I don’t know why I never got around to seeing the THE CROW sequel from the director of SIX-STRING SAMURAI. Always was curious. Still took me 19 years. Lance Mungia’s THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER, just like the previous one, was meant for theaters, but I think it only played somewhere around here? Wiki(dprayer)pedia says its theatrical run was only in Seattle and only for one week, and I do remember seeing an ad for it and being confused, but I was thinking it was in Eastern Washington. Anyway, I didn’t go.
EL CONDE is a pretty simple idea: what if Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from 1974 through 1990, was in fact a vampire? Sort of the opposite of our “what if Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter?” It’s kind of a horror movie in that it shows us graphic bloodlettings, beheadings of both humans and animals, eating a cat, crushing a skull, and it puts even more revolting imagery into our heads through verbal descriptions. It also gets a classic horror atmosphere going with its gorgeous Academy Award nominated black and white cinematography by Edward Lachman (LIGHT SLEEPER, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, THE LIMEY, CAROL). But mostly it’s a satire hitting on a very old, very obvious, but still very relevant point: the rich and powerful are monsters. You could say we’re all human, we’re all petty, but that doesn’t make us all the same. These people are fucking weirdos, the bad kind. I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but it seems like more often than not the type of people who seek power, and the families who inherit it, and feel it is their right, there’s something very wrong with them. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but also it attracts a bunch of freakos in the first place. I mean, part of the joke of this movie is that the fucking guy wears a cape. Like Dracula. (read the rest of this shit…)
When I first saw the trailer for LOVE LIES BLEEDING I thought “I need to see SAINT MAUD, don’t I?” It’s the first movie from writer/director Rose Glass, which was heavily hyped after playing TIFF and Fantastic Fest, and was picked up by A24, who of course gave it an intriguing trailer that was playing on all the horror movies. But that was in 2020, so the pandemic happened, it got delayed for a while, and ultimately only received a limited release in January of 2021, which was a no-go for me because it was well before vaccines were available.
So the hype train grinded to a halt, and personally I needed it to push me over the small hill of it looking like religious horror. You know, you put “Saint” in the title, you show her in some kind of robe on the poster, you show her levitating, I’m gonna assume it has something to do with possession or some shit. I can watch a movie like that if it’s a really good one, but I need some encouragement. Glass’s follow-up looking amazing gave me that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Seeing LISA FRANKENSTEIN pushed me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for years – rewatch JENNIFER’S BODY (2009). Uncharacteristically, I came right home from the theater and put it on. It made a good double feature.
In a way it doesn’t seem like that long ago, but in other ways it seems like ancient history. It was Diablo Cody’s second movie, coming two years after JUNO, which won her the best original screenplay Oscar. Director Karyn Kusama was on her third movie, trying to make a comeback after AEON FLUX (2005), her one studio project after the indie smash GIRLFIGHT (2000). Since then she’s done THE INVITATION (2015) and DESTROYER (2018) and lots of acclaimed television. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m a fan of the Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody. I enjoyed JUNO and TULLY and her directorial debut PARADISE, but it was YOUNG ADULT and its more friendly cousin RICKI AND THE FLASH that made me a die hard. Two movies about women who are assholes. My life is so different from either of theirs, but somehow Mavis Gary and Ricki Rendazzo are two characters I relate to deeply.
Of course she’s also got a foot in horror world – she wrote JENNIFER’S BODY for Karyn Kusama and even did some script revisions on the EVIL DEAD remake. She’s said she didn’t have to do much on that, but I still wonder if she was the one who named the dog Grandpa. Now she’s returned to the genre, sort of, with LISA FRANKENSTEIN, a teen movie with a zombie and some murders, directed by Zelda Williams (KAPPA KAPPA DIE). (read the rest of this shit…)
SUITABLE FLESH is the latest from Joe Lynch, a director who has a certain credibility in my book because his debut was a DTV sequel. I was mixed-positive on WRONG TURN 2: DEAD END (2007) and wrote some things in the review that I now consider out of line, but I definitely respect its joyful spirit toward sequelizing and in many ways outdoing a studio movie I really wasn’t that into. Since then Lynch has directed a comedy that got taken away from him, the Salma Hayek action vehicle EVERLY, the gory outbreak-in-an-office-building movie MAYHEM (which I liked but apparently didn’t review) and the Frank Grillo/Anthony Mackie car chase buddy movie POINT BLANK. But now he’s returned to horror with a sacred task: to manifest an unfinished project of the late great Stuart Gordon.
