mermaid heather

Freezing Time For The Plague

2012-01-26T12:21:00.000-08:00

Being sick has actually gotten me in the mood to do reviews for some odd reason. I think it is because being home all day, for the third day in a row, can get rather boring after a while. I can only watch so much TV before I want to do something else. I'm feeling better today. I'm still sick, but at least I'm not sneezing like crazy (yesterday) or coughing a lot (the day before yesterday). Since I have meetings I have to be at tomorrow, sick or not, I even went to go see the new Underworld film. The review will come soon. Since I didn't think I would be watching it so soon yesterday, I went ahead and reviewed Quarantine 2: Terminal. For here though, I watched The Sick House (2008).

Anna (Gina Phillips) is a archaeologist doing some research at a children's hospital. It has been a children's hospital dating back to the times of the great plague that went through London. It seems some doctors were known for working with people who had the plague, but the plague had never reached as far as the children's hospitals, so what were they doing there? Anna believes she is close to figuring this out, but the people funding her has shut down her research. The place is considered a bio-hazard and is scheduled to be torn down. Risking everything, Anna decides to sneak in and finish her research the night before. Meanwhile, a group of young adults are out joy riding when they get into an accident right in front of the old hospital. Once inside, time seems to freeze outside, while inside the hospital things start to get weird when someone dressed like an old plague doctor shows up. What could the past want with out group of five?

The Sick House was co-written/directed by Curtis Radclyffe. I came across The Sick House when I watched a trailer for it on some other film. I couldn't find the movie on Netflix for some reason, but it turns out it was in my queue. I don't know if I managed not to spell it correctly that day or what happened, but because I couldn't find it on Netflix, I ended up buying it on the cheep. It wasn't long into this movie that I was already starting to feel lost. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on, or what I felt was going on anyway. Now that I do know what the movie was all about, I'm tempted to watch it again from that perspective to see if it makes more sense to me. I think part of it has to do with the site that Anna is working on is never explained much. There is a passing mention of why she wants to keep working, she believes some doctors were part of a plague cult that was never proven to have been around, but that didn't explain what was happening. Sure there was a doctor dressed in the way they would back in the day during the plague, and anyone he seemed to touch now had the plague, but what did that have to do with any type of cult?

To make matters worse, as many people like to point out, is the way things play out towards the end of the film. They figure out that the deaths the doctor was supposed to have been a part of all those years ago are repeating themselves. With only two deaths left, they make a promise to each other to make sure they don't die in those ways. One way was by fire, so what do they do after making this promise to each other? They make some make-shift torches! Another problem for me was the ending itself. I got what they were doing, but it didn't work for me. It had to do with a baby from a woman who didn't look all that pregnant. I didn't know if when time started again outside the hospital if she was still pregnant or no longer pregnant or what? For each person to decide I guess.

The Sick House isn't a very gory film, but there are some moments that were pretty cool all the same. A ton of bugs coming out of the pregnant woman was pretty cool. More than likely it was a CGI effect, at least it looked that way, but it was a cool effect all the same. The acting was just okay for me. I liked Gina Phillips in the lead role well enough. You can also find Alex Hassel, Kellie Shirley, Andrew Knott and Jack Bailey. By the way, I hope you like British accents if you do give this movie a watch.

Another thing I didn't care for was the way Radclyffe filmed The Sick House. He tends to use the shaky camera for a lot of things. I get that it is a style that a lot of directors like to use, and that sometimes it does help the feel or mood of the movie. Having said that, I also feel that it can be damn annoying. If it hadn't been used as much as it did here, I may not be complaining about it. I did like some parts of The Sick House. While there are many movies where I'm not really sure where the film is going, it bugged me a lot more here because I didn't really even have a general idea for it. It's too bad things didn't work better for this movie. I do feel there was an idea there that could have made a great film.
2 out of 5 I wonder if anyone would know what I was if I dressed up that way for Halloween

I Triple Dog Dare You!

2012-01-23T13:27:00.000-08:00

I'm back already. Still sick, but feeling a little better at least. I went to the theater yesterday, only to discover the times had changed, already, on the new Underworld film. Not wanting to stick around for over two hours, I instead got some lunch and just went home. As much as I hated to do so, I called off from work since I didn't want to make anyone there sick. I was also hoping an extra day of pill popping and napping would help me kick the cold. Once I was up for the day, until my nap which I think is coming up quick, I decided to get back to my old ways of watching a movie from Netflix, one from Instant Watch, and one of the movies I have in my own collection. I decided on a movie called Triple Dog (2010) mostly because it has a couple of actress' that I like in it.

Eve (Alexia Fast) is having a sleep over for her 16th birthday party. She has invited her best friend, bad girl Chapin (Britt Robertson), and friends Cicely (Janel Parrish), Sarah (Emily Tennant) and Nina (Carly McKillip). Also showing up is Liza (Scout Taylor-Compton), who was invited by Eve's mom. I took it that Eve and Liza were friends at one point, but are no longer. As the night goes on, Chapin starts to get bored and suggests that they all play a game called triple dog. More or less it is truth or dare, but without the truth part. The rules are simple enough, everyone gets a dare and everyone gives a dare. If you decide not to do the dare, or fail to do it, then your hair will get shaved off. Not everyone wants to play though, so a vote is taken and the majority wins out, so everyone is playing. As the dares play out, we slowly learn of another student who died a few months back. Stories vary on how she died, although they all agree that she jumped off a bridge...or did she? Chapin may know more about it, but whenever someone brings it up, she wants to fight instead of answering questions about it.

From what I had been reading about Triple Dog before watching it, it sounded like it could be close to a horror film. It doesn't sport the horror tag, but it does claim to be a thriller, which can sometimes be another name for a horror film. As it turns out, it is much more a teen drama, and not much of a thriller. Since I had already decided to review it, and the fact that I'm behind on reviews as it is, I'm still doing the review. I can't say that I have watched a lot of teen drama films, even when I was a teen, but I suppose you can do worse than Triple Dog. Either I'm out of touch or the game itself was invented for the movie. I've heard of, and even played, truth or dare (although I hate playing it). Of course I have heard of the phrase "I triple dog dare you." I've just never heard of it as a game before. The dares the girls ask each other to do are for the most part somewhat tame. The first one surprised me because of the edginess the film went for. The completely good girl Sarah was dared to run down the street completely naked. I found that funny, but wasn't expecting director Pascal Franchot to actually show it. Emily Tennant was doing her best to cover herself with her hands and arm, but I was still surprised by it all.

I found the dares to be somewhat original at least. Like peeing on the Principal's door step and stealing a porn magazine from a store that has a guard. I think the one that surprised me the most was trying to get one of the girls to get to third base with a guy. While I found this part of the film interesting, I did have some problems with things writer Barbara Marshall did at times. For one, the girls seem a little too hip with the constant use of slang terms and things like that. It might be the way teens are talking these days, but it will make the film seem more dated years down the road. I also didn't care much for how the flashbacks for Stacy (Julia Maxwell), the girl who died a few months before, were handled. One of the girls who shows up from time to time claims that Chapin knows more about than she lets on. She knows this because her mom works at the school this happened at. In the flashback we see the same girl there when it happened. Why she just doesn't say that though is something I'm still trying to figure out instead of just saying her mom works there so knows the story.

I thought the story was just okay in Triple Dog. It was a little slow in places, but it did make me laugh at times, and offered a few surprises at least. The real treat, for me at least, was watching Alexia Fast sharing the lead role, and watching Scout Taylor-Compton. I know not everyone likes Scout, but I do. I also know not many have probably heard of Alexia Fast, but I like her well enough. Because of Triple Dog, I just might have to check out other things Britt Roberston has been in. If teen drama's happen to be something you don't mind watching from time to time, Triple Dog might be worth checking out for you. If you aren't interested in them at all, then you aren't missing anything by skipping over it. Unless you happen to be a fan of an actress or two found within.
3 out of 5 That river didn't look deep enough to jump into, let alone drown in

Chrome Me Part Two

2012-01-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

My plans for this weekend sort of got derailed. I had watched ChromeSkull: Laid To Rest 2 (2011) Friday night, but I wasn't feeling the best that night, so I didn't start the review. I figured I would either do it yesterday or today, depending if I went to go see the new Underworld film. Neither happened because when I got up Saturday morning, I was feeling even worse. I think I have a mild cold, some coughing and sore throat, but that wasn't what was getting to me. I also believe I have a sinus infection on top of the cold. Between my sinus pain and my eyes hurting, I just wanted to sleep. Thankfully the pain is gone today. I'm just left with the slight sore throat and coughing, so hopefully I will be back to my more normal self soon.

ChromeSkull picks up where the last movie left off. As the remaining surviors drive away from the gas station, police pull in. Tommy (Thomas Dekker) and The Girl (Allison Kyler) hole up at a motel, while we see a team of people trying to save ChromeSkull (Nick Principe). Preston (Brian Austin Green) is the person in charge of this operation. While the team manages to get ChromeSkull back into the land of the living, Preston discovers where The Girl is and heads off to take care of her. Tommy leaves to pick up some food for them, and that is when Preston shows up to kill The Girl. ChromeSkull isn't very happy about Preston taking his kill away from him, but there isn't much he can do about it...for now. Spann (Danielle Harris) sets ChromeSkull's sights on another girl, Jess (Mimi Michaels), who is slowly going blind.

Laid To Rest was hardly a perfect film. I had my problems with it, but the kills won me over. With ChromeSkull: Laid To Rest 2, the story takes a turn for the worse, if that was even possible. I can say this one good thing about the plot for the sequel: at least they don't have the characters running around in circles again. Once again Robert Hall directs, but this time he picks up a co-writer in Kevin Bocarde. Maybe that had something to do with the way the plot changes so much in this sequel. I could be wrong, but I don't recall there ever being a hint that ChromeSkull was working with anyone before. As others have pointed out, it is like they took a page from the Saw movies. There is Preston, who works under ChromeSkull, finding out that he also likes the thrill of the kill. It was easy to see that there would be a showdown between the two at some point. The mystery of who ChromeSkull is, and why he is doing his thing, is still there. Only a small flashback about him is found, and it doesn't really show much. In the first movie there was also the mystery of who The Girl is as well. There is no such mystery this time. In fact, Jess pretty much takes a backseat to Preston.

The effects are still top notch at least. While not as gory as I remember the first one being, there are still some effects to be found that will make the gore hound happy. While I question how well a knife, no matter how sharp it is, will be able to cut through the skull seeming so easy, it was still a sight to see. The effects were once again my favorite thing about this one, much like the first one. The acting was also pretty good. I was surprised while looking at the cast for this movie. Allison Kyler, who takes over the role for The Girl, looked a lot like Bobbi Sue Luther, so I just assumed that is who it was. I don't know why Hall couldn't get her to come back, considering that they are married, unless she didn't want to do the nudity. That leaves Thomas Dekker and Nick Principe as the only people to return for the sequel.

I have to give Hall some credit in trying to expand on his story instead of coming up with the same thing yet again as the first film. I just didn't care for the direction he decided on. ChromeSkull: Laid To Rest 2 takes things away from the people that ChromeSkull is after, and puts the entire story on the people working for ChromeSkull. Maybe I would have liked it better if the characters for the bad guys had been better. There is Jess who could have been the most interesting character in the film if Hall had allowed it. Her not being able to see well is played up a lot, but it is never really used to push the story forward. It is just there to try and make us feel bad for her I guess. Even though I didn't like ChromeSkull: Laid To Rest 2, I still have to up the rating just a little bit because of the gore once again. The ground work has been laid to put out a third movie, so lets hope Hall gets back to the basics this time. That is if Hall doesn't make it a prequel like he has been hinting at.
3 out of 5 More stupid cops, just what the movies need

Paint Everything Black

2012-01-18T20:07:00.000-08:00

This has been an off month for me so far. Usually January is an active month for me, no matter how burned out I might have been feeling by the end of the last year. I blame it mostly on work still, since I have been busy there. I don't mind that at all, money in my pocket after all, but I do hope things will pick up for me here. I was going to try and get two reviews in over the weekend, my second one didn't get done on time though. I did get it finished at last, so if you would like to read my thoughts on Stake Land, then click the link and head on over. I'm surprised it took me so long to get around to it. Sometimes I'm behind the curve on some films. It happens like that. For today I have the last of the backed up movie reviews, about time I might add, Finale (2009).

When the oldest son in the Michael's family suddenly dies, it leaves a lot of questions for the rest of the family. Helen (Carolyn Hauck) doesn't believe that her son killed himself, which is the official story. While the family cleans out Sean's (Warren Bryson), they discover black paint over everything reflective and then some. Peter (James Johnson), the other brother, finds and explosive device in the closet, that was there apparently to destroy Sean's diary. The diary is a mess of writings that refer to something called The Collector, and has a bunch of newspaper clippings that don't appear to have anything in common. But no, Sean couldn't have killed himself! Peter never says anything about the bomb, for whatever reason, and Kathryn (Suthi Picotte), little sister, joins up with the drama class that Sean was once apart of. Helen begins to believe that Sean was onto something, but will the rest of the family believe, or just believe that Helen is losing her mind?

Finale has some interesting ideas in it. Writer/director John Michael Elfers managed to put together some very cool visuals at times. I was really impressed with some the shots that find their way into the movie. At the same time I have to say that it also reminded me a hell of a lot of a Marilyn Manson video. Not a certain video, but just the style and the way The Collector ended up looking. As much as I liked all this though, it didn't come together very well with the plot. Things start off with us seeing Sean and his girlfriend trying to plant explosives somewhere. The opening felt confusing, and I wasn't the only one to feel this way, I think because we are just thrust into this situation without any reason why these two were doing this. Of course it was explained later, but that didn't excuse the opening giving the feel of coming into the middle of the movie.

I never got why The Collector was doing what he was doing. I got that he was using reflective surfaces in order to interact with our reality, but I never understood why or why the people he was picking to kill. I also didn't get why people were doing things for The Collector, or what they were getting out of it. Maybe all this had been explained and I just managed to miss it. Wouldn't be the first time, and I was watching this one kind of late at night, so wasn't 100% into it at the time. One thing I didn't care for in the plot itself was the sister getting caught up with the same people as her brother. I don't really get why movies do this, or maybe I am just missing something since I was an only child.

Another point that bothered me was some lady that is found at Sean's grave. I didn't get who it was right away, and feel I should have, but it seems Elfers couldn't make up his mind on what she was. She seems normal at first but then in another scene (from what I remember), she was this like demon type thing, and then normal again later. I was pretty surprised when she turned out normal, and that made me wonder what the whole scene when she wasn't was all about.

The acting was fine for me. I didn't have a problem with any of the actors. I thought that Carolyn Hauck did a nice job with the lead role. I didn't care much for James Johnson but I think that had to do more with his character and the writing for it. Finale wasn't a gory film really, but it had some cool makeup designs going for it at times. It would have been nice if it had been more gory than it was, but welcome to low budget film making.

Finale was one of those films where I was trying to decide where I would could with it for my rating by the time the ending came around. I liked some of what I was seeing, but felt confused by the plot some. I also felt not everything was coming together. Even so, I was waiting on the ending to see how it all played out in order to make up my mind. The ending, like the rest of the film, didn't really do it for me either. There are some reviews out there that gave Finale high marks, but I can't do it. I do look forward to seeing what else Elfers can do though, as there was some very interesting spots to be found. Even though I am giving it a lower rating, I will still suggest looking it up when you can.
2 out of 5 Wonder what it would have been like with Manson in it

A Good Reason To Hate Mother-In-Laws

2012-01-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

Even though I have one more review waiting in the wings, so to speak, I decided to watch a horror short. Things are still busy around here. To add to that, I started up my interview with Terry (Cattleworks) again, and started a new one. Not saying who yet, that would be telling. I've never been one to kiss and tell after all. If you have been reading any of the recent comments on a somewhat recent review at Top Horror Movies Club, then you will have a pretty good idea who it is. Anyway, I have gotten a couple of emails from director Erik L. Wilson asking if I would review his short film House Call (2011). Since it was only 17 minutes long, shorter without the credits, I not only watched it, I watched it twice!

Janice (Aimee Bello) is a married woman with a boyfriend. As the movie opens we hear Janice talking with her boyfriend Steve (Michael Jordan) about how her husband knocker her out and that his mother (Janet Gawrys) was said to have been been practicing black magic. Steve encourages her to find a way to get away from Dave (Brad Egger). Once home, Dave is in the bath yelling at Janice about being with her boyfriend again, even though she denies it, and swears he will beat her once he gets out. This causes Janice to do something that will let her be with Steve. Four months later, we see that Janice is in fact living with Steve now as they celebrate their one year anniversary. But Mother has some plans for them.

House Call was filmed using a Red One digital camera. I couldn't tell you if this is a good or bad thing when it comes to cameras, but I can say that House Call does have a very crisp look to it. The plot itself I didn't think would be anything all that interesting, but I wasn't expecting what the mother ended up doing. Something I noticed at the start of the movie was the lighting. It looked stretched if that makes any sense. I assume this was some type of digital effect since it was only there for the first couple of scenes. Some people seemed to think that the lighting was a little on the dark side, but I didn't have any issues with that. House Call starts off a tad slow, but quickly picks up the pace once mother shows up. One of the things that made this short enjoyable for me was the sound effects that was used along with the music. It made things much more interesting.

The special effects are a mix of CGI and practical effects. The CGI effects are kept down, but they were very well done. I really liked what was done the first time we see them with the smoke. Even the makeup effects were well done. They aren't real gross, but I think they will be a nice surprise for most horror fans. The acting was also well done. I don't know why, but I didn't care for Aimee Bello a lot. Not saying she did a bad job, just was something about it that I didn't care for much. I also didn't care much for Michael Jordan at first, but thought he was much better in the later half of the film.

So far House Call can only be seen by invitation only. It is on a password protected site. Wilson is hoping to get House Call into the horror convention and film festival scenes. I don't think he will have a problem at all getting that done. If you happen to have a blog, I do hope you get invited to watch House Call. It is a fun movie, and even if you find you don't like it for some reason, as least you don't have to invest a lot of time to it.
4 out of 5 Makes me glad I have yet to get married

Tiki Dolls Are Bad Ass

2012-01-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

Things have been a little slow around here lately. Hopefully I will be able to pick things up again soon. I have been busy at work, which is a good thing, but I've had to take reports home and get them finished here. That cuts into my free time, sometimes by a lot. Even so, I did manage to get out of the house, thankfully, in order to go to the movie theater to catch The Devil Inside. It wasn't as good as I was hoping for. After getting my review list updated, which I was a month behind in doing so, I jumped right into this review. For today I have a movie called Tiki (2006), which also wasn't all that great.

Amy (Joelene Smith) has decided to move away from her aunt (Maria Caprile) in order to go to college and start her own life. She wants to be an actress, so she looks for the theater not long after getting to college. She meets Mark (Wes Deitrick), who gives her directions and is super nice to her. Once she finds the theater, she discovers that a group in the class, lead by Julie (Tanya Morton), doesn't like her at all for whatever reason. She also discovers that Mark is the teacher for the class. With Mark being the only person that is nice to Amy, and gives her the lead role in the upcoming play, she soon starts to have a crush on him. Julie discovers this and decides to play a prank on Amy. Julie writes a note to make it sound like Mark wants to meet up with her in order to fool around. Amy dresses up and shows up at Mark's house, only to be rejected by him, in a sort of mean way. Amy runs out, only to be met by a laughing Julie and crew. This causes Amy to start to spaz out, which puts her in the hospital. Amy's aunt shows up with a tiki doll that come alive and seeks revenge on those that wronged Amy.

I'm sure that Tiki will remind people of the Puppet Master films. The tiki isn't really a doll, so much as it is a wood carving, but that is what I will call it all the same. The movie opens in a sort of weird way with the tiki is helping some woman. No idea who she is or anything, and she never shows up again. I guess it was just a way to show what the tiki can do. Tiki was a low budget deal, but it suffers the most from bad acting. The plot from writer/director Ron Ford was pretty basic. It could have been better, but I didn't really have much of a problem with it. The tiki itself was a little on the silly side at first. It did start to grow on me though, and I did enjoy it. The kills were bad, and didn't always make much sense. At the same time though, they did manage to get me to laugh at some of them, so there is that. Tiki is a silly movie because of the tiki doll and the things it can supposedly do. I don't recall how far up the apartment that Amy lived in was, I want to say on the second level, but it was rather funny watching the tiki climb its way up.

Besides the tiki doll coming alive, which didn't look all that bad to me, there are some gory effects to be found. Nothing was outstanding, but I can't say it was the worse stuff to be put on film either. The acting, however, is a different story. Still not the worst out there, but it was pretty bad. Joelene Smith comes off as a shy person in the movie. I don't know that it worked for the character too much. I have nothing against the average looking girl, but again it didn't fit well here. I guess I felt that she wasn't into the role much. I can't single her out though since the whole cast was pretty much the same way.

Tiki may not be the best movie out there, but it was starting to grow on me a little bit by the end of it. I can't say that I would ever watch it again though. It has a little bit of magic to it, but the bad acting took it down. I'm not sure I would give it too much of a higher score even if the acting had been better. I wasn't mad or anything after watching it on Instant Watch, and I don't feel I would have been if I had the DVD sent to me. I probably would have been if I bought the DVD on a whim though, depending on how much I had bought it for. If you are into these types of movies, where things like a tiki doll thing come to life, might be worth the curious watch. With the acting though, I think most people will not enjoy this one.
2 out of 5 I don't even want to own a tiki!

Sexy Witches Can Kill Me Anytime

2012-01-05T15:36:00.000-08:00

A new year already. To bad this is the last year, depending on who you talk to anyway. The way I see it, if the end does come, there isn't a thing I can do about it so why worry? After my disappointing output of reviews last year, I hope to turn things around this year. Even though a couple of the movies in my Instant Watch queue couldn't be added to my DVD queue, I decided not to watch them. Neither film was getting all that high average ratings, and I'm behind as it is anyway. As it stands now, I have three reviews (including this one) before moving on to something new again. For today I have a movie called Ghost Game (2004).

Abby (Shelby Fenner) and Nate (Peter Cilella), along with Dara (Alexandra Barreto) and Randy (Curt Cornelius), have decided to stay in a cabin for the weekend. After meeting up with Cousin Ted (Robert Berson), they find the place and start to settle in. While the guys are messing around and getting things out of the car, the girls find a book where people have been writing about their vacation at the cabin. They flip through it some until they find an entry where the person said they were scared and their friends were dead. There was also a warning not to do something, but that something had been torn out. Later on they start to get bored so check to see what kind of board games there are to play. Around this time, Sebastian (Aaron Patrick Freeman) and his girlfriend Talia (Danielle Hartnett) also show up. They find a metal box that has a game inside it that none of them have heard of before. There is also a note that says not to play the game, but of course they do. Unknown to them, the game is a way for three witches, who died 30 years before, to get the people playing it to complete a summons they started but didn't complete.

Ghost Game started out with a little bit about the three witches. They are played by Sarah Shoup, Caroline D'Amore and Sahra Silanee. Even though the movie said this was happening 30 years in the past, I had a hard time believing that. I wasn't around 30 years ago, but from movies I have watched around that time period, I don't recall seeing women dressed the way these women were. I see them dressed that way now days, but not back then. Clothing aside, I found the plot for this film to be rather confusing even though it seems straight forward. Before the friends even know what they are supposed to do, help the witches with their summoning spell, the friends start to get killed off. Two of the witches seem to enjoy it, while the other may or may not be trying to make the spell fail. Even when the friends are trying to help, fairly late in the film, they still are getting killed off. I had to keep wondering why. If the ghosts witches need these people to complete their spell, why the fuck kill them off before they can do it? The people they kill off, before they know what they are supposed to be doing, might be the ones that would have no problem with helping out.

There wasn't much for effects. Director Joe Knee plays around with the camera to get some cheap effects for the ghosts. From what I remember there wasn't anything that stood out to me for gore effects. I didn't have anything in my notes about it, so there must not have been anything. The acting was a mixed bag. I liked some of the actors, like Shelby Fenner, but didn't like some of the others, like Curt Cornelius. While Danielle Hatnett's character could be annoying, I also found her to be funny in some ways. With her "I'm better than everyone" thing going on, it gave me a few laughs.

I'm not sure if Ghost Game bored me beyond caring, but I didn't understand why the last death happened at all. Since I was watching it on Netflix, I didn't try to go back to see what it was I missed, if anything. You can't always go back a few seconds to see something again, so usually I don't even bother to try. Even though I didn't find the pacing to be all that bad for Ghost Game, I just didn't care for the story at all. The three witches pretty sexy though, so it gets some credit for that at the very least. No nudity was shown from what I remember. I have spent worse 72 minutes with a movie before, but Ghost Game just wasn't for me. I don't think it is on Instant Watch anymore, but then I haven't bothered to see if it was added back in yet. I do know it can be watched through Amazon though. If you want to bother with it that is.
2 out of 5 Think I will go dream of those witches now

Wild Boars Hate France

2011-12-31T22:48:00.000-08:00

I couldn't let the year end without one more review. I just couldn't! I'm closing out my theme for the month with Prey (2010), a movie from France. It has been a fun month with lots of movies. I closed out the month over at Top Horror Movies Club by putting up a review for We Are What We Are yesterday. I have no real plans for next month. I think I will just get back to reviewing whatever strikes my interest for a bit at least. I may not be real excited about going into my 7th year, but at the same time, I am. Since I have decided not to worry about how many reviews I get in on a month, I have been in more of a mood to actually do reviews. Now though I may have to compete my time with Star Wars: The Old Republic. I'm just getting started with it so if anyone else plays, let me know!

Nathan (Grégoire Colin) is with his wife, Claire (Bérénice Bejo), while visiting her family. Her father, Nicolas (François Levantal), owns a pesticides factory that is in danger of closing. While Claire meets with her father, Nathan goes in to talk to Eric (Fred Ulysse), Claire's grandfather, and David (Joseph Malerba), her uncle. Nathan discovers that Eric has some bad chemical burns on his back, and that Eric and David are going boar hunting. Some deer was attacked near their home and a tusk was left in one of the deer. David feels it is larger than his record setting boar, so wants to go hunting. Nathan is invited but turns it down at first. Nathan and Claire are wanting to announce that Claire is pregnant but that is pushed out of the way when Nicolas wants Claire to return to work. I don't know if this means Claire no longer wants the baby, or if it is just dangerous for the baby since all she says about it is "we can have another one." Nathan decides to go on the hunt when he learns Nicolas is going, hoping to change Nicolas' mind. What they find in the woods will make them wish they never went hunting and reveal things about the factory.

With Prey, I was both surprised by it and disappointed by it. I was surprised by it because at times director/co-writer Antoine Blossier manages to throw in some good tension. I can't say that I'm a big fan of this sub genre within a sub genre that is killer wild boars. I liked Prey because there is good reason for the boars to be pissed off. It isn't about mutated boars, like I thought it might be. The plot is pretty easy to follow, and it isn't all that hard to figure out what will happen. I was surprised by Nathan's actions towards the end of the movie though. I was a little disappointed by Prey because despite having more than one wild boar running around, we barely ever see the things. We hear them and see the grass and whatever moving at times, but the boars themselves aren't shown much. Maybe that was for the best really, since it did add to the tension in some spots. Having never been boar hunting, though it seems to be popular on A&E, I can't say how realistic it is or isn't. I know it got a bad review from someone that said the boars didn't act in a realistic way though. Anyway, the pacing was done well, with hardly a boring moment except at the start. That wasn't really boring, just setting things up.

What we do see of the boars is a couple of dead ones, which could have been the same one but done differently on either side. All this, and some boar heads that we see once in a while, all seem to be done with actual FX instead of CGI. There isn't all that much for gore effects though. There is a scene where someone cuts a boar open and lets the blood pour all over them though. The acting was also pretty good. I enjoyed all the actors this time around. The small cast is what helped though too. The only actor I haven't talked about so far was Isabelle Renauld. She played the part of Nicolas' wife and isn't in the movie all that much.

One of the things I found kind of funny was the relationship between the brothers. Even though I think they were in their late 40s to early 50s, they still fight and argue at times like they are teens. I guess sometimes brothers never get passed that phase in their relationship. I found Prey to be a fun film. It certainly isn't as gory as some of the other French films that have been coming out there, but it was still an interesting film. Even though I don't feel it is one of the greats, it is still well worth the watch. I know some of the blogs I read really dig the killer boar movies, so I hope I see this movie pop up on those blogs. It is closing in on midnight here as I write this, so I hope everyone has a great New Year's!!
3 out of 5 What is better than a killer boar? A pack of killer boars!

Infecting Berlin

2011-12-29T16:46:00.000-08:00

With just a few days left in the month, I thought I would press forward and maybe get a couple more reviews in. There are still some foreign films that I want to watch, so maybe I will get around to some of them next month as I start up my 7th year. This has been a rough one for me, but I see it getting better going into the new year. I have four movies coming out of my Netflix queue on the 1st, but I think I will only watch them if I can't add them to my DVD queue. I'm already behind on reviews, so I don't want to add to that anymore than I have to. For today I decided on a movie that wasn't in my queue, but it did catch my eye: Rammbock: Berlin Undead (2010). The fact that it is out of Germany made it fit right in.

Michael (Michael Fuith) arrives in Berlin in order to visit his ex-girlfriend Gabi (Anna Graczyk) in order to give her keys back. He has decided to come in person hoping that he could win her back. He arrives at her apartment building and finds the right apartment only to find that the door is open. He goes on in but can't find Gabi. He does find someone working in her apartment though, who is less than friendly. Then he meets Harper (Theo Trebs), a teen aged boy who is helping with the repair job. While Harper isn't much help either, Michael tries calling Gabi's cell, only to reach her voicemail. Just as he hangs up, he sees Harper's boss go on the attack. Together they manage to get the guy out of the apartment and bar the door shut. As they look at the window from up above street level, they see people being attacked, and turning into the people doing the attacking. Trapped in the apartment, they have to figure out what to do, along with the people trapped in other apartments.

Rammbock was a quick watch considering that is only an hour long. I was a little worried about how good it might be because of that, but it was getting some pretty good ratings. Most of the movie takes place in the apartment with Michael always worrying about Gabi. It does get annoying with how far he keeps going on about her. I guess in a way I would be worried too if I was in his shoes. They had been together for years, so it is a little bit understandable. When he finds a picture of Gabi wearing a costume, he goes and puts it on, which takes it to a whole new level of weird. I could be wrong, but I think the film covers a couple of days. The name implies that there be zombies found in this film, but Rammbock is more along the lines of 28 Days Later with people who are infected which drives them to attack those not infected. They do bite, but it was hard to tell if they were trying to eat normal people. The pace is a little slow at times since the are trapped. To counter that, writer Benjamin Hessler changes things up but hinting that there may be a way to beat the infection. He also comes up with an interesting way not to kill the infected, but to at least keep them from attacking you.

Director Marvin Kren didn't make Rammbock a very gory movie, but it does has some minor moments. These of course come when we see people getting attacked and having their skin bitten off. While they don't come as anything new, they are well done. Some people seemed to have problems with Michael Fuith in the lead role. I don't think it had to do with his acting so much as his character was rather annoying at times. I did like Emily Cox, even though she has a minor role. I could never tell if she was supposed to be an older teen or what though. She looks the part, but is older than that.

