Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Thursday, February 9th, 2006
Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…
The always-brilliant Vern is back to show us how it’s done with his review today of 2001 MANIACS:
What’s up fellas,
You guys have been covering this ‘2001 MANIACS’ movie for what seems like years. Well, it seems that way because it is that way. Quint reviewed the script before Bush was even in the White House. Then you kept talking about it while it was being made and a while back I believe Moriarty personally presented a screening of it and you guys posted a bunch of reviews from the screening. That’s already more than enough coverage for a movie like this. But now that it’s found its rightful home in Direct to Video Land, it falls into my jurisdiction. I make the rules here. King Kong ain’t got shit on me, etc. etc. Anyway here’s my take in case anybody gives a shit. (Not likely.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV sequels, Giuseppe Andrews, Lin Shaye, Peter Stormare, Robert Englund, Tim Sullivan
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | No Comments »
Sunday, January 29th, 2006
Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…
What a pleasure. Reviews this morning from Elaine in Rotterdam, Cbabbitt in LA, and of course, the one and only Vern. Good reading all the way around, but I don’t think anyone turns a phrase the way our buddy Vern does, and certainly no one else stepped up to battle such a potentially deadly foe as HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2. I’m impressed at Vern’s moxie. Let’s see how well he held up:
Hey boys,
I know you guys follow Dr. Uwe Boll around all the time so you’re interested in all his movies and their mysterious sequels. I know alot of people like to talk shit, but I will say this for Dr. Boll. The medical profession is a noble one. If he healed somebody some time in the past that is to be commended. If he is one of those pervy doctors that drugs ladies and feels them up or something like that, I’m against that. And if he makes bad movies like everybody says, I’m not gonna defend that either. George Miller M.D. heals people, that didn’t stop him from making MAD fucking MAX. So it’s been established that you can be a doctor and still direct great movies. Anyway that’s not important because this is not by Dr. Boll, but it’s a sequel to his movie HOUSE OF THE DEAD, I guess. I never saw any of his movies or played video games so I am uniquely unqualified for this review. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, DTV sequels, Kirk Sticky Jones, Michael Hurst, Sid Haig, zombies
Posted in AICN, Horror, Reviews, Videogame | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
Some day I gotta come up with a name for this certain style of movie I like, a movie that is really fuckin dumb, but in a good way. It manages to be so spectacular, almost innovative in its level of stupidity that it is what the young people now and in the ’80s called “awesome.” I’m not talking a dumb comedy like HOW HIGH, I’m talking about a movie that as far as anyone knows is supposed to be serious. One really good example is DEEP BLUE SEA, Renny Harlin’s movie about super intelligent sharks. That takes the genre to its highest levels because there are so many things that play with the audience’s expectations that it is undeniably clever, almost brilliant. And at the same time, so fuckin dumb. A movie where a girl has to take her scuba suit off and stand on top of it so as not to get electrocuted. Because of the super intelligent sharks. That’s the best, when it’s so smart and so dumb that you can’t even tell which is which anymore.
Well this is not that good but it is another dumb movie by the same director. I think maybe the pressure of doing a sequel to DIE HARD was too much for Renny Harlin to take, it damaged his brain and he’s been mushy ever since. MINDHUNTERS isn’t as good as DEEP BLUE SEA but it’s worthwhile if you’re into that type of stupid shit, like I am. It has Val Kilmer, Christian Slater and of course DEEP BLUE SEA’s LL Cool J in the cast but it sat on the shelf for a couple years. It actually came out on DVD in Russia a long time before it came out in american theaters. So maybe the Russians could tell me what to call this genre. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: LL Cool J, Renny Harlin, Val Kilmer
Posted in Action, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 30 Comments »
Wednesday, January 11th, 2006
No way in hell HOSTEL is the landmark horror movie that at least one of my online buddies will tell you it is. Also, it’s not the worthless piece of shit some other people will tell you it is. This may seem weird, you probaly have never heard an opinion like this on the internet before, but HOSTEL falls somewhere in between GREAT AMERICAN HORROR CLASSIC MASTERPIECE and COMPLETE SUCKING OF ANIMAL SEX ORGANS. I call this condition “okay.”
As the ads will tell you, HOSTEL is “FROM DIRECTOR ELI ROTH” – in other words, the guy whose only other movie is CABIN FEVER. I liked that one. The hero-victims were dumb teenagers, but they had funny dialogue that made you like them anyway. In HOSTEL we get a trio of dumbass pussy fiends straight out of an ’80s fraternity movie, and they’re not as funny as those cabin kids. The first half of the movie is mostly about trying to get laid, smoking pot and drinking at a dance club. If you like to watch stupid dipshits get all excited about hot chicks taking their shirts off, you will enjoy this. I can’t remember if they keep high-fiving each other or not, but that is the basic vibe we’re talking here. The high fives are implied. Also, there is not a wet t-shirt contest at any point, but maybe on the DVD. Of the three characters, one is so obnoxious as to be kind of humorous, one is halfway sympathetic in comparison to the other two, and the third one is just a completely bland frat boy with few distinguishing characteristics except that he is the guy who plays Carlito Brigante in the CARLITO’S WAY straight to video prequel that I haven’t watched yet. So of course they die in that order, leaving you trying to root for the least interesting of three unlikable pricks. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eli Roth, Jay Hernandez
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 4th, 2006
HIGH TENSION (aka HAUTE TENSION, aka SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE)
This is another one of those heavily buzzed foreign imports that I put off watching forever. The final deciding factor, I keep seeing the trailer for a remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES which is made by these same frenchmen. So I figured I oughta investigate, see what these guys are about.
