Eastern Carolina Style

Rated R.  I’m going to feel free to consider that a good sign.  One question.  If, as reported by several online sources, filming began back in 2010, how on Earth did this cult classic waiting to happen slip past my hypersensitive radar?  My fake Vulcan ears are glued to ground on movies about geeky stuff like LARPing and role-playing!  I mean, I am a genre whore–I kept track of  Trick R Treat, Fanboys, and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane from rumors of their production to their tragic shelving and, finally, their triumphant release (except Mandy Lane.  Not bad, but hardly a triumph).  In this case, movie purgatory kept a movie down so far that I had never even heard of it until a trailer popped up on IMDb a few months ago.  Yes, it is released now.  And Peter DInklage is there!  And Summer Glau!  And Why can’t I find a copy!  WHY!  Sorry, I went to my sad place.  You know what might cheer me up?  The trailer!

Please note, before I even started watching the trailer, the promo posters had me frothing at the mouth to watch this bad boy…

Movie voiceover guy starts us off right by hitting the movie’s key demographic where it lives…a parking lot Renaissance Faire style set-up.  I used to work at at a Ren Faire, and while we did have twenty pounds of bosom lacked into ten pound corsets, we did not have Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) packed into plate armor.  Nor did we have Peter Dinklage camping it up, and hey!  It’s that guy from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia who plays that sweaty milk drinking guy!

Hm.  So far, three or four main guys–there’s the hot chick!  Oh Summer Glau, I missed you.  Can you do me a favor and contribute a cameo to all the shows I love over the next year?  I can picture you in Mad Men playing, um, yeah, can’t do it.  Maybe you can just run a round in that pseudo-medieval boiled leather miniskirt and kick things?  Cool, thanks.

Anyway, then Danny Pudi (Community) shows up and does his Danny Pudi thing, but slightly toned down, which reminds me that I’m going to miss Community next year because it is canceled.  That’s when things get a little…left of center?  It’s like, watching From Dusk til Dawn and having no idea about the vampire subplot that takes over halfway through.  Because suddenly, the geeky gang calls up a real live succubus.  And maybe, just maybe, that’s where the movie loses it way.  From this point on it’s mostly yelling and running and it’s dark, so I guess this is a comedy horror?  But not the good kind, like Shaun of the Dead.  Because they are taking it to a sort of misogynistic place, at least based on the trailer, and I’m not down with that.

But you know what?  It still looks pretty awesome and I want to see it.