BY: BANANAS ABOUT MOVIES
Skeleton Man The following review of Skeleton Man is brought to you in association with Shitfest Summer 2014, a blogathon that comes to you all the way from Shitfest Island, bearing gifts of movie crapdom, with a side order of rancid sweetcorn, and greasy peanuts from a half-digested Snickers bar, parped into a bucket from the arse of a man with irritable bowel syndrome. Yes, this is Shitfest. And this is Skeleton Man, a crime against eyeballs, ears, and probably cute little kittens. And I’ve watched it twice! Here’s my review… They say that in a monster movie, it’s always best to keep its appearance under wraps for as long as possible. It helps to build tension and fear, working towards that terrifying moment when one of the protagonists — along with the audience — bears witness to the monster’s full, hideous visage for the first time. This is the point in the story where there is no going back. It’s now a basic fight for survival between hero and monster. In Skeleton Man, I think they realised they had the movie world’s lamest monster design ever, so they reveal it almost straight away, to avoid a keener sense of disappointment later on. Think of the movie monster greats like Michael Myers, the Alien, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, and the Predator. Then take a look at Skeleton Man…
That’s right. They basically bought a Halloween skull mask, and then finished it off with… well, I’m not sure what they finished it off with. Sometimes, Skeleton Man seems to be wearing a raggedy old cloak which is all torn up and full of holes. Other times, he seems to be wearing one of these…
Don’t tell Tesco that I used one of their cheap product ranges to describe Skeleton Man’s costume, as I fear they might sue me for sullying the good name of their bargain bin liners (which are always tearing as they’re too thin, I might add). As costume designs go, it really is appalling. And yes, I realise I used a picture of a hot babe in a Freddy Krueger outfit, rather than the actual Freddy Krueger, but it’s only further evidence of just how rubbish the Skeleton Man costume really is. Even the hot babe looks scarier! The story begins at a house where some old professor is busy brushing the dirt off a vase which he’s found at an Indian burial site. History tells us that digs at Indian burial sites never go according to plan. And sure enough, Skeleton Man shows up to collect a skull that belongs to him, making short work of the professor and his wife. He gives them a right good old chopping with an axe. To give the film some credit, it’s a blood-soaked kill, which is sure to please your average gorehound. Halfway through the scene though, he dispenses with the axe, and gets out a sword. This is the first example of the film’s makers been unable to decide upon a single, iconic looking weapon. Even a fairly rubbish bad guy like the fisherman from I Know What You Did Last Summer had a hook, and stuck with it. If you’re a monstrous killing machine who navigates the twilight realm between this world and the next, you’ve got to keep it simple. Choose your weapon. Humans will see you as a single-minded individual, and fear you all the more. You don’t want them thinking you’re some wishy-washy tart, flip-flopping from one weapon to the next. During the course of the movie, Skeleton Man uses an axe, a sword, a spear, and a bow and arrow. The last one he uses to shoot down a helicopter. When he hasn’t got any weapons, he just kind of pushes people over with his hands. Or holds people up in the air, where they seem to scream a lot, even if Skeleton Man doesn’t actually seem to be doing much to them, until suddenly they’re dead. Here, he takes out an innocent fisherman. Rooker’s Delta Force squad are of little use, and can only sit and wonder at the blood curdling scream. Did they hear something?
There’s a kind of indecisiveness that permeates the whole film: it can’t work out what on earth it wants to be. It’s a big old stinky stew of bits from better movies, most notably Predator. Skeleton Man has, for no reason I can fathom, Predator-style thermal vision. He also warps in and out of existence at random, to escape bullets and explosions from Michael Rooker’s Delta Force squad. And then other times he doesn’t bother, staggering around like he’s drunk (in all fairness, the guy in the Skeleton Man costume probably needed to be drunk just get through a day’s filming). Rooker’s Delta Force squad is, bizarrely, heralded as an “Undercover” Search & Rescue Team. Why they’re undercover in the middle of a forest that isn’t behind enemy lines or anything, is an unsolved mystery I will take to my grave. I think it might just be a very flimsy excuse to add four babes of various hair types to the team. Here’s the babe additions to the team, along with their names, specialist skills, and hair type. They’re all pretty useless, and most of them are rapidly dispatched, usually through every fault of their own. Having said that, they’re not much worse than the guys in the team, and they’re supposed to be hardcore Delta Force, trained to within an inch of their lives. Even Michael Rooker, the leader of the squad and supposedly battle hardened through various campaigns in volatile hotspots around the globe, finds himself struggling with the forest itself, let alone the evil presence that stalks it, in one of the films funniest scenes, below…
Oddly enough, on the back of the DVD box it says the running time is 86 minutes. Yet my DVD player showed a total running time of 2 hours. You can only imagine my trepidation as the film neared the end of it’s 86 minutes. Was it not going to end? Had I somehow got hold of a bootleg copy which had a special, extended director’s cut? I was gritting my teeth, and girding my loins in readiness. Thankfully, it turned out to be just an extra thirty minutes of a single black screen. Almost like they’d ran out of shit to fill the disc up with. I watched every single minute of that black screen. And in comparison to the film, it was pure bliss. Like Rooker and his battle against stray branches, watching Skeleton Man often feels like a fight for survival against impossible odds. If you can make it through, well done. I’m recommending you to Delta Force!
