Heebie Jeebies is the best horror film ever made. I'm sorry, let me start over. Heebie Jeebies is the most horrifying movie ever. Damn. That wasn't it either. Heebie Jeebies is the most horrifically made movie I've ever seen. Think Clash of the Titans without a budget. Imagine Harry Hamlin and Laurence Olivier alone together on a soundstage without any sets, props or costumes. Now that's terrifying, but in a silly way, not in a good way. Heebie Jeebies is so much worse than that image. It's bad. It's not even good bad, it's bad bad. No, it's worse than that, it's bad, bad, bad. Even that still doesn't quite capture the essence of this movie. It's bad, bad, bad, bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. I can't seem to stop writing bad. Bad.

Heebie Jeebies has several dissimilar stories loosely linked together by one main plot. Kind of. If you try really hard and sort of squint your eyes you may be able to see what I'm talking about. Bobbie Jo Westphal plays Cassandra, a woman who is having bad dreams about her friends. What to do, what to do? The obvious choice would be to get them to all come out to a dilapidated farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. What an utterly fresh idea! With all of her friends about she might just be able to figure out the mystery of her dreams . . . or get everyone killed! But we'll get back to that.

First let's deal with the inane dream story sequences in which her friends get killed. The first one is a practical joke gone wrong, the second involves the stealing of ancient statuettes which come to life ala Gremlins and the third deals with a good Samaritan trying to help an innocent woman dispose of a body which she killed with her car quite by accident. The first one is just bad, the second insulting, and the third is . . . well it's almost entertaining.

Entertaining it may be, but I have a bone to pick with this film. With this film and Fargo. I may be the only reviewer out there, good, bad or otherwise, that actually has extensive experience with a chipper. Talk about terrifying, I still have nightmares about working with them. Chippers are used to chop up branches and logs into little itty bitty pieces, and they do so in the blink of an eye. The object is to stand back as far as you can and toss the wood into the chipper. But that doesn't always work. Sometimes you have to get a bit closer and when you do so you try to get your hands out of the way as quickly as possible, because as soon as the branches start feeding into the chipper you have a decent chance of having the branches catch on your shirt. It literally rips the branches out of your hands. I lost more than a few gloves to that demon. You also wanted to be out of the way when you tossed in a log as it would sometimes kick back out.

Armed with such knowledge, I was appalled by the ending of Fargo (an otherwise fine movie), and am even more so by Heebie Jeebies. First there are the similarities; two people on a remote piece of property in winter, one tries to leave and the other prevents them by chasing after and whacking them on the head, and then the disposal by chipper. But Heebie Jeebies is so much more ridiculous. Our good Samaritan (Gerald) decides to get rid of Kelly (Reaca Pearl) by tossing her in the chipper feet first. Slowest death ever. She inches in, but then awakes and has the temerity to reach out and grab Gerald and pull him in after her. This would be funny if a guy hadn't actually died in a chipper accident not so long ago. They didn't even have time to hit the stop button.

And all of these stories revolve around the main plotline which is a really overused story; a bunch of friends in some isolated place with a killer amongst them.

I'm going to give this movie one Hamlin and one Hamlin only, but for something after the movie has ended. No, not the bloopers, for they are truly lame, but for the credits. After the characters are listed there is a list of actors not appearing in the film. Many scenes on the cutting room floor. But look for the name of Mark Metcalf. I applaud you, makers of Heebie Jeebies, not for your lousy movie, but for the fact that you realized that one thing and one thing only could make your movie even worse, Mark Metcalf.

Hamlin Grade: 1

Big Daddy Yum Yum