The next two films in the worst of the worst list
Number 98: Demon Island (2002)
The best way to sum up Demon
Island would be Nightmare on Elm
Street meets Predator. Seriously,
the monster in this film uses heat vision and then steals their souls.
So, the film begins with a drawn out explanation of how a
demon was trapped inside a clay piñata hundreds of years ago (it’s not specific
about the time) in an unknown Central American country. So obviously, a group of American teenagers
come along and set it free.
Chief among our teens are Nicholas Brendon (better
remembered as Xander in long running tv series Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Jaime Pressley (who was excellent as
Joy in My Name is Earl). Along with a group of other rather
forgettable teens, they arrive on island as some sort of College fraternity
break to play a game that involves them collecting lots of underwear scattered
across the island. Yes, really.
They all get paired up with Xander and Joy being forced
together, which neither is happy about as they recently broke up but that doesn’t
really play much of a role in the rest of the film. Two of the kids find the piñata,
they break it open and the demon escapes.
From there on, it’s like every slasher film you ever saw as
all the kids get picked off one by one. Xander and Joy survive to the end
(along with a tour guide who disappeared from movie for about 40 minutes), they
kill the monster, escape the island and there’s a shot to establish a possible
sequel.
I don’t know if Demon
Island’s really that bad, just generic.
Number 97: Khan the Con (2010)
This is an interesting one as Khan the Con (or Tees Maar
Khan) takes us into the world of Bollywood.
This is not a genre I am overly familiar with, I have seen a
few Bollywood films but am by no means an expert. I am going to focus on the
film elements rather than the songs because it’s not a style of music I listen
to and in all honesty, I probably could not tell you a good Bollywood song from
a bad one.
However, even with my limited knowledge of Indian cinema I
know the likes of Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif are fairly big name stars in
Bollywood, so that’s got to be a good sign going in, right? Well, given that
all the reviews from people who are more acquainted with this style are saying
that the great songs can’t cover for how bad this film is, possibly not.
Well, it’s certainly as bright and colourful as you’d expect
from a Bollywood movie.
The story revolves around Akshay Kumar as the titular Tees
Maar Khan, an internationally renowned criminal, who is planning a great train
robbery. His plan involves duping a village into commiting the robbery for him
by pretending to be a Hollywood director shooting a movie. That’s not a typo by
the way, I did mean Hollywood as Khan pretends to be M Night Shyamalan (or M
Day Ramalan as he calls himself in this film).
Predictably, he grows a heart and can’t let the villagers
take the blame for his crimes. He escapes prison, beats the bad guys and we
have our happy ending (which is appropriately enough, the title of the last
song in the film).
There are a few too many characters, the three stooges in
Tees Maar Khan’s gang start to grate pretty quickly and Katrina Kaif’s
character Anya doesn’t add anything to the movie. The film drags on a bit too
long and would have benefitted from being cut down to 80-90 minutes but from my
experience Bollywood doesn’t believe in shorter movies.
But in fairness, Akshay Kumar is charming in the title role
and he has the charisma to carry the rest of the movie.
Overall, it wasn’t too bad so is maybe a little unlucky to
be in the bottom 100 of all time.
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