Celluloid Terror

2020: Texas Gladiators (1984)

2012-01-25T12:01:00.003-05:00

The year is 2020 and survivors grasp on to life and what little bit of organized society and humanity still exists in the shadow of an atomic holocaust. The land is barren and desolate and gangs fight for women, money and land. The Rangers are a group with a goal or restoring some sort of order to the world and that means kicking the collective ass of all these freaks and baddies.

The film opens in a nondescript run down old building where one of the gangs have captured a priest and two nuns and are forcing themselves upon the nuns and torturing the priest. The Rangers arrive and even more hell breaks loose as they clear out the building of the gang, where they find one captive woman, a beautiful blond. One of The Rangers forces himself upon her and when the others find him they kick him out for breaking the rules and their trust. Nisus (Al Cliver) bonds with the woman who tells him of a place where society still exists just 3 days from where they are.

Now in Texas at a refinery/plant where a nice organized little town has been built around and the occupants try to carry on life. Nisus and his new love, Maida (Sabrina Siani) help raise Maida's daughter who is about seven years old, until the town falls under attack by a motorcycle gang. After fending them off in a lengthy gun fight the gang calls in the reinforcements which is a uniformed militant group armed with futuristic bulletproof shields that have giant holes in the middle so they can still fire their weapons... the giant holes are still bulletproof though. The militant group's leader enslaves the town and forces them to work the mines. He sends his top bounty hunter to kill The rest of the The Rangers. Nisus is killed when he breaks free from captivity and tries to kill the man that raped his woman but is quite easily killed due to being outnumbered.

The Rangers now want to save the town to restore some peace and order to the war torn world and the rest of the movie is basically a big fight scene spanning what has to be hundreds or thousands of miles. The Rangers realize they can't kill the militant group who has the futuristic weapons so they enlist the help of a local Native American tribe after they prove they're strong enough. When the warriors reach the town to free them another big fight breaks out for control of the town and the Natives really show their worth and help take down the militants.

2020: Texas Gladiators is another Joe D'Amato ripoff that he made his living off of. The film is endlessly violent and moves at a very brisk pace which are the main strong points of the movie. It doesn't get many points for story or writing as it is very jumpy from major scene to major scene. Just when you think Nisus is the main character he's killed off with very little to-do about it and we have a new main character. There are of course some flaws in logic but none bigger than those futuristic bulletproof shields that can stop bullets even where there isn't actual shield but the Indian's arrows go right on through? That doesn't make a bit of sense to me but this is the fun nonsense we're faced with.

The acting isn't really good but gets the job done, if you're expecting award winning stuff you should just move right along. There should be plenty of boobs and blood to keep you mildly entertained for the duration, if only a better story had been put together this could have been a nice standout. Instead 2020: Texas Gladiators will forever be lumped into the middle of the pack of these Mad Max ripoffs.

The Gardener (a.k.a. Seeds Of Evil) (1975)

2012-01-17T15:33:00.003-05:00

The back of the DVD cover states "The Gardener is flowery mix of 70s mod-art film, grindhouse horror and Italian giallo along the lines of horror maestros Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci." What a load of shit that turned out to be.

Ellen and her husband John are a well-off couple living in Costa Rica where Ellen spends her time lounging, and sipping cocktails with her best friend Helena. Ellen hires a mysterious gardener named Carl (frequent Warhol collaborator Joe Dallesandro) to do some gardening work and bring the place some color and life. Soon after, Ellen's cook tries to warn her that Carl is no good and evil. Strange events follow Carl including, being drawn to watch him the early hours of the morning, the sudden illness of the family's previous landscaper, deaths, and flowers blooming to life that are not in season.

Eventually Ellen becomes too obsessed with the goings of Carl and Helena offers to hire him from her. It isn't long before Helena's life is in danger, Ellen is brainwashed and Carl turns into a tree.

Practically nothing of any significance happens in the 87 minutes that THE GARDENER was on the screen. It is mostly spent sitting around watching both female leads talk about one thing or another with the conversation also holding little to no significance. The little bits and pieces of meaningful movie are so plainly stupid that it's just a total chore to sit through.

For James H. Kay this would be his only directing or writing credit and it is no wonder why. He is totally incapable of bringing any life or excitement or any quality that resembles a living, breathing organism to the weak script. To say the acting is wooden is an understatement. The story is weak, but I suppose that is where the "mod-art film" aspect comes in to play. Too bad this film falls far short of art on any level. The grand finale should have left a powerful image in the viewer's mind all it left was a palm in my face.

The artwork for this film was both original and eye-catching. The plot could have been a piece of trippy and cheesy gold. Instead I'm left with a movie I couldn't wait to be over and some neat artwork. A friend of mine saved the DVD of Murder Set Pieces until our summer vacation last year so he could punt it into the Atlantic Ocean because he hated it so much. I might have found something to send to the depths of the Atlantic right alongside of it.

In A Glass Cage (1987)

2012-01-10T22:04:00.002-05:00

That was draining.

Klaus is a former Nazi doctor who found a fetish for loving, torturing and killing young boys while serving under the Swastika. His sickness continues into his isolation until a failed suicide attempt leaves him paralyzed and dependent on an iron lung. His wife Griselda and daughter Rena live with him and care for him while a maid handles the housework. One day Angelo comes to the home offering his services as a nurse for Klaus. Griselda immediately dislikes the man and tells him to leave but Klaus insists on him staying, even after it becomes clear Angelo has no medical training.

It is soon revealed that Angelo was a boy Klaus tormented. Angelo stole the diary that deeply detailed the crimes Klaus committed, and is now reading the stories back to Klaus and recreating the events. Angelo is set on punishing Klaus for his crimes but is obsessed with becoming the same man Klaus was. Angelo slips deeper and deeper into his childhood tormentor's mind until he finally believes he is Klaus and sends Rena into his own role.

Tras el Cristal, or, In A Glass Cage is a beautifully crafted film from director Augusti Villaronga. It is filled with images that will stick in your mind long after the credits roll. Horrible images. Beautiful images. And more often than not, a bizarre mixture of the two. The cast is more than convincing in bringing the great script to life.

This is much more than a horror film. In A Glass Cage will push you and challenge your personal limits. It isn't a fun movie, and never claims to be. You won't sit down with a big bag of popcorn or some Sour Patch Kids and have a blast while watching this. If you do decide to watch it you'll find something strangely beautiful, made with great skill and artistic vision. This is a great film.

9/10

Hostel 3 (2011)

2012-01-03T00:52:00.002-05:00

Every horror franchise I can think of reaches a point where it ceases to be any good. Hostel has reached that point.

Scott is soon to be married and on his way to his bacelor party trip with his best friend Carter, only to find out that their destination isn't going to be based around the golf links, but in Las Vegas with Scott's other best friends Justin and Mike. After meeting a couple of girls in a casino who tell them about a "freaky" place off the strip to party the real bachelor party is underway. A feeding tube 40oz, plenty of naked women and more random people than you'd know what to do with are the setting inside of this sketchy warehouse. After the night of partying Mike and the escort he was with disappear and eventually they get a message from his phone to meet them at a motel where they are gassed by masked men and brought back to a dingy room and housed inside of metal cages. Carter reveals his Elite Hunting Club tattoo and they free him where he has a meeting with the bigwigs of the club. It's revealed that this is all a setup on Scott because Carter wants his woman. Scott and Carter end up fighting with swords and a mace before all hell breaks loose at the club setting up a really cliched twist ending.

Scott Spiegel, best know for directing INTRUDER and for his various roles working on Sam Raimi films, directs the first HOSTEL entry to go straight to video and to not be directed by Eli Roth. Spiegel's direction is bland and uninspired but so is the rest of the film. The editing suffers from fast jumpy music video style editing at times that plagues many independent horror films. The photography looks plain awful on more than one occasion, notably during a couple of hand to hand fight scenes. There is a ghosting lag that looks like a shitty video game connection on the internet. The effects are cheaply done and don't really hide themselves. Look for a scene with cockroaches and sparks from a cane to see exactly what I mean. Aside from all of that the cast does a nice job for the most part. They carried a rather weak script and made it believable and aside from hamming it up on occasion the acting was the bright spot of the movie. I wish we could have seen more from Thomas Kretschmann though.

Obviously this movie had more budget limitations than the previous entries of the series had (which were by no means big budget films) but there wasn't much about Hostel 3 that really worked to make the best of it. The switch in setting from Eastern Europe to Las Vegas had pros and cons. It was cool to see a bit more of the EHC, and I suppose it works as a linked international organization, with different chapters or clubhouses but the real world sketchiness that Eastern Europe has provided in the not so distant past, along with the unknowing-tourist-in-peril aspect really added to the atmosphere of the first two movies for me. A seedy hostel in a small town of Slovakia would be scarier to me than anywhere in Las Vegas.

Hostel 3 doesn't have a whole lot going for it. Love him or hate him, it really would have benefited from Eli Roth behind the camera. It probably won't be the worst movie I watch in 2012 but this isn't exactly how I wanted to start out the new year.

4/10

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly of 2011

2011-12-27T12:33:00.020-05:00

I really wanted to stay away from an end of the year list this year. Every time I do one I want to change it immediately upon completing it. So this year instead of rankings I'll just do what was good and what wasn't in the world of movies for 2011 that I got around to seeing. As is the case when the end of December rolls around each year there are plenty of films I didn't get around to seeing during the calendar year and others which I wish I hadn't bothered with. That is just how it goes. Without further adieu I give you Celluloid Terror's Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo.

First up on the good list is Takashi Miike's 13 ASSASSINS. A wonderfully violent samurai adventure about, you guessed it, 13 assassins who want to bring justice to the tyrannical power of the Shogun family. If you're a fan of Miike's previous works such as Ichi The Killer, Audition and Sukiyaki Western Django you'll enjoy this, which is perhaps my personal favorite of his filmography.

I debated putting SUPER 8 on the list. While I loved everything in the first part of the movie about the kids and using the accident to film their movie I hated the bullshit we were fed during the second half with the parents and their soap opera melodrama. What started out as a great kid adventure film that could have easily been worked into the monster movie part of the plot got shit on for typical government cover up and bland monster movie crap. There are a couple movies that could have made it above this one but the kids were great in this so for that reason it (barely) makes the list.

INSIDIOUS is our first to be branded with Lee Van Cleef's face for being bad. It's funny how creepy this film started and how quickly it fell off a cliff and no one seemed to care to tell anyone else on the production crew just how awful this movie became. It doesn't help that they did some live Q&A thing and didn't take any questions from this blog... tisk tisk. The only thing that saved this from the dreaded "ugly" is that opening 45 minutes or so. Stay Away from this unless you enjoy your movies to change tone totally and get really really bad all at once.

If you kept up with my October Horror Challenge you certainly saw my severe disdain for Kevin Smith's new film (and Smith himself) RED STATE. A bloated mess that fits Kevin Smith's personality these days like a glove. While trying to make a smart, in-tune film Smith makes a pile of garbage.

In what was the best comic book movie of the year and among the best in the history of such films, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS easily makes the list. First Class is a well made, acted and written prequel to the franchise. This easily gets rid of the bad taste that Last Stand and Wolverine Origins left in my mouth.

I SAW THE DEVIL was my favorite movie of 2011. It was damn near perfect in my opinion. It was filmed beautifully, acted wonderfully and had some damn fine direction with excellent camera work. If you're a fan of revenge tales, especially bloody and gruesome revenge tales definitely check this out. Kim Ji-Woon continues to impress as a director.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK probably doesn't deserve to be here, but it gets the dubious honor of this spot for the sake of symmetry. While it wasn't a particularly bad movie it wasn't very good either. The whole thing was predictable and had a been-there-done-that feel to it. It did have some thick atmosphere and you could tell that Guillermo Del Toro had his little touches throughout but Katie Holmes not being able to act herself out of a wet paper bag certainly didn't help it out at all.

No surprise that TRANSFORMERS 3 made the list. Michael Bay is a walking pile of turds so what else would he put to film than more turds. Seriously this movie was so fucking jumpy that it had no continuity as to what the fuck was going on. In a room of 5 people watching the movie not one could explain how this shit was happening because Michael Bay is more concerned with BOOM EXPLOSION CLOSE UP FIGHT BOOM YAY! than actually constructing a half decent fucking story. Fuck you Michael Bay, instead of Dark Of The Moon it should have been called Turd Of The World.

This movie was fun. And violent. And bloody. And a little bit silly. And starred Rutger Hauer. Yea, HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN made the Good list.

I reviewed TROLL HUNTER back in the summer, if you read that review you probably could have guessed it would end up as one of my favorites of the year. The movie that brought the fairy tales to life convincingly certainly did end up as one of my favorite movies of the year, and it earned this spot.

FRIGHT NIGHT is another movie I reviewed during the summer with totally opposite results. This was really bad, not quite ugly, but really bad. This shouldn't have been a difficult remake to at least make entertaining, but they failed at that. McLovin is no Evil Ed.

It's funny that Magnolia Pictures/Magnet Releasing released four of my favorite films of the year (which you'll find hanging out with Clint Eastwood on this list) and also released one of my 2 or 3 most hated. RUBBER had a cute idea about a tire that uses Telekinesis to kill humans by blowing them up. It was entertaining for about 5 minutes and then you are faced with the complete and utter bullshit that surrounds the killer tire thing that wore out it's welcome almost as fast as your relatives did at Christmas.

The Children (1980) - Grindhouse Experience

2011-12-23T00:40:00.002-05:00

After a long absence from reviewing a new chapter of the Grindhouse Experience set I have returned with 1980's horror film THE CHILDREN. This has nothing to do with the more recent film of the same title. This was a movie with every chance to be a piece of classic 80s horror VHS glory.

After a couple of nuclear power plant workers decide to say fuck it and get a beer instead of working overtime to fix a leak at the plant a giant yellow gas cloud engulfs a school bus with a few kids and the driver aboard. The cloud only effects the kids who come out looking normal aside from black fingernails (Carson Daly syndrome) and generally creepy (as country town kids often do). The kids prey on the townsfolk who aren't very worried about their kids not coming home from school on the whole... apparently a bus driver taking a kids on a picnic or down to the quarry while abandoning the bus in the middle of the road isn't much of a problem to the town of Ravensback. The kids attack with deadly force in the form of... hugs. Yes, hugs. The power of love is enough to burn, melt and just completely mangle their adult victims. Sometimes the hug is accompanied by a similar yellow gas cloud. Eventually the sheriff figures out that there is some weird shit going on and tries to fight back. The problem is all but solved until... GASP!

This movie was a breath of fresh air compared to the memories of much of what I have watched in this set. It started out with great promise and an easy premise. Kids are naturally creepy in certain situations but the budget limitations on makeup really sell this movie short. The black fingernails just isn't convincing and certainly doesn't grab you and pull you in. There is also no explanation why the gas cloud didn't effect any adults either. The makeup looks fine after the kids attack but the whole hug thing isn't funny after the first time you see it. This could have been golden 80s cheese and simply fizzled out into slow, spotty, schlock. It was good enough for me to give it a positive review, because it wasn't bad and it even had a serious VHS tracking moment at the end but it does fall short of anything worth revisiting anytime soon.

5.5/10

Deathstalker (1983)

2011-12-10T01:18:00.002-05:00

The 80s had hundreds of movies that ripped off other movies without shame or guilt. DEATHSTALKER is one of those movies. Directed by James Sbardellati under and assumed name this is 80 minutes of the stinkiest cheese you've ever come across. Big hair, crazy characters, sword fights, boobs everywhere, some wild gore and magic to top it all off.

Deathstalker is a mighty warrior sent on a mission by an old witch to find and unite the Three Powers Of Creation - A chalice, an amulet and a sword. 2 of these items are held by the evil king/magician Munkar. Munkar invites the best fighters around to a tournament to decide a successor to his throne - the winner rules! The problem is that Munkar has no intentions on giving up his power and is instead using the tournament to kill off any threat to his throne.

If you have half a brain it isn't hard to figure out where the story is heading. It is the incredible cheesy low budget nature (Producer Roger Corman would have it no other way in the 80s) that are the fun of it all. The naked girls are captured and often served up as nothing more than eye candy for us with all the goods on display. In fact they aren't just eye candy for us, the majority of them in the movie are simply objects for the warriors to toy with. The girls do get their revenge at one point in a rather entertaining scene. The sword fights aren't exactly the most memorable but they are adequate, and usually leave a bloody mess in their wake. Heads fly, guts get spilled and wild shape shifting make it all fun.

DEATHSTALKER is far from high art and isn't even original but serves as a fun time waster to turn your brain off to and just enjoy the glory of the B-movie. Swords, magic, boobs... how bad can it be?

6/10

Ken Russell 1927-2011

2011-11-28T13:45:00.003-05:00

I'm going to keep this short and sweet because his filmography, career and legacy speak for itself. If you haven't familiarized yourself with any of his work you're cheating yourself of one of cinema's finest.

When a film maker as talented and important as Ken Russell passes it cannot go with mention. Had he never made another movie other than The Devils he would have had an important career that would be worth remembering. The Devils is quite simply a perfect film and is one hell of an experience (no pun intended). I'm disappointed to say that I've barely scratched the surface of his filmography but that doesn't take away the sadness I know the film word is feeling. If the world of movies was filled with more Ken Russells the real world might not be such a terrible place.

1927-2011

INTRUDER Blu-Ray Review

2011-11-26T16:34:00.004-05:00

As the Walnut Lake Supermarket prepares to close for the night a man enters the store and begins to torment and attack cashier Jennifer. After the entire night crew gets involved in the situation and the bumbling cops don't get anything done, the employees of the store can finally start marking down the entire store for clearance as the owners have announced that they'll be selling the store. It is soon after that the bodies start dropping and the blood starts flowing.

By the time INTRUDER was released in 1989 the slasher film that created such a buzz and had divided audiences and critics had become bland and mundane. We had seen it all and we knew the formula. These movies were cheaply made and usually profitable despite whatever flaws each individual film may have. INTRUDER doesn't totally fall victim to it's time. The setting is a rather unique and interesting one for a slasher film, and the blood and gore that made the genre popular is abundant and handled well by KNB EFX Group. Sadly the gratuitous nudity that so brazenly graced the silver screen in the 80s is nowhere to be found here. Director Scott Spiegel (best known for his work on Evil Dead 1 and 2 and other Sam Raimi films) doesn't let the film get overly hokey even with plenty of cliches and one liners placed around the set. The reveal of the killer isn't going to blow your mind with life altering meaning but it serves the purpose of the movie just fine. I have seen this movie a number of times on different formats but this is by far the best time I've had with it. I'd never been much of a fan of the film but my opinion may be shifting.

Synapse Films delivers the 2 disc Blu-Ray & DVD combo of INTRUDER with a brand new 2K digital restoration of the original Director's Cut. To put it simply it has never looked better on home video and likely never will. The print and transfer are clean with a nice natural film look to it. Very minor speckling during the opening credits were the only debris I noticed during the film's 88 minute run time. Flesh tones are recreated beautifully and textures are nice. Black levels are pretty deep and don't block up. Colors of items on the market shelves pop well, and the reds from blood are rich and vibrant while not looking unnatural. The film is presented with DTS 2.0 audio which is clear and free of any interference. A perfectly serviceable audio track for this movie.

Extra features on the Blu-Ray include:
-Slashed Prices: The Making Of INTRUDER (HD) This is a nice retrospective featurette from much of the cast including Bruce Campbell. They discuss everything from the Super 8 version of the movie made a decade before the feature length all the way up to filming and production.
- Audio Commentary with writer/director Scott Spiegel and Producer Lawrence Bender
- Extended "Murder" Sequences from the original workprint
- The Slashing of INTRUDER - A short interview with film maker Vincent Pereira (HD)
- Outtakes from the lost Super 8 short film NIGHT CREW
- Original Audition Footage
- Still Gallery
- Original Theatrical Trailer
- Night Crew Trailer

Synapse Films has done an excellent job with the presentation of this movie. From the beautiful transfer to the lineup of special features (not to mention NOT SPOILING THE MOVIE ON THE BACK COVER LIKE THE OLD DVD VERSION!) they've proved again that they understand how to present cult films on the Blu-Ray format. Synapse is even offering a DVD-R of the workprint version of the film limited to 500 hand numbered pieces if you order directly from their website. That is worth jumping on to see a different cut of the film and for how limited it is!

You can feel good about picking up this release

Grades:
Film - 7.5/10
Video - 8.5/10
Audio - 8/10
Extras - 8/10
Overall - 8/10

Syngenor (1990)

2011-11-26T00:15:00.004-05:00

The late 80s and early 90s were a time of trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with horror and Sci-Fi. The slasher run had been crap for a while and even the Alien rip offs were abundant by 1990. Syngenor will get lumped into the Alien ripoff category. The film revolves around a Classified project about a SYNtheszied GENetic ORganism. This Syngenor is a super soldier built to fight the next world war in the desert climates of the Middle East. After some shady doings, one of the prototypes breaks loose and all hell breaks loose. The head of the operation Carter Brown(David Gale of Re-Animator), loses his shit and decides everybody dying would be the best option. The building becomes a war zone with cyborgs and people fighting for survival, and for an end to the project and total destruction to the Syngenors.

Syngenor is directed by George Elanjian Jr. who did this film and a few TV series and documentaries. His lack of storytelling in feature films is evident as the entire run time of over 100 minutes is jumpy. Characters are never fully developed and neither is the story except in a very bare bones way. We find out what can kill the cyborgs early on but it is hardly brought into play in the story until the very end. The movie is best viewed as a shitty B-movie than anything serious. It does work on the level of a bad, over the top B-movie to a certain extent. The story sucks, but some of the characters, especially David Gale of Re-Animator fame is fucking insane in the best possible way. He would die from complications in heart surgery a short time after this film was released but he made a memorable impression here. He certainly made better, but aside from the classic H.P. Lovecraft adaptation I don't know if he made a more memorable role than in Syngenor. The charm of this movie comes in just how shitty is.

This is a so-bad-its-good movie through and through. I found out it is a sequel just before starting it and it made little difference. There is enough setup for this to be a standalone movie and plenty of insanity and ridiculousness to carry anyone that can appreciate such things through to the end. The monster design is actually pretty decent (you'll be able to tell the borrowed look from movies such as Alien and Creature From The Black Lagoon without any trouble) and the effects aren't bad. The movie on a whole is just lacking. It isn't hammy enough to be fun, it isn't suspenseful enough for the horror, it isn't smart enough for the Sci-Fi.

David Gale is really the reason to watch because he is seriously out of his mind in this movie. Other than him it is messy, and underwhelming with entertaining bits sprinkled throughout.

5/10

Lone Wolf And Cub: Sword Of Vengeance (1972)

2011-11-16T21:10:00.004-05:00

While I'm still on my hiatus from horror films after last month's barrage I'm back to you all of you to bring you my first review since and it is for a movie I just watched for the first time.

