Gearing Up For October And Halloween

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

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)

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.

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)

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, confident Tamara 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)

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)

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.

8.5/10