Bones

STARRING
Snoop Dogg as Jimmy Bones
Pam Grier as Pearl
Michael T. Weiss as Lupovich
Clinton Powell as Jeremiah Peet
Ricky Harris as Eddie Mack
Bianca Lawson as Cynthia
Khalil Kain as Patrick Peet
Merwin Mondesir as Bill Peet
Katharine Isabelle as Tia Peet

THE TAP

Like the Godawful movie, Killjoy, Bones is another attempt to make an Urban Horror Movie. Unlike Killjoy, Bones doesn't suck like fifteen black holes on steroids. It also had the benefit of having people that can act and some recognizable names starring in it. Most people know who Snoop Dogg is even if they don't listen to rap music. Pam Grier is a veteran of the 70's Blaxploitation craze and Katharine Isabelle has been in a few horror movies (Freddy vs Jason, Ginger Snaps) so she's known to fans of the genre.

"This is the story of Jimmy Bones, Black as night and hard as stone…"

In 1979 a numbers runner named Jimmy Bones (Snoop Dogg) was the big fish in his little pond. He had fancy clothes, nice cars and a brownstone that resembled a small castle in his neighborhood. His main squeeze was the fine-looking Pearl (Pam Grier), a local Psychic and Tarot Card reader. The people loved him also, since he was generous with his money. In a way, he was sort of a ghetto-criminal-Robin Hood. Of course, the problem with being the man on the top is that there will always be people that want to take your place.

Enter Jimmy's friend Jeremiah. He wasn't a Bull frog, but he was envious of Jimmy's money and reputation. Jeremiah sets up a meeting in Jimmy's house with Eddie Mack and a crooked cop named Lupovich. They want to get into the drug business and need Jimmy's resources to make it work, but Jimmy refuses. He might run numbers but he won't peddle poison to "his people". Jeremiah is disappointed as he saw this as a way to get from under Jimmy's shadow, but Eddie Mack and Lupovich are enraged at Jimmy's dismissal of the idea. Mack and Lupovich get the drop on Jimmy's bodyguard, Shotgun, and shoot him just as Pearl walks in. In order to force Shotgun, Jeremiah and Pearl to keep their silence Lupovich forces them to stab the slowly dying Jimmy with his own knife repeatedly by gunpoint. This makes them complicit in his murder, he tells them. (Yeah, that doesn't seem like it would hold up in court to me either, but I didn't write the dang thing)

Flash forward to the present, or at least 2001. Pearl still lives in the neighborhood with her daughter, Cynthia, fathered by Jimmy before his death. Shotgun lives directly across the street from Jimmy's brownstone which has been abandoned for decades. The neighborhood has fallen into crime, drugs and decay and Jeremiah no longer lives there. He's used his money from the drug scheme to go legit and now has a family, two sons Patrick and Billy and a daughter by marriage, Tia. His kids and their friend Maurice have dreams of running a hip-hop nightclub and behind their father's back they've purchased and begun renovating Jimmy's old home. But in doing so they've disturbed Jimmy's vengeful spirit. That may be because the original murderers buried him in the basement! (and they didn't even do that good a job of it) At first Jimmy can only manifest himself as a black dog, that Tia adopts for …um…reasons. (don't ask me, as I said I didn't write the thing) but as the dog eats, Jimmy's corpse slowly-sorta-comes back to life.

This guarantees them the most exciting grand opening night of all, as the very first time their new club opens Jimmy's resurrection is complete and all hell breaks loose. Jimmy makes his grand appearance by dog-murdering Maurice, killing Billy and burning the place to the ground while the ceiling rains maggots and Jimmy triumphantly appears to the scared-shitless-party crowd. He then goes after the men that were responsible for his death….and when I say those that were responsible for his death I mean basically anyone with the misfortune of being around them, too.

