I’m always open to a James Wan movie just because I love DEATH SENTENCE so much. But everything else he’s done (until FAST AND FURIOUS 7 next summer) is horror, so it’s pretty different. SAW was okay, I kinda liked INSIDIOUS, haven’t seen the other one (DEAD SILENCE) yet. I probly wouldn’t have rushed out to see this except I heard good word including from some of you commenters who I trust.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play Ed and Lorraine Warren, supernatural investigators or demonologists. They’re actually based on a real couple who famously investigated the cases that AMITYVILLE HORROR and A HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT and I think GHOST DAD and CASPER MEETS WENDY were based on, and wrote several books about this type of shit. I guess this is kind of like CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND where the movie pretends to believe their story and tells it as they would tell it. (read the rest of this shit…)
I don’t want to say I’m a zombie fan. I mean, George Romero’s first three LIVING DEAD movies are some of my all time favorite movies. RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is a classic. Fulci’s ZOMBI 2 is pretty good. I keep watching The Walking Dead. And there’ve been other ones I’ve enjoyed. But I mean, it goes without saying that this particular type of monster has gotten overexposed. I do not envy whichever poor bastard decides to do a book chronicling all the zombie movies, and has to watch every imagination-free piece of shit that’s come along in the last ten years or so. Don’t make any more zombie movies for a couple ten years, you guys. You wore ’em out. I’m sick of fuckin hearing about em.
But it’s true, I do like a good one, and I was open to Brad Pitt’s blockbuster-budgeted zombie epic because it’s an approach that hasn’t been tried before. (read the rest of this shit…)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen William Lustig’s MANIAC, but its memory lingers as a favorite movie somewhere in the scummy part of my brain. It’s not a slasher movie by my definition because it follows the killer the whole time, but that makes it more upsetting. Played by GODFATHER I-II supporting player Joe Spinell (who also co-wrote the movie), this maniac is a sweaty, disgusting mess living in the shadows of the flea-bitten New York City of 1980, the era of peep shows and grindhouses. He was the weirdo women had to worry about following them on the subway. He was literally the guy you didn’t want to run into in a dark alley, partly because he might be dumping a body in the garbage, and you don’t want any part of that.
To me the most memorably fucked up scene is the one where he’s handcuffed himself to a mannequin that has a real woman’s scalp attached, and he’s crying and he says, “I’m so happy.” And then later there’s one of my all time favorite turnarounds where this sicko leaves the private world of his dingy apartment, he goes into the city in the daylight, and it turns out he knows people. He’s wearing sunglasses and he’s hanging out at a photo shoot. They think he’s cool! Great movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
warning: I wanted to get this up in a timely manner so I have to throw it on here without re-reading it. Sorry.
Today is the 4th of July, where we in the United States celebrate our independence day. Partly the movie but mostly the historic event. There are flags and barbecues and shit, and fireworks. It’s not as involved as Christmas, but it’s a thing.
I am a fan of the holiday horror movies, so I’m happy that director William Lustig and writer Larry Cohen made this one for Independence Day back in 1996. Lustig was way past his prime and the movie kinda sucks, but I still like that it exists.
This was of course the same team that made MANIAC COP, and this is basically MANIAC SOLDIER. The maniac is Sam Harper (David ‘Shark’ Fralick), killed in a friendly fire incident during Desert Storm, not found until 3 years later. His burnt corpse is shipped back and sits in a flag-draped coffin at his widow’s house for the memorial service. But when his idolizing nephew Jody (Christopher Ogden) puts his box of medals inside the coffin for some reason that turns him into a vengeful zombie just in time for the town’s 4th of July celebration. (Also he pins the medals into his burnt flesh.) (read the rest of this shit…)
NINJA III is one of the only movies to really explore how much ninjas like yogurt
One of our nation’s perennial VHS favorites, NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, has recently made the transition to digital and high definition disc type formats courtesy of the heroes at Shout Factory. Check out my review of the new blu-ray over on Daily Grindhouse. If you also want to read a review I wrote of the movie a couple years ago then you can click here.
