Shut up.

Anyway, long story-made-longer-made-short, for $6 I scored a four-flick feature (or an "F3" as they'll now be called in these halls) called "Spawn of the Devil". One of the movies in this four-pack required immediate viewing and reviewing (as in "it also needed to be reviewed", not "it needed to be viewed multiple times"). As you can imagine by this review, that movie was of course The Screaming. But, instead, here's a review for Night Crawlers.

Okay, just for the record, I'm going to try and go easy on this dime store feature for two reasons: (A) - It cost me less than the price of a Big Mac, so I have no pretenses of it being any good. (B) - The name of the production company responsible for the movie isn't some snide ego name like "Awesome Movies" or "Quality Films", it's "Micro-Budget Productions", meaning these folks know their movie's bound to be of the "crap on the bottom of the viewer's shoe" variety, but went ahead and made it anyway. Then again, this could also be their own attempts at creating an excuse for what is no doubt going to leave me in abdominal pain for a few hours, so maybe I won't be so "generous" with my opinions after all... Oh well, we'll just have to find out...

Yeah, you can pretty much mind-wipe that last paragraph from your memory right now. I don't know what the Hell I was talking about.

Okay, hate to butt in again already, but the opening "credits" are obvious done on someone's iMac and include cheesy "star swipe" effects and bad "you could make better looking fonts on Microsoft Word" type introductions. But that's all I wanted to say there. Nothing more out of me until something actually starts to happen, I promise...

Our feature fiasco takes place in the unassuming hills of the rural sprawls of Whispering Bluffs Utah. Dare I say the countryside is almost gorgeous as we're painfully ripped away from it to focus on a big white house. Inside said house is a tale of terror to make your flesh crawl and your ears bleed, as a shrill and completely unappealing old broad screeches her enjoyment for talking on the phone with a friend who has, if she prizes what's left of her auditory function, has hopefully taken the precaution to turn off her hearing aid. The easiest analogy? This freakish geezer is what will happen when all the Valley Girls from the '80s actually hit their 80s.

While the old harpy crones on with her friend, Fluffy, her unoriginally named feline companion, finds herself in the basement of the house investigating something that sounds like markers being scribbled on a dry-erase board. The cause of these inhuman sounds is yet to be seen in all it's no doubt gloriless glory, but from the attack is lays on the unfortunate cat, it seems to have a tail made of plastic with little cardboard spiky pieces coming out of it, eyes that neither move nor contain eyelids (possibly because they're made of papier-mâché!?), and dangling "fangs" of plastic that drip with gore. Oh, and a bunch of human hair (very long and thin of stature) is tossed against a cardboard box with a drizzle of blood, because Fluffy had apparently been wearing a hairpiece... I guess...

You know, that Big Mac's starting to sound real appetizing right about now...

Upon hearing Fluffy's distressed cries from the lower levels of the home, the Valley Geezer gives her friend on the other line a prompt (and final) goodbye before heading off to her unavoidable doom in true horror movie victim fashion. What's that, a noise downstairs? A pet in distress? That cat's cry is the sound of your death wish being officially signed and authorized by the Notary Public lady, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer gal. So yes, she dies, horribly gnarled and mutilated by the hungry fangs of the unmoving killer toy monster thing that sleeps in her basement. This is what happens when you make all those canisters of peaches and preserves and never use them. It doesn't matter that that joke wasn't funny though, so long as this annoying old bitch is no longer amidst the functioning lungs club, and that's alright with me.