The Lone Wolf And Cub series was based off a successful Manga series, which I've never read and don't know much about aside from basic plot details which you can easily find so I won't bother you with all of that right now. The first entry in the film series is Sword Of Vengeance. It follows Ogami Itto, a former executioner for the Shogun. He was set up and betrayed leaving his wife dead. Their infant son was left to choose his own fate by Itto, join his mother or follow his father in avenging her death. The boy chose his father. So we have a Samurai who is possibly the best swordsman in Japan seeking vengeance with a baby in tow. There are 6 films in the series, not counting Shogun Assassin which is an edit of the first 2 in the series into one movie, so there is plenty of time to hash out the future of the father and son.

Sword Of Vengeance, to put it simply, is great. The direction is extremely stylish, especially during the fight scenes, which have fantastic choreography. Their is such a tight artistic vision that raises it above most bloody revenge films. Not that it is short on the blood, it flows... and sprays freely. Limbs are hacked off, heads roll... there is no shortage of violence and excellent swordplay. The acting is good across the board and the baby son is adorable. There is also a lot of breast feeding, human and animal. I don't know if I've ever seen it happen as much as it did here. The first time it happens is weird as hell too.

Moving on from the boobs, this movie really is very cool and it has me ready to steamroll through the rest of the series. I must pace myself to avoid burning out on them.

8.5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 31 - The Wrap Up

2011-11-01T13:23:00.004-04:00

Now that it is officially November and all we have to look forward to for a while is dinners with family we are obligated to talk to once a year, annoyingly long lines anywhere you go and crappy weather I suppose the October Horror Challenge is over. The last day for me was mostly filled with helping out my little cousins get ready to trick or treat and then handing out candy. The smaller of the 2 boys is 6 years old and Dracula was on TV while we were getting stuff ready and he was mesmerized, seeing what he was for Halloween on screen almost exactly (he was a "classic vampire"). During the commercial breaks they showed ads for Creature From The Black Lagoon and Frankenstein. He immediately wanted to know all about them. Then Hammer's version of The Mummy came on and he was again stunned at what he was seeing. He couldn't get enough. I don't know if a horror head was born yesterday but there is no better time than October 31st for that to happen.

The movies I actually watched were Trick 'R Treat and Halloween. I'm sure you all know plenty about Halloween so I won't say too much about it other than it is my 2nd favorite movie and I love the shit out of it. Trick 'R Treat gets a little more attention every year after sitting on the shelf for far too long because the studio couldn't get it's collective head of it's ass and release it. It is a great anthology film with a few different stories intertwining together about the spirit and tradition of Halloween. Everything about this movie is wonderful and I hope you'll check it out if you haven't. It has become a tradition to watch it on the 30th or 31st.

Halloween - 10/10
Trick 'R Treat - 9.5/10

The Wrap Up:
This challenge was a big mixed bag. Some good, some bad. The movies and life in general. The movies helped me escape the endless drama though, and the nights I got to spend watching with friends were great. This is my third year doing this challenge along with DVDTalk and I'm ready for next year... well not really but I know I will be soon. Thanks to anyone that read the blog over the course of the month especially those that read it daily. And a big thanks to anyone that liked CT on Facebook. Hopefully some cool bigger stuff will be happening as I've been wanting to do for a while, in the near future. Now on to some fun stuff from the challenge...

The Stats:
Entries- 108 (100 feature films, 4 tv (120 minutes compiled), 1 short film (90 minutes compiled), 3 wild cards) (previous best was 107)

First Time Viewings (Feature Films) - 50 of 100 feature films = 50%

Average Rating /10 (Feature Films) - 6.76

Favorite 1st Time Viewings - [REC]2, Sledgehammer, The Deadly Spawn, Swamphead

Worst Movie - Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (you already knew that)

Biggest Surprise - Swamphead (I expected to like it, but not that much)

Biggest Disappointment - Halloween 6 producer's cut

Random Thought To Sum It Up - The whole Vomit Gore genre can go fuck itself and Kevin Smith can join them.

October Horror Challenge Day 30

2011-10-30T23:34:00.002-04:00

Very late start today as I was busy with football and just being in a funk. I eventually got started and watched the Simpson Treehouse of Horror XXII... it was possibly the least funny Halloween special the show has ever produced. Even though the show has been on a steady decline for a while the Halloween special is usually funny. Not this time.

Then came episode 3 of The Walking Dead season 2... this was better than last week's. Sets up a few characters for their turns in the story and there wasn't a ton of melodrama. It still isn't perfect and probably won't ever live up to the books but it is getting interesting again and that is good.

Alucarda was the only actual movie I watched, but it is a goody. If you've never seen it it can be summed up in 4 words - bloody, naked, Satan, 70s. Some demonic possession, orgies (which by chance became a bit of a theme this month), nuns and monks catching fire, a blood filled coffin... all the fun stuff. Oh and lesbianism. Can't forget that. You'll probably like it if you've made it this far.

Today's Rundown
Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 22 - not funny
Walking Dead 2.3 - heading in the right direction
Alucarda - 9/10

October Horror Challenge Day 29

2011-10-30T11:23:00.002-04:00

After a late late night and feeling pretty rough all day, the 29th of October wasn't a very productive one. Not just for movies but for complete human activity. I did squeeze in a couple of flicks though.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. I first saw this around the same time I saw part 4 but time hasn't been as kind to this one. I don't know what direction they wanted to go with this one but it really seems like 2 separate movies. The first hour is bad. Really bad. There are questionable decisions made like killing off a main character to simply replace her with a friend and have literally no consequence from the main girl dying. There are 2 Barney Fife cops who ham it up every time they're on screen and there is awful hokey music played when they act like idiots. I don't get this but this incredibly forced comedic relief, which isn't needed in the least, doesn't work and takes you out of the film. After the first hour is done being a shitty attempt at a funny and scary body count film the movie actually gets down to being a Halloween film and focuses on Jamie and Dr. Loomis. The tone totally changes and Michael Myers starts to act a bit more like Michael Myers. The slash becomes a bit more stalk, and the film gets darker. Oh, and Myers looks awful in this movie. How hard is it to give him a mask that doesn't look like it came out of a Halloween store?

Then I finally watched the Producer's Cut of Halloween 6. This is years in the making for me. I've read and been told that it is so much better than the theatrical cut and yadda yadda. Well, it's different. I wouldn't say it's better or worse (though I'll probably come to the conclusion that it was a little better). This movie is a fucking mess though. There is so little continuity in simple things like where people are or how they got there. Not just with Myers either, a character will be outside then the next shot they're in a basement. I don't totally mind the whole Thorn mythos but I realized while watching this for the first time it makes Michael Myers look like a total bitch. They could have handled it better. Also, this movie has more twist reveals than a fucking Saw movie.

Today's Rundow
Both get a 5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 28

2011-10-28T18:56:00.002-04:00

First up was a re-watch of a movie, Haxan. However I did watch it with commentary for the first time. The movie is a 1922 silent film about the history of witchcraft through the ages, presented as a "documentary" with acted out scenes. The director heavily researched the events for 2 years prior to making the film. This is a pretty groundbreaking film and it has incredible imagery. Well worth watching, and the commentary track is very informative.

Then came Ghoulies 2. If you don't know about the Ghoulies movies you can probably figure it out just from the title. They are cheesy little monsters running amok. I don't think this movie (or the first) gets nearly as over the top and fun as they should. Part 2 is a slight improvement over the first, but that isn't saying much.

And my day comes to an early end with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Just something to kill the time before tonight's party. I've always enjoyed this sequel for what it is. Nostalgia may play a part in how much I like it but that's fine by me. My biggest complaint is that Michael Myers looks like an idiot in this entry.

Today's Rundown
Haxan - 8.5/10
Ghoulies 2 - 5.5/10
Halloween 4 - 8/10

October Horror Challenge Day 27

2011-10-27T23:20:00.002-04:00

I spent much of the day running different errands and getting and assembling my Halloween costume for a party tomorrow night so my movie watching time was cut short. Thanks to an early start in the wee hours of the morning I got in a respectable 3.

It all started with Schramm which was not only a first time viewing but my first experience with Jorg Buttgereit. The German director made a handful of well regarded and apparently disgusting films in the early 90s. I watched Schramm via "other methods" since the DVDs of his films go for outrageous prices. This was 65 spent with a serial killer and delving into his mind. It was a well made picture, showing the human and monster side of the man with equal beauty and horror. Not an easy viewing and almost 24 hours later I don't know if watching it at 2am helped or hurt my opinion of the picture but I did find it to be good.

Next up was the timeless Its The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. This is a classic every child needs to see and grow up with. It is just good Halloween fun and spirit. The Blu needs to come down in price though, $13 for a half hour show? Come on now.

I finished up this day with the newly released Blu Ray of Lucio Fulci's The House By The Cemetery. I've never thought of this as an example of Fulci's best work but I've always found easy entertainment. The Blu looks very nice, and I didn't even find Bob's dub voice to be all that annoying. This is a major improvement because it is honestly one of the worst sounding things to ever exist. I found it a bit better this time around no doubt thanks to not wanting to rip my ears from my head.

Today's Rundown
Schramm - 8/10
Charlie Brown - great childhood memories
The House By The Cemetery - 7/10

October Horror Challenge Day 26

2011-10-27T10:50:00.003-04:00

I hate spiders but I do love Black Belly Of The Tarantula. This giallo from director Paolo Cavara will never be considered as shocked as the Mondo films he worked on but it is generally held as one of the better films from the giallo cycle, with good reason. The story moves along at a nice pace, the acting is good even from the 3 different Bond girls in the movie and Ennio Morricone's score is fantastic. After not seeing this movie for a good 3-4 years it came back to me the moment I heard it. While there isn't a ton of blood/gore to speak of the depravity of the murders will surely satisfy the gorehounds.

Next up was Meridian, essentially Full Moon's version of Beauty And The Beast. This wasn't a particularly bad movie aside from the fact that nothing fucking happens for an hour of the 80 some odd minute run time. There's an orgy of sorts in the beginning and a pretty hilarious looking "beast" running around but other than that it is just a whole lot of talking about a curse and "the lady of the castle". And the ending we all knew was coming finishes it out.

I then popped in Death Carries A Cane which I thought was a first time viewing but about 5 minutes realized I had seen it before... and only a few months ago. Oh, the toll this month takes on the brain.

So instead I ended the day with The Black Castle which co-stars Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney jr. Can't complain about that cast. It was a pretty good suspenseful revenge flick with the horrors of any Austrian Baron's castle... alligator pits, dungeons, poison, a deranged butler, a killer leopard from Africa. This was an enjoyable first time viewing.

Today's Rundown
Black Belly Of The Tarantula - 9/10
Meridian - 4/10
The Black Castle - 6/10

October Horror Challenge Day 25

2011-10-26T12:36:00.002-04:00

Aliens started out day 25, it had been quite a while since I watched any movie from the series and decided to go with the first sequel. It is a very good follow up to the original and has a good cast. Everything about it is entertaining, but it just isn't as good as the first. James Cameron will never be the director Ridley Scott was when he made Alien and Bladerunner.

Then a Vincent Price double feature to celebrate 100 years of him on the anniversary of his passing. The Masque Of The Red Death was first. Price is very cruel to almost everybody in this movie as Prince Prospero and even has a 2nd role. The scenes in the woods are incredibly shot and are some of my favorite scenes from any Corman/Price collaboration.

Then came The Abominable Dr. Phibes which probably shares the honor of my favorite Price movie with Masque. The set pieces in this are phenomenal as is Price who doesn't even get to open his mouth. The climax/final chase is expertly sequenced.

The Legend Of Sorrow Creek was next and if you ever come across this movie just stay away from it. I won't be to blame for the taste of shit in your mouth when you watch it.

Finally I went to bed with The Exorcist. This was my first time watching it on Blu and it looks good. I still think the movie is overrated. By no means bad but not nearly as good as everyone makes it out to be. There are good performances and nice cinematography but it just doesn't pull it together to the perfect package for me. Still worth watching and re-watching.

Today's Rundown
Aliens - 8/10
The Masque Of The Red Death - 8.5/10
The Abominable Dr. Phibes - 8.5/10
The Legend Of Sorrow Creek - 1.5/10
The Exorcist - 8/10

October Horror Challenge Day 24

2011-10-24T20:25:00.003-04:00

Today started with a re-watch of a highly underrated, or at least a not talked about enough movie from David Cronenberg called The Brood. This is pretty typical Cronenberg fare for the time period. Bloody, violent, smart, and involving some sort of nastyness involving the human body. Gross stuff in the best possible way.

Next up was my first viewing of Embodiment of Evil. This marks the return of Coffin Joe for the first time in decades, and director (and Coffin Joe himself) Jose Mojica Marins hasn't lost it. This is as mean spirited as Joe was 40 years ago. All he wants is to conceive his perfect son so he can be immortal... and he'll do all sorts of awful things to make it happen.

Then came the incredibly long winded title of Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D. Yes that is serious... well sort of. This movie from 1991 is a spoof done over George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The director erased all of the soundtrack and added in his own dialogue and music. It is as stupid as it sounds and sporadically funny. While I did laugh hard a few times it dragged for me and I could have done without watching this.

Today's Rundown
The Brood - 8.5/10
Embodiment Of Evil - 8/10
NOTDOT - 4/10

October Horror Challenge Day 23

2011-10-23T22:54:00.004-04:00

Mario Bava's Black Sunday aka The Mask Of Satan started things off. This gothic horror is top notch. One of Bava's best films and just a pleasure to watch. Barbara Steele is great as usual and the atmosphere is so thick. If you and Mario Bava haven't met acquaintances let me introduce you to him through this movie.

Then came Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Musicals aren't for everyone and I'm normally not a fan of them but this one is pretty cool. A totally miserable looking London, Johnny Depp doing great with his role and human meat pies. This is a fun watch once a year or so.

I finished the day with the new episode of The Walking Dead. The new season is already being handled sloppily. I still find it entertaining but all of a sudden the zombies can run? And how did a zombie so stealthily separate a member of the group by about 30 yards in literally the blink of an eye? Ugh, I didn't hate it but I really have higher hopes for this season than this episode.

Today's Rundown
Black Sunday - 8.5/10
Sweeney Todd - 7/10

October Horror Challenge Day 22 & SWAMPHEAD

2011-10-23T00:40:00.002-04:00

Day 22 of this challenge will be I'll never forget for numerous reasons, mainly bad. There was some potentially life altering things that I'll never forgive happening to myself and my family. I was able to knock out a couple of movies before the day really got started but after that the challenge in continuing with the challenge wasn't even close to the most difficult part. In a definitely twisted yet thankful turn of events tonight was the world premiere of a movie I'd been looking forward to for months.

But first was Child's Play 2 just because. This is my favorite of the series, and after part 3 I don't care much for them outside of the sporadic joke. Chucky is at a proper mix of dangerous and funny here, and Andy is still young enough where the killer doll angle works just fine. The classroom scene is hilarious and there are some funny one liners. Nothing incredible, but a fun slasher to visit as often as the nasty grandparents who give you cool presents... only once in a while.

Then came the Night Of The Living Dead remake which was directed by Tom Savini, the acclaimed fx artist. I've probably said "this is one of the first horror movies I ever saw" about 25 times this month but this movie may very well be the one that started it all. I'm pretty sure it is but around the age of 7 there are a few I know I saw, but none of them have quite the initial impact that this one does. It certainly isn't as good or important as the original but I think it is underrated. It is a good remake with really good performances and story. Tony Todd and Patricia Tallman shine in this. I actually think Tallman's character is a big improvement over the original Barbara. There are enough characters who aren't mentally able to fight and have the instinct to flee (and just be stupid) instead of fight. To be fair, Tallman's Barbara is the only character in either movie to repeatedly suggest that they can simply walk passed them because of how slow they are and that certainly wouldn't be the worst choice they could have made. I really enjoy this one.

Here is where the entry turns into a long gush fest...

Swamphead. A movie with such a title makes you think of what I can only describe as "silly shit". And sometimes that is all we want, shit that is silly. This movie doesn't hold back. It has offensive characters, questionable dialogue, hilarious one liners, nauseating effects and morally reprehensible content. For those of you that didn't click the link today to watch the FREE ONLINE WORLD PREMIERE here is what you missed - An ancient relic is found at the bottom of a lake which was keeping the dead head of Robert Gross aka Swamphead. The most ridiculously thrown together group of seriously socially inept teens come across it on a camping trip and have a really bad time. A killer decaying head, a retard shitting his pants, and dicks being chewed off. What more could you want? How about the one liner "holy choco taco look at that post mortem turd!". Yea, exactly. If you can't picture the scene from the movie you know you blew it now.

In all seriousness, Swamphead is a movie that was obviously made by a group of people that were passionate about it. It has its faults, even for a low budget tongue-in-cheek horror comedy. But what movie of that type doesn't? It is legitimately better than any movie of it's type has any right to be. It was written with total disregard to what may be seen as appropriate and only what the film making team wanted was used. That is how movies should be made. This would be a long standing cult classic if it was made by Troma in the mid 80s. As it stands it is already a cult classic to me, and soon all of you will understand soon. When it is released it will be found right next to the clams... next to the cottage cheese by the fucking clams!

Swamphead is a fucking winner.

Today's Rundown
Child's Play 2 - 7.5/10
NOTLD remake - 8/10
Swamphead - 8.5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 21

2011-10-21T23:52:00.003-04:00

Today was a day filled with an awful lot of walking around an "adventure farm" (whatever the hell that means) with my family and my little cousins running me ragged. I am worn out typing this and getting ready to enjoy a couple of movies to start out day 22... but this is about day 21.

The Mist started things off. If you weren't one of the 16 people that saw it in theaters (ooh ohh I was!) than you missed out. I really liked the movie then and found it to be a moving piece of film and a great horror movie. That was the first and only time I watched it in color. Director Frank Darabont wanted to film it in B&W but that just isn't cool with the kids today so the studio wouldn't allow it. Thankfully for us technology prevailed and it was released in black and white on the subsequent DVD and Blu-Ray releases. And it really does add to the film. The first thing you'll notice is that the sometimes messy CGI, due to budget constraints, is cleaned up greatly. This is most notable in the loading dock tentacle scene. But the lack of color adds to the atmosphere so deeply. This is so much more than weird monster creatures from another dimension, it is the horrors of humanity, religion, pride, and so much more. This movie, particularly the ending has divided its audience greatly, see it and form your opinion. I love it.

Next up was the original King Kong, my first time seeing it on Blu-Ray. HD really does wonders for it. Nothing needs to be said about the movie, it's timeless, has spawned several remakes (with mixed results) and had ground breaking special effects. On top of that it is just a fun movie to watch. There is a giant gorilla, dinosaurs, hostile natives, bombs, and more. It is nice to be able to watch it in a clean print that doesn't try to make it look like Iron Man or Transformers.

I closed the day out with George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead. I don't need to say much about this. You already know if you aren't familiar with it you aren't much of a genre fan. This movie is responsible for the zombie movie, tv show, and culture as a whole as we know it.

Today's Rundown
The Mist - 9/10
King Kong - 8.5/10
Night Of The Living Dead - 9/10

October Horror Challenge Day 20

2011-10-20T20:35:00.002-04:00

I can't believe we are already 2/3 of the way through October... The weather is just now getting where I like it. Nice and chilly, with all of the leaves changing. Unfortunately Maryland has been getting a lot of rain and humidity... gross.

I started off today very strong, 3 movies before going to sleep. It all started with Candyman: Day Of The Dead, the third movie in the series. I'm a fan of the the first two movies despite their shortcomings but this movie was nothing more than typical late 90s bullshit with the Candyman thrown in. Tony Todd was decent given what he had to work with but he is better than this. Even part 2 which a lot of people shit on was enjoyable for me and trumps this.

Next up was The Evil Dead. I needed something to wash the bitter taste of bullshit that Candyman 3 left in my mouth. This movie is damn near perfect, I flip flop on whether I like this or part 2 better but they're both fantastic. Anchor Bay did a phenomenal job on the Blu of this... such a shame they couldn't do that with some of the other great movies they had the rights to.

I delayed sleep another 90 minutes when I saw Leprechaun In The Hood was on FearNet. I'd never seen it and I'm not even much of a fan of the series but this one has always had a ridiculously hilarious plot so I had to watch it. It was more entertaining than it had any right to be. That said, it still was just cheap laughs... I'll take some cheap laughs though. Overall not bad.

After waking up I threw on Cold Eyes Of Fear, a giallo I'd been wanting to check out for a while. It was a bit different than what most people are accustomed to when they sit down for a giallo. No black gloved killers here. It was a tense and claustrophobic thriller that was done nicely. From the director of Inglorious Bastards (no, not Tarantino)

Then I popped in the Blu-Ray of Daughters Of Darkness but it was to watch The Blood Spattered Bride, which is a special feature on the disc. Another movie I'd been wanting to see. It was a cool, sexy spin on the Carmilla story. A young woman is being controlled and manipulated by a female vampire to do her dirty work... that is the main idea. This is a 70s Spanish production so you can rest assured there is plenty of boobs and blood.

The day comes to a close with And God Said To Cain. This is far from a traditional horror movie, however it is a horror movie through and through. Antonio Margheriti finds his way into my month long journey yet again with this spaghetti western that has it's soul (not to mention most of the actual movie) in horror. The story is a simple one of betrayal and the inevitable revenge. This is a staple of spaghetti westerns but here it is played out as Klaus Kinski's character is an apparition, paranormal entity or as one of his victims put it "it was a monster". The soundtrack is that of a horror movie, many of the themes are that of a horror movie and it is shot as a horror movie. It reminds me of John Carpenter's The Fog with a dash of slasher film thrown in. This is one of the more different movies I've watched this month and I'm glad I did. I got to enjoy two of my favorite genres at once. I really hope a nicer print than the public domain one that is available gets released.

Today's Rundown
Candyman: Day Of The Dead - 3.5/10
The Evil Dead - 9.5/10
Leprechaun In The Hood - 5/10
Cold Eyes Of Fear - 7.5/10
The Blood Spattered Bride - 7/10
And God Said To Cain - 7/10

October Horror Challenge Day 19

2011-10-19T23:00:00.002-04:00

Alligator started off the day. It takes no genius to figure out what this movie is about. A flushed alligator grows up to be huge in the sewers of Chicago and is on a man eating rampage and the local police force have to stop it. If director Lewis Teague went to further extremes with the violence of this it would be a really great animals attack B-movie, as it is its good but won't reach the cult classic status of something like Piranha.

Next up was Friday The 13th Part 6: Jason Lives which is one of my favorite entries in the series. It is nothing more than a stupid fun slasher which was all I was looking for at the time. I don't revisit this series all that often, but when I'm in the mood for it it is great. Some of the deaths in this movie were awesome which is really what we want out of it. And boobs. Also this is one of my favorite Jasons from the series.

The day was finished with the Antonio Margheriti directed giallo Naked You Die. My first reaction from this movie is how tame it is. Very little in the way of excess. And for a film with this title there isn't much nudity and you never see the goods. What a tease. Also, most of the victims are clothed. It isn't awful, a bit slow and as I said, tame, but I was expecting more from a movie directed by Margheriti and involving Mario Bava.

