Zombeavers

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A Note from Derek: Unfortunately, Jake has had to take a break from doing the show, due to real-life stuff he needs to handle. So, for the time being, it's going to be Larry and me doing the show, with the occasional guest (most likely Troy). So, please bear with us as we ramble incoherently and fail to remember the names of directors we like. And keep your fingers crossed that Jake can come back sometime soon! Thanks.

Very rarely, there comes a movie that changes the viewers' perceptions of the world and their place in it. It challenges the viewer to see his or her surroundings in a new and sometimes disturbing way that will forever change the way they interact with those they know and love.

This is not one of those movies.

This week, Derek and Larry watched Zombeavers, starring Cortney Palm (Zoe), Rachel Melvin (Mary), Lexi Atkins (Jenn), Hutch Dano (Sam), Jake Weary (Tommy), Peter Gilroy (Buck), and Rex Linn (Smyth).

Two idiot delivery men, Joseph (Bill Burr) and Luke (John Mayer--yes, that John Mayer), hit a deer, causing one of the barrels of toxic goop on their truck to fall off and contaminate a lake.

Hey...Are you okay?

That lake, it turns out, happens to be the destination of Mary, Zoe, and Jenn. The three of them are on a "girls-only" weekend at Mary's cousin's cabin to get Jenn's mind off of her boyfriend, Clint Howard doppelganger Sam, who was photographed making out with another woman.

After a quick stop at a gas station so Jenn can be leered at by the creepy director, the girls make it to the cabin and immediately start bitching about the lack of cell service and how there's only one bathroom. Friggin' millennials.

Once settled in, they decide to hit the lake and go swimming. While sunbathing on a platform in the middle of the lake, Jenn spots a beaver dam and decides she totally needs to investigate and maybe make friends with a beaver.

And they came dressed for the occasion.

While inspecting the dam, they notice that it is covered with some kind of green stuff, but before they can investigate further, they are confronted by a bear, which is itself confronted by Smyth, a creepy guy who wanders around in the forest, probably hoping for this exact scenario. Today appear to be his lucky day.

Say, I notice ya got some of them whatcha call..."boobies".

He warns them about wandering in the woods dressed in nothing but bikinis, then wanders off to go harass more woodland creatures.

The girls, having had enough fun for the day, decide to head back to the cabin and drink while they play Truth or Dare and Would You Rather, as young women tend to do when there are no menfolk around.

Their fun times are interrupted by a pounding on the walls. When Zoe goes out to see what's causing it, it turns out to be their boyfriends, including Sam the dirtbag. It was all a set-up by Zoe, that rebel! She planned the whole thing because she is a terrible friend and really only wants to have sex with Buck, for some reason. That happens, and it's gross, although Buck is willing to admit that he has no idea what she sees in him, either.

Jenn, in no mood to let Sam paw at her, knees him in the berries and goes off to take a shower, where she is confronted by some kind of demonic beaver critter in the bathtub. When they entire group goes to investigate, it lunges out from under the sink and scratches Jenn before Sam beats it silly with a baseball bat. They toss it in a bag and leave it on the porch.

The next morning, as the group is going out for a swim, they notice the bag is ripped open and assume it was some other critters that tore it open and took the dead beaver. No biggie. Time to swim!

Jenn refuses to get in the water, but the others go to the platform. Zoe, Buck, and Tommy keep swimming, but Mary and Sam stay on the platform, where they discuss the picture Jenn was sent. It turns out that Mary is the woman Sam was making out with, and they argue about whether to tell Jenn.

They are interrupted when Buck gets his foot chewed off. That sort of thing can be a real show stopper.

The most upsetting thing to Buck is that he now owns at least one useless shoe.

After sacrificing Zoe's dog (probably the most disturbing scene in the entire movie), the group gets back to shore and hides in the cabin, where Zoe and Tommy volunteer to take Buck to a hospital. They stick his severed foot in a bag of ice and head out, while Sam, Jenn, and Mary stay behind and barricade themselves inside.

