MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE THE BODYGUARD

I said that I'd never do it again... I vowed that I'd never do this again… But I did it again anyway. B-WARE 2005 proved to be one of the most popular articles I've ever put together, so much so that it spawned my idea to start a blog to keep an eye on the upcoming schlock. I got this stupid thought in my head to do another a little less than two weeks before the posting of this Foyeurism. It was only going to be about 30-50 movies - a quick update. Nothing fancy. Somehow that ballooned to two hundred. 200 UPCOMING B-MOVIES! That's what you'll find in B-WARE 2007: 200 listings with title art, plot synopsis, and website/trailer links for most. It nearly blew my mind compiling it and I suspect some of the movies you'll read about will nearly blow your mind too.

B-GIN READING B-WARE 2007 HERE

Also, a major updating to the ARCHIVES page (Button Above, Duh!) with 43 new Dread Central and B-WARE THE BLOG! reviews I've done over the past couple of months. Next, I'm planning another updating of the LINKS page, but that's for another day.

So needless to say I've given you plenty of stuff to incinerate your eyeballs on - not the least of which is this month's Foyeurism...

 

GODSPLOITATION

 

You've heard of blacksploitation and sexsploitation; now comes godsploitation. Schlocky movies with a (sometimes overbearing) religious or spirtual theme. Movies that mean to promote or play up matters of faith only to fall victim to the same shortcomings as their secular counterparts. Now don't anyone get to thinking I'm just going to spend this Foyeurism ridiculing people's faith. Lord knows there are plenty of people out there making a living being as openly hostile as possible to all manner of faith. Unfortunately, as one of the movies I'll be reviewing momentarily, that hostility is clearly a two-way street. That one I'm going to take some issues with. But primarily, I'm here, as is the reason for all Foyeurisms, to have some fun with some goofy movies. It just so happens that this month I'm taking aim at some well intentioned but ultimately misguided films dealing with spiritual matters, just as I did several years ago with the movie I consider the crown jewel of modern godsploitation flicks - the epic apocalyptic cheeseball MEGIDDO: OMEGA CODE 2; my review of which seemed to be the one that kind of put me on the bad movie reviewing map. Up until HOUSE OF THE DEAD, that seemed the one I usually heard the most raves about. So here we go, a Christian serial killer flick, a fundamentalist Christian UFO conspiracy flick, and (just in time for Lent) a Catholic action flick. Yes, it's quite the holy trinity of holy crap this month God help us.

First of all, some of you may have already read this review over at Dread Central or on the Stomp Tokyo message board. If so, oh well, here it is again. I originally had another film in this slot but decided to save it for a rainy day since the movie proved such a boring chore to sit through I could barely squeeze anything worth writing about out it. Instead I opted to run with THR3E. Besides, it fit the theme and was a movie so profoundly goofy that I felt it warranted induction into the hallowed halls of Foyeurism. Also, this time I'm including a description of the film's mind-blowingly bad ending - an all-time bad movie ending if ever there was.

If there is any one scene that best sums up THR3E in a nutshell it would be early in when theology major Kevin Parson gets his second threatening phone call from the mysterious, mad bomber serial killer dubbed "The Riddle Killer" who this time tells him that he has 60-minutes to return to his childhood home in order to save his old dog from an explosive death. Parson arrives at his aunt's house and is immediately greeted by a 350-pound retard with a Moe Howard haircut, followed by the introduction of his crazy aunt who looks like Nora Desmond reliving her prom night - too much make-up and a tiara to boot - and his gibberish-spouting uncle in a Shriners hat. Then the doghouse exploded and I damn near fell out of my seat laughing hysterically.

Remember - not a comedy, folks! Not meant to be a comedy!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world of THR3E, the first movie from Fox Faith Films, the new movie wing of 20th Century Fox targeting Christian audiences. That's right, folks; THR3E is a serial killer movie - a Christian serial killer movie. What does that mean exactly? It means there are only two dead bodies (one of which was a dog), no profanity, no sex, and a religious message tacked onto the last two minutes of the film that wouldn't have felt anymore hollow if it had turned into an invisible Kevin Bacon, snuck into my apartment, and raped me. THR3E is based on a novel by popular Christian evangelical writer Ted Dekker. Having not read any of his work, I'm going to assume that the book is vastly superior to the movie because if it isn't then I'd love to know what in God's name possessed anyone to make it into a film. I can't imagine a movie this terrible appealing to anyone, Christian or secular, unless they're into awful movies chock full of constant moments of laugh-out-loud badness.

THR3E basically has two modes: boring mode and stupid mode. The film is only 108 minutes long, but I swear there are periods where it felt like it might as well have been 308. But don't worry because as soon as you start getting bored you'll suddenly be stupefied back into the movie. There are the moments of such mind-blowing stupidity that will leave you dumbstruck. You have this serial killer thriller with a preposterous plot that is often badly acted and flatly directed and loaded with stuff so idiotic your jaw will drop. Heck, you'll get plenty of laughs just from the scene where one of the bombs blows a big CGI hole in a wall that sends CGI bricks flying out in such a manner you'll be waiting for a CGI Kool-Aid Man to pop out. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

THR3E opens with a police psychologist Jennifer Peters being run ragged by the Riddle Killer in order to rescue her brother. The Riddle Killer uses a voice disguiser that makes him sound like Jigsaw from the Saw movies and he taunts people with riddles worthy of a certain Batman villain. The Riddle Killer is pissed at Peters because of something she wrote in a book that he took issue with. To be honest, I never understood what exactly she wrote that so angered him, not that it really matters all that much anyway since little in this movie will make sense. What does matter is that Peters has to solve a couple of riddles in order to find clues to the whereabouts of her brother. I guess nobody on the street ever bothered to look into that empty store window in which they'd have seen a young man duct taped into a Volkswagen Beetle with a bomb attached to the steering wheel. Peters will not succeed in saving her brother, but I was far less interested in the fate of her brother than I was in wanting to know how this bomb exploded while she had her arms through the window of the car trying to free him and yet her the only injuries she suffered required her to bandage her hands up like she's about to have old school taped fight match with Terry Funk. I'm surprised her brother didn't survive seeing as this bomb going off did nothing more than give her some minor burns on her hands. Her brother is also the only person in the movie that did fall victim to one of the Riddle Killer's easily avoidable time bombs.

Police psychologist Jennifer Peters is supposed to be this brilliant, hard-nosed woman now obsessed with catching her brother's killer, but Justine Waddell totally bombs in the role. She plays the part with all the edge of a secretary trying to feign toughness when she confronts her boss for a pay raise.

