16 October 2008

Travel Advice

The Department of Foreign Affairs is a bit slack when it comes to useful travel advice. Do they warn you about the hazards of walking the forests of Transylvania? Backpacking in Croatia? No, no they don’t.

Forget Rough Guides (who wants to travel roughly?) and forget Lonely Planet (if you’re lonely, there’s a reason buddy), we take all our travel advice from the movies. All we really need to know about Europe we learnt from Eurotrip and Hostel ... Here’s what else we have learnt.

TURISTAS (2006)
Brazil has beautiful beaches, beautiful women, and people who want to cut out your organs to sell on the black-market. It’s a completely by-the-numbers film that plays better as a travel warning for tourists than a horror film.

WRESTLEMANIAC (2006) (EL MASCARADO MASSACRE)
Mexico was so desperate to win an Olympic gold medal in wrestling, its surgeons pieced together a super wrestler (Rey Mysterio Sr). El Mascarado went insane and preys on visitors to his ghost town, in this case a bunch of Americans there to shoot a porno (why else?) What’s not to love about a psychotic masked wrestler who keeps the faces of his victims on the walls?

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (2007)
Apparently there are cannibals in the mountains of New Guinea. This is yet another movie based on footage from the characters’ video camera and, like the others, is dreadful in every way (except for Sandy Gardiner in a bikini). I could make a better film on my mobile phone, and have...although my girlfriend at the time was less than impressed when she found it.

BIG BAD WOLF (2006)
Cabins in the forests of America are never safe (Evil Dead, Cabin Fever, etc). This time, six horny teens are attacked by a werewolf. With a surprising lack of cliches and a clever script, this is a different kind of werewolf – one who suggests cast members go “back to the cabin for a spot of bestiality”.

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