Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Friday, December 23rd, 2022
TOYS OF TERROR is a 2020 Christmas horror movie that’s exactly what it sounds like – a movie about toys coming to life and doing evil toy shit. It seems to have premiered on SyFy, and it’s on DVD and VOD. The director is someone named Nicholas Verso (BOYS IN THE TREES) and it’s written and executive produced by Dana Gould, the comedian, Simpsons writer and podcaster. I had no idea when I rented it that anyone notable was involved, and I respect that Gould seems to have just wanted to make a straightforward, non-parody Full Moon type movie. But it comes from the dystopically named “Blue Ribbon Content” division of Warner Bros. Television, responsible for some DC Comics web animation plus the DTV movies DAPHNE & VELMA and THE BANANA SPLITS MOVIE, and has better craft and production value than many of the actual Full Moon movies, especially the later ones.
It’s the story of a family coming to stay at a former children’s home that they plan to refurbish into a mansion and flip. (Same set up as The Haunting of Hill House.) It’s implied to be somewhere in Washington state, but it’s filmed in Canada – as usual, and as indicated by a cast full of actors you know are Canadian because of how many Hallmark Christmas movies they’re in. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christmas, Christmas horror, Dana Gould, Dayo Ade, killer dolls, Kyana Teresa, Nicholas Verso, stop motion animation, Verity Marks
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 22nd, 2022
I really enjoyed Rob Zombie’s love letter to THE MUNSTERS earlier this year, and it even got me to check out the o.g. Munsters movie MUNSTER GO HOME!. But Zombie’s movie did not go over well with or cause much of a splash among the general public, and now there’s this Netflix show Wednesday, based on Munsters rival The Addams Family, which is actually a huge streaming hit (and which I have to admit I like even more than THE MUNSTERS). So it kinda looks like a Photon Warrior to Lazer Tag situation for ol’ Herman and Lily. Or Gobots to Transformers. Or IRON EAGLE to TOP GUN.
Still, I am making this The Year of the Munsters by watching a Munsters Christmas special as part of my holiday festivities. THE MUNSTERS’ SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS (not to be confused with the weird New Zealand Christmas special THE MONSTER’S CHRISTMAS) is a 1996 Fox TV movie. The Munsters are entirely recast from the 1995 Fox movie HERE COME THE MUNSTERS, but they carried over an uptight neighbor character named Edna Dimwitty, played by Mary Woronov (DEATH RACE 2000), so I guess they’re connected. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ann Magnuson, Arturo Gil, Bruce Spence, Bug Hall, Christmas, Ed Gale, Elaine Hendrix, Mark Mitchell, Mary Woronov, Sam McMurray, Sandy Baron, TV movies
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Monster | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, December 21st, 2022
Whether Christmas is a religious holiday for us, or just a way to celebrate giving, or whatever, we can all agree that it’s mainly about trying to find more movies we haven’t seen that are about a killer Santa or some shit. That’s the true and sole meaning of Christmas, is what it says quite clearly in the Bible, and if you don’t believe me I challenge you to tell me which verses it’s not in. You can’t do it, can you? Case closed. Anyway the point is this year I saw CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS but for those of you who would prefer to have the same title but shorter there’s also CHRISTMAS BLOOD (Juelblod), a Norwegian one from 2017.
IMDb lists it as a horror comedy. It really doesn’t read as one to me, but maybe it’s an exceedingly dry sense of humor – there is certainly some absurdity to it, which is what I liked about it. It’s very openly a Santa Claus version of HALLOWEEN. It opens in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, 2011, when a little girl and her parents get killed by a guy dressed as Santa. The police show up in time to shoot the Santa, and Detective Thomas Rasch (Stig Henrik Hoff, THE THING premaquel), who’s been chasing this guy for 13 years, unloads his gun into him while he’s down. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Rock, Bonita Friedericy, Christmas, Christmas horror, Daniel Myrick, David Simkins, killer Santa, Philip Newby, Raw Feed, Reinert Kiil, slashers, Sondre Krogtoft, Stig Henrik Hoff
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, December 20th, 2022
CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS is the new one from writer/director Joe Begos. I previously reviewed his first two features, ALMOST HUMAN (2013) and THE MIND’S EYE (2015), but I’ve been sleeping on his 2019 double whammy of BLISS and VFW. Nevertheless I had to see his new one as soon as it hit Shudder because it’s Christmas horror. There’s a timeliness factor.
