Horror Web

Intruder - Director's Cut - Blu-ray

2011-12-29T12:11:00.000-05:00

To me, Intruder signals the end of an era of classic horror movies. From the early 1970's to this film in 1988, horror fans were treated to the most amazing gory shockers ever made in the Exploitation, Grindhouse, and golden age of Slasher cinema. After Intruder, the 90's ushered in tame bloodless films with bad digital effects which lasted until the dawn of the 21st century, and at present we seem to be back to violence,blood, and gore albeit not as original as it was in the 70s and 80s.

Intruder was also the film that the KNB effects crew used to jumpstart their careers as a single company and this film features some of their best gore effects, even now. Everything about this film, from the casting to the gore, and music score, screams classic slasher and one could initally think this film came out in 1981 along with The Burning and The Prowler.

However, Intruder delivers a dose of humor that seems to carry over from Evil Dead 2 and into this film. In a wierd way, I see this film as a companion piece to Evil Dead two. They share some of the same cast and most of the same crew. From Sam & Ted Raimi, to Bruce Campbell, the KNB guys and Scott Speigel, this film is an obvious labor of love for the genre carried out by friends with their hearts in the right place.

While the Wizard DVD release was uncut, this Blu Ray is an absolute must have. The new cover art, the vinatage 8 MM footage prior to the films creation, the additional gore sequences, and the new featurette with cast and crew interviews - All make this release an easy choice for slasher fans and fans of 1980's horror cinema. The new transfer of the film alone would warrant re-purchase because the film looks ten time better than it did on the Wizard release. I hope you like the color of blood, because this new transfer makes sure that every drop is literally popping out of your screen.

While there are still literally hundreds of films from the heydey of horror needing release on DVD (or even better, Blu Ray), Intruder is a much welcome addition to any horror fan's Blu Ray collection.

Pandorum - Movie Download

2011-12-14T11:47:00.000-05:00

So many people these days want to do movie comparisons with just about every new title that's released...here is another one getting that same treatment. These are the movies I have seen this one compared to: "Alien," "Solaris," "Event Horizon," and "2001: A Space Odyssey." This flagrant need to compare movies is largely due, in my opinion, to Hollywood's decade long quandary with not being able to come up with much new material...everything has already been done...and everyone has been conditioned to not expect anything new from that corner of the planet. Well, I'm not buyin' it! Books pour out of author's imaginations and onto the shelves of our local bookstores on a daily basis, and they are ALL different from the next. If book writers can do it, then I'm sure movie writers can do it as well. And this movie is no exception. It has plenty of newness to it. As a matter of fact, once you get through the creepy and atmospheric body of "Pandorum," which takes place on a spaceship meant to transport everything needed to start anew on another planet much like Earth, and finally reach the climactic ending, the breath of fresh air is resultant of a movie that never let on where it was going, reveals a story that has never been told (even remotely), and leaves the watcher with good feelings in their hearts...feelings of hope and reverie. The acting is superb by all in attendance, although, I believe Ben Foster should have gotten top billing, not Dennis Quaid. The vast majority of the time spent here is centered around Ben's character, whereas, Dennis' character doesn't do much more than try to stay connected with him from another part of the ship. All in all, "Pandorum" delivered on all eight cylinders. It had suspense, tension, depth, a well-thought-out plot, exceptional acting, production, and direction, creepiness, absorption, and reward. If you like the sci-fi/horror type thing, DON'T MISS IT!

Supernatural - The Anime Series - Blu-ray

2011-12-01T14:10:00.001-05:00

The OAV Supernatural: The Anime Series (2011) is an anime first: an American live-action show reworked as a Japanese animation series. (The original Supernatural debuted in 2005 on the WB, and continues on the CW.) Sam and Dean Winchester are Hunters--licensed officers who tool around the United States in a classic black Chevy Impala, pursuing demons, ghosts, vampires, and other evil spirits. They're also looking for their father, a Hunter who's chasing the evil entity that killed their mother. Almost all the specters strike attractive young women, and the series soon devolves into a damsel-in-distress formula, with Sam and Dean arriving in the nick of time to dispatch the threat with silver bullets, salt, and fire. Some of the episodes are reworked from the original program; others are new story lines for the characters. But too many of them play like a mash-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Hardy Boys. Supernatural: The Anime Series recalls old live-action-based Saturday morning shows like The Karate Kid and Fonz and the Happy Days Gang. The designs for the characters are stiff, and the animation remains minimal, with still drawings accompanying voice-over dialogue. Although there are occasional interesting special effects, the series doesn't really make use of the potential that animation offers. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles repeat their roles as Sam and Dean, and appear in tight T-shirts to introduce each episode. (Not rated; suitable for ages 14 and older: graphic violence, violence against women and children, grotesque imagery, animal cruelty, alcohol use, potentially offensive religious imagery) --Charles Solomon

(1. The Alter Ego, 2. Roadkill, 3. Home, 4. Ghost on the Highway, 5. Savage Blood, 6. Till Death Do Us Part, 7. Temptation of the Demon, 8. Everlasting Love, 9. The Spirit of Vegas, 10. Moonlight, 11. Nightmare, 12. Darkness Calling, 13. What Lives in the Lake, 14. Reunion, 15. Devil's Trap, 16. In My Time of Dying, 17. Rising Son, 18. Crossroad, 19. Loser, 20. What Is and What Should Never Be, 21. All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1, 22. All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2)

Zombie Apocalypse - DVD Movie

2011-11-16T10:00:00.001-05:00

In the tradition of The Walking Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Night of the Living Dead. When college roommates Mark and Tom go out for a night at the bar, the last thing they expected to find was a machete wielding stranger and a horde of the undead. With the help of amateur photographer and video store clerk Raven, the unlikely party fights their way into an epic conflict between the living...and the dead. Zombie Apocalypse is a feature-length over-the-top action/adventure/horror movie. Its roots are in the style of the blockbusters of the 1980 s, John Carpenter films, and the energy of video games. Zombie Apocalypse has scenes of exciting action and intense drama, but it never takes itself too seriously for too long in the style of Zombieland. It focuses on four main characters and their adventures after a zombie outbreak spreads throughout the country. Miller: the mysterious stranger searching the country for his long-lost wife, who herself has ties to the creation of the zombies; Mark, a bullheaded college student with a chip on his shoulder and an axe in his hand; Tom, Mark s video game playing medical student roommate; and Raven, a rebellious video store clerk and amateur photographer who goes from depressed to overjoyed once the zombies hit. Throughout the movie they meet a host of other characters including a mob of survivors who call themselves The Marauders, shadowy agents, an Illuminati-style organization, and nemesis from the past.

Bloodlines - DVD Movie

2011-10-25T20:57:00.000-04:00

Bloodlines
Directed by Stephen Durham

Click here to buy for $9.14

Set in Kentucky, Bloodlines (2007) is another low budget entry in the backwoods horror genre. It incorporates several familiar elements, including strong family ties, kidnapping, rape, inbreeding, and references to cannibalism. The acting is not always convincing, but after a shaky start, things come together for some decent action and gore, resulting in a film that turns out better than it first appeared it might.

Collegebound Amber Strickland (Grace Johnson) stops for gas at a service station with a creepy attendant. A short distance down the road her car dies out, and in no time flat Amber finds herself a prisoner in a house deep in the woods. She wakes up in room with two other women, Jenny (Tracy Kay) and one mean bitch (Mallory Durham). Eventually it becomes clear that the Hackfords, a family that includes some inbred freaks, captures women for breeding purposes. Pairs of women are first made to fight each other to the death, with the survivor then being raped by Billy Bob (Jason Padgett), the leader of the clan. All about spreading his seed, old Billy Bob is also having sex with his sisters.

Amber's family ties are also very strong, as her brothers Brody (Douglas Tait) and Bear (Dorian Kingi, the son of Lindsay Wagner) grab their knives, and load their bows and arrows in their SUV, and head out to get their "baby girl" back. They quickly pick up her trail, and after putting the gas station attendant out of business, head through the woods for the Hackford's cabin, taking out any opposition they encounter. Amber and Jenny have managed to escape, and the Strictland boys find their sister, and head back to their truck. Billy Bob gathers what's left of his clan and they head out into the night to hunt down the escapees.

The first part of the film is quite surreal and doesn't play very well. The prisoners are not tied up or restrained, and there isn't a hint of the razor wire shown in the promotional material, and the door doesn't even appear to have a proper lock! The women don't behave rationally, and have ridiculous conversations. Amber and Jenny easily dig their way out of the cabin, without getting dirty. Then instead of just running away, they head right where the inbreds can see them. So much dumb nonsense. The death matches are an interesting idea, but the execution is poor and unrealistic. The fights are held in what looks like a barn, with a dirt floor and some short posts tied off with rope as the boundary for the arena. No one with a half brain would be standing close to someone wildly swinging a knife, like the morons in the film do.

The story remains implausible throughout, all the way the sappy ending, but things do improve when the Strickland boys get involved, as brutal killing is routine for them, and they provide a worthy match for the Hackfords. The chase through the woods sees the Strickland boys fade out, and Amber assume the spotlight role, extracting her revenge. She takes some hard hits, but manages to bring breeding season to a close.

Directed by Stephen Durham, who also co-wrote the screenplay, Bloodlines could have been much better. It features a few twists, but has a variety of story issues that could have been tightened up, and a bigger budget would probably have made a difference. Taking a look at "family values", the film shows promise, and eventually delivers some kills, thrills, and gore. The makeup for the inbreds and the special effects in general, are not bad for a film of this type. It's not as nasty and graphic as it could have been, but if you are a fan of "Wrong Turn" type horror, Bloodlines may be of interest. After over a decade, Grace Johnson makes a return to acting. She is capable in a physically demanding role, although she does looks a bit old to be playing a college freshman.

Discussed in the commentary by Stephen Durham and members of the production staff, are the cast (a number of which were last minute selections), the locations utilized, and the difficulties of making an independent production (some involved quit their jobs to make the movie). Bloodlines also has a surprisingly cool soundtrack.

Dead Riot & Flesh for the Beast - DVD Movie

2011-10-05T14:19:00.005-04:00

Thrill to the Grindhouse experience in the safety and comfort of your own home! You will actually believe that you are sitting in a sleazy downtown 24-hour slime pit cinema! Two full-length, full-strength horror exploitation gems and outrageous coming attractions! Main feature: DEAD RIOT- See Kung Fu Fighting cellblock babes face a horde of flesh hungry zombies! Uncut/unrated! "A cult classics is born… Totally off its rocker!" – NY TIMES "Very cool grind house vibe…" – Icons of Fright Added attraction: Flesh for the Beast – See sexy succubi seduce & devour spineless, weak willed men! Uncut / Unrated! "Fans of the genre – or ‘Gore Hounds’… Will find plenty to enjoy…"

Mimic - Blu-ray

2011-09-26T11:35:00.001-04:00

Mimic - An ultra-creepy blend of horror and fantasy (think of it as Beauty and the Bugs) from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro (Cronos) about giant cockroaches in the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan. Like its DNA-altered spawn (the title refers to the way some insects evolve to resemble their predators), Mimic is not your everyday bug picture, but a more poetic (though quite gruesome) sort of film, literally crawling with bizarre, striking images. In this case, the mutant bugs are not the result of evil atomic experiments (as in Them!), but are the unexpected side effect of work done by an entomologist (Mira Sorvino) and her Center for Disease Control officer husband (Jeremy Northam), who, in a last-ditch effort to control a roach-carried disease epidemic that was killing children, released a genetically altered form of sterile cockroaches beneath the city. They stopped the virus, but... Also starring Charles Dutton, Giancarlo Giannini, F. Murray Abraham, and Josh Brolin.

Trollhunter - DVD Movie

2011-09-07T11:31:00.000-04:00

The Norwegian comedy-fantasy Troll Hunter, a surprise art-house hit across the globe, posits an intriguing question--what if monsters of folklore and popular culture existed, but were kept hidden by the government?--and delivers the results in a clever, faux-documentary format that underscores both the special effects and the satire. Controversial comedian Otto Jespersen is the title character, a world-weary, working-class stiff assigned by a bureaucratic agency to track and eliminate dangerous trolls from the Scandinavian countryside. The lack of respect and notoriety afforded by his job convinces Jespersen to allow a naive collegiate film crew to follow him on his hunts, which nicely balance quirky humor with genuine moments of suspense and some impressive CGI special effects for the trolls. Genre fans' appreciation for the "shaky-cam" subgenre (The Blair Witch Project, [REC], Cloverfield) will undoubtedly affect how they feel about Troll Hunter--the film's light comedy will certainly be lost on those unwilling to either believe or tolerate the idea of another film comprised of "found footage." But more forgiving viewers will be thankful for the rather seamless incorporation of the CGI trolls, all imaginatively rendered as part fairy-tale image and part biological specimen, into live-action scenes, as well as the dryly humorous satire of government "special projects." Pacing is also occasionally an issue--though beautiful, the Norwegian landscape receives far too much coverage--but for the patient, Troll Hunter is a unique and clever experience.

Red Riding Hood - Blu-ray/DVD Movie

2011-06-06T11:21:00.000-04:00

This is not your grandmother's Red Riding Hood. There's a basket of goodies (not exactly the edible kind), a sweet grandma, a winsome young lass in a beautiful red hood, and a Big Bad Wolf. But there the similarity ends. This Red Riding Hood is shot through the lens of the Twilight films--for wide appeal to the tween and teen audiences, and definitely not a bedtime story for the little ones. Helmed by Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke, Red Riding Hood bears a lot of the moody trademarks of the vampire series. Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), the plucky girl in the stunning cape, lives in a tiny medieval village whose geography is not specified--it's just very mountainous and remote. Valerie's heart belongs to her childhood friend Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but as Red Riding Hood opens, she learns she has been betrothed to Henry (Max Irons). As if that love triangle weren't enough, it seems a dangerous wolf--or is it werewolf?--has been terrorizing the town for years, and its killing sprees have intensified. When the townsfolk kill a wolf, they think they have finally freed their town from tyranny, and throw a giant bacchanal--like Burning Man in the snow. But then Father Solomon (Gary Oldman, in wickedly good form) appears on the scene to tell the villagers they've killed only a gray wolf--not, in fact, the werewolf he knows is the true villain.

So the romantic pulls of Valerie, Peter, and Henry play out with a backdrop of true chills and mystery. The atmosphere created by Hardwicke, along with production designer Thomas E. Sanders and cinematographer Mandy Walker, is perfect for a goose-bumpy horror story with teen hearts caught in the balance. The set design of the village, especially, is rich with detail--even the trees in the surrounding forest seem to have branches made of threatening spikes. Seyfried is willful, passionate, and perfect as Valerie, and easily anchors a film that could have spun out. Other standouts include Virginia Madsen, Valerie's mother who has a dark secret in her own past, and Julie Christie as Valerie's rather peculiar grandmother. All Twilight fans, and those who love a good tale of star-crossed (or perhaps full-moon-crossed) lovers will enjoy Red Riding Hood. Just don't go walking in those big bad woods alone

Mark of the Devil - DVD Movie

2011-06-01T13:13:00.000-04:00

The commanding Herbert Lom stars as a sadistic, corrupt inquisitor in this salacious exploitation thriller from Germany set in 18th-century Austria. A handsome young Udo Kier takes a rare romantic lead as a young baron who rescues an innocent peasant girl from the clutches of a local witch hunter (the villainous-looking Reggie Nalder), only to run afoul of Lom's unholy warrior. An early entry in the "sex and sadism" genre, this production is an exploitation film with an intelligence behind it, but an exploitation film nonetheless: director Michael Armstrong revels in the most barbarous tortures as the impotent inquisitor punishes innocent young maidens for his own unclean desires. Strong performances from Lom, Kier, and Nalder and a cynical ending deliver a dramatic punch along with the grisly nastiness. This brutal thriller is not for all tastes: barf bags were handed out to audiences on its initial release. The new Collector's Edition restores the film to its full, uncut gory--that is, glory.

Driller Killer - The Early Short Films of Abel Ferrara

2011-05-16T15:20:00.000-04:00

Abel Ferrera's Driller Killer is one film that I think every horror fan should have in his collection. The film is low budget, and you can obviously tell that when you start watching it, but I think this helps the film a lot. With the sort of grainy picture against underground New York. Now the film is not just a slaughter fest, where the main character goes on a rampage right away for no reason. You go threw the film seeing all the little things that add up to drive Reno (main character) crazy. Then he takes out his frustrations with the drill, but don't worry there is still plenty of gore. On to the DVD package. Cult Epics did an awesome job putting together The Driller Killer. It comes in a 2-disc set with 3 unreleased short films by Abel Ferrera, a trailer, a commentary by Abel Ferrera, among some other stuff. It also comes with a trailer for one of Abel Ferrera's earlier porn films that he directed. I personally think that the trailer did not need to be included, but hey I guess other people might find it amusing. The package that Cult Epics put together is limited to 10,000 copies. So if you get one on the back there will be a spot that tells you what number your copy is.....trust me, it will make you feel special.

Synopsis -An artist slowly loses his mind as he and his two female friends scrape to pay the bills. The punk band downstairs increasingly agitates him, his art dealer is demanding that he complete his big canvas painting as promised, and he gets into fights with his girlfriends. When the dealer laughs at his canvas he snaps, and begins taking it out on the people responsible for his pain and random transients in the manner suggested by the title.

The Good - Ferrera does an awesome job slowly declining into his mad state of mind. The sound-track is pretty good also if your into punk rock. If your not it is still cool seeing them play. The film is not just a random killing machine film either. Its sort of a art-house/horror film.

The Bad - The gore effects might lack a little bit, but that is not really a problem at all. I cannot really think of anything wrong or bad with this film, aside from the unwanted prono trailer (but that would be more about the packaging of the DVD). All I can say is, that this film might not be for everyone, but if your a fan of low budget, or 70's horror, then this is a film you should enjoy.

The Rite - Blu-Ray DVD

2011-05-09T10:22:00.000-04:00

Anthony Hopkins is a veteran exorcist who shows a novice the tricks of the trade, so to speak, in The Rite, a decidedly sober supernatural thriller about demonic possession that stands in stark contrast to the gymnastic pyrotechnics of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Last Exorcism. Colin O'Donoghue is the new-minted priest with a truckload of familial baggage (as a boy, father Rutger Hauer showed him his mother's corpse shortly before preparation in the family's funeral business) and a sincere crisis of faith. His adviser (Ciarán Hinds) ships him off to Rome, where he studies under Hopkins, who treats the dismissal of evil forces like a not particularly strenuous therapy session. But when a young pregnant woman turns up with a nasty case of the Devil inside, the tables are quickly turned, and O'Donoghue is forced to ply his training in an actual confrontation with demonic forces. Director Mikael Håfström has an extraordinary visual eye for malevolence in architecture, and his pacing and restraint in delivering full-bore shocks are admirable. Unfortunately, the result is somewhat stillborn, never quite fulfilling its promise as a thinking person's exorcism film, and instead hoping that meaningful glances and mounting shadows will suffice as atmosphere. Hopkins is also restrained in his performance, which works in its early stages--his post-Silence of the Lambs roles have hinged so often on operatic rages that one forgets what a subtle actor he can be--but falters in his later scenes, which require him to deliver the film's central chills. The Rite is a notable effort that simply doesn't translate beyond the page.

The Walking Dead - Season One

2011-04-28T08:31:00.000-04:00

Arguably the biggest hit of the 2010 television season, the apocalypse drama The Walking Dead pulls the zombie subgenre out of its overexposed doldrums and finds, ironically enough, the humanity and emotion beneath its rotting shell. Produced by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) and Gale Anne Hurd (Aliens) and based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead follows a band of Atlanta-based survivors of a viral outbreak that has caused the dead to rise up and consume the living. The group's nominal leader is a sheriff's deputy (Andrew Lincoln) who wakes from a gunshot-induced coma to find the world in disarray and his wife (Sarah Wayne Callies, Prison Break) and son missing. His search for his family and the survivors' attempts to make sense of their lives in the wake of the outbreak is handled with intelligence and sensitivity, which helps to elevate the show beyond the grindhouse take on zombies, which favors spilled guts over character development. That's not to say that the blood doesn't flow plentifully here: the special effects are on par with zombie-movie mayhem, but again, they aren't the show's raison d'être. Solid performances, including Jon Bernthal as Lincoln's partner, Jeffrey DeMunn as the group's leading rationalist, and Michael Rooker and Norman Reedus as a pair of trouble-making rednecks, and gripping suspense make each of the first season's six episodes compelling from start to finish for both horror fans and those who dislike the genre as a whole.

The two-disc set of Walking Dead's first season includes all six episodes, as well as a number of making-of extras, including the show's conception and production, a talk with Robert Kirkman (he's a fan), a look at the makeup by KNB Studios, and the show's panel at the 2010 ComicCon. All of the principal players on both sides of the camera are given adequate screen time to discuss their vision for the show, its influences (George Romero, naturally), and the challenges of depicting the end of civilization on a budget.

Children of the Corn 3 - Urban Harvest - DVD Movie

2010-11-16T09:11:00.000-05:00

No other author in recent memory has had as much consistent success selling books as Stephen King. For roughly three decades the Maine writer churned out book after book, each one selling more and more copies. He's a world unto himself, the lucky fellow! He's so successful that he could throw out his pens, put away his typewriters, bury his word processor six feet under, never write another word in his life, and STILL have enough money to wallpaper the Great Wall of China five times over. In many respects, it's Stephen King's world and the rest of us are just living in it. But, and this is a gigantic but, an enormous number of metaphysically bad films based on his novels threaten to put a serious dent in his legacy. We all know the good ones, the ones that not only scared audiences stiff but also helped propel King's career to even greater heights. "Carrie" is probably the best example, followed by "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Dead Zone." These are wonderful, magical films that one can watch again and again without wearying of them. Then there are the rest: the truly wretched refuse that reminds one of dental plaque or the junk that washes up on the shores of a filthy river. Welcome to the Children of the Corn franchise.

"Children of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest" moves far beyond the parameters established in the first film. Instead of Isaac issuing the doom and gloom prophecies of "He Who Walks Behind the Rows," we now have Eli (Daniel Cerny) stepping up to the plate. He and his older "brother" Joshua (Ron Melendez) turn up in Chicago after Joshua's father, who had the temerity to question Eli's increasingly bizarre behavior, perished in a hideous manner back on the Nebraska farm. Adopted by William Porter (Jim Metzler)--a big shot at an agricultural firm specializing in the creation of resistant grains--and his wife Amanda (Nancy Lee Grahn), Eli and Joshua seem like fish out of water in the Windy City. Right from the start it's obvious that Eli is a little strange; it is also obvious that he has some sort of weird hold over Joshua. How odd is the pint-sized preacher? His new mother opens his suitcase only to find it packed full of ears of corn covered in huge bugs. Screeching like a banshee, Alice is astonished to discover that the insects were just a hallucination of some sort. Hmmm. Anyway, Eli soon realizes that a huge, abandoned warehouse right next door to the house provides fertile ground for a few rows of special corn. This crop grows to full height in a matter of hours, is impervious to disease and other forms of damage, and tastes great.

William Porter soon learns about the crop and dreams about how much money he can make selling these plants around the world, an idea encouraged by Eli. In the meantime, the two kids enroll in a Catholic school run by the kindly Father Frank Nolan (Michael Ensign). Eli continues to try and control Joshua, but his influence seems on the wane. With the help of Malcolm (Jon Clair) and his cute sister Maria (Nari Morrow), Joshua begins to emerge from his shell. He takes up basketball despite Eli's objections, and even strikes up a physical relationship with Maria. The young preacher turns his attention to the other kids in school, lecturing them about the importance of children in scripture and thus usurping Father Frank's authority. He even stands up one day during services to relate his interpretations of the holy word. Predictably, the kids soon fall under Eli's power. Joshua, with the help of Malcolm, heads back to Nebraska to unearth an important book buried there by Eli that just might help defeat the evil intentions of "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" and his earthly minion. We finally see the incarnation of this demon when Eli holds a ceremony in the warehouse. The film ends on one of those "the evil goes on even though we thought it was over" themes.

Actually, "Children of the Corn 3" isn't half bad. Director James D.R. Hickox is well known as a purveyor of schlocky yet entertaining low budget horror, so maybe that has something to do with it. I got a real kick out of the Eli character, who I thought looked like a miniature version of a certain "Grease 2" star (The movie should carry the title "Honey, I Shrunk Adrian Zmed"). He's not as eerie as Isaac in the first one, but he does carry a certain unease about him. The guy who played Father Frank was a real hoot, too. His hysterics make Rod Steiger's priest in "The Amityville Horror" look tame by comparison. But what really takes the cake in "Corn 3" are the imaginative kill scenes and cheesy special effects. A head bursting into flames, a combination garden tool/pipe atrocity, and people torn apart by "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" insures a good time for all. The model the filmmakers used to depict the corn demon, however, looks woefully inadequate. At one point the beastie snacks on a kid, but it's so obvious that the crew stuck a doll in the creature's mouth that I howled with laughter for hours afterwards. By the way, Charlize Theron appears in a bit part as one of Eli's followers during the final showdown.

I Drink Your Blood - DVD Movie

2010-11-15T13:55:00.000-05:00

Sons and daughters of Satan: Let it be known that this is the first and only uncut, authorized release of David Durston's I DRINK YOUR BLOOD. Restored in all its acid-crazed glory, this `70s horror classic is now more gruesome and depraved than ever before--accept no substitutes!

Originally released in February 1971, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD was one of the first motion pictures to be rated X for violence. Aiming to outdo NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, producer Jerry Gross instructed writer/director Durston to discard all of the old monster-mash cliches and shoot straight for the gut with maximum shock value and gore. The result was pure American drive-in genius. Even after 30 years, IDYB still holds up as one of the most entertaining and wildly demented movies of its kind.

Between the bad-taste instincts of exploitation legend Gross (who gave the film its lurid title and distributed it on a double-bill with an cheap black-and-white zombie film he'd rechristened I EAT YOUR SKIN- a.k.a. ZOMBIE, VOODOO BLOODBATH, 1964) and Durston's twisted imagination (rabies, meat pies, LSD, hippie maniacs, construction workers foaming at the mouth--call the Red Cross!), I DRINK YOUR BLOOD plays like a double-barreled shotgun blast, a sugar fix for gore freaks. Just when you think Durston can't push the delirium any further, somebody drags a dead goat across the screen...or an old man in long underwear pukes up his dentures while being strangled...or an electric carving knife strays from a side of ham with disastrous results...or...well, you get the picture.

Unfortunately, the MPAA didn't appreciate the effort. Graphic scenes of bodily dismemberment, multiple stabbings, self-immolation, barbecued rats, gang-bang sex, gut-spilling, decapitation, and the hara-kiri stake impalement of a pregnant woman's stomach all seemed to upset the censors for some strange reason. Ever the exploitationeer, Gross sent the movie out uncut anyway, resulting in pandemonium. With the ratings board cracking down on offenders, Cinemation panicked and prints of the film were hacked to pieces by everyone from projectionists to the local morals squad. The R-rated print seen in most theaters (and on previous, inferior video releases) lacks a crucial plot point and barely makes sense. Despite these trials, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD was a smash success for Gross and even managed to impress a few critics who were unperturbed by the day-glo ad campaign announcing "2 Great Blood-Horrors To Rip Out Your Guts!" The L.A. Times' Kevin Thomas gave I DRINK... a rave, as did then-unknown Joe Dante, who praised it in the pages of FILM BULLETIN. The film even captured a prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival in Paris.

Words just can't do this movie justice. Like a sheet of high-grade blotter, this DVD of I DRINK YOUR BLOOD packs enough bizarre entertainment value to last for hours and hours. In closing, we can only repeat the demonic invocation of Horace Bones, who tells his followers in the movie's opening scene: "Satan was an acid-head. Drink from his cup. Pledge yourselves, and together we'll all freak out!"

Grimm Love - DVD Movie

2010-10-28T09:26:00.000-04:00

"What you are about to see is inspired by a true story that happened in Germany not too long ago..."

The Armin Meiwes cannibal murder case is the basis of Grimm Love, a German import that had been banned in Germany in 2006 before it could be released, because it "infringed upon the personal [or personality] rights of Armin Meiwes." Subsequently, the film was sold for international release and the ban was annulled in 2009 (in favor of "freedom of arts").

American actress Keri Russell plays the part of Katie Armstrong, an American graduate student studying criminal psychology in Germany, fascinated with the case of a cannibal who lured his willing victim using the Internet. They met in a "cannibalism chat room." As the story develops, she narrates, spinning a tale of her building obsession with the subjects of her research.

Flashbacks inform the viewer of the tortured childhood of Oliver Hartwin (Thomas Kretschmann), a lederhosen-wearing schoolboy, following him and a friend spying on a neighbor woman butchering a pig and watching slasher films at the cinema, as well as his being overly mothered at home. Katie visits the school he attended as a child and is expelled from the building for digging into its dark memories. Flashbacks of Simon Grombeck's (Thomas Huber) life expose his boyhood guilt, and his adult love affair and fascination with butchered bodies.

Katie visits the home Oliver lived in as an adult -- dominated by his shrewish, scraggly-haired mother to whom he was doggedly devoted -- going so far as to break a window to gain access. As she goes from room to room taking photographs, flashbacks delineate events that had occurred within, all of them ominous.

Grimm Love is an effectively creepy film. The subject matter is darkly illustrated by moody cinematography, downbeat portrayals, and an overall gloominess. Parallel tellings of the graduate student's growing obsession and Hartwin's descent into a madness few would want to witness are seamlessly edited. As she becomes more involved in her research, she begins to identify with him.

Not for the squeamish, Grimm Love will have viewers wondering every time someone is seen with a fork, but not wanting to discover the menu. No matter how sympathetically the characters are portrayed at times, the audience will be making value judgments. Some of the most revolting scenes are bloodless as Oliver reads from the chat room instructions on how to set up for the slaughter of a human, and prepares a potential victim for butchering. When Oliver and Simon exchange e-mails, queasiness is inevitable.

While much of Grimm Love is dramatization and fiction, much of the relationship and actions between Hartwin and Grombeck are true to the Meiwes case. It is dark, intense, and disturbing, so devoid of comic relief (or any other relief) that it nearly serves as documentary. Viewers know how the relationship between the two men will turn out, and speculate where the graduate student's fixation on the macabre case will take her. The horror depicted may cause viewers to stop the movie before they find out.

Grimm Love is sinister, depressing, repugnant, and abhorrent. It is also well made, though I think I would have been happier if I hadn't seen it.

Life Blood DVD Movie

2010-10-21T14:03:00.002-04:00

This film is fantastic. God, gore, guns and lesbians. What more could you ask for? Lovers Rhea and Brooke are attending a New Years Eve party in 1969. After a rather vicious and unpleasant incident occurs, the two girls flee. On the way however they have a run in with god. 40 years later the girls awake as Vampire avengers. And when the two girls reach the Murder World gas station all hell breaks loose. What follows is sexy, gory and funny. The death scenes while not very original have some quality special FX. Most of the film's humour is provided by the legend that is Charles Napier. He brings his brilliant dry wit to the character of Sherriff Tillman. The repartee between him and Danny Woodburn is hilarious. But I'm going to honest; this film is all about the talented and smoking hot Sophie Monk. No one can play a bad girl quite like her. She oozes sex but also manages to be very menacing at the same time. She gets to have the most fun in this film. And clearly shows what a fine actress she is. All in all I thought this was a nice twist on the standard lesbian vampire narrative. I can candidly say that the scene with Sophie Monk and Anya Lahiri walking down the highway on a moonlit night is an image I will not soon forget. This film is not perfect by any means. and even though 80% of the action takes place in the gas station. It was just so much fun that at no point was I bored. Look out for a cameo from Halloweens Scout Taylor-Compton and for the amusing fake TV programme chicks chase chickens.

The Evil Dead - Blu-ray Movie Review

2010-10-19T15:39:00.002-04:00

In the fall of 1979, Sam Raimi and his merry band headed into the woods of rural Tennessee to make a movie. They emerged with a roller coaster of a film packed with shocks, gore, and wild humor, a film that remains a benchmark for the genre. Ash (cult favorite Bruce Campbell) and four friends arrive at a backwoods cabin for a vacation, where they find a tape recorder containing incantations from an ancient book of the dead. When they play the tape, evil forces are unleashed, and one by one the friends are possessed. Wouldn't you know it, the only way to kill a "deadite" is by total bodily dismemberment, and soon the blood starts to fly. Raimi injects tremendous energy into this simple plot, using the claustrophobic set, disorienting camera angles, and even the graininess of the film stock itself to create an atmosphere of dread, punctuated by a relentless series of jump-out-of-your-seat shocks. The Evil Dead lacks the more highly developed sense of the absurd that distinguish later entries in the series--Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness--but it is still much more than a gore movie. It marks the appearance of one of the most original and visually exciting directors of his generation, and it stands as a monument to the triumph of imagination over budget.

The Call of Cthulhu: The Celebrated Story by H.P. Lovecraft

2010-10-14T14:31:00.000-04:00

Written in 1926, just before the advent of "talking" pictures, The Call of Cthulhu is one of the most famous and influential tales of H.P. Lovecraft, the father of gothic horror. Now the story is brought richly to life in the style of a classic 1920s silent movie, with a haunting original symphonic score. Using the "Mythoscope" process - a mix of modern and vintage techniques, the HPLHS has worked to create the most authentic and faithful screen adaptation of a Lovecraft story yet attempted. From the cultists of the Louisana bayous to the man-eating non-euclidean geometry of R'lyeh, the HPLHS brings Cthulhu to the screen as it was meant to be seen. Eighteen months of production and a cast of more than 50 actors went into making this film a period spectacle that must seen to be believed. The DVD includes The Call of Cthulhu (47 minutes, black and white), the high-fidelity and "Mythophonic" soundtracks, a 25 minute "making-of" documentary featurette, two slide shows, deleted footage, a prop PDF of the Sydney Bulletin and more. To appeal to Lovecraft fans throughout across the globe, this DVD provides intertitles in 24 languages including: Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Euskera, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, Luxmbourgish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Welsh. These aren't just subtitles either - they are the real title cards rendered tastefully in each language. If you thought the story was scary before, wait until you see it in Welsh!

Torso - DVD Movie

2010-10-13T11:17:00.000-04:00

There's a killer on the loose who's murdering and mutilating beautiful young college girls, and there's no shortage of suspects. Four comely coeds decide to escape the madness by vacationing in an isolated country villa, but the maniac has his eye on them--one of them suspects his identity--and drops in for a homicidal holiday. With a title like Torso you know what you're getting, but despite the high body count and the suggestion of dismemberment, most of the gore in this Italian giallo is offscreen... with a few exceptions (an icky eye gouging stands out). Director Sergio Martino is no Dario Argento and the film is blunt, direct, and vicious, as can be seen when the killer disposes of a witness by ramming his skull into a brick wall with his car, not once but twice (with the appropriate close-up). The killer, who hides behind a ratty ski mask and strangles his targets with a florid scarf, is haunted by some obscure childhood memory involving a porcelain doll and a traumatizing accident. He straddles two clichés, the Norman Bates-variety psychos and the hooded, zombielike automatons of Halloween and Friday the 13th. It doesn't make much sense, but like most slasher films, it's really about suspense, spectacle, and a body count, and Martino doesn't disappoint. To restore the film, Anchor Bay has included a few brief scenes in Italian with English subtitles.

Frozen - Blu-Ray Movie

2010-10-12T12:49:00.000-04:00

Snow-sport enthusiasts, take note: Adam Green's unsettling thriller Frozen suggests that abiding by the rules and regulations of your local ski resort might not only be polite, but essential to your health. Green's hapless heroes--nice guy Dan (Kevin Zegers, Transamerica), his best pal Lynch (Shawn Ashmore, the X-Men franchise), and Dan's new girlfriend Parker (newcomer Emma Bell)--decided to cut a few corners in pursuit of more time on the slopes. Miscommunication with the staff results in the trio getting stuck on a lift some 60 feet in the air just moments before the resort closes for a three-day weekend. The hope for rescue soon dwindles, and the trio faces the decision to either endure the elements or somehow make their way to the ground without injury. All of the gruesome possibilities inherent to the situation--from frostbite and broken limbs to a pack of voracious wolves--are explored in unpleasant detail, but what sets Frozen apart from a simple splatterfest is the quality of the performances, especially Bell, who rises above her character's initial superficiality to present a wholly sympathetic character. Fans of Green's first film, the abysmal slasher tribute Hatchet, might find the pacing glacial (ahem), but those who admired his sophomore effort, the psychological thriller Spiral, will appreciate his attention to pacing and suspense, which puts Frozen on par with the very similar Open Water. The DVD includes commentary by Green and his stars, along with deleted scenes and a wealth of behind-the-scenes featurettes focusing on conception of the project, as well as the crew's struggles with the genuinely contentious weather at the Utah filming location.

Horror of Dracula - DVD Movie

2010-10-07T08:31:00.000-04:00

After Hammer Studios' tremendous success with The Curse of Frankenstein, they struck a deal to adapt Universal's catalog of classics and set their sights first on Dracula. Christopher Lee removes the monstrous makeup from the earlier film and makes his entrance as an elegant, confident, altogether seductive Dracula, a frightening figure of flashing eyes and erotic allure. Peter Cushing, with his hawklike profile and piercing eyes, turns his rationalist intensity to Van Helsing: man of science as crusading vampire hunter. Director Terence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster make a few changes to Bram Stoker's tale; gone are Renfield, Transylvania, howling wolves, and transformations into bats. The Count is an old-world aristocrat firmly ensconced in a castle in England and Van Helsing a crusading vampire hunter who plots his demise with an elaborate plan. This is the first film to really mine the erotic appeal of vampires: Dracula seduces Mina and Lucy like a devil tempting good to the dark side through sex--more suggestive than explicit, but daring for 1958. Lee is electric as the ferocious Count, despite his limited screen time, and Cushing turns Van Helsing into a virtual swashbuckler of a hero, leaping and diving through the climax like an aging action hero. Cushing reprises his role in The Brides of Dracula, while Lee absented himself from the series until 1966's Dracula: Prince of Darkness.

The Wolfman 2010 - DVD Movie

2010-10-06T11:16:00.002-04:00

The mist rising over the moors feels right, and so does the slant of moonlight coming over a Victorian village-scape. And if the moon is full, this must be The Wolfman, Universal's 2010 attempt to revive one of the crown jewels in its deservedly legendary horror stable. Benicio Del Toro takes on the old Lon Chaney Jr. role of Lawrence Talbot, an American visitor to his ancestral home in England. Talbot's brother has recently been torn to bits by a beast in the forest, leaving behind a grieving fiancée (Emily Blunt) and a not-visibly-grieving father (Anthony Hopkins). This central situation seems drained of blood even before the full-moon transfigurations begin to bloom, and Del Toro's Talbot--an actor by trade, which raises interesting possibilities for a story of a man divided by different personalities--is mystifyingly blank. The intriguing casting of Del Toro (what an opportunity for a cool werewolf!) comes to naught as Talbot seems to languish on the periphery of his own story. Hugo Weaving tries to generate some interest as the police inspector on the case, but he too is defeated by the combination of mechanical storytelling and bland computer-generated werewolves. The script skips from one exposition scene to the next, but nothing registers long enough to create character, tension, or the slimmest desire to see what happens in the next scene. Every once in a while director Joe Johnston (Jumanji) finds a grand staircase or CGI fog that conjures up the atmosphere of the old Universal horror classics, but otherwise this is a clueless affair--not as bad as Van Helsing, but flat-out dull. The movie can't even find a way to get the old Gypsy lady (Geraldine Chaplin stepping into Maria Ouspenskaya's tiny shoes) to deliver a proper recitation of screenwriter Curt Siodmak's great "Even a man who is pure in heart" doggerel from the 1941 film. Instead, it's thrown away in a voice-over at the beginning--one hairy way to start the movie.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage - DVD Movie

2010-10-05T13:57:00.000-04:00

Dario Argento takes sole writing credit for his directorial debut but The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is actually an unofficial adaptation of Fredric Brown's novel The Screaming Mimi. Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante), an American novelist in Italy, is a helpless spectator to a vicious attack in an art gallery. Initially a suspect, Sam becomes the key witness to the attempted murder, the fourth in a month but the first survived by the victim. Something about the attack haunts him and so he launches his own investigation as the murders continue, the killer finally turning on Sam. Argento exhibits a sure hand in his first film, creating an easy to follow thriller spiced with tightly choreographed murder scenes and leavened with character humor (his colorful cast includes a genial stuttering pimp and an eccentric artist who lives in a house with no doors). But it's his gift for arresting images and cinematic inventiveness that gives this thriller its edge, from the opening murder where Sam impotently watches the bleeding victim while trapped in a veritable glass cage to the killer's naked eye peering through a peephole at Sam's girlfriend (Suzy Kendall) as she hysterically searches for an escape from the killer's pounding attempts to break into her apartment. Future Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro shot the film and Ennio Morricone provides an unusual, often eerie score arranged for human voices. While less baroque than Argento's later work, it's a fine first film and a standout in the giallo genre

Requiem for a Dream - Movie

2010-10-01T15:14:00.000-04:00

Synopsis
Darren Aronofsky follows up his acclaimed debut Pi with this gritty emotionally charged film set amidst the abandoned beaches and faded glory of Coney Island, Brooklyn. Based upon the novel by celebrated author Hubert Selby Jr., the story intricately links the lives of a lonely widowed mother (Academy Award Winner Ellen Burstyn), her son Harry (Jared Leto), his beautiful girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) and his best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is a hypnotic tale of four human beings each pursuing their vision of happiness. Even as everything begins to fall apart, they refuse to let go, plummeting with their dreams into a nightmarish gut-wrenching freefall.

Review
Hubert Selby Jr.'s elegiac and mesmerizing novel about four addicts of different varieties appeared in 1978 and ranked alongside Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (also made into a superior film) as one of his best books. Darren ("Pi") Aronofsky was himself a Selby fan and eventually persuaded the Thousand Arts production company to finance his $5M film of the novel.

The resulting film is as horrific and fascinating as anything ever put on a screen. The plot isn't complicated: Junkie Harry (a nearly unrecognizeable Jared Leto) takes to pawning his mother's TV set for heroin. His buddy Tyrone (Marlon Wayans, in a performance that makes his turn in "Scary Movie" and other junk look like total red herrings) hatches a plan with him to score for a pound of pure and put them on the fast track to riches. Harry's girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) has vague plans of opening a boutique with her share of the gains. And Harry's mother (a truly amazing Ellen Burstyn) is obsessed with appearing on her favorite TV show.

Movies like this are not about plotting but emotion. We know there is no happy ending possible here; what matters is not what happens but how and to what extent. The final 20 minutes -- which have been written about endlessly elsewhere -- are a masterpiece of Soviet-style intercutting and gradually mounting, excruciating tension that does not even end with the release of death, but with the promise of unending, ongoing pain.

This isn't a pretty movie. This isn't a movie for your mother (well, I guess that depends on the family), or a movie for the whole family. This is a movie about despair and destroyed dreams. In short, this is a movie about something -- and it tells its story with such fierce style and power that it almost makes issues of taste or subject matter irrelevant. You may not like the film -- and there are many who don't -- but you can't deny its power, or the skill involved in making it.

Dark Night Of The Scarecrow - DVD Movie

2010-09-30T15:51:00.003-04:00

When young Marylee Williams (Tonya Crowe) is found viciously mauled, all hell breaks loose in her small rural town. Officious postmaster Otis P. Hazelrigg (Charles Durning) leads a gang of bigots in pursuit of the suspect: her mentally challenged friend Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake). Finding him hiding inside a scarecrow, they exact brutal mob "justice"...only to discover a tragic mistake! Now a strange apparition stalks the land seeking each of them out, as the legend of the Scarecrow begins. Bonus Features: Director & Writer Commentary, Original World Premiere Trailer. Product Specs: DVD9; Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround; 96 minutes; Color; 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio; MPAA NR; Year 1981

Review: So who says you need a huge budget, a lot of computer generated special effects, and super big names to make an excellent horror film?

I saw this originally back when it first aired on TV and have never forgotten it. The screenplay is superb; I believe even Stephen King could not have done any better. One is kept wondering throughout the film if a vengeful human--District Attorney, Bubba's mother, the little girl--might be exacting the justice that was denied in the courtroom. The ending shot is almost poetic in both its simplicity and what it confides to us. The director halts the film at that touching, if horrific moment, while the little girl's voice continues speaking to the Scarecrow as the credits roll. It doesn't get any better then this.

I have always found scarecrows to be unsettling at the least and a frightening parody of man at best. Curiously, its origins actually stem back into ancient pagan religions. Scarecrows actually do not scare crows, or other birds for that matter, due to the fact that they never move (except in the movies) and the animals become used to their presence. In reality, they represent the ancient God of Fertility, and were put in fields as a supplication to this god for a bountiful harvest. Few people today realize that when they put up this effigy, they are really worshiping an ancient deity. Which, in my opinion, fits in nicely with the theme of supernatural revenge in this movie.

There is also an unsettling thread throughout this movie and others like it (Dark Secret of Harvest Home comes to mind) of just what might be occurring in these small and isolated communities. Seemingly almost out of touch with the modern world, Dark Night of the Scarecrow reminds us that anything is possible within an insular town, even murder and revenge.

This is a classic that needs to be digitally re-mastered onto DVD, if someone hasn't thought of it already. It is a refreshing change from the big blockbusters of today, and shows that imagination coupled with an outwardly innocent setting can produce a tale of pure horror. Horror, yes, but with an ending that is curiously satisfying. I could not think of a better way to end this grim little fairy tale from the depths of darkness.

Sorority Row | Blu-ray | DVD | Movie

2010-04-08T11:14:00.000-04:00

"Now let's go wash the blood off in the lake and get back to the party." Ah, the girls of Theta Pi are up to something naughty again. And as that crucially timed line of dialogue suggests, Sorority Row takes its durable horror-movie concept and tweaks it with a bit of Diablo Cody-era snark. The outline of the story is taken from Mark Rosman's 1983 slashfest The House on Sorority Row: an elaborate prank goes extremely wrong, and the resulting accidental death triggers a cover-up that will have dire consequences for those involved. This update gets off to a flashy start, with funny lines and a genuinely horrifying prank sequence. It's only when the action advances a few months into the future, and the time comes for the sorority sisters to pay the piper, that the movie devolves into a disappointingly standard slasher rhythm. The sisters include in their ranks Briana Evigan, Leah Pipes, and Rumer Willis (daughter of Bruce and Demi), all of whom have taken the code of Theta Pi solidarity a little too seriously. Of course, you have to suspect something is tainted when the Theta Pi housemother is played by Carrie Fisher. The grisly deaths, many of which involve a souped-up tire iron, are certainly true to the slasher-movie spirit of the 1980s, even if Sorority Row has snappier dialogue than those movies could have dreamed of.

Night of the Comet - DVD Movie Review

2010-03-16T15:44:00.000-04:00

A sleeper at the time of its release in 1984, Thom Eberhardt's Night of the Comet has built a small cadre of fans thanks to its breezy performances and blend of comedy and tongue-in-cheek science fiction. Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney are thoroughly likable as a pair of San Fernando Valley sisters who find themselves completely alone after the arrival of Halley's Comet reduces their affluent community--and most of Los Angeles--to dust. Their subsequent nonstop shopping spree is soon interrupted by predatory zombies, as well as a sinister scientific cabal (led by cult favorites Mary Woronov and Geoffrey Lewis) with designs on the girls. Stewart and Maroney are terrifically game as the heroines (especially Maroney, whose flair for bubbly comedy was never given another chance on screen), and Robert (Star Trek: Voyager) Beltran is also on hand as a fellow survivor and romantic lead. Fun for '80s enthusiasts and sci-fi fiends who don't mind a little fizz in their end-of-the-world scenarios.

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant Blu-Ray Movie Review

2010-03-05T14:12:00.000-05:00

Adapted from Darren O'Shaughnessy's book series the Saga of Darren Shan, Cirque du Freak: A Vampire's Assistant is an endearingly goofy teen-vampire tale reminiscent of The Goonies or Lost Boys. Like those kids' horror classics, Cirque du Freak is a coming-of-age tale in which maturity is hastened by horrific discoveries of alternate realms. Best friends Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) and Steve (Josh Hutcherson) embark on a life-changing career path as monster prodigies after attending a taboo freak show starring various mutants and Madame Octa, a fluffy, neon orange, Muppetlike spider that Darren is irrevocably compelled to kidnap. Darren's petty theft results in the boys' introductions into the dualistic realm of good vampires, including the paternal Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly), and less-generous bloodsuckers such as Murlaugh (Ray Stevenson) and his Vampaneze family. Part of the fun is in learning how vampires are defined in this world; for example, they can't turn into bats but they have magic spit. The film's additional appeal is in its clever teen-vampire cultural nods, such as when Darren plays his Gameboy inside his coffin. The actual circus, too, offers a wide array of fun, spooky characters, such as ringleader Mr. Tall (Ken Watanabe) and Darren's scaly buddy Snakeboy (Patrick Fugit). Cirque du Freak: A Vampire's Assistant has tough moments, too, once the boys realize they can't look back. These moments transform Cirque du Freak: A Vampire's Assistant into a film parents may even be charmed by.

In The Mouth of Madness DVD Movie Review

2010-01-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

The mind-bending worlds of author H.P. Lovecraft have long interested horror directors, but the films have rarely successfully captured his nightmarish mix of madness and mythology. John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness is not directly based on Lovecraft's work, but screenwriter Michael De Luca draws his inspiration from Lovecraft's Cthulu mythology and then adds his own ingenious twists. John Trent (Sam Neill), an insurance investigator recently fitted for a straightjacket, tells his story to a psychiatrist. Hired to track down the missing pop-horror phenomena Sutter Cane, a Stephen King-like author whose fans are literally made for his books, Trent finds the supposedly fictional Hobb's End. He watches the town collapse into madness, murder, and monstrous transformations: the fantastic horrors of Cane's novels played out in front of his eyes. "Reality isn't what it used to be," deadpans one zombielike townsperson. In fact, it is how Cane writes it--but is he Devil, dark oracle, or simply a preacher in the service of an evil that grows stronger with every soul his books convert? The script never quite gets a grip on the blurry relationship between fact and fiction, but those details fade in the face of Carpenter's demented imagery, shiver-inducing twists, and dark wit. It's more eerie mind game than straight-out horror, a portrait of a world gone mad, and Carpenter relishes every hallucinatory moment.

Night of the Creeps - Blu-Ray Review

2010-01-15T10:46:00.001-05:00

Night of the Creeps, Fred (The Monster Squad) Dekker's spoof/tribute to '50s-era horror and science fiction, died an unheralded death at the box office back in the slasher-centric '80s, but it developed a passionate cult following in the ensuing decades; aficionados and first-timers alike will be thrilled with this DVD release, which underscores the film's loopy charms with a wealth of fun supplemental features. The premise is prime Creature Feature material--in 1959 an alien experiment containing vile, sluglike organisms that possess their hosts crashes to Earth, where one of the slugs takes over a young Lover's Lane habitué; flash-forward to 1986, when hapless nerds Jason Lively (brother of Gossip Girl's Blake Lively) and Steve Marshall discover the corpse, cryogenically frozen in their college lab, and accidentally free it as part of a prank. The body unleashes its extraterrestrial passenger, which proceeds to infect the student population at a breakneck pace. Dekker juggles his humor and horror with a fair amount of skill, though for every inspired moment, there's a groaner or two (it was the '80s, after all); the presence of genre vet Tom Atkins (The Fog, the 2009 My Bloody Valentine) lends a proper degree of grit. Though not perfect, Night of the Creeps was--and remains--a refreshingly quirky alternative to the franchise-heavy studio horror of the decade.

As a reward for the cadre of fans who have been waiting so long for Creeps to reach the DVD market, the director's-cut DVD is bursting at the seams with extras devoted to the film's creation and legacy. Two commentary tracks--one with Dekker, the other with Lively, Marshall, Atkins, and costar Jill Whitlow--provide insight into both the technical and the production sides of the film; the latter is particularly notable for the cast's first viewing of the movie's original, less-gimmicky (and preferable) ending, also included here. Dekker and the cast reunite for an impressive, four-part making-of featurette, which includes interviews with makeup creators David B. Miller, Howard Berger, and Robert Kurtzman and producer Charles Gordon. Atkins also gets his own spotlight extra, which profiles his long and prolific career both in and out of the horror genre; the disc is rounded out with seven deleted scenes, the original trailer, and a text-only trivia track that can be played along with the feature itself.

Paranormal Activity Blu Ray Review

2010-01-14T09:05:00.000-05:00

Like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity is an impressive and harrowing indie chiller that derives much of its terror--and there is quite a bit of that in its brief running time--by playing on the most basic of human fears: that which cannot be seen. Though one might assume that the point-of-view aesthetic had been worn out thanks to Cloverfield and Quarantine (and, lest one forgets, Blair Witch), Paranormal makes excellent use of the single-camera technique, which helps to not only preserve the film's central conceit--a new-minted couple records the increasingly threatening supernatural phenomena that have invaded their home on a camcorder--but underscore the realism needed to drive home the low-fi (if completely persuasive) special effects. The approach is also crucial to the film's suspense, which unfolds in long, largely broken takes to nerve-rattling effect. Not every horror fan--or moviegoer--will fall for the film's spook-show approach. Those that found Blair Witch's less-is-more approach aggravating will feel the same way about Paranormal, but the sleight of hand exhibited by first-time director Oren Peli, and assisted by his two leads, relative newcomers Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, should provide adventurous viewers with fresher and stronger scares than anything from Hollywood in recent years.

Halloween 2 Blu-Ray Review

2010-01-13T09:49:00.002-05:00

Rocker turned writer-director Rob Zombie returns to the horror field with this visually ambitious and aggressively brutal follow-up to his 2007 reinvention of John Carpenter’s seminal slasher Halloween. The 1981 sequel to the Carpenter film is completely ignored here (and for good reason) in favor of an extension of the central focus of Zombie’s Halloween, and all of his films, for that matter: the corruption at the heart of the nuclear family. Here, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor Compton) is attempting to heal the psychic wounds from her previous encounter with brother Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) by bonding with Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif, a pleasure to watch as always) and his daughter Anne (Danielle Harris, herself a vet from the original run of Halloween sequels). Her previous surrogate father, Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) has forsaken his connection to Laurie by exploiting his connection to Michael with a tell-all book; meanwhile, Michael himself roams the lonely outskirts of Haddonfield, driven by visions of his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) and a single-minded urge to bond with his sister at any cost.

Aesthetically, H2 is striking, thanks largely to the ashen color scheme by cinematographer Brandon Trost (Crank 2: High Voltage), which underscores the doom-laded spiral track each of the main characters seem to travel in the film. And Zombie is to be commended for venturing outside of his comfort zone--the grimy, pop-culture ironic, white trash environment his characters frequently inhabit--with the scenes between Michael and his mother. But again, his ambitions don’t meet with his abilities--Moon looks impressive, but her apocalyptic mutterings ring more silly than spectral, especially when she’s forced to play opposite an enormous pale horse (insert heavy-handed Biblical imagery here). Most fans will find these moments more tedious than inspired, and a distraction from the murders, which retain Zombie’s preference for mayhem. He succeeds in this department, but if the end result is a menu of ugly killings, the point of revamping the Halloween franchise is somewhat moot, since the threadbare follow-ups to the Carpenter original already achieved that goal. Zombie’s knack for offbeat casting remains his most inspired talent: Haddonfield is filled with cult icons like Caroline Williams (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Margot Kidder, and Daniel Roebuck, who jostle for space with rough-hewn character players like Duane Whitaker, Mark Boone Junior, and Dayton Callie (Deadwood) and left-field cameos by Howard Hesseman and “Weird Al” Yankovic.

Jennifer's Body Blu Ray Review

2010-01-12T15:50:00.003-05:00

I wasn't expecting much out of this film; I bought it purely to see...you know...Jennifer's body...and maybe some blood and guts! On that level, the movie delivers pretty well; Megan Fox is hot, there is quite a bit of gore, and the movie has some really perverse parts too!

Though the story and characters seem a bit average, they have nuances and elements of their own that distinguishes the film as a unique horror/comedy hybrid. It ultimately provides an entertaining (and somewhat poignant) reflection of high-school life. Acting and writing are decent. The movie is well-filmed with solid photography. The movie has some interesting transitions and editing effects that make it seem hip, but it is never over-done. Production design features good sets, props, and costumes. Music is alright.

This disc does have decent quality. The video looks very clean, sharp, and detailed, with superb color and contrast. Film grain is intact and unobtrusive. Sound quality is good (5.1 DTS-HD). Extras include a commentaries, deleted scenes, some featurettes, a gag reel, and a digital copy. This disc includes both the theatrical and unrated cuts of the movie (don't know what the difference is).

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans Movie Trailer

2009-06-11T21:09:00.003-04:00

Dead Snow Movie Trailer

2009-06-11T21:07:00.001-04:00

The Bad Seed DVD Movie Review

2009-05-21T10:35:00.002-04:00

The Bad Seed... "A basket full of kisses for a basket full of hugs." Those are chilling words, at least when uttered by that ice princess, Patty McCormack. As Rhoda Penmark, she is as pretty as a porcelain doll but drips venom with each curtsey and polite response. Little Rhoda's mother is terrified she has passed on her own mother's corruption. Oops, turns out she's right. This passes the test of time, as it still gets under your skin. The character development is tight and the story very involving. Not even Freddy Krueger had the ability to scare like tiny McCormack, looking just like a little adult while she literally beats out the competition for a penmanship award. However, director Mervyn LeRoy's hands were tied over the ending, which was changed from the source material--Maxwell Anderson's hit Broadway play. A supposedly more appropriate, and moral, ending was demanded by the studio. This was remade (badly) in 1985.

Cube DVD Movie Review

2009-05-01T10:48:00.003-04:00

Cube... If Clive Barker had written an episode of The Twilight Zone, it might have looked something like Cube. A handful of strangers wake up inside a bizarre maze, having been spirited there during the night. They quickly learn that they have to navigate their way through a series of chambers if they have any hope of escape, but the problem is that there are lethal traps awaiting if they choose their route unwisely. Having established some imaginative and grisly punishments in store for the hostages, cowriter and director Vincenzo Natali turns his attention to the characters, for whom being trapped amplifies their best and worst qualities. The film is, in fact, similar to a famous episode of Rod Serling's old television series, though Natali's explanation for why these poor people are being put through hell is a lot closer to the spirit of The X-Files. Cube has some solid moments of suspense and drama, and the sets are appropriately striking: one is tempted to believe at first the characters are lost inside a computer chip.

Them DVD Movie Review

2009-04-14T08:31:00.003-04:00

Them... That ol' cinematic devil the A-bomb has spawned a colony of giant murderous ants bent on destroying humanity in this, the seminal big bug movie (an obvious and oft-credited influence for Alien among countless others). The special effects may be dated, but this brilliantly rational-sounding film has held up wonderfully in all other regards, including some starkly effective location work in the high Arizona desert, a genuinely inspired sound design guaranteed to bring on the creepy-crawlies, and an unexpectedly dry sense of humor (mainly personified by Grade-A egghead scientist Edmund Gwenn). This is essential viewing for all those who consider themselves science fiction or horror fans. Heroic hardcase James Arness previously played for the other team as the titular character in The Thing from Another World.

The Hunger DVD Movie Review

2009-04-08T08:35:00.002-04:00

The Hunger... Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie are rich, handsome, and oh-so stylish as inhabitants of the night. Wearing sleek outfits and classy sun shades, they haunt rock 'n roll clubs on the stalk for young blood, whom they bring back home to their incredibly lush mansion for a late-night break.

Being a vampire never looked more horny, but there is a price : Bowie starts to age so fast he wrinkles up in the waiting room of a doctor's ( Susan Sarandon ) office. Tony Scott's ( Ridley's bro ) directorial debut, changed from the Whitley Strieber novel, revises the vampire parable with Egyptian inflections and removes all references to garlic and crosses and wooden stakes--these parasites can even walk around in the daylight--but the ties between blood and sex are as robust as ever.

Scott's background as a prize winning commercial director is clear in each luxuriously textured frame and his densely interwoven revising, but the moody atmosphere comes at the cost of dramatic pressure.

At times the film is so languid it becomes mired in its misty, impeccably designed visible style. In its own way, The Hunger is the ideal vampire film for the '80s, all poise and angle and surface beauty. Sarandon talks truthfully about the film in the documentary The Celluloid Closet.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans DVD Movie Review

2009-04-07T11:29:00.002-04:00

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans... This prequel to Len Wiseman’s Underworld and Underworld: Evolution is distinctively different, especially minus the nimble vampire warrior star, Selene (Kate Beckinsale). Underworld: Rise of the Lycans takes its cues from the vampire/werewolf battles that occur in the other films, but director Patrick Tatopoulos focuses here on the young werewolf Lucian's (Michael Sheen) rise to leadership. Rise of the Lycans is set mostly within the walls of vampire lord Viktor’s (Bill Nighy) castle, so the film’s silver, black, and blue palette reflects a world happening under moonlight. From the outset, when Viktor brings Lucian, the first werewolf, into the world, this villainous bloodsucker’s daughter, Sonja (Rhona Mitra), is smitten with Lucian’s hairy appearance and instinctual intelligence. As years pass, Lucian grows tired of watching his race suffer slavery and imprisonment, and recruits a human named Raze (Kevin Grevioux) to assist rebellion. This archetypal plot is not so riveting, and what carries Underworld: Rise of the Lycans are the battle scenes between vampires and werewolves, which are excitingly fast-paced and brutal. The whole film adopts a medieval battlefield aesthetic that carries an otherwise clichéd story about illicit love and freedom fighting. Some characters, like the traitor vampire Tannis (Steven Mackintosh), also intrigues throughout, as one guesses who he will ally with. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans may not be the finest film in the werewolf and vampire archives independently, but its mixed monstrosity makes it unique and entertaining, especially on a big screen.

I Spit On Your Grave DVD Movie Review

2009-04-02T10:21:00.003-04:00

I Spit On Your Grave... Writer-director Meir Zarchi's controversial story of rape and revenge has lost none of its ability to shock viewers since it first gained notoriety in the late '70s. Camille Keaton (grand-niece of Buster Keaton and, later, Zarchi's wife) stars as a young woman who is terrorized and then brutally assaulted by four men while on vacation. After slowly pulling herself together, she methodically tracks down and butchers each of the perpetrators. Zarchi's film has been consistently accused of celebrating violence against women, and while the rape scenes are graphic, they also lack the voyeuristic qualities that earmark other similarly plotted exploitation films. If anything, Zarchi is guilty of awkward scripting; the dialogue is leaden, and Keaton's transformation from victim to avenger is too swift. But to label him a pornographer is wrong, and while the film is challenging--perhaps more than most audiences can bear--its depiction of the psychology of violence is undeniably powerful.

The Thing DVD Movie Review

2009-03-27T09:30:00.002-04:00

The Thing... Director John Carpenter and special makeup effects master Rob Bottin teamed up for this 1982 remake of the 1951 science fiction classic The Thing from Another World, and the result is a mixed blessing. It's got moments of highly effective terror and spine-tingling suspense, but it's mostly a showcase for some of the goriest and most horrifically grotesque makeup effects ever created for a movie. With such highlights as a dog that splits open and blossoms into something indescribably gruesome, this is the kind of movie for die-hard horror fans and anyone who slows down to stare at fatal traffic accidents. On those terms, however, it's hard not to be impressed by the movie's wild and wacky freak show. It all begins when scientists at an arctic research station discover an alien spacecraft under the thick ice, and thaw out the alien body found aboard. What they don't know is that the alien can assume any human form, and before long the scientists can't tell who's real and who's a deadly alien threat. Kurt Russell leads the battle against the terrifying intruder, and the supporting cast includes Richard Masur, Richard Dysart, Donald Moffat, and Wilford Brimley. They're all playing standard characters who are neglected by the mechanistic screenplay (based on the classic sci-fi story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell), but Carpenter's emphasis is clearly on the gross-out effects and escalating tension. If you've got the stomach for it (and let's face it, there's a big audience for eerie gore), this is a thrill ride you won't want to miss.

His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th

2009-03-24T10:55:00.002-04:00

"Jason has no expiration date," as someone observes in the exhaustive His Name was Jason, a touch-all-the-bases approach to chronicling horror's blankest killer. Yep, it's all too true. Timed to mark the 30th anniversary of the Friday the 13th franchise, but probably more to serve as publicity for the 2009 remake, His Name was Jason is a two-disc set containing the 90-minute title doc plus a bevy of shorter, themed extras. Jason gives a quick run-through of all the Friday the 13th installments, filled out with detailed analysis of Jason as a cultural phenomenon and copious memories from the various casts and crew. (The better-known actors who have passed through the series--namely Kevin Bacon, Corey Feldman, and Crispin Glover--aren't around for interviews.) Special-effects gore maestro Tom Savini's wry delivery guides us through the story, with a few newly-staged murders along the way. Extensive clips are used to illustrate the grisly single-mindedness of Jason's killing, and various directors, including franchise guru Sean S. Cunningham, weigh in on the heaviness of guiding the various episodes. It all seems surreally weird, in the light of the movies' general lousiness and the trashy elevation of the empty-vessel killer to icon status. The 90-minute documentary is just the beginning, it turns out: fans can delve deep into the nuances of life (and death) at Crystal Lake. A 45-minute featurette on the actors who played Jason fills out disc one, and a plethora of other shorts (most of them culled from the same interview sessions, this time without the supporting clips) crowd disc two. There's another hour and 20 minutes of stories from directors, and 30 minutes of screenwriter anecdotes. "Dragged from the Lake" gives light to some amusing discrepancies in the series, as well as detailing actress Adrienne King's horrifying experience with a stalker. Fourteen minutes of fan films give parodistic views of the Jason experience, and "Friday the 13th in 4 minutes" gives a tongue-in-cheek shorthand account of the entire saga. Director Joseph Zito and actor Erich Anderson re-visit the set of The Final Chapter, and actress Gloria Charles takes a tour of the deadly barn from Part 3. Shorter extras include a 5-minute Crystal Lake survival guide (i.e., interviewees reciting the worst mistakes you can make while in proximity to Jason), a quick trip to a Comic-Con, and a tour of Universal Studio's Friday the 13th horror house. Things round off with a funny bogus ad for the law offices of a character from Part 3, Shelly Finkelstein, the kid that introduced the hockey mask into the series. It's a lot of effort for a low point in horror history.

They Live DVD Movie Review

2009-03-16T21:41:00.002-04:00

They Live... An economic crisis brings unemployed Nada (Roddy Piper) to L.A. in search of work. What he finds instead is that the ruling elite of the world are aliens in disguise, their aim being to keep humans in a state of mindless consumerism. His discovery comes when he dons a pair of special sunglasses made by a resistance group and sees for the first time reality unadorned. Billboards, store signs, magazine covers--all bear subliminal messages to OBEY, to CONSUME, to have NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT. Money itself says THIS IS YOUR GOD. But worst of all, with these glasses you see which of us are really hideous, bug-eyed aliens. The conceptual breakthrough is hilarious while keeping its roots in darker matters. Although some fault the film for settling into its action plot, the ending has a great payoff. And the direction by John Carpenter is handled with superb workmanlike aplomb. One unforgettable set piece has Piper in a back-alley fistfight with a friend who won't put on the glasses that goes on and on, and just when you think it's over it goes another round. One of the most subversive films ever made in Hollywood, They Live was released on the eve of the 1988 elections. The first TV ads had two hideous alien politicians debating, then one accusing the other of being "No John Kennedy!"

Freddy vs. Jason DVD Movie Review

2009-03-13T11:16:00.002-04:00

Freddy vs Jason... After 11 years in development hell and screenplay drafts by 13 different writers, the long-awaited smackdown of Freddy vs. Jason finally arrives. After making their respective debuts in Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger, replacing long-time Jason performer Kane Hodder) and razor-gloved Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) square off in a slasher-franchise combo-deal that only their most devoted fans will appreciate; turns out this is a lightweight match in which nobody wins. It's an average entry in the histories of these horror icons, comparable to half of their previous sequels, and Bride of Chucky director Ronny Yu satisfies purists with plenty of gushing blood and mayhem when Freddy recruits Jason to slice 'n' dice the ill-fated teens who've forgotten Freddy's once-formidable reign of terror. While it logically connects the gruesome legacies of Nightmare's Elm Street and Friday's Camp Crystal Lake, this horror hybrid is shockingly uninspired. It briefly peaks when Freddy gives the unconscious Jason a dream-world pummeling, but their ultimate showdown's a draw. In the immortal words of Peggy Lee, is that all there is?

American Psycho DVD Movie Review

2009-03-12T09:00:00.003-04:00

American Psycho... The Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho, a dark, violent satire of the "me" culture of Ronald Reagan's 1980s, is certainly one of the most controversial books of the '90s, and that notoriety fueled its bestseller status. This smart, savvy adaptation by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) may be able to ride the crest of the notoriety; prior to the film's release, Harron fought a ratings battle (ironically, for depictions of sex rather than violence), but at the time the director stated, "We're rescuing [the book] from its own bad reputation." Harron and co-screenwriter Guinevere Turner (Go Fish) overcome many of the objections of Ellis's novel by keeping the most extreme violence offscreen (sometimes just barely), suggesting the reign of terror of yuppie killer Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) with splashes of blood and personal souvenirs. Bale is razor sharp as the blank corporate drone, a preening tiger in designer suits whose speaking voice is part salesman, part self-help guru, and completely artificial. Carrying himself with the poised confidence of a male model, he spends his days in a numbing world of status-symbol one-upmanship and soul-sapping small talk, but breaks out at night with smirking explosions of homicide, accomplished with the fastidious care of a hopeless obsessive. The film's approach to this mayhem is simultaneously shocking and discreet; even Bateman's outrageous naked charge with a chainsaw is most notable for the impossibly polished and gleaming instrument of death. Harron's film is a hilarious, cheerfully insidious hall of mirrors all pointed inward, slowly cracking as the portrait becomes increasingly grotesque and insane.

The Last House on the Left DVD Movie Review

2009-03-06T08:44:00.003-05:00

Last House on The Left... Future Nightmare creator and Scream weaver Wes Craven's film debut is a primitive little production that rises above its cut-rate production values and hazy, grainy patina via its grimly affecting portrait of human evil infiltrating a middle-class household. The story is adapted from Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, but the film has more in common with Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs as it charts the descent of a harmless married couple into methodical killers. A quartet of criminals--a distorted version of the nuclear family--kidnaps a pair of teenage girls and proceeds to ravage, rape, torture, and finally brutally murder them in the woods, unwittingly within walking distance of their rural home. The killers take refuge in the girls' own home, but when the parents discover just who they are and what they've done, they plot violent retribution.

Along with George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Craven helped redefine American horror with this debut--all three movies portray modern society crumbling into madness and horror. But, unlike his fellow directors, Craven gives his film an uncomfortable verisimilitude, setting it squarely in the heartland of modern America. While at times it's awkward and inconsistent, with distracting comic interludes, his handling of the brutal horror scenes is unsettling, and the death of the daughter is an unexpectedly quiet and lyrical moment.

Twilight DVD Movie Review

2009-03-03T08:27:00.002-05:00

Twilight... The big-screen adaptation of Twilight, Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire romance, is aimed squarely at its key demographic: teen girls whose idea of Prince Charming is a brooding, pale, undead teen who could kill you instantly at any moment. Such a prince is more fascinating than frightening to new girl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who moves to the rainy-gray town of Forks, Wash., to live with her dad (Billy Burke), the local sheriff who's puzzled by a series of "animal attacks." On her first day at school, Bella appears to (visibly) nauseate her lab partner, Edward (Robert Pattinson). Turns out the scent of her blood is this vampire's "brand of heroin," and his struggle not to kill her causes an irresistible pull toward her. Whether he's attracted for the normal reasons or because she smells especially sweet to him is vague in the book and even less clear on-screen; nonetheless, Bella falls hopelessly in love with Edward, which sets her on a dangerous path when a few nomad vampires show up in town, one particularly keen on tracking the human. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), Twilight is full of funny moments--not all of which are intentional--and the casting, from Stewart to Bella's self-absorbed friend Jessica (Anna Kendrick) is spot-on. The weakest link, unfortunately, is Pattinson. While he certainly looks the part, his Edward could have used an extra injection of testosterone (Pattinson, who is British, used James Dean as a model for his American accent). In scenes where he growls about the temptation to kill those who would harm Bella, or flitting around a forest warning her how dangerous he is, he comes off more like a whimpering puppy than a debonair monster. The good news is, his chemistry with Stewart (particularly in their big kissing scene) is palpable, which, let's face it, is really what matters to Twilight fans most.

Quarantine DVD Movie Review

2009-02-24T14:20:00.002-05:00

Quarantine... Based on the Spanish-made chiller [REC], Quarantine is an effective piece of scare machinery that derives most of its terror by viewing the action from the perspective of a cameraman covering a routine emergency call that blooms into a nightmare. Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) is a TV host who accompanies a firefighting unit on a disturbance call at a decrepit apartment building. Once inside, the group discovers that the tenants are infected with a disease that has turned them into ravenous cannibals--and that all possible exits have been sealed off by a government-issued quarantine. As POV horror goes, QuarantineThe Blair Witch Project with the super-sized shocks of Cloverfield (without its nausea-inducing camerawork), and it largely delivers in both departments. Characters are stock at best, and the relentless jumping and shrieking gets wearying before the end credits, but the cast is game, especially Carpenter (a world class screamer, as established in The Exorcism of Emily Rose) and Jay Hernandez as one of the firemen, and the technical aspects (including some gruesome gore) are top-notch.