sounds horrendous! really shitty review my friend 🙂
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this movie sounds like SHIT!
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Are we still a go for tomorrow?
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YEP!! 04:00 AM my time 🙂
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Cool. Can’t wait. Tnx man!
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You got it 🙂
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That cover art is deplorable -.-
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Pitiful!
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The movie is deplorable!
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I’d fuck Freddy.
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Mercury?
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Prinze Jr.
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GOTCHA!!! I’ve been wondering what to do for your thumbnail…!
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I thought I called dibs on that broad with the big boobies? Although, a little ethnic diversity with these thumbnails would be good. Maybe Salma Hayek or Jamie Chung or Zoe Saldana?
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Or Freddie Prinze Jr.
How about Lucille Ball?
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Too Irish.
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Good point. Saldana it is.
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And good tie-in with Guardians of the Galaxy.
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And your balls.
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Which are also tied.
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Right!!
#cocksucker
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Poor, poor, Michael Rooker.
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HAHAHA!!!
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HE’S ALRIIIGHT, HE’LL SURVIIIIVE…
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What, something called “Skeleton Man” isn’t good?
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Watch the profanity!!
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I’m at home. lol.
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No, it’s not. The Skeleton Man experience is like I was walking down the street, minding my own business, and someone stuck their bum out of the window and did a smelly plop on my head.
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Skeleton Man, Skeleton Man, doing the things a Skeleton can
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I’ll just do this now in case Scrotey comes around and pollutes my blog with this:
A skeleton walks into a bar and orders a beer…. and a mop.
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LOL
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Haha, loved the fact that the DVD couldn’t be bothered to trim the remaining space on the disc lol. Oh, and never apologise for putting a hot babe into the article.
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Well said.
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BOOM SHAKALAKA!
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that was supposed to be a lot bigger – let’s try this again
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Don’t lie, Eric. Sometimes it is normal for you to take a while to get bigger around naked women.
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it’s true…..
😦
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Haha, yeah, the whole enterprise was so shoddy, the direction, acting, script, special FX, right down to the some underpaid staff member copy-pasting the movie onto a disc in his lunch hour, and forgetting to trim it to size.
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yeah, that sounds shitty alright!
: )
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SURE DOES!
XOXOXOXOXOXO
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Oh, and that redheaded chick needs a cheeseburger, french fries, a milk shake….and maybe some muscle tone. She’s kinda scary.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
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HAHAHAHA!!!!
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Ill be honest Skeleton Man taking down a helicopter using a bow and arrow sounds kind of awesome!
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I bet its better than REC: GENESIS
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What a fucking shitheel…..
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Another worthy addition to Shitfest. Sounds DREADFUL. But this is pretty hilarious. 🙂
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This post is fucking hilarious!
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This cracked me up… I mean they couldn’t even come up with something more inventive than Skeleton Man. He’s not even really exposing his skeleton is he? Bin Bag Man probably would have made more sense.
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I would totally watch something called Bin Bag Man!
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Yeah…we know…
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Rooker *and* Van Dien and it’s shit??? Maaaannnn.
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Too funny! This sounds horrible. I bet that trash bag is so sad it was used in this movie.
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#pitythetrashsack
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#trashisscary #trashbinsbeware
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Hahaha! This looks so shitty! But what strikes me as the ultimate shittiness is the thirty minutes of black screen. Maybe it was so people could do a meditation or breathing exercise to purge this film from their system.
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I seriously doubt the makers of this DVD were concerned about a Cleanse.
#shittyproduction
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Wow, that really does sound very, VERY shitty. You have great skills of endurance! I think the wonky camera work alone would put me off.
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Bwahaha! Hilarious review. Love it. : ) Surely Eric actually chose the Freddy Krueger pic, though??
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