of it. In the long run, that really doesn't pay off much for sheer terror.
(However, it does have this awesome ninja-sword-looking knife tail that it uses to stab, strangle, trip and decapitate, and that wins back a few terror points on the dangerous scale, I guess.)
Also, the snake head on the DVD cover doesn't look like an alligator at all, which is hilarious.
Anyway, so for some reason, the fat bald guy starts feeling bad about unleashing this unholy terror on these kids... so he takes the two only-surviving teens to the one man who can help them: DMX.
It says on the DVD cover that DMX is some kind of ex-special ops super soldier "master hunter," but we never get any of that back story in the film. In fact, the only thing we DO get to see is an awkward scene shot in somebody's driveway of DMX purchasing a giant, plastic bazooka from a couple of thugged out dudes with gang tattoos & sideways hats driving a tricked-out Chrysler 300. In fact, they actually put the bazooka on DMX's "tab."
He never uses, brandishes, holds or mentions any other weapons in the film other than a Wal-Mart purchased plastic-handle machete and a giant plastic-looking bazooka.
In one of the most amazing scenes ever recorded on film, DMX gives the exposition about the snake and answers all the questions we've been biting our nails over. As it turns out (SPOILER ALERT), he's the son of the old hispanic voodoo skeleton man.
He explains about the spirit of vengeance thing, and then when one of the kids asks if the snake will ever stop killing, he replies (verbatim):
"Once you're drawn in the picture, the deal is done. The only thing you have to look forward to is its stomach acid...
(long dramatic pause)
That acid can destroy... just about anything."
Upon hearing this, the survivor girl turns to the fat bald guy and says (verbatim):
"So where's the picture, asshole? You drew us to death!!! This sucks and YOU suck!!!"
Keep in mind here, that these kids viciously ran over this man's wife and left her for dead with no remorse whatsoever. This is never mentioned and the fat bald guy actually apologizes to the kids for the snake problem. I'm not sure this makes a whole ton of sense, especially since the guy's wife was the best actor in the entire film. The fat bald guy actually wears this busted wife beater with his wife's blood all over it throughout the film... and you'd think that would serve as a subtle reminder of the pain and suffering the guy has been through that afternoon.
No time to mourn your wife's brutal killing, however, when there's a big ass voodoo snake killing teens in a corn field.
At any rate, DMX calmly lets them know that HE is the only thing that can stop the snake's reign of vengeful terror. He says that it's going to kill 'em all—unless he can get to it first. Then when they all jump up to take action, he just keeps sitting in his recliner and tells them that he'll come only when he's needed. ("I'll come when I'm needed," he says.)
I can't blame DMX on this one. There was probably a sweet episode of that show on ABC where people run and jump through wacky water obstacle courses and get the hell beat out of them by giant cushions. Once you start watching that show, it's impossible to stop. If you can hold off of peeing for an hour to see that kind of thing, you're damn skippy that he can hold off on killing a giant alligator-snake spirit-of-vengeance voodoo murder machine with a plastic bazooka.
Back at the old farm house, the two kids and the fat bald guy are repetitively loading up his shotgun (because that pump action looks & sounds awesome on film). The other teen survivor dude is an engineering student in New York City (we know this because he wears glasses and has a backpack and iPod on for most of the film), and what happens next is one of the most awesome things I've ever seen in a movie.
Off camera, we hear him say, "I decided to put my engineering skills to the test." Let me repeat that for you, just to make the next paragraph more clear:
"I DECIDED TO PUT MY ENGINEERING SKILLS TO THE TEST."
In an extremely dramatic and serious moment, the kid walks out with a porcelain lamp from the living room, shade & light bulb removed. Duct taped to the bottom of the oval lamp is the original drawing the fat bald guy did of the kids in the bronco being eaten by the snake. Duct taped (and I mean DUCT TAPED) to the top of the lamp is:
1. Two forks.
2. A small knife.
3. The alligator voodoo pen (alligator head facing up).
4. The lamp cord wrapped around it.
5. Some spoons.
6. Some type of popsicle-looking sticks.
7. An indistinguishable metal object.
8. Indistinguishable wooden objects that may have been pencils.
They look at this lamp like it's the ultimate killing weapon, and they all take a minute to pause and look at it like it's some kind of mythical sword. At this point, I had to rewind this movie several times just to take all this in.
The next few minutes of the movie turns into a total shitstorm of horrible CGI, as the teens and fat bald guy take on the snake. Highlights include:
• The survivor teen girl screaming, "I've had enough, you bastard! Come out and fight!" while holding a lamp with forks duct taped to it.
• A random survivor teen skateboarding comedy relief kid (who pops up out of nowhere) stopping the action for a minute and saying, "I have an idea, guys. When I used to eat paper and glue as a kid... it wouldn't be paper and glue when it would come out of me." (This random statement is completely ignored by the other actors.)
• The fat bald guy getting randomly decapitated by a horribly animated ninja-knife snake tail.
• DMX appearing out of nowhere and screaming, "DAMN!!!" before shooting a bazooka rocket at the snake's neck. (It doesn't stop it, and the canned explosion looks like something out of an episode of South Park.)
I guess the director ran out of CGI money, so all they could have the snake physically do to the kids and DMX is slither by them really fast and trip them. At one point, the snake quickly slithers past DMX, tripping him to the ground. He slowly gets up nodding and says, "Oh, so it's gonna be like THAT, huh?"
In the end, DMX tricks the Engineer survivor kid to stand really still so that when the snake eats him, he can blow it up with the bazooka. I'm not sure why the Engineer kid needed to get eaten by the snake for him to do this, but I guess it made for some really intense action.
When DMX blows the monster's head off... it explodes into a giant glowing cloud of golden glitter. It looked just like a Mariah Carey video. The Engineer kid is left lying on the ground... and I had to keep wondering about that dangerous stomach acid. If that acid can destroy "just about nearly everything," why didn't it burn some of his face or at least the lamp when he was in its stomach?
That's too bad, really. It would have been cool to see that guy come back in the sequel with a cool mask, a robot arm or maybe even some giant scars like Jon Voight in Anaconda.
He could even bring back the lamp—even more supercharged than ever before... this time with some deadly cork screws or coat hangers.
In the end, our hero DMX fades slowly back into the corn with his machete and plastic bazooka and the kids hop in the fat bald guy's truck and drive back to civilization. Don't you think this is a little rough? When the cops run up on this farm, they're going to have a bunch of half-eaten dead teen bodies, some hell-beaten, run over woman's body lying in a ditch, a decapitated fat bald guy in a bloody wife beater, a stolen truck... and a tiny voodoo pen with an alligator head glued on to it... with glowing red eyes.
Only one man has the answers, but by now he's already faded into the darkness like Steven Seagal.
This DVD has one single special feature option that'll leave you breathless: a "STILL PHOTO" production gallery. In this gallery, you'll find seven or eight photos of DMX holding his bazooka, standing in a corn field. He has a variety of poses here, with several different looks... ranging from angry to whimsical. Best production gallery ever, man.
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For those of you who've kept reading and made it through this entire blog post, I sure appreciate you. Nothing would make me happier than giving you some type of prize for making it this far... like a replica of the voodoo pen, or a little miniature skeleton necklace. Unfortunately, all I have to give is my heart.
Take it and go readers. Take it and go.
Putting my engineering skills to the test 4 life,
-McClane
1 Comments:
epic review.
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