Banana Splits: Tra la la Terror!

Posted on 31st Jan 2020 by Hailey Roebuck

‘We’re here for a taping the the Banana Splits, noone is going to die.’ – Austin

Shout out to my friend, Chris, at my local HMV for this wacky suggestion.

Banana Splits is a Hanna-Barbera show from a time before I was even born, but something you still know of – that jaunty tune plays and you know it’s the Splits.

I got a ‘Five Nights at Freddie’s’ vibe from the beginning. Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky are no longer actors in suits, they’ve continued their run into 2019 as animatronics owned by Taft Studios.

No matter how much you want to meet your hero, stay our of the way of the Banana Mobile!

The film opens to the ending of The Banana Splits on TV. Mum, Beth, is asleep on the sofa when Harley startles her in his Snorky outfit; he’s too excited about his birthday and he just can’t sleep! Beth takes him back to bed and checks in on nineteen year old Austin, who apparently has snuck in from curfew, and for some reason everyone sleeps with the lights on, even the teen, and act so casual about it.

Next morning, Beth has a huge surprise for the birthday boy – however, his friend Duncan can’t make it to the big event as he’s sick (lucky him), so she ropes in a girl named Zoe; the surprise? Only tickets to a live taping of the Splits. Austin also gifts him a wand that looks like a little mace, and you can tell it’s going to kill a Split – but which one?

Mitch, Harley’s dad and Austin’s step-dad, drives everyone (through the wrong entrance if you pay attention) to Taft Studios; the security guard jokes with Harley that he sees the Splits driving around at night – but is it really a joke? The studio has a surprisingly large draw of both adults and kids, which include Insta-sensations Thadd and Poppy, and Parker with her fame hungry dad Jonathan; while waiting, the Splits come along in the Banana Mobile and Harley jumps out in front of them, almost getting hit; Beth pulls him to safety while Mitch is on the phone to ‘work’.

I immediately clocked that he was cheating on Beth.

Paige comes out and collects everyone’s phones, but Poppy manages to keep hers and Austin tries to be smooth with Paige. It’s actually kind of cute.

Inside, Splits animatronic creator, Karl, suggests they need an upgrade since they nearly ran over Harley; Drooper is plugged into the machine and Karl states that the show must go on, which seems to initiate some kind of protocol.

Drooper is the creepiest. His laugh is creepy.

Before the taping begins, Paige states that some tickets have stars on the back and if you have one you get a tour after taping; unluckily, Harley’s don’t, but it seems Austin has a plan.

The show begins without Drooper, but that’s ok because Stevie rolls in and says he’s needs rescuing from the neighbours’ fence – again! Stevie is an asshole in general when not on stage. I hated him straight away.

Rebecca, the producer, finds Drooper in the workshop when Andy strolls up to her and states he’s now Vice President of production and Banana Splits are over, this taping will be their last…and Drooper heard that…

During the taping, Austin wanders off to find Paige and convinces her to let Harley stay behind since it’s his birthday; Paige agrees and leads him back to the stage, where Mitch has come back from finding his phone, too.

Behind the scenes, Bingo attacks the Vice President and Stevie has over heard that the Splits are over – he’s ecstatic at the news, and in his drunk state, during the finale of the taping, he says Drooper should spin the ending wheel since ‘it might be the last thing you do’; when the show ends, Stevie tells the Splits that the show is over and spits alcohol in Drooper’s face. Drooper follows Stevie into his dressing room and kills him by shoving a giant lollipop down his throat.

My favourite killing in this whole film!

Paige tells Harley the good news: he gets to meet the Splits! She leads everyone but Mitch – ’cause he’s busy cheating on Beth – behind the set for photos. On the way, Austin explains to Beth that Mitch is an asshole who doesn’t care about his own son, when Beth denies that claim Austin points out he’s gone; Beth finds Mitch outside and finds out ‘work’ is called Cara and it’s been going on for months. Mitch says they may have been married eleven years, but she’s been all about the kids during that time; he decides to leave and Austin takes Beth back inside.

Is that Snorky stalking Mitch in the Banana Mobile?

Meanwhile, Thadd and Poppy are excited to have their picture with the Splits while Jonathan simply wants to plug Parker for a part in the show; he runs off to find the producer and, when Paige follows, Thadd and Poppy sneak behind the sets. Harley and Zoe wonder where Snorkie is…

…he’s trying to run Mitch over with the Banana Mobile!

