LePumice pushes the cart full of acid washed denim toward the main gates of the stadium. Sweat is beading on his forehead and he whispers quietly to the hidden Jamie and Patrick, “You guys sure this is going to work?” Patrick assures him that it will. They know PaJama ParTy’s biggest weakness was their shopaholism. “We were what the kids call ‘clothes horses.’ We had to have a metric ton of denim freshly acid washed for every show,” Patrick recalls fondly. As they get closer they hear a gruff voice. “You there, stop, what do you think you’re doing?” LePumice looks on the verge of bolting but stands his ground. A security guard looks suspiciously at the crate of denim. “Aren’t you going to take this other crate, too? Or are you just gonna leave it for me?” The guard points at another nearby crate. Phew. “Wait a second,” the guard says, suspicion aglow once again in his eyes, “This is a mighty large amount of freshly acid washed denim for just one show, isn’t it? They usually only need half this much.” Patrick and Jamie hold their breath in anticipation. What will LePumice come up with? “Right… uh, but it’s pretty steamy out here tonight so they are anticipating they’ll be sweating through double the number of jorts.” They let out a collective breath. Clever. And indeed the guard dabs his head and agrees that they don’t make jorts like they used to. Once inside LePumice hurries to the nearby wardrobe room before his legs give out. Patrick leaps out of the crate, but before he reaches the door Jamie stops him. “Wait, something… something is off,” he thinks for a moment, “I don’t know what it is, but something is different. I can feel it in my bones.” That’s right! We are watching Bones! (“What’s that?” all our loyal readers say at once) You don’t know what that is? Why it’s the cult classic Snoop Dogg horror film from the early 2000s… … … you know what it really doesn’t matter. We’re watching it anyway. Let’s go!
Bones (2001) – BMeTric: 56.5; Notability: 29
StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 6.4%; Notability: top 28.8%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 23.0%; Higher BMeT: Glitter, Jason X, Freddy Got Fingered, Driven, The Animal, Ghosts of Mars, Black Knight, Valentine, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, Soul Survivors, Monkeybone, The Musketeer, Corky Romano, Scary Movie 2, The Wedding Planner, Bones; Higher Notability: Pearl Harbor, Monkeybone, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Hannibal, Impostor, Ghosts of Mars, Not Another Teen Movie, Bubble Boy, Swordfish, 15 Minutes, The One, Town & Country, The Affair of the Necklace, Scary Movie 2, I Am Sam, America’s Sweethearts, Along Came a Spider, Perfume, Texas Rangers, Joe Dirt, and 52 more; Lower RT: Nobody’s Baby, Texas Rangers, Soul Survivors, Glitter, Corky Romano, The Forsaken, Summer Catch, The Wash, Out Cold, Say It Isn’t So, Joe Dirt, Head Over Heels, Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, Freddy Got Fingered, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, The Musketeer, Perfume, Double Take, Valentine, and 35 more; Notes: Actually a really solid BMeTric and Notability for a film I basically never heard of. Probably a testament to the BMeTric where you can find sub-5.0 films with <10K votes and it registers so high. Just saying.
Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – Tow young suburban brothers (in both senses) buy a dilapidated ghetto brownstone in hopes of turning it into a trendy nightspot … but their entrepreneur father is panicked about the house’s sinister history and his own participation in the 1979 slaying of its original owner (Dogg), who’s now a ghost. If grossness makes you giggle, this speedy junk has a few grotesque jolts, plus the sight of still-shapely Grier to keep your own dad’s heart beating adequately.
(“Who’s now a ghost”? I’m in. Just such a funny line. If you remove just that bit you would never know that Snoop Dogg is even really in the film, it would just sound like an odd murder mystery or true crime thriller or something.)
Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z8Srxaoi48/
(Oh boy, the style of this film is something else. It also is mind blowing that this trailer from 2001 is in 4:3 format. It is an interesting haunted house idea, feels like they were trying to go for Candyman but just went a bit cheap.)
Directors – Ernest R. Dickerson – ( Known For: Juice; Double Play; Ambushed; Blind Faith; Future BMT: Surviving the Game; Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight; BMT: Bulletproof; Bones; Never Die Alone; Notes: A frequent Cinematographer for Spike Lee, he was the first African-American member of the American Society of Cinematographers.)
Writers – Adam Simon – ( Known For: Books of Blood; Brain Dead; Carnosaur; BMT: The Haunting in Connecticut; Bones; Notes: In writing Shadowman which is about a possessed Jazz musician based on a Valiant Comics character, which is kind of cool.)
Tim Metcalfe – ( Known For: Revenge of the Nerds; Kalifornia; Fright Night Part 2; Higher Ground; Three for the Road; Killer: A Journal of Murder; Iron Maze; Future BMT: Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise; Million Dollar Mystery; BMT: The Haunting in Connecticut; Bones; Notes: Most of his credits have to do with writing the original Revenge of the Nerds film. He evidently because Simon’s writing partner later on, and hasn’t written anything since 2011.)
