Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Thursday, October 17th, 2019
POSSESSION: UNTIL DEATH DO YOU PART is a 1987 low budget slasher movie that’s not, as far as I can tell, a sequel to Andrzej Zulawski’s POSSESSION. That’s too bad, because there’s plenty of room for DTV type followups to that one. It could just be in the rehash style of WILD THINGS 2 or CRUEL INTENTIONS 2 – some other couple breaking up with one of them fucking a weird blob of tentacles. You could gender swap or you could have it be the two blobs are breaking up and one is fucking a human, there are many ways to mix it up. Or of course if it was me I would try to get Sam Neill to come back (or recast with Billy Zane) and lean heavily into his character’s background as a spy. More of a shitty cloak and dagger thing but with relationships and slime and what not. This movie has none of that.
It opens with a dude dragging a dead woman by one arm from the yard of his big house to a spot just inside the surrounding woods, where he digs her a grave. At first they’re not showing his face, but then they do, and he’s babbling animatedly about having thought she was different or some bullshit like that. His name is Frankie (John Robert Johnston, who became an executive producer of reality shows including Rampage, When Vacations Attack, Pranked and Bad Dog!), and he’s got a bunch of other dead women in his closet, plus he kidnaps a live one named Madeline (Sharlene Martin from FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN) from a parking garage. He brings her home, says weird things to her, forces her to put on his mom’s dress, yells at her when she pulls down her top for a second because what if Mother saw her do that!? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Lloyd A. Simandl, Michael Mazo, Monica Marko, Sharlene Martin, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, October 16th, 2019
I’ve been meaning to see POSSESSION – the 1981 French/West German co-production from Polish director Andrzej Zulawski – for years. I’ve heard superlatives from its devotees, knowing little of its plot, just a description of its strange, arty vibe. But holy shit does it live up to the hype!
It’s a crazy fuckin horror movie. It’s a crazier fuckin relationship drama. Mark (Sam Neill right after OMEN III: THE FINAL CONFLICT) comes home to Berlin from a business trip, meets his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani, THE DRIVER) outside their apartment, is frustrated that she hasn’t made a decision yet. It seems things are not working, they don’t know what to do, and are doing a bad job of faking it in front of their young son Bob (Michael Hogben). Anna is manic and indecisive, and Mark finds out she’s been sleeping with some guy he doesn’t know named Heinrich (Heinz Bennent, THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrzej Zulawski, Carl Duering, Carlo Rambaldi, Heinz Bennent, Isabelle Adjani, Johanna Hofer, Margic Carstensen, Sam Neill, Shaun Lawton
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Tuesday, October 15th, 2019
Right after Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red wrote NEAR DARK for her to direct, they wrote UNDERTOW for him. Her vampire movie got off the ground first, and it was almost a decade later when his weird thriller about three weirdos out in the woods during a hurricane became a Showtime movie.
It’s not supernatural, and maybe not even horror, but the mood somehow does remind me of NEAR DARK. Lou Diamond Phillips (RENEGADES) plays Jack (last name Ketchum, apparently!), who’s introduced in his car, drifting to the next town after – as he explains in voiceover narration – falling for a sheriff’s daughter. Too dangerous. But before he can find a new place to stay he drives his truck off the road into a forest and wakes up the captive of a paranoid old redneck named Lyle (Charles Dance, LAST ACTION HERO) and his timid wife Willie (Mia Sara, TIMECOP), who I assumed at first was his daughter. They live in an isolated home in some North Carolina woods that’s somewhere between a hermit’s shack and a luxury resort lodge. It looks cold and some of it is built out of rusty car doors, but it’s huge, with various buildings and facilities. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charles Dance, crossbow, Eric Red, hurricane, Kathryn Bigelow, Lou Diamond Phillips, made-for-cable-movies, Mia Sara
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 3 Comments »
Monday, October 14th, 2019
NEAR DARK is what happens when young, hungry Kathryn Bigelow comes off of co-directing the arty biker movie THE LOVELESS and teams up with the writer of THE HITCHER to do horror movies. She and Eric Red sat down and wrote two scripts together, one for each to direct. A producer says on the making-of featurette that he trusted her to direct, then admits he told her up front that she had three days to convince him not to fire her.