Today's Rundown
Alligator - 7/10
Friday The 13th Part 6 - 7.5/10
Naked You Die - 5.5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 18

2011-10-18T21:18:00.003-04:00

Today started off with checking out a TV show called Psychoville. This is a BBC production and I only watched one episode but it seems stupidly entertaining, at least for one episode at a time.

The movies got underway with The Mummy. Boris Karloff starring as Imhotep is fantastic. A true classic that belongs right up there among the most notable classic monster movies. It has several good sequels, including the first, The Mummy's Hand which is arguably even better. If you've never given this a spin you should.

I kept the classics going with The Invisible Man. I hadn't seen this movie in a long long time, to the point where I had forgotten much of it. I feel this is a severely underrated Universal movie. Or at the very least I don't see it talked about nearly as much as Frankenstein(James Whale directed both), Dracula, and even The Mummy. I've never seen any of the sequels so I look forward to watching them in the near future.

Moving on to Inferno, which I had wanted to watch last night right after Suspiria but was just too tired. This movie takes everything Suspiria did and shoves it to the extreme. Argento certainly didn't hold back here. It is the perfect follow up to Suspiria. And the climax is fan-fucking-tastic. It is worth watching for that alone. My love for this gets a little closer to Suspiria every time I watch it.

And Day 18 comes to a close with the best worst movie Troll 2. If you have never seen this well then we probably won't be friends. If you see it and can't appreciate it for just how insanely awesome it is and being inept we probably won't be friends. On a slightly more serious note, this movie is awesome. For all the wrong reasons maybe, but awesome nevertheless. I have a serious love affair with this movie. Oh, and the Blu looks damn good.

I didn't have a single first time viewing today so I'll have to start out day 19 with a couple.

Today's Rundown
The Mummy - 8/10
The Invisible Man - 8.5/10
Inferno - 9.5/10
Troll 2 - 10/10

October Horror Challenge Day 17

2011-10-17T22:20:00.002-04:00

Two Evil Eyes started out the day. I watched the Blu-Ray from Blue Underground and my BD player decided to be a complete bitch with the disc. This is a 2 part anthology film with one entry directed by George A. Romero and the other by Dario Argento. Both stories are based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Romero's entry "The Facts In The Case Of Mr. Valdemar" is a mixed bag. It certainly has some creepy moments but isn't great by any means. It runs about an hour long but would be better suited around 45 minutes. Argento adapted "The Black Cat" and it is one of the more interesting and insane adaptations of the classic story. Both entries have a good amount of gore and there are some notable actors in the film like Harvey Keitel, Tom Atkins and Adrienne Barbeau. I like to give it a spin every once in a while. But damn was my player being a asshole during it. I guess its having it's time of the month.

And with Halloween just around the corner it was time to count down the days to it with everyone's favorite jingle in Halloween 3. This sequel having nothing to do with Michael Myers still gets mixed reactions but I'm glad to see it getting more and more love each year. Its nice to see people getting over the lack of Myers. This is a great and mean spirited movie for the season. There is excellent use of the original theme towards the end of the movie when Tom Atkins is in trouble too. Just a good movie to watch in the days leading up to Halloween.... 14 days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween... 14 days til Halloween, Silver Shamrock!

And it was finally time to watch my favorite film ever - Suspiria. The Dario Argento classic about witches in a dance academy is insane, mad and beautiful. From the dizzying camerawork to the incredible score by Goblin this movie is just perfect. Can we please get a Blu-Ray over here? Please?

Two Evil Eyes - 7/10
Halloween 3 - 8/10
Suspiria - 10/10

October Horror Challenge Day 16

2011-10-17T10:35:00.002-04:00

Before calling it a night I got in a movie early and it was one I tracked down a while back and had been wanting to check out. I knew Paganini Horror wasn't going to be great but it didn't really hamper my desire to see it. Director Luigi Cozzi was Dario Argento's apprentice for a while and you can see some of that in this movie. There are some cool elements to it, like the killer, some of the lighting around the old house and gore but the movie is executed really messy. The bad outweighs the good but I still didn't totally hate it.

After waking up I put the challenge aside for a much needed break from it. Football and friendship was the order of the day. And other than my fantasy team taking a collective dump and giving me my 2nd loss it was a good day. Ravens win decisively and fun was had. Not only did the break help me recharge my horror movie batteries but so did all of their excitement for the season premiere of The Walking Dead. It was a great start to the season and has set up some interesting paths that each character can take. I just don't understand why in every episode of this show the picture quality gets really bad in random spots. Anyone care to weigh in?

And the night was closed out with the Syfy channel original Roadkill. This is no different from most of these movies. A group of college aged Americans go on a road trip across Ireland and piss off some Gypsies while acting like total douchebags. They get cursed and a giant bird stalks and kills them. They also have trouble with the gypsies after they take a protective amulet from them and there is an awful lot of overly dramatic filler. It did a nice job of putting me to sleep.

Today's Rundown:
Paganini Horror - 4/10
Roadkill - 3/10

October Horror Challenge Day 15

2011-10-15T05:28:00.008-04:00

Day 15 started out about as bad as possible. I was watching movies with some friends and we watched Transformers 3, which obviously isn't horror but it fit the theme of the night just fine because it was the first of 3 awful movies. But then came something I couldn't have prepared myself for -

Slaughtered Vomit Dolls. Let me just say that it honestly made me consider never watching another movie. It is a total pile of shit. 70 minutes of women running around naked for no reason, throwing up and apparently Satan? I don't get it. Someone actually funded this bullshit? People actually paid to see this? And there are people who actually like it? REALLY? You have to be fucking kidding me. I could film my shit floating in the toilet for 70 minutes and it would have more merit and skill than this abomination does. This movie is barely a movie. It's barely anything. I don't know why or how it exists but I hope everyone in the movie dies in a fire because of the time they wasted in my life. Give me a fucking break.

We then watched Clerks director Kevin Smith's new horror/thriller Red State and while it was a step up from the previous movie, it sucked. John Goodman is cool and I like seeing him in stuff but I've really grown to totally hate Kevin Smith as a person. His doucheyness is really showing through in his movies now. He should have sold the rights to the movie instead of being too cool for that because he might have made a buck and retired.

After I recovered from the movies I watched before calling it a night, and the alcohol needed to make it through them, I popped in Street Trash. If you've never seen it and are into older Troma type stuff this is for you. Its silly, gory, funny, gross... all the good things. It has one of my favorite scenes in any movie when the one bum goes into the grocery store. There is also a game of penis keep-away. You know its good.

The Exterminator rounded out the halfway point of the challenge. This isn't really a horror film but I used a "wild card" on it...basically used for anything close enough to horror but not exactly. This is a great exploitation action/revenge flick. Gritty and tough but with heart and dignity. They pushed him too far. You can really feel the grime of old New York coming through the screen in this one. Very good stuff.

Today's Rundown:
Slaughtered Vomit Dolls - 0/10
Red State - 3/10
Street Trash - 8/10
The Exterminator - 8/10

October Horror Challenge Day 14

2011-10-14T14:07:00.003-04:00

I started off the day with a fantastic haunted house movie from 1980 called The Changeling. Directed by Peter Medak and starring George C. Scott it does such a great job of creating suspense and tension. The sound mix is incredible and will put your surround sound systems to work, and bring you to a state of curled up in a ball sobbing. The best part is? If you haven't seen it you can usually find the dvd brand new for under $5. Yea... no reason not to jump on that because you are missing out if you've never seen this one. Lights down, volume up and immerse yourself.

I then checked out Duccio Tessari's giallo Puzzle. The sex and violence factor is toned down quite a bit however the story is very solid and it builds to a nice climax. This won't create new fans for the genre however its a nice addition for jaded fans.

I finished off the day with a friend packed viewing of Santa's Slay. This is a rather silly movie. If you haven't seen it is pretty much summed up with professional wrestler Goldberg being an evil Santa and the fate of Christmas comes down to a game of Curling... Yea, I wish it came down to a game that mattered too. Oh well, this movie is hysterical.

Today's Rundown:
The Changeling - 8.5/10
Puzzle - 7/10
Santa's Slay - 6/10

October Horror Challenge Day 13

2011-10-13T00:59:00.004-04:00

I wanted to start the 13th day of the challenge with a movie I absolutely find beautiful and love. Cannibal Holocaust gets a lot of heat for its incessant disgust and depravity but it really is much more than sadiism, animal killings and shock. I could go on for days about it but Dave Grant's write up about it at http:/http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif/www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif is the single best piece written on this film that I've ever had the privilege of reading so go HERE and read it.

Hellraiser was up next. I'm sure most of you have seen this one. This movie has excellent visuals and I always enjoy revisiting it. The cenobites are such cool villains.

I then watched an episode of Friday The 13th: The Series which surprisingly wasn't awful. The show has nothing to do with the movie series and almost every episode I've seen was terrible, this one was entertaining and actually half decent. The day was finished off with Dark Night Of The Scarecrow. This is my first time seeing the 1981 made for tv movie that is such a cult classic. I had the privilege of watching it on Blu and I'm positive the movie has never looked this good. A surprisingly excellent presentation, and the movie is good too! Nothing groundbreaking but it is effectively scary and fun at the same time. One of the better made for tv horror movies I've seen.

Today's Rundown:
Cannibal Holocaust - 9.5/10
Hellraiser - 8.5/10
Dark Night Of The Scarecrow - 8/10

October Horror Challenge Day 12

2011-10-12T00:37:00.007-04:00

Return Of The Living Dead Part 2 started out day 12 for me just where day 11 left off. I actually saw this movie about a week before the original because the first was already rented when I wanted to get it. That didn't matter to a boy just discovering this shit. All I can say is that it is definitely not as good but I love the shit out of it anyways. I just wish the DVD had The Ramones in the opening credit scene like the original cut did. Damn you music rights.

Next up was something as easily digestible, Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive. A silly, cheesy flick about machines killing humans thank to a meteor. There are some great scenes early on like a little league coach being killed by a soda machine. It drags a little but is fun enough to warrant multiple watches... especially when the day's theme is Stephen King.

Followed up by the infamous slasher Silent Night Deadly Night, the 3rd re-watch of the day. This has been a fun slasher to me since my friend introduced it to me about 5 or 6 years ago. Its still funny to think about the outrage it caused. Killer Santa Claus? OH NO!

I closed out day 12 with the 2nd episode of American Horror Story, which I still can't form a real opinion on. It is still walking a fine line in my opinion and could easily become really good or really bad. And the original 1910 short of Frankenstein was the last thing for day 12. If you're a fan of the source material or the classic 1931 version you need to watch this short (it's on youtube).

Today's Rundown:
Return Of The Living Dead 2 - 8/10
Maximum Overdrive - 6/10
Silent Night Deadly Night 7.5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 11

2011-10-11T13:54:00.005-04:00

Day 11 started out with a shitty werewolf movie called Werewolf In A Girls Dormitory. I don't want to spend much time talking about it because it sucked. The acting was wooden, the werewolf look was cheap and even the transfer was bad.

Next up was Madmen Of Mandoras... which almost made Werewolf In A Girls Dormitory look good. A complete steaming pile of shit that no one should waste their time on so I'll leave it at that.

I needed to get the bad taste out of my mouth with those two so I threw on something I know I'd love and it is one of my favorite movies ever made, Return Of The Living Dead. No matter how many times I watch this movie I have a blast. It is to the point where I can play it out and recite most of the lines in my head but I still act like the little kid I was when I saw it for the first time on VHS from a local rental store. To go with the movie I even made a late beer run because I needed to help forget a few really shitty days (much more than just bad movies) because... YOU WANNA PARTY? ITS PARTY TIME!

Oh and you may be wondering why I'm posting this entry before I finish ROTLD so that technically the day isn't over? It's my blog and I can do what I want. Plus ROTLD won't be getting a change in score anytime soon.

Today's Rundown:
Werewolf In A Girls Dormitory - 3/10
Madmen Of Mandoras - 1.5/10
Return Of The Living Dead - 10/10

October Horror Challenge Day 10

2011-10-10T12:05:00.008-04:00

Before falling asleep last night I decided to watch Snake Woman's Curse. So I did get to squeeze in 3 films on day 9. That was a pretty cool movie with a very cool 60s Japanese style. If you're looking for something different I recommend it for its nightmarish feeling.

Day 10 started by revisiting Lucio Fulci's classic The Beyond. This movie has very little narrative and just as little logic but for whatever reason it works perfectly for this flick. It is grade A material for gore hounds.

I then moved on to a pair of 1930s films I'd never seen before, Doctor X and The Return Of Doctor X. The first is a very early Technicolor movie in the mad scientist murder mystery realm. I didn't know much about it going in but it was a nice surprise. Well made all around and pretty intense for such an early film. The sequel was just a tamer, slower and all together less impressive version of the first. There really isn't much else to say about it.

Today's Rundown:
Snake Woman's Curse (day 9) - 8.5/10
The Beyond - 9/10
Doctor X - 7.5/10
The Return Of Doctor X - 5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 9

2011-10-09T22:29:00.002-04:00

Another slow day of viewing here as the day started late (and hungover) and early in the afternoon I had to help move some furniture that took forever so only 2 movies on tap today. Day 9 was David Hess Memorial Day for me. The Last House On The Left and House On The Edge Of The Park. Both films are nasty, dirty and just plain mean. If you can't stomach rape revenge movies then you can pass on these titles. If you're into cruel exploitation movies than these are for you. David Hess is really great in both of these and the highlight of LHOTL for me. If you like these 2 movies be sure to check out Hitch-Hike also starring Mr. Hess. I apologize for the short entry but I'm exhausted and will be passing out any second.

Rest In Peace David Hess

2011-10-08T14:41:00.003-04:00

After hearing the news was confirmed that David Hess has passed away I decided I need to write this now, so I'm taking the time to do it.

David Hess, the iconic baddie in such films as Last House On The Left and House On The Edge Of The Park has passed away at the age of 69. The man was a pure prescence on screen and made you absolutely despise him. The way he manipulated "Ricky" in House On The Edge Of The Park and his acts of depravity in LHOTL. He was easily hated in his roles but I never once heard a story of him being anything but a kind and grateful man in his personal life. He had been making the rounds on the convention circuit lately and everything I've heard from fans who were lucky enough to meet him confirm that. I wish I had found the time to get to meet him.

David Hess didn't only act, he was a very accomplished musician including soundtracks for films he worked on and writing songs for Elvis Presley (yes, THE Elvis). The entertainment world has lost a great talent. And his family and friends have lost a good man. A movie marathon in his honor is in store for tomorrow.

RIP Mr. Hess and thank you.

October Challenge Day 8

2011-10-08T10:12:00.005-04:00

Day 8 started as i was getting ready to call it a night so I popped in the very familiar John Carpenter's Vampires. This movie starring James Woods is heavy on vampire action and James Woods being a badass. Hell, there's even a Baldwin co-starring. The effect of the vampires being exposed to sunlight is very cool. Worth checking out if you want a little more action oriented vampire flick.

And day concludes without being very productive with I Bury The Living. There was just too much going on today to get more done. Things to get ready for and bullshit to deal with took away my time that I could have fit in at least one more movie. I Bury The Living is a pretty neat 50s B-movie but drags on for a bit then tries to make up for it at the end by rushing things. It was still entertaining though.

Today's rundown:
Vampires - 7/10
I Bury The Living - 6/10

October Horror Challenge Day 7

2011-10-07T11:31:00.008-04:00

Day started out with a double feature of Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland. These movies are incredibly stupid and fun body count flicks. Grab a beer, some popcorn and laugh it up. Part 2 was one of the first horror movies I ever saw. I wouldn't change that. Also some of the best kills in any slasher movie happen in part 2. I strongly prefer Unhappy Campers to Teenage Wasteland but they were both a big part of my young self falling in love with horror movies. I don't deny that nostalgia inflates the scores of these 2 a bit but they're worth it.

It came time to finally dig into some Hammer films and I did just that. I was really excited to dig into these first time viewings because I love Hammer and still get a little giddy when I see their name during the credits. First up was Brides Of Dracula which was directed by the great Terence Fisher and stars Peter Cushing. How could this go wrong? It can't and didn't. A very worthy follow up to 1958's Horror Of Dracula and it had one of the more creative endings I've seen in a vampire movie. All around good stuff here.

Next up is the studio's version of Phantom Of The Opera from 1962. Herbert Lom is the Phantom in this version and it is a pretty good one. Great sets and performances from top to bottom. The main problem I had is that the Phantom never came across as all that threatening.

The Kiss Of The Vampire closed out the first full week of the challenge right around the stroke of midnight. The Hammer-thon came to a satisfying close with another quality gothic horror despite the lack of any of Hammer's big name stalwarts. A very nice score and excellent set design along with a creepy (for a reason I can't quite put my finger on) masquerade scene make this a satisfying end to day 7.

Today's Rundown -
Sleepaway Camp 2 - 9/10
Sleepaway Camp 3 - 6/10
Brides Of Dracula - 8/10
Phantom Of The Opera - 7/10
Kiss Of The Vampire - 7.5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 6

2011-10-06T01:12:00.006-04:00

I wanted to end my night and start off day 6 with something familiar and lighthearted. I decided to re-watch Redneck Zombies. This 1989 zombie schlock from Troma is something that has been in my life for 15 years. It is part of the reason I love horror, bad movies and just plain stupid shit. This movie is bad, really bad. But I love it. It is made right near where I grew up and live, it was one of the first crazy horror movies I remember renting and is a lot of fun if you turn your brain off. Redneck Zombies will always have a special place in my heart.

Next up was another movie I have seen before and seen a few times. It is the highly underrated Dead & Buried. This movie is fantastic in almost every way. This is a genuinely creepy movie with tons of atmosphere. from If you've never seen it you probably should do yourself a favor and do so.

I decided to end the night with a pair of first time viewings from producer Val Lewton - Cat People and Curse Of The Cat People. The first is a moody thriller rich with shadows and great lighting. Very slow suspense with a pay off at the end. Curse isn't a bad movie but is almost unbearably slow. It doesn't play like at all like a horror film until the very end and by that point it sort of became a "who cares?" type thing to me. But it is a pretty good movie it just seems a bit messy in what it wanted to be.

Today's Rundown:
Redneck Zombies - 7/10
Dead & Buried - 8.5/10
Cat People - 8/10
Curse Of The Cat People - 6/10

October Horror Challenge Day 5

2011-10-05T01:14:00.012-04:00

Day 5 started right as day 4 ended and I decided to go with another film I had seen only bits and pieces of and that was Tourist Trap. This film was produced by Charles Band of Full Moon and is one of the better movies they have handled. It was creepy, disturbing and actually pretty good. Turning people in to mannequins while living as one yourself can apparently make for a good horror movie.

Apparently day 5 has a Full Moon theme because the next couple of movies I have lined up are both from the infamous low budget company. Decadent Evil is the story of a man in love with a vampire, a midget hunting her master and a weird shrunken man thing. It wasn't very good and I don't know what Charles Band's fetish for little doll sized people is all about but this movie sucked. No pun intended.

The last Full Moon movie of the day is my favorite of theirs and probably their best production. Castle Freak stars director Stuart Gordon's favorites Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. A very gothic feeling movie that has great set pieces and atmosphere. This is in a different league than most other Full Moon movies.

Jean Rollin's The Grapes Of Death was next in line and while I think Rollin had a lot of talent he never quite put it together for me in a movie that I liked start to finish. This one did the trick, a nice infected crazies movie with some gross outs.

Sleepaway Camp was next on tap, a movie (and sequels) I enjoy watching each year. I think it's a pretty solid slasher even if it is predictable but that ending is unforgettable.

I finished the night off by watching the pilot to the new TV series American Horror Story. I can't really say much other than I'll need a few more episodes before I form a real opinion. It could easily go either way.

Today's Rundown:
Tourist Trap - 7/10
Decadent Evil - 3/10
Castle Freak - 8/10
The Grapes OF Death - 8/10
Sleepaway Camp - 8/10

October Horror Challenge Day 4

2011-10-04T16:38:00.007-04:00

I finished last night with Mountaintop Motel Massacre and decided to start today with the other film on that DVD, The Initiation, another 80s slasher. This time the result were quite a bit better and I found the movie to be a pretty fun watch and actually have a half decent story as far as slashers are concerned. If you're a big fan of the genre and have never seen it you will probably be happy you did.

Then I wanted something a little different so I popped in my Halloween 2 Blu-Ray for the Terror In The Aisles documentary on it. A 1984 documentary that was released theatrically that stars Donald Pleasance in enacted sequences discussing horror films and why we see them while showing clips of the movies and enacted audience reactions. A lot of people were very happy it was getting released for the first time ever on disc on this Blu-Ray but I found it to be nothing more than a very mildly entertaining time waster. I just don't really see what the point of the whole thing was.

I couldn't wait any longer to check out the recently released Blue Underground Blu-Ray of Torso. The film is preceded by a nice intro from Eli Roth, love him or hate him he knows his stuff and is a true fan of the film. The movie is giallo greatness. The final 20-25 minutes of the movie are about as perfect as giallo film making gets. The rest of the movie is pretty damn good too. The Blu looks great in HD.

I had seen bits and pieces of The Deadly Spawn before but it ended up being far less than I thought, so this first time viewing was newer than I thought it would be. I pretty much knew I was getting into a campy, low budget monster movie and I got exactly what I hoped for. This movie is lots of fun and pays homage to many creature features that came before it. I'm so glad I finally stopped putting off buying it because it is a loaded dvd and an awesome movie.

Today's rundown:
The Initiation - 6.5/10
Terror In The Aisles 5.5/10
Torso - 8.5/10
The Deadly Spawn - 8.5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 3

2011-10-03T21:05:00.003-04:00

I decided it was time to watch the original Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark for the first time, while the remake is still fresh enough in my mind to compare them. Ever since the remake came out I've been hearing it from everyone that I need to see the original and how it is one of the best made-for-TV horror movies ever. I found it creepy and a bit unsettling. It suffered from a much shorter run time than its remake though and there just wasn't enough time to really build the suspense and up the uneasy feeling. I don't think it quite lived up to the hype, but I did enjoy it.

I then moved on to the challenges theme of the day which was "Jawsploitation" which is pretty self explanatory- movies that rip off Jaws. I went with Sergio Martino's Big Alligator River which is a nice mix of killer animal and jungle horror/exploitation. It didn't do much to set it self apart from other movies of the sort but it was pretty much successful in being a fun, violent cash in on Jaws.

And to keep the cheese factor going I ended the night with 1986's Mountaintop Motel Massacre. A rather tame slasher film about an old woman who is deranged and kills a night's worth of guests at her motel after the death of her daughter. She uses everything from a sickle to snakes and roaches to get the job done. Nothing special here.

Today's rundown

Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark - 7/10
Big Alligator River - 7/10
Mountaintop Motel Massacre - 4.5/10

October Horror Challenge Day 2

2011-10-02T17:20:00.004-04:00

After a long night of celebrating a good friend's birthday day 2 started late, slow and feeling awful. All of the football games didn't help me watch any horror either. But I still managed to get 3 movies in, which is the daily average I try to maintain through the month.

