Meyer Threat

Waif Me

2011-10-28T16:52:00.012-04:00

Sucker Punch (2011)

What have I done to deserve this? Sucker Punch is like watching someone play a video game except without one person in the room enjoying themselves. "Babydoll" is a young girl who is institutionalized after she accidentally kills her sister (tries to kill her stepfather, fails). The girl looks so young that I thought she was handed over to an orphanage but apparently it's an asylum...that happens to be filled to the brim with other jailbait-looking chicks. And they're all getting raped. Apparently. It's hard to tell. They are forced into burlesque performances, which is certainly similar. Once this is all established, we are thrown into Babydoll's fantasy world where all the girls defeat various villains to the soundtrack of every song I like done horribly ("Where is My Mind?," "Search and Destroy," "White Rabbit," "Tomorrow Never Knows" - all brought to us via unbearable cover versions). This series of fantasy battles is all supposed to lead to their eventual escape. To say that this movie is tedious would be an understatement. Visually, it's okay. It's very silly looking but I suppose the effects might be sort of interesting if there was a story worth being interested in. Really, the movie's just masturbation fodder for dirty old men disguised as female empowerment for teenage girls. I like a couple of a Zack Snyder's other movies (particularly Dawn of the Dead and The Watchmen) but this is one colossal misstep in his career. It's a fucking mess.

*1/2

Straw Dogs (1971)

While we're on the subject of rape (fun!), let's talk about Straw Dogs, the 1971 Peckinpah film that's recently been remade. I had never seen this movie (in fact, the only Peckinpah movie I have seen is The Wild Bunch) but when I saw it was released on Blu-ray, I decided to give it a whirl. Dustin Hoffman plays an American mathematician named David Sumner. He and his young English wife Amy move to England to settle in an old-timey rural home. David hires some locals to do some repairs on the property and their encounters are awkward (to say the least) as they're constantly eyeballing the wife while making David feel like less of a manly man. This is a really terrific, suspenseful film but I feel like the rape scene is a little too ambiguous for my tastes. I got kind of a "She asked for it"/"She liked it" vibe. And it seems to propose that the road to true manliness is paved with smacking with your wife. I might be way off but I also know I'm not alone in these interpretations. Still, Peckinpah was a masterful filmmaker and touches of genius are certainly found here, if you can get past some of the more troubling aspects of the film.

***

Irreversible (2002)

There's no mistaking the rape in this movie - it's right there in front of you for a good ten minutes. And it is goddamn brutal. Rape is obviously a very ugly and upsetting thing and director Gaspar Noe portrays it as such. Not for the faint of heart and I think this might be a film that victims of sexual assault may want to proceed with caution here. And this is not to say there isn't more to Irreversible than the notorious rape scene. The movie begins with two older men talking about sex before cutting to a man (played by Vincent Cassel) being lead out of a club on a stretcher. We begin to see that the story is being told in reverse chronological order - the beginning is the end, the end is the beginning. Marcus (Cassel) is searching for a man named Le Tenia, whose skull is crushed by a fire extinguisher, courtesy of Pierre who is with Marcus on the search. It's later revealed that they're searching for the man who raped Alex, who is played by Monica Belucci. Much uglier than Noe's recent work, Enter the Void, and certainly no less haunting. Noe is a daring, inventive filmmaker that challenges his audiences not only with his non-linear storytelling but with the disturbing imagery he chooses to show.

****

The Woman (2011)

I swear I didn't watch all of these in a row. It wasn't like I had Rape Week or something. And it's not a subject I'm at all flippant about. Anyway, so The Woman is probably my favorite horror movie of 2011. Lucky McKee's sequel to the lackluster Offspring (a Jack Ketchum novel - the Woman novel is a Ketchum/McKee collaboration), The Woman picks up where its predecessor left off. The feral woman of the previous film (she's obviously not given a name) is wounded and while bathing in the wilderness, she's spotted by a hunter, Chris Cleek, who's also a lawyer and family man in a small town. Cleek sets up a trap and captures the woman, chaining her up in a cellar at his home for his family to gawk at. It is his intention to "tame" her. As the film goes on, we discover that Cleek is not a great guy - in fact, he's kind of a piece of shit. The facade of perfection that his family puts on is revealed to be a thin disguise; the oldest daughter is experiencing a significant amount of emotional turmoil while the son is revealed to take after his father in the worst ways. What starts out as an offbeat but somewhat disturbing film escalates into a straight-up horrifying nightmare world. The Woman is a unique, stylish movie but make no mistake, it is absolutely frightening and brutal at times. I cannot wait to watch it again when my imported Blu-ray arrives. Any day now, U.K.!

*****

Red State (2011)

I'm a big fan of Kevin Smith but I was skeptical when I read about how this was a straight horror movie without any of dick jokes and Star Wars references he's made an admirable career out of. Well, it's exactly how it was described. Red State is a real horror movie - it's dark, disturbing, and at times, sort of scary. The movie begins with some teenage boys looking for some small-town thrills in the form of a woman in a trailer offering group sex for money. Turns out she's the daughter of a local Fred Phelps-type fundamentalist and after being drugged, they're brought to the church to be made examples of. This is the plot that's been making the rounds on the internet so I wasn't all that surprised by the story. Until John Goodman and his ATF cronies show up and the movie takes a left turn where I was left wondering if the movie was going to have any good guys. It should be noted that the acting in Red State is especially noteworthy. While it's not a perfect movie - or even a great one - Smith should be admired for stepping away from his successful formula and making a daring, challenging film. While Smith can write a lewd monologue better than just about anyone, this a more-than-welcome change of pace.

***1/2

A Horrible Way to Die (2010)

This was an interesting movie. AJ Bowen (a tremendous new actor on the horror scene, known for roles in The Signal, House of the Devil, and Hatchet II) plays a serial killer named Garrick Turrell whose ex-girlfriend, Sarah (Amy Seimetz), is trying to put her life back together through AA. While Turrell escapes from prison and is out on the lam, Sarah is dating again - a nice fellow alcoholic from her meetings (even though that's taboo in AA). Even though most people will be able to see where the movie's going right around the halfway point, the charm of the two lead actors carry the movie the whole way. Really tremendous performances here. While some gorehounds may find the movie a little underwhelming and maybe even boring, I thought it was a nice change of pace in a sea of formulaic slasher flicks. My one complaint in this film is that I was expecting more of a tie to be made between the killer's compulsions and the alcoholic's. I don't want to give away the ending but I was expecting that to be the point - the similarities the two have. Alas, it wasn't to be but the climax stills packs a little punch.

***1/2

ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2 (2011)

What a disappointment. I really dug the original Laid to Rest - it was a fun slasher film with some elements in the story that really creeped me out. Well, even though the killer's face melted at the end of the first one (not to mention, it was pummeled into goo by a baseball bat), ChromeSkull is back and he's...the CEO of some murder corporation? The real treat in this lackluster sequel is...Brian Austin Green? I'm so confused. But, yes, Brian Austin Green's performance in this movie is terrific and easily the best thing about it. Danielle Harris is another employee of ChromeSkull's - she's adorable, as usual. But much of this movie is a mess, much more in line with the later Saw films than Laid to Rest. Curiously, it's not as though the first movie set the world on fire. At best, we have a straight-to-DVD franchise going here, so why the lowest-common-denominator bullshit? And frankly, I'm not sure I quite understood what was going on. The next in the series is supposedly a prequel, though the ending of this one doesn't lean that way. Definitely not the worst movie I've seen in recent months but something of a bummer nonetheless.

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)

Well, this movie's fucking terrible. Though not as bad as I remember Wrong Turn 3 being but still pretty wretched. Still, if you're looking to watch a ridiculous movie that doesn't make much sense, Wrong Turn 4 will certainly do the trick. First off, this is an origin story to a series that nobody asked for. Was anyone curious where the inbreds in the Wrong Turn movies came from? My guess is they came from inbreeding. But this movie starts off in an old school Cuckoo's Nest-style mental institution where the inbred brothers magically become expert locksmiths and soon, the inmates are loose. Cut to "present day" (not sure when this is as the first movie took place in present day 8 years ago and yet there's still a guy with a Bieber swoop here) and a group of dickweed college kids are out on snowmobiles getting lost in the wildnerness. So they spend the night in the abandoned asylum, like that ever works out. And even though it's below zero outside and the asylum is fucking abandoned, they take their jackets off the second they're inside. The hillbillies all show up and as though they're geniuses of physics, come up with the elaborate booby traps the series is known for. One big grossout scene but it's mostly boring, poorly-acted bullshit. A good movie for Bad Movie Night but useless for any other kind of enjoyment.

*3/4

Children of the Corn (1984)

I don't remember the last time I watched Children of the Corn - maybe ten years ago? - but I've owned it on DVD for the longest time and now I've upgraded to Blu-ray. Still, it just sat on itself alongside many other classics that I like having around but never get around to revisiting. While I wouldn't say Children of the Corn is as scary as I remember it being (or even half as scary), it's still a decent enough movie with some certainly creepy moments. One thing I particularly liked is how most of the kids, not just Malachi, are ugly as fuck. I try not to remember the SyFy remake from a year or two ago but I'm sure all the corn children were all Disney channel rejects instead of the awkward-looking kids in the 1984 classic. And as I've suspected for so many years, the actor who plays Isaac is not a child at all! According to imdb, he was 25 when this movie was released. While his appearance is certainly not as startling as the "boy" from Burial Ground, there was also something off about him. Not making fun - He-Who-Walks-Behind-the-Rows bless the little guy.

***

The Exorcist (1973)

Not much to say about this one! I used to think The Exorcist was kind of boring and really only like the stuff with Regan cussing people out. What outrageous foolishness! Maybe that's the greatest trick the devil every pulled - convincing me that The Exorcist isn't fantastic. Weird trick, but whatever. As an adult, I start to see the movie as less about the possessed girl and more about Father Karras, whose struggles with his own faith provide the entire backbone to the story. And what a treat the Blu-ray is. It comes in a nice collector's digibook (the version I got, anyway) and the transfer is really something. Get this thing going with some surround sound and you're in for a real treat. You know what's not at all a treat? The Omen box set. I would be reviewing at the original film right now except the packaging was so heartbreaking that I couldn't bear to watch it. I asked Amazon for a replacement (fucking box was literally crushed) and they sent me an even more damaged on. Finally they just told me to send them both back for a refund. The worst packaging I've ever seen in my life. The Exorcist though? It's great.

*****

Caged Fury

2011-10-19T21:02:00.007-04:00

Drive Angry (2011)

Nicolas Cage has truly done a remarkable thing with his career. He went from being one of the worst high-paid actors in Hollywood to simply a hit-or-miss actor. Somewhere around 8mm, Cage went from dogshit to sometimes dogshit and though he impressed me with recent roles in Kick-Ass and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, I didn't think this car movie was going to be one of his winners. Boy was I wrong. This movie is pretty dang good. Cage plays a guy escaping from Hell and just in case you've read a book or two in your life, the movie gives you a little wink by naming him John Milton. Seems as though his daughter has been murdered by a Satanic cult (seriously) and he needs to get back to Earth to track them down and get his grandchild back from them. Guess they're the sacrificin' babies kind of Satanists. This is a massively fun and violent film with an especially enjoyable William Fichtner showing up as the devil's accountant or some shit. All you need to know is that Cage pops a bunch of caps in dudes' asses all while his dick is inside some chick. Who I think catches some PTSD from the whole thing and who can blame her. Certainly not a great movie by any means but a lot of fun if you can't get past how ridiculous it all is.

***1/2

Season of the Witch (2011)

And here we have one of Cage's misses and man, is it a fucking miss. Nicolas Cage plays a soldier in the crusades who wises up to the church's crimes against humanity after he offs a hot chick. It's revealed that he's been crusading for years but for whatever reason, it took him awhile to figure out that innocent people were dying. Turns out that in the end the church was right all along - there is actual evil in the world and it's causing the black plague. Just not witches per se. This is one of those movies where the villain actually gets in its own way by actively preventing people from helping it along. Throughout the journey, the "witch" does everything in its power so that they don't reach their destination...which is where the "witch" needs to be to carry out what it wants. One would think that such a crafty supernatural being would just let everyone be so that their plan could fall into place effortlessly but it's an agent of the devil so it has to fuck shit up along the way. In the end, there's really nothing that makes this movie worth watching. Up there with Red Riding Hood for the year's most boring genre film.

Black Death (2010)

The Deep Impact to Season of the Witch's Armageddon, Black Death couldn't be more different from its thematic twin. Again, the plague is causing people a lot of problems and a group of knights and one lovesick monk travel to a village that's been untouched by disease, presumably due to - you guessed it - witchcraft. Along the way, there's some trickery, sickness, and death and when they finally arrive at the village, it's revealed that things truly aren't what they appear to be. From the director of the great Severance and the apparently great Triangle (still haven't seen it), Black Death is one of those goddamn historical horror films that I usually dislike but in this case, it was actually quite good. I thought the film's examination on religion and belief to be interesting and I liked the performances throughout. Perhaps it's best to watch Season of the Witch first, as I did, so that you can understand how bad movies can truly be. Once soaking in all that suck, give Black Death a chance and you'll maybe appreciate it more than if you went in cold.

***

Cabin Fever (2002)

I have a long history with Cabin Fever. Well, not long. I saw it when it came out, didn't like it, revisited it a couple years later, thought it was really good, bought it on DVD and later Blu-ray, now I'm here revisiting it again. Strangely, a lot of what I didn't like about - the characters are unlikable and make dumbass decisions, it's largely very silly, some scenes are straight up nonsense - are now what I like about the film. Over the years, I've warmed up considerably to Eli Roth (I particularly like the second Hostel film) and for a first feature, he really knocks it out of the park with Cabin Fever. Synopsis? A flesh eating disease spreads among friends who have rented a cabin out in the woods. Some grossout stuff here and there but the movie mostly shines with its string of bizarre characters that pop up throughout. There's the legendary "Pancakes!" kid, the "Party Man" cop, and of course, Roth himself as a guy named Grim who's out camping with his dog Dr. Mambo. And then there's my favorite line of the movie, when one of the guys is asked why he's shooting at squirrels: "Because they're gay." More lessons to be learned? If you raw dog a potentially diseased chick, just pour some mouthwash on your dick. Can't hurt, right? Not much anyway.

***1/2

Dead Awake (2010)

Hey look, it's some cheap-o supernatural mystery. And it's populated by actors who were once rising stars (a couple of whom are quite competent actors). Nick Stahl, who was disturbing in Bully and equally as effective in In the Bedroom, plays a funeral home employee who decides he wants to have a fake funeral for himself. Just for kicks! But only his ex-girfriend (Amy Smart) and some crackhead (Rose McGowan) show up. The girlfriend is surprisingly understanding when she finds out he's not really dead (or is he?) and the crackhead has the secret to his parents' death years earlier. Exciting stuff, eh? Not really. The "Is he dead or not?" silliness was used to better effect in After.Life (which, I understand, came out after this one). It's a lot of boring stuff all leading up to the big twist, which isn't very surprising, and looking back at the rest of the movie, sort of nonsensical. Even if you're looking for a lightweight mystery movie on Netflix Instant, I'd still suggest you skip over this one. Watch Bully! It's not a mystery but it'll skeeve you out for sure.

*1/2

Dead End (2003)

Another film I revisited recently, but unlike Cabin Fever, I loved it from the get-go, way back when an impulse rent resulted in a new favorite. But like with Saw, another movie from the same time that had a somewhat shocking plot twist at the end, it doesn't really hold up to repeat viewings. Still, getting to the end is still fun, especially with a cast like this (Lin Shaye, Ray Wise, the chick from Celebrity Rehab that had the weird co-dependent mom). So it's Christmas Eve and an ordinary family is traveling by car on some backroad that seems to be leading them nowhere. And there you have a plot device that I find very effective - the road that doesn't take you anywhere. I have no idea why; I just find that to be very scary. Throughout this non-journey, they make stops. At one point, the son takes a walk out into the woods to have a wank and the aforementioned Rehab lady seduces him into a makeout sesh that ends badly for him. Later, the family sees him in the back of a hearse. They later find his charred body in the middle of the road. The driver of the hearse seems to be picking them off one by one but why? And who is the mysterious lady in the woods? Some see the ending coming a mile away - I didn't. And even if you do, I think the movie's got enough going on that you'll be satisfied with the journey.

***1/2

Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)

And from the "Why the fuck does this have a sequel?" files, Quarantine 2: Terminal. The movie begins on an airplane with various people hacking and coughing all over the place but before you can say Flight of the Living Dead, the flight is grounded and the passengers are all quarantined underneath one of the airport's terminals. Luckily for the writers, the word terminal can also refer to the infectious disease (some sort of super-rabies) that's been going around since the first film. Wordplay. We later find out that a particularly assholish hamster-rat was on board courtesy of a suspect science teacher who mysteriously can't tell the difference between a hamster and a rat. That's later explained but it bears the question - why would anyone even lie about not being able to tell the difference between a hamster and a rat? Why was this movie even made? Did anyone even like Quarantine? So many questions. As a faux-zombie movie, it's average at best; expecting it to break any new ground would be foolish.

Zombie Girl: The Movie (2009)

Not a lot of people know this about me but I have somewhat of an interest in film and I'm particularly charmed by amateurs rolling up their sleeves and, against all odds (take a look at me now), making movies themselves, outside of the studio system. American Movie is certainly the best documentary of this ilk but a new runner-up might be Zombie Girl, a movie about a 12 year old girl named Emily with an interest in horror films who, with the help of her encouraging mother, wants to make a zombie movie of her own called Pathogen. While I spent much of the movie expecting her to throw a shit-fit when things don't work out for her (as filmmakers of all ages are prone to doing), she rolls with the various disappointments she faces and by the end, I really wanted her to succeed and more importantly, maintain her passion for film as she gets older. Well, she older, and according to imdb, she's got a new movie called My Sucky Teen Romance. Now, it doesn't sound like a movie for me but I'm glad she's still out there doing it.

****

Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

You can just see the suits sitting around saying "You know what? Hurt Locker made a lot of money. What if we combined it with another movie that made a lot of money? Like, say, I don't know...Independence Day!" So what we got here, besides failure to communicate, is a second-rate gritty war movie crossed with the over-the-top silliness of every big budget sci-fi feature of the last twenty years. Every cliche under the sun is loaded into Battle: Los Angeles, from the washed-up guy who's days from retirement to the noise in the darkness that turns out to be a friendly dog. There is nothing in this movie that isn't formulaic and trite and because of that, the film is nothing short of tedious and obnoxious every step of the way. The special effects might have been the saving grace here except everything's so shaky, you can't see shit. Millions of effects dollars pissed away for some film technique fad that's going to be outdated in a couple years. Good going, dingleberries. Battle: Los Angeles is a failure in every sense of the word and yet, it's not the worst alien invasion movie of the year. That honor goes to...

Skyline (2010)

What the fuck! This movie is such a stinker, it makes Battle: Los Angeles look like District 9. Well, almost. One of the dudes from Six Feet Under flies out to L.A. to kick it with an old friend in his ballin' apartment, hoping to rekindle some old business collaboration. They party down but early the next morning, bright light begins to pour into the apartment, sucking one or two of them through the windows and into the air. If you don't get sucked into the air, you get black veins all over your face and body, which isn't good either. Turns out, aliens have invaded and they're being fuckers. Sgt. Batista from Dexter shows up and he's going to take them down one way or the other, leading to one of the silliest scenes in recent memory: Faced with imminent defeat at the hands of the aliens, he goes to the stove and turns the gas on. Before flicking his truty Zippo, he puts a cigarette in his mouth. Why? I guess to show the creature from another planet that he's a badass. He's certainly not going to be able to smoke the fucking thing if he's getting blown up. Turns out all the massive stupidity in this movie is just leading to a set-up for a sequel. That's right - we're now making movies just to make sequels to them. And here's the thing: I don't think Skyline will ever get a sequel! Because it sucks and nobody likes it. Stupidity. The filmmakers should be ashamed of themselves for being so crass and clueless.

Battle: Los Angeles: *1/2

Skyline: *

Call of Doody

2011-09-05T19:59:00.006-04:00

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

Sure, I bought into the hype, having purchased the Blu-ray release the week it was released, anxious to see what everyone was talking about. Then I kept putting it off and putting it off until I finally lost interest in the film altogether. Almost a year later, I finally put the thing in and I'm shocked by what I see. What a lame, bullshit movie! While a movie like A Serbian Film delivers on the hype and more, The Human Centipede relies solely on the unpleasant concept to carry the entire movie and it fails miserably. In fact, aside to from the ass-to-mouth shit (see what I did there?), this is a movie that's been done a thousand times and more competently. Thankfully, there's very little actual poo-poo (but a pretty gnarly mouth infection ups the gross factor quite a bit) but apparently that's all going to change in the sequel. Anyway, I liked the actor playing the scientist and I thought the shitty digital look of the film added some much needed atmosphere. Wait - how is this thing a fucking centipede at all? If a centipede has a hundred legs (hence the name), wouldn't you need 25 people for a human centipede? A three person shitmouth chain is a centipede not.

*1/2

Mega Piranha (2010)

Hey, it's another shitty movie that I bought on Blu-ray because I'm irresponsible with my money and again, I wound up holding off on watching for months. I like all these SyFy movies...in theory. I love watching the trailers and asking people "Hey - did you see the commercial for that movie Ultracroc vs. Megazilla?" Actually sitting down and watching these movies is an absolute chore and Mega Piranha not only didn't prove to be an exception, it was an especially tedious watch. 80s pop star Tiffany is a scientist (why not?) whose research team accidentally creates the titular mega piranha and unleashes it into a South American river. A buff government agent is flown down there to set shit straight with this gaggle of ornery piranhae and of course, this under the direct order of Greg Brady. To say that Mega Piranha is some incompetent filmmaking would be an understatement. My favorite scene is the car chase where the government agent guy is constantly shifting an automatic as if it were manual. Just going up and down, from first gear up to park and back down again. I also enjoyed watching the piranhas go from huge but manageable to the size of buildings...and back down to just huge again. Asylum, the company behind other mockbusters like The Da Vinci Treasure and Snakes on a Train, have apparently been teaming up with SyFy a lot lately. I understand why they make these movies but I'll never understand why they don't even try.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

To say that this movie was made by an incompetent buffoon would be an understatement. Even considering the $10,000 budget, there is seriously nothing in this movie that at all hits the target. The sound mix renders dialogue mostly incoherent, the special effects are ridiculous, the acting is at about the level of a regional furniture store commercial...it's bad. Really bad. That isn't to say it's not without its charm. While Mega Piranha is a crass, unwatchable cash-in only to be enjoyed by the sickest of masochists, Birdemic is so absurd and downright shitty that, like The Room, it's almost fun. Now, it's my understanding that the world is way ahead of me on that one and Birdemic has achieved somewhat of a cult status already. And it's not undeserved. In all seriousness, it has some of my favorite dialogue in any movie, words I hadn't heard in a film (or anywhere) up until that point. For instance: "Where's Becky?" "She's taking a shit." What's strange is I don't think the director, some dude named Nguyen, was at all kidding with this movie. If you have the stomach and you want to enjoy a really bad movie with some friends, you can't go wrong with Birdemic. It is weird. But I don't think shittiness should be rewarded so I'm holding it to the same standard as everything else, rating-wise. And what the fuck? Where did the $10,000 go?

*1/2

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

Funny how Grindhouse was such a colossal flop and yet this is the second spinoff already. And it's only the second time the whole grindhouse thing has been gotten right out of the four features (Death Proof being the other). Not that I really know. I was born in 1979. I don't know 42nd Street from Sesame Street. But I do know that Robert Rodriguez's efforts - while immensely entertaining - missed the mark with their big budgets and massive special effects. Hobo with a Shotgun harkens back to an equally sleazy era as Tarantino's 70s, the VHS-ruled mid-80s, when films like Class of Nuke 'Em High were corrupting youngsters like me across America, right around the same time Rutger Hauer was scaring the shit out of us on Cinemax. Hauer plays the hobo in question who battles a local warlord and his thug sons after a failed attempt at starting a decent, employed life for himself. The violence and gore is suitably over-the-top and the overall look of the film is pretty incredible - a dead-on, balls-accurate homage to the low budget VHS tapes of the 80s, all dayglo and grime. Throw in an appearance from Robb Wells of Trailer Park Boys (it is, after all, a Canadian production) and you got yourself some serious entertainment here.

****

Rubber (2010)

I had been reading mixed things about this movie but I gotta say, I really enjoyed it. No, it's not some Troma movie about a giant killer condom; it's about a tire that explodes people with it's tire mind. Like Scanners. But with a tire. It sounds fucking ridiculous, and it is, but the way the filmmakers carry the story is really interesting. For the jaded horror fan, this might not hit the spot, but for fans of creative and somewhat silly indie features, I think I would recommend this flick. Let's see - what more is there to say about Rubber? Well, it was a delight to see the older sister from Fat Girl again. Not getting fucked in the ass by a swarthy Italian but she has one scene in particular that is very funny. There are certainly some scenes that may test a viewer's patience and there's not a whole lot of meat to the film but I was in the mood for something different and I got it.

***1/2

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Another fun movie that may not satisfy the horror jocks out there looking for the next level of sadism and grue but damn near one of the finest horror-comedies in recent memory. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine play a couple rural fellas named Tucker and Dale (you probably could have guessed that, non-existent reader) who purchase a run-down cabin out in the woods that they hope to restore for future good times (fishing, beers, what-have-you). A group of snotty college kids run into them and see them as the homicidal hillbillies from the horror movies they've seen. When they later try to rescue their friend ("hot girl" from 30 Rock) from Tucker and Dale (who are nursing her back to health after a fall), they start accidentally killing themselves one by one. Hijinks galore in this movie, that I can tell you. The trailer gives away every kill so I don't recommend watching that but even if the premise sounds a little goofy, give it a shot. I thought it was a pretty clever, funny movie and I don't warm up to these horror-comedies easily. In fact, I liked it so much it may go in my collection. (Though simply being priced at $10 can get you a slot there as well. What's up, The Alphabet Killer.)

****

Bereavement (2010)

A prequel to Malevolence, a movie I barely remember. I remember there was a trio of bank robbers who hid out in some house in the sticks and then kidnap a mother and her daughter. I think the mom and kid get away; maybe not. I know one of the robbers dies early on. Anyway, I sort of remember there being a killer of some kind on the loose and this here Bereavement tells the story of how that killer came to be. Martin Bristol, a 6 year old who feels no physical pain, is kidnapped from his swingset by a guy who worships some sort of cowskull god. I don't know. He makes the boy watch as he tortures and filets young girls. The boy is initially weirded out by what he's seeing but the man is trying to teach him his philosophy about life and suffering and how people should be killed like the animals in the slaughterhouse his dad made him work at. The overall atmosphere maybe leans towards torture porn a little but I think it's a valid creative work that'll probably scare some kids picking it up from Redbox. Okay, before I wind down the review - what's up with the main girl's tits? They're obviously amazing but she's apparently in high school and she's running around the house with her nipples on blast. Dang.

