Teenage Caveman (2002)

Directed by Larry Clark 
Starring Andrew Keegan, Tara Subkoff, Richard Hillman, Tiffany Limos
Unrated
USA

“I hate outside.”

Despite the fact that it's packed wall to wall with teen sex antics and hinky splatter, Teenage Caveman was produced for TV as part of an ultra low-budget series of late-night Cinemax snacks delivered by infamous B-movie mogul Sam Arkoff (who, coincidentally, croaked the same year this was released). I am unsure what other films, if any, were made for this series. I am also unsure whether this was meant  to be a remake of Roger Corman's Teenage Caveman (1958), since I have not seen that particular teenflick, although I do sorta doubt it was also about a post-apocalyptic sex cult. The only thing I am sure of is that this is one seriously whacked-out piece of work, a softcore/gore mash-up so wobbly and weird that it almost passes for outsider art.

The first part of the film justifies the title. Sort of. There are, in fact, a group of teenagers living in a cave. It's after the fall of man, and a hard-scrabble group of survivors live together as a rag-wearing, expletive-spewing tribe just outside of Seattle. They learn to read by studying old issues of Penthouse Forum, and the leader of the gang is, of course, a corrupt perv who continually tells his flock they must abstain from sex while secretly banging the hottest tribe members, because god told him to.  Annoyed because his tribal leader dad tries to god-rape his girlfriend Sara (Tara Subkoff, Freeway, who was actually 30 when she made this), brooding teen rebel David (Andrew Keegan, 10 Things I Hate About You), stabs his father in the eye with a crucifix, killing him. The other tribal elders tie him to a stick to die in the sun, but his loyal gang set him loose and they all split for better days and better lays. After wandering through the wasteland (actually just some shrubs) for days, they stumble upon a ruined old city (actually a painted/CGI-d backdrop of a smudged Seattle). And then a brutal storm hits (actually just a filter on a the camera lens) and then everything goes black.

The gang wakes up naked in a groovy room full of artifacts from the good ol' pre-apoc days ( Basketball! Vacuum cleaner!). Before they can figure out what the fuck is going on, a coked-up glam rocker named Neil (Richard Hillman, who may or may not be dead, according to IMDB) bursts in and serenades them with the early Misfits jam, “Where Eagles Dare”. Things get weird from there.

Long story short, Neil and a big-breasted Asian chick named Judith (hilariously wooden, fancy-named  non-actor Tiffany Limos) are both genetically modified mutants. They were part of a college medical experiment a hundred or so years ago, and were granted powers of self-healing and (provisional) immortality. So, when the world ended, they were still around. They hang out in this solar-powered pop-culture emporium, snorting up their self-cooked cocaine, guzzling  booze, listening to punk rock, and fucking. Luckily for the kids, Neil was on meat-safari in his SUV when he spied the kids in the storm, and brought them back for some x-rated entertainment.

Seeing as this a Larry Clark film, it is inevitable that the man who foisted Kids on the world would use this opportunity to get the cave-Kids naked. And so he does, in a ten-minute (it feels like hours), unscripted, booze-crank-sex orgy that feels as icky as you imagine it does. I think that's Larry's lasting contribution to modern cinema, bad nudity. Sure, he'll get the hot chicks naked, but at what cost? Larry Clark wants to ruin boobs for everybody. And he very nearly does with this brain-numbing “party scene”. It's like a community college production of Caligula.

Anyway, it turns out that Neil and Judith can spread their super-virus to others via sex. And they managed to fuck everybody during their coke party, except for David and Sara.  Thusly, the all turn into  a super-hero team ala the Justice League and build a new world free of disease and sorrow.

No. That's not what happens at all. Some of the cave-gang can't handle the process. The next morning, one of the chicks ends up writhing around in pain on Neil and Judith's bed. While Judy vigorously fingerbangs herself, the chick explodes.

So that was messy. Dave and Sara figure out pretty quick that they're dealing with a couple of lunatics, so while the other kids either transform into super-beings or bags of jelly, they do their best to A. Avoid fucking Neil and Judith and B. find a way out of this nuthouse. This proves harder said than done, and ultimately, Dave gets tricked into a quickie with Judy in the warehouse (and then it hit me: the WHOLE MOVIE is shot in the warehouse of, like, a K-Mart!) and before you know it, he's a pseudo-mortal like the other two creeps. Well, almost. He's still the hots for Sara, so instead of raping her – as his super-pals requested – he socks Neil in the mouth.