I didn’t even realize THE LORDS OF SALEM was coming out this week until somebody told me. I never saw an ad or saw the trailer play before another movie. When I saw the Anchor Bay logo at the beginning I thought, “That’s weird, why is the new Rob Zombie movie being distributed by the company that only does barely-released-or-advertised horror like HATCHET or BEHIND THE MASK?” After the movie was over it kinda made more sense.
There are many things I liked about this one. Oddly enough I like that it stars Zombie’s wife, Sheri Moon Zombie. She was a major character in all his other movies, but in this one she’s the center of the whole story and often alone on screen. I like that because it’s unusual to see an adult, tattooed, dreadlocked white lady as a lead. You see ’em around but they don’t usually make movies about them. Nice to have something different sometimes. (read the rest of this shit…)
not to be confused with THE EVIL DEAD (1981). They take the ‘the’ out to streamline it, like FAST & FURIOUS.
I’m an EVIL DEAD 2 man myself. But I love THE EVIL DEAD too. It’s a timeless classic that I dig out every couple of years and it keeps getting better. And I never wanted them to remake it. But the truth is, I’m afraid, that that first one is pretty forgotten in our culture. I know this by the overwhelming number of genuine horror fans, not just Johnny-come-latelys, who are confused why the remake looks so serious. You have to keep explaining to them, no, this is supposed to be a remake of the first EVIL DEAD. The one before EVIL DEAD 2? That sequel is just such a perfect do-over that it eclipses the first one in the popular consciousness.
This is in that rare category of horror remakes where instead of somebody (Platinum Dunes or whoever) buying the rights and cashing in on the name the original director decides to get it over with, picks out a director himself, produces it and is pretty hands on to try to make it worthwhile. The originator of this strategy might’ve been George Romero with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1990). It was also used successfully by Wes Craven for THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2006) and THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (2009). Note that he had nothing to do with A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010). That’s what they’re up against here. (read the rest of this shit…)
I never heard of this one until I saw THE WOMAN. If you didn’t hear, Lucky McKee came up with that one because he saw OFFSPRING and was impressed by Pollyanna McIntosh’s portrayal of the feral, cannibalistic savage also called The Woman. OFFSPRING itself is an adaptation of a book by Jack Ketchum, which is in fact a sequel to another book called Off Season. So after I loved THE WOMAN so much I decided to read those.
In Off Season (published in 1980) a group of vacationers on the coast of Maine are attacked by a tribe of inbred savages. Like THE HILLS HAVE EYES this is a story inspired by the legend of the Sawney Beane Clan, cave-dwelling inbred cannibals who may or may not have terrorized 15th or 16th-century Scotland. The tribe in Off Season like to storm cabins, bash people over the heads, slit ’em open, take their favorite organs, or sometimes drag people back to their cave. They cook up body parts and eat ’em, collect bones, torture people, shit like that. They steal babies and raise them as their own. Their culture is very different from ours. (read the rest of this shit…)
Don Coscarelli is really underappreciated. Including by me. Everything he’s done is good, right? I haven’t seen his first two, but one (JIM, THE WORLD’S GREATEST) is not on video and the other (KENNY & COMPANY) I’ve heard nothing but good things about. All four PHANTASM movies are pretty great. I like THE BEASTMASTER. I like SURVIVAL QUEST. But he’s a low budget independent guy who wants to do his own thing, so he takes a while. It’s been 10 years since his last movie, the one-of-a-kind BUBBA HO-TEP. It’s been 7 years just since his last TV work, INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD, easily the best Masters of Horror episode I’ve seen.
So he’ll be out of sight for years and then he’ll travel through the portal of time to bring us one of these distinctive sort of fringe horror-ish movies. This time he brought us JOHN DIES AT THE END, probly the closest thing he’s done to an actual comedy. You could compare it to something like JACK BROOKS: MONSTER SLAYER or maybe CABIN IN THE WOODS or TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL, but still with enough weird, non-jokey horror in its guts to keep me satisfied. It arguably leans a little bit more to the left on the horror-to-comedy spectrum than those ones, but not by a huge amount. (read the rest of this shit…)
Usually a director you like producing somebody else’s movie doesn’t mean much. See for example Sam Raimi. Love the guy’s directorial works, but look at the stuff he and his company produced – not necessarily the seal of quality. I’m starting to see Guillermo del Toro is different, though. I still gotta see THE ORPHANAGE, but most people seem to speak highly of it. I loved DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and now this one is pretty good. These last two are movies where he found new filmatists who had done short films and helped them to make a feature.
