Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a horror comedy from 1991. That movie is "Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh".
I'm gonna tell you guys, I *love* that fucking title. In fact, that's really the only reason why I'm covering this movie at all. Because I discovered this movie by pure accident when I was just looking up random movies to cover from YouTube. And this was a couple of years ago, and one of the films I happened to discover was this movie. I was thinking of putting it on the schedule then, however, by the time I looked it up, it sadly no longer existed. But I still remembered the name of it, and when I was able to find this movie at one of my local video stores, I jumped on the chance and thus I finally get to cover it with a tangible copy in my hands.
I'm really hoping for this thing to be good, or at least be funny in a cheesy sort of way. I'm saying this without even knowing what the plot is, but I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that there's pharaohs in Pittsburgh for some reason, and they want to suck people's blood. Granted, that sounds more like vampires shtick instead of pharaohs, but whatever. Point is, this movie's title better live up to it's ridiculousness. Otherwise, I'm gonna be very disappointed here. But there's really only one way for me find out where this movie will stand for me. And that is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh".
10 minutes later
So this guy has been shot 3 different times, there's blood all over his clothes, and despite him losing a lot of blood as he's still running from these two detectives, he's somehow still moving! Oh, and he just lost an ear, too, as our detective just slipped while the guy gets away. How the fuck that guy was still alive, letting alone still moving, is anyone's guess.
2 minutes later
Jesus Christ, lady! Apparently, this other detective's wife smokes so many god damn cigarettes that she had to use a voice synthesizer to speak. And that part wouldn't bother me so much if not for the fact that she sounds like a fucking robot when she speaks. That, and also, I'm surprised she hasn't fucking died yet, considering all the cigarettes that are all over the house and on the front steps of the outside of the house. I mean, I guess I shouldn't question her lifestyle choices, but damn, man, I'm actually really happy that I never smoked a cigarette ever. And her voice is really annoying, too, I just wanted to mention.
11 minutes later
OK, I was gonna ask what the hell Joe put in his gun earlier. Apparently, he's able to pour liquid drinks inside his gun clipping and use it to drink his beverages by pulling the trigger on his gun. I didn't even know you could actually do that with a handgun, but I guess you do learn something new every day, don't ya?
6 minutes later
OK, guys...um, apparently, we just went from Sweeney's wife watching an anti-smoking PSA to dude's wearing gorilla masks coming out of the projector and shooting water at her with a hose. Admittedly, that definitely caught me off guard, but I still gotta ask, what the fuck just happened?!
8 minutes later
Holy shit...so, guys, we were just treated to a second anti-smoking PSA, and this one had a bunch of people on a plane smoking, and then suddenly the plane crashed down into a building full of people who were also, apparently, smoking cigarettes. Oh, and Sweeney's wife is now being electrocuted by a bunch of dudes in lab suits. Not as interesting as the guys in gorilla suits, but still. Anyway, without stating the reference, because this movie came out long before that happened, I'm gonna say that this movie doesn't shy away from dark humor. It was funny as hell, at least to me was, but still, I never expected that kind of humor from this film at all.
12 minutes later
All right, guys, admittedly, I have never been to an Egyptian restaurant before, but now that I'm seeing how burgers are made in the kitchen, I'm kinda thankful I've never had one. I'm not saying that to be racist, I just don't know if I prefer the way that they make burgers. Just my opinion, really.
8 minutes later
Well, guys, out of all the kills I've seen from our killer here, this one was probably the quickest where he uses a jackhammer to kill his next victim. Admittedly, it's not as creative with his previous kill involving the shock vacuum, but at least this one is quick and to the point. Not totally sure if that's physically possible, but I'm willing to let it slide for now.
12 minutes later
You know, out of all the things I was expecting from this movie, female ninjas was not one of them. I mean, granted, it's something different, but still, I wasn't really expecting ninjas in a movie about Egyptian pharaohs and all that.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh". Let me shut the movie off now...oh my god. Um...I'm genuinely trying to figure out where to start here, but even I'm having a difficult time with that because this movie is just off the walls insane. Mind you, it's a good kind of insanity, but still a bit on the insane side.
