Couch Potato - So bad it's good: Shredder

 

Shredder (2003)

We like to watch bad movies.  Not just any bad movies.  Bad movies that are so bad they're good.

Last night we had an excellent candidate: Shredder.

[SPOILER ALERT!] 

Basic Plot 

Kimberly Van Arx invites a bunch of friends to go to a closed snow run with her to check it out.  Her daddy is apparently going to buy and develop the mountain.  On the way they meet hottie Christophe at a gas station and the girls invite him to join their little party.  They break into the old lodge on the ski slope and get ready to "shred" or snowboard.  

The story comes out that, many years before, three snow drunk snowboarders had freaked out a little girl on skis and she had crashed into a tree, and died.  Then other snowboarders - or possibly the same ones, I can't remember - killed the girl's mother in a car accident.  These were the child and wife of the current owner of the ski slope.  Suffice to say, snowboarders are not welcome in these parts, as evidenced by the "Death to snowboarders" sticker on the local snowplough.

One by one, of course, the snowboarders are killed, and make revolting discoveries, including the bodies of the first three snowboarders.  

It turns out that the other daughter of the ski run owner, now an adult, is killing everybody and two final survivors from our pack of shredders manage to kill her and live to tell the tale.

Why was this movie so good?

Well, first, for all you boys and gay girls out there, this movie has a LOT of boobies in it.  It has a lot of sex in it in general, so you'll definitely have something to keep your attention.

For the ladies and gay men, Christophe's nudity provides some titillation and, if you know me, you'll know that my personal brand of feminism advocates equal exploitation.  It's no use trying to get all of society to stop showing boobies, but at least give us some six packs and buns.  Women are as sexual as men and we like to see hot bods too.  Deal with it. 

Second, the murders are gruesome, and hilarious.  Well, maybe it's only me that finds a snow spike being jabbed through someone's heart funny.  But seriously, there are times you have to laugh, like when the girl hanging from her scarf from the ski lift bobs in the wind, going up and down the mountain, somehow unnoticed by the rest of them.

The final scene, where the killer gets shredded (do you GET the irony, do you?) by the snowplough, had me cackling for at least five minutes.  It's actually worth rewinding to see it again.

Third, the horror bits are the right kind of scary.  The director doesn't fall into the trap of formulaic horror.  You know something bad is coming, but there is still enough surprise to make you draw breath.  The first kill happens in the first two minutes, and it involves gushing arteries.  You know you're in for a good time.

There are also smaller scary elements which ensure that the tension level never disappears completely.  There's a flash of the killer passing by in the background, and you want to yell at the actor who's front of screen: "BEHIND YOU!"

Fourth, the movie has the five foundational elements right: 

• A good story,
• Natural sounding dialog,
• Red herrings to keep you guessing who the killer is,
• A decent pace and
• Acting that's good enough to allow you to suspend disbelief

Why was this movie so bad?

Aaaaaaaaaall righty then!  Strap yourselves in, 'cos here I come!

Oh MY HOLY GOD this movie was sexist.  Against BOTH sexes.

Why?  The characters, that's why.

Let's start with the women.

Kimberly

When we first meet Kimberly Van Arx, she's in the shower washing her perfect blonde, straight hair, and then her perfect pink, slim body.  A shot of her clothes on the bed, waiting to be packed, shows us instantly that she is a total slag#.  I mean - LEOPARD PRINT bra and panties?  

Next we see her refusing to put out for Cole, and she treats him like a dog.  She's holding sex over him to get him to do her bidding.  Cut to a Jeep packed full of teenagers, because Kimberly has asked her friends along to what Cole thought would be a romantic weekend in the mountains.  Poor Cole.

Kimberly explains about her daddy going to buy the ski resort and develop it.  Clearly daddy's not short of a bob or two*.  So now we can think back to the leopard print and realize... she may have money, but she got no class.  

Ah, what we have here is The Rich Bitch.

She proves this by confessing to her friends in the gas station toilet that she isn't interested in Cole at all, and has invited a guy she is into, Chad, to meet them at the lodge.  So she leads boy one along to get him to drive her up the lodge, but she's invited another guy she's really into.  

Yeap, classy.

We never meet Chad.  Just his corpse.