First up was Moon Of The Wolf. This is a made for TV horror mystery from 1972. It was just plain boring. There was no werewolf until almost an hour in to the movie and none of the characters were interesting enough to carry the film. The climax was bland and pretty uneventful but it did have decent acting though.

I then decided to go for something short and I had been wanting to revisit Dario Argento's Pelts from the Masters Of Horror series. I think this is one of the better episodes the show had. It has some vintage Argento flare and style and Meatloaf is a madman. And you'll never hear me complain about Claudio Simonetti handling the music.

And to end the night I threw on I Am Omega, The Asylum's version of The Last Man On Earth and I Am Legend... I was expecting it to be really bad, and it was, but somehow not quite as bad as I was prepared for. It was a pretty uneventful day of viewing overall.

The rundown:
Moon Of The Wolf - 4/10
Pelts - 7/10
I Am Omega - 3/10

October Horror Challenge 10/1

2011-10-01T01:18:00.015-04:00

October finally came around and I was prepared with some beers and good movies in hand I rang in my favorite month of the year. I decided to start out with a couple of movies that I've been wanting to see really badly for a while and see where it went from there. The countdown towards 100 movies is on!

[REC]2 - This follow up picking up just minutes after the first leaves us amps up the action and continues the story of the first. The cause of the infection is spelled out and I love it. The priest character is great. I would have preferred the 10 minutes or so with the kids not been so annoying and a bit more tension built up but I don't think I could honestly ask for a better way to start the month with a new viewing. 8.5/10

Sledgehammer - If you aren't a fan of "so bad they're good" movies then you can skip to the next movie. If you are still reading go buy this now. NOW! I've been aware of this movie since Intervision released the DVD but only from reviews of people I trust. They didn't let me down. 99% of the time I hate the word "epic" these days but this movie is fucking epic! Hands down one of the single best things ever put to film... or video tape.

We finished out the night with Ghouls which is a pile of shit SyFy movie that not even Trip from Detroit Rock City could save. And I love DRC. Oh well, it definitely helped put me to sleep. After catching a few hours of sleep I woke up and threw on 3 On A Meathook. I've wanted to see this 70s horror for a while but just now got around to it. It had a fast opening with plenty of blood and guts but soon after it came to a screeching halt until the last 10 minutes. A good 50 minutes where nothing exciting happens really hurts the score on this one even though it was pretty decent overall.

A couple of shorts were up next, PIN from 2009 and The Dummy from 1982. I found PIN by doing a generic search on Youtube and picking one. Both of the shorts were pretty well done. That filled the gap in time I had until Husk came on tv. I had heard good things about it but it was nothing more than typical DTV fare.

And to end the night on a high note - Alejandro Jodorowsky's SANTA SANGRE on blu ray. A beautiful film and a stunning presentation. This is a perfect mix of madness, beauty, murder, love and surrealism. I appreciate it more with each viewing.

The rundown for today:

[REC] 2 - 8.5/10
Sledgehammer - lol/10
Ghouls - 2/10
3 On A Meathook - 5.5/10
Husk - 4/10
Santa Sangre - 9/10

Victor Crowley Lives - Hatchet 3 Has A Director

2011-09-30T20:55:00.000-04:00

Remember a few days ago when I said I was done posting in September? I lied. News has just surfaced that BJ McDonnell is attached to helm Hatchet 3. McDonnell has been the camera and Steadicam operator for each of the first two Hatchet movies along with movies like Jonah Hex and the A Nightmare On Elm St. remake. Don't let those two shitty movies make you judge his directorial work... because he doesn't have any. This will be his first time in the director's chair so it will be interesting to see what happens with the 3rd installment in the modern day splatter slasher series. Adam Green the director of the first two Hatchet films is expected to work closely with the development of the third.

There you have it.

Gearing Up For October And Halloween

2011-09-26T22:09:00.000-04:00

September has been a quiet month for me as far as movie watching and reviewing goes. When I have watched some stuff it has been mainly been things that don't fit in with the CT and a few exploitation flicks thrown in for good measure. The main reason for this is that for the last 2 years I've participated in DVD Talk's annual October Horror Challenge. This is a month long fun activity that gets the horror fans together to shoot for the loose goal of watching 100 horror movies in the month. I've successfully reached the mountaintop in both 2009 and '10 and hope to be able to do it again this year while watching at least 50% new movies. There are no real rules to it, so you can sign up and join in even if you don't plan to try to complete any of the goals/checklists. I will make a post right here every day to recap everything I've watched that day with short reviews and thoughts. This is my favorite time of the year and turning my brain to mush with tons of horror movies just makes it even better. See you guys on the first.

100 movies. 31 posts. 31 days.

Big Doll House/Women In Cages/Big Bird Cage

2011-09-19T12:35:00.001-04:00

One of the most anticipated DVD and Blu-Ray releases of the year for exploitation fans has been the Women In Cages triple feature from the Roger Corman Cult Classics line by Shout! Factory, and for good reason. The Corman Cult Classics series has seen some classic Corman trash and sleaze get top notch releases on DVD and some in high definition as well.

Without ever experiencing the pleasure of any of these films I was pretty excited to rip into it and find out just what these flicks are all about. First up was The Big Doll House from director Jack Hill. Five women are tired of the torture and punishment and plan to break out of a Philippine jail with the help of 2 men from the outside. Pam Grier, Judith Brown and Sid Haig star, in this top notch example of a WIP flick. Everything you need to make a successful flick like this is here- Action, violence, scantily clad or nude women and some deranged women threatening males to "Get it up or I'll cut it off!". It doesn't hurt that Jack Hill just seems to know how to make great exploitation cinema.

Women In Cages is the only of the three to not have Jack Hill directing. Instead Gerardo de Leon helms with Judith Brown and Pam Grier starring again. Grier has moved on to the other side of the iron bars and is the evil head matron who likes to get some lovin' with the inmates whenever she pleases. Brown's character plans an escape with several other inmates with the head matron as a hostage despite knowing the trackers will be sent to find and kill them. This movie focuses more on the characters and their trials and tribulations in the prison and less on action. It is a solid entry and worthy of inclusion on the set for sure but it is the definite low point for me.

Jack Hill returns to bring us The Big Bird Cage, which is every bit as good as Doll House. Pam Grier and Sid Haig team up again, this time as revolutionaries who plan to free prisoners from the jungle prison from the outside in. This entry has the highest dose of comedy of the three and it works. Haig impersonating a gay man for much of the 2nd half of the film is hilarious and Grier is a total bad ass. The rest of the cast, including Anitra Ford who was one of the first models for The Price Is Right, is on point. Bird Cage may be the best WIP flick I've seen, just edging out Doll House. This is great stuff.

Anybody with the slightest interest in exploitation fare should get a copy of this. The Blu-Ray looks fantastic and the movies are great fun even at their lowest point. Plus who doesn't like seeing attractive ladies run around in little to no clothing and fighting? Nobody.

Fright Night 3D (2011)

2011-09-06T21:36:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody, I'm back. Hurricane Irene knocked my power out for a week and the internet was screwed up for another 3 days so I didn't get a chance to watch or review anything. I did however catch up on some H.P. Lovecraft reading, which is actually pretty awesome when reading in the pitch dark by flashlight only. Now that I'm back in the 21st century I'm back to CT, and caught Fright Night 3D in theaters earlier when I was randomly asked and treated to go... can't pass that up no matter how bad it might be, right?

If you have seen the original Fright Night, the cult classic from writer/director Tom Holland that features a crazy Evil Ed, Roddy Mcdowall being awesome as usual and just great 80s vampire fun and saw the trailers and TV spots for the remake you have to be aware that they don't look too similar. And you're also aware at just how shitty the trailers for this remake were. It is no wonder it didn't make much money at all, and I'm surprised it was even still in theaters today.

Charley has just found popularity in his later high school years after a lifetime of living the life of a nerd with his former best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). After several classmates go missing Ed persuades Charlie to investigate with him. Ed believes Charley's new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrel) is a vampire and quickly taking over the town. It isn't long before Charlie realizes that Ed is right and enlists the help of vampire/occult/reality/Vegas celebrity Peter Vincent who has a history with these creatures. Charley and Peter Vincent chase Jerry back to his lair where they get more than they bargained for.

I'll start with a positive first... I expected this movie to be truly terrible. I mean fucking God awful. This has everything to do with the disastrous trailers and marketing. It did end up being better than expected, but that isn't saying much. The writing seemed rushed to me. Everything jumped from one part to the next without much actually happening until the finale. The acting across the board was pretty bad. Colin Farrell wasn't a convincing vampire... or a convincing creep who seduces high school girls. McLovin wasn't bad as Evil Ed, who they only referred to as "Evil" once in the entire movie as far as I could tell, but they didn't give him much screen time at all. It was a decent modern day take on the character. David Tennant was a cross between Criss Angel and Russel Brand which made him about as unlikeable as a human can get until the last 20 minutes by which point it was too late for me to give a shit about him. The CGI effects for the vampires was obnoxious and totally missed out on the practical latex effects used in the original that were awesome and added to the feel of the film. These odd looking, shark toothed vampires were just annoying to look at and screamed "LOOK AT ME I'M A FUCKING FEROCIOUS VAMPIRE!". The humor from the original was mainly lost as well. With only a few genuinely funny moments out of dozens of attempts with cheap one liners and slapstick it was more face palming than knee slapping. And as for the 3D which any reader of this already knows I just could not care any less about, it was actually decent looking. There was noticeable depth without many cases of it looking awkward and some effective use of the gimmicky things flying at the camera. But seriously, who fucking cares about that?

Like I said, there were far more positives than I expected. It had some cool vampire action scenes, and there were the few successful funny moments but it missed the mark by a mile.

3.5/10

New Hellraiser movie, huh? Welp, see ya later.

2011-08-22T23:22:00.000-04:00

So the trailer for Hellraiser Revelations was just released and my first thought was You have to be kidding me. Where's Ashton because I'm being punked". It looks like a fan movie, in fact I've seen fan movies that look better than this. The entire thing just looks cheap and full of make up and props you could buy at a Spirit Halloween store any year when October rolls around. Now you may be asking how I could gather enough of an opinion on this movie from a 2 minute trailer so here it is -

Now do you understand? It isn't like this series was trash from the beginning and each sequel just got a little worse than the one before. The first two films are widely regarded as classics of horror cinema and are works of Clive Barker (who directed the first). Even the third installment, Hell On Earth, is a bit of campy fun. The rest of the series is really hit or miss, mainly miss, but with some troubles during production of Bloodline and a few scripts that threw in Pinhead and made it a Hellraiser movie, it hardly matters and doesn't take away from those first two classics. They're dark and haunting, they feature creatures that were formerly human but now look as if they truly are disfigured and evil. Not like a shitty actor who can't deliver his recycled one liners from the original in a $50 costume from the clearance rack on November 1st. Clive Barker has already stated how this isn't his work and that he doesn't support it at all and 8 films (even when the movie was fucking awful) would be ashamed to be connected with this new asshole.

The Weinstein brothers want to know why their Dimension/Dimension Extreme label is constantly on the verge of bankruptcy? It is probably because they poor their fucking money into complete and utter bullshit like Hellraiser Revelations. They might have made some money off of this thing had they not released a trailer for it off of the title alone. A few poor unsuspecting saps would pick this up and realize they've been duped. I really hope everyone involved in this gets shit on, literally. That seems fair for my eyes and brain having been shit on for 2 precious fucking minutes of my life.

I've had a Revelation that Hellraiser really is dead for good.

Tamara (2005)

2011-08-13T22:38:00.000-04:00

I remember seeing this movie on DVD at Wal-Mart everytime I went into a Wal-Mart for a few months around the time it was released. It looked pretty craptacular back then and I thought "what the fuck, lets watch it" tonight when I saw it was available on FearNet in HD.

The story is Tamara is a very intelligent but weak, bullied, loser girl in her senior year of high school who is in love with her charming, kind English teacher. She also has an affinity for witchcraft Her bullying gets worse after a local newspaper article exposes steroid use among the local high school sports stars. After luring her to a local motel with her teacher love as fake bait, the jock stars get video of her stripping and a deadly struggle ensues. After the reality sets in for the popular kids that they'll be convicted of their crime they decide to bury Tamara. A new sexy, confidentTamara walks in to class the following Monday to the surprise of all the kids involved. Tamara has come back from the dead thanks to a spell and now she will kill anyone in her way from getting her way with the one she loves.

TAMARA had far more positives than I expected. The stereotypical movie high school student was well represented but it worked and they even brought a few laughs. In fact, the acting overall was competent. The problem is that the movie goes down the road of shit slasher film as soon as Tamara comes back from the dead. It turns in to nothing more than any run of the mill body count film with a psycho cunt witch bitch in control of the knife wielding maniac. It became boring fast and extremely preditcable. I have very little else to say because there isn't much else to say. It is what it is. With (more than) a few beers it was a cheap time waster, but not a very good one. That said, it did exceed my very low expectations.

4/10

Nightmare In A Damaged Brain (1981)

2011-08-11T08:27:00.000-04:00

After years of broken promises and delays NIGHTMARE IN A DAMAGED BRAIN has finally made it's way to DVD thanks to the folks at Code Red. Released simply as NIGHTMARE, I was pretty excited to see this Video Nasty for the first time after hearing about it for years.

George Tatum (Baird Stafford) is a potentially homicidal schizophrenic who suffers from seizures which are accompanied with disturbing fever dreams of a young boy attacking a woman and his father with an axe during the adults having sex. Tatum has is now wandering the streets with only an experimental drug to keep him sane. Over the course of 6 days he makes his way down to Florida, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. As his dreams get worse so do the killings until George is confronted with his past.

Writer/Director Romano Scavolini delivers what would become one of the most notorious slasher films of the 80s and one of the more disturbed as well. Baird Stafford does well in playing a mentally disturbed man who is torn up over what he does to people but the acting won't win any awards. This is your typical slasher film when it comes to acting, a few decent performances with a lot of overacting and some truly obnoxious characters (the mom!). There is enough of the red stuff to keep all of the gorehounds happy, and the effects are pretty damn good. This movie has one of the best decapitation scenes I've had the pleasure of viewing. Pacing may be one of the biggest problems about NIGHTMARE. Scavolini left rather large chunks of time with not a whole hell of a lot happening except for annoying characters to get under our skin just a little bit more. There are some killings during these stretches but some of them are off screen so there is minimal pay off.

After years of hearing about NIGHTMARE IN A DAMAGED BRAIN I was a mixed bag of reactions. Did it totally live up to the hype? No, not really. Was it entertaining? Yes, especially the final half hour or so. As most horror fans know dozens of movies were given the infamous "Video Nasty" tag in the UK during the excess crazed days of the 1980s and many are notable for that alone as they aren't very good. NIGHTMARE has enough entertainment and madness to keep your attention. If you're a fan of the gory body count films of the 80s you'll definitely get some enjoyment out of this.

7/10

TrollHunter (2010)

2011-07-31T21:55:00.000-04:00

TrollHunter has been on my radar for many months now. As I've found out more about my interest slowly grew and grew until I was able to see it tonight thanks to a friend shelling out the $6 for the On Demand presentation.

This is a "found footage" movie, you know the kind- Some tragic event that was captured on a handheld video camera is presented in the point of view from the crew that usually have gone missing. These movies have become pretty prevalent since 1999's The Blair Witch Project. With very mixed results. TrollHunter is the story of a small film crew from a local college in Norway searching out a local bear poacher as the bear population of the country is tightly controlled. They quickly run into Hans (Otto Jespersen) who they believe to be the poacher. It doesn't take long to discover that is actually an aging, and jaded government worker who is out to control the troll population that is kept secret by the Norwegian government.

Hans allows the group to follow him in his confidential work because he's become fed up with his thankless job. The group does what any crew looking for their big break would do and subjects themselves to the dangers that various types of trolls bring. After several violent encounters that leave the crew battered and bruised, and down a man, Hans goes to find the giant troll in the snowy mountains that is the cause of all of the problems for a wild finale.

TrollHunter is briskly paced, getting from point to point with little down time in action or troll hunting. The acting is engaging and believable and the story, while silly on paper, is a great grown up fairy tale. The visuals are fun and at times breathtaking, with really great effects on the monsters themselves. The filmmakers did a great job in creating a diverse group of breeds with each having it's own characteristics and design. From the Mountain King to the Ringlefinch and the gigantic Jotner, Norway is infested. And I couldn't be happier about it because that was a fucking blast. I wish all fairy tales were this cool.

9/10

Kung Fu: Punch Of Death - Grindhouse Experience vol. 10

2011-07-29T23:52:00.000-04:00

I will say that I'm sorry that it took this long to get to the next entry of this series. At this point you've probably figured out that the set is broken down into "double features" and I simply was not in the mood for an Italian gangster film. God forbid I skipped one because I needed some guaranteed fun in my life. And how can a title like Punch Of Death not be fun?

I'll never quite figure out how this boxset came to be. There is no way one single man masterminded the whole thing. The movies, the transfers, the dubs, the packaging. This had to a team hellbent on shoddy transfers and shit releases. The Prodigal Boxer aka Kung Fu: Punch Of Death is another okay film subjected to this set. Punch Of Death is a Kung-Fu film based on a pretty typical story of one man having to avenge another's demise. And that is really putting much more into the film than is actually there. It really is that simple.

There is plenty of action here, enough to keep me well entertained while enjoying some brews. It even replicates the attitude of a solid spaghetti western at times during the story which aids it along because the story on it's own is thin and pleading for anything entertaining. This movie is for any fan of classic Shaw Brothers material but it never does get to their level. This is a movie to watch on a boring Friday night with some beers.

5/10

Infini-Tropolis

2011-07-18T22:54:00.000-04:00

Hello readers, this is a short entry to let you know that a few reviews of mine are up on www.infini-tropolis.com Infini is a great cult/horror film site that any reader of this blog would be a huge fan of. It is free of internet douchebags, it has great reviews and features and a message board full of cult fanatics that are sure to have you thrilled with all sorts of new material you need to check out.

Infini-Tropolis also has a Facebook page that you should like and follow.

There you have it. A life changing website that has been handed to you on a silver platter... Go and contribute!

Case 39 (2009)

2011-07-07T07:06:00.000-04:00

I tried to settle down on this one a little by sleeping on it. Please believe me in saying that I really did try.

Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger) is a state social worker just assigned with a new case (you guessed it, her 39th) on Lily Sullivan who is showing signs of neglect. After an uncomfortable visit with Lily and her parents, Emily takes up an interest in Lily and after receiving a disturbing phone call Emily rushes over with her detective friend Mike (Ian McShane) to discover Lily is in the process of being burned alive by her parents in the oven. Lily is freed, her parents institutionalized, and Emily petitions for custody of the child until a permanent foster home is found for her. Not soon after, it becomes clear that Lily isn't the sweet innocent child she seems to be.

CASE 39 is a movie that you watch and think "I'd rather have stepped in a pile of dog shit". Seriously. We are supposed to be terrified of this little girl who can basically make you hallucinate your fears and drive you mad until you kill yourself and plant murderous thoughts in your head and is just all around evil. The movie could have been over well before Emily ever took custody of her had Lily's parents just shot her or cut her throat or anything less dramatic than throwing her in the fucking oven. The characters are so painfully paper thin that we don't care how they meet their end whether it be stabbing themselves in the eye with a fork(when did we start giving metal forks and steak knives to violent crazies inside the hopsital!?), or being chased by bees (in a scene that makes Nic Cage from The Wicker Man remake look good) and killing yourself in the bathroom it just doesn't matter. The acting is wooden and the editing awkward and choppy. And fuck the pacing of this movie. 109 minutes. 109 minutes of staring at Renee Zellweger's scrunched up "I can't fucking act so I'll just be ugly to cover it up" face is too much to handle. She ruins just about every movie she's in and while this one wouldn't have been saved by someone else, at least they wouldn't have been Renee fucking Zellweger.

CASE 39 was filmed in 2006 and sat on the shelf in almost every country it was released in until 2009, the USA waited with overflowing anticipation until October of 2010. And boy, what a treat we got. Demon child who is apparently really hard to kill and knows all of your thoughts but can be tricked into drinking tea with a crushed up sleep pill in it? And then when she falls asleep from that pill you soak the whole house in gasoline EXCEPT FOR HER FUCKING BEDROOM? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? FUCK OFF. And don't even try to tell me that soaking her door counts. The bitch has a window.

Seriously one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Insidious Live Q&A

2011-07-05T21:36:00.000-04:00

Attention all fans of the recent horror box office success, Insidious- This coming Monday, July 11th, Fangoria will be hosting a live Q&A session with the film's director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell. The event will be streamed live on the Insidious Facebook page at 9pm PST/ midnight EST and all questions will be fan generated. You can submit your questions on the Facebook page or on Twitter using the tag #InsidiousLIVE. And for all of you who enjoy winning free things, leave a comment during the event on the Ustream tab using the #InsidiousLIVE and you'll be entered to win a copy of the DVD which is available July 12th.

This is a pretty cool thing and I really hope to see more companies get behind the release of their films with streaming events like this that makes it so we can all enjoy it.

The New Kids (1985)

2011-07-02T14:08:00.000-04:00

What do you get when you put Aunt Becky from Full House, bad 80s music, too many montages and a pack of small town high school drug dealing gang members together? THE NEW KIDS.

When Loren (Shannon Presby) and his sister Abby (Lori Loughlin) lose both of their parents in an accident they move to a small town in Florida to live with their aunt and uncle who have just purchased a run down amusement park to fix up. All seems well as the siblings help their aunt and uncle and attend their new high school until the local trouble makers, lead by Gordo, place a bet on who can go to bed with Abby first. After several unpleasant encounters which don't lead any of the hooligans to the sack and hurt their ego and light their temper the gang decides to vandalize the newly renovated amusement park and their prized Cadillac. After a few nastier and more personal encounters Loren decides to end it and beats up one of the gang in the school parking lot to cheers of his friends and classmates. It is this moment that causes Gordo to go over the edge and want blood. Abby is kidnapped during a school dance and tortured by the gang until the final bloody showdown inside of the amusement park's walls.

Director Sean S. Cunningham, best known for popularizing the slasher film with 1980's Friday The 13th, gives us a somewhat nasty thriller that is really a story of two halves. The first half is a decent set up but we are required to really believe that these redneck teenagers are some major threat to the town and are dangerous without seeing to much to make us believe that at all. Five or six hick kids with shotguns in the back of a pickup truck just shooting into the air isn't all that frightening. Eventually we get to see their nastier side before the finale which was an important save. The soundtrack is as 80s as it gets, and not in a good way. Every time there is a montage, and there are plenty, we get a song that really really wishes it was in any better 80s movie. When we aren't being treated to such soothing songs of empowerment and triumph we get to listen to an ill-fitting score. The thing that keeps THE NEW KIDS from being more of a stand out 80s movie is the weak first half and that it feels like a movie wanting to be an 80s movie.

For all of its flaws and the fact that it is certainly dated THE NEW KIDS succeeds moderately as a revenge thriller.

