Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris

Here we are, folks. The final review ever at Invasion of the B-Movies. It's been an amazing seven years but all things must come to an end I suppose. I know there was a lot of debate on what my final review was going to be. I almost went with "High School Musical 3" but then I remembered something. Something from my past.

Way back in 2006, just shy of the one-year anniversary of the site, I asked all my friends to suggest movies I should review. I got some good ones, I got some lame shit like "BILLY MADISON"! and then I got THE request to end all requests. And it came from my friend and former Mass Invader April. She said ten words that will forever change our relationship for the next 6 and a half years.

"Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris!"

I said "Hm. That's an interesting title. I WILL DO IT!"

One request from Netflix later and the disc arrived at my house. I watched about 30 minutes of it and did something I hardly ever do: turned it off. I couldn't watch anymore. I came online and said as much to April, who basically called me a pussy. Since then, ANYTIME I ask for suggestions she would throw this movie back at me. So then I believe one day I said to her "I tell you what. If I ever stop doing Invasion of the B Movies, 'Jacques Brel' will be my final review ever. Then I will kill myself."

Here we are: the final review. And true to my word "Jacques Brel" it is. Sorry, horror movie fans. I guess we'll just have to see what Human Centipede 3 is like later. But for now, let's dive into this amazing shit-fest, shall we?

First off: who the fuck is Jacques Brel? Good question. He was a singer/songwriter who, much like Jerry Lewis, made it big in France because why not? This film I'm going to attempt to talk about is sort of a visual interpretation of his songs. Got it? Now take all that and forget it cause it has absolutely nothing to do with the movie.

Maybe the movie takes place in Paris, it's never really said. You know what? I know it's my last review but I don't think I can do this movie justice. Let's just rip off Wikipedia and see what it says about it.

"Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is an American musical revue of the songs of Jacques Brel. It was filmed in 1975."

...

Well fuck.

ALRIGHT! For the final time ever, here's my Dash Style! Here we go!

-Film starts off with some street hippies, lead by a guy who looks like Barry Gibb, attacking a cab and then a guy waiting for a date.
-It starts raining and a girl with nice tits gets her shirt wet so we see those.
-The hippies go into a theater where we meet three reoccuring characters: A Lady, The Cab Driver, and The Army Guy. They are watching a marionette play that's happening in front of a movie screen while World War II footage plays.
-The marionettes resemble the Lady, The Cab Driver, and The Army Guy. After the play, it turns into "The Langoliers" and the entire audience but our main three characters vanish.
-All three roam around the theater and find themselves locked in and the puppeteer is dead.
-There's a giant hand hanging overhead and it falls. This symbolizes something I'm sure.
-Eventually they manage to get outside where the loudest tornado siren starts blasting, and I live in Indiana. The Army Guy kung fu's the siren until it explodes.
-Then it jumps to The Lady singing a sad song.
-Then it jumps to a statue singing a sad song.
-Then it jumps to the Cab Driver singing a sad song.

Ok, there's a lot of sad songs, mixed in with songs that represent things from Jesus to being in the army to the death of a little girl. That's all this entire movie is, just songs. There's no plot to this movie whatsoever. I have said in the past that movies haven't had a plot but this, FUCKING THIS, has ZERO plot! There's just people and singing. And some cute girls. Oh and Jacques Brel singing in French. Wonderful.

The only accomplishment I have with this movie is that I finished it. I actually watched THE ENTIRE thing. This movie...fuck man. This is a tough movie to get through. I GUESS you need to be a fan of Jacques Brel to like this movie but...I consider myself a fan of The Beatles and I BARELY got through "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". AND I had two friends watch and review that with me. So that's probably going to be tough.

I gotta say, I picked a doozy of a film to end this website on. But I had to and now...that's it. I have nothing else to say about this movie. It sucks. SUCKS! JUST FUCKING SUCKS! UGGGHH!!!!!!

