This blog covers Movies, TV, and other Geeky things...... Movie Reviews (over 3,400 movies rated so far) Countdowns of my top movies by year.... and much more.
Three years in the making, we finally review the “cult classic” Bloodsucking Freaks. The film was originally called “Sardu: Master of the Screaming Virgins”. Later on it was renamed as “The Incredible Torture Show” and then finally as it’s final title, Bloodsucking Freaks. This strange film was earned cult status among our group of friends because of the characters Ralphus and memorable lines that were often misquoted and remembered differently. The film was never as good or funny as we remembered, but the stuck in our heads. After name dropping it since the start of the podcast we finally felt brave enough to discuss it.
WARNING this episode is not for the faint of heart or easily offended. I can't even include the trailer on this one.
Happy Death Day is basically a horror movie version of the classic romantic comedy Groundhog's Day. A love letter to that film mixed into the slasher movie genre. The mix works surprisingly well and makes for an entertaining twist of a tired genre of slasher movies in the same way Scream did back in the day.
The film focuses on a college girl (Tree Gelbman) -the worst character name ever. She is trying to enjoy her birthday. She wakes up in a nerdy strangers room and goes about her day only to end up murdered at the end of the day. She then wakes up and the day has started all over again. So the film basically becomes about her trying to solve her own murder that keeps happening over and over again no mater what she does. This makes for a fun and enjoyable journey.
Just like in Groundhog's Day (which is the obvious inspiration for this film) the character learns and grows as a person as a result of experiencing this day so many times. The story had some fun little twists and turns and I'd definitely recommend this flick for fans of Time Loop stories or horror films with a little bit of comedy.
A couple move to a quiet town after the death of their teenage son to start a new life. Unfortunately for them they picked the wrong house. Apparently the house they moved into awakens about every 30 years and demands blood as revenge for an old town secret.
This movie has 1970's feel to it. It stars a couple of names I recall from the past like Barbara Crampton (who once once a B-Movie actress in horror and Sci-fi films) and Lisa Marie (Tim Burton's Ex). As the film starts I could almost imagine that it might be a secret sequel to Troll 2-- but Nilbog wasn't the name of the town. It was a decent low budget horror film as the dumb white people stay in the house even after being warned by one of the townsfolk to get out (White people never listen) They invite some friends that can communicate with spirits because the mom senses her dead sons presence in the house. Their friends show up and after diner in the strange town where all the townsfolk basically stare at them they spend the night . Her psychic friend tells them that everything about the house is dark yet they hang around anyway. Then her boyfriend ( Who look like a Jack Nicholson impersonator) does a seance when the girls go into town the next day awakening the evil within the house. The true evil appears to be the townsfolk themselves and the dirty little secret they have (which isn't being Goblins with bad makeup).
Well the house wakes up every 30 years for payback and this time around it gets it when the townsfolk descend on the house to make sure the couple is sacrificed --but things don't turn out as they town plans and we actually get some decent gory carnage. It wasn't a great horror film ---but I liked the retro vibe of the film and the gory blood filled conclusion. If you like evil house out for revenge flicks this one may be worth your time
Oculus isa supernatural psychological horror movie. It stars Karen Gillian (Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy) and Katee Sackoff (Battlestar). The film centers around an old and mysterious mirror that apparently brings death to everyone that owns it. The film is just creepy. It brings back the uneasy feeling I had the first time I watched Prince of Darkness by John Carpenter with that weird message. The film focuses on two kids that have grown up trying to keep a promise to destroy the mirror after an incident when they were younger that lead to their parents death. The daughter played by Karen Gillian has researched the mirror and found a trail of unexplained death and mystery around it. She sets up a test with video cameras to see what the mirror will do. From here things slowly start to ramp up as we see flashbacks to what happened to their parents and strange things that start to happen to them. The movie does a great job of flipping back and forth between when they were kids and their parents played by Katee Sackoff and Rory Cochrane were effected by the mirror. The intersecting of the two story lines can be both a little confusing and yet enjoyable at the same time. The power of the mirror creates a situation where both the characters and the audience can't trust what is and isn't real. The movie is a descent into madness. I didn't know how I felt about the film at first --but the fact that I wanted to know more about the mirror made me realize it was more effective than I first thought. The movie is based on a low budget short film that called Oculus: Chapter 3- The Man with the Plan...that the director of the film did previously that I know want to check out as well. If you are looking for creepy and weird give this film a viewing.