6/10

Beyond The Darkness (Buio Omega) (1979)

2011-06-22T22:48:00.000-04:00

If you are at all familiar with sleazy Italian horror you have probably at least heard of BEYOND THE DARKNESS and Joe D'Amato. Quite possibly the most notorious film from the infamous director. The Italian title, BUIO OMEGA, should be a staple in any horror/exploitation fan's collection.

Francesco is a mortician and taxidermist who has just lost his lover, Anna. After her death and funeral Frank can't stand the pain and turns to extreme measures of preserving and stuffing his partner to keep her in his large estate. The groundskeeper Iris has been with the family for many years and has watched Frank grow up and is there to comfort him in a way that will make almost anyone squirm in their seat. As the heated relationship between Francesco and Iris builds so does the body count to keep Frank's secret just that. Anyone that enters the house is prone to Francesco's ever-growing madness to keep him and his true lover together. As the bodies pile up so does the tension with Iris after she makes a proposition to continue to help Frank if he marries her. Eventually the odd couple snap at each other and resort to violence that looks like a cross between jungle animals and lovers that have a truly fucked up sense of the word "love".

Joe D'Amato is well known for being one of the main catalyst's of creating the Italian horror genre and keeping it as sleazy as humanly possible. This wasn't hard for a man who would go on to make porn of both the soft and hardcore variety. D'Amato was never shy of getting nearly every woman that would appear on screen to peel her clothes off for no reason at all. He also amped up the gore to nearly Fulci-like levels. BEYOND THE DARKNESS features everything from slasher film violence to necrophilia to cannibalism. And more. It is one of the gross out, scary films that is a blast to watch over and over.

It had been quite a while since I last watched this movie, mainly due in part to Media Blasters delaying the Blu Ray for a full year, but it was worth the wait. In all reality this movie looks as good as it possibly could. A low budget, low production horror movie from Italy in the 70s, this Blu Ray has its rough spots but certainly looks considerably sharper and clearer than it's DVD counterpart.

With a standout score from the exceptional Goblin this very well may be Joe D'Amato's finest achievement. The man that wasn't opposed to excess of any sort wins with a movie full of excess of all sorts.

8.5/10

Made For TV Horror - Where Have You Gone?

2011-06-21T09:55:00.000-04:00

What has happened to made-for-TV horror movies? Back in the 70s and 80s and even into the 90s we got some real quality horror movies that were made for TV. The 70s gave us the great Salem's Lot, an adaptation of a vampire story by Stephen King. Gargoyles, featuring effects from the late, great Stan Winston and you'd find a quality movie Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark and The Night Stalker. The 1980s gave us Dark Night Of The Scarecrow, which old and new fans alike have been able to discover or re-discover on DVD since it was released a couple years ago. It even has a scheduled Blu Ray.

You may be thinking of movies that you're pissed I didn't list but that isn't the point. There are plenty of websites to see a list of good (and bad) made-for-TV horror movies. The point is asking what the hell happened to them. Sure even in their heyday they weren't all good, and some were down right awful (I'm looking at you Devil Dog: Hound of Hell) but the level of film making was obviously miles above any sort of made-for-TV fare we get today, which seems to be limited to SyFy channel originals. Now, those SyFy originals aren't all bad, if you enjoy a few beers... or a 12 pack they can be cheap fun... some of them. The fact is that is about all we have anymore for TV horror and most of them are headache inducing shit fests. Even the next closest thing, Direct-To-Video, has gone to shit. That is another discussion for another day though.

It just seems that TV has completely been disregarded as a legitimate means of breaking a new director or getting your script into production. When is the last time we have seen a tried and true director like Dan Curtis (1973's Dracula) get to make a movie for TV? I know there are scripts lying around, wasting away, that would be successful on the smaller screen. And where would Steven Spielberg be without his 1971 picture Duel.

It isn't like there is a shortage of channels that are dedicated to horror or make horror a large part of their programming. FearNet, Chiller, and the aforementioned SyFy. Maybe SyFy is the answer to bringing back this lost love, but not in their current form. Maybe if they put more emphasis on quality in simplicity instead of making a giant monster movie on a soap opera budget. Maybe. Hell, many of the best made-for-TV horror movies played on network stations like ABC. Is it the times? Is it that people are so uptight and worried that it may spoil their child's fragile little mind that no station wants to play it? Is there no money to made from advertising and ratings? I'm sure it is a combination of all of that.

There are so many great movies that never made it into a theater that wouldn't go unnoticed because of the made-for-TV movie. It is really a shame that the style is pretty close to dying currently. Sure every few years we get something, and recently we had the Masters of Horror series which divulged into Fear Itself but that was so toned down for network TV that no one cared. Other than that there seems to be nothing, and not much desire to bring it back. That's a shame.

Death Carries A Cane (1973)

2011-06-09T17:28:00.000-04:00

How can one giallo fit in every calling card of the genre and drive them into the ground so that you're so aware of the type of film you're watching that it borders on no longer being enjoyable? I'm not exactly sure but director Maurizio Pradeaux manages to get damn close to doing just that in DEATH CARRIES A CANE.

Kitty (Susan Scott, All The Colors Of The Dark, Adios Sabata) is thrown head first in to a murder mystery when she accidentally witnesses a murder threw a park's coin operated viewfinder. After her fiancee is suspected of the original murder and subsequent killing of other witnesses, Kitty clears his name but they are thrown even deeper in to the madness which now surrounds everyone close to them. As the body count piles up and the police fail to capture the killer with their bag of tricks Kitty comes face to face with the killer who has separated her from her lover and sister.

DEATH CARRIES A CANE manages to fit every trademark of the genre into the 85 minute run time. We have the classic killer wearing all black to hide their identity. More red herrings than you can shake a stick at, hell even inanimate objects become false leads here. The nudity and sex is so gratuitous that you really stop noticing it about half way through. I'd be willing to bet every woman aside from one in the movie gets naked. The problem is that these staples of the giallo are beat to death so bad that they really stopped being entertaining. Even the reveal of the killer's motive was just plain stupid.

There are some positives in DEATH CARRIES A CANE. Pradeaux has solid direction throughout, and even if the story is a bit disjointed due to the fact that it seems like it wanted to outwit itself, it does flow pretty well and pacing is fine. This would be a decent giallo had their been some more tension built around the kill scenes. What we end up with is less suspenseful than your typical teeny bopper slasher film. The score was fairly typical and sounded very familiar and I wouldn't be surprised if it was lifted from an earlier film.

A rather unremarkable film that only giallo enthusiasts need track down.

5/10

Nightmare Castle (1965)

2011-05-24T17:47:00.001-04:00

Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Muller) is a greedy and sadistic man who spends his time on crazy experiments and wants nothing more than to inherit his wife's family fortune. After discovering his wife cheating he tortures her and her lover until their death but not before she informs him she has re-written her will to leave everything to her sister who is institutionalized. Shortly after their murders he marries the sister in a plot to drive her totally insane and inherit complete control of the estate to share with his true lover Solange, the housemaid. The ghosts of his dead wife and her lover aren't too thrilled with the idea and haunt the castle until they exact their revenge in a fiery finale.

Mario Caiano directs this moody piece of gothic horror that is brimming with thick atmosphere from the beautiful black and white photography. Caiano's direction is like that of someone with a much larger name associated with gothic horror. Mario Bava comes to mind right away. Getting the most out of his shots and actors, NIGHTMARE CASTLE is classic 1960s horror. The lovely and legendary Barbara Steele stars in a duel role, playing both the Dr.'s wife Muriel and her sister Jenny. Steele does a nice job in the very different roles and embodies gothic horror as always. The film is scored by Ennio Morricone and is his first horror soundtrack. It is a key element to the film. His use of the organ is overbearing to put it lightly, but in the best possible way. It creates a feeling of tension and unrest, almost as if you aren't comfortable in whatever familiar place you're watching NIGHTMARE CASTLE.

NIGHTMARE CASTLE has seen a slew of cheapy releases over the years with almost as many different alternate titles. The film was recently restored in its complete uncut form by Severin and it is definitely how the film should be watched. If you are interested in gothic horror or horror that relies heavily on its atmosphere you definitely need to see NIGHTMARE CASTLE.

8.5/10

Killer Yacht Party dvd review

2011-05-15T15:31:00.000-04:00

Lacy is a Los Angeles party girl and her best friend Jane is a shy girl who has just moved to the area for a fresh start and to try to get her songwriting career off the ground. After a night of partying at an exclusive club they get an invitation to attend a private yacht party the next night. After some coaxing by Lacy, Jane agrees to be her "wing man". After hearing some murmurs about the boat's tragic past there is a slight buzz amongst the crowd but it quickly fades as the booze starts to flow. Everything seems to be going okay until some of the self centered party goers make decisions they wish they could take back and it quickly becomes apparent that there is a killer on the loose. Is the killer someone on the boat or is it a former owner from beyond?

KILLER YACHT PARTY was filmed in 2006 by director Piotr Uzarowicz and is his feature film debut. While the movie is a simple slasher, with a foreseeable twist, it is pretty decent fare for the genre. It has most of the staples you'd expect from a Friday The 13th or any 80s slasher that rose to prominence twenty years ago. It has the creepy old man who prophesies blood shed, the killer with an array of weapons and gratuitous nudity. There is surprisingly decent acting performances from top to bottom. The direction gets the job done, though during most of the kills they edit in black frames. Imagine a slow strobe light effect. That was a bit annoying when you are trying to watch the meat and potatoes of a slasher film. Even if it isn't as fun as watching Jason Voorhees stalk through the woods or Freddy haunt your dreams KILLER YACHT PARTY was a surprisingly entertaining movie. I think the fact that there are so few likable characters that watching everybody die is a pleasure.

Troma has released KILLER YACHT PARTY in a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen print which has a nice clean picture throughout with only a few scenes being overly hazy looking. A Dolby Digital stereo handles the audio side of things and aside from being quiet (you'll have to jack up the volume) it is clear and mixed well. The A/V quality won't win any awards but there isn't anything that will take you out of the movie because of frustration. The extra features side of things bring us a commentary track from the director and writer which is informative and doesn't have much down time at all. Some information is repeated but the majority of the time they are giving us solid insight into the cast/crew and the production of the movie. Troma also gives us a trailer, a slideshow which is just filler and the same set of "Tromatic Extras" that was on the previously reviewed Eyes Of The Chameleon. The only problem I have with the disc itself is that is nearly impossible to see which option you have chosen on any menu. The lettering is an off white color that is very close to white and whatever option you have chosen highlights to white. It is a real pain in the ass to try and figure out which you're on. Literally any other color would have worked fine.

This isn't typical Troma fare, but it isn't a red-headed step child either. I'll recommend this one for Troma enthusiasts and slasher fans.

Director - Piotr Uzarowicz (2006)
Writer- Alex Silver
DVD Release Date - May 10, 2011

Film - 5/10
DVD Presentation- 6/10

Eyes Of The Chameleon dvd review

2011-05-13T14:41:00.000-04:00

Sara is a bartender living in Las Vegas who is unhappy with the way her life is going. She and a friend visit a psychic for a card reading but the visit goes sour after an unsettling encounter with the psychic and her assistant. Soon after the ordeal Sara's life begins to spiral out of control and a series of brutal and bizarre murders surround the people closest to Sara. Can Sara find out what is the cause of her sudden madness and who is behind the murders before it is too late to save herself?

Ron Atkins directs this schizophrenic horror film that doesn't know which direction to go in. There are a couple moments in EYES OF THE CHAMELEON that have a giallo flare to them which are quickly followed by moments so over the top silly that they couldn't be an accident. The short comings of low budget horror films are ever present here though they are forgivable during the bright spots of the film such as the disturbing opening and hallway stalk sequence. Other than those two moments EYES OF THE CHAMELEON is a sloppily edited mess that unfortunately falls into the territory of Rob Zombie-esque disaster more often than not.

Filmed on location in Las Vegas using what seem to be mini DV cameras, EYES OF THE CHAMELEON comes to us in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio from Troma. The aspect ratio does seem to be the original. The picture seems to come from a clean print with minimal spotting and dirt. The audio is a Dolby Digital 2.0 track that while a bit quiet at times is serviceable and usually easy to understand. Extra features include a pair of deleted scenes and a trailer along with a lineup of Troma shorts. A commentary track by the director is listed however it is nowhere to be found on the disc or in a separate audio track. Overall this would be competent package for a very underwhelming film if the commentary track was present. Recommended for Troma completists only.

Director - Ron Atkins (2005)
Writer - Ann Green
DVD Release Date - May 10, 2011

Film 1.5/10
DVD Presentation 4/10

General Update May '11

2011-05-11T20:31:00.000-04:00

This entry is to update everyone on a few things going on and some plans for the not too distant future.

First off- I recently did a DVD review for Infini-Tropolis. I will be doing more reviews for them in the future. Infini is a great site dedicated to all things cult film/TV/comics etc.. It has the least douchey community of any internet movie site I've been around. I suggest visiting the site and looking around. There is a ton of great stuff going on. Then, sign up and contribute. We are in the middle of a creating a list Cult Films Bucket List ie: cult films to see before you kick the bucket. The more minds working with that one, the better. Support that site which can be found HERE

I've gotten in with a couple of companies to start regularly receiving screener discs of their new releases. I won't reveal any names until I actually get packages and can review them. That will bring a steady flow of new DVDs and Blu Rays to review, that will hopefully be able to inform of you what to spend or don't spend those hard earned bucks on.

There is a plan to turn Celluloid Terror into a magazine, along with increasing the web presence. The magazine will cover all things from horror, midnight movies to all forms of exploitation and sexploitation. We will have film reviews, product reviews (dvd, blu ray, collectibles, etc...), mid-Atlantic convention coverage, short stories, fan art, and everything you can imagine. Much of what is happening in the magazine will be from the readers. If you have a short story or a short comic, send it! You have a drawing of Pinhead having sex with a werewolf? You're weird, but send it! The fan section will play a big role in the magazine, along with the articles from regular and guest contributors. I also want to spotlight a collection and its owner in each issue. There are a lot of us out there who have spent a ton of time and money putting together a collection we're proud of and we need the world to see it! I'm hoping to have the first issue out around Halloween. It will be mail order or perhaps I'll be around at different conventions with them.

If you have any interest in being a contributor to the magazine or have something you'd like to submit to show the world comment on here or the Facebook page (which will also be overhauled soon I hope) with your email address and what it is you're interested in doing.

Thanks for reading.

Cursed - A Short Film

2011-05-08T21:54:00.000-04:00

A buddy of mine asked me to review a short film he worked on and in and who am I to say no? If anyone has any movies they've worked on or acted in and want it reviewed let me know.

CURSED was written, produced and directed by Ryan Callaway, who has written a few novels as well. It follows a young woman (Mary Lelina) as she investigates a series of crimes that are believed to be Satanic rituals. As the police and criminal profilers (Greg Pantaleo) aren't coming up with any leads she experiences a series of strange phenomenons until they get too close for comfort.

Clocking in at just over 18 minutes the story is nicely paced, getting in enough information on the background so that we can have a complete story. The actors are usually competent and do a decent job. I've seen worse in other low budget horror films. The directing is serviceable, never striking you with awe, and never making you shake your head. There is one scene I particularly liked, involving a home intruder which is creepy in it's simplicity. The music was one of the high points for me, it set the mood of the film from the start and never lets you feel at ease. While you are aware that you are watching an independent film done entirely by those who are still in the learning stages, there is no shortage of passion, and this is a good early step.

Django Unchained Script - Reaction

2011-05-06T00:09:00.000-04:00

So Quentin Tarantino's new script has leaked. DJANGO UNCHAINED is his homage to spaghetti westerns. It is as much a slave revenge tale as much (probably more) than a spaghetti western.

The script is 164 pages long, and in a few cases I can already see the areas that should be cut. I won't spoil anything (it is out there if you want to read it) but there are some areas where Tarantino strokes his own ego a bit too much and the story suffers from it. To be fair the story seems well paced other than a couple of instances of QT being QT. The action, even if I could tell which movies he is lifting it from already (which he's infamous for doing) is exciting. The characters are decently interesting, with none of them really soaring to Hans Landa levels. The dialogue flows as always. And aside from the typical downfalls of Tarantino films, that being that the majority of his movies were already made in the 60s and 70s, it is a good script. Hell, he name drops Leone and Corbucci in the script. I have no doubt it will be an entertaining movie that is successful. I just hope that while praise for Quentin roles in people go back and discover the films that... inspired.... him on this one. Because until he makes a movie that is truly his own, the great films that he loves so much to remake deserve praise as well.

If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968)

2011-05-05T17:40:00.000-04:00

Sartana is one of the biggest names in spaghetti westerns. He ranks up there with Django, Ringo and Sabata. Like the others there were a plethora of unrelated films that had characters using his name or his name in the title with no such character to be found. IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH is the first of five official Sartana films (Though some argue there are six official films).

The film opens as a stagecoach is attacked by Morgan(Klaus Kinski) and his gang of bandits who shoot down the passengers. Sartana (Gianni Garko) arrives on the scene and kills everyone except for Morgan who gets away. Shortly after another stagecoach is attacked by General Mendoza's men and they are ambushed by Lasky (William Berger) and his men. The chest is taken from the back of the wagon but Lasky murders his gang with a Gatling gun. After opening the box to find it contains rocks instead of the intended gold, Lasky heads to town to a local banker and crooked politician to collect his payment. Sartana meets Lasky in a card game and beats him out of thousands of dollars. The other men in the game confront Sartana outside and meet their deaths. Lasky is a bit more patient in the situation.

Lasky sends his partner Morgan after Sartana but Morgan's arrogance with his throwing knives costs him his life. Meanwhile, Lasky is blackmailing the two men bankrolling his crimes while in search of the missing gold. The men inform Mendoza that it is Lasky who killed his gang. Mendoza captures Lasky who tells him that only Sartana knows of the location of the treasure. Our crooked businessman and politician are busy trying to out think the other to get all of the gold for themselves. Eventually the grand finale of gun play between occurs in the funeral parlor between Sartana and Lasky. And we all know IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH.

IF YOU MEET SARTANA... is a very entertaining, if a bit confusing Italian western from director Gianfranco Parolini (SABATA trilogy). The story is a bit all over the place with the multiple subplots. There are enough turncoat moments that if this was a WWE event I'd be hoarse from yelling "Heel turn!". That said the action never stops and once the story hits its stride it is a fun ride to see it play out. Parolini doesn't stray too far from the path of classic western direction but there are some playful moments with the camera. Garko is perfect in the title role and his gun play and antics are beyond fun. And hell, we even get the crazy comedic coffin maker old man character. I would have liked more out of Kinski's role, who has minimal screen time though. But how bad can a movie be when the lead character's first line is "I am your pallbearer"?

When all is said and done this is a great first step in to a series I'd been putting off for way too long. I cannot wait for I AM SARTANA YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH.

8/10

A Nightmare On Elm St. (2010)

2011-05-03T09:51:00.000-04:00

I'm going to keep the first entry of May short because I'm working with one good hand right now. I'm not upset over that either because I'd probably get pissed off if I had to write anything of substantial length about this movie.

In 1984 Wes Craven introduced us to Freddy Krueger the child murderer who has since become one of horror's biggest icons. Last year we got the inevitable remake and from the early stages it seemed doomed for failure. Robert Englund who had embodied Freddy in every ELM ST. movie up to this point had been replaced by Jackie Earle Haley (Bad News Bears, Watchmen), the early makeup tests looked awful and the teasers didn't do any better. After an awful word of mouth I decided to wait it out, no amount of morbid curiosity would get me in to a theater for it.

We all know the plot, Fred Krueger worked at the preschool of the main characters and got a little to close with more than a few of them. The parents wanting to to save their kids from the lifelong memories decide to handle it themselves and burn down the building Krueger is hiding in. Flash forward several years and the kids are in high school now, and Krueger is ready to get his own revenge. Krueger haunts and attacks in their dreams, so no sleep for these kiddies or they're dead like Fred.

Who did the world piss off for us to deserve this movie? Simply put this movie is fucking terrible. The writing sucks, instead of making a dark film like the original it simply comes off as a late sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer through the majority of the film. Its corny, it is filled with sad attempts at the one liners used in the sequels of the original franchise, Jackie Earle Haley's makeup looks like he was hit in the face with a frying pan a few hundred times and every cliche is there including an attempt at most fake jump scares (and real ones) in a single movie. None of them being effective. The majority of Krueger's lines sounds like they were added in post production and no one bothered to mix them properly, they stand out like a sore thumb.

The movie does have an upside though. It made me realize how good the original truly is. It is everything the remake isn't and never could be. If I'm your last bastion of hope from getting you to not watch this movie then heed my warning.

1/10

Gingerdead Man 2: Passion Of The Crust (2008)

2011-04-26T21:53:00.000-04:00

Charles Band... what a guy. If you are familiar with Full Moon Pictures you are familiar with Charlie and some of the stories surrounding him and his movie studio. From successful and now classic horror films like Re-Animator and From Beyond to his successful and cult Puppetmaster series to the abysmal films that make up the majority of his filmography that only a sadomasochist would enjoy, the man has been a part of hundreds of movies. Love him or hate him he gets his movies made and distributed. The GINGERDEAD MAN series may never reach the status of genre classic but they have been entertaining.

GINGERDEAD MAN 2: PASSION OF THE CRUST is a sequel to 2005's original which was directed by Charles Band, 3 years later came this equally as silly movie which was directed by Silvia St. Croix, which is an Alan Smithee type deal. Alan Smithee was a name directors were credited as when they didn't want their name attached to a film. Whoever the director was, they did a decent job making a Full Moon movie. GINGERDEAD MAN 2 has the all of the expected fare and follies. There is plenty of laughs both intentional and not, and plenty of drag in the story during a movie with an extremely modest runtime. 72 minutes of movie is closer to a single hour once the backstory of the original and end credits are accounted for.

The movie follows the titled character, a killer gingerbread cookie possessed by the soul of a murderer. After transferring his soul to another character and being baked back into a cookie in the first entry to the series the cookie is transported to the set of Cheatum Studios' newest picture in a bakery box. Needing a body to transport his soul to the killer cookie finds a spell in one of the movie studio's prop books which begins his rampage of terror. It is up to an aging movie star who is sick and tired of working for a movie studio that makes crappy movies to save anyone that hasn't already fallen victim to THE GINGERDEAD MAN.

Where do I even begin? From a film making standpoint this movie (like most Full Moon movies) is awful. The thing is, that is the point of these movies. Charles Band knows exactly the type of movies he makes. They're silly, over the top and certainly not for everyone. The majority are truly painful to sit through, but occasionally he makes one that is really fun to watch. GINGERDEAD MAN 2 falls somewhere in the middle. It starts out with a corny yet oddly silly fairy tale opening, a song about the cookie to the tune of Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation", and then spends the duration between corny humor, over the top kills and slooooooooow parts. It does have a certain charm about it similar to the first film, that puts it among the better Full Moon movies of recent years.

Is this movie for everyone? Certainly not. You'll know if it is even worth checking out by reading the plot. Some people like this nonsense, most hate it. I gave it a chance with a few drinks and had some good laughs and a decent time. If they could just get someone that could write a solid 70 minutes instead of a solid 35 minutes they'd have a recipe for success (get it?).

