Noutions
Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .
Mathilde the Guild
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Zandra
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Scott LeBrun
Combine a ridiculous story (actually, there's not very much of a "story"), stunningly terrible acting, lousy sound, endearingly tacky effects, and an omnipresent, overbearing music score, and you have the memorably bizarre and stupid micro budget oddity that is "Things". This movie just goes to show that Canadians can do this sort of thing just as "well" as anybody. It drags and meanders and is often just as tiresome as it is funny. But when it's over, it's the kind of Thing that you just don't forget.Basically, an insane husband whose inability to give his wife a child led them to participate in an experiment that saw her give birth to the creatures of the title. Now a bunch of characters: Don Drake (played by co-writer / co-producer Barry J. Gillis), his brother Doug (Doug Bunston), and Fred (Bruce Roach) are about to experience a night of terror thanks to the machinations of the nefarious Dr. Lucas (Jan W. Pachul).You'd swear these guys, including co-writer / co-producer / director Andrew Jordan, were just making up this absurdity as they went along; this plodding but amusing piece of work does have that feel. The so-called actors in this thing appear pretty amused themselves. (Lovely porn star Amber Lynn appears in a (clothed) part as a reporter. Overall, getting through "Things" is going to be a real endurance test for some people while others may well have a whale of a time. The filmmakers may not be the most technically proficient you'll ever see (to put it mildly), but they make up for that to a degree with gonzo enthusiasm. The splatter is absolutely delicious stuff for whatever budget they bad.Shot on Super 8, this truly walks on the wild and wacky side of Canucksploitation.Five out of 10.
HumanoidOfFlesh
"Things" really has to be seen to be believed:it's perhaps one of the worst pieces of late 80's horror garbage I have seen including such abysmal low-budget atrocities like "The Shaman" or "Return of the Family Man".The ugliness oozes from the screen,the cinematography is amateurish,the acting is diabolical and the script is so disjointed that it doesn't make sense.Two lazy beer drinkers go to this creepy house to drink tons of beer from the icebox and end up having to fight some ant-like monsters with sharp jaws that were born from woman's womb.Utterly awful and inept piece of garbage with Casio keyboard music,laughable dialogue and paper-mache effects.A porn star Amber Lynn plays the small part of reporter:she clearly enjoys reading news from cue cards.A must-see for fans of the worst horror films ever made.You won't believe your eyes-"Things" is a sheer genius of atrocious cinema.
jonathan-577
OK it's late and I don't have the energy to do it justice, but I am committed to telling the world about the 'Things' screening in Toronto this past Saturday. In case you didn't hear Things is the most hilariously incompetent and berserk movie ever made in Canada (NOT the worst though - that honor goes to 'Caged Terror' - competence isn't everything) and possibly the universe. It is mostly shot on Super 8 and basically involves some hosers drinking beer and wandering around the house. They are occasionally interrupted by an inert papier-mache ant with fangs - it doesn't seem to bother anyone too much that it ate its way out of one of the guys' wife's stomach - and 'newscasts' of moonlighting pornstar Amber Lynn reading cue cards WAY off to the side somewhere. There is one scene where a guy silently waves a flashlight around a bathroom for ten full minutes. Dialogue includes "Next time we go somewhere together I'm leaving you at home!" and "Does a toilet flush during a blackout?" Star Ray TV's legendary Jan Pachul shows up as some kind of 'mad scientist' and trumps everyone with his skeezing hyperbolic delivery even though he's basically playing the same mullet-headed boob as all the others. You can not believe that this thing cost two months and $30,000 to make. They must have bought a lot of beer! But the real show was the guys themselves. Most of the crew showed up for this, the 19 1/2 anniversary screening - which they said was the first time they ever saw it with an audience! The director was a modest soft-spoken guy, but the co-writer/'star' was very stoned and just could not shut up. He seemed to alternate between embarrassed, pre-emptive defensiveness and attempted good-natured embrace of the audience's howling contempt for their work - signified by him going "HEHHEH" very short and sharp and loud about every thirty seconds during the movie. When Trash Palace proprietor Stacey Case paused the tape for intermission Gillis insisted on telling everyone how much better it was about to get. (It really really didn't.) After the movie he took to the stage and wouldn't let it go; he talked so much no one could start the Q & A, and when the director gave it a shot he talked over HIM. He repeatedly promised to give everyone an autographed DVD (with extras!!) and to interview people for a 'documentary' they were going to do about the movie. Unfortunately both were sidetracked when - AFTER the movie had been over for about ten minutes - they went to turn the camera on and couldn't get it to work. Instead we got to watch three of these guys torture the camera in the corner for perhaps fifteen minutes while Stacey tried desperately to fill up the space. Finally the guy - who had been moaning about the turnout intermittently all night - stood on the stairs and yelled something to the effect of, "I mean I don't HATE Stacey, he's gotta make a living..." at which point the heretofore mesmerized audience came to the collective realization that they might actually never ever get out of there alive, so I did everyone a favour and started making strong ready-to-go gestures like standing up and putting on my backpack. Fortunately the stars all suddenly went out for a smoke which gave us a chance to declare the evening officially over.Marijuana is a hell of a drug. I feel privileged to have been a part of this event - now "Things" will have new layers of meaning every time I watch it, which I expect will be once or twice a year for the rest of my life. (And for the record, the free DVDs did happen, after I left...peace Barry!)
deheor
This is it my friend. When you haunt video stores in the hope of finding the worst movies ever made you can stumble across all types of elements that can make a movie terrible but 'things' managed to combine them all to produce a film that is so bad that it totally represents the bottom of the cinematic barrel.1.Bad special effects. Check. The mutant ants (which seem to number in the dozens despite the tiny belly that they erupted from) in some scenes seem to be filled with green slime and in others, paper mache.2.Bad dialog. Check. This is one of those movie where everyone seems compelled to make noise no matter what they are doing. My favorite scene involves a man looking through cupboards and saying "Hummm" as he opens each one.3.Fully dressed Porn star. Check. Porn star and club owner Amber Lynne shows up as a reporter who spends the entire movie sitting on a chair and reading off cue cards. The remarkable thing is that in one of her first mainstream films, the set she is on has lower production values than any porn she had appeared in. 4.Referrences to better movies. Check. The biggest mistake a bad movie can make is reminding the audience of much better films and "Things" seem to revel is discussing movies like "Evil Dead" and comments about "last house on the left"I could go on but the point has already been made. Of all the movies I have seen in my life this may actually be the worst. I know negative reviews will often cause people to seek out certain films but let me just say, watch at your own risk.