We're then introduced to Kevin Parson, a morose young man living off his late parents' insurance money, and given the size of the loft he lives in, that must have been one hell of an insurance policy they had. Kevin's a full-time student working on his doctorate in theology by - what a coincidence - writing a thesis about the nature of evil. Almost immediately, he gets a call from the Riddle Killer, who proceeds to brow beat him about needing to confess some great sin from his past and then tossing out a riddle he has to solve or his car will explode. The Riddle Killer will continue targeting Kevin, demanding a confession for this past sin and insisting that he not involve the police or else, although the cops will indeed get involved, particularly a certain police psychologist. Kevin will also receive assistance from an old childhood friend turned potential adult love interest, Samantha, the world's hottest insurance investigator. Samantha actually does more to help Kevin's cause than Peters will, further making this police psychologist character feel like an extraneous addition.

You know you've got serious abandonment issues when even mailing a letter becomes such a traumatic experience that it requires an on-the-spot therapy session

It'll soon be revealed that Kevin is harboring a dark secret that's led to years of a guilty conscious. An unknown neighborhood hoodlum he caught peeping through Samantha's window threatened to kill him if he told anyone, which he did, leading to a chase into an old abandoned warehouse where Kevin locked the kid in and left him to die, never telling anyone. Could it be that sociopathic youth escaped and grew up to become the Riddle Killer that's now suddenly seeking revenge against Kevin?

Or does the truth lie with the abusive aunt Kevin was sent to live with after his parents were killed in that car accident? Everything involving his crazy aunt and uncle and their mentally handicapped adult son feels like something straight out of an entirely different movie. You got Priscilla Barnes doing some of the worst overacting I've ever seen playing the tyrannical, tiara-wearing matriarch of this lunatic family unit that seems to be about one killing spree away from turning into the Firefly Clan. She's been keeping everyone cooped up in the house in order to shun the outside world that she perceives to be too wicked and dangerous, going so far as to pretend that it's an earlier decade and Eisenhower is still President. If they go out of their way to keep themselves isolated from the outside world and its wicked modern ways then who the hell went out and bought the mentally challenged son that Nintendo Gameboy he's always carrying around?

And how does the Riddle Killer set out to torment Kevin, aside from blowing up his dog? How about strapping a time bomb to one of his friends that can only be removed if they punch in the numerical code that corresponds to the biblical verse etched into the guy's forehead? Perhaps by donning a mask made of masking tape, recording video message set to be broadcast on a TV left in Kevin's refrigerator, and rigging it too to explode? Or maybe the Riddle Killer will achieve ultimate vengeance by sneaking a bunch of humongous fans in Kevin's apartment, opening the windows, and setting it to blow the pages of his thesis all over the place? Let's not forget when he phones Kevin with an impossibly obtuse riddle that Samantha instantly solves, leading the two of them racing down the street to rescue the people from the number three bus before it blow up.

Are you scared yet? No, not Kevin or Samantha or Jennifer; I'm talking about you, the audience. Are you trembling with fear? Are you on the edge of your seat? Are you biting your nails? Me neither. How lacking in suspense is THR3E? People, the remake of When a Stranger Calls was a well made scarefest compared to this. The only thing even remotely suspenseful about THR3E stems from wondering what act of stupidity will happen next and how much longer the movie has to go before it's finally over. You'll also be wondering just how many more scenes can director Robby Henson end with a fade out; that seemed to be his favorite technique.

FROM THE 'WHERE ARE THEY NOW' FILES: Klytus from Flash Gordon has fallen on hard times

The title THR3E, which the studio marketers have spelled in such a manner as to invoke memories of a certain other religious-themed serial killer movie entitled Se7en, a movie so superior that THR3E isn't even worthy of having its head chopped off and delivered by FedEx to Brad Pitt, seems to derive from the Riddle Killer's liking for the number three. I think. The movie unfolds over a course of three days and a couple of the riddles involve the number three, but not everything is three related. Late in the film the police psychologist will unravel a clue and say something along the lines of, "None of this makes any sense." I wanted to yell back at the screen, "Preach on, sister!"

But nothing, and I mean nothing, prepared me for the big third act twist. When I initially wrote this review I described the big twist as, "the single most preposterous, improbable, implausible, (insert similar adjectives here) third act plot twist I have ever seen in a motion picture that was meant to be taken seriously." While the big twist to THR3E remains one of the most ludicrous things I've ever seen, I've since seen THE NUMBER 23. Suddenly the big twist ending to THR3E doesn't seem nearly as preposterous, improbable, or implausible. Nothing will ever seem anywhere near as preposterous, improbable, or implausible after seeing THE NUMBER 23 play out.

But if you don't want to wait and soak in the idiocy of THR3E's finale and want to know right now what the big twist is that will cause your internal bullshit detector to short circuit and burst into flames, here it goes.

AND HERE'S YOUR SPOILER WARNING...

The finale has Kevin and Samantha trying to rescue his crazy aunt who has been taken captive by the Riddle Killer (the adult version of Slater, that kid he locked up in the warehouse years ago and left for dead). The killer gives Kevin a gun, makes him aim it at the aunt, and begins taunting him to pull the trigger because deep down he's wanted to kill her for years. He even puts a gun to Kevin's head threatening to kill him if he doesn't do so even though Kevin looks like he just might do it and enjoy it. Having been shot in the leg, Samantha is on the ground pleading with Kevin not to give in. Then the police psychologist lady makes her way into the room and finds Kevin with both a gun pointed at the aunt with one hand and another gun pointed to his own head with the other. Yep, the evil Slater is just a figment of Kevin's imagination - and so is Samantha! You see Kevin's childhood was so traumatic from all the physical and emotional abuse he suffered at the hand's of the loony aunt that he created two entirely new personalities: Slater, who represented all the evils in the world, and Samantha, who represented everything good that he longed for. You end up with Blucas all manic with these guns to his head doing a variety of voices (usually that of the actors playing Slater and Samantha, not Blucas doing a heck on a ventriliguist impression) and sometimes just Blucas shouting in one direction and then turning to shout back at himself. All of this is intercut with his delusionary alter egos continuing to plead with him to do or not do whatever it is he's going to do next. It's like the ending of FIGHT CLUB taken to an even more ridiculous degree, not just because of the twist itself, but how the big twist ending is staged. It's preposterous and poor Blucas ends up looking especially silly when shown arguing with himself.

And then the movie starts going all SIXTH SENSE rewinding the movie to show us how it might have been possible for Slater and Samantha to have not really existed - despite all the scenes she was involved in with other characters. Again, words fail me.

