Destruction Kings (2005) — Triskaidekafiles

DESTRUCTION KINGS

WRITERS: Story by Chris Seaver and Lauren P. Seavage
Based on an idea by Debbie Rochon

DIRECTOR: Chris Seaver

STARRING: Chris Seaver as Bonejack
Casey Bowker as Teenape
Ariauna Albright as Brandy
Brad Austin as Dracula
Jason McCall as Funkenstein
Travis Indovina as Eddie
Shawn Green as Steffon
A.J. Stabone as Mowgli
Noel Williams as Katie
Brett Kelly as Milo
Katie Lesnick as Marsha

QUICK CUT: Several groups of people come together and find common ground, when a trio of strangers enter the town of Bonejack Heights to cause trouble.

THE MORGUE

Teenape - A government paranormal investigator, who loves the ladies, is rude and crude, but he gets the job done. Oh, and he’s a fucking ape.

Bonejack - Teenape’s partner, who also loves the ladies, is rude and crude, but is distinctly NOT an ape.

Brandy - The new girl on the team. She’s trained her whole life to join the Paranormal Investigation Agency, and she is the highest rated new recruit aside from the previous two chucklefucks.

Dracula - I mean, he’s Dracula. But he has a bit of a jollier attitude this time around, and almost everything he says could end with a :D But he’ll also fucking kill you.

The Wolfman - A human who acts like a dog, very loyal to Dracula, and loves letting out farts.

Funkenstein - A black man who is made up of bits and pieces of other men, and the finest beatbox of his generation or any other.

Katie - One of three members of what is essentially the kiddie training league for the PIA, even if they don’t know it, the Monster Club. She loves the supernatural, and I might mean that literally. The darker and spookier things get, the wetter she gets.

Steffon - Monster Clubber #2. He almost always has a nudie mag in his hands, and has anger issues.

Mowgli - The nerdiest of the nerdy Monster Club. A scaredy cat, who shits his pants so much you could make a drinking game of it.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Happy April Fool's Day, Triskelions! This year's are you fooling me?? movie is Destruction Kings. It is...it sure is something. Let's get into this oddity from Chris Seaver. Craven help us.

The movie opens up with Bonejack and Teenape *takes a deep breath* getting chewed out by the head of the Paranormal Investigation Agency, and...I already know I am in for a ride here.

I watch only the finest cinema, folks.

Chief is upset with her top agents' penchant for destruction and Bonejack says they might leave destruction in their wake, but hey, they get the job done. There is a madness to their method!

First of all, that...that isn't how that saying goes, and second of all, that is exactly the problem!

Bonejack's penile sorcery calms down the chief, and before I can ask why they are getting berated in a high school classroom, they get a new case to investigate down at the local strip club.

A bunch of strippers are going missing, and they're getting word of otherworld involvement in the disappearances. Oh hey, at least there actually is a plot in this nonsense.

So it's time for the science team to jump in and arm them up with high tech gadgets that look like toys bought at Kaybee.

The director of HomiCycle, ladies and gentleman.

Bonejack tells them to "thrill me" and no. NO. You are not Tom Atkins, you stop that right now! Ahem.

They totally rip off the Underworld light grenades, kinda, with a device you attach to a vampire and it will inject UV radiation and silver nitrate right into their bloodstream. This weapon is dismissed because you need to be up close and personal, and you can just stake the undead bastards. Oh well, we’ll never see that again!

But wait, there's more! Before they go, Teenape and his hetero lifemate, Bonejack, are assigned a rookie to join the team, Brandy Kaufman. And hey, it's Serena from Bloodletting!

Fortunately, it's now time to meet our bad guys, as they pull up in a car. And it is Dracula with two of the missing strippers, a guy who I can't joke about looking like Matt Stone, because the movie does that later, and *ahem* Funkenstein, a black Frankenstein.

Did I ever tell you how I got these scars?

And I gotta say, I kinda love these guys. Well...I can take or leave Eddie, but Drac and Funkenstein are a blast. Dracula has this delivery that I cannot do justice in text. It is the earnest and joyful tone of very clear statements. And Funkenstein is...well, black Frankenstein, who is always ready to drop a beat, and is most eloquent. They’re not what you expect, and rather fun.

While Dracula kills the two girls, don't worry they'll be back later as his brides, we go to meet ANOTHER group of characters, a trio named Steffon, Mowgli, and Katie, better known collectively as the Monster Club

The kids are also interested in the paranormal, noticing all the weird shit in their town of Bonejack Heights and...wait. Why does the town have the same name as one of the main characters? This? This is where my suspension of disbelief falls apart with this movie??

Anyways, they've heard about the missing strippers, and the P.I.A, and want to get to the bottom of both, if just to prove that the paranormal is real. This movie has two many main characters all in on the same plot.

I want you to teach me to be a killer…er, agent! AGENT!

Back at the PIA High Sch...Headquarters, Bonejack and Teenape meet some rival agents who will get kidnapped and murdered by Dracula later. They hate the lead characters destructive methods, and aren't afraid to let them know it. So, as he goes on his way, Teenape flings his poop at them. Because he's an ape, you see.

The two newbies head to the strip club to try and get the info from the strippers before the A-Squad get their slacker asses down there. However, Lucious isn't having it. She flings them outside, they get dragged off by Funkenstein to their fate, and the main characters finally saunter down to get the information.

