10.11.2012

#206 -- Trail of the Screaming Forehead (2007)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Larry Blamire

 What can you really expect from a title like that? Well, personally, I expected something awesome. I'm a huge fan of purposely stupid horror movies. I love that cheesy humor; I love movies that make fun of themselves. So, when I saw this on Fearnet's VOD, I was pretty excited. I thought, "Now there's something I can get on board with." But make no mistakes, this movie doesn't have to make fun of itself, because the viewers can do that for themselves.

Good horror-comedies have just the right amount of stupidity, and they're smart about it so it works. This is not one of those movies. It was purposely stupid; I wasn't wrong about that. But it wasn't very smart about it. There were no real jokes here, or at least nothing I actually found funny. It seemed to me that it was trying to poke fun at those old '50s and '60s movies that feature strange creatures and such. The difference is that those old movies are actually good. Trail had potential. If it had been done better, it could have been wonderful. But alas, it's just another one of those movies that tries to be awesome but fails.

It's about an alien race of foreheads. They were once just like humans, until they destroyed themselves through nuclear war. Then they realized that they only way they could survive was by evolving into foreheads. But that couldn't last forever, and their race was slowly dying. They came to Earth to steal the bodies of humans, so that they could continue living. They would attach themselves to peoples' foreheads, turning them into very boring folks. They were dull. Maybe it could have been better if the foreheads had turned them into wacky dancing machines. I'm not sure, but I don't think boring was the way to go. Anyways, the only people who weren't possessed were two annoying sailors and a librarian. It was up to them to figure out how to destroy the forehead creatures, and try to keep from getting possessed themselves.

Meanwhile, a couple of scientists were trying to figure out exactly what was going on. They knew nothing of the alien threat, I don't think. Their theory was that all human thought came from the forehead, rather than the brain. There was some chemical called Foreheadazine that would give them the answers. One of the scientists took Foreheadazine pills that were supposed to make him super smart. They figured that this would prove that thought came from the forehead. It did make him smarter, but it also gave him a gigantic forehead.

This one starred Daniel Roebuck as one of the boring possessed people. He's that guy who looks really familiar, and he's been in a lot of things I've seen, but I can't remember him from any of them. Maybe I'll remember him from this, though I'm not sure that's a good thing. The only thing this movie had going for it was its theme song. No, the song wasn't that great. But it contains the line, "When you're not dreaming, your forehead is screaming that we're all from outer space." Catchy, huh?

If you're looking for something that you won't have to think about, something really stupid just to pass the time, then Trail of the Screaming Forehead is the movie for you. If you're looking for something good, then you should probably skip it.

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