17A

There are movies that are so grotesque in concept and execution that they become surreal and almost comedic, and boy is this one nutty. A woman is released from a mental institution after her newborn baby drowns in the tub while she's in the other room on the phone, we'll refer to her as “Genius” from this point on in the review. Genius' husband decides that the best thing for her is to travel with him and some friends on a vacation to an isolated island. Upon arriving on the island, the vacationers discover that the island is inhabited by an eccentric elderly couple and their three “kids,” (adults acting like children). The friendly old-timely family invite the vacationers to dinner, but are utterly appalled by their trashy city ways and decide to kill them. The family starts hunting the couples and killing them in hilariously insane ways, probably the best being launching a man off a cliff via swing set. The cast is whittled down to Genius and some other woman, who find a motorboat and almost escape the island when they see a dead body on it and run away, and eventually only Genius is left.

The Kids are revealed to be “adopted” visitors to the island who have been brainwashed, and the couple decide to adopt Genius as their fourth child. They show her their collection of dolls, several dozen rotting corpses kept in their root cellar, and she is given a mummified baby corpse as a doll. Everything goes crazy fine until the kids play bath time with mummy baby, making Genius go super crazy and start murdering the family with giddy child-like glee.

Moment of Madness: After running from the boat the woman with Genius is killed by the oldest kid, who starts molesting her dead body. Once the father finds out about his son's indesgression, he takes the 32 year old man over his knee and gives him one of the strangest bare-ass spankings in movie history.

Bullshit or Reel?

Reel, this movie is called “American Gothic” (not to be confused with the later movie made in '05). Man this flick has a bizarre atmosphere that would be really revolting if not for the break-neck speed that the movie continually ups the anti of “ick”. At a certain point your brain just pops, and everything seems hilarious.

17B

It's the end of the world as we know it… and I feel really paranoid. Our twisted tale begins with a panic-stricken man speeding down a decimated country road. As the panicked radio announcer provides exposition on how strange riots are tearing apart cities across the world, our protagonist hits another car. When he gets out of the car to investigate the other vehicle, he sees a weird mutant man cooking in the cab.

The man limps his busted car to a small county school where he sees a light on in the basement. He enters the school and has guns pulled on him, as the people inside are afraid that the guy is a monster in disguise. He's able to convince them to let him in (basically by being an ass) and they go into the downstairs bomb shelter, where about 14 people are hiding and listening to the radio. As time passes and we get a little of each of the character's stories and their theories on what's happening (damn commies), but paranoia builds between the inhabitants of the basement as they fear more and more that some of them are monsters in disguise. Their fear is worsened when the radio reports that the monsters have a Tapeworm-like ability to digest some of the knowledge of their victims and then divide. People start fighting each other and someone is accidentally killed when all hell breaks loose. The inhabitants start breaking into groups and generally going “Lord of the Flies” on each other, and a lot of errors in judgement occur (like shooting a guy because the group could have sworn he resembled somebody they'd shot earlier that night). In the end the last few people left alive end up killing each other, only to have it revealed that they were all aliens the entire time.

Bullshit or Reel?

Bullshit, this turkey is a bit of “John Carpenter's The Thing” mixed with “Night of the Living Dead” and a dash of “Twilight Zone” thrown in for zest.