FUCK THIS MOVIE!! FUCK THIS MOVIE SO HARD THAT I HOPE THE WORLD JUST FUCKING EXPLODES AS A RESULT OF THIS MOVIE BEING FUCKED SO HARD!!!! I have never heard a Jacques Brel song before and I hope I never do! IF I EVER hear one, I will probably burst into flame and kill any motherfuckers that are in my path!! FUCK THIS MOVIE

FUCK THIS MOVIE!

FUCK!!! THIS!!! MOVIE!!!!!!!!



So anyway, thanks everybody for spending seven years reading all my crap. It's a bit sad this is the end but hey, what ya gonna do, huh? To tie everything together, here's a pretty sad song originally sung by Jacques Brel but I think it fits well in this situation.




Until we meet again!
-Jason Soto

Old School Summer: Bloody Murder

Status: Own

You gotta love grocery stores around Halloween because they'll just find any shitty four pack of movies and sell them for 8 bucks, step three=???, and then profit. And here comes ol' Jason Soto being a dumbass, buying it up.

"Bloody Murder" is in a four pack of movies that I'll be taking on here in the near future and tonight I was in the mood for a slasher flick, and reading the back of the DVD, and seeing the name was "Bloody Murder" I figured this would do.

Let me tell you now: I AM SEVERELY DISAPPOINTED!

The movie's killer is called Trevor Moorehouse and he's a legend in this small town that happens to have a camp that happens to have some bad history behind it. Of course. A group of teenagers (?) are on their way to be councilors at this camp and they are Julie, Jason, Tobe, Dean, and Whitney. I only remembered their names because they're introduced about ten billion times in the first 10 minutes of the film.

"OH, I'm Patrick!"
"Hi Patrick! I'm Julie! This is Jason, Tobe, Dean, and Whitney."
"Oh this is Brad! Brad, this is Julie, Jason, Tobe, Dean, and Whitney!"
"Hi Julie, Jason, Tobe, Dean, and Whitney! This is Drew! Drew, this is Julie, Jason, Tobe, Dean, and Whitney!"

And so on. So Patrick is the head of the camp, Brad is some dude Jason knows, and Drew is a chick that's bunking with Julie, our main character. Julie is dating Jason but Tobe has a thing for Julie, even flirting with her in front of Jason. Man, don't you know you should never piss off dudes named Jason, ESPECIALLY in the woods?

So what does any of that have to do with this movie? Not much, really. The set up to this movie was SO by the numbers for a slasher movie. Let's do the checklist:
-Closed camp that's reopening after however many years...
-...because of some horrific thing that NOBODY wants to talk about.
-A group of teenagers (?) setting up said camp.
-A crazy old man who wanders in and out of camp, warning people to leave before HE strikes!
-A serial killer who's legend and only certain people believe in him.

Should be basic, right? Well, that's where you are WRONG! This movie sets it up but then drops it on the way to the dining room (or mess hall) and then scrambles to get it all together but fucks it up so badly, you're just left with a mess.

The title refers to a game the teenagers (?) play which is basically "Hide-And-Seek". During the game Bloody Murder, Brad falls victim to a prank by Dean and Jason that involves Dean dressing up like Trevor Moorehouse and pretending he's gonna kill Brad. Brad cries manly tears and goes back to his cabin. Jason decides to cheat on Julie and fuck Whitney, who use to date Dean, who witnesses this. And we get the vibe that Dean MIGHT just be the killer. Especially when we get a scene after Jason fucks Whitney of "someone" going up to Jason, but the scene cuts before we see anything.

So here's the next complaint about this supposed slasher: There's hard any blood, gore, or on camera deaths! To those of you who been around forever, you might remember that I didn't care for the original "April Fools Day" because they didn't SHOW anything. It's the same thing here. So if you LOVED "April Fools Day" you'll LOVE this movie. (OK that might not be true.)

Julie tells Patrick that Jason is missing, but Patrick doesn't seem to care. Meanwhile, Dean decides to be all creepy and take Whitney to the middle of the lake in a canoe, where it's established that she can't swim and he basically pushes her into the water. But he rescues her and they row back to land.