Some undetermined amount of time passes and wouldn't you know it, that old lady's house is up for sale. An elderly chap with a quickly retreating hairline, an old man trench coat (what, no flashy red blazer and name tag?!), and a Chevy mini-van is the guy responsible for unloading the deathtrap on the unsuspecting Hayden family. Their first names aren't important, so I'll simply refer to them as Man (co-director Mark Polonia), Woman (Mark’s real-life wife Courtney Polonia… or his real-life sister… ew), and Girl (not played by a Polonia, which is good, as this means it’s still possible these monkeys have yet to breed and we can therefore kill their tainted bloodline before it gets worse) for the rest of the review. The Haydens drive a Ford, so I'm guessing no one from either Chevrolet or Ford has seen this abomination yet, otherwise they would've filed for an injunction to get their fancy logo nameplates removed from every shot of the movie. A lawsuit obviously wouldn't have worked, as the people who put this leaning tower of ass cakes together surely had no money to begin with. As for the Haydens: Man is a dork with officially licensed Dork Brand™ glasses and the official Dork Club™ cut moustache and hairstyle, Woman has a bad complexion and soul devouring '80s hair, and poor little Girl is obviously distraught by the fact that her college fund has gone straight down the toilet in favor of Night Crawlers. Parents should have no say in their kids' futures...

Elsewhere, just one "slide right" Powerpoint™ transition away, a priest sits alone in his church funded abode reading up on his scriptures. Meanwhile, in the cluttered basement of said church, amidst the empty Eggo™ boxes and rusted steel drums, a green light appears, accompanied by generic sci-fi sound effects. What does this green burst of Flash 2.0™ animation mean? Yes, it's the heralding of that damn toy monster puppet thing, which we now get a full view of. It's moments like this that the phrase "less is more" was made for, as I will now feel as if my eyes are being repeatedly stabbed with acupuncture needles for the rest of the movie. This puppy's going straight to the "Never Watch AGAIN!" lock box stored in the loose floor boards of my bedroom alongside Demonicus, Night Ripper and Zombie '90 when this is all over with, I can already feel it.

Back at the big white house of death, Woman and Girl take a look around the property while Man hashes out the details with Greg (not his actual name, but it's easier to type than “Generic real estate guy”), suspicious that there must be something wrong if such a big place is being sold at such a low price. Greg's reasoning? "These houses are priced to sell".

And here I thought the point of selling houses was to price them so obscenely outside of anyone's budget that no one would ever be able to afford to live in one...

Greg goes on to explain further that the whole place is furnished because the prior owners were murdered... across town... and the police have yet to find the parties responsible... good one Greg, you're up for Employee of the Month for sure! Of course you're the only member of your one man real estate office, so the fact that it took you this long to be honored just serves as a testament to the competitive real estate market in Whispering Bluffs...

Given the way Greg continues to stutter and look at his feet while further assuring Man that the murders had "nothing to do with this house" are just one testament to this movie's ever expanding cache of reasons that suicide is a positive alternative to being me. But, I must be strong so future generations who might stumble upon this DVD in a time capsule buried in the heart of the Sahara won't be foolish enough to pursue it's viewing further. I'll just slip a few toothpicks up under my toenails to try and counteract the mental cheese grater currently making quick work of my brain.

Continued stock horror music and the familiar sounds of that same dry-erase board elsewhere prompt once more an appearance by the demonic toys (not to be confused with Demonic Toys, which comes off as Spielberg-ian in comparison), as they burrow into the backroom of a video rental store so they might make a sampler plate out of the scalp of another ugly woman, following her star making "completely unattractive counter worker girl writes down stuff on a piece of paper" scene. I know I made two mentions of this girl being ugly but trust me, she's fugly enough to warrant more. Consider me generous and then get the Hell out of my office!

