By Steve Anderson
2005-05-24


Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove

**

Directed By

Gary Jones

Written By

Gary Jones

Jeff Miller

Cast

Rhett Giles

Tom Nagel

Kristina Korn

Thomas Downey

Kim Little

R

80 mins

What do you get when you take undead pirates with familiar aspirations,

a plot that seems vaguely familiar, more than enough blood and fake heads,

and strippers? You get "Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove," the newest film from The Asylum.

So what we have here is a pirate who wants his gold back. Yeah, I know, it sounds familiar. It's the plot of the entire "Leprechaun" franchise, only with an undead pirate instead of a homicidal midget. And of course, our pirate buddy is willing to go to really horrendous lengths—including killing anything and everything in his path, even a couple of rather attractive strippers—to get his gold.

And for this guy, how much good can gold possibly do anyway? Unless he's planning to get, like, a whole lot of plastic surgery, no one's gonna take his money. The guy looks like he went through a garbage disposal face first. Not that anyone seems to care; he walks into a strip club and nobody bats an eye. Even the strippers don't seem to care. They grind away at him like he was dripping with twenties and looked like Jesse McCartney.

Okay, so a movie like this isn't exactly long in the old logic department. Frankly, the back of the box says it all: "A new horror

masterpiece from the director of Mosquito and Spiders."

Oh, my.

On what planet is "Mosquito" considered a masterpiece? "Spiders"

wasn't so bad, but "Mosquito" was just plain sad. And frankly,

"Jolly Roger" will never be anyone's idea of a masterpiece unless

your sole judgement criterion is: "a movie can only be declared good

when two or more actresses expose themselves."

Check out the fantastically puerile ghost story at the twelve-minute mark. Check out the excerpt: "It's called 'Babes in Whoreland', and there are these five sluts. And they get killed, by this guy in this mask." The character telling this one probably has a decent chance at getting it produced if he can pitch it to Brain Damage or Shock-O-Rama Cinema, as long as Misty Mundae would be willing to play—GASP—a SLUT!

Even better, check out the CSI rejects at the crime scene in the sixteen-minute mark. One body missing a head; one body with a torso cut in half longways; and they can't quite figure out what the murder weapon is. I'm guessing it's not a handgun.

And at the twenty-five minute mark, we get this absolute hoot of a sequence in which a guy, with all the aplomb of McGyver, picks a police station door lock—with the underwire from his girlfriend's bra. I don't even know where to begin telling you what's wrong with that.

And at twenty-eight-and-a-half minutes, the plastic heads go a-flying.

This is the really, truly interesting thing about "Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove." It is packed to the gills with probably unintentionally comical moments. Moments where the effects or the writing or the acting or even the post-production work isn't exactly all it could have been. I could keep a running list of bizarre sequences that only make a scrap of sense when viewed in frame-advance: like the head shot at thirty-five minutes ten seconds, where it goes from semi-attached to midway down the back and into the fish bowl in the space of one frame.

The ending isn't all the much of a surprise, but still fairly well done. It completes things rather well, and this is an ending's minimal purpose. It includes one truly comical sequence, one fairly massive cheat, and one small twist that felt tacked on just so they could say that there was a twist in the ending.

The special features include deleted scenes, a behind the scenes featurette, audio options, cast and crew commentary, and trailers for "War of the Worlds", "Intermedio", "Jolly Roger", "Lethal Eviction", and "Alien Abduction."

Overall, "Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove" won't win any awards any time soon, but if you're looking for standard, run of the mill indie horror fare for your Saturday night movie party, you could do vastly worse.