Actors – Snoop Dogg – ( Known For: Training Day; Pitch Perfect 2; The Addams Family; The Beach Bum; Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping; Starsky & Hutch; Baby Boy; The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run; Dolemite Is My Name; Turbo; Future World; Trouble; Arthur et la vengeance de Maltazard; The Big Bang; Mac & Devin Go to High School; Pauly Shore Is Dead; Hood of Horror; Ride; Falling Up; Singh Is King; Future BMT: The Addams Family 2; Half Baked; Malibu’s Most Wanted; Arthur and the Invisibles; Soul Plane; Racing Stripes; Meet the Blacks; The Wash; I Got the Hook Up; Caught Up; BMT: Scary Movie V; Bones; Notes: Y’all know Snoop Dogg. Killed it at the Superbowl this year and notably (and briefly) changed his name to Snoop Lion at one point.)
Pam Grier – ( Known For: Jackie Brown; Mars Attacks!; The Vindicator; Escape from L.A.; Holy Smoke; The Man with the Iron Fists; Foxy Brown; Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey; Above the Law; Something Wicked This Way Comes; Coffy; Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; The Package; Class of 1999; The Big Bird Cage; The Arena; The Big Doll House; ‘Sheba, Baby’; Just Wright; Women in Cages; Future BMT: Jawbreaker; Snow Day; Larry Crowne; Poms; Posse; The Allnighter; In Too Deep; BMT: Ghosts of Mars; The Adventures of Pluto Nash; Bones; Notes: Was a major blaxploitation actress of the 70s, and then famously starred in Jackie Brown a homage to that era. Was diagnosed with cancer in 1988, but survived.)
Michael T. Weiss – ( Known For: Ordinary People; Freeway; Jeffrey; Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby; Confessions of an Action Star; Until the Night; Iowa; Net Worth; BMT: Sex and the City 2; Bones; Notes: Mostly does voice work these days and apparently is a personal trainer to other actors as well.)
Budget/Gross – $16,000,000 / Domestic: $7,316,658 (Worldwide: $8,378,853)
(Disastrous, but I’m also highly skeptical of that budget. It seems unlikely they forked over $15 million+ for a haunted house film starring notable non-actor Snoop Dogg.)
Rotten Tomatoes – 25% (18/71): Slow to start, the sleek looking Bones is more silly than scary.
(At least it is sleek looking though. That seems somewhat promising.)
Reviewer Highlight: A garish, grotesque slab of silliness drowned in bloody visual effects overkill with an end result that is more horrible than horrific. – Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter
Poster – Boners
(I dig it. I think the only odd thing about it is that they treat Snoop Dogg like he’s a) the star of the film and b) the equivalent of Kevin Costner in star power. But the color is nice, the font is cool and sure, Snoop Dogg is the draw here. B+)
Tagline(s) – This Halloween, unleash the Dogg. (C+)
(I guess a play on unleash the hounds. That’s a phrase, right? Or is it release the hounds? I’m not sure it matters because this is a weird tagline. Short and going for something, but not good.)
Keyword(s) – blaxploitation
Top 10: Django Unchained (2012), Black Panther (2018), Jackie Brown (1997), Candyman (2021), Boyz n the Hood (1991), Black and Blue (2019), Straight Outta Compton (2015), Black Snake Moan (2006), The Last Dragon (1985), The First Purge (2018)
Future BMT: 48.5 Pootie Tang (2001), 42.6 Love Don’t Cost a Thing (2003), 37.8 Action Jackson (1988), 29.1 Waist Deep (2006), 25.3 Breakin’ (1984)
BMT: Shaft (2019), Alex Cross (2012), Proud Mary (2018), Steel (1997), Bones (2001), Never Die Alone (2004)
Matches: Dolemite Is My Name (2019), I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), The Hebrew Hammer (2003), Naked Acts (1996), Willa Mae, the Church Lady Vampire Slayer (2009)
(Interesting that it pretty much died after the mid-90s right after on of the better examples of blaxploitation homage in Jackie Brown. Alex Cross isn’t blaxploitation though, so I’m also a bit skeptical of the keyword in general.)
Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 15) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Pam Grier is No. 2 billed in Bones and No. 5 billed in Ghosts of Mars, which also stars Jason Statham (No. 3 billed) who is in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (No. 1 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (2 + 5) + (3 + 1) + (3 + 1) = 15. There is no shorter path at the moment.
Notes – This was the first time where Snoop Dogg and Pam Grier collaborated together on film – they have done music videos since 1993.
Snoop Dogg and Pam Grier play lovers who are supposed to be the same age. In reality, Grier was born in 1949 and Snoop Dogg was born in 1971 (a 22-year age difference).
Ernest Dickerson’s original cut was structured more like a classical horror movie. The movie was meant to be slow build but the studio wanted a more modern approach.
Bad Movie Twins 