Reviews
Blood Ranch (2006)
what junk
Yet another DVD box that promised all sorts of depravity and ended up not even showing a breast.
More silly kids end up out in the desert. They stumble into this compound of a bunch of sheds and huts wherein roam several mental defectives who are led by a guy called Spider. While all kinds of brutality and mayhem is promised on the box,other than a woman getting her arm hacked off not much depravity is shown.
Special effects are minimal. The acting is horrible. The script is worse. More homemade crap from Xenon.Anyone with a video camera and some red colored corn syrup could make something like this. That doesn't mean they should.
Automaton Transfusion (2006)
Homemade zombie muck
Oh another zombie movie that blew chunks.Imagine that.This movie promised the world on the DVD box but little did I know that this was another of those 8 Days of Horror or whatever they call it.Any of those movies I've saw were awful and this one was no exception.
First off I've no idea what the title means.It wasn't explained.After seeing this puke pile I'm guessing this homemade piece of junk was just given some weird mysterious nonsense title to give it a bit of class or mystique or whatever.
Anyway the mean old US government was doing more experiments in some little town on dead bodies to try and bring them back to life so they could fight our wars for us.Seriously.That was the reason given for this wave of zombies.The experimental zombies were released as a test and naturally and of course the experiment goes wrong.These zombies were made to be stronger and faster and able to think by the experiments so it was a bad decision to let these things loose on purpose it would seem.
Zombies run amok while a group of teens,the only ones left alive,run around trying to stay away from them.
Boy this thing stunk to high heaven.The acting was horrible.The script was worse.Special effects were clunky and badly done and just sort of thrown in here and there as opposed to sort of happening naturally during the course of the movie.These zombies were strong enough to rip heads and legs off yet seemed to be stopped by someone closing a door and turning the little lock on the knob.The continuity from scene to scene was a mess.The teens would run out the front door when a zombie came in the back way yet just a second ago they had ran in that very same front door with a swarm of zombies right behind them.The action jumped from scenes that looked to be out in the middle of nowhere to city scenes with no explanation of how the characters got transplanted so fast.
The camera was slashed around so fast during the fight scenes it was just impossible to follow what was happening.I eventually gave up trying.There's nothing really positive to say about this clunker.The info I read about this thing says it was shot in 9 days.From the way this mess turned out I would have guessed 4 days. This pile of garbage even ends with the words "To be continued..." on the screen.
It felt like I was watching a two part episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies" or something,like when the Hillbillies went to England when they learned they owned a castle over there and they just couldn't get all the Jethro fighting a dragon jokes in a one 30 minute episode,I see the reason for doing a TV show like that but who ends a movie like that?And to beat it all I read there was a Part 2.Anymore no matter how bad and unwatched the first one was they always convince themselves someone wants a Part 2 of it.
This was just another homemade piece of junk from people who have little talent for horror movies.Too bad today's technology is so easy that everyone who used to think they could write the next great American novel now thinks they can make the next great zombie movie.
Just because you got a camera and you can do a little CG on a computer doesn't mean you got any movie making talent.
Dementia 13 (1963)
typical low budget crap
Yeah I know----its by Coppola.We don't review names here ,we review movies and as a movie this one was pretty bad. But if you want me to review Coppola I will -----Godfather I and II are good,Apocalypse Now is great and the rest of his stuff is average . Anyway in this movie the setting is a castle in Ireland. A woman and her 3 sons live in the gloomy castle that hasn't seen a happy day since the woman' s daughter drowned in the pond 7 years ago. Two American woman who are involved with 2 of the brothers also fall prey to the gloom and madness of the castle. All in all this film was a typical low budget mess---boom mics seen overhead and if not the mic itself its shadow was seen frequently. My favorite scene was when one of the women stripped off to her bra and panties to go into the pond. Her bra and panties are white as she approaches the water but the next scene in the water her panties were black. The unexplained color change was no doubt due to a see thru issue. People were killed or disappeared never to show up again but life went on in the dull castle without anyone becoming too alarmed at the goings on. Nothing of greatness or genius here----just another piece of low budget crap produced by Roger Corman that just happens to be directed by someone who you've actually heard of,Francis Ford Coppola. As for Coppola,its hard to find anything he has directed since about 1985 that is much better than this over hyped mess.
Welcome to the Jungle (2007)
It petered out
I thought this movie was gonna be good.It starts out at least looking a bit promising but then just when it finally gets to some good stuff it ends leaving you feeling unsatisfied and kind of mad.And let me add that this movie has absolutely nothing to do with Guns N Roses.