And then Neil turns into a caveman. So THAT'S what the title means!

And then they fight.  And one of 'em wins. And then there's an ending so ludicrous you'd be outraged, f you hadn't already spent the last 80 minutes being outraged.

In conclusion, take 1: what the fuck just happened?

In conclusion, take 2: So, this movie was co-produced by 70's jiggle-queen Colleen Camp. Camp, Arkoff, and Larry Clark walk into a bar...and 17 drinks later, this is the movie they make. It's so cheap it sometimes looks like a public access show and some of the acting is cringe-worthy, and yet, there's something undeniably alluring about this goopy, disgusting, pervy  mess. If your biggest problem with Kids is that it didn't have enough decapitations or mutant cavemen – and let's face it, it didn't – then this is the movie for you. Actually, this isn't the movie for anybody, really, but you know what I mean.

- Ken McIntyre 

Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank (2006)

Directed by Kirk Bowman
Starring many hot girls in their underwear
Unrated
USA


"Sexy cannibals who will touch your heart...with their teeth!" 

Awesomely sleazy low-fi splatter comedy about warring teams of hot young archeologists (!) out to win some vague prize for digging up the most  compelling artifact in Burbank. Turns out there’s a mystical, magical jewelry box buried deep in the ancient hills of upper Burbank, and when the jewels inside the box are fondled by any woman, she grows plastic fangs and eats the nearest male. And that happens. A whole bunch of times.

This film has it all, really. It’s got a brain literally made out of jello. It’s got hilarious bits of junky CGI. It’s got a Pia Zadora lookalike who chews off a guy’s thumb. It’s got an incredibly hot blonde who poses in the woods in her panties, with her skin-tight jeans around her ankles, while she eats a dude’s arm. It’s got a non-nude shower scene that rivals Austin Powers for sheer, um, cheek. All the men in the film are buffoons or douchebags, and they all sorta resemble well-known character actors. There is very little nudity but an amazing amount of panty scenes, which seems much sleazier than nudity, for some reason.

None of it makes a lick of sense, but it all comes together seamlessly anyway. It’s like HG Lewis meets Russ Meyer in the bargain basement. Director Bowman is either a genius or a lunatic. I’d bank on the latter, but hope for the former. Whichever. If you’re looking for a low-budget, blood-splattered jiggle-fest that works just as well with your pants on or off, Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank is for you.

- Ken 

Suburban Shootout (2006)

Suburban Shootout (2006)
Directed by Vito Rocco 

Starring Anna Chancellor, Felicity Montagu, Amelia Bullmore, Rachel Blake 

Genre: Crime-comedy 
UK

“I just  want you to know I just had anal sex with your boyfriend in the toilets.”

“Really? That's so cool!” 

Perpetually put-upon plain-jane Joyce (Bullmore) has just moved into the fairytale suburb of Little Stempington, a picturesque, upper-middle-class paradise where crime simply does not exist. Her husband, Jeremy (Ralph Ineson), is Stempington's new chief of police, and her teenage son Bill (Tom Hiddleson) is home from his year in Africa building an  orphanage. Pleasant people, pleasant town. Or is it? 

It is not. There is a very good reason why there's no crime in Stempington. Turns out there's a trio of gun-toting soccer-moms who beat, shoot and terrorize anybody who even thinks of doing anything untoward in their perfect little 'burb. Worse still, they have competition – there's another rogue trio of 40-something ladies who do their best to thwart their arch-nemeses at every turn.

Joyce hasn't even unpacked her boxes before Camilla (Chancellor) and Barbara (Montagu) start having gun battles over which team Joyce is going to join. Joyce gets blackmailed into joining Camilla's crew when she unwittingly blows up the local wicker basket shop, but secretly works with Babs' team to rid Stempington of Camilla's evil cabal. Things get even more complicated when they get caught up in the estrogen-dealing trade (estrogen patches are a new underground drug sensation! Get into it!). When Camilla's tarty daughter Jewel (Ruth Wilson, doing a sort of slutty, grown-up Veruca Salt) steals their drug money, they end up being stalked, kidnapped and menaced by French gangsters.

Outrage piles on outrage, leading to a...well, the title of the show is Suburban Shootout, after all. 

Frequently hair-raising but always funny, Suburban Shootout is pretty delightful stuff, deftly balancing the escalating crime story with character-driven humor. Fans of Hot Fuzz and Weeds should love it. 