I know a lot of people still throw infected people that act like zombies into the zombie genre. If this is the case, or even if you don't do that, Rammbock: Berlin Undead is worth a look. Since it is a bit shorter than your average film, even if you don't like it then at least you didn't spend as much time with it. Even though I didn't find Rammbock to be one of the greats, I still enjoyed that it is a little different. If you are looking for something that shows how people deal with what is going on around them, you will want to check this one out. It was also interesting how Michael's story ends. Well worth the look and it is still on Netflix's Instant Watch if you can watch it that way.
3 out of 5 Seeing how these infected acted, I wonder if playing dead would have worked

Exporting The Christmas Spirit

2011-12-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

I was going to try and get two reviews in yesterday. I got both movies in, but not both reviews. I got sidetracked by some friends when I started to watch the second movie, not that I am complaining. It was a nice way to be sidetracked, especially on Christmas. All was not lost though. I did get one review in at least. Over at Top Horror Movies Club I did a review for the movie Saint. It was supposed to be one of two Christmas themed movies for yesterday, with Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) being the review for her. So I'm a couple of days late, nothing new there. This one, out of Finland, wasn't listed as a horror film on IMDb, but it does border the genre some.

An archaeological dig is happening just across the Finland border that is being kept very secret. An American believes he has found something that his been lifetime goal. Two little boys are spying on this and one of them, Pietari (Onni Tommila), believes that they have found the real Santa Clause. Weeks go by as Christmas nears. Pietari gets more worried at the last couple of days get closer because he believes Santa has been spying on him. His father (Jorma Tommila) takes him along on a hunt where they will gather reindeer, their main income. They discover that almost all of the reindeer have been killed already though. Believing that is because of the blasting, causing the wolves to hunt elsewhere, they head up to the dig only to discover there isn't anyone there. The next day Pietari finds that the bait above a wolf pit his father had dug is gone. But it isn't a wolf that is in there. Could it be Santa Clause?

I have been curious about Rare Exports ever since I first heard about it. What I didn't know is that there are two shorts dating back to 2003 and 2005. If you have never watched either one, you can find them on the DVD, or even on YouTube if you don't want to wait that long. They are both worth the watch, but don't have much to do with the movie itself. Even though both shorts are considered prequels, I would have to disagree with that. Anyway, Rare Exports is a fun film. It does take a little while to get going, but once it grabs you, it is hard to stop watching from then on. It isn't really a horror film, but there is talk about how evil Santa is, and then there is how the real Santa looks as well. It was a little odd with it starting out in English. I wasn't really expecting that at all. A problem I can see for some people is that there is some male nudity thrown in at places. It didn't bother me, and it was one of the rare films that had male nudity only. In fact, there is barely a female to be found. There is only one scene I can think of that had a woman in it, and I don't think she had a speaking line. While Rare Exports doesn't appeal to everyone, what film does truth be told, I liked a lot mostly because it is so different. The myth of Santa isn't explained completely here, only hinted at really, but it was enough to make things a little different. I wasn't sure what the plans were for the children, so I do wish they had made that a little more clear.

Not a lot of effects to be found with this one. There are some dead reindeer, and a guy gets his ear chewed on. There is one where someone gets a pickax to the head though. The acting was what surprised me the most. Films that have kid actors in the lead role can go either way faster than other films I think. If the kid actors don't stand out, the film is lost pretty early then. In this case, I really liked Onni Tommila in the lead role. He sort of shares that with his father, which is pretty cool in my book. Not often you see father and son playing father and son on screen. You can also find Tommi Korpella, Rauno Juvonen and Per Christian Ellefsen.

The main thing that seems to decide if a person will hate or love Rare Exports was the ending. Depending on how you look at it, the film may, or may not, deliver after a build up towards the end. I admit that it didn't end in a way I was expecting, but I still liked it. In its own way Rare Exports is a coming of age story. That is what I loved about it all. I would go into more, but feel I would be spoiling it if I did. Rare Exports does have some small problems of course. It can be a little slow, and not everything in the story makes sense. If you have watched the two shorts, then you will pretty well figure out what the very end of this movie will be. I know some people feel that Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is way over rated, but I still loved it a lot. Might be one I will work in every Christmas for now on. If you haven't checked it out yet, give it a go!
4 out of 5 I don't think I will have a Santa sent to me

Kidnapped Haunting

2011-12-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

Yay my last backed up review for this month. I still have three others, but will wait to get those done since they aren't foreign films. I was wanting this review done before today, but it is what it is I suppose. For tomorrow I hope to get two reviews in. I don't know if it will get done or not, but that is the plan. Just in case though, I do wish all my readers a Merry Christmas! I hope everyone gets what they asked for. The movie I want to watch for tomorrow isn't really a horror movie, but it is a foreign made film, so it still fits in more or less. For today, I have a movie out of Japan called Pray (2005). I was going to watch even more of the movies that were about to be taken out of Instant Watch, but I got tired of spending all day watching movies. So this was the last one that I had watched.

Mitsuru (Tetsuji Tamayama) and Maki (Asami Mizukawa) have kidnapped a young girl in hopes of getting a ransom out of her. They are drug dealers that are in need of some cash, so they have been looking around for a child from a rich family, and believe they now have one. They take the girl to a school that has been closed up for good. As it turns out, which we find out later on, this used to be Mitsuru's school when he was a kid. Having given Ai (Karen Nakazawa) some sleeping pills in her water, Maki sets about calling the parents in order to tell them that they want 50 million yen for her safe return. The parents inform Maki that this must be some sick joke because Ai has been dead for one year to the day. When they go to check on Ai, she is gone. When some of Mitsuru's friends show up, who seem to know about the plan, things get more complicated, especially when one of the turns up dead.

Pray gets some praise because it isn't your typical Japanese ghost story film. It doesn't have the long haired ghosts that always looks wet. As it turns out, it is also different because there are two ghost stories going on. I won't spoil what either is really about, but the twist and turns do reveal that neither have to do with a kidnapped girl. The different twists are sometimes easy to see coming, and sometimes I was a little surprised by them. The movie itself, which was directed by Yûichi Satô, was a little slow and repetitive at times. They would lose Ai for a while, go in search of her and manage to find her. Repeat this a couple of times and there you go. Things did get a little more interesting when the friends showed up, and the twists in the plot they ended up representing. Despite all this though, I wasn't really into Pray all that much. I didn't find the two kidnappers all that interesting. There was something in Mitsuru's past that is hinted at, and eventually revealed, but that was about it. There was also a bathroom that seemed important since they kept going back to it. The bathroom was explained eventually, but not in a way that everyone got.

Pray ends up being a little gory, but I don't think it is enough for gore hounds to really care about. Hands get cut off, but we don't actually get to see that. Just the hand, and body, in a pool of blood. A few stabbings, and one getting a blunt blow to the head that didn't look hard enough to hurt, but was hard enough to kill apparently. The acting was okay, but a couple of the actors really took it to the next level towards the end of the movie. I would say who, but it might spoil things a little if I did. You can also find Mitsuyoshi Shinoda and Toshiyuki Toyonaga.

The two ghost stories was a nice idea, but it left the very end of the movie a little confusing. There are a lot of ideas thrown around about the ending, but nobody knows for sure if they are right. I didn't really find Pray boring, but I didn't find it all that exciting either. The twists were nice, but for me they didn't add a lot to spice up the plot much. The saving grace was towards the end when writer Tomoko Ogawa starts to pull at the heart strings. I'm not afraid to admit that it did make me tear up a bit. If it wasn't for that, Pray would have been given a lower rating. Pray isn't a bad movie really, just there. If you are looking for something a little different than the average Japanese ghost, give this one a shot. If you should watch it, give your thoughts on what you think happens at the very end.
3 out of 5 Would have been better if the little girl was creepy

War Ghosts In Vietnam

2011-12-23T10:27:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to get my back log of movies caught up still. With this review I will have one more movie and I will be able to move on, with the foreign made movies at least. I have a couple of movies that I want to get in for around Christmas, so I am hoping to be caught up at that time. Even though I haven't been putting out a lot of reviews, I feel like I have been doing better this month. This will only be my 10th review for this month, but I have done four or five over at Top Horror Movies Club, so I feel I have done pretty good. For today I watched another movie from South Korea called R-Point (2004). As it turns out, this was one of those movies that I learned something from, a history lesson actually.

In 1972 Vietnam, a South Korean base gets a radio transmission from a platoon that has been missing and presumed to be dead. One person from that platoon was found, and he still claims that everyone else was dead since he took their dog tags himself. Lieutenant Choi Tae-in (Woo-seong Kam) is recruited to lead a hand picked platoon, made from people who have been on medical leave. Their mission is to find the lost platoon and find out what happened to them, and to bring them back if possible. The transmission came from a place referred to as R-Point. Soon after getting there, they are attacked by a lone woman, whom they manage to take out. After that they soon discover markings that describe a story of how the Chinese attacked and killed many Vietnamies and put the bodies in a lake. A temple was then build over the bodies. The land is considered a cold zone because both the South and North consider it sacred ground. They find a place to hold up while doing their search, but it doesn't take long before weird things start to happen. When one of their own kills himself and they discover that it was a guy from the missing platoon, Choi has to figure out what is going on.

As I was watching R-Point, I kept wondering why this was being based during the Vietnam war. I just assumed that the story was being based there in order to have this story. After I finished watching it, the first thing I did was look up to see if South Korea was part of the Vietnam war, and they were. Someone else mentioned that they didn't know this either on IMDb message boards, and was made fun of. "Stupid Americans don't even know who their allies were in wars." Personally I don't remember being taught in school that South Korea was part of the war. Every show I ever watched about the war only talks about American troops that were there to support the South Vietnamese troops.

Writer/director Su-chang Kong manages to weave a pretty interesting and strange story. It isn't a new plot really. There have been other films where troops come up against the supernatural while in battle. What is happening to these guys is never completely explained, but I didn't mind that. Even after the movie I wasn't completely sure what was going on. Was it just a place that had a way of keeping ghosts there? Was it a main ghost they were seeing, or could the place just control ghosts? It is kind of weird how with some movies I don't mind that it isn't fully explained, while with others I wished they had explained it more. I thought the pacing was good for this movie. There are some slow points to it, but it is kept interesting but always having something to think about.

For a war/horror movie, R-Point wasn't very gory. You get the usual stuff of when a person is shot and things like that, so there is plenty of blood to go around. The only real complaint I have about R-Point was the way it was acted. At times it seemed like the characters were being way to silly. I guess I could write it off as they were just dealing with things in their own way. I know when stressed I can start laughing at things I probably wouldn't find all that funny normally. Anyway, I didn't find that acting bad, just wish it had a bit more serious feel to it. You can also find Ju-bong Gi, Seon-gyun Lee, Won-sang Park, Tae-kyung Oh and Byung-ho Son.

Another, but smaller, problem was that there seemed to be a lot of Sergeants in this platoon. It could make it a little confusing at times when names start get thrown around a lot. Another thing is that they don't seem very well trained. Maybe these guys are officers that never saw much combat but once the bullets start to fly, it seemed like most of them would scream like little girls and act like they don't know what to do. Despite these things, the acting being the most annoying part, I would gladly watch this one again. There are some creepy parts to it, like knowing they are interacting with ghosts even if they don't know it yet. Maybe I have a soft spot for movies like R-Point since I tend to give them high ratings, but I do feel this has been one of the better movies I have watched so far this month. Time will tell if it will be the best or not. If you haven't watched R-Point yet, and love the mix of supernatural and war, you should give this one a watch when you can.
4 out of 5 I'm excused when I scream like a little girl

Eating Dead Babies

2011-12-19T19:54:00.000-08:00

While exploring other blogs the other day, I came across a movie that I wanted to watch. With it being a low budget film, and a foreign one at that, it fit right in for what I like. The movie was called Last Ride. I decided to do the review over at Top Horror Movies Club mostly because I had been looking to double up there for once. As soon as I finished up the review I did here yesterday, I got started on the review for Last Ride. I wasn't expecting to get it done, but I did. Looks like I am back into review mood since that is usually the first thing I start to think about when I get up in the morning now, which movie is up for review. For here today I will be reviewing a movie from Taiwan called The Heirloom (2005).

James (Jason Chang) returns to his family home after learning that he is the last in his family and now owns the house. It is really a mansion to be honest. The place has a dark history to it, as we see from the start of the film where almost all of his relatives are hanged in the house 20 years before. James talks his dancer girlfriend Yo (Terri Kwan) into moving in with him. Because of his job, James is interested in fixing up the place, and eventually wants to start a family with Yo. They invite their best friends over to help celebrate their new home and have a small party. Odd things start to happen, like weird noises and footprints in the dust, but the oddest thing is when their friends keep showing up at the house at midnight with no memories of how they got there. James has inherited his family curse, but what is the curse?

At the start of the movie we are told about how the spirit of a baby can be very powerful and a few other things. Then we see the family being hanged and then get into the current day story. The story is somewhat interesting, but because they had to throw everything out right away, it spoils the story some. There was still a twist I didn't see coming, but it was minor compared to the rest of the story. It is a shame because once the movie gets around to why the family was "cursed", we already have a pretty good idea. That twist, if you want to call it that, loses its impact since we already knew the spirit of a baby was going to be used at some point. Why else tell us about it if it wasn't going to be used somewhere? I didn't get why people were showing up in the house either. Writer Dorian Li and director Leste Chen try to explain it away by saying the spirit is trying to protect the family, but I didn't buy that at all. Call me stupid but I don't think to get rid of someone is to keep having them show up at your house.

To my surprise, despite the theme of dead babies and all, Heirloom is very gory at all. The acting seemed to just fine, I didn't really have a problem with any of the actors. What I found strange though didn't have to do with the acting, but the way the characters were handled. James is set up to be the main character, but he is soon taking a back seat to Yo. Yo goes out and fits everything together, where you would think it would be James that would be more curious about everything. Then as the movie starts to close, James becomes the main focus again. It was an odd movie and it has cause other reviews to say that Jason Chang isn't much of an actor because of it.

Heirloom also has a problem of starting a plot line and then having it drop out. A good example of this is when the police get involved with people turning up in the house. They set up cameras in order to try and see where they are coming in at. When that doesn't work out too well, cameras and police are simply dropped from the story line, never to be heard from again. As much as I am downing Heirloom, I found it to be an average movie. The pacing was good up until the end of the movie. It slowed down a bit instead of picking it up some. It got a little boring, but not real bad. The story line was also interesting once they got more into the curse itself. It is too bad that this had to get thrown out at the start of the movie, instead of waiting to just reveal it in the story itself. It would have had a lot more shock value, and hopefully would have made the flaws not stand out as much. I would say that Heirloom is worth a watch, but I can't say it will ever be a favorite for me.
3 out of 5 Is it any surprise I had to watch a movie with dead babies in it?

Making Faces...But Not Funny Ones

2011-12-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know why, but I am in a writing mood today. Maybe it is because of the giveaway that Aaron and me got started yesterday. I know I'm excited and I'm not even getting a prize! To all the new followers that have joined up because of the giveaway, a big welcome! I was just going to do a couple of reviews over at Top Horror Movies Club, but I changed my mind. I did get one of two reviews done there though. I watched The Silent House, and to my surprise got the review out fairly quick yesterday morning. I will get the other review out over the weekend. Meanwhile, I watched another movie from South Korea called Face (2004).

Lee Hyeon-Min (Hyeon-jun Shin) is ready to quit his job. His daughter has recently gone through a heart transplant, and still isn't doing the best. He wants to quit in order to have more time to help take care of her, but the doctor that did the surgery isn't being very straight forward with Lee about it. Every time Lee asks about the donor, the doctor gives him the run around. Lee's job is that of forensic face reconstruction. He takes the skulls of unknown victims and tries to give them a face again. His boss tries hard to talk him out of quiting, but Lee goes home and gets ready to pack his things up. Jeong Seon-yeong (Yun-ah Song) shows up that night with a skull. Lee refuses to do anything with it, but Jeong leaves it with him. After seeing some strange things, and hearing a weird ringing noise, Lee soon changes his mind. Will he be able to help Jeong and the victim?

Face is a bit of an odd movie in that it doesn't feel much like a horror film even though the ghost try to be scary looking. Director Sang-Gon Yoo combines forensic science with different types of ghosts. I'm in the same field, but I do different things, and have yet to come across a ghost. Then again, I'm not in a movie. The ghosts that we do find mostly here are what reminded me of the ghosts from Grudge. Not so much in the way they moved, but just in their general look. Hair that seems to be alive and blood shot eyes. I thought it was kind of a silly way to get Lee to work on the skull. Like most movies today, there is a twist at the end of the movie. The twist was easy to see coming for a couple of different reasons. The twist itself makes the other ghosts unneeded and pointless.

The story itself was a little interesting for me since it had to do with forensics. I have never done this type, and more than likely never will, but still nice to see it in a horror movie. There is also some police trying to link the connection between missing people and a doctor who seems to be able to provide hearts for a certain kind of transplant person. Organs are like blood in that a certain type can give to any other type, but can only receive the same type. Because of this story line running side by side with Lee doing his thing, it isn't hard at all to see where things are going. The twist mixes it up a little bit, but as I said, even that is easy to see coming.

At the start of Face there is a pretty good gory effect of someone having their heart taken out. This is a good start, but as it turned out it was the only gory effect to be found. Hate it when they tease like that. The acting was about the same way. No one stood out to me, but the acting wasn't bad at all. The leads were fine, if a bit too serious all the time. I guess the character of Lee has every reason to be serious though with everything is going through.

While I enjoyed the nod to forensics, I found that Face could have been a whole lot better. For me the main problem was that it was just too easy to connect the dots and figure out what was going to happen way in advance. I suppose that the ghosts did help with breaking up the slowness, even though it wasn't that bad. It would have been nice if the ghosts had been used to advance the plot a little more, added more to the story as well. I didn't find Face to be a bad film really, just way too predictable. Maybe worth a watch once, but I know I won't be going back to it anytime soon.
2 out of 5 Not an artist so would never try what Lee does

December Giveaway

2011-12-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

As part of my foreign movie month, I decided to hold a little giveaway. Instead of doing it myself though, I teamed up with my good friend Aaron over at The Death Rattle. What better time than right before Christmas to have a giveaway, am I right? While the giveaway won't end until after Christmas, January 2nd in fact, these prizes will hopefully make you want to enter.

My buddy Aaron is throwing in a brand new copy of Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection DVD. It is a brand new copy at that! As for me, I will be throwing in an open copy of the movie D4. It has never been watched but had to be opened in order for director Darrin Dickerson to sign it. I tried to give the thing away back when I reviewed it, but no one took me up on the offer. While that isn't a foreign movie, I am throwing in a House By The Cemetery signed poster! I went to HorrorHound Weekend Indy back in March and picked up the poster. While I was there, I got it signed by the following cast: Silvia Collatina, Dagmar Lassander, Giovanni Frezza and Carlo De Mejo.

All you have to do to try and win one of these great prizes is to head over to The Death Rattle, and follow the instructions there. You can also see pictures of all the prizes there. Good luck everyone!!!

Satan In France

2011-12-14T13:17:00.000-08:00

I thought maybe I would slow down again since the weekend is over, and it has a little bit, but I still feel I'm in a writing mood. I'm not complaining really. I've been waiting to get back into this mood for a while now. I surprised myself by knocking out four reviews in just three days. Of course two of those had been about half way done already. Reviewing foreign made films, I had to watch at least one from France. Some of my more recent favorites have been out of France, so I was a little excited when I noticed that Sheitan (2006), which translates into Satan, would be one of the movies I would be watching this month. This one is a hard movie to write about though. Not because it will be hard not to talk too much about the plot, but because it is just an odd film.

A few friends are out having a good time, hitting the bars, when Bart (Olivier Barthelemy) gets into a fight on the dance floor after meeting Eve (Roxane Mesquida). He gets a bottle to the head and then thrown out of the club. He is joined by his friends Thai (Nico Le Phat Tan), Yasmine (Leïla Bekhti) and Ladj (Ladj Ly). Eve talks them into going to her place, out in the country since her parents are gone. When almost there, they get stuck in the mud and Joseph (Vincent Cassel), who Eve says is the house keeper. Things are a bit odd in this small country town, but what they don't know is that someone has made a deal with the Devil, and they have been included in that deal.

As I said above, Sheitan was a pretty weird movie. I got what was going on, but I kept feeling like I was missing something the whole time. It is one of those movies where you really need to pay attention to it. A little detail that can be over looked might become important later on. Writers Christian Chapiron and Kim Chapiron, who is also the director, often use things from the bible that aren't always easy to find. You may have noticed now that I have said that some of the names, like Eve and Joseph. There was a lot of things to make you think here. Things get even more odd when the group heads into the small town. I never found the plot confusing, which was a good thing. Eve says her dad is into making dolls, which can be seen all through the house. I knew this was going to play into the plot somehow, but I wasn't sure how.

Not a whole lot happens as far as moving the plot forward, or so it seems. What it seemingly lacks in this department though, it makes up for it in spades with interesting characters. While the friends are pretty run of the mill, the people we meet through Eve are where the interesting characters come from. You will not forget Joseph's large smile, or the girl who seems very easy and does something to a dog. It is too bad the friends aren't as interesting. Ladj and Thai are a couple, but Ladj is more the girlfriend on the side it appears. While she gets mad at him for always answering his cell phone, I was never sure if she knew she was his girl on the side. Bart and Yasmie are just looking to get laid it seems, with Bart always losing out there. I'm pretty sure this was done on purpose though in order for Eve and the others to stand out that much more.

Sheitan isn't very gory when it comes to French horror, but it does have some moments. The effects are good and the biggest surprise was seeing Vincent Cassel playing two roles. He also plays Joseph's wife. I don't care how much makeup they put on him, he still looks like an ugly woman. The acting was great, especially by Cassel. Not to say the other actors weren't as good, but it was really Cassel that stood out above everyone else. A little bit of nudity is thrown in, from both sexes, if that is important to you.

Sheitan is a movie you have to think about after the movie in order to figure everything out. I don't mind that so much in my movies, but I know it isn't for everyone. Normally I am all over movies like Sheitan, but there was something about it that I was never really able to put my finger on that kept me from loving it. I enjoyed it, and would gladly watch it again. Still, I didn't fall in love with it. I don't think it was too odd of a film for me. Sometimes that happens, but I didn't feel that here. Even so, I will highly suggest giving it a watch if you haven't already. Unless you hate these types of films, I don't see why you won't like it then. As some would say, just go with it.
3 out of 5 Never trust doll makers if you think you are in a horror film

That Is One Big Pair Of Scissors

2011-12-11T16:48:00.000-08:00

Over at Top Horror Movies Club, I talked a little about how by watching movies from outside my own country, I learn about their local legends and lore. The movie that at last completed a review for was Trollhunter. That film was from Norway and I learned about their local lore about trolls of course. My review for here today was also about a local legend, but this time it is from Japan. This is something I find fun in foreign films as it mixes things up some. Doesn't always mean it is a good movie, but at least I learned a little something by watching it. In A Slit-Mouthed Woman (2007), or Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, I learned about...well, the slit-mouthed woman.

Rumors are spreading pretty quickly with the children about the slit-mouthed woman. As the story goes, she will appear a child and ask if them if she is pretty. How to respond seems to vary though. As stories seem to grow, an earthquake happens, which seems to release something in one house. Soon after, children start to disappear. According to reports about these children, a woman that matches what the slit-mouthed woman looks like is reported at each scene. Once child, Mika (Rie Kuwana) is being abused by her mother when one of her teachers, Yamashita (Eriko Satô), tries talking to her about it, but it doesn't go well. Mika runs off, straight into the slit-mouthed woman (Mizuno Miki), who then takes off with Mika. Yamashita then teams up with Matsuzaki (Haruhiko Katô) who believes he knows who the slit-mouthed woman actually is. Will they be able to save the children, or is it too late for them?

The lore behind A Slit-Mouthed Woman actually goes back a long ways in Japanese history. Director/co-writer Kôji Shiraishi seems to drop the ball with this, and many other things. With a legend that goes back a long ways, I think I would have found a way to use that in my film. Shiraishi hints with a set of parents that it goes back a ways. The parents tell their kids that they talked about this woman even when they were in school. While it isn't said, it gave the impression that it goes back a long ways. Either way, this isn't the case at all. The woman in question becomes the legend only 30 years prior, which makes it a more recent legend. The plot itself has a lot to do with child abuse. In a way I support this. Just because it is a horror film doesn't mean the publicity it gets should be bad. Anything that gets a subject like child abuse into your mind is a good thing, as long as your not the abuser that is. That being said, I did think that A Slit-Mouthed Woman took it too far. Every major character in the film has been abused, is being abused, or is the abuser. It just felt like over kill.

Speaking of the abuse, some of it is shown in the film. The main person doing this was the slit-mouthed woman. There was a lot of things wrong that was around her character. When she appears, everyone seems completely helpless. There was plenty of times someone could have gotten away easy, or at least fought back, but they never really do. A hit or a kick, especially by the actress playing the slit-mouthed woman, didn't look hard at all, but the other actor would make it look like it was. She would barely move her foot and the person she "kicked" would act like a bone was broken. Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but you get the point.

A Slit-Mouthed Woman does manage to get gory here and there. With showing how the slit-mouthed woman got her name, to chopping off a head, the effects are pretty good. It was real gory, but it was a little more gory than I was expecting. The acting was just okay. I didn't really care for any one actor, but each did okay with their role. Outside of the lame hits and kicks anyway.

One of the cool things about this movie was that did go as far as killing off a kid. If you have read my reviews for very long, you know a movie gets major points for doing that. For A Slit-Mouthed Woman though, it was just too bad the rest of the movie didn't work. Another smaller problem with the plot is that we discover that the slit-mouthed woman takes over some other woman's body in order to do her work. So this made me wonder why there wasn't any women being reported as missing as well. A Slit-Mouthed Woman could have been a pretty good film, but it wasn't. To my surprise it still has a fairly good rating on both Netflix and IMDb. Neither has it listed as a great film, but I didn't find it to be an average film. To each their own I guess.
2 out of 5 Going after abused kids seems backwards to me

Trapped As A Spider In The Forest

2011-12-09T17:14:00.000-08:00

Does anyone have their Christmas shopping done yet? I haven't even started, not that I need to buy a lot anyway. Might buy some things for a few selected friends, but that is about it I think. Anyway, I followed up the last movie with another movie that was from South Korea. I wasn't very sure about Spider Forest (2004), just because it didn't really sound all that interesting to me. For one thing it was just shy of the two hour mark. Since it didn't sound all that interesting, I was afraid it would be a chore to get through. Just a normal 90 minute movie can be a chore to get through at times, let alone 112 minutes. Oddly enough, the Japanese cut is 120 minutes long. Maybe they got the uncut version or something.

Kang Min (Woo-seong Kam) wakes up in a forest and doesn't really know what is going on. He makes his way through and manages to find a house that is out in the woods. Inside the house he finds a very bloody man who has been stabbed many times. The man is dead now, so he explores further in and discovers a woman. He seems to know the woman, we find out later she is his girlfriend. She is still alive, but barely. She mumbles something about spiders before she passes away. Then Kang hears something in the house. He sees someone take off running out of the house, so he gives chase. This other person manages to lose Kang in the woods, and then manages to knock him out. When Kang comes to, he somehow manages to find a road, only to get hit by a passing car. He wakes up in the hospital not remembering much except for the above, and has the need to get back to Spider forest. With the help of his friend who is in the police department, will they be able to figure out what happened to Kang?

Writer/director Il-gon Song manages to weave a story that is often compared to those by David Lynch. Like a Lynch film, Spider Forest can be rather confusing at times. Basically the whole of Spider Forest is a flashback as Kang starts to put memories together about how he got to the forest before discovering the bodies. There are even flashbacks within the flashback as a story is told at times. While I feel I have the basics of what happened in this movie down, I still am a little confused over some of the plot. There is some nice lore that is dropped on the forest about how it got the name of Spider forest. There does seem to be a lot of spiders in this forest, which is probably why it got that name, but the lore is more fun. According to the lore, those that have died forgotten become a spider in the forest until someone remembers them. Kind of cool I thought, but the film never really does anything with it. The lore happens to be something Kang was researching so it comes part of the story. It does come into play towards the end at least, but felt it was too little too late.

There is much as far as special effects go for Spider Forest. About the only thing we get to see is blood flying around when we see the one guy killed. I thought the acting was fine, but what interested me more didn't have to do with the acting. Part of the reason why Spider Forest ends up being so long is because in gets into Kang's past a lot. It goes as far back as his wife being killed. Does it have anything to do with the story of the forest? Not really, but it was still nice to get background information for the lead character. One was where his wife realizes that she is dead after talking to Kang. It was a very good little story there. Some of the other actors you can find are Jung Suh, Kyeong-heon Kang, Hyeong-seong Jang and Byung-ho Son.

I was a little disappoint with Spider Forest. It is always hinting at something that could possibly be supernatural, but it never really crosses over into that. The only twist has to do with a ghost, but that was pretty easy to see coming. Spider Forest is more of a murder mystery than anything else. After watching it I was surprised that it found its way into the horror section. That isn't the reason for my low rating though. I didn't find Spider Forest to be a bad film, but I didn't really care for it that much. The story was okay, but was drawn out a bit too much. There is a story about the house in the woods that turns out to be false, so it made me wonder what the whole point of it even was. Some people say that Spider Forest is a movie you will either like or hate. I may not have hated it, but I didn't like it either.
2 out of 5 Not scared of spiders, but hate it when I find one on me that I didn't know about

Getting Revenge On Your Least Favorite Teacher

2011-12-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

I was going to finish up a review I started over at Top Horror Movies Club, but the site seems to be down for the moment. Not to big of a deal though. Not like I don't have a lot of reviews to catch up on here. I'm still exploring those pesky foreign films that people have to read. For a neighbor of mine, that is a big problem. They will keep a movie that I know they will like for months at a time, and claim they don't have the time to watch it, only to give it back to me unwatched. Sub titles and/or bad English dubs used to bother me some, but no longer. If they are real bad then sure, but I have learned to enjoy a movie even if I have to read my way through it. For today I have a review for the South Korean film To Sir With Love (2006), or as it is called on the DVD Bloody Reunion, which is actually a better title.

Mi-Ja (Yeong-hie Seo) is living with her formar teacher Miss Park (Mi-hee Oh). Mi-Ja has been taking care of Miss Park, whose health hasn't been very good of late. Miss Park knows this and wants to meet some of the other students one last time that were in Mi-Ja's class. Mi-Ja was able to contact six of these people, who are all now adults. As each arrives, they seem pretty happy to see Miss Park again. Eventually we learn that each one has a reason to hate Miss Park though. Like one was made to do squats so much one day that he hurt his knee playing soccer later in the day, which still hurts him to this day. Miss Park doesn't really seem to recall these mean things that she did to her students though. We also learn that Miss Park gave birth to a boy that was deformed. She kept him at home in the basement, and was often seen with a rabbit mask on. No one seems to know what happened to him though. When the former students start to die, who could be the one doing it? Is it the son? Is it the boy who was teased so bad one day that he quit school, and the watched him mother die the very same day?

At the start of To Sir With Love, we learn of the son right away. We also learn of the deaths of the students and that two people managed to survive, Mi-Ja and another woman. While a detective (Eung-soo Kim) questions Mi-Ja about what happened, we see the entire flashback. This goes on up until the last part of the movie, where a twist is thrown in. The twist was nice. It makes you rethink everything that happened in the flashback. Some people didn't like the flashback idea because if it was being told by the one person, why were other characters dreams included? In truth, the twist should answer that question for you. While I liked the twist, it did leave some open questions. Mostly it wasn't clear of the boy that Miss Park have birth to was real or not. I think he was, but not everyone agrees.Writer Se-yeol Park and director Dae-wung Lim manage to give the movie a good pace. While the slasher aspect of the film is pretty by the numbers, it does stay interesting at least. One thing I have to complain about though is there were scenes where the camera operator couldn't make up his mind if it was supposed to be a close up shot or not. One scene was every bad about this, with the camera zooming in and out constantly. It was very annoying.

