Final Destination 3 (2006)

Ready for a quick summation of Final Destination 3? Here goes: Death is the vengeful spirit of Rube Goldberg….. again. There. Done. If you have seen one movie from this series, you have seen them all. It is the same formula, just applied to a slightly different setting. Just a new round of fresh faced teens getting offed in the most complicated and splatteriffic ways by the faceless, formless spectre of Death who apparently has an ordered list of who dies next and is determined to keep on schedule. This movie is even self-aware of the series, with one character researching the events of the first movie. The only thing that makes this stand out, just slightly, from the other two is the presence of several pairs of young pert breasts in a tanning booth scene.

The killings are done with a decent amount of gore, although the trend nowadays with all these slick horror teen movies is to rely heavily upon CGI. In my opinion, too heavily. CGI is a nice accentuator, a nice way to enhance a prosthetic gore/horror/death effect. Add a few extra splatters or ribbons of viscera to the final effect. It shouldn’t comprise the whole shot. I guess I am just a sucker for the old school. Anyhoo, This movie was formulaic for the series, really gave us nothing new, just went through the paces to reach the logical, and Final, conclusion.

Evil Dead II

"Workshed!"

The importance of this film is very hard to overstate. When I first watched it in the theater with my cousin at the tender age of 13 I never expected that two decades later it would have cured world hunger and the common cold. Alright, so maybe it only managed to scare a pair of teenage girls out of my theater within the first five minutes- but that's pretty damn important when you're 13 and hormones are kicking in with all the rage of a Candarian Demon. Come back here, girls!

In actuality, my libido was the LAST thing I was thinking about when this film was running. At 13, I was admittedly scared shitless at what might leap off the screen at me. This film was the big, bad Rated R. People died in those films if they weren't careful. In retrospect, I think the only thing that kept me from running in the footsteps of the two girls who wigged out during the decapitation scene was the fact that Evil Dead II made me laugh as often as it made me jump in fear.



If nothing else, Sam Raimi taught the world that horror and intentional humor go together like peanut butter and jelly. Sure, you can laugh at all of the unintentional humor in a film like The Screaming Skull but it takes a craftsman to come up with a hysterical middle finger joke after watching a gratuitous scene of self-induced mutilation.

I take great pride in the fact that I championed this film among my friends in college, well before there were a hundred versions of it on DVD (or even DVDs!) and when finding a video store with a copy for rent was difficult because fans were simply stealing them since it was out of print for so long. To this day, I'll stop whatever is going on among the guests in my house to make them watch this film if they admit to never having seen it. (Remember that before you come over!)

I could go on and on about the innovative film techniques and the personal trials of the film crew and the death-defying performance of Bruce Campbell, but you can read about that in Bruce's book. Chances are you've seen this film scores of times are are simply reading this because you want to give me high-fives in your mind. You know this film rocks and you know I'm justified in saying that it is the best horror film ever made during anyone's lifetime. FUCK YEAH, MAN! And if you haven't already seen it then where the hell have you been? There have been multiple video games and even a musical made based on this film. Hell, I'm surprised that General Mills hasn't licensed an Evil Dead breakfast cereal. (How much ass would that kick, huh?)

Now if you know anything about me, you know that I tend to mention female breasts a little too much when I review movies. You'd probably (rightfully) expect that any horror movie with a shameful dearth of (non-puppet, non-rotting) breasts would receive only a three of four rating on the ol' Georgian Scale. That, dear readers, is why this film is so important. A parade of naked Suicide Girls could be marching down my street and I wouldn't even get up to watch if Evil Dead II was playing on my TV. It's that damn good.

-2 points for lack of boobs (and making me look at rotting ones), +2 points for the scares, +1 for the "ewww" factor, +2 for breaking the mold with new concepts in film technique, and +2 for the laughs earns Evil Dead II a FULL GEORGE in my book, man.

The Georgian Scale

When the first convention of the Dudes of Horror assembled in Colorado Springs, CO in November of 2006, the world shook in horror. But more importantly, Bunny Horror's Boobs:

were responsible for many beating hearts. Fortunately for you, the Dudes of Horror survived the experience and lived to bring you this kick-ass blog. One brave little mouse, on the other hand, did not:



That's poor George. The Dudes of Horror met him on November 19th when he snuck into Walter and Bunny's home. During a frantic chase around the house, George peered upwards with his beady little eyes and beheld the majesty of Bunny Horror's Boobs playfully jiggling as she ran- crouched over- to catch him. He suffered a massive mousy coronary and died right on the spot. Walter quoted the Looney Tunes ("I will love him and hug him and pet him and squeeze him – and I will call him 'George'.") Donny and myself laughed hysterically. Bunny sank into a deep state of guilt-induced depression after placing the lifeless body of George in his burial box (pictured above.) We later assisted Bunny with her recovery by taking the photos of her that you've been gawking at instead of paying attention to our reviews.

Little George didn't live past that fateful day and could no longer bring us the wisdom that his bewhiskered mouse chops would often utter (i.e. "SQUEAK!") but he has lived on in spirit though the Georgian Scale. No, it's not the name of a film about George's musical contributions or about climbing the first president. The "Georgian Scale" is our name for the Official Dudes of Horror Rating System. Films that would otherwise rate "5 Stars" according to lesser critics' scales will be given the "Full George" here.

Now you're probably wondering "where was this 'official' rating system half a year ago?" Well the answer- man- was that we had it but... uhhh... we were just, like, ummm.... too busy then to make these cool icons:



Ahh, George. In all of his splendor. What about films that rate less, you ask? Well for those we memorialize George in true horror fashion:



So you get the point. Of note is the 1/5 rating which also has a special name:

I believe it was Donny who decided that if we were only going to give one severed George part to bad films, it should be the ass.

Oh, and if there is a film that is so retardedly bad that it doesn't even warrant a severed mouse ass, we give it the droppings:


So there you have it. The Georgian Scale. Remember that it is up to the individual reviewer to determine how their review translates into Georges... so don't expect every Dude to act the same. If they did, we'd only need Donny. And that'd be a bleak world, indeed. (Shut the fuck up, Donny!)

(NOTE: There are unsubstantiated rumors that the death of George was actually caused by a delayed reaction to an advance screening of the Richard Brandes film "Penny Dreadful", but we're sticking with what we know...)