- Ken McIntyre

Vampire Sisters (2004)

Directed Joe Ripple
Starring Darla Albornoz, Jeanie Jameson, Syn Devil, George Stover
Unrated
USA

"I feel like a hooker."
"You look like a hooker."

The name Don Dohler oughta strike fear into the hearts of Z movie-watchers everywhere, if the ultra-dismal Fiend (1980) is any indication of what the cat has up his sleeve. If you haven’t had the displeasure, you're better off- I think that ‘film’ has the ability to literally bore you to death. Luckily, the Dohler-penned Vampire Sisters- while being about as by-the-numbers, softgore schlocky as ya can get- is still about 666 times more watchable than Fiend, and, if you're in a god enough mood, you might even get a few chuckles (or boners) along the way.

The premise- hell, the whole plotline, really- is neatly summed up in the film’s title. Darla Albornoz, Jeanie Jameson, and busty goth pin-up queen Syn Devil star as the sisters in question, who run a pay-porn website together. Their highest paying customers are privy to special “Bonuses”, which means that when they get hungry, they invite said slobs over to their nondescript suburban home and suck ‘em dry. Literally. ‘Cuz they’re vampires, see? Vampires with fake wood paneling!

Although I am confused as to why the guys that are paying the most to see their dirty pictures are the ones that get offed- you think they’d wanna keep those guys around to help pay the rent- the rest of the film is a very linear affair, with dope after dope (a few chicks, too) arriving at the house, getting teased by the sexy gals, and then getting stalked, slashed, and vamped. Occasionally, there’s a hint of wit- when vet Dohler actor George Stover shows up at the girls’ house, he brings ‘em a box of Stover chocolates (zing!)- but there’s very little in the way of character development, and the only way to distinguish between one girl and the next is exactly the way you do it in porn flicks- hair color and breast size. There’s a sub-plot involving a private detective (or undercover reporter, maybe, I couldn’t really tell which) who decides to infiltrate the vampish cabal, and there’s a monster in the garage, too, but otherwise, it’s a standard blood and jiggle-fest.

But, you know, I like blood and jiggling, so this one was alright with me. Don’t expect a nightmare of depravity- or hardcore goreporn- but if yer lookin’ for a goofy, kinda sexy, old fashioned b-movie, albeit one shot on a camcorder, then you just found one.

- Ken McIntyre 

Cindy and Donna (1970)

Directed by Robert Anderson
Starring Debbie Osborne, Nancy Ison, Alice Friedland
Rated X
U.S.A.

This forgotten little drive-in diversion first appeared in 1970, one of numerous titles churned out by the Crown International Pictures factory. It follows the usual skin & sin formula, with more emphasis on the peepshow than the plot than you’ll find in other titles like The Teacher or Pick-Up or Malibu High.

Is perhaps a tad more scandalous than the usual fare, too, with underaged protagonists, sorta-kinda incest, sorta-kinda lesbianism, and other more obviously exploitative elements, all of which helped get Cindy and Donna tagged with an early “X” by the MPAA.

Things begin with 15-year-old Cindy (Debbie Osborne) enjoying an idyllic end-of-summer walk on the beach with her boyfriend, Bob. Their stroll is accompanied by the film’s theme song, a syrupy dollop of pop in which the singer advises “Don’t be afraid to discover, Cindy / Don’t be afraid of a lover, Cindy” and the like.

In other words, the pressure on Cindy begins from the get-go. She and Bob make out a little, then Cindy goes home and is bored for a little while.


Soon her stepsister, the 17-year-old Donna (Nancy Ison) comes home. Cindy quizzes Donna about the boy with whom she’s been hanging out, Greg (Tom Koben), while Donna drinks some booze. Then their mother, Harriet, arrives.

She, too, immediately hits the bottle, a harmonica blasting away as if to mark her as “southern” or “white trash” or something. She speaks with a weird-sounding, highly affected accent, almost as though she’s trying to sound British. Or maybe trying to sound not British.


Harriet is kind of a spectacle, really. Interestingly, for the IMDB entry the obscure actress who played her (Suzy Allen) jumped on to comment on the film. “I agree that Cindy and Donna was a terrible movie,” she writes, “but the stagehands and crew said I was the best actor in the movie!”