The description of the movie was something about a group of high school cheerleaders rising from the dead as zombies to take revenge on the football player from their school that was responsible for their death. It made it sound like a silly, cheesy zombie comedy. I was hoping for a SO Bad that it is Good low budget zombie flick. Instead the movie was actually something completely different. It was more a supernatural witchcraft movie along the lines of The Craft.
The story starts out as sort of a take on "Mean Girls".
After a tragic death of a cheerleader at the beginning of the film an outsider transforms herself to be a cheerleader and a part of the cool crowd. At this point in the film you are thinking that maybe this character or her witchcraft loving ex will turn on the cheerleaders, but the film actually gets a little serious. A party just outside of town ends with the high school quarterback punching his ex girlfriend. This dude is an abusive OJ type and his football career is more important to him then anything else. The girls are going to report this incident --which leads him to drive them off the road leaving them for dead. Extreme.... stuff as the other members of the team are too scared to stand up to him or say anything.
The main characters witch ex --uses a spell an some magical rocks to resurrect the girls. They show up to school the next day like nothing happened to the shock of the football players. The girls start taking revenge on the players --by basically draining them dry of blood to help them stay alive. I'd say they are more like superpowered vampires then zombies.
At this point in the film you are thinking it will just be a simple revenge movie with the hottie cheerleaders killing off the football team. Instead the asshole quarterback figures out what is giving them their powers and starts killing for the magical gems that revived them and the movie ends as more like a supernatural battle between the remaining girls and this powered up OJ.
The film was surprisingly entertaining. Like I said definitely not the film I was expecting at all, but a pleasant surprise.
I was flipping through channels over the weekend and passed Chiller TV and saw a quick blurb about a movie that said something like "A bunch of High School teenagers must save their town from a Killer Clown that works at a fast food restaurant". I had to record this of course (expecting it to be absolutely terrible) but it had me at Killer Clown working at a Fast Food restaurant which makes it a possible so bad it is good movie.
The movie opens with a bunch of punks pulling into a late night fast food drive thru. The punks and their death scene is something straight out of Toxic Avenger as they break into the fast food restaurant and die in a gory way at the hands of a Clown with a head that has a speaker box for a mouth and an outfit straight out of the band KISS's closet. The movie is just an average horror flick peppered with some decent kills -like the cool scene in a Haunted Funhouse ride. The killer clown has some decent cheesy one-liners which also make the film watchable.
The story basically features a group of kids that are getting killed off by this Killer (Rock N Roll) Clown that is the evil looking mascot from a burger chain called Hella-Burger. Think if Krusty The Clown from the Simpsons had a evil baby with Jack from Jack n'the Box. The story itself is an often used plot straight out of Nightmare on Elm Street or similar revenge stories. A character that had been bullied or "Killed" by a group of teens in the past takes out his revenge on the children of those teens that hurt him. Don't expect anything new or original here, but you may enjoy it if you are fan of evil clowns.
The acting in the movie is decent. The lead actress Leighton Meester has actually been in a bunch of other things since then and she makes for a good lead character.
I recently recorded Don't Be Afraid of the Dark during the annual crush of Halloween movies on TV and decided to move it to the top of my list of nearly full DVR recorded movies and my overwhelming (never going to get to some of them) Netflix queue. I watched it based on the Guillermo Del Toro's track record, since both Hellboy movies were good and Pacific Rim was great.
It is haunted house movie after all and at one point he was scheduled to do a reboot of The Haunted Mansion for Disney, so I was curious to see what he made. Well it turns out I wasn't afraid of the dark after all, it was really an underwhelming film.
The Story: The Story follows a Dad and his girlfriend living in a mansion that clearly looks haunted with his young daughter that until then had been living with her mom. (a storyline that isn't really explained well.) The dad is restoring the mansion in order to resell it for his client and within the first days of his daughter's arrival the family discovers a secret basement. The basement was sealed for a reason dummies and the reason is where the movie falls apart for me. The movie has potential with the creepiness of what lurks in the basement --but once you see the evil little creatures the tension falls apart for me. The daughter, who is already having a rough time adjusting to the change in her living conditions is tormented by the little creatures and at first no one believes her. They just write off her concerns as her needing therapy to deal with family issues , until a groundskeeper is attacked by something in that creepy basement. Most people would leave at this point (Like the famous Eddie Murphy bit about white people in a haunted house --(the irony)). The groundkeeper's death isn't enough to get hem to believe her or leave, but it is enough to get the girlfriend (played by Katie Holmes) to do some research on the house. She finds out the truth about the house and they still stay???? Throw in the Jaws Scenario scene about having to stay because they have important dinner???? All in all it just didn't work and wasn't scary at all.
