Island of the Fishmen (1979)
Ah, so my patience finally paid off, and after waiting through several date shifts for Mya Communications to release Island of the Fishmen, it has arrived from Netflix. The box cover lead me to believe I’d be watching a cheesy Italian knock off of the already cheesy Humanoids from the Deep. What I got instead was an incredibly slow fucking film with a random mish mash of voodoo, monsters, a pissed off evil dude, and a heroic doctor just trying to survive. Too bad the story wasn’t good enough to pull this off and it dragged along with a few smatterings of death thrown in for good measure.
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Big Bad Wolf (2006)
When was the last time you had fun watching a straight werewolf flick? The last time I had fun was Dog Soldiers. It was a little cheesy, but entertaining from start to finish. Well, I just finished Big Bad Wolf, and, while it is nowhere near the caliber of film that Dog Soldiers is, it sure as hell entertained me from start to finish with cheesy dialogue, a decent looking villain, generic story, and gore and boobs. What else could you possibly expect from yet another low-budget entry into the werewolf sub-genre? I can’t say I was hoping for much, and what I got was at least enough to make me not feel like I wasted an hour and a half of my life.
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7 Mummies (2006)
So, I just finished a little flick called 7 Mummies. I don’t know what I was thinking seeing as the box cover couldn’t look more like direct to video trash and one of the stars is Cerina Vincent (thanks for taking it off in Cabin Fever, but we don’t think you can act, so get naked more). Well, I may not have known where my head was at when I started this thing, but I know where it’s at now, and it’s a bad place.
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Wyvern (2009)
According to Wikipedia, a wyvern is ‘a legendary winged reptilian creature with two legs often found in mediaeval heraldry.’ So, how could a film about a giant monster killing people not be good? Well, by pulling a SyFy channel special approach (complete with shitty CGI monster) and mashing together bits of The Fog and The Mist (more on this later). Wyvren also should be given credit for the most convenient and out of place monologue I’ve seen in a long time. What you get when you pop this bad boy in is nothing short of a late night cheesefest that would go down great with a few drinks.
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Nightmare Castle (1965)
Why is it that since Gothic horror is so rarely done anymore, that the things that made it work so well are gone as well? Ominous ambiance, atmosphere, tension; where did those important parts of horror vanish to? Somewhere along the line, not only did horror filmmakers give up on good story, but they also started getting extremely lazy with the look of modern horror films. What does this have to do with Nightmare Castle? Well, this film fits in with modern horror in dialogue and a pretty simplistic story, but the cinematography is simply jaw dropping. Almost the entire film takes place in a massive castle and each and every scene looks fantastic. And, hardly a side note, but casting Barbara Steele in another (double) role is always a good thing.
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Dismal (2009)
So, lately the horror world has been inundated with torture/slasher style hybrids (by lately, I mean the last decade and by the styles I mean those damned French flicks that seem to be getting so many high ranks). I could go on a rant, but I’m here to review Dismal. Now, most fans of the genre have checked out the, very solid, flick Wrong Turn (and, some have even ventured into the cheestastic sequel). Why do I bring up Wrong Turn? Well, Dismal plays to many of the same ideas (minus the seemingly invincible mutants) and does it pretty well. I’m not going to say that Dismal is a perfect horror film, because it’s not. What it is, is a fun way to kill some time and not feel like you want to stab a child because it sucked so bad (too many of those to list).
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Thirst (2009)
As a huge Chan-wook Park fan, I made damn sure to check out his newest film Bakjwi, AKA Thirst. It’s been promoted for a while now, as a vampire film from the director of Oldboy. Die-hard Chan-wook Park fans salivated over the opportunity to see a great director tackle a classic, yet oversaturated, sub-genre in the horror film market. What Chan-wook Park, and co-writer Seo-Gyeong Jeong have done with Émile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin is inject an icon of terror into an incredibly twisted tale of tragic romance. Chan-wook Park directs this tale with all the power and imagery his fans have come to expect.
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The Cry (2007)
I just finished watching, what I can only describe as a cinematic turd. Yes, I try to find something good in just about every film I watch, but it was nearly impossible for me to get through all 80 minutes of The Cry without wishing I could kick a child (which is exactly what the antagonist would want since she’s all about the butchery of kids and making their mothers suffer). Based on the Mexican legend of “La Llorona”, The Cry is a pathetically weak attempt at mixing a thriller with a supernatural twist.