Meanwhile, the elderly couple next door, Winston (Brent Briscoe) and Myrne (Phyllis Katz), are convinced all the screaming and noise coming from the cabin are just the girls "scissoring to Lady Gaga," and ignore it at their own risk. This turns out to be an extremely bad idea.

It does not go well for anybody, really. Even the beavers.

On the way to the hospital, Tommy, Zoe, and, to a lesser extent, Buck find that the road has been blocked by a dam. Fortunately, there's a truck on the other side, and Tommy gets an axe out of the bed. He tells Zoe to take Buck back to the cabin while he takes the truck to get help. Almost immediately, the beavers drop a tree on him, but Zoe manages to get herself and Buck out of there in time.

Once back at the cabin, they can't get inside because Sam, Jenn, and Mary have blocked the doors. Fortunately, Smyth shows up and takes Zoe and Buck to the neighbors' house. Inside, Smyth finds the bodies of the elderly couple, and then tells Zoe that Buck's foot is probably not going to be attached because it has been off for too long.

Right then, Buck turns into a mutant beaver sort of thing and literally eats Smyth's face. At the same time, Jenn, who was scratched earlier, also turns into a mutant beaver and tries to kill Mary. Mary gets away by locking Jenn in a bedroom, and she and Sam try to get out of the house, which is now being invaded by more beavers. Before they can escape, Sam also turns into a mutant beaver and tries to eat Mary.

Will Mary and Zoe get away to safety? Or will they themselves be turned into mutant beavers? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Larry thought this was a pretty good flick, despite the goofiness. He thought some of the gore was pretty good, but wanted to see more. Also, he thought the two delivery guys were pretty entertaining.

Derek was not nearly as impressed by the film, although he is willing to admit that there are a few good laughs. The beaver puppets look exactly like beaver puppets, and the tail Jenn grows looks absurd. He's also angry about the dog being sacrificed.

So put on your tiniest bikini, chew on some trees, and listen to this week's episode!

Surviving the Game

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This week, the guys sat down to bask in the glory of Ice-T, a man who once played a "gangsta" kangaroo.

But in this week's movie, Surviving the Game, he plays Mason, a homeless man who is having a pretty rough week. First, his dog gets hit by a taxi. Then, while trying to steal what appears to be an entire side of beef to feed himself and his hobo mentor (that's a thing, right?), Hank (Jeff Corey), when they are assaulted by a security guard (Bob Minor).

The next day, Mason wakes up in his spacious, conveniently-located abandoned camper to discover Hank has died in the night from his injuries. So, of course, Mason buries him next to the dead dog.

Finally fed up with all of this nonsense, Mason decides to end it all by stepping out into traffic, only to be "saved" at the last second by Cole (Charles S. Dutton), a guy working at an outdoor soup kitchen.

Cole sends Mason off to see his friend Thomas Burns (Rutger Hauer) about a possible job. After a very brief interview, Burns offers Mason a vague job that involves working as a kind of guide during a hunting trip.  He gives Mason some money and tells him to get some new clothes and be ready to go the next day.

Wackiest roadtrip movie EVER.

After sharing a brief flight in a private plane with Burns, Cole, and a pig, they land near a cabin in the middle of nowhere, where Burns and Cole's friends await their arrival. They all seem to take to Mason, with the exception of Griffin (John C. McGinley), who looks like he wants to hate-fuck Mason to death.

Once everybody is settled in, they sit down to dinner, and Doc Hawkins (Gary Busey) explains how he knows the others; he is Burns' and Cole's psychiatrist, and they are all ex-FBI. He then tells a disturbing story about how his father made him kill his dog with his bare hands when he was thirteen. To say that it was odd dinner conversation would be selling it way short.

Griffin, on the other hand, keeps giving Mason "murder eyes," and when he asks Mason how he ended up homeless, Mason says, "I killed my wife and kid," which causes Griffin to go ballistic. After the others drag him away, burns explains that Griffin's daughter had been murdered by a homeless man. Whoops.

Griffin gets lost in Mason's eyes and dreadlocks.

After dinner, Burns shows Mason to his room, suggesting he get a good night's sleep because the next day's hunt will be pretty busy.