One suspects the stagehands might have been being nice. Then again, it isn’t as though the best-actor-in-the-movie title should have been especially coveted by anyone here. Allen says a few more things about the making of the film, which sounds like it was quite fun for her. Her post is under the name “britwit” so perhaps she is British after all.


Meanwhile Dad, Ted Weeks (Max Manning) -- Cindy’s father, and Donna’s stepfather -- is driving home from work. He can’t help but eye the legs of female drivers from the cab of his truck...


...thereby rapidly alerting us to his “dirty old man” status.


He ends up stopping at a bar where he gets a drink and talks to some other dirty old men about this “unbelievable doll” they want to tell him all about.

Then comes a quick, unannounced cut to a strip club, where we are invited to ogle an oily Alice (Alice Friedland).


An unknown here (in fact, she’s uncredited), Friedland would later appear in some small roles in high profile flicks such as John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) where she played one of the “De-Lovlies.”

Her dance lingeringly lasts for three solid minutes, the lengthiness of the scene obviously vital to the plot.

We cut back to Ted, who has left the bar and ends up calling Alice from a phone booth and arranging a meeting later that night. (One of the other dirty old men has given him her number.)

Back home Cindy is still bored. She undresses and puts on a nightie. That takes a couple more minutes.


Then Dad comes home and he, too, hits the booze without hesitation. When he hugs Cindy, she asks if he’s drunk. “You gotta be a little bit drunk to get through the day” he explains.

We watch him then linger over Donna in her bra a little longer than he should, after which he has a drunken shouting match with his wife. She knows all about his “little whooahs,” but that doesn’t deter him much as soon he’s out the door and heading to his rendezvous with Alice.

We hang out with Cindy some while she takes her top off and is bored some more. Then we look in on dirty Ted with Alice who after some small talk quickly get it on.


“You’re blowing my mind, you know that!” says Ted.

Meanwhile, Donna sneaks out the window to meet Greg for a midnight frolic. Cindy sneaks out, too… easy enough since Dad is away and Mom is passed out blotto. Donna and Greg get high and engage in some dimly-lit, semi-clad groping in his car while Cindy watches, then Cindy returns to her bedroom. She rolls around by herself in the bed a little gropingly, too, then frustratingly, teen-angstingly exhales.


Back to Ted and Alice, where Alice is showing Ted some magazines. She’s a model, too, she explains. “I'm kind of a star, you know. Do you know how many men buy these things just to look at me…? It makes me feel kind of creative.”


More small talk, during which we learn she’s 17. “Same age as your daughter,” she notes pointedly, referring to Donna.

We move on to the next day. Cindy chats with her friend Karen at school about what she saw the night before. "I felt like it was really ugly and offensive," she tells Karen, going on to explain how she and Bob haven't gone that far. Karen is only slightly more worldly-seeming than Cindy, her lecturing to Cindy about love-making revealing her to be a bit naive as well.

Cut to Harriet, getting drunk at a bar. Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere and oh by the way what the hell are YOU lookin’ at? She comes on to a couple of old dudes who play along a little then unceremoniously dump her in her car.


That night Cindy writes a letter to Bob, seemingly away at school, in which she expresses various frustrations.

A drunken harpsichord then announces the drunken arrival of Ted, also frustrated because Alice wasn’t available for a second straight night of fun. He creeps into Donna’s room and kind of shockingly joins his stepdaughter in bed while a horrified Cindy looks on.


The next day Cindy commiserates some more with Karen about her screwed-up family. Then we see Donna meet up again with Greg. She wants weed, but only has five bucks, and he gets her to agree to a favor to make up the rest.

At this point Ted and Harriet take an unexpected business trip to a convention in Las Vegas which they only tell Cindy and Donna about moments before leaving.

They leave, again weirdly accompanied by those banjos and harmonicas. We’ll look in on them again a couple of times -- finding Ted looking and acting like he’s ready to blow his mind out in a car after being forced to endure Harriet -- although they’re essentially riding out of the picture.


What’s left? Well, Cindy takes a shower. Karen comes over and they go to the beach, where Karen shows Cindy how to put on suntan lotion in order to attract the fellas.


The trick works, and soon they find themselves with a couple of horny dudes in their groovy love shack by the shore. Karen is into it, but Cindy not so much.


Eventually Cindy has her way and they leave.

Meanwhile we learn that the favor Greg had asked of Donna involves her posing for some topless photos, and the session quickly devolves into a couple of other horny dudes taking turns engaging in some semi-nude couch wrestling with their model.


