Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Wednesday, January 12th, 2022
“Then let’s head down into that cellar and carve ourselves a witch.”
After the financial and (perceived) artistic failure of CRIMEWAVE, Raimi and company were itching for a win, and knew their best bet was to return to the one that had worked, THE EVIL DEAD. When they couldn’t find financing, their savior was the same guy who arguably made their careers by raving about THE EVIL DEAD: Stephen King. One of the crew members Raimi and friends had interviewed for the potential sequel was working on King’s directorial debut MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, and happened to mention to King that Raimi was having trouble getting a greenlight. King was like Are you kidding me? There could be an EVIL DEAD part 2 but nobody will let them do it!?, called up his producer Dino De Laurentiis and convinced him to meet with Raimi. So give that man a medal.
De Laurentiis was skeptical of the project, especially after Raimi and friends rejected filming at his Wilmington, North Carolina studio. But he agreed, allowing a $3.6 million budget, small enough to rule out their plans to set it in medieval times, but giving them more to work with than either of their previous films. And the studio gambit worked exactly as intended – the three hour drive to the locations made it harder for higher ups to pull any CRIMEWAVE shit..
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce Campbell, Dan Hicks, Denise Bixler, Dino De Laurentiis, Doug Beswick, Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger, John Peakes, Joseph LoDuca, Lou Hancock, Mark Shostrom, Peter Deming, Robert Kurtzman, Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel, Steve Wang, Tom Sullivan, Tony Gardner
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 30 Comments »
Monday, January 10th, 2022
Welcome friends, to a new review series. Each year on Halloween I like to post a piece on an all-time classic horror movie, usually one that I’ve been intimidated to tackle because so much has already been said about it that it’s hard to find a fresh angle. A couple Halloweens ago I decided to tackle Sam Raimi’s 1981 low budget classic THE EVIL DEAD. And I was really proud of the appreciation I put together, but writing it got me so excited about Raimi that I got a little ambitious. I decided I should do a separate one on the even better EVIL DEAD II. But watching that again got me thinking about other early Raimi movies, so I held off posting to grow it into a mini-series. And then I decided fuck it, I should do every movie he’s directed, even ones I’ve already reviewed.
Initially the goal was to remind people of the joy of Raimi since, having not directed a movie since 2013, I feel he’s largely fallen out of discussion. Since I started writing these, though, he filmed a DOCTOR STRANGE sequel, and his SPIDER-MAN characters returned in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. Hopefully we’ll be seeing other retrospectives that go beyond Marvel Comics, but I’m glad I took the time to get carried away revising, digging through old magazines and books, and making screengrabs to illustrate my points. I want this series to be closer to a college course than a “Sam Raimi Movies Ranked” slideshow. So please joooooiiiiinnnn usssssssss for the next few weeks in examining THE COMPLETE FILMS OF SAM RAIMI.
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When you say “EVIL DEAD” to people now, they tend to think of cocky Bruce Campbell, funny Ash, “Shop smart, shop S-Mart,” “Hail to the king baby,” etc. But back in the early ‘80s – and now, if you can watch it in the right state of mind – Sam Raimi’s original THE EVIL DEAD was and is a real fuckin corker, a cinematic slap to the face (in a good way), a thrilling ordeal in 16 millimeters.
You know how it is: you and a group of your fellow young people decide for some reason to go on a road trip from Michigan to a dilapidated, isolated cabin you’re renting in some dreary woods in Tennessee. Your buddy finds a reel-to-reel in the basement and hits play, a professor reading from an ancient text conjures up the ol’ Kandarian demons, and before the end of the night all your friends’ eyes are turning white, their skin turning crackly grey and they cackle and levitate and contort themselves, jerking around like marionettes, all their joints making sounds like cracking knuckles, until you decide your only options are to lock them in the basement or chop them up with an ax. You try to stay calm, but what the fuck is up with this invisible force charging through the woods at you, knocking down trees and battering through windows and doors? Whenever we shift to its perspective our ear drums rattle with eerie drones, gurgly didjeridu moans and echoey, whispered taunts. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 22 Comments »
Thursday, December 23rd, 2021
Programming note: This will most likely be my last review until some time after Christmas. My MATRIX RESURRECTIONS review is in-progress but I don’t want to rush it and I’m hoping I can get in a second viewing soon. For now please enjoy this perhaps overly detailed assessment of a lesser known killer Santa movie. Happy holidays, friends!
David Hess was a singer and songwriter in the 1950s. Under the stage name David Hill he recorded a version of “All Shook Up” before Elvis did, and later wrote some lesser known Presley songs including “Come Along” (from the movie FRANKIE AND JOHNNY) and “Sand Castles” (from PARADISE, HAWAIIAN STYLE). He also penned songs for Pat Boone and Sal Mineo.
In 1972, like The King before him, Hess took his talents to the big screen, starring in a movie and recording the soundtrack for it. But this was pretty different from LOVE ME TENDER; it was Wes Craven’s LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and he played the despicable villain Krug. It kicked off an acting career in American and Italian exploitation, episodes of Knight Rider, The A-Team, etc., often, I’m afraid, playing criminals and rapists. He was in THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK, Craven’s SWAMP THING, and even Mark L. Lester’s John Candy movie ARMED AND DANGEROUS (as Gunman #4). Since he was reportedly a Method actor, I’m sure he was fun to be around.
