Slasher Witch

I forgot to add that there was a plus about yesterdays movie Creepies. It did introduce me to a new music group. I'm not sure how well I like this group yet but from the couple of songs that could be found in the movie, I thought they were pretty good. I have never heard of them but for a small band, I enjoyed them. If you want to, you can check out Manda And The Marbles and see for yourself. On the other side of things, I found out there is a Creepies 2. What could they possibly have been thinking? I sure hope it isn't as low budget as the first movie but somehow I believe that it is.

Today's movie would be Bewitching or B-witched (2001) as it is listed by IMDb. Took me a while to find it since it had a different title under IMDb and I have found very little about it on the net in general. It is one of the few movies that has no comments about it and has only been rated by 14 people so far. Netflix rates it low but at least over 400 people have rated it. Only 9 comments about the movie though, so to say people don't think to highly of this film is an understatement. Is it really that bad of a movie? Yes and no. I don't think to highly of it either but I felt with some twinking, maybe it could have been a better movie.

It starts with a woman running away from another woman, getting knocked out and almost getting her heart cut out. The police show up just in the nick of time to save the woman and shoot the woman with knife. The story then picks up with Melissa (Shana Lane-Block) who is a college student doing the drama school thing. Melissa and her friends are putting on a very short, and I do mean a very short, play. After the play they are told that it is in very bad taste. The short play is about a woman being accused of being a witch. Melissa's friends include her boyfriend Derek (Will Burke). Sherry (Alexandra Scarborough), who Derek has been messing around with on the side. Greg (Michael Maples) and another guy that isn't credited on IMDb. There is also Natasha (Sunny Lombardo) who is a bit of a goth girl.

Melissa goes scouting around for some place to hold her play and finds a run down theater where the woman with the knife was killed. Of course she doesn't know this but the cop who shot her, now retired, is still hanging around and warns her off. It wouldn't be a horror movie if Melissa actually listened so she buys the place. Turns out the woman, who we find out is a witch, is still haunting the place. When Melissa finds a book that belongs to the witch and reads from it, she returns to the living and right away starts killing people.

For a movie that is all of 67 minutes long, not a whole lot happens in it. They do set up the characters a little bit so we can get to know them. We see a couple of people getting killed before the witch comes back to life here and there. When the witch does come back it feels rushed since this part of the film only lasts around 10 minutes. Some blood to be found of course but it really could have used and effects person to take it up a notch. What is there isn't really bad, just not enough to help set the mood they were after. The acting could have been better of course but for a low budget movie it wasn't to bad.

There were two things that really bother me about Bewitching besides the length of it. One was the sound. At times it was hard to hear the actors and other times I couldn't believe how loud it could get. It was like it went from one extreme to the next, sometimes within the same scene. The few times the witch spoke, she would do so in a weird way. You would hear her in the low sounding voice and then a second or two after she started saying her lines, you would hear the same lines being repeated in a louder voice. At first I thought it was kind of neat but it ended up being annoying. The other thing that bothered me some was the editing. When the action gets going, the editing puts a bit a damper on it. The witch grabs one of the guys and pulls him towards her and the next thing we see is the whole group, including the guy that got grabed, running out of the room. It made things a little confusing at times. Maybe that scenes wasn't the editing but the way it was filmed. Either way, it could have been better.

One other little problem, the film looks very grainy at times. I think Bewitching is this way through the entire film but it's not so noticable until there are a lot of shadows or a night scene. So, Bewitching is hardly the best film out there. I just felt that if they had extended the story a little and added some more effects, then maybe, just maybe, it would have been a good little movie.
2 out of 5 Keys to the eyes has got to hurt

Attack Of The Giant Spiders

After reading all of the animals running amok over at Final Girl, I had to get in on the action. Since this is my unoffical bad movies week though, you can be sure that it isn't a good animals run amok movie. A couple of movies ago I got a trailor for a giant spider movie that looked really bad. I didn't catch the name of the movie but when I poped in Creepies (2003), it didn't take long to figure out that is was that bad spider movie. I figured out how I got thrown into bad movie week. All these movies are being pumped out by the same studio you see. I guess when I added one movie I got taged by them all. The only good thing about all this is at least you don't have to sit through them unless you want to now.

Creepies is basicly two plots that sort of merge and they have one thing in common, the spiders. It starts out at a weapons storage place that has some containers full of experimental spiders that the Army was trying to make in order to unlesh on our enemies. They start out bigger than the average spider and they are either CGIed, rubber spiders, and even stuffed toy spiders. This is a movie that goes all out on the special effects folks, bad special effects that is. I will into that a little more later though. A very small amount of Army guys show up after some of the spiders manage to get loose and try to kill the spiders. Somehow they combine into one giant spider, at least I'm pretty sure that is how they explained it. Two of the Army guys hop into a tank with missle launchers on it and with a blatant disreguard for life, blow up anything and everything in order to try and kill this giant spider. Oh yeah, did I mention that this is supposed to be taking place in L.A.? Actually around the Hollywood area. There is a container missing and the Army guys are told to find it at all costs!

That is where the second part of the story comes in. The missing container was accidently sent to a recording studio where a couple of guys are working. One tells the other about the container, they go check it out and of course manage to knock it over and out comes the spiders. They realize they are in trouble and get smart enough to call the Army and tell them they have one of their spider containers. What is funny about this is they end up talking to the same guy that said to find this container at all costs and he tells these guys that he will get someone there within 24 hours. When the two guys complain about this the Army guy then tells them that it might even take 48 hours before anyone can get there so just sit tight. So much for that lost container being urgent.

The effects look something out of a 1950's movie. In fact, I have watched movies from the 50's that had better effects than this! Bad CGI. When I mean bad, I don't really mean that you could tell it was just fake looking spiders, even though at times it was very easy to tell when something was CGIed onto someone. No what I mean is when the CGI spiders come around the corner of a wall and start walking towards the camera and they are no where near the wall they are supposed to be walking on. Everything looked like models except when stock footage was being used. One guy gets thrown out of the tank by his partner, not sure how that was possible but he did. They show the tank in the middle of the street just before and after this and yet when the guy lands on the ground, it is in a very grassy area.

The acting is just as bad. I mean they aren't going around talking in the same voice the entire time but it isn't to far off. I didn't know any of the people, except of course, Ron Jeremy. I didn't see his name in the opening credits so I thought I was safe but he does show up. Only for a minute though before the spiders get him. Only had one line which I think was "What the hell?" You will also find the following people: Lisa Jay, Jeff Ryan, Phoebe Dollar, Calley Edmunds and Eric Flenner.

How this movie ever got listed as a horror movie I will never know. I don't think it would even scare a 4 year old. I guess some people will say I'm missing the point, it is nothing more than a spoof which is true. But to me, a spoof should be listed as a comedy since most spoofs are poking fun at a movie or a genre in general. Very few films have managed to mix horror and comedy and come out with a good movie. Does Creepies make an effort to be scary? No not really. It does thrown in some bad horror effects though. Mostly people getting shot up or having the spiders do something to them. One guy finds a spider on his hand and shots it with a pistol. Now, when I saw him getting ready to do this I knew it was going to be a bad idea. Bullet goes through spider and hand right? Well not in Creepies. He manages to shoot off his entire hand! The ending of the movie is one of the women shooting the briefcase of the head Army guy and it explodes. Not a small explosion mind you, but atomic bomb type explosion. Instead of talking about this "monster" of a movie any more, I will instead suggest that you pass it over unless you just want to see what the true meaning of low budget means. I will leave you with my rating and some pictures I took off the only web site I could find that had any, that wasn't even in english so I don't know how they felt about the movie.

1 out of 5 No way anyone will be able to take this film seriously

Bad Witch's

Is the fact that 3 out of the last 4 movies I watched had Ron Jeremy in them a bad thing? At least he only had a small role in Witch's Sabbath (2005). Not saying he is a bad actor....ok, I am saying that. At least he isn't as bad as some I have seen in other movies though. Maybe I just need to be a little more careful when selecting movies to add to my movie queue. No, that can't be it. I know, this is bad movie week. Yeah! That's it! Witch's Sabbath wasn't as bad as the last couple of offerings but it was still bad.

Witch's Sabbath follows to groups that eventually meet up. You have a coven of witch's. The lead witch is Auriana (Syn DeVil). Her and her coven most offer up 666 souls to their master, Satan, in order to stay together as a coven. They say they have to do this every year and it has to be done by holloween which is when Satan will show up. Call me silly but that seems like an awful lot of people to kill every year. In order to get people to offer up their souls, they lure people to their home by working in a strip club called Sin & Flesh. If you are wondering, no one actually willingly gives up their souls. They are taken from them by having their heads ripped off. I guess this is the only way they can get to the soul and it has to be done while they are still alive.