Just when you think it can't get any dumber, after Kevin says goodbye to Samantha and destroys his Slater persona, gets arrested, and sent to a psychiatric facility, the police psychologist is going through the place he built all the bombs and what not needed to copycat the Riddle Killer and finds a crime scene aftermath photo he'd taken with someone in it that she recognizes from the beginning sequence when her brother was killed. The police arrest him and, sure enough, he's the Riddle Killer. That's right, people, the hot dog street vendor did it. And he'd have gotten away with it too had it not been for that stupid seminary student and his meddling personalities!

Finally, the police psychologist goes to visit Kevin at the funny farm where's he now remarkably sane. His theology teacher also shows up and gives us a quick speech about why we need God in the eternal struggle between good and evil; the only moment in the entire movie that contains anything resembling a genuine religious message. The end.

SPOILERS OVER...

Believe me, seeing it play out doesn't compare to just reading about it.

Up until this finale, Marc Blucas had at least seemed poised to escape this debacle with his dignity intact. Oh well, the staggering stupidity of the finale that hinges on him being able to sell it (God bless him; he tries leaves him more than a little looking ridiculous. It's actually the perfect exclamation point for this asinine movie. At least Blucas can seek comfort in knowing he's just continuing the tradition of what I call "The Buffy Curse." Ever notice that horror/thrillers starring former cast members of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” turn out to be almost consistently awful? At least THR3E provided some serious laughter to go along with the boring stretches and prevailing awfulness.

This is a Christian movie that's likely to have you paying more lip service to the Devil than to God. I know I sat there in my seat throughout this film constantly muttering, "What the hell?" But if the Academy Awards ever create a special Oscar for "Best Christian Serial Killer Movie Featuring Both an Exploding Doghouse and an Exploding Refrigerator" then THR3E will indeed be glory bound.

“Always remember: They are children of God as we are…” - Pope John Paul II's response to a question a child back in 1999 asked him about the possible existence of extraterrestrials. Don't let the makers of this movie here that.

Personally, I think most Christians get a bad rap these days. Unfortunately, there's also a certain percentage of Christians in the US these days that are so vocal and high profile that the strident world view they actively promote any chance they get manages to paint all people of their faith in a bad light. Put them together with their left-leaning counterparts and you get this wonderful thing we in America call the "Culture War," which at this point has seemingly devolved into a self-absorbed squabble between two increasingly antagonistic sides more interested in manufacturing outrage, playing up the victim card, and just being angry for the sake of being angry. It really has gotten quite pathetic on both sides. Much like Cru Jones, I've no use for this culture war, and like Cru Jones and his bicycle, I got my bad movies.

Now while I said I believe most Christians get a bad rap these days, movies like UNIDENTIFIED and the choir it preaches to are a prime example of why they (sometimes deservedly) get that bad rap. I can respect a person's religious beliefs even if I don't share them and make the occasional snarky remark at its expense, as I do with most subject matters - just the sort of irreverent person I am. But what I cannot respect is zealotry of any type - religious, political, or otherwise. Movies like UNIDENTIFIED are the cinematic equivalent of Tom Cruise on the Today Show sternly lecturing us because he has read the truth, knows all the answers, and we're all just a bunch of Matt Lauer's being glib about a subject we're in desperate need of getting informed about. UNIDENTIFIED is nothing more than propaganda disguised as a motion picture meant to spread a particular viewpoint to a wider audience, something I was pretty much expecting going in - just not to the degree that it turned out to be. As often proves to be the case with overzealous filmmakers trying to pound home a viewpoint, it ends up being another case of preaching to the choir, and in this case I strongly suspect "the choir" to be the sort of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians that would watch a movie like JESUS CAMP and think it looks like a great place to send their kids. Everyone else, myself included, is more than likely going to be amazed at how a Christian filmmaker can be so oblivious to the reality that they've made a movie that casts their entire faith in a negative light to those that don't already share their particular hardline dogma.

UNIDENTIFIED was made by Rich Christiano; his previous film TIME CHANGER was an equally ham-fisted response to films like THE OMEGA CODE franchise that some in the Christian community deemed too secular. How could two other movies made by evangelical Christians be deemed too secular? From what I've come across it's primarily due to those two films having left out the Rapture. We live in the age of Rapture-sheik and including talk of the Rapture in your Christian movie or book seems these days to be almost as important as praising Jesus.

I watched an extra on the DVD beforehand that consisted of a brief message from writer/director Christiano talking about his film's overall message. He's a relatively young man who seems perfectly friendly, 100% sincere in his beliefs, and I'm sure deep down he means well. Yet I found it impossible listening to him talk about why he believes people need Jesus and not get the sense that he, like far too many fire & brimstone Christians that can quote Scripture chapter & verse, seems to have missed the bigger picture of Jesus' teachings. Love, compassion, respect for your fellow man, trying to be a better person, trying to make the world a better place, making the right choices in life: nowhere to be found in anything he said nor in the movie he made. Believe in Jesus, read your Bible, or into the lake of fire with you seems to his only reason for being a Christian. Accept Christ and earn your get out of Tribulation free card or get left behind. This movie espouses not a conversion to Christianity based on faith or longing for something greater; it's primarily based on fear of eternal damnation. Christiano talks about how it's all worth it if the movie helps convert at least one person. Yeah, well, what about the rest of the unconverted who only come away having had damn near every negative stereotype about fundamentalist Christians reinforced by a film intellectually dishonest on both the religious and extraterrestrial phenomenon front?

The film opens with the UFO abduction of a guy named Randy Mitchell in a small Texas town. UNIDENTIFIED may very well be the first UFO film in history to never actually even attempt to show you a UFO. All we get some bright lights illuminating the actors. I realize the budget of this film was quite low, but that low?

The Randy Mitchell abduction story gets picked up by Both Sides magazine. Young Christian reporter Keith is initially unhappy being sent to Texas to cover such a "tabloid" story but soon more abductions occur and his investigating leads him to meet up with a reluctant to talk Randy Mitchell, the other abductees, and a born again old man that used to work for a secret government agency that itself was devoted to investigating extraterrestrial phenomenon who now believes it's all a satanic deception. Keith continues trying to decipher the whole UFO phenomenon in Texas and consults with an older Both Sides reporter named Darren. Keith's just your average god-fearing Christian, but Darren, he's a hyper, mega, ultra, super duper Christian. Once Darren steps into the picture as an active part of Keith's investigation the movie essentially ends; the plot just ceases to try and tell anything resembling a narrative. It all just stops pretending that it ever had any intentions of being an actual motion picture and transforms into a Jack Chick tract put to film. UNIDENTIFIED is an 80-minute movie that's about 35-minutes of actual story and everything after that point is nothing more than shrill proselytizing handled with the subtlety and tact of blunt force trauma to the skull. Christiano doesn't just beat you over the head with his "accept Jesus right now or else" message, he clubs you with it unmercifully like you're a baby seal and he's a Japanese poacher, stopping only long enough to go get a bigger club to come back and finish the job.

