SKELETON MAN

Skeleton Man is a straight-to-video horror flick that's, well, bad. And when I say it's bad, I mean it's laughably bad! The movie is about an army unit that takes on and gets picked off one-by-one by this Native-American demon or whatever the hell it actually is called Cottonmouth Joe. (I know, I know the title of this flick is Skeleton Man, but bear with me!) First off, the Skeleton Man/Cottonmouth Joe you see on the video box cover doesn't even come CLOSE to looking like the "demon" in the actual movie. That Skeleton Man/Cottonmouth Joe looks like a guy dressed in a hooded cape wearing a cheap skeleton mask, which it what it essentially is. I mean, if the "demon" in the movie looked more the one on the video box cover, it might--and I say MIGHT--have made it a better horror flick! And the inconsistencies in the flick DON'T end there! For instance, early on in the film, Cottonmouth Joe/Skeleton Man kills off one of the female soldiers . . . AND NOBODY SEEMS TO NOTICE HER MISSING!!!! At another point in this dumbass film, another one of the soldiers--played by actor Casper Van Dien who's perhaps best known for his role in the "classic" sci-fi flick Starship Troopers (where the army unit in THAT flick was battling giant space bugs, if you'll recall)--follows Cottonmouth/Skeleton all the way to the interstate where the soldier inexplicably steals a semi-truck and then it crashes and explodes and when said soldier gets out of the truck he gets stabbed by . . . well, you know! Still yet another female soldier--all the female soldiers in this flick, by the way, look like more like swimsuit models than actual soldiers (not that I really minded, of course!)--gets conked in the head by Cottonmouth/Skeleton a couple of times yet he doesn't finish her off for some odd reason. And, to top it off, the scar on this female soldier's head keeps changing sides and shapes! Not only that, but Cottonmouth/Skeleton's horse keeps changing as well! Now I understand the budget on this particular flick was probably pretty much near-to-non-existent, but still! Besides Casper, the only "name" actor in this godawful flick is Michael Rooker who's starred in a number of films and TV shows, including on the popular show The Walking Dead. My guess is that Rooker probably starred in this flick because he needed a quick paycheck. As for Casper, well . . . Anyway, the movie reaches its "climatic" end when Cottonmouth/Skeleton goes on some inexplicable murderous rampage in some chemical plant and Rooker's character confronts him and . . . well, I frankly didn't even care at THIS point. My bullshit meter with this particular film reached its limit during the scene when Cottonmouth Joe/Skeleton Man actually shoots an army helicopter out of the sky--and, no, I'm NOT making this up!--WITH A BOW AND ARROW!!!! Seriously! I've seen some campy-ass horror--and other--flicks in my time (which I've, of course, reviewed on this blog), but THIS one took the campy cake! All I can say is that this would be a, uh-hum, good film to watch if you're bored out of your skull (pardon the pun!) and you want to watch a REALLY bad horror flick. What made this film even WORSE--as if it couldn't get ANY worse!--was that you could tell that it was a blatant rip-off of the classic eighties sci-fi/horror flick Predator starring none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Skeleton Man--or whatever it is he's actually called--even looks at his "prey" like the Predator did in THAT movie and even "steals" skeletons like the Predator did. My suggestion would be to watch THAT movie instead of THIS claptrap-of-a-flick. Hell, even the less-than-stellar Predator sequels would be FAR better to watch, you know what I mean?