The other group of people are normal people and I'm sure you can quickly figure out that they will all be invited to the witch's house by movies end. You have Seth (Eli James) and his girlfriend Eliza (Christine Cowden). They decide to set up Seth's buddy Damian (Eric Coffin) with one of Eliza's friends Amber (Rikki Dale). The problem with this is that Damian likes to watch a lot of porn and all he seems to be interested in is getting laid. He puts the moves on Amber like right away and uses some of the lines he has heard in porn movies on her. All this does is creep her out and she wants the date to end but instead they all go to the strip club and get invited over to the house.

The effects aren't the best I have ever watched in a movie but they are watchable. For the most part anyways. You will find plenty of blood obviously since heads are ripped off a lot of the time. The blood looks ok and at times maybe to much blood was used but in a way that was part of the charm of this movie. They go all out with it. The now bodyless heads look pretty good really. A lot of the times it is easy to tell how fake they are but here they look pretty good. They look like the actors at least and that is always a good thing. There are times though when the effects become laughable. An arm gets pulled off and the blood that comes gushing out looks lower than where the shoulder is. Satan himself, when he shows up, will get you laughing because of how bad it looks. I must say that I have never seen a Satan that looked like that before.

The acting was bad to say the least. The acting made me laugh more than anything. I don't know if that is how it was intended to come across but some of the lines in the movie just caused me to laugh at times. When you get lines like "You crazy psycho big tittied witch!", how are you supposed to react? You will either just roll your eyes or you will start laughing, depending on the mood you are in at that time. I liked Christine Cowden. Her acting may not have been the best but I still liked her. The person with the lines that made me laugh the most came from Damian, the porn watching fool.

I am probably being kinder to Witch's Sabbath than it really deserves. The plot is rather silly but pretty standered for a horror movie. I'm sorry this is labled as horrorotica. In a way this isn't a very good lable. There is a lot of nudity to be found but I can't say there were any sexy moments. A back story for Eliza is attempted but is never fully explained. We see a flashback with her holding a child and then later the same flashback but this time some woman comes and takes the child away. This is fine and all but what does it have to do with the plot?

When Auriana gets her witch on, her eyes turn black and sometimes her skin gets all crusty looking. The biggest difference though is that her right arm gets this device on it that reminds me a lot of Witchblade. I couldn't tell if her breasts were made to look fake at times or if they were fake. I went looking for some pictures of the device and of the funny looking Satan (who is to big to fit through a large hole in the wall and has a bunch of tenticals) but no one had any screen shots. Maybe I could have gotten my own but I'm not that computer smart to do something like that. Some of the death faces will also get you laughing at times as well. Witch's Sabbath more than likely deserves a lower rating than I am about to give it but it did make me laugh so I can say I was entertained by it. I will probably never watch it again but for the one time I have watched it, it offered up some laughs.
2 out of 5 Giving witch's a bad name

Troma Strikes Again

With a title like Slaughter Party, I admit that I wasn't expecting much out of this film. I thought that maybe, just maybe it could be a so bad it's good movie. At least that is what I was hoping for. When I took Slaughter Party (2005) out of its sleave though, the first thing to jump out at me was that it was presented by Troma. Now I know that Troma has a following but I'm not one of those people. So far I have only watched one movie that I thought was an ok movie. Almost right from the start of this movie, I knew it was going to be a long movie. I eventually stoped trying to be entertained by it and instead tried to make myself watch the entire film. I did make it through but I was sooo glad it was over and I can't say that about to many movies.

According to IMDb, Slaughter Party was going to have a different plot but when an actor didn't show they had to change it. It was going to feature a lot of the cast from a movie called Zombiegeddon but that didn't happen. It had a budget of $1000 and $400's worth of props went missing after the second day of shooting. If all that makes it sound like they just threw together then you guessed right. There is no plot, there is no character developement. All we get is a mad doctor (Ford Austin) who is doing some experiments on people but all he ever does is chop people up. A midget (Mighty Mike Murga) who runs into said mad doctor and after the mad doctor has sex with him, he ends up going around killing women. A couple of detectives are trying to solve the recent slew of murders only to find out at the end that one of them is actually trying to protect the doctor.

We never find out what the experiments are supposed to be or if the doctor does explain it I was to zoned out by then to take notice. Not that it would have mattered to me anyways. The killings are a joke. Lot of blood flying around at times and some guts but it all seemed so silly to me. I guess with such a limited budget they couldn't get to wild. No matter what happened to people, blood comes out of their mouth. Get stabed in the lower back, blood comes out their mouth. Get strangled to death, blood comes out their mouth. Stub a toe, blood comes out their mouth. Ok so the last one didn't happen but that is how it was starting to feel.

The only person who was even trying to act was Felissa Rose. You might remember that name from a movie called Sleepaway Camp. It was good to see her in a horror movie yet again but girl, pick your horror movies better! One person who is trying to act just doesn't make for a very good movie. In one scene she has her leg cut open by the mad doctor. She was tied down to a table but the doctor gets her up so he can show her one of his experiments (a guy trying to act like he is insane). Now her leg is made to look like it has been cut pretty bad but when we see her standing there looking at this experiment, her leg is no longer cut. There is just a little blood smeared where the cut was. When she gets put back on the table, cut is there again. I don't always catch stuff like that but this was down right obvious.

One fan of the movie said we are missing the point of Slaughter Party. The point of it is the film makers weren't trying to make a serious movie. I understand that some set out to make spoofs or try and make a so bad it's good movie. But like Final Girl pointed out, a so bad it's good movie just is, you can't make it that way. The film makers seem to know they put a movie that never should have been released since the very last thing it says in the credits is this: "We apologize to anyone that sat through this movie."
1 out of 5 If this isn't the worst movie ever then I hate to see what it is

A New Werewolf In Town

I say it is high time for a werewolf movie don't you? I don't know why but I actually haven't watched to many werewolf movies that I have really enjoyed. Only two I can think of off the top of my head is Dog Soldiers and Ginger Snaps. I'm sure there are others if I put my mind to it though. The one that I think ended up being over hyped to me, so I ended up not liking it as much as I thought I would, was The Howling. I did like it, I just didn't like it as much as a lot of fans I know did. I think part of the problem with werewolf movies is that it is hard to make a good werewolf. Werewolfs change so much from movie to movie as well. Some are all wolf, some are half man half wolf, some are all wolf but are much bigger and can walk on two legs, ect.

As you have probably guessed by now, Dark Wolf (2003) is a werewolf movie. It is mostly about Josie (Samaire Armstrong), the target of the werewolf. The dark wolf is supposed to be much worse than an actual werewolf. It is looking for "the girl", the one that will mate with it. Josie happens to be that girl. Steve (Ryan Alosio) is a police officer who lost his partner to this werewolf after they arrest it in its human form (Kane Hodder who was Jason in some of the Friday The 13th movies played the werewolf in human form while Rick McCallum put on the suit). We are told about the dark wolf and Josie by Mary (Tippi Hedren) who is a homeless woman who lives in the alley behind the resturant that Josie works at. To make matters worse, everyone that Josie touches is basicly marked for death. The werewolf is tracking her by her scent so everyone that has it the werewolf will track down. Since it isn't Josie, the werewolf kills them. If the werewolf mates with Josie it will be the end of human kind. Will Josie have a new lover or will she fight against it?

Sadly, the effects aren't very good. The werewolf is sometimes a person in a suit and other times it is CGI. The suit (said the be an ape suit modified to be a werewolf) looks bad and the CGI looks even worse. Once in a while we see the werewolf go running by. This looks mostly like a blur but in a way it does work. One of the problems with this though is that they can't seem to make up their mind how big the werewolf is. At times it looks very good as it goes wisking by and other times it looks no bigger than a large dog. One time I could have sworn it was a dog. They mostly switch to CGI durring the transformations. As I said, it looks very bad. There is some gore to be found. The werewolf does rip into people of course. Often times this is shown in quick edited together scenes that is a bit hard figuring out what all is happening. Still, the blood part of the movie looked pretty good.

The acting could be a bit over the top at times and some of the lines said were rather silly but that wasn't the actor's fault really. Overall though I didn't have to much of a problem with the acting. You will also find Andrea Bogart, Jaime Bergman, Alexis Cruz, Aaron Van Wagner and Sasha Craig.

I'm glad that they tried something a little different with the werewolf story but it falls flat. Some of it is the effects and some of it is the plot and the characters. There is a lot of nudity and even a scene with two women dancing and kissing. Why? Because sex sells. At least that is what the director had to say about it in his interview. Actually it was called a "making of" extra on the dvd but all it ends up being is a bunch of interviews with cast and crew. Everyone seems to take the idea of a werewolf in stride except one person. A little bit of a spoiler here, I assumed that Josie was human, at least that is how the story and Mary seemed to make it come across but she is actually a werewolf as well. She never transformed I'm guessing until this night. After she does she is a bit freaked out of course and what does Steve do to help her calm down? He tells her werewolf jokes.