2 couples set out to find the missing Michael Rockefeller ,who disappeared into the jungles of New Guinea in 1961 and was never heard from again.A rumor from a bush pilot sends the four out into the jungle to find Rockefeller and get rich and famous doing it.After one of the four steals some bones from a burial site the local natives get ticked off.But they might have anyway,who knows? This movie has nothing original to offer.We've seen the cannibal movies before and we've seen the shaky hand held movie documentary style filming before.My question with these supposed self shot movies is would a person really keep filming even after they realize their life is in danger ?Really? You gonna keep the camera light on out in the middle of the jungle at night with headhunters all around?I kinda think I'm gonna shut it off and hide like the sniveling coward I am.
Anyway the movie goes along fine and then all of a sudden it's sort of wraps up all quick like and the credits roll.Did you boys run out of money or did you get tired of filming out in the hot jungle?It just abruptly quits before any good gore or terror gets going.
Some night time quick glimpses of some gore is about it.No nudity at all even though you got 4 hot young folks out in the middle of nowhere taking swims and sunbathing and stuff like that.
I can't recommend this movie ,it just never delivers on it's promise of terror and gore.
Days of Darkness (2007)
Garbage
This is another low budget piece of crap zombie movie from Lionsgate.
A few people hold up in an abandoned military installation after a comet hits the Earth and causes most humans to turn into zombies.There is some talk of reproduction and some poking around in the crotches of the zombies and a bunch of other silly stuff.I guess the genital exams was an attempt to try and do something different in a zombie movie.The DVD box boasts "2 billion zombies" but we end up seeing only about 2 dozen poorly made up zombies in this puke pile of a movie.
The plot doesn't make sense .The gore is phony looking and pretty mild.One set of very small breasts are shown and that's about the most interesting thing this sorry mess of a movie had to offer.
It's to the point once you see those big metal gears turning when the Lionsgate logo starts that you might as well hit the eject button and get the DVD out cause you know it's gonna blow.
Freakshow (2007)
What a rotten mess
Well once again a DVD box at the rental store drew me into a wasted night.Who could resist a movie that claims to have been banned in 37 countries?So ,even though by now I should know better,I rent this thing and take it home.
So we have a traveling circus and one of the attractions is the freaks or strange people as I think the sign on the tent said.Also traveling with the circus is the support group of guards and mechanics etc.Anyway a few of these support guys and a girl decide to rob the circus during it's travels.The group decides that the girl should cozy up to the owner and trick him into marrying her where the group of plotters will have access to his fortune.Apparently the owner of this fleabag circus has big money somewhere although looking at him you'd never figure. The owner is a repulsive mess,bad teeth,greasy hair and big yellow boils all over his body.
The boil covered owner of the circus feels more at home with the freaks of the show than he does with normal people.He considers them his family.His family protects him as one of their own when they feel he is in trouble.Therein lies the main plot I guess you'd say.
This movie really sucked bad.It was just too much for me to believe that the beautiful young women would have sex with the oozing nasty owner for all the money in the world.She was so hot she could have found a much cleaner and less repulsive sugar daddy.The sets were lousy shots of tents and the Ferris wheel was shown over and over.There never seemed to be any people at the circus and all the workers just sat around slurping beer from bottles that somehow came with no labels on them.And the sound track was the most irritating soundtrack of any movie I've ever seen....one after another of bad fakey attempts to recreate old scratchy songs like they sounded on records made in the 20's and 30's.On and on these miserable songs went until I was nearly mad.
And the acting was bad.Terribly bad.And I'm not even sure this movie had a script as many of the actors seemed to fumble for their words.Or maybe the budget was so tight that re shots weren't allowed?The freaks themselves weren't really all that freaky except for the one that looked like a miniature version of the Toxic Avenger.Special effects were minimal,little bit of gore near the end but for the most part this movie was just people doing mostly talking.A couple of women showed their breasts but they were small and uninspiring.I think I gave it a 3 mostly because of the breasts because really this movie was probably a 1 or 2 at best.
It's very apparent that this movie was nothing more than a sad weak blatant rip-off of Tod Browning's "Freaks".This mess is totally forgettable and I probably wouldn't have even finished watching it had it not been a cold rainy day with nothing else going on for me to do.
The only way this crapola was banned in 37 countries was for being so bad.Skip this crud fest and watch Browning's original.
King of the Hill: That's What She Said (2004)
An episode quoted by millions of guys
All you need to know about this episode is ever since it aired,millions of guys all across the country,are still saying " That's what she said" to millions of other guys every time one of them says something as innocent as "That sure is a big engine" or "I've got a sore throat" or "You'll need a ladder to reach that".
It never gets old and it's always funny.I'll use "That's what she said" at least 2 dozen times a week myself.
My wife doesn't get it...most women don't get it.But every time my friends and I use it at work we laugh long and hard---That's what she said.
Terror in a Texas Town (1958)
Decent Western
This is a pretty standard run of the mill western...good guy versus bad guy.It had way too many clichés to be considered a good film but it is watchable if not too much else is on at the time.The film is sort of mis-titled,I didn't see too much 'terror' ,just a whole lot of standard oater stuff.