This Darren character is an incredible piece of work and, amazingly, Christiano actually seems to think this guy is the messenger of the movie who audiences are going to connect with. The magazine's editor is a young guy named Brad who the movie portrays as an arrogant, disrespectful, Christian-bashing secularist constantly taking pot shots at both Darren and Keith for their religious faith, making him in serious need of a spiritual comeuppance. While the Brad character does accurately reflect an unfortunate portion of the American populace vehemently spiteful towards people of faith and religion in general, Christiano presents the Darren character as the kind of conceited Christian with such a holier than thou attitude that even other devout Christians are revolted by, and this Darren probably wouldn't think too highly of those other Christians either since he even keeps going after Keith for not being Christian enough. Keith dares to tempt damnation by expressing doubts, actually questioning things about this world and the next, and not claiming to know all the answers - all things that are major no-no's in the absolutist, all-or-nothing mindset of Christian fundamentalism. Remember, you either believe everything in the Bible as it is written, unwavering, or burn in Hell for all eternity. Christians like Christiano really would be better served to not include lectures about how people try to pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to believe since that's what Christians themselves have been doing ever since the Bible was written (and rewritten). The movie does a good job painting Brad as a condescending jerk for being close-minded to the notion of any religion yet Darren's close-mindedness to everything but his brand of religion is supposed to make him wise. Anyone in the movie that questions or stands up to Darren is painted as being a fool or merely being deceived by the devil or, worse yet, is only doing so because deep down they're really terrified about the possibility of eternal damnation but just don't want to admit it because the truth makes them uncomfortable. You can't have a legitimate debate of ideas with people like this because in their mind there's nothing to be debate. The rigidity of his message is doomed to fail even more so by the performance given by the actor playing Darren, who does so with a perpetually strident tone of voice, a grim expression plastered on his face, and a sometimes vindictive gleam in his eyes. You get no sense that this man has any inner peace, just an offensively smug sense of piety. Any other movie would have cast this character in a less-than-flattering light, probably as a straight-up villain, but in Christiano's mind Darren is just spreading the Gospel the way Christ intended it.

"I am so going to fill you with Christ's love, you sonovabitch."

Along those same lines, Christiano's pretty much insulated his own movie from any true criticism because if you're criticizing the movie, which is all about the message, then you're criticizing the message and that means you're either a heathen or just too frightened deep down to accept his truth. The questionability of the message still doesn't change the fact that what he's made is a piss poor piece of filmmaking loaded with wooden acting, dialogue that's both repetitive and vexatious, and a plot that quite literally goes nowhere. Story mechanics get forsaken in favor of making a shrill recruiting tool that would make most real people of faith cringe.

By the midway point the film has devolved into an endless series of sermons and debates involving Darren that always has the same conclusion - Darren is always right. When Darren's not arguing faith with Brad or disturbingly manipulating Keith into believing he's not a good enough Christian, he's proselytizing to the UFO abductees about how they're actually being manipulated by Satan. The devil wants us to be confused about the afterlife and what we perceive to be the supernatural is all part of that confusion. You don't even have to believe in UFOs or alien life because in this stringent religious view even entertaining the possibility is heresy enough.

I'm amazed Christiano managed to get through the whole film without taking a shot at Harry Potter too. The hat was right the first time - he did belong in Slytherin House, that evil little twerp.

I wanted to watch UNIDENTIFIED in hopes of either getting a movie genuinely interested in tackling the theory that UFOs and extraterrestrials are demonic in origin (even if I did know going in what side of the discussion the movie was going to lean towards) or at the very least getting a few chuckles out of it like I did the remarkably loopy MEGIDDO: OMEGA CODE 2. The whole UFO-demonic connection is a subject matter that I've read a little about before and found to be at least an intriguing enough theory that one could make a potentially interesting movie around it. But Christiano had no interest whatsoever in making an interesting movie or a coherent argument or even connecting the dots. Heck, he needed to make up some dots just so he can connect those to his overall message. Every UFO sighting is accompanied by the lingering smell of sulfur - as in the sulfuric scent of the lake of fire - and abductees are given a message to take back about a coming mass evacuation of a significant number of Earth's populace - as in the Rapture occurring and the Antichrist manipulating everyone left behind into believing aliens abducted these people instead of it being the Rapture. One such conversation has Darren utter a line of dialogue that's rife with irony you know never even crossed Christiano's mind when he wrote it:

"Doesn't it seem odd to you that these super intelligent beings would travel great distances to some backwater planet just to put a scare in a few people and then tell them to share with society a message about some impending mass evacuation?"

Does that really sound all that outrageous to you, Mr. Christiano? What if the question was, "Doesn't it seem odd that intelligent beings would travel great distances to the middle of nowhere just to put a scare in a few people and tell them to share with their society a message about the why they need accept Christ now because Armageddon is imminent?" Well...?

Hey, wait a minute; I saw that first LEFT BEHIND movie. I thought man-made radiation in our atmosphere was going to be the Antichrist's excuse for the sudden dematerialization of so many? Now it's aliens... What will some Christian author or filmmaker come up with next as the Antichrist's cover-up of the Rapture? I say blame it on being kidnapped by gypsies; still works in parts of Europe.

Christiano has to further tip the scales to his side's favor by making sure that every abductee had some sort of demonic influence in their life. Almost all the abductees have some sort of book on the paranormal in their apartment prompting Darren to begin preaching to them that the devil uses the paranormal to deceive us into not seeing the truth. Satan seduces people into losing their way to Heaven with the fantastical: psychics, ghosts, ESP, horoscopes, UFOs, Bigfoot, etc. Yes, Darren even lumps Sasquatch into being a tool of the Great Confuser. I don't know about you but there seems to be something especially hypocritical in hearing a guy ramble against the fantastical being a deception yet one of his core beliefs is that at any given moment he's going to vanish in the blink of an eye and be Raptured up to Heaven. - sounds pretty fantastical to me. The Bible itself is full of fantastical stuff too, including a lot of the very paranormal activity being denounced as demonic. But I guess that fantastical stuff is okay in the same way that people like Darren would denounce the violence in movies like SAW to be unacceptable yet PASSION OF THE CHRIST is to them a family friendly film.

Hold on a sec. Does this mean that Fox Mulder was the dupe of the devil and the likes of ALF, Invader Zim, Doctor Who, Mork, the Transformers, Marvin the Martian, those little robots from BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED, the Purple People Eater, and Superman are all really Lucifer's minions? I bet you E.T. was actually the Antichrist incarnate and that stupid little boy just kept feeding it candy. Isn't there something in the Book of Revelations about the Antichrist having a glowing finger?