Mary has a book that I'm guessing tells the whole history of the dark wolf. We see the story inside and I could be wrong but it looks like it was wrote in something other than English. While some of Josie's friend get their hands on it and look through it, it looks more like a how to manual for dark wolf sex. There a drawlings in the book that show two werewolves getting it on basicly. As these friends look through the book we get the line, "Hey, this looks like someones notebook." Notebook?? Are you kidding me? A notebook is a bunch of paper with lines on it so you can write in a straight line. This was a book and a fairly large book at that.

Towards the end I'm guessing Josie is still trying to make up her mind if she wants to be with the werewolf or kill it. She has a gun, she is pointing it at the werewolf and instead of shooting the gun, she makes wise cracks at it. Then she is given a second chance and once again fails to get a shot off even though she has plenty of time. The werewolf itself seems to be strong enough to be able to smash through walls, even metal walls, and yet when it finds two people in a loading elevator, it can't smash through the lame chain link fence door of the elevator. You know, I was going to give Dark Wolf a rating of 2 but the more I think about how stupid the plot ended up, the more it gets me to hate this one. Avoid unless you happen to catch it on TV somewhere and even then you should think twice before watching it.
1 out of 5 Who knew werewolf's claws are so flexable?

Don't!

The movie for today is one that Quentin Tarantino loves. I haven't found him saying it but it is reported that he considers Don't Go In The House (1980) a classic. With a title like that it is hard to see it as something one should go rush out and rent just because one famous director thinks it is a classic movie. Then again, we all have movies that we love despite the fact that everyone else hates it. I'm a little more careful with which movies I attach the term classic onto though. Does this mean I disagree with Tarantino? That I do but not as much as you might think.

Don't Go In The House is about one man, Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi). The story starts with Donny at work. He is a repair man from the looks of it. A co-worker catches on fire after a can explodes and all Donny does is stand there and watch while other co-workers take longer to get there. One co-worker really rags him for this but it seems that Donny is the guy most of the co-workers pick on. He keeps pretty well to himself, lives with his mom and doesn't seem to have any friends. Bobby (Robert Osth) is trying to be a friend to him and tries to look out for him at work. When Donny goes home, he discovers that his mom has passed away in her chair. At first he panics, starts to call someone on the phone and hangs up. Then he hears a voice in his head that is basicly telling him that he is free. His response to this voice is, "You mean I can play my music loud?" He goes and does just that and jumps around on a chair and smokes.

Soon after this he can hear his mom calling to him. Is he just crazy or what? He calls off from work and ends up at some flower shop and even though the place is closed he talks his way in. Donny delays the woman just enough to where she misses her bus ride. He offers her a lift and she takes him up on it instead of sticking around for the next bus since there are three guys near by making some rude comments and gesters towards her. Donny tells he has to stop at his house but its on the way to where she goes so it will only take a minute. Then after much talking, he gets her into the house. To me he was trying way to hard and that should have sent the alarm bell ringing for the woman. Anyways he hits her and knocks her out. She wakes up naked and chained in a room that Donny had put metal plates all over the room. He then comes in wearing like a fire proof suit and poors gas over her and sets her on fire with a flame thrower. Nice guy huh?

The effects are rather limited. We see the ever blacking body of his mother once in a while and the chared bodies of the women he burned. This was well done. There is a scene where they appear to be walking that looks a little funny since it is easy to tell it isn't people in make up doing the walking. The guy at the start of the film is obviously on fire and can be since he is in a fire suit but when he sets the woman I talked about on fire, it is easy to see that she wasn't on fire at all. They used movie magic to make it look like she was on fire and it didn't look good at all.

I wasn't to taken by the acting. I can't say that it was bad, I just didn't really work for me. I can't explain why really, it just didn't. The characters themselves, what few could be found, are interesting though. It seems people thought Donny was a bit off and crazy before we meet him but watching him slip further into madness is what made the movie interesting to watch. He starts to see his dead mother up and around. He can hear the voice I talked about along with his mother at times and also the voices of the women he kills. He talks to the now dead women as if they are still alive. Puts them back in the clothes they showed up with and keeps them in one of the rooms in his house. He starts to have dreams about them taking revenge on him so some part of him is feeling guilty for what he has done.

I've said before that sometimes only showing what happened after is more effective than actually showing everything that happened to a person in a horror movie. This is one time I wished they had shown a little more. After the first woman is shown being burned alive, the others are simply shown being taken in the room and then are shown again as a chared corpse. I understand why they didn't show them being burned alive, it would have been repetitive for one and since the fire effect didn't look good it is probably best they only did it the one time. Still, it would have been nice if they had maybe shown him turning on the flame thrower each time, something to push the horror of the moment just a little more.

Don't Go In The House is, in a way, about child abuse. We learn through flash backs that Donny was abused by his mother and we see the cycle again at the end of the movie. Some people thought it was also a story of Donny striking out at his feelings of homosexuality. I didn't really see that between Donny and Bobby but at one point there was a conversation that kind of goes like this:

Donny: "I thought we could just have a quiet evening together."
Bobby: "Look, I didn't go to the trouble of making my wife think I was working this weekend just to go to a movie and hold your hand."

You see, Bobby was trying to get Donny to double date with him. He had two women he was going dancing with and wanted Donny to date the other woman. Still, when things are being said like that it is hard not to wonder if there might be a bit of a read between the lines type thing going on. I didn't enjoy this movie a lot but it was an interesting character study. Donny seeing his dead mother and him hearing voices provided some creepy scenes. It wasn't enough for me to call Don't Go In The House a classic but I have to admit I liked it, just enough.
3 out of 5 Wondering why no one noticed the burnt flesh smell

Vampires And Zombies?

What? Another movie review already? I didn't have a whole lot to do today and wanted to get back into my Netflix stash since it has been a while since I returned a movie to them. Got to get my money out of it you know. A bad habit of mine when it comes to Netflix is that I just add movies at random to my queue. I check to see if it is a horror movie and click add if it is. Rarely do I read about it see what type of horror movie it is and ever more rarely do I read what other people had to say about it. While this does give me a surprised good movie now and then, it also (more times than not it sometimes feels like) gives me a real bad movie to watch.

The Wickeds (2005) is about a group of friends that go to a house that has long been forgotten about for halloween. The house has been sitting empty since the '70s happens to be next to a very big cemetery. Currently it is being used as a movie set for a horror movie. The crew isn't there, since it is the weekend. "Film crews don't work on weekends....right?" While the friends are busy checking out the house, out in the cemetery somewhere we find a pair of grave robbers. One of the happens to be Ron Jeremy. Yes I know who he is and no I have never watched any of his adult movies. They are looking for a certain amulet and they find it on a corpse that is in some very bad makeup. The corpse opens its eyes once, then twice, then bites the wrist of the guy trying to steal the amulet. Turns out the corpse is a vampire and strangely enough, the sun is having no effect on it what so ever. The man punches the vampire and it goes back to sleep. As they walk through the cemetery to get back to their truck, you can see the markers and the ones that you could actually read the names on from a little ways away are blured out.

Not to long after they robe the vampire, we start seeing zombies popping out of graves. Meanwhile, back at the house, one of the couples is up stairs trying to get it on. In fact, they have been rubbing against each other since the start of the movie and haven't made it passed getting their shirts off over 20 minutes into the film. Around this time the grave robbers show up at the house and the vampire shows up in the bedroom knocking out the boyfriend. The girlfriend, who was completely topless when the vampire showed up, comes back down the stairs screaming about someone else being in the bedroom and she has her bra back on. Call me silly but I don't think I would stop and put my bra back on if I felt my life was in danger.

The brother of the boyfriend goes rushing up to save his brother only to be trapped in the room with his brother and one of the other guys because somehow the door is no frozen shut. Yes it is frozen shut. I'm guessing even the window is even cold because when they go to open it they jump back as if in pain. They instead kick out the window and climb out on the the sloping ledge and jump or fall to the ground in slow motion. Oh yeah, the vampire is no where to be found. Actually he shows up outside the house trying to get back in again. Why he left in the first place is never answered. Maybe he missed feeling the sun on him. Sometime durring this mess, a ghost shows up. Why? Because the house is supposed to be haunted as well. The stories about the house and the amulet are told and to make a long story short, everyone dies except two people. They destory the amulet which banishes the zombies and vampire. One of the surviers turns into a zombie as they drive away.

