It Came From the Bargain Bin: B-Movie DVDs on the Cheap! (#1 in a series)

Hello and welcome to the first installment of "It Came From the Bargain Bin!" Before we get to the good stuff, here's a quick introduction to your humble narrator: I am a lifelong fan of "B" grade horror/sci-fi/action movies. I also happen to be notoriously cheap when it comes to buying DVDs. When I want to add to my collection I'll usually start browsing at the dollar store, then I might move on to the bargain DVD shelves at the supermarket or the drug store, and of course there's always the Mother Lode, otherwise known as the famed Wal-Mart $5.00 DVD bin. I pride myself on the fact that I have never paid more than ten bucks for a DVD in my life. I have a particular soft spot for flicks produced during the 1970s and 1980s, but honestly if it's a film I've never seen before and it's cheap enough, I am open to "B's" from any and all eras. Of course, collecting unknown B-Movies is a lot like playing Russian Roulette. You may stumble upon an unrecognized gem every once in a while, but you're also going to have to slog though a lot of truly awful crap before you find those gems. In this and future "It Came From the Bargain Bin" entries, I'll reach onto the DVD shelf, grab some random titles, then line'em up and knock'em down! There'll be slashers, monsters, aliens, carnivorous creatures, and zombies galore, so make sure you stop by often!!

We'll begin this cavalcade of sub-par cinema with a pair of recent cheapies that I found bundled together in the previously-viewed DVD bin at the local Walgreens' for a mere four bucks total... the intriguingly titled combo of THE MORGUE and LEGEND OF THE BOG.

2008's THE MORGUE has a promising looking cover and tag line - "Where the Dead Live!" -- but the film itself is a pretty basic low-budget creep-o-rama with delusions that it's far more clever and shocking than it actually is. Lisa Crilley stars as "Margo," a likeable college gal with an unusual night job - cleaning lady at an out-of-the-way mortuary. One fateful night the monotony of her lonely routine is broken by the arrival of a family of lost motorists, whose car has run out of gas. They're immediately followed by a pair of blood-covered, battered men who say they've been in an accident and need medical attention. Poor Margo tries to help as best she can, but it quickly becomes obvious that All Is Not Right here. First, whenever any of the wayward travelers attempt to leave the morgue to find help, they find themselves right back at its front door, no matter which road they take. Complicating things further, there's a mysterious guy in a black hoodie who is roaming the cavernous building's hallways, seemingly intent on picking each of them off one by one. THE MORGUE can't decide whether it wants to be a psychological thriller or a straight up slasher flick, and over the course of its 84 minute run time it somehow manages to bungle both ends of the equation with an annoying reliance on jump cuts, flashbacks, and snazzy editing tricks. The back cover promises an "astonishing twist," but you're likely to have figured it out long before it's revealed, as it's telegraphed from a mile away barely fifteen minutes into the movie.

THE MORGUE is the English language debut of a pair of Brazilian filmmakers (Halder Gomes and Gerson Sangiatto) and while the film is nicely shot and features a lot of cool camera tricks, the pair's skills obviously don't extend to making a coherent story. The mostly unknown cast (the biggest name in the film is Heather Donohue of "Blair Witch" fame) does what it can with the material but by the time you get to the excruciatingly drawn-out ending you'll be wondering "Where did it all go wrong?" and then realize, "Oh, yeah...as soon as I hit the 'play' button."

Things don't get much better in 2008's Irish-made LEGEND OF THE BOG (also known as "Bog Body" and -- for some reason -- "Assault of Darkness," for those of you keeping score), which toplines former soccer bully turned movie tough guy Vinnie Jones (most recently seen in NBC's short lived super hero series "The Cape," as well as "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "Midnight Meat Train") over a cast of unknowns in a tale set in the swampy Irish countryside. Most viewers are probably semi-familiar with the concept of "Bog Bodies" -- ancient corpses that are apparently still found, well preserved, on a regular basis in Irish peat bogs. Supposedly (and I have no idea if this has any basis in fact) when a "bog body" is discovered, Irish tradition demands that it receive a Christian burial, otherwise the tortured soul will remain trapped within the body. In "Legend of the Bog," an American construction developer finds and incorrectly disposes of a "bog body" while digging for a new housing development, causing said body to re-animate and start trudging around looking for victims. So far, so good, right? Unfortunately, what could've been a pretty cool Irish flavored zombie flick quickly turns into "The Beast of Yucca Flats" with an Emerald Isle brogue. The so-called "Bog Body" is one of the least threatening looking movie bad guys in recent memory -- he's just a big hulking guy with a perpetually confused expression, resembling a pro wrestler who got off the wrong bus. Anyway, he wanders around the swamp for a while till he finds a cabin populated by a gang of lost travelers who have coincidentally all found this same secluded spot to spend the night, including an annoying college professor (who conveniently happens to be an expert on bog bodies) and his ex girlfriend, two female hitchhikers, the snotty American real-estate developer and her cab driver, and Jones as a "hunter" who seems to know a thing or two about how to handle a reanimated bog body. Will our rag-tag band of travelers manage to escape? Will you even care? Carnage is miminal, while overacting is at its maximum, and by the time this one's over you'll want a pint of Guinness - or three -- to wash its memory away.

That'll do it for this first installment of IT CAME FROM THE BARGAIN BIN. I hope you all enjoyed it and please, tune in next time for more low-budget, low-priced video fun. Till then, remember -- I watch these movies so you don't have to. You should thank me.