Lucious tells them about Eddie who's been lurking around every time someone goes missing, and the geek squad does their thing, revealing he is the werewolf. Which is a big deal, but they are in for a surprise when they meet Eddie.

His alcoholism is a real monkey on his back.

We jump to Dracula's lair, which is just some geek’s basement, where he reveals his evil plan to cover the world in darkness, as one does. He then kills the two agents, and Funkenstein spins some mad beats.

Our zeroes show up and are shocked to discover the dead bodies of their fellow agents, until Bonejack laughs it off and treats them like the losers they are.

They're still unsure whose lair they've found, because this clearly goes beyond Eddie, and if only there was some sort of clue...

It's the crude hand drawn nature of it that kills me.

While Bonejack and Teenape react to the sign, Brandy wanders away. She is drawn by some unseen force, and runs into Dracula, who further elaborates on his plan; the pendant she wears, which she got from a long gone father/boyfriend, is the Amulet of Doom, which will enable him to do that spreading darkness thing.

And yes, I know what I typed about who she got it from, yes the movie goes there.

BJ and the Bear realise Brandy's gone missing, and sucker punch Dracula hard enough so they can flee.

Meanwhile, the ...C Squad? D? show up at the cemetery to try and find the PIA's base of operations.

We have to be back before 7, that's when my mom is picking us up.

The kids find their way in, and run into Teenape getting laid out by Brandy, for being an animal. At least we're starting to condense the plots slightly.

After some discussion of possibly murdering the kids, they agree to all team up, because why not at this point? Teenape declares that destruction is their middle name, and we get the title drop. They worked hard for that.

They head to a warehouse, because that's where all movies climax at, and the team has a fight with the Drac Pack.

Amidst the fighting, Dracula summons Brandy over and uses his vampire wiles on her. Bonejack shoots Wolfman in the back of the head, but he doesn't fare so well against Funkenstein.

Funky knocks BJ to the ground, and to find the will and power to overcome, Bonejack calls upon the power of Bill Cosby. Hhhh. This is not a joke that has aged well. But also....in this movie, with it's puerile sense of humour? Somehow still works??

Once Funkenstein is down, Brandy is about to succumb to Dracula. Bonejack tosses Chekov's tech gadget to her, and she stabs it into the vampire's chest.

The movie should be over at this point, and it even plays like it's going to end and Dracula's dead, but JUST before the credits roll, Dracula jumps back up, says you cannot stop the Dracula...and the credits roll, denying us of any actual conclusion.

Bad guy's not dead, but there's still no more movie left

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Looks pretty decent, about average for an early 2000s shot on video movie.

Audio: Sounds fine

Sound Bite: I’ll give the movie this, it had a lot of memorable lines in it, and I can’t pick just one.

“Christopher Lee would not reveal his true wizard form to the Italians!"

"Boobs and gents, we got ourselves the wolfman!"

"You get to see Dracula rise up and take over your fair city! And cover it in everlasting darkness, like glaze on a porn star's tits!"

Body Count: An all right amount of death, even if a few come back, and most of the rest is from the climax.

1 - Almost 12 long minutes before Dracula kills one of his strippers
2 - And then the second one immediately after.
3 and 4 - Thunderball and Budnick get killed by Dracula's vampire brides
5 - Mowgli kills a monster
6 - And then another
7 - TeenApe kills another monste
8 - The Werewolf gets shot in the head by Bonejack
9 - Bonejack kills Funkenstein

Best Corpse: Eddie’s death is the best. It’s a bit brutal and in your face, and the blood splashed from his brains is good. There is something I like better, but Dracula’s melty, oozing death is immediately undone, so I don’t count it.

Blood Type - B: I’ll give the movie this, it packs in quite a bit of blood. Every death gives a good splash, ther’s a dick removal, Mowgli gets drenched, and that oozing almost-death again. Solid effects work.

Sex Appeal: Lots of boobs but little to no outright nudity.

Drink Up! Every time you hear “FUNKENSTEIN!”
Every time a woman is called a “bovine”.

Movie Review: I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t like this. But…I do respect it. It’s sense of humour is just one that I don’t vibe with, and I don’t think has aged very well. It’s that trying to be edgy by saying bad words, and doing random stuff for randomness’ sake. But the acting is actually nicely camp, and you can tell most of that is by design, or choice. The movie looks cheap and uses items and locations they have available to them, and it’s that sort of “friends getting together to fight in their backyards” sort of feeling that I do enjoy. The movie may not be to my liking, but I do like that it exists, and it wasn’t completely devoid of entertainment. Chris Seaver has a skewed vision here, and he’s making the movies he wants to make. Two out of five passion flakeys.

Entertainment Value: Setting aside my own issues with the humour, there are people who will be amused by these shenanigans, and I did find myself warming to them a LITTLE more during my repeated viewings, once I was down with the ridiculousness. I did get a few laughs from the movie, and again, the villains are a real highlight. I wish we could have more with Dracula and Funkenstein. I did also discover this is part of Seaver’s wider cinematic universe, with Bonejack and Teenape making multiple appearances. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little curious to see more of their adventures, and flesh out their backstories and lore. This movie is deeply ridiculous and stupid, but it’s not trying to be anything but that, so it’s hard to fault it for being what it wants to be. How do you criticise a movie knowingly having a character called Teenape who is a guy dresed in a cheap monkey mask and furry gloves? Two out of five amulets of doom.