I meant to finish this post last night, but I ran out of time in the middle of a horror movie. It's Halloween! Autumn, horror movies, and candy! Does it get any better than that? I think not.
Prophecy: Forsaken (2005) was made around the same time as Prophecy: Uprising. Picking up where Uprising left off, Forsaken continues the story of Allison, Keeper of the One True Bible, the one where God is still dictating the last chapters of Revelations. Needless to say, the rogue angels are still after the book, trying to get ahold of it so they can gain an advantage in the war. The rogue Angels have an assassin working for them this time, and Allison no longer has her brother to back her up. What she does have, is the One True Bible, which is about to reveal the name of the AntiChrist...
Prophecy: Forsaken adds Tony Todd as Stark, the Seraphim after the Bible that Allison guards, Jason Scott Lee as Dylan, the assassin after Allison, and has Kari Wuhrer and John Light returning as Allison and Riegart (aka Satan). The acting is decent, and with such veteran actors, why shouldn't it be? This movie wraps up the short side-plot of the book that has gone on for two movies, which was a departure from the first three movies, that were mostly about Gabriel (played by Christopher Walken, who hasn't showed up since the third movie).
This movie was pretty much focused on the rather rapid demise of Jason Scott Lee's character, who goes from living assassin to decomposing zombie in a matter of about an hour. Still, there was a fair bit of moral ambiguity, especially since, well, we're starting the movie on the premise of angels being the bad guys, so we can only go downhill from there. Lucifer doesn't even do much in this movie, and what he does do only seems to help Allison, and what Allison does only seems to help Lucifer, which is odd, but that's how it goes.
Not too much action, and I wasn't too fond of the end. I thought it could have been better, but it's the last of the Prophecy movies, at any rate. This movie is available on Netflix if you want to see it. I'd say watch it at least once to see how the 5-movie arc ends, then forget about it. I personally would have loved another Kari Wuhrer nude scene, but alas, the best I got was some shadow nipplage seen through one of her sweaters.
Our final horror movie review for the month is Let Us Prey (2014) also on Netflix. I wasn't sure what movie to end the month on, and I was considering watching Idle Hands (with Devon Sawa and Jessica Alba), which is good, but more of a comedy than a horror flick. Option B was Stephen King's A Good Marriage, but I wasn't sure whether that would turn out to be horror, or just a thriller. So, I went with Option C, take the Claw to the face, roll around on the ground, and die. Wait. No, that's Kung Pow. Option C was a total risk, a low-budget movie that had no discernible plot, and it turned out to be not half bad.
Let Us Prey (2014) picks up the story of Rachel Heggie, a new police officer assigned to a remote scottish law enforcement post. Rachel starts her day by arresting the driver of a car that just ran into an old man, but the old man seems to have vanished. When Rachel arrives at her new job with her perp in tow, she's heckled by her new squad-mates, which is probably normal. But things aren't all that they seem in Rachel's new post, and as the jail cells begin to fill up, Rachel can't help but wonder about the old man who was hit by the car...
I thought this movie was pretty decent. Fair amount of action, unusual plot, well-acted and well-executed. The only recognizable actor was Liam Cunningham (yes, Davos the Onion Knight himself), but the rest of the cast wasn't bad, either. I can't really think of any plot holes that bothered me, making this one of the more solid writing jobs for horror movies out there, and while the idea may not be wholly original (I seem to remember seeing something like this before, but I can't quite recall where), it's certainly different from the norm.
I would say watch Let Us Prey at least once for the originality of it, as it's not your usual horror story, but I don't know if it's up to repeat viewing yet. Pretty much once you've seen it, you kind of know where it's going to go. Let Us Prey is on netflix, if I didn't mention that.
And that's all for my annual Halloween Horror Movie Review-a-Thon! Yet again, I have managed to watch and review 31 horror movies in 31 days! True Horror movie lovers are out there going "That's an accomplishment? I watch 31 horror movies a day!" And, you're probably right.
Bonus review, Ash vs Evil dead on Starz! wasn't bad. They gave a sneak-preview last night after Showing Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness, and then Bruce Campbell told me that watching all that for the last 7 hours was impressive! Yea, what can I say. Sitting around on my butt is something I am good at.
Hope everyone has a good All Hallow's Eve, Festival of Samhain, or however else you celebrate this time of year! Enjoy your candy! :-D
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
Horror Reviews #28-29: Prophecy 3 and 4.
Continuing the Prophecy Series of movies I began reviewing yesterday. I know these movies are about angels, and I ask myself (because I have no one else to talk to about these things), why are these movies considered horror? Well, let me tell you, or me, or whatever these voices in my head are. As Gabriel (Christopher Walken) himself said it, in the first Prophecy movie. Whenever God needs someone killed, he sends an angel. Sure, we have this Catholic/Christian image of angels of mercy, beautiful, glowing winged servants of the lord coming down to aid us in our time of need. But really, what did the angels always do in the bible? They brought plagues. They sacrificed the firstborns of families. Were they anything more than winged assassins? Some of the best horror movies feature demons, perhaps rising from the bodies of those they've possessed. But if Angels are the heavenly counterpart to demons, shouldn't they be at least as powerful, and capable of similar acts? If, like Lucifer, all demons were once angels, doesn't that make them as capable of great evil, simply by choosing to work against god, instead of for him? And doesn't that make them just as terrifying, and just as worthy to be the subjects of horror films?
Prophecy 3: The Ascension (2000) picks up where Prophecy 2 left off. Gabriel is human now, wandering the streets, a homeless bum. Danyael has returned, this time as the offspring of Valerie Rosales (played by Jennifer Beals in the last movie). Danyael is Nephilim now, half-human, half-angel, but he's become something of a prophet. Preaching to a crowd of poor and hungry folks, Danyael says that god does not care about the earth, that there is no plan. And Danyael is promptly shot, several times, in the chest, by a blind man. And if Danyael weren't Nephilim, that would be the end of the movie. But Nephilim, as the Coroner relates later, are notoriously hard to kill...
Prophecy 3 marks the last time Christopher Walken reprises his role as Gabriel. The rest of the cast is mostly unknown, but interestingly, there are several returning characters. The coroner from the first movie, who was such good friends with Thomas (the cop/ex-priest from the first movie) returns for a third time (the coroner also popped up in the second movie). Also, the waitress from the diner that Gabriel and Rachel stopped in (in the first movie), returns for a cameo. Mary, the little possessed girl from the first movie (also played by the same actress, now older), also returns for a brief cameo. None of them have much effect on the movie as a whole, really, but they do sort of tie the whole series together. Vincent Spano plays Zophael, a new angel for this movie. Brad Dourif plays the blind guy who shoots Danyael. Danyael's love interest, named Maggie (the actress I have never heard of, before or since), is a cute addition to the cast, and has a rockin' body, as they used to say back in the 80's.
Obviously, the actors you've heard of do a reasonably decent job in their roles, but this movie isn't as good as the first one. Maybe it's on par with the second one, but it feels a bit shorter. In any case, there's a fair bit of combat in this one, and Vincent Spano carries around a wicked looking dagger, so there's always the usual hand-to-hand combat/melee fun of angels trying to rip out each other's hearts. Still, this movie wraps up Gabriel's plot-line, so I'd suggest watching 3 before starting into the last 2 Prophecy movies, as they seem to revolve around a different aspect of the second (or first) war of angels.
Prophecy: Uprising (2005) marks the fourth entry into the Prophecy series. This time, the Angels (and demons) are now looking for a book. The book is the one true copy of the Bible, as it were, in that it acts as a cosmic secretary, scribbling down God's word as if it were taking dictation directly from him. Word on the street is that, whoever possesses the Lexicon (as this unfinished bible is called), has an insurmountable advantage over either side in the second war of the angels, or even the first war, because the Lexicon transcribes the word of god as it is spoken, thus predicting the future as god creates it, or something to that effect. Obviously, this book would be a game-changer in the hands of any demon, angel, devil, or whatnot. The problem is, the Priest who possessed it has passed on, and the book has been stolen! :-o
Prophecy: Uprising introduces one of my favorite actresses of all time into the series, Kari Wuhrer (or Salin, whatever name she's using at the moment). Kari is an actress with B-list acting talent, but A-list looks and perseverance. Probably her best shot at fame was the movie Eight-Legged Freaks, in which she acted beside a young Scarlett Johansen (playing her incredibly hot mom, of all things) and David Arquette. Unfortunately, that movie neither spawned a series of sequels, nor garnered Kari the fame and fortune it should have. In any case, Kari plays Allison in this movie, the unfortunate recipient of the Lexicon, and the focus of much of the ire of the rest of the cast. Sean Pertwee plays a cop with a pivotal connection to the book, who is recruited by an interpol agent named John Riegert (who you just know isn't quite everything he appears to be).
At this point in the Prophecy series, it's getting hard to tell who's an angel, who's a demon, who's following god's plan, and who isn't, and that's all part of the fun, I guess. Hopefully things are going to get all cleared up in the final entry in the prophecy series, but it's too late to start watching it now, so I'll have to hold off til tomorrow. Both these movies, and the final one in the series, are all available on Netflix if you want to watch them.
Ugh, Halloween. So much to do, so little time. Still got to carve out my pumpkin and I don't think I'm going to catch all my favorite Halloween-season movies this year. Oh well, there's always next year. Maybe next October I'll do a month-long series of my favorite horror movies of all time, or maybe I'll shoot for doing all-new movies that I haven't seen yet. Hmmm. Oh well, we'll see what happens!
Just a reminder to Grimm fans, the new season kicks off tomorrow night on NBC, I believe. Also, Ash vs the Evil Dead premieres on Starz! on Halloween night. You know I'll be watching both of those, so don't miss either of them if you're a fan! Or, you know, DVR them if you have Halloween parties to go to. Til tomorrow, Horror movie lovers!
Prophecy 3: The Ascension (2000) picks up where Prophecy 2 left off. Gabriel is human now, wandering the streets, a homeless bum. Danyael has returned, this time as the offspring of Valerie Rosales (played by Jennifer Beals in the last movie). Danyael is Nephilim now, half-human, half-angel, but he's become something of a prophet. Preaching to a crowd of poor and hungry folks, Danyael says that god does not care about the earth, that there is no plan. And Danyael is promptly shot, several times, in the chest, by a blind man. And if Danyael weren't Nephilim, that would be the end of the movie. But Nephilim, as the Coroner relates later, are notoriously hard to kill...
Prophecy 3 marks the last time Christopher Walken reprises his role as Gabriel. The rest of the cast is mostly unknown, but interestingly, there are several returning characters. The coroner from the first movie, who was such good friends with Thomas (the cop/ex-priest from the first movie) returns for a third time (the coroner also popped up in the second movie). Also, the waitress from the diner that Gabriel and Rachel stopped in (in the first movie), returns for a cameo. Mary, the little possessed girl from the first movie (also played by the same actress, now older), also returns for a brief cameo. None of them have much effect on the movie as a whole, really, but they do sort of tie the whole series together. Vincent Spano plays Zophael, a new angel for this movie. Brad Dourif plays the blind guy who shoots Danyael. Danyael's love interest, named Maggie (the actress I have never heard of, before or since), is a cute addition to the cast, and has a rockin' body, as they used to say back in the 80's.
Obviously, the actors you've heard of do a reasonably decent job in their roles, but this movie isn't as good as the first one. Maybe it's on par with the second one, but it feels a bit shorter. In any case, there's a fair bit of combat in this one, and Vincent Spano carries around a wicked looking dagger, so there's always the usual hand-to-hand combat/melee fun of angels trying to rip out each other's hearts. Still, this movie wraps up Gabriel's plot-line, so I'd suggest watching 3 before starting into the last 2 Prophecy movies, as they seem to revolve around a different aspect of the second (or first) war of angels.
Prophecy: Uprising (2005) marks the fourth entry into the Prophecy series. This time, the Angels (and demons) are now looking for a book. The book is the one true copy of the Bible, as it were, in that it acts as a cosmic secretary, scribbling down God's word as if it were taking dictation directly from him. Word on the street is that, whoever possesses the Lexicon (as this unfinished bible is called), has an insurmountable advantage over either side in the second war of the angels, or even the first war, because the Lexicon transcribes the word of god as it is spoken, thus predicting the future as god creates it, or something to that effect. Obviously, this book would be a game-changer in the hands of any demon, angel, devil, or whatnot. The problem is, the Priest who possessed it has passed on, and the book has been stolen! :-o
Prophecy: Uprising introduces one of my favorite actresses of all time into the series, Kari Wuhrer (or Salin, whatever name she's using at the moment). Kari is an actress with B-list acting talent, but A-list looks and perseverance. Probably her best shot at fame was the movie Eight-Legged Freaks, in which she acted beside a young Scarlett Johansen (playing her incredibly hot mom, of all things) and David Arquette. Unfortunately, that movie neither spawned a series of sequels, nor garnered Kari the fame and fortune it should have. In any case, Kari plays Allison in this movie, the unfortunate recipient of the Lexicon, and the focus of much of the ire of the rest of the cast. Sean Pertwee plays a cop with a pivotal connection to the book, who is recruited by an interpol agent named John Riegert (who you just know isn't quite everything he appears to be).
At this point in the Prophecy series, it's getting hard to tell who's an angel, who's a demon, who's following god's plan, and who isn't, and that's all part of the fun, I guess. Hopefully things are going to get all cleared up in the final entry in the prophecy series, but it's too late to start watching it now, so I'll have to hold off til tomorrow. Both these movies, and the final one in the series, are all available on Netflix if you want to watch them.
Ugh, Halloween. So much to do, so little time. Still got to carve out my pumpkin and I don't think I'm going to catch all my favorite Halloween-season movies this year. Oh well, there's always next year. Maybe next October I'll do a month-long series of my favorite horror movies of all time, or maybe I'll shoot for doing all-new movies that I haven't seen yet. Hmmm. Oh well, we'll see what happens!
Just a reminder to Grimm fans, the new season kicks off tomorrow night on NBC, I believe. Also, Ash vs the Evil Dead premieres on Starz! on Halloween night. You know I'll be watching both of those, so don't miss either of them if you're a fan! Or, you know, DVR them if you have Halloween parties to go to. Til tomorrow, Horror movie lovers!
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Horror Reviews #26 - 27: Prophecy (1995), Prophecy 2 (1998)
I can't recall if I have reviewed Prophecy at some point, but it's a fairly decent horror movie, and I need something to review, so I watched Prophecy 1 and 2 on Netflix. I honestly tried watching the Septic Man on hulu.com, but I only got halfway, and I'll briefly tell you why.
First off, for the same price as Netflix ($8 a month) hulu gives you commercials throughout all your movies (unless you want to pay for the commercial-free option, which is $12). Which seems retarded, because HBO and all the rest of the premium channels (as well as Netflix) give you commercial-free movies. Frankly, that seems shady to me. Not only do they collect money from advertisers to spam commercials at you while you're trying to enjoy a movie, but they want money from you, as well? So they're getting paid twice for the same showing? Seems totally crooked to me. Also, most of the commercials I'm seeing throughout the movie are for hulu's commercial-free option, which begs the question... If hulu wasn't interrupting my movie to show me commercials for their commercial-free option... wouldn't my movie be commercial-free? Why, yes. Yes, it would. I was actually considering getting a subscription to hulu, but if they're going to show commercials throughout my $8 worth of movies, and continuously spam commercials for their $12 service while I'm paying for the $8, then screw them. Crooked bastards.
Also, if you get a chance to watch Septic Man, don't. Boring as hell. Seriously. Oh, the first few minutes are disgusting, and you think "Oh geez, this is going to be one of those movies where I shouldn't eat a meal during it." and then... you watch a sewer worker walking and crawling around the sewers for the next 45 minutes. Yea. He's going nowhere, nothing exciting is happening, there's some whackos supposedly living around the sewers but they're so ridiculously uninteresting that one of them files the other's teeth to try and make it more exciting. And no, watching someone file teeth down to points isn't exciting. It's like watching someone floss. So, while nothing is happening to the sewer worker, nothing else is happening anywhere else in the movie, which makes for a whole lot of boring, from a handful of boring characters. Which is, well, boring. Duh. I expected so much more from the guys who made Pontypool. Very disappointing. Between the commercials and general boredom, I had to shut it off, or risk even greater levels of insanity than I already display on a regular basis. And nobody wants that.
Prophecy (1995) is about an archangel, Gabriel, who comes to Earth to tip the scales in an angel-on-angel war, and I'm not talking about the one against Lucifer. Only it's not really an angel on angel war, because Gabriel is actually pissed off that god likes humans better than angels, so Gabriel is looking to gain an advantage in order to destroy all humans. In Prophecy, Gabriel seeks the soul of a colonel who served in the Vietnam war, a particularly vile sort who enjoyed vicious fighting and supposedly sacrificed children to drive fear into the hearts of his enemies. The colonel has only recently died, and another angel, one loyal to god, has hidden the soul from Gabriel. It's up to an ex-priest and a schoolteacher to prevent Gabriel from finding it.
Gabriel is played by Christopher Walken, who is creepy enough to scare Lucifer (who is actually played by Viggo Mortensen in this movie) out of hell, so he makes a perfect evil angel for this movie. Elias Koteas and Virginia Madsen play the ex-priest and schoolteacher, and Eric Stoltz and Amanda Plummer round out the supporting cast. Obviously these are all talented actors, and the plot is like something out of the Exorcist, so you have a decent movie on your hands. Could have done with a bit more action, but still, twasn't bad. I've seen it before, and I'll probably see it again, so repeat viewings are fine on this one. Solid start to a whole series of movies.