Further reason to sever my own head is thrown into my face with the force of a sledgehammer, when Man and Woman further discuss their plans to buy the house... in bed... and naked... Sure it's under the covers, but that's still 90% more flesh than I need to see from these beasts! :::Anubis proceeds to paint his desk in a Technicolor tidal wave before racing to the bathroom to rinse out his mouth and thoroughly wash his eyeballs with Clorox™:::

As for the priest who looks like Matt Frewer's younger, less demented cousin (on his mother's side), he takes time out of his Bible readings to put on a sweater that would make Bill Cosby weep, then heads down to his basement to add to the clutter piles. Jesus didn't have time to be neat and organized, so none of his followers should really be expected to neither. The angry plastic watermelon with the pipe cleaners for arms won't put up with such blatant disregard for proper basement usage though, and confronts the misguided padre. The as yet unnamed man of God (who will now be known as Skeeter for completely nonsensical reasons) holds the unblinking beast at bay with the Jesus's love though, and it escapes into a hole in the wall and off to less faithful pray... haha, little religious play on words there... you know, with "prey" and... and... "pray"... as in... "prayer"... and... right.

Screen swiping back to the Haydens, they've decided to buy the house (that had nothing to do with the murder of its former tenants) and are quick to move in and unpack their junk to the soundtrack of a 3M training video. You know, one of those generic rock anthem, "Americans all across the country are waking up to the promise of a new day, thanks to the hard work and caring eyes of 3M" type riffs that tries to be work-inspirational "rock" without getting so "rock" as to inspire independence and free thinking. Yeah, that's the kind. Kinda brings a tear to your eye, don't it?

Nah, me neither :::Anubis proceeds to wipe a tear from his eye and blow his nose:::. Turn those cameras off. I said turn those fucking cameras OFF!

Back at father Skeeter's steeple baring crib, he sits down from some more scripture reading (the only pastime these collar wearing crackpots apparently enjoy aside from casting couch tryouts for new alter boys), this time in search of anything that might explain to him why his basement is being targeted by man-eating art projects from a head start program. He's stunned to find that this creature may in fact be something created within the 2000+ years since the book's writing (and yes, that collection of mythological short stories WAS written, NOT "created" from nothingness) and must go by what little free thought he has left to try and solve this Scooby-Doo mystery on his own. My money's on the monster being a robot or a hologram controlled by a greedy land developer looking to scare everyone in town away so he can set up an oil drilling/gold mining operation and make himself rich, as scaring people isn't considered harassment under the United States legal system...

This is when Skeeter looks to a photo of his Great Grandfather for inspiration, being as how the man (who seems to have had 20lbs of beard on his face and absolutely no lips) was also "of the cloth" way back in his days of preaching in the town of Ellisville. Not sure what the deal is with Skeeter looking at a picture of Ellisville (in what I'm surmising to be a state of ruin), then muttering the words "night crawlers" before going into a semi-comatic state of shock, but allow me to use my powers of b-movie clairvoyance and guesstimate the back-story we're about to be introduced to: Skeeter's great grandfather's hometown of Ellisville was destroyed by ravenous watermelons called Night Crawlers who were defeated thanks to the selfless act of sacrifice by Pappy Skeets and have now somehow found their way to Utah thanks to a tear in the time-space fabric as opened by the shrill voice and inane geezer speak of that stupid old lady from the opening scene. All attempts at reading the future by the Tomb of Anubis are strictly for entertainment purposes only, and should any or all of them be proven as false, the owner (and his alternate personalities) are not held accountable, thus negating any and all claims for refund. Thank you.

Oh man, this movie's starting to make my ulcers bleed! When we go back to the Hayden household, we find little Girl playing with her stupid ball, a plot device often used by b-movie writers to drag children into all kinds of bad situations. Because of movies like these, I will never allow my children to have such implements of fun, as they will no doubt lead the child/children into oncoming traffic, a troll's evil clutches, or the hungry mouth of a big plastic watermelon. This part isn't the ulcer inducer though. That comes when one of the monster's green vortex balls appears in the wall of their basement and leaves what's supposed to be a "tunnel". That "tunnel" is instead an image of a tunnel, pasted onto the image of the basement wall with what looks to be an incredibly primitive image editing programs the likes of, again, Microsoft Word™! As if that weren't bad enough, it indeed gets worse, when you look out the window of the wall to see that this "basement" isn't even underground, thus meaning that this "tunnel" would've just been a hole through the wall and opening to the front yard...