The Creatures: The creatures themselves are the worst part of the movie. We would have been better off never seeing them and just hearing their creepy whispers. They look like a bunch of demented sewer rats on meth. They were basically meant to be a creepy play on Tooth Fairies and it just didn't work and all for me. Maybe they should have just called an exterminator for these rat fairies.
It is listed as a horror comedy....Well there really wasn't much of what I would call comedy in this horror comedy. I've definitely seen this story before in many forms including The Old Dark House which came out the same year from William Castle (which was a remake of a 1930's movie). It is the old story where an American Salesman crashes his car and ends up in a spooky mansion with a bunch of weird relatives. The relatives start to get killed off during the night and the mansion is cut off from the regular world. So it is basically a who dunnit murder mystery in a creepy mansion movie. It is very true to the formula of this type of movie. Pat Boone is decent in the lead role of the salesman, which in this case has come to the mansion to marry one of the relatives. The best parts would have to be the creepy family museum in the basement with the trash compactor crushing machine that almost takes out our lead and the creepy song Pat Boone breaks into in the middle of the movie (which is completely out of place).
The movie is about a group of forensic students that are taking a field test with their teacher (Played by Michael Shanks --of Stargate SG1 fame). This field test takes place on a remote island where apparently some illegal biological testing took place on some dangerous criminals. I recorded this film on the DVR off of Chiller TV ---(the TV channel for low budget horror movies that back in the day we would find at local Music Plus VHS rental store). It was described as a bunch of students that come across mutant creatures. The movie was a mixed bag of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The Bad 1. The movie got off to a slow start establishing the forensic students taking their tests on corpses at this remote location. The movie took its time setting up the story.
2. The movies description wasn't very accurate as its budget didn't really allow for an island full of mutant creatures. I was expecting actual creatures.....not just a couple of prison inmates in what looked like muscle bound Toxic Avenger makeup. I was really hoping to see a bunch of weird creatures. 3. It was the typical: It isn't a zombie movie----but it is really a zombie movie plot. Just because you call something a mutant creature, doesn't mean that it isn't just a zombie. I mean they are undead (zombie)---if they bite you ...you turn into one of them (Zombie) they crave human flesh (zombie). If you are going to make a Zombie movie ----just call it a Zombie movie. Of course a lot of low budget Zombie movies like this that can't afford a bunch of extras --call themselves non-zombie movies so that the people that can watch quality Zombie action every week on Walking Dead---don't actually expect a ton of zombies stalking the victims in the movie. 4. The ending was very abrupt and Michael Shanks ---the one actor I actually know disappears from the story for a good 20 minutes near the end. The Good 1. If you like gore the movie once it got going actually delivers with numerous gory death scenes. It did a good job of providing some nasty visual footage and some interesting death scenes. At this point I feel like I have seen everything that could be seen in a horror movie, so if a film can deliver something disturbing that you haven't seen or show something you have seen already in an interesting way that is good. The Ugly These Toxic Avenger flesh eating mutants sure were ugly. Here is the trailer
The movie has an interesting concept doesn't deliver on its potential. An escaped convict that was wrongly imprisoned for robbery and murder escapes from prison with a mad scientist. He learns the secrets to shrinking humans and then being able to control their minds from the scientist. The scientist passes away during one of his experiments and the main character uses this knowledge to get revenge on those that framed him. Lionel Barrymore stars in this odd film in which he spends much of the movie in drag posing as an old lady. The problem is his old lady just seemed like an uninteresting version of the old ladies from some Monty Python sketch. His revenge plot was kind of boring as he using the doll sized minions to get his revenge. I felt like it was a waste of a cool and interesting story concept in its lackluster execution. The best moments are early on when scientist shows him how he has shrunken some dogs.
The movie is directed by Tod Browning of Freaks fame.