5/10

Mausoleum (1983)

2011-04-19T20:34:00.000-04:00

There are plenty of films that you may have never seen but hear rumblings about from time to time and don't see anywhere but on the bootlegger's tables at conventions. For whatever reason they have notoriety and almost a mystique about them. You anxiously await the chance to see the film that all of your fellow horror fans tell you about, whether they've seen it or not. For years MAUSOLEUM was one such title for me. And while it slipped out of my "Oh my God must see" realm of thinking years ago it has remained in the back of my mind.

Susan Nomed's mother dies when Susan (Bobbie Bresee) is just ten years old. At the funeral she runs away from her new guardian, Aunt Cora (Laura Hippe) and hides in the family mausoleum which is cursed to all Nomed women. Susan becomes unknowingly possessed by the evil within. Now 30, Susan is married and regularly seeing her psychiatrist but with each passing day is losing more and more control. It is up to the psychiatrist to come to terms with the reality of the curse and help Susan before its too late.

MAUSOLEUM is directed by Michael Dugan (who wouldn't direct another movie for 16 years) and he makes it in the true style of the time he was working in. Heavy on tits and gore and short on everything else, MAUSOLEUM is a prime example of what comes to mind first when you think 1980s horror film. The acting is sub par to put it nicely, though this does lend to a few humorous characters. The writing is amateur and the pacing suffers greatly because of it. The story takes 20-30 minute breaks in progression and the movie just plods along between boob shots or gore shots, which more often than not go hand in hand. This movie could easily be 70 minutes long and give us the same result, probably with the same shitty, boring ending. The only real positive are the make up effects from John Carl Buechler (Friday The 13th series, Nightmare On Elm St. series).

While MAUSOLEUM certainly disappointed it wasn't all bad. Some of the kills were creative and a telekinetic demon bitch was a cool enough villain. There just seemed like a real lack of inspiration from anyone on set. Some movies gain the mystique from simply being unavailable for long periods of time. Or from getting a release which happens to be cut. Or from people that saw it as kids and haven't seen it in many years and only remember that fond viewing of their youth. MAUSOLEUM checks off all three of those. It should get a proper uncut release like the one I watched. The prints are obviously out there and there is a market for the movie since the out of print DVD is going for big, big numbers. Release the movie, let everyone see it and decide that this one probably should have stayed ahem... buried.

3/10

The Brotherhood of Satan (1971)/Strait-Jacket (1964)

2011-04-18T14:43:00.000-04:00

Here is a quick double entry on a pair of horror films that have little in common and nothing to do with each other that I just recently watched for the first time.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN is a 1971 horror film from director Bernard McVeety and written, produced and co-starring L. Q. Jones. It follows Ben (Charles Bateman), his daughter K.T. (Geri Reischl) and girlfriend Nicky (Ahna Capri) who are on a road trip of K.T.'t grandparents house until they see an accident on the side of the road and notify the sheriff of the nearest town. They are mobbed by seemingly the entire town and barely escape. Shortly after they wreck their car and have to walk back to the town for help. It is revealed that much of the town is wrapped up in black magic and have been abducting children for rituals.

The movie is pretty damn awful. It clocks in around 95 minutes but take the away the useless nonsense like dream sequences and conversations that go nowhere and you have a movie of about 65-70 minutes on your hand. Even then it wouldn't be very good because so little happens that it is hard to pay attention, let alone care. The direction is bad, the music sucks and the acting is wooden. The end is pretty much the only part worth watching for a rather creepy Satanic black mass scene.

STRAIT-JACKET is a bit more noteworthy source, William Castle, who directed such films as the original House On Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts. Lucy Harbin (Joan Crawford) has spent 20 years locked away in an asylum after murdering her husband and his mistress with an axe after finding them in bed together. She comes home to her daughter who is now in her early-mid 20s and is planning to marry her boyfriend soon. It quickly becomes clear that not all is right with Lucy, and perhaps it has spread on to other members of the family or friends. A series of axe murders that are eerily similar to those 20 years earlier occur and its every person for themselves in figuring out who is sane and who isn't.

William Castle is very hit or miss with me. He's well known for his gimmicks that he used to get people to see his movies and some are certainly better than others. I simply find some of his movies to be awful. STRAIT-JACKET wasn't doing anything for me until about three quarters through the movie when it started to turn around. The climax sold me that this was a solid movie. I won't highly recommend it but I will recommend it to someone looking for some psychological horror they haven't seen before.

The Violent Professionals (1973) - The Grindhouse Experience Chapter 9

2011-04-12T22:03:00.000-04:00

The crime and gangster film was a major player in the international film market in the 1970s with entries from all over the world flooding the market. Audiences worldwide loved to see variations on the mob, mafia, and yakuza movies in violent ways. Sergio Martino had a few entries into the genre among THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS including Gambling City.

When policeman Giorgio (Luc Merenda, Hostel 2) is suspended for shooting and killing a pair of train prisoners who escaped in a spree of murders he is relocated to Milan and witnesses the death of his Police Chief and is hell bent on revenge. Giorgio goes undercover and rises through the ranks of Italian crime to become the driver for the mob as he keeps his cover to allow his vengeance to take down the crime rings of the city that claimed the life of a respected policeman (Silvano Tranquilli of Black Belly of the Tarantula, So Sweet So Dead).

From start to finish the film is very well paced. After an extremely violent and gun-ho opening 20 minutes the movie never quite reaches that level of violence again however the story and action more than makes up for it. Plenty of shoot outs, car chases and fights to keep one invested in the story which isn't groundbreaking but is capable of carrying the movie. The acting and writing is what someone would expect from an Italian crime film of the 70s, spotty but acceptable and at times even good. The soundtrack is classic for the period and will have you humming along each time a new track kicks in. Sergio Martino is best known for his ventures into the giallo, cannibal and horror fields but this crime film, much like his western Mannaja is a welcome change of pace for him. He is far from perfection but as far as this reviewer goes, his name is usually enough to give a film a fighting chance.

THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS has enough entertainment to satisfy someone that would enjoy bullshit like The Fast And The Furious and enough story for someone that enjoys Martino's giallo The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh (which may be Martino's finest effort). Its not perfect but is more than worthy of mention when speaking of the Italo-Crime genre (and damn, does it have some fine car chases).

On a quick note- The transfer again is from a 3rd or 4th generation VHS with tracking problems, popping and hissing during the audio and an extremely unnatural letter boxed presentation but the movie was still good enough to not worry too much about it. This set proves to be the smelliest shit I've ever come across with presentation in mind. Since the set continues to be awful in its presentation of the movies, I won't even take up your time to express my thoughts on it unless it surprises me and is somehow good. So if I don't mention the transfer or overall quality of the print its because it is awful.

7/10

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011)

2011-04-06T13:22:00.000-04:00

For the past few years fans have been eagerly awaiting the finished product of co-writer and director Jason Eisener's film that some of us first got a glimpse of as a faux trailer during the theatrical run of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse. Four years later and we have the actual feature film of HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN and it doesn't disappoint.

Rutger Hauer stars as the title character who rides into a city best known as "Scum Town" on the rails (as any hobo would) and quickly finds that the town is controlled by a criminal known as The Drake (Brian Downey) and his two sons Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman). The cops are dirty, the people live in fear and the homeless community is constantly exploited for money or dirty deeds. With little more than a dream of buying a lawnmower to start his own business Hobo sees just how nasty the city really is. Sticking up for a young prostitute named Abby (Molly Dunsworth) that is being harassed by one of The Drake's sons, Hobo throws himself into the middle of the dirt and corruption the city is filled with. After the cops help attack him to get revenge for his act of defiance Abby offers him a bed to sleep in for the night and friendship.

After Hobo gathers enough money to buy a mower from the pawn shop he becomes a victim of a hold up while in the store. When the masked men threaten to kill a crying baby Hobo has had enough and grabs a shotgun from the shelf and quickly ends the situation, then turns his attention to cleaning up the city. When no criminal is safe there is plenty of bloodshed and it all leads to a showdown with Drake and The Plague, a duo of heavily armed and armored bikers who look like they came straight from an 80s Escape From New York rip off (love it) and drag coffins behind their motorcycles much like Django.

Where do I even start to sum up my thoughts? From top to bottom the movie is spectacular. It captures the feel of the movies it is an homage of perfectly and gives winks and nods to many genres and specific films. Eisener's direction is great, with a rich color palette throughout and using the few locations in the movie to make it feel much larger than it actually is. The synth driven score is aided by a couple of well placed songs that feels like it was straight from the 70s or 80s. The effects are so over the top at time its ridiculous, but never in a bad way. They're well done and will have you laughing and cheering. Pacing is spot on as well, clocking in at a brisk 85 minutes there isn't much time for a lull in the action or story. This is what Machete should have been. This is closer to 42nd St. in New York during the 70s than Grindhouse could ever hope to be, and I love Grindhouse.

I don't know what else to say except that HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN is a fun fucking movie but serious in tone so it never borders on being hokey. It was worth the 4 year wait and will have endless replay value. It amazes me that this movie was made in 2010 and is getting a wide(ish) release. When it comes to a theater near you, go see it. When you see it on demand on whatever cable provider you have, order it. Buy the DVD or Blu Ray. Just see it. It is worth your time and money.

12(gauge)/10

Humanoids From The Deep (1980)

2011-03-30T22:46:00.000-04:00

This is what happens when The Creature From The Black Lagoon hangs out with Ben Roethlisberger for too long. HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP is from Roger Corman's New World Pictures and that right there should tell you enough that you know just what kind of movie you are about to watch.

The blue collar town of Noyo is highly dependent on their Salmon fishing industry and when The CanCo company has proposed to open a cannery that they promise will hugely expand the business for the fishermen. The Native American population is highly against the damage it will cause to the local ecosystem and it is a driving force for most of the main characters. When the CanCo companies test tanks break during a storm DNA altered Salmon are released into the wild and the larger fish that ate them have now mutated into human-like creatures with great brain capabilities that want to mate with human women.

The movie has a brisk run time of 82 minutes and it moves swiftly through them. The pacing is spot on, following Corman's formula for successful film making we never get a lull in the action (or boobs) of more than a few minutes. The acting is surprisingly good for the most part and the direction is solid. Much of the exploitative moments in the film were shot with the 2nd unit crew because the original director Barbara Peeters had shot a more shadow based suspense movie that lacked the critical ingredients for a Corman production. The original title for HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP was Beneath The Darkness in order to play it off as the suspenseful mystery that Peeters was directing for so that they could land some name actors. The special effects in HUMANOIDS are fantastic. The suits are convincing, far from too rubbery and they have good movement. The gore, which is plentiful, is stomach churning in the best way. Excellent prosthetic work here from Rob Bottin (The Thing, Robocop). There is even a creepy score from future Academy Award winner James Horner (Titanic, Braveheart). And if the ending doesn't make you stand up and cheer in the name of all things ridiculous and awesome you can go to hell (not really, but you should be cheering.)

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP is the whole package . Its fun (as any Corman should be), its scary, violent, action packed and sexy (as any Corman movie should be). Hell there is even a scene that may have been taken straight from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. I only wish I had seen it sooner.

9.5/10

I'd like to quickly add in that Shout! Factory has done an incredible job restoring these Corman Cult Classics for their newer Blu Ray and DVD releases. These are B movies getting the Criterion treatment. It's a real shame that the Blu sales haven't been good enough to warrant future titles being released to get the HD treatment they deserve. Just go buy them, you won't be disappointed.

Spasmo (1974)

2011-03-24T23:39:00.000-04:00

I adore the giallo genre. Italian thrillers that are usually as high on substance as they are on style and sex. They are fine examples of a perfect marriage of class and sleaze. Food stamps meeting Donald Trump if you will. They are fine film making while appealing to those who want nothing more than to see teen campers killed by a guy in a hockey mask. Of course not every title is this great, or even worth watching, but as a whole, I simply love them. It is a treat to get to see one for the first time as good Umberto Lenzi's SPASMO.

Christian (Robert Hoffman) is main stock hold and part heir to a plastics empire headed by his brother Fritz (Ivan Rassimov) which was left to them by their late father. He also seems to have his entire world turning upside down and becoming a sort of "bizarro" version of itself. The people in his life seem familiar but he can't put a finger on who they are. Their intentions may or may not be true and he can't figure out why. As everything starts to unravel he finds out that nobody is quite who they say they are, and their intentions certainly don't have his best interest at hand.

It can be quite hard to sum up a gialli and not give anything away, SPASMO makes it just a bit more difficult than usual. The true treasure here is in the story. Director Umberto Lenzi (Man From Deep River, Nightmare City) refrains from using the genre staples of a black gloved killer, relying heavily on gore and sex and goes straight for the psychological. And while I'll never complain about the black gloved killer, his choices are spot on. The story will mess with your mind as much as it does for our protagonist. The giallo genre is built heavily on the reveal of the killer and motive and SPASMO has a few reveals, each making the story better and better. It is a prime example of how less can be more.

Movies are a funny thing in the sense that even if you can't find a true flaw in a movie you may not love it simply because it just didn't sit right with you for whatever reason. For me SPASMO straddles the bottom tier of grade A gialli and the top tier of grade B. Maybe I just love the black gloved, highly exploitative examples that made the genre famous. Whatever the reason is I wouldn't say SPASMO is something you have to see to bust in to the genre, but it isn't far behind. In an interview Lenzi has said that for American markets George Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead) was hired to film gory scenes to better fit the genre, I don't see it aiding the film in any way. While I have no doubt of Romero's abilities to film a great scene (especially during his early days) I think SPASMO is as good as it possibly could be. It would be interesting to see the added scenes though, just to compare. In the same interview Lenzi clearly expresses his disdain towards Romero for that specific reason and claims he would never shoot additional scenes for another director's film if a production company came to him to do it. I'm not one to say either way. However he would add that he started the Italian thriller genre we have come to call "giallo" which I would love to have a conversation with him about. I respect him as a film maker, and I'm shamelessly a big fan of his work, but until someone proves otherwise the two Italian maestros Mario Bava and Dario Argento are responsible for starting and making famous the genre respectively. That said Lenzi certainly added some very worthy chapters to the story of the giallo which clings to life to this day and no one can refute that.

8/10

Earthquake 7.9 (1980 )- Grindhouse Experience chapter 8

2011-03-22T23:29:00.000-04:00

Ugghhhh... I'm not even at the half way point of this project and my patience are already wearing thin for these movies. Not all have been awful, and there has even been a couple surprises so far but the overall package of them, from the films themselves to their transfer and framing is just a true test of patience.

Watching this movie on this particular day seemed like it could have been a sobering experience. A film about a massive earthquake crippling Tokyo just a few days after an earthquake (a full point bigger than the one in the movie's title) leveled a large part of Japan. The first 45 minutes of EARTHQUAKE 7.9 made sure that any emotions that life could carry into the viewing of this movie were thrown out the window. It had to have been the most melodramatic thing I've ever seen outside of a Lifetime channel movie. For a movie about a giant earthquake it takes until the halfway point of the movie to get to it. And the first half is bad music and lover's quarreling. Eventually we get to a decent low budget natural disaster survival movie. The effects were decent but the acting stayed way too dramatic for the duration.

Possibly the biggest problem that EARTHQUAKE 7.9, also known as Deathquake, Megaforce 7.9, had was that it just dragged on and on. The second half wasn't paced poorly but after the torture of the first half you had lost so much interest that you were hoping that the credits would start rolling at the end of each sentence. And once again the transfer sucked and the framing was worse.

4/10

The Mask Of Fu Manchu (1932)

2011-03-14T21:23:00.000-04:00

I've been in a classic horror mood of late, knocking out several I've never seen before including DEVIL DOLL and MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, both from director Tod Browning. Next up was Charles Brabin's THE MASK OF FU MANCHU starring Boris Karloff as the title villain.

The race to find the tomb of Genghis Khan is on between Egyptologist Lionel Barton (Lawrence Grant) and the diabolical Fu Manchu who plans to use the sword and mask found in the tomb to claim himself as the reincarnation of the vicious ruler and lead the people of Asia and the middle east into a war to exterminate and enslave the white race. Shortly after, Barton is captured by Fu Manchu's men, and a group, including Barton's daughter and her fiancee set out to rescue him. Fu Manchu will stop at nothing to get his hands on Khan's relics to gain his power and start his war.

This is a nice example of a classic horror/adventure movie and while it may not be as well known as the Universal movies of the period (this was MGM) it is only a step below... maybe not even a full step. There are some great set pieces, the acting is solid top to bottom, and there were some creepy sequences such as men dressed as mummies simultaneously emerging from coffins in a museum to commit the kidnapping. The real star of the show here is Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu. You know him better as Frankenstein's Monster and The Mummy but he is just as good here. The man was capable of carrying on a conversation without saying a word. He does have plenty of lines here, and delivers them beautifully. He fully embodied the madman and you never thought of his other, more famous monsters.

THE MASK OF FU MANCHU pushed some boundaries for early film. There is an awful lot of racism going on, both in plot and dialogue. Stuff that would still have people in an uproar today. Whether its simply for the movie or a not so subtle undertone that the director and writers wanted is up for debate but it works well for the film. Unfortunately it was removed from the film for many years, so until fairly recently it wasn't easy to see the film in it's true form.

If you're looking for some classic horror that you may not have seen before this is a good one to check out.

A very solid 8/10

Flavia The Heretic (1974)

2011-03-05T15:07:00.000-05:00

FLAVIA THE HERETIC is a film that has been on my radar for some time now, but until today I had never gotten around to seeing it. The nunsploitation genre is one I find every bit interesting as I do entertaining. So it was quite a joy to be able to pop in the Synapse DVD of one of the most notorious films in the genre.

Gianfranco Mingozzi directs Florinda Bolkan (DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING, LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN) as the title character who is a nun in an Italian convent in the year 1600. After the convent is invaded by the Cult of the Tarantula who defile the alter with orgies, and other general blasphemy and insanity, Flavia begins to hallucinate and can no longer bare the Religious oppression that church life, and Christian life has forced upon her. She flees the convent and rebels until she is captured and punished for her sins.

That in a nutshell is FLAVIA THE HERETIC. You really do need to see it to get the full picture however. There are all the staples of the exploitation film- gore, copious amounts of nudity, taking a subject matter and using it in contrast to how it is normally viewed. FLAVIA goes deeper. It is obvious Mingozzi has something to say about feminism, more so the dominant status of males in the world and religion, and the inherent oppression that organized religion has always had. It is a well made film, with something to please many crowds. Gorehounds will have their bloody fun, the midnight movie crowd gets some surrealism and the arthouse crowd gets a film with deeper meaning. It really struck on every level with me, personal feelings towards any commentary the film had aside. It was successful in getting its message across, but most importantly it was successfully entertaining. What good is a message in a movie if you don't give a shit about the movie itself?

Everything works for this movie from the acting, to the direction, the set decoration is superb and the score is top notch (as expected from a future Oscar winner). I would say it gives Ken Russell's THE DEVILS a run for its money on best nunsploitation, but it does fall a bit short of that landmark film.

9/10

Grindhouse Experience Chapter 7: Poseidon Explosion (1973)

2011-03-02T22:33:00.000-05:00

The Grindhouse Experience set has been a bit different through every movie. Some quality, some garbage, some laughs, some moments of me wanting to slam my head into a wall. Poseidon Explosion is another head scratcher.

Made in 1973, its title is an attempt to cash in that doesn't fit the film at all. It makes you think cheap... rip off... throw away... Its really none of them. I expected a large boat blowing up due to some crazy heist or plot to gain money or something that isn't too far fetched in the world of cheap cinema. Instead its a dramatic thriller about a city trying to save their region from a giant ship that is on fire and filled with highly flammable and explosive cargo. The problem is that for the duration of the movie it was the same damn thing over and over. A man on the ship yelling at other men on board about the fire, then yelling to the shore about how it "could blow any minute" then some drama in the town about it.

Its honestly on repeat for the vast majority of the run time. It wasn't poorly made, in fact its one of the better made film in this set so far. Its just painful to sit through. My attention span was about 30 seconds at a time for this movie because of it's repetition. The IMDB page says it has a runtime of 112 minutes but this copy was only around 80 minutes so I don't know which is closer to actuality since IMDB has been known to be wrong but it felt like something was missing. And honestly, on this night, that wasn't a bad thing. The 80 minutes dragged on and on. It could be a case of me not being ready or in the mood for what I was getting but I had no desire to see any more.

Maybe on another day it will sit better with me but that other day will be years away.

GIALLO (2009)

2011-02-23T20:28:00.000-05:00

GIALLO was written by Jim Agnew and Sean Keller. The screenwriters wrote this script specifically for Dario Argento as an homage to the genre he made famous with movies like THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and DEEP RED. I don't know if these guys ever saw one of the early gialli from the 60s and 70s but this just does not live up to them.

The basic story here is a deformed man abducts beautiful tourists in Rome to torture and kill them. Adrien Brody plays Enzo, the lead detective on the case. When Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner) comes to visit her fashion model sister who is abducted shortly after, she is thrown into the mix of hunting the killer as well. What ensues is little more than your run of the mill thriller. This is to blame mostly on the screenwriters who seem to have no grasp on what a giallo is all about. Any tension that could be built is lost every time the killer is shown because he's just so goddamn ridiculous to the point of being comical. Brody is never given much to do as the lead, and with a man with as much talent as he has that is a real shame. Linda is a cliche in and out who tries her hardest to hit every one she can.

Aside from all that, one of the biggest downsides to the movie movie is that it is really tame. For an homage to movies that were widely known for their graphic bloody violence, GIALLO has very little. You'll get a couple of scenes that are satisfying in that manner but they are few and far between. Also, most gialli were sexy movies, while this is about as unsexy as it gets. I won't hold Dario Argento without any blame, while his direction certainly didn't hurt the movie, it didn't add much to it. For a man that built his legend on wild camera work, intensely beautiful lighting, and maddening soundtracks we get but a small taste of it here in very sporadic spots.

GIALLO had a troubled production process. All the way from casting to its release on DVD. Vincent Gallo was set to play the killer until he pulled out of the project when his ex-fiancee Asia Argento was cast as the female lead. Asia would pull out after becoming pregnant. Ray Liotta was originally cast in the role of Enzo, and would eventually be replaced by Brody. The movie would then hang in distribution purgatory when even Dario Argento himself didn't have a clue what was going on with it. When it was released it had apparently been re-cut by the producers who seemed to have a very large portion of control during the entire process and Argento was not at all happy with what appeared on the screen and has since more or less disowned the project. And to top it off shortly after the movie came out on DVD it was pulled from shelves when Adrien Brody had to sue the producers because he was never paid in full for his role in the film. A couple months later they reached a settlement and the movie was again available on disc in the US. All of this could play a big part in why GIALLO falls flat, but I'll still lay a very large majority of blame on the two screenwriters who failed to deliver anything that anyone, no matter the talent could make great.

I'll be the first to admit that I get excited over Dario Argento. His recent films certainly have had mixed results and just as mixed reaction but when he has a new movie coming out I clamor for the chance to see it. GIALLO isn't his best effort, that much is certain. It fails as an homage to the fantastic horror thrillers of decades past, but it is competent thriller. I'd love to say that this is vintage Argento, but when you add up everything that went on with it, no matter who was at fault, it is what it is.

