Ouija (Blu-ray Review) - Universal Pictures

USA/2014
Directed By: Stiles White
Written By: Juliet Snowden, Stiles White
Starring: Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff
Color/90 Minutes/PG-13
Region A
Release Date: February 3, 2015

The Film
 Best friends Laine and Debbie have played with Ouija boards since they were little girls. Now as they're getting ready to graduate high school, Debbie uses one alone and is disturbed by what she experiences and attempts to burn the board and planchette. After talking to Laine but not letting her inside Debbie's eyes turn white and she hangs herself.

With the tragic death of their friend lingering over them Laine and four other friends gather at the funeral and later decide to have a seance to attempt to talk to their friend, and make contact with a spirit that calls itself "D". The group stops playing after being spooked but each get a message of "Hi friend" and decide to return to the board as they think it is Debbie communicating with them. Quickly they find that it is not Debbie speaking to them but a malicious spirit with their mouth stitched shut and another named "Mother". One by one the friends begin to suffer similar fates to Debbie as their eyes turn white and are killed in mysterious ways. That is when Laine finds out the truth behind the board they're using, the spirits they've encountered and the living relative to the spirits and that intentions aren't always good. Laine and her sister attempt to end the evil by burning the board with the body of the evil spirits that haunt it.

About an hour in to OUIJA I thought to myself "Why is this rated R?". I quickly realized it wasn't. I have nothing against PG-13 horror films as I feel film makers can achieve a proper level of dread, suspense and horror in that rating if they're creative and skilled enough. Unfortunately OUJIA barely deserves the PG-13 rating. A few spooky looking ghosts or bodies is really all I can see separating it from a lesser rating. The film is bland as can be and plays out like a late 90s Scream clone but instead of being a slasher film it is a supernatural horror film. Exchange a fish hook wielding killer for this nasty spirit and I don't think the comparison is to see.

The characters are boring and paper thin, sure they seem like nice kids but none of them are the least bit interesting. Lin Shaye appears in yet another supernatural horror film and she's becoming more common in these types of films than Troma's Lloyd Kaufman is in Z-grade no budget schlock. I like the woman and think she's a fine actress but it's getting old seeing her in these films. The scare and shock moments of the film are laughable. Check out the dental floss scene and try not to laugh. The others are generic paint-by-numbers junk that was all the rage a decade ago. Are we back to it? I sure hope not.

The Audio & Video
Universal Pictures' Blu-ray of OUIJA is downright beautiful. The anamorphic widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio has great clarity and strikingly vivid colors. Detail level is very high in textures and surfaces while skin tones look natural and healthy. Black levels are deep and inky with no blocking or pixelation.  The English audio track is a DTS-HDMA 5.1 mix that sounds excellent. The mix is full and boisterous when it needs to be. Dialogue and score are complimentary of each other and there's no background noise or imperfections to speak of.

The Extras
-"The Spirit Board: An Evolution" (Blu-ray Exclusive) - A brief 4 minute look at the history of spirit boards and their place in our culture.
-"Icon Of The Unkown" (Blu-ray Exclusive) - Another four minutes spent looking at the experiences Ouija board users have had that influenced the film.
-"Adapting The Fear" - How about another four minutes? This time with a look at the cast and crew's opinion on Ouija boards.

The Bottom Line
To put it simply, OUIJA is not a good film. It is boring and mundane in every way and would be hard pressed to get a scare out of even the most novice horror viewer. 

OUIJA is available HERE

Day Of The Mummy (DVD Review) - Image/RLJ

USA/2014
Directed By: Johnny Tabor
Written By: Garry Charles
Starring: William McNamara, Danny Glover, Nimi
Color/80 Minutes/Not Rated
Region 1
Release Date: December 9, 2014

The Film
Danny Glover made out like a bandit on this movie even if his payday was only $100. His entire role is him sitting in a chair delivering the same 4-5 lines over and over, and quite lazily at that. Good for him. What we have is a shitty mix of Charlie's Angels without the sexy women and Danny Glover as the Bosley character and a broke ass Indiana Jones ripoff filmed through some lame Google Glasses type POV. There's a giant diamond, a mummy and some pretty boring set design.