Karloff and Lugosi...... Sound like a winning formula. Well not in this very dull horror movie. A scientist played by Karloff turns into a glowing murder after being exposed to some radiation as a result of his discovery of a new element. That is pretty sums up the whole movie. It was a revenge tale that never really held my interest or attention. A waste of the talents of these two horror legends. The story just dragged...and dragged with nothing interesting happening other than Karloff's hand glowing before he killed off the people he felt had wronged him.
I'll give The Collector some points for a little bit of originality.
It was an interesting horror movie about a thief that goes into a rich families house, while they are out of town, in order to rob them to pay off some debt he has involving his ex. The only problem is that he has picked the wrong night to do this. A killer that collects and tortures people is already in the house and has the different members of the family and others tied up in interesting torture situations. The whole house is bobby trapped with killing devices like something out of saw and the robber is trying to help rescue the family which includes a little girl (the same age as his own daughter). Like I said it was an interesting entry into the torture gore genre of horror that movies like Saw, Hostile and others have explored in recent years. My only problem with the movie is that I'm not a big fan of anti-heroes. I already care less about the main character when he is a thief going in to rob the house in the first place. This plot point leaves me less invested in his plight despite the fact that he has a pivotal moment of caring about the family and trying to save them.
If you like these gory genre films this may be one you have over looked that is worth checking out. There are some interesting death sequences in the movie.
A millionaire invites a group of people to spend time at his mansion. One of them he claims is a werewolf and he is determined to figure out which one by the end of the weekend and hunt and kill them. "The beast must die" he loudly proclaims in overly dramatic fashion. The film is kinda of cheesy and yet kind of interesting at the same time. It is more of a who done it with a twist than a horror movie with a little bit of The Most Dangerous game thrown in. The main actor played Calvin Lockhart is so over the top that I found his performance enjoyable. The film also features horror legend Peter Cushing as one of the possible werewolves. The end of the movie the 4th wall is broken during a 30 second werewolf break where the audience is asked to guess how the werewolf is like some cheesy Castle Films stunt. Enjoyable nachos with 1970's cheesy sauce.
A Security expert (played by Adrian Paul) is sent to check on a group of scientist in the desert that contact has been lost with. Instead all he runs into is a hot blond and a mystery. The experiment that scientists were working on was drilling into the Earth's crust and while doing so they unleashed something. It may be a strange gas that is causing hallucinations or it may be a the gateway to hell. Anyway things aren't quite what they seem and the movie does a pretty good job of making you constantly change your opinion of what is really going on. The movie would have had a perfect ending if it had ended about 5 minutes earlier than it did, but it felt like pulling and putting the rug out from underneath you a few more times. It probably would have been an 8 out of 10 for me if it had ended at the right point. Still it was an interesting movie that engaged my attention.
It's halloween night and some sexy college students decide to throw a halloween party in the wrong house. Having parties in old houses where something tragic happened years ago is never a good idea. The first 25 minutes of the movie is basically a bunch of college girls in slutty halloween outfits. Then the party gets busted by the cops and group of people get left behind and locked inside. They find some old skeletons in the basement and one of them gets bite by one of the skeletons. She turns into a demon and one by one the demons try to take over their bodies so they can unleash their wrath on humanity. It was an okay horror flick if you like watching scantily clad girls in Halloween costumes turning into gory demons.
The movie is a remake of a 1988 Horror movie by the same name that I never saw or have forgotten about. I guess you could place this movie in the genre of Evil Dead type films (although not even close to as good as that). The demons are pretty gory and once the possessions start taking place the movie doesn't really slow down for too long between deaths and gore. It stars Elizabeth Shannon (American Pie) and Edward Furlong (Terminator 2) and Monica Kenna. It is a decent halloween diversion if you are looking for demonic movie you haven't seen yet.
Here is the trailer for the original 1988 movie which I'll have to check out at some point to compare the 2 films
It was horror in the corn day, having already watched Scarecrow, I decided to give the 2009 version of Children of the Corn a chance. The first 45 minutes of the movie was basically just a unhappy couple bickering at each other while the Amish looking corn kids stalked them and hide behind things. The cult of corn children are just not that scary. Kids that don't know how to fight in Amish outfits are just not that scary even if they are killers. I really don't know how they ever killed the adults in the first place unless they did it in their sleep. They keep talking about He Who Walks Behind the Rows which is who they worship and fear, well He Behind the Rows should have showed up at some point in the movie if it wanted to be scary. The original Childre of the Corn didn't scare or entertain me. This version was no different.