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New Zombie Flick GATEKEEPER Gets Cast Together
An upcoming zombie film called Gatekeeper is coming from the production company Circle of Confusion and is set for feature the actors Matthew O’Leary, Lea Thompson, Judge Reinhold, Ron Perlman and Jana Kramer. Isaac Meisenheimer is set to direct and this film will be his debut which he also wrote. It’s about three friends who are left to defend themselves in a town during a zombie outbreak.
Stephen Emery who is an executive at Circle of Confusion and producing the film had this to say about the project:
“We intend to make a film in the vein of ‘Shaun of the Dead’ for American audiences”.
Production is expected to begin this September.
Cut (2001)
We’ve all made mistakes. My mistake for the day was watching Cut. Yes, I know. It’s a slasher flick, so of course it probably won’t be good, but the problem was this one almost worked, which made it all the more infuriating. It played on the idea of a slasher movie being haunted by someone that doesn’t want the film being made. The problem with that is…we’ve all seen it before (and, by we. I mean horror fans that tend to watch whatever’s being thrown our way).
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Death in Charge (2008)
Death in Charge takes a more in depth look at the character of Death. What would happen if Death was put in an unfamiliar situation (and a funny one at that)? Well, Death in Charge looks at this question and deftly weaves a short flick around it that shows some strong imagination (and directing skills) on writer/director, Devi Snively’s part.
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Finale (2009)
Remember those great Argento films of yester-year? Remember the fantastic camera angles, crazy colors, dazzling lights, and gore wrapped up in a decent story? Remember when we sat around waiting for the final film in the “Mother’s Trilogy”, but instead we got Mother of Tears? Well, writer/director, John Michael Elfers was able to crack into a genre that I’d almost written off as dead, unless all you cared about was over the top gore and senseless violence for the sake of being brutal. After finishing Finale I have to say, this is a damned fine horror film, and probably one of the best throwbacks to the heyday of Mario Bava and Dario Argento.
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Consumption (2007)
Consumption is a short film that could best be described as a slow-burning mind fuck. Right off the bat you know something is off, but you’ll probably have no idea if you don’t have a twisted imagination or read some of the wicked news stories that have come out over the last few years. That said, Consumption could use a small shot of caffeine to get its own heart racing a bit. Once the third act kicks in, everything speeds up, but that will only work if you’ve stuck with it so far.
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Alien Raiders (2008) – DVD Review
Alien Raiders is a pretty damned good sci-fi/horror flick that suffers from a terrible name that not only sounds like a third grader wrote it, but it gives away what the film’s about before you even hit play. I mean, it’s not like the audience wouldn’t realize what’s going on within ten minutes, but still…jeez Warner Bros. Anyway, Alien Raiders is what you’d get if Terminal Invasion had a bigger budget, a better script and took place in a supermarket instead of an air terminal…and, that’s a good thing.
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Locusts: The 8th Plague (2005) – DVD Review
So, another Sci Fi Channel flick is out and once again, it disappoints. I know, I know. Why would I get my hopes up? Truth is, I didn’t, and this thing still underperformed. I would go into my rant now, but then you’d have no reason to read the rest of the review. The flick already had plenty against it, because, let’s face it, locusts are pretty boring on the killer animal scale. Well, they sure as hell didn’t try to make up for the boring antagonists with anything involving story, character development or even some nifty camerawork.
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My Name Is Bruce (2007) – DVD Review
It’s always sad when a film that you’re super pumped for is a let down. A great example of this would be My Name Is Bruce. How did this happen? A film about Bruce Campbell being the hero, fighting a viscous monster and basically stomping ass while doing his best Ash Williams impersonation since the days of Army of Darkness, should have been a straight shot to awesomeness. What we get instead is a very uneven flick that captures the good and bad to such extremes that it never comes off as anything more than, meh.
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Ghost Game (2004) – DVD Review
We’ve all seen what can be made on a shoestring budget, and still be incredibly entertaining…it’s called The Evil Dead. Why do I bring up the classic Rami film from yesteryear in a review about a modern film entitled Ghost Game? Well, because the parallels between the two are very, very similar. Yet, where The Evil Dead managed to terrify (as well as scare up some comedy), Ghost Game fails and is nothing more than a low budget film that attempts to follow in its predecessors much larger footsteps.