And you know what else are aliens into - anal probes. UFOs are satanic and aliens are like to stick things into people's butts... I'm a little surprised the movie didn't make this connection as further biblical proof that sodomy is an abomination. Guess he has to save something for the sequel.

Even when the Darren character isn't prattling on insufferably about the whole UFO-Satan-Rapture conspiracy-to-come that old born again ex-government agent steps in to further beat the dead horse just in case we might have missed the message the first two dozen times. He even tries to claim the mass hysteria caused by Orson Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast as proof that the Antichrist's post-Rapture alien abduction explanation will work. Again, Christiano keeps stating this all to be fact without providing any real evidence to support his theories outside of a "because I said so" attitude.

The most repugnant moment of UNIDENTIFIED comes when Darren and Keith "gang save" original abductee Randy Mitchell. Turns out that Mitchell's wife is a wiccan and we all know they're going to burn for eternity. Darren again repeats how these aliens only seem to abduct those not of strong faith and that he needs to accept Jesus, even going so far as to tell the man he needs to dump his pagan wife since she's clearly an obstacle to his salvation. Just a vile scene.

The last 10 or so minutes of UNIDENTIFIED is devoted to Darren and Keith orchestrating an elaborate prank played on Brad to make him think the Rapture has actually occurred; a scene that again pounds home everything wrong with this film's central message - a very un-Christian like emphasis on trying to scare people into religious faith.

Regardless what my personal views might be on the subject of religion, the afterlife, or unidentified flying objects, I was more than open-minded to seeing a movie that provided a counterpoint in a thought-provoking, intellectually honest manner. Instead I wasted 80 minutes of whatever time I have left in life viewing a listless, depressingly arrogant, completely wrong-headed polemic that failed to make a case that UFOs and aliens are indeed the devil's doing and pummeled me non-stop with a message presented in such a heavy handed manner that it only succeeded in having the opposite effect of what the filmmaker intended. UNIDENTIFIED is all about browbeating the audience into pondering where we're going to spend our afterlife with an emphasis on accepting Jesus as the only way to get into Heaven. In that sense it did succeed; it made me ponder whether or not I really want to spend an eternity in a place full of all the Darren's of the world. No, I wouldn't actually. The Darren's of the world are the primary reason why so many, especially young people today, are prone to denigrate Christianity, a sad truth completely lost on the Rich Christiano's of the world.

Oh, no! How...? How did the devil get in here? DEMON KEEPER isn't a godsploitation flick. It's a hellsploitation flick! Be gone, Satan! Satan, be gone!

Only one way I know of to get rid of cinematic evil. No, not prayer, a quick review lampooning it will exorcise this movie demon. This one is quite the celluloid hellspawn too. DEMON KEEPER, a film so terrible the devil no doubt had to be behind the production of it, or at the very least, damned it from the get-go. The smell of sulfur emanates from the VHS tape. Quick, someone call that Darren guy!

After a bizarre opening prologue in which a naked woman being burned at the stake began zapping people with animated red globs coming from her eyes and mouth, we're introducted to the late Edward Albert (son of the late Eddie Albert) playing a phony psychic that likes to fleece the rich and stupid out their money with his dog & pony show seances. One such dog & pony show comes with a hitch for the psychic scammer - a genuine psychic will be in attendance to keep an eye on the phony psychic. The real deal is played by The A-Team's Dirk Benedict, sporting a goatee that makes him look more like evil twin Dirk Benedict. Since this guy is a real psychic - hence the coifed goatee - that specializes in debunking phonies, the fake psychic realizes he's going to have to pull off something legit. The fraud dips into his great big book of ancient demonic rituals and conjures up an actual demon that's none to happy about getting conjured. The demon inititially vows to kill every last one of the people attending the seance for daring to disturb his sleep, and not because he's - you know - pure evil. Still, conjuring an actual demon with a bad bedside manner, this was probably not the smartest move this phony psychic could have made, but at least nobody is gonna call him a fake now.

The demon he foolishly summoned is named Asmodeus, and judging by its role in the film, Asmodeus must be the dark lord of inane chatter. This demon looks like a one of the gargoyles from that classic 1972 TV movie, but then you see its plastic looking wings and, I don't know about you, but the girl in the bee costume from the Blind Melon video sprung to mind for some reason. For those rare shots when you get a full head-to-toe glimpse of Asmodeus it's hard not to think you're looking at an action figure come to life; an inarticulate action figure seeing as how this demon does little aside from talking your head off and barking commands. Let's just say that Asmodeus is not the most hands on demon there is. Perhaps he's demon lord of goading and manipulation?

I have a strange inkling that Asmodeus' role in the film was originally to be voice-only with a few scenes of glowing red animation to signify its evil presense, but then the full-bodied demon scenes feel like they were added after the producers realized just how much the film stunk and was in desperate need of something more. Just the fact that Asmodeus always appeared to be standing before the same generic backdrop and yelling into the camera like an old school pro wrestler cutting a promo on his next opponent, definitely felt tacked on. I don't know if that's the case but I can assure you that DEMON KEEPER needed a lot more than a guy in a gargoyle suit acting like a satanic version of The Great Kazoo to make it more watchable.

"I'm gonna suplex you, put you in the camel clutch, break your back, and then F%@# your ass! Make you humble... Old country way."

Most of the time Asmodeus spoke in an electronically altered voice that made him sound like the hellish demon he's supposed to be. There were also moments where the post-production people either forgot to or just didn't bother to alter the actor's voice and Asmodeus ended up sounding like just a guy - a guy who could have been named Dave or Bill or something equally less unholy sounding with an equally unholy sounding voice. This proves problematic since, again, all Asmodeus does is talk. You can't shut this demon up. The power of Christ compels you to shut the hell up!

Amongst some of my favorie Asmodeus-isms:

"Give yourself to me!"
"Cringe before me!"
"Kill! Kill them for me! I command you to kill!"
"Feel me. Enjoy me. Love me always."

This demon talks like he learned English from reading the lyrics to many a death metal album, at times bordering on sounding like some sort of unholy Borat.

In addition to being a world class monologist, Asmodeus has the power to compel women to turn lesbian - murderous lesbians. Compelling people to kill someone else and occassionally blasting someone with some of his poorly animated evil seems to be the extent of his power.