Sterling Hayden is quite good has a Swedish man who comes to America to a small town in Texas after his father is killed there.Hayden comes to the USA to inherit his fathers' land but finds out that the local mean big wig is buying up all the land and he has the local sheriff on his side to convince people they should pack up and move.The big meanie,played by Sebastion Cabot,also has a gunslinger,dressed in all black and black must be terribly hot in summertime in Texas, that helps convince the locals to give up their land to Mr.French.Of course Cabot ain't playing Mr.French in this movie ,but to this kid who grew up in the 1960's watching "Family Affair" he will always be Mr.French. Anyway the big Swede don't take too kindly to anyone pushing him around and he soon runs afoul of the local bad guys who want his land.
The movie isn't too bad nor too good.It just sort of plods it's way along to the predictable conclusion although I will give it points for being at least a little bit original in the final showdown.You'll see a few familiar faces besides Hayden and Cabot...some of those faces you'll remember from TV shows like "The Andy Griffin Show" and "Green Acres".
This movie was OK .I gave it a 5.But honestly if I catch it on AMC again I'd probably flip on by it.It's good enough to see once but not nearly good enough to sit through twice.
District 9 (2009)
Great trailers,dull movie
I loved the trailers for this movie and really made an effort to go see it when it the first weekend it came out.I rarely go see movies at theaters and almost never try to go the first weekend one opens but this one looked cool so I gave up a Saturday night to go see it.
A huge alien spacecraft becomes disabled and its one million occupants ,yes one million,are put in camps,sort of like the camps where human refugees are put now.The big mother craft just hangs up in the sky low to the ground unable to move.Soon the camps become like any other camp where beings are forced to live in squalid conditions--crime ridden and violence filled hell holes.The aliens are sort of big insect looking things.Most of the movie is told from the viewpoint of the man who was put in charge of relocating the aliens when the camp becomes too much of a problem being located near a large human population.
I didn't really understand why a million of these things would be flying around in space and how you would get a million in the spacecraft they came to Earth with.Their home planet apparently wasn't destroyed because some of the more industrious aliens were trying to get back to the mother ship and fix it so they could get back home.And they can build this incredible massive flying craft then they appear stupid and lazy when the are in the camps....eating cans of cat food which were used as currency in some cases,and also eating old tires.The whole cat food business was just stupid and silly and distracting.I think I would have liked the movie better had the aliens been more menacing,instead of the dullards they were.
The film is done in a sort of documentary type although it doesn't hold too strictly to this style.The action is good when it finally starts and the special effects are pretty cool with space guns that explode people and stuff like that.And the big space craft looked cool hanging in the sky.But overall the movie was rather bland and boring in dealing with this problem of space alien refugees.
Maybe the whole point was to deal with these aliens like we humans deal with other human refugees but if you are going to do that why use space aliens? This wasn't a bad film.It just didn't live up to it's potential and certainly not to it's trailers.I wish I had my $8.25 back I paid to see this movie.That would rent me 4 DVDs of movies that would be at least,if not more,interesting than this movie was.
I gave this movie a six which to me means a decent watchable film but nothing that you'll remember as being extraordinary enough to go out and buy when it's released to DVD.
Splinter (2008)
Nothing I ain't seen before
I had saw this film hyped on G4 and elsewhere and was pleased to come across it on the shelf of my local rental store.There is only about a 5% chance that I'll find a horror film that I really want to see at the local hole in the wall rental place I go to but such is the drawback of living in a small town.Not getting shot in the head by a gang is one of the many pluses of a small town versus the big city.
Anyway 2 couple get trapped in an isolated gas station after some sort of weird spiny thing,who used to be the local yokel gas jockey,attack them.They figure out that there is some sort of parasite taking over living people who get all spiny looking and move all herky jerky and attack uninfected humans.
The trapped people have a good assortment of weapons and gadgets being trapped in a gas station but between their wounds and their cowardice the outcome is still not assured.
Like a lot of other horror films this one was over hyped quite a bit.The special effects were pretty well done although the spiny beings were filmed with quick slashing shots that didn't linger on them too long.This wild camera work made it hard to follow the action sometimes when the pace picked up.This also tells me instead of taking the time to create some cool looking special effects creatures the film makers took the easy way out by using cameras and computers....cheaper yes but also fake looking ...you get what you pay for.
The gore is sparse and again done with those annoying quick slashes of the camera.No nudity but there is quite a bit of four letter words used during the heat of battle.
The film is tense and competently made well enough but it just ends up being another run of the mill horror film that you'll quickly forget.The way this one ended I'm sure that Part Two is already in the can and coming to a local rental store near you.No doubt it too will be over hyped because of the "greatness" of this film.
