Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #25



Hostel


starring Hot Young People Being Dismembered

directed by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever)



In case none of you had noticed, I have included a link over there on the right hand sidebar that takes you to a list of all the previous MIHNIoS entries. So much genius all in one place. Be careful. Staring directly at the page may scorch your retinas. There is only so much Awesome the human eye can process at once.

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Well, I had planned something special for this, the Silver 25th Edition of the Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing Series. Unfortunately, the mark happened to fall during the month of January.

Ah, January. When all the Oscar-contending movies have all been released just under the previous-year-eligibility wire. Concurrently, it is also snowing in roughly 2/3 of the country right now, which means the impetus to release any sort of movie that anyone would want to see in any numbers just isn't there. This is the month where studios release movies that weren't good enough for their summer or holiday slates of craptastic-yet-lavishly-watchable fare but perhaps cost too much to justify a direct-to-DVD release.

There is one more category, movies-that-suck-but-have-some-kind-of-other-oddball-draw. Sometimes you get movies that have been shelved for ages, but because of some off-screen influence (one of the bit players becomes a star in the interim or, failing that, a producer gets his hands of video evidence of studio heads eating Christian babies in a traditional Hollywood Jewish blood sabbath) they decide to try their luck at making some money off a dead turkey during the bleak entertainment wasteland between Christmas and Memorial Day.

In this case, I have to think the release has to do with the peripheral (peripheral peripheral) involvement of Quentin Tarantino. The movie is billed as "Quentin Tarantino Presents..." even though, as far as I can tell, Quentin Tarantino has nothing to do with this movie in any way besides calling in to morning-zoo-type radio shows along with Mr. Roth and doing his spastic-poodle hyperbole-only-vocabulary act to help promote the film. God knows what kind of video evidence Mr. Roth has on Quentin, but it must be good.

Whatever the motivation, it was nice for Quentin to interrupt his long days of bong hits and Froot Loops to help a pal out. Seeing as Kill Bill was essentially one movie, Tarantino has made a grand total of one film in nine years. Jackie Brown was 1997. That's a lot of Froot Loops in between.

I have not seen Cabin Fever, but I heard it's good. That will have to do it for me because I don't watch scary movies. It's an unfair blanket judgment against all films of a certain genre, I know, but I'm just not built for them, biochemically speaking. Some people watch big hulking dudes in masks jump out and kill naked co-eds while they're in the shower and they get a rush of adrenaline and endorphines that makes the experience exhilarating and pleasureable. I have a different hormonal reaction. What's the hormone called that causes choking, uncontrollable weeping and projectile vomit? That's the one I have.

Actually it's not that bad. They actually just stress me out. I always leave the theater feeling agitated and cranky. Perhaps it's because I know that even though the scary-scary machete-wielding co-ed murderer has been stabbed, shot, beheaded, electrocuted and dropped in a vat of acid, he's somehow not really dead and will reappear in the inevitable sequel(s).

Or perhaps it's because I know deep down that the American Coalition of People With Families Against Things That Other People Think Are Fun are right and the secret lust for blood that lurks in deep in the recesses of my heart and mind have been awakened by exposure to red-colored corn-syrup spilling out of rubber torsos being split in half by plastic cutlery in front of effective lighting and creepy/shrieky mood music. Hollywood is out to get us, people. And they won't be happy until we're all suicidal/homicidal perverts.

The movie is about two lunkheaded American dudes in Europe living on a diet of bong hits, Froot Loops and hot Euro punani. The legend of some hostel in Slovakia peopled entirely by Euro chicks with severe shirt-and-bra aversions draws them in, which inevitably leads to all kinds of bloodletting and (probably) murder.

The lesson, of course, is two-fold: a) rooms/buildings full of slutty naked chicks always SOUND like a good idea, but almost always end in ritual torture and b) never ever trust foreigners. If you walk into a room entirely peopled by foreigners, you either back out slowly or walk forward, killing all in sight before they can kill you. Of course this makes traveling abroad difficult since "abroad" is almost totally populated with foreigners and all that killing can wear a guy out, but if you want to see the Eiffel Tower, you have to be prepared to wade through a mountain of blood and gore to get there. We are Americans. It's the price we must pay for being so motherfucking awesome.

It's an unpleasant fact of life, but you try not to dwell on it. Apparently Mr. Roth has not learned that lesson because in this film, he apparently dwells on everything, almost literally ad nauseam: every puncture, hack, slash, cut, drill, saw, shot, tear... everything in up-close, lingering, bloody detail.

Americans aren't going to stand for that kind of brutality. Unless it's being done to Jesus. Which is weird, but I don't judge.

So I'm on board with the boobies in Hostel, but that's about it. Everything else about this project turns me off, up to and including its dubious January release date. This is no way to begin the 2007 Oscar race.

I have less than no intention of seeing this movie. I actually have no interest in this movie, which is curious considering I just spent about 800 words talking about it. Let me sum up my position by offering for only the second time ever in the grand history of Movies I Have No Intention of Seeing:


Andrew Shue!

That's a big fat ZERO on the Hot Babysitter Scale, people. What that tells you is I'd rather stay home with my kids than see Hostel. Terrifying.


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:47 AM