(2022)
Dir - Tom Fanslou
Overall: MEH
There are some fun moments in the tenth installment to Tom Fanslou's relentless Bad Ben franchise, but it also drags at regular intervals and overstays its welcome. Some could argue that the entire series has overstayed its welcome by this point, and no one could fault anyone for dropping out before making it this far. For those who keep checking in every year to see what more goofy, micro-budgeted nonsense Fanslou has conjured up in his ever-expanding narrative, Bad Ben: Eulogy offers another formula detour and an appreciated one following the previous year's paint-by-numbers Bad Bed: Benign. At the end of that film, Fanslou's schubby paranormal investigator died and went to hell, this episode delivering on its title and serving as a compilation eulogy that cobbles together various footage from past clients of his, all of whom have less than flattering things to say about his ghost/demon/big foot-exorcism methods. Many of these vignettes are amusing, showcasing just how much of a clueless dope Tom Riley is as he bumbles his way through one supernatural event after the other, usually making things worse for the people who call on him for his assistance. A podcaster has cobbled together the footage in his attempts to understand Riley's legacy, ultimately leading to a finale that was predictably teased at and leads us right into the same year's Bad Ben: Undead.
(2022)
Dir - Tom Fanslou
Overall: WOOF
Tom Fanslou has never made any claims to be a found footage Orson Welles, but his work here in the eleventh Bad Ben movie seriously raises questions as to his directorial abilities or more to the point, his lack-thereof. Bad Ben: Undead rides that razor-thin line of a movie that has such major problems that one has to wonder, (or at least hope), that the lone creative voice behind it was in on the joke and merely pulling a con on his audience. Namely, the pacing is so redundant that it becomes comical long before a segment hits about an hour in that is either one of the funniest elongated gags in film history or one of the biggest laps in judgement on the filmmaker's part. It is an expository dialog dump for the books, one that manages to shoehorn in presumably every Bad Ben fan, financial backer, or buddy that Fanslou possibly could into a hysterically monotonous name-dropping sequence that goes on for nearly twenty goddamn minutes. Whether or not Fanslou meant for it to obliterate any narrative momentum is up for debate, but in any even, this moment alone is worth the price of admission, something that puts the whole movie in the "so bad it's good" category. Elsewhere, Fanslou's Tom Riley comes back to life, (it's a long story), visits a zoo, acts like a crotchety asshole, puts on a purposely amusing and ill-fitting pink shirt at one point, and roams around the woods with two other dipshits while people in, (very), cheap Halloween masks are supposed to be zombies slowly lurching at them. Fanslou is taking the piss out of himself as much as ever, but how much comedy is here on purpose as opposed to how much is on account of him not knowing what the hell he is doing is the real question.
(2023)
Dir - Tom Fanslou
Overall: WOOF
Though he does not do it nearly as hilariously as he did in the previous year's abysmal Bad Ben: Undead, Tom Fanslou still egregiously shoehorns in his financial backers in order to balloon up the running time in Bad Ben: Alien Agenda. An inevitable avenue to cross with these movies was giving them some kind of sci-fi angle since every other genre premise is getting checked off the list, but anyone expecting this to be a trek through the cosmos where Fanslou and his partner in boredom three movies running Scott Tomlinson run away from little green men while filming the evidence will be grossly disappointed. Instead, Fanslou and Tomlinson arrive back on earth within the first few minutes after being abducted at the end of the previous film, only to just slum around the woods or his Morgan Freedman talking car, (voiced by Red Letter Media's favorite guest Josh Robert Thompson), while frequently cutting away to fans of the series who donated money. Fanslou is getting more incompetent, lazy, and less funny as he continues to churn these indie franchise installments out, shooting long endless takes as he prattles on with lore, stumbles his lines, and forces Tomlinson to stand or sit there uncomfortably as he tries to act remotely interested. Whereas the series was originally a clever send up of found footage/haunted house tropes, and Fanslou's average Joe schlubbiness has always been consistently hilariously, he seems to be begrudgingly churning this one out. Even scrapping the barrel with the same shit different movie routine would be preferable to whatever zero effort agenda he has going on here, the longest and worst of the lot.
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