Ils (2006)
Tense but lacks payoff
I'd never heard of this film and after seeing it in the rental store I thought I'd give it a shot.I had an armload of Romero rip-offs and a Jenna Jamison cannibal film so I tossed them aside and rented this instead.It probably was a pretty good decision ,although I WILL see the Jenna Jamison cannibal film someday.
A writer and his teacher girlfriend drive out to the country to spend a weekend in what I assume to be his country getaway home.The house is a massive building,sparsely furnished ,old but elegant looking.When dark falls the couple soon find themselves being attacked by a group of mysterious hooded beings who seem to communicate by a series of whistles and chirps and other weird noises.
The hooded group soon find their way into the rambling home and the couple retreats from one room after another in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the terrifying invaders.
This movie was tense throughout after a bit of a sluggish start.My only problem with the film was the ending.The film maker built up great terror during the film only to have it deflate like a punctured balloon at the end of the movie.This movie reminded me greatly of "The Strangers" not only in content but they both had the same let down at the end of the movie after building up great tension during the movie.There may be some connection between the two films but I'm always too busy looking for pics of Milena Velba on the net to do any research about movies.
The movie had subtitles but as I've said before that isn't even hardly noticed if the film is good.I'm not sure why the movie was rated R--no gore to speak of ,no nudity and I don't think there was more than one or two bad words in it but there could have been more...I tend to be immune to bad words as I think labeling some words in the language as "bad" is a bit silly.
I only gave it a 5 but until the ending it was probably a seven .It's not a great film and not one you'll want to see again but it was worth a 2 buck rental for a rainy Saturday afternoon.
A Crack in the Floor (2001)
Terrible mess
They sure gave this thing a good write up on the DVD box but sadly it was no surprise at all when this movie turned out to be a major piece of junk.I was pretty drunk when I watched this thing so I may not get all the details exactly right BUT it was bad ,that much I do remember.
A bunch of friends set out on their annual trip together.This year they decided to go camping and hiking and dope smoking ,the stuff a bunch of 20 year olds in a horror flick usually do.They get lost and end at an old deserted cabin out in the middle of nowhere.Unknown to them a weirdo lives beneath the cabin in a cellar.
It sounds like it might be a cool horror film but it wasn't.A few good scenes early in the films were pretty cool.Rance Howard and Gary Busey played a couple of weirdo local yokels but they were used too little and never seen again after these early scenes.Why Im not sure,cause none of the youngsters in this film were good actors at all.They were a dull and uninspired bunch.Mario Lopez was really really bad.I mean really bad.
Bo Hopkins played the local sheriff and he was good as always.But damn was he ever fat.He sure packed on the weight in his last years.
This film had very little gore and what there was was clunky and badly done.The weirdo under the floor wasn't developed much at all and therefore didn't never seem that scary.There was some brief side boob shots of a pretty large pair but once again it never developed into that glorious full blown nudity that would have made this mess a whole lot better.
I never understood how this guy survived laying underneath the cellar out in the middle of nowhere.As I said the villain was never fleshed out and never really even seen that much so I didn't develop that much dread of him.
In fact it was sort of a relief when he would kill one of these bad acting idiots.This was a totally lame and totally forgettable piece of junk that isn't worth your time.
Psychomania (1973)
Dorky motorcycle gang meets the underworld
I went back old school and actually rented a VHS copy of this thing to watch after reading about it for years.I'll have fond memories of it cause I watched it about half drunk but actually it wasn't too good.
This spoiled rich kid,Tom,in what I took to be London,is the leader of a motorcycle gang.His mum is a well known spiritualist or seer or whatever you call them in town and Tom becomes interested in the occult because of his mum's doings and Tom gets his whole gang interested in this thing called death.Tom and his mum and their creepy butler,Chadwell,somehow figure out that a person can come back from the dead if at the moment of death they truly believe they will come back.There is also something about toads and Tom's dead dad and some secret room in Tom's house but all that is sort of garbled...not sure if that is because of the Dos Equis or just because it was a crappy movie.
Anyway Tom and his gang then seek to fulfill their leader's goal...an undead motorcycle gang.
This movie had potential with the premise but the way it come out didn't live up to that potential.For one thing the motorcycle gang was a boring dorky bunch--from their goofy helmets with the big plastic bones on them to their criminal acts which consisted of riding through town and knocking guys off ladders,who just happen to be on ladders out in the middle of the sidewalk for some reason,and knocking trays of bread out of guys hands,who just happen to be walking through town with big trays of bread for some reason.
The gang also rides into the grocery store and knocks over cans of stuff.Once in a while they'll harass a truck driver and make him wreck but all in all this gang just didn't have enough meanness to make it interesting.Where is all the gang rapes and baseball bat brain explosions that motorcycle gangs are famous for? There are a couple of cool scenes of a motorcycle flying up out of the ground and going through a brick wall but mostly it was a dull uninteresting story.
