For years Robin Hardy, the director of the original non-mega THE WICKER MAN, has been trying to make this movie based on his novel Cowboys For Christ. It’s supposed to be a “spiritual sequel” dealing with the same themes but not the same characters or story. I expected a barely watchable but hopefully interesting mess, but that’s not what it is. Without being directly connected to THE WICKER MAN it pretty much takes the WILD THINGS approach to sequelizing: kind of a loose paraphrase with all the details changed. It’s clunky at times and always completely unnecessary, but surprisingly compelling. (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
The Wicker Tree
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012The Innkeepers
Monday, April 23rd, 2012
THE INNKEEPERS is the new one from Ti West, the guy that did HOUSE OF THE DEVIL. This one doesn’t have the same retro trappings (I still believe if I came across HOUSE on cable and didn’t know what it was I would think it really was made around 1980) but it has a similar attitude about taking its sweet time getting to the horror part. In this one I really appreciated that because I almost preferred just hanging out with the characters to watching them get scared. (read the rest of this shit…)
Valentine
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Released in February of 2001, VALENTINE was one of the last of (the last of?) the post-SCREAM studio slasher movies. Its low box office totals, combined with the success of THE RING the next year, might’ve sealed the deal on that particular horror cycle. It’s directed by Jamie Blanks, who debuted with the similarly crappy URBAN LEGEND and later returned to his native Australia, where the spirit of the Tasmanian tiger or something blows in the wind, into his lungs, inspiring him to make much better movies (STORM WARNING, NATURE’S GRAVE). (read the rest of this shit…)
Lovers Lane
Monday, February 13th, 2012
aka I’m Still Waiting For You
I didn’t even realize it until I started watching it, but LOVERS LANE is a cheapass slasher movie shot in the Seattle area. Mostly Issaquah, I think. Anna Faris, who grew up in nearby Edmonds, is in the movie (not her first, but Wikipedia calls it “her first significant role”). It was filmed in 1999, but seems more like an ’80s slasher. (read the rest of this shit…)
Hospital Massacre
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
aka X-Ray
In 1982, a year after MY BLOODY VALENTINE, we got this Golan and Globus production which also begins with a murderous incident on Valentine’s Day, 1961. It looks like the ’80s and the kids even say “Omigod!”, but it says it’s 1961 so I’m taking their word for it. In this one a little boy named Harold leaves a valentine for a little girl named Susan and watches through her window as she reads it. When she sees it’s from Harold she laughs and her (brother? boyfriend?) crumples it up and throws it on the ground.
While Susan goes into the other room to cut two giant pieces of cake for her and the boy, Harold comes in and breaks the kid’s neck and hangs him from a coatrack. (read the rest of this shit…)
My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
I know Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that’s sort of made up to sell greeting cards, like Ziggy Day in May or Rehearsal Christmas in September. It’s based on an actual Christian martyr but the traditions got nothing to do that, it’s all a scam by Hallmark, the chocolatier lobby and Big Flower. Still, it’s enough of a real holiday to have a handful of slasher movies based on it, and therefore I am willing to acknowledge it. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Woman
Monday, February 6th, 2012
Honestly all I knew going into THE WOMAN was who made it, that it was supposed to be really good, and that some dude flipped out when he saw it at Sundance and had to be removed as he yelled that the movie had no value and should be burned.
The director is Lucky McKee (MAY) and he wrote it with the novelist Jack Ketchum, who he also collaborated with on RED (the good RED – sorry Bruce). I liked both of those movies quite a bit, but this is McKee’s best work yet. It’s surprising and it’s darkly humorous and it’s the rare horror movie that works without following the template of any previous movie, at least not one that I can think of. So this is one of those reviews that I recommend you don’t read yet unless you either already saw the movie or don’t plan to see it. I didn’t see a trailer or anything and I was glad I didn’t really know what it was about at all. (read the rest of this shit…)
Twilight Zone: The Movie
Saturday, January 7th, 2012
Well, this is depressing. I skipped over Spielberg’s stone cold masterpieces RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and E.T. OF THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS ’cause I’ve seen ’em a bunch before, but decided to watch TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE because I don’t think I’ve seen it since the ’80s. Turns out it’s Spielberg’s first bad movie, at least for his segment. And that’s small fish compared to John Landis’s, since it was an actual legitimate tragedy that ended lives and derailed a great filmatist. Bummer. Not worth it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Saturday, December 24th, 2011
RARE EXPORTS is this year’s hottest Christmas horror movie. It’s a killer Santa movie but not in the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT sense – in this one Santa is a monster. It’s kind of like THE THING – an American team finds him frozen in a block of ice under a small mountain. They say it’s actually a burial mound. They dig him up and this might cause some repercussions that could put a damper on the season.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Silent Night, Deady Night 5: The Toy Maker
Friday, December 23rd, 2011
Part 4 director Brian Yuzna returns as co-writer for part 5, but hands over the directing reins to first-timer Martin Kitrosser. I never heard of the guy but I should’ve because he wrote a movie I love, FRIDAY THE 13TH 3D, plus the story for FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING. He started as a script supervisor on the first two FRIDAY THE 13THs and has also worked in that capacity on all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies. So maybe that’s how that one thing happened where Tarantino came in for a meeting about doing a FRIDAY THE 13TH even though he wasn’t serious about it but the rumor got our hopes up. I’m discovering alot of Tarantino-SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT franchise connections here.
(read the rest of this shit…)
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