The zombies looked pretty good. There are a few that could have been better but over all they did a good job on them. The vampire looks god awful. The ghost looked cool but was entirely pointless. Plenty of zombie head get cut off or smashed but these effects either look very bad or somewhat good. The problem with the good effects is they have been just as bad as the others but they cut away from them before we can really find out for sure. The acting isn't great but at least they were trying to act instead of just reading the lines in a flat way. You will find Justin Alvarez, Anna Bridgforth, Danny Darder, Gabrielle Dennis, Bryan Donoghue, J. Matthew Miller and Kelly Roth.

Obviously this was a low budget movie. I'm fine with those types of movies. You don't always get the best effects or the best acting. As long as it wasn't overly bad, I can generaly overlook it. A lot of reviews that gave The Wickeds high marks said they did so because this movie was so bad that the film makers had to be making a spoof of horror movies. Maybe they were but it was rare for me to find anything worth laughing at. Even if this was the case they did something that I can't really forgive and that is bad film making. It was badly edited. The director or whoever it was operating the camera had a hard time getting the people who were talking in the frame. The camera man would circle people while they were trying to find a way into the house only to cut them out of the frame most of the time and wobble the camera around the entire time.

The story itself may not have been to bad but did we really need zombies, a vampire and a ghost? Ok maybe a vampire that uses zombies to do his dirty work would be kind of cool but at least play by vampire rules. The living people spend a lot of time trying to get to a truck. They can't use the one they came in because the guy that had the keys happened to be the first guy to get killed. In the end, after all the zombies have been banished, the only woman not to be hurt gets into the truck with her boyfriend and finds a spare set rather quickly. I want to say how ironic but instead I will say how stupid is that? Maybe this movie would be funny if I had been drunk or stoned or maybe both but I wasn't. Instead it did make a for a good way to make me tired. So not all was lost.
1 out of 5 At least the poster is very cool

Grinding Through Movies

I know I don't talk about "real life" stuff here on my blog. I have only gotten personal maybe a handful of times. I'm not going to right now but I did want to bring something up. I haven't been watching the events that have taken place over the last couple of days but I have been reading about it here and there. Being in college, the event that took place at Virginia Tech is scary to me and it also saddens me. One expert, years ago, said that school shooting will only keep going because someone else had done it. Basicly saying that others that want to get back at people will look at these events and think to themselves, they did it so I can too. They say the warning sighs were there. Maybe not enough was done to stop it or maybe there can never be enough. I have probably said to myself that I could kill someone for something they did to me. Actions speak louder than words though and I just don't have it in me to do something like that. I guess what I am trying to say, in a very rambling way, is please keep the family and friends of the people who were killed at Virginia Tech in your prayers and thoughts over the next few days and weeks. They don't know us but I am sure they would appreciate it all the same.

Now back to my usual blog stuff, reviews. I went to see Grindhouse just after I started my last set of movies. Since I didn't want to break up the set and throw off my master plan, I didn't write up a review for it. I have been trying to decide if I wanted to do a review for this movie for a few days now. Since I had a somewhat stressful day, I needed something I could just sit and relax with and why not a review for that? I can sit and relax and get my mind to change gears for a little while at least.

Unless you don't watch to much TV, you probably know what Grindhouse is about. Just before its release date, I was seeing the trailor a ton, and I do mean a ton, on TV. This worried me since it seems to me that the movies that are advertised rather heavy means the movie usually sucks and they are hoping that by flooding ads for it, it will get people more interested. Grindhouse is actually two movies under one billing. Planet Terror was directed by Robert Rodriguez and Death Proof was directed by Quentin Tarantino. The first movie is basicly a zombie movie when it gets down to it and the second movie is a slasher film where the killer uses a car as his weapon of choice.

Each film, broken by some trailors of fake movies (before the first movie and between the two movies), has a lot of people I knew from other films. Some obvious, like Kurt Russell, and some not so obvious, like Tom Savini. The effects for both movies are very good as would be expected. Planet Terror has a long of effects. If you love gorey films then you will really enjoy this one. Death Proof is also gorey but scaled down a lot more. There is one scene though that I still haven't forgotten. Death Proof is more about the car chase at the end of the movie. While it was very exciting, it was the last thing I would have really expected to find in a horror movie.

As far as all the acting goes, I can't name them all since it would take forever but I had no complaints with the acting. It could get a little cheesy at times and in Death Proof there was not one, but two long sequences of conversation. Both are fairly interesting but after the first one was over I was expecting some action. Tarantio did provide but it was short lived before heading into the next long conversation. Like I said, it was interesting and you can find some forshadowing in the conversations but most people, myself included, felt like "not again" once the second long conversation began. I'm all for getting to know the new characters but it seemed to drag the film down at the wrong point.

As you can see I sorta threw out my usual review style this time around. I felt like being a little different this time around. When Grindhouse was finished, I left feeling ok with this one. I wasn't overly impressed since I was never a big fan of bad B movies. That is what both directors were paying their homage to, bad B movies. If this is up your ally or you are just curious then have fun with Grindhouse. The fake trailors are fun to watch. Planet Terror was fun to watch for me because of all the effects and guest spots like Tom Savini and Bruce Willis. Death Proof was also interesting but for different reasons. The effects in the middle of the film were great but it was the stunt work and the big chase that really made it fun. Even though I liked parts of it, I just can't get over the feeling of being bored for the rest of the movie. If you see it at the theater, remember that is almost a three and a half hour movie but the time it is all said and done. There is not break between the two movies so either hold in the bathroom trip or try and find a good place to run.
2 out of 5 Anyone else have the urge to ride on the hood of a car now?

Mistaken Identity

Sweet #200. I have said this before in my other posts but I honestly didn't think I was going to get to this post. It took me longer to get to #200 than it did to reach #150. That is counting every 50 posts by the way. From #100 to #150, I burned through it pretty quick. Getting to #200 took me longer but then I did have some issues to get through. I was also wrong about ever post being a movie review. One wasn't but I was close. I'm not sure how many movies I have actually reviewed. I'm pretty sure it is close to 200 movies since in some posts I have reviewed two movies in. Still, movie reviews or not, 200 posts is a lot of writing. Hopefully one can tell that my reviews are nothing that I just throw together when it comes time to write one up. I know sometimes I can jump around but I do that even while talking to someone at times.

I picked The Thing (1982) for two reasons. One: Because Jed has been bugging me to do this for roughly 100 posts. Two: Because it truely is one of my favorite movies. If you have been a reader of my blog then you know that every 50 posts I throw out the usual review and select a movie that I haven't done a review for but is a favorite movie of mine. Instead of the usual review I just simply talk about why it is a favorite of mine. For The Thing that is an easy explaination. I came across The Thing durring a time when I was starting to loose faith in horror movies. I know that seems impossible with all the movies I have watched. I have watched hundred's since starting this blog and I'm sure I watched hundred's before I started this blog. I had started to believe that horror movies had lost their charm for me. Part of the reason is because I was running into a lot of bad horror movies. Nothing good was coming out at the time and even the new ones I did like didn't have the same effect on me that horror movies once did. Then I ran across The Thing and decided to rent it. After watching it, my faith was restored in horror movies. Ok, so at the time it was an older movie. It was over ten years old by that time but still, it let me know that there were still horror movies that could get to me.

The Thing has a few things going for it. A great cast, music that can really add to the mood, very cool effects, paranoia and lots of tension. The story is simple but effective. We see a helicopter chasing after a dog. One man inside is shooting at the dog and throwing bombs at it. Soon the dog reaches the American base. One of the men drops a bomb and it goes off before he can recover it. The other man ends up getting shot and dies since he shoots one of the Americans. Why is he doing this though? We discover that the two men are from the Norwegian camp and that they discovered a space ship that was burried in the ice. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that the story is based in the Antarctic. "A 1,000 miles from nowhere" as one of the characters proclaims. The Norwegians also find an alien body. The Americans figure out that this alien can "copy" other life forms. If it gets to a more populated area, the computer figures it would only take 27,000 hours before everyone is taken over by this alien. But how do you destory something when you don't know who has been infected?

The cast and the effects is what sells The Thing for some people. While I enjoyed both. It was the tension found through out the film that sold me. This is a rare movie that manages to draw you in from the start and never lets go. Most of the effects still hold up but here and there they do look a bit dated. Even so, the effects are something that you won't soon forget after watching this movie. As I said before, the cast was great. This was before Kurt Russell had become the big movie star that he is today and he shows why he will become that big movie star. I know he isn't a big name likes some are out there but truthfully, he has always been high on my list of favorite actors. Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard A. Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, Joel Polis and Thomas G. Waites. A fairly big cast but they all work so well together and help bring the story together that you can't just credit one person with great acting.