No gore that I remember and certainly no nudity...this movie could be shown on TV without any editing at all I think.I was hoping for a little more from this movie but at least I can say I've saw it and now I can move on and try and find a copy of some other long lost movie that might be a forgotten treasure.
The Cat's-Paw (1934)
Entertaining little flick
While this isn't an all time classic comedy it is a pretty good little movie to watch if you catch it on a rainy Saturday morning with not a lot else going on right then.
Harold Lloyd plays Ezekiel Cobb, an American coming home after growing up in China where his dad was a missionary.He has come home from China to find an American wife and plans to return to China to continue his father's work.Cobb unwittingly is recruited to run for mayor of his corrupt home town when the existing political machine that controls the town realizes that he would make a perfect patsy to run against the current mayor who also is the head of the town's underworld.They figure the bumbling ,stumbling Cobb has no chance to win and therefore the current mayor continues to run the town and run his schemes which makes them all rich.
Lloyd isn't doing the physical comedy here like he did in his silent films.He does a convincing portrayal of Cobb with a reserved understated dignity.The acting was good from all involved and the story and script were also quite good.
Being made in 1934 the film does have some rather racist language when talking about the Chinese and it also has a typical black character from that era but these stereotypes aren't nearly as mean as I've seen from other films from that time.
Although not close to being Lloyd's best film ,this movie does entertain and Lloyd is very good as Cobb.You won't be blown away by this film but it may be enough to peak your interest in Lloyd and make you want to see more of his work.
Donnie Darko (2001)
One of my top 10 all time favorites
This is one of the few movies that I can't seem to forget.The first time I saw this movie it absolutely captivated me and it danced in my head for months afterwords.This is also one of the few movies I've ever seen that hold up after you see it again.It's maybe even better the second ,third,fourth time.
Donnie Darko,played by Jake Gyllenhaal, suffers emotional problems and is tormented(or not) by a large evil looking bunny.While his world slowly spins apart the people around him seem to spin even more out of control while they watch Donnie and wonder what is next.
This movie makes you laugh and makes you cry and mostly makes you think.It makes you think a lot.It's scary and weird but mostly it's a beautiful and oh so sad movie.Yeah I cry every time.I love this movie.
It's got lots of familiar faces in it but it's not about who stars in it.The sum total of this picture is way bigger than the people in it.Jake is amazing however.
You'll have to watch this movie.Turn out all the lights and start the movie and you'll never want it to end .
It's a 10 if any movie was ever a 10.
Invisible Ghost (1941)
Another Lugosi stinker
Now I love Bela ,always have and always will.But man he made some stinkers.However at least he is interesting to watch even in one of his many clunkers and this movie was a major piece of junk.
After Lugosi's wife supposedly leaves him for another man Lugosi sort of flips out and isn't quite right.Unbeknownst to Lugosi his wife had a car wreck very near their home and the gardener brings her to the cellar and keeps her there for some unexplained reason.She too is messed up in the head and she gets out of the cellar when the gardener goes home at night and roams around.
When Lugosi looks out the window and sees her he goes into some kind of trance and then the next morning someone is found dead.Is it Lugosi killing them or is it his wife who creeps around at night doing the dastardly deeds? Well don't let my summary whip you into a frenzy to see this movie because you'll waste an hour of your life.
The movie is silly like many of Lugosi's movies are.It's never explained why Lugosi goes into a trance when he sees his wife.And why does Lugosi and his daughter,who looks about the same age as the wife,just continue to live in the house when one murder after another is committed there?They just rehire a new staff member to replace a murdered one and just go on as nothing as happened.Doors aren't locked and the conversations are mundane and they play chess as though several unexplained murders in one's house is no more unusual than having a light bulb blow.
Anyway a couple of detectives get on the case and they wear trench coats and pork-pie hats and chew on cigars cause that's what hardboiled cops did in those days I guess.They stake out the house and somehow don't manage to see the weird lady walking around outside in the rain looking in the windows of the house.
The killer tries to kill someone right in front of them before they can crack the case but by then the bodies have piled up and an innocent man has been executed for the murders.
This thing doesn't have much of a plot at all...a paper thin story just so Lugosi could have another movie to star in, I suppose.Lugosi is good as always... he's not a great thespian but damn even his hamminess is fun to watch.No one else you've ever heard of make up the rest of the cast.But this is about Lugosi and, damn it ,he tries so hard.
It's hard to pass up a Lugosi movie....even though you can pretty much guess it'll suck. But somehow the suckiness is just something you accept as being part of the Lugosi appeal.
I gave this thing a 2 but to me Bela Lugosi will always be a 10.
The Vampire Bat (1933)
Major stinker
Boy what a dud this mess was.But it only lasts an hour and I only paid a buck for it so I'll live....unlike the entire cast of this 1933 clunker who are all dust by now.