Back to Karen and Cindy, who get high and wrestle some themselves.


That goes on a while, complete with freaky-deaky echoes helping to indicate their baked status. They talk about what happened over breakfast the next morning, with Karen assuring Cindy she was “marvelous” but that “you’ve no idea what it's like until you’ve tried it with a guy. I mean it’s wild! It’s the greatest.”

Cindy remains skeptical, but when Greg comes around for Donna a little later, Cindy’s trying the suntan lotion thing again.


Could it be? Is Cindy is finally no longer afraid to discover? No longer afraid of a lover? And, well, is anybody gonna face any consequences for this uninterrupted sequence of hedonism, or are lessons never gonna be learned?


While Cindy and Donna isn’t exactly what I’d call a swinging good time, it is certainly engaging enough for those with a tolerance and/or penchant for low-budget ’70s sexploitation, with crazy Ted and Harriet adding a touch of added camp value and a few groovy jams along the way.

- Triple S

Secrets of Isis (1975-77)

Executive Producers: Norm Presscott and Louis Scheimer/ Filmation Studios

Starring: JoAnna Cameron, Brian Cutler, Joanna Pang (Season 1) Ronalda Douglas (Season 2)
Genre: Live action Superhero Kidshow
USA

"With this amulet, you and your descendants are endowed by the Goddess Isis with the powers of the animals and the elements. You will soar as the falcon soars, run with the speed of gazelles, and command the elements of sky and earth."


I don't know how I remember the CBS Saturday morning live-action show THE SECRETS of ISIS, but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that ISIS star JoAnna Cameron was a dead ringer for my second grade teacher Ms. Cooper, of whom I had one of my first boyhood crushes on. Now mind you, I was around seven years of age, and even though I think I knew about the mechanics of sexual intercourse by that time (after having learned it from the same place where all God-fearing Ohioan have for years...from the high school kids who sat in the back seat on my rural school bus route), there was nothing carnal about my interest in Ms. Cooper. I just hoped one day she'd turn into Isis and we'd have an adventure that involved fighting dinosaurs. Or aliens. Or Commies (this was the Reagan Era, after all). Whatever hi-jinx we would become involved in, I'd certainly be the only male second grader in her class joining her on it, and then we'd get married. After that, I'd spend my days getting into misadventures in which Ms. Cooper would have to save me from bad guys, and on our off days I'd hang out with Steve Trevor (who looked a lot like Lyle Waggoner) while Ms. Cooper and Wonder Woman would enjoy a much needed "girl's night out".

I was a pretty imaginative kid. Plus, I think my school was riddled with asbestos, which I might have ate on a dare, leading to those funny headaches I have these days.

The Secrets of Isis is your typical superhero formula kids show, with JoAnna Cameron portraying high school teacher Andrea Thomas, who after finding a magic necklace, gains the ability to transform into Isis, basically a feminine version of Captain Marvel. A full option package of superpowers came with the deal.....Isis' more than human abilities are a little difficult to define because it seems that she, well, pretty much could do anything the episode in question called for.



The general plot of the bulk of the 22 episodes of the series usually involves the kids of Andrea's class making bad decisions and then needing Isis to bail their sorry asses out of the fire. It's kinda like an Afterschool Special that at some point takes a turn for the bizarre when the flying chick in the toga shows up and starts juggling Chevys or disintegrating bank robbers....with Isis every once and a while breaking the fourth wall to tell kids to not take drugs, drink their milk, cross only at designated crosswalks,.....y'know, whatever floats yer boat.


The Secrets of Isis was the brainchild of Lou Scheimer and Filmation Associates, a mainstay in 1970s Saturday morning television, and a personal favorite of mine, and was a spin-off of sorts of their earlier live-action superhero success, SHAZAM!, based upon the lovable DC Comics property Captain Marvel. DC followed suit and launched an ISIS comic book tie-in around the same time as the show was hitting the airwaves.

One thing I've always found kinda odd is that JoAnna Cameron didn't really go on to do anything else of merit after her time on ISIS. She retired from acting around 1980 and went into the home health care industry. These days she makes occasional appearances at comic book and sci-fi conventions, signing autographs and seems to take the whole ISIS thing in stride, but I've always thought she had a fairly interesting look and had some decent acting chops. She was in an episode of the 1970s Amazing Spider-Man live-action show in a bikini, so that's worth something, I guess...




