Well, here at the Tomb of Anubis, our motto is "fuck Hollywood in their stupid asses", hence why I'm currently reviewing The Attic Expeditions. A direct-to-video release made for a mere million, Fangoria was quoted as saying the movie has the same frantic pace of the original Evil Dead, but with higher production values... though, again, do to inflation I doubt the production values are all that much higher... Anyway, actor Andras Jones is Trevor Blackburn. Who's Trevor Blackburn? Well, aside from being a guy whose name obviously sounds made up for a Cardinal in the Church Of Satan, he's our protagonist for the next 90 or so minutes. Trevor's also the target of a serious brain ailment whose required surgical removal could in fact lead to the man's early demise at the hands of the evil malpractice monster. Despite all this, it's not Trevor's real problem. His real problem is the doctor in charge of his operation is Jeffrey Combs...

Yes, Jeffrey Combs, notorious for playing scientists more than a little on the mad side, the likes of Herbert West, Richard Benjamin Vannacutt and Rick Davenport (hey, the guy was trying to invent a high-tech motorcycle when he could've been banging Heather Thomas around the clock, you try telling me his head was on straight...), plays the "eccentric" Dr. Ek, who has some radical methods in store for his new patient far beyond some "simple procedures"... and stole his style sense from Colonel Sanders... who I bet was never even a real Colonel... As for how Mr. Blackburn got into this predicament in the first place, it seems he used to date this HOT (as in "she could've taken out Pompeii") redhead by the name of Faith. But, as with all redheads, the love-in ended on a sour note when she tried to make her Trevy-Bear a sacrifice for new love: Satan. Yeah, chicks always drop the good guys for the bad boys, a harsh lesson I learned a while ago when I found out I was one of the good guys... until I introduced my ex to ball of sticks and mud ala Cannibal Holocaust, but after that women just started running away from me... I hate dating, hence why I encourage the legalization of prostitution! Let's hear it for whores!

Not one to bend over and let his girlfriend fuck him with something like Satanic ritual sacrifice, Trevor turned the tables and Faith wound up with her mystic butter knife stuck in her side. Trevor was brought up on murder charges and somehow fell into a 4 year coma under Ek's care (no, not Ecks, leave Antonio Banderas and his Ballistic Hollywood tripe far away from this). As an audience to the Doc's latest experiment, Ek invites along fellow medical scientist and long time admirer Dr. Koffee (speaking of Evil Dead movies, say hello to Ted Raimi kids!), whose nose turns a dark and muddy brown as he feels privileged to pay witness. Ek tells Trevor that the source of his coma was an allergic reaction to an anesthetic used for his noggin' repair... a 4 year coma from an allergic reaction? Those musta been SOME drugs! I'd be giving the offices of Dewey, Cheatum & Howe a call and filing a lawsuit as soon as I regained consciousness.

Before his surgery and resultant coma, Trevor was saying something about possessing a magick book that had a lot to do with the botched ritual. But, now that he's awake and given time to adjust to the world of 2006 (what, no flying cars or robot monkey butlers?), our hero is transferred to another pet project of Dr. Ek's creation: the softcore asylum known as the House of Love. Not a whorehouse per say, the HoL is a warm, caring environment for a lovable troupe of mental cases, where Trevor can get the attention he needs. It's not long before Trev's glaring charisma ("I'm Trevor") is winning him new friends and associates at the House. The most significant of these appears to be Douglas (Seth "Ticks" Green), whose enigmatic jabbering and riddle-speak are either trying to clue Trevor into what's really going on in his life... or is just trying to fuck over the guy for personal enjoyment.

Upon being shown to his room, Trev does what any self-respecting human being would do and takes down the big ugly Jesus painting. I can completely understand his motivations, as you wouldn't believe the number of freakish nightmares and hallucinations I've had of that damn hippy and his 6-pack abs. Were this a motel, I'd also burn the bible in the nightstand... It's soon revealed that Trevor's fellow loonies are just actors under Dr. Ek's employ, as Ek and Koffee watch on through hidden cameras to see how Ek's experiment in mind games is going. I know this may seem like one of those "oh, well, there goes the rest of the movie" moments, but trust me when I say that there are still plenty of twists yet to be turned in this million dollar pretzel... Meanwhile, as with any tale of lunacy, self-doubt and lost pasts, our Mr. Blackburn is frequented with momentary sanity farts that result in blackouts and flashbacks that, though seem to make little to no sense at the time, will no doubt be pieced together with a twist of cinematic lemon at the finale. Just like that 1000 piece puzzle I once assembled that I thought was of Mr. T, but turned out to be a nude picture of Grace Jones... I miss my old eyes, before I sporked them out...

Allow me to take a short time out to introduce you to the rest of House of Love crew, before I forget and start referring to them by name and confusing all two or three of you. The other legumes in this can of nuts are Liz, who thinks that if she stops typing her stories, the world will end; Ronald, whose best friend is the Professor, an alligator hand puppet complete with googly-eyes and top hat that serves as a vessel for Ronald's other personality; and lastly (and probably the best looking meal on the menu) is Amy, the trippy blond with a Patricia Arquette air to her, whose "ailment" is having delusions of rape with men she's engaged in consentual sex with... in other words, if you're gonna bang her, be sure to get a signed confession of consent and video documentation of the agreement prior to intercourse, witnessed and officialized by a licensed lawyer. Hey, she looks like she could be worth it, and if she fucks half as good as it looks like she does, trust me, it'd be more than worth it!

Most of the characters are supporting roles, not so much there to further the plot line or unlock key elements to the story. For instance, Amy and Ronald tend to sit around in the wreck room discussing each other's perceptions of what reality really is or isn't, in which "the Professor" butts in to insist it's real while Ronald is the fake and Amy just wants to get a Slim Jim™ inside her greasy 7-Eleven™ taco... Meanwhile Liz stays in her room slapping away at her typewriter (I know what that's like), leaving Douglas the only one to help Trevor further the movie, but somehow speaking in riddles, enigmas and straight-up paranoid bullshit doesn't seem to be helping Trev much with his random hallucinations and frantic montages. It's like answering questions like "What's 2+2?" with other questions like "What does the color blue taste like on a Friday?"... which is really more of a Naked Lunch question.

Soon things turn deadly as they often do when you make a movie about a house populated by insane people, when Ronald turns up deceased, his puppet lobbed off at the wrist. Being the only one in the house ever accused of a murder, Trevor becomes the obvious suspect in the slaying, though I'd say it's more likely that the Professor just wanted a little time off... wait, "time off"?! Uh-oh, inadvertent bad joke kids, beware falling rocks... While engaging in their usual back-and-forth, Trevor and Douglas reveal to each other that they've both been having weird dreams about the House's attic and a very energetic trunk that probably contains an important plot device or that twist of cinematic lemon to go on top of the proverbial dessert. The two venture into the attic to investigate their mutual hallucinations (the point of every movie where the title makes sense) and find, what else, but the trunk.

Unable to open the lock, Doug begins booting the big steamer, causing some kind of mental backlash to Trev, who feels every *thump* like it was being laid upside his brain. If you can't smell the metaphor, then maybe it's time to head back to Blockbuster and exchange this for a copy of The New Guy and live the rest of your life in blissful ignorance. Not satisfied with the rate things are developing, Ek decides to up the dosage of heavy pharmaceutical drugs in Trev's diet in an effort to FF>> through the movie a little. The increased hallucinogens lead to fevered visions of Faith, who claims that she's here to help the man she tried sacrifice, starting with telling him about his ignorant drug consumption... when your life's become a series of Pink Floyd album covers, you've got problems... albeit cool ones. Witnessing all of this turns Koffee off to his original hero worship of the mad Doctor Eks, proof that listening to how a guy describes his methods and actually watching him execute them are completely different...

Further feverish nightmares have Faith taking care of the background story. When they were together, Trevor bought a new house. In the attic he found an old steamer trunk, popped the top and found a secret passage leading to some bizarre room that looks like a clearing in a forest. Trevor discovered an arcane hardcover (I usually wait for the softcovers myself) with pages that appeared blank to everyone who looked at them with the exception of Trevor, since it's magical and was meant only to be read by him. Seems the book contained a recipe for some kind of transference ceremony that would've put Trevor's mind into Faith's body, somehow giving the two ultimate power... and one cramped skull. But, Trev broke his concentration at a crucial point of the project, he forgot what it was he and Faith were doing and instead killed his woman out of "self-defense". In addition to spelling out an awkward situation to explain to the cops, it also let Faith's soul without a vessel, now trapping her inside of Trevor instead of vice versa... so, uhm, does he have "ultimate power" now or not?

Apparently unlocked from Trevor's mind courtesy of Ek's drugs, Faith now attempts to maneuver her old flame into finding the book and straightening this ordeal out. As for the House of Love, yes, it's the very house that Trevor and Faith had bought and in which he had found the book, with the inmates of course being actors and the murders staged in an effort to send Trevor deeper and deeper into his mental labyrinth, all orchestrated by Ek, who wants Trevor to lead him to the book... obviously Ek is more than just a mad doctor... that, or Combs is regressing into his Necronomicon role of H.P. Lovecraft... As for Faith, it seems she can't be freed from her place trapped in Trevor's mind unless he dies, so when her attempts to get him to kill himself fail, she's gotta possess somebody else's body to do it for him... got that? No? It's okay, neither do I. If she can get out of Trevor's body to possess other people, then why does she need to kill him? Why not just possess the body or bodies of anyone and everyone she'd want to be? Didn't like her ass in her previous body? Find a better one! Always wanted to know what it was like to piss standing up? Possess a man! Always want to have the world by the balls? Jump into the president's body... as opposed to letting him jump into yours... oh come on, that one was actually pretty good, even for me!

Anyway, after Faith's threat to possess an as yet unknown body and do Trevor in, the actors in the House of Love hit the reset button and start the scenario all over again to fuck with our hero further. But, he's not falling for it, especially when he finds a milk carton in the fridge dated for the year 2000 and gets Amy to confess that she's just an actress willing to whore for her "art"... i.e. for the right price. Yes, not only are the people and the House a bunch of bullshit, but the whole 4 year coma story's about as real as Reverend Lovejoy's pec implants. Back at headquarters, Koffee finally gets the morality to stand up to Ek and threatens to rat him out to the medical board and the authorities. This of course throws Ek into "Bond villain" mode, as he holds a hypodermic to Dr. K's throat with threats of death and the textbook unveiling of his insidious master plan to get a hold of Trevor's book, which not only exists for real, but holds the powers of the Old Ones... come on, did you really think you'd get a movie with Jeffrey Combs, Ted Raimi and a black magic spell book without a direct reference to Lovecraft?! Silly viewer...

Instead of trying to cover up a murder, Ek instead sedates Koffee and has him locked away. After all, who'd believe a story about black magic textbooks in regards to one of the more revered head scientists? Back at Love central, the actor playing Douglas decides to side with Trevor and let him in on the truth he already knows. Unhappy with this turn of events, Ek sends some violence prone orderlies in to secure Dougie, though next time he should really give the goons photographic reference material to work with, because when they get to the House, the real Doug (well, the actor) redirects them and their club wielding furies onto Ronald, whom they proceed to beat the fat fucker and his hand puppet mercilessly (and hilariously!). As for Mr. Blackburn, he's convinced himself that Faith had possessed Amy, so instead of letting himself be seduced and killed like any other movie schmuck, he gets the jump on the blond and strangles her with her own shirt, giving us as excuse to check out her tits again. Thanx Trevor!

As for Douglas, he starts going medieval on everyone else in the house with various implements, including a nightstick and typewriter, beating the orderlies to death. The boy's obviously got a flare for bludgeoning, and now he's setting his sights on Trevor... yes, we have our psychotic ex-girlfriend! Despite a heavy ass whooping, both the actor playing Ronald and the actress playing Liz escape, only to have Ek send more goons their way to dispatch them off screen. When Doug-Faith goes after Trev, for once in history Jesus really does save, as he uses the yard sale painting hung in his bedroom to prop a door closed and impede his-her chase, heh heh. The chase ends in the ceremonial forest room inside the chest in the attic. Trev winds up stabbing Doug-Faith with the same ceremonial knife that killed her last time, followed by a quick ring to the fuzz, the hiding of the book and a complete breakdown into madness as some of Trev's prior hallucinations start to make sense while new ones are suddenly thrown into our face to compensate... it's like David Lynch meets Rod Serling, only more "movie" and not so much "cinema"... if any of that makes sense...

Though I found the twists interesting and one of the few things that set this film aside from other video releases, there are things that continue to make little-to-no sense even upon repeated viewings, like the ending and why Ek and Trevor both seem to have the ability to blow up light bulbs with their minds... a possible duality? Perhaps it's all metaphorical things that only the writer/director can explain, perhaps it's stuff that you need to be a psychology major to pick apart to it's bare bones and ruin all the mystery, or maybe it's just one big random dose of crack. Either way, when your budget is low enough that you can pay for the whole thing by telling Regis Philbin how far the Earth is from the sun (thank you They Might Be Giants), it takes mind games to make up for it, and that's a tolerance I have... besides, it's got Jeffrey Combs, Ted Raimi and Seth Green in a role that NO teenage girls are likely to witness or enjoy if they did so... little bitches ruined Blink 182 for me... like Kevin Williamson, Wes Craven and all of Hollywood ruined slasher flicks from 1996-2001... a grudge I refuse to let go, no matter what my psychiatrist and parole officer say.

One of the things that stands out from the rest of the movie is the actual House of Love itself. The set design for the place is simple, with the occasional exception, like fake walls and the attic's "hidden room" inside Trevor's mystery trunk. The colors are what really define the structure though. On the outside, it looks like a normal suburban home, but inside it's a post-modernist, Clockwork Orange-ian hallucination color scheme that adds to the all around feel of confusion and insanity. Sure, the colors aren't as important a feature as they played in something like Suspiria, but that's Argento's bag to be played in. These colors are more pastel, more subtle but still play with the visuals.

The acting was pretty good. Combs was his usual b-movie madman self (which I love). Raimi was, well, his usual self, which is okay, except he's better in the off-kilter serial killer type of role ala Skinner or as a pantomime demon possessed old woman as per Evil Dead 2. Then again, somebody's gotta be the straight man to foil Combs, so maybe it's not Teddy's fault. Hell, with me, EVERYBODY takes a backseat to Senor Combs, especially the entire cast of House On Haunted Hill and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Actually, Jeffrey Combs is the ONLY reason I'll spell out that abomination's entire title, so let's not linger. Like I said, Seth Green did well as Douglas. Much like Brad Pitt, I think his calling is more that of an asylum inmate... or an actor playing an asylum inmate... As far as his ability to play a murderer possessed by the spirit of a vengeful female worshiper of the lord of darkness back to kill her boyfriend? Well, let's say I've seen better, by my neighbor for example. I still feel kinda bad about having to split him in half for that, but hey, Julia wanted to be a bitch, so she had to die twice... uhm, as for the rest of the cast, the crazies filled their roles well and the orderlies had me laughing out loud, not because they were bad, but because of the contrary, heh heh. Alice Cooper always makes a good cameo too, much better than when he tries to carry a movie.

Final thought? For 1/15th the price of Halloween: Ressurection, Jeremy Kasten, Rogan Russell Marshall and Tse Tse Fly Productions can put together a flick 15 times better. It's movies like The Attic Expeditions that the terms "get your money's worth" and "do the best with what you have" were created.