It’s a low budget movie but seems huge and lush compared to those other two I mentioned. It continues in the same tradition of filtering a specific ‘80s horror aesthetic through Begos’ brain, now with more dialogue and humor. But I wouldn’t call it a comedy. After the comical advertisements that open the movie and introduce the absurd horror premise, there aren’t really jokes. The laughs come from the characters themselves being funny. Otherwise it comes across as very serious – an odd choice that I like. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christmas, Christmas horror, Dora Madison, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Joe Begos, Jonah Ray, Josh Ethier, killer Santa, Riley Dandy, robot, Sam Delich
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 11 Comments »
Monday, December 19th, 2022
I do believe this is my first review where just telling you the movie exists is kind of a spoiler. But I had to have it spoiled to know to watch it myself, so now I’m passing that information on to you. This is a horror movie that was designed to be found on accident, originally promoted like this: “ADULT SWIM YULE LOG: Get in the holiday spirit with this cozy, crackling fire,” and airing at 11:30 pm after the season finale of Rick & Morty. Now it can be found on Home Box Office Maximum under “Adult Swim Yule Log – a.k.a. The Fireplace.”
It starts off as a normal Yule Log or fireplace video. Just footage of a fire with some Christmas music playing. But after a few minutes of that we start to hear something going on outside of the frame. The owner of the cabin containing the cozy, crackling fire is talking about getting the place cleaned. We see her walk past the fireplace a few times. Then there’s a knock on the door, a woman (Tordy Clark, GLORIOUS) talking about her car breaking down, and introducing her son… a hulking, grunting Leatherface type (Brendan Patrick Connor, JOKER) wearing a plastic Halloween mask of a Ken-doll type character. He bursts in and attacks as his mom reminds him to “Say nice things to her, women like that.” It’s off camera, but we get the implication, and this is a really fucked up thing to have on as holiday background ambience. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adult Swim, Andrea Laing, Casper Kelly, Christmas, found footage, Jonathon Pawlowski, Justin Miles, long takes, Mark Costello, Tordy Clark
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 9 Comments »
Friday, December 16th, 2022
If we hadn’t seen it coming for so many years, AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER would be a cinematic miracle. There has definitely not been a blockbuster movie with this level of mindblowing spectacle, visual beauty and action chops since MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and before that since the first AVATAR.
I’ve rewatched AVATAR several times since it came out, and it’s always as good, usually better than the last time. Watching it again this week was no exception, and it really struck me that holy shit, these “game changer” visual effects from 2009 have influenced everybody, but not one movie has matched them. (Probly closest would be Peter Jackson’s largely forgotten HOBBIT trilogy.) I don’t want to get into an attack on modern blockbusters, many of which I enjoy, but it’s a simple statement of fact that the similarly-greenscreen-and-performance-capture based visuals in the very expensive Marvel movies that are trailered before THE WAY OF WATER and coming out next year look crude and primitive next to what was achieved thirteen years ago in AVATAR. And now along comes the sequel that blows AVATAR out of the water (by putting it into the water). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brendan Cowell, Britain Dalton, Cliff Curtis, Dileep Rao, Edie Falco, James Cameron, Jamie Flatters, Jemaine Clement, Joel David Moore, Kate Winslet, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 103 Comments »
Thursday, December 15th, 2022
TAPE RAIDER ALBERT PYUN TRIBUTE PART 3: RAVEN HAWK
RAVEN HAWK is yet another Albert Pyun movie only released on VHS in the States. The only one of this review trilogy to not include any cyborgs. According to IMDb, it was #3 of five Pyun releases in 1996 (the others being ADRENALIN: FEAR THE RUSH, NEMESIS 3: TIME LAPSE, OMEGA DOOM and NEMESIS 4: DEATH ANGEL), but was filmed in 1993. It was meant for theatrical, but ended up premiering on HBO. Written by Kevin Elders (writer of IRON EAGLE, director of SIMON SEZ, therefore a legend), it’s a very basic but pretty appealing revenge movie. It follows in the tradition of the THUNDER WARRIOR trilogy (itself inspired by the success of the BILLY JACK series) in trying to mine the thrill of a Native American hero standing up to racist white bullies and land stealers. But what makes it stand out is that the hero is played by bodybuilding champion Rachel McLish, who was in PUMPING IRON II: THE WOMEN and then stole the show in ACES: IRON EAGLE III.
