Gwendolyn Bitchfairy And The Flesh-Eating Worms

"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy...and I keep it in a jar on my desk."

I've gone five days without a cigarette or a drink. I'm aware that doesn't sound like much to those of you who haven't been partaking of those particular vices pretty much every day for quite a few years now (five in the case of alcohol, eleven for cigarettes), but trust me, that's an achievement. I'm a long way from actually escaping the clutches of these vices, but I'm on the ladder and climbing. That's the one part of anything I truly struggle with. Once I've got my hands wrapped around those rungs, fucking death-grip, baby.

One thing that's come of trying to quit cigarettes, in terms of my reaction to my environment, is that I've become...how to put this...a clawing, snarling, sneering beast of rage, frustration, and withering sarcasm. And one of the things you should definitely not do when confronted by such a creature is to show it a bad movie. Because then things like this get written.

So I was bored the other night. This isn't usually a problem, but when you're trying to quit something you're addicted to, boredom is the last thing you need. If the mind isn't occupied, it gets to thinking about how great it would be to smoke a cigarette, to watch the cherry glow its beautiful red as you wrap your lips around that thin, perfect cylinder, inhaling that warm, soporific smoke, feeling it fill your lungs and then drift up into your head, leaving you just a little dizzy, a little high. Christ, there's no rush in the world like a nicotine rush.

But I digress. To cure my boredom, I decided to watch a movie. To this end, I made my way downstairs after my parents had gone to bed and checked out the satellite listings. There was nothing overly exciting in the offing, so I plumped for Dreamcatcher, being familiar with the book and noticing that the film featured both Jason Lee and Timothy Olyphant, two young actors I happen to think are pretty damned good.

Hah. Hahahahahahaha. AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Holy shit. Is this real? It is? I mean, they really made this movie? Like, they spent money? Hahahahahahahahaha! Awesome.

Dreamcatcher is the story of four childhood friends that rescue a mentally handicapped boy named Douglas (or 'Duddits', as he puts it) from being forced to eat what looks like a slug by some generic teenage bullies. They discover that he has STRANGE and UNCANNY mental abilities that he somehow passes onto them. Many years later, while going on their annual hunting trip to the middle of nowhere, the four find themselves in the middle of a CRISIS involving ALIENS, a VIRUS, and Morgan Freeman's FAKE EYEBROWS.

It's not quite that linear, but you get the idea.

First off, answer me this, moviegoers: If you start with main characters played by the actors Jason Lee (fantastic in anything by Kevin Smith except Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back), Timothy Olyphant (walked away with Doug Liman's Go in his back pocket a few years ago and is usually at least moderately entertaining), Thomas Jane (in quite a few decent movies, but tends to stink up the place when asked to emote), and Damian Lewis (uh...who?), which two would you kill off in the first half of the movie? If you answered Thomas and Damian, congratulations, you have a rudimentary knowledge of how to entertain people. If you answered Jason and Timothy, you probably liked or would like Dreamcatcher. In the best interests of evolution, you should immediately go to the hospital and get yourself sterilised. Thank you.

So Jason Lee gets his face ripped off by a flesh-eating worm that comes out of the toilet. The reason this happens is because he's sitting on the seat to keep the worm from getting out when he suddenly decides that he simply cannot do without a toothpick that's just out of his reach. A toothpick, ladies and gentlemen. Not a knife or a gun or maybe something necessary like...I don't know...HOW ABOUT A FUCKING INHALER? There you go. Add two more minutes to the film, make the character asthmatic, give him a credible reason to lift his arse off that toilet seat so that when the alien worm eats his hand and then his face the audience can at least feel a little bit sorry for the guy, rather than sitting there wondering just why in the blue fucking hell they used a frigging toothpick. A TOOTHPICK. A FUCKING TOOTHPICK.

And then Damian meets a giant alien. Which explodes for no reason. And he inhales it. And it takes over his mind.

Oh, the whole face-eating bit was preceded by another bit where Damian found this hunter guy lost in the woods and the guy kept farting and his stomach was all swollen and then...wouldn't you know it...he shat out an alien worm. And then died.

Meanwhile, Timothy and Thomas crash on their way to someplace in a car when they encounter a woman sitting in the middle of the road. Thomas goes to get help while Timothy, who has hurt his leg, stays to make sure the woman is okay. Of course, she's showing the same symptoms as the farting hunter guy, so we know it's only a matter of time before a worm eats its way out of her arse and starts sliming and chomping about the place. Which it does. Luckily, Timothy shows a little more intelligence than Jason, and he kills it with a chunk of burning wood.

THEN Damian finds Timothy and Thomas finds Jason. Damian is now half himself and half an alien called Mr. Grey. When he's Mr. Grey, he finds everything hilarious and speaks in an incredibly bad English accent. This was made even more amusing for me when I discovered that Lewis is actually from England. Fantastic, an actor so bad he can't even master his own accent.

So Mr. Grey turns into a giant worm and eats Timothy, which sort of makes you wonder what the point of having him survive that long in the first place was. Meanwhile, Thomas gets captured by the army, who are there because the EVIL ALIENS are trying to spread a virus that makes people shit flesh-eating worms. THOSE BASTARDS. Wonderfully, the army is under the stewardship of Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore. Somewhat less wonderfully, Freeman has big steely grey hair and truly terrifying eyebrows. He looks like a black J. Jonah Jameson. Sizemore, meanwhile, has clearly been taken ill and sneakily replaced by his brother Bill, who definitely wasn't in either True Romance or Bringing Out The Dead, but may have played - I don't know - one of Sarah Jessica Parker's 'sensitive' boyfriends in Sex And The City.

It only gets worse, folks. Thomas and Tom Sizemore's Sensitive Brother have a conversation, during which Thomas uses his psychic powers to convince Tom Sizemore's Sensitive Brother that Morgan J. Jonah Freeman is insane. It works, and they rush off in pursuit of Damien/Mr. Grey and the alsation he's IMPREGNATED WITH HIS FILTHY SEED and intends to drop into the water supply. The twisted FUCK. The maniacal alien FIEND.

But first they have to go see Duddits, who's played by...man, I'm really losing it here...DONNIE WAHLBERG. Yup, that's the same Donnie Wahlberg who used to be in New Kids On The Block, now playing a retarded manchild capable of controlling people's thoughts. Heh. Can you say 'typecasting'?

Anyway...Tom Sizemore's sensitive brother and Morgan J. Jonah Freeman kill each other, Duddits turns into an alien and kills Mr. Grey, Damien disappears back into British mini-series obscurity, and Thomas shortens his name to Tom and goes off to film The Punisher.

I found out that last little detail when I was walking past the video shop yesterday, by the way. I mean, I knew he was in The Punisher, but I didn't know he was credited as 'Tom Jane'. Fuck, dude, if you're gonna change your name, at least change it to something that better represents you, like Gwendolyn Bitchfairy.

In closing, I'd just like to say that Thomas/Tom/Gwendolyn and everybody else involved with this rotting corpse of a movie should be stabbed repeatedly in the face with a trowel.

And don't go anywhere, 'cause I'll be back later to tell you just exactly what I thought of Wrong Turn.