The Legend Trip

I've bombarded the reader with fun family stuff for awhile, and have more to come, so I thought I'd take a short break and talk about something else.

Back in December I bought a Christmas present for my wife off of Craigslist.

When I picked it up the seller cheerfully included a free DVD of a locally produced horror movie entitled The Legend Trip; I think he had a role in producing it.

Kind of an odd incentive for buying a Tresor gift box, but allrighty.

Look, I’m always hesitant to criticize someone else’s artistic work.

A) Because they’ve done something and I’ve done jack diddly to date

and

 B) if I eventually do ‘do’ something it might come back to haunt me. Best to treat it like a jalapeno and assume it could could back to burn my ass tommorow.

But really, this film was nothing more than torture porn.

The plot revolves around a ‘legend trip’ a nocturnal visit to a place of evil misdeeds, in this case ‘the fabled Buth House’. We’re treated to a series of stories going back at least 75 years, with characters/victims including prohibition era gangsters, college kids, a priest (played by Mark Metcalf from Animal House), and the researchers intent on making the visit.

For a local film the acting was unusually good (except, in my opinion, for the physciatrist and the female student that initiates the trip) and some of the shots were staged with just the right creative eye. The brief story of the college kids was intriguing and entertaining.

So much for the good.

On the bad end of things I couldn’t follow the plot, and frankly if it exists outside the DVD cover I couldn’t find it. We get it – the house inspires bad deeds – but do you have anything more to offer than that revelation?

That was the main downfall for me. I can forgive many a sin if it’s concealed within the boundaries of a solid story, but I’ve never been one to enjoy a bad script, no matter how visually stunning.

There was also the issue of gore. I don’t think it was necessary to include an odd and out-of-kilter self disembowelment, nor the shot of a man stabbing himself through the eye, or the kidnapped woman strapped to a chair as her captor wraps barbed wire tightly around her face.

Why? I mean really. I love horror, but ‘horror’ and ‘fright’ are different than gore and sadism. Enough of these Hostel/Saw copycats. The world’s a messed up enough place even on a good day. There’s no need to get off on showcasing it at its worst.

Over at IMBD.com the reviews are largely glowing, so maybe I’m out in left field (but at least one review smacks of being written by someone involved in the film).

I’m happy someone in the Milwaukee area successfully brought a film to the screen. I just wish the result was something I could be equally proud of.

* * *

I also had a chance to see Fantastic Four. Not nearly as bad as I feared, but I still wouldn’t have paid to see it.

Ditto Daredevil. It was a very passable film but I agree with some reviews that say it didn’t do enough to explore the hero vs. vigilante aspect of his personality. I loved the effects that represented Matt’s hearing but deplored some rather lousy CGI at other parts of the film. And what’s with DD being able to leap up two stories? He’s just a plain jane human after all, albeit one with super hearing.

Warning: Spoilers ahead

National Treasure:Book of Secrets was a fun popcorn movie even if the history and motivation were goofy.

To paraphrase a line of dialouge from the movie: 140 years later no one cares who the (non-Booth) Lincoln conspirators were, aside from historians, and it hardly slurs your family name.

 I also don’t see the US government covering up the existence of a city made of gold during the Depression, if ever. Melt the damn thing. What, Americans of the 1930’s would object on the grounds that it was a Native American artifact? Get real.

And if memory serves it took the US  a wee bit of time to secure the Dakotas. How was the financially and militarily strapped Confederacy going to invade, secure, and hold that area against both the natives and the US? C'mon - really, the whole movie is bunk.

But fun bunk.