Thaad and Poppy find the extra sets, they play around on Fleegle’s Magic Shop where Thadd proposes live with Poppy’s phone; Fleegle finds them, takes the phone and smashes it while pretending to do a trick. He then forces Thadd into a box and makes Poppy watch as he cuts the man in two. Harley and Zoe have been exploring, too, and almost stumbles across Fleegle’s trick when he approaches them; Harley wants to see Snorkie, Fleegle offers to take them to him.

You phone was delicate and so is your squishy flesh!

Jonathan finds Rebecca who tells him the Splits are done, so he rushes off to find the Vice President, Andy; he finds Drooper in the office and sets his face alight with a lit cigar and some spray. Parker tries to run, but Bingo throws a sack over her.

Fleegle has led Harley and Zoe to Karl’s workshop and locks them in a cage with Parker.

Rebecca and Paige go back to where the guests were supposed to be waiting, only to find just Beth and Austin. The mother-son duo go further into the studio to find them when Jonathan stumbles out to tell them the Splits have gone rogue; Rebecca sends Paige to phone for help.

Beth and Austin look through Bingo’s jungle for the kids. There’s some mild backstory about Austin’s dad dying and that’s why Beth is so overprotective of them and a little meek herself. Bingo somehow bungee jumps down to grab Austin and Beth follows them to the upper platforms where she throws Bingo over the edge and breaks him; they find Poppy having a breakdown next to Thadd’s corpse and take her away from the area.

The kids meet Karl, who has been injured by the Splits while trying to stop their rampage; they convince Karl to let them out, but Fleegle and Drooper come in dragging a damaged Bingo. Karl drops the keys in surprise and Zoe grabs them. Once the animatronics leave, the kids lock Karl in the cage and run.

Meanwhile, Fleegle and Drooper have found Jonathan and Rebecca; she tries to get away, but Fleegle breaks one of her fingers. The humans are forced to run the show’s obstacle course to get the blue key, only when the pair reach the top, the key is in Fleegle’s hands – which he rams into Jonathan’s spine, breaking it!

The phrase is ‘key to your heart’, not lower vertebrae.

Rebecca jumps into the ball pit, winning the course, but Drooper clocks her over the head with a hammer to kill her.

Paige discovers the phone line is disconnected and the phones she’d confiscated broken; as she makes her way back to the others, she’s forced to hide in the ball pit to avoid the Splits and finds Rebecca’s body. Austin helps her out and she explains there’s no way to call for help; they, with Beth and Poppy, go in search of the kids; they find Karl locked away and discover a passage to the basement level. Poppy lags behind when she notices a mask; Karl explains he was building Hooty, a fifth Split and Poppy dons the unfinished outfit and kills Karl.

Meanwhile, the kids bump into Snorky while looking for a way out. Harley bonds with him through the Snorky Shuffle and asks him for help; Zoe and Parker are weary, but Harley assures Snorky isn’t like the others…but he just might be.

Down in the basement, Beth, Austin and Paige discover the bodies of the other adults who were watching the taping of the show; they continue on to see the kids chained down and forced to watch a show that never ends. Fleegle and Drooper play with Stevie’s dead body – substituting the mailbox gag with a tube that shoots fire – while Snorky brings in the others and locks them down too, leaving Harley the key!

Round he goes. Where will he stop? Nobody knows!

Time for the Wheel of Ending, featuring Andy nailed down as the needle for the board. While Andy spins, Harley frees the kids and the remaining Splits begin to pull Andy’s limbs off; Paige leads the kids out while Austin and Beth take on Drooper and Fleegle – one of them ends up with Harley’s wand (which he’s had the whole time) through their metal face!

Just when all seems hopeful, Bingo blocks the way! Snorky saves the day by destroying his cast-mate and also dies in the process, but not before Harley declares that Snorky will always be his favourite. Awww.

Help arrives. Parker asks her mum to quit acting classes (can you blame her after that?), Austin and Paige share a kiss and Mitch…

Mitch somehow survived, but is seriously injured, and begs forgiveness from Beth; she punches him in the face and states she wants a divorce. Go Beth!

Mitch is left hobbling behind the vehicles as he leaves, only to be effectively run over and killed by Poppy, who’s still dressed as Hooty, driving the Banana Mobile and singing the famous Split’s theme song – all while towing the damaged animatronics.