I didn’t realize it from the name, but it’s one of those unfulfilled ambitions we read about for years – here’s an example of Gordon talking it up while promoting STUCK in 2008, but using the title of the H.P. Lovecraft story it’s based on, “The Thing on the Doorstep.” The script is by Gordon’s regular collaborator Dennis Paoli (RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, CASTLE FREAK, DAGON) and it’s produced by RE-ANIMATOR/FROM BEYOND/CASTLE FREAK star Barbara Crampton. (read the rest of this shit…)
In the interest of jolliness, as well as continuing the Stream Warriors (formerly Slasher Search) project of scouring for unknown slasher gems, I spent last night searching for watchable holiday horror obscurities on Tubi.
For my tastes this can be rough going. There’s a whole cottage industry of boring, off-brand Krampus movies and shit, but that’s not even the biggest threat. Their library is also a bottomless well of no budget, non-professional movies of the current digital video era, and so far in my experience not many of those have the same appeal as the regional horror movies shot on film in the ‘80s with hopes of a drive-in or VHS release.
Film had a magical power not just because of how it looked, but because of the difficulty of acquiring and properly using it. If a movie was made by some weird dude and his friends from work but he was able to pass the test of shooting it on 8mm or whatever, then that was a weird dude and his friends from work worth respecting. They were true dreamers, if not artists then at least romantics reaching from something outside of their small town, day job existence. So even their worst movies might be interesting, maybe even fascinating. I don’t think that’s the case with many of these. (read the rest of this shit…)
It’s here – that special time of year when I drink eggnog, watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, and try to find some new Christmas horror or crime movies that hit the spot. This year I watched one that’s a distant cousin of the killer doll movie.
In fact, the kind of doll that’s a Christmas present. POOKA! (2018) fulfills the important holiday horror movie duty of having lots of seasonal content. It centers around this Christmas season fad toy. Multiple scenes take place at a Christmas tree lot. The protagonist practices a monologue from A Christmas Carol for an acting audition, and the story includes a supernaturally-looking-back-at-your-life aspect vaguely similar to that or IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. There’s a (weirdly birthday-like) Christmas party. And lots of red and green lights. So it does the trick. (read the rest of this shit…)
As long as I rewatched URBAN LEGEND and URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT I figured I should complete the trilogy. Maybe you weren’t aware that there was a DTV part 3 called URBAN LEGENDS: BLOODY MARY. Or maybe you were a reader of The Ain’t It Cool News in May of 2005 and read my review of it back then. While the other two came from new directors, the DTV sequel comes from a veteran: Mary Lambert (PET SEMATARY 1 & 2). I wonder if any dudes ever accused her of “stealing my genre” like happened to the young director heroine of URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT? At the time I made a bigger deal about screenwriters Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris, because they’d written the then-upcoming SUPERMAN RETURNS, and in those days the internet seemed to attract people who were very opinionated about Superman movies. Hard to imagine it ever happening again.
While BLOODY MARY does briefly make reference to the events of the other films – murders on college campuses based on different urban legends – they mix up the premise quite a bit. It’s about high school kids in Salt Lake City who accidentally summon an evil spirit by saying “Bloody Mary” five times, and then (oddly) she kills people in methods based on urban legends. When they discuss the idea of saying “Bloody Mary” into a mirror somebody points out that it’s like CANDYMAN so that another character can point out that CANDYMAN got the idea from the urban legend. Actually kinda smart to address that right away just so people not familiar with the legend don’t think this is a rip-off a way better movie about urban legends than any in this series. (read the rest of this shit…)
The title URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT sounds like an escalation, because the legend has suddenly become plural, but I seem to remember this sequel coming out with a whimper. I thought I remembered respecting it a little more than others at the time, but in my review back then I seem to have thought it was pretty bad.