Prophecy 2 (1998) picks up with Gabriel again. This time, he's after a woman who has been impregnated by an angel. The offspring of an angel and a human is called a Nephilim. Supposedly, they have the power of an angel with the free will of a human (though Gabriel seems to have a lot of free will to do evil in these movies, so I'm a little confused about that), and Gabriel can't stand that idea. Of course, all the angels who are still loyal to god are going to be standing in his way.
Christopher Walken reprises his role as Gabriel in Prophecy 2, with Eric Roberts doing a short bit as the Archangel Michael. Jennifer Beals plays the pregnant woman, but I really don't recognize anyone else in the movie except for Gabriel's undead henchman, uh, hench-woman, that is, played by the late Brittany Murphy. Acting and plot aren't as good as the first movie, though the added benefit of a short nude scene by Jennifer Beals ups the excitement level by a fraction, for a fraction of a second.
Prophecy 2 wasn't as good as the first one, so if you only have time for one, watch the first one. Prophecy 2 may or may not add anything to the series. I'll have to let you know since I am watching the other Prophecy movies tomorrow.
That's all for now. Til next time!
First off, for the same price as Netflix ($8 a month) hulu gives you commercials throughout all your movies (unless you want to pay for the commercial-free option, which is $12). Which seems retarded, because HBO and all the rest of the premium channels (as well as Netflix) give you commercial-free movies. Frankly, that seems shady to me. Not only do they collect money from advertisers to spam commercials at you while you're trying to enjoy a movie, but they want money from you, as well? So they're getting paid twice for the same showing? Seems totally crooked to me. Also, most of the commercials I'm seeing throughout the movie are for hulu's commercial-free option, which begs the question... If hulu wasn't interrupting my movie to show me commercials for their commercial-free option... wouldn't my movie be commercial-free? Why, yes. Yes, it would. I was actually considering getting a subscription to hulu, but if they're going to show commercials throughout my $8 worth of movies, and continuously spam commercials for their $12 service while I'm paying for the $8, then screw them. Crooked bastards.
Also, if you get a chance to watch Septic Man, don't. Boring as hell. Seriously. Oh, the first few minutes are disgusting, and you think "Oh geez, this is going to be one of those movies where I shouldn't eat a meal during it." and then... you watch a sewer worker walking and crawling around the sewers for the next 45 minutes. Yea. He's going nowhere, nothing exciting is happening, there's some whackos supposedly living around the sewers but they're so ridiculously uninteresting that one of them files the other's teeth to try and make it more exciting. And no, watching someone file teeth down to points isn't exciting. It's like watching someone floss. So, while nothing is happening to the sewer worker, nothing else is happening anywhere else in the movie, which makes for a whole lot of boring, from a handful of boring characters. Which is, well, boring. Duh. I expected so much more from the guys who made Pontypool. Very disappointing. Between the commercials and general boredom, I had to shut it off, or risk even greater levels of insanity than I already display on a regular basis. And nobody wants that.
Prophecy (1995) is about an archangel, Gabriel, who comes to Earth to tip the scales in an angel-on-angel war, and I'm not talking about the one against Lucifer. Only it's not really an angel on angel war, because Gabriel is actually pissed off that god likes humans better than angels, so Gabriel is looking to gain an advantage in order to destroy all humans. In Prophecy, Gabriel seeks the soul of a colonel who served in the Vietnam war, a particularly vile sort who enjoyed vicious fighting and supposedly sacrificed children to drive fear into the hearts of his enemies. The colonel has only recently died, and another angel, one loyal to god, has hidden the soul from Gabriel. It's up to an ex-priest and a schoolteacher to prevent Gabriel from finding it.
Gabriel is played by Christopher Walken, who is creepy enough to scare Lucifer (who is actually played by Viggo Mortensen in this movie) out of hell, so he makes a perfect evil angel for this movie. Elias Koteas and Virginia Madsen play the ex-priest and schoolteacher, and Eric Stoltz and Amanda Plummer round out the supporting cast. Obviously these are all talented actors, and the plot is like something out of the Exorcist, so you have a decent movie on your hands. Could have done with a bit more action, but still, twasn't bad. I've seen it before, and I'll probably see it again, so repeat viewings are fine on this one. Solid start to a whole series of movies.
Prophecy 2 (1998) picks up with Gabriel again. This time, he's after a woman who has been impregnated by an angel. The offspring of an angel and a human is called a Nephilim. Supposedly, they have the power of an angel with the free will of a human (though Gabriel seems to have a lot of free will to do evil in these movies, so I'm a little confused about that), and Gabriel can't stand that idea. Of course, all the angels who are still loyal to god are going to be standing in his way.
Christopher Walken reprises his role as Gabriel in Prophecy 2, with Eric Roberts doing a short bit as the Archangel Michael. Jennifer Beals plays the pregnant woman, but I really don't recognize anyone else in the movie except for Gabriel's undead henchman, uh, hench-woman, that is, played by the late Brittany Murphy. Acting and plot aren't as good as the first movie, though the added benefit of a short nude scene by Jennifer Beals ups the excitement level by a fraction, for a fraction of a second.
Prophecy 2 wasn't as good as the first one, so if you only have time for one, watch the first one. Prophecy 2 may or may not add anything to the series. I'll have to let you know since I am watching the other Prophecy movies tomorrow.
That's all for now. Til next time!
Monday, October 26, 2015
Horror Review #24 - 25: The Hollow (2015), Twixt (2011)
Double feature tonight, to catch up! Again! Yea. I know. I'm a total slacker. That's just me. :-) Tonight's movies are completely unrelated to each other, as much as I'd like to unite them with a common theme, so let's just get to the reviews.
The Hollow (2015) is so new that it doesn't even have an IMDB.com entry yet, as far as I can tell. Basically, three girls are heading to an island to visit their Aunt Cora when they hear about an old legend, one that says 6 young girls were accused of Witchcraft on the island, and put to death. As they died, the girls summoned up a fierce storm and half the people on the island died on Halloween, 1915. They also vowed that, 100 years later, they would return and seek vengeance on anyone staying on the island. Turns out, just as these three girls are visiting their Aunt Cora, it's 100 years later, and a fierce storm is a-brewing up on the island that will cut it off from the mainland...
I think this is a case of my review actually being better than the movie again. The backstory was good enough, the tale of the 6 girls killed 100 years back, but here's my problem. At the beginning of the movie, the townsfolk are getting all freaked out because there's a storm coming, and they're scared of being on the island because "the last time a storm hit the island, half the people on it died!" Okay, look, this is 2015. No story that's 100 years old would even be considered to be real anymore. It's too far removed from the public memory to incite fear in the local populace. Two, there are people living on the island. You're telling me that, in the last 100 years, there has NEVER been a storm on the island? Because if "the last time there was a storm on the island, half the people died!" Storms occur in most places fairly often. Wouldn't the last time have been, at best, a few weeks back? I mean, if half the people had died then, and during every storm for the last 100 years, I could see where the townsfolk would be a little upset. Plus, there wouldn't be anyone living on the island at all at that point, would there? No. No there wouldn't.
So then we get to the basic nuts and bolts of the movie. There's this creature made of twigs and sparks, is I guess the best way I can describe it, and it's hunting, well, everyone, as it's supposed to. Apparently, this is the form of vengeance the spirits of those 6 girls took. Okay, I'm with you so far. So. Where exactly is this storm they keep mentioning? They said there was going to be one, and... There wasn't, not til the very end. Nothing all day and throughout most of the night. What we end up with is a few strokes of lightning and poof, movie over. That was it? That was the big storm that was scaring everyone away from the island? Really? No rain, no wind, no fog, no hurricane, just poof? Wtf?
The basic story was easy enough to follow, and matched the usual SyFy movie of the week pattern (which is where I saw this one, on Syfy). Creature chases victims, victims die one by one, creature seems unstoppable, finally creature is defeated. Not giving anything away in case you want to watch this drivel on Syfy at some point. The creature effects were computer generated, but they weren't bad. The girls were cute, but their parents died recently and I'm a little confused as to how the older sister got temporary custody of her two younger sisters, or how the youngest sisters weren't already in the custody of their aunt cora to begin with, since she seems to be the sole surviving relative? Meh. Just a little confusing. Also confusing is how, in an underground bunker where one of the girls needs a lighter just to see, there's still the flicker of lighting that somehow shows through not only the steel superstructure of the underground place where they are, but through the ground as well. That's some impressive lightning.
Meh, I don't think The Hollow is worth a watch at all, honestly. Syfy may play it again if you really must see it. Acting was passably okay and some of the actors looked familiar. There was some blood and gore, and the creature made frequent appearances, so, there's that. On to the next one.
Twixt (2011) is the story of ... well, I guess it's a story of how a writer came up with his next novel, and solved a murder in the meantime. Apparently, some guy named Hall Baltimore is a novelist, and is having a hard time writing his next book due to his daughter's recent death. While on a book signing tour (the bane of every novelist, apparently), Hall is approached by the local Sheriff of a rinky-dink little town to co-write a novel about vampires. The Sheriff lays out the beginning of the tale, involving the unidentified corpse of a murdered girl in the town's morgue, and Hall tries to run with it, only to run into his usual difficulties, that of alcoholism and writer's block. Can Hall get an outline to his editor before ending up another body in the morgue? Only time will tell!
Okay, this movie was just confusing. Val Kilmer plays Hall baltimore, the "bargain basement Stephen King" of this tale, and Bruce Dern is effective and engaging as the sheriff. Elle Fanning does an equitable turn as V, the murder victim. Special effects were okay, but as to what actually happened, well, who knows. Supposedly, there were some murder victims, staked in the way that one would kill a vampire, and these formed the basis of the novel that eventually went to Hall's editor. There were a lot of murdered kids buried somewhere that Edgar Allen Poe once spent the night, and Hall spent a lot of time chatting with Poe in his alcohol-induced dreams. And then...! And then Hall is handing his finished novel to his editor, or publisher, or whatever, who assures him the novel is bulletproof. Whatever that means.
What did I just watch? Was it a horror movie? I can't tell. No wonder it did poorly at the theaters. It's on netflix (netflix calls it a thriller) if you want to try your hand at figuring it out, but it disappears from their streaming service on Nov 1. Honestly, I'd say give it a pass. Too confusing to figure out, and nothing interesting to keep your attention. And wtf was up with the clock tower? They spend all this time mentioning it and nothing of any note happens there. What was the damn point? So confusing.
So, don't watch either of the films that I just suffered through! For your sake. I hope you guys appreciate my sacrifice. That's almost 3 hours of my life that I spent watching crap, so you don't have to. That's right, I took one for the team. The horror-movie-enthusiast team. Actually, I took two for the team. So go watch something better! Don't make my sacrifice meaningless! Save yourselves!
Til next time.
The Hollow (2015) is so new that it doesn't even have an IMDB.com entry yet, as far as I can tell. Basically, three girls are heading to an island to visit their Aunt Cora when they hear about an old legend, one that says 6 young girls were accused of Witchcraft on the island, and put to death. As they died, the girls summoned up a fierce storm and half the people on the island died on Halloween, 1915. They also vowed that, 100 years later, they would return and seek vengeance on anyone staying on the island. Turns out, just as these three girls are visiting their Aunt Cora, it's 100 years later, and a fierce storm is a-brewing up on the island that will cut it off from the mainland...
I think this is a case of my review actually being better than the movie again. The backstory was good enough, the tale of the 6 girls killed 100 years back, but here's my problem. At the beginning of the movie, the townsfolk are getting all freaked out because there's a storm coming, and they're scared of being on the island because "the last time a storm hit the island, half the people on it died!" Okay, look, this is 2015. No story that's 100 years old would even be considered to be real anymore. It's too far removed from the public memory to incite fear in the local populace. Two, there are people living on the island. You're telling me that, in the last 100 years, there has NEVER been a storm on the island? Because if "the last time there was a storm on the island, half the people died!" Storms occur in most places fairly often. Wouldn't the last time have been, at best, a few weeks back? I mean, if half the people had died then, and during every storm for the last 100 years, I could see where the townsfolk would be a little upset. Plus, there wouldn't be anyone living on the island at all at that point, would there? No. No there wouldn't.
So then we get to the basic nuts and bolts of the movie. There's this creature made of twigs and sparks, is I guess the best way I can describe it, and it's hunting, well, everyone, as it's supposed to. Apparently, this is the form of vengeance the spirits of those 6 girls took. Okay, I'm with you so far. So. Where exactly is this storm they keep mentioning? They said there was going to be one, and... There wasn't, not til the very end. Nothing all day and throughout most of the night. What we end up with is a few strokes of lightning and poof, movie over. That was it? That was the big storm that was scaring everyone away from the island? Really? No rain, no wind, no fog, no hurricane, just poof? Wtf?
The basic story was easy enough to follow, and matched the usual SyFy movie of the week pattern (which is where I saw this one, on Syfy). Creature chases victims, victims die one by one, creature seems unstoppable, finally creature is defeated. Not giving anything away in case you want to watch this drivel on Syfy at some point. The creature effects were computer generated, but they weren't bad. The girls were cute, but their parents died recently and I'm a little confused as to how the older sister got temporary custody of her two younger sisters, or how the youngest sisters weren't already in the custody of their aunt cora to begin with, since she seems to be the sole surviving relative? Meh. Just a little confusing. Also confusing is how, in an underground bunker where one of the girls needs a lighter just to see, there's still the flicker of lighting that somehow shows through not only the steel superstructure of the underground place where they are, but through the ground as well. That's some impressive lightning.
Meh, I don't think The Hollow is worth a watch at all, honestly. Syfy may play it again if you really must see it. Acting was passably okay and some of the actors looked familiar. There was some blood and gore, and the creature made frequent appearances, so, there's that. On to the next one.
Twixt (2011) is the story of ... well, I guess it's a story of how a writer came up with his next novel, and solved a murder in the meantime. Apparently, some guy named Hall Baltimore is a novelist, and is having a hard time writing his next book due to his daughter's recent death. While on a book signing tour (the bane of every novelist, apparently), Hall is approached by the local Sheriff of a rinky-dink little town to co-write a novel about vampires. The Sheriff lays out the beginning of the tale, involving the unidentified corpse of a murdered girl in the town's morgue, and Hall tries to run with it, only to run into his usual difficulties, that of alcoholism and writer's block. Can Hall get an outline to his editor before ending up another body in the morgue? Only time will tell!
Okay, this movie was just confusing. Val Kilmer plays Hall baltimore, the "bargain basement Stephen King" of this tale, and Bruce Dern is effective and engaging as the sheriff. Elle Fanning does an equitable turn as V, the murder victim. Special effects were okay, but as to what actually happened, well, who knows. Supposedly, there were some murder victims, staked in the way that one would kill a vampire, and these formed the basis of the novel that eventually went to Hall's editor. There were a lot of murdered kids buried somewhere that Edgar Allen Poe once spent the night, and Hall spent a lot of time chatting with Poe in his alcohol-induced dreams. And then...! And then Hall is handing his finished novel to his editor, or publisher, or whatever, who assures him the novel is bulletproof. Whatever that means.
What did I just watch? Was it a horror movie? I can't tell. No wonder it did poorly at the theaters. It's on netflix (netflix calls it a thriller) if you want to try your hand at figuring it out, but it disappears from their streaming service on Nov 1. Honestly, I'd say give it a pass. Too confusing to figure out, and nothing interesting to keep your attention. And wtf was up with the clock tower? They spend all this time mentioning it and nothing of any note happens there. What was the damn point? So confusing.
So, don't watch either of the films that I just suffered through! For your sake. I hope you guys appreciate my sacrifice. That's almost 3 hours of my life that I spent watching crap, so you don't have to. That's right, I took one for the team. The horror-movie-enthusiast team. Actually, I took two for the team. So go watch something better! Don't make my sacrifice meaningless! Save yourselves!
Til next time.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Horror Reviews #21-23: Mimic, Mimic 2, Mimic 3
Friday night triple feature! Can I pull it off? Can I, in one fell swoop, catch up on all the reviews I am behind? Probably not! But I'm going for it! Plus, I don't think I've ever reviewed the Mimic series before, which sucks, because the movie are actually pretty good. Mimic (1997) starts the series off with Mira Sorvino in the lead role, then Mimic 2 (2001) follows it up with, well, mostly a cast of unknowns (as far as I can tell) and Mimic 3: Sentinel (2003) finishes off the series with Lance Henriksen, Amanda Plummer and Alexis Dziena! Let's start with the first and work our way up!
Mimic (1997) kicks off the series with, of course, the origin story. A plague is making the children of New York City terribly ill, so ill that the lucky ones are probably the ones who die. No cure can be found, no means of prevention will work. If the virus has one weakness, it lies with the host. Cockroaches. But how do you eradicate an entire city's worth of cockroaches, when just killing one of them can be difficult? Enter Dr. Susan Tyler, entomologist extraordinaire. The Indiana Jones of the bug world, Dr. Tyler bio-engineers a strain of insect she calls the 'Judas breed.' Designed solely to attract roaches and inseminate them with a viral exterminator, the Judas Breed accomplishes its task, and the children of the city are saved. Not unaware of the dangers of toying with mother nature, Dr. Tyler even ensures the Judas Breed is sterile, so that it cannot replicate itself. Once it has killed all the roaches, the Judas Bug will naturally die out. Fast forward three years later, and Dr. Tyler, the hero of the city, finds out the Judas Breed is still around. Somehow, it has not only survived, but it is thriving...
