Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Friday, October 26th, 2018
TERROR ON TOUR is about a band called The Clowns, who wear makeup kind of like Kiss, as well as black leotards, red capes, afro wigs with two white stripes, and sometimes Phantom of the Opera type half-masks. This is important because someone is going around doing the murders and we don’t know if it’s a lookalike or a band member and which band member or which lookalike.
The movie contains “original music by The Names,” who I have determined to be the one from Rockford, Illinois, not the one from Brussels. And I believe they are playing the band in the movie, which is why (just like Easy Action as Solid Gold in BLOOD TRACKS) they don’t really do that much acting. Instead the story focuses on these two guys in the green room, roadies or something. One guy likes to put on makeup so he can trick groupies into thinking he’s in the band (approved by the band), and his main job seems to be buying drugs for the other guy.
The title is slightly misleading because although I guess they’re technically on tour we only see them in one town, one venue, where they’re playing shows on multiple nights and also having parties. The police are suspicious of the band and their shindigs even before they find a dead lady in the alley, yet they have no security and only a couple suit wearing cops including Lieutenant Lambert (John Green, DEMENTED) occasionally standing in a quiet part of the building looking at documents and stuff. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Don Edmonds, Slasher Search, Slasher Search Rocks, slashers, VHS
Posted in Horror, Reviews | No Comments »
Thursday, October 25th, 2018
SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II is a kinda cool, kinda odd, but kinda boring variation on the simple part 1. It follows Courtney, one of the first film’s survivors, but recast with Crystal Bernard (Wings). Her older sister Valerie is said to be in a sanitarium somewhere, just now beginning to speak again (after five years, if it’s in real time). Courtney convinces her mom (Jennifer Rhodes, THE TOWERING INFERNO) to let her spend a weekend with her friends at one’s dad’s new condo. But don’t tell Mom that boys will be there.
Much has been made of the first one being written and directed by women, and what that means in a slasher movie centered around a dude with a phallic drill murdering teenage girls in nighties. This one is written and directed by a different woman, Deborah Brock, and has a rare slasher movie occurrence of the female gaze in an opening dream sequence where Courtney pictures her crush Matt (Patrick Lowe, PRIMAL RAGE) shirtless, smiling, throwing a football, while she’s in a non-revealing nightgown. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Atanas Ilitch, Crystal Bernard, Deborah Brock, Joel Hoffman, Patrick Lowe, Roger Corman, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, October 24th, 2018
HARD ROCK NIGHTMARE is an account of the tragic events that befall the up and coming rock ‘n roll band The Bad Boys when they stay at Jimmy’s grandma’s farm for the weekend. They “gotta get ready for the concert” so at first they practice in their garage with one girlfriend watching. But she accidentally bumps the garage door opener just as three other young female rock ‘n roll aficionados are walking down the sidewalk, so they stand and watch and swoon. But also it attracts a police car and they get shut down.
They’re kind of an unlikely band because there are two dudes with slicked back hair, leather jacket and jeans, others are standard long hair dudes, and a guy with a trenchcoat, and one guy is a Mike Mills looking nerd often wearing a Nike sweatshirt. Like they’re a couple different bands accidentally combined. I’m not sure if all their music is like this, but the song we hear is funny because the chorus is “It’s a nightmare!” but the lyrics are all about wanting to start a band and “work really hard.” The first line is “It started when I got my first guitar at the age of ten…” So the band and “a couple of hot babes” from the sidewalk head out to the farm. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dominick Brascia, Slasher Search, Slasher Search Rocks, Tape Raider, Troy Donahue, VHS, werewolves
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018
In HE NEVER DIED (2015), Henry Rollins (JOHNNY MNEMONIC) plays Jack, which is the guy mentioned in the title, the one who hasn’t experienced death so far. He’s an immortal who just lives a boring life in a dingy apartment, mostly sleeping, sometimes playing Bingo, paying his rent in cash from a box of hundreds he has under the bed. Cara (Kate Greenhouse, TERMINAL RUSH), a waitress at the diner he goes to every day, seems to like him, but I’m not sure why. He shows little emotion or enthusiasm and seems uninterested in understanding normal human social interactions.
This is the story of the time a young woman (Jordan Todosey, THE PACIFIER, Degrassi: The Next Generation) knocks on his door and runs off and then he gets a call from a long-ago ex who he hates who says that was his daughter and can he please find her and make sure she doesn’t drive home drunk, because that’s what she does. Around this same time he’s also getting threats from some gangsters for reasons he doesn’t understand, or seem that interested in understanding.
