Things (1989)

Very well executed

Please don't spend money on this.

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I am a bad movie buff. But "Things" made me hate all of Canada by proxy. It is seriously that bad. I watched it TWICE. Once with a buddy. (He has not visited my house since then, so he might not be my buddy anymore. I don't blame him, really.) Then I showed it at a get-together with about a dozen friends who also love bad films. My hopes were that their good spirits and jolliness would find some seeds of corn in this turn. They were game - they tried to joke and laugh at it, but in the end it was Man vs. Machine. And, sadly, "Things"'s mean-spirited stupidity and bad sound quality triumphed over my friends' willpower - by the end, their spirits were broken. All they could do was sit there glumly and say mean things about my mom. I am a bad movie buff, so I thought I "needed" to see Things. I was wrong. If you are a bad movie buff, and you're considering this, back away slowly. Trust me. You do NOT need to see Things. It is worse than Curse of Bigfoot. It is worse than The Creeping Terror. It might not be worse than the soul-crushing dreariness that is Theodore Rex, but it's a toss-up. Get out while you still can. I actually BOUGHT this thing, and it's sitting on my DVD shelf right now. It's making me dislike the movies that sit next to it on the shelf by association. It's honestly that terrible.

Combine a ridiculous story (actually, there's not very much of a "story"), stunningly terrible acting, lousy sound, endearingly tacky effects, and an omnipresent, overbearing music score, and you have the memorably bizarre and stupid micro budget oddity that is "Things". This movie just goes to show that Canadians can do this sort of thing just as "well" as anybody. It drags and meanders and is often just as tiresome as it is funny. But when it's over, it's the kind of Thing that you just don't forget.Basically, an insane husband whose inability to give his wife a child led them to participate in an experiment that saw her give birth to the creatures of the title. Now a bunch of characters: Don Drake (played by co-writer / co-producer Barry J. Gillis), his brother Doug (Doug Bunston), and Fred (Bruce Roach) are about to experience a night of terror thanks to the machinations of the nefarious Dr. Lucas (Jan W. Pachul).You'd swear these guys, including co-writer / co-producer / director Andrew Jordan, were just making up this absurdity as they went along; this plodding but amusing piece of work does have that feel. The so-called actors in this thing appear pretty amused themselves. (Lovely porn star Amber Lynn appears in a (clothed) part as a reporter. Overall, getting through "Things" is going to be a real endurance test for some people while others may well have a whale of a time. The filmmakers may not be the most technically proficient you'll ever see (to put it mildly), but they make up for that to a degree with gonzo enthusiasm. The splatter is absolutely delicious stuff for whatever budget they bad.Shot on Super 8, this truly walks on the wild and wacky side of Canucksploitation.Five out of 10.

That score! That dialogue! That awkward pointlessness! What in hell happened here? In similar situations, I usually half-jokingly say "I don't even want to know". But in this case, I really, really wanna know! For whatever reason this movie ended up like it did, it was definitely intentional. It didn't take a long time to figure that out. Somehow, that doesn't take away at all from how completely insane and random this movie is! It's like Troll 2, or Horror House On Highway Five, with maybe a little Zombie '90 thrown in. Exactly! That's the kinda odd I'm talking' about, here. Which makes me wonder How in the hell could I have gone as long as I did without seeing it? That's the part that gets me the most. And by the way, I adore this film. Mainly because I can watch it a thousand times and still have no idea what's going on. Now, that's what I call rewatch value! Whilst searching for next awesome B-movie for my collection, this is the kinda thing I'm always hoping to eventually unearth. It rarely happens, which makes it all the more satisfying once it does. Such a disasterpiece, that Things truly is a masterpiece. A masterpiece of the odd, the surreal, and the confusing. Why can't Troma ever release stuff like this? I'm gonna watch this movie so many times, it ain't even funny! And not to mention the recently released DVD offers two audio commentary tracks. There's gotta be something in one of those which offers some sort of an explanation. Although, if there isn't, somehow, I won't be surprised. If you like 'em bad in all the right ways, this confused Super-8 epic is nothing short of a beautiful experience... Oh! And yeah. I did notice how I said absolutely nothing about a plot. Trust me. It makes no difference. 10/10

THINGS is notable mostly as a curio, being the mainstream(?) film launchpad of blue movie queen Amber Lynn. So popular was she in the jizz biz, it seemed inevitable that she'd do a non-sexual role. Well...in this stultifying mess, Amber demonstrates that she is, indeed, able to read(!). Her participation consists entirely of prerecorded video footage which features her as a news anchor, reporting a number of random idiocies on a t.v. in the house where this "movie" takes place. She looks just as if she were on a porn set, and reads blankly from a cue-card at the side of the camera(after suffering through a few moments of this, you'll be praying for Ron Jeremy to enter the scene and shovel his hairy business into her flapping maw just to keep her silent).What we're offered, besides the dramatic marvels of Ms. Lynn, is badly shot footage(sans synchronized sound)of drunk morons in a trashy house spouting bits of witless dialog, and a woman in the bedroom who dies while giving birth to several immobile paper-mache bugs that look like baked hams with spindly legs and fangs. That's about all I can say for certain, as THINGS is so unfathomably disjointed and illogically conceived. Sadly, I have little doubt that some will actually find reason to praise this garbage as some sort of "art brut" masterpiece, rhapsodizing with masturbatory ardor over its disorienting surreal quality and experimental concrete minimalism. God help them.1/10...a legitimate contender for "all time worst" accolades.