To Sir With Love isn't a very gory film as far as effects go, but there was plenty of blood to go around. Some of the kills were also interesting. While it wasn't really a kill scene, it was fun watching ants going into one persons ear, and apparently causing the person a lot of pain. Another scene has to do with razor blades that I'm sure will make you wince. The acting also seemed to be pretty good. I didn't like them all, but I didn't feel I hated anyone for their acting. You can find Dong-kyu Lee, Ji-hyeon Lee, Hyo-jun Park, Hyeon-Soo Yeo and Seol-ah Yu.

There are a few things that can tip you off to what the big twist is. The start of the movie is part of the twist really. I also had to wonder if that Miss Park was so damn mean to everyone, why was it just these selected students, that have all came out of the same class, that wanted revenge? I was also a little confused by the last shot in the film. One of the characters isn't there, and I wasn't sure why. To Sir With Love isn't the best slasher film out there, but it was still a fun one. Looking back, I can't think of any teachers I would ever want to kill now, but I can see how some things teachers do can stick with someone for a long time. If you like you slasher films, this is one to check out someday.
3 out of 5 I want a rabbit mask now!

Possessing An Actress

2011-12-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

After taking a day off yesterday from writing, I thought I would get going again with some more reviews. If I have horror movies to be thankful for, I would say that it is because of them that I have given movies from outside my own country more of a chance. I never watched any until I started to really get into horror movies. Even though some themes have carried over into those movies, mainly slashers I think, it is still fun to watch them because I get to see places that I will likely never go to myself. Over at Top Horror Movies Club, I completed my review for Atrocious. I decided to carry over my foreign movie theme over to there as well. Check out that review when you can. Meanwhile, the next movie I watched for here was The Victim (2006), a movie out of Thailand.

Ting (Pitchanart Sakakorn) is an actress who is trying to get a start when she is hired by Lieutenant Te (Kiradej Ketakinta) after watching her explain the difference between laughs. Since the police are short on actors for reenactments, Le wants to give her a shot, and figures she can't be worse than what they already have. She does her first job so well, that the crowd watching beats up the accused. After doing several more, and us seeing ghosts of the victims at times, Ting hopes to get hired for the reenactment for the death of Meen (Apasiri Nitibhon). For whatever reason, Te decides to go with someone else, until Meen's ghost interferes. Meen was killed, but not by the man being accused of it. Will Meen help Ting find out who the real killer is?

I was really enjoying The Victim except for the sub titles. While I got what the sub titles were telling me, it was obvious that whoever did them wasn't a native English speaking person. It wasn't real bad, as I still understood, but got annoying at times. The odd thing about The Victim is that just as you are getting invested in the characters, and trying to decide what all the ghosts want with Ting, it drops the story line and completely shifts gears. At the mid way point, or pretty close to it anyway, there is a twist that makes the first half of the movie completely false, more or less. The actors remain the same, but their character names are changed. This causes one to relearn everything, and it is a little confusing at first. At 108 minutes, it also makes the movie longer than it needed to be.With the twist, it no longer becomes so much about why the lead actress is being haunted, but by who. I give director/co-writer Monthon Arayangkoon credit for making the actual ending an interesting one.

There are at least a little gory effects to be found. One of the things I didn't get though was when a person was killed by a ghost, we would see them all deformed and their skin looked grey. But when news of the death was passed around, it was wrote off as a heart attack or something natural. Unless that is how people in Thailand die all the time, I would think their death would raise some red flags even if it was a heart attack that ended up killing the person. The acting was pretty good, but no one became a favorite for me. Pitchanart Sakakorn does a good job with the lead role, but her hair threw me off for a while. She has short hair through the first half, and long hair after the twist. I wasn't sure if it was the same actress at first.

One of the cool things about The Victim is that it was filmed in reportedly haunted locations. During the credits they were showing stills from the movie and pointing out ghostly images. I have no idea if it was all for the movie, or if they were actual supposed ghosts. Either way, it was kind of cool to see. It was better than just watching the credits go by anyway. Even though I liked The Victim, I do feel it could have been much better. It was mainly because of the twist that I feel this way. I don't mind twists that makes rethink everything I just watched, but that wasn't the case with this twist. Instead of having to rethink everything, I had to relearn everything. Both stories ended up interesting, I do wish they had gone with one or the other instead of cramming both into one movie. Worth a watch but be ready for that twist!
3 out of 5 I know I hate it when a ghost tries to teach me dance

Never Go Into A Haunted Mine

2011-12-02T12:54:00.001-08:00

One of the reasons I haven't been writing much lately is because just after Thanksgiving I discovered that 17 movies were being removed from my Instant Watch Queue. At first I was going to try and get them all watched, but after two days of that, I gave up. I don't mind watching a bunch of movies in row sometimes, but not for four days straight. I did get a lot of them in though, and all but one of the 17 movies was a foreign movie. That is what gave me the idea of doing only foreign movies this month. My next movie up for review, which is already back up on Instant Watch, is a movie from Belgium/Netherlands called Slaughter Night (2006). The original Netherlands name for the movie was SL8N8. I know it looks kind of stupid, but it does actually play into the plot at one point.

Kristel (Victoria Koblenko) is out hitting the bars with her friends one night when her car decides it doesn't want to start. She calls her dad (Martijn Oversteegen), who comes to pick the girls up. After talking to the girls about college and such, dad learns that Kristel is planning on leaving school for a while in order to travel with her friends. This doesn't go over to well with him, and they argue about it after dropping off the friends. While the are doing this, a truck t-bones them. Kristel survives, but her dad does not. Kristel learns after the funeral that her father had some personal things in Belgium that needed to be collected. Her dad was writing a book about Andries Martiens, a man said to have murdered seven children in 1857. As legend has it, he was found guilty and was given a choice. He could either be killed, or he could go into the mines. Back then in the mines, there wasn't a good way to explode the gas build up, so they would send convicts down there to do it by hand. They were wrapped in wet cloth and if they managed to survive, they would be set free. Martiens didn't survive but his ghost is said to still be in the mines. Kristel heads there with her friends, and is talked into taking a tour of the mines. They discover that there is some truth to legends.

As you have probably guessed, Slaughter Night is a combination of slasher and ghost story. The ghost story part of the plot, while important, gives way to it being a slasher flick.What attracted me to this movie was that it was set in a mine. It doesn't hold a candle to My Bloody Valentine, but it still wasn't half bad. Some of the kills was well done and the killer does actually look pretty cool when wrapped in wet cloth. Slaughter Night also has a pretty cool plot to it, with an interesting back story in Andries Martiens. Once the story moves into the mines, it does start to fall apart some and throws it into average movie turf. Part of the problem was the mine itself. It was hard to tell where everyone in the mine was in relation to each other. At one point the killer seems to get around very quickly, a little too quick in fact. Most of the movie takes place at night, which doesn't matter in the mine, but explains why they get stuck down in it. I just bring this up because it was hard to figure out how much time had passed. There are a lot of fade outs to black, so I was never sure if writers/directors Frank van Geloven and Edwin Visser were just fans of that or if it was supposed to show the passing of time. An annoying thing that happens is the elevator is shut down because it is closing time, which is why the group gets stuck in the mine, but then later on it suddenly works again even though no one turns it back on.

Slaughter Night will never rank up there as one of the most gory films, but it does have some nice moments. There are plenty of heads to be found and what was nice about them was they actually look real. There was also a nice effect when a shovel meets up with one persons mouth. I know this has been done before, but it was still a well done effect. The acting seemed to be just okay to me. I wasn't really all the impressed with anyone, and the characters could be pretty stupid at times, which did lead to laugh here and there.

Something that confused me some about Slaughter Night was that I was never sure what the killer was trying to do. You see, there was a reason for the killing of kids. He had a reason behind it. I will let you watch the movie in order to find out what that reason was though. Now in present day, I wasn't real sure why he was killing again. If what he was doing didn't require the death of children, why did he kill them then? If it did require that, then why was he killing college age people this time around? Was he trying to complete what he didn't finish back in 1857, or was there a different reason this time around? The plot itself can't seem to make up its mind on how to answer those questions.

Even though I would suggest giving this one a watch at some point, I couldn't get passed the problems I had with it. I found it fun and it managed to entertain me, so that is always a good thing. Since it is back on Instant Watch, I only know this because it shows it as my last movie watched when it didn't just yesterday, that makes it an easy way for some of you to give Slaughter Night a watch. If you don't mind sub titled films, give it a try.
3 out of 5 Wondering how the killer got into the wet cloth suit so quickly

Silly Reality Shows Gone Wrong

2011-12-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

It is days after Thanksgiving, and I still feel stuffed! I wasn't really looking forward to Thanksgiving, or Christmas too much, so I decide to spend it with some friends. Not really the same, but it will do. Better than spending it alone I suppose. Anyway, I haven't been in too much of a writing mood this week, but I hope to change that over this weekend. I'm playing catch up still, and now that back log list has grown longer. I took the time to watch a new movie, Wake Wood, and have been writing about it over the last couple of days. Check it out when you get the chance! Meanwhile, another movie that I watched a while back was Safety In Numbers (2006). It will help me kick off a theme for this month, foreign movies. I don't care which country it is from, as long as it isn't from my own. Safety In Numbers comes from Australia.

Six contestants from a reality show, think Survivor, have been invited back to the island where the game took place. Basically lead by Sarah (Tory Mussett), they arrive at the island by Nigel's (Henry Nixon) boat. Nigel was the big winner of the show, and seems to like to flaunt his money some. They head to the shack, and right away find written in red on the wall that isn't very nice. They settle in and spend the night. When they get up in the morning, they discover that the boat is gone. Not sure what is going on, they split to go look for it, only to start getting picked off one by one. Who could be doing it though? Is it just someone who happens to be living there now? Or could it be the guy who was humiliated before being voted off the game show?

Safety In Numbers has the right idea behind it, but it doesn't do a very good job of following through with it. Writer/director David Douglas has a good setting and plot, but where he goes with it could have been a lot better. We learn of the guy who was humiliated fairly early in the movie, and he keeps coming up. It seems very obvious who the killer is because of that. I was hoping they would throw someone else in, either to make us think someone else was actually the killer or having it turn out to be someone else. That wasn't the case though. You would think that Douglas would have waited until later to start throwing hints out. There was a point where they try to fool us, but I just wasn't buying it. Even though the characters in this movie were on a game show that required survival skills, you would never have guessed that by the way they act sometimes. One person falls off a possible cliff, but no one goes to see if he is okay. People go in search of their boat, find it but don't try to get it. Instead, they leave to go tell the others and act surprised when it isn't there once they return. Lets not forget that even though this is a slasher movie, all the kills happen off camera.

Since all kills take place off camera, you can probably guess that there aren't many effects to be found. We do get some blood, but it wasn't anything to write home about. The acting was at least somewhat good. I enjoyed the different characters. I liked Tory Mussett the best out of the group and I'm glad she got the lead role. The story tends to focus on her more than anyone, which made me wonder why they didn't make her the winner of the game show. In a way I get it. Rarely does the person I like the most ever win! It can be frustrating sometimes. Even though I know of the show Survivor, I have never watched it. If it was a horror show like this one though, maybe I would.

One good thing I can say is that I like the poster art. It is simple, but stands out because of that I think. Safety In Numbers, which they never really stick together, was a film I wasn't sure which way I would go. Some movies like this get a little better towards the end, but this one tended to get worse. Since all the kills happen off camera, and it was rather easy to figure out who was next, there just wasn't any suspense to what was happening. The end doesn't help matters at all, and has left everyone (and I mean everyone) wondering what the hell the ending was supposed to even mean or happen. I suppose there could have been an explanation, like a storm, but it just there with no explaining it at all. Since I don't think there is enough for a sequel, we will likely never know unless Douglas bothers to explain it.

If you haven't watched Safety In Numbers, and I know some of my readers have already, then I can't really suggest giving it a shot. The ground work was there, but it just doesn't ever get going with it. If you happen to catch it on TV somewhere, maybe it would be worth the time to watch then. Just be ready for one of the possibly worse endings out there.
2 out of 5 Snakes show up at the worse times

Deers Sort Of Getting Their Revenge

2011-11-19T11:00:00.000-08:00

For the first time in almost half a year, I have reached double digits! I admit that I wasn't so sure I would when this month began. I think what helped me get back into the mood was that I had so many movies to watch lately. With the Instant Watch stuff ending, which I am still writing about now, and then watching all those movies at the convention as well. Not all of these movies have been all that exciting to write about, but I at least feel the desire to write about movies and such again. Being off all week has helped too. I don't feel so pressed for time. The next movie I watched a while back was called The Hunt (2006). If you look closely at the movie poster for this one, you will probably get the general idea of what is doing the hunting.

Jack (Joe Michael Burke) has an idea about making hunting videos. He believes that what is out there for hunting videos doesn't cover how to hunt with a bow very well. So he teams up with his friend Atticus (Robert Rusler), who was once a camera man for a news station. Because of that, Jack feels that Atticus has an eye for detail. Jack is also using this as a way to bond with his stepson Clint (Mitchell Burns). After getting some funding from his father-in-law (Cliff De Young), they set out to hunt down a deer.When they first get to the area they will be hunting in, they are warned off by some guy. Since they paid to hunt on the land, they head in anyway. After tracking and wounding a deer, they follow it to a fenced in area. Having not found another deer all day, and wanting to get all their footage, they go into the fenced in area and become the hunted. Days later a search party is sent in to find them. What happened that caused them to disappear?

The Hunt is a low budget film by co-writer/director Fritz Kiersch. I found it a little confusing at first because there are two stories going on. There is the story about Jack and Atticus, and there is the story of Jon (the father-in-law) trying to find out what happened. There is a constant back and forth between the two stories. Dates are provided, and the time of day is always given. This does help a little so we know which story is being followed, but I found the constant time showing up to be annoying. It doesn't help move the plot along at all so why bother? In a way the second story serves a purpose by cutting back to it. Before we get to know the characters, we find out that something happens to them that causes them to disappear. We find out that the government has shut down the search, but why? There is also a scene where someone is found, but Kiersch is smart enough not to reveal who until after the main story gets to that point. So in a way, despite the annoying back and forth, it does serve a purpose of helping to build suspense.

There isn't really anything for effects as far as gore goes, but the things that do the killing are interesting looking to some degree. Even though it is probably obvious what the things are, I'm still trying to spoil the twist. The things look cool, but the use of CGI to make them appear to move super fast. The acting wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. While all the main actors could have been a little better at times, I still didn't have any major complaints about anyone. I especially liked Joe Michael Burke. I liked his acting even more so when he was being host for the video they were making. He should consider doing that for real.

If you don't know the directors name, he also directed that 1984 version of Children Of The Corn. I didn't know it at the time but I found it pretty cool. I haven't watched anything else that he has directed so far though. For me it was his first directors job, and his last...so far anyway. Anyway, I was starting to wonder if anything exciting was going to happen in The Hunt. Hunting animals isn't exciting for me, but the second story about the search for them did keep it interesting a little bit at least. I still think the two stories could have been handled a little better to make it less confusing. Even so, The Hunt wasn't an all that bad of a movie. Not a great film, and I'm sure many will find it to be too slow. If it does sound interesting to you though, give it a watch someday.
3 out of 5 Would have been more fun if the twist was deers getting their revenge

Cursed To Eat

2011-11-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

As I work ahead some, I'm not writing the reviews so much as I am just making a few notes. I decided to do this so I wouldn't forget things I wanted to talk about in each of these reviews. Six movies is a lot to remember for, plus watching other movies as well as doing those reviews. If I had known with more advance that I would have a bunch of movies to watch as I neared my 900th post, I would have gone with a different favorite, and not one in a series. Of course I didn't have to watch the entire series, but I said I was going to do a series review, so that is what I did. Ah well, not a big deal really. Just means I have a lot of writing ahead of me. Good for my blog since the numbers are real low anyway. This is a review for the 2006 film Trespassers.

Tyler (Brendan McIvor Fleming) has found a great surfing spot. Him and his friends have the beach and surf all to themselves with no locals around. He calls up his brother Colin (Kaiwi Lyman) to tell him to get down to Mexico to join up with him. Colin then invites his friends Lucky (Alex Feldman) and Javier (Jon Ada). He also invites his girlfriend Ashley (Michelle Borth) and her friend Rose (Joleigh Fioravanti). After some minor adventures with the drive there, they make it to the beach that Tyler told them about. They found some dirt bikes, but they can't find Tyler or any of his friends. Thinking they all took off to a nearby town, they decide to start enjoying the water. That is until Lucky goes off on his own and finds the camp that Tyler and friends made. What is found there changes everything.

Trespassers is a low budget film by co-writer/director Ian McCrudden. Things start off a little slow since the movie doesn't get right to things on the beach. This period, and even the period before things start to go wrong, was kind of fun though. There was some funny moments, and a touch of nudity to throw in as well. We know from the start of the film that something bad happened to Tyler and friends, but we don't know what for sure. It was easy to see that Trespassers is a low budget film for a couple of reasons. One was the complete absence of effects. Sure there is a little blood, but when someone is being attacked, there is nothing there to be seen. To hide the fact that no effects are being used during the attack scenes, we get a camera that moves around a lot. This hides things, but it very hard to figure out what is going on at times and the close ups don't always help either. This doesn't really take away from Trespassers, but it doesn't really help either. I watched this through Netflix, but there are plenty of people complaining that the box makes this movie sound like a zombie movie. There are quotes comparing it to other zombie movies apparently. This is not a zombie movie. I don't want to give away too much, but will say it all has to do with a curse.

There is a scene where we get to see some dead bodies, but even that wasn't a great effect. These weren't bad effects, just nothing that stands out. The acting was much the same way. I didn't have much of a problem with any of the leads, but no one really stood out to me. Kaiwi Lyman felt a bit on the flat side, and he is one of the people we have to deal with the longest.

Another thing that annoyed me some is when Colin and Ashley are running around trying to hide, they find time to have sex. Then again, it was funny when they get caught and have to defend themselves on the fly. Despite the problems, I did enjoy this one. The back story for the reason behind what is happening was a little different and interesting. It also didn't end the way I figured it would, which was really a good thing. I just had this feeling it was going to end in a certain cliche way, and was happy when it didn't happen that way. Not that the ending was great, but I was still happy with it. Trespassers isn't a great film by any means, but if you are willing to give this movie a shot, I think most will find it to be an okay film. It kept me interested in what was going on, which is a lot more than I can say for other films.
3 out of 5 No plans for me to visit Mexico, curse or not

There Really Are Phantoms

2011-11-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

As I write this, I am working a bit ahead. I haven't started the series reviews for Phantasm yet, which will be up before this one. I discovered that a bunch of movies I have in my Instant Watch queue will be taken out soon. Six movies and five days to watch them all in. I know I don't have to watch them all, but I will get to them quicker this way than I will by moving them to my DVD queue. I may not get them all wrote up before I get them all watched, but I figure I will try and get some of them done. First up is a movie I added way back when I did a rare guest review for And Now The Screaming Starts. I wasn't sure which movie I was going to review there, but I had it down to two movies. The Phantom Of The Opera (1925) was the movie I didn't go with at that time.

In an opera house in Paris, the owners are selling the opera house to a pair of new owners. As they ink the deal, they are warned about the phantom that haunts the opera house. Laughing it off at first, they are told that he stays in a certain balcony. When they investigate that balcony, there is someone there. A lady that works there says all she knows about the man is that his name is Eric. He watches each performance, and seems to like one woman more than the others. Before the opera of Faust, the lead singer Carlotta (Virginia Pearson (1925) or Mary Fabian (1929)) gets a note warning her to give up the role or something bad will happen to her. In her place will be Christine Daae (Mary Philbin), an unknown, but the favorite of the phantom. Eric (Lon Chaney) has plans for Christine, but what could they be?

I admit that I haven't watched very many movies out of the silent film era. If my memory is correct, this is only the fourth such film that I have watched. I'm not a big fan of the movies to be honest. It isn't because they are silent films, or because they are in black and white (for the most part). It is mainly because so little is told in text that I feel like I am missing something important. Of course if it was important, they would put it up one the screen for us I suppose. Still, I see people talking and wonder what is being said. I get why people like this version of The Phantom Of The Opera. There are actually a lot of versions of this movie out there, and I don't mean ones that came after. There seems to be a few different run times for this movie, sometimes depending on the country. From what I was reading in the trivia though, when The Phantom Of The Opera was re-released in 1929, parts of the movie was changed. Either it was edited differently, or parts was completely reshot. Even though Netflix lists it as 1925, I still had to wonder which version I was watching.

If the silent movie era has impressed me with anything, it is the fantastic sets that they used. It is something we just don't see much in today's horror films. I noticed that The Phantom Of The Opera was heavy in atmosphere, which was probably the best thing about this movie for me. I didn't care much about the story itself though. I sure didn't get why Christine was in love with Eric, considering she had never seen him. I guess it would be like the internet today, but having a guy hide behind a wall while telling me things is a bit creepy to me and not romantic. I also didn't get the boyfriend. Raoul seems more worried about his own appearance than anything else.

There are stories of women fainting during the unmasking scene. It reminded me of the stories of The Exorcist actually. Lon Chaney's makeup, which he designed and did himself, is truly remarkable. I have never watched The Phantom Of The Opera up until now, but the clip of the unmasking has been used many of times, so it lost its impact for me. I think the makeup for Eric would still hold up today. Something that surprised me a lot was that some scenes had a touch of color to them. It was a bit confusing when color started to show up, since I thought this was just a black and white movie. I was trying to figure out if this was part of the movie or added in later. As it turns out, some color was used.

Something that annoyed me was the mob towards the end. I know not all horror movies ended this way back in the day, but it sure seems like a lot of them did. I don't know...I see why The Phantom Of The Opera has managed to be popular even today, but at the same time I wasn't really feeling it. I'm sure it will always be considered a classic, but for me it was just an okay film. I think it has more to do with always hearing about it since I have become a big fan of the horror genre. It is why I have avoided some of the classics. They get so hyped up that they can't be as good as you believe once you do get around to it.
3 out of 5 Be leery of people that you never met that claim they love you

Exposing Movies From The Philippines

2011-11-14T11:42:00.001-08:00

In between the two movies that was screen Sunday, there was the Friday The 13th Part VI panel which featured writer/director Tom McLoughlin, Thom Mathews, David Kagen and NancyMcLoughlin. It was the only panel that I went to over the weekend. It was an interesting panel, with some fun stories about the movie. I don't usually go to the panels just because I usually have a hard time hearing what the people on the stage are saying at times. I was close enough this time I could hear everyone fine even without a mic. I stuck around after for the last film of the weekend: Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010). It got a late start because we were waiting around for Sid Haig to come in for an introduction. I think many of us thought this was a film like all the others shown, but it is actually a documentary.

Machete Maidens Unleashed is about the film industry that took off in the late 1960s through the early 1980s over in the Philippines. Prior to the late 1960s, the Philippines was churning out movies, but none of them were given an international release. But that all changed, and quickly. With cheap labor and some beautiful land to film on, directors flocked there to make movies. With a few exceptions, they were never big budget films, but they were a hit with drive-in theaters. Machete Maidens Unleashed is the story about this boom as told by the people that made the movies.

As much as I love watching low budget films, I can't say that I have watched all that many films that have come out of the Philippines. While Sid was introducing the movie to us, I noticed a couple of people get up and leave, and a few more left after the movie had been on a while. Even though I wasn't all that interested in the subject of the documentary, and I was ready to start heading back home, I still stuck through it. I figured I had watched all the other screenings, why skip out on the last one? Machete Maidens Unleashed mostly puts its spotlight on Roger Corman. It highlights films that Corman produced during this time. There are all kinds of interview clips from Corman as well. He isn't the only one though. There are also clips from Joe Dante, John Landis, R. Lee Ermey, Pam Greer and of course Sid Haig. There are many, many others that give interview clips as well.

One of the interesting things to come out of this documentary was that the woman involved in the movies felt that they were doing something important with them. Even though a big chunk of the movies showed women having bad things done to them, the women playing the parts still felt that they were important roles because they always came out on top despite of things. As they pointed out, women didn't get the lead roles in action films back then, except for these movies. I found Machete Maidens Unleashed more interesting when it got to this section of interview clips.

There is some interview clips from native directors, but really they aren't highlighted much. Since I don't know the history of these films at all, I don't know if it was because director Mark Hartley is just in love with Roger Corman, or if those films just didn't have the same impact. Still, it gives an decent over view of the films that were being made through this time period in the Philippines. It was also interesting to hear about the stunt work, and how dangerous it could be for the stunt people. Sid Haig pointed out before the movie that while he was working on The Big Bird Cage, extras were being paid $1 a day. He said most of them didn't care, they just wanted to be in a movie.

Machete Maidens Unleashed is an okay documentary. Sometimes it jumps around the movies being talked about that it is hard to keep track. I thought they were talking about one movie, only to discover they had moved on to some other movie. There are plenty of clips from movies they talk about, but not having watched any of them, they were somewhat pointless to me. The interviews were fun, and a lot of the things said was getting people to laugh at times. Horror movies that were done, which didn't seem to be many, are touched on, but not talked about for very long. Unless you are really into these films, or are interested in learning more about them, then I can't suggest going out of your way to find this one.
3 out of 5 Thinking they could have found a better title

Puppets Attack!

2011-11-14T04:45:00.001-08:00

I'm getting close to be done with the reviews from the screenings this last weekend. I posted a review over at Top Horror Movies Club for the movie Chillerama, which turned out to be my favorite of all the screenings. Check it out when you get the chance. After the second screening Saturday, I went out and got the autograph I told Dawn I would get, plus I checked out the line for Anthony Michael Hall. It was real short so I got in line for him. He is a super nice guy. I also got an autograph from Alex Winter, who is also very nice. I loved him in the movie Freaked. I didn't have much to do Sunday, but there was two screenings to go to. The first one was called The Puppet Monster Massacre (2010). Writer/director Dustin Mills was there to talk about his movie.

Charlie (Ethan Holey) gets a letter one day offering him a million dollars if he can spend the night in a house that is supposed to be haunted. Unknown to him, but he quickly finds out, others have also been given the letter. There is Gwen (Jessica Daniels), who Charlie likes but is too afraid to tell her. Raimi (Dustin Mills), a film geek who is always trying to hit on the women. Iggy (Bart Flynn), a punk rocker, and his girlfriend Mona (Erica Kisseberth), who wasn't invited but shows up anyway. They all head to Wolfgang Wagner's (Steve Rimpici) house, who is an Nazi scientist who has engineered a monster. In needs something besides bunny's to eat though, so Wagner has gathered together the lowest life form known to man: teenagers.

The Puppet Monster Massacre was done using, if you haven't guessed yet, puppets. Dustin Mills said that he made the film for about $3,000, with his mom making all the puppets. This was his first film, and he has hopeful plans on a sequel that will be bigger. Mills also said that he grew up watching things like the Muppets, so wanted to do something in that vein. I admit that it took some getting used to, see puppets in a horror movie. Despite the puppets though, The Puppet Monster Massacre is not for kids. There is plenty of jokes about sex and even some puppet nudity, along with a real woman shown on TV. The backgrounds looked like they were done with CGI, or possibly paintings for some shots. I have read some reviews that complained about the backgrounds, but I liked them. To me they gave the puppets their own little world, and helped set the mood of the movie. The only complaint I found about the backgrounds is that when they were the main focus and the camera was moving across them, it would look choppy. It wasn't real bad, but noticeable. The story itself was fun, and I liked the characters. Raimi was probably my favorite, getting scared by any little thing.

Another review talked about how he would have liked to seen stuffing come flying out when something bad happened to one of the puppets. While this would have gone better with some of the jokes made in the film, there was something about seeing blood squirting out that appealed to me. The voice over work was well done, but there was times I thought the lines came a little too rushed.Someone would be talking and change the subject all in one breath it seemed like.

Even though the run time is only 70 minutes, The Puppet Monster Massacre was starting to wear thin towards the end of the movie. Some of the jokes were starting to run on a little too long and getting old. Still though, I enjoyed it. For the budget that was put in, Dustin Mills does a great job with it. As Mills pointed out, it is a movie to laugh at and poke fun at. Worth checking out if you can find it out there. Oh, if Dustin Mills's mom should happen to read this, great job on the puppets!
3 out of 5 I wonder if I would make a cute puppet

Exploding Women In Argentina

2011-11-13T04:41:00.001-08:00

After exploring the convention some yesterday, I got in line for Kane Hodder. I promised Dawn, a friend I have made over at Top Horror Movies Club, that I would get his autograph for her. The line was actually short, so I thought I would have time to get it before the Cold Sweat (2010) screening began. There was a woman in front of me that was next, but someone was taking forever to get their things signed. Hodder had a photo op around the same time as the screening, so he was taken away for that before it was our turn. I gave up my place in line so I could get back to the screening. Don't worry though Dawn, I went back after the screening and was able to just walk right up to him. I went by a few minutes after that and there was another long line for him. Funny how things work out at times.

Sometime in the 1970's there was a political uprising in Argentina. A group known as Triple A came across 25 crates of TNT after a raid. When the political status changed, the headquarters of Triple A was raided, but the cases of TNT was never found. Now in present day we meet Román (Facundo Espinosa) and his friend Ali (Marina Glezer). Román can't find his girlfriend. She has left him for a guy that she has met on the internet. Thanks to his friend Ali, who has been talking to the same guy, they have traced the emails back to this guy's house. As they sit there, Román gets an email from his girlfriend basically telling him to forget about her. The email sent is the same IP address as the guy she went to meet up with, so Ali believes she is in the same house. Ali gets the invite to go into the house, so she does. After a long time, Román starts to get worried and sees an old man trying to cross the street. He decides to help the guy, who then goes into the house that Ali went into. Now that he really worried, he finds a way into the house and finds Ali has been tied up and along with some other woman. This other woman is being asked by the old guy if she knows what the meaning is of something that has been written down on a chalk board. After she stalls for a long time, the old man tells his partner to lower the woman, and when she hits her head on a board, her head explodes. What is going on in this house?

Sadly that question is never answered. Unlike the other movies I had been watching this weekend, Cold Sweat, Sudor frío is the original title, puts you right into the mix of things early in the movie. The two old men that are doing things to women were apparently part of the group that was called Triple A. It was never said, as far as I know, but Ali comes to believe that. The cases of TNT that was never found shows up in the house. We see a couple of flash backs where the two guys, who are younger now of course, are buying the house and getting ready for a project. The project is never really explained though. What we do know is that this pair of old men manage to lure women to their home using some blond guy. The guy barely moves, but is alive, so I don't see how women would not think something is wrong. Once there, the old men put nitroglycerin on the women that they got from the TNT. Since this is unstable stuff, they can't move around to well so that makes escape something they can only wish for. Then they are asked about what is on the board. Ali believes it says "kiss me if you can read this", which pleases the old guy. Don't know if that is what it actually says though. He then goes on a rant about how women today only use on average of 200 words, when there is over 150,000 Spanish words out there. So what is the film trying to say? That these guys are psycho Spanish teachers?

Things only get worse when Ali goes to escape, but instead of doing so, explores the house. It amazed me that they could get around the house so well without ever being noticed. Once the girlfriend is found, alive at that, she is supposed to be covered in nitroglycerin. I guess that is where they get the title from because it looks like sweat in a way. Since her backside is supposed to be dry, she crawls around on her back a lot, but very slowly. There are all kinds of moments where people have to move very slowly. When an explosion does happen, it happens in slow motion. It would seem that writer/director Adrián García Bogliano is a fan of moving slowly. I get that this was supposed to add some tension. You don't want these people to explode or get burned by acid from the bottles that are placed on them sometimes, but it happens so often that it just becomes very boring after a while.