The high point of the film is that the special effects makeup isn't bad and the mummy has a decent look. The rest is a lot of shitty acting, cheap point-of-view filmmaking, Glover chiming in every few minutes through the glasses and running around caves that look nothing like the inside of a pyramid. I'll end this review with my thoughts upon the film's ending - "Well... that was a movie. That's gotta be worth something."

The Audio & Video
The DVD from Image/RLJ looks good with nice sharpness and detail level for a standard def release. The desert exteriors make for a nice backdrop and the dark interiors are handled decently. The DVD has a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The audio is much of the same with a clear and stable Dolby 5.1 track without any damage or background noise.

The Extras
Bare bones.

The Bottom Line
Don't waste your time. 

DAY OF THE MUMMY is available HERE

Jesse (DVD Review) - Arc Entertainment

USA/2011
Directed By: Fred Carpenter
Written By: Fred Carpenter, Paul Regina, Joanne Tamburro
Starring: Stephanie Finochio, William Forsythe, Armand Assante
Color/86 Minutes/R
Region 1
Release Date: August 12, 2014

The Film
Jesse is a cop who likes to drink away her problems which are based around her failed marriange and her husband who has custody of her kids because she's a pretty terrible person. Jesse's brother is killed by the mafia after he owed them thousands of dollars so Jesse does what she has to do to take down the people responsible.

This movie is a joke right? Where is Ashton Kutcher to pop out of my closet and yell at me tellling me I was punked? JESSE is fucking awful on every level. Every single character in this shit fest is a stereotypical New York loud mouth Italian caricature that you'd find on some shitty reality show. It's fucking ridiculous. Jesse is the least likable protagonist I've seen in a film in quite a while. Her attitude sucks, her personality is loud, self righteous and arrogant. On top of that she's just a major bitch. The acting in this thing seems like a contest of who can put on the strongest accent and overact the shit out of it. It was to the point where every line of dialogue processed through mind as "AY YO BUDDY! I'M FROM LONG ISLAND! YOU GOTSA A PROBLEM OVA HERE!?"

It's all good though because we care about the vengeance on the mafia right? No, no we don't In fact there isn't a single fucking thing to care about in this movie that is pretty much based on the notion that all cops and firefighters hate each other. Oh and Jesse's mother? Yeah, she holds up a gun to a little dog's head at one point to stop an argument. JESSE is filmed on shitty cameras, it is framed poorly half the time and edited like a Skinemax flick. Hell, even the opening credits look like a shitty made-for-TV movie fro the 90s. That's not fair to made-for-TV movies as I think every single one of them would be better than this bullshit.

The Audio & Video
The DVD from Arc Entertainment looks good enough given how it was produced. The 16x9 anamorphic widescreen transfer is attractive and is clean. A decently sharp picture overall with nice colors. The audio is hit or miss as there are times the audio is so poorly recorded that it barely registers in the mix. That is a problem with the production of the film and not the authoring job done on the disc. Otherwise the Dolby Digital track sounds okay.

The Extras
Bare Bones aside from a VUDU digital copy.

The Bottom Line
I'd rather be stuck in some weird reality where I repeatedly poke myself in the eye repeatedly than watch the steaming pile of dog shit that is JESSE, ever again.

JESSE is available HERE

Saving Grace B. Jones (DVD Review) - Arc Entertainment

USA/2009
Directed By: Connie Stevens
Written By: Connie Stevens, Jeffrey Elison
Starring: Tatum O'Neal, Michael Biehn, Penelope Ann Miller
Color/116 Minutes/R
Region 1
Release Date: May 27, 2014

The Film
In a 1950s small town Landy and his wife Bea are getting Landy's sister Grace out of an asylum after she has spent years there after becoming mentally damaged from an accident on her wedding day twenty years earlier. Grace's reappearance in the community has shaken some of the locals and is bringing a lot of distress to the family. Grace is obviously not fully cured of her problems and during a massive flood that threatens the entire town she breaks down in a violent relapse.