***

Dogtooth (2009)

One of the best movies I've seen this year, hands down. I love movies that exist in their own worlds but still have a startling realism to them and Dogtooth is all of those things and more. Not sure if I'd call it a horror movie (though a couple scenes are certainly horrific) but a couple horror mags reviewed it so here I am. Dogtooth is about a family where the nameless children - presumably in their late teens, maybe even early twenties - are told lies by the parents in order to keep them from leaving the grounds of their home for the entirety of their lives. However, an outsider is brought in - Christine - who is hired to have sex with the son. When she teaches one of the daughters how to perform oral in exchange for a nifty headband, a series of events unfold that disrupts the order of the household. Soon, the daughter becomes curious about the outside world, a curiosity fed by movies Christine leaves for her. A very strange and sometimes very funny movie that I think will live on as one of the best films ever made. A modern day classic.

*****

Visitor Q (2001)

Another film that exists completely in its own world. Brilliant (and notoriously extreme) filmmaker Takashi Miike begins Visitor Q with home video footage of a father paying his daughter for sex. Later, a stranger hits that man on the head with a rock and follows his home to witness some major dysfunctional behavior with his family. The son's being bullied at school by kids who shoot fireworks at his window at night. He takes it out on the mom, who has developed a limp from all the brutal beatings. She seeks refuge in heroin and later, is taught to lactate profusely by the stranger in their home. Super fucked up movie. Meanwhile, the dad is trying to make a name for himself as a reality TV producer and starts filming his son being bullied. Spiraling further into madness, he kills a co-worker and takes her home to rape her corpse in the family greenhouse. Even by Miike standards this is a very strange movie but I can't recommend it enough. If you want to see some shit you've never seen before on screen, I think you should check out Visitor Q. If you lack the stones, check out Hesher. It's an eerily similar movie but without all the cool stuff.

****1/2

Insidious (2010)

Though director James Wan pinched out a real dud with Dead Silence some years back, I did enjoy Death Sentence, that crazy violent action movie starring Kevin Bacon that's basically Death Wish. And I liked Saw when it came out (though it certainly hasn't held up). Still, even though the guy's track record is decent, I was not completely sold on Insidious. Looked like a "creepy kid" movie and I've seen enough of those. Okay, so Dalton is a little boy who went to sleep one night and didn't wake up. The parents don't know what the fuck is going on but when some paranormal shit starts going down, they hire a team of investigators and the movie becomes Poltergeist. Temporarily. Then it's all about astral planes and goofy new age shit like that but it does get pretty cool and scary in the third act. It hasn't been an amazing year for horror so a movie like Insidious is something of a stand-out but I'm not sold on this being a terribly notable film with a lot of staying power. For what it is - a somewhat cool, creepy movie that's okay for kids but would maybe scare the hell out of them - I thought it was alright. And it sounds like it's getting some buzz on home video so I guess we can expected a sequel to come out every year for the next decade.

***

The Peter Criss Jazz

2011-08-31T23:56:00.015-04:00

Fright Night (2011)

It's about time one of these remakes decided to not take itself so seriously and instead, let the audience have some damn fun for once. Hollywood's love affair with "gritty realism" is taking a break in the Fright Night remake, a film that can best be described as a tribute to the beloved original film. I loved this movie as a kid but I admit that I was skeptical when first reading news about this remake. It just seemed to be the perfect vehicle for this "paranormal teen romance" genre that I can't bring myself to hate but don't want to really involve myself with. Well, this couldn't be further from that shit. From the get-go Fright Night 2011 is a funny, well-crafted film with enough references to the first film to give the diehards quite a few chuckles and enough twists to give those same fans some welcome surprises. That's not say there aren't one or two poor choices in the film but in general, it's a real hoot. The cast is particularly tremendous: We got Colin Ferrell as Jerry, the magician kid from Curb Your Enthusiasm as Charlie, McLovin as Ed, and some ridiculously hot chick as Amy. Along with McLovin, the real treat is David Tennant as a Criss Angel-style Peter Vincent. I've never seen Dr. Who but I guess he's from that show. He's really great. The 3-D was great, the script is funny without being silly, it stays true to the original while still taking the story to new places - probably the best remake I've seen in some time and maybe one of the best genres flicks to come out this year. Loved it.

****1/2

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

See what I'm doing here? Another remake of a vampire flick, this one directed by the legendary Werner Herzog and starring his best fiend Klaus Kinski as the titular wampir. Also, music by Popol Vuh. It's a real treat. The story is basically Dracula: Jonathan Harker visits Dracula's castle because ol' Drac wants some tasty real estate in Wismar. Kinski as Dracula particularly shines in these scenes, a stark and creepy portrayal that easily competes with Max Schreck's legendary performance. Dracula arrives by boat to Wismar, bringing with him an army of rats to signal his arrival. Meanwhile, Harker is severely ill, having been bitten during his trip to the vampire's castle. Van Helsing makes his appearance later in the film, setting up a twist ending that I certainly won't give away here. Herzog is a masterful filmmaker and his take on the classic horror story ranks among his best films. Personally, I would've liked to have seen Bruno S as Renfield but as Def Leppard once said, you can't always get what you want.

****

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2011)

I don't read funny books, certainly not Italian ones, so I'd never heard of this character before. I had seen the commercials on TV and while it didn't look the least bit appealing, I have a blog that I need to write in and I can't just watch really great movies. That's where Redbox comes in. Apparently this is all connected to the amazing horror/comedy Dellamorte Dellamore but none of that movie's charm is found here. It's a horror/comedy but of the variety that's neither scary nor funny - not terribly funny, anyway. Sam Worthington, the drummer kid from Detroit Rock City (great movie), provides much of the humor as Marcus, Dylan's sidekick that is turned into a zombie early on in the film. Dylan is played by Brandon Routh, who I thought was pretty good as Superman and even better in Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Not all that crazy about him here though I can't really blame the guy since he didn't have a whole lot to work with. Dylan Dog is a film noir-era private dick in New Orleans that's retired from the monster slaying game. That is, until a hot chick hires him (as is always the case). Vampires, werewolves, and zombies all compete for his attention and though the monster platter is full here, it's a real snoozefest. However, his zombie friend has an amusing sideplot that made me with the whole movie was about him. Here's a movie so boring and lame, it rightfully should have taken the box office by storm like all the other no-imagination shitfests. Instead, it was one of 2011's biggest flops. Looks like even the Transformers kids have some sense now and then.

*1/2

Priest (2011)

More vampires. Tremendous. Here we are in some theocratic futureworld where the church runs shit and the catchphrase is "If you go against the church, you go against God." After centuries of man battling it out with vampires that look more like the creatures in The Descent, they've been exiled to "reservations" thanks to an army of kung fu fighting clergy called "priests." Pretty clever, eh? One such priest, who everyone calls Priest, is alerted to the abduction of his niece. He insists that there are vampires afoot but the church disagrees. So he goes against the church (and thus, God) to go track her down with the help of the girl's town sheriff (and boyfriend?). On their journey, they run into "familiars," or the vampires' slaves, or in other words, their Renfields. Priest and his sheriff friend do some light asskicking before the climactic confrontation with the girl's abductor who of course reveals some shit Priest was not privy to. Like Dylan Dog, I believe this was some sort of comic book and like Dylan Dog, I had never read it myself. I do know that this kind of action/horror shit isn't really my bag and when vampires are transformed into creatures from other movies devoid of personality, I lose even more interest. For what it was, Priest was okay but I'm not really itching to see more.

The Rite (2011)

What do you get when you cross The Exorcist with The Silence of the Lambs? An amazing fucking movie, right? Right? Wrong! You get The Rite, a movie that is a cheap imitation of the former and downright comical when it channels the latter. The only truly freaky thing about this movie is the star looks exactly like Jason Patric who, incidentally, is the son of Jason Miller, also known as Father Karras from The Exorcist. Did the filmmakers want so badly to ape The Exorcist that they get a guy that looks like the dude's son? Anyway, the guy who's not Jason Patric lost his faith (hmmm...) and after some soul-searching at a neighborhood boxing ring (what the fuck!), he decides to go over to Italy to go to exorcist school. I shit you not. There he meets Anthony Hopkins' character, who I have to admit is very charismatic. They try to exorcise some possessed chick but I guess exorcism is like chemotherapy where one dose isn't enough - it's a lengthy process wherein the afflicted goes in and out of possession. Not Jason Patric witnesses some shit getting real, Anthony Hopkins gets to play Hannibal Lector for a couple minutes, and it's business as usual in the exorcism game. The possessed chick is actually pretty scary but when it's Hopkins' turn to be spooky, it's downright laughable.

**1/2

Red Riding Hood (2011)

What the fuck is this crap. This movie's so unbearably godawful, it makes Dylan Dog look like Shaun of the Dead. Here's a good reason to look at a film's credits before forking five bucks to Ingles for the privilege of whiffing a giant turd. It appears as though the director of this film directed a little movie called Twilight. Right away, I smelled the Twilight on this movie like it was Brut by Faberge. I have no problem with Twilight - it's fine for pre-teen girls and post-menopausal women - but I do my best not to avoid it. I saw the first one, decided it wasn't for me, and moved on down the road, only to be hunted down like the werewolf in this here Red Riding Hood movie. Let's see if I can remember what the hell happened. A retarded kid is burned alive in a giant metal elephant. That happens. Gary Oldman, in the role of a lifetime, has silver claws for killing beasts with. And someone says "What big eyes you have," which you'd think Amanda Seyfried would hear all the time. This is a movie to be avoid at all costs, by everyone, ovulating or otherwise.

Red White & Blue (2010)

From the director of the haunting The Living and the Dead, this is a movie that seems to be flying under the radar, which is a real shame because it's fucking amazing. Amanda Fuller plays a small-town super-slut who plays fingercuffs for some local garage band one night. She's got a pessimistic outlook on the world and doesn't really give a shit about anything. Noah Taylor plays a guy who lives in the same boarding house as her and the two strike up somewhat of a friendship, despite her hesitation to do so. Meanwhile, one of the guys in the garage band (Marc Senter of The Lost) comes down with the AIDS. Only problem is he's been giving his cancer-ridden mother blood transfusions for months. She beat the cancer only to get the AIDS and guess who the source of all this AIDS is - the girl. A revenge plot is hatched, shit goes haywire, and Noah Taylor, a veteran, lets everyone know he doesn't play that shit. In all seriousness, this is one of the most visceral and disturbing flicks I've seen in a while and what's brilliant is that so much of the violence is offscreen. A lot of freaky stuff is implied instead of shown. A brilliant film all around; highly recommended.

****1/2

Left Bank (2008)

Belgium! Oh Belgium. I know nothing about you. But here's a movie that takes place in you. Marie is a high school athlete (track) who is benched after an injury. Depressed, she meets a guy and within seconds, moves in with him. There are a lot of reasons why this is generally a bad idea and she finds out one of them - he might have some very strange secrets that relate to you finding mud in your panties. A very atmospheric and moody film where we see a shit-ton of nudity from the female lead (very welcomed), Left Bank is a slow burn that takes you somewhere probably unexpected. If you expected what happens, I don't know what to tell you. It's strange. You will not feel good about being buried alive after watching this movie!

***

Super (2010)

Yeah, I know, it kinda looks like Kick-Ass, but I assure you that this movie is vastly superior to the overrated Kick-Ass in every way. Rainn Wilson married out of his league to a former junkie played by Liv Tyler. In spite of the enormous amount of disbelief suspension required to make it past that, the movie sticks pretty close to reality with the jist of it being that superheroing is not as easy as it looks in comics and in movies. Rainn Wilson's character Frank, inspired by a vision from God, takes on the persona of The Crimson Bolt and soon hooks up with a pint-size sidekick Libby (Ellen Page) who goes by the super-handle Boltie (who's not nearly as great as Hit Girl from that other superhero movie I mentioned earlier). Writer/director James Gunn's tenure at Troma shines through often with some insane gore effects and really dark humor. And at times, it's just plain dark. Even though it's a, uh, super low budget movie, he managed to snag Kevin Bacon as the bad guy. He's pretty good. Ellen Page has some moments too; I usually find her somewhat grating but she's clearly having a lot of fun here and it's enjoyable to watch. Really crazy and fun (and, like I said, really dark at times), here's another one I recommend.

****1/2

Super 8 (2011)

This is one of those movies that I don't want to say much about and I think writer/director J.J. Abrams agrees, if the promotional campaign behind this movie is any indication. I'll describe a little bit of the plot, I guess. A group of kids, maybe aged 12-14, like to get together and make Super 8 movies (hence the mysterious title of the film). One night while shooting on location, they manage to film a massive train accident wherein something escapes. Is it the monster from Cloverfield, as suggested by internet nerds? No. And when those same internet nerds later suggested that this was Abrams' version of classic Spielberg movies like E.T., were they referring to a cuddly turd of an alien that makes nice with the aforementioned group of kids. Uh, not really. The horror is kept to a minimum but the thing that's unleashed from that train doesn't go around eating Reese's Pieces and drinking up all the goddamn beer. So...I guess I'll just leave it at this. I will say that most of the movie is fantastic, though it does fall apart somewhat in the third act. Still, the charismatic child actors carry this movie a long way, so much that it almost doesn't even need a monster in it.

***1/2

Scream 4 Me, Long Beach

2011-04-28T21:42:00.000-04:00

Scream 4 (2011)

I'm so old I saw the original Scream when it came out! So...I'm at least 15 years old. And I'm old enough to remember that Scream 2 and Scream 3 were total dogshit, though I don't really remember anything about them. Wasn't Patrick Dempsey in one of them? I remember a Jay and Silent Bob cameo. Anyway, I was getting my oil changed and didn't want to browse Borders for 90 minutes so I decided to check out Scream 4. It starts of the old movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie trick because, get it?, it's so meta. It's so meta that it even brings up the issue of meta in one of those scenes! While the intention is to be cute, it's just annoying. Just like the original Scream was a commentary on slasher horror, this one's a update on that, which is actually a pretty good idea that's only expanded upon a little bit. Mostly the film is just like every other Scream movie but occasionally there are nods to modern horror films - remakes, all that bullshit. I kinda like that spin, except the execution here is rather poor. It winds up turning into a slightly altered version of the first film, which as we all know, are not how remakes are. It should have been a lot gorier and grittier and for fuck's sake, why weren't there Saw-style booby traps? In the end, the movie wound up commenting on nothing. Neve Campbell's super hot though, hotter than in any of the other ones. Good for her.
**

Let Me In (2010)

Speaking of remakes, this isn't really a remake so I don't know why I brought it up! It's more like another adaptation of the same book that Let the Right One In is based on (which is also called Let Me In). Now, I was hesitant to see this version because Let the Right One In was such a brilliant film that I couldn't see the story improved upon whatsoever. And though in the end, nothing was really improved, what we have here is an amazing adaptation on its own that's absolutely worthy of recognition. Chloe Moretz is really great as the vampire, uh, person and Kodi Smit-McPhee is perfect in his role as the troubled young boy. I was a little disappointed by the graphic way the vampire girl's feeding was shown and I certainly don't think the iconic pool scene at the end was nearly as great but Let Me In is definitely amazing in its own way. Another actor I really enjoyed was Richard Jenkins as the girl's caretaker. His character in this version is more fleshed out and though the issue of pedophilia is never approached (as it is in the book), I think it only serves to make a more sympathetic character. Great movie, totally underrated. Hopefully it will be a recognized as a classic in years come.
****1/2

Home Movie (2008)

Hey, speaking of creepy kids who fuck some shit up, here's a movie about a brother and sister who are just plain evil for no discernible reason and of course, as the title suggests, it's all captured on the family's home movies. One of my major problems with these "found footage" movies (and I may bring this up every time) is that it's rare that they gracefully jump the hurdle of "Why are they still filming?" Home Movie starts off with an adoring dad simply wanting to capture his kids' adorable childhood moments on film. And to the film's credit, there are sudden stops in filming when something gruesome is discovered. However, as the more the tension builds, the more the camera is left rolling and I was left wondering, "Why is this family capturing all this horrible shit on tape? And why are they using the same tape for everything?" For as much as I didn't completely buy the whole approach, I thought the actors who played the parents were good, particularly the guy who played the father. Some effective parts here and there but overall, I wasn't on board.
**1/2

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

I don't even really like the "creepy kid" genre (though I did really enjoy The Orphan and of course, Children of the Corn is spectacular) but here's another movie about a kid going shithouse all over the place. Or is she? Guess you'll have to watch and find out. I got this movie from Netflix because I wanted to see Aubrey Rose but thought the title was Alice, Sweet Alice. No harm, no foul, as this is an old school horror film just the same. And it's got Brooke Shields in her first role, looking totally hot (that's a joke!). Brooke Shields plays the good kid, Karen, while her sister Alice is a little shit who acts out and is inappropriately sexual sometimes. It's assumed that when Karen is found dead at her first communion that Alice is the one behind it. The killer wore the same raincoat and Alice is kind of a fuckhead to everyone. It's a fairly typical slasher film but there are some scares, particularly from the fat guy landlord who tries to lure Alice into his apartment. He doesn't have much to do with the movie - he's just super fucking weird looking. Not a bad flick, just nothing all that exciting.
**1/2

Case 39 (2009)

Okay, this is the last creepy kid movie of the post, I swear. I didn't even see a pattern until I looked at the list of movies I needed to review. Funny. This one stars Renee Zellweger, star of The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the little girl from Tideland, a movie that I really enjoyed but no else seemed to like. Anyway, Zellweger plays a social worker who magically adopts the little girl after her parents try to cook her in the oven. The parents insist she's evil but how could that be? She's so cute! So rather than examine any of the fact, Zellwegs jumps head first into the deep end of parenthood, eventually discovering that the little girl is indeed an tremendous asshole and of course, later tries to kill her. There are some twists and turns as R-Zell's past is examined and I have to admit, there were a couple gruesome kills. Overall, this movie is a fucking mess and apparently it's release was delayed for something like three years as the studio tried to turn chicken shit into chicken salad. Didn't work.
*1/2

Buried (2010)

This one's not about a creepy kid at all but rather, creepy terrorists! They kidnap a truck driver working over in Iraq and bury him alive, hence the catchy title. People generally hate it when people in movies are buried alive (probably hate it even more when it happens in real life) so why not make a movie where the whole thing is a guy buried alive? Skip all the bullshit, get to the terror. Surprisingly, it works - this is a super suspenseful movie that weirded me the fuck out. Ryan Reynolds plays the truck driver and as the only actor who's ever shown onscreen throughout the entire film, he really had his hands full here. But he's a great actor who I like a lot and he pulled it off well. What's the worst that can happen once you're buried alive, you ask? Well, a fucking snake can get in. That's for starters. And he's in Iraq so it's crazy hot and there's sand seeping in all over the place. Then you have a real kick-to-the-nards ending that I felt was coming but was seriously dreading. Great movie, loved it, would recommend.
***1/2

Enter the Void (2009)

I have actually never seen Gasper Noe's most infamous film, Irreversible. Well, that's not entirely true - I watched about a third of it last night but I have the flu and all the swooping shots were making me sick. My fever wasn't doing me any favors either. His latest film, Enter the Void, makes use of the same time of shots as the story is mostly told from the point of view of a ghost. Kid does a bunch of dope, gets caught up in some drug bust, gets shot, gets ghosted. Now he's floating up in the air, looking down at...his sister banging some dude? Uh... I'm really only describing part of the movie - his story gets told, along with his sister's, and it's all revealed how he came to live in Japan, how his sister got there, who everyone is, etc. There are also some philosophical discussions for that ass, talking about what happens after we die. If it's anything like this, I want to hold off on dying as long as I can. It looks like a goddamn nightmare. An amazingly colorful, Japanese nightmare.
***

Altitude (2010)

I looked at the cover of Altitude and thought, "Damn, this looks like some Lovecraftian shit." And there is a little of a Lovecraft vibe to the mysterious monster fucking with a small plane up in the air, but it's mostly like a really bad, really long episode of Tales from the Darkside. Jessica Lowndes plays the pilot and of course there's a bunch of drama in her history. Turns out her mom was killed in a plane crash! And there was a little boy on that plane who's supposed to surprise us later in the movie when it's revealed that he's now the pilot chick's boyfriend. I can't imagine that plot twist being a surprise to anyone. Rounding out the cast is a typical jock asshole guy, a typical emo-rocker asshole guy, and some asshole chick. Sure enough, they get up in the air and shit starts to go wrong and we eventually see that it's some kind of monster (heh) up to his old tricks again. You see, that's how the mom's plane crashed too. And guess who the common link is between these two flights? Nothing at all scary going on here and there's an ending that should have Netflix customers groaning across the country. Ridiculously fucking corny.
*1/2

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

Looking back at my review for the original Paranormal Activity, I can see that I wasn't terribly impressed, which would explain why I haven't watched it since nor really recommended it to anyone. I remember that movie being hyped for years and when I finally saw it, was just like "Is that all there is?" Peggy Lee-style, son. So Paranormal Activity 2 was announced, I thought "Why? And how the hell are they going to do it?" It reeked of a cash-in and to be honest, that's fine with me. The first one made a bunch of money, obviously there has to be a sequel. Imagine my surprise when I found myself not only loving the sequel, but actually jumping in my seat quite regularly throughout. The story is something of a prequel to the original film, this time focusing on the big tittied woman's sister and her family. There's more revealed in their backstory but that part of it doesn't really do much for me. I can't say I really give a shit why the shit's happening, I just want to see it happen. And of course the stakes are upped this time as there's a baby involved but I really don't give a shit about babies - I was honestly more worried about the dog. The actors are much more likeable this time around and I think the story is much more interesting too. I have to say, this is definitely one of the few examples of a sequel surpassing its predecessor, and by a lot.
****1/2

Poltergeist (1982)

More spooky haunted house stuff! I don't think I had seen Poltergeist in its entirety up until now. Granted, I think I've seen every scene of the movie at very points of my life - it was on cable regularly when I was growing up. So I went into this recent viewing knowing all the iconic scenes - I was just piecing them together. What a great movie! I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said a million times so I'll give a brief synopsis. Craig T. Nelson and his pothead wife move into a new house provided to them by Craig T.'s real estate firm. Oops - they built the house on an ancient Indian burial ground. That doesn't work well for the Indians so they torment the family in various supernatural ways, like kidnapping their young daughter and putting her inside the television. Then some midget lady shows up and yells at the ghosts which leads everyone to assume that's it over, and of course it's not, as you can gather from the two sequels (or were there three?). Among movie nerds, there's some mildly interesting controversy over whether or not Tobe Hooper or Steven Spielberg directed Poltergeist. I guess it's too fantastical for ol' Tobe! I don't really give a shit; I just think it's funny so I'm throwing it in here.
****

I Wanna Be Like Miike

2011-04-19T23:22:00.000-04:00

Audition (1999)

After months of sitting on my shelf unwatched, the Blu-ray edition of Takashi Miike's classic film Audition was finally viewed by yours truly, having only seen it once maybe six or seven years ago. Back then, I was really into how dull most of the movie is. The first half of the movie is boring! Finally, a laundry sack moves and it's the scariest shit ever. This second time around, I knew what was in the sack and I couldn't take my eyes off it. When it finally moved, I seriously jumped. I loved Audition the first time I saw it and there was even one scene in particular (nothing to do with needles) that bothered me for years after. This second time around, I loved it even more and though I've only seen four or five of Miike's films (a drop in the bucket when you consider how prolific the man's been in his career), I would put him at the top of the heap as far as directors go. Another thing about revisiting Audition is I completely misremembered the ending. I'm not going to go into it here but in my head, it was something completely different so when it turned out to not be that, I was as shocked as if it was the first time I saw it. Brilliant movie, will revisit in 2017 to get the crap scared out of me again.
****1/2

I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

Like with Audition, I have the original I Spit on Your Grave sitting on my shelf, still unwatched. Unlike Audition, I have no real plans of revisiting that film any time soon (yes, I've seen it). I have no real problem with the movie - it doesn't offend me or anything - it's just so hard to watch. Still, when the I Spit on Your Grave remake was released on DVD, my curiosity got the better of me and I thought I'd give it a whirl. Though it's still got lengthy and difficult-to-watch rape scenes that you have to endure, I think the remake is a somewhat more palatable version of the story. While it's certainly not a fun movie (and I would say it's even more graphically violent), the brutality bestowed on the female character isn't quite as lingered upon as in the original. Also, this is a film that's certainly of it's time. Just as the original pushed boundaries set by movies like Last House on the Left (another Blu-ray in my collection that's been so far unwatched), this one would have Saw or Hostel as it's contemporaries. The revenge scenes are brutal but often, unnecessarily complex. I think it's in this conceit that we find this remake much easier to swallow. Certainly a gruesome movie with an ending that is probably the definitive butthole revenge scene.
***

My Soul to Take (2010)

I mentioned Last House on the Left in the last review so I'm going to use that as a clumsy segue as Wes Craven also directed this. I've never been a big fan of the original Last House but holy cow, is that movie a masterpiece compared to this slice of teen-horror dogshit. I'm not asking for gang-rapes out in the woods but My Soul to Take feels like a desperate attempt to combine his past successes with Elm Street and Scream and the end result is a confusing and obnoxious mess. The story begins with a suburban husband who discovers that he's the murderer that's been stalking the town of Riverton. As it turns out, he has multiple personalities (of course). Or does he? Something about collecting a bunch of souls or something. So he kills his pregnant and fast forward to 16 years later, and a bunch of kids start getting killed again. Gosh, I wonder if the pregnant woman's fetus somehow survived and grew up to be one of these kids! That's one of the twists at the end, the other being who the killer is (still a little confused on what the hell was going on but I'm not so bothered that I'll watch it again). Apparently, this was released to theaters in 3-D, which is funny since there's nothing in the film that would be remotely exciting in 3-D. Awful movie in any dimension.
*1/2

Them (2006)

I've been talking a lot about movies sitting on my shelf unwatched in this edition of the Meyer Threat blog but what about movies that sit unwatched on my Netflix Instant virtual shelf? That was the case with Them (also known in its native tongue [shitty Poison album] as Ils), a French movie that I had heard was super scary. I also heard that The Strangers was a remake but I think maybe the reviewer was just being snidey (there are a lot of similarites - it's basically the same story - but they're still pretty different). Like in The Strangers, there's a couple out in the middle of nowhere being terrorized by a group of unknown ne'er-do-wells for no real reason. The harassers are just a bunch of dicks. I might have been in a shitty mood while watching Them but I wasn't all that impressed by it. There were certain things I really enjoyed and wished were expanded upon but I kinda thought the movie was a little dull. Maybe it's because of the whole Strangers thing, I don't know. I will say that the end is suitably creepy but it takes a while before there's any kind of payoff. Definitely an atmospheric film but for whatever reason, I wasn't up for the slow build. Maybe I'll give it another shot down the road.
**1/2

The Horde (2009)

Hey, another film from the French, this one about zombies. There was a time when I was really stoked for new zombie movies but man, this shit is getting played out. Night of the Living Dead is still one of my favorite movies - if not my favorite - but I tend to avoid the fucking things now because there aren't too many new ideas. The Horde isn't much of an exception to that, though it is a damn fine movie. A bunch of cops bust in on some gangsters in a run-down apartment building and when the shit starts to hit the fan in there, zombies are afoot outside. Pretty soon, the line between crime and law enforcement begins to blur as you expect it to do in these situations. Good guys aren't necessarily good guys, bad guys might not be so bad, etc. The real treat is when they run into an older gentleman, a resident of the apartment building with a unique outlook on things. Though The Horde is a fine effort in the zombie genre, it's not enough to get me excited about any of it again.
***

