Dying God (2008)
Seriously, did you see that title? Talk about promising! Alas, that’s where the originality pretty much begins and ends. Oh well. At least I can say I’m being multicultural because this one’s from Argentina.
Premise: 3/5
Wow, I've sure never seen a shot like this before in a horror movie.
What we’ve got here is what happens when a sleazy ’70s era dirty cop drama mates with a rubber-suit monster flick. It’s like that, but then the noir cop drama turns out to have a giant retractable curved demon penis that perforates the uterus of the monster flick and tries to spawn a little demon-penis baby that . . . okay, I just ran out of analogy.
Let me rewind–this movie’s about Sean Fallon, a fallen (see what they did there?) cop who sells guns from the evidence locker to gangsters and pimps, smacks hos around when they don’t get their ass out there to buy him some booze at ten in the morning, murders indiscriminately (sometimes he only threatens to murder indiscriminately though), has all women in the city falling for him, and still somehow manages to be “a damn good cop ” for all his failings.
Oh, Fallon also does this too. That's his gun. The real one, not the figurative one.
Oh, there’s also that demon penis rape-monster and the uterus-perforating I mentioned above. I didn’t make that up. For some reason, Fallon takes it upon himself to hunt down this thing. It started off just killing and raping hookers but soon enough escalates to kidnapping his oh-so-smackable girlfriend (surprise!), killing nuns, and the final straw for the pimp community: absconding with Lance Henriksen’s (yeah, he’s a pimp. In a wheelchair.) mute adopted daughter. It’s up to Sean to convince the Council of Elrond–err, sorry, the Council of Pimps–to stop threatening to shoot each other and stop Vulcan death-gripping each other’s manhood (FYI: Lance will kick your ass EVEN in a wheelchair) long enough to hunt penis-monster down and save the day for ladies of the night, and I guess other ladies too.
Cast: 2.5/5
Nope, this kind of porn just doesn't do it for me.
Two stars: one for the aforementioned Lance Henriksen (playing a pimp named Chance) and one for James Horan (who plays Sean Fallon). Lance can take any crappy line the writers care to give him and make it sound cool somehow, and James Horan does a great job looking and usually acting like a dirty burnt-out bastard. The other half star is for the smokin’ hot ladies in the movie. Most of them suck at acting but they’re easy enough on the eyes.
Pretty much everyone else in the movie is a walking cliche (well, come to think of it, so are Chance and Fallon–but at least they’re entertaining), and barely warrant mentioning. The hot-headed pimp Ray (played by Ivan Espeche) is a really bad character actor who’s more irritating than interesting and chews scenes like he’s starving, the guy who plays Fallon’s uber-boss (whose name I don’t remember and can’t be bothered to track down) acts about as convincingly as a 5-year-old playing dirty cops and robbers and seems to not really be sure what he’s supposed to be saying, only that he’s supposed to say it forcefully. Everyone else is simply forgettable. Definitely not worth the time I just invested in writing about them, actually.
"You're a loose cannon, Fallon! Now hurry up and pull my finger!"
Technical: 2/5
Only okay, for the most part. If there was any background music or scoring, I’ve already forgotten it, and most of the actual filming is just boring to look at. There’s a definite “made for TV” quality to the way the movie’s shot that’s just too bland to hold your interest for long.
Now the good news is, there’s a lot of carnage in the movie. The bad news is that most of it is only caught in quick glimpses, or else it’s some girl lying on the ground with a pool of blood on her stomach that’s supposed to look like she was ripped open. I would have appreciated a bit more bloodiness and less of the quick-cutting around, but I’m guessing the gore was minimized because the evidently low budget just couldn’t produce anything that looked all that great.
Better number 1? Or . . .
The monster suit is OK–it kind of looks like the anorexic lovechild of Swamp Thing, Skeletor, and a zombified Gray. Its penis is retractable, too, if you’re into that sort of thing. You don’t see it too much until the end, which I think is for the best: somehow the movie managed to hit the sweet spot between not showing too much of the monster that it gets repetitive or silly, and not showing enough of it to the point where it’s frustrating. Most monster movies err on either side too often, so it’s a welcome surprise that this otherwise “meh ” movie managed to nail the monster-face-time target.
Popcorn Factor: 2/5
. . . Better number 2?
I can honestly say that I was expecting a “The Ghouls “ level of pain when I started looking at the synopsises (synopsi?) online as to what this movie was about. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s not too bad. Sure it’s a mash-up of gritty copsploitation, strippers, and a slasher movie, but it’s one that actually kind of works well together. Unfortunately, it wasn’t tremendously interesting once you got past the boobs/asshole cop/demon-penis monster part, but what more could you possibly want? I mean, really. I didn’t hate my time watching this movie, and it was usually just passably entertaining enough (and, fortunately, short enough) to keep me going. It wasn’t a bad flick, unless you hate boobs, dirty cops, or demon-penis monsters, but it still fails to qualify as a must-see. I don’t know what it is, but something just held this movie back for me.