The end?

5/5: I really enjoyed this. Despite the FNAF feel, I thought it was a unique way of bringing a show, that finished in the 70’s, into 2019; the effects looked fabulous and the animatronics of the Splits looked really cool, I thought there some unique kills in there, too. The kid’s acting can be a little wonky, but it’s forgivable with them being so young. My only disappointment is that Fleegle and Drooper do all of the on-screen killing, and Bingo seemed pointless by the end of it.

Oh, the theme song will get stuck in your head. Try not to kill anyone!

Wounds

Posted on 18th Jan 2020 by Hailey Roebuck

I’d like to say that I took this brief gap to clear my mind and sanity from Shark Exorcist; the truth is that I watched Little Evil and got more comedy than horror, and felt it wasn’t worth the time to review…

At least Little Evil was entertaining, unlike Wounds.

I’m not entirely sure what I just watched. I was expecting some Simulacra type horror, I think? Certainly not this cockroach snooze fest. So many questions left unanswered, so much to process in my tired brain while I write this rough draft.

What was the point in this film?!

At the time of writing this sentence, I have slept, fed and watered, and I’m still no clearer on what I wasted my time on; I still find myself staring into space trying to process the reasoning of some of the characters, the cockroaches, the portal/hole thing, who those teens were.

Was there some kind of cult? What is ‘Translation of Wounds’ Volumes one through three? What was summoned and why did it choose Will?

Was Will’s girlfriend, Carrie, fucking her professor?

I believe that a great film ends in a way that doesn’t have me deep diving into the net to find an explanation for the ending…or the film in general; unless it’s intentionally written for a sequel everything should be answered and wrapped in a bow – even this so-called ‘psychological thriller’ needs to fill in a lot of the gaps.

The premise of the film is that bartender, Will, finds a phone that was dropped in the bar after patreon, Eric, is glassed during a fight. Will takes the phone home and begins receiving messages from Garrett asking for help, that there’s something at home with him.

Carrie is IMMEDIATELY suspicious that Will is cheating once she spots the phone the next day. Yes, Will has an obvious thing for his friend Alishia, but there’s no background information that anything has happened between them before, and said friend has Jeffery. I’m much convinced that Carrie IS fucking Prof. Steve though.

Will gets a text on the phone from Jason and tells him about the ‘pretty pictures’, leading Will through the gallery to some gorey photos and a strange video of a severed head; then he tries to call Garrett (and only ever Garrett for some reason), the phone makes some weird sounds and that’s that. Will is now the chosen one!

Will decides to take the phone to his cop friends, but receives another text from Jason. Will is the ‘chosen one’ and they need that phone back. I assume Jason and his friends have been tracking the phone since someone has been seen in previous scenes following Will around; so once Will hallucinates that the phone is a giant roach and that he’s covered in them, one of the teens manages to grab the phone again and disappear.

Will continues on to the station to report the teens, but now lacks evidence without the phone; he proceeds to give a statement along these lines:
Cop: Did you get the plate number?
Will: Yeah, it began with a six.

No, Will, you did not get the plate number.

Will makes a move on Aleshia. Boring.

Will comes back from his cheating to find Carrie staring at some portal thing on her desktop. He digs a little deeper and find out she’s looked into Garrett and found him on a forum about some ritual that believes human are portals for other worldly beings – which then led to her staring at the screen. It still doesn’t explain the Translation of Wounds or anything.

After a weird dream involving Garrett, Will goes to work but Jeffery comes in all pissed that Will made a move on his girl; Carrie then texts him with an ominous ‘there’s something here with me’ and a picture of something sat on the bed. When Will rushes home, he finds her staring into the portal thing again – she’s been there so long she’s wet herself. He almost drowns her in the bath trying to clean her up.

Don’t almost drown your SO in a bloody bath, folks.

Will grows a pair and dumps Carrie the next morning, which she takes eerily well until he brings up the phone; then she quotes some philosophical shit about him being an empty shell. It made me wonder if she was either possessed or just crazy.

In search of a place to stay now that Carrie’s thrown him out, Will ends up at Eric’s, who still hasn’t fixed his face from the glassing two or three days before. Will remembers Doug phoned him to say Eric had a gift for him, and when questioned Will is led to the phone in the draw; Jason has text him.