But later that night, they all get together to watch either "Friday the 13th" or "Sleepaway Camp" (I think they wanted to make one of those references but couldn't afford the rights) and when Whitney gets up to get a snack, she's killed! Off camera of course. FUCK!

I think this movie was made for Mormons who were like "We like horror movies too. But boo to gore, blood, bad language, or nudity! BOO!!" Yes, there's ZERO/NADA/NONE nudity in this movie. It sucks. Yeah, lost interest now? How about I tell you that this movie is less of a slasher but more of a who-dun-it? And I like who-dun-it's but NOT when I'm expecting a slasher! And one this poorly made!

Ok so because Dean is acting like a creepzoid they suspect he killed Jason (who vanished, I think I mentioned that?) and Whitney and he is taken to jail for questioning. Meanwhile, not a whole lot happens. We get some lame emails sent between Julie and her dad, Julie starts to get naked but forgets something and runs into the crazy old man, who tells her to ask her dad about some guy named Nelson. HA-HA!

Julie asks her dad about Nelson but all her dad can say is "Eat my shorts!" and "Smell ya later!" Julie becomes friends with Drew, who talks about smoking cigarettes from Guam, which I thought was weed at first. I could use some weed right now. Brad gets murdered, which lets the police know that Dean isn't the murderer. So who is the killer, HMMM??

WAS IT YOU MR. GREEN?!?!?!?!

Oh wait, wrong movie. You can understand my confusion.

A whole much more of non-deaths and gore happen and Julie THINKS she knows who the murderer is: DREW! Why does she think Drew is the murderer? Because Nelson murdered a bunch of people that included her dad so Drew is getting revenge on...people...who AREN'T Nelson....um....YEAH!!! KILL THE BITCH!!

But turns out Drew ISN'T the murderer because that logic doesn't many any god damn sense. Turns out the killer is SPOILER ALERT LIKE YOU CARE Patrick! Because he's really NELSON! LE GASP!!! Patrick Nelson Riley chases after Julie for a few moments. Oh, that's another thing: everybody in this fucking movie is clumsy as hell! Anytime they go running, they trip and fall. And I mean EVERYBODY!! It's fucking stupid.

Anyway, Julie runs and finds help. But Patrick shows up and tells everyone Julie hit her head and she's cray-cray and not to listen to her. The only person who DOES listen to her is Tobe because he's love with Julie. Again, Jason gets the shaft. Oh yeah, Jason isn't dead, he just went into hiding because he was caught fucking Whitney. Of course, he's a royal douchebag who DOESN'T get the girl in the end. OF FUCKING COURSE!

I'm totally gonna start a movement that makes people aware of the fact that all guys in movies named Jason are douchebag asshole killers. It's really insulting because I'm none of those things (well, depends on who you ask. Like if you ask anybody in Canada, they'd say I am. I dunno what it is with the Canadians...) and I have to wonder WHY they choose the name Jason.

Well, here I'm sure it was to be cute and go "TEE HEE HEE it's about a summer camp and people getting murdered! Let's have a guy named Jason! HEE HEE!" and they bring this point home by having Tobe mention this fact IN THE MOVIE! It was a bit surreal.

Where was I? Oh right. Julie decides to go out with Tobe and leave poor Jason behind. Jason is walking home when he comes across a guy in a mask and a chainsaw and this ends up being Trevor Moorehouse. The end!

This movie is a giant waste of time. It's a shitty slasher, a not very good who-dun-it, and just a boring stupid movie overall. The acting is HORRIBLE, everybody from Julie to Dean to even Patrick, whose only job in the movie was to be menacing and even he fucked that up. The only great performance in this movie was the crazy old man and all he did was go "NOO!!! GO HOME!!!! NELSON!!!! I pooped myself."

And you know what REALLY sucks? THEY MADE A SEQUEL! Fuck!



-Jason