Chain Letter (2010)

What...the...fuck is this horseshit. Just seeing the title of the movie told me everything I needed to know: Some kids get a chain letter through their e-mail or social networking inboxes and if they don't respond, they get killed. Sure enough, that's the movie. The first gripe I have is that when you make "hip" movies for The Kids, it's wise to utilize things in the plot that won't be outdated when the movie is finally released. After all, this movie came out fairly recently and yet there's an awful lot about MySpace in the film. Five years from now, it's going to be especially jarring; not that MySpace will be completely forgotten, just that it probably won't be used. So you have a movie with an expiration date, basically. That's one problem, and a minor one in the greater scheme of things. Some of the teen actors are pretty good, some not so much, and there are some truly great actors like Brad Dourif in the mix. Noah Segan of Someone's Knocking at the Door and Cabin Fever 2 is also in the movie, as it's almost a requirement to cast him in everything (not complaining - he's great). Horrible script, totally unbelievable (and somewhat nonsensical) premise, nothing at all surprising except for a minor twist at the end.
*

S&Man (2006)

It's fitting that the titular "S&Man" in this movie looks a little like Paul F. Tompkins because in the words of PFT, his subplot is "the phoniest of baloneys." From what I can gather, most of the film is a straight documentary about extreme underground horror films as the director interviews guys like Bill Zebub, Fred Vogel of the August Underground series, and a woman who looks like Christopher Guest. He meets a fat guy at a horror convention (what are the chances?) who makes his own series of ultra-low-budget films called S&Man where his "character" stalks women, makes voodoo dolls of them, and finally kills them. As the movie progresses, we're supposed to suspect that these deaths aren't staged. This is all implied using dialogue that's about as subtle as a hammer to the face. The real stuff is what I really enjoyed - I enjoyed all the interviews and the in-depth examination on what we get from viewing violent imagery. The S&Man stuff was okay (his movies were indeed creepy) but like I said, it's going to take a lot of suspension of disbelief to buy into that humbug.
***

Monsters (2010)

Had I seen The Host before watching this, I would have thought "Hmmm. This is like The Host except not funny." I don't think Monsters was really intended to be funny - just saying. In this monster movie, a probe crashed to Earth and alien life forms spread across the Southern U.S. and Mexico. These areas ("infected zones") soon become overrun with creatures and a photographer has to lead his boss' daughter through one to get her home. They have something of an adventure and of course, there's a little spark between them but nothing terribly eventful happens until the very end of the movie when we the audience finally gets a peek at the aliens. Definitely cool effects going on. The acting's good and the life forms are genuinely interesting. However, this isn't the most exciting monster movie you could pick up. If you want a truly brilliant monster flick that will keep your interest throughout, I would recommend The Host, which I'm about to write about in just a second.
***

The Host (2006)

Okay - The Host. Not only was this movie that sat on my shelf unwatched, it sat on my shelf unwatched for years. Like, since it came out on DVD. That's right - I bought the DVD the week it came out, didn't watch it, sold the DVD when I switched over to Blu-ray, bought the Blu-ray, and then didn't watch that for maybe a year. Why? I have no idea. I had heard nothing but good things about this movie. And you know what? It's awesome. The movie takes places in Seoul, Korea, beginning with a guy being instructed by his boss to dump their formaldehyde supply down the drain, in spite of it going straight into the Han River. I guess this contributed to the gigantic mutant fish-eel-thing that later emerges from the river, attacks a bunch of people, and grabs a little girl, dragging her down into the sewers. Though her dad is a lazy slacker-type, he vows to find her and the rest of his family (including his professional archer sister) help him. The title of the film comes from the fact that the monster is the carrier of some infectious virus. The Host is both funny and suspenseful and the special effects are great. I don't know what the hell took me so long.
****1/2

I Saw the Devil (2010)

This one's also a Korean film, though it really couldn't be more different than The Host. This one stars Min-sik Choi (the lead in the amazing Korean film Oldboy, which I'll probably get around to reviewing one of these days) as a serial killer who abducts the pregnant fiancee of a secret agent who doesn't take it so well. He vows to track down the killer and he does - really early in the movie, in fact. And he beats the shit out of the guy. Having planted a homing device inside the guy, he lets him go, letting him go off and attempt more crimes...so he can get caught by the secret agent guy again who, of course, kicks the shit out of him some more. This cycle repeats itself over the course of the film and I'm really not giving it enough credit - it's amazing. The hunter becomes the hunted and all that bullshit but seriously, it's really a fantastic film and in fact, one of my favorites of 2010.
****1/2

Man-Moths?

2011-01-17T14:49:00.000-05:00

The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

I remember not liking this movie very much when it came out but since then, I've grown more appreciative of the Mothman mythos so I decided to revisit the film as I'm sure I was just wasted the first time I watched it. Richard Gere is married to Debra Messing (the flat-chested one on TV's Will & Grace) and just before a collision that leads to the detection of an inoperable brain tumor, she sees the Mothman jump in front of her car, presumably so that she'll go to the doctor...to find out there's really nothing she can do. You see, the Mothman is sort of an omen of bad things to come, letting people in on a potentially bad future but really doing nothing about it himself. Just giving people random clues that they usually don't know the meaning of until they're seconds away from drowning or whatever. Then they get what he meant. Not a terribly effective prophet but Gere becomes obsessed anyway and with the help of local sheriff Laura Linney (these are of course the actors' names--the screenwriter wasn't being lazy), they get deeper into the Mothman mystery until one fateful night when Linney almost becomes #37 (which of course reminded me of Clerks--"I'm 37?!"). I wound up liking the flick a lot more this go-round but it's still not the most satisfying watch. Certainly some creepy moments.
***

Hatchet II (2010)

Okay, Hatchet II: The sequel to the film that only horror nerds gave a shit about. I liked the original (I even have a Hatchet t-shirt) but I didn't buy the hype that it was a return to the glory days of "old school American horror" (as the back of my t-shirt proclaims). The sequel picks up right where the first one left off except this time Danielle Harris is in the role of Marybeth. She's great so whatever, it's cool. Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd) is a big character in this one, having only been a bit part in the original. He turns out to be something of a prick as he gathers a team of local vigilantes to go out to the swamp to kill Victor Crowley once and for all, with Marybeth in tow. Guess having an axe-murderer running loose is hurting his business. As to be expected, shit doesn't really work out like that and this time around, the gore is even more extreme. Some real comically brutal gore effects up in this piece. The real star of the movie is AJ Bowen (bearded guy from The Signal) who participates in one of the funniest sex scenes in recent memory. I'm still not completely sold on the Victor Crowley character but his backstory is expanded her in a particularly gruesome fashion. One of the rare sequels that's better than the original.
****

Repo Men (2010)

When I first heard about this movie where people have their artificial organs removed for defaulting on payments, I thought "Didn't we just have a movie exactly like this but with singing?" I am referring to Repo: The Genetic Opera, a film that was okay but still--the fucking singing. Nice idea but the execution was cheesy and over-the-top (as to be expected from a musical), making it creamjeans fodder for mall-goths worldwide. This version (unrelated to the musical) stars Jude Law and Forrest Whitaker as childhood friends (uh, Jude Law still has the accent) who grow up to repossess these organs on behalf of The Union, a mega-corporation specializing in unreasonable contracts which keeps the repo men very busy indeed. Occasionally they'll drive around and point their scanners at random people, checking to see if they defaulted. The first part of the movie is rather good but towards the middle, it goes into predictable territory and once it just becomes a guy on the run, the film goes downhill considerably. Things pick back up at the end (super-violent and bloody) but it's not enough to save the movie. Still, I will give the movie credit for being much better than I expected.
***

White Skin (2004)

In the U.S., I do believe this movie is called Cannibal, a title that I don't like as it really doesn't fit the movie at all. Technically, there aren't even any cannibals in the movie, it's just a lurid title designed to appeal to fat stupid Americans like myself. I much prefer the title White Skin, which I'm assuming is the translation of La peau blanche, it's French-Canadian title (yes, this is a foreign film, subtitles and all). Thierry is a college student with unfortunate facial hair who in spite of his aversion to redheads, hooks up with Claire, who he later finds out has cancer and is dying. His roommate, a black guy named Henri, is suspicious of this girl because she's creepy and sort of racist (for reasons we eventually find out) but he never makes the connection to another redhead from earlier in the film, a prostitute who tried to slit his throat. This is a really unique monster movie that unfolds slowly for a big gore payoff at the end. Definitely some hot babes in the mix as well.
***1/2

Link (1986)

Oh, Link. What a terrible, terrible movie you are. After star Elisabeth Shue was a guest on my favorite podcast, Doug Loves Movies, I became intrigued about a killer chimp movie they discussed called Link. Most bad horror movies showed up on late night Cinemax in the 80s but for whatever reason, I had never heard of this one. Damn thee, Doug Benson. This movie is an enormous piece of shit. Shue plays a college student who gets a job as the assistant to a chimp researcher played by Terence Stamp. One of his chimps, Link, is not really a chimp at all--he's an orangutan dyed black to give the appearance to viewers that he's an abnormally large chimp. Except orangutans don't really look like chimps at all so this is incredibly distracting throughout the duration of the film. Anyway, Link goes predictably batshit, killing Terence Stamp and harassing Elisabeth Shue all over the place, even checking out her nude body double at one point. I was expecting a bad movie but nothing as bad as this. And it's at a crushing duration of two hours. Ugh.
*1/2

Apt Pupil (1998)

Here's one that I of course heard about but never seen in its entirety. I knew there was a shady kid blackmailing an old man who used to be a Nazi. Which is the case but watching the whole movie let me in on how much the story relies on pure coincidence, so much that it takes a real leap of disbelief not to be taken out of the movie. Brad Renfro (now dead) is the aforementioned kid and the spectacular Ian McKellen plays the Nazi war criminal. The kid basically tells the old man to tell him fucked up Nazi stories or else he'll squeal to the authorities. How did he find him out? He was looking through a book, saw a picture of some Nazis, and then later saw one of them on the bus. Like I said, what a crazy coincidence that is. But the movie is pretty good and it doesn't take the holocaust lightly at all. A cat almost gets cooked but I think he gets the fuck out of Dodge with some scorched hair and wounded pride. A homeless guy is not so lucky; after attempting to S some D, Gandolf gives him a good whack on the head. The ending is another example of an extreme coincidence but overall, I'd say this movie is suitably disturbing at times. David Schwimmer plays a high school counselor but strangely, his obvious Jewishness isn't ever brought up. Not that I remember anyway.
***

The Shining (1997)

I've certainly seen Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining but only remember bits and pieces of the made-for-TV version that ABC aired when I was a senior in high school. I remember thinking it was total dogshit but I often revisit movies I previously wrote off just to be a gentleman about the whole thing. As bad as I remember it? Yeah, pretty much. Steven Weber (also known as sitcom poison) plays Jack though his portrayal is a little less intense than Nicholson's. Those are big shoes to fill and though Weber doesn't live up to his predecessor, he does okay. I feel bad saying this but the real problem here is the kid. He's really hard to watch and let's be honest, he's got a weird fucking mouth, man. I'd like to check out some more of these Stephen King TV movies but aside from IT (which was really kinda jainky), I don't remember liking any of the ones I've already seen. This one's really just for the curious--even if you've seen Kubrick's version a million times like I have, just watch that one.
**

Nightmare (1981)

One of Britain's "video nasties" from the 80s, Nightmare (also known as Nightmare in a Damaged Brain) traumatized me as a child not because I had actually seen it--I was just scared of the box art. Look at it! It's fucking crazy. And it pretty much shows the most graphic scene in the movie. Nightmare starts off strong, with a creepy low-budget atmosphere and a main actor who looks not unlike Ian Curtis or maybe the guy from The Fall. He's all fucked up in the head after hacking up some woman for the crime of banging his dad (it's unknown at this point if it's his mother but it all gets sorted out at the end). This was when he was a kid, by the way. He's all grown up and released from the asylum after a new kind of treatment cures him of his insanity. Except he's out for maybe fifteen minutes before he goes to a nudie booth and gets all fucked up again. Meanwhile, in Florida, there's some kid who's a real asshole, faking being stabbed and whatnot. Ian Curtis makes his way down there, where he lurks in the bushes, keeping his eye on this kid. And in the meantime, he kills some people. Everything's explained at the end and it's really nothing that can't be predicted. Fine movie. The middle hour is a touch on the boring side though.
**1/2

Emanuelle in America (1977)

Speaking of Cinemax in the 80s, I definitely remember the softcore Emanuelle films but little more than all the boobs in them. I don't think I ever sat down and watched one in its entirety. Well, that would change when at age 31, I caught wind of a particularly fucked up entry in the series, Emanuelle in America (Emanuelle, by the way, is a cheap knock-off of the apparently more sophisticated--but still smutty--Emmanuelle series). Emanuelle begins the film by sending an assailant running by way of touching his dick a little bit. Later, she becomes a spy in a brothel where she checks out some broad jacking off a horse (not to completion, thankfully). After that, my memory gets a little hazy. Aside from the horse scene, the action in the first half is softcore but somewhere in the middle, we start to see some graphic sex, something I wasn't expecting (I got this movie from Netflix!). Then at the end, there's the real disturbing stuff--some faux-snuff footage that really is not for the faint of heart. Certainly some of the more extreme violence I've witnessed on film. Worth watching? Not really. It's a real chore to sit through if you're not interested in the porn and though there's some really strong stuff at the end, you still have to endure 85 minutes of bullshit.
*1/2

Black Swan (2010)

First thing's first--is Black Swan a horror movie? Yeah, kinda. I don't feel like getting into it but it's on the cover of Fangoria magazine so I'm going to review it here. Natalie Portman plays goody-two-shoes ballerina Nina and when she gets the coveted main role in a performance of Swan Lake, she starts to lose her shit a little bit. Meanwhile, the slutty Lily (Mila Kunis) is up to some shady shit, probably trying to get Nina to crack so she can take over her role. Nina's mom is something of a kook, displaying some seriously obsessive behavior--extreme protectiveness, painting a shit-ton of Nina portraits, etc. And then there's Winona Ryder's character, a falling star who goes crazy with jealousy over being replaced. I never thought I'd say this but I would have liked to see more of her. Vincent Cassel, a motherfucker of an actor, plays the ballet director, Tomas, and he's really the best part of the film. He tries to slut up Nina so she can properly play the Black Swan. A fantastic movie, a sort of companion piece to Aronofsky's previous film, The Wrestler. Does it bring the horror? A couple times, yeah. One particularly nasty scene involving a hangnail had me wincing in my seat. And who wants to get lost in a particularly steamy masturbation sesh only to discover that your mother's in the room? Yikes.
****1/2

See Ya, Saw

2011-01-04T15:50:00.000-05:00

Saw VII: The Final Chapter (2010)

I sort of thought that the Saw series might pull out a surprise in the last lap and make a good movie but, alas, it was not to be. I don't know why I even thought that was a possibility; I guess it was because Saw VI was surprisingly not terrible. And I figured, hey, they're wrapping the story up, giving the fans what they've been wanting, and maybe pulling out all the stops with this final installment. The Saw series was never very good but for whatever reason, I kept coming back for cheap thrills and to see how far they would take the story that was convoluted as fuck by the second sequel. Detective Hoffman (are we finally done with Costas Mandylor?) escapes that beartrap-to-the-face trap that we all enjoyed so much in the first one and Jigsaw's wife is worried because, after all, she's the one who put it on his face. Meanwhile, that dillhole from Boondock Saints is going around selling a fake story about escaping one of Jigsaw's games because that's a good idea - taunting the guy who goes around torturing and killing people to teach them lessons about morality. Well, a new game is afoot and the Boondock Saint has to save all of his accomplices as well as his wife who was in the dark about the whole thing. While all this is going on, there's a new cop getting involved who had a history with Hoffman which is funny because he's only now entering the story in the seventh movie of the series. A character from the first film comes back, not really to tie up any loose ends, but to create more, which is certainly a bold choice here. Especially bold since the actor was so laughably bad in that film that he constantly threatened to derail the already shaky premise. So does any of this pay off? Not by a long shot. Saw goes out not with a bang but a whimper. Easily the second worst film of the series, right up there with Saw V. Good fucking riddance.
*1/2

The Hole (2009)

Not to be confused with the movie where Keira Knightley shows her titties, this a PG-13 Joe Dante film that was apparently in 3-D during its theatrical run. I'm not going to piss and moan about it being PG-13 but the rating is definitely representative of the film. There are some decent scares here and there but this is absolutely a movie made for kids in their early teens. Dane is a brooding emo-looking kid whose family moves to a new city and in their new house, there's a basement with a trapdoor leading to, you guessed it, a hole. And guess what? The hole has no bottom and all kinds of spooky critters come out of it because, apparently, padlocks were the secret to keeping them contained. Neighbor hottie Julie (the chick from The Haunting of Molly Hartley) helps Dane and his little brother Lucas solve the mystery of what the hole is and what they have to do to stop all this super scary evil stuff. Bruce Dern of The 'Burbs (one of the greatest movies ever, also directed by Dante) shows up briefly which is great but for the most part, this flick wasn't for me, though for what it is, it's pretty good. Definitely one for the kids when they have their sleepovers.
**1/2

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009)

I'm sort of at a loss for words as to how to describe this one but I'll give it a shot anyway. First of all, it's a Japanese film, from the people behind the brilliant Tokyo Gore Police. Monami is the vampire girl and she's at a new school where there are all kinds of bizarre shit going on like some students who dress up in black face (with big prosthetic lips and everything) as well as a group of competitive self-mutilators. Monami has her eye on Mizushima but he's got a girlfriend - Keiko. Keiko's father is a mild-mannered teacher who moonlights as a mad scientist in his spare time. Mizuskima is soon infected by Monami, courtesy of a blood-filled chocolate (gross) and when Keiko steps in, she falls from the school's roof and is killed. Meanwhile, her father discovers that the vampire's blood can reanimate dead body parts so he brings Keiko back to life as a sort of Frankenstein's monster. To say this movie is crazy and fucked up would be an understatement. But it's a lot of fun; definitely one of the most enjoyable films I saw in all of 2010. I'm looking forward to the team's new film, Mutant Girls Squad. Should be a good time.
****1/2

Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! (2006)

After seeing Someone's Knocking at the Door and really enjoying it, I decided to look into Chad Ferrin's other work which lead me to Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!, a bizarre slasher flick about a mentally handicapped boy named Nicholas who's obsessed with Easter. Remington is his mom's boyfriend and he's a really fuckhead. At the beginning of the film, he robs a store, killing the clerk in the process. For whatever reason, Mom decides to leave Nicholas in the care of this obviously shady guy who invites some prostitutes over, not to mention his pedophile friend who wants to "play" with Nicholas. Yep, it's that kind of movie. Nothing terribly graphic goes down but a killer in an Easter Bunny mask starts taking everybody out. What starts off as a really fucked up indie horror movie becomes a run-of-the-mill slasher flick, which is fine. I can only take so much fucked up shit. But the movie is something of a dud and the big reveal at the end isn't really much. The mom's hot - real nice boobs.
**

The Redsin Tower (2006)

Another real low budget movie, this one from the people behind the August Underground series, a trilogy of "found footage" movies that take torture porn to the extreme. I'm not a fan of those films but I read somewhere that the special effects in this film (a "real" movie, not none of that found footage shit) were outstanding. Which is absolutely true - the special effects are indeed amazing and the rest of the movie isn't so bad either. Kim (a super hot chick who spends most of the first 10 minutes totally naked, pubes and all) breaks up with Mitch and afterwards, goes out with her goth friend Becky. They meet up with some dudes and they all decide to party down at the Redsin Tower, where all kinds of weird occult shit went down a couple centuries ago. They get super fucked up on booze and pot and of course, shit starts to go down. Really awesome shit. I gotta hand it to the Toetag Pictures guys - when they threw out all the stupid torture porn gimmickry and made an actual film, they pulled off something pretty cool. The story's certainly not original (definitely a throwback to the 80s) but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. If you can find it, I recommend watching it.
***1/2

The Pumpkin Karver (2006)

I discovered this movie on YouTube as a user felt it necessary to take all the choice moments from this Pumpkin Karver and compile them for our viewing pleasure. After about 30 seconds, I decided that this was indeed a film to be seen and anxiously awaited its arrival in the mail. Not really--I was actually sort of bummed that I wasted one of my Netflix choices on what was sure to be a shit film. Final verdict? The Pumpkin Karver is indeed a very shitty movie but it's also incredibly entertaining. Our story begins with some slutty chick and her Satan-worshippin' boyfriend who are about to go to a Halloween dance. When she's in the garage, a masked killer tries to stab the shit out of her and her brother, who I assumed was retarded at this point, comes in to save the day, killing the assailant with his pumpkin carving knife. Oops--it was the boyfriend! Turns out the brother is not retarded but he is shaken by this event. To get over it, bro and sis decide to go to a Halloween party, where in some scenes there's a lot of people (and a band) but in the majority of the film, it's just a group of 5 or 6 idiots doing shit nobody ever does at parties, like a True or Dare-type game where you have to swallow a bunch of bugs. The not-retarded brother does this, pukes, and then his love interest kisses him! What the fuck! He's got bugs all in his teeth, girl! Then there are the two stoner guys who are so goddamn ridiculous they have to be seen to be believed. Great trashy movie all around. Recommended if you got the stomach.
***

Shredder (2003)

Another YouTube discovery, Shredder is a snowboarding themed slasher flick in which a killer is apparently avenging the death of a young girl who was killed on the mountain when some drunk snowboarders ran her into a tree (or something). So the resort's been closed down and some years later, it's about to be reopened. A group of teens decide to go there and check it out and...isn't this the exact same story as the original Friday the 13th? Indeed it is, except there's snow. Let's see if I can remember some of these characters: Rich bitch, her nice boyfriend, the slutty girl who has some extreme sexual boundaries issues, the girl who everyone thinks is a lesbian because she's not a dumb slut, the stoner guy who carries a video camera around, the mysterious French guy who turns out to not be French after all, and...that might be it. I don't recall any obligatory black guys but there may have been a fat virgin in the bunch. Maybe not. Like The Pumpkin Karver, this is good cheesy fun but certainly not a mindblower.
**1/2

Trauma (1993)

I have mixed feelings about Dario Argento, as I think most people do who are aware of the guy. His films range from great (Deep Red) to pretty good (Suspiria) to hilariously bad (Mother of Tears). If you're at all familiar with the timeline of those films, it's apparent that he's been on a steady decline since about the mid-70s, perhaps placing him at the top of the overrated horror directors list. But I think his daughter is hot so I watched one of Dario's films with her in it, Trauma. Asia Argento plays Aura, an anorexic teenage girl who witnesses the beheadings of her parents after her mother conducted a seance in their dining room. She shacks up with a local journalist and together, they attempt to uncover who's behind this series of local beheadings. The great Brad Dourif shows up towards the end and when his severed head screams as it plummets to the bottom of an elevator shaft, I decided that this was another of Argento's stinkers. The first hour is rather tedious and there's really only one scene--a scene where a bunch of mental patients are freaking out--that's at all creepy. The screaming severed head was my breaking point though.
**

Psycho (1960)

I guess I really don't have much to say about this one as just about everything's been said. Hitchcock was a genius, this set the standard for all the slasher movies that followed, it broke a shit-ton of taboos, etc. This was probably my fifth or sixth time seeing it and as always, I enjoyed it tremendously. This time I really paid attention to how great Anthony Perkins really is as Norman Bates. Just perfect. But...I don't think it's a perfect movie. The only real qualm I have with it is the very end where the psychologist spends a good five minutes explaining to everyone the deal with Norman's fractured psyche. It goes on for-fucking-ever but I guess I have the benefit of 50 years of Psycho ripoffs whereas in 1960, this split-personality jive wasn't heard of. Still, it's tiresome listening to that guy's spiel. We get it already.
****1/2

Psycho II (1983)

The only sequels to Psycho I had scene up until this point was parts of Psycho IV on the USA network when I was a kid (saw Elliott from E.T. poisoning Olivia Hussey while Norman in the future is talking to some radio guy) and the made-for-TV movie Bates Motel that I really loved as a kid (I think I'll revisit that one soon). I also remember the VHS box for Psycho III being in every video store when I was a kid. Just the cover weirded me out; I never had the guts to rent it. Anyway, so Psycho II is a dang good follow-up but of course, it's not nearly as great as the original so it doesn't get near the props it deserves. Norman is back from the bin and Lila Loomis (sister of Shower Lady from the first one) is none too happy about this. So she devises a plan to make Norman crazy again, which seems kinda fucked up since more people are going to die and that's why she thinks he should be locked up. Sort of a contradiction, right? Anthony Perkins is again really great and Meg Tilly plays his super-hot friend who's got a secret. The ending is a little silly but for the most part, this movie was really good.
****

American History XXL

2011-01-04T02:34:00.000-05:00

Night of the Demons (2009)

Having finally been unleashed from a tentative release date that seems to date back forever (though not far enough that the featured actors would be considered stars), the awaited-by-nobody remake of Night of the Demons has finally come out, though straight to video. As a fan of the original and as someone who doesn't get their panties in a wad over remakes, I was somewhat looking forward to this, partially to see where they take the story and also to see how Shannon Elizabeth and Edward Furlong have aged. Ms. Elizabeth? Goddamn, she is still fine. Sir Furlong? I think he ate John Connor. And then there's Monica Kenna (she of Undeclared, a fantastic TV show from the early 00s), who apparently didn't learn her lesson from Freddy vs. Jason. Or maybe she's still butthurt over that experience which is why her performance her is shockingly bad. In spite of Keena's weird and terrible performance, the movie's not all that bad. Furlong is believable as a shady drug dealer; less believable is that he dated Keena's character. The lipstick trick from the original is back but of course it's taken to the next level for the Mountain Dew generation. A decent flick, certainly watchable, but if you have to choose, go with the 1988 version. Nobody even says "Eat a bowl of fuck" in this one.
***

Predators (2010)

Predator - yeah, I like it, but after one dismal sequel and two even more dismal Alien vs. Predator films, I wasn't expecting much from this sequel. That is, until I learned of Robert Rodruiguez's involvement. Strangely, he chose not to direct, instead choosing the considerably less commercial Machete (in my opinion, a good choice), and it shows in the final product: What we have here is an entertaining but ultimately unremarkable sequel that can only touch the original by constantly referencing it. Adrien Brody, apparently channeling the voice of Christian Bale's Batman, isn't a Schwarzenegger level action hero but he doesn't get in the way too much. A beefy Laurence Fishburne shows up for exposition as a batshit guy who has survived his stay on the Predators' hunting reserve. Not a terribly popular opinion but I really enjoyed Topher Grace as the doctor who eventually becomes a crazy third act plot twist that had fans groaning across the world. Me - I thought he was good and I enjoyed the outrageousness of the twist. Did they finally get it right? Well, I'll just say they didn't get it horribly wrong. Definitely underwhelming though.
**1/2

Someone's Knocking at the Door (2009)