RRRRRRRRRRRRARGH!!!! IT'S LIKE SOMEBODY OPENED UP MY SKULL AND COVERED MY BRAIN IN MAGGOTS AND THISTLES!!! IT'S ITCHES AND HURTS AND TICKLES, BUT I CAN'T MAKE IT STOP WITHOUT FILLING MY HEAD WITH BUCKSHOT!!!!!

Uggh, now that that's over with, allow me to try and gather my wits, shattered and scattered to the four winds...

NO! THE TORTURE CONTINUES! After the family scratches their heads over the sudden appearance of this giant hole in their wall (and subsequently call up and verbally harass their real estate agent for selling them the dump), Man gathers up his tool box and a couple of scraps of wood and boards up the hole... with magic nails that can somehow be planted through solid concrete. It only escalates, as we watch part of this from the vantage out of within the hole, which consists of filming the dork in the basement, then super imposing a border image of blue bricks around the video footage and having the geek hold up the lengths of wood, as if to hold them against this imaginary "hole"... I just had a stroke.

The final nail in my coffin: we're treated to a "worm's eye view" of the watermelon monster as it burrows underneath the ground ala Tremors, only instead of driving the camera through loose soil and rocks, the "effects" consist of the FX guy's screensaver... fuck, I just had an embolism... I seriously can't feel my feet or my thumbs right now...

Screen swipe right and we're in the office of Man's boss at the lumber yard, doing his deed as the asshole of the movie as he steals money from the company, only to become victim of the creature's bloodlust, as seen through it's kiwi-watermelon Kool-Aid Burst cataracts... and upon further inspection, it seems the monster isn't a plastic watermelon after all. No, the thing's actually a big plastic pumpkin painted green with pieces of sheet metal poking out of it, a pink rubber Halloween skull mask bolted to it, four ping-pong balls glued to the mask along with two vacuum cleaners for "mandibles" glued to either side, painted toothpicks used for teeth, and rubber snakes placed underneath it so the tails are meant to look like tentacles... Total cost of the movie's titular monster: $5.82 plus tax at the Family Dollar. Family Dollar, where we've funded home video monster movies since 1998!

As you can guess, dickweed dies, vomiting up Hershey's syrup as the monster wobbles around on the man's abdomen. Back to Father Skeeter, he revisits his haunted basement (which is actually underground and has a real hole in it's wall, unlike the story over at the Hayden place) and finds that the hole is remarkably well lit with green neon... at least the Not-Nearly-As-Great-As-It's-Made-Out-To-Be Pumpkin takes it's tunnel burrowing seriously... when it's making the tunnels and not just super imposing them onto the videotape...

Skeets decides to get some use out of his "Learn Spelunking By Mail!" degree, and heads into the hole to see what he can see, a malfunctioning flashlight his only companion. You know, the kind of flashlight you see in movies all the time, where people have to constantly bang them against something to get them to work, as they immediately start flickering or turning themselves off whenever the monster/alien/serial killer/fake scare best friend is around. Yeah, those kind of flashlights. Of course he runs into the monster(s?) and gets a spatter of raspberry jam across his cheek for his troubles. Skeets then attempts communicating with the no-budget demon and gets some psychedelic Vulcan mind-meld for his troubles. Through this nightmare in '70s "special FX" editing (backgrounds of swirling colors, tracer effects,, the monster explains why he didn't kill the man earlier. Seems that the crucifix around the priest's neck caught the beast's attention... because the monster witnessed the crucifixion of "Jesus" from beneath a rock some 2000 years ago... okay, if it were under a rock, how did it actually see the event happening? I guess I should replace my eyes with ping-pong balls! Then again, my current health plan doesn't cover vision or dental, so maybe I'll hold off on that little science experiment.