Mimic 2 (2001) continues the tale, picking up with Remy, Dr. Tyler's colleague from the first movie. Remy is teaching in the city now, but all her ex-boyfriends seem to be disappearing, or ending up dead. Enter the police in the form of Detective Klaski, who is beginning to think Remy is a psycho serial killer. The only reason Klaski hasn't arrested Remy yet is because he can't figure out how a 112-pound schoolteacher could toss the 200+ pound body of her ex-stalker over a lamppost. Turns out it isn't Remy doing all the killing, but the last surviving fertile male of the Judas Breed, who has somehow selected Remy to be his procreative mate. Can Remy use her scientific knowledge of the Judas Breed to save herself and her students?
Mimic 3: Sentinel (2003) focuses on one of the sick kids who had 'Strickler's Syndrome' (the disease that was borne by the cockroaches in the first movie). Now an adult, Marvin spends most of his time in his room in his family's apartment, taking surreptitious photos of his neighbors. Marvin's hobby turns up a few interesting tidbits about his neighbors, such as the fact that Marvin's sister is close friends with her drug dealer, and one of the children across the alley has disappeared. Marvin isn't in much of a position to help any of his neighbors as they start to run into trouble, and the policeman he calls for help, ends up being more interested in Marvin's mother than investigating Marvin's story. Can Marvin and his drug-addled sister figure out what is going on, before it's too late?
I'm honestly surprised they haven't made another Mimic movie. Granted, the third movie probably didn't make much money, but it's basically a movie series about killer cockroaches growing to human size and mimicking our appearance so they can kill us easier. Seems like a fairly original concept, if barred from true greatness by longer running times and ample female nudity. Or at least, that's what I would do to improve the movies, anyway. And honestly, wouldn't that just make every movie better? I think so.
Acting is pretty decent, special effects are well used for what little screen time they actually get, and there's a token gunfight and explosion sequence in pretty much every movie. Charles S. Dutton, F. Murray Abraham and Giancarlo Giannini round out the cast in the first movie with Mira Sorvino as Dr. Tyler. In the third movie, Lance Henriksen and John Kapelos show up to support Alexis Dziena, Karl geary and Amanda Plummer. I don't really know anybody in the second movie, but, uh... It passed an hour and a half without making my eyes bleed? I'm not sure what else to tell you.
All three movies are basically the same formula, but not to say the movies are formulaic. Each movie picks up the tale of a normal man or woman who has some inside knowledge about the Mimics being tasked with stopping them from spreading. I like that none of the heroes or heroines are particularly hardy, in fact, the male lead in the third film spends most of the movie sucking oxygen out of a mobile tank. In every case, the mimics begin the attack before the main characters even have any idea what's going on, and the action sequences that follow aren't even about the leads trying to play catch-up, but just trying to live through the night. Which, is why I refer to them as action-horror.
All three movies are on netflix if you want to watch them. Each of the movies are worth a viewing on their own merits, but taken as a whole, you get a good sense of what the Mimics are trying to accomplish and how feeble our efforts to stop them actually are. Plus, Mira Sorvino and Alexis Dziena are actually quite easy on the eyes, and even the mousy-looking teacher from the second movie strips down to her bra and panties in an effort to foil the Mimics keen sense of smell. Yea, I know, I don't get out much. Your point?
That's all for tonight. Caught up for now. As long as I don't fall behind again, only 8 more movies to go for 2015's horror movie review-a-thon! :-D
Mimic (1997) kicks off the series with, of course, the origin story. A plague is making the children of New York City terribly ill, so ill that the lucky ones are probably the ones who die. No cure can be found, no means of prevention will work. If the virus has one weakness, it lies with the host. Cockroaches. But how do you eradicate an entire city's worth of cockroaches, when just killing one of them can be difficult? Enter Dr. Susan Tyler, entomologist extraordinaire. The Indiana Jones of the bug world, Dr. Tyler bio-engineers a strain of insect she calls the 'Judas breed.' Designed solely to attract roaches and inseminate them with a viral exterminator, the Judas Breed accomplishes its task, and the children of the city are saved. Not unaware of the dangers of toying with mother nature, Dr. Tyler even ensures the Judas Breed is sterile, so that it cannot replicate itself. Once it has killed all the roaches, the Judas Bug will naturally die out. Fast forward three years later, and Dr. Tyler, the hero of the city, finds out the Judas Breed is still around. Somehow, it has not only survived, but it is thriving...
Mimic 2 (2001) continues the tale, picking up with Remy, Dr. Tyler's colleague from the first movie. Remy is teaching in the city now, but all her ex-boyfriends seem to be disappearing, or ending up dead. Enter the police in the form of Detective Klaski, who is beginning to think Remy is a psycho serial killer. The only reason Klaski hasn't arrested Remy yet is because he can't figure out how a 112-pound schoolteacher could toss the 200+ pound body of her ex-stalker over a lamppost. Turns out it isn't Remy doing all the killing, but the last surviving fertile male of the Judas Breed, who has somehow selected Remy to be his procreative mate. Can Remy use her scientific knowledge of the Judas Breed to save herself and her students?
Mimic 3: Sentinel (2003) focuses on one of the sick kids who had 'Strickler's Syndrome' (the disease that was borne by the cockroaches in the first movie). Now an adult, Marvin spends most of his time in his room in his family's apartment, taking surreptitious photos of his neighbors. Marvin's hobby turns up a few interesting tidbits about his neighbors, such as the fact that Marvin's sister is close friends with her drug dealer, and one of the children across the alley has disappeared. Marvin isn't in much of a position to help any of his neighbors as they start to run into trouble, and the policeman he calls for help, ends up being more interested in Marvin's mother than investigating Marvin's story. Can Marvin and his drug-addled sister figure out what is going on, before it's too late?
I'm honestly surprised they haven't made another Mimic movie. Granted, the third movie probably didn't make much money, but it's basically a movie series about killer cockroaches growing to human size and mimicking our appearance so they can kill us easier. Seems like a fairly original concept, if barred from true greatness by longer running times and ample female nudity. Or at least, that's what I would do to improve the movies, anyway. And honestly, wouldn't that just make every movie better? I think so.
Acting is pretty decent, special effects are well used for what little screen time they actually get, and there's a token gunfight and explosion sequence in pretty much every movie. Charles S. Dutton, F. Murray Abraham and Giancarlo Giannini round out the cast in the first movie with Mira Sorvino as Dr. Tyler. In the third movie, Lance Henriksen and John Kapelos show up to support Alexis Dziena, Karl geary and Amanda Plummer. I don't really know anybody in the second movie, but, uh... It passed an hour and a half without making my eyes bleed? I'm not sure what else to tell you.
All three movies are basically the same formula, but not to say the movies are formulaic. Each movie picks up the tale of a normal man or woman who has some inside knowledge about the Mimics being tasked with stopping them from spreading. I like that none of the heroes or heroines are particularly hardy, in fact, the male lead in the third film spends most of the movie sucking oxygen out of a mobile tank. In every case, the mimics begin the attack before the main characters even have any idea what's going on, and the action sequences that follow aren't even about the leads trying to play catch-up, but just trying to live through the night. Which, is why I refer to them as action-horror.
All three movies are on netflix if you want to watch them. Each of the movies are worth a viewing on their own merits, but taken as a whole, you get a good sense of what the Mimics are trying to accomplish and how feeble our efforts to stop them actually are. Plus, Mira Sorvino and Alexis Dziena are actually quite easy on the eyes, and even the mousy-looking teacher from the second movie strips down to her bra and panties in an effort to foil the Mimics keen sense of smell. Yea, I know, I don't get out much. Your point?
That's all for tonight. Caught up for now. As long as I don't fall behind again, only 8 more movies to go for 2015's horror movie review-a-thon! :-D
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Horror Reviews #19 - #20, Superstition (1982), Night of the Demons (1988)
Throwback Thursday double feature tonight! Aren't you just the luckiest sons-of-bitches that ever walked the earth? Yes, you are!
Superstition (1982) is a movie that doesn't start out slow. A couple is out necking at a notorious make-out spot, an old abandoned property owned by the local church, when a couple pranksters scare the bejeesus out of them. They tear out of there, and the pranksters have a good laugh. The pranksters are about to leave the property when they meet an untimely death. Suspicion falls on the mentally disadvantaged caretaker of the property, but his mother tells police that the boy is just "serving his Mistress." Who is this mysterious Mistress, and where is the boy? The police and the local clergy must find the answers to these questions, even as a new family moves onto the property...
Superstition is an older movie. There's not a lot of special effects nor any nudity, but what special effects are used are done fairly well. The new clergyman and his family have a pair of fairly attractive daughters, who do don some swimsuits to take a dip in the local pond. I find it funny that for the entire length of the movie, one of the daughters never changes her outfit, while the other daughter changed her outfit several times, one even from one terror-filled scene to the next.
Strangely, the only actor I recognized was the young son, who turned out to be one of the actors in Just One of the Guys, another 80's movie that actually wasn't a horror movie. The acting wasn't bad, but not terribly effective. The story isn't particular new, but it's a decent premise. A witch (Witch is also an alternate title of this movie) who was drowned around the time of the Salem witch trials has returned from the dead and is wreaking havoc on anyone near the pond. I caught this movie on one of the Cinemax channels if you want to check it out. I can't say it was worth more than one viewing, but it was semi-enjoyable the first time around.
Tonight's second feature is Night of the Demons (1988), a fun-filled frolic in a possessed old house called Hull House. Hull House used to be a funeral parlor, and a girl named Angela and her sister Suzanne are throwing an impromptu party there on Halloween night. The trouble is, Hull House isn't just haunted, it's possessed. As Angela explains it, the difference between the two is simple. Haunted houses are inhabited by the spirits of the dead, whereas possessed houses are inhabited by the spirits of those who have never been alive... Or, in other words, Demons.
Night of the Demons may be old and low-budget, but it is eminently entertaining. There's nudity, and demonic makeup and decent special effects, and all of it contribute to a pretty wild atmosphere of insane horror. There's a few scenes to establish just what each character is like before things get hairy, and then all hell pretty much breaks loose. Which, is what you'd expect from a movie called Night of the Demons, right? Right.
Linnea Quigley, the only recognizable actress, has an awesome scene where she's applying her make-up in a unique fashion. Horror movie fans may recall Linnea from her turn as Trash in Return of the Living Dead, a cult classic that I try to catch at least once every October. The rest of the cast do their acting jobs adequately enough, and the body count gets pretty high, with each cast member meeting his or her ultimate fate in a unique way. Lots of scares, and this is probably the half-dozenth time I've seen it, so re-watchability is high. This movie is playing on Encore Suspense this month if you want to catch it.
That's it for tonight! Still a couple reviews behind, but if I can keep these double feature things up and I'll catch up in no time! Hope everyone is enjoying Halloween Horror month as much as I am! :-D
Superstition (1982) is a movie that doesn't start out slow. A couple is out necking at a notorious make-out spot, an old abandoned property owned by the local church, when a couple pranksters scare the bejeesus out of them. They tear out of there, and the pranksters have a good laugh. The pranksters are about to leave the property when they meet an untimely death. Suspicion falls on the mentally disadvantaged caretaker of the property, but his mother tells police that the boy is just "serving his Mistress." Who is this mysterious Mistress, and where is the boy? The police and the local clergy must find the answers to these questions, even as a new family moves onto the property...
Superstition is an older movie. There's not a lot of special effects nor any nudity, but what special effects are used are done fairly well. The new clergyman and his family have a pair of fairly attractive daughters, who do don some swimsuits to take a dip in the local pond. I find it funny that for the entire length of the movie, one of the daughters never changes her outfit, while the other daughter changed her outfit several times, one even from one terror-filled scene to the next.
Strangely, the only actor I recognized was the young son, who turned out to be one of the actors in Just One of the Guys, another 80's movie that actually wasn't a horror movie. The acting wasn't bad, but not terribly effective. The story isn't particular new, but it's a decent premise. A witch (Witch is also an alternate title of this movie) who was drowned around the time of the Salem witch trials has returned from the dead and is wreaking havoc on anyone near the pond. I caught this movie on one of the Cinemax channels if you want to check it out. I can't say it was worth more than one viewing, but it was semi-enjoyable the first time around.
Tonight's second feature is Night of the Demons (1988), a fun-filled frolic in a possessed old house called Hull House. Hull House used to be a funeral parlor, and a girl named Angela and her sister Suzanne are throwing an impromptu party there on Halloween night. The trouble is, Hull House isn't just haunted, it's possessed. As Angela explains it, the difference between the two is simple. Haunted houses are inhabited by the spirits of the dead, whereas possessed houses are inhabited by the spirits of those who have never been alive... Or, in other words, Demons.
Night of the Demons may be old and low-budget, but it is eminently entertaining. There's nudity, and demonic makeup and decent special effects, and all of it contribute to a pretty wild atmosphere of insane horror. There's a few scenes to establish just what each character is like before things get hairy, and then all hell pretty much breaks loose. Which, is what you'd expect from a movie called Night of the Demons, right? Right.
Linnea Quigley, the only recognizable actress, has an awesome scene where she's applying her make-up in a unique fashion. Horror movie fans may recall Linnea from her turn as Trash in Return of the Living Dead, a cult classic that I try to catch at least once every October. The rest of the cast do their acting jobs adequately enough, and the body count gets pretty high, with each cast member meeting his or her ultimate fate in a unique way. Lots of scares, and this is probably the half-dozenth time I've seen it, so re-watchability is high. This movie is playing on Encore Suspense this month if you want to catch it.
That's it for tonight! Still a couple reviews behind, but if I can keep these double feature things up and I'll catch up in no time! Hope everyone is enjoying Halloween Horror month as much as I am! :-D
Horror Review #18 - Out of the Dark (2014)
We've got a two-for-one special on Darkness this week! Last time it was "Dark was the Night" and this time it's Out of the Dark! So, either things are looking up, or darkness is just coming out of the woodwork around here. Hmmm. Think I'll take option A.
Out of the Dark (2014) starts with a cryptic episode. A doctor is burning files in an expansive jungle villa when he hears something. Tossing some files into a dumb waiter to hide them, and closing the doors, the doctor arms himself with a scalpel and steps out onto the balcony. There's someone one on the balcony with him, but before we can see who or what is threatening the man, he falls off the balcony and dies. Fast-forward twenty years, and a family is arriving in Colombia to go to their new home, and look, it's the very place where the doctor died twenty years ago! This can't be good, can it?
Out of the Dark stars Stephen Rea, Scott Speedman and Julia Stiles in the lead roles, and is your basic horror story about creepy children. It's a pretty common theme in horror nowadays, probably beginning with the Exorcist back so many years ago. This particular story is decently well acted, though the special effects are minimal. There's a lot of the traditional jump scares, and they space them out so there's a general level of tension throughout the film. It adds to the overall atmosphere, but there's nothing exceptionally scary about this movie. I think the little girl managed to bring it all together, her english accent seemed so out of place at first, but I think it added a level of personality to the movie that it might have otherwise lacked.
Nothing particularly new or exciting in this one, though. Maybe worth a watch on Netflix if you have nothing better to do, but no sense in watching it twice. Fairly predictable, as well, so don't expect a major plot twist, but semi-enjoyable if the little girl's english accent doesn't throw you out of the immersion.
That's all for tonight, I hope to start catching up on my review pretty soon.
Out of the Dark (2014) starts with a cryptic episode. A doctor is burning files in an expansive jungle villa when he hears something. Tossing some files into a dumb waiter to hide them, and closing the doors, the doctor arms himself with a scalpel and steps out onto the balcony. There's someone one on the balcony with him, but before we can see who or what is threatening the man, he falls off the balcony and dies. Fast-forward twenty years, and a family is arriving in Colombia to go to their new home, and look, it's the very place where the doctor died twenty years ago! This can't be good, can it?
Out of the Dark stars Stephen Rea, Scott Speedman and Julia Stiles in the lead roles, and is your basic horror story about creepy children. It's a pretty common theme in horror nowadays, probably beginning with the Exorcist back so many years ago. This particular story is decently well acted, though the special effects are minimal. There's a lot of the traditional jump scares, and they space them out so there's a general level of tension throughout the film. It adds to the overall atmosphere, but there's nothing exceptionally scary about this movie. I think the little girl managed to bring it all together, her english accent seemed so out of place at first, but I think it added a level of personality to the movie that it might have otherwise lacked.
Nothing particularly new or exciting in this one, though. Maybe worth a watch on Netflix if you have nothing better to do, but no sense in watching it twice. Fairly predictable, as well, so don't expect a major plot twist, but semi-enjoyable if the little girl's english accent doesn't throw you out of the immersion.
That's all for tonight, I hope to start catching up on my review pretty soon.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Horror Review #17 - Dark was the Night (2014)
Yep, I know, still behind, but feeling a bit better. Only 3 reviews to make up before I catch up. Expect a busy week of posting unless I go see some fall colors somewhere. Halloween horror season! Kicking back, watching horror movies, why? Because I like them! Fun stuff. :-D
Dark Was The Night (2014) begins with a logging camp cutting through some old timber in a far-away portion of the forest. Jesse's crew of lumberjacks seems to be running late, and it's starting to snow. The foreman is getting pissed, and it looks like he'll hav to head on over to where Jesse's crew is doing their lumberjack thing to see what the fark is going on. Only, looks like the only thing left of Jesse is his good right arm. Well. Coroner will conclude it was an accidental death. Axe mishap. Yea. When you and I both know.... uh huh. It's coming. wait for it... not yet.... nooootttttt yeeetttt.... yep! All hell has broken loose.