Man, firing her would’ve been a huge fuck up! It’s definitely a cool scenario they came up with, but the primary appeal of the movie is Bigelow’s style, mood, attitude. I suppose the alternate timeline scab that took over would’ve at least had the great cast she put together. Yes, three of them (Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein) had already been together in ALIENS (a movie that exists in some form within the NEAR DARK universe, unless the “ALIEN5” we see on a marquee meant PROMETHEUS). Bigelow correctly guessed that they’d not only be perfect for the characters, but would carry over a chemistry and familiarity that would work well as this outlaw family. Reportedly she hired them all separately and all were worried about the perception of following ALIENS with a low budget vampire movie. But they knew what they were doing. They chose right. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrian Pasdar, Bill Paxton, contemporary western, Eric Red, Jeanette Goldstein, Jenny Wright, Joshua Miller, Kathryn Bigelow, Lance Henriksen, Tangerine Dream, Tim Thomerson, vampires
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Thursday, October 10th, 2019
BEDEVILLED is a powerful South-Korean film from 2010 about a disastrous reunion between childhood friends on the tiny, barely populated island of Mu-do. From the cover I expected something more gothic and intensely gory, and maybe supernatural? But it’s not like that. It’s all leading up to a bloodbath, so I wouldn’t deny its horror credentials. But it mostly plays out as a very involving character drama. So keep that in mind if planning a Halloween celebration.
It’s definitely a morality tale. Hae-won (Ji Sung-won, EMPIRE OF LUST) is a young bank worker in Seoul. At the beginning she coldly refuses to loan to a woman who’s about to lose her home. It reminded me of DRAG ME TO HELL, but she doesn’t get cursed for it, and she’s not doing it under professional pressure. In fact when she steps out her co-worker takes over and does help the woman. So it establishes her lack of compassion. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bae Seong-woo, Jang Cheol-soo, Ji Sung-won, Korean cinema, Park Jeong-hak, Seo Yung-hee
Posted in Drama, Horror, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 9th, 2019
One problem with doing Slasher Search every year is that I’ve watched so many vaguely similar movies that they really blend together. It’s disturbing how many times I’ve looked at a box having little idea if I’ve seen it or not. So when I came across RUSH WEEK I had to think it through. I’d seen FINAL EXAM, THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, KILLER PARTY, SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE, THE INITIATION, GIRLS NITE OUT… but no, this was an ’80s college campus slasher movie I had not seen.
At least it was supposed to be an ’80s movie. It was made in ’88, but it went straight to video in ’91. So it’s from when Chucky and Maniac Cop were born, HELLRAISER, PHANTASM, SLEEPAWAY CAMP, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and FRIGHT NIGHT were at Part II, and Michael Meyers was returning, but it came out when SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was best picture and they were killing off Freddy and moving on to finding people under the stairs and shit. It was left over from another era, not just in its approach to horror, but in its glorification of dumb fraternity assholes. It sort of centers on frat president Jeff Jacobs (Dean Hamilton, who went on to write, direct and produce such films as SAVAGE LAND starring Corbin Bernsen and BLONDE AND BLONDER starring Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards) and his rivalry with some other more preppie frat. They play such hilarious pranks as going to the other house’s presentation to tell parents “we’re the first homosexual fraternity on campus” and replace part of a film they’re showing with gay porn. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bob Bralver, fraternities, Gregg Allman, Kathleen Kinmont, Pamela Ludwig, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Tuesday, October 8th, 2019
I think my favorite movie by director Todd Phillips (ROAD TRIP, STARSKY & HUTCH) is still his 1993 student film HATED: GG ALLIN & THE MURDER JUNKIES. It’s a documentary about an infamously transgressive punk singer skipping parole to do a tour where he kind of plays music, but the shows usually end soon after he shoves someone’s banana up his ass or smashes a woman’s nose with a beer bottle or shits on stage and throws it in the crowd. Phillips was clearly aware of the absurdity of his subject, but also in awe of someone living their life as a human middle finger. The director’s new film, JOKER, won the Golden Lion at the 76th Venice International Film Festival, and shows an evolution in his film craft, but not necessarily in his world view.