During drinking games at the lodge, Kimberly one ups her cousin, Pike, who took off her bra without taking off her sweatshirt, by pulling her g-string off while fully dressed.

Kimberly and Holly shove themselves at the Sheriff when he stops by, getting rid of him by shoving their g-string and pink bra, respectively, at him when he comes by to try and arrest the kids who are trespassing at the lodge.

After Christophe, the hot blonde "foreigner" joins the group, and everyone has gone to bed, Kimberly waits for Cole to be asleep before jumping out her sleeping bag, stripping off her warm PJs, putting on a red (of course) satin babydoll and matching panties, and wandering around the lodge with an oil lamp trying to find the blonde bombshell so she can schtup him.  Sadly for her, Holly (we'll get to her), manages to bed Christophe first, and Kimberly stands in the doorway, watching them.  She laughs, accepting defeat and heads back to bed.

AS IF!

This part makes it abundantly clear that this script was written by men.  No woman would shrug it off with a laugh in that situation.  She might let it go, but she wouldn't laugh about it, unless she was planning to walk into the room and offer to join in.

Later Kimberly gets her moment with Christophe, where she assumes the kabab** position - being skewered - in a hot tub.  As Cole walks in on them, mid-orgasmic oohaah, she has the audacity to say that "this isn't what it looks like".  

See?  TOLD you this movie was funny!

Kimberly's final moments involve her being freaked out, sitting in the lodge with a poker as her weapon, shivering by the fire, and yet somehow still wearing only a ski jacket and her leopard print panties, which she got into after jumping out of the hot tub.  She is BACK IN THE LODGE, people!  Her clothes are upstairs!  She's cold!  

But, no.  She runs around the lodge, poker in hand, in her panties.  

Frankly, when she dies, it's a relief.

Illustrative dialog:

Holly (holding the video camera at Kimberly in the restroom:

"Kimberly!  Do a striptease for Cole!  Or are you still making him beg?

Kimberly (giggling):

"Oh, now why would I stop?  It's kinda nice having my own puppy."

And later...

As she lays dying, discovered by the distraught Cole, her last words are:

"I never... loved you."

Holly

The first time we see Holly she is sharing the front seat of the Jeep with Kimberly, in a very close way.  Being too dumb to put the lid on her coffee cup, she spills some on her white sweater, and yells for Cole to pull the car over.

As she jumps out of the car, at a public gas station, she pulls her sweater off and runs to the bathroom, long brown hair swaying behind her, in a little pink bra.  When she and the girls emerge, she is still holding the sweater in front of her and so she meets Christophe, who is standing outside, in her little pink bra.

Holly isn't hard to figure out.  She's the Stupid Slag.

For some inexplicable reason, she sits with a red sweater open as the group sits around drinking, later at the lodge, still showing her pink lace bra.

When bedtime comes, she tries to get it on with Pike, Kimberly's female cousin, with a classic line: "I'm not gay, I'm just horny!" 

Getting the brush off from Pike, she goes for Christophe like a heat seeking missile, wandering round the lodge, like Kimberly, urgently whispering his name, trying to find him.  It's a Slag-Off.  Which will find him first - blonde slag, or brunette slag?

Holly's overt slutty behavior makes Kimberly look like a nun.  In fact, I sat there thinking that the only way a young woman would behave like this is if she was sexually abused as a child and had her appropriateness radar all screwed up by that terrible experience. 

Illustrative dialog: 

Christophe (as they stand in the rain) :

"Oh, you are getting all wet!"

Holly:

"Can you tell?"

Pike

Pike is the odd girl out.  She's only there, it would seem, because she's Kimberly's cousin.  She's not nearly as pretty as Kimberly and Holly, she doesn't speak like a lady and... horror of horrors!... she has SHORT HAIR.

Of course, all the other kids think she's gay.

If she's not pretty, she must be the Brainy Girl.  

She snowboards, she breaks into the lodge with a credit card, she finds electricity, she fixes the wounded, she even fixes cars.  She's brave, resourceful and clever.

She is the first to figure out what's going on.

She fights two killer attacks and, as Fluffy Bear says: She has spunk!

Needless to say, she survives.

Illustrative dialog:

Pike, about to shoot the killer:

"Hey!  Shred this, Bitch!"

And now for the men...

Cole

Cole is The Good Guy.  

