The Hazing (2004) is listed at IMDb as Dead Scared, and they say it is In Production. I assume by that that Dead Scared was a working title, and it went direct to video. It is no wonder, as it is a by the numbers teen slasher film, made many years after that genre had run its course. Five pledges, three male, two female, are to complete a rather tough scavenger hunt, then spend Halloween night locked in a haunted house. The head of the frat, and of the sorority, are there to try and scare them, but one of the items they get in the scavenger hunt opens the gates of hell, and with it murderous demons that posses some of them.

Nector Rose and Tiffany Shepis show breasts. Most everyone dies, except the two nice kids. IMDb calls this comedy horror, and, if it is a genre send-up, it also fails there. There are no votes or reviews for this film. I will give it a low C-. If you are a genre fan, you might be able to sit through it. IT was a reasonably promising start, with the co-ed pledge night, and both sexes in bras. The scavenger hunt was also entertaining, but things went downhill rapidly once they got into the house.

If you are a poker player, you know that the key to success is to make small mistakes. You can afford to risk a lot of $100 raises if you win a few $3000 pots. The ones you can't afford are the $3000 pots where half of the pot is your money, and you have the second best hand.

I'm thinking Kevin Costner isn't much of a poker player because he doesn't seem to understand that a big risk should not be taken unless there is potential for a big reward. Three times in his life he's tossed a monumental amount of money into projects that just didn't seem to have the potential to pay out. Three times he went all-in for $2000 with a pair of nines in order to steal $150 in blinds.

Waterworld, The Postman, Rapa Nui.  Ridiculously expensive movies compared to the potential reward.

Costner didn't direct or star in Rapa Nui, but he was the money man, and the director was Costner's personal designated director, Kevin Reynolds. Just before Rapa Nui, Reynolds directed Costner's infamous Robin Hood movie, and when Rapa Nui was wrapped up, Costner and Reynolds went on to the even more infamous Waterworld (aka Kevin's Gate, aka Fishtar), a movie which has become the very symbol of wildly uncontrolled spending on a mediocre project.

Rapa Nui is a film which offers a possible explanation to the mysteries of Easter Island. As you may know, Easter Island is an isolated and quite desolate little chunk of igneous rock sitting approximately in the middle of the open Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Chile and Tahiti. Before the first Dutch explorer discovered and renamed it, on Easter Day in 1722, Easter Island was known to the natives as Rapa Nui, hence our title.

It is most famous for two things: (1) The Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, has attempted to prove that it was settled at least once from the East, although most archeologists insist that it is completely Polynesian in culture. Heyerdahl formed his hypothesis based on similarities between artifacts found on Easter Island and artifacts found in the Western portions of South America, and Heyerdahl's own voyages proved that the sail from Chile to Easter Island was possible, using the sailing technology from centuries ago. (2) The shore of Easter Island is dotted with several very famous and very immense stone statues which look out to sea. These statues seem to have been dragged to their resting places from various other parts of the island, using technology not possessed by the inhabitants who remained when the Europeans arrived.

The movie attempts to explain how the statues were moved to their seaside locations. It also creates a scenario to explain the complete disappearance of the sophisticated people who once lived there, people who possessed a written language and sufficient technology to move immense stone objects.

This link contains just about every possible worthwhile link to Easter Island info and theories.

To tell you the truth, the story told here is plausible. It involves a civil war, or maybe it should be called a slave uprising, between an aristocratic tribe and another tribe they enslaved to do their heavy labor. The social context portrayed here bears a certain similarity to what we know of the people of ancient Egypt, and the story also meshes well with the social stratification which was still present among the primitive remaining natives when the Europeans arrived. The dramatic arc of the story is kind of silly - a Romeo and Juliet story between lovers from the two different tribes - and the dialogue is an absolute hoot, but the setting of the story is not entirely illogical.

