(2019)
Dir - Tom Fanslou
Overall: MEH
The mixed bag trajectory of the nada-budgeted Bad Ben series continues with Bad Ben: The Haunted Highway. Here, Tom Fanslou takes a much needed new angle by leaving the haunted house on Steelmanville Road, (even though we make a few trips there anyway), and instead follows his on-screen counterpart Tom Riley around in his new job as an Ubber-type driver who has a busy supernatural evening on Halloween night. The tone is exclusively goofy and for his part as our increasingly aggravated host, Fanslou is hilarious as he exhibits a combination of nonchalant and "Dude what the fuck was that?" befuddlement over every ridiculous thing that keeps happening to him. This includes taking three different people to his old abode, (one of whom is a vampire), venturing in there like an idiot to find pairs of boots chasing him, hitting a dog with his van that turns into a naked guy because werewolves, dropping a dude off for a presumed fuck date in the middle of the woods and then picking up the woman that he presumably met up with who has his severed head in a bag, running over a clown scarecrow that comes alive, and finally meeting up with two parallel universe versions of himself while trying to get gas. Any sense of logic is nonexistent and it starts to feel its length after awhile, but Fanslou's comedic chops are in fine form, plus he seems to be having a ball by changing it up for once.
(2020)
Dir - Tom Fanslou
Overall: WOOF
An hour and forty-eight minutes of Tom Fanslou watching zoom calls and jumping back in his chair going "What the fuck was that?!?" is the gist of his eighth Bad Ben installment Bad Ben: Pandemic. It becomes clear from the onset that most if not all of the segments were filmed separately and not in the video call format in which they are presented, since Fanslou talks to whoever is on the other line without them answering him or acknowledging his questions or comments. Judging by the title and because 2020, the premise is that everyone is cooped up in their homes bored and/or going stir crazy, so Fanslou's charming now-paranormal investigator offers his services online to help anyone out there with whatever bumps in the night issues they may be experiencing during the COVID-19 lockdown. It is a nice idea on paper to get the fans involved while people were quarantined, cobbling a series of their homemade movies together instead of just having Fanslou wander around his own house again. Our cranky host does have a couple of funny lines and reactions, but the framework here is terrible due to the painful repetitiveness and poor execution of each video call. All of them feature a combination of some family member not being home for days or acting strange, vague sounds that they go investigate, someone in a cheap grim reaper or clown mask standing in the background, people finding doors closed or items moved, and each one ending with a jump scare, scream, and static freeze frame. It would work better as a twenty-minute holdover in between proper full-lengths instead of literally being the longest entry thus far.
(2021)
Dir - Tom Fanslou
Overall: MEH
Now back to Tom Fanslou wandering around his house talking to himself. After two installments that at least broke up the form, Bad Ben: Benign returns to basics, too basic in fact since his running-on-empty trajectory becomes more crystalized here. Fanslou's frustrated yet nonchalant reactions to his never-ending supernatural predicaments are still routinely hilarious, but at this point they are the only redeeming qualities. The "scary" bits are merely retreads of gags that he has already utilized ad nauseam, his built-up mythology is dead in the water, and his sense of pacing therefor suffers considerably from the "been there, done that" approach. To be fair, we do get some new and improved special effects like the disembodied head of a former "Druggo Jesus" priest and his sentient severed hand ala-Thing from The Addams Family, but most of the CGI looks charmingly lousy at best. Fanslou goes up against Pazuzu himself here, (plus a creepy doll and another guy in a Spirit Halloween clown costume), before some more parallel universe Toms eventually show up to get us to the finish line, which has a twist, is one of the silliest so far, and does not deserve spoiling. The comedic angle was always there with these movies, and this one leans into it with abandon at regular intervals, but the structure is still on rinse and repeat too much to make this something recommendable to the non-converted.