The Secrets of ISIS is an enjoyable enough time-waster, sometimes much better than many it's contemporaries in the 70s live-action kiddie show arena (I seem to remember loving Jason of Star Command as a small child, then recently picking up the BCI DVD release of it and actually becoming physically ill watching it, probably due to the massive cheese content the show contains). JoAnna Cameron provides some much needed live-action eye candy that's sorely missing from children's television programing, and holds a significant place in TV history as the first costumed superheroine to grace the idiot box in a regular ongoing series, pre-dating Lynda Carter by a few years.

Above: Cameron in B.S. I Love You (20th Century Fox, 1971)

In 2007, BCI Eclipse released the entire series on DVD, and even though it's currently out of print (as are all of BCI's titles since the company shut it's doors), it still can be found for fairly affordable prices online. Or, you can just watch it for free on Hulu, and recently made it's way to Netflix's streaming services. So, if ladies in togas, the speed of gazelles and magic necklaces are your thing, The Secrets of Isis might just fill that need to see a little leg in your Saturday morning entertainment.

- Hong Kong Cavalier 

Siren (2010)

Directed by Andrew Hull 
Starring Eoin Macken, Anna Skellern, Anthony Jabre, Tereza Srbova
Rated R
UK

“I think I figured it out. She hypnotized us!”

I haven't met too many folks that are fans of the taut, unsettling parking lot psycho flick P2,but it's one of my favorite anti-Xmas epics. Writer/director Hull wrote that one. I'm also sucker for peril-at-sea flicks. I think this is because the last thing I'd do is get on a boat and bob around in the ocean. Fuck that. It's full of sharks. I'm also a big fan of lady/monster flicks. Species! Thusly, it was inevitable that I would see Siren, a film that neatly merges both genres in one pulpy, low-budget package.

Ken (Eoin Macken – what the fuck man, Eoin?), a douchebaggy, constantly horny American neo-rapist, his gorgeous, put-upon, British girlfriend Rachel (Aussie actress Anna  Skellern, from The Descent 2), and her equally British (and also sorta douchebaggy) ex-boyfriend Marco (Anthony Jabre) all meet up in Greece and rent a boat for a weekend excursion to the Greek Isles. Specifically, they're going to sail around the island where the mythical “siren” was fond of luring sailors to their deaths. What could go wrong?

Even before they get on the boat, Rachel keeps seeing a mysterious hot blonde who pops up and vanishes whenever she's alone. But Rach is pretty on the edge anyway, what with the aggro-roleplaying fuck sessions Ken's always dragging her into, so who knows?

Anyway, they're only out for a couple hours when Ken abandons his post to have punishing sex with Rachel, leaving Marco to helm the ship. Marco sees a distress signal on an island and crashes into the beach. They find a panicked sailor who freaks out and accidentally (or maybe purposely) kills himself, and that very hot blonde Rachel's been hallucinating for the past couple days.

Her name is Silka (Tereza Srbova), and she's a weirdo. However, she's good looking enough to overlook her quirks. She doesn't say much more than “Help me”, so they figure she's a stranded tourist, and make it their mission to bring her back to shore. First though, they wander around the island, get drunk, play charades, have a sing-along, allow the willowy blonde to plant seeds of conspiracy in everyone's mind, have a nude swim, and then start hallucinating wildly about massacring each other. As you do.

It was definitely a weird day. The next morning, Ken decides it's time they all got off this screwy island, but when he announces this, Silka laughs at him and turns green and tells him he's going to die. Well, we all are, someday, Silka.

She means today, though. The gang panics and makes a run for it, when they discovers lots of smashed-up boats and a pit full of corpses! Well, you don't really see either – there's no budget for corpses or shipwrecks – but we know, man. We know.

Murder and  mayhem ensues until the girls are left. And so, they battle to the death...and possibly beyond. Well, first they make-out a little, and then they battle.

Ok, so you can guess the cornball “twist” ending in the first ten-minutes (after a pretty effective fake-out prologue). Also, Hull never commits to either sweat-soaked dread or sexed-up camp, and the film really needs one or the other. But I still had a pretty swell time watching Siren. It's reasonably unique, looks great, and the acting is a notch above what you'd expect. More importantly, It's got hot girls acting weird, hot girls swimming naked, and hot girls making out. And I'm a pretty simple guy.

PS director Andrew Hull had a bicycling accident and died shortly after wrapping Siren in 2010. RIP, sir. I liked the cut of your jib.

- Ken McIntyre