5/10

The Grindhouse Experience Chapter 6: The Executioner Part II (1984)

2011-02-22T01:39:00.000-05:00

When you think of a movie that is so bad it's good what do you think of? Troll 2? The Room? Pieces? A large portion of Troma's library? Well... Its time to add The Executioner Part 2 to that list.

Director James Bryan (Lady Streetfighter, Don't Go In The Woods) delivers this action/exploitation film about a Vietnam vet who is fed up with the crime in his neighborhood and takes action to fix it. This is a story we saw throughout the reign of the drive-in and gritty grindhouse theater. It is violent, obscene and tries its hardest to be nasty. It just never reaches the level of "nasty". It is an obvious cash in on more than a couple movies of its time. It has a pretty hilarious Rambo monologue scene ripoff and countless scenes of violence that are done far more effectively in hundreds of other movies. The charm of this movie comes in its entire package. You'll recognize almost everything that happens from one place or another. Even if you can't put your finger on where it came from you'll know it.

The Executioner Part II sounds like a sequel, right? Well, there is no part 1. That's right, this movie is titled 'Part 2' for a reason, but not because it is a sequel. Don't ask me why, because I have no idea. It is just one of the reasons it has such an entertaining charm to it. Actors voices change in the middle of sentences, laughably underacted scenes, surprisingly overacted scenes... you name it. Its fun. I'd be willing to bet all of my worldly possessions it wasn't meant to have this charm but it does.

The poster shows what would have made this move and instant cult classic, laser guns, exploding helicopters, an entire city on fire in the background... As it is this is a movie that seems to be (very) slowly building it's place in history as a cult classic for being so bad its good.

Just don't forget the beers.

Jean Rollin double feature

2011-02-17T16:59:00.000-05:00

Over the last couple of nights I've watched a couple later Jean Rollin vampire flicks so I figured why not throw together a quick double feature review of them.

The late French auteur Jean Rollin was known for his surreal style of horror films. With a dream like quality they were often filled with plenty of nudity and blood but with an artistic touch that lifted him above his contemporaries such as Jess Franco and Lucio Fulci (this is in no way a knock to either of those fine directors). Short on budget and excessive on "what the fuck?" Rollin made some classics... and some absolute garbage. He passed away this past December of 2010 and it was a blow to the Euro-horror world. His later works certainly had a generous mix of ups and downs.
I started the 2 night double feature with his 1997 Two Orphan Vampires. A story about two blind vampire sisters who can see at night when they hunt around the city for blood. They live in a Catholic orphanage until they are adopted by a renowned eye doctor. This movie was a big question mark for me. I wanted to like it... a lot. I thought the atmosphere was thick and I really did feel like I was watching this happen while dreaming. There were a cast of other monsters such as a werewolf and a demon bat thing, but we are never shown them in beast form, they just inform our orphans of what they are. The story doesn't really go too far... there is a beginning, middle and end but there isn't much to any of it. The movie is restrained by Rollin's standards. Two shots of nudity which are very brief and bloodshed is restricted to being seen around the mouths of the girls after they attack for the most part. Still, the more I think about it the more I can focus on the positives. I wanted to like it more than I did and I really wanted to have a reason to like it more than I did. Not incredible but worth a watch if you want something different.

Last night was Fiancee Of Dracula, another vampire flick like those that made Rollin a name among horror enthusiasts. I sum up this movie by calling it ridiculous. In a good way though. There are bat-shit crazy nuns, vampires appearing out of clocks, a baby eating ogress, a midget jester who is the lover of another vampire, witches, a Van Helsing like hunter and his young trigger happy assistant... it goes on and on. The basic story is simple... sort of. Isabelle is set to become the bride of Dracula and the nuns who are being controlled by Dracula's influence from beyond protect her but want her to hurry up and get it over with so they can go back to being normal or so they say. Just about every other character is out to protect Isabelle and make sure her marriage goes off without a hitch. (Pun!) There are twists and turns and an awful lot of stuff that doesn't make a lick of sense. There is a dream like atmosphere of course and more blood and considerable more nudity than Two Orphan Vampires. It eventually makes enough sense for a story to come together but don't think about it too much. I enjoyed watching it and it does have some classic Jean Rollin touches.

These films certainly could have balanced each other out though. Fiancee could use a more central character like the orphans but TOV could use a more gratuitous everything. There is no hiding that these movies are up to the standards of Rollin's more famous and plain better movies . That is also to say that these are far superior to the utter shit that is Zombie Lake. The man had a style, it better suited some movies than others but the man knew what he was doing and did it. These movies are worth a watch to at least see some craziness and sheer lunacy.

It was a little late, and these certainly won't be remembered as his best films but this will serve as my tribute viewing for Jean Rollin. I look forward to digging deeper into his library in the near future.

RIP

The Grindhouse Experience Chapter 5: Confessions Of A Police Captain (1971)

2011-02-10T02:59:00.001-05:00

"I'm being accused by a man with an insane mother... Then I'll call you a faggot!" While this is one of the more ridiculous (and entertaining) lines I've ever heard in a movie this film is actually far more serious in tone than that line would ever have you believe. Part 5 of the Grindhouse Experience is one of the titles I was least excited about seeing when I scanned the list. Confessions Of A Police Captain just didn't have the so-bad-its-good ring to it that some of the others in the set did. What a pleasant surprise it was to see some familiar names both in front of and behind the camera during the opening credits.

Director Damiano Damiani is perhaps known best for A Bullet For The General, a high quality spaghetti western. He also directed the 2nd film in the Amityville Horror series. Here he lends his talents to Confessions Of A Police Captain, a good cop-bad cop drama. Franco Nero (Django, Die Hard 2) stars as Traini, a District Attorney who is investigating the mafia. The plot gets rolling when a man named D'Ambrosio has an attempt on his life. It is quickly revealed that D'Ambrosio is a higher up within the mafia. Traini and Commissioner Bonavia (Martin Balsam) are our central characters who seem like opposites at first glance but digging a bit deeper could lead you to believe they are more alike than you'd think.

Damiani creates a corrupt and morally questionable political world with more than a couple layers to it. Each character has hero and villain moments and they're believable, which is a credit to the outstanding performances from Balsam and Nero. Riz Ortolani adds his drama building score at the right moments to keep us on the edge of our seat. And by the end we are still left questioning just exactly who's who. Damiani strays from the tendencies most Italian crime movies have, giving us a well paced, straight forward film that even while lacking on the uberviolence still keeps us engaged.

I set out with low expectations for this one, and came away with a solid movie.

7/10

So Sweet, So Dead (1972)

2011-02-08T21:55:00.000-05:00

The giallo is a perfect type of film to blend class and trash. The classiness of a well made, well written film, with the trashiness that we've all come to love (or hate) in European horror. That isn't to say that all gialli have class, many don't and just as many of those are all the better for it. However some do have class, and So Sweet, So Dead has some of that class.

Director Roberto Bianchi Montero wasn't afraid to jump on any bandwagons. Whatever the current trend in Italian film was at the time determined what kind of films he would be making. Westerns, sex, Mondo documentaries, he did a little bit of everything it seems. He made good films though and while he may not have brought anything new to the table in his 1972 giallo, he took all the trademarks the giallo is known for and used them beautifully. The sexy women who are naked more often than not, the black gloved killer, the red herrings, all are common to the genre and this film.

There is a killer running around choosing unfaithful women as his victims. He leaves them bloodied and surrounded by pictures showing off their infidelity. It is up to police inspector Capuana (Farley Granger) to put the clues together and discover the killer. And that is where I'll leave the plot at.

So Sweet, So Dead is excellently paced, never leaving you bored and always leaving you thrilled. The direction is strong, with some truly excellent sequences. The one that comes to mind is when we see through a foggy mirror, the killer appear like a ghost behind a woman and the chase that ensues. The acting is fine, led by Granger and the support that while mainly pretty is more than competent. The score from composer Giorgio Gaslini who is well known for his music work for Dario Argento's masterpiece Deep Red, is haunting. Its a very lyrical piece of music that works in direct contrast to what is happening on screen and creates a distinct mood that makes you question how you really feel. It almost makes you want to cope with the killer, more than his victims.

With as many alternate titles as I have fingers this title has been difficult to track down for years and even harder to track down without heavy cuts. German label Camera Obscura has released it in a limited edition and it looks fantastic. It has special features including a commentary track and a supplemental booklet. I suggest you track it down.

9/10

Cotton Comes To Harlem (1970)

2011-02-02T17:43:00.000-05:00

Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are police detectives the black community can trust. They do right by the people and they do it in their own style. When Reverend Deke O'Malley comes to Harlem with his "Back To Africa" rally they know something is up, and they're going to do something about it.

1970's Cotton Comes To Harlem was directed by veteran stage and screen actor turned first time director Ossie Davis (Do The Right Thing, Bubba Ho-Tep). It stars Godfrey Cambridge (well known for his stand up comedy of the 60s) and Raymond St. Jacques as Gravedigger and Coffin Ed. They are supported by Calvin Lockhart as O'malley, Judy Pace and Redd Foxx (Sanford and Son).

O'Malley holds rallies in the major cities of the country to bring the poor back to Africa on his ocean liner Black Beauty. The down payment for each ticket is $100, and he stashes the cash in a cotton bail. After a shoot out at the rally/BBQ the bail of cotton goes missing, containing $87,000. The rest of the movie follows the swindling crook chasing the cotton, the detectives chasing the crook and a whole bunch of other people chasing them for various reasons.

For Ossie Davis' directorial debut he does a serviceable job. He doesn't do anything he can't handle and has a good sense of how to fit in a useful amount of comedy with the action and drama without it becoming distracting. There is everything from shootouts, to pies in the face and somehow it all fits... or at least we don't care if it doesn't. The acting is spotty, which is nothing new for movies such as this.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it is just too long. Nothing new happens during the entire 97 minute duration after the story is set up. We know what is going on, and anyone with half a brain can figure out what will happen. The writing needed a bit more inspiration it seems. It lacks much of the hip factor and sexiness that better blaxploitation movies are known for. Luckily we get enough entertaining parts to keep us interested enough to finish.

6/10

Raw Force - Grindhouse Experience Chapter 4

2011-01-26T01:01:00.000-05:00

Here we are again, already with chapter 4 of the Grindhouse Experience. I'm getting through this set a bit faster than expected, thanks in large part to the wonderful creation of alcohol. Without which I doubt most of these movies would go down easily, or so it seems.

Lets get the technical stuff out of the way now - Raw Force is a 1982 action/adventure/horror/exploitation/whatever the hell they wanted to do film. Edward D. Murphy, who directs this pure schlock-fest is responsible for only one other directorial credit (Heated Vengeance) and a handful of acting credits. Murphy shows some actual ability, believe it or not. While not blowing you way with his artistry he could set up and execute a shot. His directing abilities certainly outweigh his writing (he's also the write of both of the movies he directed).

The movie opens with a group of women who look local being shipped to Warrior's Island by plane. Its quickly that we learn a Hitler look-a-like is in charge of this human trafficking type operation, which commonly leads to the women being stripped naked for the natives. Cut to a group of tourists getting no a cruise ship who are promised entry to the forbidden areas. They wind up on the mainland and go to all the normal touristy areas- junk markets, bars, strip clubs and an illegal whorehouse until they arrive on Warrior's Island in a life or death situation and find they are not welcome.

Raw Force is ridiculous, certainly the type of movie that is aided by liquor. It goes from a butt naked scramble out of the whorehouse when the cops bust in, to a single jar of gasoline being lit on fire and sinking an entire cruise ship. There are zombies, plenty of kung fu fighting, shootouts where the armed men cowardly hide behind things and shoot blindly at unarmed people, cannibalism (barbecued, not boiled!), boobs and Hitler impersonators. How can it be bad, right? Well its awful. But its awful in one of those ways where if you are someone who appreciates almost totally inept movies you can find plenty of entertainment in it to justify your time. The direction is okay, the dialogue is awful and the acting is just as bad. The score isn't as bad as it should be but you really don't have a clue as to what the fuck is actually going on. And I wouldn't want to with this one.

This is certainly a case of the drunker you are, the more fun you'll have. Bottoms up!

7/10 for the entertianment provided

I'm not posting a poster so the alternate title is Kung-Fu Cannibals if you are trying to find it.

SHIT! I totally forgot to add that this movie was ended with a To Be Continued... So I'm anxiously awaiting the next chapter to this film just like the new Sisqo album he promised me when I met him several years ago at the mall. I hope Sisqo directs Raw Force 2.... Thong Song would be a great track to play over some cannibal kung-fu action.

Cronos (1993)

2011-01-23T19:10:00.000-05:00

Cronos is the feature film debut of now household name Guillermo Del Toro. The film begins with narration stating that in the 16th century an alchemist developed the Cronos Device which is a mechanism that enables its user to eternal life. Centuries later a building collapses and a man with ugly, discolored marbled skin lay dying. The device had not been reclaimed until an old antique dealer discovers it in the base of an old statue in his shop. He quickly finds that there are people out there hellbent on finding the device at any cost. After an accidental encounter with the Scarab the antique dealer quickly develops a taste for blood, and has to find out the truth of what is happening to him.

Cronos, at its core, is a horror film. The meat of the story is an elderly man dealing with a type of Vampirism, however Guillermo Del Toro gives us so much more than that. The director of such recent hits as Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth gives us much more than that. It is relationships, between the old antique dealer and his young granddaughter who idolizes him and all he does and a dying businessman desperate to get his hands on the Cronos Device and his greedy nephew who is anxious for him to die to get his fortune. All of the performances are believable and solid, Ron Perlman is great in the violently sadistic nephew of the businessman. And without so much as a single line in the movie Tamara Shanath evokes so much emotion as the granddaughter. There is one scene in particular where she hands her grandfather a towel, after the effects of the device are setting in that makes your heart break.

Cronos has a lot to say but its also a simply fun ride. Del Toro was 28 when he made this film and few others can say they made a truly beautiful and equally haunting film that transcends genres at such a young age. This will satisfy the horror fans, but just as so, the art house crowd. Its refreshing to see a director with such talent and vision not use the horror and fantasy genre to break in to Hollywood, but to stay with it because that is what they love.

9/10

PS- The Criterion Collection release of this film has a (among many others) special feature in which Del Toro gives us a tour of his "man cave"... a house that houses all of his collections and fanboy stuff. It was incredibly fun to watch... but it will probably make you very jealous.

The Grindhouse Experience Chapter 3: "Savage Man/Savage Beast"

2011-01-16T19:41:00.000-05:00

The 3rd film in the Grindhouse Experience set is a 1975 Mondo film. Mondo films are exploitation documentaries that focus on wild topics ranging from murder to cannibalism. They are graphic, and often contain footage that is staged. They rose to prominence in 1962 with the release of Mondo Cane, still the most notorious and arguably the best of these films. They remained a staple of the grind theaters for most of their existence.

Savage Man/Savage Beast focuses on the relationships of man and beast, and man and fellow man in various aspects of hunting around the world. Directors Antonio Climati and Mario Morra went to seemingly all corners of the globe to obtain the footage of the hunt. Scenes range from Indigenous tribes hunting elephants with spears, to the traditional European fox hunt being interrupted by animal activists to mercenaries committing sadistic murder in the jungle and cannibalism.

This isn't for the squeamish and animal lovers be warned, even though much of this is people hunting for food for their survival as they've done for centuries, there is plenty of on screen animal death. There also an infamous scene shot in Namibia of a tourist on safari being mauled and killed by a lion. There is no shortage of blood and guts on screen, and had it been more exploitative than it was it could be nauseating, but there is a message in there. Its certainly not prevalent enough to have the film escape being an exploitation film, but it does have something to say about the natural instinct of all beasts, human and animal never escaping the natural instinct to hunt be it for sport or survival.

The film is well made, and even with quite a bit of it being staged and acted, and even more being suspected of it without proof. Its interesting to say the least and will get your mind turning at least a little. And it did have an influence on other exploitation films to follow. This is what the grindhouse was... excess in one form or another.

The 3rd film of this set has been the high point so far hopefully it keeps getting better.

6/10

The Grindhouse Experience: Chapter 2 "Tortured Angels"

2011-01-12T23:49:00.000-05:00

We are on to film number two of the Grindhouse Experience. Lets get to the point...

Strike Of The Tortured Angels (1982)

Imagine an exploitation movie. Got it? Now imagine an exploitation movie made by a kid in 4th grade. That is what this movie is.

I normally do research on a movie I know little about to find out about the actors, directors, writers, so on, so forth. This one gets no such treatment. Why, you may ask... because it is a giant pile of steaming shit.

The whole movie centers around a few girls in reform school. One is in love with a doctor... a doctor who knocks up her sister. This could be the setup for amazing Women In Prison revenge style stuff. Instead we get melodramatic, boring and the least intense action you may ever see. Even when the action gets "crazy" it is still boring and lethargic. Even the actors don't care. There is some mud wrestling action but you won't care because it is an Asian based film where nudity is strictly monitored. So even when you may get something trivial and worthwhile you get nothing. There is some blood, but during that scene there is also a girl in obvious blackface so you are more focused on that. Speaking of blackface... is the lead black girl just a white girl in makeup? It seriously looks that way. I don't know what to say about this movie. Its boring, melodramatic and just plain bad. Your intelligence will be questioned and patience tested. If you are a fan of any sort of fun/sleaze/good movie just move along because there is nothing to see here.

The basis of this movie is enough to be good, but because of how it ended up it may very well be the biggest cock tease in cinematic history.

FUCK YOU/10

Oh, and no, you don't get a poster for the movie because it would possibly make your pants wiggle and get you excited for some action that isn't in this movie. Deal with it.

GRINDHOUSE EXPERIENCE: An Ongoing Series of Reviews

2011-01-12T18:19:00.000-05:00

So I've just busted into this DVD set I have called Grindhouse Experience. Its a 20 movie collection of 70s and 80s films. Some exploitation, horror, spaghetti westerns, action, a little bit for everyone (or no one). I decided it would be fun to go through the movies and review them all through the year (or month or week... however long it takes).

Some of these movies are pretty rare, and don't have much (if any) type of distribution deal anymore and fall into the public domain where anyone can sell them legally.

I figured the easiest way to do this is go right down the list on the box and watch them in successive order.

Without further adieu, I give you chapter 1...

Women's Camp 119 (1977)

This Nazisploitation flick from cult film favorite Bruno Mattei is full of everything you'll come to know while watching movies of this sub-genre. Attractive women being submitted to various tortures and experiments (they often are doing the experiments as well), nudity, gore, usually some sort of rape (again women often forcing themselves on men and vice versa) and of course Nazis. Doesn't sound like you can really mess that up right? Well as I've come to realize it seems like just about every single one of these movies finds a way to do it. Sure there are interesting and even entertaining parts but they are usually few and far between and sometimes for all the wrong reasons.

The plot in Women's Camp 119 is non-existent until the last 20 minutes. Essentially a group of Nazis have orders from Hitler that they need to find new ways to kill the enemy, and help their own cause. This is anything from testing new chemical gases to attempting to set gay men straight by having naked women dance for them and attempt to rape them, to bringing back dead soldiers by having naked women lay all over them and rub on them... basically necrophilia. This one worked, but only when the corpse had a single woman, according to the dialogue during the part he had 2 women, he became too bashful. Yea. Two of the doctors try to sabotage the whole operation and eventually it becomes about a manhunt for escaped prisoners. It actually makes more sense than most of these movies I've seen.

Women's Camp 119 is just as ridiculous as other Nazisploitation flicks I've seen. That is one of the good things it has going, another is that Mattei can actually be a half decent director. The man is responsible for such cult horror hits as Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror, and Zombi 3 & 4 which are all endlessly entertaining to me. The problem with this genre as a whole is that while there is some crazy shit going on, they are beyond boring. I don't know why this is, but I've felt this about many of these movies, and I'm not alone. Many others I've talked to with these feel the same. Perhaps they're presented with too much emphasis on classic exploitation and not enough on the horror side. Maybe they need a more substantial plot, even though many movies have been entertaining with little to no plot... who knows.

4/10

BASTARD!!!

2011-01-12T01:39:00.000-05:00

I'm a few days late writing this but that's how it goes sometimes. It's okay though, because it would be just as relevant a year from now.

I'm writing because Juan Piquer Simon, director of cult classics such as Pieces and Slugs has passed away at the age of 75.

I wish I could say I've seen more of Simon's filmography than the two listed but I haven't. However you'll be hard pressed to find a director of any film that can make movies as fun to watch as Pieces and Slugs. He also has an uncredited director role and was a producer on a previous CT review, Satan's Blood!

I won't claim to be an expert on the man, I've seen 2 films from him along with Satan's Blood which he was a producer and I have no idea how much he could take credit for as a director. J.P. Simon will live on because he knew the kinds of films he loved and he made. He knew that critics didn't care for horror or fantasy movies, the movies he made and how he made them. He took a fun approach to these movies and made them entertaining throughout. Watching Pieces while enjoying a 6-pack is something few other movies can replicate.

Nothing will ever change that.

Rest In Peace Juan Piquer Simon, your style and approach is admired.

5 Deadly Venoms (1978)

2011-01-06T18:12:00.001-05:00

Kung-Fu movies are a thing many of us remember from our childhood. In the same way we remember Godzilla we remember these martial arts action flicks. They'd regularly play on TV and would always feature grainy transfers and awful dubbing. They were something to laugh at just as much as we'd love the action. For most of us they were only an anomaly. In 1978 Shaw Bros. studio brought 5 Deadly Venoms to the world. Action packed, humorous and well made, it would become one of the most revered martial arts movies ever made.

As the master of the Venom House is dying he sends his last student on a crucial mission to track down the five senior members and reclaim the treasure that has been gained using the master's teachings for evil. The master instructs his pupil to use his skills and team up with any of the senior members who have not turned to wrong doing to stop them and give the treasure to charity to clear the House's name.

Each member is trained in a specific lethal style. The oldest is The Centipede, having hands and feet so fast it makes him appear to have 1,000 legs. The next is The Snake, who's left and right hands operate as the head and tail of a snake, working together in deadly unison. The Scorpion follows suit, his hand like the pincers and his feet the stinging tail with the ability to paralyze his enemies. The final two seniors are The Gecko who learned how to use his weight against gravity and crawl at will on walls. Speed and position are his biggest assets and The Toad who is strong and has only one weak point. He can withstand attacks of all kind and bend hardened materials.

The main plot of the film follows the junior student, Yan Tieh, as he poses as a beggar in town and witnesses various events including a family being murdered, corruption and backstabbing among the key characters of the story. The story intertwines with our six members of the Venom House and concludes in a five-way battle which is possibly one of the best choreographed fight scenes I've ever seen.

Chang Cheh was well versed in the art of kung-fu film making by the time Five Deadly Venoms was made, and his skill in the director's chair is evident. Performances are tight, all comedy is right on time and well placed and cinematography is great. The set pieces are beautiful as well, and make for interesting fight scenes.