HIGH TENSION is a well made throwback kind of slasher movie, but not as good as WOLF CREEK. Similar subject matter though. Two young ladies, Marie and Alexia, go to visit Alexia’s parents out in the french boonies. While everybody’s in bed, some grunting redneck schlub (he looks like M. Emmett Walsh in an Ed Gein costume) drives up in a rusty truck, breaks in and starts killing everybody. Most of the movie – and the best part of the movie – involves Alexia being tied up and gagged in the back of the truck, while Marie chases the killer trying to save her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexandre Aja, Cecile De France, French horror
Posted in Horror, Reviews | No Comments »
Saturday, December 31st, 2005
THIS REVIEW IS BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS.
First off, I gotta address a couple points. Number one, regarding the reputation of this movie. I think it’s getting a bad rap. One Seattle critic wrote about walking out instead of reviewing it. Another one (“shout out” to Andrew Wright as the kids would say) mentioned the other critic walking out and said he didn’t blame her (his review was “a recommendation, I guess”). Roger Ebert gave WOLF CREEK zero stars and pretty much condemned it as a failure for the human race. Even some of the horror fans who liked it are talking about it like it peeled off their skin and made them eat it and despite the unpleasantness of the whole ordeal they begrudgingly had to admit that it did a good job of forcing them to eat it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Greg McLean, John Jarratt, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
CANDYMAN in: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH and CANDYMAN in: DAY OF THE DEAD
Last week I watched this CANDYMAN movie. The review is above but maybe somebody is too lazy to read it so I’ll just say it was surprisingly good and classy for a slasher movie about a guy with bees in his stomach that likes to gut people with a gorey hook hand. Anyway I decided as a completist and foolish optimist I should give these two other Candyman adventures a shot. Maybe lightning strikes three times, you know.
Well truth be told, number 2 is not all that bad. It’s just not all that good either. This one is directed by Bill Condon, who went on to do GODS AND MONSTERS and KINSEY and write some musicals. So it’s not just a random hack, although nobody knew it at the time because this was 1995, it was before they had time travel. Anyway it treats the material as seriously as the first one does, but it’s less dreamy and more literal. The setting is moved to New Orleans which we find out is Candyman’s birthplace. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Condon, Bill Nunn, Clive Barker, Donna D'Errico, DTV sequels, Tony Todd
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Sunday, October 30th, 2005
This movie surprised me. Everything about it is classier than I expected. From his reputation you’d think this Candyman guy is just a B-list Jason or Freddy type. But it turns out he’s more a classic movie monster like Dracula or the Phantom of the Opera. And his movie has more subtext than all of Freddy and Jason’s pictures put together, including JASON X. Hell, throw in a couple Child’s Plays too. And one or two Halloweens. And one Silent Night Deadly Night. No Texas Chainsaws though, that would tip the scale.
You know why we have to deal with Jason? Because of some horny counselors not doing their job. Freddy, because of some overzealous parents who took the law into their own hands. Dr. Phibes because some doctors fucked up a heart operation. But we got Candyman because of a bigger reason: America’s history of racist oppression. This is the only slasher/ghost movie I know of that deals with the legacy of slavery and racism (only BLACULA comes close). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bernard Rose, Clive Barker, Kasi Lemmons, Tony Todd, Virginia Madsen, Xander Berkeley
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
Well as you know I am always searching for straight to video movies that don’t suck. And even I sometimes forget why that is my mission, so let me put it down in writing here as a reminder. See, in the old days you had b-movies, you had exploitation movies, etc. And the idea of these movies was low budget, lowbrow, easy investment quickie moneymaker. Like squeezing out sausages. And there was alot of disposable garbage made, because that was the whole point. But within that world there were people like Roger Corman, William Castle, Jack Hill etc. who sometimes made movies that transcended just being a product, movies that some people still watch and hold dear today. Lots of directors like John Sayles, John Demme and maybe one or two other guys got their start working on cheapo Roger Corman movies about women in prison or giant alligators. Also unfortunately Ron Howard but that doesn’t count. And people like George Romero and Sam Raimi started with low budget independent movies made for the drive-ins, movies that nobody would expect to still be considered great all these years later. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, Josh Olson, Zach Galligan
Posted in Horror, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 26th, 2005
If you ever saw THE HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, there’s one thing you probaly remember. It’s this montage set to “I Remember You” by Slim Whitman. It’s got lots of slow motion and you can’t hear anything but the music as the cops discover a couple of the house’s thousand corpses unexpectedly, then get gunned down by the Firefly family. The montage ends with Otis (Bill Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 Moseley) holding a gun to a cop’s head and it sits there with 20 full seconds of complete silence and stillness before he executes him.
That movie was pretty good, I liked it overall for it’s spunk and what not, but it was real sloppy and uneven. And that “I Remember You” scene was the one part where the director, a guy named Rob Zombie (yeah I know, I think it’s Hungarian or something), seemed like a real filmatist. Well good news, Mr. Zombie’s new one THE DEVIL’S REJECTS is not as much a sequel to HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES as it’s a sequel to that scene. It’s about the brother of the first cop killed in the montage hunting down the Fireflies for revenge. And all the sudden the Zombie guy knows what the fuck he’s doing: real good framing, way better acting, expert use of slow motion and effective montagings edited to old country music, blues and classic rock. Very dirty and raw, lots of ’70s techniques like Peckinpah slo-mo and fancy wipes. Kind of what Jim Van Bebber was going for with THE MANSON FAMILY. Maybe not quite as authentic but way better thought out and more involving. It’s almost changed genres – now it’s less straight up horror and more of one of those sicko ’70s serial killer/crime/road pictures, or a revenge picture like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. It’s just as sick and inexcusable but more fun. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Moseley, Danny Trejo, Diamond Dallas Page, Geoffrey Lewis, Ken Foree, Leslie Easterbrook, Priscilla Barnes, Robert Zombie, William Forsythe
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 16 Comments »