So why was I criticizing Costner and Reynolds? Well, brother, this piece was actually filmed in Easter Island. That means that The Two Kevins set up a film crew on one of the remotest places on earth. The only air-based contact between Easter Island and the outside world is two flights a week from Santiago. Pretend you are a director, and imagine how that would affect your project.  Let's assume you crack a lens. How long will it be before you can replace it? Let's assume one of the stars needs some fairly sophisticated medical treatment. How long before they can get it? Let's assume we need the usual filmmaking crew. You have to think that not many film professionals live on Easter Island, so you'll have to fly in every single person you need. But Easter Island is not filled with hotels and restaurants, so where will you house and feed everyone? I know, you can build a village for them!

Do you see where all this is leading? Filming on Easter Island requires a major commitment of time and money.

This film could probably have been made for three or four million dollars in Hawaii, and could have attracted big-name stars if it had offered a short shooting schedule in a nice part of the world. Instead, it ran up a $20 million tab, and it starred  ... well, they hired any actor willing to spend a few months in the most desolate and god-awful spot in the Pacific, possibly excepting Pitcairn's Island.

In fact, as shown in the "making of" special feature on the DVD, even the weather on Easter Island is unpleasant, and the people who wore skimpy native garb while on camera were wearing winter coats when the cameras were off! The actors must have been freezing cold a good portion of the time.

Are there good reasons to film in such a location? Yes, but those reasons are aesthetic, not financial. Very few people in the world have seen what Easter Island looks like today, and still fewer have seen a meticulous recreation of how it may have looked in its Golden Age, so this film represents a unique window into a place and time forgotten by the world. I was willing to watch it just because it was really filmed on Easter Island, and I was curious about what that looked like. Unfortunately, the marketability of such a project is limited. How big is the market for a corny love story set inside a cornier story about forgotten ancient tribes battling in silly headgear, which also tries to work as a heavy-handed environmental impact parable for our own times. 

I can see the allure of the project, but I can't see where they could have expected any potential payback.

Predictably, the film made about thirty five cents at the box office, and the investment turned out to be a total write-off.

Like many of Coster's investments in the 1990s.

• Sandrine Holt (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

• various native chicks (1, 2, 3)

Haunted Sea (1997):

This one has must-see pictures, so read the review at The Movie House Page. (It is, I think, a reasonably entertaining review.)

• Krista Allen (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Other Crap:

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

• Three new clips from/about The Last Shot, Matthew Broderick's new film
• (Borowitz) CHANGING TERMS OF DEBATE, KERRY CALLS BUSH A LYING COKEHEAD. Blow, Snow Dominate New Stump Speech
• Las Vegas Poker Lore: A Piece of the Strip
• In honor of Oprah's new car giveaway, here's a classic SNL skit: Oprah's 50th Birthday
• Just one month after launching its custom postage service, Stamps.com scaled back the program on Monday in an attempt to deter controversial images from being affixed to the nation's mail
• According to Weekly World News, the nation's #1 source for unbiased coverage, U.S. ATTORNEY General John Ashcroft has secretly canceled the November presidential election
• A New York man was arrested for theft when he left a 10% tip instead of the required 18% for large parties. This happened at Soprano's Italian American Grill. The submitter notes, "Joey Pants unavailable for comment. Sopranos? I'd leave 20%. No, here, just take my wallet and my watch."
• Urban Legend: Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak began when the Yankees' regular first baseman, Wally Pipp, sat out a game with a headache. Verdict: bullshit.
• Hollywood's baddest bad boys? New pals P. Diddy and Bruce Willis.
• The Smoking Gun documents: More Money Woes For Courtney Love
• Oprah Winfrey had a surprise for the 276 members of her studio audience -- she gave them all new cars.
• Winona returns to a starring role
• The world's best anti-rodent pesticide? Tabasco sauce!
• Here is the full trailer for the Jude Law remake of Alfie
• Surprise of the day dept: Woman with big collection of poisonous snakes dies of snake bite.
• A ban on the manufacture and sale of assault weapons in the US ends today, even though the ban is supported by vast majority of Americans and just about every law enforcement officer on the planet.
• Seeing The Horror - many, many photographs and videos from the 9/11 tragedy.
• The world's greatest film reviewer, the Filthy Critic, takes on Criminal.
• Tanning beds are fun!  
• Mad Magazine speculates on "President Bush's campaign ads if he ran against Jesus".
• Pacino draws Oscar buzz in compelling "Merchant of Venice"