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Gidam aka Epitaph (2007) – DVD Review
This film is a Korean horror/drama and is written/directed by the Jung brothers (Bum-Sik Jung and Sik Jung). The film follows a series of events that take place in a Korean hospital in the 1940’s. The film starts with Park Jeong-nam(a doctor) looking through and old photo album, that was given to him, from a hospital that is scheduled to be destroyed. In the first event, Jeong-nam is a young intern at the hospital and gets forced into morgue duty. While in the Morgue, he becomes fascinated with a, young, dead woman who is in the morgue. He draws the woman’s face, and something very mysterious happens….The second event revolves around a girl named Asako, who is the sole survivor of a car crash that killed her parents. She is unable to speak, because she is riddled with guilt. The third event is centered around a husband and wife(both surgeons) who are working together on autopsies of the victims of a serial killer, who kills only soldiers. By working together they find the killer, who is not at all what they seem.
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The War of the Gargantuas (1966)
What would you get if you took the ass-kickery of Godzilla and crossed him with a retarded looking version of King Kong? Why, you’d get a Gargantua. War of the Gargantuas, or Furankenshutain no kaijû: Sanda tai Gaira, is the story two Gargantuas and the doctor that raised one as a child. Yeah, it gets a bit weird, but the flick is so filled with cheesy violence and destruction that it’s easy to overlook the massive lapses in story development. Heck, all you really want is to see a giant monster stomping ass all over town anyway.
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Island Fury (1983) – DVD Review
Kidnapping, torture, beatings, shotguns, meat clevers, nudity, terrible dialogue, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-rip-offs, a little Tarzan-like dude, and some random close-up shots of cockroaches: how can you go wrong? Well, Island Fury managed to be both strangely entertaining, and still failed at the same time. I mean, come on now, the other title for this flick is Please Don’t Eat the Babies. What this had anything to do with the film is beyond me, but I’m sure it helped sell some seats when this thing originally came out.
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Barracuda (1978) – DVD Review
When you make a film called Barracuda make sure you have the damned animal in it more than a handful of times. For a flick with a kick ass, pissed-off looking demon fish on the cover there sure wasn’t a lot of the aforementioned beast. In fact, after the halfway point I’m hard pressed to think of more than twice that they make an appearance (even though the first half would lead many to believe that there was the potential for some fun feeding frenzies). What a tease.
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Vampire Hookers (1978)
This review comes complete with a warning beforehand. The review for Vampire Hookers, from director Cirio H. Santiago (T.N.T. Jackson, The Muthers), is going to make it sound like one hell of an awesome film, but you’ll have to keep in mind that this flick was viewed at a revival theater with a room full of psychos calling out obscenities and random sound effects, making the experience a blast. For the truest score for the film, focus on the star rating.
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Cruel Jaws (1995)
There are rip-offs, and then there are RIP-OFFS. Cruel Jaws is of the latter category. I mean, seriously, they even used Jaws in the title. Not only did this movie manage to use one of the names from one of the finest films ever created, but it also stole shots from Jaws, as well as several of the other rip-offs that came out afterward. Cruel Jaws has no shame, and is friggin’ hilarious because of how hard if fails.
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Midnight Meat Train (2008)
Midnight Meat Train is horror/thriller film based on the short story of the same name, written by Clive Barker. The film stars Bradley Cooper as Leon, a photographer who is trying to break into the art photography scene. Leon’s girlfriend, Maya, is played by Leslie Bibb and their mutual friend Jurgas is played by Roger Bart. While the antagonist, only named Mahogany, is played by Vinne Jones. This was an enjoyable film filled with violence, gore, an MMA superstar, and a big old bloody mallet. Sounds like fun right?
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Valentine (2001)
This film is directed by Jamie Banks, and hit theaters in 2001. This slasher is centered around a young man getting revenge on a group of friends that had slighted him at a school dance in 1988. Little Jeremy Melton asked four of the friends to dance, and he was rejected harshly. He asked a fifth girl to dance and she accepted, then they proceeded to make out underneath the bleachers. When the “cool” kids catch them, the girl totally denies it, and they begin to ridcule and beat Jeremy.
Fastforward to the year 2001, and all the friends are grown up: Shelley (Katherine Heigl), Kate (Marley Shelton), Dorothy (Jessica Capshaw), Ruthie (Hedy Buress), and Paige (Denise Richards). Around Valentines day, they all start to get deranged Valentine cards and gifts, threatening their lives. When the freinds start getting mysteriously killed by a masked assailant. The clues all point to Jeremy. With the help of Det. Leon Vaughn (Fulvio Cecere) and Kate’s boy friend Adam (David Boreanaz), the girls try to find Jeremy before all of them are dead.
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That looks like one of the dumbest movies of all time!! That trailer puts it in at... - 
I must admit I’m not to sure about this casting bit, Downey seems... - 
Wow. I’m digging it. Fucking love PA movies - 