So anyway a small village starts having bodies turning up that have been drained of all their blood.The local yokels start talking about vampires ,of course,and a little more loudly after each body is found.The town sheriff or constable or whatever he is,played by awesome actor Melvyn Douglas,tries to tell them otherwise.When he mentions the fact that the dead have one large hole on each side of the neck,instead of two holes close together, the locals simply then say it's a giant vampire bat.The constable insists that vampires do not exist and it must be a human culprit doing the killings.
But Melvyn doesn't seem too bothered either way.He spends most of his time trying to get into the pantaloons of his sweetie,played by Faye Wray.Also in this mix is the town simpleton,played by Dwight Frye,who always seemed to have played the same role in every movie he did.He further freaks out the townspeople by catching bats and drinking his own blood.Lionel Atwill plays the town doctor who seemingly is trying to help the constable solve the crimes.And boy does he ever stink as an actor.Atwill is as close to cardboard in this role as he could get.And Lionel Barrymore is also in this thing....lots of big names to be such a pile of guano.
Other than the terrible mis-title this movie has,the alternate name,"The Blood Sucker" is much better,this movie is also dull and plodding and just silly.
For me the high point of the movie is watching Frye,he nails the freaky town weirdo but other than him this movie didn't offer much.And then when you find out the reason for the strange deaths and see the special effect thing that required all this blood you'll really be let down.
Bela Lugosi did a lot of awful pictures but at least he was fun and interesting to watch.Think of this movie as a really bad Lugosi clunker WITHOUT Lugosi and you'll get a feel for how miserably bad this mess was.
If you can't make a good 1930's horror film at least put Lugosi in it.
Quarantine (2008)
Bloody Good!!!!
This was one of the best horror films I've seen in a long long time! It is a very cool movie that will hook you,after a bit of a slow start,and will keep you hooked all the way to the very end.
A film crew in Los Angeles spends the night in a firehouse to do a story on the firemen who work there.The first several minutes of the film are spent showing the crew setting up shots and all that and I began to think this film was gonna be a clunker.Then all of a sudden the fire station gets a call to go to an apartment building where an old lady is reported to be sick in her apartment.When they arrive and get into her they find she is sick but it's a sickness that they've not seen before she is acting weird and covered in blood.
Not long after tons of police and other agents arrive at the apartment building and start sealing it off trapping all the tenants and the firemen and the film crew inside.
One by one the people inside the building acquire some sort of illness that turns them into crazy wild killers who attack anything in sight.Soon the electricity and all forms of communication is cut off from the building and the rest of the film is lit with the light from the camera as the survivors race around in the building to try and stay one step ahead of the attacking crazies.
While the gore isn't what this film is really about, what gore is here is very well done.Some very cool stunts are also done.This is a taut very cool film.And the last few minutes shot with night vision in the attic of the building is as creepy as anything I've seen in a horror film!That 'thing' puttering around in the attic scared this veteran horror film watcher pretty damn good!And I love it when that happens! This film is worth seeing for the last 15 minutes alone.
This one is good enough to buy and watch again.And the DVD extras were also interesting.It's a film like this that makes all those trips to the rental store completely worth it even if you strike out 99% of the time because this film is that 1% that will make you want to go rent again next weekend.
Day X (2005)
Plodding and slow just like a zombie
Yes this movie is plodding and boring and never really goes any where.It does however manage to rip off about all of Romero's zombie movies instead of just one like most terribly made zombie movies do.
A group of people end up hiding out in a warehouse after some sort of experimental material is released that turns people in brain dead zombies who ,of course, have to eat lots of meat to keep up their metabolism.This will sort of remind you of both "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead".They even mention the plot to "Night of the Living Dead " at one point! The leader of the group turns out to be some government courier agent who was escorting some weird albino chick who is somehow involved in all of this.He is,of course, a black guy.Meanwhile in a subplot a group of scientists and military men are holed up in another compound conducting experiments on the zombies like in "Day of the Dead".One of the zombies is especially mean and nasty and this sort of echoes "Land of the Dead".This movie even manages to rip off the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" as the group fights their way from the warehouse to a van.Anyway this movie isn't nearly good enough for you to care too much about the plot.It's basically one big rip-off.
The acting is terrible,there is no character development and the zombies are few and far in between.Since when has zombie movies turned into movies that show few zombies but lots of scenes where people are just TALKING about zombies? Sheesh! Special effects are pretty mundane....little black holes appear in the zombie foreheads when they are shot and we have a few shots of what are supposed to be guts being pulled but all in all the gore factor is lame.Much of the movie is just these people standing around in this warehouse listening to zombies bang around on the walls outside.
Skip this low budget snoozer and rent something by Romero instead if you're hankering for zombies.This is just another poorly done lame zombie movie made by people who have about as much talent for movie making as Miley Cyrus does for singing.
The Zombie Diaries (2006)
Unwatchable junk
As I've said before I'm a cheapskate and I'll pretty much watch anything I rent but even I couldn't endure this piece of junk.I've seen some terrible zombie films in my years of watching horror films and this was one of the worst of the bunch.