Now we're cooking. I had read that this film was pretty crazy but I totally wasn't expecting a nightmare world where this mostly depraved and unlikeable group of drugged-out college kids get buttfucked to death one-by-one by a greased up Ezra Buzzington sporting a massive cock. Yes, that's what this movie's about. No, I'm not lying. Yes, it's great. Horror films of the past have dealt with serial killers coming back from the dead - heck, it's old hat - but how often do we see this formula translated into true horror, the horror of being assraped to death by a 15-inch dong? It's an ugly, super fucked up movie but unlike the works of, say, Ryan Nicholson (probably a nice guy but his movies SUCK), this one's chock full of charm and though the twist isn't anything original, I have to say that, like a naked ghost tackling me out of the shadows and fucking me up the ass, I wasn't expecting it.
****

Lost Boys: The Thirst (2010)

You know what I was expecting? This movie sucking horribly. I didn't hate Lost Boys: The Tribe. In fact, I thought it was an okay movie when it wasn't just repeating shit from the original. It was an okay movie for what it was - certainly much better than it should have been. This one lives up to what a direct-to-DVD Lost Boys sequel ought to be: a steaming pile of dogshit. First of all, let's talk about the story. Corey Feldman is back as Edgar Frog and he's been hired by the author of a series of teen vampire novels (cute) to go after yet another "head vampire." This alleged head vampire is a DJ and even though it's 2010, he's getting his new blood from putting on raves. Really, dudes? Fucking raves? Corey Haim is absent - not because he was dead at the time but because he was such a fuckup he couldn't even get a role in this fucking disaster. I guess they weren't expecting any kind of comeback as they wound up just killing off his character (not onscreen, of course - Feldman just mentions it at some point). Corey Feldman, techno music, bad CGI - avoid this one. Hell, avoid all of them. The first one's kind of a turd too.
*1/2

Suck (2009)

Like Lost Boys: The Thirst, I started this one, watched about 10 minutes, and just couldn't get into it so I turned it off. Unlike The Thirst, I was really glad I came back to it. My initial impression was that it was a horror-comedy about musicians who turn into vampires (ugh) that coasts on its cameo appearances (of which there are many) but it really is an enjoyable movie that, correct me if I'm wrong, is a metaphor for drugs? Or just selling out? Both? In any event, there's this band called The Winners (dumb) who are on a short tour when their hottie bass player (some chick who is apparently on Mad Men now) gets infected with vampirism by the guy from Burning Brides. One by one, she infects the entire band and they go from being a bar band that can't get a break to being this shit-hot band that floats around and shit. Iggy Pop shows up to drop some Midwestern flavor as a record producer and Henry Rollins appears briefly as a goofball DJ. Then there's Alice Cooper as a creepy bartender and the great Dave Foley of The Kids in the Hall as their sad sack manager. (Oh, and Alex Lifeson of Rush as a border guard.) A cool, fun movie for sure.
***1/2

Devil (2010)

Apparently the trailer for this elicited laughter when the words "From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan" appeared on the screen. What did that dude expect? After a decade-long series of ridiculous movies, did he think audiences wouldn't eventually come to laugh at him? Me - I have a soft spot for the guy. The Happening is so bad it's fucking awesome and his previous movies are really only guilty of being silly and somewhat predictable. However, Devil is really just "from [his] mind" - it's actually directed by John Erick Dowdle, the guy behind the still-unreleased Poughkeepsie Tapes, which I didn't care too much for. So is Devil laughably bad, like audiences are expecting? Nah. But let's not get too carried away; I can really only give it credit for being less ridiculous than I anticipated. Okay, so a shady mattress salesman, an old lady pickpocket, a Gulf War vet, a gold digger, and a security guard are all trapped in an elevator. Now and then one of them gets picked off because guess what? One of them is the devil. You know what I just found out? The weird looking mattress salesman guy (the backseat guy from the "meow" scene in Super Troopers) is engaged to Christina Hendricks, famous for her role as Giant Titted Redhead on Mad Men. Goddamn, kid. High five. That information is way more surprising than the twist at the end of Devil.
**1/2

Four Boxes (2009)

I can't remember what movie I had seen this preview before and I'm actually pretty sure I saw it a couple times. So whoever the studio is, kudos to you, because for whatever reason, the trailer totally grabbed me. Unfortunately, it wasn't out on DVD at the time and I had to wait. Luckily, Netflix put it on their Instant service, probably several months after I had forgotten about it entirely. The title of Four Boxes comes from a website that the three characters (the only characters, I believe) obsess over while moving a dead guy's belongings out of his house to sell on eBay or something (their business is selling dead peoples' stuff). The site used to be a porno site but the hot chick moved out and some terrorists moved in. Eventually, the viewers determine that some bad shit is going to go down. Meanwhile, there's a whole love triangle thing going on between them. Just when the idea started to lose steam, the movie takes a total left turn into a really exciting place and by the end, I was really amazed. I was expecting something low budget and dumb but it really goes somewhere that I think is very clever. Probably one of the best horror films I watched in all of 2010.
****1/2

The Last Exorcism (2010)

Hopefully this is the last mockumentary because I've about had it with this shit. And if it was, the subgenre would be going out well because this is a damn fine movie - a real surprise. Cotton Marcus is a preacher/exorcist who lost his faith after hearing of the death of an autistic child during an exorcism. He decides to make things right by letting a film crew document one, uh, last exorcism so that he can show the world all the tricks con-men like him use during these rituals. Nell Sweetzer is the possessed girl and as the story unfolds, we're left going back and forth as to whether or not this possession is in her mind or if the demon Abalam is actually in her body. The movie's an interesting watch as this mystery unfolds but just as the story starts to feel a skosh unsatisfying, the film takes a sharp left turn into completely fucked up and expected territory. For my money, this is one of the best horror films of 2010. The ending might be a little too over the top for some viewers but I enjoyed it a great deal.
****

The Loved Ones (2009)

I had read some good things about this movie but going into it, I really had no idea what it was even about. I surmised that teenagers were involved and there was some sort of school dance but that's it. At the beginning of the film, we see this metalhead kid driving a car with his dad riding shotgun, listening to the Little River Band. Of course, metalhead kid isn't paying attention to the road and out of nowhere, some bloody fucker pops up in front of them and they crash into a tree, killing the father. Months later, MHK - Brent - is asked to go to the end of the year school dance by this shy but pretty girl. He must refuse because he has a girlfriend who gives him sex in her car after school. The rejected girl doesn't take this so well and she has her father kidnap the kid so they can torture him in their kitchen on the night of the dance. It's kind of like an Australian version of Otis with a female as the villain but also there's a little bit of People Under the Stairs thrown in for good measure. I thought it was quite good and definitely had a real nice look to it but I certainly wasn't as blown away as others have been.
***

Splice (2010)

A controversial film in the vet tech community, Adrien Brody's other genre film of 2010, Splice, is certainly an interesting film, if flawed in many areas. The main thing I have a problem with is the main characters being named Elsa and Clive. Okay, we get it - Bride of Frankenstein. Congratulations, you just took me out of the movie. So Elsa and Clive make these two little booger monsters that are supposedly the key to everything but on the sneak, they make Dren, some sort of human lizard thing that creeps me the fuck out. She grows rapidly and though she's interesting looking, I can't say she was terribly fuckable, not even at the ripe old age of several weeks when Clive decided it was prudent to raw dog his science experiment. Ooookay. Elsa meanwhile takes out all of her issues with her mother out on Dren which comes around to bite her in the ass. As if she couldn't see that coming. The special effects are really cool, Dren is pretty freaky looking, but the story is a little much at times. Nice nipples on the lizard chick, I must say.
***

Unnecessary Evil

2010-09-14T16:09:00.001-04:00

Resident Evil (2002)

With the new Resident Evil movie in theater now (and in 3-D), I decided to go back and revisit the previous 3 movies, mostly because I hadn't seen two of them. I did see this first one back when it came out and remembered liking it okay. In 2010, the movie's still just okay, if a little bit dated. Do these kinds of movies still have techno soundtracks? Ugh. That's an era of music I would like to not revisit. Let's see...Resident Evil. You know, these movies are so fucking all over the place that it's silly to recap the plot. There's a viral outbreak, there are zombies, Milla Jovovich is...someone. It all takes place in some underground lab which is funny because The Devil's Tomb (last post) is the exact same story except with demonic possession. Ha! Oh and Steve Rodgers from Welcome to the Dollhouse is in it. Oh Steve!
**1/2

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Gosh, who would have thought that these movies get worse as they go? In this one, the virus is spreading out into Raccoon City and the Umbrella corporation has to go to great lengths to contain. Basically, you can skip the first third of this movie if you've seen the beginning of Doomsday or I Am Legend. The zombies are barely around in this one; instead we have some huge mutant named Project Nemesis running around. I guess they thought 2 years was enough time to completely forget the ending of the first movie because they treat the real identity of Project Nemesis like it's a big secret. Weird. Easily the worst movie of the series so far but even so, it's not even all that terrible. It's just that nothing really happens; it feels like a bridge between two movies. I guess that's not the case though because the next movie is just as underwhelming...
**

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

There are more zombies in this one than the last one and a new twist has been added - the zombie virus has spread to birds! Which is pretty fucking crazy and changes shit entirely...for about 10 minutes. No idea why throwing the bird shit in the movie was so important because it's built up and then completely abandoned. Also, I noticed that in all these movies Milla Jovovich apparently has romantic feelings for a couple of the characters but nothing ever leads up to it. She appears to have no real opinions on anyone or anything and then out of nowhere, she's kissing some dude on the mouth like they had something. I think this takes up maybe 30 seconds of each movie and then its back to kicking ass. What else? Oh! Chris Mancini on the Comedy Film Nerds podcast pointed out something funny while talking about the new one. If the entire world is an apocalyptic wasteland, why are there corporations? I get that they want to control everything and the cure for the virus will give them that power but the world has been almost wiped out and more importantly, these people don't have any money. They can give you a can of peaches for the vaccine - good enough?
**

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Resident Evil 4 was so cool in 3-D!....is what I would have said had I seen it in the 3-D. I bought my ticket, grabbed some popping-corn and a bottled water and thought "Shit! Forgot the special 3-D glasses." When I made my way back to the ticket counter and requested my glasses, the guy looked at me like I was completely insane. Turns out this showing was not in 3-D but really, dude, it wasn't that outrageous for me to ask. Bummed as I was (seeing it in 3-D was its only appeal for me), I decided to look on the bright side - I get to ogle Milla Jovovich some more. And boy did I, especially in the first scene where there's a bunch of here fighting some Japanese guys and later, the worst actor I've ever seen in a motion picture. The guy from Prison Break (I think) shows up later and he's really bad too. Actually, most of the acting sucks and once again, Milla Jovovich has a romantic interest who she's only known in the movie for, I would say, 48 hours at the most. Also, a giant executioner guy shows up. No idea who he is (never played the game) and it's not really explained. The movie would have indeed been kickass in 3-D and unfortunately, in 2-D it's kind of hokey. A lot of effects that might have been cool in The Matrix 10 years ago plus a nu-metal soundtrack. At least the techno shit's gone. Overall, it was a decent movie and I would say it's probably the best movie of the 4. Man, that ticket guy was a cocksucker.
***

The Evil Dead (1981)

It's always hard for me to review these classic horror films because there really isn't much for me to say. Bruce Campbell is Ash (or Ashley, rather) and he goes to a cabin in the woods with a dude and 3 chicks (one is Ash's sister, one is his girlfriend, and one is the other guy's girlfriend). They unleash a bunch of demons by playing a reel-to-reel tape with a bunch of incantations. Which got me thinking, wouldn't it reverse the whole thing if they played the tape backwards? Isn't that how this shit works? Like I said, this movie's classic and it's not to be missed. Especially impressive are the ultra-low budget effects; there's a lot of oatmeal and karo syrup. Also, I really gotta point out how good looking Ellen Sandweiss is in the movie. She's still kind of a babe. Holla atcha boy, Sandweiss.
*****

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

It had been years since I'd seen this movie - 10 years, in fact. I saw it when it first showed up on pay-per-view. I liked it at the time (and even liked the sequel) but saw no real reason to watch it again. That is, until a recent Blu-ray release that happened to be at my local Best Buy for 8 bucks. Surprisingly, the movie's held up really well. Fall is arriving and this is a nice creepy movie to watch this time of year. It definitely wasn't as scary as the first time I saw it but then, I'm no longer under the impression that it was real. Not the Blair Witch, mind you; I thought the reactions of the people in the movie were real. I thought they went out in the woods, were fucked with by whoever hired them, and they thought it was the Blair Witch. One thing did occur to me while watching it this time: Man, I feel bad for Heather, the actress in the film. The entire country not only got a good look up her nostrils but they got a gander at a major snot situation. Not flattering.
****

Frozen (2010)

Fuck me! A movie has been made about the horrors of ski lifts! I've always been uneasy about ski lifts, in spite of the fact that I've never been skiing in my life. They always seemed really unsafe but I guess I never really hear about ski lift injuries or deaths so I suspected it was all in my imagination. Turns out Hatchet director Adam Green thinks there's some ski lift-related terror to had and that's what Frozen is - two guys, a girl, and a ski lift. They scammed their way onto the lift without passes and a breakdown in communication within the ski lift operations bureaucracy leaves them stranded up in the air. What do you do? Do you jump? Sorry, pal, your legs will break and you will be...eaten by wolves? Where were the wolves when everyone was skiing? And why don't they just fashion a makeshift rope out of all their layers of clothing and just climb down? Because that's not scary. For as much as I had to suspend disbelief, the movie was effective. There's a particular scene involving frostbitten skin that made me go "GAH!!!" It's really not that bad; it was just built up an awful lot.
***1/2

Pig Hunt (2008)

The first of two pig movies in this installment, Pig Hunt is about a group of friends (several of whom are recent marine recruits) who go out onto the land one of them grew up on for a weekend boar hunting trip. Shit gets tense when the guy's former hillbilly friends tag along to make everyone uncomfortable for no real reason other than that's what hillbillies do. No tact! Some accidents happen, of course, and after a showdown, one of the hillbillies is shot dead. The surviving hillbilly goes back to get his hillbilly clan to exact revenge on the city slickers so they all seek refuge at a local hippie colony. That's when the movie starts to get a little weird. Finally! The movie was 2/3 over before it started going anywhere. You know from the beginning that there's a giant pig so where's the fucking giant pig, man? Not giant pig-man. That's the next movie.
**1/2

Squeal (2008)

Like I said, there's a giant pig-man in this movie. Not literally a giant; he's a pretty big guy though. And then there's a little pig-man; a dwarf pig-man, in fact. Along with a pig-lady, there are the pig family who kidnaps some obnoxious alternative rock band and holds them captive on their farm. Various methods of torture are employed upon them and since most of the characters are annoying assholes, it's no harm no foul. To be honest, it starts to get a little boring as they're all one-by-one tortured and/or dispatched in various brutal ways. I guess the movie's supposed to make us think about how we treat animals. I don't know. The real treat of the movie is the little pig-man - he's really great! Especially when he puts on clown makeup and puts on a show for their guests. I admired the low-budget look of the film and the little dude was awesome but not much else appealed to me.
**

Hush (2009)

I can't think of a more generic movie for a horror film, especially since it really has nothing to do with the movie. Hush is about a guy who has to follow around a mysterious semi because the driver abducted his girlfriend from a truck stop. Who exactly needs to hush here? The movie's fairly suspenseful throughout but really, the story is nothing more than this guy trying to track down his girlfriend. Subtlety is not a particular strong-suit of the film, especially when the camera zooms in on a trailer suspended in air by cables. You think that might come into play a little later? The human trafficking angle is always a scary one but in Hush, it's barely explored. There are hints of a conspiracy but the story mainly focuses on the one guy and his mission. Certainly not a bad movie and like I said, it's got a certain tension to it, but my socks remain unknocked.
**1/2

Boobs!

2010-09-14T14:29:00.000-04:00

Machete (2010)

The complete failure of Grindhouse begs the question, How did this movie get made? Clearly it was the heartthrob appeal of Danny Trejo. Man oh man, has the karmic wheel spun in that guy's favor this time. He gets it on with both Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan and uh, Michelle Rodriguez, otherwise known as my least favorite actress of all time. M-Rod is sort of okay in this movie, no doubt helped by Alba's laughable performance. And who did her hair? Mariah Carey in Precious? But that's neither here nor there as the spirit of the film is rooted in exploitation cinema...that apparently only exists in the head of Robert Rodriquez. Like Planet Terror, this is way too high budget and star-studded to be a "real" grindhouse film but who cares? It's a lot of fun. You got Robert De Niro channeling George W. Bush, Lindsay Lohan as a total slut, and the long-awaited crucifixion of Cheech (just kidding - Cheech rules). Steven Seagal's inclusion really bothered me because he sucks and is a total piece of shit but whatever.
****

Piranha 3-D (2010)

Oh how I waited for this movie. I'm not a huge fan of Aja (see High Tension review) but Piranha (or maybe Piranha 2) is one of the first horror movies I'd ever seen. I'm not wild about the new 3-D craze but I figured that with a cheesy horror flick such as this, it could add to the fun. Well, let's start off with the 3-D. I don't know if it was because the effect was added in post but it really wasn't all that dazzling. The movie itself is a hoot. I was ready for a really campy and gory tits-and-ass horror flick but when the carnage ensues, it gets sort of mean-spirited. Drunk college kids are among the most intolerable human beings on the planet but man, they really get their asses handed to them by these fish. Not that I really care; just saying it gets kinda dark there for awhile. What else? Elisabeth Shue (who's still super hot) is a sheriff who of course has to save her kids, Eli Roth makes his obligatory cameo, Adam Scott is miscast as a scientist. I should probably see Jaws because the Richard Dreyfuss appearance, while delightful, was lost on me. That's right - I've never seen Jaws. One of these days.
****

High Tension (2003)

This arrived on Blu-ray as a Best Buy exclusive this month and for 8 bucks, I couldn't resist. I hadn't seen the movie since it came out and although I liked it, I thought about the big twist ending since and considered how nonsensical it really is. So I put on my new Blu-ray and watched the film with a eagle eye. Guess what? This movie is really poorly made! You can suspend disbelief and say that certain things aren't really happening but then there's the issue of an imaginary car accident at the end that gives our main character very real injuries. So what? It's just a horror movie, right? Well, with the amount of nutswinging Alexandre Aja has gotten since, it should be pointed out that not only has his movies since sucked balls (especially his Hills Have Eyes remake) but the movie that carried him to stardom is really clumsily made. I will say that the violence is disturbingly brutal and the chick is hot so High Tension isn't a total waste. Still, it bugs the shit out of me to see a movie that could have been brilliant come out so goddamn sloppy because of just a handful of sequences.
**1/2

Session 9 (2001)

Here's another much-praised film from the 00s that I haven't seen since its DVD release. Like High Tension, it's also got a twist ending but I remember little else about the film other than the kid from Welcome to the Dollhouse being in it. Gordy owns an asbestos removal company and his right hand guy is Phil (played by...*sunglasses on*...David Caruso). Gordy agrees to a two-week abandoned mental hospital job in just a week, to Phil's dismay, so the crew (which also includes Josh Lucas, in one of his earlier roles) has to bust ass in order to get the $10,000 bonus that's stipulated in their contract. Gordy's having problems at home and things get especially weird when Josh Lucas' character turns up missing, only to be found wandering the halls with a fresh lobotomy saying "What are you doing here?" repeatedly. Meanwhile, one of their co-workers helped himself to some old tapes, therapy sessions with a former patient who suffered from multiple personalities. These tapes culminate in the titular "Session 9," where the twist is somewhat explained. Great movie! Very atmospheric and suspenseful. Definitely worthy of all its praise.
****1/2

The Woods Have Eyes (2007)

This title's similarity to a certain classic film's title made me understandably skeptical but...it was on Blu-ray and I like to watch as many movies on Blu-ray as I can so The Woods Have Eyes made it into my Netflix queue and later, my mailbox. First off, let's talk about the alleged high-def transfer. This movie looks no better than if I burned an mpeg to a DVD-R. It looks really bad. It's a really low-budget movie but I'm still curious why a Blu-ray release was necessary. The film itself is surprisingly not awful. A group of East coast families are enjoying a vacation in their summer cabins and when the kids decide to take a hike in the woods, they come across a family of murderous hillbillies. Okay, not the most original idea in the world but what carries the film are the actors' performances. For a low-budget horror flick, the acting is pretty good. Not crazy about the bullshit ending but I was happy to not hate this movie.
**

The Devil's Tomb (2009)

Talk about a surprise! Going through the cast, you see some actors whose careers have, shall we say, seen better days. The Devil's Tomb stars Cuba Gooding, Jr. and at his side are Jason London (can't remember which one he is, the Dazed and Confused guy or the Mallrats guy) and Taryn Manning (the slutty trashy girl in every movie since 2001). Rounding out the cast are a crew of working actors like Ron Perlman, Bill Moseley (who's really great here), Zack Ward (another great performance), and Henry Rollins (who's really bad here). They're all part of an elite group of soldiers who have to venture down into an underground lab because, unbeknownst to them, there's some supernatural shit afoot. Wait - isn't this the same story as the first Resident Evil movie? No matter, this is still a damn fun movie and besides, it's demonic possession this time around. And goddamn, there is some gross shit in this movie. Now and then, Netflix Instant will give me a good one and this is one fine example.
***1/2

Walled In (2009)

Speaking of actors whose careers have seen better days, here we have Mischa Barton in the "supernatural thriller" Walled In, about a demolition engineer (Barton) who's maiden project after graduation is an apartment building located out in the middle of nowhere. For some reason, she has to stay in one of the apartments because although the job looks like it would take someone maybe the better part of an afternoon, it takes Mischa something like a week. But if she comes and goes, who will solve the mystery of all the murders? It seems as though there were a bunch of bodies found in the walls of the building and of course it's now up to her to get to the bottom of it. Not an unwatchable movie by any means but this is a movie that's been done a gazillion times before. The kid in this movie - what a fucking dickhead. Hopefully he's not in any more movies because he gives me the creeps. Fuck that guy.
**

The Morgue (2008)

I really like movies where people are dead but they don't know they're dead. I don't know why; I just think it's a fun idea. I'm not going to mention what movies have done this really effectively because it's usually the big reveal at the end of the movie. The Morgue doesn't really wait until the end of the movie to reveal that these people are in limbo; you're in on it by the middle. Or you're in on it from the very beginning, if you read the Netflix plot description. Way to go, Netflix. Still, even if that was left up to surprise, it's not a very good movie. There's still a twist at the end but unless you're fucking retarded, you'll have seen it coming a mile away because of the really unsubtle flashback sequences. This movie is notable for having Heather of The Blair Witch Project in it and I felt kinda bad for her, not only because she has to slum it in shit movies like this but it appears as though she's being typecast as something of a cunt. I thought the main girl was from Grounded for Life but I guess not.
*1/2

Sisters (1973)

Brian De Palma sucks fucking nards - let me just get that out of the way. Yeah, yeah, Scarface is pretty sweet and I guess he did direct the original Carrie but fuck, his other movies are dogshit. The Untouchables sucks, Carlito's Way sucks, Casualties of War sucks, Raising Cain sucks, and I haven't seen Snake Eyes or The Black Dahlia but come on, those movies have to suck. Sisters is one of his earlier movies; I thought it was his first but apparently he did like 5000 movies before this one. Man, he had all that practice and this movie looks like a directorial debut. It's almost painfully Hitchcockian and for whatever reason, he felt it necessary to make Margot Kidder (who used to be such a babe) a French-Canadian. Still, in spite of De Palma being a shit director, it's an okay movie, though it's a bit obvious where it's going to go. I'm kinda curious to see the remake now - the one with Chloe Sevigny.
**1/2

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

With the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, coming out here in the States in the next couple weeks, I decided to check out this talked-about Swedish film based on the book whose title translates to Men Who Hate Women. That title intrigued me and after watching Dragon Tattoo, its meaning is all too clear. Now, some might say this isn't really a horror movie but as someone who considers Silence of the Lambs a horror movie, I think this too qualifies. Most of the movie is just a journalist and some hacker girl trying to solve this decades-old murder but there are a couple scenes that are not for the faint of heart. It gets into some real unsettling and sort of graphic territory. It's not Cannibal Holocaust; just saying I was a little surprised at how far the movie went in a couple places. Overall, I think it's a fantastic movie. I would even say that it's brilliant.
****1/2

My Six Cents

2010-08-26T23:58:00.000-04:00

Signs (2002)

After becoming sort of obsessed with hilarious awfulness of The Happening, I decided to go back and check out some of M. Night Shyamalan's other movies. I saw The Sixth Sense when it came out (didn't like it) and later, saw Unbreakable (liked it a great deal). However, after about a half hour of Signs (the first time, I mean), I was done. It wasn't until The Happening that I watched another one of his movies. So here I return to the land of M. Night, eager to see what bullshit he's feasted upon us this last decade. Signs is about as bad as I remember it being, made even more difficult to watch with Mel Gibson's current scandal. The one person that carries this movie is the little girl who went on to star in Little Miss Sunshine. She's so cute in this movie that it's worth watching just for her. The rest of it's about as silly as you'd expect from a movie where aliens who can be killed by water invade a planet that's mostly water.
**

The Village (2004)

And here we have The Village, another one that supposedly features one of M. Night's famous "shocking twist endings." Well, here's the thing - if you become famous for your twist endings, people are going to go into your movies expecting them. Why he bothered after The Sixth Sense, I don't know, because I knew almost from the get-go what the ending of The Village was going to be (also called The Sixth Sense because people couldn't shut up about it). Even though the movie's been out for six years, I'm not going to give it away because I don't want to rob anyone else of "Really? That was it?" I will say that the story is greatly improved with the casting of Bryce Dallas Howard and William Hurt but then Adrien Brody cancels it all out with his paint-by-numbers retarded guy. I will extend a bravo to Ade for going full retard.
**

Lady in the Water (2006)

This one probably got the worst reviews out of all the time so of course I liked it the best. I guess it's just my contrarian nature. I didn't think it was that bad! Now, the story is a little goofy. It's about this fairy-girl named Story whose people lives in water. She has to help someone out in the human world in order to get her wings or something so she starts hanging out in the pool of an apartment building and sho nuff, there's a guy there who needs to discover his inner strength...or something. I think the reason I liked this movie is that it takes itself a little less seriously than his other films. Also, Paul Giamatti is a fantastic actor and he really carries an otherwise lame story. I guess M. Night wrote it as a bedtime story for his kids. Cool, I guess.
**1/2

After.Life (2009)

I have no idea what the dot in the title is supposed to mean but that's how it's typed. As far as I know, it has no significance to the movie, which is all about Christina Ricci getting naked. That's all you need to know - Christina Ricci is naked a lot - and that's all I knew before putting it at the top of my Netflix queue. Well, there's a little more to it. She's a teacher who gets in a fight with her boyfriend and drives off into a rainy night only to get in a car accident which apparently kills her. I say apparently because the rest of the movie is all about whether or not she's actually dead. The mortician can talk to her because he claims he can talk to the dead. But is he just some weirdo burying people alive? Towards the end, it gets fairly suspenseful and the very end is something of a surprise. Is it worth watching? Well, if you want to check out C. Ricci's cans, do know that she had breast reduction surgery awhile back. Man, what a treat the O.G.'s would have been. Otherwise, it's a decent watch, I suppose.
**1/2

