Rated PG-13 Runtime: Too long. Release: 2002
Brotherhood III: Young Demons
The Story:
Within the first ten minutes of this movie a masked figure forces a teenaged boy to give him a blowjob. Later on the movie another young man is seen in nothing but his tightie-whities for no good reason, let alone a plot related reason. You know what, screw you, David DeCoteau, you fruity assed moron! I don't actually care if you're gay, bisexual or like to hump farm animals, but at least have the balls to go make homoerotic soft-core porn movies instead of "supposedly" horror movies if that's what you're into.
Okay, that was probably a very mean spirited thing even for me to say (Though I did mean every single word.) but if you saw this movie you'd probably agree with me. Its awful. Its worse than awful, actually. I haven't felt this angry at a movie since The Doom Generation. DeCoteau has actually achieved a new low here in The Inferno. This movie was so bad it should be considered a biohazard.
Two horrible actors playing high school students, approach and enter their school late at night. They provide some exposition about how another student named "Lex" sets up a live action Dungeon and Dragons type game for his friends and they role play in the school at night. When I say horrible, I mean horrible as in "They can't act at all". Unfortunately they aren't the only horrible actors in this movie, but this opening is only a harbinger of things to come. I could only sit here and wonder do these people actually do acting as a profession? I mean, do they really make a living at this? Because they really suck. These two dorks are setting up a few "traps" and "surprises" for Lex and his game tomorrow night, since they won't actually be playing. To add to the exposition, they claim that Lex's brother (whose name is Ramses....yeah, right....I'm fighting to restrain myself from making Ramses jokes on DeCoteau's behalf, by the way) just came back from an archeological dig in the Far East, and they're also to hide the prize for the winner of tomorrow's event to find....a golden amulet that I guess is supposed to be Anubis or something. To convince us that the 2 dorks are indeed DnD players they use dialogue like "I'll be having fun until you look at me like a level 7 Orc". Gawd, I wish this movie was about the ghost of Tolkien coming back to smash their heads in already. Or at least maybe Gary Gygax going nuts and machine gunning the entire cast. The two dorks are shadowed however by the aforementioned masked figure. This is fantastically lame since at one point they don't see him standing about 20 feet behind them backlit on a stairwell. The two dorks split up, in order to get their tasks done faster, and the shadowy figure catches up to them both, separately and....and....forces them to kneel and blow him. Now its not like you see these guys actually slurping this masked guy's love rod, but the implication is there and its not like DeCoteau was trying to suggest otherwise.
The next morning we see football guy, Roger, enter the school as the day begins. he's immediately confronted by Victoria, a chick with big freaking teeth and Stan, who looks like Vin Diesel's younger illegitimate brother. They say that Lex has handpicked him to join the game, which is odd. When they explain the Game in ambiguous ways to Roger, he evidently has no knowledge, therefore interest in Dungeons and Dragons and role playing. For instance, when asked if he knows what a Renaissance Faire is he answers "Is that where you dress up like princesses and stuff....I've heard of 'em." Yeah, he sounds like he'd really be interested in this sort of thing on a Friday night. A football player....You know, in my high school the football players usually got the hottest chicks to go out with them on Friday nights. Well, not in DeCoteau's world....I forgot that there guys don't actually like girls. Still, Victoria and Stan convince Roger to join them tonight outside the science lab to play this game. Before parting Victoria reminds Roger to bring a sword. (?!) From there we get to meet Lex. As expected, Lex is dressed in All Black and has a spiked collar and his nails are painted black. In comparison, Stan and Victoria looked a bit to "normal" to want to hang out with a guy that dresses like that, but hey, I don't let clothes pick my friends for me either, so what the hey. Lex's older brother, Ramses (groan....Lex and Ramses...these guys had some hateful ass parents) shows up in the school to give Lex a gift he forgot to give him before he left the house. An "Honest to God" magic book that he found on his dig in the Middle East. If he found that book in an archeological dig then I'm Aragorn, heir to the throne of Gondor! The book is immaculate. Its a hard covered, perfect bound book in MINT CONDITION! Where was this dig, in a local B. Daltons? Ramses says it'll add to