Bones didn't do too well at the Box Office but truth be told it's not really a bad movie. It's no masterpiece but it is no worse than many other horror movies out there. In my opinion it's got a lot of things going for it over the average B-list Horror movie. There aren't really any "Cat-jumps-out-of-a-cupboard" jump scares in it. I've seen movies where 75% of the "thrills" are false alarms. Bones doesn't do that much, and that's a good thing. It does drag at first while the story is being set up, but once Jimmy Bones starts his revenge killing it doesn't slow down. It doesn't matter that the premise is shaky (In 20 years no one figured to look in the basement to find the body?) movies like this only need a flimsy reason for there to be a ghost. It's not an episode of Law & Order.

On the weak side, there aren't any sympathetic characters. Even if he wasn't a brutal thug that refused to sell drugs, Jimmy Bones was still a criminal, and when he comes back from the dead he kills a few people that didn't deserve to die. Even Pearl isn't totally sympathetic…she and Shotgun never revealed the truth of the murder and left his dead body to rot in the basement. I mean, geez, even if you gloss over the many reasons Lupovich's attempt to implicate them in the murder, couldn't they at least have tried to get a decent burial for the guy?

Katharine Isabelle is completely wasted in the movie. She's just there to be "the white chick" and she practically vanishes from the movie after the first act. When Lupovich first meets her he says "Nice Rack". I guess that's what they wanted her for.

LET'S DO SOME SHOTS

1.) Tia opens a door in the long abandoned building that was once Jimmy Bones house and is confronted by a scruffy, large black dog. Her first reaction? To ask "How long have you been in here?". A better question would be "How did you get in here?". The dog couldn't have turned the knob.
• How did Patrick buy Jimmy Bone's old house without his father, Jeremiah, knowing about it if his father owns the building? I'm hoping the movie will explain that at some point. But I'd also like to know why he would do that without having it inspected or inspecting the place himself first! He plans to open a club in it, right? That requires licenses, insurance, etc....stuff that would require the place to be inspected by the city and contractors. Yet he didn't know about the labyrinth under the basement and the human bones buried there. (AVERTED: Patrick tells his father he went through a broker so dear old dad wouldn't know it was him...still, that doesn't explain how his father didn't know that someone brought the building. If Jeremiah didn't want the building to ever be sold, couldn't he have just told his holding company that it's not for sale to anyone, ever?)
• Where did Patrick get the money to buy the place anyway? I don't care how run down the neighborhood is, it couldn't have been THAT cheap.
• Tia's the only one that has common sense and brains when they find the remains of Jimmy Bones. She wants to call the police but the others are all like "But then we won't get a permit!". You're not going to get a permit anyway, nitwits. As soon as a building inspector comes over to approve the place HE's going to find the body. (Obviously they got a permit, because the club opens, but that means the city's building inspector should be fired)

2.) Pam Grier's character, Pearl, is one of those movie psychics that really does have psychic powers but everyone else believes she's faking it. I had two aunts that used to tell me they saw spirits and it used to creep me out. I'd never want that kind of psychic power. I'm jumpy enough as it is, if I started seeing dead people all of the time I'd go stark raving bonkers.
• The scene where Pearl is looking at an old photograph of Jimmy Bones and the picture turns its head to stare back at her was genuinely creepy. Gotta give credit where credit is due.
• No matter how many times Pearl tells her daughter, Cynthia to stay away from Jimmy Bone's old house she goes over there anyway. If you're not going to actually do anything to stop her, you might as well stop saying it, lady.

3.) There's a gigantic Mac-truck sized plothole in Lupovich's plan to cover up the murder of Jimmy Bones. After he and Eddie Mack shoot Jimmy and he lay dying on the floor they force Jeremiah, Pearl and Jimmy's bodyguard to stab him with his own butterfly knife with the intention to make it look like they all conspired to kill him. But there is really nothing stopping any of them from going to the police later and explaining that. Lupovich and Eddie Mack's bullets are in the body. It'd be obvious to the Medical Examiner that Jimmy was shot first then stabbed and the others had no reason at all to kill him, especially Pearl.