It appears John Lovitz's Satan from Saturday Night Live was the original model for Asmodeus

So after witnessing the tedium of everyone else having wandered around the house all night, arguing with a cartoonish outline of something resembling a devil figure, gotten drunk and/or had sex, and then taking turns killing one another, plus a few scenes of cops debating whether or not the phone calls they keep getting from people trapped in the demon house are a bunch of cranks jerkin' their chains, the nonsensical finale has the phony psychic now under Asmodeus' spell chasing the real psychic all over creation with a broadsword. This sword-swinging pursuit takes them outside into a rain-less thunderstorm where the phony psychic raises the sword to deliver the deathblow to the real psychic only to be killed "By the power of Grayskull" (i.e. lightning strike to the sword being raised above his head). Dirk Benedict then heads back inside for the pentultimate verbal debate with Asmodeus that ends with him sacrificing himself by compelling the talkative demon to enter his body where he traps the hellspawn by putting on a magic ring that's sorta like an occult padlock. Poor Dirk Benedict finds himself in a catatonic state with a blissfully stupid grin on his face. The cops arrive and naturally assume that he's responsible for all the dead bodies.

If you really think about it, this showdown between good and evil ended in a draw. But if you look at it from a movie-watching standpoint: we lost. Score one for the power of cinematic evil.

Awful movie. Awful, awful, awful movie. The only positive thing I can say about DEMON KEEPER is Dirk Benedict's performance wreaks of being the type of go-for-broke acting job turned in by an actor that has signed onto a film for a quick payday but never dreamed it was going to be as atrocious as he would soon come to realize and decided that if he was going down then, by god, he's going down swinging.

Dirk Benedict after he finished watching Demon Keeper for the first time

Amen. The devil be gone. Whew! That was unpleasant. You just never know when cinematic evil is going to rear its ugly head. Next time it would be an even more powerful evil, like TURBULENCE 3: HEAVY METAL. Need something a little less Old Testament to wash that evil out of my hair.

DEATH TRAIN originated as an early 2006 German TV movie called IM AUFTRAG DES VATIKANS, a title that roughly translates to "I Often Rag on the Vatican." What's that? It doesn't? Sorry, I forgot that I don't speak German. It actually translates to ON BEHALF OF THE VATICAN, a truly awful title for an action flick. No wonder the US DVD distributors changed it to the very generic but still superior DEATH TRAIN. Although, the title that appears on-screen at the beginning of the movie is LASKO: DEATH TRAIN. Make up your mind, people!

What we essentially have here is a super goofy variation on UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY but with Steven Seagal replaced with the screwy notion of a bad ass Catholic monk kicking terrorist butt. That this film was directed by a German named Diethard Küster, a guy whose name is DIE HARD with an extra letter between the two words, is proof positive that God has a sense of humor and, like me, gives this film a hearty thumb's up. Had Steven Seagal starred as the bad ass monk it would have been that much greater.

His name is Lasko and he joined a Catholic monastery to devote the rest of his life to the Lord as penance for a horrible incident that forever scarred his psyche during his past life as a soldier stationed in war torn Bosnia. This traumatic incident that sent him looking for divine atonement will be revealed piece-by-piece in a series of flashbacks throughout the first half of the film. The fact that he's now a man of peace who has renounced violence in favor of a life of devotion to God's work doesn't mean he can't still take time out of his day to rip the shirt off his chiseled physique and practice his kung fu forms in the privacy of an empty cathedral. Hey, there isn't anything in the Bible that preaches against beefcake martial arts tricking.

Lasko is played by young German martial artist Mathis Landwehr, who may or may not be the offspring of a James Van Der Beek/Heath Ledger coupling. I can't tell you how good an actor he is since his dialogue was English dubbed by someone else. Nor can I tell you how good a martial artist he actually is since he only gets to show it off in a few short bursts before the finale. When he does unleash his fury he proves to be of the Van Dammage variety.

Even the most apologetic Star Wars fan was forced to admit George Lucas had sold out the franchise when he produced the martial arts space opera ENTER THE JEDI

The Pope (John Paul, not Benedict - thus dating a film that's still only a year old as it is) will be holding mass in Lourdes, the French city where the Virgin Mary is reportedly seen quite frequently in between her regular appearances on burnt toast and wood carvings. There's going to be a special pilgrim train heading to Lourdes that will be loaded with nothing but priests, nuns, monks, and the faithful. Lasko is one of those off to see the Pontiff, joined by his superior, Brother Matthew, and a chubby little monk, Gladius, who will later come to be known to the movie's villains simply as "Fat Monk."

Brother Gladius definitely is not your typical monk seeing as he's prone to make comically inappropriate comments to attractive nuns (That's about 5,000 Hail Mary's right there!) and has no problem dipping into the communion wafers for a snack. In other words, Fat Monk will be the hero's bumbling sidekick and the film's comic relief. At one point Gladius will even find himself having to hang off the side of a speeding train, despite the fact that he doesn't even look like a person that could do a pull-up. Insipid comic relief and unlikely action hero, that's what Fat Monk is.

There'll be even more unsuccessful comic relief in the form of a bickering duo: a blind schlep and his aristocratic friend who looks as if he should be sipping tea and plotting how to thwart that Sherlock Holmes once and for all. A whiny blind guy who's still smarter than his seatmate, a guy who looks like he should either be a villain on The Avengers or at the very least tying a young lass to the train tracks and twirling his mustache.

Meanwhile, a young single mother is reading an insurance agent the riot act because her son has a potentially fatal blood disease that can only be cured with an expensive treatment performed only in Switzerland. The kid will die without it, but the heartless insurance agent insists that 100,000 Euros is just too much for them to pay. She reacts to this heartless act of corporate bureaucracy just as anyone would - by hurling herself off the balcony of a Catholic cathedral with a bungee cord to repel down to the ground below safely while hurling hundreds of flyers all over the street telling of how those greedy insurance company bastards want her son to die because they're too cheap to pay for his treatment. I'll say this; I did not see that coming. When she first leapt I thought she was committing suicide, which also would have been a needlessly extreme reaction, but when the bungee chord was revealed and the flyers went everywhere... Again, I did not see that coming. You just don't see that sort of behavior every day.

Cathedral Bungee Jumping: It's all part of The Catholic X-Games 2007

A priest picks up one of the fliers and tells the mom that he'll see what he can do for her, and by see what he can do for her what he really meant to say was, "Here's two free train tickets to Lourdes so that you can go pray to the Virgin Mary for a miracle." Ah, Catholic charity at its finest.

Mom and sick son - who never once in the entire movie even coughs, let alone shows any signs of having a potentially fatal disease - will, of course, end up seated in the same booth as Lasko and company. The boy, whose name is Billy, a good strong German sounding name if ever there was one, is so poorly dubbed that when talking about his disease and the possibility of dying, the lad does so in the same bummed out tone of voice you'd expect to hear from a kid unhappy about an upcoming dentist visit.

And would it shock you to know that this great tragedy from his past that scarred Lasko's very soul involved the death of a child? Something tells me he's gonna have to save this kid from certain death before it’s over.