Fingerprints (2006)

Okay, enough of these movies. I'm tired of ghost movies where there's no real threat except when the main character goes snooping around some old-ass shit which she then has to make right in order for the spirits to rest. And who the fuck is Kristin Cavallari? I don't watch dumbass reality TV shows that aren't called Jersey Shore so I don't know who she is. Thankfully, she's not too bad and doesn't do anything to derail this already crap movie. Okay, so there are these train tracks in town and if you stop on them and put your car in neutral, the ghosts of these kids that died in a bus/train collision will push your car over. The main character (a totally hot babe who was also in the new Sorority Row) has to uncover the truth about this alleged accident, of course. And of course, there's more to it! About the only thing I liked was that Geoffrey Lewis was in it. Aside from that, it's a real snoozer.
*1/2

Big Man Japan (2007)

I think it goes without saying that Japan is just a weird fucking country. I guess to an ugly American like myself it's weird but to them, it's totally normal to have a movie about a giant man who fights monsters in his underwear. Big Man Japan "gets big" through a lot of electricity via power plants. They hook jumper cables up to his nipples while he stands naked in a giant pair of underwear and turn on the juice. The effects during the fight scene aren't Avatar quality but the whole movie's so surreal that the jainkiness is fitting. The movie takes such a weird turn at the end; I don't want to give it away but I was like "Whaaaaaaat." This is a really weird and fucked up movie but it's a lot of fun. You're not going to see any crazy Takashi Miike shit here - just a lot of bizarre silliness.
***

Stuck (2007)

I remember hearing the story about the nurse who left the guy dying in her windshield. And of course it's gotta be made into a movie but who better than Stuart Gordon to make that movie? Well, that's what I think anyway, as a fan of movies like King of the Ants, Castle Freak, and my favorite and definitely his most famous, Re-Animator. At the same time, I kinda suspected Stuck to be a more traditional film, less craziness. Not really. For a movie starring Mena Suvari, this is a pretty weird movie at times. Not often but just enough to really set it apart from other "based on a true story" films. There's a good deal of suspense and an ending that, while not true to life, is satisfying, at least to this viewer. On top of all that, you get to see Mena Suvari totally naked, getting her fuck on. Damn girl.
***1/2

Abduction (2009)

Often, when I can't decide what crappy movie to watch on Netflix Instant, I'll just pick whatever's at the beginning of my queue and on this particular day, it was Abduction. Fuck this movie up its fucking ass. This is not a horror movie, first of all. It's about these people in this small town who abduct girls and then impregnate them to sell the babies on the black market. Now, that's pretty crazy, and it would certainly suck to be one of those girls, but it's not horror when that's all there is. What's that you say? You got gratuitous full-frontal nudity? That's nice and it certainly makes your movie more watchable but still, it's not a horror movie. Pretty much the whole movie is about these black guys that fuck these chicks because apparently, there's a huge market for "mulatto" babies. Yes, this is a world where biracial babies are a rare commodity. I don't know. This shit fucking sucked.
*

Salvage (2009)

Not to be confused with the other recent horror movie called Salvage, the one I got as a twofer with Mortuary. This one is British so it's fancier. I'm not sure what the other ones about (still haven't watched it) but this one's about a shipping container that washes onto a beach near a residential community that is soon under quarantine by the British military - whatever their special forces is called. Like, think the guys from Predator but British. It's not important. Anyway, this mother needs to get across the street to her estranged daughter but she's not allowed to leave the house. Turns out, there's a monster afoot! It's really not as stupid as it sounds; it's actually a well-made movie. I especially liked that it wasn't all that long. I get a little impatient sometimes but Salvage kept moving and cut it nice and short at 79 minutes.
***

The Sentinel (1977)

As I mentioned in my Changeling review in the last post, this isn't to be confused with the Michael Douglas movie that came out several years ago. This is the classic horror film about a model who moves into an old building that is, of course, haunted. Not just haunted, it's the fucking gateway to Hell! This is a really fantastic movie but my one complaint is that the Hell presented in this movie seems kind of awesome. First off, we got eccentric, possibly-gay neighbor Burgess Meredith running around with his various pets. He's got a bird on his shoulder and a kitty cat that runs around. The clincher, the thing that would make me gladly give into the temptations of Hell, is the young Beverly D'Angelo whose apparently quite socially awkward as she doesn't know not to masturbate in front of company! The movie implies that this is typical behavior for a lesbian but I'm not so sure. A fine film! A couple good scares but nothing too heart-stopping.
****

If You Film It, They Will Yawn

2010-08-26T23:14:00.000-04:00

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2001)

With a winning title like that, how could this movie go wrong? Well, it does. I remember 2005's 2001 Maniacs as being somewhat of a decent splatter-comedy but I was sort of befuddled when I saw a sequel was in the works (original subtitled Beverly Hellbillies - oh, what a joy we missed out on). But when I saw that Bill Moseley was starring, I was intrigued. Okay, let's go over the plot. A couple of celebutards named Rome and Tina Sheraton (subtle) are filming a reality show in Iowa (HOLLA!) and the cast and crew run into the titular Maniacs who are taking their war up to the North. The picture quality is very low (shot on digital video, I'm guessing) but it appears as though some money was put into special effects, which I suppose was a good move. However, the humor in this movie is extremely corny (get it?) and the silliness wears thin really fast. A lot of racist jokes and a lot of gay jokes but nothing offensive - just stupid. This movie also marks a comeback of sorts for the actor who played Jar Jar Binks so let's give him a hand.
**

Don't Look Up (2009)

Why? Why can't I look up? I sat through 98 minutes of this shit movie and I never figured out why I'm not supposed to look up. I know it has something to do with a scene in the movie within the movie where the actress looks up but I don't know what that has to do with me. I suppose there is a malevolent spirit that sometimes hangs out up in the rafters but wouldn't that mean that I ought to look up and see if it's coming at me? So this movie stars some guy who looks like Mac from It's Always Sunny and he apparently sees ghosts and then goes and directs movies inspired by those ghosts. His agent is Henry Thomas of E.T. (and a really fantastic 90s movie called Suicide Kings) and along with Kevin Corrigan (Pineapple Express, Grounded for Life, a little movie called Goodfellas), they really take the movie up notch with their acting. But just a notch. The movie's still a crushing bore (thanks, Morrissey!) so much that the obligatory third-act plot twist lands with a wet plop. Was the Eli Roth cameo supposed to be funny?
*1/2

The Horseman (2008)

Critics may foolishly label this film as torture porn but I assure you, dear reader, it is anything but. The term "porn" implies an artlessness that The Horseman is simply not guilty of. Christian is a father who lost his daughter to a drug overdose who then tracks down all of her former associates in the seedy world of underground pornography. They didn't even kill her; they just corrupted her and gave her the tools to kill herself. On his journey, Christian picks up a young girl who we later find out is pregnant. She notices that Christian often cuts himself with a knife to, as he puts it, "feel something." It's a very well-done film with a couple scenes that are definitely not for the squeamish, including one involving a soccer ball pump. This is one that I'll have to purchase. Very well done.
****

Neighbor (2009)

Another film that could be labeled as torture porn - Neighbor, a low budget straight-to-DVD flick starring a really hot chick named America Olivo. Her unnamed character (she's listed as "The Girl" in the credits) goes around torturing and killing people for kicks. Little insight is given as to why she's doing this but you just have to accept that it's just because she likes it. Now, on paper (or monitor), this movie sounds terrible but it's really not that bad. For a cheap-ass movie, the acting is pretty good. And there are some crazy gore shots that turned my stomach. Mink Stole makes a cameo but it's nothing terribly exciting. Overall, I'd say it was a decent film with some interesting twists here and there.
**1/2

Meadowoods (2010)

Here's another low-budget flick but unlike Neighbor, the acting is so unbearable that you want to bury this movie in a makeshift coffin in the woods. Which is what happens in the movie - these 3 kids bury a girl from a school alive. Throughout the movie, we get to see the planning stages of this caper, which is about as awesome as suffocating to death under six feet of dirt. The kids in Meadowoods are extremely annoying. The cold, unfeeling girl comes across as bitchy, the menacing leader comes across as an excitable nerd and the thoughtful one just comes across as the biggest asshole of them all even though he's supposed to be the conscience of the film. This is another one of those "found footage" movies so we get the privilege of watching shaky footage of shitty acting. You can tell this movie's begging for controversy but the only thing troubling about it is how much energy that was put into something so lame and uninspired.
*

Dolan's Cadillac (2009)

It's always a bummer seeing actors who are quite good have to slum it in paycheck movies like this because they're no longer on top of the world. Such is this case with Christian Slater and Wes Bentley, the stars of Dolan's Cadillac, an adaptation of a Stephen King short story. Wes Bentley plays a schoolteacher named Robinson whose wife is murdered after she witnesses mob boss Dolan, played by Christian Slater, murder a couple immigrants he was trafficking in a van. Later they found the rest of the passengers buried alive in the van. So Robinson decides he's going to buy Dolan alive in his Cadillac. This would have made a fantastic episode of Tales from the Crypt but as a feature film, it drags. You can tell that a lot of scenes were added as padding and when the Cadillac is finally in its place of burial, the movie still has a ways to go. I suppose the endless negotiations between the two characters are supposed to add suspense but really, it's just tedious. Overall, I thought it was just okay; like I said, it would have fit much better in an anthology.
**1/2

Parasomnia (2008)

There are a lot of troubling things about the movie Parasomnia. First, it was directed by the guy behind the House on Haunted Hill remake. Hmmmm. Okay. Not a terrible movie. Oh and he also directed FearDotCom. D'oh! Now I suppose it's unfair to judge a director based on a couple movies but those are pretty much the only two movies he's done. Until Parasomnia, a movie about a guy who falls in love with a girl in a coma (I know, it's serious). Which brings me to my next problem with the film. The girl isn't really in a coma, per se; she suffers from a disease that only allows her to be awake for minutes every day. As a result, she has the mind of a children. That's right - our main character falls in love with a girl who, for all intents and purposes, is retarded. After he kidnaps her, their romance is presented in a way that's supposed to be adorable but I thought it was troubling and more than a little immoral. Eventually he finds out that kidnapping a girl with a serious brain malady isn't all sponge baths and food fights. Turns out the resident next door to her in the hospital was a...mentalist who hypnotizes people into killing themselves? No idea why she was in the mental ward of the hospital but the mentalist wants the girl for himself because he haunts her dreams. Something like that. The movie is really low budget and the effects are not so great (reminded me of Hellraiser II, which came out in '88) but I won't fault the movie for that. However, I will fault the more for being creepy in all the wrong ways.
**

The Changeling (1980)

Like The Sentinel (review coming soon), this is one of those movies where there's a recent film with the same title that has nothing to do with the original. In these two cases, they're horror classics. That probably led to some confusion but not much because I'm not sure I know anybody who even saw those newer movies. Anyway, The Changeling stars George C. Scott (who was really an incredible actor; I also recommend Hardcore and of course, Dr. Strangelove) as a classical composer who moves into a haunted house in Seattle after the deaths of his wife and young daughter. George can't concentrate with all the racket and all the balls rolling down stairs (you'll see) so he looks into the history of the building and of course, it leads back to a prominent local politician, who's something of an asshole. The movie's certainly light on gore and violence but definitely has a creepy atmosphere and the performances really serve the story well. If you're in the mood for a classic ghost story, you can't go wrong with The Changeling. Just make sure you get the right one.
****

Phantasm (1979)

I've been watching this movie since I was a kid and for years, I praised it as being one of the greatest films of all time while having little idea what the fuck its even about. With each subsequent viewing, the plot became a little clearer until my recent viewing, where I think I finally have a good grasp of what's going on. That is, until I watched the sequel, but more on that in a bit. The movie begins with this dude getting it on with a hot chick in, where else?, a cemetery. And of course, that goes wrong from him when the hot chick turns into an old man. Isn't that always how it goes? The old guy, known only in the Phantasm films, as The Tall Man is the villain of the story and when orphans Mike and older brother Jody attend the cemetery guy's funeral, Jody discovers that the funeral home isn't exactly on the up and up. It seems as though The Tall Man is...reanimating the dead, shrinking them, and then transporting them to his home planet to be used as slave labor? Meanwhile, if his lair has some pretty spiffy security in the form of a metal ball that flies around and drills holes in people's heads. Oh and instead of blood, he's got mustard. Really awesome movie, though - creepy as shit.
*****

Phantasm II (1988)

Unavailable on DVD until recently, Phantasm II decided to hit shelves just as the format was on its way out. Good going, suits! Oh shit, I forgot to talk about Reggie in the last review. Reggie is friends with Jody. He's a guitar-playing ice cream man. He returns for the sequel but apparently the original Mike wasn't good enough so they got James LeGros, an okay actor who would later go onto famous roles in Drugstore Cowboy and Living in Oblivion. Supposedly Brad Pitt auditioned for the part but didn't get it. Anyway, Reggie and Mike are on the road in this installment of the series, looking for The Tall Man. Apparently the events of the first film were a dream...except they weren't and The Tall Man is real? Mike's got his own agenda - he needs to find this girl he's been dreaming about. He finds her and they hook up and Reggie gets some tail of his own, some hippie chick. Blood is shed, more balls fly at people's faces, and The Tall Man is only temporarily thwarted as there are two movies left to go. I'll get to them eventually.
***1/2

Disturbing Serbia

2010-07-24T22:21:00.000-04:00

A Serbian Film (2010)

Having seen some of the more infamous films in extreme movie history (Salo, In a Glass Cage, Cannibal Holocaust, etc.) and having endured the torture porn trend of yesteryear, I was prepared for either a gruesome movie or a gratuitous and vastly overrated movie. I was not prepared for A Serbian Film. This film goes so beyond gruesome, I'm at a lost to even describe it. Critics who have attended some of the festival screenings have called it "brutal" and "depraved" but even that doesn't really scratch the surface. Not since Bully (which is Superbad compared to A Serbian Film) have I seen a movie that made me feel guilty when it was over. Guilty like I committed a crime. What we have here is probably the most extreme movie ever made and what's most shocking is that it's actually a good film. Milo is a father, husband, and retired porn actor who is lured back to the industry by an eccentric filmmaker who chooses not to tell Milo anything about the movie he's making. The scenes get progressively more perverted and fucked up so Milo bows out. What follows is some of the most crazy and upsetting shit ever put to film. I had even had one of the more infamous scenes spoiled for me by a review and I was still immensely disturbed by it. If film can go farther than this, I'm not sure I want to see it. I think this might be it - the end of the road.
*****

The Wolfman (2010)

When I first heard about this movie, I was excited. I like werewolves and I think Benicio Del Toro as the classic Wolf Man is almost perfect as he's pretty wolf-like as it is (it was no accident that he was The Dog-Faced Boy in Big Top Pee-Wee). As time went on, I read more and more about the troubled process this movie went through and as release dates came and went, I became convinced that Hollywood fucked up yet another great title. Having made up mind, I went into this new Wolfman with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised to find that it's not terrible. My biggest concern was that the Wolfman was going to look jainky with the CGI. It doesn't look great but it's passable. Like with most CGI, once your eyes adjust, it's fine. The story's okay and it's not too long, which is always a concern of mine (movies are too fucking long!). Is it a disaster? Nah. Is it worth seeing? Sure. Will anyone talk about this movie 5 years from now? Probably not.
**1/2

I Sell the Dead (2008)

Here's a movie that I thought was watchable at the time but the more I thought about it afterward, the more I disliked it. First of all, it's got Charlie from Lost, who I was not excited to see again. Secondly, this movie is a horror-comedy that's on the sillier side of things. It's an ambitious little film but unfortunately, it's a swing and a miss. The story is about two graverobbers who have various adventures involving zombies (of course) as well as a vampire and an alien. There's a lot crammed in this movie and it's only 85 minutes long, which I'm thankful for. The other star of the movie, Larry Fessenden, has been involved with a slew of decent movies, acting in Mulberry Street and Cabin Fever 2 as well as directing movies like Wendigo and The Last Winter. I'll seek some of his other work out but I don't think this particular film (which, of course, has a sequel coming up) does his talent too many favors.
**

The Shortcut (2009)

Adam Sandler's production company making horror movies (under the Scary Madison banner) intrigued me tremendously. And I'll be honest, the fact that this movie stars Cerie from 30 Rock (playing a high school girl here) also piqued my interest. The Shortcut is about a, uh, shortcut. Kids dare each other to take this shortcut home from school and if they dare, an old guy comes out and scares the shit out of them. When a classmate's dog turns up missing, he and Derek and some of their other friends decide to plan a caper that involves burglarizing this guy's home. From there, there are some expected twists but it's not that bad of a movie. It's certainly directed at teens but even for a teen horror flick (which are mostly fucking awful), it's somewhat enjoyable. For a movie that has a lot working against it, it does okay.
**1/2

Ink (2009)

Here's another movie that's probably best viewed by teens; this one in particular is probably aimed at kids in their early teens. While it's not as straight-up goofy as, say, Twilight, this is a very mild fairy tale that's light on the scares. But what it lacks in violence and gore, it makes up for in creativity. Ink is the name of a monster that kidnaps a girl and takes her to this dream world where he's going to trade her in to the incubi (who reminded me of Devo), who go around and give people bad dreams. In exchange for her, he's going to become an incubus himself. Meanwhile, the Storytellers (the beings who give people good dreams) are trying to get her back while in the real world, the girl is in a coma. Should they fail, the girl's going to slip away and die, forever trapped in this parallel world with the incubi. I thought the movie was a little too earnest for my tastes but what I was really charmed by is how well it's executed in spite of not having a studio backing the production. It's an admirable DIY effort but for me, I need a little more. Great movie for older kids, I think.
**1/2

Pandorum (2009)

This is one of those Blu-rays that's on sale for 10 bucks one week and the next week, it's back up to 30. I always seem to be shopping for movies when it's at 30 so even though it's been out for awhile, I hadn't seen it until very recently. This movie takes place in space, where a two men from a flight crew wake up after a lengthy period of hypersleep to find that no one else is around. From there, they have a look around and as the threat of Descent-like people-eaters becomes evident, they also have to worry about "pandorum," which is code for space madness. A pretty neat twist at the end but as far as the creatures go, it's basically The Descent in space. Which doesn't make for a bad movie but if you really want your socks knocked off, watch The Descent instead.
***

Dark Water (2005)

As I've mentioned many times before (I think I say this about one time each post), I'm not wild about J-horror ghost movies and I'm even less wild about the American remakes. The Ring can eat a dick, The Grudge can eat a dick - all of them can eat dicks. But when I traded in some movies at Video Games Etc., I had little selection to choose from as far as Blu-rays go, so I wound up getting Dark Water because it has Jennifer Connolly in it and she's hot. The movie's actually pretty good. J-Co plays a single mom who moves into a slum with her daughter. Soon after moving in, she's tormented by a stain on her ceiling. Guess what? A ghost story unfolds. John C. Reilly plays her landlord and even though it's a serious role, he's comes across as funny. Definitely not a whole lot of scares but it's one of the better J-horror remakes I've seen, mostly due to the casting.
**1/2

Deep in the Woods (2000)

The French have been kicking some serious ass in the horror world lately so I decided to check out this flick from the early 00s. For some reason, I thought it was going to have something to do with The Birthday Party song; whether or not it inspired the title, I don't know. So this is kind of about Little Red Riding Hood in the sense that there's a guy in the movie who's obsessed with the story and he hires a theater troupe to perform it for him and his creepy son. And when I say this kid is creepy, I mean he is creepy. I would say he's the creepiest kid of any movie I've ever seen but I'm reminded of the guy from Burial Ground. Does he even count? He's not even a kid. Anyway, this a pretty good slasher flick. Not as mindblowing as some of the recent French movies like Martyrs or Inside but it's dang good, I'd say. And again, the kid is super creepy.
***1/2

Carrie (2002)

I love love LOVE Angela Bettis so I recently decided to revisit some of her earlier movies. This here remake of Carrie was met with understandable skepticism, what with Stephen King's made-for-TV movies being almost 100% dogshit. Actually, now that I think about it, I'd like to revisit the TV version of The Shining with the guy from Wings. I remember it being awful but I should give it another go to see if it's as bad as I remember it. So...Angela Bettis plays Carrie and she's fantastic. She really brings it. Patricia Clarkson plays her crazy mother and she's really good too. Since it was made for television, a lot of the edits are really jarring so it doesn't look like a "real" movie at times but for the most part it's good. I'm not wild about the new ending (I guess you can only surprise people once) and I don't think it's quite as good as the original film but for a TV movie, I was impressed.
***

May (2002)

May is the movie that made me fall in love with Angela Bettis (me and about a million other nerds). I don't have much to say about it because if you haven't seen it, you really should. I will say that it gets better every time. James Duval's character used to bother me but now I think he's funny. I guess the humor of the movie really connected with me this recent time. Anyway...May - it's fantastic. One of my favorite movies of all time.
*****

Enough of the Dead

2010-05-01T04:09:00.000-04:00

Survival of the Dead (2009)

George Romero is sort of like horror's version of Metallica. Metallica's first four albums are so devastatingly awesome and their image was so badass back in the day that it's heartbreaking to see how lame they've become. I was one of the few who really enjoyed Land of the Dead so I'm not one of these assholes who's not willing to give the guy a shot. However, Diary of the Dead was absolutely abysmal and this new installment in the series isn't much of an improvement. No, it's not quite as bad as it's predecessor; I didn't want to personally murder all of the characters. It's just that most of this movie reeks of laziness, from the unbelievably poor CGI to the mostly uneventful plot. Seeing how the zombies "evolved" in this latest feature elicited a groan so loud it could have brought George Romero's former greatness back from the dead. The plot? There's this island (which I think is off the east coast of the U.S.) with a bunch of Irish people and there are two families feuding, leaving one of the patriarchs exiled. Also, there are zombies about. Certainly not the worst zombie movie to come out in recent years but this is a film for diehards only, provided they want to be disappointed yet again. To continue the Metallica comparison, this would be Death Magnetic to Diary's St. Anger.
**

The Crazies (2010)

I haven't seen the George Romero original so I can't compare but I really enjoyed this movie. While I can't say it's as scary as it's also-takes-place-in-Iowa brother Children of the Corn, I will say that it's setting affected me somewhat, as I grew up in an area not unlike the one in film. I assure you, dear reader, a feeling of pride shot through me with every mention of Cedar Rapids, wishing I had a viewing companion so I could say "I used to work there!" Anyway, this movie is basically about some sort of toxin that gets into a small town's water supply, making some of them into murderous, uh, crazies. Overall, I'd say it's a real good flick that starts out strong but kinda peters out towards the end. Is it scary? To me, yes, but that's most likely because of the location. Also, how funny is it that remakes of Romero movies are turning out better than his new films? Day of the Dead excluded, of course. Fucking zombies crawling on the ceiling?! What was that?
***

[Rec] 2 (2009)

I'm pretty sure I always start my reviews for sequels that are better than their predecessors the same: Talking about how it joins the ranks of The Empire Strikes Back, etc. If I haven't said that before, I've always meant to. And so here we have another rare example of a sequel exceeds the preceding movie in terms of quality, [Rec] 2, a follow-up to a Spanish film that was poorly remade in the States as Quarantine. This movie starts with a special operations team invading the building with all the infected people (with cameras, of course). With them is a Ministry of Health official who we later find out is a priest. Turns out that there's more to this outbreak than just a biological agent. Meanwhile, there were some kids fucking around on some roof with a blowup doll and soon we see some things from their camera as well. This movie answers a lot of questions from the first film and takes the whole thing to a new level of awesomeness. This is turning out to be a great series - highly recommended.
****1/2

Splinter (2008)

What a creepy movie! Seth and Polly are on a romantic getaway when they are carjacked by dope fiends Dennis and Lacey. They're driving in the middle of nowhere when their car runs over an animal that pops the tire. They find a nearby gas station to call for help and soon discover that what popped their tire was a kind of fungus that infects living organisms and replaces most of the tissue with a bunch of splinters. Sort of like The Thing crossed with Clerks (okay, that's a stretch, but it does mostly take place in a gas station). I haven't seen a whole lot of hype behind this film; I hope it's one of those movies that catches on gradually through word of mouth. With all the bullshit, formulaic tripe being shoved down audiences' throats, Splinter is one of the few new horror flicks that actually sticks out and even more surprising, it kinda scared me.
****

Below (2002)

I watched this one during that week where everything I watched seemed to have Zach Galifianakis in it. Really, it was only Up in the Air, Into the Wild, and Visioneers, but for the most part, the Galifianakis marathon was completely unintentional. Recently, I watched Youth in Revolt, which was pretty good. So anyway, onto this movie Below. It's a ghost story set in a World War II submarine that was apparently ignored upon release in favor of the other horror movie that takes place at sea, Ghost Ship (which I still have not seen but have heard many good things about). I liked this movie, even though it's the same story that's been told a million times before: Weird shit happens, a mystery needs solving, a ghost needs to be satisfied, so on and so forth. Still, it's a tense little film that would probably suit people who don't like horror movies that are too graphic or violent. Also, Zach Galifianakis' character's name is "Weird Wally."
**1/2

Life Blood (2009)

Sometimes I don't feel like watching anything good and I'll just look around Netflix Instant for something trashy. That's the only way I can explain how I came across Life Blood. Or I saw that Scout Taylor-Compton was in the movie and since I think she's super-cute, decided to check it out. Probably a little from columns A and B. Life Blood starts out in the late 60s with a lesbian couple (who are of course supermodels) stopping the attempted rape of lil' Scout by murdering the assailant, a prominent actor. I guess God or some shit comes down and as God is prone to doing, turns them into vampires. They awake 40 years later and find themselves a gas station where the fat kid from The Sandlot works. It's up to the good lesbian vampire to stop the sort-of-evil lesbian vampire as she plays it a little too fast and loose with the whole killing people thing. Not as trashy as the cover art would suggest but not any good either.
*1/2

Necrosis (2009)

Note to filmmakers: Unless it's 1980, your name is Stanley Kubrick, and you just made a movie called The Shining, your movie about people being snowed in is probably going to suck. While not as godawful as the crowned turd of low-budget blizzard movies, Blood Predator, this movie is certainly not worth a whole lot. A group of friends are out in a cabin, they get snowed in, and of course, it's the exact same location that the Donner party ate each all those years ago. Did I mention that the "star" of this movie is 80s pop "singer" Tiffany? Oh yes, this movie has it all. The story is lame, the acting is unbelievably bad, and for as bad as it is, it somehow fails to entertain which is, for me, the worst crime a movie can commit. Definitely one to avoid unless you're snowed in and have gone completely insane.
*

Class Reunion Massacre (1977)

This is one of the first horror movies I had ever seen. Either my oldest brother rented it or it was one of our teenage neighbors, probably around the year 1986. The only parts I could remember from this movie was that it took place mostly during the day and there was a part where a sword fell from the ceiling and went through a guy's head. And I remembered that it scared the shit out of me - in a good way. So I've always sought this movie out but I don't think it was ever released on DVD. Having downloaded a VHS rip, I watched it and was surprised to find that I enjoyed it just as much as when I was 6 years old. The atmosphere of the movie is really creepy and the villain is very effective. It's a story that's been told a dozen times before (think Prom Night but much, much better) but it's rarely as good as it is here. The plot? I think the title pretty much explains it all. Great movie.
****