The film is supposedly camera footage shot by different groups that chronicle their tribulations after London is overrun by walking dead.It mostly ended up being a film that featured a lot of bad actors standing or sitting around trying to emote the horror of fighting off zombies while talking into a shaky camera,ala "Blair Witch",while not being even close to as good as "Blair Witch".
After one moist eyed snotty nosed young man likened his situation to the people in the World Trade Towers on September 11,2001 I'd had quite enough and ejected the DVD from my player as quickly as I could.
Nothing really good to say about this crap-fest....the acting as horrible,the script was lame,even if it was ad-libbed it was still bad stuff.Special effects non-existent,they mainly consisted of newspapers blowing around in the streets.The zombies were those half-ass done kind with just some pale makeup smeared and there and some blood dashed on here and there.Long camera shots of a dead spider on a counter and rain splashing in a puddle were also counted as special effects I assume.Apparently the special effects budget was shot in the opening scenes where a handful of soldiers wearing gear that looked like it was from WWII ran around for a few minutes taking cover behind objects as they moved toward some buildings as though they expected the zombies to shoot at them! Right then I knew this was gonna be a puke of a movie.
No hordes of zombies here,just a few here and there milling around,usually standing in a group waiting for their cue to fall when someone shoots a gun their way.Then the camera holder walks up and shows us the zombie laying there with a splatter pattern of brains and blood fanned out from the head all over the ground looking as though the zombie was shot up through the head from under the chin while laying there.Bleeck!At least get the basic physics right! Don't waste a second on this mess.It's unwatchable.I gave it a 1 and I really wish this website would add some negative numbers to the ratings scale.
What happened to the good old days when people shot homemade porno when they got some camera equipment instead of their own horror movie?
Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)
Very funny !
Right off the bat I'll tell you Kevin James is one of my heroes.I saw him years ago when he was a stand-up and then later his show "The King of Queens" became one of my all time favorites,ranking right up there with "Barney Miller" and "Mash".I still watch the reruns every time I can.So my comments may be a little bias but truthfully this movie was very funny and I don't think you have to be a James' fan to appreciate it.
James essentially plays his "King of Queens" character ,Doug Heffernan,here although he is named Paul Blart.He is an overweight security guard,or security officer,as he prefers to be called ,at a large mall.He's wife has left him so he lives with his mother and daughter.He pretty much is a miserable lonely guy who takes refuge in his mother's cooking.His mom and daughter are always trying to hook him up with a date but without much success.He dreams of being a state trooper but his blood sugar crashes makes it hard for him to pass the physical exam despite having some pretty incredible skills for a fat guy.
Blart doesn't fare much better at work where is is the butt of jokes by his fellow security guards and generally ignored by the mall patrons.Blart is a bit of a Barney Fife in that he takes his security guard job way too serious which irks his co-workers,who tend to be a slovenly bunch.
Blart's mundane routine suddenly changes when a group of high tech thugs take over the mall in an attempt to steal millions the mall has raked in during the Christmas shopping season.Thanks to a loud game of Guitar Hero ,Blart comes out of the arcade and finds himself locked in the mall with the thugs.He becomes determined to save his mall.But what can a overweight security guard ,who doesn't even have a gun,do? This movie is family friendly with mild violence and no nudity.This movie was consistently funny .It was well written and acted by all those involved.It has some pretty good plot twists too.
While maybe not a great movie it is heads above what passes for comedy these days.I saw this movie when it first came out and I'll rent it and watch it again.
Hopefully the success of this movie will open more movie doors for Kevin James,who is a great comedy talent.
Rock on,Dougie!
Hatchet (2006)
Gory fun
While not a great film this movie was a pretty fun and gory ride.Maybe there isn't anything very original here but it does keep you interested all the way through.
A group of people on a scare tour of a New Orleans swamp get stuck out in the swamp after their boat runs aground.One of the people on board is a local who tells them of the legend of a boy,last name of Crowley, borned deformed who was killed with a hatchet by his daddy.Soon after his death people started disappearing in the swamp and our group of tourists have landed smack dab in the middle of Ol'Crowley's territory.You can probably figure out the rest.
OK so the DVD box at the rental store over-hyped this thing a mite,but it was still a decent horror flick.Like I said there is nothing terribly original here,the Crowley thing kinda looks like an uglier version of Jason and poor old Robert Englund makes yet another horror film cameo and it's a bunch of mostly 20 year olds running from a boogerman but still this film had some attitude.
While not the coolest gore I've seen ,the gore is gruesome ,hacking and tearing and all sorts of blood.The director, Adam Green,has a thing about throwing gobs of blood on a tree when someone gets killed,not sure what that represented,and as he explains in one of the DVD extras he also has a fascination with Dee Snider of Twisted Sister fame and I'm really not sure why we would care enough for him to go into such detail.Even Dee is there gushing about meeting Adam,you two get a room.