Dark was the Night was kind of a surprise to me. First, it's got Kevin Durand, from the Strain, and so many other roles that I am surprised I had no idea who he was, playing a bereaved sheriff. His new partner, Donny (played by Lukas Haas), is from New York, was recently shot, and seems to be looking for some quieter pastures. I guess since we're in a horror movie, Donny picked the wrong town to live the quiet life in. None of the rest of the cast looked to be well-known, but the action revolved around these two veteran actors, so the supporting cast is basically just a bunch of extras you're sure are about to be slaughtered.
This movie was a little on the low-budget side, with special effects on the level of your average Syfy movie, but used to much better effect. The build-up and tension created some awesome atmospheric suspense. You know something is out there, and you know it's killing, but you don't hardly ever get to see the damn thing. As the title of the movie tells you in advance, the night is pretty goddamn dark out there, and you'll be lucky if you see the thing before it kills you. Between the palpable sense that this thing is stalking the residents of the town, and the (minor spoiler) running gun battle with the thing at the end, the movie does a good job of evoking some creepy fear because you just have no idea what the hell is out there til the end. End minor spoilers.
I caught this one on Netflix, and it's definitely worth a watch, for the atmosphere and suspense alone. Might even be worth some repeat viewing. Maybe aspiring film-makers could use this horror flick as a basis for what to do with a low budget and good actors. And it's not short, either, at an hour and 38 minutes it's just over an hour and a half worth of action, sprinkled with intermittent bits of cheesy goodness, mushy stuff, and character development. In short, I liked it, but the special effect at the end could have been better done, I think.
That's all for tonight. Hopefully I can find better things to watch tomorrow and start catching up. Til then, enjoy yourself some horror movies... Pretty soon it'll be all about Xmas!
Dark Was The Night (2014) begins with a logging camp cutting through some old timber in a far-away portion of the forest. Jesse's crew of lumberjacks seems to be running late, and it's starting to snow. The foreman is getting pissed, and it looks like he'll hav to head on over to where Jesse's crew is doing their lumberjack thing to see what the fark is going on. Only, looks like the only thing left of Jesse is his good right arm. Well. Coroner will conclude it was an accidental death. Axe mishap. Yea. When you and I both know.... uh huh. It's coming. wait for it... not yet.... nooootttttt yeeetttt.... yep! All hell has broken loose.
Dark was the Night was kind of a surprise to me. First, it's got Kevin Durand, from the Strain, and so many other roles that I am surprised I had no idea who he was, playing a bereaved sheriff. His new partner, Donny (played by Lukas Haas), is from New York, was recently shot, and seems to be looking for some quieter pastures. I guess since we're in a horror movie, Donny picked the wrong town to live the quiet life in. None of the rest of the cast looked to be well-known, but the action revolved around these two veteran actors, so the supporting cast is basically just a bunch of extras you're sure are about to be slaughtered.
This movie was a little on the low-budget side, with special effects on the level of your average Syfy movie, but used to much better effect. The build-up and tension created some awesome atmospheric suspense. You know something is out there, and you know it's killing, but you don't hardly ever get to see the damn thing. As the title of the movie tells you in advance, the night is pretty goddamn dark out there, and you'll be lucky if you see the thing before it kills you. Between the palpable sense that this thing is stalking the residents of the town, and the (minor spoiler) running gun battle with the thing at the end, the movie does a good job of evoking some creepy fear because you just have no idea what the hell is out there til the end. End minor spoilers.
I caught this one on Netflix, and it's definitely worth a watch, for the atmosphere and suspense alone. Might even be worth some repeat viewing. Maybe aspiring film-makers could use this horror flick as a basis for what to do with a low budget and good actors. And it's not short, either, at an hour and 38 minutes it's just over an hour and a half worth of action, sprinkled with intermittent bits of cheesy goodness, mushy stuff, and character development. In short, I liked it, but the special effect at the end could have been better done, I think.
That's all for tonight. Hopefully I can find better things to watch tomorrow and start catching up. Til then, enjoy yourself some horror movies... Pretty soon it'll be all about Xmas!
Monday, October 19, 2015
Horror Review #16 - The Lazarus Effect (2015)
Yea, I know, I'm a few reviews behind for the month. No big deal, I'll make them up like I made up my labs back in college. All at once! But for now, just one review, because I have a headache.
The Lazarus Effect (2015) or just "Lazarus" as they refer to it on NetFlix (where I saw it) is a movie about resurrection. Not Jesus, or Lazarus, but a dog. At least, at first. A team of college (I think it was college) researchers are looking into ways of extending the time a human can be left deceased before being reanimated, so that doctors can repair the damage done to the body. After a potential breakthrough, they hire a camera operator to go ahead and record the experiment for posterity. Success! They successfully resurrect a dog that had been dead for some time. The dog seems completely healthy (which is odd, because it was dead) and they take it home to keep an eye on it. The next day, the dog is acting strangely aggressive. While the team of researchers is deciding what to do, their lab is shut down by the college review board, and all their research is repossessed by some parent company. Frustrated and angry, the team knows that their discovery is about to be snatched away by some huge corporation. The only way to protect themselves is to properly document the experiment, but all their records have been taken. To document the experiment, they have to sneak back into the laboratory, and repeat their success, only this time... Yea. All hell breaks loose.
This was kind of a short movie at only an hour and 15 minutes long (excluding the credits), but not entirely un-enjoyable. There's little lead-in and no character development, and only a tiny smidgen of back-story. Maybe a lot of the back story was edited out as being unimportant (if you're feeling generous), or maybe it was never filmed, because there's a few minor plot-holes floating around like stale doughnut holes left in an old box in the break room. I don't think any of what I'm about to tell you counts as a spoiler, but let's start with just what I have in the plot summary, above.
First, I'm not sure a college laboratory has to satisfy a review board every few months to keep their grant, if indeed, it was a college lab. Two, if it was a college lab, why did everything revert back to some corporation? Wouldn't ownership revert back to the college? Three, the whole evil corporation coming in and taking everything had huge potential, but was totally unexplored, and seemed only to give the characters a reason to go back and film the experiment a second time. They even had an awesome actor come in to give the whole evil corporation a face (I think it was an awesome actor, because i recognized his face as being familiar, but I forget who it was). And that's just about the corporation.
Couple of other plot holes exist in the fact that, why the hell don't they bother to ground an electrical switch? Seriously, wtf? Two, would wearing a ring really cause that much of a problem? Granted it's 11,000 volts, but it's the amperage that kills you, not the voltage, and any electrician will tell you that. And then, there's the damn dog. First the dog acts all freakin weird, and you're wondering wtf is up, and then, when you expect the dog to be all happy, it's not. And that's odd, because you'd think it would be, in that particular instance, and if you see the movie, you'll understand what I mean. And one final question, what exactly happened to the dog? I mean, honestly? I know it's sort of implied, but it's a lab. There's only so many places to hide the body of a large dog, you know?
Three, and here's something I don't get (minor plot spoiler here), but they actually bring up the fact that the release of DMT (have no idea what that stands for but supposedly it's highly hallucinogenic) apparently opens the portal and ushers your soul on to the afterlife when you die. So then they say, maybe (um, so-and-so, so I don't give away too much of the plot) is actually stuck because the portal never opened, when the alternative would probably be more true and OH-so much scarier... That the portal is open, and stuck that way. Yea. That would make my juevos crawl back up inside me and hide, let me tell you. But no, they say the portal never opened, which makes absolutely no freaking sense, given what was happening around them at the time. Just made me look at the screen like the characters were confused morons, which, may not be unusual for a horror flick, but these are supposed to be scientists. Meh, bad writing, I guess. End Spoilers.
So Olivia Wilde is in it, and there's no nude scenes that I recall, much as I would have enjoyed one from Ms. Wilde, but meh. The movie sort of sucked, acting wasn't that great, but at least it was short and sweet and to the point of attempting to scare the bejeesus out of you as quickly as possible. No real suspense here, nor atmosphere, but more of an action-horror piece. No creepy horror, multiple attempts at jump scares that failed because, well, you pretty much knew they were coming. Special effects were pretty decent, at least, for the few times they were actually required. Maybe watch it once for the kooky plot, and to see if you can figure out a way to plug all the plot holes? Nothing terribly new here, that's for sure. If you miss it, you aren't really missing anything terribly exciting, or original.
Okay, that's all for this evening. I'm going to try and catch up over the next few days. Supposed to be almost at #20 by now, and I'm only at review #16. Sigh. Hard to find good stuff to watch, too. Til next time!
The Lazarus Effect (2015) or just "Lazarus" as they refer to it on NetFlix (where I saw it) is a movie about resurrection. Not Jesus, or Lazarus, but a dog. At least, at first. A team of college (I think it was college) researchers are looking into ways of extending the time a human can be left deceased before being reanimated, so that doctors can repair the damage done to the body. After a potential breakthrough, they hire a camera operator to go ahead and record the experiment for posterity. Success! They successfully resurrect a dog that had been dead for some time. The dog seems completely healthy (which is odd, because it was dead) and they take it home to keep an eye on it. The next day, the dog is acting strangely aggressive. While the team of researchers is deciding what to do, their lab is shut down by the college review board, and all their research is repossessed by some parent company. Frustrated and angry, the team knows that their discovery is about to be snatched away by some huge corporation. The only way to protect themselves is to properly document the experiment, but all their records have been taken. To document the experiment, they have to sneak back into the laboratory, and repeat their success, only this time... Yea. All hell breaks loose.
This was kind of a short movie at only an hour and 15 minutes long (excluding the credits), but not entirely un-enjoyable. There's little lead-in and no character development, and only a tiny smidgen of back-story. Maybe a lot of the back story was edited out as being unimportant (if you're feeling generous), or maybe it was never filmed, because there's a few minor plot-holes floating around like stale doughnut holes left in an old box in the break room. I don't think any of what I'm about to tell you counts as a spoiler, but let's start with just what I have in the plot summary, above.
First, I'm not sure a college laboratory has to satisfy a review board every few months to keep their grant, if indeed, it was a college lab. Two, if it was a college lab, why did everything revert back to some corporation? Wouldn't ownership revert back to the college? Three, the whole evil corporation coming in and taking everything had huge potential, but was totally unexplored, and seemed only to give the characters a reason to go back and film the experiment a second time. They even had an awesome actor come in to give the whole evil corporation a face (I think it was an awesome actor, because i recognized his face as being familiar, but I forget who it was). And that's just about the corporation.
Couple of other plot holes exist in the fact that, why the hell don't they bother to ground an electrical switch? Seriously, wtf? Two, would wearing a ring really cause that much of a problem? Granted it's 11,000 volts, but it's the amperage that kills you, not the voltage, and any electrician will tell you that. And then, there's the damn dog. First the dog acts all freakin weird, and you're wondering wtf is up, and then, when you expect the dog to be all happy, it's not. And that's odd, because you'd think it would be, in that particular instance, and if you see the movie, you'll understand what I mean. And one final question, what exactly happened to the dog? I mean, honestly? I know it's sort of implied, but it's a lab. There's only so many places to hide the body of a large dog, you know?
Three, and here's something I don't get (minor plot spoiler here), but they actually bring up the fact that the release of DMT (have no idea what that stands for but supposedly it's highly hallucinogenic) apparently opens the portal and ushers your soul on to the afterlife when you die. So then they say, maybe (um, so-and-so, so I don't give away too much of the plot) is actually stuck because the portal never opened, when the alternative would probably be more true and OH-so much scarier... That the portal is open, and stuck that way. Yea. That would make my juevos crawl back up inside me and hide, let me tell you. But no, they say the portal never opened, which makes absolutely no freaking sense, given what was happening around them at the time. Just made me look at the screen like the characters were confused morons, which, may not be unusual for a horror flick, but these are supposed to be scientists. Meh, bad writing, I guess. End Spoilers.
So Olivia Wilde is in it, and there's no nude scenes that I recall, much as I would have enjoyed one from Ms. Wilde, but meh. The movie sort of sucked, acting wasn't that great, but at least it was short and sweet and to the point of attempting to scare the bejeesus out of you as quickly as possible. No real suspense here, nor atmosphere, but more of an action-horror piece. No creepy horror, multiple attempts at jump scares that failed because, well, you pretty much knew they were coming. Special effects were pretty decent, at least, for the few times they were actually required. Maybe watch it once for the kooky plot, and to see if you can figure out a way to plug all the plot holes? Nothing terribly new here, that's for sure. If you miss it, you aren't really missing anything terribly exciting, or original.
Okay, that's all for this evening. I'm going to try and catch up over the next few days. Supposed to be almost at #20 by now, and I'm only at review #16. Sigh. Hard to find good stuff to watch, too. Til next time!
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Horror Review #15 - Maniac Cop (1988)
In honor of Throwback Thursday, a horror movie that came out when I was 18, that I had still not seen until tonight (although I have seen a couple of the sequels). Throwback Thursday is a little new to me, because until recently, I was still living in the 80's. I mean, what's to recommend sleazing one's way through the 90's or 00's? Not much anything of note happened then, and I've only been semi-conscious since the late 80's, anyway. 1988 was the year I graduated high school, and started college. It may have felt like Miskatonic University at the time, but I managed to get through it without being sucked into a dismal hell-plane. Unless of course, you count the rest of my life since college, in which case, I probably was.
Maniac Cop (1988) is the story of, well, a maniac cop. The action begins pretty much right away, with a woman fleeing a pair of purse-snatchers and possible rapists. Managing to get free after their initial assault on her, the woman flees to a police officer at the edge of a park. She runs up to him, only to have the impassively large form of the policeman grab her by the throat, lift her bodily into the air, and savagely snap her neck. The pursuing criminals, who turn and flee the scene after witnessing the woman's murder, are left alone. Enter Detective Frank McCrae, who happens to know the dead woman, and is lead detective on the case as the slew of murders by the Maniac Cop continues. McCrae wants to start looking into police officers who might be on the edge, anyone capable of murdering innocents, but then his superiors start the cover-up. Apparently, having people walking around scared of police officers is bad for business.
Maniac Cop was actually a pretty good horror flick for the late 80's. Frank McCrae is played by Tom Atkins, who was in a slew of horror flicks back then, everything from Halloween 3 to Night of the Creeps (one of his, and one of my, favorite horror flicks) to The Fog. Bruce Campbell, of Evil Dead and Army of Darkness fame (who also has a new series premiering on Halloween on Starz!), plays the prime suspect in the string of grisly murders. The late Robert Z'Dar, who is pretty much only famous because of the entire manic cop series and who sadly just passed away earlier this year, actually plays the title character of the Maniac Cop. But that's not a spoiler, since it's patently obvious to anyone watching the movie that Bruce Campbell's character is being framed. There's some familiar faces in the rest of the cast, but not anyone who spends a lot of time on-screen.
I'm surprised I hadn't managed to catch this movie before tonight. Apparently, it's not played on TV very often, and I'm not really sure why. The special effects aren't terribly great, I mean, it's basically just some fake blood and prosthetic scar tissue, but they work fine considering there's no horrific explosions or weird-looking aliens in this movie. Meh, I guess it's just one of those decent 80's movies that they just never seem to show anymore, but it's still definitely worth a watch, if only to find out exactly how the Maniac Cop got his start. I caught this movie for free on hulu.com, and apparently, there is a remake that's going to start filming next spring. I found it fun just to see something starring Bruce Campbell that didn't have the Necronomicon in it.
Woohoo! Finally caught up. Review #15 on the 15th of October! Now all I have to do is find and review another 16 horror movies in the next two weeks and two days, while still enjoying the plethora of other horror movies on TV and the internet that I've already reviewed in the last six years of blogging, AND managing to catch the slew of fall colors before autumn dips into the seven months of winter coming up. Not even mentioning that November is national Novel Writing Month, and I'm STILL trying to start and finish a novel in 30 days time (which I've been trying and failing to do for the past 6 years), and I have to prepare for that as well. Wheee! Stress can be so much fun when you self-medicate with alcohol! :-D
That's all for tonight. Going to relax with a drink and a horror movie. Til tomorrow's horror movie review, then.
Maniac Cop (1988) is the story of, well, a maniac cop. The action begins pretty much right away, with a woman fleeing a pair of purse-snatchers and possible rapists. Managing to get free after their initial assault on her, the woman flees to a police officer at the edge of a park. She runs up to him, only to have the impassively large form of the policeman grab her by the throat, lift her bodily into the air, and savagely snap her neck. The pursuing criminals, who turn and flee the scene after witnessing the woman's murder, are left alone. Enter Detective Frank McCrae, who happens to know the dead woman, and is lead detective on the case as the slew of murders by the Maniac Cop continues. McCrae wants to start looking into police officers who might be on the edge, anyone capable of murdering innocents, but then his superiors start the cover-up. Apparently, having people walking around scared of police officers is bad for business.
Maniac Cop was actually a pretty good horror flick for the late 80's. Frank McCrae is played by Tom Atkins, who was in a slew of horror flicks back then, everything from Halloween 3 to Night of the Creeps (one of his, and one of my, favorite horror flicks) to The Fog. Bruce Campbell, of Evil Dead and Army of Darkness fame (who also has a new series premiering on Halloween on Starz!), plays the prime suspect in the string of grisly murders. The late Robert Z'Dar, who is pretty much only famous because of the entire manic cop series and who sadly just passed away earlier this year, actually plays the title character of the Maniac Cop. But that's not a spoiler, since it's patently obvious to anyone watching the movie that Bruce Campbell's character is being framed. There's some familiar faces in the rest of the cast, but not anyone who spends a lot of time on-screen.