So anyway, um...I may as well just start off with the writing, because I think that would be the easiest place to start with. The writing in this movie is, surprisingly, very simplistic. At least in terms of a plot anyway. Basically, our two main detectives, Sweeney and Joe, are investigating a series of murders that all involve women getting certain body parts cut off by our killer, who takes them for their own nefarious purposes. And by that, I mean they're collecting body parts for some kind of Egyptian mutilation ritual for reasons that I dare not spoil. Mind you, there's not a lot to spoil here, but I won't spoil the reason behind it because it's really kinda of stupid. But anyway, they're investigating the murders. And later on, they're soon joined by a girl named DeeDee, who happens to be on this case, too, because they apparently murdered her father and she wants to know why they're doing this. And I should mention that all of the women that are killed in this movie have some connections with each other. One of the reasons being that Joe Blocker, one of the detectives I just mentioned, knows just about all of them. And also, he's been after this serial killer for the last 12 years thanks to a certain incident that lead to his life being completely miserable.
I may as well just go straight into characters because, honestly, there really isn't much story here. However, before I actually talk about the characters in this movie, I'm first gonna say that the humor in this movie is a mixed bag at best. Most of the humor is rather uneven with itself. The best bits of it, though, is when it does dark humor. And I'm gonna tell you, guys, this movie will delve into dark humor. Not as much as I would like to, and admittedly, it's not quite as hilarious as I would see done in movies like "The Toxic Avenger" or "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie" where they did dark humor better, but what is here is still really funny in terms of it's dark humor. Everything else kinda ranges on being campy, weird, or just batshit insane. Most of the latter happens in the final act of the movie, and, my god, does it ever go over that route. Though I have to admit, it may go a little *too* much in terms of it's insanity. It just depends on how much you can tolerate it yourself.
Now going back to the characters, I'm gonna start with Joe Blocker because, as I mentioned before, he has been chasing after this serial killer for the last 12 years. Originally, all the murders started in Vegas, and he had a different partner back then. They were chasing after some guy who might've potentially been a suspect and they were trying to detain him. Well, Joe was anyway. His partner was trying to kill the guy, while Joe was just trying to apprehend him. He fails at it, obviously, which leads into a downward spiral where his wife divorced him because he was having sexual problems. And they let you know that he has sexual problems because they repeat that kind of information at least 3 or 4 different times. And it did get kinda old. In fact, if there's one thing that I kinda didn't like about the humor is that, a couple of times, they will repeat the same kind of dialogue, whether it's an insult or information that we already know. One instance I can think of involves Jacky Cairo, who is the man potentially responsible for the murders. And he has a henchman who is obviously overweight, and on several different occasions, he will tell him that he's fat and ugly. Which wasn't really that funny to begin with, but to repeat it a couple of more times just sorta got old.
But anyway, getting back on topic, Joe's life is a fucking mess. And that's not to say that his partner, Sweeney, isn't any better off. Most of that centers around his wife, who is a constant chain smoker. Now she actually does try to go to some therapy session to help her stop smoking, but none of it really helps. In fact, I'll spoil this much and say that she doesn't stop smoking. She just continues on like nothing happened. And he has to put up with her shit. He also apparently is something of a misogynist, although I didn't really pick that up until the fight against the female ninjas where he started having trouble firing his gun at them. He apparently broke out of it when his wife appeared and that's when he got his mojo back, I guess. It doesn't really make too much sense, though.
DeeDee's the only other character I can mention because, as I said earlier, she joins our investigators to help track down her father's killer and find out why they did it. Her character is more level-headed and is a little bit smarter than our two investigators, partially because she has some knowledge about how to decipher Egyptian writing that our killer leaves behind the scene as clues. Although the thing is, most of the clues are hidden inside the victim's body, as is a way to try and decode the messaging and figure out the killer's location. It's sorta like if you took the concept of "National Treasure", and instead of finding historical treasures to find the next clue, you leave messages inside dead women's bodies in order to come up with the next clue. Granted, this one's obviously on a lower scale than "National Treasure", and quite more insane than how that other film played out. Other than that, though, DeeDee's okay. She's nothing special, but she at least gets quite a bit of screen time here.