The effects were okay. It wasn't that they were badly done, just that there wasn't much of anything for effects. For having a few explosions, which sometimes includes people, we never really get to see much of anything. There was a bloody stump where the head used to be, but that was about it. The acting was also okay. There wasn't anyone that stood out, but I think that just had to do with the odd plot more than anything else. I was trying to figure out what the hell this movie was about instead of paying close attention to the acting. The old guys were fun at times because of their bickering back and forth, but that was about it.

Just to make Cold Sweat all the more odd, there are women being held in various stages of nakedness down in the basement. I have no idea why they were being kept. They weren't zombies of course, but they sure acted like them. Sometimes the sub titles would disappear before I had the chance to read the whole thing, so I don't know if I might have missed something, or if the movie itself was just poorly explained. Either way, I don't feel I was the only person that didn't care for Cold Sweat. I know the guy that was sitting in front of me was getting frustrated because no one would ever go on the attack against the old guys. The only part I did like was when Ali makes it out of the house, at long long last, and runs into the neighbors house asking to call the police. As soon as she says this we see that the neighbors were just getting ready to do some drugs. Unless you are a big fan of horror movies from Argentina for some reason, then I think it is safe to say that this one can be passed on.
2 out of 5 Be sure to move like the mighty turtle!

Making A Human Killing Machine

2011-11-12T17:25:00.001-08:00

This post will serve a double purpose. Even though I still haven't set up my giveaway that I had planned on after my last convention, I'm going to giveaway what I picked up today! The first movie that screened today was a movie called D4 (2010). After the screening I had some time to walk around before the next movie. I discovered that I still hate conventions held in hotels the size of HorrorHound. Thanks to a badly placed bar by the hotel, the hallway was nearly impossible to get through, as well as the vendor room. My mission at the time was to find the booth that was set up for the movie. I got myself a copy, and then later I got another copy to giveaway. This is a DVD of the movie D4 that has been signed by writer/director/actor Darrin Dickerson. The review is below, so if it sounds like something you would like to have, just send me an email. If you don't know it, it is listed in my profile for here. Please put D4 in the subject line. I will randomly choose the lucky winner.

The story unfolds in two parts. A very rich woman has had her son taken by the government. She believes he is being held in a top secret location. The place, known as D4, isn't completely unknown though. Some people believe that the place is holding Bigfoots there and breading them for their on purpose. The woman's son has been in trouble with the law because of his drug use, but she doesn't understand why the government would take him. She is worried about him because he is epileptic and doesn't have his meds. She hires retired operative Sloan (Eric Berner) to put a team together and go in to get her son. At the same time this is going on, we also meet Old Man Dalton (Ted LeGarde). His young grandson is also epileptic. After talking to a doctor, he is given some meds to give his grandson, but when they make him very violent. The doctor then tells him that they will take his grandson in order to treat him with a new drug. When Dalton goes to visit his grandson days later though, no one at the office knows what he is talking about. The day he claims to have met the doctor was a day that the office was supposed to be closed, and the doctor doesn't look like the one he met with. Dalton is then tipped that his grandson has been taken to D4, so he heads that way as well. The two stories converge into one as they discover what is going on there.

Like all other movies screened so far, D4 is a low budget film. Shot on a $35,000 budget, the script was written and the movie filmed all within a year. It took another two years before Dickerson got the movie to the point where he wanted it to be. How do I know all this? Dickerson was there with us all and did a quick Q&A after the screening. The story was partly based on his own experience dealing with his own epileptic son and his violent moods when taking drugs to help his condition.

If I can say one thing about D4, it is that it takes its sweet time setting up the story. This isn't a bad thing really though. Things start off with three stories being told. There is the lady trying to hire a merc team, the grandfather trying to do what is best for his grandson, and the mercs coming together and being told what their mission is going to be. It was all pretty easy to follow despite the jumping around of story lines. Something that surprised me was that I was expecting an all out action flick, something in the sci-fi vain. Maybe aliens or something like that based partly on the poster that was hanging outside the screening room. While there is some action sequences, it wasn't the all out action I was expecting. I thought something that kept the movie interesting was the music. There was some nice music that really helped set the mood in this one.

All effects were done by CGI. I could have done without them, but they aren't all the distracting, even if they do stand out somewhat. The effects are limited to gun shots and blood splatter, along with some CGIed sparks. The acting was better. I didn't have anyone that really impressed me, so the acting wasn't great, but it does the job just fine. You can find Clay Broker, Jeff Hime, Jaimee Gray Simon and Mike Ulm. The last name listed is the big guy at the top of the poster.

Dickerson said in the Q&A that he filmed the outside shots in D4 in what he called his parents backyard. The building that the mercs find towards the end of the movie was actually a church that was torn down a few months after filming. I have a hard time calling D4 a horror movie, even if it is making the rounds at horror conventions. I was glad that story came before action. I was happy that the beast they go up against is human. In a way I do wish that the story had set up a bit faster. I wasn't bored, but I was starting to wonder when it would move on from the set up stage. Even though I didn't fall in love with D4, it was well worth the watch. I wouldn't have picked it up otherwise.
3 out of 5 Those are some big muscles!

Finding Death Down The Road

2011-11-12T05:14:00.001-08:00

As I sit here eating breakfast, I thought I would try and knock out the review for the other film I watched yesterday. Down The Road (2011) had a posted time of 8pm. So I showed up a little early, towards the end of a panel, and moved up once most people started to leave. The guys doing the hosting all left without a word, but there was a few minutes left yet. I sat there and waited, along with others. We were first told a few minutes, the later on told 20 minutes. Actually it didn't start until a couple of minutes after 9pm. If I had known that, I would have explored the rest of the convention some before returning. Still, a lot of people did show up for the screening, which surprised me.

The film opens in the year 2002. We see a party going on, along with a lot of drinking. The next day we see a young girl playing hopscotch in the street, while her dad looks on. We then see her get hit by a car that has drunk teenagers in it. The 12 year old girl is killed but the driver doesn't get much out of it for punishment. In the present day, we meet Jenn (Jen Dance) who has just gotten out of the hospital. Her parents want her to get out with some friends, which she decides to do eventually. Her group of friends pick her up and they all go camping. After they set up camp, one of them starts to tell a story about the girl that was killed. He says that since that time, people who come into the woods to party are never seen alive again. Of course they laugh the story off, but sometimes stories have a way of being true.

Down The Road is another movie in which the film makers were there. We were told that this was the first time the film has been screened, and then writer/director Jason Christopher, the producer, props guy, and Chelsey Garner (who plays Michele) came up on stage to talk about the film a little bit. Christopher tells us that he wrote the script when he was 17, filmed it when he was 22, and is now 23. His dad passed away when he was a young kid, so he dedicated the film to him. After the film they came back up to do a q&a with everyone. As someone else suggested, don't do a lot of drinking before showing off your film. I understand that they were all nervous, but it just gives the wrong impression. Chelsey Garner was the only one not drinking which gave the impression that she is as classy as she looks. After getting a half hearted response if everyone liked their film or not, the props guy goes into a little rant about how the film was only made for $40,000, so we should keep that in mind (that was the short end of what he said by the way). Having reviewed more than my share of low budget movies, I have learned not to care how much the movie was made for, but to look at the film like any other film.

Much like the movie before it, The Sleeper, Down The Road was being called a retro slasher flick. Maybe it was, but unlike the last film, this one didn't really remind of any of the films that came before it. I'm not saying that as a bad thing though. Sure the plot of people going into an area to party and have a good time, being warned off by a local and ignoring said warning only to be killed off like promised, has been done plenty of times before. What sets Down The Road apart from most other slashers though is that the killer has a purpose. Not all have a purpose of course, and those films that don't give a reason for the killing are usually just fine by me. It wasn't clear right away if it was the father going around killing, but once we see him talking about it, we know for sure. The film itself was a little on the slow side at first, but not real bad. The only thing that bugged me was that they made a point to show that Jenn was taking pills, assuming for whatever reason she was in the hospital for. They also make the point of showing that she loses them while running for her life. It turns out to be a moot point though. She never seems to act differently. She does start to ramble a lot at times, but I just assumed that had to do with her being scared, and not because she lost her pills.

The effects were pretty good. Nothing major was done, but they all still look good. At times it was hard to tell what was going on because of all the camera movement. Like I didn't even realize that one person had been hit until they showed him on the ground later on. I know where in the film he was hit, but because of the camera movement, I just didn't make that connection. The acting was also well done. Brian Gallagher does a great job playing the father that lost his daughter. He really gets across the pain that he feels, and the revenge that he wants. Another stand out was the guy that was the odd man out of the group. I believe he was played by Chris Ready. If I am wrong, I do apologize in advance. It was getting late and I had a long day, so the character name has slipped my mind. All the other actors did just fine as well. You can also find Shaun Paul Costello, David J. Bonner, Nikki Bell and Matthew Nadu.

I wasn't blown away by Down The Road, but I was pleased with it. The weapons used to kill may not have been the best choice, a sledge hammer was used most often, but it was different at least. I thought some things could have been done a little differently in order to avoid confusion, but overall it wasn't too bad of a movie. I did find it ironic that this was a movie about drunk driving, in a way, and then the film makers show up drunk, or at least well on their way. But that doesn't change my view of their film. Christopher did mention that if Down The Road does well on DVD, he would like to make a sequel. He has more of the story to tell apparently. The way this one ends, it could have a sequel if they wanted to make one. Worth checking out sometime once it is out there.
3 out of 5 Should have asked Garner how she liked getting her leg sawed into

ZZZ

2011-11-11T20:41:00.001-08:00

Hello from Ohio. First day over at HorrorHound Weekend is over now. I have yet to see most of it. I spent all day either in the film room, or not at the convention at all. I got there a couple of hours early, mostly because I had no idea what the parking would be like. It is a pain in the ass to find a parking space at the hotel in Indianapolis, but it isn't a problem at all here. I didn't want an early in pass, since it is like $10 more for just two days of the three. The first movie started at 5pm, which was when I could get into the convention rooms. This was the movie The Sleeper (2011). After it was over, I went for a walk to find something to eat. I had breakfast, but nothing since then, so was feeling rather hungry. Once I got back, I didn't know that the other movie had been pushed back by an hour. If I had known that, I would have went walking around. Plenty of time to do that tomorrow though.

Amy (Brittany Belland) has been invited by the sorority Alpha Gamma Theta in order to possibly become a pledge. The girls throw a party to hopefully welcome her, and her friend in, but only Amy decides to be a pledge. Little do the girls know though, someone (Jason Jay Crabtree) is watching them. Once in a while we see him sitting somewhere, drawing Z's on each girls picture. The picture he draws these on is the one that will die next. He will the call the house and mutter into the phone while whoever answered it looks puzzled. As the girls start to go missing Detectives Drake (E. Ray Goodwin) and James (Luke Frost) are called in. Will the be able to find the killer before all the girls are killed?

The Sleeper is a low budget film that was written and directed by Justin Russell. It was filmed in Ohio, I believe Russell said about 40 miles away from the convention. While watching it, I couldn't help but think of the movie Black Christmas. This film is set in the year 1981, and Russell admits that he wanted the feel from older slasher films such as Black Christmas. There are movies that will remind you of other films, and then there are movies that you remind you a bit too much of other films like it. The Sleeper even has a scene where a body is found in a rocking chair. I fully expected it to have a plastic bag over their head, but the person was killed in a different way at least. While I felt that Russell did a fine job directing his film, I wasn't all that happy with the story. It wasn't that it completely reminded me of another movie, but that there was next to no atmosphere to it. We don't really ever get to know any of the characters. There really isn't a main character to speak of. After Amy leaves the party, the attention turns to the girls in the sorority being killed off before returning back to Amy.

With each kill, there is a small pause while the next person gets a small spotlight on them before being killed off. This includes the worse basketball game to possibly be put on film. A dance sequence is also included. And sneaking up on someone in an empty indoor pool, not once, but twice. In fact I don't think I've ever watched a movie where people were able to sneak up on each other and never once be noticed except this one. I do have to give thanks to the straggle kill. It didn't take 5 seconds to kill the person like it seems to do in other horror movies. This one took a while, which it actually does.

The effects start off kind of bad with the first kill, which I believe Russell said was one he would do over if he was able to. It involved a hammer, which was the killers choice of weapon most of the time, being smashed into a face. It goes right into the head on the first swing. The effects do manage to get better from there at least though. The acting was fine. I did like Brittany Belland. She makes a pretty good scream queen. A special guest cameo can be found by John Bloom. You might know him better as Joe Bob Briggs though. You can also find Paul Moon, Tiffany Arnold, Jenna Fournier and Riana Ballo.

I really hate to down The Sleeper since it is a low budget film that was playing in front of its home crowd so to speak. There just wasn't much to the story and it was pretty easy to figure out what all was going to happen before it did. Another set back the movie has because it is low budget is that we never see much of any extras. Being a college campus, you would expect to see others around, but we see very few. I can't blame the film itself for this, and really it was a minor thing anyway. Even though I didn't care for The Sleeper, I still appreciated that Russell was there to answer questions after the movie was over. I would comment on some of the things he said, but he had a habit of holding the mic a little too far away. Some words could be heard find while I had to struggle to catch other words in the same sentence. As for The Sleeper, if it gets picked up for a DVD release, it is worth at least one watch.
2 out of 5 Still confused on how the second person was killed

Being Chased By Metal Balls Part Four

2011-11-10T06:57:00.000-08:00

At long last I have made it to the last Phantasm film. I didn't intend to wait this long. I have some reviews that are waiting to be written up, and they are going to have to wait even longer now. I'm on vacation starting now! This weekend I will be going out town, HorrorHound Weekend, so I will be watching even more movies. I have things to get done next week, but I hope I can get in the writing mood and get a few reviews caught up. I just hope that by waiting so long, I can still knock out good reviews. I did get one review done last night. I even stayed up passed my bedtime to get it done. If you would like to read what I thought about the movie A Serbian Film, then click the link and head on over. It was a hard review to do, and not only because I liked my first draft that got deleted, by clicking on the wrong thing, much better.

Phantasm 4: Oblivion (1998) picks up where the last movie leaves off. Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) is off driving around after discovering what the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) has done to him. Reggie (Reggie Bannister) isn't dead after all. He is confronted by the Tall Man, and let go. Reggie feels like he is done with everything, but Jody (Bill Thornbury) gets Reggie to go after Mike. While Reggies starts off to follow, Mike finds himself trapped inside a hearse that can drive itself. The Tall Man is taking Mike into Death Valley, but Mike doesn't really know what the Tall Man wants from him. As Mike starts to figure out that he can cross dimensions and time, Mike hopes to discover the secrets of the Tall Man, and end things that way.

There has been talks about a fifth film since before this one was filmed. Since it hasn't happened yet, I don't think it will now. Some fans, or Phans as they like to be called, are already complaining about the ages of the actors. The time between the first film and second film was ten years, and the actors of course aged ten years as well. The time between the all the sequels though was that they picked up where the last one left off. Of course they were not filmed back to back, so the actors aged a few years between films. We are talking about a twenty year period between the first and last movie, so to me complaining that the actors all look older than the story calls for is a rather silly argument. Sure Mike looks a lot older between the second and third film, but all the films have had a dream like quality to them anyway, so just go with it.

Phantasm 4 takes a little while for it to set up. With both of the main characters on the road, not a whole lot happens. There are breaks, like when Reggie meets up with Demon Trooper. Once again, writer/director Don Coscarelli drops the ball when it comes to the character of Tim from the last movie. It is easy to figure out what happened to the kid, and according to Coscarelli, he had planned on filming something to show what happened to him. Budget didn't allow for that apparently. Still though. Cascarelli could have included a line by Reggie with him seeing what happened and saying something like "Damn it...poor kid." Would that really have been that hard to do? Unlike the last movie, where he basically did the same thing, Tim wasn't that important a character, so it is easier to over look his completely ignoring a character.

Phantasm 4 also features some of the found footage that was shot for the original film that didn't make it to the final cut. I had mixed feelings over this. It was nice to see what was filmed. Even so, some of the footage is hard to figure out where in the original film it would have been shown. At times it feels forced, not having much to do with the story line in this movie. The last time the lost footage is used does manage to wrap up this movie, and even the series if need be. I was happy to see that the dwarf's were back again. They aren't used a whole lot, but at least unfunny zombie people aren't running around in their place. I don't know if Coscarelli was trying to answer some questions that fans had, but all he really ended up doing was creating more questions.

I have come to believe that these films, for the most part, are just a dream. There are just too many things that happen that can only be explained in that way. The car for one gets damaged at times, only to have it completely fixed at the start of the next movie. Reggie throws away his four barrel shotgun towards the end of the second film, but Mike somehow has it at the start of the third movie. There are many other examples like those.

The effects are pretty good. The metal balls aren't used a whole lot this time around. In once scene, where we see a lot of them fly past, it is easy to tell that CGI was used for that. It doesn't look real bad, but it still stands out. There was a scene where Reggie finds the metal balls in a very odd place. The effects for this didn't really look all that great to me. You can easily see where the makeup ends, and the real person begins. Still, it was a cool scene, just not done as well as it could have been. The acting was also good. The only new person to show up was Heidi Marnhout. She does fine, even if they do tease us with some nudity from her.

After fans bashed the third film, Coscarelli apparently decided that he had pushed the horror/comedy as far as it could go, and thus decided to get back to the roots of the films. This was just fine with me, but I still found Phantasm 4: Oblivion a middle of the road sequel. It was nice to see the Tall Man before he became just that, but it doesn't explain much of anything. I actually am glad that most everything was left up to fans to figure out on their own, but when your characters are trying to find the origin of the guy they are fighting, some explanation should be there I would think. Some feel that the Tall Man was after Mike so he would become the next Tall Man, but I'm not so sure of that. Either way, Phantasm 4: Oblivion was a nice way to end the series. If you have watched the other movies, you might as well watch this one as well. If you haven't watched any of them yet, this one is of no use to you then. Worth a watch, but only if you have followed the series.
3 out of 5 Would like to know where Mike got the parts to change that engine

Being Chased By Metal Balls Part Three

2011-11-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

The weekend is here! I had a short day at work yesterday thanks to some meetings I was required to be at. Since it only left two hours to work, we all got sent home after the meetings. It did help me get some things done though. One thing was getting my last review done. After I did that I had some running to do, which didn't take all that long. Once I got home, again, I watched Phantasm 3: Lord Of The Dead (1994). I figured since I don't really have any plans for tonight, I would start on this review, which I didn't get far on. I do have some plans for the weekend, so not sure I will get another review in here. I will at least get the next movie in this series, which is also the last for now, in this weekend. Oh, by the way, spoilers below!

Things pick up right at the end of Phantasm 2. Reggie (Reggie Bannister) watches as the hearse he was in with Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and Liz (Paula Irvine) blows up. He runs over to where it blew up and finds Liz dead and being chewed on by one of the Tall Man's dwarfs. Reggie trips over Mike as he tries to get away, and they make their escape together. Once they make it to some house, they discover Jody (Bill Thornbury), Mike's older brother. Jody doesn't seem all that surprised when they tell him that he is dead, and tells Reggie and Mike to get out because the Tall Man has managed to get a lock on him. Sure enough, the Tall Man shows up. Jody turns into a silver metal ball, but is no match for the Tall Man. The Tall Man takes Mike and Reggie sets out to try and rescue Mike.

Phantasm 3 marks the return of all the original cast. After the last movie, Universal wasn't interested in another sequel, but did agree to put one out there if Don Coscarelli made another sequel. With no restrictions this time, Coscarelli was able to cast who he wanted, which meant Baldwin was back as Mike. It didn't take me long to realize that I had yet to ever watch Phantasm 3. It was all new to me, so that means the next movie will be as well. While reading peoples thoughts on the last movie, I had sort of figured out that I had yet to watch this one from the way people were talking about it. Many described this one as Mike and Reggie being on the run from the Tall Man the entire time, which isn't really true at all. While Coscarelli doesn't make this one as much of a road movie as the last one, it is still there some. Now that I have watched it, I wonder if Coscarelli should have went with what the studio wanted from the second movie.

Since Coscarelli didn't like the whole romance angle for Mike, even though he keeps trying to get one for Reggie, Liz was gone very quickly. While disappointing, it wasn't that big of a deal. What was a big deal is that even though Mike was knocked out at the time, he never once asks about her once he does come around. Of course he could have off camera at some point, but it would have been nice if Coscarelli had included something since Liz was supposed to be the love of Mike's life. Before we find out Liz dies, I found it funny that they went through so much trouble not to show James LeGros in the short flashbacks to the previous entry. Anyway, after the death of Liz, there is a nice little battle between Reggie and the dwarfs, but after this scene, the dwarfs completely disappear. This was mistake number two. Instead of the dwarfs, which have always been fun to watch, we instead get three people that were killed by Tim (Kevin Connors) turning into zombies for some reason. I guess these guys were supposed to add some humor to the movie, except I didn't really find them all that funny.

The effects were fine. Not as gory as they were in the last movie, but still pretty good. CGI was used in this film, the first time being used in the series. They were used for small things, like Judy turning into a metal ball or back again. And there was some light effects that were CGIed as well. The thing I liked most about Phantasm 3 is that we learned some things about the metal balls, and we see them do some different things as well. Even though they don't seem big enough to do so, they have the brain of a dwarf in them. Sometimes we even see an eyeball pop out as well. While these things were cool, it wasn't enough to save the movie.

The acting was just okay. Reggie Bannister does fine as usual. Again I didn't really care for A. Michael Baldwin, but to be fair, he isn't in the movie much. Even when he is, he is laying around for whatever reason. It confused me some. Coscarelli gives the role back to the actor that started the character, and then barely has the guy in his film. A couple of new people show up, such as Kevin Connors. There is also Gloria Lynne Henry. While both did fine with their acting, I think most people didn't like the characters all that much. Connors' character of Tim was something of a tribute to Mike from the first movie, at least that is what Coscarelli had in mind with it. Think Home Alone and you have a pretty good idea what this character started out as, except he was using deadly force. Henry's character is a Kung Fu type chick who feels out of place in the Phantasm world.

It is great that Coscarelli was able to make the movie that he wanted to make, but it just didn't work for me this time around. Maybe because the second in the series is so special to me, that it makes this one not so special. Phantasm 3: Lord Of The Dead does have its share of fans though. It has a pretty good average score of 5.7 average (as of this writing at least) on IMDb. While not a great average, it is far from a bad one. Even though I was disappointed with the movie, I am glad that I watched it. I sometimes feel a need to watch sequels no matter how bad they are, so I am glad that I went forward in order to see this one, and the next one as well. I will leave it up to all of you, if you haven't already watched it, to decide if it is for you, but as I said, I didn't care for it.
2 out of 5 Give Reggie some love already so he will shut up

Being Chased By Metal Balls Part Two

2011-11-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

I have been talking about post number 900 for a while now, and it is actually here now! I plotted and planned things out so Phantasm 2 (1988) would fall into this spot. It worked out just right, sort of. I will get into that another day though. Writing again has been a blessing since I have been getting back into movies again. I'm really behind in my reviews though because of this series review, so I'm hoping I can get through the next two quickly. I have already watched a few movies to review here, and I have movies stacked up and waiting to be reviewed over at Top Horror Movies Club. In the meantime, I did get one review there done. If you would like to read my review for the next to last DVD release of the After Dark Originals, 51, then feel free to check it out. It could use some hits!

I remember Phantasm 2 so well mainly because it was a movie I first watched with my dad. That isn't the only reason that makes this one a favorite of course, but it ranks right up there with the other reasons. Even though he got me over my fear of horror movies, we really didn't watch all that many together. If I remember right, it was the first time either of us had watched Phantasm 2, and we both loved it. I admit it has been many years since I last watched this one. I don't have it in my collection sadly. When I bought Phantasm and Phantasm 3 on DVD, this one wasn't out yet in that format. It has since come to DVD, I believe anyway, but Netflix has it on their instant watch, so I just watched it that way yesterday.

For those of you that haven't watched Phantasm 2 yet, there was nine years between movies being made, and nine years have passed for the characters as well. Phantasm 2 starts off with Mike (now being played by James LeGros) being released from a mental hospital, where he has apparently been since the end of the last movie. Doctors believe that Mike now realizes that the events from the first movie never actually happened, but the truth is, Mike doesn't believe that at all. He heads to the nearest grave yard and starts digging up graves. This is where Reggie (Reggie Bannister) finds him, after the third one with no body in it. Mike tells Reggie about his dreams, where he feels a woman named Liz (Paula Irvine) is in danger because of the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Reggie doesn't much believe everything that happened, until the house his family is in blows up. Reggie and Mike decide to try and find this woman Mike has been dreaming about, and take the war to the Tall Man.

As I always do, I sat down to watch this one in order to refresh my memory before writing about it. I admit that it took a little while before I remember why I liked Phantasm 2 so much. It starts off in an odd way with Liz providing a flashback to the original movie and how it ended, and then some. The ending is actually extended here, which was all filmed just for this sequel. If I could change anything about this film, it would be the way the flashback was handled. Without knowing who Liz even is yet, or why she is important to the story, she is giving a recap of the original movie. I understand the reason behind it, it had been nine years between movies after all.

Phantasm 2 started off a little slower than I remembered it. The first major effect that is found still made me get a little wide eyed at it. If anything stands out about this one, it is the effects. From the face that comes out of a woman's back, to the gold ball getting stuck inside of a person, the effects really stand out. This sequel had the highest budget of any of the movies in the series, and it does show. There are also some real nice action sequences that have a mild mix of comedy thrown in. The fight that Reggie gets into stands out to me the most. Once the action starts, it doesn't let up for very long, which I think is the main reason I liked this sequel the most and it has become a favorite for me. That and the way the metal balls were used. The addition of the new gold ball was great, and added to things a lot.

At the time that I first watched this one, I don't know if I didn't realize there was a casting change for the role of Mike, or if I thought it might have been the same actor. Some fans resent that A. Michael Baldwin was not recast, and feel that James LeGros wasn't right for the role. Other fans feel the other way around. As it turns out, the studio (Universal) had their hand in this movie a little more than writer/director Don Coscarelli would have liked. Universal threw down some things they wanted for this sequel, like no dream sequences, a more linear plot, a love interest for Mike, and perhaps most the most important change is that they wanted both leads be recast. After fighting that last one, Coscarelli was allowed to keep one of the two for sure, so he went with Reggie Bannister, believing his role would be the hardest to recast. Baldwin was forced to audition for the role of Mike. Obviously he didn't get it with the reason mostly being he had not been in anything since the last Phantasm movie. Personally I didn't mind the recasting of Mike. It is nice when the same actor can reprise their role, and I do prefer that, but sometimes it doesn't always work out for the best when they do.

Even though Phantasm 2 is one my favorites, I didn't get everything about it. I already talked about how the flashback at the start of the movie was done, but I also didn't get the connection that Mike and Liz felt with each other. There is a point where the talk to each other just by using their minds. I think Coscarelli does try to explain it some, but it didn't really work for me too well. Even so, I liked the interaction between Liz and Mike, even if it wasn't much of a love story there. If you have never checked this one out, then you should at some point. It isn't the favorite in the series for everyone, but it looked like the majority of fans rank it either one or two in their list. It helps to see the first movie, but the recap gives just enough information that you don't really need to. Meanwhile, I am off to watch the third movie.

Being Chased By Metal Balls Part One

2011-10-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

I am going to have a busy weekend watching movies. I will explain that later on though. Last night I sat down get my series review started at least. I will need to get a review up over at Top Horror Movies Club tomorrow, so my 900th post will have to wait until sometime during the week. And once again I fall short of double digits for the month. I'm going to hate my end of the year total. Anyway, I decided to watch the Phantasm films for this series review. I will get into why the second movie is considered a favorite of mine in the next post. I have watched at least the first three films. I don't remember the fourth film though. Lets kick things off with Phantasm (1979), shall we?

Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) has recently lost his parents. It is now up to his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) to take care of him. Jody wants to get out of the small town that he has grown up in, and get out to explore the world. Mike feels his brothers need to leave, and is afraid that Jody will leave him behind. This has caused Mike to follow Jody everywhere he goes. As the movie opens, we see Jody attending a funeral of a friend, where he meets up with his good friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister). Mike hides in some bushes while watching the funeral, and keeps thinking he hears weird sounds. After everyone leaves, a tall man (Angus Scrimm) shows up and picks up the coffin by himself and places it in the hearse. The tall man sees Mike as he rides off on his bike, and somehow manages to knock him off of it with just a look. Mike, and eventually Jody, start to believe there is something weird going on at the funeral home. They don't know the half of it.

It has been a long time since I last watched Phantasm. Even though I own the DVD, this was the first time I have watched this movie on that medium. While this has nothing to do with the movie, I feel like telling this story anyway. The very first horror movie convention that I went to had A. Michael Baldwin there. I walked around for a good while before I started getting autographs. I had my Phantasm DVDs with me and had planned on getting Baldwin's autograph while I was there. Every time I walked by his table, no one was there. I started to feel bad for the guy, as he seemed pretty bored. Being my first convention of this kind, I was not aware that it was $20 per autograph, so I was pretty shocked when Baldwin told me it was $40 for the two DVDs that he signed for me. I haven't made that mistake since then. Anyway, back to the movie itself.

Writer/director Don Coscarelli has said that the original run time for Phantasm was over three hours long. I believe it was also said that the tall man didn't first appear until around the 90 minute mark. Realizing that this was asking a lot of people, and knowing it may not hold their attention for that long, Coscarelli made the cuts to make it closer to an hour and a half. For some, this has made Phantasm feel disjointed. In a way I understand the complaints. For example, we see Mike spying on the funeral and it ends with Mike wondering what is going on when he sees the tall man lift the coffin by himself. But then later on we find out there was more to it, the tall man somehow knocking Mike off his bike. I guess I didn't really see the point of telling us that later instead of sooner. Even so, I have also liked the story and the way it keeps you guessing as to what is going to happen next.

Phantasm didn't hold up as well as I hoped it would. I still liked it, but it didn't hold that same magic that I seem to remember it having. Part of that was that some of the effects look dated now. I still love the metal ball flying around, but once is starts to drill in, it didn't look all that great. The blood looked a little to bright to me, but it was still cool seeing it shooting out so far. Hard to believe that Phantasm was given a rating of X at first because of that entire scene. The bug that shows up later was also very silly to me now. It looks bad and the whole way the actors played out that scene also feels silly. Not all the effects were that way though. The hand getting stuck in the door looks cool still, as well as the severed finger still moving around.

The acting was also a bit of a problem for me. I didn't think it was bad at least though. Considering that A. Michael Baldwin was just 14 at the time of filming, I thought he does an okay job with the role. However, there were times I couldn't stand him, and if I remember right, that goes for the other movies as well. I liked Reffie Bannister more in the other films, and was surprised that he didn't have a bigger role in this one. While Angus Scrimm never really says much, he doesn't have to. I don't see how people don't find his Tall Man character to be scary. Maybe it is a girl thing, having a old guy chasing after me while trying to grab me. Bill Thornbury's acting just feels flat to me in most of his scenes.