I'm surprised I hadn't managed to catch this movie before tonight. Apparently, it's not played on TV very often, and I'm not really sure why. The special effects aren't terribly great, I mean, it's basically just some fake blood and prosthetic scar tissue, but they work fine considering there's no horrific explosions or weird-looking aliens in this movie. Meh, I guess it's just one of those decent 80's movies that they just never seem to show anymore, but it's still definitely worth a watch, if only to find out exactly how the Maniac Cop got his start. I caught this movie for free on hulu.com, and apparently, there is a remake that's going to start filming next spring. I found it fun just to see something starring Bruce Campbell that didn't have the Necronomicon in it.
Woohoo! Finally caught up. Review #15 on the 15th of October! Now all I have to do is find and review another 16 horror movies in the next two weeks and two days, while still enjoying the plethora of other horror movies on TV and the internet that I've already reviewed in the last six years of blogging, AND managing to catch the slew of fall colors before autumn dips into the seven months of winter coming up. Not even mentioning that November is national Novel Writing Month, and I'm STILL trying to start and finish a novel in 30 days time (which I've been trying and failing to do for the past 6 years), and I have to prepare for that as well. Wheee! Stress can be so much fun when you self-medicate with alcohol! :-D
That's all for tonight. Going to relax with a drink and a horror movie. Til tomorrow's horror movie review, then.
Horror Review #14 - The Thing on the Doorstep (2014)
I admit, I don't know much about H.P. Lovecraft. My first experience with his work was probably 1985's Re-Animator, which I loved, mostly for the nudity (hey, I was 15 when it came out). IMDB.com lists him as a writer who lived from 1890 to 1937, and has influenced such writers as Stephen King and some few other people I have read. Coincidentally, I have never read any of H. P. Lovecraft's actual works except "The Thing on the Doorstep," which I ran across on the internet one day and read in its entirety in the course of an afternoon.
The Thing On the Doorstep (2014) is a fairly faithful retelling of H. P. Lovecraft's original work, as far as I can recall. A guy named Daniel (and his wife, which is apparently an addition of this particular retelling) has a friend named Edward. Edward is a bit odd, a delver in the dark arts, who tends to go off on wild excursions at the whims of fancy. Edward runs into a woman named Asenath at a party, who seems to bewitch Edward to an extreme extent, and Daniel begins to worry about his friend's sanity, as well as his physical well-being. Those of you who follow H. P. Lovecraft's work will be glad to know that, in this story at least, all Hell does NOT break loose.
This particular movie had an extremely cheap budget, and the acting wasn't particularly great, but it wasn't too bad, either. Overuse of Lovecraft's original flowery language with a modren-day setting seemed odd. Especially confusing to me was the way the narrator of the tale, Daniel himself, was clacking away on an old typewriter in his retelling of the events that he had witnessed. It was especially confusing because they show him sitting in front of an actual computer earlier in the tale, and since he's apparently still with his wife and child, I'm not sure why he would be typing away on an old typewriter instead of his computer. Or, even where he might have foundan old typewriter to clack away on.
The original story is quite good. I mean, they don't call H. P. Lovecraft the father of modern horror for nothing. This retelling is marred by a lack of poor special effects, mediocre acting, and an abysmally low budget, but might be worth watching once if you've never read the original tale. No nudity, the actors are not very easy on the eyes, and the sets aren't very enticing or much to look at. There are a lot of references to Asenath's "inhumanity" and the "fishy" looks of her servants, but this movie didn't take any effort to display them as such. This movie is available for free on hulu.com, where I saw it, but I can't recommend watching it unless you haven't already read the original tale by H. P. Lovecraft. Interestingly, IMDB.com says there are a slew of movies still coming out based on H.P. Lovecraft's works, some 80 years after his death. If that doesn't tell you what a good horror writer he was, I'm not sure what would.
Keeping things short because I am still one horror movie review behind, and trying to catch up. :-)
The Thing On the Doorstep (2014) is a fairly faithful retelling of H. P. Lovecraft's original work, as far as I can recall. A guy named Daniel (and his wife, which is apparently an addition of this particular retelling) has a friend named Edward. Edward is a bit odd, a delver in the dark arts, who tends to go off on wild excursions at the whims of fancy. Edward runs into a woman named Asenath at a party, who seems to bewitch Edward to an extreme extent, and Daniel begins to worry about his friend's sanity, as well as his physical well-being. Those of you who follow H. P. Lovecraft's work will be glad to know that, in this story at least, all Hell does NOT break loose.
This particular movie had an extremely cheap budget, and the acting wasn't particularly great, but it wasn't too bad, either. Overuse of Lovecraft's original flowery language with a modren-day setting seemed odd. Especially confusing to me was the way the narrator of the tale, Daniel himself, was clacking away on an old typewriter in his retelling of the events that he had witnessed. It was especially confusing because they show him sitting in front of an actual computer earlier in the tale, and since he's apparently still with his wife and child, I'm not sure why he would be typing away on an old typewriter instead of his computer. Or, even where he might have foundan old typewriter to clack away on.
The original story is quite good. I mean, they don't call H. P. Lovecraft the father of modern horror for nothing. This retelling is marred by a lack of poor special effects, mediocre acting, and an abysmally low budget, but might be worth watching once if you've never read the original tale. No nudity, the actors are not very easy on the eyes, and the sets aren't very enticing or much to look at. There are a lot of references to Asenath's "inhumanity" and the "fishy" looks of her servants, but this movie didn't take any effort to display them as such. This movie is available for free on hulu.com, where I saw it, but I can't recommend watching it unless you haven't already read the original tale by H. P. Lovecraft. Interestingly, IMDB.com says there are a slew of movies still coming out based on H.P. Lovecraft's works, some 80 years after his death. If that doesn't tell you what a good horror writer he was, I'm not sure what would.
Keeping things short because I am still one horror movie review behind, and trying to catch up. :-)
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Horror Review #13 - Tremors 5 (2015)
It's not too common for sequels to be anywhere near as good as the original movie, usually because the original cast members, writer, and budget are notably missing by the time a sequel comes around. There are some exceptions, like the Friday the 13th series of movies, where the sequels were actually better than the original.
Tremors 5 (2015) begins with Burt Gummer (Michael Gross, from the original Tremors), working on his own survival reality show. Burt is in the middle of switching camera men when he is contacted by a representative from the South African government. Apparently, Graboids (the worms prevalent through all of the Tremors series) are starting to show up in South Africa. Gummer is hired to capture one, though he repeatedly assures anyone who's willing to listen that capturing them isn't really an option. As is usual for Burt, there's a few things that people have missed informing him about the new Graboids. I would say, when he starts in on the hunt, that all hell breaks loose, but that's kind of redundant at this point, isn't it? Yea.
I thought Tremors 5 was pretty good. Sure, the acting talent was slightly less well known, but when the hell are Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward going to be around to do repeat appearances in the sequels? Exactly. So here we have Jamie Kennedy playing Gummer's new camera man, and Gummer pretty much leading a cast of total unknowns. That doesn't mean they aren't good actors, however. There was a big guy I was actually starting to like before... Well, I won't give anything away, but the various cast members seem to be a little more hardy than they appear.
A fun watch, no nudity, but the female cast members were very easy on the eyes, and not just pretty faces, either. Lots of action in this movie, explosions, and full of characters, to boot. The part where Burt spends a few hours in a cage is freakin hilarious, but this isn't really a comedy. Still funny in parts, I could probably watch this one more than once. Tremors 5 is new on Netflix if you want to watch it.
Keeping this review short because I have yet another movie to review this evening, if I can find one to watch, that is...
Horror Review #12: Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005)
Yea, I know this review is a couple days late. I have been extremely busy the last couple days, going on trips to see the fall color and taking my vehicle into the shop for some repairs. God, you're such a nag! Get off my back already! Not, not you, the voices in my head. Yea, yea, the review, I'm getting to that. Sheesh. Cut a guy some slack.
Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005) is a slightly better movie than the previous one. The story picks up where Necropolis left off, with "Uncle Charlie" heading down a dark road with a barrel of Tryoxin 5 in the back of a pickup truck. Uncle Charlie meets up with a couple russians (at least, they sound like russians), who want to buy the Tryoxin from him. There's only one small detail... they want to test it first. Uncle Charlie obliges them, and dies in the ensuing Zombie struggle. Julian (the sole male survivor of Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis) is now attending college, and is notified of his Uncle Charlie's death. With him are, uh, the "survivors" of the last movie (all the same actors, now playing different characters, which is funny considering some of them died). Julian investigates his Uncle's house after his death, and finds a hidden room in the attic containing two more barrels of Tryoxin 5. Not having a clue what the barrel is (apparently, he wasn't in the know during the entirety of the last movie), he takes it to his chemist-buddy to try and figure it out. His chemist buddy (a bit of a party animal) analyzes the gooey green slime issuing from the barrel, and notices the similarities to Ecstasy. One of Julian's other friends (even more of a party animal) immediately tastes the green goo to determine its ability to induce a "high." When he comes back from his Tryoxin-induced Zombie-high, he immediately names it "Z." The chemist and his buddies immediately start churning out Z capsules by the hundreds, and selling them to everyone heading to the local Halloween party, called "Rave to the Grave." Yea, you know what happens there, don't you? Yea. All hell breaks loose.
Rave to the Grave was actually better than Necropolis, which I didn't particularly expect. There was nudity, and not so much lead-in to the action, and the plot was actually slightly better. Uncle Charlie, the dickhead from Necropolis (and by dickhead, I mean the character who was played to villainous excellence by Peter Coyote), dies within the first ten minutes, leaving Julian and his cronies to survive a Zombie outbreak of their own making. Since Z starts going out even before the Halloween Rave, there's zombies all over the college campus. Sadly, there's no collegiate women's shower scene, which is always a bonus in every horror movie, and would have made this movie even better, but, oh well.
Aside from the whole same cast, different movie deal, the movie was pretty watchable. Special effects and acting are consistent with the rest of the series, and they at least kept to the Zombie-headshot rule this time, in that most of the zombies died by head shots. This one might not be worth watching over and over again, but it was at least fun to watch once. Also, since the rave actually occurs around Halloween, this movie qualifies as a Halloween movie! :-D Always good to watch a horror movie that's actually based around Halloween, like, oh, the Halloween series. And Trick R' Treat. And... uh... Yea. I think that's it. Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave is available on Crackle.com.
Keeping this review short since I have two more reviews to write today if I want to catch up. Be posting again shortly.
Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005) is a slightly better movie than the previous one. The story picks up where Necropolis left off, with "Uncle Charlie" heading down a dark road with a barrel of Tryoxin 5 in the back of a pickup truck. Uncle Charlie meets up with a couple russians (at least, they sound like russians), who want to buy the Tryoxin from him. There's only one small detail... they want to test it first. Uncle Charlie obliges them, and dies in the ensuing Zombie struggle. Julian (the sole male survivor of Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis) is now attending college, and is notified of his Uncle Charlie's death. With him are, uh, the "survivors" of the last movie (all the same actors, now playing different characters, which is funny considering some of them died). Julian investigates his Uncle's house after his death, and finds a hidden room in the attic containing two more barrels of Tryoxin 5. Not having a clue what the barrel is (apparently, he wasn't in the know during the entirety of the last movie), he takes it to his chemist-buddy to try and figure it out. His chemist buddy (a bit of a party animal) analyzes the gooey green slime issuing from the barrel, and notices the similarities to Ecstasy. One of Julian's other friends (even more of a party animal) immediately tastes the green goo to determine its ability to induce a "high." When he comes back from his Tryoxin-induced Zombie-high, he immediately names it "Z." The chemist and his buddies immediately start churning out Z capsules by the hundreds, and selling them to everyone heading to the local Halloween party, called "Rave to the Grave." Yea, you know what happens there, don't you? Yea. All hell breaks loose.
Rave to the Grave was actually better than Necropolis, which I didn't particularly expect. There was nudity, and not so much lead-in to the action, and the plot was actually slightly better. Uncle Charlie, the dickhead from Necropolis (and by dickhead, I mean the character who was played to villainous excellence by Peter Coyote), dies within the first ten minutes, leaving Julian and his cronies to survive a Zombie outbreak of their own making. Since Z starts going out even before the Halloween Rave, there's zombies all over the college campus. Sadly, there's no collegiate women's shower scene, which is always a bonus in every horror movie, and would have made this movie even better, but, oh well.
Aside from the whole same cast, different movie deal, the movie was pretty watchable. Special effects and acting are consistent with the rest of the series, and they at least kept to the Zombie-headshot rule this time, in that most of the zombies died by head shots. This one might not be worth watching over and over again, but it was at least fun to watch once. Also, since the rave actually occurs around Halloween, this movie qualifies as a Halloween movie! :-D Always good to watch a horror movie that's actually based around Halloween, like, oh, the Halloween series. And Trick R' Treat. And... uh... Yea. I think that's it. Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave is available on Crackle.com.
Keeping this review short since I have two more reviews to write today if I want to catch up. Be posting again shortly.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Horror Review #11 - Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)
There was a long break between Return of the Living Dead 3 (which I reviewed last night), and Necropolis. Twelve years, in fact. In that time, I think what happened was, SyFy channel got ahold of the rights to Return of the Living Dead, and started making sequels.
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005) starts out with a few guys heading into Chernobyl to fetch some barrels of Tryoxin 5 (which doesn't seem to be the same as 2-4-5 Trioxin, but seems to have the same effects on the dead) that had been stored there. There's some nice shots of what I guess is that deserted town near Chernobyl, the one that was just opening an amusement park, that had to be evacuated. It's been shown in a couple movies I've seen already, and the scenery looked familiar. I think the intro sequence was actually filmed there, which is cool. The guys have the inevitable zombie accident, but one guy survives to retrieve the barrels, and returns them to Hybra-Tech. By this time, zombie outbreaks happen about as frequently as natural disasters, and Hybra-Tech is the go-to clean-up company in charge of containing and cleaning up the zombie mess. Fast forward a bit, and we see a teenager named Julian getting ready to go to school. Julian and his little brother, Pyro, seems to be wards of a guy they call "Uncle Charlie," after the death of their parents. Uncle Charlie (played by Peter Coyote) turns out to be that surviving guy from the Chernobyl thing at the beginning of the movie. Fast forward again to where Julian is riding around on motorbikes with his friends, and one of them (named Zeke) falls and has a head injury. They take Zeke to the hospital, but the hospital lists Zeke's condition as deceased and transfers Zeke to Hybra-Tech for research purposes. Apparently, Hybra-Tech owns not only the hospital, but the ambulances as well, so it seems they've been doing a little "live specimen" collecting on the side. A friend of Julian's, Katie, works at Hybra-Tech and sees them bringing an unconscious Zeke in for testing, so Katie contacts Julian and they decide to get him out of there. Of course, during their attempted jailbreak, all hell breaks loose.
I know, kind of a long intro, isn't it? Well, the lead-up to the action in this movie seemed to take forever. Slow starter, indeed. I had never seen this movie before tonight, so I had no idea it would take so long to get there. But hey, it's a zombie movie, I guess we need some reason to get a bunch of teenagers into a research lab to let the zombies loose, right? Right. One long, convoluted reason, but whatevs.
The action and plot in this movie is a little sub-par, even for the return of the living dead series. They go a long way to explaining the reasons for getting a bunch of teens into the research lab, and frankly, spend way too much time on the teens' back-stories. Do I really need to know that Katie used to date Zeke, is now dating Julian, and they're hiding it from Zeke because he's something of an asshole? Not really. Did I need to know one of the other girls was a gymnast? Nope. Doesn't seem to have any bearing on the movie whatsoever, so why mention it all? I have no idea. I guess they needed some lines of dialogue while they were getting the special effects ready. (shrug)
Let me toss a few more plot holes at you. Minor spoilers. The kids zoom off on their bikes to infiltrate Hybra-Tech in order to rescue Zeke, where the zombie outbreak is already happening. One of the teens (named Carlos, I think), happens to bring along a gun. A couple of hobo-zombies attack them, and carlos shoots them, only to find out you need to shoot them in the head to kill them. Carlos shoots them in the head. Two zombies down, outbreak suddenly contained, though nobody knows it but me. Fast-forward a bit. Teens continue into the facility, and accidentally let loose a shit-ton of other zombies. Guards unload shotguns into the bodies of the dead, which... kills them? Wait, what? I thought you needed a head shot, to... I guess not. Yep, suddenly, for the rest of the movie, bullet wounds to the body suddenly kill zombies. Then, in another completely unrelated plot hole, Pyro, Julian's little brother, is in the air vents where the teens are. How the frig did he get there? No explanation. Just bam, there he is. Awesome.
Necropolis is a pretty dismal entry into the series. Judged on what few merits it possesses, I can't really say there's much to recommend here. The actual running zombie-fight at Hybra-Tech isn't bad, but it doesn't last too long. There's a few explosions, a lot of shooting, and some fist-fights with teens, who somehow manage to beat the crap out of some zombies who tore a guard's head off not five minutes earlier in the movie. Meh, I guess the plot holes are kind of obvious, and just knocked me right out of enjoying this movie.
