"The Fear"

Stink Yard Article #B14

Reviewed by :   Shortstick Rating :   (2 outta 5) Kill Count :   5

Not being an abundantly creative writer (and not really being a writer either), I usually need an angle or theme to complete my reviews. When I initially sat down to write my review for "The Fear", I thought a good angle would be to write about "good ideas gone bad." After hitting the backspace button a few thousand times and a night of tossing and turning (not related to "The Fear"), it dawned on me that the premise for "The Fear" really wasn't that great.

A creepy looking mannequin with a taste for killing isn't a terrible idea, though. Rather than embracing the absurd nature of the premise, the folks behind the movie decided that a killer mannequin movie should be a psychological slasher. As you might have guessed, a serious movie with an absurd premise didn't work.

I still can't figure out why, but we liked "Morty", the killer mannequin. He wasn't very entertaining and he didn't move around much, but we found ourselves rooting for him. Who can root against a character named Morty? I don't know anyone named Morty, but I get the feeling that it would be hard to dislike a fellow with such a folksy name.

 

We wanted to get things started quickly the night we watched "The Fear". It took us a while to figure out what to make of the menu on the DVD, though.

You see, to play the movie, you have to select the "Continuous Play" option. I understand what it was getting at, but wouldn't "Play Movie" have worked out better?

But what if I want to jump to a specific scene? I guess selecting random access would do the trick. I don't know what is so random about selecting a specific scene though.

Needless to say, this was the worst DVD menu we have come across at the Stink Yard.

But wait, it get's better. If you really feel like randomly selecting a scene, you can go to the "Film Facts" portion of the menu. How randomly selecting a scene and "Film Facts" connect, I don't know. Then again, putting the film facts option on the scene selection part of the menu is pretty random.

More importantly, the folks who made "The Fear" decided that the movie deserved it's own special rating. Isn't "PG-17" essentially the same thing as an "R" rating?

I should mention that the "PG-17" rating was perhaps the most entertaining thing we saw on the entire DVD, including the movie.

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. The man on the right in this scene is Wes Craven. How the guy who created "Freddy Krueger" became involved in this junker is beyond reasoning.

The dude on the left isn't really that important, except that he is the main character that we really didn't care about. The only thing that stood out in the scene is that he put his damn paws on everything that wasn't bolted down. He was just too damned "grabby" for us to rally behind him.

Ah, another character that we really didn't care about. I suppose that he was supposed to provide comic relief or play the irresponsible drug user. We were never really able to figure out what he was supposed to be.

Sometimes he acted like Vanilla Ice. Sometimes he was the albino version of Bob Marley. I'm still lost.

The younger, skinnier version of Tony Gwynn easily became our favorite character in the movie. He was the only character that made any sense. Of course, he was killed pretty early. Bad movies can't have decent characters stick around for very long.

Morty sort of looks like Robin Williams' character from "Bicentennial Man." Perhaps that is why we liked Morty as much as we did. It's hard to dislike a character that looks like Robin Williams.

Can you imagine Robin Williams being a killer in a slasher movie? I would love to see Mork from Ork go on a killing spree.

This seems like an appropriate time to insert a woody joke. I don't know why this chick is trying to seduce Morty. It seems like splinters would end up being a problem. Then again, Morty may have polished himself up with some Pledge and everything would have been alright.

This scene has to be something from the theater of the absurd. There is a killer mannequin chilling with a boom box, and old dude dressed in a Santa suit, and a young hotty (you'll see more of her later).

What I really want to know is why the young hotty is with the drunk Santa. How is it plausible?

If the film makers had any sense of humor (and a huge budget), Morty would have been listening to "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles in this scene.

Instead, we are subjected to crap music like "Morty's Theme".

Does anything really need to be said? I mean, other than this chick is banging the drunk and old Santa dude. Life just isn't fair sometimes.

Unless you grew up in Southern CA, this scene won't mean a damn to you. Does the phrase "Fun, forest, and fantasy all rolled up in one" mean anything to you? Or the "Good Witch's Bakery"?

Yep, that's right.. some of action in "The Fear" took place at Santa's Village, near Big Bear. I never got to visit the village, but Giggles and Roachito confirmed that it royally sucked. I don't know if it sucked as bad as "The Fear", though.

We were surprised to find out that Vincent, played by Ron Perlman on the "Beauty and the Beast" tv series, decided to make a cameo.

I know why we liked Morty so much. He looked like Robin Williams and is a master at doing "The Robot", even if his rendition was a little stiff.

This came from the suspenseful conclusion to "The Fear". Of course, we couldn't see what was going on. I should add that the actual quality (you know, like the film and lighting) was terrible. Who the fuck does a chase scene and doesn't light it? Joe Castro wouldn't even pull something this dumb.

It looks like Morty fell into a vat of "Old English" wood polish. It's too bad that film stock from "The Fear" didn't fall into the same vat.

Perhaps the reason why I liked Morty so much is that he gave me something to write about. If it wasn't for him, this review would have been even more difficult for me. "The Fear" was the type of movie that was just bad enough that all you can say about it is "yep, it was bad". Outside of the time that it takes to say that it was bad, you really don't want to give it much more thought. With that, I'll just say that "The Fear" was bad, but not super bad. If it was, I would have had an easier time writing this review.