Idle Hands

Year: 1999

Director: Rodman Flender

Written by: Terri Hughes & Ron Milbauer

Threat: Hand

Weapon of Choice: Bottle

IMDb page: IMDb link

      Idle Hands

Other movies in this series:
None

Rish Outfield's reviews
Wait a minute, Idle Hands wasn't Horror! It was a stupid, sick comedy! What, are we supposed to review Love at First Bite or Young Frankenstein? Sure, there were Horror elements, with a real, genuine, honest-to-god SCARE at the very beginning, plus tons of gore, evil music, and death . . . but to call it a Horror Movie...
What's next, we review Michael Jackson's Thriller video?
That'd be funny.

The tyranist's thoughts
There is a tradition of horror/comedy that exists mostly because it is so hard to do. A lot of writers and directors see writing something that legitimately makes you scream and laugh alternately for an hour and a half as the ultimate challenge in horror film making. It is. Precisely for this reason there are a lot of horror films that are a little funny and a lot of comedies that are a little scary, maybe. Idle Hands is clearly a comedy when it is all said and done, but there are some legitimately scary moments in the movie along with a lot of gore. Anyone who hates the sight of spattering blood and loose body parts should stay away. But for the average horror fan, this movie is really funny. Rish and I gave it skulls as if it were a scary horror film since I think they were at least trying to make sure the horror elements didn't disappear completely.
Seth Green and Elden Henson are hilarious as the undead sidekicks. Jessica Alba is so tempting you can't help but empathize with Anton (Devon Sawa). The opening sequence manages to be wildly funny and very scary at the same time. The Vivica Fox subplot is great, but sorely under-developed. Some of the lines had me rolling. It is well worth the money spent and probably should have done better than it did. This is the kind of movie that needs to be made a little more often. It is light-hearted but still has all of the horror you could want.

Total Skulls: 27

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie skull Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing skull
OTS skull
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex skull
Death associated with sex skull
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut skull
Someone investigates a strange noise skull
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door skull
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out skull
Fake scare skullskull
Laughable scare skullskull
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
No one believes only witness skull
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes skull
What the hell? skull
x years ago . . .
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead skull
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim skull
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster skull
Beheading skullskull
Blood fountain skullskull
Blood hits camera
Poor death effect
Excessive gore skull
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives skull
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots skull
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending skull
Unbelievably crappy ending