No redeeming nudity, not even a shower scene. The only recognizable actor was Peter Coyote, who looked angry just for having to show up in such a crappy zombie flick. Acting was hard to gauge since most of the scenes involved running and riding around on dirt bikes. I think the zombies probably did a better job of acting, and they were dead. This one is available on Crackle.com if you want to check it out, but I can't really recommend it. The beginning wasn't very good, the middle sucked, and the ending was worse. It doesn't seem to have anything of interest or note within it, unless you want to check out the scenes around Chernobyl at the very beginning, out of curiosity.
That's all for tonight. I'm going to review Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005, also on Crackle.com) tomorrow night, completing the Return of the Living-Dead trifecta, for extra bonus points. Extra bonus points? What am I talking about? I don't know! See you guys then.
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005) starts out with a few guys heading into Chernobyl to fetch some barrels of Tryoxin 5 (which doesn't seem to be the same as 2-4-5 Trioxin, but seems to have the same effects on the dead) that had been stored there. There's some nice shots of what I guess is that deserted town near Chernobyl, the one that was just opening an amusement park, that had to be evacuated. It's been shown in a couple movies I've seen already, and the scenery looked familiar. I think the intro sequence was actually filmed there, which is cool. The guys have the inevitable zombie accident, but one guy survives to retrieve the barrels, and returns them to Hybra-Tech. By this time, zombie outbreaks happen about as frequently as natural disasters, and Hybra-Tech is the go-to clean-up company in charge of containing and cleaning up the zombie mess. Fast forward a bit, and we see a teenager named Julian getting ready to go to school. Julian and his little brother, Pyro, seems to be wards of a guy they call "Uncle Charlie," after the death of their parents. Uncle Charlie (played by Peter Coyote) turns out to be that surviving guy from the Chernobyl thing at the beginning of the movie. Fast forward again to where Julian is riding around on motorbikes with his friends, and one of them (named Zeke) falls and has a head injury. They take Zeke to the hospital, but the hospital lists Zeke's condition as deceased and transfers Zeke to Hybra-Tech for research purposes. Apparently, Hybra-Tech owns not only the hospital, but the ambulances as well, so it seems they've been doing a little "live specimen" collecting on the side. A friend of Julian's, Katie, works at Hybra-Tech and sees them bringing an unconscious Zeke in for testing, so Katie contacts Julian and they decide to get him out of there. Of course, during their attempted jailbreak, all hell breaks loose.
I know, kind of a long intro, isn't it? Well, the lead-up to the action in this movie seemed to take forever. Slow starter, indeed. I had never seen this movie before tonight, so I had no idea it would take so long to get there. But hey, it's a zombie movie, I guess we need some reason to get a bunch of teenagers into a research lab to let the zombies loose, right? Right. One long, convoluted reason, but whatevs.
The action and plot in this movie is a little sub-par, even for the return of the living dead series. They go a long way to explaining the reasons for getting a bunch of teens into the research lab, and frankly, spend way too much time on the teens' back-stories. Do I really need to know that Katie used to date Zeke, is now dating Julian, and they're hiding it from Zeke because he's something of an asshole? Not really. Did I need to know one of the other girls was a gymnast? Nope. Doesn't seem to have any bearing on the movie whatsoever, so why mention it all? I have no idea. I guess they needed some lines of dialogue while they were getting the special effects ready. (shrug)
Let me toss a few more plot holes at you. Minor spoilers. The kids zoom off on their bikes to infiltrate Hybra-Tech in order to rescue Zeke, where the zombie outbreak is already happening. One of the teens (named Carlos, I think), happens to bring along a gun. A couple of hobo-zombies attack them, and carlos shoots them, only to find out you need to shoot them in the head to kill them. Carlos shoots them in the head. Two zombies down, outbreak suddenly contained, though nobody knows it but me. Fast-forward a bit. Teens continue into the facility, and accidentally let loose a shit-ton of other zombies. Guards unload shotguns into the bodies of the dead, which... kills them? Wait, what? I thought you needed a head shot, to... I guess not. Yep, suddenly, for the rest of the movie, bullet wounds to the body suddenly kill zombies. Then, in another completely unrelated plot hole, Pyro, Julian's little brother, is in the air vents where the teens are. How the frig did he get there? No explanation. Just bam, there he is. Awesome.
Necropolis is a pretty dismal entry into the series. Judged on what few merits it possesses, I can't really say there's much to recommend here. The actual running zombie-fight at Hybra-Tech isn't bad, but it doesn't last too long. There's a few explosions, a lot of shooting, and some fist-fights with teens, who somehow manage to beat the crap out of some zombies who tore a guard's head off not five minutes earlier in the movie. Meh, I guess the plot holes are kind of obvious, and just knocked me right out of enjoying this movie.
No redeeming nudity, not even a shower scene. The only recognizable actor was Peter Coyote, who looked angry just for having to show up in such a crappy zombie flick. Acting was hard to gauge since most of the scenes involved running and riding around on dirt bikes. I think the zombies probably did a better job of acting, and they were dead. This one is available on Crackle.com if you want to check it out, but I can't really recommend it. The beginning wasn't very good, the middle sucked, and the ending was worse. It doesn't seem to have anything of interest or note within it, unless you want to check out the scenes around Chernobyl at the very beginning, out of curiosity.
That's all for tonight. I'm going to review Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005, also on Crackle.com) tomorrow night, completing the Return of the Living-Dead trifecta, for extra bonus points. Extra bonus points? What am I talking about? I don't know! See you guys then.
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Horror Review #10 - Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)
Not many good things came out of the 1990's. Come to think of it, I can't think of a one. Give me a minute. Oh, there was... No. Hmmmm. No. Oh, how about... Nope. No, I got nothin. Nothing except the greatest Zombie Love Story Ever Told. And, yes, that includes Warm Bodies.
Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993) is just that. The Greatest Zombie Love Story Ever Told. But let me sum up. Curt Reynolds is the teenage son of Colonel Reynolds, a military research scientist involved in the experimentation and containment of 2-4-5 Trioxin. Any of you who have seen the cult classic Return of the Living Dead (1985) or any of the sequels, know that 2-4-5 Trioxin is the stuff that the military was looking for in the first moxie. Trioxin (for short) is the gas that, quite simply, reanimates the dead. Colonel Reynolds is in the midst of an experiment in controlling the reanimated dead when his son Curt and his girlfriend Julie sneak in and find out about the effects of Trioxin on the bodies of the deceased. Unfortunately, the experiment goes horribly wrong, and ... yea. All hell breaks loose.
Let's start with what I love about this movie. Melinda Clarke's boobs. Yea, I said it. It's out there. Curt's girlfriend Julie (Melinda Clarke) is what we probably think of as a 'Cutter' now. Basically confusing pain with pleasure, Julie spends her spare time hurting herself, when she's not getting half-naked with Curt. To say Julie is a little unbalanced is probably understating things, but this is usually the type of girl who I meet in bars and hit it off with, so who am I to judge? Everyone's special in their own way, and actresses who aren't afraid to get naked in horror movies are a very special breed.
So, minor spoiler, when Julie has a little accident while riding on the back of Curt's bike, is it any surprise that the ever-devoted Curt uses Trioxin gas to bring her back to life? No, it really isn't, so that's probably not even much of a spoiler is it? Shit, if she were my girlfriend, I'd have brought her back to life, too. What is a surprise, is how hard Julie works to stop herself from eating Curt's brains. From hurting herself worse than she ever did in life, to denying her own unceasing hunger for brains, Julie repeatedly stops herself from eating Curt. And for a brain-hungry zombie, that's nothing short of miraculous.
Is it any wonder that I call this the Greatest Zombie Love Story Ever Told? No. No it isn't. Sure, Warm Bodies (2013) came a close second, but I chose Warm Bodies second for several reasons. One, it's not really a Zombie love story. The male lead in Warm Bodies eventually becomes alive again, so technically, he's not a Zombie. Nor is his girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) a zombie, though she is incredibly hot. Teresa's IMDB.com page says she's often mistaken for Kristin Stewart, which I just don't get. Kristen Stewart is kind of nice looking in a girl-next-door way, whereas Teresa is hot in a Jesus-Christ-I-think-I-just-orgasmed-in-my-jeans way. Sure, Melinda Clarke may not be as out-and-out pretty as Teresa Palmer, but she makes up for it with undead sensuality. So Warm Bodies really isn't a Zombie love story, but essentially a romance movie that happens to start post-mortem for one of the two involved. In Return of the Living Dead 3, I'm pretty sure Curt starts becoming a zombie the minute he turns Julie into one, due to over-exposure to Trioxin. Also, given such close contact with Julie, I'm almost absolutely certain he would've infected himself in other ways as well.
Now here's one thing that confuses me in Return of the Living Dead 3. Shooting a zombie in the head is always a universal cure for ending their undeath. Come to think of it, that's pretty much a universal cure for anything. Yet, here's Curt and Julie, escaping in a van, and the shopkeeper that's riding in the back of their van is accidentally shot in the head by the police. Then Julie, feeling a little peckish by this point, feeds on the corpse of the shopkeeper. Here's where things get confusing. Despite not being exposed to Trioxin at all, and not having much of a brain left, the shopkeeper is brought back to life by Julie's munching on his brain matter. How, exactly? His brains, pretty much splattered out of his head, are the only thing Julie munched on. If Trioxin (or the Z-virus, or whatever) is transferred by bite, which I think is also pretty much a standard tenet of all zombie flicks, then wouldn't it need a working brain to go ahead and revive the dead tissue? Sure, this series has reanimated limbs and such, but weren't those limbs reanimated by direct exposure to Trioxin gas? Well, despite the confusion involved in the reanimation of the shopkeeper, I'm pretty sure the rest of the movie is all good.
To sum up, decent acting for the 90's, though most of the cast is kind of unknown. I loved Sarah Douglas in the role of bossy Colonel Sinclair, sent to clean up Colonel Reynold's mess and using the opportunity to put forth her own agenda. Don't mistake the relative anonymity of the cast for a lack of acting skill, because the supporting actors are all veterans of numerous films. Even Melinda Clarke went on to appear in a number of other TV series and movies, though nothing as remotely popular as Return of the Living Dead 3 (which admittedly, isn't that popular). This movie is on Crackle.com if you want to watch it. I've seen it several times, and it hasn't lost any thrill for me over the years.
Bonus Review of Ominous (2015), which was on Syfy tonight. Ominous is a tale of a bereaved pair of parents who agree to have their son revived from the dead by a mysterious stranger (played by Mark Lindsay Chapman, the only actor I recognize), only to find that their son isn't quite the same as he was when he was alive. Ominous is your standard anti-christ tale, only so dumbed down with mediocre special effects and bad acting by most of the unknown cast, that it plays like a bad lifetime movie of the week. I don't know who made it, but if Asylum was responsible (the ones who make most of syfy's flicks), then this is one of their worst efforts yet. I don't recommend watching it the first time, let alone watching it again. There's nothing new here, and nothing even remotely interesting. Ultimately forgettable.
That's all for tonight! Catch you guys next time.
Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993) is just that. The Greatest Zombie Love Story Ever Told. But let me sum up. Curt Reynolds is the teenage son of Colonel Reynolds, a military research scientist involved in the experimentation and containment of 2-4-5 Trioxin. Any of you who have seen the cult classic Return of the Living Dead (1985) or any of the sequels, know that 2-4-5 Trioxin is the stuff that the military was looking for in the first moxie. Trioxin (for short) is the gas that, quite simply, reanimates the dead. Colonel Reynolds is in the midst of an experiment in controlling the reanimated dead when his son Curt and his girlfriend Julie sneak in and find out about the effects of Trioxin on the bodies of the deceased. Unfortunately, the experiment goes horribly wrong, and ... yea. All hell breaks loose.
Let's start with what I love about this movie. Melinda Clarke's boobs. Yea, I said it. It's out there. Curt's girlfriend Julie (Melinda Clarke) is what we probably think of as a 'Cutter' now. Basically confusing pain with pleasure, Julie spends her spare time hurting herself, when she's not getting half-naked with Curt. To say Julie is a little unbalanced is probably understating things, but this is usually the type of girl who I meet in bars and hit it off with, so who am I to judge? Everyone's special in their own way, and actresses who aren't afraid to get naked in horror movies are a very special breed.
So, minor spoiler, when Julie has a little accident while riding on the back of Curt's bike, is it any surprise that the ever-devoted Curt uses Trioxin gas to bring her back to life? No, it really isn't, so that's probably not even much of a spoiler is it? Shit, if she were my girlfriend, I'd have brought her back to life, too. What is a surprise, is how hard Julie works to stop herself from eating Curt's brains. From hurting herself worse than she ever did in life, to denying her own unceasing hunger for brains, Julie repeatedly stops herself from eating Curt. And for a brain-hungry zombie, that's nothing short of miraculous.
Is it any wonder that I call this the Greatest Zombie Love Story Ever Told? No. No it isn't. Sure, Warm Bodies (2013) came a close second, but I chose Warm Bodies second for several reasons. One, it's not really a Zombie love story. The male lead in Warm Bodies eventually becomes alive again, so technically, he's not a Zombie. Nor is his girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) a zombie, though she is incredibly hot. Teresa's IMDB.com page says she's often mistaken for Kristin Stewart, which I just don't get. Kristen Stewart is kind of nice looking in a girl-next-door way, whereas Teresa is hot in a Jesus-Christ-I-think-I-just-orgasmed-in-my-jeans way. Sure, Melinda Clarke may not be as out-and-out pretty as Teresa Palmer, but she makes up for it with undead sensuality. So Warm Bodies really isn't a Zombie love story, but essentially a romance movie that happens to start post-mortem for one of the two involved. In Return of the Living Dead 3, I'm pretty sure Curt starts becoming a zombie the minute he turns Julie into one, due to over-exposure to Trioxin. Also, given such close contact with Julie, I'm almost absolutely certain he would've infected himself in other ways as well.
Now here's one thing that confuses me in Return of the Living Dead 3. Shooting a zombie in the head is always a universal cure for ending their undeath. Come to think of it, that's pretty much a universal cure for anything. Yet, here's Curt and Julie, escaping in a van, and the shopkeeper that's riding in the back of their van is accidentally shot in the head by the police. Then Julie, feeling a little peckish by this point, feeds on the corpse of the shopkeeper. Here's where things get confusing. Despite not being exposed to Trioxin at all, and not having much of a brain left, the shopkeeper is brought back to life by Julie's munching on his brain matter. How, exactly? His brains, pretty much splattered out of his head, are the only thing Julie munched on. If Trioxin (or the Z-virus, or whatever) is transferred by bite, which I think is also pretty much a standard tenet of all zombie flicks, then wouldn't it need a working brain to go ahead and revive the dead tissue? Sure, this series has reanimated limbs and such, but weren't those limbs reanimated by direct exposure to Trioxin gas? Well, despite the confusion involved in the reanimation of the shopkeeper, I'm pretty sure the rest of the movie is all good.
To sum up, decent acting for the 90's, though most of the cast is kind of unknown. I loved Sarah Douglas in the role of bossy Colonel Sinclair, sent to clean up Colonel Reynold's mess and using the opportunity to put forth her own agenda. Don't mistake the relative anonymity of the cast for a lack of acting skill, because the supporting actors are all veterans of numerous films. Even Melinda Clarke went on to appear in a number of other TV series and movies, though nothing as remotely popular as Return of the Living Dead 3 (which admittedly, isn't that popular). This movie is on Crackle.com if you want to watch it. I've seen it several times, and it hasn't lost any thrill for me over the years.
Bonus Review of Ominous (2015), which was on Syfy tonight. Ominous is a tale of a bereaved pair of parents who agree to have their son revived from the dead by a mysterious stranger (played by Mark Lindsay Chapman, the only actor I recognize), only to find that their son isn't quite the same as he was when he was alive. Ominous is your standard anti-christ tale, only so dumbed down with mediocre special effects and bad acting by most of the unknown cast, that it plays like a bad lifetime movie of the week. I don't know who made it, but if Asylum was responsible (the ones who make most of syfy's flicks), then this is one of their worst efforts yet. I don't recommend watching it the first time, let alone watching it again. There's nothing new here, and nothing even remotely interesting. Ultimately forgettable.
That's all for tonight! Catch you guys next time.
Friday, October 9, 2015
Horror Review #8 and #9: Insidious part 1(2010) and 2 (2013)
If Zombies are the meat and potatoes of the horror genre, then creepy demonic possession flicks are the horror equivalent of eating pufferfish, in that it's a rare delicacy, and it can kill you if it's not prepared properly. Well, not really. I mean, eating badly-cooked pufferfish (otherwise known as fugu, I believe) can kill you, but people don't usually die of watching demonic possession movies. If they did, that would be both very bad, and the mark of an awesome horror movie, at the same time. Sure, Zombies are great horror movie fodder. Sure, you get your occasional frankenstein's monster, your werewolf, your dracula, but nothing scares the bejeesus out of the american public like a good demonic possession story. Think of The Exorcist, and how 42 years after its release, it's still the scariest movie of all time.
Insidious (2010) is another story about possession. I won't give away the plot, because it's difficult to do an intro to this movie without giving anything away, but let me paraphrase Elise (the psychic) when she explains a bit about the Further. The Further is a world beyond time where the dead gather, before moving on to other places. The Further is not meant for the living. It is filled with the deceased, the lost souls who wander eternally, and with other spirits. Spirits with a more insidious agenda, parasites, those who prey on the living... and worse.