The dvd of The Thing was great. When I found out that a collectors edition, I got pretty excited over it. The commentary track features John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. It is a very interesting and entertaining commentary that I wish there was more of like it for other movies. You will also find an 80 minute documentary that is also a lot of fun to watch. All in all the dvd is well worth your money to buy. It is almost hard for me to express how good of a movie this is to me. I watched it before I started writing this up just so it would be fresh in my mind instead of just going off my memories of it. Even now, years after I first watched it and after having watched it many times since, it still makes me tense up while watching it.

Like any movie there are some problems. As I said, some of the effects look a little dated now. That is just a minor draw back though. Some people have a problem with how the alien becomes a copy of another life form. Some say it is impossible but I have always said that what may seem impossible to us may not be for another race of aliens. Humans like to think they are smart and we are, for the most part anyways, but we have far to go yet in figuring things out. Besides that, it is only a movie. Just let your mind go with it and enjoy. One thing that bugged me just a little was how the computer knew it would take 27,000 hours for the alien to take over every life form. We find this out fairly early in the movie when the alien is still pretty much an unknown to the people at this station. Another thing that has bugged me just a little is how they are so dead set on killing this alien. Yes I know the alien is taking them over but is that what it truely wants? That is a question that is never answered but since it went through one camp and now a second camp, it is safe to say it doesn't much care who it kills in order to survive.

These things take very little away from the overall feel of the movie though. All the way through The Thing the tension is high. In case you didn't know, The Thing is a remake. I have never watched the original movie so I can't say if it is better or worse but I have heard many people say this is a rare remake that out does the original film. I'm almost afraid to watch the original since I can't see a remake or even a sequel that could match this movie. When it was first released it didn't make it but fans have been coming around to it for years now. Many, including myself, consider it to be a true classic. A film that manages to mix sci-fi with horror and comes out on top. If you have never watched it, you need to and you need to do it soon.

Dying For Movies Part Seven

Well this is it, at least for now. Unrest is the last movie that I needed to watch for this set. The eighth movie is not out yet but when it is released, be sure I will have a review for it as well. The next post will be the magical #200 I have been harping about. Now if I remember right, this is the first set of 50 posts that have been all reviews. I haven't counted them but I think only a handfull of my posts haven't been a review of some sort. Anyways, I would say that if you are considering this set of movies, it is well worth checking out. Do they live up to all the hype? No they don't but I have spent my money on much worse things than these movies.

Unrest is about two things really. We meet Alison (Corri English) who is a med student and is going to be taking the Gross Anatomy class along with her other students. Dr. Blackwell (Derrick O'Connor) has some bodies already set out for his students and tells them to pick one, four students per body. Alison then meets Brian (Scot Davis), Carlos (Joshua Alba) and Rick (Jay Jablonski). They all in turn meet the other person this movie is about, Alita Covas (Marisa Petroro), their cadaver. As soon as the sheet is pulled back, Alison gets an uneasy feeling and passes out. Dr. Blackwell writes it off as being the first time having to work with a dead body but Alison starts to feel it is much more than that. She claims she can sense things and these things are not good. When bodies start to be discovered, fresh bodies that is, will everyone still think Alison is just imagining things?

The effects are pretty good. I was reading somewhere that some of the cadavers we see in the lab are real cadavers. The director (Jason Todd Ipson) was a med student at one point in his life so tried to recreat what it was like. Watching them cut on their cadaver did make me feel uneasy. I don't think it is something I could do. They actually did less of this than I thought they might. I have never watched this so I can't say how real the inside of the cadaver looked. Outside of this there is some blood to be found, some self inflicted wounds mostly.

I've read many a review talking about how bad the acting was. I felt differently. I liked all the leads and felt they were all strong actors. The problem I think most had was with the characters themselves. Alison would get freaked out over something and then in the next scene she appears all happy and flirty. I don't think we can blame the actors for this. Maybe that is how she was told to act out that scene or it could have been in the script that way.

The first half of Unrest was pretty good. A little funny in places and gross in others. Also the long hospital halls with no one in them could give off a creepy feeling as well. I was liking it but not really loving it yet. It had an alright story that started to get into an Aztec curse that was never really fully explored. Towards the end of the movie, instead of it picking up in pace, I felt like it was running out of steam instead. The ending itself was simply ok. There are some leaps of logic that you will have to let your mind just go with at times if you want to enjoy this movie. Some how Carlos manages to get some video tapes of Alita while she was still alive. He explains how he got them but still it seemed very convenient that he found and was able to get them so fast.

I know most people have never encountered formaldehyde before so some of the things in Unrest may not be noticed by the average person. There is a tank full of the stuff and they store some of the bodies in this tank. At one point, Alison and Brian actually get into this tank in order to get a body out of it. I know that formaldehyde smells, if you ever do smell it, it is something that you will remember for a good while. It isn't the best smelling stuff around to say the least. The other thing is you sure don't want it to get in your eyes or in an opening and here both of these people were doing just that. From what I have been told and from what I have been reading, getting this stuff into your eyes is a very, very, painful experiance.

This was another area that I had to roll my eyes at but I tried not to let it spoil the mood to much. I think this one could have been a lot better than it ended up being. Even so, I ended up enjoying it enough that I will end up watching it again some day. Not the best out of this series by far. It is however down at the bottom for my favorites out of this set. The rating might confuse you. I know I riped Unrest some but as a whole I did enjoy it enough to like this one.
3 out of 5 Beware of spirits that are in a state of unrest

Dying For Movies Part Six

So far I have watched a couple of slasher movies, one movie I can't say what it was about since it will give to much of it away, and two ghost stories. Given the basic plot outline for Wicked Little Things, I was expecting another ghost story. To my surprise it isn't a ghost story but I'm not really sure if that is a good thing. I didn't mind the change of pace. Sure I have my favorite subgenres but I love horror movies in general. There isn't one I won't watch, as this blog will attest to.

Wicked Little Things starts off in the year 1913. We see some kids working in a mine when an accident happens and burries the kids inside of the mine. We find out later that the owner of the mine was cleared of any wrong doing through some newspaper clips. From there we jump forward to the present time and meet Karen Tunny (Lori Heuring). She is moving her family after her husband had passed away. She finds out that her husband's family owns a house outside a small Pennsylvania town. Since he had ownership of the house she decides to live there. The reasons, there is a quick think about health reasons, are never to clear as to why she decides this. She has two daughters, Sarah (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Emma (Chloe Moretz). Sarah is the oldest and more against the move.

They notice some strange things right away. Like blood on the door and talk about zombies in the hills around the house. Emma hears something like childrens laughter and goes to check it out. She gets deeper and deeper into the woods though. Once Karen discovers this, she goes out in search of her daughter. Eventually she finds Emma just outside of the old mine. As they head back home they get lost and soon enough it is dark out. They come across the home of Hanks (Ben Cross). Hanks knows about the kids and knows that blood on the door will keep them away. But is it already to late for them all?

The effects are a little more gory this time around. The kids themselves don't really look like zombies. They are pale of course and have a cuts here and there but you won't find flesh hanging off of them which would make a little more sense since they have been dead for a long time now. Hanks says at one point that they hunger and that they do. They carry things around that you would find in a mine, pick ax, shovels and the like and they know how to use them. When they do use them on us humans, the blood goes flying. We also get to see some of the kids chowing down on some pig and human meat.

The acting from the main leads was real good. Out of the three, I think Scout Taylor-Compton impressed me the most. By the way, she is signed up for the remake of Halloween playing the part of Laurie Strode. If you want to know how she will be in a horror movie, this is a good way to find out. You will also find Geoffrey Lewis. He has a small part to play but it was good to see him in a horror movie. I was going to list some of the kids that played the zombies but none of them are listed on IMDb.

Wicked Little Things is a movie I enjoyed. It had some good acting and effects. The story, while nothing to really brag about, wasn't all that bad. I have certainly seen less story played out of the screen before. The reason I didn't out right love this movie is two fold. First there are the kids. To me, they just weren't all the scary. The way the kids looked and the story around them felt more like this should have been a ghost story instead of a movie about zombies. Most times there is a reason for zombies and I just couldn't figure out why they would be zombies. Ghosts, at least movie ghosts, can have their revenge so I just didn't see the point of having zombies. The other reason was that at first it seemed like we were only dealing with a handfull of kids. That was all that talked about for the most part and they showed us some pictures of some of the kids but it was always the same kids in the pictures. I could be wrong but each time they showed the kids, in the woods or where ever they were at the time, it felt like I was seeing more and more kids each time.

