Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Saturday, October 29th, 2011
I’m including this as part of Slasher Search ’11 because that’s why I rented it. But it turned out I was wrong, it’s more of a ghost or haunted house type movie.
The opening ten minutes or so really leave you guessing what the hell this movie’s gonna be about. It starts on a plantation in 1800s Virginia, something about some slaves giving a stone mask to the slave master’s wife to protect her from a curse that some guys they keep cutting to on the Ivory Coast are working up. Then we go to modern day (well, 1980s) Virginia, where the house still exists, and a lady is filming a music video, and a psychiatrist is dealing with crazed patients in an asylum. How does this all tie together? Not well.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Stevens, Mark Frost, Mary Page Keller, Slasher Search
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Friday, October 28th, 2011
SILENT MADNESS is another song in the key of HALLOWEEN, with little melodies from a few other slasher favorites. A psychotic mute inmate from a mental asylum gets out and returns to the scene of a 20 year old massacre. Like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET there’s a boiler room involved, like BLACK CHRISTMAS he kills some sorority sisters still on campus when most students are on vacation, like HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW there’s a cranky old sorority mother, like SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE the killer (played by stunt coordinator Solly Marx) is a regular looking dude with no mask or anything, and there’s a twist ending that’s kind of a nod to FRIDAY THE 13TH’s nod to PSYCHO. But it’s nowhere near as good as any of those movies. I don’t want to call it Z-grade, but it’s pretty low on the alphabet. Maybe W-grade? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Paul DeAngelo, Simon Nuchtern, Slasher Search, slashers, Sydney Lassick
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
When I saw that there was a WRONG TURN 4 I had to think for a minute to remember if I had seen part 3. I did, so what’s one more gonna hurt? Nothing. That’s generally the best attitude to go into a movie with, right?
The first WRONG TURN was a competent but bland studio version of a savage cannibal movie. It didn’t work for me. Part 2 had some humorously over-the-top digital bodily mutilation, but a completely obnoxious “people making a reality show run into trouble” type of plot and characters. I forgot to write reviews of parts 1 and 3. I don’t remember what part 3 was about but if I remember right it was similar to part 2 but a little funnier and less grating. Maybe. They’re all kind of shitty movies with some bright spots. This is no exception. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: cannibals, DTV, DTV prequels, inbreds
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 34 Comments »
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
Here’s another popular 2007 French horror movie. This one came out about a month before FRONTIER(S) did and like that one it has a pregnant protagonist and takes place during a time of rioting in the underprivileged Parisian suburbs. But it seems to be in the present and it’s much simpler, fewer characters and locations, and to me way more effective. “Fun” is probly not the right word for this one, but it comes close.
The movie opens with a (digital) baby in its mother’s womb… and what happens to it when the mother is in a car accident. In-utero whiplash. So, yeah, it’s pretty fucked up. But that’s how they do it in France. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christmas, Christmas horror, French, French horror
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 36 Comments »
Monday, October 24th, 2011
Here’s a weird one. Martin (Pierre Lenoir) comes home one day to find his wife Alice (Lynne Adams – “Yakuza with rocket launcher” in JOHNNY MNEMONIC) cutting his suits into little squares. After Alice has a stint in a mental hospital the couple comes to live in a new house, still undergoing some refurbishment.
One night Alice wakes up and hears power tools being used in the basement. She investigates and finds a dude (Wings “Ramrod” Hauser) still working on the house. He explains that he has a strong work ethic and won’t stop until the job’s finished. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ghosts, Slasher Search, slashers, Wings Hauser
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
While almost all of the slasher movies I find on VHS are low budget and low skill level, NIGHT SCHOOL actually seems like a higher budget studio take on the genre. Released in 1981, just enough time for the studios to notice how much money HALLOWEEN made and start cashing in, it’s slickly made with nice, deliberate camera moves and high production values (even a vehicle chase on the streets of Boston). And it’s pretty good, too. I thought I’d discovered one of the last VHS-only gems, but then I found out it just came out on DVD from Warner Archive.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ken Hughes, Rachel Ward, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 46 Comments »
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
RED STATE is ex-movie director Kevin Smith’s long-threatened version of a horror movie, supposedly his last movie except for an epic 2-part Seann William Scott hockey comedy based on a Warren Zevon song (!?). Promises promises.
I gotta tell you though, I kind of liked this movie. Never would’ve predicted that, but it’s true. It’s his best camerawork and direction and his least self-indulgent dialogue. It’s not just “good for Kevin Smith,” which in my opinion would also describe COP OUT and ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO. If I saw it and didn’t know who made it I still would’ve thought it was pretty good (and never would’ve guessed it was Smith).
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: John Goodman, Kevin Smith, Melissa Leo, Michael Parks
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 55 Comments »
Sunday, October 16th, 2011
BLOOD RAGE, aka NIGHTMARE AT SHADOW WOODS, wants to be the identical twin brother of HALLOWEEN. Same genetics, separate souls. It kinda seems like somebody wrote down a summary of HALLOWEEN, then went through line-by-line crossing out each part and writing something else next to it.
So it’s the opening of HALLOWEEN, where a little boy snaps and commits murder out of the blue, except it’s at a drive-in instead of a house, it’s his mom having sex instead of his sister, instead of sneaking up on the sister he sneaks out of the car to kill a stranger, and he uses a small ax instead of a big knife. The biggest change is that he has a twin brother, and after he commits murder he plays a mean trick and leaves his innocent twin standing in shock holding the weapon. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Slasher Search, slashers, Thanksgiving, twins
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 20 Comments »
Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Released in ’89, but filmed in ’86 by one-time director Douglas Grossman and writer Leo Evans, neither of them horror fans, HELL HIGH is a befuddling story about a group of kids harassing and sexually assaulting their biology teacher because she told them to be quiet and take their test. But what they didn’t bargain for is that she’s a traumatized nutcase and the source of “the Legend of the Swamp” they keep talking about.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 26 Comments »
Sunday, October 9th, 2011
THE LOVED ONES is a 2009 Australian horror picture about five teenagers on the night of the End of School Dance. Brent (Xavier Samuel) is a broody long-haired dude haunted by a recent personal tragedy. He goes for a walk before the dance and disappears, his mom and girlfriend figure something bad happened to him and try to find him. Only we know that a local psycho (John Brumpton) hit him over the head and brought him home for his daughter Lola (Robin McLeavy), who had asked Brent to the dance and been turned down.
This is yet another twist on the TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE setup: once again a victim (this time male) wakes up to find himself a forced participant in a demented parody of a traditional family dinner. Instead of force-feeding him human meat they give him what you could reasonably assume was roadkill of some kind. In this one there’s a prom theme, so he’s been put into a tux and there’s a disco ball. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Robin McLeavy, Sean Byrne, Xavier Samuel
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 23 Comments »