I think what keeps Phantasm in favor with me is that it is set in a small town. This helps give it the feel that this story could happen anywhere. I also like that while it throws out who the Tall Man is, and his reasons for what he is doing, it also doesn't explain it. There are still a lot of unanswered questions by the movies end. I also like how it will make you look at mausoleums in a whole different way. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't enjoy Phantasm as much as I used to, but it is what it is. There are other movies I have felt this way about as well, and ones I hated at first but like now. I still think it is worth a watch, and I'm sure I will watch it again someday. Now I'm off to watch a few more movies.
3 out of 5 Going to have bad dreams of old men chasing me now, great

Cowgirls Are The Best

2011-10-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Since I got the day off from work today, I thought I would get that last movie in before the series review. I had planned on at least watching Mad Cowgirl (2006) today, but I didn't think I would get the review in as well. I do have a couple of things I need to get done today, but they shouldn't take all that long. With plenty of time to get this review done, hopefully I can get it done today. There have been times I would be writing, but then decide to go do something else for a while. Bad thing about that is, I don't get back around to the review right away. Anyway, I don't know when I added Mad Cowgirl to my queue, but I suspect it was many years ago. I sometimes add a bunch of movies to the top of my queue which means a lot of others sit in limbo forever.

Therese (Sarah Lassez) is a single woman, and a health inspector. She has a thing for eating red meat, something that she shares with her brother (among other things). Her brother (James Duvall) owns a meat packing plant. Therese has warned her brother many times that he needs to be careful with the meat he is getting, since there have been all kinds of recent reports about the mad cow disease. Therese is also sleeping around with a certain televangelist (Walter Koenig) and loves a corny Kung Fu type TV show. Even though Therese has a bit of a strange life, she is happy. That is until she finds out her brother may have given her some meat that was infected with the mad cow disease, and her own path into madness begins.

Mad Cowgirl is a strange movie. Writers Norith Soth and Gregory Hatanaka, who is also the director, gives us a story that never tells us which is reality and which is just Therese's madness. There is never a dividing line between the two. The writers leave it up to us to decide which is which. Hell, most things could have just been something that was in her head. It has some odd themes to begin with really. Getting sexually turned on just by eating meat is something I haven't heard of before. While I like a good steak, I don't like it that much. I guess it wasn't too much of a stretch to like older men at least. While most of her affection is directed towards Pastor Dylan, it isn't limited to him. All this makes Mad Cowgirl somewhat interesting, but in the end I didn't find it to be my kind of movie. The pacing is a bit on the slow side and some scenes feel out of place. There is one where Therese goes to a theater that is showing a porn and a kung fu movie at the same time and in 3D apparently. What make it weird is some guy starts making out with her and they end up having sex there in the theater.

There are some scenes that are pretty bloody, but that is as far as the effects ever go. If anything helped save this movie for me, it was the acting. Sarah Lassez does a wonderful job with her role. She can be serious when it is called for. She can also be funny when doing Kung Fu moves while watching her favorite show. Not that it has anything to do with her acting, but she does get nude for a couple of scenes. Devon Odessa shows up as a woman who ends up befriending Therese at one point. While her role is smaller, she is just as good. You can find more of her in some of the deleted scenes.

I thought that Mad Cowgirl was just okay at best, but I wasn't really into it. The ending starts to come into sight and the plot started to feel a little rushed then. It was still interesting even if I didn't really get who all the guys were supposed to be. If you have watched, or once you watch it, you will understand what I mean by that. I didn't hate Mad Cowgirl at any point, but I was never all that thrilled by it either. I wasn't really bored with it, but I was close. I think it is pretty cool that Hatanaka tried something a little different, even if I didn't care for it. I don't really want to scare anyone off from watching this one though. I do feel it is one of those movies you should just judge for yourself and not let someone else do it for you.
2 out of 5 Everyone was Kung Fu fighting!

Ghouls In The Night

2011-10-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

Since I didn't have much to do yesterday, and wasn't feeling tired for once, I sat down to watch my next movie, The Lonely Ones (2006). I have movies lined up, and hopefully ready to knock down. I have one more movie to watch before I get started on the next series review. I hope to start the series review this weekend at the latest. Since I don't think there is a new movie coming out in the theaters that I want to see, I will probably review Area 51 next up for Top Horror Movies Club. I have several movies I would like to review for other there actually, I just have to get around to them. I'm not back to my old self just yet when it comes to reviewing movies and such, but I do feel like I have been doing slightly better lately.

Nine college friends decide to get together and head to a cabin somewhere in Northern Arizona. Legend has it that there are creatures in the near by woods that would lure people into the woods by calling out your name. The people that went into the woods were never seen again. The creatures became known as The Lonely Ones. Back in 1988, a group of women vanished. No trace of any of the women was found, not even blood in the cabin they were staying in. Our nine friends aren't believing any of it of course, even when they find something on the Internet that somewhat proves the stories. That is until the power goes out and they have to fight for their lives against ghouls.

It isn't hard to believe that The Lonely Ones will be a bad movie when it first starts. It is obviously a low budget film, reported to be around $100,000. The film itself is very grainy looking. I found that a little annoying since this movie is only 5 years old. The sound isn't any better. It was hard to hear most of the movie. I had the volume turned up pretty high. The lighting wasn't very good either. If there was a scene shot outside in the dark, it was very hard to see everything. The plot itself also feels bad, and isn't helped by some bad acting. The story starts off like one we have watched in many horror movies before. A group of friends going to a secluded place, telling ghost stories, talk of a serial killer in the woods. It was enough to almost get me to not keep my full attention on it. Roughly half way through though, it suddenly decides to get better. Still not great...but better none the less.

What starts out as the main characters, if you really want to call them that, trying to get through the guy cheating on the love his life, turns into something a little more interesting. It is still a sub plot, but it was who he cheated with that makes the movie more interesting. Writer/director David Michael Quiroz Jr takes the ghoul and gives it some lore and rules. People who give up on movies will probably never get that far, and I'm sure some just won't care even if they do make it that far. Some reviews gave The Lonely Ones a higher rating because of the ghouls. I admit that I am tempted to do that as well, but don't think I will this time around.

For every good effect found, it seemed like there was a bad one soon to follow. The first big one was really where the turning point ended up being. One of the guys gets his head ripped from his body, spine and all. It was pretty well done. There are some other cool looking effects, but that was the big one. The effects for when a ghoul is shot though was just some green "blood" flying out. It looked very silly every time it was done, which seemed like a lot. The acting wasn't so good, but there were some bright spots. Heather Conforto and Vince Reign get the leads. Devanny Pinn and Jose Rosete also have some big roles to play. As others have pointed out though, Ron Berg was the best out of the group.

If you are a gamer, then you will probably know some of the names that are used for the characters in this movie. It seems that Quiroz has a love for games himself. Even though The Lonely Ones got better towards the end, I still had plenty of problems with it. It is a slow movie, even when it did get better. If I have managed to make you curious about The Lonely Ones, then by all means check it out sometime. If I haven't, then I can't really suggest going out of your way to watch it. Hopefully Quiroz will try again at some point, if he hasn't already. He can tell an interesting story when he wants to.
2 out of 5 Glad I don't have green blood!

Bent On Killing Guys

2011-10-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

Even though it took me a while, I managed to get both reviews finished that I was working on. I was still disappointed with myself when I noticed it had been a week since I started my last review here. I was really wanting to watch a movie today though, but wanted all other reviews finished first. I worked hard and got them out. After that, I went out to eat, came home and watched Hellbent (2004). It was nice to get around to a DVD that has been sitting here for two months now. Before I did all that though, I went to see Paranormal Activity 3 Thursday night. Even though I lost sleep to go, I had a fun time. Check out the review sometime.

Hellbent begins with two guys, who are in their parked car, start to mess around. Since they are in the front seats, they are having some trouble finding room to do that, so the guy in the passengers seat decides to hang out the open window some. Unknown to them, a killer is near by, and the guy hanging out the window gets his hear removed. Then we meet Eddie (Dylan Fergus), who works for the police department with a desk job due to an eye injury. He is asked to put up some posters asking for information about the double murder that we watched part of. While doing that, he sees Jake (Bryan Kirkwood), and it is obvious that Eddie likes Jake. Later on, Eddie meets up with his friends Chaz (Andrew Levitas) and Toby (Matt Phillips), as well as Eddie's younger brother Joey (Hank Harris). With it being Halloween night, they are all heading out to a festival to have a fun night. Their first stop though is the park where to double murder took place. Nothing happens at first, but then they see someone. The same someone that killed the two guys, and now he is stalking Eddie and his friends.

Hellbent is a slightly different slasher movie in that it features characters that are all gay. If it wasn't for the gay angle, this slasher wouldn't have been much different from others of its kind. In the description that Netflix provided, I wasn't sure if their use of the word gay meant that the characters were gay or if it was a horror/comedy type deal. It didn't take long to figure out what was meant though. I had given this movie to my neighbors to watch long before I got around to it, and it was returned to me the same day, which is kind of odd for them. They didn't like it at all. Said they didn't even finish it in fact. I could be wrong but I don't think it had to do with the gay angle. They just don't like movies that doesn't have a lot of action going on in them. I found Hellbent to be okay. I didn't find it to be a great movie, but it wasn't bad either. While it is obvious the characters are gay, it is done in a rather tasteful way. The guys talk about other guys in a sexual way at times, and you will see some kissing, but that is as far as things go. The plot was more about these five guys more than anything else. Sure there is a killer after them, and not all of the guys make it, but to me this was a character driven movie.

The effects are surprisingly good. After watching the featurette, which I don't suggest watching before you watch the actual movie, I learned that the effects were a combination of practical and digital. I wouldn't have known that if it wasn't for them talking about it in the featurette. There are some stabbings, but the main effects are a few people losing their heads. While not as bloody as the real thing probably is, they were still nicely done. The acting was also a surprise. Each of the main actors does a good and they do give you the feel that they are all friends. Dylan Fergus does a good job in the lead role. I believe the killer was played by Kent James. He was listed as Nick Name as his character name.

Some people didn't like Hellbent just because the killer is never given a motivation and never really says anything. The lack of motivation actually works here, and I think writer/director Paul Etheredge did the right thing by not giving him one. If the killer had admitted he hated gay guys, then it would have been seen as a movie against gays. If the killer had said he was just jealous, or something like that, of certain gay guys, I don't think that would have worked out too well either. If you don't mind the gay angle, or think you can look past it, then Hellbent is worth a look. It has been said that this is the first gay slasher film, but I'm not sure if it is. I know I reviewed a movie that featured a mostly lesbian cast that was also a slasher film. I could be wrong, but I think it was released before this one was. Anyway, while Hellbent is hardly the best out there, it was surprisingly decent.
3 out of 5 It was nice to see all guys getting killed for once

Weird Vampire Women

2011-10-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

If all goes well, I have my movies all planned out to my 900th post. I promise I won't mention it again until I actually hit that post. I was hoping to get another post in before now, but things didn't work out that way to well. I went to see The Thing last Saturday, but had some trouble getting the review done. It was one of those movies that I just wasn't real sure what to say about it. You can read my review here if you want to check it out. Before I went to go see it though, I managed to watch Lemora: A Child's Tale Of The Supernatural (1973). I was going to review it Sunday, but between the other review, and going out with friends, I just didn't find the time to do so. The story of my life lately.

Lila Lee (Cheryl Smith) is loved for her singing at her local church. The local reverend (writer/director Richard Blackburn) has taken in Lila to show that Lila is an angel compared to her murdering gangster father, Alvin (William Whitton). One day Lila gets a letter from someone named Lemora (Lesley Taplin) who claims that Alvin is very ill and seeks forgiveness from Lila. So Lila does what any young girl would do, she sneaks out late at night and tries to get rides to the bus station. The letter instructed Lila to go to the station alone, where a bus would be waiting for her. After dealing with a creepy ticket guy, she finds the bus and soon discovers that things only get more weird from there.

The first thing I can say about Lemora is that it is a very weird movie. It starts off somewhat normal with meeting Lila and learning a little bit about her. Once she starts on her quest to meet up with her ill father, that is when things take a turn towards the weird. Lemora doesn't let up once it starts getting weird though. From the creepy ticket guy, to the odd bus driver, to the even more weird bus ride. The movie actually starts a little slow, which is a problem that it often suffers. There isn't much action to counter the slow areas. I spoiled things a little bit with my title, but the poster also does that, so I don't feel so bad. We don't know who or what Lemora is when we first meet her. She seems to be in control, but outside of that, we know very little. It is easy to figure out though when the first clue is dropped on us. Lila is looking for a mirror but can't find one. The glass has been removed from all mirrors, but when Lila pulls her own out...Lemora doesn't cast a reflection. Anyone that knows their lore will know what that means.

Not a lot of things are explained in Lemora. There are these people that are more creature than human. Lemora somehow makes them, but it is never explained how. They didn't seem to be vampires, but I guess that can be debated. It is also not explained what Lemora wants from Lila. It is easy to figure out though, so don't worry about that one. One of the things I found amusing was how they went out of their way not to show any nudity. They never say how old Lila is, but Cheryl Smith was just under 18 years old during filming I believe.

Not a lot of effects are found outside of the creatures. They do look pretty cool at times, so there is that. The acting was pretty good as well. I did like Cheryl Smith in this one, but I did feel character could have used some work. She was obviously smart, but there were times I got the feeling she was completely not getting things. I know the whole point of her character was her being the innocent type, but it was over played a bit too much for me. Lesley Taplin also does a nice job with her role. Coming across as a little creepy, but trusting in some ways as well.

Lemora: A Child's Tale Of The Supernatural is a hard movie to write about for me. It has been described as a fairy tale, and it does fit that in some ways. I found this one to be a bit too slow at times, and I didn't feel like it had much of a plot. On the other hand, the general weirdness that is found through most of the movie more than makes up for the things I found I didn't like. It is just an odd movie, and generally, I can't help but like odd movies. Lemora gets a slightly higher than average rating on most movie sites, and I can see why. While I didn't like it that much, I did enjoy it all the same. I had never heard of Lemora before I decided to add it to my Instant Watch queue, and I am glad that I gave it a watch.
3 out of 5 I would learn how to drive real quick if my bus was attacked by creatures

Pop Music Will Kill You

2011-10-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

I have decided on a slight change of plans. I was going to start up a series review soon, but seeing as I have had Netflix DVD at my home for two months now, I figured I am long over due in getting them watched and sent back. I will still get the series reviews in that I was planning on, especially since one of them works itself into my 900th post. I am now caught up with all my reviews. I did manage to get my last one done here with my last post, and I got my review for Creature over at Top Horror Movies Club done at long last. That one took way longer than I intended. For now though, I had to get Ring Of Darkness (2004) in before it was taken out of Instant Watch. I have one more such movie to watch around the end of the week.

A boy band that goes by the name of Take 10 has lost their lead singer. The media is saying that he left because of drug reasons, which had to do with his not dealing well with fame. We see the real reason at the start of this movie though. So, the remaining four members, along with their manager (Adrienne Barbeau), set up an audition where people interested in becoming the next lead singer can sing in front of the group, and screaming fans. Three guys are chosen, with Shawn (Stephen Martines) the favorite of the manager, and Max (Eric Dearborn) being the favorite of the group. The third guy (Jeff Peterson) we find out is a plant to get dirt on the other members of Take 10 that managed to get picked. They are taken to the group's island retreat in order to finish their auditions, and see how well they get along with the other members. Shawn drags along his girlfriend (Ryan Starr) and acts like he doesn't want to be there at all. He is a more "serious" artist, and wants to write his own songs. He learns eventually that it takes a lot more than talent to be part of this boy band.

I'm a little confused. According to IMDb, Ring Of Darkness is a TV movie. Or maybe it means it first came out on TV. This confuses me a little because it does have an R rating. I don't know what the rating is for though. Only thing I can think of was the swearing found in it. There was no nudity to be found, not even hinted at either. There is nothing gory about this one either, so that wasn't it. It had to be the swearing, but I don't even recall all that much of it.

Using music groups as the main focus isn't new for horror movies, but this is the first time I can remember that a pop boy band was used. Even though they looked older than your average boy band, they did have the act and music down for it. The odd thing about the auditions was that it sure sounded like each singer was using the same voice. Going back to the very start of the film, we watch as the lead singer tries to make his escape, and then is met up with by four people. Director David DeCoteau is careful about not showing who these four guys are, but honestly, it doesn't take long to figure out that part. The only real mystery to the movie is what are these guys? I had a feeling they were aliens, but I was wrong. They do at least do a good job of waiting to reveal what these guys are, but that is about the only good thing I have to say.

Even though Ring Of Darkness had a good sized budget, even if it is still considered a lot budget movie, it was painfully obvious that none of it went to special effects. There is some blood, mostly when people turn to look at the camera and blood spills out of their mouth some. Oh, there is also a so called knife cut. Blood comes out of the wound, but when they spread the blood around you can tell there is no actual wound there. There are also some makeup effects when one of the group gets scratched. They just smeared a little silver paint and there you go. When it is revealed what they are, we get to see their real faces. It looked better than just smearing some silver paint, but was still bad looking.

The acting was just okay at best. Adrienne Barbeau steals all the scenes that she is in, without trying most likely, but one has to wonder how she got talked into this movie. Most didn't care for Ryan Starr, and I can't really blame them for that. She wasn't very good, plus she would disappear for long stretches. I wasn't real big on Stephen Martines, but a lot of others did praise him as the one to watch.You can also find Colin Bain, Matt T. Baker, Greg Cipes and Jeremy Jackson.

Since Ring Of Darkness was showing boy bands in a new light, so to speak, I was curious to see where the writers would go with it. For some, the fact that it had three writers meant that it would be bad. I didn't know this going in, but it wouldn't have meant much to me anyway. I don't feel I was expecting too much from it. The story feels flat, and the effects don't help with that at all. The ending counters the whole movie. I understand why it ended the way it did, but at the same time, it goes against what Shawn and his girl was fighting against. Even though I'm not a fan of boy bands, at least not the kind depicted here, I do feel this one could have been a whole lot better than what we got.
2 out of 5 I should start a girl band and show them how it's done!

Ghostly Happenings At The Playhouse

2011-10-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

I'm almost caught up with back reviews. This will be the last one here before I move on to watching something new. I have one more review to catch up on over at Top Horror Movies Club, which I hope to get to soon. Meanwhile, I did manage to get a review up there for Dream House. If you would like to hear my thoughts about that one, just click the link! Hopefully I have just one more movie to watch before I start in on a series review. I know I keep pushing it back, but hopefully I can get it in soon. Since I am getting close to post 900, I am trying to work things out so it is the movie I want it to be. That can be easier said than done at times. Anyway, one of the last movies I watched on Instant Watch was Playhouse (2003).

A group of students are in a Pittsburgh playhouse trying to get ready for a play they will be putting on. Their director gets rather mad at them when things aren't going to well, and sends them all home. After a few minutes, the director thinks he sees someone from the stage, but they disappear before he can find out who they are. The person appears again, and then other people suddenly appear also. The next day the police are called when the director is found on the stage dead. Detective Black (Nikitas Menotiades) is called to the case. He not only has to deal with the murder, but also Officers Koss (David Friday) and Randal (Andy Parks) who frustrate Black more than they help him. As more bodies begin to be found, Black begins to believe that the janitor (Ross Donaldson) knows more than he lets on, but every time the guy tries to tell Black what is going on, Black cuts in. Will they be able to figure out what is going on before all the students are killed?

Playhouse is a low budget film that is loosely based on a real haunted theater in Pittsburgh. The movie was going to filmed there, but scheduling conflicts at the last minute prevented that. The interiors were shot at a different theater from there. In case you didn't catch it, because I didn't write it well, Playhouse is a comedy/horror mix. It is more comedy than horror by a long shot. Even though ghosts pop up frequently, it is really only some of the effects that would throw this one into the horror genre. It took some time for me to get into this one, and even when I did, I still didn't think real high of it. I'm not a very big fan of this type that put comedy above the horror. Playhouse was no exception to that. I didn't find it all that funny usually. I don't know if it was the acting, or just the jokes, that fell short for me. Both were starting to grow on me some by the end of the movie, but as I said, I never completely got into it. There are some running jokes through the movie. Like Black always interrupting every time someone is trying to tell him something important, and then the person he will get the information of him one of these days. The two officers also seem to get sick every time they discover a new body. The pacing was fine, I didn't have any issues with that or the directing by Hunter F. Roberts, who also wrote the script.

One of the surprises for me was the effects. Not only did they look good, but they were actually pretty gory at times. Those that did the makeup for Playhouse did a very good job considering the budget for this movie. There was some real nice surprises there. The acting was pretty mixed. I didn't care too much for the actors that played the students, but they weren't really the main focus of the movie. Even the main actors had to grow on me though. I would say that my favorite out of the group would have been Nikitas Menotiades. It helped that he was always serious, no matter how funny things were getting.

If you should ever decide to watch Playhouse, then I would suggest doing it mainly to see how good the effects are. If they didn't get the group that did them noticed, then it really should. Considering the budget for this movie ($40,000 was the reported budget), Playhouse wasn't that bad of a movie. It just wasn't all that great either. With some better acting, maybe a better story as well, it could have been a better movie. Not trying to get all of you not to give it a shot though. There have been much worse out there. If you like this type of mix in your horror films, then you might want to give it a try.
2 out of 5 Always fun to see dead people blink

If The Dead Love New York, They Will Love It Anywhere!

2011-10-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

I had the day off today, and tomorrow, so I managed to get some reading done. I have been having problems with my car since I got it, so I took it in today to get it worked on. The only time they could get it in, apparently, was when I was at work. I couldn't just drop it off or anything since I wouldn't have a way into work then. I ended up just taking a vacation day today, and took one for tomorrow as well while I was at it. My car isn't fixed yet, but they are pretty sure they know what is wrong with it at least. While I was waiting I managed to finish the novella I had been reading over the last couple of days. That will be reviewed here along with the main novel The Gathering Dead by Stephen Knight.

Major Cordell McDaniels has been tapped to lead a Special Forces group into New York City in order to get Safire and his daughter out. The story picks up as they are leaving the city, or trying to leave anyway. You see, New York City is quickly being over run by zombies. Efforts are being made to stop the dead in New York. There have been reports of zombies in other cities, but not as bad as what New York is. Safire claims that he has a way to keep the living from becoming a zombie if they should get infected by the virus that makes zombies. Things are already going to shit quickly but they at least make it to the loading zone. The helicopter manages to take off, but as they fly through the city, a zombie falls and damages their ride, causing them to crash. Most manage to make it into a building where they came up with a short term plan. But can they get out with thousands of the undead just outside their doorstep?

Most zombie books that deal with the end of the world type plots are usually centered around the average person trying their best to survive. The Gathering Dead obviously takes a different approach. While there are a few people that are just the average person, it mostly deals with the military side of things. The Gathering Dead only hints at things happening outside in the rest of the world. From the author's notes at the end of the novella, Knight plans on expanding on what is happening in the world in the next book. Stephen Knight does manage to get the reader right into the action on the first page. With the group trying hard to get to the landing zone in order to get out of the city, Knight describes some of the horrors that is happening already. The one that stood out to me, and the character of McDaniels, is a woman pleading with them to save her child.

Once they hole up in the building they are forced to go into, things slow down for a little bit. Knight takes this time to give us some more back ground for the different characters that are still alive at this point. While he does this for nearly everyone, McDaniels and his next in command First Sergeant Dave Gartrell are the main focus. McDaniels and Gartrell respect each other but these is also a bit of bad blood between the two as well, which is told in a quick flashback. Their relationship is an interesting one, especially when it people's lives were on the line at one point.

One of the things that I found interesting was the use of different kinds of zombies. I don't think there were what movie fans call runners or fast zombies, but Knight does describe some that move quicker than your average zombie. He also has a few that still can remember things. The theory presented by Safire is that the recently dead can be a bit smarter. I don't want to get into what these zombies can still do though. I want that to be as much of a surprise for any of you that decide to read this as it was for me. This may not really separate The Gathering Dead from other zombie books and/or movies, but it was still a nice surprise whenever it happened.

It wasn't really a problem for me, but be ready for a lot of military lingo to be found. Knight uses it a lot, but not to the point where you have to be in the military to understand what is going on. In his note at the end of the story, he does talk about tapping some guys he knows from the Special Forces in order to make it sound and feel real for the story. The weapons talk is a bit lost on me, since I couldn't really tell you anything about weapons. The only thing that really bugged me is whenever someone would go with their night vision, Knight would almost always describe how it looks for the person using it. I get explaining it once or twice, but it was reaching a point that I was getting annoyed by it.

When I finished up with The Gathering Dead, I decided to see what else Stephen Knight had put out. I came across Left With The Dead (A Gathering Dead Novella), so I decided to go ahead and read that before doing this review. This is an 87 page (if I remember right) short story about one of the loose ends at the end of The Gathering Dead. I don't really want to get into the plot, as it will spoil the ending for the other story somewhat. It is written in the same style and deals with a character from the other book, that is all I will say about that though.

Much like The Gathering Dead, Left With The Dead mainly takes place in a building. It would have been nice if more of either story took place out in the streets a little more, but it was very interesting to see why they had to leave their building in both stories. The main character this time finds two other people and tries to get them out of the city along with himself. In a short time for this story, which takes place over two days I believe, Knight puts his main character through a lot. I found that I liked Left With The Dead just a little more. It has a little more drama to it I thought.

Both stories have a lot of action in them. If you are looking for a zombie story with a lot of action that deals more with the military, even if it is a somewhat limited offering, then these books should appeal to you rather well. One of the action sequences in the second story where the characters are trying to get into the subway was a favorite part of that story for me. Knight does a good job with both of the stories. If nothing else, it has made me want to check out his other books, which is never a bad thing for an author. I would liked to have a bit more drama to the stories, but I still think both are well worth checking out.
3 out of 5 I would want to be one of the swimming zombies

Even Dead Girls Can Be Sexy

2011-10-05T14:37:00.000-07:00

October is here at last. While I have no big plans this time around, I do know I will not try to get a review a day in this time around. I managed to do that last year, to my surprise, but I know better than to try it this year. I don't have it in me, nor do I have the time to do it. I do have some catching up to do though. Not just with Deadgirl (2008), which I was mostly done when I gave up on the review, but with another movie that I had watched as well. I'm going out with friends soon, which I hope will put me in a good mood, and plan to go see a movie tomorrow. That means I will have some catching up to do over at Top Horror Movies Club, where I accidentally deleted half of a review last week, doh!

Bestfriends Rickie (Shilof Fernandez) and JT (Noah Segan) are at school one day when there is a fire drill to take part in. Instead of going back to class though, they decide to take off and get drunk instead. They end up in an abandoned mental hospital where they trash the place while drinking their beer. Eventually they find their way down into the basement where they are almost attacked by a dog. They manage to get away though, thankfully for them. As they walk around, JT finds a door that has been pretty much sealed shut. For whatever reason, JT isn't going to give up getting that door open. With Rickie's help, they do manage to get it open and discover that there is a woman (Jenny Spain) chained to a bed inside. Rickie wants to help her, while JT doesn't so much. Rickie leaves JT behind and goes home where he intends to call 911, but his mom's boyfriend wants to talk. Before he can call again (supposedly) JT finds him and takes him back to the woman. JT explains that he tried having his way with the woman but she tried to bite him. The more she tried, the madder he would get and eventually he killed her. Rickie is repulsed by this, but the woman is alive after all, or is she? JT takes the gun that Rickie had been using and shoots the woman three times. She seeming dies from this, but then starts to move around again. While JT is happy with leaving her there to use sexually, Rickie wants to try and help her. Whatever will a boy do now?

Of course there is more to the story than what I just wrote up. It is a hard plot to try and explain. While there is more to Deadgirl, there isn't in a way. I waited a long time for there to be something other than a moral dilemma for Rickie. I get not ratting out your friends when they do something they aren't supposed to, depending on what it is of course. Even though Rickie did try to help deadgirl more than once, I had trouble with Rickie not doing more than that. I can understand why JT does what he does. Having very few friends, and probably getting turned down by most women, he feels in control and in power there in that room. Eventually there is more than just sex with a zombie girl, or whatever you want to call her. I'm having trouble putting my finger on what I didn't like about Deadgirl. I know it wasn't the subject matter. There have been enough horror, and even non-horror, movies that have rape as part of its plot. While I might feel...uncomfortable while watching it, it doesn't make me hate a movie or anything like that. I found the plot to be very different actually, in mostly a good way. Even though the plot sounds like a horror movie, it didn't really play out like one until it was getting close to the end of the film. Between Ricky trying to do the right thing, and trying to get his childhood sweetheart back, I was starting to wonder if it was going to be more of a teen drama.

It has been a while since I have watched Deadgirl. Not really how I like to do reviews, but it is what it is. I don't recall anything real gory, but I do remember some scenes that were a bit on the bloody side. The acting is what I do remember rather well though. Jenny Spain never says a word, but does a great job in what had to be a tough role. While I liked both of the leads, I think that I liked Noah Segan the best. Could be that I just liked his character better as well. Eric Podnar and Candice Accola also show up. I wasn't really all that impressed with Accola though. She looked pretty and all, but I just didn't care for her all that much.

There was one scene that really stood out to me. JT and Wheeler, played by Podnar, are hanging out at a gas station looking to nab someone. What happens to them was just real funny to me. I wished that the rest of the movie had that tone for me, I would have liked Deadgirl a bit more I think. That scene also made me wonder how Joann managed to find JT and Wheeler. Directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel never give us a good view of what the town looks like, or how big it is, so it just seemed odd that she was able to find those two. I never hated Deadgirl, I never loved it either. The ending leaves things pretty open, but I really don't think there will be a sequel to this one. I am having a hard time deciding on what rating to give this one. Even though I didn't love Deadgirl, it still had a good story to it, and a fairly original one at that. Maybe if I ever watch it again, I will like it more. I do think folks should give this one a look if you haven't done so already though.
3 out of 5 Kinky sex is the best...not that I would know

What Was I Thinking?

2011-09-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

I'm going to pull something that I know men hate about women, I'm changing my mind...again. I almost deleted my last post a couple of times, but decided against it just before my finger twitched too much. This is why I have decided not to give up on my blog just yet: my dad. See, he got me into horror movies. Even though he didn't watch them much over the last few years, it was something that we still talked about. Months back I went to where he worked to pick up what remained of his personal stuff there. When I walked into his office, I had this overwhelming sense that I would see him sitting in his chair, and of course he wasn't there. I'm not sure how long I stood there, seemed like several minutes though, and stared at the chair. I was remembering him sitting there like I had seen him so many times before. While I didn't get upset over it, I did feel sad. I guess that feeling has stuck with me, and horror movies just reminded me more of him, so I pushed them off to the side. My dad didn't like when I did stuff like that, and I could hear him in my head telling me not to do that all week because he liked that I was taking my love of horror films to a new level with my blog. Who am I not to listen to my dad? So, I am back to give it another shot. If I only get one review a month in, then so be it. I'm not going to worry about that anymore.

Back in March when I went to this years Horrorhound Weekend Indy, there were a few guests there from Laid To Rest (2009), and the upcoming sequel. Since at the time I had yet to watch Laid To Rest, I didn't go up to any of them. I thought about getting their autographs as part of a giveaway, but as a general rule of mine, I don't usually talk to the guests if I have never watched any of their movies. I don't really want to say, "To hell with your movies! Just give me your autograph," if they start asking what I thought of their movies. Not that I would...maybe. Speaking of giveaways, another reason I came back since I had yet to do that. Anyway, several months later, I sat down to watch Laid To Rest, and was pretty surprised by it.

