CRAP! (Aug '14) - Bloody Varisity blues

CRAP! Some times movies are just so bad that by the end your palm is bruised from forehead impact, and your brain has liquified and began to drip, slowly, from your ears. So I Charles. B. Boonsweet have decided to stand up, and take the film loving bullet for you. I give you CRAP! A segment devoted to the silliest, worst, not worth time, films I come across. Sometimes new, sometimes old... but always, always... RANT inducing and remote tossing. The rules of my normal reviews do not apply (there is no film love here!). There may be spoilers, random rage, and hell... I might even invite the filmmakers to a parking lot throw down... we'll see... Enjoy Booniacs!!

VARSITY BLOOD (2014)

Ok I'll say it. Cool cover art,

Within 5 minutes you have all your high school horror cliches and stereotypes in order.

1. Jocks that are dicks
2. Cheerleaders that are party animals
3. The "Goodie" cheerleader that is dating the popular QB
4. The nerds that get pushed around (equipment/water boy, and the mascot)
5. Oh and the plain hipster sister to the hottest cheerleader.

(honorable mention to having actors that look 28+ playing 17 year old high school kids)

Check your how to horror pamphlet... Yup. Got em all. And you know what as we have seen in my awesome years of film review awesomeness (yes it has been fun hasn't it Booniacs) that acknowledging the cliche of your genre is not always a bad thing. As long as what... Right, you have a fun, cool, script to play on all the "By the numbers" you are throwing at the audience. Think a couple of reviews I've done in the last year: The little highschoolers vs the undead, Detention of the Dead (review HERE ) or the recent bit of bloody pom pommin' All Cheerleaders Die (bask in my review HERE ). Both this films were cheap cheesy bloody fun. 

Yup. Thats a cheerleader showering. And yup. Thats a gym bag blocking the view.

Within 3 minutes I knew this was not gunna be another gem in the rough... no. Here there would only be rough... and deep, dark, thicker rough... Golf joke anyone?

So your story goes... All the popular kids are somehow tied to the death of a girl a year earlier, and someone that knows is wiping them out.

Here's some of the things you will see in this flick... A "Killer" Swinging an Axe while standing about 6 inches from a woman who is bent over... and missing... just so they can have a gym chase scene. You will hear lines like (addressing a photographer) "did you get a few good wide shots?" to which the lady with the camera will reply "Well I tried to get one big enough to fit your head, but they don't come that big" Ha.

Ha. Ha. Ha. I mean. Come on. How about you just shorten it to "Oh, sorry, couldn't fit your ego in the frame" Bam! Boonsweet to the rescue. Seriously. Call me. I'll fix your shit.

Oh let me tell you, best/worst scene in the film opening half the "Explain the backstory about the dead girl to the new girl" scene. Which takes place on a park bench... in front of ducks... and is waaaaaay to long. I mean they explain who died, why, how, the parent is now dating new girl's mom, there was a suicide, sorry, attempted and now living in asylum ... blah, blah. Just ridiculous.

Goodie cheerleader 2... who buys sexy clothes to maybe finally have sex... Sigh

The real issue here is this: pick a damn side! You are either a movie that can be serious, and horrorish, or you realize your actors are C grade, your direction is C grade, and you should just go for pure B movie magic. But no, they actually try to be serious. They actually try to treat this as a real horror film... big mistake. Bad actors acting bad, can actually be awesome, and lead to way less pain, as in the pain the audience feels well processing bad dialogue.

An example? Why yes I would love to give one... so in one scene there is a brief joke about how the one jock looks older (but still can't buy booze without a fake ID) because he was held back 2 years. It would have been great if that line was delivered real tongue in cheek... and then maybe the girl had looked at the camera with a wink to the 4th wall.

Of course, maybe I have just been watching too many 80s flicks. Actually, screw that, I have always watched too many 80s movies, and have always been awesome... sooooo theory revoked.

Hey Costume designer... did you just have a rack of cheerleader outfits? I might actually make you laugh how much time these girls spend in their uniform. At home - uniform. At dinner - uniform. Check my watch... 45 minutes into this movie - one kill scene. Possible tea cup full of blood. What?! So there's not even any violence in this thing? Wait, no it shows up around 40 minutes left. Oh man was I happy to watch these dumb horrible people die. I mean sure, who's to say 6 jocks could take out a skinny punk in a mascot outfit... no I'm sure they couldn't handle that, better run. I mean this ain't exactly Jason Vorhees outside ya house... Right? Am I right? It's a thin dick in a mascot suit with a bow and a hatchet. I bet one solid punch... probably do it.

A quick quiz...

Tree. Wide open yard. Truck coming at you. Do you a) Run across yard. b) Trick truck by standing in front of the tree and then jumping out of the way, resulting in the truck crashing or c) Stand directly in front of tree and watch the truck drive towards you and then crush you.

Did you pick c)?

This film did.

And thats all you really need to know. More shit in the horror genre that will be forgotten and lost to VOD or wherever really shitty films go now.

Movie scale .5 out of 5 stars
Horror Scale 1 out of 5 stars

You know a couple of great lines near the end where it would really seem to be the script wanting to have fun, but if that was the scriptwriter's goal... someone didn't get the memo... Can you imagine if this had been writer as a B-movie black comedy the entire time, and only one actor actually got it in the last 5 minutes... Oh. That poor screen writer.

Oh man. The gun thing at the end... cop pulls his gun and then just runs at the killer, and loses his head. So bad. It's all so bad.

-Chucky B.

#VarsityBlood