4.) Patrick finds the dog "Bones" eating the newly deceased Maurice upstairs...then the dog's face kinda morphs into Snoop Dogg's face and he says "the gangsta of love don't eat no fried chicken!" . I'm just wondering how Patrick managed to not crap his pants. I mean, I caught my own dog eating a dead frog once. If he had looked up and said "The gangsta of love don't eat no fried chicken" then I'd have emptied my bladder on the spot.
• You know how Godzilla opens his mouth and shoots radioactive fire from his maw? The dog does this but shoot maggots at Patrick. A lot of maggots in a steady stream. It's freakin' hilarious.

5.) When Jimmy Bones comes back from the dead and goes to kill his old bodyguard, Shotgun, the man realistically begs for mercy. He even asks Jimmy "What else could I have done!?" Jimmy tells him "You could have died with me!". Gosh, Jimmy, selfish much? That's not much of a choice.
• If Jimmy had said "You could have gone to the police afterwards and told them what happened to me!" he'd be more sympathetic.
• For that matter, most of Jimmy's victims are either directly responsible for his murder or scum of the earth drug dealers. With a few exceptions, like Eddie Mack's girlfriend, (she might have been trashy, but she didn't do anything to Jimmy Bones) none of them are exactly innocent. Even Maurice doesn't count...he stole Jimmy's ring off of his dead corpse. Thats pretty much like asking to be ghost-murdered.
• When Shotgun dies it's the fakest blood I've seen in a long time.

6.) Eddie Mack is one of those "special kind" of blockheads. He knows Jimmy is dead, seeing as he was one of the people that murdered him more than 20 years ago. But when Jimmy's ghost comes for his revenge he brags about putting holes in his chest and tries to shoot him. Bro', YOU KNOW he's a ghost. Did you really think those bullets were going to do anything? Did you expect his Jimmy's spirit to go "AAARGH! Ya got me!" and fall over? Moron.

7.) Note to Self: If I ever find myself as a temporary visitor to the Hoary Netherworld do not follow the ghost of any friends that may have passed on. They've either become evil or they're a monster in disguise that will lead me to my doom.

HANGOVER MOMENTS

♦ The moment the gang finds the remains of Jimmy Bones is when they all went from somewhat shallow 20-somethings of perhaps reasonable intelligence to Idiot, Ghoulish Knuckleheads. Only Tia thinks it's a good idea to tell the authorities at first. Patrick wants to take care of it after the weekend. (Hey, it's just a dead body that was obviously murdered, it can wait!), Cynthia SEES Jimmy Bone's spirit lurking in the corner and says nothing and Maurice thinks its a good idea to take the diamond ring off of Jimmy Bone's cold dead finger. These kids are begging to be haunted.

♦ Somehow, when the black dog eats, it makes Jimmy Bone's remains grow flesh and organs, "bringing him back to life" or something. How? Why? We don't see Jimmy Bones in any flashback owning a dog. I don't get the connection. Yeah, I've read that the dog is supposed to be the manifestation of Jimmy's ghost, but Cynthia SAW his ghost in the cellar and he was a man then. Why would his spirit manifest itself as a dog just so it could eat and somehow make his remains grow flesh? If he can already be in the physical world as a dog why not be a man already?
♦ The dog is fed raw meat in his bowl, presumably by Tia. Why would she feed the dog raw, fresh meat? If you're going to go to a grocery store to get meat why not get dog food? Save the beef for youself, honey, get Purina for the dog.

FAMILIAR TROPES

Here are some tropes that fit this movie:
As mentioned, most of Bone's victims are criminals so they fit into the categhory of Asshole Victims.
While it's hard to feel bad for Bones sending Lupovich, Jeremiah and Eddie Mack to hell, Shotgun and Pearl didn't wish Jimmy any harm, they were given a Sadistic Choice
Jimmy Bones had no reason to kill Eddie Mack's girlfriend, or Maurice except to hurt his real enemies in Revenge by Proxy

THE BAR TAB

I'm not a big fan of rap music myself, but thats fine as there really isn't a lot of rapping going on in the movie. Snoop Dogg may not be an actor, but he did well enough in this movie. This is the kind of movie you watch and just accept it for what it is. So turn off your brain for minute and enjoy these four beers.

Back to the top