Anyway there were lots of blood and guts.One chick has most of her face taken off with a grinder and I wondered how you charge a grinder out in the middle of a swamp.Oh well,the little details....
The "eye-popping" nudity the DVD box promised turned out to be a few quick shots of chicks flashing their mammaries at Mardi Gras trying to get some beads.There were a couple of big sets but they were too far away and too quickly shown to make me happy.Why can't we ever see really huge all natural bigguns in horror movies instead of those A cups? I'm not sure if this movie was pretty decent or I was just relieved not to have rented yet another totally sucky horror film,I've had a long streak of losers lately ,but either way it was an OK movie.I gave it a six,which may be a little high but, doggone it, I'm tired of handing out threes all the time.
Not good enough to add to the collection but probably good enough to rent part two when it comes out.
Mansquito (2005)
As cheesy and lame as the name sounds
So I've pretty much gave up on believing the DVD boxes at the rental store,especially the horror ones.They promise scares and terror and end up leaving you feeling mad and ripped off.
But the box for this one didn't even promise much.I guess with a name like "Mosquito Man" there ain't no use in pretending you're gonna be good.But I didn't care about the read on the box.I thought maybe we would go old school,back to the 80's in horror,when all the rage was some big cool looking monster,like Rawhead Rex or Pumpkinhead.
OK,first off this movie is nothing but a blatant rip-off of "The Fly" but without the cool gore or anything else that made "The Fly" at least watchable.When an experiment to save the world from some mosquito carried virus goes wrong a guy is mutated into a giant mosquito.Really.
So he kills people by sucking them dry of blood .A cop decides that the dead bodies turning up around town aren't being killed by your average wacko and the cop is determined to find what is killing all these folks.
The acting is bad.The plot is worse.Some of the special effects were decent.But the Mosquito itself looked really cheesy at times,actually all the time, but sometimes it looked worse than others.
Stupid ,plodding and nothing cool here at all.The only saving grace was that it was a fairly short movie.No nudity and very little cursing for some reason.The most cursing was from me, I suppose, at having been disappointed again by yet another cruddy horror movie.
Don't rent this mess.Even if you could see it for free it would still be a rip-off.
Night of the Dead: Leben Tod (2006)
Pointless
I've seen lots of zombie,walking dead,whatever you want to call them, films.Some good ,some bad,most of them bad actually.This one was a bad one.I knew it was gonna be bad when the opening credits were those cheesy looking graphics you can make on a computer.
So a crazy doctor runs a clinic where he does experiments trying to bring the dead back to life.He is working on a serum and is trying different version of it on his victims or patients or whatever you want to call them.The ones who don't turn out right,which is all of them,are kept locked in the basement.So anyway eventually if you keep enough re-animated dead in the basement you'll slip up and things will get out of hand.
Actually even though this movie was plodding and pointless there was lots of blood and gore but the downside is that it wasn't done very well.They sure gave it a go with the blood and guts but I just sort of sat there waiting for this mess to end.
A little bit of walking dead boobies was shown but in addition to being dead they were silicone too,a double yucko.
Skip over this German made crap-fest even though it has a cool looking DVD box.The box drew me in and now I warn you so you won't make the same mistake as I did.
Machined (2006)
What a load of junk
Renting movies is sort of like fishing ,you throw out a line and see what you get.I had never heard of this movie so I thought I'd give it a shot a see what I got.Not much ,it turns out.
This big fat weirdo of a mechanic who lives out in the desert runs runs over a guy walking along side the road.So instead of calling an ambulance our big fat bald weirdo takes the wounded guy back to his garage and puts him back together with mechanical parts.So then the big fat bald mechanic teaches Machine Man to kill people while baldy sits in another room and whacks off while watching it all on a monitor.I swear thats the movie.Really.
But don't let my dazzling synopsis fool you.It was a terrible movie.Badly lit,badly acted.I mean badly,badly acted.No special effects to speak of except people being stabbed and then getting back up and getting back in the action as if being stabbed through the liver can be cured by holding your side.
The movie also had all these annoying little atmosphere effects...like the light bulbs kept flickering and the monitor screens kept blinking off and on and these things happened over and over to the point of being so freaking irritating.So the mechanic could make a part man part machine to kill people but he couldn't fix a light bulb so it would stop flickering?And the Machine Man made these robot like sounds whenever he would move.Well Machine Man may be too grand a term....he looked more like some doofus in a football helmet with lights on it and he also had what looked like shoulder pads on too! There were a couple of topless chicks but they weren't enough to save this waste of time.This is just another home made looking piece of crap movie from Lionsgate.Shot on video at night in some junkyard......please someone take the cameras away from these little snot noses who all think they can make a horror movie.