Becca moves to the town of Spork, to live with her father. Upon arriving she attracts the attention of Edward Sullen and his blood-sucking family and Jacob White, who seems to be looking more like a big hairy dog every day. It’s like the Twilight saga you see, but played for “laughs”.

*****

I was determined to come to Vampires Suck with an open mind, but having seen the trailers and being aware of the track record of this production team, from the Scary Movie franchise, through Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet The Spartans et al, my hopes were not high. It is of course no revelation at all to identify the Twilight franchise as the target this time around, although if like me you haven’t seen any of those films, you are really no better or worse off. Even if you are only vaguely aware of the characters and themes of the Twilight films, you’ll be able to see where most of the scenes comprising Vampires Suck are headed.

I can state that in all honesty I did not so much as crack a smile, much less laugh out loud at any point during this dire, pointless film. The jokes, such as they were, whether in the background, pop culture reference points, plays on words, rip-offs from Twilight or whatever, fell entirely flat on every occasion. At one point Becca’s father expresses astonishment at how much she has grown, commenting on how big her breasts have grown. Excellent, an incest gag, how classy. I think the whole situation is just so frustrating, given how fantastic a well-crafted spoof can really be. Think of Airplane!, Police Squad, The Naked Gun, Top Secret, The Big Bus, Hot Shots Part Deux. Instead, what we are reduced to with Vampires Suck, as with all of this recent swathe of so called spoofs are scenes where we do not laugh, so much as say, “oh yes, that looks or sounds a bit like that thing from that other film”. There is no joke, no punchline, so intelligence, no subtlety, just crudeness, crassness and idiocy.

The writer/directors, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, must shoulder full responsibility for this horrible mess. The actors they have cast are no great shakes as far as I can tell, but they can obviously only work with what they have been given, which is a turkey of staggering proportions. This idea of wringing box office takings out of recognition of films and characters rather than actual jokes is long past its sell by date and must now stop, except that we now have news of another Scary Movie franchise entry possibly being in the works. Heaven help us.

Commenting on the cinematography, art direction, pacing, acting etc feel a little redundant in this instance. The running time is around 1 hour 15 minutes, so at least it doesn’t last too long and although I cannot in all good conscience recommend it, it made close to $40m in the US and UK alone, against a budget of $20m, so plenty of people must at least be morbidly curious if nothing else. If you are a glutton for punishment, you can rent it from LoveFilm here. It is out on Blu-ray and DVD on 14th February 2011.

½~~~~ (0.5/5)

You can catch the trailer here.

The Weinstein Company have a forth instalment of their enormously popular horror franchise Scream on the way, so why not return to the spoof spin-off that has made them a another bucketload of cash too!

For those out there who already bemoan the lack of originality in Tinseltown, and are less than excited at the prospect of Scream 4 heading to the multiplexes soon, an announcement has cropped up on Facebook (and reported by ComingSoon) that the brothers Weinstein are planning a Scary Movie 5.

Oh geez! That series of films may have made a very healthy profit for the company in the past (a whooping $800 million worldwide in fact), but this really does smack of creative bankruptcy. Even Scream 4 feels like a completely unnecessary venture, so the idea of returning to its half-assed parody once again is just depressing.

Hasn’t the success of their big Oscar hope The King’s Speech been enough of a tell-tale sign that there is a big audience out there who are hungry for original, quality product?

What are your thoughts on this potential fifth outing? Is it time to put both franchises to sleep for good?

The way we watch movies is changing. In five years time, the studios believe, all our home entertainment will be delivered digitally. Apple know this, and already have a large quantity of movies available via iTunes and Apple TV.

To encourage us to try this form of media, every week iTunes offers one movie for rental at 99p, a considerable discount from the usual price of £3.50. Every week I  review the movie that has been chosen. This week, to coincide with Halloween, they’ve selected… Airplane creator David Zucker’s Scary Movie 3.

The first Scary Movie was the first proper spoof movie for a while when it was released. Opening at a time when gross-out movies had hit their prime, it was a big success. Infused with The Wayan family’s edge and relevant humour, it was a mix of old style Zucker/Abrams puns and more contemporary American Pie-style sex comedy, and was pretty funny at times.

Scary Movie 2 was unnecessary, but the big box office of the original made a follow-up inevitable. The second film also made big bucks, but the humour fell flat. The Wayan family were out, and Zucker himself, the king of this kind of comedy in the eighties, was brought in to freshen up this third instalment.

Anna Faris is back as Cindy. She is now a news reporter, and when she comes across the story of a crop circle at a farm, she gets a feeling something big is afoot. The crop circle was discovered by Charlie Sheen’s Tom, and his brother, wannabe white rapper George. George travels into the hood to participate in his first rap battle.

Meanwhile, Faris’ friend Brenda is terrified. She watched a haunted videotape a week ago. Anyone who watches the tape dies seven days later. And that’s not seven working days either. Cindy believes the crop circle and the mysterious tape are linked. She tries to warn the country via her news station, but no-one is listening.

No-one, that is, but President Harris, Leslie Nielsen. He travels to find Cindy in an attempt to discover the truth, whilst she learns an ancient lighthouse might hold a key to the mystery. With the video broadcast across the nation, can Cindy stop the evil spirits before the population of the US is murdered by this supernatural phenomenon?

Zucker was obviously brought in to work his magic on the franchise, but it’s clearly an impossible task. Scary Movie 3 is mainly a mash-up of Signs and The Ring, two mediocre movies to start with, offering barely enough material to fill a two minute You Tube short put together in someone’s basement. All the humour is either obvious, repetitive, or just not funny.

Without decent gags, the poorly conceived story (if you can call it that) is left hopelessly exposed. Good endings are notoriously difficult to write, but when you’ve already struggled (in vain) with the beginning and the middle, you’ve got no chance. The only genuinely funny material comes at the beginning during the rap battle, and to be fair Faris’ psychic nephew does get some funny lines. But when Nielsen arrives, it turns into a pseudo naked gun story, with the finale becoming an absolute farce. And not the good kind.

Charlie Sheen is a very good comedy actor, particularly suited to this kind of humour, but is given nothing to work with. The brightest spark is Anthony Anderson (Transformers 2). He is saddled with a very generic ‘token black guy’ role, but has great comic delivery, and can make the lamest lines at least sound funny. Perhaps most impressive is Faris herself. Not necessarily for her performance, but for her unwavering commitment to the role. At the climax, when all around her are losing their acting heads, she sells her part to the bitter end.

Scary Movie 3 made a lot of money, as did Scary Movie 4. The law of diminishing returns may apply to the comedy, but not to the ticket sales. And that’s the true horror. For as long as they keep flogging this dead horse, there’s clearly no shortage of people who will pay to see it.

Scary Movie 3 is available on iTunes at the discounted rental price until Midnight Monday 2nd November. It is available to buy on DVD now, as indeed are 1,2 and 4…

Bazmann