his "Game" tonight, though I don't see how Lex would buy this...the pages are written in Hieroglyphics. Ok, they're just little pictures of birds and crap that you would think were hieroglyphics if you were 6 years old. Lex takes a moment after Ramses has left to look through the book and lightning and thunder abound as he does so.....Lex gets this weird look on his face, like he's got a really bad drunk goin' on, and this is to let us know that something supernatural and eerie is happening to him as the pages flip by, pushed by some otherworldly breeze. You'll note that the little hieroglyphics have one symbol that appears on 75% of every page and it looks....I swear I'm not making this up....like a friggin' penis! DeCoteau, you are a sick bastard, you hear me?! Lex then runs into Megan and some other jerk whose name I didn't get. They tell him that Victoria asked Roger to play that night and he dismisses that, saying that Roger is a "football guy" and wouldn't be interested. But only five minutes ago we heard Victoria tell Stan that Lex wanted them to get Roger to play. Stupid movie. The movie then segues into a dream sequence...at least I think its a dream sequence....that Megan has of the masked cloaked figure from the beginning terrorizing her with a soccer ball that has "You will die tonight" written on it red paint. I say I think its a dream sequence because Megan later claims it was a dream, but there's no indication to the audience that Megan is dreaming. The scenes just changes from Megan, some other jerk and Lex talking into this bit. Stupid movie.
Lets get to the game. Roger and Victoria share a moment after entering the school at night, where I can at least confirm that Victoria has some pretty big [unwrite]ing teeth. Then we see the shadowy cloaked masked figure walking into the school. Then we shift to Some Jerk and Stan entering, dressed as if they are going to a Ren Faire...no problem, except that Some Jerk slips on a 3 Stooges like trap in the hallway (slippery grease or something that is red like blood) and then we hear Lex mocking them on the intercom, saying that they found his first trap of the evening. Instead of making Lex look like some kind of mastermind this made me think, if Lex can obviously SEE and/or HEAR them doesn't that mean there's some kind of security system in the school? Which makes this even more stupid, because if there was the police would come screaming to the building or there'd be rent-a-cops monitoring it. Stupid movie. Well, this entire exchange is solely so Some Jerk can claim that whatever he slipped in smells awful and he's not going to walk around all night like that. So he wants to clean up while Stan goes on to the Game. Yep, this is solely so we can see Some Jerk in his underwear as he goes to use the school's showers. The Shadowy figure looms in the background as we're treated to a crotch level shot of Some Jerk removing his pants. (He still has underwear on) Still, DeCoteau you are a demented pervert, you hear me!?
I certainly hope you weren't expecting the rules of this game to be explained to you. Because they're not. Lex speaks to the players on a radio headset, that must by default use the schools PA system. He tells them that the only way out of the school is by winning the prize or by dying at another players hand. But he goes on to say the weapons are toys and he'll be judging that all the combat is fair. How? I don't know, because he says so I guess.
Anyway, Some Jerk then takes a shower in the locker room where the Shadowy Masked figure attacks him, cutting him in the arm. Despite the minor wound, Some Jerk runs away rather slowly only to have his path blocked by Tony and Mike,....the 2 dorks from the beginning. Only now they've been changed into Leather fetish monster guys. (Not scary ones, but kinda like the ones you'd find in a sleazy, warped homoerotic movie....well, like this one) Shadowy Masked Guy then comes up to Some Jerk and the screen fades to black as I guess he makes some Jerk suck him off.
After this part its just a lot of boring stuff. Actually, more boring stuff. Roger and Victoria have a little "I like you moment" which in a better movie, would still be dull, but in this movie it just adds to the non-acting quotient. Then They split up, even though Victoria gave Roger all of the signals for Blast off. She ends up being hunted down by the shadowy figure and the Two dorks, and I think she's the first female to do the Forced "Blow Me" move. After that there's a completely nonsensical scene with Victoria dressed as some kind of dominatrix in rock video gyrating in front of Some Jerk who is tied up to a pole. Again, I sh*t you not. This scene not only makes no sense whatsoever, its not titillating in the least. By this point in the flick, if you got this far, you're just waiting for some kind of hopefully, coherent conclusion.