A plot hole that I, and others, found is that we are told the kids won't attack their own blood. One of the girls who died was a Tunny. That means mom is fair game but the oldest daughter shouldn't be. Yet they do attack the oldest daughter. Of course that doesn't mean they were going to hurt her but it was strange. Then again, maybe she wasn't of Tunny blood. Over all it wasn't to bad of a movie. I never got a creepy vibe from it but I still liked that they actually had some kids as zombies. Not something you see very often. To bad they didn't look the part a little more.
3 out of 5 Pig and human guts look a lot alike

Dying For Movies Part Five

Sometimes I really enjoy running this blog. It has opened me up to so many more horror movies. Well this blog and Netflix. This set of movies I bought myself, and so far I'm glad that I did that, but Netflix has gotten me a lot of horror movies I know I wouldn't have been able to find in a rental store. Why did I bring this up? I have no idea, just to hear myself talk I guess. I did get to watch two movies from one of my favorite subgenres in horror though, ghost stories. Why ghost stories? I guess I can see myself being haunted more than I can see myself as someone that has a killer come after me even though it probably is the other way around.

The Gravedancers starts with a woman being haunted. We never see the ghost but some very strange things are going on around her. Eventually she is grabed and drug across the floor and hanged. It is a pretty good opening for the movie even though it ends up having nothing to really do with the rest of the movie. No one ever brings up who she is or what happened to her. From there we meet Harris McKay (Dominic Purcell) and his wife Allison (Clare Kramer). They are at a funeral for one of Harris's college buddies that passed away. Harris later meets up with Kira (Josie Maran) and Sid (Marcus Thomas). They were all best friends and drinking buddies so they have gathered together to remember their lost friend. After some drinking they all end up at the cemetery for some more drinking. Sid brings a radio, and after some exploring, turns it on and they all start to dance.

A couple of weeks go by and Harris and Allison have started to notice some strange things. The pipes are making an awful noise. Doors are being found open when they know they had closed them. Harris sometimes hears the piano playing when no one else is in the house. Allison thinks she hears a woman's voice coming from their bedroom but when she opens the door there is no one there. One night she even sees a woman in the room with her. She thinks it is Kira playing a game because she has been calling Harris a lot. It seems that Kira and Harris have a past together and Allison thinks that Kira is trying to work herself between Harris and herself. They end up going over to Kira's house only to find it a total wreck and Kira herself is in bad shape. It turns out that the three friends are all being haunted because of they danced on graves. Who knew this would be a bad thing? To make matters worse, the section of the cemetery they were in was reserved for the cities undesirables. You know, the murders, the rapists and the crazy people.

The effects are kind of cheesy this time around sadly. There is one scene that involves a lot of blood that was actually really cool but outside of that most of the effects are CGI and are over the top. Some people complained about the look of the ghosts but I thought they looked kind of evil which is probably what they were trying to do. The ghosts, when not CGIed, tended to show a lot of teeth. I guess this would either be a bit scary to people or funny to others.



I liked that acting. At times some of the lines came across as a little funny. Sid seemed to be the one that had the most funny lines but then some people have said they thought his acting was bad. Clare and Dominic made a good couple. You will also find Tcheky Karyo and Megahn Perry as a couple of researchers that are basicly ghost hunters. Sid goes to them for help and they end up helping all three of them. Well they try to help at least.

The Gravedancers starts off in a creepy way. Once the hauntings start, the movie once again becomes creepy and even pretty tense at times. This is always a good thing and I think a big reason it effected me this way is because it was ghosts. At the same time though, the story itself does a good job of giving us that very creepy feel to it. Sure the whole idea of dancing on a grave and then being haunted by that person is a bit silly but it was just an excuse for these people to be haunted. That part of the story didn't bother me. I was really enjoying this movie and then it got to the end.

Some movies will help me decide what rating to give a movie. I can love a movie but hate the ending so bad that I can't get passed it (An American Haunting anyone?) and there are other times the ending will help me enjoy a movie I wasn't liking to much up until then. I was loving The Gravedancers because of the creepy and sometimes tense moments that was leading up to the ending so what went wrong? Well for starters the ax murderer. No I realize the ax murder was far from a professional killer, she killed her lover and his wife, but it felt like she couldn't hit the side of a barn with that ax she was swinging around. And then the CGI kicks into full force. You get a giant, and I do mean giant, ghost head that chases people around and somehow manages to smash through every thing in its path. It's a ghost, it shouldn't have to smash through things.

The head, and a few other effects, almost made this film laughable at the end. For some people it was laughable. Sure it had some funny one liners or moments before this and it didn't bother me at all. I don't mind some funny things in a serious horror movie. That is how The Gravedancers was feeling to me, a serious ghost story that happened to have some funny moments at times. If the script or director wanted to make this a bit more of a comedy then that is fine I guess but it totaly took me out of the feel good creepy mood I was in. I still think it was a good movie, I just didn't end up enjoying it as much as I could have. Maybe on the second viewing I will like it a little better since I know more about it.
3 out of 5 Won't be dancing on any graves, not on purpose anyways

Dying For Movies Part Four

After watching today's movie, Reincarnation (or Rinne as it is also known as), I started reading other reviews. I don't do this in order to copy from them. But I do like to see what other people thought. I want to see where I stand, compared to other people that watched the same film. I have already made up my mind what rating I will give, and the other reviews won't change my mind on that. A big thread in these movie reviews, the After Dark Horrorfest, is that people were looking for something too graphic or too scary for the general public, and didn't walk away with that feeling. While I admit the advertising was part of why I wanted to see these films, I didn't truly believe that they would be what the advertising proclaimed them to be. All I'm doing, as well as anyone that is watching these films, is going into each movie hoping to be entertained and possibly, just possibly, be scared by them. It's all I'm asking from a movie, and all that anyone should be asking for.

Reincarnation is a little hard to explain without giving too much of it away. So I will do my best not to spoil anything. Whatever you do, don't read the plot summary on IMDb, because it gives everything away. Ikuo Matsumura (Kippei Shiina) is going to make a horror film based on an actual event. Thirty some years ago, a professor killed 11 people in a hotel. This included the staff, the guests, himself and perhaps worst of all, his two kids. Nagisa Sugiura (Yuka) is trying out for one of the parts and gets it. Before this though, she starts to see a strange little girl holding a very weird looking doll. At one point, the director takes the entire cast and some of his crew to the actual hotel where the murders took place. It has been closed up for some time now and is a bit run down. Matsumura wants the cast to try and feel what the people they are playing went through. During this time Nagisa starts to see strange things, and feels like she is reliving the memories of this event that are now inside of her. What could all this mean?

Reincarnation starts off like a ghost story, at least that is what it reminded me of. But it turns into something much more than that. There is very little blood to be found, but this film doesn't need it. It is a ghost story but with a twist. Many have compared it to The Shining. I will admit that it does remind me of that movie a little bit. But it is different enough to where I think they were paying homage to it, instead of trying to rip off the story. The title of the movie gives some of the plot away. It deals a little bit with reincarnation.

From start to finish, Reincarnation kept me pretty much glued to the screen. Like most J-horror films, a big part of the film is nothing more than the set up for the end of the film. You are probably saying to yourself "but Heather, all movies are like that." Am I right? Most J-horror movies seem to be throw backs to some of my favorite older horror movies made here. By that I mean that there is a slow build up, with maybe a few things happening before the big finish. Of course, not everyone likes slow builds. This was only part of the reason I loved this one. The story itself was interesting. Trying to figure out what is happening, what the ghosts want is another reason. I found this to be a very thoughtful movie.

Does Reincarnation have its faults? Of course it does. No movie is perfect after all. The ending left at least one question in my mind that could have been easily explained, if they had wanted to do so. It's not a big complaint, but it would have been nice if they had tied up some of the loose ends. Also, the creepy doll comes to life at one point and walks. To some it was laughable. I can't say that it made me laugh, but it could have looked better than it did. Some people didn't care for the making a film within a film. It gave them that "been there done that" feel. I rather liked that myself, and it's not like the whole haunted hotel thing has never been done before either.

This one really worked for me. It had me wondering what was going to happen next. It made me try and figure out what was going on. I was also trying to figure out what the twists were going to be before they happened. I can't say I that I managed to do that, but it was fun all the same! This one is subtitled so I will warn you about that. At times, it goes up and off again a little too fast. Because of the slow build up and the events that take place in the movie, this one went by quicker than I had thought. I felt very tense at times and yes I have to say it, even a bit scared as things really got going. It has been a long time since I have done this, close to a year I believe, but it has to be done. This is not the first to get this rating, but it is the first movie not made here in America to get it. If you get any of these films (even though I'm not done watching them all as of this writing) get this one, it is well worth it.
5 out of 5 Glad I never had a doll like the one in this movie

Dying For Movies Part Three

Sorry no review yesterday but had a day off that I don't normaly get off so I did things I don't normaly get to do durring the week. I can watch movies any old time so I took the day off from there. I was in the mood for a movie today so I decided to watch the next movie in the box set which just happened to be The Hamiltons. While reading the reviews for this one I noticed that there are a lot of them that liked The Hamiltons (2006). Not to many reviews didn't like the film and only a few put it in the middle. To start things off, I will say that The Hamiltons is a very different kind of horror movie.