Let’s take a moment to consider that when BATMAN & ROBIN came out there is no way in hell any of us could’ve guessed that in 22 years one of our generation’s most respected actors would star in a super-fucked-up hard-R ‘70s period piece Scorsese knockoff character study vaguely based on (and officially branded as) an iconic Batman villain. Much less that it would be controversial only for reasons other than “it’s too scary for kids.” It’s a crazy world we’re living in. Almost like… the Joker. Oh my god. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brett Cullen, Brian Tyree Henry, DC Comics, Frances Conroy, Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Scott Silver, Todd Phillips, Zazie Beetz
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Drama, Reviews | 91 Comments »
Monday, October 7th, 2019
Last year, Jamie Lee Curtis returned as Laurie Strode in the new HALLOWEEN, exploring what life might be like for a horror heroine 40 years after she faced down evil. But did you know there was another late sequel to an iconic slasher film from 1978? I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE DE JA VU (full end credits title: “I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE DE JA VU a.k.a. DAY OF THE WOMAN DE JA VU”) is a writer/director Meir Zarchi’s direct sequel to his infamous rape-revenge film, with Camille Keaton (WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?) returning to her role as feminist writer turned violent avenger Jennifer Hills. It was filmed in 2015, but not released until disc and VOD last April.
Things seem to have turned out all right for Jennifer. She’s an author and counselor for rape victims. She doesn’t treat her violent past as a dark secret – in fact, she wrote a new best selling book about it. As the original film’s famous tagline predicted, “No jury in America would convict her!” And she’s close with her daughter Christy (Jamie Bernadette, MORTDECAI), a world famous model who’s thinking of retiring. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Camille Keaton, Jamie Bernadette, Jeremy Ferdman, Jim Tavare, Jonathan Peacy, Maria Olsen, Meir Zarchi, rape-revenge, revenge
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Thursday, October 3rd, 2019
THE BOY (2016) is a slight but enjoyable little PG-13 horror movie about taking a weird job. Greta (Lauren Cohan, DEATH RACE 2, Maggie from The Walking Dead) is a Montanan trying to get as far the fuck as she can away from an abusive ex (Ben Robson, DRACULA: THE DARK PRINCE, Vikings, Animal Kingdom), so she flies to a remote castle somewhere in the UK to work as the nanny for a rich couple called the Heelshires. The mom (Diana Hardcastle, THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL) immediately seems to be judging her, while the dad (Jim Norton, STRAW DOGS, MARY POPPINS RETURNS) is looser, but distant. When they introduce her to their son Brahms, he’s not what she expected. Like, she expected a human child made out of flesh. Instead he’s a porcelain doll propped up in a chair. She thinks they’re making a joke at first, so she laughs, and they look at her like she just took a shit on their floor. Maybe they should’ve been more specific in the CraigsList ad.
It’s a good “What would you do?” scenario. She came all the way out here, she probly needs the money, and you could assume “nannying” a doll might be easier than being responsible for a living human being. On the other hand, what the fuck, right? You’re gonna get paid by weirdos to pretend all day? Mrs. Heelshire gives her a detailed schedule of everything she’s supposed to do for this doll, has a million strict rules, watches her and keeps telling her she’s doing things wrong. Even if it pays well, how much advanced doll-playing would you be able to stomach? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Robson, creepy dolls, Diana Hardcastle, Jim Norton, Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Stacey Menear, William Brent Bell
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019
The 2014 werewolf romp WOLVES did not get a wide release, and has a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I got stuck scrolling for a horror movie to watch one night, found it on that ad-supported streaming service Tubi, and remembered it had Jason Momoa in it, so I watched it. And it fulfilled its duties.
I’m sure WOLVES – which is the directorial debut of X-MEN/THE SCORPION KING/X2/WATCHMEN screenwriter David Hayter – was greenlit due to the popularity of TWILIGHT, and viewed with skepticism by potential viewers for that reason. It has minor similarities that I’ll mention later, but it’s a completely different tone, if anything trying to offer an alternative.
It’s the story of Cayden Richards (Lucas Till, MONSTER TRUCKS, MacGyver in MacGyver, and Havok in X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, DAYS OF FUTURE PAST and APOCALYPSE), a dude whose perfect life as high school quarterback in a small Texas town goes to shit when he discovers his werewolf side during attempted car sex and is suddenly wanted by the police for the munching of his parents. So he hops on a motorcycle (wearing one of those Tom Cruise style leather motorcycle jackets) and hits the road. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Butcher, David Hayter, Jason Momoa, John Pyper-Ferguson, Lucas Till, Melanie Scrofano, Merritt Patterson, Stephen McHattie, werewolves
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 9 Comments »