And he directed exactly one feature, the Christmas slasher movie TO ALL A GOODNIGHT, given a limited release in January of 1980 before going to video in ’83. (Yes, it’s surprising that a Christmas movie didn’t catch on a month after Christmas.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Rebar, Buck West, Christmas, Christmas horror, David Hess, Harry Reems, Jennifer Runyon, Judith Bridges, Kiva Lawrence, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, November 30th, 2021
I don’t know what DEMENTIA 13 means, but that’s the name of Francis Ford Coppola’s official on the record first feature directorial work, and it’s the rare Coppola horror outing, almost 30 years before BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA. It’s a tight little black-and-white Roger Corman production that seems to split the difference between gothic horror like the Poe movies (THE RAVEN, THE HAUNTED PALACE and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH were released the same year, 1963) and the modern slasher like PSYCHO and PEEPING TOM (released three years earlier). It’s got a castle, a rich family and some possible ghostiness, but also a money scheme running afoul of an ax murderer. And there’s a mystery. And some brutality I wasn’t expecting in a movie of this era.
It’s got a great opening – John Haloran (Peter Read, THE BRAIN, TALONS OF THE EAGLE) is upset one night, wants to row out onto the lake to be by himself, but his wife Louise (Luana Anders, THE YOUNG RACERS, NOWHERE TO RUN) comes with him and bickers with him about money. His mother is sick and plans to will her fortune to charity – Louise wants him to talk to her about putting him in the will. All the rowing gets his heart worked up and he collapses. She goes for his heart pills (apparently this happens alot) but the container is empty, and he dies. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hill, Mary Mitchel, Monte Hellman, Patrick Magee, Peter Read, Roger Corman, William Campbell
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, November 24th, 2021
You know how it is – sometimes the mood hits you for a little martial arts/horror combo, specifically the type found in Hong Kong vampire movies from the early 2000s, so you check out two of them. At least that’s how I dealt with the problem. The first one in my double feature, VAMPIRE EFFECT (2003) credits Dante Lam (BEAST COPS, THE STOOL PIGEON) as director and none other than Donnie Yen (HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME) as “co-director” and “action director.” Unsurprisingly, the action is the best part.
The original title is TWINS EFFECT, because it stars a pop duo called Twins, made up of Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung. But nobody knows what that is here and there are no twins in the movie, so I guess this is our equivalent to when Germany changed ROVER DANGERFIELD to ROVER & DAISY. And this is another one of those pop star vehicle movies that doesn’t really have an equivalent here exactly. I mean, you don’t see Tegan and Sara doing a vampire movie. So far.
Choi stars as Helen, a heartbroken young woman who, while grieving a breakup, hits it off with a vampire prince named Kazaf (Edison Chen, GEN-X COPS 2: METAL MAYHEM) who’s enjoying a glass of blood in a fancy restaurant. She doesn’t realize what he is, even though she has some knowledge of such matters because her brother Reeve (Ekin Cheng, YOUNG & DANGEROUS) is a vampire hunter. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Wong, Anya, Charlene Choi, Chunhua Ji, Danny Chan, Dante Lam, Edison Chen, Ekin Cheng, Gillian Chung, Herman Yau, Hong Kong action, Jackie Chan, Josie Ho, Ken Chang, Lam Suet, Michael Chow, Mickey Hardt, Tsui Hark, vampires, Wellson Chin, Yu Rongguang
Posted in Horror, Martial Arts, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Monday, November 15th, 2021
I think you can see why I’d assume a movie called MEATCLEAVER MASSACRE would qualify as a slasher movie, or at least a chopper movie. Surprisingly, if there is a meatcleaver anywhere in the movie I missed it. There is a massacre, but it’s the inciting incident, and the story is about a series of killings to avenge the massacre. I’m using title on the VHS box, but the opening credits expand it to THE HOLLYWOOD MEATCLEAVER MASSACRE, and it does indeed take place in Hollywood. So at least one third, arguably two thirds of the title is accurate in that iteration.
It’s from 1977, before the slasher craze took off, and it’s about a supernatural force killing people, but there are definitely some parallels to A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, so if that counts as a slasher maybe this could too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Lee, Doug Senior, Ed Wood, Guerdon Trueblood, Paul Kelleher, Ray Atherton, Slasher Search
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, November 10th, 2021
Francis Ford Coppola’s BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA is an incredible fucking movie that I previously mistook for a pretty good one. I saw it first on opening night in 1992, when I thought it was cool and weird, if flawed. (If you would like to imagine my wild teen years, I remember it was a foggy Friday the 13th and I was bummed that I hadn’t done anything good on Halloween, so I drove a carload of friends to an evening show, blasting the score from NIGHTBREED in the tape deck.)
