Doomed Discussiethon: Legend of the Bog

Happy Friday everyone! Today, Nafa and I discuss...



Doomed Discussiethon: Legend of the Bog
by Richard of DM and Nafa



Richard: An archaeologist (played by Jason Barry), his assistant (Nora-Jane Noone of The Descent), and a group of seemingly random numbskulls get stranded in the woods outside of Dublin. They find refuge in the shack (or shanty) of a hunter (Vinnie Jones) who is after more than just you average game. He is hunting ‘bog people’, reanimated Celtic warriors of the past who are very thirsty. One of these bog duders (Adam Fogerty) is friggin’ huge and goes on a rampage destroying anyone who gets in his way. But that’s not all to this story, my friends. Dun dun dun DUHHHHHHHH!!!! Everyone stranded out by the bogs on this night shares a similar trait: they all have a secret they would much rather keep. How scary is that? Nafa, HOW SCARY IS THAT!?!?!?

Nafa: About as scary as a misguided junior high school lock-in. Oh, but with a water-drunk Celtic giant on the loose. What was pretty horrific to me was the fact that the first bog man, though covered in mud and hiding any lack of skin pigmentation, was pretty immediately recognizable as the current WWE champion Sheamus a couple years before he even entered the WWE... because, you know, besides water the first thing a resurrected boggite would want would be hair product. But do you know what was truly terrifying in this film—the Americans.



Richard: Yeah, this movie is pretty racist. According to Legend of the Bog, Americans are whiny, selfish, stupid and evil. This is unacceptable. Why would anyone ever say that about us? Great, now I’m crying! Actually, all of the characters in this movie are so fucking annoying it was driving me nuts. What is with that friggin’ archaeologist? Duder won’t shut his hole about the stupid bogs. Poor Vinnie Jones. What a waste. I mean he’s good, he’s always good but damn: “I’m a hunter not a priest.” Even Adam Fogerty, our main bad bog man, has his moments. His rampages at mostly innocent people are friggin’ spectacular.

Nafa: Worst game of ‘gotcher-nose’ ever.

Here it is:



Oh wait, I’m confusing that with another Vinnie Jones vehicle. Richard, you explain the nose thing.

Richard: I think that this is why I chose the movie. The image of Vinnie Jones destroying another man’s chances to have children. The nose thing takes place when our favorite bog monster goes out on the town. He ends up at a circus where a friendly Russian (?) clown offers him some vodka. This angers bog duder and he kills the guy off camera. He then runs into some kids who mistake him for the strongman and he gives the kid the clown’s big red nose. This is after he gingerly removes the duder’s REAL SEVERED NOSE from the big red one. Most importantly, the clown was a midget. This behemoth duder tears a little person to shreds. Best scene in the entire movie.

Nafa: The lead up to the circus was quite good, too. Our giant is walking down a lonely Irish road when suddenly a car full of Irish kids come by to criticize his circus and show him a fine Erin rose by exposing their backside to him (which, unfortunately, is the only nudity in the film). But I digress. This film is the best horror movie to come out of Ireland since Rawhead Rex — OK, it’s probably the ONLY horror movie to come out of Ireland since then (though I would accept 1997’s The Matchmaker). The most realistic and jarring scene, the one that really got to us, came quite literally from out of nowhere and involved, of all things, a South American cat—namely, a Jaguar. Rick?

Richard: Oh so it’s ‘Rick’ now? So we’re sitting there enjoying the cinematic equivalent of a cold 7-11 taquito when this silver Jaguar pulls up across the street from Nafa’s house. This guy gets out, locks his car and then disappears into the darkness of the golf course. We immediately assumed the worst that this guy was a friggin’ pedophile rapist serial killer golfer. After about 15 minutes of watching and waiting for something to happen, we paused Legend of the Bog (good instinct) and went outside into the windy night to do some snooping. After memorizing the license plate number, we stood in the shadows and continued our surveillance until we got bored (like 5 minutes later) and then headed back into the house for more of Vinnie Jones’s masterpiece. Next thing we know, the guy comes back to his car drenched in sweat (I hope) and he takes off. Nafa theorizes that he was probably just exercising on the golf course but I’m still not sure. His plate number is in my memory banks so if some shit goes down, we know who it was. Yo.

Nafa: One of the perils of living in one of the safest neighborhoods in town where people find it’s safe to exercise at night.

(I should mention two things at this point in the discussion. First, ‘bog’ is also slang for ‘toilet’. Second, the soundtrack to the film is basically, like most Irish films, a rip off of the ‘Far And Away’ CD—peppy, Gaelic, and jaunty, and does not match the tone of the film by any stretch of the imagination. Just keep those facts in mind.)


STICK!


NO STICK!

The film from here on out really doesn’t match the tension that the Jagman gave, but it has it’s moments. The offing begins. Lots of sticks. Lots of prop hands. Even a pretty gnarly decapitated head. But this is also where the flashbacks begin and the story is rolled out. Each of the players in this farce reveals their hidden shame (and we aren’t talking about Vinnie in The Condemned). The stories sort of get convoluted, irrelevant, (the kid and the fishing dad—thinking about it, did that have ANYTHING to do with anything???), irriluted, and convelovant. Even Boggie gets a flashback. At least you know that the grand finale is on its way—Rimbaud?



Richard: It’s the shifts in tone which totally ruin this flick. It’s funny, sometimes funny on purpose, ironic even, then it’s depressing, then the weak horror parts kick in and then it’s a half-hearted action flick with some piss poor stunt work. But yeah, each character gets to tell a story and then later they tell another, totally different story. Shit just fills up the running time and it feels like this was two overly short screenplays jammed together: one action-packed horror flick and one talky anthology horror flick. Neither of which really work and especially not together.

Laughing (or crying) and screaming are the only ways to survive Legend of the Blog. And don’t think I’m going to ignore the references to Deliverance and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Give it up, you lousy bastards. Mentioning a better horror movie in the dialog of your shitcan half-assed bullshit does not enhance your film. It just reminds the viewer of what they would rather be watching. Who am I talking to? The whole film can be summed up in one Gaelic phrase that our monster man utters before disappearing into the bog forever…

Nafa: "POGUE MAHONE!!!"