Overall, guys, the writing in this movie is teetering all over the place. In terms of it's humor, it's a mixed bag at best. And the writing itself, while simplistic in story, is also kind of a mess in itself once you factor in the characters and their backgrounds. But still, despite all that, there is quite a bit in terms of campiness here. And I did say earlier that I wanted this movie to be funny in a cheesy sort of way. And while I'm not sure about the cheesiness part, it is still pretty funny in it's own way. Again, the humor is mixed at best, but there is enough material here to where you could get a laugh out of it. And this one did give me few laughs, which is more than what I could say about previous horror comedies like "Night of the Living Deb", where that film was devoid of being funny at all. This one, though, does have more to work with, which is totally cool to admit.
The acting here ranges on two different sides. You're either hamming it up, or you're overacting. And my god, the actors in this movie definitely did both here. Which normally, I would have a problem with this because if you're trying to ham it up on purpose or trying to overact to be funny, it wouldn't really work because it just sounds like your just forcing it, thus the acting would become complete shit. But in this case, I can't really do that here. Because while I admit the acting isn't really that good, the combined aspects of hammy and overacting actually does sort of work here. Every actor here seems like that they're just given whatever they have to work with for a script and it sounded like they were having a blast with this movie. So as much as I could say that the acting here isn't really good, I'm actually going to praise the actors here for just taking a kinda flawed script and just rolling with it, which they certainly did a really awesome job with.
Special effects in this movie are amazing. A lot of it comes from the blood and gore effects, which were done by Tom Savini, who was responsible for many great special effects in other movies such as the "Friday the 13th" series, "Creepshow", and many others that are too many to count. This movie is no different. There is a *ton* of blood and gore effects. The best ones involve the final act, where a guy is just peeling his face off and it is incredibly detailed and gruesome, and it looks amazing. Although now that I'm thinking about it, there is one thing that I can comment that I can count as a negative. This movie is called "Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh", and I didn't see a single pharaoh sucking blood. Nor where there any actual pharaohs in this movie, outside of this Egyptian town that you see in the middle of the film, where people are dressed up in Egyptian attire. Which, I will say, the costuming here is actually pretty good, though I will admit that the ninja costumes our females looked rather cheap. Beyond those, however, the costuming here is pretty good from everyone else.
Camerawork here is really good. Lighting here is mostly good, save for the beginning of the movie, where most of it was shot in the dark, as we see our killer slowly walking with a wagon behind them and I could barely see what was going on. Admittedly, this might just be more of the quality of the movie being somewhat on the low side, though it's much better than the god-awful mess I had to deal with in the previous movie I covered, which was "Splatter University". So, at least, there's that. Sound-mixing here is good. And the music, well, it's just sorta there, really. It's neither good nor bad. It just exists, really. So the score here is nothing special.
Ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh"? Yes, I can. As long as you're able tolerate on the amount of insanity this movie goes for, mostly for the final act. But there's still a lot to be had here. The humor is still a mixed bag, but it's still really funny at times. The story here could've maybe used a bit more polish, but what is here does work in it's own way. And overall, if you're looking for something that's sorta different in terms of B movies, this one will definitely satisfy you. Non-fans will obviously not care for this sort of thing, but still, the other side will definitely get something out of it. I can't guarantee that you'll love it, but it definitely does offer something different here. As for me, well, I enjoyed it enough to keep for my DVD collection. And who knows? If I end up watching this thing a second time, I might make more sense out of what I could grasp on my first viewing. For now, though, I'm gonna go and watch "National Treasure" again, seeing as how I mentioned it earlier, and I haven't seen it in a good long while. So I'm gonna go do that next and this sucker will definitely have a nice spot on my DVD collection.
And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment