The Human Centipede 2 - Full Sequence Movie

"The Human Centipede II" opens with the final moments of "The Human Centipede (First Sequence)", including the closing credits. The camera pulls back, to reveal that this is playing on a laptop computer, and a man in a toll booth in a parking garage is watching the film. Martin Lomax (Laurence R. Harvey) is an asthmatic, overweight, mentally ill, middle-aged, short British man. He lives in a small flat with his emotionally abusive mother (Vivien Bridson) while working as a security guard in an underground parking garage. His neighbours play Hard Dance music at high levels all night and day, and Martin often spies on the rich individuals who use the parking garage. Dr. Sebring (Bill Hutchens) suspects that Martin was sexually abused repeatedly by his father, now in prison (a suspicion confirmed when Martin has a flashback to this abuse, in which the audience hears the father [voiced by Tom Six] raping his son).

Martin is obsessed with "The Human Centipede (First Sequence)", watching it repeatedly at home and in his toll booth. At one point, he is depicted masturbating (graphically and on-screen) to the film with sandpaper wrapped around his penis. He keeps a centipede as a pet, and maintains a scrapbook on the film. When his mother destroys the scrapbook, Martin crushes her skull and then props her dead body up at the kitchen table. Martin wordlessly decides to recreate the fictional experiment he saw portrayed in The Human Centipede (First Sequence). Medically untrained, he assembles a potpourri of kitchen gadgets, woodworking tools, and assorted household items, puts them in a suitcase, and secures a dingy, dirty, dark abandoned warehouse to recreate the film's medical experiment. But Martin intends to create not just a three-person centipede, but the "full sequence" of 12 connected people.

How do you review a film like "Human Centipede II"? It is one of the most vile, reprehensible, and ugly horror movies that I have ever seen? You want broken teeth, crushed babies, and explosive diarrhea? It's all here. This is a film that completely succeeds in what it wants to do - gross out its small but intensive audience - and will do anything in its power to achieve it. Stylish and incredibly well made with some nice artistic touches here and there - I especially liked the "dinner table" scene. Nonetheless, none of this really adds up to very much which is a shame considering that Syx is a talented director with a lot more to offer. Overall, I can't really recommend this film but I can't recommend that you don't see it either. Does that make any sense? This film exists in its own little world and there is something kind of special about that.

Blood & Chocolate - Blu-ray

When graphic novelist Aiden (Hugh Dancy) travels to Bucharest to research the loup garou legend, he nearly gets devoured in the latest female werewolf film, Blood and Chocolate. In the tradition of Werewolf Woman and Ginger Snaps, Blood and Chocolate stars Vivian Gandillon (Agnes Bruckner), a girl who's forced to face her lupine tendencies in order to discover how capable of loving Aiden she really is. Based on a book by Annette Curtis Clause, the film chronicles the lives of the remaining loup garou who are an extended Romanian family waiting for their pack leader, Gabriel, to select his new mate. His desire for Vivian means trouble when her wish to be with Aiden results in her revealing too much about the clan's secretive lifestyle. In this film, werewolves look fully human until their eyes glow with colored contact lenses while they fly through the air to then land as full-fledged wolves. Gone are the days, apparently, of films showing the transformation in all its hairy, explosive detail. A lack of scenes describing the werewolf metamorphosis make this film more a love story than a monster tale, though two forest gatherings in which the loup garou hunt human sacrifices offer some grizzly satisfaction. Unlike the aforementioned femme werewolf films, Blood and Chocolate features a girl fighting her urge to kill in a bid to unite humans with her brethren, making this movie the most peaceful in its genre. With a tame wolf as protagonist, the potential nightmare is really just a pleasant dream to unite the two disparate worlds. The question is: Do we want that to happen?

Grace - Blu-ray

I'm a bit torn on how to review "Grace." As a drama, it does have fairly decent suspense and a slow burn kind of pacing. If you have a short attention span or enjoy gore, this will not be a worthwhile experience. As far as horror goes, it falls short of being frightening, though I do not think that was the plan. The disappointment in the reviews seem to come from expectations rather than the actual movie. At no point was I bored. In fact, it was a pleasant diversion to become immersed in the characters and the mother's slow decent into brutality in order to save her child.

"Grace" is generally presented as a believable story in its context, and is well acted for the most part. A mother desperate for a baby, and destined for a stillborn child, miraculously has the child survive, only to find eventually that blood is the only thing that keeps it alive. The plot is fairly creative and there is tension throughout the movie. Still, if Lifetime had a horror network, this would be its centerpiece.

"Grace" is certainly worth a watch if you adjust your expectations to include suspense rather than horror, and subtle terrors rather than blood.

The Last Man on Earth - DVD Review

Vincent Price gives an atypically restrained performance as the sole survivor of a worldwide plague that revives its victims as bloodthirsty vampires. During the day, he canvasses his abandoned hometown, tracking down and stalking his former friends and neighbors, always making sure to return before nightfall, when the dead rise to assault his fortified house. Hope arrives in the form of an apparently normal young woman (Franca Bettoia), but her agenda proves to be even more sinister than that of the vampires.

The Last Man on Earth is based on the 1954 novel by coscripter Matheson (whose displeasure with the final product spurred the use of a pseudonym), this Italian-made production is best known for its influence on George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The similarities between the two films go beyond the presence of shuffling zombies and housebound heroes; both feature taboo-breaking scenes of interfamilial murder, and both end on bleak, dystopian notes. While The Last Man on Earth lacks the political and darkly satirical shadings (and graphic gore) that make Night of the Living Dead a more memorable experience, the combination of Bava-esque Gothic atmosphere and bleak, documentary-style camerawork by directors Ragona and Salkow (the brother of Price's agent Lester Salkow) lend themselves to moments of pure frisson that compare laudably to Romero's film. Matheson's novel also provided the source material for the awkward 1971 Charlton Heston vehicle The Omega Man. A planned third version, helmed by Ridley Scott and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was shut down in its earliest stages due to skyrocketing budget costs.

A Haunting in Georgia - DVD Movie Review

A Haunting in Georgia is based on true events.  A Haunting in Georgia is the chilling story of four year old Heidi and her make-believe friends Mr. Gordy and Con. As Heidi tells strange details about the two, her parents become worried. Is there a chance that her playmates can be more than make-believe? When the rest of the family begins experiencing scary phenomena, waking with deep gashes on their bodies it seems there's little they can do to stop the escalating nightmare.

Blind Fear - DVD Movie Review

Shelley Hack deemed as the angel who can't act, actually, I thought she acted better than Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd in the 4th season but this should be with the Charlie's Angels review, proves she can act. Blind Fear has been compared with Audrey Hepburn's "Wait until Dark" but the movie is completely different and Hack makes the movie. Shelley plays Erica, a blind switchboard operator at the inn. She is forced to stay overnight because her cousin can't pick her up until the next morning. She plays a game of hide and seek with three murderous brutes, who robbed an armored security truck for a million dollars. Hack uses her resources against the hooligans. Astonishingly Hack looks younger than she did on Charlie's Angels 10 years ago. There is a surprise twist at the end but like the other reviewers, but I won’t be an idiot and spoil it all for you. Well worth buying if you like Horror movies.

Headspace - DVD Movie Review

Headspace for a movie that boasts "gore and gratuitous nudity" and revealing that "the scariest place on earth is between our own ears," "Headspace" seems to fall short of its declarations. It tries to be a brainy thriller that relies more on the what if factor more than everything else. There are certainly a several somewhat gory minutes in the film, but nothing worthy of the acclaims or awards it features on its DVD case. 

The story of Headspace involves the splitting of two young brothers by an apparently heartless father after the violent death of their mother. One boy has become extremely intelligent and is the focus of this story, while the other is gradually exposed through flashbacks in the smart brother's mind. Our hero begins to have brutal headaches and terrible nightmares that ultimately put him in the hospital. Unable to diagnose him, his doctor releases him into the care of a psychiatrist who tries to figure out what's going on in his head. As the days go by, however, the body count grows. Ultimately, the boy figures out what's actually going on in his mind and attempts to tussle with his demons both inside and outside of his brain.

The story of Headspace does have a nice twist to it linking a key character in the story, but I don't want to give away any more info. If they would’ve spent more time on this tale, and a lesser amount of importance on touting the gore, this might have been a brilliant, exciting tale. In its place, we get a film that tries to be both smart and gory at the same time and bombs at both.

The acting is ok, but the majority of the cast is dragged along by former scream queen Dee Wallace Stone, ex-Juliet Olivia Hussey, the capable William Atherton, and the still lovely Sean Young. The rest of the cast is made up of newcomers.

The creatures in Headspace are all right. In summary, I think this movie is a one-time rental. It doesn't add or take away from the horror genre, but the DVD case will mislead you to believe so.

The Tripper - Unrated - DVD Movie Review

A crazy homage to 1960s and '70s drug and slasher exploitation flicks, The Tripper has "future cult movie" written all over it. A van full of neo-hippies (including Lukas Haas, Brick, Jason Mewes, Clerks, and Jaime King, Sin City) head into the California woods to attend a retro-60s rock concert (featuring the not-very-60s sounds of Fishbone)--only to find themselves hassled by backwoods rednecks and hunted by a obsessed serial killer. 

Along for the ride is a direct but fair sheriff (Thomas Jane), a envious young Republican (Balthazar Getty) (Paul Reubens). The Tripper wavers wildly between trippy visual effects and spewing gore, reflecting writer/director David Arquette's clear appreciation of such lurid b-movies as The Trip, Psych-Out, Deranged, and Three on a Meathook. Thrown into the mix is political lampoonery far too broad and scattershot to be called 'satire,' but it's clear that Arquette has no particular agenda, he's just making fun of everything he can think of, and the results are outrageous, gruesome, and sure to hit the sweet spot for a certain brand of cineaste.