In the prologue, Senator Stansfield (John de Lancie, Days of Our Lives, Star Trek: The Next Generation) – who’s on the phone talking in an evil voice while a naked lady lounges by the fire nearby – pressures his stooge Thorne (William Atherton, DIE HARD) to finish “negotiations” with the tribal council to approve a land deal to build a nuclear power plant. (In a dark touch, he says if they don’t do it now the Department of Transportation will build a freeway there. Either way, the Natives are fucked.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Albert Pyun, Dick Warlock, Ed Lauter, John de Lancie, John Enos III, Kevin Elders, Matt Clark, Michael Champion, Mitch Pileggi, Native American, Rachel McLish, revenge, Ron Samuels, Tape Raider, Thom Mathews, Vincent Klyn, William Atherton
Posted in Reviews, Action | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, December 14th, 2022
THE TAPE RAIDER TRIBUTE TO ALBERT PYUN PART 2: HEATSEEKER
Yes friends, here’s another Albert Pyun film that has only been released on VHS in the U.S., HEATSEEKER. It came to us in 1995, #2 of 3 between SPITFIRE and NEMESIS 2: NEBULA. Pyun has a story credit, with the screenplay written by Christopher Borkgren (whose only other credit is SPITFIRE).
Set in the futuristic New America of 2019 A.D. (“After Dollman?”) it’s the story of kickboxing champion Chance O’Brien (Keith Cooke, CHINA O’BRIEN I & II) trying to keep doing his thing in a changing world. Combat sports are beginning to be dominated by new models of cyborgs, including those created by the sinister Sianon Corporation, who try to bait “the greatest human fighter in the world” into entering their imaginatively titled event “The Tournament.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Albert Pyun, Chad Stahelski, cyborgs, fighting tournament, Gary Daniels, John Machado, Keith Cooke, Norbert Weisser, Tape Raider, Thom Mathews, Tim Thomerson, Tina Cote
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 13th, 2022
At the end of last month we lost Albert Pyun, prolific and perhaps infamous b-movie auteur, chronicler of kickboxing cyborgs, mounter of simultaneous productions, and occasional blurrer of lines between drive-in exploitation and abstruse art movie.
I did not always have generous things to say about his films, but something about them kept me coming back, so over the years I’ve reviewed DANGEROUSLY CLOSE, CYBORG, CAPTAIN AMERICA, KICKBOXER 2: THE ROAD BACK, NEMESIS, KICKBOXER 4: THE AGGRESSOR, and MEAN GUNS, and of course I have chapter in Seagalogy about his Seagal movie, TICKER.
When I reviewed KICKBOXER 2 back in 2009 the man himself showed up in the comments and thanked me for the review, even though it included the line, “The director is Albert Pyun, but I never would’ve guessed that because it’s both watchable and kind of good.” He had a very gracious and self-deprecating attitude, promising “I hope I am improving to at least an almost semi-coherent level of competence,” and he came back a few times responding to questions and comments. Too bad he dodged my question about how he made it look like a dead Van Damme in KICKBOXER 2 (claiming it was someone who died from watching the beginning of ALIEN FROM L.A.). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Albert Pyun, cyborg, Gary Daniels, Kathy Long, Kris Kristofferson, Lance Henriksen, post-apocalypse, Scott Paulin
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 6 Comments »
Monday, December 12th, 2022
When I first heard that the trusted manufacturers of sturdy action cinema at 87North Productions were making a Santa Claus movie, I misunderstood. I pictured sort of a BAD SANTA meets DIE HARD – a serious action movie where it’s some deadbeat mall Santa who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time and has to save the day, hopefully using a velvet sack’s worth of seasonally themed methods.
So when I realized that the Santa Claus played by David Harbour (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN) in VIOLENT NIGHT is the actual Santa Claus, having his Christmas Eve deliveries interrupted by hostage takers and using “Christmas magic” to fight back, I was disappointed at first. Sounded corny, I thought.
I was wrong. I want to apologize to Santa. VIOLENT NIGHT is an admirable and solid take on a type of movie I treasure: the genre mash-up that knows it’s ludicrous to combine these particular types of movies but moves forward trying to deliver on both genres as well as the unique opportunities offered by their combination. So it has the trappings of a DIE HARD/UNDER SIEGE scenario (ruthless mastermind, elite mercenary force, carefully planned heist, hero mixed up in it by mistake, shocking deaths of innocent people, bad guys picked off one-by-one with stolen or improvised weapons) but also a heartwarming holiday tale (little girl wavering in her belief in Santa, family having trouble getting along, lessons about selflessness). It’s a comedy, but not a spoof. It tries to deliver faithfully on the mission of each genre. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 87North, Alex Hassell, Alexander Elliot, Alexis Louder, Andre Eriksen, Beverly D'Angelo, Brendan Fletcher, Cam Gigandet, Christmas, Christmas action, David Harbour, Edi Patterson, John Leguizamo, Jonathan Eusebio, Leah Brady, Mitra Suri, Pat Casey & Josh Miller, Phong Iang, Santa Claus, Tommy Wirkola
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords | 44 Comments »