A woman (Bobbi Sue Luther) wakes up in a casket, and doesn't know how she got there. Once she manages to get out of the casket, we soon learn that she doesn't know who she is, or even where she is. She finds herself locked in a funeral home. The only door she finds open goes into the room where the funeral director prepares bodies. She manages to find a phone and knows enough to at least call 911. The police try to trace her call (which is actually a lot quicker than it is shown in movies), but manages to pull the cord out of the phone before it can be traced. She then sees an older man (Richard Lynch) killed before her eyes by some guy wearing a chrome mask. She manages to get away before being killed herself, and is picked up by Tucker (Kevin Gage), who takes her home. But Chromeskull (Nick Principe) manages to find them, and no one is getting in his way of killing this woman.

Laid To Rest surprised me because it reminded me a lot of slasher films of old. Back in the day when no one cared who the killer was or why he was going around killing people. Outside of Chromeskull's real name, which doesn't help at all, we know very little about him. One of the things we know is that he has killed a lot of women. He isn't above killing a guy, but women tend to die in more horrible ways. He also has a shoulder mounted camera, and sends the tapes to the police. We never even get to see what he looks like, his face anyway. It was really the whole mystery behind the killer that kept me into it more than anyway else. Forget the details, just give us some awesome kills.

That doesn't go to say that Laid To Rest has its share of problems though. A big part of the plot calls for no phones, or not enough gas to get very far with. If things like that manage to happen once or twice it isn't above reason, but writer/director Robert Hall manages to stretch this paper thin. This did bother me, but I didn't let it get to me all that much. Another thing that Hall manages to run paper thin is no matter how far someone walks or drives, they always seem to end up in one of three places. That isn't completely true, but it sure feels like it at times.

If you are looking for a pretty gory film, this one will be what you are looking for. There are some very cool kills to be found. Slicing off one's face, knife behind the eyes (and can see the eyes bulge out some when the knife movies). There probably could have been more blood for some of the effects, but they still looked very good. The acting was okay. I didn't completely care for Bobbi Sue Luther, but then her character was a bit dumbed down after taking a blow to the head. I liked Kevin Gage better actually. Lena Heady plays Gage's wife in the movie, and doesn't have a real big role. You can also find Sean Whalen, who's character did make me chuckle at times.

The combo of the gory effects and the mystery of the killer really sold Laid To Rest for me. Chromeskull seems unstoppable at times, but there were also times that he would get knocked over easy, or seemed very human as well. Not saying he is anything more than a human, but it reminded me of Micheal Myers for example. You think he is down and then he is up and chasing you again. These things helped me get pass the low points of the movie, but it didn't for everyone. Laid To Rest gets average scores on both IMDb and Netflix. If it wasn't for the effects, that is probably where I would have put it as well. For me though, the effects managed to raise the level of enjoyment, so it gets a little higher than average score from me. Worth a watch if you manage to find it.
4 out of 5 Would gladly watch just for the kills again

Hearing Voices In Static Part Two

2011-09-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

I have had one busy week. Work has been either busy or super busy for me all week so I am very happy to see the weekend. I have a short week this next week. Only working three days since I will be going to a concert on Thursday. The weekend also means that I have time to write, and I have a lot of writing to do. By the time I get home and get a few things I want to get done around the house and on the net, I have time to work in a movie or do a review. Since I had three movies being taken out of Instant Watch, and I discovered a movie I wanted to see at the theater was going to get pulled Friday, all I had time for was watching movies. Hopefully I can get all four reviews done this weekend so I can start a series review on Monday. I'm also nearing my 900th post and I have no idea what movie to watch for that. Time will tell I suppose. I will start things off with the first of four movies that I watched, White Noise 2: The Light (2007).

Abe Dale (Nathan Fillion) is out with his family having dinner together. As his wife begins to act strange, and his son says that he isn't feeling well, a man (Craig Fairbass) comes up and pulls a gun. Abe's wife and son are both killed. Abe eventually tries to kill himself with pills. As the doctors rush to save him, Abe passes away. The doctors do manage to bring him back, but not before we see Abe going through a tunnel where his wife and son are waiting on the other side. Now that Abe is alive once again, he starts to notice that some people have a bright white light around them. He is told that is a normal thing for someone that is brought back from the brink of death, but then he notices that the people he sees with this light around them are being killed. Not really murdered, just some sort of accident usually. Abe decides that he will try and save the people that he sees with the light around them, and hopes that the next leap will be the leap home. Opps, sorry. Wrong show.

I remembered watching White Noise years back, and thought I had done a review for it. I didn't see it on my list though, so I am assuming I watched it just before I started doing reviews. I remember liking it a lot, even if I don't recall most of what happened in it. It doesn't matter with White Noise 2 though. Even if you have yet to watch the first movie, White Noise 2 doesn't try to connect itself with the original film. It is a stand alone movie, so it did lose some points for that. The only way this movie connects itself with the original film is through the use of white noise, which doesn't play much of a part of the plot. Abe can see things in the static of a TV station, or hear voices through it and other devices. There is a quick explanation of what white noise is, and the voices will usually single to Abe when someone around him has the light, but it is never used like it was in the original film.

Even though White Noise 2 has nothing to do with the original film, it is still a good movie. The plot moves a little slow at first. When Abe decided to try and save people, it became a little repetitive for a bit there. Each situation was different, but the end result was the same. Once it gets pass that part though, it because a really interesting movie. Abe discovers that he isn't supposed to save these people after all, because if he does...well, I will let you discover the reason. I had to wonder what the point was if he wasn't supposed to save these people, and the answer surprised me. It goes off in a direction that I wasn't expecting. I loved the plot, but there were things that bugged me to the point that I ended up not loving the movie. Abe could see ghosts for whatever reason. Some seemed to be rather random, while other ghosts were those of the people he didn't save. At times they are rather hostile, not that they hurt Abe in any way besides give him a scare. I guess I would be a little pissy too if someone knew I was going to die and didn't try to stop it. I don't really know if that was the whole point of it or not though. I thought they could have used the white noise in a better way, and the ending got a bit silly.

I am assuming that the ghosts were real people with a digital effect to make them look ghostly. Outside of that though, not many effects were used. There was more blood when someone got beat up than there was when people got shot. The acting was at least pretty good. Nathan Fillion does well in the lead role. Some people complained his character was a bit too dark and never smiled much. If I had lost my husband and son, I probably wouldn't be all that cheerful either. Katee Sackoff plays the part of Abe's possible love interest. Her character is the opposite of Abe's. She is more perky and happy. There is also Adrian Holmes, who plays the part of Abe's best friend.

I have to give credit to Matt Venne for keeping the story interesting. He could have written a script where Abe just goes around saving people, or trying to anyway, but it became much more interesting than that. Director Patrick Lussier also puts together a good film. I think I would have loved this one more if the ending had been different. Maybe more open, keep us wondering what would have happened instead of showing us. Even so, White Noise 2: The Light is well worth checking out. In a way it is nice that it isn't connected to the first movie since anyone can watch this one and enjoy it without wondering what they missed from the first movie. Currently it is no longer on Instant Watch, but maybe it will be back. If you are interested in a plot driven movie, check this one out.
3 out of 5 Wondering who will meet me at the end of the tunnel

Possessions Gone Bad

2011-09-12T19:01:00.000-07:00

My plan for today was to start a new series review. When I checked the other day on Netflix, I noticed that The Exorcist Chronicles (2007) was going to be taken out of Instant Watch. No big deal, I could still get my series review in. But that didn't work out too well since I messed around and took a week to get two reviews in. When I checked on Netflix last night, there were a few more movies going to be taken off Instant Watch, so the new plan is to get those watched and then, hopefully, get to the next series review. Over Labor Day, I did manage to watch Shark Night 3D. If you would like to know what I thought of that movie, just head on over there. Don't forget to come back here though.

A reporter (Deitre Courchesne, I think) is looking for Doctor Eric Forester (Richard Cross). Forester was a renowned psychiatrist who was granted permission by the Catholic Church to document and prove the validity of demonic possession back in 1983. Over several months he visits four cases where it is believed a person has been possessed. Being a person who doesn't believe in possessions or the Devil, he first interviews each person and/or people related to the case. He also talks to the priest that is doing the exorcism. In the first case, he just talks to everyone and listens to a tape of the exorcism of a young girl. From there though he does get to see what happens during on in person. After the last case, Forester calls it quits and is never seen or heard from again. The film that was made was later turned into The Exorcist Chronicles. Now the reporter is hot on his trail.

I thought that The Exorcist Chronicles might be a pretty good film. The majority of the movie is shown in documentary style, with the story about the reporter mostly being book ends. In truth, the story about the reporter didn't even need to be there. I think it was included to give the movie more of a shock ending, but it could have been done even without the present day story. Some people who claim to get this movie, when most didn't it would seem, say that the film was trying to show what a real exorcism looked like. I don't know if that is what director/writer Will Raee, with Paul Cama also getting a writing credit, was going for though. I didn't have a problem with the story, even though there seemed to be more talking than exorcisms going on. The movie itself seemed rather grainy, maybe to reflect it being films in 1983, and a little too dark in places. There was some annoying music being play during the majority of the movie. It wasn't that the music was bad, I've heard better but still wasn't bad, it was more that it was being played almost all the time. The exorcisms should have been enough to up the tension levels, no real need to have music trying to do it for you. Another big problem, for me anyway, was the way it was edited. Forester could be talking to three different people and the conversations would jump back and forth between them. I didn't have a problem following it, sometimes the conversations were related, but I just found it very annoying at times.

Outside of the lights flickering at times, there are no special effects. I don't know if turning the lights on and off qualifies though. The acting wasn't all that great. I thought that Richard Cross was okay in the lead role at least. I didn't care for his acting all the time, but for a small budget film, he did okay with it. The rest of the cast wasn't so good. As someone else mentioned on Netflix, I wasn't sure if they were trying to act like normal people, or if they were just that bad of actors.

It didn't take long really before I realized I wasn't going to like The Exorcist Chronicles. I didn't give up on it, like I have some other movies I have watched, but I knew it wasn't going to turn around enough for me to like it. There is a mixed reaction on Netflix on rather the exorcisms were realistic or not. The characters will throw out that the exorcism can take days to complete, but every one that is in this movie seemed to only take minutes. I just wasn't buying into it very well. If you happen to be interested in watching this, if you have Netflix, then it will still be around for a couple of more days. Even though I can't recommend that anyone rush to go see it, it might appeal to people that are really into this type of sub genre. Then again, since next to no one is talking about it IMDb, I don't think too many people ended up liking this one.
2 out of 5 Being possessed apparently makes you pee a lot

That Weird Indian Guy

2011-09-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

One has to love a three day weekend. I just got back to work last week, went a lot quicker than I thought it would, and I already get a three day weekend. I will be working the rest of the week, all next week, and then only three day week after that. If my plans don't fall through, which they tend to do for some reason, then I will be heading out for a Foo Fighters concert that week. I'm excited about going, as it will be my third time going to see them. Meanwhile, I watched The Manitou (1978) and Apollo 18. I also plan to go see Shark Night 3D in a couple of hours, and hope to get that review up tomorrow night. At least for now The Manitou was the last film that was being taken out of Instant Watch, so I will be getting back to a series review soon.

Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg) has a problem. We meet her while she is in a San Fransico hospital having a lump on her back just below her neck checked out. Doctor Hughes (Jon Cedar) doesn't believe that the tumor is what it seems at first. Having examined it, and looked at it thanks to x-rays, they do know that it growing at a very fast rate, and even think it looks like a human fetus. That can't be what it is though, right? Karen goes to see her ex-boyfriend Harry (Tony Curtis), who happens to be psychic (or so he says anyway). Harry tells her that he believes everything will be fine, but doesn't like what his tarot cards has to say. After trying three times, he gets the exact same cards. That night Karen says things that are not in English. The next day Karen is going to operated on, but when Hughes gets ready to start his first cut, Karen wakes up and starts to chant. This causes Hughes to cut his own hand. At the same time, Harry is meeting with an older woman, telling her what she wants to hear, when she suddenly starts to chat as well. She begins to float across the room, and then throws herself down the stairs. Harry begins to believe that what is inside Karen is a 400 year old medicine man who is being reborn. To make matters worse, he is supposed to be the most powerful of his kind, and he isn't a very nice guy. Harry gathers some friends to help, but will they be able to stop the Manitou?

The Manitou is a movie that I have had in my DVD queue for a good while now. It has been moving up my list for some time, I believe it was sitting in the 20s before I watched it, so I probably would have gotten around to it soon so I could remove it from the DVD queue. Why have the DVD sent to me when I can just watch it through Netflix? I was a little worried about this one, so I kept putting off getting around to it. The plot sounds very strange, but the movie ends up being even more strange than that. This was one of those movies where you may not really like the movie, but you still end up at least enjoying it because of how weird it is. Legends had it that a full grown man would be born, killing the host. I don't want to say what it was that comes out, but it wasn't what I was thinking of, that is for sure. Throw in some special effects that look like they come out of a sci-fi film, and it gets even more weird. The Manitou was based on a book by the same title. Word has it that director William Girdler, last film he made as he was killed while scouting a location for another film, was so excited after reading the book by Graham Masterson that he started making phone calls as soon as he could. Those that have read the book, and watched the movie, say that the book took things much more serious than the movie did, but the movie is worth watching for the camp alone.

Since it has been a while since I watched this one, I don't recall anything real gory happening. There is at least one person that does end up with a lot of blood on him though. The effects are mostly used for the last half of the movie. There is a hospital floor that has lots of fake ice in it, and it looks very fake. There are also a lot of...I guess you could call them lasers towards the end as well. If you thought an Indian coming out of another person was weird, you haven't seen nothing until the end of this movie. The acting is about the same as the effects. Some of it is pretty good, while some of it isn't. Tony Curtis is the main attraction I would guess. He does a good job, but he does manage to really ham it up in some scenes. He does manage to inject some humor as well. Burgess Meredith has a small role that is almost funny as well. Stella Stevens plays the part of the person who taught Harry everything he knows, and also looks like she has a really bad fake looking tan going. Michael Ansara plays the part of an Indian on Harry's side who tries to stop the Manitou.

The first thing that I noticed about The Manitou is how slow the movie starts off. We learn about Karen right away. It also doesn't take long to figure out what it is inside her may not be a tumor after all. She knows she will be going under the knife very early in the movie, but it takes 20-30 minutes later before that actually happens. We do learn a little more about the characters that are involved in the story, which I appreciated, but it just seemed like a long time to advance the plot forward. I can't say that I enjoyed the story line all that much, but it was weird enough to make it a fun movie. Makes me wish I had not put it off for so long. If you have yet to watch it, you should give it a try. I think The Manitou is odd enough to get most people to enjoy watching it, if for no other reason than to poke fun at it.
3 out of 5 If I ever have kids, I hope it is the normal way

Roleplaying Nightmare

2011-09-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to avoid three months with less than ten posts three months in a row, but it just didn't work out that way. Hopefully I will avoid having four months in a row. With my current obsession, Facebook games, and now being back at work, I will need to find a balance that will allow me to work movies and reviews in. I have managed to watch a few movies though. Even one review. Last weekend I went to go see Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark in the theaters. But before I did that, I managed to watch Girly (1970), or Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly, the original British title, but Girly is much easier to type so I will just stick with that. Hopefully I will just have one other movie I will review after this before getting back to doing a series review.

Girly (Vanessa Howard) and Sonny (Howard Trevor) are out having fun and looking for someone. They eventually find a homeless guy in the park and convince him to go home with them to Nanny (Pay Heywood) and Mumsy (Ursula Howells). The man is given the name Soldier (Robert Swann), and is told that he has to follow the rules. Basically the rules are that they have to act like one big happy family, and play any game that they are asked. If they don't follow the rules, then they aren't sent to the angels. Eventually Girly and Sonny meet "New Friend" (Michael Bryant). They manage to kill the woman that New Friend is with in a way that makes New Friend think that it was his fault. They get New Friend home and he plays along with the game for the most part. He also comes up with a new game, creating tension between the happy family members and turning them against each other.

Even though Girly has the label of horror movie attached to it, I didn't feel like it was much of one. I'm sure I would feel differently if I was one of the people that they took home with them. From what other fans have said, Girly was based off a play by the same (original title) name. In the play, Mumsy is the mom of Girly and Sonny. She is looking for more children since she can no longer have any. The movie version, by writer Brian Comport, these things are not so clear. It is never really said why they go find guys to join their family. I guess in the play they find both men and women, but in the movie it was always guys as far as I could tell. I was also never sure if they were related to each other. It is never said that they are, and one line from Mumsy made me believe they were not related. When speaking to Nanny, Mumsy says: "Remember Nanny, you are just the Nanny and I'm the Mumsy." This could have only been to put Nanny in her place, which it did, but it also made me think that this had been going on for a very long time, and Mumsy wasn't always Mumsy. Then again, I could just be over thinking it all. Girly had some interesting moments to it, but as a whole I found it to be a bit slow. The violence is suggested more than shown. Even when it is shown, it felt rather tame. It lacked the attention grabbing kick that it needed to really put it over the top. I understood why New Friend didn't try to leave on his own, in a way anyway. With his believing that the death of his girlfriend was his fault, there was that hanging over his head if he did leave. There wasn't anyone else that knew about it, so the secret was safe as long as he stayed. They showed what happened when someone had tried to run away, but not what happened at the time they did try. Because of that, I had a hard time trying to figure out why they didn't just up and leave.

The highlight for the movie was Vanessa Howard. She manages to find that balance of crazy, yet glimpses of sanity. Innocent and childlike, yet sexy and mature. It is easy to write off Vanessa at first, but as the movie went along she really won me over. If it wasn't for her, I probably would have gotten bored with the movie and given up on it. Not to say that the rest of the cast didn't do a good job as well though. The only person I didn't care for much was Michael Bryant. That had to do with his character more than his acting though. For being thrown into this bizarre situation, he seemed to handle it very well. The only time he doesn't handle so well is when he first gets there, but he was also drunk at the time.

Girly has managed a nice following over the years. While it has an average rating on Netflix, IMDb users give it a 6.8 out of 10 on average. I guess this is just another movie that some might call a classic that I just didn't connect with. Even though I loved the performance by Venssa Howard, it wasn't enough for me. With the story moving slowly, and with not a whole lot going on most of the time, I didn't feel bored by it, but I did feel it was missing something. The horror wasn't there for me, even though one person does lose his head. I was waiting for the end of the movie to help me decide how much I would like this one, and to see how it was going to wrap up. The ending seems to be a big problem for a lot of people. It doesn't wrap up, but instead leaves things open just as the order has been mixed up and things felt like it could get even more interesting. I don't mind open ended films, but this was left a tad too open. It was worth the watch, but I don't see myself going back to it anytime soon.
2 out of 5 I could easily be the character of Girly!

Italian Zombies Alive And Well In America

2011-08-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been doing too many reviews lately. I had plans to get more done, but I went through a period where I just didn't give a shit. It started with the last review I did for here when it didn't publish right, because I had been signed out for some reason, I discovered it also didn't auto save like it should have. So I had two hours worth of work disappear on me. Even though I got it finished the next day, I was still pretty pissed about it. I also lost part of my review I was doing over at Top Horror Movies Club. I was pissed about losing one review, but with it happening twice, I didn't want to write anymore. I got over it, eventually, and did finish my review for Fright Night done. I don't know if I will get up in time, but I would like to go to another movie Saturday. For now though, I watched City Of The Living Dead (1980) before it was taken out of Instant Watch.

Somewhere in the town of Dunwich, a priest hangs himself. Because he does this, he opens a gate to hell that causes the dead to start to rise. Mary (Catriona MacColl) is a psychic who has a vision of this, and things to come. This puts her in a death like state, and is even buried alive before Peter (Christopher George), a reporter, discovers she isn't so dead after all. Peter and Mary decide to team up and head to Dunwich to see if there is anything they can do. Mary believes, because of the vision she had, that the gates must be closed before All Saints Day arrives, which happens to be the very next day. In Dunwich, we meet Gerry (Carlo De Mejo), a psychiatrist. Because of his job, he has been meeting people that believe something is very wrong in Dunwich ever since the priest killed himself. Gerry teams up with Sandra (Janet Agren) when she discovers a body in her house that was just at the morgue. They eventually find Peter and Mary and try to help them as well. Will they be able to close the gates in time?

City Of The Living Dead, which has a long list of other titles, is a movie by writer/director Lucio Fulci. I have watched a few of his movies for here, so I was looking forward to watching it. It gets fairly high marks on IMDb (6.1), which I don't really get. Not to say I hated City Of The Living Dead, I just didn't connect with it like so many others have. I found the start of the movie a little confusing. I didn't even make the connection that Mary was the woman in the coffin for a while. Everyone calls the dead zombies, but that is a very loose term for them here. They certainly have the look of zombies, but they don't really act like one. They can kill just by staring at women and they can appear and disappear at will. It was a bit strange, like they were part zombie, part ghost. My biggest problem with City Of The Living Dead was that there was no sense of urgency. They had less than 24 hours to close the gates, but they were always being side tracked by something. They save some kid twice. The last time they did so...well I don't want to give anything away but lets just say they were late. I'm not saying the kid wasn't worth saving, but if it was the kid or having millions killed because the gate wasn't closed, then sorry about your luck kid.

I think City Of The Living Dead has become something of a favorite mostly because of the special effects. It can be a pretty gory film at times. Bleeding from the eyes, puking up ones guts, and a nice scene where someone gets a drill to the head. Even the zombies looked pretty good. Most of the effects look good, but there was at least one where it was pretty obvious a fake head was being used. The acting seemed to be okay. The version that was on Instant Watch was dubbed.

I'm not alone in not really liking the plot for City Of The Living Dead. Once I figured out what was going on, I still wasn't a big fan of it. I guess I get why people like Fulci's films. I have liked some of them, but I have never found one I can think of as great though. Fans say to leave logic at the door when you do watch his movies. That is fine I guess, but I like logic. I also like weird movies, but as long as they makes some sense, then I am happy. It wasn't that City Of The Living Dead was way out there as far as its logic, I just didn't care for the way the characters were taking their sweet time saving the world. The ending also leaves a lot to be desired as well. The story about how the ending came about is interesting, there was a split in the film so Fulci just went with it, but it gives you the feel of just leaving you hanging. Fan of Fulci do seem to like this one. If you are one, and haven't checked out this one yet, then give it a watch. Even though I didn't care for it, I would tell people to give it a chance at least.
2 out of 5 I wonder where the zombies went when they disappeared

Underwater Nazi Zombies

2011-08-21T14:25:00.000-07:00

In order to get the two Instant Watch movies in before tomorrow, I am working ahead a little bit. I was going to watch one today and one tomorrow, but then it hit me that won't work. Netflix doesn't mess around when it comes time to take a movie out of Instant Watch. When they say the 16th, they mean it. I have missed out on a movie before because I thought the date listed would be the last day you could watch it, but it is actually the date it will be pulled. So I watched Shock Waves (1977) last night, and I will watch the other movie at some point tonight. I actually like to do my reviews during the day, since there isn't as much on TV to distract me. I hope to keep things going once I get back to work at the end of the month. Plus I really should get back to that interview I was doing. I haven't done anything with it for months now. I'm bad like that sometimes.

A tourist boat is out on the seas. The crew is the Captain (John Carradine), Keith (Luke Halpin) and the cook Dobbs (Don Stout). Out for a boat ride you will find friends Rose (Brooke Adams) and Chuck (Fred Buch), along with Beverly (D.J. Sidney and Norman (Jack Davidson), a married couple. When we first meet everyone, we learn there has been some engine problems. This has cause some friction between some of the people on board. Once they get the boat going again, they head off but find that the compass isn't working the way it should. Because of that, they aren't sure they are going the way that they had planned on. To add to this, we hear some strange noises, and the sky has turned a funny color. This just raises the tension even higher. Late that night though, they hit a rusted out ship that appeared to have been moving. This causes damages to their own boat, and also leaves it stranded on a sand bar. Lucky for them though, they are close to an island. The island only has one person living on it (Peter Cushing), who warns them to leave the area as soon as possible, but why?

At the start of Shock Waves we are told about how during World War 2, towards the end of it, the German's made super solders. While some were encountered, there was one unit that no one ever managed to capture a single person. We also learn that these special solders are somewhere between life and death. While they are never called zombies, that is pretty much what they are. It was easy to see what out rag tag group was going to go up against. The zombies seem to like the water. They are often shown as laying in the water while waiting for someone to pass by. The first time we see all of these zombies is pretty cool. They don't just rise up out of the water, but are shown walking up to the island, so they are slowly being revealed. This was great, but it was something that they showed a lot. Every time someone would get in the water, I was pretty much expecting to see a zombie pop up behind them. After a while, seeing one come up out of the water lost its impact. Add to the fact that the zombies don't really do much, and the slow pace that director Ken Wiederhorn gives Shock Waves doesn't help much. I had to wonder why any of the characters would even bother to walk through water that was more than knee deep since that was where the zombies seemed to like to hang out. The zombies would just grab a person and then drown them, nothing all the special.

No special effects outside of the makeup for the zombies. The cast for Shock Waves had some fairly well known people for the time. Peter Cushing and John Carradine never share any screen time. It is hard to call either of their parts cameo's, as each does have a good sized chunk of screen time. It seemed to me that Carradine got the better end of the deal though. Cushing only interacted with the other actors for a couple of scenes, and the rest of the time we just see him wandering around the island. Even so, both actors do a great job with what they have. They weren't the only ones that didn't have much to do. Brooke Adams spends most of her time looking pretty in a bikini.

When I started reading other reviews, I noticed a trend in them. The reviews that gave Shock Waves a high mark were from people that had watched this one when they were kids. It just goes to show that movies that we first started to watch usually end up being the ones we remember the most. A lot of these people point to the slow pace and say that it adds to that atmosphere. Maybe it does a little bit, but I just wasn't feeling it. Between the slow pace and people not really doing much at all, I just didn't end up caring much for Shock Waves. I'm not knocking people that did really get into it, as I'm sure there are movies I really enjoyed but most hated. Shock Waves is considered a cult classic. I won't argue that point at all. It is a movie that has a following, yet I had never heard of it until I added it to my Netflix queue. It is hardly a bad movie, just one I wasn't able to get into.
2 out of 5 At least I understood the need to want to be in the water

A Good Reason Not To Give Out Your Number Remake

2011-08-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

I did it. I made it through the One Missed Call series. It also seems I'm back into a writing grove again. After today's review I will have two movies in Instant Watch to get through before starting on my next series review, Phantasm. I have all the movies here, ready to watch. Unlike the One Missed Call series, I have watched all of the Phantasm movies at least once before. I'm looking forward to giving them a watch again. Late last night I decided to go ahead and watch One Missed Call (2008), the American remake. In a way I was actually looking forward to watching this one. I wanted to see what changes would be made. Wanted to see if it would have a more American feel to it. I was a little surprised by what I found. I was also surprised by peoples reactions to this movie.

After a string of deaths, Beth (Shannyn Sossamon) is trying hard to figure out what is going on. Her best friend was thrown to her death in front of a train. Her best friend's boyfriend is killed soon after. What do these, and other, deaths have in common? They all got a phone call from themselves dated in the future and they can hear their own death. When that time comes, it actually does happen just like the phone call said. When her roommate gets the call next, Beth starts to team up with Detective Jack Andrews (Edward Burns), who's sister was a victim of the phone calls as well, to try and figure out what is going on and how to stop it. Or will they be the next to get a phone call?

One Missed Call does waste time putting you into the action. At least one person is dead almost right away. With little explanation to what is going on, we see a hand come out of the water which grabs some woman and her cat. There is also a fire at some hospital that is thrown in there, but that is better explained later on. In fact, that was the only thing I liked about this remake over the original. The fire offers up a better explanation on something that is discovered late in the movie than it did in the original film. That is about as far as this remake goes in being better. The first thing I noticed being different, besides the fire anyway, was that people were seeing strange things the closer they were getting to the time of their death. Some of this is explained away, the fire victims or things found in a certain room, but I didn't care for this change. It wasn't that the effects were bad, they just seemed out of place. The reactions to people seeing these things were also a little off. I think I would be doing a little more than just stare, and say something just to make sure I wasn't going crazy or something. Another big change was the way One Missed Call ends, but I was expecting that. While the new ending is okay, it wasn't the best around. For once I was glad of the extended time of the original movie. There is around a half hour difference in the times. Maybe it was because I knew the story, but it sure felt like that Beth and Jack were connecting the dots way to quick.

From what I have heard, and I don't know how true it is, One Missed Call was intended to to be rated R movie at the time of filming, but it came out as a rated PG13 film. Nothing gory will be found here, which is a shame since the original film was. Instead we get mostly digital effects that while they don't look bad, just don't really cut it. These were mostly used for the ghost effects. The only highlight for effects is a burn victim, that one was done very well. The acting was also just okay. Shannyn Sossamon is fine in the lead, but wasn't great. Edward Burns gives you the feeling that he was just showing up and not trying at all. Ray Wise shows up as the guy that is involved with the media. This was changed slightly. In the original it came off as this big media event, while here it is just some show looking for ratings.

I mentioned people's reactions to this movie earlier in the review. When I looked up One Missed Call on IMDb, I was rather surprised at the low 3.6 average rating. I thought that was pretty low. I don't think this is a great movie by a long shot, and it isn't as good as the original film, but I was happy with it for the most part. Once I started reading the forum for the movie, it didn't take long for me to figure out why it was getting such a low average rating. The remake doesn't explain what is going on as good as the original did, but there was still enough there to put everything together. When reading the forums, people were asking some pretty basic questions about the plot. I had to wonder about their attention span since everything they were asking was explained.

Even though I wasn't all that impressed with the remake of One Missed Call, I still saw it as an average movie. Not great, but not awful either. I almost wish I had given the original a little higher rating just to show that I liked it the most. Eric Valette has some big shoes to fill considering that Miike was the direct of the original. According to trivia, he did not watch the original film, and asked his cast not to watch it as well. If you don't like sub titled movies, or just not into movies from Japan, this remake will be the way to go for you then. I do suggest the original over this one, but I don't think that will surprise many people.
3 out of 5 I wish Ariel Winter was in it more than she was

A Good Reason Not To Give Out Your Number Part Three

2011-08-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

At least I made it back over here to do a review. I was just going to do one review over at Top Horror Movies Club, but I ended up doing two. If you would like to read my thoughts on either The Task or Final Destination 5, then click the links and head over there. Don't forget to come back here though. Even though throwing in a review for Final Destination 5 sort of screwed up my plans for here, I can still get everything in on time. For today I watched One Missed Call Final (2006). This is a movie that Netflix doesn't have yet, so I went out of my and ordered it so I would be able to get a review in for it. Maybe that was a little silly of me, but it hasn't been the first time I have done that.

I found the start of this movie a little confusing. We see a woman watching chickens and eventually she notices that there is the body of a woman who has hanged herself. Then we see the same woman being picked on at school. Since there are no names given yet, I had no idea what was going on. Then we see a group of high school kids that are taking a trip to South Korea as part of the sign language class. They are learning that even though they speak a different language, sign language is a way that everyone can still talk. They are encouraged to talk to locals while they are sent to different places to take pictures. They are all given cell phones that they will take the pictures on. On the way to South Korea, one of the girls gets a weird phone call that is dated around noon the next day. At the time she finds herself alone and gets attacked by something, and is hanged with a piece of red candy in her mouth. When other student dies after a call, it starts to panic the rest. Soon one in their group gets a text that tells them to forward the text if they don't want to die. Emily (Meisa Kuroki) starts talking to Asuka (Maki Horikita) who may be behind it all. Asuka blames the group for picking on Pam, who hanged herself, and now is wants revenge on them. Not all were doing the picking, but Asuka still blames them since they did nothing to stop it. Will Emily (not her name in the sub titles) be able to stop the killings?