The next morning, Burns and Cole wake Mason by sticking a gun in his face and telling him to get outside. When he goes, they tell him that he is, in fact, the prey they will be hunting, and he has until they finish a nice breakfast to get himself as far away as he possibly can.

As the "hunters" are enjoying their breakfast, Derek (William McNamara), the son of Wolfe, Sr. (F. Murray Abraham), tells them that he is not too keen on actually hunting and killing a human being. The others mock and harass him for being such a whiny little puss, especially Hawkins, who is now clearly aroused by the idea.

Jeepers! I sure do enjoy murdering!

Now happily fed, the crew mount up on ATVs and motorcycles bristling with guns and other implements of destruction, and they start tracking Mason, who, it should be noted, is on foot.

After an initial close call in which Griffin spots Mason and tries to shoot him, Mason circles back to the cabin in search of weapons to defend himself. He breaks the padlock off the door of the room he thinks they are in, but discovers he is exactly wrong. The room, it turns out, is filled with glass jars containing the heads of all the previous hunt victims. there's also an empty one with a brass plate that says "Mason" on it.

I am certain he will never circle back around to the cabin and discover the
room full of heads.

Suitably disgusted, Mason douses the entire cabin in gasoline. The hunters, figuring out that Mason may have gone back to the cabin, get there and send in Hawkins and Wolfe, Sr. to either chase him out or kill him. That's when Mason sets the place on fire, trapping Wolfe, Sr. upstairs behind a wall of flames. Hawkins, however, catches Mason outside and attacks him with a knife, and a struggle ensues, until Mason throws Hawkins through a window, just as the room full of heads explodes, ending the doctor's participation in the hunt.

Derek runs inside and rescues his father and, as he is dragging him out a window, spies Mason running back into the woods, but decides not to tell the others, as he's still not in line with the idea of hunting and killing another human being, despite that human being having almost killed his father. (In Derek's defense, Wolfe, Sr. is kind of a dick, even setting the murderiness aside.) However, Burns figures it out by watching Derek's eyes.

Now deep in the woods, Mason stops for a breather, only to come face to face with a wolf that is not especially happy to see him. This results in the best face acting ever committed to film.

Cinematic gold.

Next, he lures the hunters into a trap using some cigarettes stuck into a tree, and takes Griffin hostage in a cave. While there, Mason explains how, when he was working two jobs--one of which as a maintenance man at the apartment complex where he lived with his wife and child (possibly children)--and how he kept putting off some of the repairs, which resulted in the building catching on fire and killing his family. Since then, he blamed himself for their death. Griffin, in turn, tells Mason about the homeless man who murdered his daughter.

The next morning, the others raid the cave, finding Griffin by himself. When they untie him, he says he's dropping out of the hunt and going home. Burns is not happy about this, and he has Cole shoot Griffin in the forehead, causing Derek to scream like a frightened pre-teen girl. After a stern talking-to from his father, Derek agrees to finish the hunt, but wants everyone to know that he's not cool with it.

What follows is a comedy of errors that allow Mason to dispatch the remaining group, except for Burns, who manages to escape in his plane after blowing up Wolfe, Sr.'s plane as Mason is running toward it.

Did it work? Is Mason dead? Will Burns go into hiding, not sure whether there is someone out there who knows what he and his friends were doing? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Larry liked the movie a lot more than he expected. He does have some logic issues with the way Mason ignores two huge packs of supplies on an ATV in favor of taking a rifle and then using most if its shells to knock over a tree. He is right to question it.

Derek also enjoyed the film. He thinks Ice-T did some solid acting in this film, and his only nitpick is the fact that the abandoned motor home Mason and Hank live in is bigger than his own apartment. And how they can grill without their grill being stolen. He's really angry about that.

Jake picked the movie, and thinks it is still as good as it was when he first saw it. He does have a problem with the whole "shooting-a-tree-with-all-of-your-shells-and-having-to-throw-rocks-at-the-bad-guys" thing, but he is willing to overlook it because the rest is so good.

So put on your camp, trim an unnoticeable bit off your dreadlocks, and check out this week's show!