Things start off with a woman (Brittany Daniel) who is tied up in what looks like a basement and manages to get loose. She finds some bodies wraped in plastic and uncovers one to discover a man that she seems to know. She cries over him a little then hears a noise from a door that is chained and padlocked. She tries to help whoever it is that is behind the door and fails. She retreats to the floor and then something, can't tell what from the shacky camera, happens to her. Next we meet the Hamiltons. The story is basicly told from Francis's (Cory Knauf) point of view. He tells us that the family's parents have passed away. His brother David (Samuel Child) is now head of the family and is doing his best but is under a lot of stress. There are the twins, Wendell (Joseph McKelheer) and Darlene (Mackenzie Firgens). Wendell seems to be the trouble maker in the family. He has been to jail and Francis tells us that have had to move 6 times since their parents death maily because of Wendell.

The Hamiltons harbor a secret. It is the secret, or secrets, that keeps the plot going. Actualy, that is the plot, to discover what the secrets are of this family. One is obvious. They kidnap people. What they do with them though is something that isn't really clear. They are kept alive though. Francis declares that isn't "one of them" and is trying to figure out if he wants to do the right thing and help the people that has been kidnaped or stay with his family. He is afraid to help the kidnaped people because he knows his family will have to go to jail and his family is all that he has left. Will Francis do the right thing? Will we discover what secrets the family has? And will we find out what is behind the chained and locked door?

You will find very little as far as effects go. I think that is the direction that the writers wanted to go though. One will find some blood but a lot of the violence is mearly suggested in this film. The acting was pretty good. There are times it went a little over the top though. You will also find Jena Hunt and Kitty. Kitty is a friend of Darlene. Al Liner as a social worker. Rebekah Hoyle and Tara Glass and two women that get kidnaped.

You are probably wondering why I said The Hamiltons is a different kind of horror movie. The reason I say that is because it doesn't follow the general rules of a horror movie. It is a slow paced movie that never really picks up steam. It offers a few moments of some scenes that can be tense. The story actually keeps you into the movie by the family's odd behavier and by keeping you guessing as to what their secret is. I didn't guess what it was. Once the movie lets you in on the secret it was a bit of a "doh" moment for me. All the clues was there, I just never put them together. Actually the movie does a good job of throwing one off the actual secret since it breaks the rules of what we know.

The thing is though, the pace of the movie is almost too slow. Sure we get to know the characters, more so than most horror movies and that is a great thing but The Hamiltons just didn't click with me. I admire the writers/directors for making something different and it did work for a lot of people. Some people proclaimed this movie as the best out of this set so maybe I was just missing something. However, I think it was just a matter of personal taste as to why this one didn't click for me. It is a fairly interesting film but it did bore me at times. Perhaps this is a film that you should ignore my rating and judge this film for yourself.
2 out of 5 A coming of age movie, horror style

Dying For Movies Part Two

I have been reading the message boards about Penny Dreadful (2006) for a good while now and this one seems to invoke a lot of bad reviews. Some, but not all of them, suggest that those that do like it are such die hard fans of horror that they like just about everything. Another one suggested that only those that haven't watched very many horror movies would be the only ones to like it. Or you most be one of the film makers trying to push the film if you give it a good review. The truth is, everyone is different. I know not everyone agrees with what I feel a good movie is. Maybe I do have low standards, maybe I don't. Sometimes I feel like a bad movie still entertains me so I give it a slightly higher rating than it probably deserves but isn't that why we watch movies? To be entertained? If anyone disagrees with how I see a movie that is their right. I hope I haven't insulted anyone either in a review or in a comment, if I have then that was not my intent.

Penny Dreadful is about Penny Dearborn (Rachel Miner). Penny was in a bad car accident that killed both her parents, as seen in a flashback. Since then she has had a very bad fear of cars. Orianna Volker (Mimi Rogers) is a psychologist who is trying to help Penny over come this dear by bringing it around full circle. They are on a trip to where the terrible accident took place so that Penny can confront her fears. While talking to Penny about the drugs she is taking (no not that bad kind), Orianna isn't watching the road and strikes someone. The person gets up and doesn't appear to be hurt. Orianna decides to give this person (Liz Davies) a ride since the person isn't running to police about now. She drops the person off a few miles down the road and when the person rises up seemingly from no where in front of the car, Orianna freaks and throws it in reverse. Penny starts to get sick so Orianna stops the car after they had put a little distance between them and this person. Penny discovers something stuck in the tire and Orianna pulls it out. Some reviews dished her for this but in truth I probably would have done the same. They manage to get a little further before the tire goes completely flat. When this happens Orianna starts walking in order to try and get a signal on her cell phone. Funny thing was, when she did get one she kept on walking and thus lost the signal again. That I wouldn't have done. Anyways, she never comes back and Penny goes in search for her only to fall and knock herself out. When she awakes, she finds herself back in the car with a dead Orianna and the car is wedged between some trees. Try as she might, she can't get out. There is a killer on the outside and she is afraid of being in cars. What is a girl to do?

The effects are surprisingly thin for this one. Most happens off camera and we some of the bodies later but even so, the effects are few and far between. What little there is turns out to be done very well though. The acting is where this one shines really. There is a small cast here and most of the movie centers around Penny being traped inside a car. Sounds boring and for some it was. I will get into that a little more later though. Since the whole movie is about Penny they needed to find someone that could keep our attention. Rachel Miner did just that. It was easy to put myself in her shoes and feel the fear she is going through. You will also find Michael Berryman and Mickey Jones with small parts. It was good to see them along with Mimi Rogers though. That is something that has surprised me so far with the two movies I have watched out of this set, a few known actors in each film.

As I said just above, some found Penny Dreadful rather boring since a big part of it is Penny in a car. I personally thought they kept things interesting enough to make it through this. It was easy for me to think about being traped in a car, knowing someone is out there who could have easily killed me but instead is just toying with me. At one point we see Alvin (Chad Todhunter) and Mary (Tammy Filor) in another car somewhat near by. Penny does her best to get their attention, ok maybe not her best since she can't ever seem to get the horn to work right. Alvin and Mary are messing around with each other. Mary is married and Alvin isn't her husband. This was a little side plot that they had going and went no where. Alive does find Penny and is looking for a way to help her when he gets pulled under the car. Most that didn't like this film saw this death, and others, as pointless and while I agree to a point I didn't feel Alvin's was pointless. It gave Penny hope for a short time and then it was snatched away.

Penny has a hard time understanding things it seems. It was easy for me, and others, to wonder why doesn't she do this or why does she keep doing that when it obviously isn't working? One thing I had to remind myself was that she is out of her mind with fear so of course she is reacting slower than she might normaly. A couple of times she was trying to get out the window and was facing the trees while doing this. I kept wondering why she didn't turn around and try going out with her back against the trees. Looked easier that way to me and maybe could bend better that way.

The pacing of Penny Dreadful is a problem for some people. I'm someone that can like non stop action but at the same time I don't mind slow movies as long as they are able to keep my interest in the movie. Some people said they could see Mimi Rogers breathing after she is supposed to be dead. I never noticed this but it has to be pretty obvious to me with nothing else going on in the scene for me to take notice. The one thing I did notice though is that it took a lot of force to get her jaw to open, after all she had been dead for several hours now, but that was the only thing that wouldn't move. I can't say I loved this movie, I simply liked it. I wasn't bored but I felt it was missing a little something that I can't really put my finger on. Maybe the killer should have been involved more. I'm not really sure. Still, I didn't like it as well as Dark Ride. Penny Dreadful is a hit or miss, I hope I provided enough information for you to make up your mind one which side you think you will fall.
3 out of 5 Don't all cars have a trunk release?