I didn't find One Missed Call Final to be all that good. It departs from the previous two films in different ways. It doesn't pick up the story that was being told in either of the other two sequels, and it just has a completely different feel to it. There wasn't much of a mystery to figure out this time around either. The red candy singles that Mimiko is killing again, so at least there is that link back to the previous movies. That is really the only connection though. If you have watched the other movies, then it isn't hard to figure out what is going on with both Mimiko and Asuka. There is a nice little twist with Asuka at least. One Missed Call Final is, more or less, a stand alone film. While it does go back to the other films in the form of Mimiko, it explains just enough about her so that you get the basics of who she is. It helps to have watched the other two, but I felt you can get by without watching them for this one. I didn't feel the tension that I felt in the other ones. In fact, a lot of it came off a little silly really. I get that they would freak out knowing that the person who got the text might forward it to them, but actually seeing this just felt silly to me. Everyone running around, in mass, trying to stop on person from sending the text to one of them. Even though these were older teenagers, they didn't really act that way a lot of the time.

There isn't much for special effects this time around. A few fingers bending the wrong way and such. There is a scene where a power line comes loose and attacks one of the students, but the digital effects didn't look very good there. It was another reason the movie has a silly feel to me. The acting seemed to be okay. I thought a lot of them over reacted to things, but I felt that might have been director Manabu Asô's fault more than anything. I liked the leads though, so I guess not all was lost.

The plot itself for One Missed Call Final was fine. The whole bully thing was an interesting plot line, I'm just not sure it worked well as a One Missed Call story. I don't know how much of an issue kids getting bullied is in Japan, but I know it has been in the news more than a few times lately here in the States. I'm guessing it is an issue since someone decided to make it a plot point in a movie. I felt like the story was there and then they tried to force it into the world of One Missed Call. It was cool they they linked the killer from the first two movies into this one, but I didn't understand why they method was changed. In both of the other movies, a person would get a call from the future and hear their own death. The first call in this movie was that way, except she hears herself say a couple of sentences and that is it. There was nothing ominous about it outside that it was a call from herself. From there it was changed to a text message. I don't know if it was changed because texting is the thing to do now instead of calling, but I would find a text message a lot less scary than hearing my own voice. Even though I thought the story did well, especially in the later half of the movie, I just couldn't get over the feeling that it would have done better as its own movie instead of a One Missed Call film. If it sounds interesting to you, I would suggest checking it out if you can find it. I didn't have a problem ordering it, but I don't know if I would recommend to do that honestly. Maybe Netflix will eventually carry it.
2 out of 5 Would you send your friend the text so they would die in your place?

A Good Reason Not To Give Out Your Number Part Two

2011-08-10T22:33:00.000-07:00

I'm sure Netflix has wondered what has gotten into me lately. After two, or maybe it was three, slow months in a row, I have sent back four movies in as many days. I will make it five tomorrow hopefully, as I think I will take a break from this series long enough to do a review over at Top Horror Movies Club. After this series I will take a small break in between series. There are two movies in Instant Watch that will be pulled on the 16th of this month. I have time to get the rest of this series in before getting to those two movies though. I managed to watch One Missed Call 2 (2005), or Chakushin ari 2 as is the original title, and get it in the mail box minutes before the mailman showed up. That was pretty good timing, even if I didn't mean it to be.

Kyoko (Mimura) is a day care teacher who is also taking classes to help her better deal with the children she works with. One of her friends talks her into going to the restaurant that Naoto (Hisashi Yoshizawa) works at. Kyoko and Naoto are seeing each other, although it would seem Naoto wants to keep that fact a secret. A little later Naoto's boss picks up his daughters cell phone, thinking it is her boyfriend whom he doesn't like, only to hear his daughter telling him it is dangerous to leaving oil on the fire. Seconds later she walks in, wondering what is going on. At the same time that Kyoko's friend gets a call from her future self, Naoto finds his boss dead in the back after hot oil was spilled on him. The calls have started again, but is it the same person behind the calls? A detective (same guy as in the first movie, but character name is not listed on IMDb) believes so, as does Takako (Asaka Seto), a reporter who I think is linked to the calls because of her sister. When coal is found lining the stomach of these new deaths instead of red candy in their mouth, does that mean there is someone new behind these phone calls? Everyone heads to Taiwan in order to find out.

The upside to One Missed Call 2 is that it isn't a stand alone film. It does try to include plot points from the first movie, and they even inform us of the fate of Yumi. The downside of One Missed Call 2 is that they try too hard to link it to the first movie. Actually the plot feels like it goes all over the place for a while there. There is an urban legend that does manage to sort of work its way into the story. There is a back story to Takako and her sister, which I think is supposed to show that the curse goes back to a time before cell phones. Don't worry, I don't feel I'm giving anything away there since it isn't clear if that was the point or not. They also find an odd way to link events from the two films that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. I liked that they found a way to keep the story going. One will find out most of what there is to know about the killer from the first movie. There wasn't much else to expand on. I just wish they had found a better way to link things up with the first movie in a better way. Once again I enjoyed the mystery of trying to figure out what was going on. It was cool that it wasn't clear that it was the same killer from the first movie for a while. This is a little hard to talk about without giving away too much from the first movie, as well as this one.

Even though Netflix claims that One Missed Call 2 is the "gory sequel," it isn't at all. Besides on person getting all twisted up, there is hardly anything that is gory. We do see a couple of people with their mouth sewed up, but I wasn't really all that impressed with that makeup. Even though I had to play with the DVD to get the sub titles I wanted, I was able to get them. The acting seemed pretty good to me. I am always surprised at how much a nod of the head can mean in Japanese movies. I liked the leads in this movie. There are about the same amount of main characters as there was in the first one, just different people now.

I can't really call One Missed Call 2 a bad film, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the original. The main problem for me was the feeling that they were trying to throw everything except the kitchen sink into this thing. If I had to choose between the two, it would be the original hands down. Not to say that One Missed Call 2 should be avoided though. While it isn't as good as the original film, and it certain has its share of problems, it is still a fun watch. The frustrating part is that it could have been so much better if they had just found a better way to link events from this movie with those from the first. Worth the watch if you have watched the original film, but I wouldn't try to watch it otherwise.
3 out of 5 I bet it is rather hard to smile with your lips sewed shut

A Good Reason Not To Give Out Your Number Part One

2011-08-09T21:46:00.000-07:00

I'm a day behind, as usual. I did start my next review over at Top Horror Movies Club Sunday like I had planned to do. It was getting late when my computer decided to mess up on me. The blog there doesn't have an auto save like this one does, so I lost the whole review. I was around half way done with it at that point I would say. Since it was late, and I was rather mad, I didn't start over on the review. I did get it done yesterday though so if you would like to read my thoughts on Scream Of The Banshee, just click the link.

As I have been hinting at, I will be starting up a series review with this post. I decided to go with the One Missed Call series, which currently has three movies and a remake to its name. I will work through this series as well as two others. I might have to break in with other movies if Netflix decides to remove any of the movies I have in Instant Watch, but other than that I plan to run through these different series. I'm starting out with the original One Missed Call (2003) and will work though the series, ending with the remake.

Yumi (Kô Shibasaki) is with a group of friends at a bar when one of them gets a call on their cell phone, from herself. The voice mail is dated for later that night, and it doesn't sound all that promising as we can hear her scream. As Yumi's friend is walking home around that time the call was supposed to have been put through, she is somehow swept off a bridge and falls to her death onto a train that is passing by below. We then see her severed arm dialing another number. Yumi learns that a curse has been finding its way through peoples cell phones. People are getting a call from themselves that is either hours to days into the future at the moment of their death. After that person dies, one person from their phone is the next person to be the target. As Yumi's friends start to get phone calls, she tries to find a connection between why each person tries to call a hospital that will soon be tore down after they die, and a mother and her two daughters that had been going to that same hospital. With the help of Hiroshi (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi), will they be able to solve the curse before Yumi becomes the next person to fall to it?

As I was watching One Missed Call, I couldn't help make comparisons to Ringu. They are very different movies, but I couldn't help feel that it was at least inspired by Ringu in part at least. Replace the video tape with cell phones and you have a class match there. This has nothing to do with the movie itself, but I was surprised at the quality of the DVD, or I guess the movie itself. It looked low quality with snow, and it looked like something was always moving in the shadows. Watching it on the computer I can watch it in a smaller window, or in full screen. Maybe it wasn't really meant for my big monitor because it looked better when in a smaller window. As for One Missed Call, I can say that it is one long movie. Clocking in just under two hours, I can understand why so many people complain about it being dragged out. There are a couple of times around the hour and a half mark where it starts to feel like the end, but keeps going. One thing that surprised me was how quickly the media got involved with the killer message story. Not long after the second death, the media is already getting involved with the next person. What I found frustrating about this is once that plot line is over, we never hear another word about it. The media simply disappear. Considering what happens on live TV, I would expect there to be more to it than that.

Director Takashi Miike does bring a nice balance with the suspense and gore. There is just enough gore here to keep the gore lover happy I thought. Even though there isn't a lot, there is just enough there. The severed arm was cool, as well as some of the makeup for burns or rotted flesh that would slide off. Some good stuff there. The acting was also pretty good. I made the mistake of leaving it on English dubbing instead of using sub titles. It started up with dubbing, and I almost stopped it change it to sub titles but changed my mind. I will not make that mistake again. It wasn't that the dub actors were bad, it was more that the voices were so far off from what was going on in the movie. I mean, when the actor is saying a single word, like Yumi's name, I would expect to see the voice over to be close with the actual actor. Instead I heard the name, and then 2-3 seconds later I see the actor saying the name.

I get that Miike is a popular director amongst fans of Asian movies. I haven't gone out of my way to check out his films. I'm pretty sure this is only the second film of his that I have watched. Many say that One Missed Call is Miike's answer to the Asian ghost story, and one can see many similar themes that run through it. Many also say this is most accessible film to date. While I didn't find One Missed Call nearly as weird as Audition, I also didn't like it as much. It certainly has some creepy places in it. There were times that it had me sitting on edge wondering what would happen next. I also enjoyed trying to figure out who was behind everything and why. Still though, the story didn't grip me as much as say The Ring did. It is a good movie, but I just didn't find it to be great. It will be interesting to see how they expand this story into two more movies, so I am looking forward to checking them out next.
3 out of 5 Beware of red candy

Hurting From Lies

2011-08-06T22:29:00.000-07:00

My next review I had planned was actually going to be for Top Horror Movies Club. I was going to watch that movie and get the review done today, and then start on a series review Sunday. When I decided to check on Netflix though, I found a movie that was going to be taken off Instant Watch tomorrow. So that changed my plans a little bit. I just have to push everything back a day is all really. Not a big deal really. I'm glad that I checked though, just one less DVD that I have to wait to be sent to me if I can watch it on Instant Watch instead. Hurt (2009), as it turns out, is something of an international movie. Filmed in California, but set it Arizona, there was people who were from Brazil, Canada, Poland, Germany, Portugal, and Greece all working on this movie.

After her husband Robert is killed in a car wreck, Helen (Melora Walters) moves her two teens, Lenore (Johanna Braddy) and Conrad (Jackson Rathbone), in with her brother-in-law Darryl (William Mapother). They are leaving behind a nice house, because the bank is threatening to take it, and moving out into the desert where Darryle has his home and junk yard. Lenore isn't all that thrilled by it,but Conrad embraces it some by using some of the junk to create art with.Darryle also struggles with having three new people around. Things get even more complicated when Helen finds out that Robert was planning on taking in Sarah (Sofia Vassilieva), a troubled kid whose parents has recently passed away. Helen doesn't want to do it at first, but after seeing Sarah getting picked on by other girls in the group home, she changes her mind. Things seem to be going okay from that point, but a secret that Helen and her family doesn't know about is ready to reveal itself, and nothing will be the same.

Hurt surprised me a little bit. I really wasn't expecting it to be a good movie for whatever reason. The plot didn't really strike me as all that interesting. To be fair though, Netflix gave an even shorter version of the plot, so I think that is why it didn't sound all that interesting. I can see some people tuning this movie out because it takes its sweet time. Writer Alison Lea Bingeman and director Barbara Stepansky let things build slowly. Strange things will happen from time to time, like Lenore's duck turning up with a broken neck, but thing don't get real serious until towards the end of the movie. I was able to figure out who was doing these things way early. Even though they try to keep you guessing, it is still pretty obvious. I think the main problem there was that it was one of two people. One was a bit creepy, while the other wasn't so much. If you watch enough movies, you figure out it isn't usually the one they are trying to make you believe is the bad person. I thought I had the reason why things were happening nailed as well, but had to wait for the reveal to see if I was right. To my surprise, I was. Even though the story is a bit easy to figure out, it didn't take that much away from it for me. I still found the reveal to be cool, which I think was helped by the acting.

I did think that the acting could have been better at times, I still thought everyone involved did a find job. A lot of people seemed to have been impressed by Sofia Vassilieva, and for good reason. She really pulls her character out well. I had never heard of her before, but I guess that is because I have never watched the TV show Medium. I also liked Johanna Braddy. She was the first person to figure out that something wasn't right, and gets her detective on. There isn't much really as far as effects and gore. One scene where someone falls on a pipe, but that is as far as things go.

There was one major thing wrong with Hurt. There is a glaring plot hole that I couldn't believe was there. I can't really get into here though, as it would give too much of the plot away. If you let the plot get to you, it can ruin the whole movie. It certainly screws up the entire story. I would give Hurt a lower score for that reason, but it still managed to charm me some. Something else that bugged me a little bit was the shotgun used in the movie. They made a point to let us know that it is loud when it is fired. Late in the movie though someone else uses it and it sounded more like a pop gun. I'm also pretty sure it didn't fire when it was supposed to. The title actually fits nicely with the plot, as it deals with being hurt over a major lie to some extent. Do ignore the movie poster though, it has nothing to do with the film itself. If Hurt sounds like a movie for you, do give it a try. It isn't a great movie, but I have watched much worse.
3 out of 5 Ducks and desert just don't mix

Never Go To An Old School In The Woods

2011-08-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

Over half the year is gone already. Seems like this year is just flying by. I hope to have a better month than my last two. I feel a little more like I am back in the groove at last. Maybe not completely there, but I have more of an urge to write it seems. Yesterday I thought about getting two reviews in, but the second one, which would have been this review for The Woods (2006), never really got off the ground for me. My first review was for Husk. If you haven't checked it out already, and it doesn't look like many have, then head on over there and do so! Hopefully I don't mess up this review too bad, as I am watching a favorite TV show when not writing. Anyway, I will hopefully have a series review starting up Monday. I still don't know which one I want to do yet. Sad isn't it?

Heather (Agnes Bruckner) is being sent to Falburn Academy by her parents. Actually, it is her mom (Emma Campbell) who is pushing for it, while her dad (Bruce Campbell) is just going along with it. Once she learns that her dad isn't as rich as she thought, the headmistress (Patricia Clarkson) gives her a test for a scholarship, which she apparently passes. Being the new girl, she finds that she is by herself for a while. She does sit across from Marcy (Lauren Birkell), who seems to be very shy. They do talk some though, and when Samantha (Rachel Nichols) comes over to proclaim herself the queen bitch of the school, a friendship starts to happen between Marcy and Heather. Not everything is going great though. Heather feels there may be ghosts in the woods, and hears voices along with weird dreams at night. But it isn't until one of the students disappears, with a pile of leaves left in her place, that things get real serious.

The Woods was a little odd in that it was set in 1965. I don't know why I found that odd really. I just assumed it was that way to rid the world of pesky cell phones. A few people complained that the girls didn't have the look, or even acted the way that kids from the 60's would have. While I did think the hair styles were off for the period, I couldn't tell you if teen aged girls acted that way in the 60's or not. Another odd thing is that The Woods is said to have sat on a shelf for three years before seeing the light of day. Depending on who you ask, some feel it deserved it, others don't. I had a bit different take on The Woods then it seems most others did. I think the reason for this was because of the back story for the school. It is, more or less, told all at once. This was fine with me, but it was the way it was told that I think throws people off. The story is told by one of the students to Heather. I took this story as only being partly true, after all it is a legend passed down from student to student. Because of that, and the way the movie ended, I guess I ended up with a different take on what happened. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting story that had some good moments of suspense to be found. I enjoyed trying to figure out what was going one with Heather and the other students.

The effects were pretty good I thought. Even though towards the end there is a heavy use of CGI, I didn't have much of a problem with it. With what they were doing with the story at that point, I don't think they could have used anything other than CGI. There are some real cool effects, like an axe to the head type of effect. The acting was also pretty good. I liked Agnes Bruckner in the lead role. I liked her tough, won't take no shit, attitude that she has in this film. It works well for her. I also thought that Rachel Nichols character fit her well. Samantha was a bully and a bit of a bitch, but Rachel Nichols pulls it off fairly well. I can easily see her being that way in high school if she wanted to be.

I guess I was a little surprised to learn that The Woods sat on a shelf since it was directed by Lucky McKee. Not that he is a big name director, but his other horror film, May, is usually pretty popular with the horror crowd. The Woods is a completely different film than May was, but it was just as good I thought and I loved May. Not only did I come to a different conclusion about the story to The Woods, I also didn't pick up on the lesbian vibe that so many people seem to think is there. Maybe it has to do with the fact that is an all girls school, even the teachers, that give it a lesbian feel? I'm not sure, but I didn't pick up on it. Heather and Marcy were just close friends as far as I could tell and Samantha had her reasons for being the total bitch. Some felt Samantha was being that way towards Heather and Marcy because she wanted one or both of them. No, her reasons were explained late in the movie, and it had nothing to do with wanting anyone. Even though the story could have been better, I still loved this one. If you haven't given this one a shot, then you should. It was a very nice surprise for me.
4 out of 5 I wish there was a haunted woods near me

Dead Things In The Bog

2011-07-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

Once I finished my last review, I decided to go ahead and watch the next movie. Legend Of The Bog (2009) is an Instant Watch film that will be taken out at the start of next month, so I figured it was a good time to get it in. I have one other movie I want to watch for here before I break into a series review. Which series? I have my eye on three different series actually. One that I have here at home, one that I had to order a movie for (so I'm waiting for it), and one I will get completely from Netflix. Well that last one isn't completely true since I have some of them at home, but close enough. But before that happens, my next review will likely be over at Top Horror Movies Club, so be on the look out for it tomorrow sometime!

Legend Of The Bog starts out by introducing us to three groups of people, two in each group. The groups are Val (Shelly Goldstein), who is called out to a job site because they dug up a 2000 year old body, and her cab driver Deano (Gavin Kelty). Cousins Hannah (Amy Huberman) and Mallory (Olgo Wehrly) are a little lost. And we also have David (Jason Barry), who in an anthropologist, and Saiorse (Nora-Jane Noone). Val orders her men to get rid of the body and to not call anyone. She knows that a discovery such as this could shut down her job site, thus pushing it further behind schedule. One her way back to down, Deano gets stuck in the mud. The cousins run out of gas. Saiorse manages to hit a cow, thus rendering her car useless. So we have all these people on foot, and they all manage to end up at the same hut, which they discover is owned by Hunter (Vinnie Jones). What they are all about to learn is that the 2000 year old dead man has been brought back to life by the bog, and is now out for some revenge.

When I first looked at the above poster for Legend Of The Bog, I admit I was rather worried. It just looks like a poster for a bad B movie. In that way Legend Of The Bog surprised me. It wasn't near as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it still wasn't good even though it comes close. The bog the movie takes place in, which is somewhere in Ireland (as well as this movie being from Ireland), has a way of returning life to the dead to avenge wrongs. What is it that all these people have done wrong? Well most of it is slowly revealed as the movie plays out. Once the Bog Body, played by Adam Fogerty, is among the living once again, he is not even close to where the others are. Even though he manages to find a store and a circus, the others only find this one hut with apparently nothing even close being around. Legend Of The Bog has a rather slow pace to it that didn't bother me a whole lot, but I was starting to wonder if anything was ever going to happen between the group and Bog Body. Even though the poster shows Vinny with a nice machine gun, he never actually uses one in the film. The way the movie is set up, you would have thought that Hunter was going to have a big showdown with the Bog Body, but this never really happens either.

The deaths, when shown, are done fairly well. Only a couple are actually shown though, which kind of sucks. Most of them are just hinted at, like the cow. Show the car about to hit the car, cut to some other scene and then come back to show the blood all over the windshield. As you can see from above, when shown the deaths can look pretty good. Depending on who you ask, most seemed to have thought that the acting was real back for this one. I didn't find it all that bad, but just thought of it as okay. No one really stands out to me, and there isn't really a main character to get behind. Jason Barry and Nora-Jane Noone do get the most screen time though.

Another thing that bugged me was the stories had to tell. It wasn't that these confession stories weren't interesting, but you could see a general theme going through each of one. So much so that when the final story comes around, you can pretty much guess what happens as soon as the story starts. Also the last story comes up at an odd time. While they are all fighting for their lives, the last story comes up. Seems like an odd time to throw that out there. It was also confused by David. He seems like he understood the Bog Body in a way, and wanted to place nice. Instead, he does a 180 for no real reason. As I said though, I didn't fine Legend Of The Bog to be all bad. Some of the comedy works well. It isn't the campy style of comedy that tends to bug me to death at times. I just felt the plot needed to be better this time around.
2 out of 5 Could have used an actual bog monster as well

One Strange Mother And Daughter

2011-07-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, at least, ZombieDawn wanted to watch [Rec] 2. Being the nice person that I am, or try to be at least, I offered to send it out. In return, ZombieDawn sent me Senrei (1996), or Baptism Of Blood as it is known on the DVD. The title isn't all that far off actually. Senrei does translate into Baptism. Anyway, I kept this DVD way too long, which wasn't what I intended to do. Part of it was that I just wasn't watching all that many movies for a while there. Then I had to find a DVD player that would actually play it. Now that I have done all that, I can say that I, at long last even, watched the thing so I could get a review up for it. Have to say though, if I were to judge a person by the movies they loan to me, then I would have to say that ZombieDawn is a weird person. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Matsuko (Risa Akikawa) is a beautiful actress with a secret. She has been using makeup to hide the fact that she has a skin disease on her face. Reaching a point where the makeup is not covering it up well, she talks to a doctor friend and decides that she will retire as an actress. The doctor tells her to give him a call when she is ready to proceed to the next step of the plan. Many years pass and we find out that Matsuko now has a daughter, Sakura (Rie Imamura). You could say that Matsuko is very over protective of Sakura. She inspects Sakura, and goes off the handle if there is any blemish to be found. Why is that you ask? Because mom wants her daughter's body! Not in the incest type of way mind you, but she wants to put her brain in her daughter's body so that she can live life all over again.

As I have already said, in a way, I found Senrei to be a weird movie. The whole plot was just a bit out there. In truth though, that is what kept me watching more than anything. Besides the main plot the whole brain transplant, there is also one of the piano teacher having sexual thoughts about Sakura, and plotting with his pregnant wife to steal Matsuko's money. That last part there felt a little out of place with the rest of the movie, but they do sort of manage to tie it all together nicely. I didn't believe that a brain transplant would be possible at all, but I went with it. It is just a movie after all. There is a twist at the end of the movie of course. While it makes sense, it also just makes everything that much more weird because of it. I didn't totally buy into the explanation given for the twist, but it could have been worse. The pacing wasn't too bad. I didn't care for the second half of the movie all that much, but the twist helped it out some.

There is really one scene in the movie that makes Senrei worth the watch. There is a nice build up to the brain transplant scene. I was getting a little annoyed with Sakura though. I know it is her mom, but I think I would have been fighting harder if I was her. Once everything is ready for the transplanting, it becomes pretty awesome for a while there. I admit I wasn't expecting much from this, but it actually shows a lot. The effects for the scene are done very well. The only part of this I didn't think worked well was putting the brain back into the head. Outside of that, very cool stuff. The acting was also done well. Being a movie out of Japan, I found the acting a bit stiff, but I still enjoyed it.

Senrei wasn't one of the greats out there. If it wasn't for certain scenes in it, I probably wouldn't have liked it as much as I did. A major problem I had with this one was not knowing how much time had passed. It was very bad with this. A few years was more like twenty years. After the transplant scene, it made it appear like only a day or two had passed. Obviously more had, which is only hinted at by a side remark of sorry to hear about your illness, but I thought it should have been better at showing how much time had passed. If you have never watched this one, give it a shot. Senrei is just an okay movie, but that one scene is just weird enough to make it all worth it.
3 out of 5 Wondering if it was a good idea not to secure the head

Death In Tunnels

2011-07-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

My desire to write is back, at least for the moment. I know I missed a day a couple of days back, but that had to do more with me not feeling the best that day instead of not wanting to write. Last night I watched Intermedio (2005) and felt ready to write about it this morning once I was up and around. This was the last DVD I have had here at home for well over a month now from Netflix. I will likely watch Prowl next, with the review over at Top Horror Movies Club, and then watch a movie a friend of mine sent to me to watch. It wouldn't play on my DVD player or computer, but it appears to play on my dad's DVD player. I need to get it watched and sent back to her, so will do that this weekend sometime, I promise!

Intermedio starts with with two guys meeting up with some other guy and giving him a lot of money. He opens up a door in the ground that leads into some tunnels. The men are leaving their kids in the truck, expecting to be back. Something attacks them while in the tunnels though, and they never return. Eighteen years later, Malik (Edward Furlong) and Gen (Cerina Vincent) are still wondering what happened to their dads. Gen's boyfriend, Wes (Callard Harris), shows up with a plan. He knows a guy in Mexico that is willing to hook them up with some good drugs on the cheap. This gets mixed reactions from his friends, including Malik's girlfriend Barbie (Amber Benson). They don't really want to become drug dealers, but the money seems to good to pass up at the same time. Wes leads them to the very tunnels that Malik and Gen's dads disappeared in. The tunnels lead to Mexico, which Wes says his guy will meet them halfway. Nothing could go wrong while they are down there though, right?

Intermedio is a low budget film directed by Andrew Lauer. It was released by Asylum, so this worried me a little bit. I haven't thought all their films have been bad, but I can't think of any I have fallen in love with either. I had to wonder if writer Kraig Wenman got the idea for this movie on news reports I recall about tunnels under the U.S./Mexico border. The plot for Intermedio is just okay at best. They are told about the ghosts that may be in the tunnel by Wes. He also tells them that Mexicans are afraid to use the tunnel because of the ghosts, which I find a little hard to believe. They get to the tunnels around a half hour into the film, which leaves a little under an hour left for the movie. It takes a while before they find they guy they want to meet up with. During this time there is some character development, but mostly they are just trying to scare each other. The tunnels I guess are like a maze, even though they don't really do a good job of showing that. Lucky for them though, they have a map. What they don't know is that some guy is following them. When he pours blood out of some kind of vial he wears around his neck, it apparently allows him to control the ghosts. Once the ghosts are out, our group gets picked off slowly, one by one.

Part of the problem for Intermedio was the special effects. There is a scene or two where things get gory, but the effects for those scene, and others, were just not done well. Way too much CGI was used. There was one ghost, played by Paul Cram, that was the best out of all of it. No CGI, just some simple makeup and he looked just fine. The guy that is after them is played by Steve Railsback, who doesn't really get a whole lot of screen time. Despite names that I knew for once in a low budget film, I just found the acting to be okay at best. Edward Furlong sounded like he was losing his voice after a while. Amber Benson had hurt her foot prior to filming, so was in a cast. That seemed silly, watching her walk around with crutches while in underground tunnels. Cerina Vincent was running around in an ever shorting shirt, with no bra on.

For a low budget film, I have watched worse than Intermedio. It still wasn't all that good though. Nothing against the writer, but I really felt this one could have had a much better story attached to it. Maybe the writer, or the director, should have found a better story line for Amber's character once she showed up with a cast on her leg. I don't think it would have been very hard. I know the tunnels were meant for drug running, but why did they have to be that for this movie? Truth is, it wasn't much of a drug run at all. I didn't care much for this one, and from other reviews and average ratings, not many others did either. Maybe worth a watch if you are into one of the actors. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it otherwise. Sometime after the DVD was sent to me, it was added to Netflix's Instant Watch if you are interested in watching it.
2 out of 5 Another reason not to do drugs

But I Don't Want To Eat You

2011-07-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

A couple of years back I watched Cannibal Holocaust with a couple of friends of mine. They had downloaded the movie (he is actually kind of bad about that) and asked if I had ever watched it. I had never watched it before, so I went over to do just that. Even though it was at a time I was doing reviews, more than I have been lately, I never did get around to doing a review for it. I didn't feel strongly for it either way. Yes it was a shocking and at times gory film, but I just didn't feel I had anything to say that wasn't already out there. Today I watched Cannibal Ferox (1981), which is known for some of the same things as Cannibal Holocaust. I think I can find something to talk about with this one.

Cannibal Ferox starts off in New York, the city, where a guy shows up at a friends house and gets murdered by someone else who is also looking for the same guy. While the police decide to look for Mike's girlfriend, we are taken to the Amazon. There we meet Gloria (Lorraine De Selle), her brother Rudy (Danilo Mattei), and their friend Pat (Zora Kerova) who I thought was the girlfriend but no. Gloria is an anthropologist and is looking to prove that cannibals are nothing more than a myth. She has read an article about a tribe in the Amazon that are cannibals, so along with her brother, she has decided to find the tribe and prove the article wrong, which will also help her with the paper she is writing for her degree. With Pat kind of just tagging along, and apparently sleeping with any guy that shows any interest in her, they set off into the jungle. They eventually find Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), the guy the mob and police are looking for back in New York, along with his friend Joe (Walter Lucchini). They claim to be on the run from a tribe that plans on eating them, but the real truth of it all will eventually come out. Will they escape, or be become a meal?

Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust are both known for the animals that are actually killed for the movie. I can understand why people would be upset over this because the way the animals were killed at times. I don't think it was because of the animals being killed, after all it happens everyday so we can eat, but that the animals are often shown suffering before being killed. Just one example from this movie was a turtle having its legs and tail cut off while it was still alive. These scenes certainly make Cannibal Ferox hard to watch, but the story itself wasn't all that interesting to me. I don't see the point of the sub plot that was going on in New York. If it was to show that Mike was a bad guy, it wasn't needed. He proves that just fine on his own. The stuff in New York turns out to be nothing more than a distraction whenever the scenes are cut in. The funny thing about them though, some people assume since scenes took place in New York, that means Cannibal Ferox is an American film. The main plot of the movie is pretty much like any other cannibal film out there, so wasn't anything really all that new or different. I guess I should say it is like other cannibal films from this time period.

I guess the main reason to watch this movie would be for the gore factor. Besides the animal killings, the gore wasn't very high for a good while, but it does make up for that more towards the end. Guts are getting ate, hands and other body parts being cut off. I think the show piece would be hooks through breasts. While I think that Cannibal Holocaust is the gorier of the two films, Cannibal Ferox does its best to keep up with it. While people tend to throw out how bad the acting is, I felt it wasn't so much the actors as it was the bad voice overs that they were given.

I've said before that cannibal films just aren't for me. If it isn't my least liked sub genre in horror, it is pretty close to it. It is easy to see the underline theme of who is the greater evil, those that eat other people or those that think they can whatever they want, I guess I wanted more than that. I liked Cannibal Holocaust more, despite my conflicted feelings for it. I don't want to call Cannibal Ferox a bad film, but it just wasn't for me. The whole New York plot line was not needed at all. It does help with the ending of the movie, but that could have been solved in a different way that wouldn't involved cutting away from the main story. If you are curious about why it is so shocking, give this one a go. For me, that would be the only reason to watch it.
2 out of 5 I don't think I have ever ate anything raw before

Groundhog Day Horror Style

2011-07-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

By the title I don't mean a movie about a killer groundhog. Now that I think about it though, why hasn't there been a movie like that? There have been horror movies just about everything else, so why not a killer groundhog? No, instead of a movie about that, I was actually talking about the 1993 film Groundhog Day. In a way I feel guilty for bringing that up, because it sort of spoils the plot for Circle Of Eight (2009). Since it will be removed from Instant Watch in a couple of days, I decided to watch it next. Yesterday I watched Fertile Ground over at Top Horror Movies Club. The second movie I have watched from the After Dark Originals set. Why don't we talk about Circle Of Eight instead though.