So it turns into a story about this gruff, seemingly heartless weirdo accidentally forming a bond with his young misfit daughter – a common format, I know, but one I’m always a sucker for. And then the gangsters notice there’s this person in his life, so the two things become intertwined. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Booboo Stewart, Henry Rollins, Jason Krawczyk, Jordan Todosey, Kate Greenhouse, Steven Ogg
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews | 10 Comments »
Monday, October 22nd, 2018
(Many SPOILERS in this review, I’m not gonna label all of them)
HALLOWEEN is the new HALLOWEEN in the HALLOWEEN series – the original HALLOWEEN series, not the remake, HALLOWEEN. HALLOWEEN takes place 40 years after HALLOWEEN and acts as if it is the only sequel ever made to HALLOWEEN. So really it could be called HALLOWEEN II, but maybe that would be confusing since there are already two movies called HALLOWEEN II: HALLOWEEN II and HALLOWEEN II.
Other than being produced by Blumhouse, this one’s not coming from any of the usual horror suspects. It’s the first horror movie, sequel or licensed property movie from director/co-writer David Gordon Green, who is best known in my opinion for writing the introduction to my book Seagalogy, but also directed GEORGE WASHINGTON, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, JOE, STRONGER, etc. He wrote it with Jeff Fradley (Vice Principals) and Danny McBride, who he turned into an actor by having him play “Bust-Ass” in ALL THE REAL GIRLS fifteen years ago and continued with PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, YOUR HIGHNESS and Eastbound & Down. McBride is usually a comedy guy, but remember he also got killed by a faced xenomorphs in ALIEN: COVENANT. So he’s legit.
Since this is a return to the original series, with no dumbass Weinstein involvement, with Jamie Lee Curtis returning as Laurie Strode, and most surprisingly with John Carpenter executive producing and scoring for the first time since HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH in 1982, there are some high hopes. If you’re not a fan of slasher sequels and want something that transcends them, you might be disappointed. For me, though, it’s a satisfying treat that revisits the series template and most important character with many scenes of great tension and without committing common franchise horror sins like obnoxious characters, overly polished look or intrusive rock ‘n roll soundtrack. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andi Matichak, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, James Jude Courtney, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jeff Fradley, Jefferson Hall, John Carpenter, Judy Greer, Nick Castle, Rhian Rees, Virginia Gardner, Will Patton
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 219 Comments »
Thursday, October 18th, 2018
(I’m not gonna count this as a Slasher Search since it’s a new movie I had been anticipating, but it’s the completion of a trilogy that I reviewed the first two-thirds of in Slasher Search 2012)
Years ago there was this weird pill junkie guy I knew who obsessive-compulsively watched stacks of crappy murder mystery movies that nobody even around here ever heard of, and he kept telling me there was this amazing horror movie called MALEVOLENCE (2003). I had to know what it was this guy was so obsessed with, but as expected it was kind of cheap and ugly. “But it has its moments. I like what it’s going for I guess” raves Outlawvern.com.
When I was looking it up on IMDb to write a review I noticed that writer-director Stevan Mena made another movie in 2010 called BEREAVEMENT that had some of the same character names. Turned out it was a prequel.
And to my surprise I really liked it! It’s got little in the way of originality, and it’s more nihilistic than I generally prefer, but with a bigger budget and more experienced cast he was able to make a creepy, atmospheric, character-driven riff on TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE type material. (And then his great heroine Alexandra Daddario got to star in the officially licensed but not as good TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D. “Do your thing, cous’!”) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrienne Barbeau, Katie Gibson, Kevin McKelvey, Scott Decker, slashers, Stevan Mena
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, October 17th, 2018
I noticed there are a couple still-only-on-VHS horror movies that are heavy metal themed, and that also seems to be a motif through some of the modern horror I’ve been enjoying like DEVIL’S CANDY and MANDY, so I decided to take a look at them in this special Slasher Search investigation (in association with Tape Raider). This first one is from 1985 and it’s about a hair metal or whatever type of band who make two major mistakes
1) For some reason thinking that a remote mountain area is a cool place to film their new video
2) Choosing the remote mountain area that’s protected by a family of anti-social brutes.