I'll admit I just started getting into these movies after finding them entertaining as a kid (for completely different reasons) within the last year or so, but I'm already finding that they are very well made and entertaining movies. I can see why Cheh is heralded as the "Godfather of Hong Kong Cinema" and why Five Deadly Venoms is considered to be one his best works and one of the best kung-fu movie ever made.

9/10

TOP 10 OF 2010

2010-12-28T19:21:00.000-05:00

With just a few days left in the year, it is time for every blog and
site in the world to do their "Best of 2010" lists for whatever they talk about it. This one is no different. This top 10 list covers all genres, theatrical releases or straight to disc. I pondered over the list for a while and even though there are still plenty of movies that were released this year that I haven't seen yet, I feel this is a pretty good look at my favorite movies of the year.

So for my final entry of the year, I leave you with the Top 10 Of 2010

10. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Director: Edgar Wright)
I wanted to hate this movie so bad when I saw the previews. I know nothing of the graphic novels, I just know that the trailer looked like stupid hipster garbage to me that wanted to be quirky and ironic. After finally giving it a chance I was entertained throughout. The cast is great together, and everything I thought I would hate about it really worked. Its far from perfect or a favorite of mine but I can't deny that I had fun with it, and that is more than I can say for most other movies I saw this year.

9. Kick-Ass (Director: Matthew Vaughn)
When this one was released the trailers looked okay, nothing special and just another superhero type movie. Similarly to Scott Pilgrim I had no idea about a graphic novel and I feel it certainly aided me in enjoying in the movie with no preconceived notions. Nicholas Cage is great in this role and I think its the only type of role he can succeed in anymore. Chloe Moretz is probably the best performance in the whole thing as Hit-Girl. Another entertaining take on superheroes that got the word of mouth moving early in the year.

8. Frozen (Director: Adam Green)
A suspense thriller/horror film about three people trapped on a ski lift over a weekend. This doesn't sound like anything that could possibly fill an entire feature film with any success, right? Well it does. Adam Green known mostly for his director credit of the gory horror/comedy Hatchet takes his film making in a much more serious direction. Most of us had to wait months to see this on disc as only a select handful of theaters and festivals showed it in the early winter months. If you want something to keep you on the edge of your seat check it out.

7. Inception (Director: Christopher Nolan)
A very cool premise and some great visuals aid this one into being a lot of fun to watch. It does have a longer running time however it is paced very well and is full of solid performances. It is certainly entertaining and the technical side of things make it stand out.

6. Machete (Director: Robert Rodriguez)
More than 3 years after Machete's faux trailer debut in Grindhouse, we finally get the real deal. Danny Trejo was born for this role and Rodriguez made sure to keep our appetite for over the top violence and sexy women satisfied. Its just what you expected.

5. Hatchet 2 (Director: Adam Green)
Adam Green is the only director to show up twice on this list and for two very different movies. While Frozen was a tense thriller, Hatchet 2 is the follow up to 2007's over the top slasher romp in the swamp (that was bad, I know). Victor Crowley is defending his swamp from anyone that steps foot. The blood and gore is upped here to insane levels and there are some of the most ridiculous things you'll ever see in a slasher film. Hopefully you got to see it in theaters before the film got pulled from theaters after less than a week. At least they were showing it unrated for those few days.

4. Piranha 3D (Director: Alex Aja)
The French director who has shown his talents in far more serious fare gives us (another) remake on the Roger Corman classic which was directed by cult director Joe Dante. Aja knew exactly what kind of movie he was making here. Having no intentions of making this heavier or more artsy than it ever needed (or wanted) to be he over loaded our senses with boobs, blood, guts and laughs. This was a horror film that had you hootin' and hollerin' at the screen. The 3D was totally unnecessary but for a one time viewing with it, it was fun. Cannot wait to watch this one again with a few (or 12) beers. One word of advice, watch out for that first jump scare... its a doozy.

3. True Grit (Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen)
This adaptation of the 1968 novel by Charles Portis is a revenge tale in pure western form. Little 14 year old Mattie is out for revenge on Tom Chaney who murdered her father. She enlists the aid of a drunk U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger to get the job done. The Coen brothers give us what is possibly there most straightforward film of a single genre to date. And I couldn't be happier that it is a western. They get the look and feel just about right, and just make an overall fine film. Jeff Bridges is just great, as he usually is and he always works well with the Coens. Matt Damon is a very convincing Ranger, and is a strong character. But the whole movie is stolen by Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie. Her acting is flawless and refined for such a young newcomer. She owned the role. This is a fine film to end the year on and I'm glad to see how well it has done at the box office in its opening week.

2. Toy Story 3 (Director: Lee Unkrich)
The final chapter in the trilogy came to us this summer. The teasers dating back about a year had me excited to see it, and though I missed it in theaters, I was incredibly anxious to view it once the Blu Ray came out. Director Lee Unkrich has been with Pixar since 1994, he has had a hand in every Toy Story movie from editor, to co-director to fully directing this one. And this was one that was made for those of us that were kids back in 1995. As an elementary shcooler in 1995 I loved the first Toy Story, of course I love it now for so many more reasons. This 3rd entry into the series was something for us. Yes, children will love to see it, but watching it... watching it was something for us. It brought us back on the same adventure we had 15 years ago and brought it right up to a place we can relate to with recent events in our lives. It was a movie that would make you laugh one minute and then totally rip your heart out. The last 20 minutes of the movie had me in tears... ugly tears.... really ugly tears. I'm not ashamed to say it. I love this movie and it reduced me to a sad shell of a man for quite a while after watching.

And finally, the top movie of the year....

1. Black Swan (Director: Darren Aronofsky)
Who doesn't remember the feelings they had when they heard this new movie was going to feature a lesbian scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis? You can read it now and you're probably thinking about how cool that sounds. Well it was cool, but the movie itself is why it is number 1. From Aronofsky's direction with his use of close ups, hand held cameras, mirrors, imagery, POV shots to Clint Mansell's masterful reworking of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet, to Natalie Portman's Oscar worthy performance this movie is phenomenal. Aronofsky could pull a great performance from a dead sheep if he really needed to, and proves it here. Every actor, lead or supporting is flawless. I could go on and on about this one, but just go see it. Support independent cinema and see it. Dare I say it was... perfect?

Thanks to those of you that read, look out for more in 2011... I'm gonna get crazy!

... maybe.

Today It's Me... Tomorrow It's You! (1968)

2010-12-23T15:50:00.000-05:00

By 1968 the spaghetti western had fully hit it's stride in the world's movie market. They were wildly popular with audiences who loved the gritty, violent take the Italians had on the American wild west.

Today It's Me, Tomorrow It's You is a basic revenge tale, in a western setting. Bill Kiowa (Brett Halsey) is a free man after spending five years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, and he's hell bent on revenge. After dreaming day and night on the day he'd get his hands on his old friend James Elfego (Tatsuya Nakadai) and practicing with a wooden replica of his trusted revolver Kiowa assembles a group of five of the best gunslingers the west has to offer to hunt Elfego's gang down, offering each of them $10,000 to do the job.

The film is straight forward from the beginning. We quickly learn who is the protagonist, though the reason we want to cheer him on is delayed until later. His team is a very likable group though, each with their own personality. Kiowa has a very Django-esque quiet calm to him, while Bud Spencer's character O'Bannion offers the brute force with a bit of comic relief. Add in a gambling man who hates to lose, a sheriff who is bored with what life is offering him of late and a ladies man who loves money more than women and there is a great contrast that makes for an interesting gang.

Today It's Me moves along at a steady pace, never getting ahead of itself, but never leaving you tapping your foot for something to happen. The writing was handled in part by Italian horror maestro Dario Argento is great. Simple, but great. There is a never a "face palm" moment from the writing and the direction by Tonino Cervi is very good. The score, which any level of spaghetti western fan can tell you can really add to the film, isn't memorable. It is serviceable but suffers from a couple of moments where it, along with the shot it is accompanying takes a turn towards being hokey. Luckily it never quite makes it there and doesn't detract from the film.

There are some problems with this entry in to the genre. The story never fully explores almost anything it could. How deep did the friendship of Kiowa and Elfego go? This could have played a part in the viewer being more emotionally invested in the all too brief finale, which was overshadowed by the set up "hunting" scene. Also, exactly what race is Elfego? He's played by Tatsuya Nakadai who is a Japanese actor famous for his decades of work with directors Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi, but his name seems to be Spanish and similar to El Fuego which means The Fire. Though no one is ever set on fire. Also he uses a sword in a fight (which actually happens to be a machete) in a very samurai-ish manner. This is a minor nitpick from me, but it would be nice to know, we just have to assume that he is a half breed Japanese-Mexican.

When it's all said and done, Today It's Me... Tomorrow It's You! also known as Today We Kill...Tomorrow We Die! falls short of its true potential. Possibly due to fear that it would seem contrived or maybe it was simply due to it's (obvious) budgetary restraints. It is however a very entertaining western that is steady standing on its on two feet. All five members of Kiowa's gang are great, and Nakadai is exceptional in the screen time he receives. Tonino Cervi seemed to draw a bit too much of a Hollywood influence for his own good at times but its never more than a passing thought. The obvious influence from the samurai films that helped start the spaghetti western cycle in the mid-60s adds a stylish touch. And I can't write this review without giving a round of applause to Bud Spencer for using a belly bump as an attack in a fight scene, I'll support that tactic until the day I die.

7/10

Dust Devil (1992)

2010-12-16T13:24:00.000-05:00

Richard Stanley is a director with endless talents that you probably have never heard of. Along with Dust Devil his only other feature film is Hardware, a great sci-fi horror film from 1990. He has also made a handful of documentaries and short films along with some music videos. With a movie in production, another in pre-production and a third announced it will be nice to see him return and hopefully bring his talents to a wider audience.

Dust Devil takes place in Namibia and South Africa and is the story of a shape shifting demon who preys on humans that have lost everything but life itself, the weak and unloved. The film has intertwining plots, all dealing with the Dust Devil. Wendy (Chelsea Field) has just separated from her husband is is driving aimlessly through the deserts when she picks up a strange hitchhiker who brings with him equally strange events. A local police officer (Zakes Mokae) is hunting the murderer after a local shaman shows him the truth about the demon. And eventually Wendy's husband gets into the picture as well after he decides he wants her back. All of the plots come together in a showdown with the demon.

The plot in Dust Devil isn't anything exceptional or even the movie's strongest point. The film truly excels in Richard Stanley's direction. He is able to create such thick and foreboding atmosphere that you almost feel the heat coming off of the desert sand, you start to feel sick to your stomach with the violence on screen. He is simply fantastic with creating atmosphere. The writing, also handled by Stanley is competent and the acting while a bit shaky at times holds together just fine.

The thing with Dust Devil is that it quickly became a studio disaster. The Weinstein brothers chopped it up, cutting the movie down to 87 minutes from its original 2 hour cut, which took out most of the supernatural elements and almost the entire role of the protagonist. That cut was released to European markets, after which the producers and Stanley agreed on a 95 minute cut which was to be released in the UK until the films British backers went under. It then went into movie studio hell for years and had all sorts of problems with who owned the rights and who gets what cut of the money. Eventually Stanley got the original negatives and was able to edit together Dust Devil: The Final Cut for the DVD release along with a work print version that is an extra 8 minutes. The original 120 minute cut is seemingly gone forever, but what we are left with today is a fine example of gruesome supernatural horror from a very overlooked director.

7.5/10

The Wolfman (2010)

2010-12-02T22:40:00.000-05:00

In 1941 Universal Pictures brought us one of the first (Werewolf of London) feature length film on werewolves, The Wolfman. George Waggoner directed the classic and is in part responsible for the love of the creature so often used in popular culture.

Nearly 70 years after the original Universal gives us the remake of its landmark film. And early on in the pre-production stages it looked promising, even a fanboys wet dream. We saw news sites reporting that director John Landis (An American Werewolf in London) and makeup wizard Rick Baker (Just look up his list of works and be blown away) who is most noted for his lead work done on the Landis directed An American Werewolf in London on top of the Academy Award winning cast lead by Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. It was going to be this centuries first perfect werewolf movie, something we got (arguably) a handful of times in the 20th century. Then the reality of the movie started coming down.

By the time the movie came out the movie was delayed almost a full year, John Landis was a distant memory and Rick Baker was removed from the role of head makeup and fx artist. Joe Johnston, who is responsible for the direction of such films as Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, The Rocketeer, and Jurassic Park III (ugh) took over the role of director and Rick Baker wasn't given control like he should have been. Anyone that has seen Rick Baker's work on An American Werewolf In London has seen the single greatest special effects/makeup work ever put to film. I'm not talking best werewolf makeup, or best horror movie effects, I'm saying the single best makeup and effects ever put to celluloid. The transformation scene in that is as good as it will ever get. I dare you to say something else is better. On to the movie itself.

Joe Johnston's THE WOLFMAN starts out with a bit of a homage to the original (something that has appeared in every Universal Wolfman film) the "wolfman poem" as I've come to know it as- Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and the autumn moon is bright. After the little nod at history, we get the basic story. Laurence Talbot (Del Toro) comes home to find his brother dead and his father (Hopkins) and brother's mourning lover Gwen (Emily Blunt) at his childhood estate awaiting his arrival. His brother's body is being held in a meat locker type building until his funeral, it is ripped to shreds, something a man certainly could not have done. Not twenty minutes into the movie and we start to see the modern influence on the film. Not a bad thing to this point.

As the film progresses and the story deepens there is more positive, some new and some hearkening back to its source material, the gypsies are present, though in a less important role than they should have been. Its as if they were put it because they needed to be to stay faithful. I understand the choice to put them in, but I would have preferred they not be there if this was the only way they were going to be involved. Its as if they were nothing more than peddlers and beggars to a point, instead of the group that new of the curse and how to cure it. It seemed everybody in the area knew of how to kill a werewolf, even if it were only a myth.

To keep things rolling, Laurence and Gwen begin to get close, he rekindles a small bit of a relationship with his father that we learn was lost when he was sent to a mental hospital shortly after the apparent suicide of his mother and he is dealing with having been stricken with the curse after an early encounter with a beast. The film then spirals down from there As Laurence tries to fight off the curse and remain normal but has no luck, just like those that preceded him, and must give way to the beast.

The Wolfman thrives in that it was certainly entertaining. As an original work, or even a first film adaptation of a piece of literature it wouldn't receive a fraction of the criticism it does. The action is good, the effects never pull you out of the moment and the story is solid. Where it fails is that it isn't an original work, we were teased with perfect options for the cast and crew and our expectations became nothing short of high.

The direction isn't bad, I don't want to give Joe Johnston a bad rap, his films have been a part of my life since childhood and he isn't bad at what he does. It just so happens that he isn't great at what he does either. We get some very nice scenes, followed by incredibly corny scenes. The cinematography is the same way, showing an incredibly gloomy and eery England/Wales followed by a flat shot inside of a mental hospital. The acting doesn't even have that luxury. The performances are, in a word, lazy. When you see the names Anthony Hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt and even Hugo Weaving you expect good acting, if not great. What we get is flat, uninspired and frankly plain out going through the motions from these names. Luckily for the film when you have a cast of this caliber even underwhelming performances such as these get the job done. The special effects also get the job done. Instead of letting Rick Baker go with his arsenal of beautiful practice effects, the studio elected to go for the cheaper CGI. Now the CGI, outside of a few instances of sub par work, looks fine. CGI certainly has its place in film but not when practical work can be done, especially with little hassle.

Getting the job done should not have been the goal for Universal with this one. They could have easily opened up the door to a new wave of fans for their classic work and classic film in general. What better way to get someone interested in your older films than to remake it properly? Unfortunately after seeing the decision making process from the studio it seems that getting the job done was the main goal behind the project. Take out an accomplished director, a special effects artist who has made the single greatest werewolf transformation scene in history loses his ability to do just that again and in turn take an award winning cast and make them lazy due to your insecurity in your film and financing (lets face it, it all comes down to $$$) and what do you get? A film that isn't bad, but not good, let alone as good as it should be. And I'd rather watch a truly awful movie than be let down as much as I am with this one. At least I held off on spending those dollars that Universal so arrogantly saved on the production.

It isn't the worst score you'll see me hand out, but know that I don't get this disappointed in movies very easily. I need to watch Waggoner direct Lon Chaney Jr asap to get this taste out of my mouth. The score I'm handing it is focusing on the positives the movie has as a piece of entertainment. I have so much more to say on the story, the creature design, etc... but I feel that I've written enough to convey my opinion. Just understand this really could have been a masterpiece of modern horror and Universal robbed us of that.

I had a slew of posters to choose from, many had good artwork, especially for modern day horror. I feel that the one I picked expresses how good the movie could have been, and why it fell so short all at once.

5/10

Undead (2003)

2010-11-30T13:54:00.000-05:00

I've been hearing mixed things about this movie since it came out. Some say it is a fresh and entertaining take on zombies while others say it was a steaming pile of dog shit. I finally got the chance to see it for free and took it.

The Spierig Bros wrote, produced and directed this horror comedy film in their native Australia. They are also the duo behind this year's Daybreakers, which was a successful and pretty entertaining horror thriller about vampires. Unfortunately Undead, which was the duo's first feature film, didn't have the same quality.

The basic plot of Undead isn't all that uncommon for zombie movies, some meteorites fall and turn the town's inhabitants into blood thirsty zombies. The core group is filled with most of the cliches... the gun nut who happened to be abducted by these aliens and let go for whatever reason, the beauty queen, the scared comic relief guy, and so on. Not only is there zombies to deal with but acid rain, contaminated water and food, all the problems one would encounter in a zombie outbreak. Eventually they learn the virus is also air born and they are slowly being infected.

There is the plot in a nutshell. There is plenty of other stupid shit, hooded glowing aliens that look like shittier versions of those from Independence Day and they try to be funny when they talk. For whatever reason when the people die the aliens suspend them in the clouds? Which of course ends up screwing up one of the group when he tries to escape in a plane.

I don't have a whole lot to say about the movie in general. It was bad. Really bad. It was slow and dragged on even though it was under 100 minutes. It was full of face palm moments, misplaced comedy that wasn't even timed well, and moments that just piss you off watching it. One example of that would be when one of the group empties an entire handgun clip into a severed arm because the timer on the watch starts beeping but minutes later, when they're actually under attack they are telling each other to conserve bullets. The actual film making wasn't any better. The direction was amateur, more than likely a result of this being the first feature for the two directors, but it was bad. The writing made me want to cry, and the effects weren't believable. It didn't even have a nice pair of boobs to stare at, which has been a saving grace for countless horror movies.

It wasn't bad in a way that can be entertaining while you're drunk, it just gets under your skin like a little sibling that won't stop poking you. Or when you bite your tongue and it swells up a little bit so you keep on biting it. Or stubbing your toe. Or poking yourself in the eye.

In fact, I'd rather have any of those than to watch this movie again. This movie may be the first time I've ever said "fuck you" at the screen repeatedly as soon as the credits rolled. Yea, it was that bad.

Also, I'm not wasting my time to put up a poster from this movie because it doesn't deserve the effort.

I'd rather be (Un)dead/10

Battletruck (aka Warlords of the 21st Century) (1982)

2010-11-26T17:26:00.000-05:00

Battletruck is another Corman produced post-apocalypse action flick that yet again delivers the goods.

This time around it is the Oil Wars of World War III that caused the world wide devastation. Gas and oil are now in extremely short supply and only available to the Government. Society has crumbled and outside of major cities there is no law. Straker (James Wainwright) is a man on a mission. He controls a small army and drives a heavily armored 18 wheeler that is more like a tank than a truck. His only goal is to steal, destroy, control and find more gas.

When Corlie (Annie McEnroe) escapes from Straker's group he sends out a group to find her. Before the group can capture her again a loner on a motorcycle named Hunter (Michael Beck) is able to scoop her up and drive her to the safety of his little compound. Hunter is self sufficient and has the knowledge to turn his chicken's waste in ethanol to fuel his bike. Shortly after arriving he takes Corlie to Clearwater, a village of a few dozen people that Hunter has a small relationship with.

While at Clearwater Corlie is voted in to be accepted into the community. Not long after Straker and his army come barreling through the outer walls, leveling everything in their way. They have no qualms with shooting anyone who speaks out against them or refuses to share information. Straker finds out that Corlie had been staying there, but made her escape before the attack.

This sets up a cat and mouse chase between Straker's army and Corlie & Hunter for the remainder of the movie culminating in a pretty entertaining chase scene between the Battletruck and Hunter in a "battlecar" and his bike.

Filmed on loaction in New Zealand on a modest budget, Battletruck doesn't exactly have epic sets. Most of the film is set in tents/huts or open fields. And on this budget, we don't get crazy special effects, though there is little need for them. There are some nice action sequences with classic explosions. The thing that surprised me most about this film is the performances, everybody does a respectable job with a good performance from Michael Buck and a spot-on performance from James Wainwright.

Will you run out and tell all of you friends about this one? Probably not. Will you be entertained? More than likely. This isn't award winning stuff, but Corman knows how to take what he has to work with and make it worthwhile or even better.

6.5/10

Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

2010-11-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

Fright Night Part 2 never had a fair chance with me... or many fans for that matter. It is a sequel to a beloved 80s vampire flick that is one of the best examples of horror that decade has to offer. It suffered a very limited theatrical release, the artwork for the movie was bad... really bad and it's sole release on DVD was shoddy at best, quickly went out of print and now goes for exorbitantly high prices. Despite all those factors, now that I've finally had an opportunity to see it, I'm a fan.

Fright Night Part 2 is a direct sequel to the first, reprising their roles as Peter Vincent the fearless vampire killer and Charley Brewster the tormented college student are Roddy McDowall and William Ragsdale. Charley is now seeing a shrink to aid him in ridding his "delusions" of vampires that he experienced with Peter Vincent.

The problem is that their apartment building has some new tenants moving in that are strangely similar to vampires. They play mind games with Charley, they show up everywhere he goes and he only sees them at night. Charley is in the predicament of a man trying to fight for his sanity or dealing with the truth.

As the film heats up and winds down the leader of this new bloodsucking group is Regine (Julie Carmen), a seductive vampiress who has taken Peter Vincents job as the host of the late night movie program called what else but "Fright Night". When Peter, Charley and Charley's girl Alex (Traci Lind) realize that the vampires are real, and it is happening all over again they stock up on all of the vampire killing necessities including but not limited to crosses, wooden stake with guns to shoot them, holy water sprayers and so on. The finale is a pretty well executed showdown in the apartment building that will stand up with the best vampire sequences of this era.

Fright Night Part 2 really has a lot going for it, the acting is on par, the effects and makeup are fantastic, direction from Tommy Lee Wallace is on point. The story is a bit on the "been there, done that" side of things but it works. A few points in developing characters hurt the film. Seeing Regine be the leader and establish her dominance earlier would have made this film stronger. Still, this sequel to Fright Night is more than deserving of whatever fan base it has from being a regular bootleg on convention circuit tables. It sure would be nice to see a proper release of it to the home market because the HD print I watched looked pretty nice.

7/10