Josh Lambert, the dad, is played by Patrick Wilson, of the Conjuring, and the upcoming Fargo series. Rose Byrne (of X-men, Neighbors, and 28 Weeks Later) plays his wife, and Elise the psychic is played by Lin Shaye, who may be more familiar to people who've seen Big Ass Spiders and Snakes on a Plane. I admit to not being overly familiar with Ms. Shaye's work, but a quick overview of her career from IMDB.com tells me she was in Brainsmasher, A Love Story (quite possibly Andrew Dice Clay's best work, and yes, I am serious), Critters 1 and 2, the Hidden, and the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Barbara Hershey plays Josh's mom, who I recall from The Entity, a pretty creepy horror flick from the early 80's. All the acting is pretty decent. Most of the special effects are okay, if a bit on the low-budget side, resulting in a few of the more common 'jump scares' and contributing a little towards the overall atmosphere.
I admit to being a little creeped out by Insidious, in an odd way. First off, I watched Insidious part 2 first, which is basically a continuation of the first movie. Yes, this is a two-part movie. The first part makes sense, but the second part continues the story and explains everything in the first movie in more detail. Insidious part 2 was on Netflix until last night, and never having seen the first or second movie, I didn't know they really needed to be viewed in order. Since Netflix was dropping Insidious 2 last night, I watched it first. I didn't have access to Insidious at the time, but I have since watched it on Crackle.com (and just noticed it's playing on Syfy channel right now). I don't know where you can watch Insidious 2 right now, but Insidious is still on crackle.com, and I think it's probably the better movie of the two movies, despite the second one basically being a continuation of the first movie, and starring all the cast members from the first one.
So, I'm watching Insidious 2, and I notice, hey, this is a decent horror flick. When I'm about halfway through, my nephew's daughter calls me to say hi. Since I haven't really talked to her in ages, I was a bit surprised. So I'm talking to her and there's a lot of static on the line because of the crappy portable phone. My nephew's daughter sounds just like she used to, which surprises me, because she's a teenager now, and should probably have sounded different than when she was 10 or 11, the last time I remember talking to her. So, we're talking and she asks me what I am watching, and I tell her Insidious part 2, not expecting her to have any idea what that was (especially considering that before last night, I had never even seen the movie). Being a bit of a horror movie fanatic, I'm used to normal people having no idea about the titles of the horror movies I am watching. So she asks me if I have seen the first one yet, or the third one. I confess I didn't even know there was a third one before she mentioned it, and while we're talking the static on the line clears up and she sounds completely different, more like a teenager would sound, and a lot less like my great-niece (or whatever you'd call my nephew's daughter). So she tells me I should probably watch them in order, in the voice of a stranger (since I haven't talked to her in ages), and honestly, this is not the type of girl I would ever have expected to know anything about horror movies. So, yes, after watching a creepy movie and getting a call from my long-lost great-niece, I admit to being a little weirded out by her extensive knowledge of scary movies. If this was an actual horror movie, I'd probably find out in a day or two that my great-niece has actually passed away, and that she died before I spoke to her on the phone. If she has, then I'm going to be REALLY creeped out. :-/ So, sure, all completely normal events, but I guess Insidious sort of got under my skin a bit. It is that kind of movie. As for my great-niece, I'm sure she's fine, and look forward to watching horror-movie marathons with her someday.
So, to sum up. Insidious 1 and 2, pretty decent horror movies. Insidious 3 out now, because they're flashing DVD and Blu-Ray ads for for Insidious 3 all through Insidious on SyFy. Insidious is on crackle.com, and good luck on finding Insidious 2. Also, I'm a bit of a scaredy-cat. Which, is actually a good thing. If scary movies didn't actually scare me sometimes, I probably wouldn't be watching them, right? Right. Don't worry, I usually still sleep like a baby at night, thanks for your concern. ;-)
That's all for tonight. Got some movies lined up for the weekend, so we should be all good for a few days. Enjoy the three day weekend, if you have monday off.
Insidious (2010) is another story about possession. I won't give away the plot, because it's difficult to do an intro to this movie without giving anything away, but let me paraphrase Elise (the psychic) when she explains a bit about the Further. The Further is a world beyond time where the dead gather, before moving on to other places. The Further is not meant for the living. It is filled with the deceased, the lost souls who wander eternally, and with other spirits. Spirits with a more insidious agenda, parasites, those who prey on the living... and worse.
Josh Lambert, the dad, is played by Patrick Wilson, of the Conjuring, and the upcoming Fargo series. Rose Byrne (of X-men, Neighbors, and 28 Weeks Later) plays his wife, and Elise the psychic is played by Lin Shaye, who may be more familiar to people who've seen Big Ass Spiders and Snakes on a Plane. I admit to not being overly familiar with Ms. Shaye's work, but a quick overview of her career from IMDB.com tells me she was in Brainsmasher, A Love Story (quite possibly Andrew Dice Clay's best work, and yes, I am serious), Critters 1 and 2, the Hidden, and the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Barbara Hershey plays Josh's mom, who I recall from The Entity, a pretty creepy horror flick from the early 80's. All the acting is pretty decent. Most of the special effects are okay, if a bit on the low-budget side, resulting in a few of the more common 'jump scares' and contributing a little towards the overall atmosphere.
I admit to being a little creeped out by Insidious, in an odd way. First off, I watched Insidious part 2 first, which is basically a continuation of the first movie. Yes, this is a two-part movie. The first part makes sense, but the second part continues the story and explains everything in the first movie in more detail. Insidious part 2 was on Netflix until last night, and never having seen the first or second movie, I didn't know they really needed to be viewed in order. Since Netflix was dropping Insidious 2 last night, I watched it first. I didn't have access to Insidious at the time, but I have since watched it on Crackle.com (and just noticed it's playing on Syfy channel right now). I don't know where you can watch Insidious 2 right now, but Insidious is still on crackle.com, and I think it's probably the better movie of the two movies, despite the second one basically being a continuation of the first movie, and starring all the cast members from the first one.
So, I'm watching Insidious 2, and I notice, hey, this is a decent horror flick. When I'm about halfway through, my nephew's daughter calls me to say hi. Since I haven't really talked to her in ages, I was a bit surprised. So I'm talking to her and there's a lot of static on the line because of the crappy portable phone. My nephew's daughter sounds just like she used to, which surprises me, because she's a teenager now, and should probably have sounded different than when she was 10 or 11, the last time I remember talking to her. So, we're talking and she asks me what I am watching, and I tell her Insidious part 2, not expecting her to have any idea what that was (especially considering that before last night, I had never even seen the movie). Being a bit of a horror movie fanatic, I'm used to normal people having no idea about the titles of the horror movies I am watching. So she asks me if I have seen the first one yet, or the third one. I confess I didn't even know there was a third one before she mentioned it, and while we're talking the static on the line clears up and she sounds completely different, more like a teenager would sound, and a lot less like my great-niece (or whatever you'd call my nephew's daughter). So she tells me I should probably watch them in order, in the voice of a stranger (since I haven't talked to her in ages), and honestly, this is not the type of girl I would ever have expected to know anything about horror movies. So, yes, after watching a creepy movie and getting a call from my long-lost great-niece, I admit to being a little weirded out by her extensive knowledge of scary movies. If this was an actual horror movie, I'd probably find out in a day or two that my great-niece has actually passed away, and that she died before I spoke to her on the phone. If she has, then I'm going to be REALLY creeped out. :-/ So, sure, all completely normal events, but I guess Insidious sort of got under my skin a bit. It is that kind of movie. As for my great-niece, I'm sure she's fine, and look forward to watching horror-movie marathons with her someday.
So, to sum up. Insidious 1 and 2, pretty decent horror movies. Insidious 3 out now, because they're flashing DVD and Blu-Ray ads for for Insidious 3 all through Insidious on SyFy. Insidious is on crackle.com, and good luck on finding Insidious 2. Also, I'm a bit of a scaredy-cat. Which, is actually a good thing. If scary movies didn't actually scare me sometimes, I probably wouldn't be watching them, right? Right. Don't worry, I usually still sleep like a baby at night, thanks for your concern. ;-)
That's all for tonight. Got some movies lined up for the weekend, so we should be all good for a few days. Enjoy the three day weekend, if you have monday off.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Horror Review #6 - #7: Rattlers (1976), The Swarm (1978)
Double feature Wednesday tonight, just because (because I missed posting one last night because I was too busy)! Animal attacks are a pretty common theme in horror movies, and have been for decades. Zoo (2015), the series by James Patterson that played over the summer, is a recent example.
Rattlers (1976) is a pretty typical example of a killer-snake movie that was probably spawned by the blockbuster success of Jaws (1975) the year before. A herpetologist (an expert in reptiles) teaching at a nearby college gets a call from the sheriff of a nearby town. Apparently there have been a small number of fatalities involving snake bites, and the sheriff is looking to get an expert opinion on just what exactly is causing the spike in snake bite deaths. The professor heads down to find out, only to find a swarm of killer rattlesnakes on the loose! :-o
I think my synopsis is actually more exciting than the movie. Rattlers starts out pretty good, illustrating a number of rattlesnake-caused fatalities in fair detail, before falling apart about 2/3rds of the way through. I won't give away any details, in case someone actually wants to check out the movie. I watched it on Turner Classic Movies, on something called the TCM Underground, which is apparently what they call it when they show movies at 3 am.
The lead actors of Rattlers were pretty much completely unidentifiable. Acting was passable for a cheap creature feature of the mid-70's. Special effects consisted of a few rattlers stirred up and placed strategically near some actors. No blood and gore to speak of, nor any nudity. There wasn't a lot of action, and I didn't like the way the movie suddenly changed focus when the professor decided to check out the pattern of attacks. However, I guess there needed to be some reason for the Rattlers to go on the rampage, so the, well, the side/main story was necessary, I suppose. Still, there was a decent build-up, and then things just seemed to go south. The ending was a bit of a disappointment, so not really worth watching again, but not a bad start if you haven't seen the movie.
The only actor of note was Darwin "Got a Smoke?" Joston, whom horror movie fans may remember from both The Fog (1980), where he played Dr. Phibes (the coroner), and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), where he played Napoleon Wilson, the convicted killer who stops over at Precinct 13 and helps fight off the gang attack. Assault on Precinct 13 was probably his best movie role, and should have led to other roles, but somehow never did. In Rattlers, he plays a doomed army patrolman who is driving through rattler country, though I recognized him by his voice almost immediately. He was actually John Carpenter's next-door neighbor for a while, as I understand it. His appearance in this movie amounts to little more than work as an extra, though he does have a few speaking lines.
The Swarm (1978) is another movie about killer animals, although this time it's bees. An army base is attacked by killer bees, and the force of soldiers sent to rescue the besieged base runs into Dr. Crane, an entomologist tracking a swarm of bees. The soldiers are so disbelieving of Dr. Crane's story, that a swarm of killer bees attacked and killed everyone on the base, that they immediately arrest him and set about confirming his crazy story. When the story turns out to be true, and the killer bees are found to be still on the rampage, Dr. Crane quickly becomes the army's most valuable asset. Can he stop the bees before they attack the nearby town of Marysville? :-o
IMDB.com gives The Swarm a rating of 4.3, though I don't understand why. Michael Caine plays Dr. Crane, and the supporting cast includes Richard Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Jose Ferrer, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens, Bradford Dillman, Fred Macmurray and Henry Fonda. With that kind of stellar cast, and an ample budget and the best special effects money could buy, you'd think this movie would have garnered better reviews. In any case, the movie plays pretty well. Killer Bees go apeshit and start stinging everyone in their path, and that path includes major cities and small towns. Pretty exciting stuff, if you ask me, and the acting couldn't be better. As with Rattlers, I caught this movie on TCM underground. TCM may play it again at some point this month, or there's probably other ways to catch this movie somewhere.
I like the Swarm much better than I liked Rattlers, mostly for the acting talent. The Swarm typically makes the rounds every once in a while, on Network TV or TCM, so it's at least reasonably popular. If I'm not mistaken, HBO played the shit out of it for a few years before retiring it. Both movies are prime examples of the killer-wildlife motif, though the Swarm most definitely had a bigger budget, better acting talent, and was the better movie, in probably all respects. The Swarm is almost two hours long, so you know a crapload of things happen in it. I suppose you could even call the Swarm one of those big-budget disaster movies, only this time, the natural disaster is bees.
Since neither movie is a comedy, and both focus on animals gone wild (typical horror movie fare), they certainly qualify as horror movies (though they aren't particularly horrifying). The body count in the Swarm is much higher than in Rattlers, and neither movie contains any nudity, but both are worth watching at least once. The Swarm I have seen before, and frankly is a good watch no matter how many times you've seen it. Henry Fonda has a particularly awesome scene that he acts the shit out of, that makes me cringe every time I watch it. Cringeworthy! Very cringe-worthy. And then, all hell breaks loose. heh. Yea, you knew that was coming.
That's all for tonight. Hope you guys can at least catch the Swarm, either by watching it on TCM or some other means. Killer Bee Hell on Earth. :-D Til next time!
Rattlers (1976) is a pretty typical example of a killer-snake movie that was probably spawned by the blockbuster success of Jaws (1975) the year before. A herpetologist (an expert in reptiles) teaching at a nearby college gets a call from the sheriff of a nearby town. Apparently there have been a small number of fatalities involving snake bites, and the sheriff is looking to get an expert opinion on just what exactly is causing the spike in snake bite deaths. The professor heads down to find out, only to find a swarm of killer rattlesnakes on the loose! :-o
I think my synopsis is actually more exciting than the movie. Rattlers starts out pretty good, illustrating a number of rattlesnake-caused fatalities in fair detail, before falling apart about 2/3rds of the way through. I won't give away any details, in case someone actually wants to check out the movie. I watched it on Turner Classic Movies, on something called the TCM Underground, which is apparently what they call it when they show movies at 3 am.
The lead actors of Rattlers were pretty much completely unidentifiable. Acting was passable for a cheap creature feature of the mid-70's. Special effects consisted of a few rattlers stirred up and placed strategically near some actors. No blood and gore to speak of, nor any nudity. There wasn't a lot of action, and I didn't like the way the movie suddenly changed focus when the professor decided to check out the pattern of attacks. However, I guess there needed to be some reason for the Rattlers to go on the rampage, so the, well, the side/main story was necessary, I suppose. Still, there was a decent build-up, and then things just seemed to go south. The ending was a bit of a disappointment, so not really worth watching again, but not a bad start if you haven't seen the movie.
The only actor of note was Darwin "Got a Smoke?" Joston, whom horror movie fans may remember from both The Fog (1980), where he played Dr. Phibes (the coroner), and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), where he played Napoleon Wilson, the convicted killer who stops over at Precinct 13 and helps fight off the gang attack. Assault on Precinct 13 was probably his best movie role, and should have led to other roles, but somehow never did. In Rattlers, he plays a doomed army patrolman who is driving through rattler country, though I recognized him by his voice almost immediately. He was actually John Carpenter's next-door neighbor for a while, as I understand it. His appearance in this movie amounts to little more than work as an extra, though he does have a few speaking lines.
The Swarm (1978) is another movie about killer animals, although this time it's bees. An army base is attacked by killer bees, and the force of soldiers sent to rescue the besieged base runs into Dr. Crane, an entomologist tracking a swarm of bees. The soldiers are so disbelieving of Dr. Crane's story, that a swarm of killer bees attacked and killed everyone on the base, that they immediately arrest him and set about confirming his crazy story. When the story turns out to be true, and the killer bees are found to be still on the rampage, Dr. Crane quickly becomes the army's most valuable asset. Can he stop the bees before they attack the nearby town of Marysville? :-o
IMDB.com gives The Swarm a rating of 4.3, though I don't understand why. Michael Caine plays Dr. Crane, and the supporting cast includes Richard Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Jose Ferrer, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens, Bradford Dillman, Fred Macmurray and Henry Fonda. With that kind of stellar cast, and an ample budget and the best special effects money could buy, you'd think this movie would have garnered better reviews. In any case, the movie plays pretty well. Killer Bees go apeshit and start stinging everyone in their path, and that path includes major cities and small towns. Pretty exciting stuff, if you ask me, and the acting couldn't be better. As with Rattlers, I caught this movie on TCM underground. TCM may play it again at some point this month, or there's probably other ways to catch this movie somewhere.
I like the Swarm much better than I liked Rattlers, mostly for the acting talent. The Swarm typically makes the rounds every once in a while, on Network TV or TCM, so it's at least reasonably popular. If I'm not mistaken, HBO played the shit out of it for a few years before retiring it. Both movies are prime examples of the killer-wildlife motif, though the Swarm most definitely had a bigger budget, better acting talent, and was the better movie, in probably all respects. The Swarm is almost two hours long, so you know a crapload of things happen in it. I suppose you could even call the Swarm one of those big-budget disaster movies, only this time, the natural disaster is bees.
Since neither movie is a comedy, and both focus on animals gone wild (typical horror movie fare), they certainly qualify as horror movies (though they aren't particularly horrifying). The body count in the Swarm is much higher than in Rattlers, and neither movie contains any nudity, but both are worth watching at least once. The Swarm I have seen before, and frankly is a good watch no matter how many times you've seen it. Henry Fonda has a particularly awesome scene that he acts the shit out of, that makes me cringe every time I watch it. Cringeworthy! Very cringe-worthy. And then, all hell breaks loose. heh. Yea, you knew that was coming.
That's all for tonight. Hope you guys can at least catch the Swarm, either by watching it on TCM or some other means. Killer Bee Hell on Earth. :-D Til next time!