The creature speaks to Skeets in garbled Swamp Thing tongue, telling him that the sparing of the human race is temporary, that their kind are older than the dinosaurs and have been living underground since the last ice age, watching the humans overtake the Earth, and are on the verge of making their bid to take the planet back for their own… and all this from a shitty little town in Utah.

Back at the lumberyard, Man goes to work the next day and has a water cooler chat with a fellow co-worker who looks like Henry Rollins’s skinny second cousin, wearing the biggest pair of prescription eyewear since, well, Man’s! Now that I think about it (as the haze of ass gas this movie’s farted into my head is starting to clear), four-out-of-five members of this cast is bespectacled! Not just decked out in four-eyed party favors though, but full-on nerdified with the biggest damn specs they could find! Everyone involved with this movie loses: the directors, producers, actors, distributors, and viewers. But, there is one group of people benefiting from this air bubble in the arteries of cinema: LENSCRAFTERS™!

Man’s fellow lumber lugger informs him of the wondrous beasties known as the “Night Crawlers”, whose evil piñata antics led to the destruction of a town called Ellisville some 200 or so years earlier, not 150 miles from where this dung heap is currently being laid. Man chalks up the story to “BULLSHIT!”, blaming the ignorance of the people at that time for their ridiculous story of these rabid plastic gophers. Speak of the little dollar store devils, back at Man’s house his ugly wife Woman and their unfortunate spawn Girl engage in hot housework action, thrilling and arousing us as they clean their oven and wash their dishes with reckless abandon, being watched from a nearby doorway by a familiar pair of ping-pong balls. When Man comes home, he finds an oily transparent substance on the floor of the kitchen, his graphically imposed hole with it’s mighty barrier of flimsy wooden planks and magical nails removed, and Woman and Girl nowhere in sight. Fearing what might have happened to them (despite all his “BULLSHIT!” boastings at work about the Night Crawlers), the world’s mightiest wiener starts calling out for them in horror! Suddenly the phone rings and who should be on the other line? Yes, it’s Woman, safe and sound at her mother’s house and concerned about what Man’s so freaked out about…

:::Anubis proceeds to slap himself in the head violently::: HOW THE FUCK DID SHE KNOW SOMETHING WAS WRONG?! BEFORE HE SAID ANYTHING OTHER THAN “Hello?” IN HIS WEAK, SIMPERING LITTLE PUSSY VOICE, THE BROAD IMMEDIATELY KNOWS SOMETHING IS HORRIBLY WRONG!? DID HER SUPERNATURAL PSYCHIC POWERS TELL HER THAT HER (SAD EXCUSE FOR A) MAN WAS IN DIRE TROUBLE?! IS HER MOTHER’S HOUSE NEXTDOOR AND SHE MANAGED TO HEAR HIS SHRILL CRIES OF HORROR FROM THERE, THUS PROMPTING HER CALL?! ARGH!!! I’M TEMPTED TO CUT OFF MY HANDS RIGHT NOW SO I HAVE AN EXCUSE TO STOP TYPING THIS, THIS, THIS ABOMINATION OF UTTER CINEMATIC TORTURE!!!!

No, wait, there’s no way this movie can even remotely be considered “cinema”! Right now, right here, I’m officially proclaiming the addition of a new word to the Tomb of Anubis dictionary! This new word is as follows:

cenema (sen-ě-mă) n. 1. films of a quality compared to that of human waste, i.e. every aspect of them are considered wretched, putrid and entirely offensive to the viewer. 2. films so awful that the viewer would rather be subjected to an enema with corrosive acid than be forced to sit through them.

Just call me Webster kiddies.

And so, it seems that Woman and Girl will be staying with Old Woman for two days as they acquire some old furniture to fill their crappy new homestead. Later on, Greg (remember, he’s the real estate dick) stops by to check out the digital hole in Man’s basement while Man goes out to drown himself in an alcoholic womb. I don’t know anyone who’d let their real estate agent free to roam in their house unsupervised, but nothing else in the cenematic nightmare makes sense as it is, so let’s just watch the asshole get gobble up by the monsters and leave it at that.