Have you found the gift, wrapped in flesh?

As it dawns on Will that it means Eric’s face, the apartment begins to fill with roaches and covers the camera lens just as something interesting is finally about to happen.

The credits rolled and I was pissed off that that was that!

I’ve made my feelings clear at the beginning of this review over all the unanswered questions. Straight to the rating.

1/5: Only because Eric’s face looked convincingly gross at the end.

Shark Exorcist

Posted on 4th Jan 2020 by Hailey Roebuck

Two things drew me to this film: boredom and this BADASS cover.

They say you should never judge a book by its cover – the same goes for DVDs. Most. Misleading. Artwork. EVER. I required copious amounts of alcohol to get through this film a second time for a review, but alas, in my current state of health I’d have to battle this sober.

I have many questions about this film, mostly why and how; the top of this list is: how did you get these girls to agree to this? What was Donald Farmer’s (writer and director) process for selection? Was there official casting, or did he just get a group of female friends together because he wanted to see them in their bikinis?

Looking at the crew list, I was surprised to find a ‘special effects makeup artist’; surprised because there isn’t any special effects. At all.

In the words from the script: you had a chunk ripped out of you!

Blood looks like some strange mix of ketchup and paint (both?) And Ali’s leg, above, is supposed to have a ‘chunk’ missing from it; I can’t even see teeth marks, am I meant to believe he was bitten by a shark?

The acting can vary from passible to…were you given any direction at all? Blonde friend, Lauren, has a small scene after the shark ‘attack’ where most of her lines consisted of ‘whatever’ with no facial expression change at all.

Emily: Did you cheat with Ali’s boyfriend? Lauren: Whatever. Emily: Take this seriously, she was just in the hospital! Lauren: Whatever.

Best acting goes to the shark obsessed Pool Girl.

The story itself is a confusing mess. The Satan loving nun in the beginning, who has killed a handful of people already, tips another victim into the water of Paris Landing and asks for ‘Satan’s Avenger’; I’m not sure why that would come in the form of a shark, or why it would take a whole year from her summoning it to the present when Ali is bitten – and why isn’t the nun seen again for a whole year? Why wasn’t she more involved it the killings and feeding them to the, uh, ‘avenger’?

I’m not sure I understand the point of Nancy of Ghost Whackers, other than to see her roll around in some grass while chanting ‘demons come in me’, which is a hell of a lot funnier than what it’s supposed to be – and I’m still giggling about it – and then later for some strange, unexplained possession scene.

Why can this shark demon possess multiple people, or are they sub-servants through some mind control? Nancy seems more zombie-like in her state, but others aren’t.

Ali’s first taste of blood is with a random guy she hitches a ride with back to Paris Landing. This random seems to be the brother of Father Michael, who receives a letter stating the brother has died in an ‘unexplained circumstance’ even though there has been reports of shark in the lake for some time now.

But sure…unexplained.

I think the priest has some kind of flash back to a young coven playing witches, and of a woman getting possessed…It’s not very clear, or explained again – and the brother is never mentioned again either, but his death is enough for Michael to know someone is possessed.

Somehow. I assume. Considering the ‘flashback’ and all.

Ali is looking for a next victim in Pool Girl, and attacks her – or was that just a dream?

Meanwhile, a pair of girls dive into the front seat of a car as ordered by the head of a sorority (I’m not sure why all three are in the front, it’s not a pickup); the pair are doing tasks to join the college group and they go down to Paris Landing for their final test: spend ten minutes in the water and if you don’t get eaten you’re in!

I think she meant swim, but they never get in further than this…

I mean, that’s totally reasonable, right? Send two young girls into a lake, recently known for shark attacks, just to prove something to some stuck up college girl? Totally safe. So worth risking your life for Gamma…Beta…Xanta? Alpha Gamma Xanta? Either way, more fool them, but it’s not them that becomes shark food – it’s head girl that gets it!

Father Michael arrives at Emily’s place; she explains to him that Ali has been acting strange and spending a lot off time in or around water, he concludes she’s possessed and they head to the fair where Ali is stalking her next victim.

No explanation as to how they know she’s there – or why she’s there, it doesn’t seem to be near the lake, unless she plans to swim in the Hook-A-Duck game! The big reveal here is that Ali is actually the shark, if it wasn’t obvious to you already.