You won't get that. What you get is finding out that Ramses, Lex's brother is actually the reincarnation of Ramses. (He's the Shadowy cloaked figure). He set this whole thing up because he has to do some kind of mumbo jumbo to raise his undead army and rule the world. He changed his other victims into the reincarnations of his deceased henchmen by making them give him a lube job on his Johnson but he has to complete his evil tasks by dawn or the deal for new life and ruling the world are off. Yada, Yada, Yada. It seems though that Lex was never truly part of the deal, just an unknowing patsy. Lex can of course hear Ramses explain his evil plan to Roger, who is the non-DnD playing normal guy hero of the movie. The key is the Anubis Necklace prize and Lex allows Roger to destroy it, thus thwarting Ramses' plot to shroud the earth in darkness or whatever.
Yeah, I know. Its insane, and retarded and stupid. I didn't make this script up, my droogies.
Let me say that even for a Bad Movie Fan like myself and the Infernal Ones, this movie was a trial. It had the most atrocious acting I've seen since I saw the Witchcraft sequels in a drunken stupor back in the early 90's. At least they had a lot of good looking babes getting nude. This movie had...dudes in their tighty-whiteys. Director DeCoteaus's fixation with penises and all is one thing...but man, he has no concept of subtlety. If you make a movie that is going to be touted as a western you know fans of the genre are going to be pissed if they think they're going to see a western and all of a sudden you have flying saucers in it, for no good plot related reason. That's what this was like. Like it or not the mainstream audience for horror movies are straight young men. I may not be as young as I was when The Inferno first started but I think I can speak a bit for that demographic. We didn't want to see your erotic fantasies, DeCoteau. As I said, if you want to make soft-core gay porn, go on and make it and label it as such. Don't toss your crappy sexual fantasies in a horror movie and expect me to like it. Especially a movie as horrendously bad as this one, you prick. Sure, horror movies have always had a less than flattering treatment of women and yes, they have been used solely for the purposes of showing some tits and ass. I won't even try to defend that as righteous. But dammit, when did you last see a female in a horror movie do a blowjob move like in this movie? Tell me 'cuz I want to rent it. Even the stinky poo Breeders wasn't as sleazy in its smuttiness.
We get it. You like boys. Fine. Do what you got to, D. Maybe if you tried to make a decent movie without throwing your sausage predilection in it The Inferno wouldn't be as hot.
Best Lines: “Oh...and bring a sword."- The single dumbest line in this movie, spoken by Victoria.
Are you kidding me?
1.) In a better movie this glaring idiocy could be overlooked, but here....naw, no way. How the hell do these kids supposedly get into the school at night and play this game? Is there a High School in the Continental United States (or Canada) that isn't locked up after it closes? One with presumably no kind of alarm system? Its especially bad since the movie could be set in say, an abandoned building of some sort. Yeah, that's cliché as hell, but I can buy that a lot easier than an unlocked high school with no alarm system that literally anyone can sneak into during the night.
2.) Victoria and Stan convince Roger, a kid that exhibits zero interest in dungeons and dragons, role-playing or Ren Faires to play the "Game". Victoria reminds Roger to "bring a sword.". Are you [unwrite]ing kidding with that dialogue? He's just said (Roger) that he barely knows what a freakin' Ren faire is....why would he have a sword? Hell, I have collectible swords only because I like that kind of stuff, and I (as an adult) could afford to buy them. Display swords ain't cheap, and for a kid in high School with no interest in Fantasy role Playing I'm betting they're way at the low end of things he'd want to buy.
3.) At this point I'm not feeling forgiving at all towards this flick. The pages in the book are supposedly written in hieroglyphics but the little penis-looking symbol appears a lot. I really only noticed this on my 3rd time watching this vomit stain of a movie, but man, DeCoteau has no shame. We get it dude. You like dicks.
4.) Some Jerk needs to get cleaned up after slipping on Some Greasy [unwrite]. He has tighty-whiteys on when we (ugh) see him take his pants off. in slow-mo. But my question is...doesn't anyone, like a janitor maybe, notice this stuff? Even if the kids clean up after themselves I'm stretching my disbelief in buying that they leave no clues. Oh, and Some Jerk takes a shower.....lovingly shot in slow motion as he caresses his own nipples (I [unwrite] you not) in his underwear! Goddamn stupid movie!