The second time was in 2000 after reading the book (Dracula by Bram Stoker, not Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The novel of the film by Fred Saberhagen and James V. Hart Based on the Screenplay by James V. Hart from the Bram Stoker novel, which I have not read and can’t afford). At that time I wrote about it along with a bunch of other Dracula movies, and you can see I was pretty hard on the “ridiculous origin story” and “trying to make him into a more sympathetic Dracula,” among other things.
But it felt overdue for a revisit and on this viewing all that stuff finally clicked for me. Though I always thought it was a stylish looking movie, I feel like I didn’t fully appreciate just how much, or how special that made it. And everything else worked better this time too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Eiko Sihioka, Francis Ford Coppola, Gary Oldman, gothic horror, Greg Cannom, James V. Hart, Jim Steranko, Keanu Reeves, Mike Mignola, Monica Belluci, Pete Ramsey, Roman Coppola, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits, vampires, Winona Ryder, Wojciech Kilar
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Romance | 48 Comments »
Tuesday, November 9th, 2021
COLD HELL (Die Hölle) is a 2017 German/Austrian movie that’s still exclusive to Shudder in the U.S. I wish they’d put it out on disc like they have with so many of their exclusives, because this is a good one that I’d like to recommend to everybody. As far as I can find the only part of the world to release it on physical media is Germany.
Wanting to see this movie is what originally inspired me to subscribe to Shudder a few years ago, but for some reason I failed to write it up back then. I watched it again in October and it holds up, so I made sure to share it with everyone this time.
Its greatest asset is a strong lead character, Özge, played by Violetta Schurawlow (HEAD FULL OF HONEY, ICEMAN). She’s Turkish, but a citizen of Austria, working as a cab driver. And the movie slowly unveils how tough she is. At first it just seems like the grit required by her occupation, considering how some motherfuckers treat cab drivers, and immigrants, and women. Then it seems to go a step or two beyond that when she needs two guys to stop blocking an alley and beats one up for calling her the c-word. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Austria, Muay Thai, Muslim, Sammy Sheik, serial killer, Shudder, Stefan Ruzowitsky, Tobias Moretti, Violetta Schurawlow
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror, Thriller | 17 Comments »
Thursday, November 4th, 2021
THE SLEEPING CAR (1990) is not exactly a slasher movie, but because it says “Forget Freddy. Forget Jason. Here Comes The Mister!” on the cover it officially qualifies for Slasher Search. Congratulations, THE SLEEPING CAR!
When I saw that title I thought, “huh?” but then I saw the train on the cover and I thought oh, I get it, not a passed out automobile, but the place on a train where you sleep. Okay. I’ll go with it. Actually, this looks kinda good.
But it does not open promisingly. Some guy is making out with some woman in a train car. She strips down to her historical panties and giant boobs and they giggle and make out while the score by Ray Colcord (My Two Dads, AMITYVILLE DOLLHOUSE) erupts into erotic saxophone. The engineer (John Carl Buechler, director of FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE NEW BLOOD) comes in and yells at the guy to stop fornicating and do his job. He chooses instead to continue with the fornicating, and then the engineer jumps off the train right before it crashes head on with another train and then he yells into the sky like newly minted Darth Vader when he finds out Padme is dead. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Naughton, Douglas Curtis, Ernestine Mercer, Gary Brockette, Greg Collins O'Neill, Jeff Conaway, John Carl Buechler, Judie Aronson, Kevin McCarthy, Nicole Hansen, Ray Colcord, Slasher Search, VHS
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021
In a small, depressing town in Oregon, ravaged by economic despair and opioid addiction, out crawls a monster to make shit even worse. Come on, read the room, monster. We don’t see him clearly for a while, we don’t know what he’s up to at first, or how he works, but we get his general vibe. Uncool.
We see this story primarily through the eyes of elementary school teacher Julia Meadows (Keri Russell, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, and I believe I heard she was in a ‘90s television show created by the directors of those films, not sure about that, probly mistaken), who is not in a great spot. She moved out of town when she was young, but has recently returned to find it not as good as it even was then. She temporarily lives in her childhood home with her brother Paul (Jesse Plemons, BATTLESHIP) and every day goes to the store and stares longingly at the liquor shelf while she buys a pack of gum or something.
She has trouble getting all but one of her students to engage at all in class, but she tries. For example she calls on Lucas Weaver (Jeremy T. Thomas, “School boy / classmate,” DOLLY PARTON’S COAT OF MANY COLORS), a scrawny sad little kid with holes in his shirt, who may possibly be illiterate. He goes from drawings with no text when he reads his story, an extremely grim and thinly-veiled autobiography about a young bear and his sick father bear. We can see how it sounds to her, but we know it’s even worse: his dad Frank (Scott Haze, VENOM, MINARI) and little brother Aiden (Sawyer Jones, one episode of Modern Family) had an encounter with the monster and now they’re locked in the attic as veiny, bestial zombie-type creatures. Lucas kills small animals and chops up roadkill to feed them. Alot of responsibility for a kid that age, and he definitely steps up to the plate. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Madigan, Graham Greene, Guillermo Del Toro, Guy Davis, Jeremy T. Thomas, Jesse Plemons, Keri Russell, monster movies, Nick Antosca, Rory Cochrane, Sawyer Jones, Scott Cooper, Scott Haze
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 5 Comments »