Meeting up with Henry Rollins’s skinny second cousin at “Schooners Pub”, the two decide to break into the lumberyard and investigate the disappearance of their boss. When I say “break into the lumberyard”, I don’t mean they go so far as to scale a fence or smash a padlock with a sledgehammer, but rather Man’s friend kicks the backdoor and it swings open with ease… with such ease that he might as well have just pushed it open with his hand, rather than try to go all “action hero” and start swingin’ his Salvation Army bought Timberlands™ all over the place. Then again, as he says he’s “always wanted to do that”, I guess it’s better just to let him live his delusions and let it be left at that. Either way the duo search the building (meaning they stand around and look in different directions until something happens) and find their deceased boss, STILL LAYING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR AND COVERED IN BLOOD! HOW DID THEY MISS THAT BEFORE! WOULDN’T THE STINK OF A ROTTING BODY HAVE CLUED SOMEBODY IN ON THAT?! IS THAT THE ABANDONED SECTION OF THE BUILDING WHERE NOBODY APPARENTLY GOES ANYMORE?!?! GAH! I’M HAVING ANOTHER EMBOLISM!!!!

:::Anubis proceeds to down a bottle of tranquilizers, then attempts to do the same with a bottle of rat poison before being restrained by several large men in white jackets:::

Okay, before I start getting tazered and pumped full of “sleepy water”, allow to make one more attempt at getting through this movie.

The two discover the large hole from which the monsters emerged (yet another little observance that went unnoticed during the prior day’s activities), but before Skinny can finish refusing to go into the tunnel of certain doom, he’s attacked by a half-inflated basketball! Oh wait, that’s right, that thing’s supposed to be a monster, my mistake. Yes, Skinny is caught completely unaware by a monster that leaps at him from his direct line of sight (!!!!!!!!) and he bites the big meatloaf in the sky while Man is thrown backwards into a pile of wood shavings by sheer terror… or a strong breeze… or indigestion...

When the monster gives chase to our wimp-ass hero, his “quick thinking” saves him when he traps the beast under the unforgiving forks of a nearby forklift… whose keys were apparently left in the ignition because around their lumberyard safety comes fourth, after stupidity, ignorance, and unlocked doors. There’s no satisfying *squish* sequence to the creature’s demise though, as I’m sure the budget couldn’t afford to go to the Dollar General and buy the parts for any additional creatures, so instead the forks simply come down (luckily the monster stands in place long enough for this to happen) gently on the beast and it lets out something reminiscent of a “moo” from one of those big See ‘N’ Say™ toys for kids with the farm animals sounds on ‘em. After listening to Skinny’s dying words of “Get ‘em. You have to stop ‘em. Get the fucker.” (words that I hope will forever be ensconced on my tombstone), Man takes off his jacket (to show that he means business) and enters the lair of the ancient pumpkin monsters… a remarkably well constructed tunnel complete with concrete floor, stone walls and perfectly angled corners… or it could be he’s just crawling around in somebody else’s basement…

In the “tunnels” (which are carpeted at some sections…), Man meets Father Skeeter and the two team up to destroy the ages old menace of the Night Crawlers, coming across plastic Halloween skeletons from time to time (probably purchased the day after the holiday, thus saving the budget 50% of the normal cost…) that are supposed to be the “remnants of the dead”… sorry Father Skeeter, but I must’ve been absent from Biology class on the day they told us the Ulna and Radius bones of the human arm are connected with a THICK PIECE OF WHITE PLASTIC…

When they find the monsters’ nest (where we learn that ancient alien beasts lay eggs that look suspiciously like those laid by chickens and sold in the dairy section of your local supermarket…), they don’t SMASH the damn things to prevent future generations of killer pumpkins but instead continue crawling on, until they find the creatures’ spaceship... my left arm is tingling…I’m having trouble breathing… my vision has become blurry… and the more I see of this “spaceship”, the harder it is to breath and the more violently my arm begins to shake and the harder it is to see… I feel a massive coronary coming on… and I think my eyeballs are going to burst…

