Sex comedies like Bikini Carwash Company are intentionally cheesy, have bad humor, and bad acting because no one cares. They are 100% viewed for shits and giggles and something to do between watching videos on MTV at 2 in the morning, but they do include enough nudity and sex to keep you flipping back just to make sure you didn’t miss out on anything. Here at Horror Yearbook, we really play up the love of nudity in horror films, but in all honesty, while it is fun to joke around about it, none of us have actually watched a Friday the 13th film to jerk off. It is just another fun cliché of the horror genre we like enjoy. So one scene of gratuitous nudity for a film like PocaHauntus isn’t going to cut it. The reason PocaHauntus fails so miserably is because it was not intended to be a Bikini Carwash type film; it actually has no idea what it wants to be.
Why would a sex comedy give you a ten-minute history lesson at the start of the film, attempt to be funny and sexy, and then try to bail it out gore with at the end? I’ll tell you why, because the people who made PocaHauntus had no idea what kind of film they wanted to make. The writing makes me think it was written by a failed stand-up comic, the editing looks like it was done with a machete, and it was filled with amateurish mistakes like shaking cameras, and bad sound mixing. Having no budget excludes you from certain things, like bad acting and cheap special effects, but producing poorly done garbage is not one of them. It just reeks of a cast and crew who were not passionate about making a movie, but rather having their names listed on IMDB.com.
Certain horror films are also known for getting away with being considered great even though they only excel at one aspect of filmmaking, many horror fans will sit through and enjoy a film just for the gore, nudity and so on. Some horror films have even become famous for just one scene; the same applies to sex comedies and many genre type films. Which brings me back to the nudity. If PocaHauntus will be remembered for anything, it will be for being a dick tease. Normally when you are watching films like these you find yourself thanking god for inventing the fast-forward button, with PocaHauntus you will find yourself thanking him for giving us the stop button. The filmmakers tried to bail out its stupid premise and no budget by being sexy, but offer NOTHING. There is an actual art to filming softcore movies and the first part of that art is actually having some softcore action in it. It also includes knowing how to film women being sexy; take Michael Bay for instance. He actually launched his career with it. This brings me to ask the question again what is PocaHauntus supposed to be? It offers none of the enjoyments of horror, comedy or softcore films, and there is defiantly nothing to be said about the plot.
Other horror films with lame premises such as Leprechaun and Jack Frost actually deliver on one or more of the aspects I mentioned. Jack Frost may not be your type of film, but the bathtub rape scene is a well-known and loved scene amongst horror fans. Leprechaun at least knows what it is and plays it accordingly, thus allowing it to have five sequels and somewhat of a following. The producers of PocaHauntus boast that DreadCentral.com said:
“The title is so simplistically gimmicky that the more I think about it the more amazed I am to realize no one else had already done it.”
I will tell you why no one had already done it, because there is nothing amusing, witty or remotely interesting about a dead Indian. Pocahontas coming back to avenge her family is simply put… a dumb idea, one someone may think was great while being stoned, but nothing more than that. Gimmicky silly horror films need things like killer puppets, cookies, or bongs to make it so over the top it works. The only thing PocaHauntus has going for it is a clever title better reserved for a porn film and still most porn films are better produced than this.
My slamming of PocaHauntus has nothing to do with bad acting, a few bloopers or even the lame story, it has to do with it managing to vomit on every low-budget genre I have grown to love. It gives the direct to DVD market, low-budget horror and sex comedies a bad name. It is a pretty sad state when your film probably wouldn’t even be shown on U.S.A. Up All Night or made fun of by the puppets on Mystery Science Theater.