Dying For Movies Part One

So it begins. Today's review was all part of my master plan you seen. I bought the set of 8 Films To Die For which only has 7 of the 8. The 8th movie, The Abandoned, has yet to make it to dvd and I think that is because it was the only movie to get an extended release. Like my last review, this movie borrows from movies that have come before. I didn't say it last time so I will now. Just because a film has a "been there, done that" feel to it doesn't always make it a bad film right off the bat. If done well it will still be a good film. So it may not be a great film because of that feel that it has but you can still sit through it. I was excited about this set of movies when I first heard about them. I didn't know of the films would be any good but I had to give Lions Gate props for coming up with a good plan to get me, the horror fan, to go see these movies. The only problem was that they were under such limited release that I would have had to travel a good ways to go see them. I don't mind going out of my way but this would have cost me a good amount of money, not including the ticket money and popcorn/coke money which I would need to have robed a bank for to cover 8 movies. So I had to wait for the next best thing, dvds. These movies have no connection to each other outside of the fact that they were packaged together but I will see review them as a series. I will review all 7 that I have and once the 8th movie comes out I will add a review for it as well. In the mean time, these 7 movie will leave me right at post 199 so it works out well for me. Ok I have talked long enough. Let us see how the first movie, Dark Ride (2006), pans out.

Dark Ride starts with twin sisters (Chelsey and Brittney Coyle) decide to get on a carnival ride called Dark Ride. It is almost a fun house but more in mind to scare people with gory things instead of fun things. One sister doesn't really want to go on the ride and while she doesn't hide her eyes, she doesn't look around all that much either. Just as brave sis is starting to give scared sis hell, a hand reaches over the ride car and brave sis disappears. The ride stops in front of a surgery gone bad type thing and the man who was just standing still moves and pulls back the sheet to reveal brave sis with her guts hanging out!

From there the we are treated to some newspaper clippings such as the headline of the two sisters being found murdered. 14 other bodies being found. The killer being senteced to a mental hospital for the rest of his life. The ride being shut down for good. The ride getting ready to open again some 20 years later and a headline saying that local colleges prepare for spring break. Gee, I wonder what could be next. Oh yeah, cut to a college where 6 friends are getting ready to head off to spring break. Wow, those headlines sure know what they are talking about. You have Cathy (Jamie-Lynn DiScala), Bill (Patrick Renna), Steve (David Clayton Rogers), Jim (Alex Solowitz) and Liz (Jennifer Tisdale). They stop at a gas station along the way and Bill discovers an add for the Dark Ride. It is about to reopen. They talk it over and decide to check it out. They will break in and spend the night there to save on hotel cost. Along the way they run across Jen (Andrea Bogart). She is thumbing it and when she learns where they plan on going she is all for it and wants to tag along. Little do they know that Jonah (Dave Warden) has broken out of the hospital and is also on his way back to the Dark Ride.

The effects are very good. There was a couple of times I thought they could have done a better job but still, over all they are very good. Some of the effects I was surprised made it into a rated R movie. The twins for example, aren't real young but young enough, I would have said lower teens, so it was a bit of a shock to see them with their guts exposed. A deleted extended scene goes even further with this. Another scene I was a bit surprised by is a man literly getting his head split. This was also a scene I felt could have been done a little better. It didn't look bad, I just thought it could have been better but then I can be, as Jed puts it, a sick puppy. If you like gory effects, you won't go wrong with this one.

The acting was just ok. This disappointed me some since I thought it would be better than what it turned out. I knew some of the actors from other projects and while they weren't bad here I felt they weren't great either. They interact very well with each other and it was the scenes that involved them all that I felt the best acting could be found. On their own, it fell apart some.

The acting didn't bother me so much that it took away from the film. I liked the effects and the story was pretty good as well. Simple but to me it was sort of old school. One killer that knows the area very well, a scene where those that are about to be hunted sit around to talk about the killer and what happened in the past. While I have seen this more than a few times in slasher movies, I was still getting into this one. I was really loving it. The thing that hurt this film was the way it was directed and/or edited. The lighting could really add to the feel of what was going on. At the same time though, the way some scenes had been directed it made that scene confusing because the actor would in the light while the camera was shooting the scene from a darker area making it very hard to figure out who it was you are looking at.

Some scenes go to quickly from one to another and back again. That is probably the person that edits the movie. Another problem I had is that the director would linger on something longer than was really needed instead of following the actor. The actor would go off camera and you could hear the actor doing something but the camera is still in one spot showing the blood on the floor or whatever. The shock, if there was any, had done passed, let me see what the actor is trying to do now. There is also a scene where one of the women is reaching for an ax and this feels like it take forever! It will make you want to scream at the tv "Just grab the damn ax already!"

One other scene I want to talk about and only because I found it amusing. A guy is getting some...well oral sex from one of the women. She stops a couple of times for different reasons only to be pushed back down by the guy. The last time he does this he says, "Come on now, you're killing me." While she is doing this, after being pushed back down for the last time, the killer comes up behind her and.....I think I will let you watch and see what happens. Still though, the guy, with his eyes closed, never figures out that anything is wrong until it is already over with. Now I know guys like their oral sex but can you all really get that into it? I was really loving this film until the direction and editing got in the way. Even some of the camera angles were getting annoying. I could have over looked this like I did with the acting but it after a while I just couldn't avoid not getting frustrated with it. Because of this I just couldn't love it as much as I wanted to. Still, this is a good start to the series and makes me look forward to the others.
3 out of 5 Wondering if I can distract a man that well

Lost At Sea

I seem to have rented not one, but two SciFi orignal movies. Of course I had no idea these were made for tv movies since they don't tell you that on the description. The Bone Snatcher came somewhat close to me liking it so I bet you are wondering if Lost Voyage (2001) will have the same effect on me. Then again, maybe you aren't. Before I get into the plot though I will say this about Lost Voyage, it reminded me of a couple of different movies. While you read the description, see if you can guess which two movies I am thinking of. I will give the names later on in the review so please be honest if you choose to leave a comment and let me know if you guessed the same two.

Lost Voyage starts in 1972 with Aaron says good bye to his father and new stepmother as they board a cruise ship. Aaron isn't to happy about not being able to go with them (it is their honeymoon) and isn't to thrilled about having a stepmom either. Needless to say, they don't part on very happy terms. The ship leaves Miami and heading for Bermuda. If you know your supernatural area's then you know which one they are crossing. That night, something is showing up on the ships radar and it is heading straight for them. It turns out to be a massive cloud bank. This is no normal cloud bank though since the ship disappears inside of it. 25 years later the SS Corona Queen returns. Aaron is all grown up and is now Judd Nelson. Aaron has spent his life learning and investigating paranormal things. With ship returning, reporter Dana Elway (Janet Gunn) wants to jump on the story and of course gets Aaron involved.

Dana hires a salvage crew to take them to the ship. David Shaw (Lance Henriksen) is the head man. He brings along Dazinger (Jeff Kober) and Ian (Mark Sheppard). They are there to help get the ship ready to go before the Coast Guard claim it. Dana brings along her camera man Randall (Richard Gunn) and Julie (Scarlett Chorvat). Julie is an upstart reporter that is trying to take over Dana's job. Dana only brings her along because she is told by her boss (Robert Pine) that she has to. Dana not only is looking for the story about why the ship disappeared but she is also hoping to find a supernatural angle on it as well. Will she get the story she is after? Will Aaron find out what happened to his parents?

The effects are CGI heavy like the last SciFi movie I reviewed. Not to much at the start and none to be found in the middle but it gets a bit heavy towards the end of the movie. We see some deaths but at least one is never explained, we just hear a scream and later see the person in a more ghostly way. One person is crushed by a very large chain. There is a little blood in that scene which really is the only blood you will find. Another person gets a lot of electricity pumped through him. While this looked a little cheesy at first, it turned into a fairly good scene.

The actone was ok. Jude Nelson was a little flat in places but still showed that he is a good actor. The hired hands is really where the acting could have been better but considering they are just hired hands, and thus more than likely will die at some point, I guess we can't ask to much from them. The characters themselves aren't the most fleshed out I have ever seen but we are given enough to know what is motivating each of the characters. Wants to know what happened to his parents. Wants a big story to make it big, ect.

As I said before, Lost Voyage reminded me of two movies. One came before and it is the one that Lost Voyage reminded me the most of. The other movie actually came after this one but to me was the better movie. In face both movies are better than Lost Voyage but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. More on that later though. I will give you a hint on the movie that came before, the cruise ship plays on the fears of the people on the ship. The movie that came after this one I will hint at by saying it was a haunted ghost ship. Read further in to see if my answers match your own.

Lost Voyage didn't impress me a whole lot but it did turn out to be a fairly decent flick. The pacing was well done. The thrills are limited but the story itself kept me into the movie fairly well. It was a little hard to figure out that the ship was playing on the peoples fears and it only did this with a few of them, not all of them. It could have been better if they had explored some of the themes a little more than they did. The CGI wasn't the best but it was enough to get by. At least it interacted well with the real people. I wouldn't rush out to find this one but if you happen to catch it on tv or at the video store, you might consider watching it. However, if you haven't already I would suggest watching Event Horizon and Ghost Ship instead. Those are the two movies I have been talking about and both outshine Lost Voyage.
3 out of 5 Soul sucking ghosts