| "Jolly
Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cover"
What do
you get when you take undead pirates with familiar aspirations,
a plot that seems vaguely familiar, more than enough blood and fake
heads,
and strippers?
You get
"Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove," the newest film
from The Asylum.
So what
we have here is a pirate who wants his gold back. Yeah, I
know, it sounds familiar. It's the plot of the entire "Leprechaun"
franchise, only with an undead pirate instead of a homicidal midget.
And of course, our pirate buddy is willing to go to really horrendous
lengths--including killing anything and everything in his path,
even
a couple of rather attractive strippers--to get his gold.
And how
much good can gold possibly do this guy, anyway? Unless he's
planning to get like a whole lot of plastic surgery, no one's gonna
take his money. The guy looks like he went through a garbage
disposal face first. Not that anyone seems to care--he walks
into a
strip club and nobody bats an eye. Even the strippers don't
seem to
care--they grind away at him like he were dripping with twenties
and
looked like Jesse McCartney.
Okay, so
a movie like this isn't
exactly long in the old logic
department. Frankly, the back of the box says it all--"A
new horror
masterpiece from the director of Mosquito and Spiders."
Oh my.
On what
planet is "Mosquito" considered a masterpiece? "Spiders"
wasn't so bad, but "Mosquito" was just plain sad.
And frankly,
"Jolly Roger" will never be anyone's idea of a masterpiece
unless
your sole criteria for judgment is "a movie can only be declared
good
when two or more actresses expose themselves."
Check out
the fantastically puerile ghost story at the twelve minute
mark! This is so unbelievably bad, I think he could get a
film deal
out of it. Check out the excerpt: "It's called 'Babes
in Whoreland',
and there's these five sluts. And they get killed. By this
guy in
this mask." The character telling this one probably has
a decent
chance at getting it produced if he can pitch it to Brain Damage
or
Shock-O-Rama Cinema, as long as Misty Mundae would be willing to
play--GASP!--a SLUT.
Even better,
check out the CSI rejects at the crime scene at the
sixteen minute mark. One body missing a head, one body with
a torso
cut in half longways, and they can't quite figure out what the murder
weapon is. I'm guessing it's not a handgun.
And at the
twenty five minute mark, we get this absolute hoot of a
sequence in which a guy, with all the aplomb of McGyver, picks a
police station door lock.
With the
underwire from his girlfriend's bra.
I don't
even know where to begin telling you what's wrong with that.
And at twenty
eight and a half minutes, the plastic heads go a-flying.
This is
the really, truly interesting thing about "Jolly Roger:
Massacre at Cutter's Cove." It is literally packed to
the gills with
probably unintentionally comical moments. Moments where the
effects
or the writing or the acting or even the post-production work isn't
exactly all it could have been. I could keep a running list
of
bizarre sequences that only make even a scrap of sense when viewed
in
frame advance, like the head shot at thirty five minutes ten seconds
where it goes from semi attached to midway down the back and into
the
fish bowl in the space of one frame.
The ending
isn't all the much of a surprise, but still fairly well
done. It completes things rather well, and this is an ending's
minimal purpose. It includes one truly comical sequence, one
fairly
massive cheat, and one small twist that felt tacked on just so they
could say that there was a twist ending.
The special
features include deleted scenes, a behind the scenes
featurette, audio options, cast and crew commentary, and trailers
for
"War of the Worlds," "Intermedio," "Jolly
Roger," "Lethal Eviction,"
and "Alien Abduction."
All in all,
"Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove" won't win any
awards any time soon, but if you're looking for standard, run of
the
mill indie horror fare for your Saturday night movie party, you
could
do vastly worse.
Jolly
Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cover
**
Directed By
Gary Jones
Written By
Gary Jones
Jeff Miller
Cast
Rhett Giles
Tom Nagel
Kristina Korn
Thomas Downey
Kim Little
R
80 mins
OVERALL
GRADE: 2 stars
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