Winner in the category for "Most Promising Horror Film with the Lamest Sounding Title" is clearly this low budget film called… Splinter? Yes, Splinter.

The title immediately conjures up images of a red-faced toddler running screaming through his backyard into… the waiting arms of his caring mother who quickly removes the offendeing sliver, dabs on some Neosporin and then pats him on the head.

Not exactly blood-curdling stuff. Is there a scary splinter scenario? I’m trying to think of one and coming up empty. Tough to base a horror premise around a situation ranking just below “banging your shin” on the fear scale (fear-ometer?).

I know nothing about this film that’s not included in the trailer (though that's more than enough to justify seeing it). In fact, I Googled it after watching and was blown away to see both Tom Sizemore and Edward James Olmos listed on the IMDB page. “Holy shit,” I thought. “Those two bad-asses are in it and they don’t even mention it?” Are they The Splinter? Do they get splinters? Does one of them play that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rat guy?

Sadly, I had erred. No such pile of awesomeness exists. I had accidentally clicked on the imdb page for the 2006 version of Splinter. A film that is summarized there with the following opener: “On the mean streets of LA, two gangsters…” That sentence doesn’t end with “get eaten by some ten-foot tall, tree-based monster.” So I got the hell out of there. Back to the real Splinter.

This is one of my favorite styles of horror film. The “introduce tough guy who is then dwarfed by some larger, actual tough guy.” Similar to the great From Dusk Till Dawn, which introduced bad-ass criminals who are then topped by crazy ferocious vampires. One of whom is also Tom Savini. Same here. Introduce crooks, top them with the unseen, TBD tree-beast. Or is it a zombie type tree virus? I’m not sure. LOOK, IT HAS SPLINTERS, ALRIGHT!!! What more do you want???

They really missed the boat on taglines though. They went with: “It will get under your skin.” Not bad, but I’d have gone with:

“This fall… get the tweezers.”

Or

“Get ready for pain… equivalent to that of a paper cut.”

Or maybe

“Prepare yourself… for a persistent nagging itch from where a sliver of wood once was.”

Bonus points for making it a story contained almost entirely in a gas station mini-mart. Like Dawn of the Dawn, only tiny, and probably nowhere near as good.

The only real negative: guy number one saying, “Uh, I think I’m gonna like camping,” after his girlfriend kisses him against the car. Seriously? What’s wrong with you? You’re making a connection there. Why not, [KISS] "I think I’m gonna like eating dinner." [KISS] "I think I’m gonna like nuclear physics." [KISS] "Kissing preceding anything indicates the thing that follows is prettttty cool. [KISS] "Oh, and I think I'm gonna like teaching old ladies about the Internet."

I’ll still see it though. Oh, I’ll see it, alright. It’s Halloween-time, come on…


TheCoolerKIng's column appears each Sunday at SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for further reading. He's also doing this: HowToBeatUpAnything