5.) Oh, boy. Some Jerk gets attacked by the shadowy Masked figure while he showers in his underwear and runs away....slowly. You see he got cut on the arm....and we all know a cut on the arm will make you run slowly.
6.) During the game, just after Some Jerk gets to kiss it, Lex says over the PA system that the prize of the game is to find the Necklace of Anubis, a priceless artifact that his brother brought back from the archeological dig. Um. ok....lets think about this, 'cuz neither the writers or DeCoteau did....if Ramses did find an ancient Egyptian artifact how'd he manage to keep it for himself, how'd he get it back to the US through customs and if that's not enough, why would he give it to Lex to use in some stupid game? Well, the reason why is in the script, but if he had two brain cells to rub together, wouldn't Lex think that this was odd? A find like that would be worth a fortune even if you turned it in to the proper authorities. Look at it this way...if someone came and told you to hold a game like this and the prize would be Excalibur, because they just found it in a dig at Glastonbury Tor, wouldn't you be a bit suspicious?
Nudity and Sex: DeCoteau only wishes he could have shown the kind of sex he's implying. I need a shower myself after watching this infested movie
Huh?:
Where exactly does DeCoteau get these actors? They're worse than terrible, trust me. In every DeCoteau film I've seen the acting is so bad I have to admit I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you. Final stab, Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy and Prison of the dead as well as this turd have actors in it that would shame the cast of an Elementary School class performing "Little Red Riding Hood". Unbelievable.
By the way, is there some kind of rule that anyone portraying a high school sports team member must have a Red and White Varsity jacket? Seriously? I see Red and White Varsity jackets in movies all of the time. Just wondering.
Megan sees Lex carrying the book and says "that looks really old". Poor eyesight must run in her family.
Stan and Megan bump into each other during the game where Megan tells Stan she's had a bad dream about the game and that she's found a flashlight belonging to one of the 2 dorks and it has blood on it. Stan dismisses this as it could be fake blood. She then admits her unrequited love of Lex. Fine. I guess they forgot that Lex can HEAR them. He's already demonstrated that fact. But the movie does only as the script demands so he acts like he didn't.
I noticed that even though the movie says these kids are Dungeons and dragons fans and players, the only DnD terms they use when referring to themselves as characters are not DnD terms. (Yes, I freely admit I'm a DnD player. Ya happy now, Goat? 'cuz I know you knew that and just wanted me to admit it in public. PS: don't tell Harper even though I know you either did or he read this) Lex refers to Megan and Stan as a 10th Level Priestess or and a Magic-Bearer. I wonder if copyright infringements were the cause for this. If anyone out there knows email The Inferno.
The cat is out of the bag, so I may as well let a bit more of my DnD geekiness come out. Why is Megan, a 10th level priestess (or a cleric in true DnD terms) running around with a war axe. Clerics in DnD don't use bladed weapons if I recall correctly. Hell, I know the reason....one, they didn't care and didn't expect anyone to notice if they did, and B, a rubber axe is easier to find at a novelty store than a rubber mace.
When one of the other players attacks Stan (possessed by the evil stuff) Stan speaks to Lex over the fantastically advanced PA system. (meaning Stan has no mic or walkie-talkie, he just speaks and Lex answers over the PA system. This school has all of that Star trek like technology and NO SECURITY ALARMS?) Stan demands an explanation for his friends violent behavior but Lex says at first he has no knowledge of that. but when Stan insists on it, Lex says he can't reveal clues to the game to a player. so which is it, Lex? Do you know or don't you? f you didn't plan this, which the audience knows you didn't by the end, why aren't you surprised?
The Final Judgment: This movie sucks...damn, wrong word, because it does suck and I mean it, but not the way it may come out.
Starring: Kristopher Turner, Paul Andrich, Ellen Wieser, Julie Pedersen, Andrew Hrankonski, Landon McCormick, David Johnson
Directed by: David DeCoteau
Written by: Matthew Jason Walsh, Ryan Carrassi, David DeCoteau
