I see that the company’s opening logo has been updated from the “rising moon” motif into a fancier “flurry of bats” version. Though I prefer the original, it really is more an icon of the “1990s direct-to-video” legacy. The new one’s actually not shittily done either, so I guess I approve. Hopefully this isn’t the best in store for the next 90 minutes of my life, though a familiar stabbing pain in my kidneys makes me think otherwise... and tells me I've probably been drinking way too much in recent weeks. Speaking of which, what exactly are the next 90 minutes of my life about? Well, an 8 minute intro scene that establishes the tissue paper thin plot (and wanders aimlessly for the other 7 minutes and 54 seconds) insists on our attention before we even get to the opening credits. Already my teeth are floating and I now wish I hadn’t sold my last blunt to my former 10th grade art teacher… who soooo wants me to pose nude for her next night school class. The topic is lewd cubist etchings! Looks like I better get to work trimming the boys’ bush into a whimsical shape before Tuesday!

There’s a story in here somewhere, and its whimpering cries sound something like this: Matt inherits the dilapidated Mysteria casino from his newly deceased uncle Franco Dragna, a name so hokey I’d be willing to bet my Cyberfrog back issues that Band found it in a circa ‘60s Stan Lee tale. You know, back when every month there was a new giant monster with a single-syllable name like Groot or Mung or Klur, or the occasional double-syllable name… like Zarkorr… yes Chuck, I know of your four-color plagiary. Meet me on Pier 19 at 2:43am. Bring 10,000 blank DVD-R’s and a set of Puppet Master statuettes. Come alone… not to be confused with what you do while crying into your bath towels on the toilet every night. Wasn’t there supposed to be a movie somewhere in between all these random tirades? Shit, I’m only 10 minutes into the damn thing and I’m already finishing out my third paragraph…

Matt and his undeservedly cute girlfriend Jen (who reminds me of Laura San Giacomo with nicer hair and sans Letterman gap) take a road trip to claim his new rundown party spot, bringing along their friends Emily (tight-wad protocol nerd), Jimbo (Spicolli protégé), and young “beautiful people” couple Skeeter and Paige. Matt and Jane are the “in love” couple, ‘Bo and Em are the non-couple pair from opposite sides of the main couple’s friend spectrum who can’t stand each other, while Skeets and Paige are the pseudo sex mongers with the “pseudo” part actually being a “kinda funny” take on the slasher stereotype in that “little blue pill” way. You know, the way that us disgruntled high school losers like to take pot shots at the shit head jocks and "cool kids" from our youth, painted into obnoxious caricatures that always get horribly mutilated on screen.

Apparently unhappy with the caliber of desperate young actors he can get now as opposed to 15 years ago, once the kids get to the abandoned casino, Band has them spend a lot of time as little more than talking silhouettes, including a bit where Jane tries to build up Matt’s confidence about wanting to re-open the dump to make money off of Welfare gambling addicts and old people on assisted living. Maybe they get paid by the scene and silhouette scenes pay less? I dunno. When one of the old slot machines in the place coughs up bloody teeth instead of Chuck E. Cheese tokens though, you know there’s something wrong… though the violently killed janitor and executor of the estate in the beginning could’ve told you the same thing. Turns out that 40 years (and a day) ago, five mobsters were killed at the Mysteria, including man-in-charge Roy (Sid Haig) and his partner/goon Gil (Michael Berryman). Matt’s uncle was trying to run a legit gambling house back in the ‘60s, but Gil and friends didn’t like not getting a slice of the pie. I know how they feel too, because when my Uncle Paul took the last slice of pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving a few years ago, his arm needed 30 skin graft surgeries and most of his ass flesh before it looked like anything resembling a human limb again.

As you can guess, those five dead bad guys are now haunting the place and ready to get back to taking pieces from other peoples’ pies. This time said pies being the bodies of our cast of generic twenty-somethings. Various toenail yanking gambling puns are made, there’s a lot of drawn out screen time where literally nothing happens, and finally, 50 or so minutes into the mire, ghost Roy and his phantom posse pop up to say hi. Though they threaten to pretty much rape and torment the kids (not necessarily in that order), the mention of a secret stash of 2 mil in silver somewhere in the casino leaves Matt adequately interested in sticking around. I get the feeling they’ll all have ectoplasms in their cornholes come morning, but I guess some people would rather be rich and ghost raped than poor and and with their not ghost raped dignity intact.