Emily and Michael find Ali before she does any real damage, knock her out and ‘tie’ her to a tree; she doesn’t seem to be really tied there though, since her hands just slip out during an altercation with the Priest. He bargains with the demon, and they come to a quick agreement: the demon will take Michael in exchange for Ali.

I don’t know why the demon doesn’t just bite him and keep Ali, unless the plan all along was to bite Emily once it’d switched bodies; Emily runs away and then some kind of portal opens in the sky and the shark demon in its shark form…eats Michael and Ali?

There’s a sentence I’d never thought I’d write…

Looks…nippy out. Also, you park like an asshole.

So, there’s this THREE MINUTE point before the end where some chick lies down on an overcast day (seriously, when was this shot, none of the scenes look bright enough to sunbathe in), and some pervy dude ninjas over and takes creepy pictures without her knowing. He even has time to scroll through what he’s taken before he leaves – she must fall asleep fast, like a cat! When she does wake up, evil nun guts her (I assume over the asshole parking job) and shoves her into the water before getting chomped on by a possessed person already there.

Mid credits scene is the revelation that Emily is now the shark…or a shark, and eats that Lauren chick who can’t act.

After credits scene offers no further explanation to anything.

This is an 88 minute car crash; it’s so bad you can’t look away! The plot, the acting, the effects are bad. The script is…wow. Special mentions to Ali’s ‘I like to get wet’ line, and the jogger who threw up at the sight of a dead body and said she was still hot and he’d ‘do her’.

The first time through can be really amusing. You laugh at the bad acting, the effects on the shark, the blood and the bad plot; but second time through you realise how much sense this doesn’t make. A lot of the ‘attacks’ happen in shallow water, where it would be impossible NOT to see a shark that big coming at you, there’s a lot of unexplained things like scene with the coven and the lore behind the demon, and yet I know more about the nun who was barely in it; it had potential to be something half-good with a better script and acting, but it falls flat from the start.

1/5: Only because I’m still laughing at ‘demons come in me’.

Blood Snow

Posted on 2nd Jan 2020 by Hailey Roebuck

Blood Snow, also titled Necrosis, had the potential to be something great. Three couples trapped in a log cabin in the middle of a winter storm, which has a sketchy history of murders – that originated from pioneers turning to cannibalism?

That screams to me either generations of said cannibals living in the mountains, or Wendigos.

I so desperately hoped for Wendigos, almost in an Until Dawn kind of way.

Alas, the horror of Blood Snow only exists in the mind as the mountain drives one member insane enough to kill everyone.

Is the mountain haunted? Possibly? Other than the story of the Donner Party, the pioneers who were trapped on the mountain trail in 1846, turning to cannibalism, there is very little known; in one scene, one of the couples finds an old scrapbook of newspaper clippings leading the viewer to believe that anyone who stays on the mountain during the storm is killed.

So, how did these characters get there?

It starts out harmless enough, as all horror films do; a group of friends heading up to a cabin, going around on snowmobiles, and then a snowstorm hits. When the guys go out to the shed to fix the generator, they find the body of the groundskeeper dead in the snow – mysteriously killed; they opt not to tell the girls at first, but have to the next morning when the body is gone.

While the victims are figuring out what to do, Jerry has begun seeing strange figures in the snow.

A woman (girl?) warns Jerry to get off the mountain. One of the couples heads down the mountain in a snow buggy never to be heard from again, only assumed frozen in the snow by Jerry’s…dream? Vision?

What we learn about Jerry is that he takes some kind of psychotic medication; does this make him more susceptible to the whispers of the mountain ghosts, urging him to kill? Or was it just bad luck? Again, never really explained, we’re just left to assume that he’s the crazy one and that it’s more than just cabin fever turning him into Jack from The Shining.

For a horror movie, there’s very little horror involved; a slight jumpscare here and there, and the only gore is Jerry picking off his friends with a gun from the cabin. It’s 90 minutes of wondering what the hell is going on and ten seconds laughing at Jerry’s girlfriend’s over dramatic fall in the snow.

I haven’t been this bored of waiting for a killer to strike since 30 Days of Night.

Rating: 2/5 The acting is ok, and the effects of the eventual gore are passable. The characters aren’t relatable or rememberable, and the lore could use some work.

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Monthly Archives: Jan 2020

Banana Splits: Tra la la Terror!

Wounds

Shark Exorcist

Blood Snow