SAVING GRACE B. JONES apparently took five years to be released on DVD and that doesn't surprise me at all. It wouldn't surprise me if this movie never saw the light of day. Not only is it a massive waste of a good cast, including not only the leads mentioned but also a pre-The Walking Dead Scott Wilson, but it just flat out sucks. The majority of the film is spent following a few pre-teen girls around as they go to dances and a black church where they're adored. These girls are actually the highlight of the movie as they're all pretty good for being so young. There's a bit of drama surrounding them and Grace but not nearly enough to warrant the amount of screen time dedicated to them. Aside from some melodrama nothing worth a damn happens until the climactic flood scene. It's boring, it's too long, it's poorly written and developed and wastes a talented cast. 

The Audio & Video
Arc Entertainment is responsible for bringing this movie to DVD and at least the disc looks okay. The 16x9 transfer looks fine, with the 1950s setting looking good. There's a bit of compression blocking during the darkest scenes but nothing awful. The 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack is fine with no background noise or annoyances. Sound levels are mixed well. 

The Extras
A trailer is the lone extra.

The Bottom Line
It looks and feels like a cheap made-for-TV movie that would air on Lifetime. Skip it.

SAVING GRACE B. JONES is available HERE

Voodoo Possession (DVD Review) - Image Entertainment

USA/2013
Directed By: Walter Boholst
Written By: Walter Boholst
Starring: Ama Amoafo-Yeboah, Devante Bell, Tomas Boykin
Color/94 Minutes/Not Rated
Region 1 

The Film
Sometimes good horror films get stuck with painfully generic titles by their producers. I don't know if this is good for business because when I see these movies with these basic titles that sound like a million other straight-to-video movies I immediately think of how bad it probably is. Once in a great while you may be surprised that the movie is actually good despite it's lame ass title. That is not the case with VOODOO POSSESSION. Hell, even the title screen tried to make it a little better by calling it A VOODOO POSSESSION but no, the official title dopes the A and becomes just that much more boring. 

A cheaply made story about a bunch of young unlikable turds of a news crew travels to Haiti to find out what happened to an American doctor who went down there to help after a devastating earthquake and disappeared with all of the donation money. The crew includes his estranged brother who was blamed by the doctor for their mother's death. While their they learn that these patients may not be sick or injured, but under a voodoo spell, possessed by spirits. The further they dig into this lead the deeper they into Haitian voodoo hell they find themselves until they can't turn back. 

Good lord what a flaming pile of dog shit. In fact, I'd rather have had to deal with a flaming bag of dog shit outside my door than watch this. The writing is atrocious, uninspired soap opera dreck and the entire cast fails. They just plain fail. Even Danny Trejo, who despite having his name plastered on the DVD cover gets about 5 minutes of screen time, couldn't have gone through the motions any lazier. If he had they'd have a hologram of him like they did for Tupac. In fact, that would have probably been better. If Trejo wasn't reading his lines off a cue card while seeing them for the first time I'd be surprised. The effects are something you'd see out of Windows Movie Maker, the scares are nonexistent and there is nothing redeeming to this film at all. There are some great films about voodoo that get the atmosphere, the terror and the Haitian culture right, The Serpent And The Rainbow obviously comes to mind immediately... this is no Serpent and this is no Rainbow.

The Audio & Video
The DVD from Image Entertainment is okay. The movie seems to have been shot with cheaper cameras so it isn't going to look great no matter what the DVD authoring did. The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is fine, it won't blow you away but it is clear of any hiccups. The majority of the film is in dark and dimly lit hospital areas and the disc handles the black levels fine. The audio fares just as well, it won't blow you away but there's no background noise, no pops, crackling or hissing. Dialogue comes through loud and clear and the score is mixed well in this 5.1 Dolby Digital track. 

The Extras
A Behind-The-Scenes featurette is the lone feature on the disc. 

 
The Bottom Line
You can take a pass on this one.

VOODOO POSSESSION is available HERE

Case 39 (2009)

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 sleeping 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.

A Nightmare On Elm St. (2010)

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

The Grindhouse Experience: Chapter 2 "Tortured Angels"

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.