The Video Dead (1987)

Here's another oldie than I downloaded a VHS rip of, as again there's no official DVD release for it. I would say that's for a good reason but really, there are all kinds of low-budget horseshit movies out on DVD. The Video Dead is about these kids whose parents are AWOL that find a TV in this house they just moved into that zombies crawl out of, sometimes when you're laying around high on grass. The acting is almost on the level of Troll 2 but unlike that movie, there's nothing terribly charming or fun here. One part of the movie that intrigued me is when the kid in the movie (the dope smoker) is watching this movie called Zombie Blood Nightmare on the haunted TV. It looked pretty cool! Turns out it's a movie that doesn't actually exist. Funny - the fake movie within the movie looked better than the actual movie.
**

eXistenZ (1999)

I love David Cronenberg but for some reason, I hadn't seen eXistenZ until recently. I probably avoided it because it's a story about a virtual reality game and I tend to not like stuff like that. After watching it, I saw that it's not only a much better movie than, say, The Matrix (which came out within weeks of this film), but Cronenberg maintained a lot of the sensibilities from classic flicks like Videodrome and Scanners. Anyway, Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Allegra and in spite of having an allergy medication name, she's a world class video game designer who invented eXistenZ, a state of the art virtual reality experience with organic game pods made out of actual animal organs. After a failed assassination attempt from a vigilante who opposes this virtual reality world, she goes on the run with Ted, played by Jude Law. From there, the story goes in and out of the video game world and it's a real treat. This is probably Cronenberg's last science fiction film to date (I say "probably" because I still haven't seen Spider) and his movies since (A History of Violence and Eastern Promises) have been spectacular but it's nice to see some old school body-horror Cronenberg.
***1/2

Fire Marshall Bill: The Movie

2010-04-28T22:32:00.000-04:00

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Okay, like with all the current remakes I review, I have to preface this by saying I usually enjoy the remakes somewhat. That out of the way, I have to say while I like the first three of the original series (yes, even the super-gay Freddy's Revenge), I'm not that big of a fan. You would think that would be beneficial to me when watching the remake but really, it had the opposite effect. I don't have much affection for the series so it wasn't a treat to see the Freddy character again. Actually, I really didn't care for Freddy at all in this movie. Jackie Earle Haley is without a doubt the best choice for this role but the makeup is so over-the-top that it just doesn't feel like Freddy at all. I guess the idea was to make him look like a real burn victim; why that's important in a movie about a dead guy who kills people in their dreams, I don't know. The CGI part of his face would be cool, provided you didn't see The Dark Knight. As far as the other characters, they're all pretty much the same--good kids from upper middle class backgrounds. Even the artsy girl and the Joy Division fan rebel are both attractive and never seem to do anything at all rebellious. Most of the kills are lifted directly from the original Elm Street with some minor alterations. The big improvement here is with Freddy's backstory: I think the movie went to some pretty dark places with that whole thing and it was a vast improvement on the original. So is it a dud? Nah. It's not terrible by any means. It's just not any good. I was neither outraged nor excited which means I was just bored. The Elm Street kids reminded me of how awesome sleep is and how much more fun it would be than watching the movie.
**1/2

Shutter Island (2010)

This movie has been getting mixed reviews but I really enjoyed it. The twist at the end is a little frustrating, I suppose, since the previous 3/4 of the movie seemed to be building up to something really fantastic. I thought the ending was okay but after the build-up to Nazi lobotomies and shit, I guess I was a little disappointed. Either way, it's not something to hassle Scorcese about since it was true to the book and he just directed the adaptation, which he did well. There were a couple greenscreen shots that I thought was beneath him but overall, the look of the movie is creepy as shit. I will again take umbrage with Scorcese again casting Leonardo DiCaprio in a role that's out of his league. Dude looks 17; maybe give the role of the grizzled detective to someone who won't force people to suspend disbelief so much. But overall, I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to people with strong stomachs for last act plot twists.
****

The Lost Boys (1987)

I actually bought this movie on Blu-ray the day before Corey Haim died. Spooky, eh? Widely regarded as the Coreys' finest moment, I will say I agree. After much soul-searching I guess I can say that it narrowly edges out License to Drive. Dream a Little Dream, you say? That movie blows, always has. Okay, so...The Lost Boys. Corey Haim's brother is tricked into drinking blood by Keifer Sutherland and he becomes a half-vampire and in order to save him, the Coreys and some kid that looks like Ralph Macchio have to kill the "head vampire" in order to save him and kill all the other vampires. I'm not wild about vampire movies but this one has a special place in my heart because I absolutely loved it as a kid--one of the first horror movies I really got into. Does it hold up? Meh. It's a horror movie for kids and I think that overall, it's a fucking goofy as shit movie but I suppose it's fun.
***

Dead of Winter (2007)

Years ago, I watched this episode of Dateline (or one of those news shows) where there was this segment on this couple who were crazy on drugs (crystal meth, I believe) and got lost in the middle of nowhere. It was the, um, dead of winter and they were freezing to death while talking on the phone with a 911 operator who couldn't guide them to safety because they were so fucked up and couldn't follow sensible instructions. Anyway, I always thought that story was scary as shit and wouldn't you know, a movie has been made about it! Sort of. I don't know the exact details but as far as I know, the first half of this movie stays fairly true to the real life events. These kids take some drugs (a meth and acid combo here) and get lost in the middle of nowhere and have to call 911. I was having a great time getting all freaked out when the movie decided to take a left turn into total lameness. Fictional lameness, I might add. Man, I thought I was defying the odds by finding a cool movie on Netflix Instant but alas, it wasn't to be.
**

The Fourth Kind (2009)

Hold your horses, The Fourth Kind! I appreciate your ambition but how's about you chill the fuck out for a sec. Okay, so you're going to have the "real" footage playing in one half of the screen while the "dramatized" footage is in the other half? Why bother? Did you want to stand out from all the other phony-baloney "OMG real footage" flicks coming out? That's great, actually, because those movies have gotten pretty tiresome but man, you somehow managed to be even more tedious. Why am I talking to a movie? I guess it makes about as much sense as making a movie where the same shit is going on in both halves of the screen. Oh, by the way, this movie's about aliens.
*1/2

Infection (2004)

I've been really getting into these Asian movies lately. If I read about them being fucked up and crazy, I seek them out. If they have ghosts in them, I tend to pass. This one's pretty crazy thought not terribly fucked up, which is a shame because it's about a deadly virus, I'm guessing ebola, that causes people's organs to liquify. First off, it's the night shift and due to a nurse's fuckup, a patient dies. The staff decides to cover the whole thing up and make it look like the patient died of natural causes so to make the chemical that killed him leave his body postmortum, they have to put the body in a room with a bunch of space heaters. Meanwhile, another patient is dropped off and this one's not doing so hot. He's got the aforementioned ebola and soon, this shit is spreading. Pretty good movie, looks fantastic, I would recommend.
***1/2

Ebola Syndrome (1996)

Another Asian flick about ebola, this one from Hong Kong, by the director of The Untold Story and also featuring that movie's star. Strangely enough, this movie is essentially a retelling of The Untold Story. No idea what the point is--I guess it's a parody of some kind. Regardless, it's different enough that it's not annoying. This one starts out with a guy killing a girl's parents after the father catches him fucking the mother. He goes to South Africa to avoid capture and while there, works for a Taiwanese couple who "bully" him by paying him very little. While on a trek to get some cheap pork from the natives, the guy decides he's going to rape a dying woman and he becomes a carrier of the ebola virus. He's immune to the disease so he's able to spread it around. Really crazy and fucked up movie, just like The Untold Story, but this one felt a little more comical, especially at the end when he's spitting at cops, yelling "Ebola! Ebola!"
****

Dead Tone (2007)

Flavor Flav! I think Flavor Flav is a fantastic human being but I'm not sure he needs to be in the horror business. Not that he has anything to do with this movie other than introducing it Tales from the Crypt-style, as "The Timekeeper." Get it? He wears clocks. I thought this movie would be about a zombie from the hood named Tone ("Freak that bitch, Tone!") but instead it's about prank phone calls. You read that right, prank phone calls. While their parents are partying down, these kids prank call this guy who later shows up and kills all the parents with an axe. Fast forward to some years later and the kids are now in college and they have a party. Guess what they do? Prank phone calls. Sick party, dudes. So the game is to see if they can keep someone on the phone for 75 seconds (the original title of the movie was 7eventy 5ive [ugh], which makes me think Flav's company just grabbed some movie and put the Flav stamp on it). An axe-wielding maniac shows up, there's a twist ending, movie's done.
*1/2

Witchmaster General (2009)

I've kinda had it with no-budget shot-on-video pieces of dogshit but this movie reeled me in with its star: L.A. Guns singer Phil Lewis. Here he plays a voodoo witchdoctor who for a fee, will put a curse on someone for you--the guy ahead of you for a promotion, a cheating wife, whoever. The trailer for this movie really made it look like an unwatchable turd but I have to say, it was actually entertaining. Phil Lewis is a terrible actor and has no business being in a movie but watching him give it a shot is amusing, to say the least. His shining moment in the movie is the slapfight at the end which somehow makes this English sleaze metal singer look even more effeminate. There are a couple jokes that don't fall flat and it's fun to watch the clock in one scene (the time jumps around and you can't help but notice with the way the scene is framed). I can't say this movie's any good but since I enjoyed watching it, I can't be too hard on it. Just for that, I have to rate it higher than most of the shot-on-shiteo messes flooding the DVD market.
**

Dread (2009)

I love Clive Barker's Books of Blood (I think I mentioned that when I reviewed Book of Blood and probably Midnight Meat Train too) and "Dread" is probably my favorite story from the collection. I think it's probably the story least based in fantasy (I don't know; I don't have the book in front of me) so that's probably why it's always stuck with me. When I heard it was being adapted into a movie, I was super stoked because I thought the story was simple yet effective and it would take a real fuckhead to mess it up. I can't say this movie's a total mess but it's really not as awesome as it should be. A college student named Quaid has been obsessed with fear since seeing his parents hacked up as a kid. He enlists his friend Stephen and Stephen's crush Cheryl to help him with a study on fear. As in the book, Quaid fucks with them and in this version, he fucks with some more people, including a chick who's body is half-covered with a purple birthmark. Actually, her story gets pretty crazy. The rest of the movie has its hits and misses but mostly falls somewhere in the middle, which is more disappointing to me than if the movie just flat out stunk. Oh well. Endnote: This movie is part of this years After Dark Horrorfest and pretty soon here, I'll be doing a series of posts on those flicks, just to catch up. How exciting!
**1/2

Angels in the Outhouse

2010-04-23T23:56:00.000-04:00

Legion (2010)

This is one of the movies where I was watching it and thinking "This is really bad but I'm sort of entertained" but then when it was done I thought about what I had watched and wondered "How the hell did I make it through that?" I was intrigued by the title, thinking it had something to do with demons ("We are Legion") but really it's about angels who come down from Heaven to kill a chick's baby because if they don't, then it will grow up and give God hope for humanity and he won't wipe everyone out. God, in spite of being fucking God, doesn't know this baby's potential so it's up to the angel Michael to step in. He brings a lot of machine guns so that they can shoot all the angels who are now possessing the bodies of various people. Early in the movie, shit gets all Drag Me to Hell when an old lady who uses foul language bites a chunk out of a guy's neck because that's what angels do, I guess. No idea why these angels don't just use magic or whatever to stop people's hearts but whatever.
*1/2

End of the Line (2007)

I really liked this movie and right off the bat, I'm going to give you two reasons. One is something that bothers me about movies like Legion: When confronted with proof of the paranormal and/or proof of a fucking afterlife, people still seem really resistant to the idea of dying and not only that, are rarely blown away by what would probably change someone's perspective on everything in a split second. In this movie, that is addressed - after seeing that there's life after death, people would be changed. I like that. I also liked that during a break in the action, a guy said "I gotta take a dump." It's a serious movie but like in life, sometimes you gotta take a dump. This movie is about a religious cult (who seem really popular so is it really a cult?) who are ordered by their leader to kill people with crucifix-knives because the world is ending and that's the only way they can be saved. All of this is taking place in subway cars and tunnels, by the way. It doesn't sound that awesome but it's a really cool movie that at times is pretty scary. One of the better movies I've seen in a long time.
****1/2

The Descent Part 2 (2010)

I think this movie's being released straight to DVD in the States which I think is fucking criminal. I don't blame the studio, I blame the moviegoing public for routinely ignoring awesome movies like this and instead going to see bullshit like Sorority Row. Neil Marshall's The Descent was a really fantastic movie and I will admit that the idea of a sequel being made by someone else didn't sound all that appealing. This movie's pretty damn good, almost as good as the original. Like with the first one, the monsters didn't scare me so much as the idea of being stuck in a cave. For me, that's the scariest part - just the idea of being stuck in these caves. That there are these blind naked monsters ready to eat their asses just adds to the terror. This movie did make me want to re-watch the original because there's a returning character or two (wink!) and it had been awhile since I watched it. Total WTF ending too. I'm guessing there's going to be a third film because this one definitely ends on a really weird and unexpected note.
***1/2

Sorority Row (2009)

Yeah, I just bagged on this movie but it really wasn't that bad. It certainly doesn't deserve to be as popular as it is but for a dopey big budget slasher film, it's not horrible and actually has a couple "Holy shit" moments. Basically, the moral of the story is that date rape is nothing to joke about. The movie begins with a prank where this guy gives a girl what he thinks is a date rape drug. When she starts going into convulsions, they all pile into a vehicle and head to the hospital. Of course, she dies on the way and they all stop to assess the situation. They decide they need to hide the body and the would-be rapist, thinking she's dead, stabs her in the heart with a tire iron! And why not? That would obviously be the best course of action. Anyway, the chick is now really dead, they really hide the body, and a year later, they all get spooky messages followed by them being picked off one by one. Wait - wasn't this I Know What You Did Last Summer? Yes. It was. This one's a little gorier and has some invented kills but the plot is obviously nothing new. Decent movie to watch if you have nothing else to put in. It's interesting even if you just want to determine whether or not Rumer Willis is hot or totally busted. I still can't decide.
**1/2

Basket Case (1982)

Okay, I've been rambling on about a lot of newer movies so let's take ourselves back to the Basket Case series, which I checked out after watching Frank Henelotter's recent Bad Biology. As usual, this is the best of the series and it's actually sort of impressive how great this movie is and how lame and stupid it gets after this one. It's about a guy named Duane Bradley who had a Siamese twin blob-thing removed from the side of his torso, a blob-thing named Belial who he now keeps in a basket that he carries around with him. Get it? Even though Belial is essentially a wad of Silly Puddy with arms and eyes, he's surprisingly mobile, much more spry than you would expect from a disabled person. He's always jumping around, eating people's faces, and you know what? Good for him. Bless his bravery. Anyway, this is a really fun movie.
***1/2

Basket Case 2 (1990)

The 80s horror boom was still riding its wave by 1990 so making a sequel to a movie that featured an iconic character was a no-brainer, I guess. Speaking of no-brainer, this movie's pretty much dumb as shit, with comedy taking the front seat as Henenlotter introduces a bunch of zany mutants all living in a home out in the country run by Granny Ruth. The guy who plays Duane makes the whole thing especially unbearable with his penchant for serious overacting. Anyway, so Duane and Belial wind up in this home after being on the run and unfortunately their high profile puts the other residents at risk, forcing them to eventually fight back. Belial finds love with another Silly Puddy person, Eve, knocking her up and opening the series up to yet another lame sequel. The sex sequence is suitably bizarre but there's not a whole lot in this flick that makes it worthwhile.
**

Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1992)

Picking up where the shitty second film left off, this one has Belial and Eve having a batch of basket cases, just as the title suggests. All the mutants from the previous movie are back, as is Granny Ruth, and Duane is behaving as ridiculous as ever. Belial is no longer telepathically speaking to him because of something that happened at the end of the last one and who could blame him. He's seriously obnoxious. Anyway, in this one we meet Granny Ruth's son (who we were told was dead in the second movie) and he's this enormous blob nerd who builds a robot for Belial to wreak havoc with. I don't really have much to say about this one. If you're into really campy and silly 80s horror flicks, I suppose this would be worth a watch. I like fun movies but this is just a little too ridiculous for me.
*1/2

The Curious Dr. Humpp (1969)

Man, I read a two-part interview with Frank Henenlotter and I go out and watch the Basket Case trilogy and this movie, released on his Something Weird imprint. He claimed it was the weirdest movie he's ever seen so I thought I'd check it out. Yeah, it's pretty weird. It also treads pretty close to being unwatchable as the sex scenes are often extended to the point of being agonizing to sit through. So...Dr. Humpp is this mad scientist (duh) who kidnaps people and makes them have sex so he can get this chemical that the body supposedly secretes during sex which I guess is the key to eternal life. Of course. He's also got this monster henchman which to me just looks like a guy with hairy hands and a wooden mask. The truth is I don't really remember much about this movie. It was strange and kind of boring and if you're looking to weird out guests, this would be a good movie selection.
**

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

I can't imagine why the studios thought this movie was a good idea as it wasn't a "found footage" movie like the first one and on top of that, everyone seemed really sick of The Blair Witch Project by 2000. I remember the backlash for that movie being pretty huge with a lot of moviegoers feeling ripped off. I liked it so even though this sequel looked like a hunk of shit, I watched it. And I liked it. Almost 10 years later, I decided to revisit it and I still like it. This movie has to do with fans of the original movie going on into the same woods to see if they can get spooked by the Blair Witch. What happens is one of the tour groups is murdered and the main characters start seeing a bunch of crazy shit. It's a little too clever for its own good but I think on its own, it's a solid movie. If it didn't have the Blair Witch brand attached to it, I think a lot more people would have liked it.
***

Rambo (2008)

I'm not going to be reviewing any of the other Rambo movies because they're action films and I don't really want to go down that road. I'll watch them, yes, but I have no desire to write shitty reviews about them. However, the latest Rambo movie - which I understand I'm a day late and a dollar short writing about - is one of the most violent mainstream films to come out in fucking forever. I loved it! John Rambo is now a bitter (but still bulky) dude who catches cobras in Thailand. When a group of Christian missionaries (huh huh, "missionary") hire him to take them up the river to Burma, he finds himself in the middle of a bloody civil war that he would probably have little interest in, where it not for the super-hot Christian chick who's been kidnapped (played by...the chick from Dexter). Rambo is an unbelievably brutal and violent movie that makes the beginning of Saving Private Ryan look like Notting Hill. And it's a pretty good movie to boot. I strongly recommend this film, if you're into stuff that kicks fucking ass.
****1/2

Cameron Diaz's Box

2010-03-02T16:05:00.000-05:00

The Box (2009)

I had very little interest in this movie until I found out it was directed by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales), who I'm sort of a fan of. Well, if you're into his previous work, you're probably going to find yourself disappointed here. It's basically a Twilight Zone episode extended over 90 minutes. Which is not to say that it doesn't have it's share of worthwhile parts. Frank Langella's face is scary as shit, outdoing even Two-Face from The Dark Knight. And there are some genuinely creepy Body Snatchers-type moments here and there but once the secrets behind the box and the motives behind the mysterious man are somewhat revealed, the movie goes downhill fast. Not as bad as a Cameron Diaz movie should be but not as good as a Richard Kelly movie should be.
**

The Collector (2009)

Nothing about this movie looked interesting to me so when it leaked onto this here internet, I was hesitant to even watch it for free. Surprisingly, I liked it a lot, even though the movie doesn't make a whole lot of sense whatsoever. Written by Marcus Dunstan, who was behind the Feast films (and the last three Saw films - yikes), the movie starts off with this guy named Arkin who is installing some bars on the windows of this rich family's home. Turns out he's a criminal but of course, he's got a heart of gold and when his ex needs to pay off some loan sharks, he decides he's going to break into the house to steal this gigantic jewel from the safe. When he breaks in, he finds the house is all booby-trapped by a masked man who is torturing the parents in the basement. This is where it gets kind of confusing. If the parents are tied up in the basement, why is the rest of the house booby-trapped? Was he expecting someone? And a lot of work went into these traps when it's possible that no one would have gotten caught in any of them. Weird. So there's a lot of grossout shit, as to be expected from a movie that was originally intended to be a Saw prequel (which also makes no sense as every Saw sequel has a prequel inside it anyway). I really dug the flick, as flawed as it is. I was on the edge of my proverbial seat the whole time.
***1/2

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009)

I think this movie was supposed to come out two years ago or something. I don't know what the hold-up was; studio politics, I'm sure. After all, this is a world where Avatar makes a shit-ton of money but Trick 'r Treat is delayed for years and then thrown directly to DVD. This is not a Trick 'r Treat scenario where what we have here is a lost gem - it's really just an amusing straight-to-DVD sequel of a great movie, nothing more. The flesh eating bacteria is now in the supply of a local bottled water plant and when the bottles are distributed to the high school, it makes for an interesting prom. While it's not as clever as the original film, this one's not without it's share of grossout scenes. Oh man, there are some doozies. However, the plot is pretty thin and not even the return of the "Party Man" cop, a cameo from Mark Borchardt, nor a reference to Sepultura can help it live up to its predecessor. A decent grossout flick, definitely fun, but nothing worth getting too excited over.
***

Daybreakers (2009)

I've never seen the show True Blood but isn't the plot about vampires of the future living among humans and drinking synthetic blood? This isn't exactly that but it's close. In Daybreakers, vampires have completely taken over the world and humans are near extinction. Blood is in short supply and they need to find a synthetic version if they don't want to turn into really fucked up looking vampires, which is what happens when they're deprived of blood. Ethan Hawke is a scientist trying to make the synthetic blood but instead runs into Willem Dafoe who provides him with a cure to vampirism. The cure is so fucking stupid that the moment it's revealed is exactly where the movie spirals downward. I admit, I was initially intrigued by the film but the second half is just lame and corny. Enough already with these vampire movies. I know this is a reaction to Twilight, like "We're going to make vampires badass!," but between this and 30 Days of Night, the results aren't so hot. Make a cool slasher movie or something. Man.
**

Timecrimes (2007)

I read mixed reviews of this one; some say it's really great while some say it's lame as shit. I dug it, even though I'm not wild about time travel movies. Yeah, The Terminator's pretty sweet (whoops, forgot to watch that one) and the first two Back to the Future movies are good but overall, it's nonsensical bullshit that I have a hard time wrapping my head around. Speaking of wrapping one's head, the guy in this movie has a bandage around his head! See how I did that? Timecrimes is a Spanish movie about a guy named Hector who one day sees a naked chick out in the woods so naturally, he goes to check out what's doing. When a man with a bandaged face chases him to a laboratory, he soon finds himself crawling inside a time machine and sent back in time - to the day before. It's not hard to deduce what's going to happen in the second act but it's in the final third of the movie that shit starts to get really interesting. Not mindblowing; just sort of neat, I guess. A really cool approach to the time travel theme that I can get behind.
****

Bad Biology (2008)

While I was familiar with the Basket Case series from way back when, I had never really sat down and watched one of Frank Henenlotter's films. I am curious to see Frankenhooker since it has one of the guys from Street Trash in it (I'm guessing the only person from that movie to act in another movie) but decided to start the Henenlotter ball rolling with his latest (his first in 16 years), Bad Biology. Co-written by rapper R.A. the Rugged Man (seriously), Bad Biology is about a woman who has a bunch of clitorises (seriously) who eventually crosses paths with a guy who has a mutant penis (seriously). Not much else to say about this one. As bizarre as it is, there's nothing terribly memorable about it.
**

Hanger (2009)

What a piece of shit this is. This is hands down the worst movie I've seen since Gutterballs, which not coincidentally was also made by Ryan Nicholson. I would even say it's worse than Gutterballs. What we have here is a guy who's out to make "shocking" movies - nothing more. While some of the imagery is indeed shocking (this is, after all, a movie about a guy who survived a botched abortion), Nicholson needs to figure out that shock isn't worth shit if you don't have anything else. I mentioned Street Trash earlier and I don't think it's a stretch to say this is like Street Trash if you took away everything that is awesome about that movie. The only thing positive I have to say about Hanger is that some of the jokes are so stupid that I had to chuckle. The entire function of this movie is just to gross people out, which is fine, but I'm not 5 years old. I'm sure me hating this movie means "it did its job" but whatever.
1/2*

Sin City (2005)

I really like Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror and From Dusk 'Til Dawn, anyway) so I don't know why it took me so long to watch Sin City. I don't really give a shit about comic books that aren't Batman related so that's probably why. Since I have no clue about the source material, I don't really know if this is a decent adaptation. What I do know is that this is a really awesome-looking movie with a lot of great actors and a decent story. Also, there's some hot chicks which distracted me from the fact that I was watching a comic book movie. Carla Gugino is topless in one scene! That's really something.
***

Run! Bitch Run! (2009)

Unlike the aforementioned Planet Terror (which, as I said, I really like), this is a real neo-grindhouse movie. That's not to say that it's all that good but even that's true to the form - most of the old school grindhouse movies totally suck. While I don't think this one totally sucked, it's a case where the aesthetic was more impressive than anything else. The movie is about Catherine, a meek Christian chick who along with her more sexually expressive friend is going door-to-door selling Bibles. Shit gets raw when a pimp named Lobo murdering one of his girls. The friend is offed and Catherine is taken to the woods from some Last House on the Left shit and of course, the pimp's stuttering sidekick doesn't make sure she's actually dead before they scram. And of course, she comes back for revenge. I wasn't crazy about the story but like I said, the grindhouse aesthetic really carries the flick.
**1/2

2012 (2009)

After seeing the trailer for this last year, I was determined to not see this movie. But now and then I get a hard-on to see big dumb movies on my fancy system so I had Netflix shoot me 2012 on Blu-ray. I wanted a big dumb movie and I got one! I don't have the time of energy to go into everything that's stupid about it, so I'll break it down. Okay, so the movie starts with John Cusack as divorced father who's going to take his kids camping at Yellowstone. While there, they jump some "No Trespassing" fences because he's terrific role model. They run into Woody Harrelson, who is a crazy hippie. In 2012, he plays a crazy hippie so that worked out great for everyone. Wait, I forgot about the Indian guy who along with Dr. Adrian Helmsley (though black, no apparent relation to Sherman) predicted the world will end in 2012 because of solar flares. Anyway, John Cusack drives back from Yellowstone and drops off the kids. Christ, this movie started off slow. Then the shit hits the fan and Cusack and the family escape in his limo, the whole time being inches away from the expanding crack in the earth. Seriously, for the next hour, it's them narrowly escaping death. They drive back to Yellowstone to talk with Woody Harrelson again. They find a map to what is assumed to be a spaceship that is supposed to take them away from all this madness. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, it's a straight hour of tearful goodbyes from various peripheral characters. Meanwhile, the Cusack family is flying to China to get on the ship, which turns out to be an ark, which is great because one of the kids' names is Noah. Why did I write all this? Four words - really stupid, really long.
*1/2

Dead Alive

2010-02-07T22:47:00.000-05:00

The Lovely Bones (2009)