It starts on an airplane during a storm, which seems crazy enough for the series that you can probly guess it’s the ol’ “actually we’re watching a movie-within-a-movie” cold open fake out. The reveal is kind of cool, though: suddenly the pilot sees a Tom-Cruise-looking asshole in sunglasses staring into the cockpit from the outside – he’s the director of this student film (filmed on a set from PUSHING TIN). In an even more aggressive “you kids liked SCREAM, right? Check this out!” move than the first URBAN LEGEND, the story has moved to Alpine University Film School, where aspiring directors are in a cutthroat competition to win “the prestigious Hitchcock Award,” which they all talk about it like it’s a guaranteed Hollywood career because it has been a “springboard” for successful filmmakers in the past. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Curt on The Heavenly Kid: “Based on this review and the comments, I can see how the similarities between this and BACK TO THE FUTURE…” Jan 10, 05:10
CJ Holden on City Slickers: “I had this movie on in the background last night, which I usually don’t do, because I prefer to actually…” Jan 10, 00:44
Patrick J on The Heavenly Kid: “Just when you think the last person who will ever be searching the internet for a take on “The Heavenly…” Jan 9, 21:57
Steven E on Johnny Hamlet: “Thanks for this Vern, gave it a watch and it is a mix of very funny (dropping the To Be…” Jan 9, 10:02
Borg9 on Hamnet: “Thanks, Vern. My sister gave me a Mubi subscription for a significant birthday a while back and GTH – we…” Jan 9, 03:17
Curt on Hamnet: “Whether Shakespeare is “still” the best or not, it’s probably safe to say he has been hugely influential. His plays…” Jan 8, 18:23
Colby on Johnny Hamlet: “Great review of something I didn’t know existed. Btw if you are on a Shakespeare adaptation journey, the movie Scotland,…” Jan 8, 17:58
KayKay on Hamnet: “Having said that, when it comes to HAMLET…. As someone’s who’s read the original play, seen a few stage adaptations…” Jan 8, 16:41
KayKay on Hamnet: “CJ, I don’t know who these uptight gatekeepers are acting like Shakespeare is the only writer who ever mattered. Haven’t…” Jan 8, 16:20
The Cosh on Johnny Hamlet: “Sounds well worth a watch. If we’re getting into a mini Hamlet season then definitely give the film of Rosencrantz…” Jan 8, 16:05
VERN on My Buddha is Punk: “Thank you for saying that, Bill. I would get excited about these sorts of reviews regardless, but it’s nice to…” Jan 8, 15:26
CJ Holden on Hamnet: “I admit that I am a Shakespeare atheist. Dude was incredible with words, but in general I have no idea…” Jan 8, 12:23
Bill Reed on Johnny Hamlet: “Cool find. This reminded me that in high school, we had an assignment to adapt a Shakespeare scene to a…” Jan 8, 12:03
RBatty024 on Hamnet: “I watched this last year because I had one day to catch a movie in theaters by myself, and unfortunately…” Jan 8, 11:43
EL CONDE is a pretty simple idea: what if Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from 1974 through 1990, was in fact a vampire? Sort of the opposite of our “
When I first saw the trailer for 
Seeing 
I’m a fan of the Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody. I enjoyed 
SUITABLE FLESH is the latest from Joe Lynch, a director who has a certain credibility in my book because his debut was a DTV sequel. I was mixed-positive on 
In the interest of jolliness, as well as continuing the Stream Warriors (formerly Slasher Search) project of scouring for unknown slasher gems, I spent last night searching for watchable holiday horror obscurities on Tubi.
Film had a magical power not just because of how it looked, but because of the difficulty of acquiring and properly using it. If a movie was made by some weird dude and his friends from work but he was able to pass the test of shooting it on 8mm or whatever, then that was a weird dude and his friends from work worth respecting. They were true dreamers, if not artists then at least romantics reaching from something outside of their small town, day job existence. So even their worst movies might be interesting, maybe even fascinating. I don’t think that’s the case with many of these. 
It’s here – that special time of year when I drink eggnog, watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, and try to find some new Christmas horror or crime movies that hit the spot. This year I watched one that’s a distant cousin of the killer doll movie.
As long as I rewatched 
While BLOODY MARY does briefly make reference to the events of the other films – murders on college campuses based on different urban legends – they mix up the premise quite a bit. It’s about high school kids in Salt Lake City who accidentally summon an evil spirit by saying “Bloody Mary” five times, and then (oddly) she kills people in methods based on urban legends. When they discuss the idea of saying “Bloody Mary” into a mirror somebody points out that it’s like 
The title URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT sounds like an escalation, because the legend has suddenly become plural, but I seem to remember this sequel coming out with a whimper. I thought I remembered respecting it a little more than others at the time, but 