3) You know what, I’m gonna count #1 as two mistakes because why they hell did they think this would look cool in a video? It doesn’t even look cool in a horror movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: metal, Slasher Search, Slasher Search Rocks, Smart Egg Pictures, Swedish cinema, Tape Raider
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, October 16th, 2018
I don’t consider myself a Chuck Norris fan, but I love INVASION USA and obviously he’s in my favorite Bruce Lee movie WAY OF THE DRAGON and okay, LONE WOLF McQUADE is pretty good and I have to admit I enjoyed DELTA FORCE 2 and also the first MISSING IN ACTION is kinda stupid fun so okay, maybe I like some of his movies, big deal, I could stop at any time.
I watched SILENT RAGE because Panos Cosmatos mentioned it on Shock Waves as a rare example of action-horror. Obviously that’s a hybrid genre that has some appeal to me because it’s my two favorite types of movies combined into one super-movie (and because it’s what I’m trying to do in that next novel I’m perpetually on the verge of finishing).
The highlight of SILENT RAGE is definitely the opening, a long, boiling-over-pot of a sequence that reminds me of the deft camera mastery of HALLOWEEN‘s opening and the stand-alone intensity of SCREAM‘s. It’s just about this guy John Kirby (Brian Libby, ACTION JACKSON, THE MIST) at home in Dallas one random day and the kids are running around causing havoc and the wife is sniping at them and nobody’s paying any attention to him but us as he is sweaty and shaking, talking to his doctor on the phone, vaguely asking for help. Then he says “I’m not gonna make it,” hangs up and stumbles to the chicken coop out back. We stay inside watching out the window and the family is still completely oblivious to anything being wrong as he returns with an ax. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: action-horror, Chuck Norris, Katey Sagal, Ron Silver, slashers, Stephanie Dunnam, Toni Kalem, William Finley
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews | 46 Comments »
Monday, October 15th, 2018
How many times will I have to write a variation of this: “Yeah, I know, I didn’t think I wanted any new zombie movies either, but here’s another one I liked”? No one knows. WYRMWOOD: ROAD OF THE DEAD (2014) feels a little bit more like a normal zombie movie than THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS or TRAIN TO BUSAN did, but it has an energy that I really like. It’s Australian and proud of it, oi oi oi, by which I mean that when a quote on the cover calls it “MAD MAX meets DAWN OF THE DEAD” it’s not that far off.
It starts right around the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, the morning after a freaky meteor shower, when most but not all people have gone ghoul. It centers on a small group of survivors, flashing back to show how it started for each of them. The lead, Barry (Jay Gallagher), kept reminding me of Scott Adkins, and though not a martial artist his character is a fighter, as in he gets in fights. In fact, early on, when a zombie is blocking the road and Barry’s companion (Yure Covich, FEED) is saying he “just can’t get used to” them existing, Barry says “Fuck it, I’m gonna fight ‘im,” gets out of the car and starts punching the thing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Berynn Schwerdt, Bianca Bradey, Jay Gallagher, Keith Agius, Kiah Roache-Turner, Leon Burchill, Yure Covich, zombies
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Thursday, October 11th, 2018
Many horror movies, maybe even most, teach us that no matter what life throws at us, we can get through it. We can survive. Some of us. Hopefully. Most of the time.
But the practice of sequelizing in horror has taught us the more pessimistic lesson that in the long run shit really doesn’t get better. Maybe for a minute it does after the bad things happen and then the evil leaves for a while. But a couple years later maybe some new people come along and the evil comes back and does the bad things to them. And usually not as cool as the first time. The shriveling circle of death.
And so it is with PET SEMATARY II*. Released in 1992, three years after the first one, it’s once again directed by Mary Lambert (MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID), with new screenwriter Richard Outten (JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, uncredited rewrites on GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH) and no Stephen King book to base it on.
*VERY IMPORTANT TITLE NOTE: The posters and other advertising materials spelled it out as PET SEMATARY TWO, a rare practice that I’m a big fan of. However, I try to follow the rule of using the title shown on screen in the actual movie, which in this case uses the Roman numeral II.
The good news, though: Look at this fucking logo! The movie itself is fun but the logo is the best thing in it!
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Edwards, Clancy Brown, Darlanne Fluegel, Edward Furlong, Halloween, Jared Rushton, Mary Lambert, Stephen King
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