I hadn't heard of the book before seeing this movie but apparently, as is usually the case, the book is much better than the film. After seeing the film, I can't imagine that being too difficult. What we have here is not a terrible movie, just not a very good one. There's a little girl named Susie Salmon and when the neighborhood pedophile decides to build himself an underground lair in the middle of a cornfield near the school (which, for some reason, no one sees the construction of), she's soon enticed into the hole, only to be killed and turned into a ghost. Stanley Tucci is really good as the pedo but the rest of the movie is something of a mess. When Susan Sarandon shows up as the grandma who's going to help around the house, the movie becomes a comedy for a good 5 minutes. Later, the sister comes home after finding out who the killer is and waits for her parents to tearfully reunite before announcing the most important thing in their lives at the moment. Once the girl is at peace, it becomes that Robin Williams movie where he's in heaven. There's nothing hateable about the movie, not even Marky Mark, but I get the feeling it could have been a lot more. Especially coming from Peter Jackson.
**

Moon (2009)

I saw this preview on some DVD and being something of a Sam Rockwell fan, and a fan of dudes freaking out in space, I decided to give it a shot. In fact, I was so stoked to see it, I waited 2 weeks for Netflix to send it to me! I guess it's a popular movie. Anyway, Sam Rockwell is an astronaut who is sent to the moon to mine helium-3, which is a newfangled energy source in this not-to-distant future. When he gets in an accident in one of the mooncars, he is mended back to health with the help of his robot friend GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), the HAL of the movie. When he goes back out to survey the wreckage he finds another guy who he later discovers is actually him. So now there are two Sam Rockwells and they eventually discover something really awesome and weird that's going down. It's not the direction I saw the movie going in and though I like the version in my head better, this is a damn fine movie. I wasn't wild about the very end but I strongly recommend this film.
****

Sweeney Todd (2007)

Tim Burton sucks and fuck him but I was curious to see what a Tim Burton horror movie is like, even if it is a musical. The Burton/Depp bromance continues here as Sweeney Todd returns to London after being exiled for many years. His wife and daughter were stolen away from him with his wife presumed dead and his daughter living with an evil judge. Sweeney T moves above a roach-infested bakery run by Helena Bonham Carter (who was not in the fantastic rock group Bonham) who later decides to use the people meet from Todd's kills to make really fantastic pies. There's a lot of blood here but it's goofy Kill Bill blood so it has little effect. I'm not familiar with the actual musical but the movie is a typical revenge story set in the magical, retarded world of Tim Burton. One of his better movies, I guess.
**1/2

Pathology (2008)

I really enjoyed this movie! I had heard of this movie but hadn't read any glowing reviews or anything. Written by the guys who did Crank (which I've never seen), this is about a guy named Teddy who graduates at the top of his class and is interning at a pathology lab where there's this gang of cool kids who we later find out has this game where one of them kills someone and the rest of them have to guess how they did it. Obviously this is an incredibly unethical practice but I thought it was a really neat idea for a movie! Teddy is sucked into this world of murder, sex, and crystal meth until he decides that it's kinda fucked up and he decides to take them all down. Alyssa Milano plays his girlfriend; I don't remember her getting naked but there's some pokies here and there. The redhead gets naked, I do believe.
****

The Living and the Dead (2006)

Note to self: Never drink a 2 liter of Coke and then watch The Living and the Dead. I about had a nervous breakdown. This is an unsettling, oftentimes frantic movie and watching it under the influence of a lot of caffeine is like having a 90 minute panic attack. James is a mentally challenged fellow who lives with his father and bedridden mother in a large mansion somewhere in the U.K. When the father, Donald, goes away on business, James keeps the nurse away and decides to take care of Mum himself, even though he's obviously not up to the task. You see, he wants to prove to his dad that he's responsible. This proves to be disastrous and James spirals into a surreal world of madness and hallucinations. Not horror in the sense that, say, Halloween is a horror movie but there's some horrific scenes. For instance, when the mother shits the bed. I'd rather get chased around by a killer than deal with that.
****

Sam's Lake (2005)

This one just came in the mail; I don't remember putting it near the top of my Netflix queue. I go through periods where I don't pay attention to my queue and when I go the mailbox, I think "Sam's Lake? What the fuck is that?" It turned to not be so bad, actually. It's about a woman named Sam who takes a group of friends to her deceased father's cabin for the weekend. Guess what? She's got a secret! I was expecting a typical slasher movie and while it's definitely a slasher flick, it falls into the whole third-act-plot-twist subgenre that's been ruling horror the last decade. The acting is pretty good and even though it's not terribly original (not even with the plot twist), I liked it just fine. I wasn't offended.
***

Evilenko (2004)

I had never heard of this movie; it was recommended to me. Not recommended for being especially awesome but for being especially weird. After looking into it and seeing that it has something to do with communism and the Soviet Union (an unusual interest of mine), I decided to check it out. Malcolm McDowell plays a school teacher and loyal communist named Evilenko who one day decides he's going to molest (or attempt to, anyway) one of his young students. He's shit-canned but he calls its a capitalist conspiracy or something. He then gets a job with KGB and because of that job, he gets to take his sick desires on the road, which have now escalated to him killing children in addition to raping them. Also, he eats them which leads to undoubtedly the creepiest part of the whole movie. The authorities search high and low for the killer, through hundreds of suspects, but Evilenko stays elusive until this pederast psychiatrist figures him out. However, it ultimately takes a magistrate who looks an awful lot like Russell Crowe to finally take him down. Interesting movie, for sure. McDowell was especially great.
***1/2

The Chilling (1989)

How is Linda Blair in this movie without showing her boobs? Criminal, I say. Not that it would have made the movie any better. It's about a cryogenics lab who do some black market organ dealing on the side. One night (Halloween, actually), during a thunderstorm, the pods with all the frozen dead people are hit by bolts of lightning (of course) and the frozen dead come alive like Frampton. The zombies are pretty cool looking and one of the security guards is none other than Grizzly fucking Adams but for the most part, this movie is a real dud.
*1/2

Terminator: Salvation (2009)

Am I done with this Terminator shit? I guess I got the first one left. I heard this one was shitty but I wanted to see a big dumb movie with my newfangled system. I got that new G.I. Joe movie coming in the mail for this reason. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. The Terminators in this movie are just big clunky robots because the machines have only started to work on the ones that look like Schwarzenegger. And they don't really terminate so much as throw people around and put them in cages. I guess the machines aren't really that intelligent after all because calling them Terminators at this point is a little inaccurate. Easily the lamest of the four movies; it doesn't even feel like a real Terminator movie. Not just because of Arnold's absence but the whole thing. The characters aren't very developed and the story just isn't very interesting. The action is just the new Transformers movies or rather, the brief snippets of those movies I've seen (don't really care to check those out, not even on my righteous system). Mildly entertaining, I suppose. Not a total mess but it pales in comparison to the previous entries in the series.
**

Diary of a Cannibal (2006)

One of my promises to this here blog was that before 2010, I would watch three Ulli Lommel movies. This vow dates back to when I challenged myself to watch three Uwe Boll movies in a certain amount of time (a week? I don't remember and I don't feel like looking). Just as I failed to do that (watched the movies, didn't meet the deadline), I failed to keep this Ulli Lommel promise as well. And boy am I glad I did. Diary of a Cannibal was such a chore to sit through that I'm not sure I would have made it through two more. I was even going to cheat and include his early 80's movie The Boogeyman, which is supposedly a turd as well but nowhere near the level of shittiness his recent movies have been. Anyway, Diary of a Cannibal is typical Lommel - "based on a true story," shot-on-video, terrible acting and dialogue, etc. This is apparently his "art film," which is even more unbearable than his shit usually is. Okay, I'll get around to doing an Ulli Lommel special edition one of these days but let me enjoy my life for now, okay? I seriously can't take this shit.
1/2 *

The Lost Christmas Sessions

2010-01-25T02:36:00.001-05:00

Black Christmas (1974)

I got really behind on this blog but around Christmas, I decided I was going to be ambitious and make an all-Christmas horror edition. That didn't really pan out but I did watch three movies, one of them being the original Black Christmas. This is the film that really started the whole slasher thing, even inspiring Halloween, one of the greatest horror films of all time. However, Black Christmas is less effective than the best of its imitators. It's about a group of sorority girls who are being harassed by creepy phone calls while in search of one of their missing sorority sisters. Olivia Hussey (Juliet in the old Romeo and Juliet) is about to get an abortion, to her boyfriend's chagrin, and Margot Kidder spends the entire movie drunk. Whether or not she was acting, I don't know. Definitely an okay movie but if you really want a classic, just go directly to Halloween. This one's a slow build with not much of a payoff.
***

Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974)

Not to be confused with the 80s classic Silent Night, Deadly Night, this movie is a low-budget early 70s flick starring some of Warhol's pals, including Mary Woronov, who went on to become Miss Togar in Rock 'n' Roll High School. This flick is a real dud. Some guy inherits a mansion that used to be a mental institution and when he comes to retrieve it, a bunch of murders go down. The one thing I liked about the movie is that at the beginning we're introduced to two characters who the viewer most likely would suspect are the main characters of the film. A half hour in, they're hacked to shit and that's when the heir comes into the story. Kind of a ballsy move but as a whole, this movie sucks.
*1/2

Gremlins (1984)

A classic! I remember when I was a kid, some fast food joint was giving away Gremlins books and 7" records with their kids meals and I had all of them. They were really cool; I wound up knowing the Gremlins story back to front. Since then, I've seen the movie maybe once or twice but I've always enjoyed it tremendously. Now, as a 30 year old curmudgeon, I revisited the film and found that it is easily as enjoyable as when I was a kid. It just came out on Blu-ray so I'll have to make a point of adding this to my collection. I remember Gremlins 2 kind of sucking. Perhaps I'll revisit that one at a later time.
****

Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)

I'm really not into vampire movies and I'm definitely not into anime so this live action version of an anime vampire story didn't really appeal to me much. However, I saw the trailer and it looked really fantastic effects-wise so I decided to check it out. Cool movie! It's about a Japanese vampire named Saya who works for a group called The Council in an undercover operation in Japan to eliminate demons. I think vampires in this movie are supposed to be half-demon, half-human? Anyway, so she enrolls in high school to take on some demons and eventually teams up with another student there, Alice. Oh and all this takes place in the early 70s, during the Vietnam War. Definitely cool and a real treat to look at.
***1/2

The Stepfather (2009)

I really think the original Stepfather is creepy as shit, having watched the thing when I was a young boy watching Cinemax late at night. I'm neither here nor there on the subject of remakes but since this one was made by the people behind the Prom Night "remake," I was skeptical going in. While it's certainly not as bad as Prom Night, it's definitely not any good either. The story's basically the same as the original - serial killer goes from family to family trying to be the perfect husband and father only to end up killing the families when they fail to live up to his ideals. Terry O'Quinn (Locke from Lost) was fantastic in the original; the guy in this one fails to even come close. The son in this movie has a really hot girlfriend who runs around in bikinis and whatnot so that's nice but for the most part, the movie's a dud. Not horrible, just not anything you'd want to go out of your way to see.
**

Sheitan (2006)

The French have really been outstanding in recent years with their horror flicks (especially with Inside and what's become one of my favorite movies ever, Martyrs) so I've been digging around looking for fresh French flicks to feast upon. Sheitan stars Vincent Cassel, the odd looking guy from Ocean's Twelve and apparently Ocean's Thirteen as well (don't know, haven't seen it, don't want to). Here he plays Joseph, a caretaker of an estate in the French countryside. When the daughter of the estate's owners brings some urban wiggerish (Friggers?) acquaintances home to party down, Joseph is beside himself with excitement. What follows is incredibly creepy, not in a horrific kind of way, but in a way that's just...creepy. The horror doesn't enter the picture until the last act so this movie is a real slow burn in that respect. Definitely not boring; definitely awesome. Really phenomenal movie.
****1/2

Header (2006)

What's a header? It's drilling a hole in the top of someone's skull and fucking their brain. I'm not giving anything away (this is answered relatively early in the film) but this question is one part of this movie that drove me nuts. Stewart Cummings is an ATF agent who needs money for his sick girlfriend's expensive prescriptions. He turns crooked to pay the bills, taking money from drug dealers in exchange for safe passage in and out of the county. Stewart is a dipshit. He comes across this body with a hole drilled in its head and semen pouring out of a hole in its brain and he spends 20 minutes obsessing over what a "header" is. What do you think it is, moron? As Dan Spitz would say, do the math!!!!! As you can probably surmise, this is an incredibly twisted movie. Is it any good? It's okay. The acting is horrible and it's really low-budget but it was surreal enough to keep my interest.
**1/2

The Craving (2008)

Another incredibly low-budget movie with an interesting premise: A group of shitheads on their way to Burning Man get lost in the desert and come across a monster who's scent gets you high. Not just gets you high but makes you a fiend for its funk. Really cool idea, I think. If you can get past the fact that every single character is hateable as fuck, it's not a horrible movie. However, all the characters are in fact hateable which makes this movie a real chore to sit through. It also makes the entire movie before you find out about the monster's drug-stink almost unbearable to sit through. There's some decent nudity but aside from the unique premise, The Craving is something of a turd. If you want to see a movie about a mysterious desert monster that stinks, watch Reeker instead.

Carriers (2009)

I didn't see the new Star Trek but apparently the main guy in this movie is Captain Kirk. He plays Brian who, along with his girlfriend, brother Danny, and some girl who's apparently not Danny's girlfriend, is on a road trip to check out some beach he and Danny went to as kids. The movie starts off really awesome. It looks like an average road trip until they see a man standing outside of his truck, waving them down for help. The put on masks and its then you figure out that there's a contagious disease that's wiped out most of the country. Really awesome beginning to the story. The rest of the movie is pretty good too. There's nothing all that new here - they travel, fight, maybe one or two of them get sick - but the performances are really good and it did make me a little creeped out about germs and whatnot. I was thankful that I finally got to see a movie about an end-of-the-world plague that didn't turn people into zombies. I can't believe I'm saying this but enough with the zombies already.
***1/2

C Me Dance (2009)

A Christian horror movie. Pardon me, a Christian thriller. It's not even like that shitty Christian horror movie Thr3e that came out a couple years ago. This one is full-on with the preachiness. This one was written and directed by a guy named Greg Robbins, who also stars in the movie. He looks exactly like a fat Steve Perry. No shit. His daughter, funnily enough, is named Sheri, though it's not pronounced like Steve Perry's "Oh Sherry," but rather like Suicide "Cheree." Sheri is a ballet dancer with a dead mom (killed in a car accident but Satan appeared to be involved, as he is with all things that suck for people). When she comes down with leukemia (the really bad kind), she has a momentary crisis of faith until she discovers that she can lead people to Jesus just by touching them. So of course she touches a bunch of people and they all become Jesus freaks. Which is fine, but where's the horror or rather, thrillering? It's in a brief segment of the film where Satan shows up all pissed off about these miracles. That's it. That's the scary stuff. Speaking of "pissed off," there's some gratuitous cursing! A preacher says "I'm pissed off!" It's really funny. I didn't hate this movie - it was fine - it's just not my thing. I was especially turned off by the right-wing fundamentalist message that sneaks in about 3/4 of the way in. Before that it was a pleasant Jesus movie and then all of a sudden it starts talking about family values and shit. Whatever. For a propaganda film, it's okay. But don't be fooled into thinking it's anything more than that.
*1/2

My Expression Showed Smell

2010-01-25T02:30:00.000-05:00

Simon Says (2006)

I love Crispin Glover and think he's a great actor but this movie sucked and Cripsin Glover sucked in it. He plays twin brothers, Simon and Stanley, and one of them is mentally challenged while the other one is just crazy. One reason this movie sucks is I could never tell which one was which and not in a cool, end of Dead Ringers kind of way but in a "What the fuck is going on?" kind of way. The story is basically Wrong Turn - douchebag kids go into the woods where rednecks (in this case, Crispin Glover's characters) set up elaborate traps that kill them. Every once in a while Crispin Glover says "You fo-gots to say 'Simon says'!!!!" but I don't think he was playing that game right. Worth watching just to see Crispin Glover being bizarre but if that's what you want, you're better off watching any of his other flicks.
**

The Perfect Witness (2007)

Here's another one of those movies that I had never heard of but watched on Netflix Instant just for the hell of it. And it was one of those few occasions where the movie turned out to be pretty good. Wes Bentley plays a guy named Mick who's a documentary filmmaker. When he happens to film a serial killer killing one of his victims, he gets the idea to make a documentary of the guy. James (the serial killer) has to comply of course because Mick has the tape. What follows is what you would expect from blackmailing a serial killer but what I really enjoyed is the human side James showed. I also liked that Mick was a recovering dope fiend who in spite of Hollywood's rules, never killed anyone in a drug induced stupor! Cool flick.
***

The Last Resort (2009)

One of the worst movies I've ever seen. A group of young women decide to have a bachelorette party in Mexico and when they're swindled by robbers and left in the desert, they come across this abandoned resort that turns them into murderous, horny shitheads. It sounds like a delightfully sleazy premise but this movie is boring as shit, the dialogue is lame, and the actresses are terrible. It's another one of those "go on vacation in a foreign land, get your ass handed to you" movies except in this one, no one's organs are harvested, no one's tortured by sport-torturers, and no one gets crazy plants growing inside their legs and faces. Instead it's a 90 minute snoozefest. I don't even remember if there was any nudity.
*

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

I hadn't seen this movie since I was in high school and at the time, thought it was incredibly stupid. I kinda liked the first Scream movie but aside from that, didn't really get into the flurry of teen slasher flicks that followed in its wake. Of course I watched them all - Urban Legend, Valentine, etc. - but none of them were all that memorable. Same formula in all of them, really. Anyway, so I revisted I Know What You Did expecting to hate it and I didn't. I didn't like it either. Ryan Phillippe is really the only actor in the movie worth a shit, which says a lot about the quality of acting here. Freddie Prinze Jr. is especially horrible in this movie. He spends the entire film just looking stupid and confused which I'm sure wasn't a huge stretch for him. The best part of the movie is of course looking at Jennifer Love Hewitt's cans. Aside from that, it's really only something to watch if you don't want to think about anything.
**

I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer (2008)

How this movie managed to be worse than the movie it got its title from, I don't know. In fact, it's worse than I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which is an enormous turd of a film. This movie takes place in Australia and its about this guy who kills all the people who bullied him in school using cricket instruments. I don't know anything about cricket but even if I did, I doubt I would have enjoyed the movie any more. This movie is boring as shit. You'd think that with all the cricket-oriented kills that there would be something to look at but no, there's really nothing. There is seriously no life in this movie - not in the dialogue, not in the kills, nowhere. There's some full frontal female nudity (I'm talkin' vagine) but that's about all this movie had going for it. I hated it a lot.
*

Orphan (2009)

What a treat this movie was after a string of lousy-to-just okay flicks! I'm not wild about creepy kid movies but this one was really something else. Esther is the name of the titular orphan and man, does the actress who plays her do a really good job. I was really impressed with her acting and usually, I'm not dazzled by child actors. So Esther is adopted and moves in with this family and of course she decides she's going to tear the family apart because she's totally evil. It's a fairly cookie cutter evil kid movie but the movie really shines because of the little girl. I don't want to say much more because there's a cool twist!
****

Mad Cowgirl (2006)

This movie was totally fucking weird and I don't think most people would get into it but I thought it was okay. Therese is a meat inspector who as you could guess from the title, gets mad cow disease. She's easy on the eyes so the 90 minutes of totally bizarre surrealism is a lot easier to take in that it would be otherwise. She's dating a bunch of different dudes, including a televangelist played by Walter Koenig (Chekov from Star Trek), I shit you not. Does that guy seriously think no one can tell he wears a wig? These guys with their wigs and hairpieces are so unnerving. I'm actually a little insulted by them. Do they think I'm stupid? That's what I get from these guys. Anyway, this movie's really weird but it's entertaining and sometimes funny and there's a hot chick.
***

Crowley (2008)

I think it's funny that some people think Ozzy writes his own lyrics. Like Ozzy could have come up with the line "Was it polemically sent?" from "Mr. Crowley," which by the way, is my all-time favorite Ozzy song. You know who else sings heavy metal? Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden (how's that for a segue?). I guess he helped write this movie which is apparently based off his solo album The Chemical Wedding which is actually pretty good. The movie's okay too; I was actually surprised that I wasn't totally bored. The guy who plays the guy possessed by Crowley is good; I enjoyed when he whipped his old man cock out and pissed all over everybody. The story is certainly creative but I can't say there's anything here that's all that scary. It's certainly much better than a movie written by Bruce Dickinson should be, I'll give it that.
**1/2

The Thing (1982)

One of the greatest films of all time. If you don't like this movie, I don't know what to tell you. I picked this bad boy up on Blu-ray and man, does it ever look good. The photography in this movie is top notch. Also top notch are the special effects - for a movie that came out in 1982, there is shit here that can't even be touched by the best CGI around today. I don't really know what else to say. It's just fantastic.
*****

Dust Devil (1992)

Here's a movie I've been meaning to see ever since watching the "In the Belly of the Beast" documentary from the Manson Family DVD. Since then, I've become a huge fan of The Abandoned, a movie that Dust Devil director Richard Stanley helped write (along with two other "Beast" alums, Karim Hussein [Subconscious Cruelty] and Nacho Cerda [Aftermath]). Anyway, so that's what piqued my interest and over the years, I've been hearing what a great movie this is. And it is - it's definitely great. The Dust Devil is a guy who travels throughout South Africa, performing ritual murders. The creepy bad guy from The Serpent and the Rainbow is a cop and he's especially effective here - hands down, the best guy in the movie. The main guy, the Dust Devil himself, isn't a great actor and sometimes his dialogue drags the movie down. Aside from that, the movie's incredible. I would definitely recommend this one.
****1/2

Give the People a Party, Richter

2010-01-25T01:23:00.000-05:00

Total Recall (1990)

Oh shit, I forgot that I was reviewing the Terminator films. Alright (Paul Stanley vox), so in one the next entries I'll talk about the first Terminator and the last one, Terminator: Salvation. It's been a while since I've added to this blog so I didn't really remember what I had going on. Okay, I was reviewing the Terminator movies with a brief detour into the world of Total Recall. I saw bits and pieces of this movie as a kid watching Cinemax but never really got what was going on. Now I think I have a much better grasp. Quaid is just a regular musclebound dude, profession unknown (I think?), married to Sharon Stone. He lives on Earth but is obsessed with visiting Mars so when a place called Rekall offers to let him take a vacation there in his mind, he accepts. But it turns out he's not Quaid, he's Hauser, a special agent from Mars whose memory has been erased. Now Quaid is involved with a bunch of spy shit...which is what he ordered for his Rekall dream. This had lead to much debate about whether or not the entire movie is Quaid's dream but my personal belief is that it's all real. The movie has scenes where Quaid isn't even there - why would he have a dream that he's not even involved in? It's fucking real, I don't care what the assholes in Bull Dyke Rodeo say about it.
****1/2

Sick Nurses (2007)

Even though this movie is titled like a cheap straight-to-DVD Lionsgate film (i.e. Haunted Forest or Haunted Boat), it's actually a Thai movie about nurses who aren't necessarily "sick" so much as with their own individual quirks. For instance, one is really into fitness, a pair of twins are really self-obsessed, blah blah blah. A ghost (of course) sets them all up for a series of ironic deaths out of revenge for being wrongly killed by them (of course). I guess the nurses are pretty sick since they're harvesting organs for the black market. Forgot about that. And most of them did participate in the killing of the person who is now a ghost. A series of flashbacks leads up to a twist at the end that I honestly did not see coming. Sick Nurses is a really fantastic looking movie and even though it's about a ghost, I would recommend it. Lotta hot Asian chicks.
***

Train (2009)

Initially intended to be a remake of Terror Train, a Jamie Lee Curtis flick from 1980, the filmmakers decided to just call it Train when they discovered that their movie had nothing to do with Terror Train, even though that didn't stop the people behind Prom Night (coincidentally, another Jamie Lee Curtis flick). Surely, they just could have called it Prom, even though none of the killings actually took place at the prom. Anyway, back to Train. It's another one of those movies where a bunch of decadent young college kids travel abroad only to get hacked up by a bunch of savage foreigners. It's basically Turistas on a train, except these young attractive Americans are on the wrestling team. And wouldn't you know, the main chick uses a wrestling move on one of the savage, organ-harvesting foreigners at the end of the movie! Didn't see that one coming! The movie is really only worth watching because Thora Birch is in it and she's really hot. I didn't think it was horrible but I think we need to move on from the xenophobic horror already.
**

Combat Shock (1986)

I guess this is a Troma movie but it's not Toxic Avenger or Nuke 'Em High or anything like that. It's not in the least bit funny; it's actually really bleak and depressing. It's really scuzzy like Street Trash but again, without all the fun. It's about this Vietnam vet named Frankie who comes home from the war to find that he can't get a job to take care of his wife and deformed baby (reminiscent of the far-superior Eraserhead). The whole movie is him walking around town running into junkies, drug dealers, and a very young prostitute, looking for a way to hustle up a little dough (to borrow a phrase from Townes Van Zandt). I guess I would describe the film as Taxi Driver if it was directed by the guys behind Street Trash. It's definitely an unpleasant bummer of a film but nothing terribly remarkable.
**1/2

Gozu (2003)

Ah, Takashi Miike. You have given us the brilliant Ichi the Killer, the haunting Audition, and the completely lackluster One Missed Call. Will this movie be one of your hits or one of your misses? I'm happy to say that Gozu is absolutely a hit. It's about these Yakuza gangsters, one of whom (Ozaki) has gone so mental that the bossman orders his close friend in the crew (Minami) (they call each other "brothers" but I don't think they were related) to dispose of him outside of town. Minami kills him on the way there after Ozaki goes crazy on a motorist but when they pull into town, the body disappears. On his adventure to find where the body went, he befriends a man with a white face (apparently an albino but you can clearly see the makeup as it's flaking off throughout the film) and a lactating old woman and her retarded brother who run a motel. This is an incredibly bizarre movie, not unlike some of David Lynch's work. I definitely enjoyed it and I will be looking further into Miike's oeuvre.
****

Hide and Creep (2004)

There are a gazillion low-budget stinkers on Netflix Instant so I don't know why this one stuck out enough for me to check it out. But I'm really glad that I did because in spite of it being really low-budget, the movie is a lot of fun. It actually attempts to be funny and succeeds which is apparently a real feat as very few horror-comedies manage to be either scary or funny. There's a zombie outbreak in a small Southern town and it's up to a gun enthusiast and a smarmy video store clerk to save the day. Definitely not reinventing anything (some of the jokes seem like they're from Clerks outtakes) but I was impressed by these guys making an entertaining little movie with seemingly no money to spend on the thing.
***1/2

Noise (2004)

I really liked this movie! Not so much a horror movie as it is a "thriller," it's about this divorcee who moves into a New York apartment right next to a woman (Charlotte, played by Ally Sheedy) who stays up all night blaring showtunes. To me, this is a concept loads more terrifying than the average horror flick. Joyce (the divorcee, an incredibly hot woman played by someone who's maybe not the best actress) goes understandably bonkers dealing with this shit, calling the police on occasion but of course, they're of no help to her. She finds out that Charlotte is a fan of the salacious personal ads so Joyce puts one in for her. This prank goes horribly wrong when Charlotte is raped and beaten as a result of this. Joyce hits the bottle, loses her job, and eventually the film reaches a denouement that is a little unexpected, even after all that. An atmospheric and very enjoyable movie that has apparently been ignored by the idiotic masses.
***1/2

Tales from the Crapper (2004)

Here we have a Troma movie that is actually a Troma movie. Shit jokes, naked broads, no production value whatsoever - it's all here. From the title, it's not hard to pick up that it's an anthology movie, this time with two equally abysmal stories. The first one, "The Case of the Melon Heavy Alien Man Eater," stars Troma vixen Julie Strain as an undercover cop in a strip joint looking to bust whoevers behind a series of grisly murders. Or at least I think that's what was going on. This movie is completely nonsensical, not at all helped by the dialogue being mostly overdubbed, apparently to a Radio Shack microcassette recorder. The second story is about a guy trying to raise money for college by throwing a party with a bunch of strippers. This part is kinda cool because it co-stars Hurley from Lost and has some cameo appearances, including one by Trey Parker, who's an asshole but whatever. I don't remember what was supposed to be scary about this one. Anyway, it's an incredibly bad movie with a couple sort of amusing parts. Definitely not worth watching unless you want to see some big tits. Even then, you have much better movies to choose from.