Of course, when they do try to escape the exits have all been barricaded and no cell phone signal can escape the supernatural structure… not unlike the hill my parents live on, where no cell service provider dares trek. You ever wonder if maybe the reason hillbillies are so damned backwards is because companies never put in the effort to provide them service for all their overpriced, cheaply made technological advances? Then again, if corporations didn’t keep us in the dark about everything, we’d be too educated to keep buying their shoddy Chinese slave labor assembled crap boxes... Anyway, each of Roy and Gil’s supporter spooks has their own alternate form that reflects their casino jobs in their past lives, i.e. the slots girl is a demon with slots for eyes, the black jack dealer turns into a machete wielding poker card Jack with black hair, and the roulette guy… has a fat round head. I’m getting flashbacks of the ulcer encouraging cenobites (“cenoshites” being a more appropriate term me thinks) of Hellraiser III, and flashbacks like that more often than not result a flare up of my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so let’s not talk about them anymore.

In the end the title poker hand comes into play, and the silver plot point feels more like a bad after thought than an integral part of the “story”, much like our two marquee names’ roles. Oh yeah, and there’s also a little mathematical discrepancy about just how many people the ghostly quintet kills in the repayment of the blood debt Matt inherited from his uncle. I’d say I was surprised, but I literally have no poker face. Seriously, every year I get together with the pantheon of deities and we have a Texas Hold ‘Em tourney (R.I.P. Uncle Bill). In an effort to avoid my usual tells I tear off my own face. If I could figure out how to play without my eyeballs too I’d win every time! Unfortunately, I do not win with DMHCotD. No one wins with it. Actually, that’s not 100% confirmed. It’s possible that the old adage stays true and the house wins, so long as Full Moon managed to recoup whatever their costs were on this wheel of stink cheese. At this point though I’ve pretty much given up hope on Charles Band turning his act around, so I’d rather this particular house burn… to the ground… then be buried in a large hole… and eaten by Graboids… who are then harvested, shot in the face with an elephant gun, melted down with corrosive acid, dished into an old Cool Whip container, and buried 75 miles beneath the North Pole… amidst flesh eating bacterium… and radioactive polar bear droppings… fuck nose.

I don't expect genius from Full Moon features. I don't expect high art, or even passable art. I don't ask for blockbuster cinema or high concept filmmaking. But come on, if I have to watch stupid hollow characters give me lessons on being disposable, at least dish them out to me en masse and have 'em grotesquely dispatched equally so. And how the fuck do you introduce the seeds for a potential lesbo love scene and not deliver on it Band!? Did you really have to toss out the shameless displays of horny male placation along with the already questionable "good" qualities once associated with Full Moon’s productions, Chuck?! Come on man. You're not only insulting the fans at this point, but you're insulting their semi-iconic bad movie heroes as well by suckering them into your cinematic quicksand, then dleaing them out a meager 5 minutes of screen time! For shame. Your movie gets a big fat raspberry. I don't mean a regular raspberry either, I mean a raspberry delivered with the disgust the Jews heap upon Hitler, and with a tongue infected with those goo slinging pustules from Planet Terror!

And then there’s Rihanna, who I’d give a DNA whitewashing to so fast you’d think she’d gotten the Michael Jackson express skin bleach treatment. She’s not in this movie, and I don’t think she’d ever be caught dead (or undead) watching it, but showering her in my nut custard is tops on my “shit I think about when the movie sucks” list. I don't care if she does look like she's sporting peg legs when she's wearing ballet shoes in the video for that umbrella song! Speaking of women whose pores I want to impregnate with my tadpoles, she hasn’t seen the movie but I can guarantee you that my Evil Dead Bride won’t be too pleased when I tell her that one of the characters quotes Dostoyevsky in a movie that thinks the term “ghoulette wheel” constitutes wit. I can hear her copy of The Brothers Karamazov trying to break its own binding already. With any luck, her promise that she reads my reviews is just to make me feel better about wasting my time on them and she never actually learns this horrible horrible truth. As for me, here comes that PTDS again... ARGH!