Here goes: the “spaceship” is little more than a heavily pixilated image of a ship taken from what I’m guessing is an old Star Wars PC game. It sits on a hill made of slightly better image quality, and sits against a very drab looking sky backdrop… though there shouldn’t be any sky in the picture at all, as the craft is supposed to be underground… where the walls are now nothing more than black tarps draped over the set and exposed water pipes line the ceiling… Things only go from awful to unbearable, as the two take a closer look at the craft, and if you’ve ever take a low resolution image into Microsoft Paint and tried blowing it up to make it larger, you’ll get an idea of how much worse the ship looks from a “closer” perspective…

Upon touching the craft, Man decrees that the ship is covered in what smells to him like “fuel” (as aliens obviously knew the merits of gasoline millennia before the human race decided it was something to exploit from the Earth and kill each other for… and they also apparently don’t put it into any kind of fuel tank, but instead cover their ships in it…) and that if he and Skeet are going to “bring the aliens’ subterranean world down around them” then they have no choice but to ignite the ship. But how will they blow it up from a safe enough distance as to not kill themselves? Well, instead of doing the noble thing (for us anyway) and sacrificing themselves with something like a Zippo™, it just so happens that the Vatican makes it mandatory that all Fathers in their service own flare guns, so the two make for the church. Skeeter gets his throat ripped out by a monster though, leaving Man to save the world from the underground menace alone. Finding the flare gun (which looks to be no more than one of those stupid little cigarette lighters shaped like a pistol) he returns to the site of the ship, stomps in the head of one of the monsters (THAT’S ALL IT TAKES TO KILL THEM: A FACE FULL OF SNEAKER FROM A HUMAN BEANPOLE?!), struggles with another creature, then loses the gun down a hole… way to go asshole.

Despite this fact that the gun is no longer in his possession (which he solidifies with a defeated and bland cry of “No”), somehow the ship still manages to go up in a limp dicked *poof* of firework gif animations, powered perhaps by the “awesome” love of Jesus? I think so, and I’m sure you will too…

The flick finally finishes up with Man stumbling on all fours through the 3 or 4 different “tunnel” sets seen throughout the movie as he escapes the resultant “explosion”, which rocks generic footage of Utah as shot through a shaky cam and prompts an old woman stirring her brownie mix to comment “The weather didn’t say anything about an earthquake today”… (1) earthquakes aren’t weather related (2) earthquakes aren’t predicted (3) shut up you stupid old nutbag.

Emerging back into his own basement, Man finds the hole that was once there is now gone (which isn’t just stupid, but also makes me wonder where the fuck he just supposedly emerged from!) and an hour of torture attempts to end on a funny note, as the “For Sale” sign in front of Man’s house goes back up and he comments that they’re moving back to their apartment. It’s over with, I’m (barely) alive, and the Polonias brothers have just made a very powerful enemy… or at least an enemy with very powerful delusions of grandeur…

Though I know I’ve already made numerous angry comments throughout the extensive length of this review, please understand that this has been the worst movie cenema experience of my life and a good part of the healing process will be to bitch and complain about Night Crawlers until I’m a long since decomposed corpse in the bowels of the Earth. I know the opening paragraphs said I would go easy on this movie, but now that I’m at the end of the review and have spent nearly 12 pages of space pointing out the horrible wrongs of a movie that’s little more than an hour in length, trust me when I say that I REALLY need this. And so, let the healing begin.