Jessica (Austin Highsmith) is moving into a new building called The Dante on the eighth floor. She is getting away from a past event that is hinted about in some flashbacks that show up from time to time. While she carries a box of her belongings in with her, she manages to drop her toothbrush into some water on the street. She also meets Evan (Ryan Doom), who offers to help her move in later. She goes inside and eventually meets Ed (John Bishop), who runs the building. Ed informs her the main rule is that nobody is allowed in the file room, and directs her to her new apartment. It doesn't take long before she notices strange things, like a new toothbrush already in her bathroom like the one that she dropped. It also doesn't take long before her neighbors make their own appearance. The more or less just walk right into her place and act like they have known her for a while already. Evan wants Jessica to trust him right away, but she doesn't understand why. When she discovers the dead body of a neighbor though, she runs out to find the police, who don't believe her since there is no longer a body. Is Jessica going crazy, or is there something else going on here.

Circle Of Eightwas originally a web series. I think for this movie, it would have played out better as a web series. While the Groundhog Day aspect of the movie, repeating a day over and over again, isn't revealed until late (sorry), it is hinted at very heavily well before the reveal. I think as a web series that would be pretty cool. Show a few different things done in each day until Jessica gets it right. The main problem is, she doesn't know she is repeating the same day. It could be debated that I am wrong about this, but I felt she was supposed to do something that would allow her out of this cycle she has found herself in. If she doesn't know that she is in the same cycle, how will she ever really learn from it? Another thing that bothered me was the neighbors turning up dead, and then not dead and so on. It is explained, but not in a very good way. While director Stephen Cragg and writers Brian Horiuchi and Dave Brewman do come up with an interesting story, they have their characters hint at what is really going on way too often. If you watch a lot of horror movies, it really shouldn't take you very long to figure everything out. I'm not just talking about the day that repeats either. I don't think most people will have a problem figuring out what the building itself is supposed to represent. I don't know if the web series hinted at things this bad, but the movie version sure does.

Since there really wasn't any gore to be found, a little blood in one scene but that was it, one has to fall back on the acting instead. While I wasn't real impressed with anyone, I didn't find the acting to be bad. Austin Highsmith does fine with the lead role. Ryan Doom was also pretty good. The surprise was seeing DJ Qualls. While he isn't a big name, I still know of him. I also liked John Bishop and wish he had been used more. You can also find Jesse Johnson, Josh Kelly, Katie Lowes and Natashia Williams.

It wasn't so much the acting I had problems with, but the way the character would act at times. One had to wonder after a while why Jessica just doesn't leave after a while. Why Evan is always so damn calm no matter what. I can't call Circle Of Eight a bad film. I was directed well with an interesting story. The only reason I'm giving it the score below is because it was just way too easy to figure out. The only thing I didn't figure out was what Jessica needed to do to get out of the repeated day. But with everything else falling into place way too early thinks to repeated hits over the head with it, the plot loses most of its suspense.
2 out of 5 I heard the web series was fun to watch at least

Document This

2011-07-18T17:28:00.000-07:00

After my last movie that I watch on Instant Watch, I decided to switch gears and watch a documentary next. Actually I ended up watch two different ones over three or four days I think it was. I decided to review both of them in this post. In case you all missed it, I did manage to get a review up for the After Dark Originals film Seconds Apart. I will eventually review all of those movies at Top Horror Movies Club, so keep an eye for them.

The first documentary that I watched was called His Name Was Jason: 30 Years Of Friday The 13th (2009). This appears to have been released right around the time the remake was coming out. There is a little bit about it, but His Name Was Jason throws its focus on all the other movies before the remake. Some of the movies get talked about a little more than the others, mostly the early ones or fan favorites. I guess what I found interesting the most about this documentary was seeing the different cast members today. I always find it fun to see what they look like now. Listening to the stories they had to tell about their characters and/or the film that they were is was also interesting to hear. I just wish that director Daniel Farrands had focused on that a little more than he did. Since I watched this on Instant Watch, I didn't get any of the extras that were included with the DVD. From what I have read about the extras though, they show extended interviews with the different cast members. Some people have complained that everything they needed to make a great documentary about the Friday The 13th films was right there, but wasn't completely used.

Why the complaints? Well, the editing has a lot to do with it I think. Instead of going through each film one at a time and talking about it, Farrands instead chooses to jump around all the time. The order in which the different films are talked about seems completely random at times. Throw in clips from all the movies that don't always need to be there, which made me feel like I was losing out on interview time. I understood some of the clips because a cast member or crew from the film would reference something from their film they worked on so it was nice to be reminded of what the were talking about by being able to see it right away. Besides some of the cast and crew being interviewed, there are also people like Adam Green, who are said to have been inspired by the Friday The 13th films. There are also a couple of journalists that talk about some of the different movies as well. These were fine, and didn't take up a whole lot of time. They one I couldn't understand though was Felissa Rose, from Sleepaway Camp if you needed reminded. She wasn't in any of the films, she isn't an important actress or anything like that, so what do I care about her opinions on these films?

The other documentary that I watched was Zombiemania (2008). This one explores the zombie genre some. From the description that Netflix provided, I was expecting it to touch on several zombie films. While it does this a little bit on the early zombie films, it never gets into the depth that I was expecting from it. Unlike the other documentary, not many from the films show up. There are a couple of actors that were in the movies, some directors (mostly just Romero), some of the special effects guys and even an author or two. I did like they spent a little bit of time on books, but they mostly focused on Max Brooks. To director Donna Davies' credit though, Zombiemania isn't really about the books and movies that zombies show up in, but more of a history of the zombie genre. Some of the interviews were fun to listen to. I enjoyed learning why Romero lost the rights to Night Of The Living Dead. If I got nothing else out of this documentary, I found a few movies I wouldn't mind looking up that I had not heard of before. Another nice thing about this one was the light hearted mood it presented everything in.

There were a couple of things I didn't care for when it comes to Zombiemania though. A minor thing was that it got off track a little but in how to kill a zombie. I guess that plays into the history of the zombie a little bit, but I'm pretty sure the majority of the people that will watch this already know. I think what got to me the most though is that Zombiemania turns into a George Romero love fest. He did turn the zombie genre on its proverbial head. When they got around to talking about Night Of The Living Dead, it didn't bother me at all that they showed some love for Romero, he does deserve it after all. Interesting enough, Romero doesn't seem to want to take credit for creating a different kind of zombie. He says more than once that he never called them zombies in the movie. Each time they get away from Romero though, it isn't long before they go back to talking about him again. It was getting pretty old after a while.

I can say that I enjoyed watching both His Name Was Jason and Zombiemania. Both documentaries are worth watching, but I didn't feel either one was great. His Name Was Jason didn't really offer up a whole lot as far as new things, and could never stay focused on one film for very long. Zombiemania managed to throw the spotlight a bit too much on George Romero for my liking. You can catch both documentaries on Netflix as of this writing at least. If either sounds like fun to you, give them a watch.
3 out of 5 (for both) I wonder if there has ever been a zombie slasher?

Okay, I Feel Stupid Now

2011-07-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

When I added Skeleton Key 2: 667 Neighbor Of The Best (2008) to my instant watch queue, I just assumed it was a direct to video sequel to The Skeleton Key. I didn't read about it or anything like that, and now I realize I should do that a little more often. One of the things that threw me off was that Netflix has it listed as The Skeleton Key 2. I didn't see the full title until after I clicked play. It is in fact a sequel though. The Skeleton Key came out in 2005, but this one isn't a sequel to that movie. Instead, it is a sequel to Skeleton Key that came out in 2006. I usually don't like to watch movies out of order, but if I can ever help it, I will never watch the original movie this one is a sequel to. Even though I learned I shouldn't assume, I don't want to risk it when it comes to watching more of the same I assume the sequel is.

I always throw the plot in right here, but to be honest with you, I didn't pay close enough attention to Skeleton Key 2 to ever figure out what it was. I watched maybe a half hour of it, and the plot still felt like it wasn't going anywhere, so I started doing other things and would just check in on the movie for a couple of minutes here and there. I don't normally like to review movies I do this with, as I hate people that claim that they only watch for ten minutes and inform everyone to stay away. However, since the majority of other reviews I have found for this also feel it is very bad movie, I don't feel so bad for not giving it my undivided attention.

Skeleton Key 2 starts off with someone that we can see walking along side some stores. Some guy that talks in a high pitched voice, all the time, stops this person to see which movie he or she rented. This person holds up the movie Skeleton Key 2, which I admit confused me just a bit at first. I was really expecting the movie I'm watching to show up in the movie you know? Anyway, this high pitched voice guy gets excited by the movie, but we (I assume since we can't see the person, it is supposed to represent us the viewer) don't feel like sharing and run away. After the screen goes dark, we discover that we have been tied to a bed and high pitched voice guy is going to make us watch the movie with him.

Now it jumps into the actual movie and we meet Howard. Howard is played by John Johnson, who also happens to be the writer and director. Howard starts talking about events from the last movie, which is when I started to figure out this had nothing to do with The Skeleton Key. He then walks in his wife/girl friend and finds her sucking on some other woman's breast. He looks pretty stunned by this, to which she only says she didn't hear him because her mouth was full. From there, as he walks away, a package is dropped through the mail slot. When he makes a comment about the package being a VHS tape and has no way to play it, another package is dropped in and this time it is a DVD. Apparently some town is being over run by evil, zombies mostly, and Howard heads that way to save the town.

The zombies look bad. There is a demon, I guess that is what he was supposed to be anyway, that is always trying to get Howard to have sex with women. There are cuts back to high pitched guy to get his comment about what was happening in the movie or to show his reaction. He even shows up in the movie (That's me!). Besides the bad makeup effects, okay not all were bad but still, there is also some very bad acting to go with it. The jokes were not funny to me, but maybe that is because they were more geared towards guys. The biggest problem that Skeleton Key 2 has though is that it reaches over the two hour run time mark. This movie sat in my Netflix instant watch queue for a long time just because of that reason. Two hours is a good time investment for a movie. When it is a real bad movie, it becomes even more of one.

Even though I didn't give Skeleton Key 2 my complete attention, I think it is safe to say it can be avoided unless you are into these very bad type of movies. I don't know too many that are though. People that feel the need to defend this one say it was never meant to be a good movie. I do get that in a way. Not every movie will be good, but this one isn't a so bad it's good type of movie. Even with plenty of nudity, it wasn't enough to save it. From what I have read, the first movie was even worse, if that is even possible.
1 out of 5 Will some one please take out the high pitched voice guy?

Don't Invite Zombies To Your Campout

2011-06-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

The last movie I watched while traveling around was Zombie Campout (2002). This was another movie that was about to be taken out of instant watch, so I decided to get it watched. I have another one that is about to be taken out, so I will watch it either tonight or tomorrow. My time away from work is starting to draw to a close at last. While I didn't get any where near the posts I wanted to get done this month, I can't say I am disappointed by that. Swimming has been a big part of my life for a long time. While I would still go swimming nearly everyday, I am glad that I was able to reconnect with it and actually compete again. I didn't realize how much I missed that until it was time to do it again. So in a way, I'm glad I didn't just sit around all month watching movies and writing reviews. Not that I have a problem doing that, but it was nice doing something else as well.

Bunny (Misty Orman) and her boyfriend Steve (John M. Davis) are going camping. Bunny is taking her recently single friend Tammy (Tiffany Black), and Steve is taking is also single friend Trevor (Jeremy Schwab). Things start off a little awkward, but once everyone gets to know each other better, they loosen up and start joking around. Once at the camp grounds, which there is a cemetery next to it, the Park Ranger (Larry Putell) offers some suggestions on what to do while there. He also lets them know that there will be a meteor shower that night as well. When one of them asks if that could be dangerous, he jokingly tells them no it isn't unless one lands in the cemetery, as that will cause zombies to rise up. Of course that night, some do strike at the cemetery, and zombies really do rise up. Will the two couples and others at the camp grounds be able to escape?

Zombie Campout, by writer/director Joshua D. Smith, is a campy type of zombie movie. It tries to be more of a comedy, but fails at it. I found some of the stuff entertaining at times, but only one scene actually made me laugh. At the time I thought that the one scene, which had the two couples talking to each other, a movie mistake. After watching the whole movie though, I realized that was the point in the movie where it went from trying to be funny, to outright campy. This isn't my kind of movie. Sometimes a campy type of movie can be funny, but I don't find them to be as funny as a normal comedy film. Maybe the comedy would have worked better for Zombie Campout if the acting had been better. As it is, a lot of the jokes fall flat because of the bad acting. Another problem was that the zombies show up pretty late to the party. Even when we see them start to rise out of their graves, it still takes a good while before they start to have any impact on the story. Show the zombies stubble around, show our couples renting a boat. Show the zombies kill one person, spend a long time watching the couples out on the lake and so on.

Once the zombies do get the main camping area, it can be a gory movie at times. The effects aren't done the best always, but it was still gory, which is more than I can for last couple of movies I have watched. I think the biggest disappointment though has nothing to do with special effects. Joshua D. Smith seems to have gone out of his way to not show nudity. There were plenty of times that nudity could have been shown, like when Bunny and Tammy were flashing the guys. There is also a scene where some other female camper was changing behind a bush or tree. The branch that was blocking the view would actually move up or down following her movements. I don't need nudity in my movies, but if you are going to keep putting scenes where nudity could be there, why not show something?

I guess I don't like campy movies because they tend to try too hard to be funny. They go from being funny to silly or just down right stupid. Zombie Campout wasn't the best movie anyway, but once it turned that corner, it became even worse for me. Sure it managed to get a good laugh at me once, but I still thought the movie as a whole just didn't work. When you have lead actors that are slightly below average, and then throw in a bunch of people that are worse than that, it isn't a very fun time. Even though I didn't like this one at all, I at least don't feel like I wasted my time on it. I am glad that I was, in a way, forced to watch it instead of picking it to watch.
1 out of 5 I knew I was a city woman for a reason

A Forest Is A Good Place To Die

2011-06-27T08:10:00.000-07:00

I just finished my last review as I write this. I don't expect to get this review done tonight, but to get myself back into a writing mood again, I thought I would at least get this review started. Another movie that I watched while resting up from a swim meet was Forest Of Death (2007). I watched this one on my lap top, which I don't really like to do because I haven't figured out how to change the settings to keep it from wanting to shut down when no mouse or keyboard activity. Truth is, I don't really use as much as I probably should. Anyway, I used a headset so I could get better sound from it as the speakers aren't very good at all on the laptop itself. Forest Of Dead was an instant watch movie that was about to be taken out, which will be the case for my next two reviews.

Detective C.C. Ha (Qi Shu) is investigating a death that happened in a mysterious forest. What makes it so mysterious is that it is a well known place where people go to kill themselves. According to news reporter May (Rain Li), there are a couple of other places around the world where this happens. May, and the people she works for, uses a supernatural angel in order to get big ratings on their clips about the forest. There is some truth to it though. Even rescue teams that go in have trouble finding their way out even while using a compass. Ha believes that in at least one case at least, the person didn't kill herself, but was murdered. Shum Shu-hoi (Ekin Cheng) is a botanist who has discovered a way for plants to be able to talk in a way. They don't actually talk, more like telepathy I guess you can say. As it turns out, May and Shum are a couple, and Ha gets Shum to use what he has learned in order to get the forest to tell her about what happened to woman she thinks was murdered. Will this work out? Will we find out why people go to this forest to commit suicide?

Forest Of Death is a movie out of Hong Kong and was based in Thailand. It was directed by Danny Pang, so I was expecting something good out of this movie. It starts off okay, but a little confusing as I was trying to figure out how the three story lines were going to work with each other. It was easy to see where Ha and Shum were going to converge their two stories, but I wasn't really sure where the supernatural part of it was going to fit in. Was May's story line a false one or would it play into the other two somehow? As the movie goes on, it does resolve some of its story lines, but then it keeps going and ends up in a way that I didn't care for. If it had ended with the resolve of it was a murder or not, I would have walked away happy. Still not a great film, but it was okay all the same. The whole plants can express feelings isn't new to horror, but has never come across as anything more than cheesy I think. It wasn't much different here. I guess that Pang and Cub Chin felt that since they included so much about the forest being a hot spot for suicide, that it was needed to show why. Some mysteries are more fun when we don't know the answer to them. That was how I felt about why this forest, and others apparently, were popular spots for suicides. It was hinted at more than once that it was something paranormal going on. I was happy just leaving it there and was very disappointed with how it was wrapped up.

Forest Of Death isn't a gory film at all. Thinking back on it, I don't recall there being any gore effects to be found. The acting wasn't too bad. This was a sub titled movie in instant watch, which was fine with me. I didn't have much of a problem keeping up with the reading this time around. I thought the acting was fine, and enjoyed Qi Shu in the lead role. I did feel a little sorry for Ekin Cheng some. I know any role means money, but I would find it hard to place his role seriously I think.

I never thought too much about Forest Of Death. It was an average movie at best and went below that by the end of the movie. While I found some of the story lines to be silly, I was willing to let that go so I could try and enjoy the plot. In the end what kills Forest Of Death is Pang trying to mix in too many story elements. I understood the twist at the end of the movie, or more the reason for it. We keep getting pushed in one direction, and then there is the twist that takes it in a completely different direction. It just wasn't one that I liked though. Hopefully Pang can find his voice in horror movies again. Many are starting to feel that The Eye might have been a fluke. I don't want to discourage anyone from Forest Of Death, but I felt it could have been so much better than it was.
2 out of 5 No forest of death around me that I am aware of thankfully

Never Pick Up David Hess

2011-06-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

Sorry I have been so silent of late. I haven't been home much it all lately. Instead, I have been out doing a lot of swimming, and even been in a couple of swim meets. I didn't do great in them, but didn't do all that bad either. The highest I placed was 4th, which I didn't feel too bad about considering I haven't competed in a long time before now. I did manage to get a review in for Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. Check it out when you give it a chance! That was my last review which I did...two weeks ago I think? Almost three now actually. I have watched a few movies though, so hopefully I will get caught up with writing about them now. Not sure if I will review Super 8, but will say that I did enjoy it. The first movie that I watched in my travels was The Naked Prey (1977), or Hitch-Hike as it is known on the DVD release.
Walter (Franco Nero) and his wife Eve (Corinne Cléry) are on vacation in California. They are trying to save their marriage, but in truth, they aren't doing a very good job of it. They fight all the time, most because Walter tends to drink a lot, which gets him in a bit of a rough mood. Walter is also a reporter, but hasn't been doing much writing it seems. Instead, he gets accused of living off of Eve's money. As they leave a camp ground, they find Adam (David Hess) near his car that has broke down. Eve offers Adam a ride, despite that Walter doesn't want her to do so. What they don't know about Adam right away is that he helped rob a bank, and that there is a dead body in his broken down car. As they travel along with him, they soon discover his secret and have to deal with his attraction to Eve, and some of his partners in crime as they make their way to Mexico.

If you have been reading my reviews long enough, you will know that I have a high tolerance for a slow moving plot. The fact that The Naked Prey started that way didn't bother me. The fact that it was still that way well into the movie still didn't bother me much, but I admit I was starting to get bored with it. It did get a little more interesting when a couple of the guys that Adam robbed the bank with showed up, but even that fell flat eventually. After watching The Naked Prey, I went to IMDb and was rather shocked at the high average rating it has. With a 7 star average, I feel a little embarrassed going the opposite way on it. With a few exceptions, the pacing never really picked up much. Even when it did, it didn't take long before it was back to a slow pace again. By the end of the movie, I was glad that it was over as I was feeling bored with it. I stuck with it mainly because I rarely don't make it through a movie. I take pride in that there aren't even a handful of movies that I have given up on. Anyway, the fact that Corinne Cléry didn't mind showing off her body now and then didn't hurt in keeping me watching. I guess the reason I didn't get into this one much was because of the characters. I got so tired of hearing Walter and Eve fighting all the time. It got very old after a while and I just no longer cared what happened to them.

There wasn't much for special effects in this one. People got shot, and of course there was blood when this happened, but that was the extent of it. At least it wasn't the real bright red that I have seen other films use out of the '70s. The acting was something I did enjoy at least. I don't call myself a fan of David Hess, but I have always enjoyed his acting. He can play a very good bad guy in a movie, but there in was the problem for me. This makes the third of fourth time that I have watched him in a movie with basically the same character. His acting was his usual good bad guy self, but I'm rather tired of this character. Corinne Cléry and Fanco Nero were also good, even if I didn't care for their characters either.

While I didn't hate The Naked Prey, I can say that it just wasn't for me. I haven't been a big fan for this type of movie either, which I am sure played into it some. There were some scenes that went on a bit too long. The one that comes to mind was when a truck seemingly wanted to pass. That went on for a long time and I just didn't get why they didn't pull to the side long enough to let the truck pass. No one accused any of the people in this one being real smart though. Obviously I am in the minority with this movie. People seem to like it since it is above what I see an average movie on a ten star scale. Please do give it a chance if you do decide to watch it, if you haven't already that is. I wanted more though and didn't get it this time around.
2 out of 5 I would never cook for my kidnapper but that is just me

Trapped In With Zombies

2011-06-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

I didn't think I was going to get my review in for the day yesterday. I had been working on it on and off, but mostly was just messing around doing whatever. Not only did I watch Stag Night, but I also decided to watch G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra for whatever reason other than it was there. After that I started to watch the first season of Dexter. I have never watched the show but have always heard good things about it. I got through the first four episodes before I realized I had yet to finish up my review. For today I decided to watch Dead Summer (2005). This is a movie that will be taken out of Netflix's Instant Watch in a few days. I decided to go ahead and watch it in order to get it out of the way.

Apparently a zombie outbreak has happened in the state of Pennsylvania and a couple of other states, or so rumor has it. Pennsylvania has been blocked off until the zombies can be taken care of. This must take forever since the people that we meet in this movie talk about it being eight years since the first zombies. The zombies are mostly taken care of by "sweepers" but the town folks also carry weapons. We meet a small group of twenty somethings as they sit around in a bar talking about who the toughest cereal box character. One of them eventually talks to some other guy who has discovered a mix of chemicals that make zombies act more aggressive. I guess this is a good thing since you can use it on a tree and the zombies will attack it, and then you can attack from a distance.

I knew I might be in trouble with Dead Summer from the opening scene. All it shows is some zombies running around, but when you notice that they only have makeup on their faces, you know you might not be sitting through a good movie. Dead Summer is a short movie, clocking in at only 71 minutes. I like these something though, as I can get a movie in a little quicker if I am busy. The main problem that I had with Dead Summer was that there was no real plot going on. It was more or less a peak into these peoples lives. I don't know if writer Robert Brewer wrote everything that the characters would say, but I was getting annoyed by them repeating things all the time. Something that a lot of low budget films suffer from is bad sound. This one is no different, but it isn't really because voices are too low to hear. Voices, more so when the scene is outside, can become very muffled sounding. I could still hear them fine, but it could be hard to pick up everything that was said at times, or it would all sound the same if more than one person was talking at the same time.

As I mentioned before, the makeup isn't all that great. There are times when only a persons face would have makeup on it, but most of the time their arms would as well. It wasn't so much that not all skin was covered in makeup, a problem that even some large budget films can have, but that it just didn't look good. Their idea of showing someone being ripped up after a zombie attack is to throw some blood on them. Even the acting wasn't all that great. The only people listed on IMDb in the cast is Amy Liszka and Peter Blessel. I don't know why more isn't listed, unless they just didn't want to make a page for themselves. The acting felt awkward at times with some untimely pauses between lines.

I guess by showing their lives without much of a direction for the plot was supposed to show us the tragedy that befalls them. This was used at least three times as someone is killed. For some reason it was always the women, with the guys crying over them. The ending felt very sudden with one of the normal guys showing up and the zombies listening to him for some reason. They all walk off and then we get a screen saying something about this is the beginning of the zombies evolving. Sure, if you all say so. Anyway, I'm all for low budget zombie movies, but this one just didn't work at all. Hopefully Netflix replaces it with something much better.
1 out of 5 Nice to know the military will shoot you even after you decide to leave

Stupid Male Rituals

2011-06-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

I am officially on layoff! It actually started two days early for me, so what have I done so far? Nothing! I have some things I want to get done though. I need to clean my computer room and bedroom something bad. I have magazines and clothes laying around everywhere. I have a clothes basket, but since it is shoved in a corner and hard to get to because of the mess around it, my dirty clothes are currently on top of the mess in front of the basket. Makes sense right? I thought so. I also have a side project of swimming even more than I already do and will be in at least one swim meet, on the state level, maybe two. I'm really looking forward to them and I'm even throwing the idea around of being in a national meet in two months. Anyway, I took the time to get a review done over at Top Horror Movies Club, Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre, which you all really need to check out. As I promised, my next review for here is Stag Night (2008).

Mike (Kip Pardue) is out on the town for one of the last times as a single guy. Along with his brother Tony (Breckin Meyer), who can be a bit of a trouble maker, and friends Carl (Scott Adkins) and Joe (Karl Geary), they are out hitting the bars in New York City. When Tony manages to get thrown out of their current bar, the group argues with Mike (who wants to go home) and eventually gets him to agree to hit another bar. They have to take the subway to get to it, which by then is very late in the night, or very early in the morning, depending on how you look at it. On the subway train with them is Michele (Sarah Barrand) and her friend Brita (Vinessa Shaw). Carl starts to hit on Michele, which goes pretty well for him. When Tony tries the same with Brita though, he ends up getting maced. Getting maced in a small space isn't good for everyone, which causes them to force the doors open while the train is stopped while waiting for another train to pass by. The place where they get out is an old platform that has been locked up for a very long time. Most of the group decide to start walking to see if they can find a platform that will let them out. While walking, they see a few guys that look homeless attacking and killing a police officer. When they are discovered, these people turn their attention to our group who goes on the run.

I usually read some of what people have to say about a movie on Netflix after I watch a movie. I also do the same on IMDb. I do this mostly to see if I had the same feel for the movie as the majority did. Most of the time I am right with them, but sometimes I find one that I really liked that gets bad reviews or vice versa. After watching Stag Night, I was surprised by the number of bad reviews that I was finding. A big complaint was that it just wasn't anything special and took from other slashers. True, Stag Night will mostly likely remind you of The Hills Have Eyes or Wrong Turn, but I still found this one to be a well made movie. The tension was very high at times and I really liked the lead guy Mike. Not a lot of background was given for each character, but enough was there to help make you care about them. Something that was got a lot of complaints, and something that I even found very annoying, was that the camera has a way of moving around a lot during action scenes. I didn't find it as bad as some other movies I have had to watch this in, but I do get very tired of it. This seems to be the style though right now. Maybe one day film makers will realize we don't care for it.

I was pleasantly surprised by the effects in Stag Night. It can get pretty bloody at times and they look real good on top of that. Lots of slashing with some dog attacks and heads getting cut off and smashed at times as well. Some good stuff there when you can see it without the camera going all over the place. The acting was also fine. I liked the guys in this movie. Some are pretty good looking. I didn't have a problem with any ones acting in this movie at all.

Some say that what happens in Stag Night could never happen in real life. Since I have never been on a subway before, I don't know how easy or hard it would be to force the doors open while at a stop. I don't know how confusing the tunnels would be while walking or running around down there. I can understand where those people are coming from. I complain about how movies screw things up when I do know about it. That can take me completely out of a movie at times, but this time I was willing to over look the fact that this most likely couldn't happen. The tension that writer/director Peter A. Dowling manages to create was enough for me to over look things. When I had watched the trailer for Stag Night, I wasn't all that impressed by it at all. The movie really surprised me though. I liked this one a lot. One of the best movies to come out of the Ghost House Underground titles. Give it a shot for sure.
4 out of 5 Personally I think the ending is a false ending

I'm Crazy And I Love It

2011-06-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

After I got done with my review from yesterday, I would have normally watched my next movie. Since I have the day off though, I knew I could get the last review done a little late, but have plenty of time today to get a movie watched for today. Things have been slow all week at work, so I was asked if I would like a day off, which I didn't have a problem saying sure to. In a way I hope they don't suddenly get busy and then need me, but they will be calling if that does become the case. Anyway, I was excited about today's movie, Psych:9 (2010). Ghost House Underground didn't release any new movies last year, and this year they only released two new movies, this was one of them. I will be watching and reviewing the other one next.

Roslyn (Sara Foster) is getting a new job at Saint Johns hospital, She will be working the night shift in order to be able to spend more time with her husband (Gabriel Mann), who also works nights as a taxi driver. The hospital has been closed down for a while now, and Roslyn will be sorting files all night. She will be working alone, but is told that there will be a guard out front, and a doctor sorting files on the 5th floor as well. To make things worse, a serial killer is working the area around the hospital it seems. The killer likes blond haired women. Lucky for Roslyn, she has dark hair. Things aren't the best between Roslyn and her husband. Roslyn has some past issues that she has yet to get over and it is causing a rift between the two. Roslyn eventually seeks out Dr. Clement (Cary Elwes) and they start to talk. Will he be able to help Roslyn and how does this killer fit into things?

Psych:9 likes to mess with your mind, but not always in a good way. Many, including myself, found Psych:9 to rather confusing. By the end of the movie, I still wasn't sure what had happened. All I knew was that the movie didn't end in a way I had thought it would. The first couple of nights that we watch Roslyn doing her job, the hospital gives off a haunted feel. She hears strange sounds, sees strange things on the video monitor and so on. Then a detective shows up asking about a recent murder that happened in the neighborhood of the hospital. The plot seems to change direction a little bit at this point. Doctor Clement starts to get more involved with the plot, and things about Roslyn's past come to light. It wasn't until after the movie when I was watching the deleted/extended scenes that things clicked for me. It wasn't the deleted and extended scenes explained anything that helped me understand. While watching an extended scene, I noticed something that I didn't pick up on before: a shirt that I thought showed up at the end of the movie. I went back and double checked and sure enough there it was. Once I confirmed the shirt, everything else fell into place. I know it seems silly that a shirt would help me figure everything out, but it is true.

If you are looking for a gory movie, you will have to look elsewhere. There is nothing as far as gore expect a bloody hammer. The acting was pretty good at least. Sara Foster grew on me the longer I watched her. I wasn't sure how well I would like her in this role, but she pulled it out I thought. It was cool to see Cary Elwes here. If you like his style of acting, you should like him in this movie as well. A nice surprise was seeing Colleen Camp. I haven't watched her in a movie in a while. She just has a small role, but it was still good to see her again.

I'm not sure how many people will end up liking Psych:9 even if they do give it a chance. The pacing can be rather slow at times, even after the one hour mark, which is usually when most movies really start to pick up. Director Andrew Shortell and writer Lawrence Robinson do manage to weave together an interesting tell. I'm not sure if the story, or maybe just the way it ended up being edited, that ends up making it rather confusing. If you do decide to give this one a chance, then good luck with it. Even though I managed to figure it out, it took a lot of thinking. It could have been explained just a little better I thought. I don't want everything explained, but don't make it confusing either. I do like this one but because of the problems I feel I have to give it a slightly lower rating than I wish I had to.
3 out of 5 I don't think I would enjoy working all night