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Horror Review #5 - Witchboard (1987)
Ouija boards, also known as spirit boards or Witchboards, have been around for a while. A while being, hundreds if not thousands of years. Typically used to communicate with "The Dead," Ouija boards have been featured in movies for decades, most recently in the movie Ouija (2014). In fact, the movie Witchboard (which I am reviewing tonight), is even listed on the wiki website as a popular culture reference.
Witchboard (1986) starts out with a party. Attending this party are Linda, her boyfriend Jim, and her ex-boyfriend Brandon, who has brought a Ouija Board. Brandon breaks out the old spirit board, and they contact David, the spirit of a little boy who drowned some years ago, that Brandon has been chatting with for some time. The party's a smash hit, everyone goes home schnockered, and Brandon forgets to bring his Ouija board home with him. The next day, Linda decides to contact David, by herself. David and Linda have a chat, and ... well, come on. It's a horror movie. You know what's coming. All hell breaks loose!
For those of you who think it's odd that Brandon roams around with a Ouija board, remember, this was the 80's. Anyone who didn't wander around with a ouija board was considered a major douchebag. I had one tattooed on my ass just so I wouldn't forget to bring one along. In the old days, before the internet, Ouija boards were used like chatroulette. You pretty much let it be known that you were looking to contact someone, and you prayed you didn't end up with a big dick. In Linda's case, she ends up with a really big dick, metaphysically speaking.
Linda is played by Tawny Kitaen, whom some of you may remember from a couple of Whitesnake music videos back in the late 80's, filmed while she was dating the lead singer of the band. She was also in Bachelor Party (1984) with Tom Hanks, when he was still doing comedy, and wasn't a huge star. Tawny Kitaen was pretty much the only "major" star in Witchboard, and while her success didn't quite equal that of Tom Hanks, she did continue to appear in series, movies, and so on. Tawny even has a nude scene in Witchboard, and she was looking pretty fine back then, if you ask me.
As far as horror movies go, this one wan't bad. It was the 80's, so you've got weird psychics, metaphysical research, and visits to magic shops to see what the hell was going on back in the day, when they didn't have a scooby gang handy. Aside from the nude scene (nude scenes were pretty much required in horror movies back in the 80's), there are several bloody deaths, a couple seances, and some generally spooky goings-on. Special effects aren't exactly cutting edge, and the acting is mediocre, but how much do you really need in a horror movie? There's a killer spirit, a hot chick, a shower scene, and lots of blood and guts. That's plenty for a horror flick, and this isn't the first time I've seen this movie, so it has a fair amount of rewatchability. Witchboard is on Encore Suspense this month if you want to check it out.
Okay, that's enough of a review. It's late and I need sleep. I hope everyone likes the new blog layout and background. Til next time.
Witchboard (1986) starts out with a party. Attending this party are Linda, her boyfriend Jim, and her ex-boyfriend Brandon, who has brought a Ouija Board. Brandon breaks out the old spirit board, and they contact David, the spirit of a little boy who drowned some years ago, that Brandon has been chatting with for some time. The party's a smash hit, everyone goes home schnockered, and Brandon forgets to bring his Ouija board home with him. The next day, Linda decides to contact David, by herself. David and Linda have a chat, and ... well, come on. It's a horror movie. You know what's coming. All hell breaks loose!
For those of you who think it's odd that Brandon roams around with a Ouija board, remember, this was the 80's. Anyone who didn't wander around with a ouija board was considered a major douchebag. I had one tattooed on my ass just so I wouldn't forget to bring one along. In the old days, before the internet, Ouija boards were used like chatroulette. You pretty much let it be known that you were looking to contact someone, and you prayed you didn't end up with a big dick. In Linda's case, she ends up with a really big dick, metaphysically speaking.
Linda is played by Tawny Kitaen, whom some of you may remember from a couple of Whitesnake music videos back in the late 80's, filmed while she was dating the lead singer of the band. She was also in Bachelor Party (1984) with Tom Hanks, when he was still doing comedy, and wasn't a huge star. Tawny Kitaen was pretty much the only "major" star in Witchboard, and while her success didn't quite equal that of Tom Hanks, she did continue to appear in series, movies, and so on. Tawny even has a nude scene in Witchboard, and she was looking pretty fine back then, if you ask me.
As far as horror movies go, this one wan't bad. It was the 80's, so you've got weird psychics, metaphysical research, and visits to magic shops to see what the hell was going on back in the day, when they didn't have a scooby gang handy. Aside from the nude scene (nude scenes were pretty much required in horror movies back in the 80's), there are several bloody deaths, a couple seances, and some generally spooky goings-on. Special effects aren't exactly cutting edge, and the acting is mediocre, but how much do you really need in a horror movie? There's a killer spirit, a hot chick, a shower scene, and lots of blood and guts. That's plenty for a horror flick, and this isn't the first time I've seen this movie, so it has a fair amount of rewatchability. Witchboard is on Encore Suspense this month if you want to check it out.
Okay, that's enough of a review. It's late and I need sleep. I hope everyone likes the new blog layout and background. Til next time.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Horror Review #4 - Curse of Chucky (2013)
I have seen all the Chucky movies, I admit it. Back when I was just a young horror movie lover, stories about killer dolls were actually pretty common, what with Chucky and the Puppet Master series of movies. You don't see too many stories about killer dolls now, unless we're talking about the Stepford Wives, but maybe a new Chucky movie is a sign of a resurgence in the genre! Oh geez. I said 'genre.' Now I sound like an artsy, snobby, movie critic type fella. Sorry.
Curse of Chucky (2013) starts out with a delivery. A seemingly innocent mother and daughter get a package, and damned if it doesn't contain a 'Good Guy' doll. Being a fan of the Chucky series, I already know this is a bad thing. No 'Good Guy' doll is ever a good guy. Trust me on this. Needless to say, shortly after the doll arrives, the bodies start piling up.
Curse of Chucky is short on plot. Usually the Chucky movies give some kind of explanation as to how the Chucky doll gets reborn, movie after movie, but I can't quite recall how the last chucky movie ended, so I'm not even sure if the doll got destroyed. That having been said, there's sort of an explanation at the end as to how everything gets started, so you'll have to watch til the end to figure out the beginning. It's sort of convoluted, but it's mostly all there. Unfortunately, you'll have to have seen a few chucky movies to realize WTF is going on. (shrug) I could explain, but it would give away the end, and I don't want to do that, do I? Curse of Chucky is on Netflix, if you want to check it out for yourselves, but I still have to say a few things about the movie.
Aside from the odd beginning, it pretty much works like every other Chucky movie. The Chucky movies work because nobody realizes the doll is actually alive. Chucky's typical schtick is to blame everything on someone else, so he has a patsy to blame while Chucky the Doll sits innocently nearby, not doing a damn thing. All the blame conveniently falls on the nearby surviving humans, and Chucky is free to move on to the next group of victims. The tricksy bastard. In this particular case, the movie gets a little scarier because there's a woman in a wheelchair involved, which is just plain mean. Chucky is an equal-opportunity killer doll, though, that much is true. He picks on kids, women, men, cripples, anyone he can get alone. I mean, he is a doll and all. Taking on armed mobs of folks is a little out of his league. He's no Jason Voorhees, that's for sure.
This movie was an okay horror flick, though. It stands well enough on its own to scare you, even if you haven't seen the other chucky movies, though you may not be able to follow the end too well. I mean, it's not terrifying or anything, but as far as a psycho-killer-horror-slasher-flick goes, this one isn't too bad. Brad Dourif plays the voice of Chucky, as always, and flashback scenes of Charles Lee Ray (the killer Chucky used to be when he was alive). Additional actors include Fiona Dourif (Brad's actual daughter) as the hot girl in the wheelchair, and Maitland McConnell (of Ninja Cheerleader fame) as the hot lesbian nanny. No nude scenes, so I probably won't watch this one over and over again (hey, I don't get out much), but the movie works okay without it. Yea, I know, nude scenes aren't technically required for most horror movies, but they make it so much better! :-D
Okay, I am four for four! Twenty seven horror movie reviews to go! I CAN DO THIS! Maybe. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can... Yes, I am the little engine that could. What will I review tomorrow? I have no idea! Let's hope I can find something, otherwise, shit's going to get real hairy real quick, and not just because I am a member of the hair replacement club for men! Well. Mostly because of that reason. Til next time.
Curse of Chucky (2013) starts out with a delivery. A seemingly innocent mother and daughter get a package, and damned if it doesn't contain a 'Good Guy' doll. Being a fan of the Chucky series, I already know this is a bad thing. No 'Good Guy' doll is ever a good guy. Trust me on this. Needless to say, shortly after the doll arrives, the bodies start piling up.
Curse of Chucky is short on plot. Usually the Chucky movies give some kind of explanation as to how the Chucky doll gets reborn, movie after movie, but I can't quite recall how the last chucky movie ended, so I'm not even sure if the doll got destroyed. That having been said, there's sort of an explanation at the end as to how everything gets started, so you'll have to watch til the end to figure out the beginning. It's sort of convoluted, but it's mostly all there. Unfortunately, you'll have to have seen a few chucky movies to realize WTF is going on. (shrug) I could explain, but it would give away the end, and I don't want to do that, do I? Curse of Chucky is on Netflix, if you want to check it out for yourselves, but I still have to say a few things about the movie.
Aside from the odd beginning, it pretty much works like every other Chucky movie. The Chucky movies work because nobody realizes the doll is actually alive. Chucky's typical schtick is to blame everything on someone else, so he has a patsy to blame while Chucky the Doll sits innocently nearby, not doing a damn thing. All the blame conveniently falls on the nearby surviving humans, and Chucky is free to move on to the next group of victims. The tricksy bastard. In this particular case, the movie gets a little scarier because there's a woman in a wheelchair involved, which is just plain mean. Chucky is an equal-opportunity killer doll, though, that much is true. He picks on kids, women, men, cripples, anyone he can get alone. I mean, he is a doll and all. Taking on armed mobs of folks is a little out of his league. He's no Jason Voorhees, that's for sure.
This movie was an okay horror flick, though. It stands well enough on its own to scare you, even if you haven't seen the other chucky movies, though you may not be able to follow the end too well. I mean, it's not terrifying or anything, but as far as a psycho-killer-horror-slasher-flick goes, this one isn't too bad. Brad Dourif plays the voice of Chucky, as always, and flashback scenes of Charles Lee Ray (the killer Chucky used to be when he was alive). Additional actors include Fiona Dourif (Brad's actual daughter) as the hot girl in the wheelchair, and Maitland McConnell (of Ninja Cheerleader fame) as the hot lesbian nanny. No nude scenes, so I probably won't watch this one over and over again (hey, I don't get out much), but the movie works okay without it. Yea, I know, nude scenes aren't technically required for most horror movies, but they make it so much better! :-D
Okay, I am four for four! Twenty seven horror movie reviews to go! I CAN DO THIS! Maybe. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can... Yes, I am the little engine that could. What will I review tomorrow? I have no idea! Let's hope I can find something, otherwise, shit's going to get real hairy real quick, and not just because I am a member of the hair replacement club for men! Well. Mostly because of that reason. Til next time.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Horror Review #2-3 - Night of the Wild (2015), Daybreakers (2009)
Two reviews tonight, to keep me up to date on my Horror-movie-review-a-thon's 31 days of horror movie reviews. Let's start with Daybreakers, because I'm watching Night of the Wild on Syfy right now.
Daybreakers (2009) is a movie about vampires. In the year 2019, Vampires have taken over the world. Nearly every human has been bitten, sucked on, and turned into a fellow vampire. In this movie, every human bitten turns into a vampire, so basically the entire population of the earth is either already a vampire, or food. Pockets of human resistance remain in hiding, sought out by teams of vampire hunter-soldiers. Vampires are searching for a synthetic substitute for blood, but so far, haven't found one yet. That means, the supply of human blood is quickly running out. Enter Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), the vampire researcher in charge of looking for the synthetic blood substitute, who stumbles upon a group of humans looking for vampires sympathetic to their cause.
I don't normally like vampire movies, but this one is a little different. First off, all the vampire-turning and the melodrama associated with that has already happened before the movie even starts. Vampires aren't the unusual thing in this movie, they're the norm. One of the best parts early on is a scene where a bunch of normal-looking humans are standing around waiting for the subway at night, and a train goes by on the other track. In the middle of the group is Edward Dalton, puffing on a cigarette. The shadow of the passing train envelops the group of people in darkness, and all you can see of them are their silhouettes and their glowing eyes.
Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, the vampire scientist looking for a cure, and he's the lead actor. Supporting cast includes Sam Neill as the evil guy in charge of the corporation looking to fund the synthetic blood, but doesn't really want it for himself, because he prefers human blood. Willem Dafoe plays 'Elvis,' a former vampire turned human, who helps Edward in his quest for a cure. The rest of the supporting cast includes dozens of random vampires who are slowly starving to death, turning into savage half-bat vampire-hobos as their hunger turns their vampiric bodies into killing machines on the hunt for blood. I'm guessing the movie had a good budget, due to the supporting cast, various location shoots and slightly-futuristic tech in the year 2019.
This movie wasn't the best vampire movie ever made (an understatement to be sure), but it's interesting for two main reasons. One is, the vampiric powers normally associated with vampires (turning into bats, unable to be caught on camera, etc) are actually hindrances for the vampires in this movie. When the entire populace is all vampires, turning into a bat is so unnecessary that normal vampires don't even know how to do it anymore, and are terrified when they run into a starving vampire that is half-mutated into a bat. Newscasters can't broadcast, nor can vampires see themselves in a mirror, so technology had to be invented to overcome this. It's like vampires were never intended to overcome humanity, so when they did, they had no idea how to adapt.
The second reason I like this movie is 'the cure.' I'm not going to give anything away, in case anyone wants to look for this movie on Syfy (where I saw it), but I like how the cure comes about. It's like it was built into the human race, and maybe it was, because this movie draws on real biology to come up with a cure, without getting bogged down in the details of it. As I said, I can't really go into details without giving away the movie, but I just thought it was interesting how the cure worked out.
As an aside here, let me just say that Sam Neill is possibly the most underrated actor to ever grace a horror movie, and has probably been in every horror movie I have ever seen. Event Horizon? Check. In The Mouth of Madness? Check. Sure, the Jurassic Park series may be what he's best known for, but he's also played opposite Nicole Kidman (Dead Calm), Sigourney Weaver (Snow White: A tale of Terror), and even Robort Redford (the Horse Whisperer) and the late Robin Williams (Bicentennial man). Those last two were admittedly not horror movies, but the man has such a range of talent that he probably played every single role in The Shining, and we just haven't figured it out yet. And yes, I can see Scatman Crothers talking about 'the shining' with little Danny, and suddenly pulling off his latex rubber mask, and revealing the evil, grinning face of Sam Neill. Shit, if I was Danny, I'd probably have shat myself. I'm sure he did the voiceovers for Danny's little finger (Rrrrrredrrrrumm), and through the magic of hollywood, even played the two creepy little girls ("Come play with us! Play with us... for eeevvvvveeerrrrrrrrr..."). I bet you didn't know Shelley Duvall was actually one of Sam Neill's aliases, did you? Well, now you do. Jack Nicholson? He doesn't actually exist. Jack's just the identity Sam Neill uses when he's on a bender.
Next up is Night of the Wild (2015) a brand new Asylum production. Yes, I know, this is a Syfy movie, and they do so love those crappy Asylum flicks. Night of the Wild is about a meteorite that explodes in contact with earth's atmosphere, and showers an entire town with meteorite fragments. These fragments glow green, give off odd vapors, and seem to really piss off the local dog population. Since the entire town and surrounding forest seem filled with pet dogs and wild dogs, this presents a problem for the humans, which quickly become dog food. Think Hitchcock's 'The Birds,' only with dogs instead. There's also a lot more barking, human dismemberment, and ... well, about the same amount of screaming, I think.
Rob Morrow (of Northern Exposure fame) and Kelly Rutherford star in it. Kelly Rutherford looks familiar to me for some reason, but after looking through her list of movies on IMDB.com, I can't figure out why. The rest of the cast is only there to be eaten, I think. There's a lot of dogs in this movie. In fact, I think the entire cast of 101 dalmatians is in it. I mean, they're probably been out of work since that movie, so I can understand why they'd need to bring home the bacon, because... wait, what? 101 Dalmatians was animated? The dogs in that movie weren't real? Shit. Well. I swear I just saw a dalmatian. I just assumed... oh well.
This movie starts out with the action pretty early on, and doesn't really let up til the end, so in that respect, there's not a lot of suspense and buildup. We get right into the action, and I like those kinds of movies. Sure, suspense is great if you have a good plot and good actors, but that's pretty rare, especially in an Asylum flick. It's good that they get right into the action. They are playing on their strengths. I'm not sure how real the special effects in this movie are. It's possible they just hired a lot of actors, bought a lot of dogs, and then didn't feed the dogs for a while. Then, they started the cameras rolling, and let the dogs loose. That would be a decent movie, if they didn't mind losing the lead actors here and there. I'm joking, of course. I'm sure every effort was made to ensure the safety of the lead actors, and probably the dogs, too. So, if they lost a few animals (or people) to rabies, that's just a hazard of the fame and fortune that comes with acting! I'm sure Rob Morrow knows what I am talking about, because I sure as hell don't.
Well, that's all we have for our Saturday night double feature! I've just noticed that Netflix has the latest Chucky movie (yes, they broke that old series out of storage), so I'm probably going to review that movie tomorrow night. Looking forward to it, actually. Three days into October, three movies reviewed! Can I review one movie for each day in October? Who knows! I guess we'll find out! Til next time, or until I epic fail!
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