Handsome in a boy-next-door way, he lets himself by stepped on by Kimberly constantly.   He drives everyone up to the lodge in his car, he spends time breaking the chain lock to get onto the ski slope while everyone else slips through the gap and goes snowboarding and, later that day, he pays for supplies for the group.

He's not the sharpest pin in the pincushion, at first not believing Pike's theory about why they're getting killed (moron).  He is also shocked at finding Kimberly with Christophe, amazed that she would betray him, not realizing he's been used all along, which makes him a double moron.

Cole, of course, has a good heart, which makes up for him being a little dumb.  When the other guys are saying Pike is gay he defends her, telling them not to jump to conclusions.  

There is NO WAY this guy is getting laid in this movie.  

No.

He's going to fall in love. 

Once Cole realizes what's going on, he draws the killer out, taunting her, and generally shows that he has balls.  You can rely on Cole, you see, to do what's right.

Illustrative dialog:

Cole, ruefully, while paying for supplies for everyone:

"A weekend alone in the mountains... priceless.  For everything else, there's my credit card."

Skyler

Skyler is a virgin and a misogynist.  Funny how those two things go together.  If you can't get laid, it must be that women are bitches, right?  He calls them "chicks" and is a walking bag of testosterone.

He's also a total dork, constantly extolling the virtues of Kirk, a good snowboarder.  Skyler seems to be his one man fan club.

His behavior places him firmly at the bottom of the pack.

Skyler is The Dumbo Dork.

When Shelley, the daughter of the ski run owner, pays him some attention, he doesn't have any suspicions at all.  Minutes after they meet, she puts her hand into her ski suit to fondle her naked breasts.  Imagine if the situation were reversed and he tried to put her hand down his pants?

But, no.

To Skyler, all this means is "she's totally into me!" as he later tells his friends.

Basically, Skyler being killed is no loss to the gene pool.

Illustrative dialog:

Skyler, on seeing the trunk of the car:

"There is a flaw in your plan, Dude!  There's an immediate beer run required!"

Skyler, commenting on Shelley:

"She's mega-spankworthy!"

Christophe 

Christophe is "from Europe," which is the first clue to him being a total phony.  No one from a European country says they're from Europe.  They tell you exactly which country they're from.  The second clue is that his accent is all over the place.

Turns out he's a "good guy", coming back to the mountain to find out what happened to his three friends who were involved, all those years ago, in the death of the little girl.  It's hard to have any real sympathy for him, though because, instead of searching the lodge (he would've found the bodies in the basement if he'd just looked), he spends his time schtupping Kimberly and Holly. 

But you don't really mind, because he's hot, and he gets naked.

Christophe drinks with the group, shirtless, he lies in his sleeping bag with his guns and pecs out, he reveals his perfect ass as he gets into the hot tub.  

Christophe is Exotic Lover Boy and, to complete the picture of his "foreigness", he has a short, shadow beard framing his jaw and upper lip.  Because, you see, he's a leetle beet dunjerossssss.

Turns out he's Chris Ramos, from Fresno.

Illustrative dialog:

Pike, exiting from the ladies room to find Christophe hovering outside:

"Hello! Skirt on the door means it's the ladies room!"

Christophe:

"Een ma cawntree, men and women yooz da sem badroom."

And, later...

Christophe, trying to get Kimberly into the hot tub:

"Such exquisite beauty I have not zeen since Florrrrence, and Raphael's Venus."

Kirk

Kirk is a pro boarder, close to being a real player.  

Except he's a total Stoner Dude.

Every move he makes is slow and, unless he is actually snowboarding, there's always a beer or joint in his hand.  He never speaks in a complete sentence, just single words.

To complete the Stoner Dude picture, he has... wait for it... a beard and mustache.  And he has red hair.

You might think that Kirk being killed is a loss to the next US Olympic team but, frankly, you don't really care.

Illustrative dialog:

To the killer, as he dies:

"You. Karma. Baaaaaaad."

Fluffy Bear raises a good point in defense of the one dimensional characterization: "Are you actually meant to care about any them dying horribly?"

Only Cole and Pike are mildly sympathetic.  No surprise that they survive.

So, if you hire this movie, take it for what it is.  

Just have fun with it. 

# Slut

* Have a lot of money

** kabob

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