Prime Time: The Lost Episode (2012)

There were three things I didn’t know when I decided to press play on The Lost Episode. First of all, it was directed by Michael Rooker. I thought it might have been someone different with the same name, but no, it is THAT Michael Rooker. Second, it has about half a dozen alternate titles and is part of some loosely-connected series of ultra-low-budget horror movies. Third, it’s absolutely awful.

Although one or two movies have angered me recently, The Lost Episode takes the prize for the laziest and most insulting movie I have seen this year. It’s clear that, yet again, people came up with this idea and decided that unfussy horror fans will still swallow this down like a sugar-coated lump of animal faeces. 

The plot is simple. A group of people enter an apparently haunted building and start poking around. Ghosts soon join them, but logic never does.

Surprisingly, there is supposed to be a proper script, written by Joe Nelms and Sue Bailey, although I am not sure how much effort they put into the actual dialogue (which is awful . . . especially coming from people who have actually written one proper movie that I enjoy before this, the very amusing Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The Thirteenth). Almost every minute of this is terrible, terribly dull, and featuring characters it is impossible to care about.

I am not going to mention any of the cast here, mainly because I don’t want to be too negative and nasty towards a bunch of people I doubt I will see in any major lead roles, although I am surprised by how many movie credits some of them have. Nobody does good work here, but I am going to put all of the blame on the broad shoulders of Rooker, who directs with all the style and skill of a dropped bowl of mashed potato.

I really like Rooker, I often love Rooker, but this attempt to move from acting into directing is an absolute disaster. Visuals are crude and ugly throughout, and there’s never a feeling of anyone really being at the helm. It is unsurprising, and quite a relief, to see that Rooker hasn’t tried his hand at directing anything else. Maybe he did this as a challenge, or a favour, but it’s clear that he is much more suited to being in front of the camera (which he also manages here, somehow directing himself in one of his worst onscreen performances).

One to avoid at all costs, and truly one of the worst films I have ever seen, not even saved by the relatively short runtime under 80 minutes. I know that some people will read this review and think “it can’t be THAT bad”. It is. If you decide to check it out for yourself then don’t say that you weren’t warned.

1/10

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Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th (2000)

I am not going to say that Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th (a title that will be referred to from now on, if at all, as SIYKWIDLFT13) is any kind of classic, but I still think it is the better of the two main horror movie parodies that ended up being released in the year 2000. Give me this over Scary Movie any day. If both Anna Faris and Regina Hall could have ended up in this film then we would have had the best of both worlds.

The plot, as slight as it is, mixes Scream with  I Know What You Did Last Summer, with the main characters being drawn from both. There's a new kid, Dawson (Harley Cross), there's desperate-to-lose-his-virginity Boner (Danny Strong), there's the beauty queen type, Barbara (Julie Benz), a slab of beef named . . . Slab O'Beef (Simon Rex), and a potential final girl in the shape of Martina (Majandra Delfino). Once it becomes known that there's a killer on the loose, you also have reporter Hagitha Utslay (Tiffani Thiessen) on the scene, and a security guard named Doughy (Tom Arnold) keeps trying to do his bit to ensure nobody else dies on his watch. It has to be said, however, that he fails spectacularly.

There aren't many other projects written by either Sue Bailey or Joe Nelms, which isn't really any kind of great blow to cinema, but they do a decent job here. The gags are silly, they're obvious, and they're often downright juvenile, but the same can be said of numerous, more successful, parodies from this time. There's certainly nothing here that feels as bad as the kind of stuff we would all have to suffer from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, and it's hard not to laugh as so many scenes are crammed with amusing lines, sight gags, and subtle details underpinning the more obvious material. Like the best movie parodies, although it's not quite on the same level, this rewards repeat viewings. There's more to take in than just whatever is happening front and centre.

Director John Blanchard, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a body of work that includes a lot of comedy sketch shows (SCTV, The Kids In The Hall, MadTV, The Martin Short Show, and quite a few more) and he conveys a constant sense of being eager to please viewers. While some of the gags that don’t work REALLY don’t work, the scattershot approach, another trait common to parodies, provides many more hits than misses. Even a third act selection of “Pop Ups”, now a relic from a bygone era of MTV, provides some solid laughs.

Arnold is pretty good in his role, and works well alongside Thiessen, who is also well-suited to her character. Rex and Benz both deliver some of the best overt comedy with their characters, while Cross and Delfino make for enjoyable enough “leads” (it’s very much an ensemble cast though, any one of the seven main characters could be considered a lead). The weakest of the bunch is Strong, stuck with a character who is defined only by his constant, and frustrating, horniness. There are some familiar faces in supporting roles, including Artie Lange, Kim Greist, Shirley Jones, and Coolio, and the only major mis-step comes from the occasional use of someone just thrown onscreen to reference a horror movie character (I’m looking at you, Chucky).

I am not going to try to convince anyone that this is a misunderstood masterpiece. There is plenty here that many viewers will find unfunny. The soundtrack has some misguided attempts to emulate generic songs from the teen slasher sub-genre. I cannot help still finding it funny though. I liked it when I first saw it, I like it just as much today. It IS better than Scary Movie, and I would be delighted if I started to find more people agreeing with me.

7/10

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