Enter the villains led by THE MUMMY himself, part-time DARKMAN, and current go-to guy for international terrorist roles, the great Arnold Vosloo. He and his motley crue of international arms stealers and dealers will make their entrance via parachute onto the roof of some research lab. They've come to steal a deadly virus and then sell it to the highest bidder, and what an elaborate plan they've devised to steal this biological weapon. They first go to the trouble of parachuting onto the roof and then they send in a four-propeller robotic helicopter doohickey that looks like something from an MIT science fair down the air shaft into the building. This thing doesn't just fly; it also blasts unsuspecting guards with a deadly toxin that kills instantly. Then they need only repel down and swipe the virus and a vaccine or two for themselves. Better safe than sorry, right?

Now surely you expect their getaway plan to be just as intricate and tricky? You'd be wrong. After all that the escape plan turns out to be nothing more than having another member of the team come crashing through the gates of the facility in a Hummer, pick them up, and then try to get the hell out of Dodge with a line of squad cars in pursuit. For some reason this struck me as especially silly after all the trouble they went to just to get into the place. It's not the last time that their plans will have a perfectly sound set-up and a not-so-sound follow-up. These criminals, they're not what you would call in sports terminology a "second half team."

The chase is on, at least it was until the terrorists passed by a parked transport truck that just happened to be transporting gigantic gas tanks, the kind the wife from THE MARINE spent the last five minutes of that film exploding through unscathed. Well, the German police, they apparently are not married to a marine because when the bad guys blow up those tanks; every vehicle in pursuit goes bye-bye.

Like DER KLOWN, which I gave the Foyeurism treatment last year; DEATH TRAIN is yet another German explodo-fest. Folks, if there's any one thing I've learned from watching what few made-in-Germany action flicks I have it would most certainly be that Germans love watching massive explosions. Screw Hasselhoff; Michael Bay must be a god amongst men to these people.

This time we're treated to a full minute (I timed it!) of explosions and cars flipping through the air in slow motion - a full 60 seconds of fiery boom boom. This had to have been a world record of some sort. I'm convinced of it. Someone needs to alert the Guinness people.

The next part of the bad guys' plan is to disguise themselves as monks and nuns and elude authorities via the pilgrimage train to Lourdes. Suspicions will first be aroused when Billy spots the henchwoman of the group in a nun's habit while still wearing expensive Nike's and lipstick. That's a major no-no when it comes to nunnery. Billy boy just can't shut up about it either. His non-stop blabber mouthing alarms Brother Matthew enough to make him go investigate. The very next scene has Vosloo telling her to wipe off her lipstick so as to not draw attention to herself. She does so. The eye shadow she's still wearing will apparently not arouse suspicion, I guess. He probably also should have told his Brent Spiner meets the albino assassin from THE DA VINCI CODE henchman that monks don't tend to carry huge knives with them and they certainly don't drop them accidentally when retrieving their train ticket for the conductor. Mr. Conductor is the first to die. Amazingly, nobody misses him. You'd think if the conductor vanished this would alarm someone aboard this train.

"Oh, I think you will be putting a little something extra in the collection plate today."

The terrorists think they can just sneak past authorities on this train and make countless millions selling this lethal virus to even more dangerous terrorists. But there were five things aboard this train that these terrorists were not prepared for:

1) God
2) Billy, the super observant dying boy
3) The world's most bad ass James Van Der Beek look-a-like
4) Pugnus Dei

That's right - Pugnus Dei. No, not Opus Dei, they couldn't even kill Tom Hanks. Pugnus Dei, now they could kill Tom Hanks. A secret order of the Vatican founded in Jerusalem some 900 years ago during the Crusades that's sworn to protect the Church from any outside threat. Think of Pugnus Dei as sort of the Remo Williams of the Catholic Church. Brother Matthew, the leader of Pugnus Dei, can still karate kick the crap out terrorists even though he looks to be not that far from qualifying as being labeled elderly. Unfortunately, he's not so good at watching his back, especially when flying knives are speeding through the air towards it. Wanna guess who he pegged to be next in line to take the reigns of Pugnus Dei?

Lasko will soon find the dying Brother Matthew, who will forsake any last rites in favor of giving Lasko the 411 on Pugnus Dei as well as the ring with the official seal of the secret order. Ain't got no time for salvation when there's still more butt to whoop. Fat Monk, who himself survives getting shot through the heart by the female henchwoman when the bullet lodged in the Bible he kept in his upper pocket (I think Ned Flanders on The Simpsons once survived a shooting in exactly the same manner), fills in the rest of the Pugnus Dei blanks for young Lasko, who initially reacts appalled to the very notion of there being a secret order of bad ass monks. He vehemently complains that he did not go to the monastery to become a secret agent and reiterates his vow to never again pick up a gun. Good news; Fat Monk informs him that Pugnus Dei does not rely on firearms.

That's right, heathens. Unlike those wussy, gun nut lovin' Christians; Catholics kill with their bare hands - just like Jesus would have had he been a kickboxer instead of a carpenter. Like the kung fu priest from Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE, they kick ass for the Lord! This will be pounded home just before the final deathmatch atop the speeding train when Lasko makes a fist, sticks it in Vosloo's face to make sure he sees the Pugnus Dei ring, and declares, "I am the fist of God!" In Lasko's world, the "Christian Right" isn't a term used to describe an American political sect of evangelicals; it's a punch to the face!

Catholicism - it's not a religion for wimps.

Captain Vatican & the Papalteers - "GOOOOO VATICAN!"

But before we get to that part, let's deal with another amusing bit. Brother Matthew, before getting all knife stabby in the back, managed to alert authorities that evil was afoot aboard the pilgrim train to Lourdes. Having found the bad guys' getaway vehicle parked at the train station, the authorities confirmed that evil was indeed aboard and began planning a commando raid. Did you know that the authority of a Catholic Cardinal extends to being able to just waltz into the equivalent of a German FBI command center and start giving orders to the special agent in charge? 'Tis true.

Authorities first try to send in a commando team via helicopter; the terrorists blow it up with a rocket launcher. I realize train rides are noisy but are they really so noisy that nobody will hear the sound of a helicopter exploding, even hitting the back of the train as it falls out of the sky? It seems so. Well, the blind guy heard it, but who's gonna believe what a blind guy claims to hear? Nobody else aboard, except for super observant Billy; he saw the rocket go whizzing by. Everyone else is so clueless that Vosloo has to get on the train's intercom, declares himself to be Lucifer, and inform them that now might be a good time for them to get right with God. I can only assume that it must have been because it was a train full of devout Catholics already at peace with their mortality, but nobody really seems to panic to the degree you'd expect people would upon hearing that terrorists have hijacked their train and are more than willing to kill them all at any given moment.