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

Today...a bunch of clips from Hitcher in the Dark (1989) (divx encoded, zipped .avis). Miserable piece of shit movie. Vile, reprehensible, mind-numblingly stupid with a villain you just wanted to bitch slap and an ending so laughable it flattens the director's desire to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside about the sweetness of revenge. Fucked up mess. I coulda done better, and that is saying something.

Josie Bissett does a double B performance in it, however. That counts for a lot. Seven clips of Josie.

• Clip 1 she's dancing (in Virginia. I thought dancing was forbidden in Virginia) as a bunch of hippy dippy guys do a lot of hippy dippy clapping.

• In Clip 2 and clip 3, she peals off her jeans and gets down to ber skivvies before the camera pans up.

• Clip 4, Clip 5 and Clip 6: Now a brunette, Josie makes all nicee-nicee with her captor-tormentor, in a boff-im-to-distract-im tactic made famous by Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm.

• Clip 7 is the winner of the bunch. Josie is drugged so that the bad guy can take Polaroids of her. Because Josie's left leg is propped up you can't see the furry B but the other B's are visible.

And then you got three clips of four gals in an entirely gratuitous wet T-shirt contest. Rule #1 of entirely gratuitous wet T-shirt contests (aren't they all?): they are supposed to be fun. Lots of fun. The gals are having fun, the guys watching them in real-time are having fun, we are having fun wathcing them have fun. Rule #2: none of that belongs in a serial killer/revenge movie. Not one bit. It's stupid beyond mortal means to describe.

• Wet T-shirt contest babes (1, 2, 3)

So what's the bottom line here, ya ask? Remember the guy who told his pals he got so drunk he blew chunks? And his friends weren't impressed until he reminded them that Chunks was his dog? Well, this movie blows a kennel full of Chunks.

Today the Ghost takes look at the giant man-eating crocodile flick, "Blood Surf" aka "Krocodylus" (2000). Scoop and Tuna have both reviewed this one, and the general consensus is that it's weak and cheesey, but also kinda fun in it's own MST3k way.

• Kate Fischer...you may remember this Aussie from the Elle Macpherson movie "Sirens" (1994). Sadly no nudity, but she looks good and shows plenty of cleavage. (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Taryn Reif...this girl really needs to eat a burger. Thong views in 1 and 2, 'breast' views in 3-4. (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Taryn Reif zipped .wmvs. Clip #1 shows the scene 'capped above. Clip #2 is a dark sex scene with some partial breast and bum views. (1, 2)

• Kate Fischer and Taryn Reif. Fischer shows pokies and grabs her big'uns while Reif kinda shows off her mosquito bites...all this while teasing the giant croc. (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Kate Fischer and Taryn Reif zipped .wmvs. Clip #1 features the scene 'capped above. Clip #2 has Kate cleavage. (1, 2)

• Maureen Larrazabal...the beautiful Philippina actress shows breasts in a daylight love scene (links 1-13) and is also topless in a night scene (14-17). (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
• Maureen Larrazabal zipped .wmvs. Links 1-3 feature her daylight love scene. (1, 2, 3, 4)

DEAD ISSUE: ARNOLD OUTLAWS NECROPHILIA
Entering WHAT?! - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill making it illegal to have sex with corpses in California. It was the culmination of a two-year drive to outlaw necrophilia. Proponents said prosecutors were stymied because without a specific law, the only thing they could charge violators with was breaking and entering at funeral homes.