Frayed (2007)

A young boy murders a family member and is put into an institution. Years later, he escapes, returning to his home to terrorize his sister. Wasn't this movie called Halloween? Man, you gotta have some serious balls to jack fucking Halloween. There are a few differences I guess: He killed his mom at the beginning and the sheriff in this movie is the boy's father. Just to make sure they got their bases covered, the filmmakers throw a little Friday the 13th in there and put the sister and a group of her friends out in the woods for a camping trip. Even though the movie is mostly dreadful in just about every way, I will say that I was impressed by the ending. As usual with these twists, it felt like the entire movie was written just for that ending. Still, it wasn't bad but even that can't make up for what's mostly a piece of plagiarized shit.
*1/2

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)

Speaking of forgotten projects for this blog, wasn't I supposed to review three Uli Lommel films by the end of 2010? Shit, I made that goal two and a half years ago and I still haven't brought myself to doing it. If you've seen a Uli Lommel film, you know why. But I am a man of my word and though I missed the deadline, I will make it up to you, my blog, by having an entire entry dedicated solely to the works of Uli Lommel. That's right - 10 fucking movies. Ugh. Anyway, let's move on to the second worst German director whose first name starts with a U: Uwe Boll. I came across this Blu-ray at Wal-Mart for ten bucks so I picked it up. It looked long as shit but I was in the mood to watch a really bad movie so I figured why not. The kicker? It's really not as bad as you would think. It's bad but it's watchable. Farmer (a farmer) embarks on his adventure to find his kidnapped-by-beasts wife and avenge the death of his son. Ray Liotta is a wizard who steals the power of Leelee Sobieski by making out with her. Burt Reynolds is the king. Not making this shit up. But the most amazing part of this film is Matthew Lillard, a tremendously bad actor who manages to one-up himself here by delivering one of the most laughably bizarre performances I've ever seen. Truly, truly inept in every way. Incredible. The movie is indeed really long (2.5 hours, I think) and the action scenes get to the point where they're agonizing but I didn't think the movie was all that horrible. That's the best I can say about it though.
**

He Who Walks Behind the Whoa

2010-01-25T00:23:00.000-05:00

Children of the Corn (2009)

I'm a fan of the first film and the short story so much that I was actually looking forward to seeing a new interpretation of it all. I didn't really take into consideration that it's a SyFy (formerly known as Sci-Fi, a term that is not gibberish) original movie and that every single movie I've seen from that channel has been laughably bad. I thought the source material was so strong that they couldn't fuck it up. Wrong. Wrong. This is a movie that is downright bizarre in how bad it is. First we're introduced to Burton, a Vietman vet (this takes places in the 70s), and his girlfriend Vicky who's so fucking annoying you're praying for the kids to show up and do her in after 30 seconds of screentime. Seriously, she might be one of the most irritating people in any movie ever made. Burton just kinda takes her shit but he's not going to help the movie much either. No, he's going crawl on his belly through the cornfield at one point because he's having a Vietnam flashback. The children are especially ineffective. In one scene, they surround Burton in the middle of town and...just stand there. Isaac throws a knife at him from on top of a building and misses and the rest of them just stand there and look at him while they talk for a good 10 minutes. What the fuck is up with this movie! With movies this bad, I find myself incredibly fascinated by the process - how the people involved thought these choices were good, how the nonsense of it all escaped the producers, how these writers have jobs, etc. A truly amazing piece of dogshit.
*

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Regarded as one of the few remakes worth a shit, 2004's Dawn of the Dead really is a great movie. I've been a fan of it since it's release and in spite of the running zombies (which I've never really been sold on), I think it's up there with the original as a true zombie classic. The movie starts off with Ana, a nurse who comes home from the hospital after a really long shift and just wants to chill with her husband. The next morning, the neighbor girl attacks the husband, he turns into a zombie, and this whole scene becomes one of the scariest scenes of any movie this decade. Really tense and unnerving. Ana runs into a group of survivors, they hole up in a mall, run into some security guard dicks, and make a plan to get to this island that they suspect is zombie-free. Great flick, glad I watched it again.
****

Black Devil Doll (2007)

This movie is really racist. I'm not kidding. It's one of the most racist movies I've ever seen. Is it funny? Kinda. There are moments here and there that are so stupid, they're funny. I suspect the makers of the film wanted to make a politically incorrect exploitation film and they succeeded. There's nothing especially bad about the movie since the synopsis pretty much tells you what you're in for. If you look at the poster and read the plot and expect a really good movie, well, you're an idiot. I'm not an idiot so I wasn't terribly disappointed. The one thing this movie has is a lot of slutty naked chicks who spend most of the movie slutty and naked. It's not a serious movie and it shouldn't be taken seriously but as I mentioned before, it's incredibly racist. A lot of jokes at the expense of black people. Personally, I don't think it's worth worrying about. It's a low-budget movie about a possessed doll that nobody's ever going to see - a racist tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear.
**

Slices (2008)

As someone who has virtually no attention span, I enjoy horror anthology films like Creepshow and Tales from the Hood (the latter being a true underrated classic). However, this movie sucks. I didn't like it. Let's see if I can even remember some of the stories. Okay, there was "The Exterminator" about a futureworld where people are exterminated to control the population. Lame torture porn. There's a ripoff of Stephen King's "Word Processor of the Gods" from Tales from the Darkside followed by a vampire story I don't really remember. There was one about zombies during the Civil War that was especially boring. I swore that this movie was 3 hours - it certainly felt that long. Turns out it was only 100 minutes but still, it was agonizing to sit through. Really lame crap.
*1/2

Clownhouse (1989)

I remember seeing this movie on cable when I was kid and getting kinda scared by it. Now, as an adult, I'm scared for a whole new reason - knowing that during the filming, the director (Victor Salvo) was molesting the young star of the movie. He later went to jail only to reemerge onto the scene with movies like Powder and Jeepers Creepers (both really creepy movies if you look for the pervy subtexts). I watched this movie feeling really bad for the youngest kid, not because he was being chased by killer clowns but because he was getting molested by the weird fat guy behind the camera. So yeah, this movie is about these guys who escape from a mental institution, dress like clowns, and stalk this kid who is of course terrified of clowns. A decent 80s horror flick (which also stars a young Sam Rockwell, who grew up to be a really terrific actor) with a backstory that is way more unsettling.
***

Dark Country (2009)

Tom Jane takes a break from pretending to be homeless to direct a film noir-styled horror film that takes place on a desert road outside of Vegas. Funny story: I put the DVD in my player and got about 10 minutes into it without any of the dialogue coming through my speakers. The soundtrack was there but none of the dialogue. I thought that's how the movie was; I thought it was just really artsy. No, the DVD was fucked and after some fiddling with the options, I got the dialogue track back. It certainly helped me understand the film better but as the visuals are the only real impressive things about the film, it didn't help much. Tom Jane and his new wife that he just met (played by the hot chick from Hostel Part 2) pick up a guy on the side of the road who's been in an accident. He's an asshole so of course they kill him and attempt to hide the body. This puts a lot of stress on their marriage and they start to question whether marrying after knowing each other one night was the responsible thing to do. An obvious twist pops up at the end but if you can't see it coming, you're probably not going to understand it anyway.
**

Castle Freak (1995)

Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs! I'm already sold. Jeffrey Combs plays John Reilly, a recovering alcoholic who is obviously responsible for the death of his child. Obviously! In films, you can't be an alcoholic unless your drinking has a death toll. And it's usually a kid, otherwise the death won't seem so tragic. So John kills his kid in a drunk driving accident which is why his daughter is now blind and his wife sleeps in another room. The family inherits a castle in Italy which if you think about it, would be pretty awesome. Not so awesome for them because there's a castle freak lurking about! He's actually the former owner's son who's been chained up and starved since he was a boy by his psychotic mother. Now he's basically just a monster. Cool, creepy movie; I'm going to have to seek out more of Stuart Gordon's work. I haven't seen a crummy one from him yet.
***

The Untold Story (1993)

Once the bad guy started grinding a person up and making pork bao out of him, I figured that eating a bag full of Taco John's burritos while watching The Untold Story might not have been the best strategy. A legendary Hong Kong shocker about a a guy who mysteriously comes into owning a restaurant that used to be run by a family who is now disappeared without a trace. Kind of a no-brainer what happened to them but that doesn't make the ending less shocking (that's when you finally get the scoop - the untold story, if you will). While the ending is definitely on the disturbing side, the rest of the movie is a lot of fun, with a group of bumbling cops trying to figure shit out. And then there's the part where the bad guy asks his cellmate for his piss so he can drink it...you just have to see it. Regarded as an Asian shock classic, and deservedly so.
****

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974)

While I can't really get behind the whole Nazisploitation phenom of the 70s (seems kinda sick to me), I decided to finally check out the most legendary film of the subgenre, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. In spite of the Nazis not allowing women to rise to any sort of power, Ilsa is a commandante of a concentration camp where cruel and inhumane medical tests are performed on the prisoners. There's a lot of really unnerving torture scenes which I suppose is the appeal of the film, along with all the sex stuff. Ilsa cannot be satisfied by any man and after the dudes blow their loads, she promptly castrates them. That is, until one handsome young American fellow fucks her right and eventually leads a mutiny that seals Ilsa's doom. I can't say I was especially crazy about this movie. It does exploit the atrocities of the holocaust which I don't think is very cool. There's definitely some sick stuff to see, and some boobs, so if that's what you're into, have at it. Even ignoring how insensitive it is, it's still not a very good flick.
**

Pontypool (2008)

I don't think this movie is even out on DVD yet but I'm curious to find out if it's going to find its audience. It's a horror movie not unlike some that we've seen before - small town, people mysteriously decide to become murderous zombie-like drones, survivors are left to figure out what to do while being holed up in a confined space. That part of the movie has been done before and while this particular version of that story is carried by some really great writing and acting, the real treat with this movie is why the people are behaving that way. Infected...words? That's right, certain words in the English language are infected so when you say them out loud, you basically become a zombie. The reason I'm curious about this movie's appeal is that it really is a hard concept to wrap your mind around as the movie inches closer to the end, it does become a little confusing as the main character is basically driven to madness by the whole idea. I enjoyed this movie a lot and would definitely recommend it.
****1/2

The Jig is Up

2009-12-09T03:40:00.000-05:00

Saw VI (2009)

The game is over and it's been over since oh about 3 movies ago. It's funny to see all these reviews say shit like "Jigsaw died in the third one but they found a way to make it work!" No. They didn't. These movies have gone from bad to worse...back to bad again. That's right, Saw VI is not as bad as Saw V but few movies are. In this one, we see why Jigsaw has a grievance with his health insurance provider. Seriously, that's the plot of the movie--Jigsaw taking revenge on his HMO! It's briefly explained why Jigsaw can pay for millions of dollars worth of elaborate torture devices but not his cancer treatment but the answer is unimportant because, really, this shit has gotten so stupid it doesn't even matter anymore. The story's a little more cohesive than the last one; I actually sort of enjoyed the "game" that the insurance guy has to go through. Oh! That reminds me. We've reached the point in the Saw series where they're trotting out old devices, like it's a Journey concert or something. While Saw VI is definitely not as painful to sit through as a Journey concert, you're not missing much if you sit this one out. Or any of them, really.
**

I just looked at my reviews for the first 4 Saw movies. Unbelievably high scores for such a bad series! I guess I stand by them since they are enjoyable. Except Saw IV--I must have been wasted when I gave that 3 3/4 stars.

Zombieland (2009)

Now we're fuckin' talkin'. The best part about this review is I don't have to say "Man, why don't people go see awesome movies instead of seeing shit like Saw VI" because I guess Zombieland made some major dough at the box office while Saw VI tanked. Way to go, America! Between this and the success of Paranormal Activity (which I still think was just pretty good), there's hope after all. Zombieland is about a guy played by Jesse Eisenberg who has all these rules on how to survive the zombie apocalypse. He's later named Columbus (where he's from) by good ol' boy known as Tallahassee (he doesn't want to use real names in case he has to shoot him down the line). On a quest to find Twinkies (seriously) they come across two girls who con them and steal their wheels (one of them is the Little Miss Sunshine girl and the other is one of the hot chicks from Superbad). They cross paths again and together, they go on an adventure. Really funny movie, great special effects, an absolutely incredible cameo appearance that I won't give away--totally fucking recommended.
****1/2

The House of the Devil (2009)

Here's a movie where I like the idea of it more than I like the finished product. A blatant throwback to 80's horror, the aesthetic of this movie is fantastic. Even the movie poster is old school. However, I kinda found myself wishing there was more to the story. Samantha answers an ad for a babysitter and finds herself in a creepy house owned by Mr. and Mrs Ulman, played spectacularly by Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov. They're desperate for a babysitter and confess that she'll actually be sitting Mrs. Ulman's mother while they go check out the lunar eclipse. Samantha is hesitant but eventually agrees when Mr. Ulman offers her a bunch more money. Mr. Ulman is insistent that she order pizza which you'd think would weird Samantha out by she thinks nothing of it. Eventually it's revealed that she was lured there for a Satanic sacrifice. Pretty dang good movie from one of the creators of The Signal (amazing film) but something about it left me less than satisfied. Worth your time though.
***

House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

This is a movie that I really didn't like at all when I first saw it. I didn't think it made a whole lot of sense and I thought a lot of it was jacked from movies like Texas Chainsaw. For some reason, I kept wanting to rent it and eventually, it got the point where I liked the movie a great deal. By the time it's sequel, The Devil's Rejects, was released, I was a big fan of Rob Zombie's film work. After picking this up on Blu-ray, I decided to give it another whirl and found that it's still an enjoyable movie though not one without it's share of flaws. The plot is still really confusing (especially towards the end) but the look of the film is really fucking awesome. Rob Zombie's got a great eye; he just can't really write for shit. I keep saying it: If someone gives Zombie a decent script, he could make a classic. Still, this is a thoroughly enjoyable movie that's really nice to look at. Hopefully Zombie will revisit this kind of fanboy stuff instead of doing unnecessary remakes and then sequels to those unnecessary remakes (both movies I'll still defend, by the way, just sayin').
****

Skeleton Crew (2009)

If you're going to watch one meta-horror movie this year, let it be The Hills Run Red (which I'll get to, just hold on). This British film is about a crew of filmmakers making a movie about a mad doctor in the very hospital he performed his torturous experiments in. Once the director finds the doctor's secret stash of snuff films, he becomes either really inspired or possessed, I couldn't really tell which. He starts killing off his cast and crew and filming it all for his feature. The movie starts off sort of interesting and then gets progressively more boring and tedious as it goes on. There's some cute British chicks but aside from that, there's not a whole lot here.
**

The Hills Run Red (2009)

Like I said, this is another meta-horror film in that it's about a lost slasher film called The Hills Run Red. Tyler is a horror buff who's become obsessed with the film, collecting various stills, and eventually going so far as to make a documentary. His girlfriend and his best friend are along for the ride and unbeknownst to him, they're banging. That's okay because Tyler runs into the daughter of the filmmaker who's not a stripper junkie and for some reason, doesn't find it at all unethical to basically hold her hostage until she sweats out all the dope, not so much for her benefit but so she can help him on his quest to find the lost film. The movie is really a lot of fun, especially when halfway through, the plot twist reveals itself and the viewer is left to figure out what the hell is going on with this movie called The Hills Run Red. Definitely a solid flick, one of the better slasher movies to come out in recent years.
****

Farmhouse (2008)

I don't consider myself a genius or anything but I'm going to brag that I totally called this movie from about minute 10. In fact, I will even go so far as to say that if you are of even moderate intelligence who's maybe read a little bit about The Bible or listened to death metal in the 90s, you will figure it out rather quick. It's about as subtle as a hammer to the balls. A couple who just lost their baby are moving away to start a new life and they're traveling through northern California (I'm assuming this based on the wine) when they get in a car accident and look for help at a farmhouse run by a guy named Samael and his wife Lilith. Hello! When farmhand Alal gives the woman an apple, it's obvious what's going on - they died and they're in Hell (or purgatory or whatever). But that's not the only twist; you're still left to figure out why they're in Hell (or purgatory or whatever). Clues are given through a series of flashbacks that reveal more as the film goes on. Not a great movie (it turns into a torture porn film for about the middle half hour) but an okay watch.
**

The Children (2008)

I'm not wild about movies with creepy kids (except for maybe The Shining) but this one really stands out. It's about two families who get together on Christmas and sure enough, one of the bastard kids is sick when he shows up. Casey is the oldest of the kids (she's about 16) and she's all sullen and angsty and just wants to go this party with her friends but she's grounded and stuck with her family. After one of the fathers dies in a sledding accident, Casey starts to suspect something is up with the kids. Of course nobody believes her and they eventually get the idea that Casey is behind the series of catastrophes that are unfolding. Really good movie with an ending that leaves the viewer wondering (and not in an annoying way).
***1/2

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)

The Wrong Turn series is somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine. Actually, before recently, I had only seen the first one once when it came out and just thought it was okay. However, the second one was great and that made me really look forward to this one. Boy, does this movie suck. It's about a group of prisoners who are being transferred to another prison and one of them has a plot to escape en route. Of course that plan goes wrong (why wouldn't it?) and they are lost in the woods where they're being stalked by the Wrong Turn inbreds. The characters are all so annoying that you really don't give a shit if they make it out and the booby traps aren't impressive enough to carry the movie (I think that was the idea but it fails miserably). There's even some really lousy CGI to make the whole thing look especially ridiculous. Bad acting, bad script, bad effects, bad movie.
*1/2

Wrong Turn (2003)

Like I said before, I had only seen this movie once and thought it was just okay. But when I picked up the third one on Blu-ray, I decided to give this one a whirl again. It really is a fun, suspenseful movie; I can see why it's become sort of a respected movie in the horror community. A group of college-age friends are out in the woods for a weekend of camping and getting it on but when a guy in a rush for a job interview hits their car, they're forced to split up, with one group sticking around the site and the other going to look for help. Of course the ones who stick around are bashed and owned by the inbred hillbillies and the group that's going for help finds their cabin which of course they help themselves to, like that's ever a good idea. Seriously, why do people just walk into creepy cabins and houses and then root around like that's okay? Even if the residents aren't murderous hillbillies, it's still rude. Anyway, the inbreds are after them and there's a series of fun kills that makes this movie pretty enjoyable though not especially mindblowing.
***

Tears in Heaven

2009-11-21T17:09:00.000-05:00

Antichrist (2009)

Now, I have no problem with art films but I can smell bullshit like it's...well, bullshit. This movie is 100% bullshit. Okay, 98% bullshit. I like the look of it and there's some imagery that's a little unsettling. Aside from that, it's tedious, pretentious, and not in the least bit frightening even though it's apparently supposed to be a horror film. Now that I think about it, Dancer in the Dark (also directed by Lars Von Trier) was a lot scarier than this and that was a musical. So the story of Antichrist is this toddler falls out of a window, the mother goes crazy with grief, both of the parents go this cabin in the woods to work it out. Once they get out there, some weird shit happens. Like what, you ask? Oh, like a talking fox. I swear, when that part came up, I laughed out loud--literally, I'm not just saying that to be internet-cute. There's some shit here that's not for the squeamish, opportunities for both men and women to cringe at the thought of their genitalia being abused. By the time that shit comes up, I was so ready for the movie to be over that I didn't care one bit. Worst movie of the year? One of them, absolutely.
*

Paranormal Activity (2009)

For me, the hype surrounding Paranormal Activity lead to what "they" call a catch-22. On one hand, I would not have seen this movie were it not for the massive hype campaign that preceded its nationwide release. On the other hand, it was a completely disproportionate amount of hype for a movie that's sort of boring. I don't mind slow-burning movies; however, with Paranormal Activity, I had very little interest in the characters so there wasn't much to draw me in. Don't get me wrong--I liked the movie. It was just a whole lot of build-up and not a lot of payoff, you dig? Apparently there's a couple different endings going around and while the one I saw in the theater made me lean back in my chair, the very last second of the film didn't really jibe with the rest of it. It reeked of studio meddling. But then I watched one of the alternate endings and I liked that one even less. Supposedly there's yet another one that sounds like the best one of all but alas, I have yet to see it. Oh well. Worth a watch? Sure. If you're a guy, watch it with a broad.
***

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009)

I had heard this movie (an animated feature by Rob Zombie) was terrible but I actually thought it was immensely entertaining and at times very funny. El Superbeasto (a former Mexican luchador) is quite taken with a busty, foul-mouthed stripper named Velma Von Black but when Dr. Satan (apparently not the same character from Corpses) takes her to be his bridge, Superbeasto has to enlist the help of his sister Suzi X to stop him. For fans of Zombie's other movies (I know there's probably someone out there besides me), there are appearances by Capt. Spaulding and Otis Driftwood of Corpses/Rejects and even an appearance by Michael Myers. The animation is...Ren & Stimpy meets Spongebob? Like I said, I thought it was really funny but I'm also the guy who loved Halloween II, so take that for what it's worth.
***1/2

The Chaos Experiment (2009)

What a crappy movie but I couldn't help but be entertained by it. This movie is a hot mess (huh-huh) with some seriously bizarre acting choices by some B-list cats. There's Eric Roberts (of Dark Knight and Julia Roberts fame) as a Southern ex-football player who is trapped in a sauna with a bunch of other strangers. I'm not going to hate on Eric Roberts but his performance in this movie is fucking weird. And...it's not even the weirdest performance in the movie. Val Kilmer wasn't in The Dark Knight but he's making damn sure everyone knows he can do a great impersonation of Heath Ledger's Joker. An especially strange choice seeing as how he used to be Batman, but I digress. Anyway, Val Kilmer is this guy who believes global warming is going to end the world in 2012 and he's using this sauna ordeal as an experiment to prove how chaos will ensue. Seems like kind of a long way to go to prove that global warming isn't going to work out for everyone but they needed something to fill 90 minutes. Of course, there's a twist ending but nothing all that exciting. I would recommend this film if you want to watch some crappy but amusing.
**1/2

Dead Wood (2007)

No, it's not a movie about that bar in Iowa City, though I imagine if it was, it would be a whole lot scarier. I don't even know what the fuck happened in this movie. Two couples go camping in the woods and they all start disappearing once this Asian chick shows up the next morning. After that...your guess is as good as mine. I thought I would be watching something really classy and profound because it's a British film and I assume that the British are a no-nonsense people (Benny Hill notwithstanding). Britain, you have failed me. Also, isn't it kind of a ballsy movie to name your movie after a popular TV show? I look forward to the director's sequel, tentatively titled En Tourage. Hug it out, bitch.
*1/2

How to Be a Serial Killer (2008)

A horror-comedy that sounds suspiciously close to Dexter: A normal everyday guy gets his kicks killing people. This guy even has his own code and everything. While not nearly as brilliant as Dexter, the movie's quite entertaining and fun. The serial killer's name is Mike and he takes on Bart, a quiet video store clerk, as his apprentice. Mike's girlfriend Abigail doesn't suspect anything until Mike's friendship with Bart starts to get a little suspicious. Once she figures out what's up, she's fucked, and it's only after a series of broken rules that Mike finds himself in a world of shit, doing everything he can do get out of it. If the subject is of interest to anyone, I would recommend the far superior Man Bites Dog or even the recent Behind the Mask but this one's certainly not a terrible way to spend 90 minutes. Mike's a likeable enough character that the unoriginal premise is sort of canceled out.
**1/2

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

So I guess I'll be moving backwards in the Terminator series (with a brief stop at Total Recall) before checking out the latest flick, Terminator: Salvation, which is apparently really shitty. I guess I don't really have much to say about this one as everyone in the world has seen it. I first saw in the theater back when it came out and I have to say, it's held up remarkably well. The special effects still look really good and the story holds up. Edward Furlong is kind of an annoying little prick and Linda Hamilton is so intense it's almost goofy but I defy you not to get choked up at the end! You would have to be a...robot?
****1/2

Cravings (2006)

Apparently titled Daddy's Girl everywhere but in the U.S., Cravings is about a troubled teen who winds up in the hospital after slitting her wrists. It becomes clearer that this wasn't a suicide attempt but rather a way for her to drink her own blood as she suffers from Renfield's syndrome, or a craving to drink blood. Make sense? What doesn't make sense is the grieving psychiatrist who goes from his wife offing herself to him sleeping with the Renfield girl's mother. He finds out what she's up (after not listening to the warnings of his dead wife's ghost) to and one blended poodle later, he decides to put an end to it. The third act becomes a very watered down version of Audition's dénouement, far less effective here. I didn't hate the movie and was actually pretty grossed out by all the blood drinking. It's a serious movie with a teen villain which was sort of refreshing. Nothing terribly memorable but nothing terrible either.
**

The Wild Man of the Navidad (2008)

Supposedly a true story about a manbeast that terrorized the locals of a small Texas Town. Dale Rogers owns some land and when times get tough for him and his disabled wife, he decides to offer it up to hunters as it's been decades since it's been hunted on. This proves to be a not great idea when the hunters ignore his warnings to stay away from a certain area of the land. We find out that Dale, like his father before him, has an unspoken deal with the Wild Man--he gives him some foodage every night in exchange for not being eaten. When the Wild Man refuses his supper one night, it becomes clear to Dale that the Wild Man is not too pleased with the hunting arrangements. A pretty good movie, especially impressive because it appears really low budget. Even more impressive is that a lot of locals were cast in the film and they're all pretty awesome to watch. These people really make the film, in my opinion.
***1/2

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991)

To sum up Riki-Oh, I will say that it's basically everything I've ever wanted to see all in one movie and more. This movie is absolutely legendary and for good reason. Ricky is incarcerated in a privatized prison ruled by a group of thugs called The Gang of Four. The fight scenes are incredible, the gore is jaw-dropping, it's funny, it's totally fucking bizarre--there is nothing this movie does not offer. The Daily Show even used the famous head-crushing scene for Craig Kilborn's "Five Questions" segment. Without a doubt, one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. Strongly recommended, provided you like stuff that's awesome.
*****