I'm still not sure how the various terrorists, Lasko, and Fat Monk consistantly managed to not bump into one another as they maneuvered back and forth throughout this train. I'm even less sure what on God's green earth possessed the terrorist's wheelman (Yeah, they still have a guy on the outside following the train) to park their new getaway vehicle on the train tracks and stand in front of it just because he'd been told they were sending someone up to the engine car to kill the engineer, commandeer control of the train, and bring it to a stop. It's like a sight gag from a Hal Needham film except it isn't done for a laugh - this guy is just a goober. Then again, if he hadn't then we might have had to go that much longer before something else exploded.

You have to understand that the bad guys can't just stop the train and get off because Brother Matthew cut all the emergency breaks before they took him out. Their attempt to send a henchman up to kill the engineer and commandeer the train falls through after Lasko takes that guy out. Thus the train then plows through their getaway vehicle that numbnuts parked on the tracks. Vosloo realizes that the train is no longer on the tracks to Lourdes leading to him realizing that the German police are in communication with the engineer, but rather than risk losing another henchman, he opts to contact the authorities and threaten that he'll unleash the virus unless they order the engineer to stop the train in x-amount of minutes.

Too bad none of our remaining terrorist nogoodnicks noticed Lasko on the roof of the train retrieving a package lowered from an overpass by the authorities containing vaccines for the virus. The vaccine is then smeared on communion wafers to be given to each passenger, inoculating them. Vosloo sees these wafers being passed out but is fooled into thinking it’s just a bunch of Catholics receiving final communion before dying. This is another prime example of what I meant about these terrorists not being much of a second half team.

The demise of the film's final two villains is one for the ages. Vosloo realizes the authorities aren't going to tell the engineer to stop the train so he releases the virus and sends his rocket launcher-toting female henchwoman up top to go make the engineer stop the train once and for all. She and the engineer end up duking it out on the small walkway on the side of the locomotive and just as she takes him down and is about to go inside to put on the brakes, the strap of her rocket launcher snags on a metal handle. She attempts to jerk herself free, but instead the metal handle pulls the trigger launching the rocket. This particular rocket is either a heat-seeking rocket or of God himself decided He wanted to ice this bitch because the rocket flies through the air for a few moments, comes back around, and blows up the female baddie. Believe it or not, this isn't even the most implausible villain death in the movie.

The locomotive proves no worse for wear despite the massive explosion caused by such an explosive device. Lasko will comment that the train is powered by a diesel engine and nothing can stop a diesel engine until it runs out of fuel. I'm no mechanical engineer but something about that statement just struck me as a tad implausible. If I'm wrong then I want to know why everything isn't designed to be diesel-powered. Someway, somehow, I just know deep down that Al Gore is somehow to blame.

Somehow, Vosloo has called in a chopper to come pick him up. Where do these extra off-site henchmen keep coming from? With the helicopter circling about a few feet overheard, Vosloo and Lasko have their final battle that primarily consists of Arnold Vosloo getting his ass handed to him in a totally one-sided affair. The chopper will have swung around behind Lasko when Vosloo decides he has had enough of this hand-to-hand-of-God crap, whips out a gun, and opens fire. Lasko dodges the bullets through a series of back flips, but a stray bullet somehow winds up in the belly of the helicopter pilot. The trajectory of such a shot is not plausible in any way, shape, or form unless Vosloo has a special gun that shoots bullet that change direction in mid-air causing them to aim about fifteen feet higher. Momentary confusion allows our villain to make his escape by hopping onto one of the helicopter's landing gear, riding on it as if he were bodysurfing; unaware that's he's mortally wounded the pilot. That wounded pilot loses control of the helicopter causing it to swing around to the front of the train and come up on the losing end of a game of chicken while Vosloo screams wildly.

Had the Virgin Mary appeared with nunchuks and used them to beat Arnold Vosloo to death, I do believe that might have been less ludicrous than how Vosloo's character eats it.

But you think that's the end? Ha! Not when there's still more stuff in Germany to blow up!

Monks outrunning fireballs - Reason #536 why I love watching bad movies

Now Lasko has to make sure everyone aboard the train has piled into the rear car so that they can detach it from the rest of the train. Did I not mention that the special agent had the train rerouted to a dead end track? Well, he did. But stupid Lasko left Billy behind to pee (Seriously!) before going to kick Vosloo's ass once and for all, and even worse, he told Billy that after he used the bathroom all he had to do was head right and he'd make it to the safety car. Didn't Lasko listen to mom earlier when she told him he can't tell his left from his right?

Hmmm... Should I head in the direction towards the fiery explosion or the other way? I take back what I said early about you being so observant. Billy, you're a dumb boy.

Fortunately, Lasko can hold together train cars like a reverse Samson while mom rescues her son with no sense of direction. Then the other car reaches the end of the line and the end of the line just happens to lead into a warehouse that's empty other than a few hundred barrels of unspecified explosive substances. KABOOM! It's like watching the end of THE MARINE all over against except their isn't a blonde chick inside an indestructible semi-truck driving through all the various explosions unscathed. Seriously, THE MARINE had to have made a billion dollars in Germany.

Extra points to DEATH TRAIN for being that super rare action movie that manages to find a way to have its hero have to outrun a fireball twice within the last 10 minutes. That takes work.

Praise the Lord! Lasko becomes the new head of Pugnus Dei and everyone aboard the pilgrim train is saved - in more ways than one. Even Billy is saved; Lasko swiped about 100,000 Euros from one of the henchmen earlier, so it's next stop Switzerland for young Billy. Yeah, stealing is a sin, unless you're stealing from bad people in order to save a sick little boy, in which case there's an exception. That's actually written in fine print at the bottom of the Ten Commandments. Get a magnifying glass and you'll see it. It's right there along with other exceptions like, "Thou shalt not kill unless thou really needs killin'.” Or is that the Bush Doctrine? I'm not sure anymore. The Ten Commandments in America tend to work a little differently than they do in the rest of the world.

The movie ends with mother and now healthy son visiting Lasko only to have to watch as he gets a new assignment. No getting the girl and becoming a father figure to the kid for Lasko; the young hunky martial artist has taken his vows to do God's work, remain celibate, and whoop ass. Lasko hops into a helicopter and flies off with little more than a wave goodbye to the attractive single mom and her precocious kid.

Praise the Lord and pass the Lasko!

IN MEMORY OF WHATEVER THE HELL HIS NAME WAS
NEXT STOP: EITHER HELL OR ANOHTER VILLAIN ROLE ON "24"

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE JUDGMENT NIGHT