In this case the director is Andres Muschietti, who wrote the script with Neil Cross and his sister Barbara Muschietti. (That’s kinda cool, I don’t know of another brother-sister filmmaking team other than the Wachowskis. And I guess Joie Lee wrote CROOKLYN.) They’re “adapting” it from their short film of MAMÁ, but I put adapted in quotes because there really isn’t a story in the short version, it’s basically just a cool shot (which is replicated in the feature version). I have no idea how del Toro figured out from that clip that this guy could direct a real movie that tells a story and has acting in it, but somehow he guessed right. (read the rest of this shit…)
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I’m always open to a James Wan movie just because I love DEATH SENTENCE so much. But everything else he’s done (until FAST AND FURIOUS 7 next summer) is horror, so it’s pretty different. SAW was okay, I kinda liked INSIDIOUS, haven’t seen the other one (DEAD SILENCE) yet. I probly wouldn’t have rushed out to see this except I heard good word including from some of you commenters who I trust.
I don’t want to say I’m a zombie fan. I mean, George Romero’s first three LIVING DEAD movies are some of my all time favorite movies. RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is a classic. Fulci’s ZOMBI 2 is pretty good. I keep watching The Walking Dead. And there’ve been other ones I’ve enjoyed. But I mean, it goes without saying that this particular type of monster has gotten overexposed. I do not envy whichever poor bastard decides to do a book chronicling all the zombie movies, and has to watch every imagination-free piece of shit that’s come along in the last ten years or so. Don’t make any more zombie movies for a couple ten years, you guys. You wore ’em out. I’m sick of fuckin hearing about em.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen William Lustig’s MANIAC, but its memory lingers as a favorite movie somewhere in the scummy part of my brain. It’s not a slasher movie by my definition because it follows the killer the whole time, but that makes it more upsetting. Played by GODFATHER I-II supporting player Joe Spinell (who also co-wrote the movie), this maniac is a sweaty, disgusting mess living in the shadows of the flea-bitten New York City of 1980, the era of peep shows and grindhouses. He was the weirdo women had to worry about following them on the subway. He was literally the guy you didn’t want to run into in a dark alley, partly because he might be dumping a body in the garbage, and you don’t want any part of that.
warning: I wanted to get this up in a timely manner so I have to throw it on here without re-reading it. Sorry.
not to be confused with THE EVIL DEAD (1981). They take the ‘the’ out to streamline it, like 
I never heard of this one until I saw THE WOMAN. If you didn’t hear, Lucky McKee came up with that one because he saw OFFSPRING and was impressed by Pollyanna McIntosh’s portrayal of the feral, cannibalistic savage also called The Woman. OFFSPRING itself is an adaptation of a book by Jack Ketchum, which is in fact a sequel to another book called Off Season. So after I loved THE WOMAN so much I decided to read those.
Don Coscarelli is really underappreciated. Including by me. Everything he’s done is good, right? I haven’t seen his first two, but one (JIM, THE WORLD’S GREATEST) is not on video and the other (KENNY & COMPANY) I’ve heard nothing but good things about. All four PHANTASM movies are pretty great. I like THE BEASTMASTER. I like SURVIVAL QUEST. But he’s a low budget independent guy who wants to do his own thing, so he takes a while. It’s been 10 years since his last movie, the one-of-a-kind BUBBA HO-TEP. It’s been 7 years just since his last TV work, INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD, easily the best Masters of Horror episode I’ve seen.
lly a director you like producing somebody else’s movie doesn’t mean much. See for example Sam Raimi. Love the guy’s directorial works, but look at the stuff he and his company produced – not necessarily the seal of quality. I’m starting to see Guillermo del Toro is different, though. I still gotta see THE ORPHANAGE, but most people seem to speak highly of it. I loved DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and now this one is pretty good. These last two are movies where he found new filmatists who had done short films and helped them to make a feature.