This movie has all the advanced technical wonder of a used car commercial, bogged down with numerous "screen wipe to the left/right" moments to drag us screaming into the next scene. Actually, that's an unfair assessment for car commercials, because those at least involve wide shots of the car lots, fast paced scan shots of the merchandise, and big fat guys in cowboy hats trying to hold off their next heart attack just long enough for them to scream out another "Arbor Day Sales Event" ad from the confines of their double/triple chins. They may be pathetic, but at least their bloated antics aren't delivered through performances that would make a stale Saltine™ look juicier than a rare cut of Porterhouse fresh off the cow. Whether you found that last bit to be a good comparison or not, either way the point is still this: I can’t remember the last time a group of people has managed to completely abandon their abilities to act even remotely human! They could have acted like normal people joining each other in normal everyday conversations and put no effort into the job whatsoever, thus allowing for something almost watchable. But no, instead they managed to forget how to act normal and instead went about putting on the worst case of Suckassatosis seen since my role as Jet Jaguar in my 3rd grade class’s performance of “Godzilla Vs. Megalon: The Play”. If I were forced to choose a “Best Actor” for Night Crawlers with toothpicks being plunged under my fingernails as the only other alternative, I’d give the award to the scenery! I'm sorry used car salesmen of America, forgive my brash comparison and please go back to "clubbing seals to make me a better deal".

I really have to wonder about the origins of this massive brain hemorrhage. When you think about it, it really makes your cerebellum itch, because it’s obvious that no human being in their right mind would produce or direct this beast! Sure, I could see it being written. The base concept is at least something I can’t fault the movie for. The idea of ancient subterranean worms eating a town full of morons wouldn’t surprise me in any way as being the idea for an episode of “Outer Limits” or “Perversions of Science” or, (Rod [Serling] help us) the “New Twilight Zone”. Throw on some ironic twist and you’ve got an instant TV show. Hell, it’s possible with a few tweaks to the script you’d have, oh, I don’t know, Tremors perhaps? But the question is what type of minds it took to think that this “movie”, a horrifying attempt to sneak past the cosmic guardians of the gates of good taste and good sense, was worth letting into the light of day! The directors had to know they was making a film digital file of diarrhea spray here, as did the producers have to know what they were plotting to unleash on the world at large! Are they mad despots too deranged to see the flaws in their plan?! Are they alien beings attempting to subjugate the human race through this outer space version of the Chinese Water Torture, until the awfulness of it all just keeps poking and poking at your sense of decency to the moment when you finally give up any semblance of sanity and call it quits on your life?! Perhaps “they” are actually “He”, as in the Devil, showing us the horrors of the world that “God” has to offer, thus convincing us that maybe, just maybe, Hell really ain’t all that bad after all…

I wouldn’t be surprised if this beast was actually put together by Brentwood themselves, redirecting their profits from a case of Sonny Chiba’s Street Fighter DVDs sold to a local Sam Goody™ store, just so they’d have one more movie to fill out their “4 Movies” Spawn of the Devil mini-horror movie box set (whose cover is displayed at the bottom of this page). Well, they suckered me outta my $5, so more power to ‘em I guess. I’m waiting to see how many more flicks like Night Crawlers are pulled from the black hole of Production Limbo over the coming years by Brentwood, not out of pity, but just so they have one more title to add to a 200 movie super “Crap You’d Never Buy Otherwise, So It Wound Up Here” collection. Coming soon to a Best Buy™, Virgin Mega-Store™, and Sam Goody™ near you this fall!

Learn more about what the people at Brentwood Home Video can offer you in the ways of entertainment (or the unreasonable facsimile thereof) by checking out your own local outlet store's "Cheap-Ass DVD Section/Bin" (as it should be clearly labeled), or by paying a visit to these fantastic mass producers of other people's crap at BCI Eclipse. They're the proverbial Savior to the bad-taste, no money outcasts of society, and we should all build a temple to them some day... or at least a shrine... or maybe we could each just build a small alter in our homes, on which we cook baked beans and offer them up to the Brentwood Gods through delicious bacon flavored sacrifice... oh wait, that's just my hot plate... oh fuck Brentwood, I got beans a burnin’!