Misery DVD Movie Review

2009-02-20T14:38:00.002-05:00

Misery... Based on the chilling bestseller by Stephen King, Misery was brought to the screen by director Rob Reiner as one of the most effective thrillers of the 1990s. From a brilliant adaptation by screenwriter William Goldman, Reiner turned King's cautionary tale of fame and idolatry into a mainstream masterpiece of escalating suspense, translating King's own experience with obsessive fans into a frightening tale of entrapment and psychotic behavior. Kathy Bates deservedly won an Academy Award for her performance as Annie Wilkes, an unbalanced devotee of romance novels written by Paul Sheldon (James Caan), whose books provide Annie with a much-needed escape from her pathetic life and her secret, violent past. After Annie rescues the injured Sheldon from a car accident, she seizes the opportunity to nurse her favorite writer back to health, but her tender loving care soon turns to terrorism as she demands that Sheldon write his latest novel according to her wish-fulfillment fantasies. From this point forward, Misery percolates to a boil as equal parts mystery, thriller, and cleverly dark comedy, with the helpless author pitched in deadly warfare against his number one fan. While Bates carefully modulates her role from doting kindness to sympathetic loneliness and finally to horrifying ferocity, Caan is equally superb as the celebrated author who must literally write for his life. It's essentially a two-actor film, but Richard Farnsworth and Lauren Bacall are excellent in supporting roles as they investigate the writer's mysterious disappearance. Frightening, funny, and totally irresistible, Misery was such a hit that some of Bates's dialogue entered the popular lexicon (particularly her nagging reference to Caan as "Mister Man"), and its nail-biting thrills remain timelessly intense.

Fear DVD Movie Review

2009-02-19T12:55:00.002-05:00

Fear... Two years before he let it all hang out in Boogie Nights, former rapper and Calvin Klein underwear model Mark Wahlberg played the psychotic boyfriend in this derivative but surprisingly effective thriller, aptly described by producer Brian Grazer as "Fatal Attraction for teens." Reese Witherspoon plays Nicole Walker, the unwitting teenager who gets the hots for David McCall (Wahlberg). David only seems like a nice guy until he gets upset by the girl's overly protective father. That's when hell breaks loose and the love-struck Romeo turns into a deadly threat who just won't go away. You'd think this kind of material would be beneath the talents of a fine director like James Foley (whose credits include At Close Range and Glengarry Glen Ross), but Foley gives the film just the right blend of style and tension to match Wahlberg's breakthrough role as an all-too-believable teenage maniac. You might feel silly afterwards, but don't be surprised if you find yourself getting caught up in the expertly manipulative suspense.

Saw V - Unrated Director's Cut DVD Movie Review

2009-02-18T10:34:00.003-05:00

Saw V... How do you keep a horror franchise going when your villain has been unquestionably and irrevocably killed off? That's a conundrum any number of genre series have tackled--to varying degrees of success--and the problem facing the sadistic Saw films in its latest entry, Saw V. The filmmakers' answer--faithful henchmen--is at first blush a savvy idea, as it allows the mayhem of original bad guy Jigsaw to continue unabated, despite the fact that he was dissected on a morgue slab in the previous film. Saw V extends the premise by having disgraced detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor from the previous two films) don the pig mask to unleash horrific tortures on another group of seemingly unconnected strangers. Scott Patterson (Aliens in America) also returns as Hoffman's Javert, a dogged fellow agent who escapes death in the fourth film and an ugly fate in this entry to continue his pursuit. All the elements that have made the Saw series popular with horror fans--the elaborate killing machines, the trompe l'oeil plotting, and the sociopathic judgments handed down by Jigsaw--are intact in Saw V, which is a positive for its most faithful followers, but a negative for just about everyone else. Saw V covers no new ground, expands no part of the mythology of the series and seems perfectly content to present a lifeless retread of Saw III and IV. It also suffers from the absence of Tobin Bell as Jigsaw, who despite his top billing, is glimpsed only in brief flashbacks. Bell, who could be unsettling even in the stillest moments, gave the series a gravity that kept its least plausible moments in check, and Mandylor, though game, simply cannot provide the same. What's left is dreary and relentlessly downbeat, and to make matters worse, ends on an open note that clearly indicates that a sixth film is in the works, no matter how obvious that the diabolical ingenuity of the original Saw has been worn to the bone by its sequels. Only diehard Saw fans need to sign up for this round of Jigsaw's games.

Dog Soldiers DVD Movie Review

2009-02-06T12:07:00.002-05:00

Dog Soldiers... This lean, efficient horror flick stands well above most bloated blockbusters. Dog Soldiers follows a military squad on a training mission in the Scottish wilds, where they run into a pack of werewolves. There's nothing fancy about the plot--the soldiers hole up in a farmhouse and desperately try to fend off the werewolves until dawn--but the script is full of smart dialogue and clever ideas, the direction is dynamic, and the performances (from Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee, Emma Cleasby, and Liam Cunningham, among a solid cast of relative unknowns) are strong and committed throughout. Dog Soldiers pays homage to Night of the Living Dead, Aliens, and The Evil Dead, among other films, but the references are woven into the fabric of the movie. An unpretentious, tension-inducing flick like this is a pleasant reminder that even crude special effects can be more evocative than expensive computer flashiness.

Blood Feast DVD Movie Review

2009-02-05T08:25:00.003-05:00

Blood Feast... Nothing so appalling in the annals of horror has ever been seen before. When Mrs. Fremont hires crackpot Egyptian cultist Fuad Ramses to cater a party for her daughter, Suzette, she commits the culinary catastrophe of the century! Fuad immediately prepares a Blood Feast made from the grisly body parts of nubile young women. The world's first (and most notorious) "gore" film, "Blood Feast" is both shocking and hilarious. It's also the first of the infamous "blood trilogy" from director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer Dave Friedman, who followed this perverse classic with the equally twisted "2000 Maniacs" and "Color Me Blood Red."

Cannibal Holocaust DVD Movie Review

2009-02-04T11:40:00.002-05:00

Cannibal Holocaust... Banned and heavily censored throughout the world, here is a film that surpasses its reputation as a shotgun blast to the senses. Cannibal Holocaust presents the 'found footage' of four documentary filmmakers who experience brutal death at the hands of a savage South American tribe of flesh-eaters. The footage is so intense so graphic and so unflinching in its realism that the director and producer of Cannibal Holocaust were arrested on its original release and the film was seized.

Widely acknowledged as the uncredited inspiration for 'THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT', Cannibal Holocaust is essential to every video store's retail and rental selection. This definitive version of Deodato's masterwork ranks with the most highly anticipated and sourght after DVD releases in the history of the medium. Not for the weak of stomach, the film's horrifying power cannot be denied.

Be forwarned: This is the one that goes ALL THE WAY!

Friday the 13th, Part 3 3-D DVD Movie Review

2009-01-23T15:39:00.002-05:00

Friday the 13th, Part 3 3-D... The tender, tragic saga of Jason Vorhees, the world's unhappiest camper, continues when yet another batch of hormonally advanced teens decide to ignore past history and spend some time at the woodsy, pine-scented slaughterhouse known as Camp Crystal Lake. It may be a bit of a stretch to describe any of the entries in this interminable series as "good," but this creatively grotesque installment manages to come surprisingly close with a welcome sense of humor and some quick glimmers of real menace (courtesy of director Steve Miner, who would later go on to helm the far more accomplished Halloween: H20). Originally presented in 3-D, which explains the never-ending slew of objects (knives, pitchforks, yo-yos, cats, eyeballs, etc.) that are repeatedly thrust in the viewer's general direction.

Poltergeist (25th Anniversary Edition) DVD Movie Review

2009-01-21T09:53:00.004-05:00

Poltergeist... What a combo! Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, teamed up with family-oriented producer Steven Spielberg to make Poltergeist. The film is about a haunted suburban tract home in a development very much like the Arizona one in which Spielberg was raised. (Because it came out the same summer as Spielberg's E.T., it was tempting to see both movies as representing Spielberg's ambivalent feelings about childhood in suburbia. One was a fantasy, the other a nightmare.) Spielberg also cowrote the screenplay, which taps into primal, childlike fears of monsters under the bed, monsters in the closet, sinister clown faces, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. At first, some of the odd happenings in the house are kind of funny and amusing, but they grow gradually creepier until the film climaxes in a terrifying special-effects extravaganza when 5-year-old Carole Anne (Heather O'Rourke) is kidnapped by the spooks and held hostage in another dimension. Though not nearly as frightening as Hooper's magnum opus, or the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, which came along two years later, Poltergeist is one of the smartest and most entertaining horror pictures of its time.

Let The Right One In DVD Movie Review

2009-01-20T10:59:00.002-05:00

Let The Right One In... The enduring popularity of the vampire myth rests, in part, on sexual magnetism. In Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson's carefully controlled, yet sympathetic take on John Ajvide Lindqvist's Swedish bestseller-turned-screenplay, the protagonists are pre-teens, unlike the fully-formed night crawlers of HBO’s True Blood or Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight (both also based on popular novels). Instead, 12-year-old Oskar (future heartbreaker Kåre Hedebrant) and Eli (Lina Leandersson) enter into a deadly form of puppy love. The product of divorce, Oskar lives with his harried mother, while his new neighbor resides with a mystery man named Håkan (Per Ragnar), who takes care of her unique dietary needs. From the wintery moment in 1982 that the lonely, towheaded boy spots the strange, dark-haired girl skulking around their outer-Stockholm tenement, he senses a kindred spirit. They bond, innocently enough, over a Rubik's Cube, but little does Oskar realize that Eli has been 12 for a very long time. Meanwhile, at school, bullies torment the pale and morbid student mercilessly. Through his friendship with Eli, Oskar doesn't just learn how to defend himself, but to become a sort of predator himself, begging the question as to whether Eli really exists or whether she represents a manifestation of his pent-up anger and resentment. Naturally, the international success of Lindqvist's fifth feature, like Norway's chilling Insomnia before it, has inspired an American remake, which is sure to boast superior special effects, but can't possibly capture the delicate balance he strikes here between the tender and the terrible.

Dead Alive DVD Movie Review

2009-01-16T23:17:00.003-05:00

Dead Alive... If you're not a connoisseur of graphic horror and gruesome gore, you'd better steer clear of this wicked 1992 horror-comedy from the demented mind and delirious camera of New Zealand-born writer-director Peter Jackson. However, if nonstop mayhem and extreme violence are your idea of great entertainment, you're sure to appreciate Jackson's gleefully inventive approach to a story that can judiciously be described as sick, twisted, and totally outrageous. The movie's central character is a poor schmuck named Lionel who's practically enslaved to his domineering mother. But when ol' Mum gets bitten by a rare and poisonous rat monkey from Skull Island and is turned into a flesh-eating zombie, Lionel has the unfortunate task of keeping Mama happy while fending off all the other zombies that result from her voracious feeding frenzies. If you've read this far, you'll either be crying out for censorship or eagerly awaiting your first viewing (or second, or third...) of this wildly clever and audaciously uninhibited movie. And while director Jackson would later achieve critical success with his fact-based drama Heavenly Creatures, his talent is readily evident in this earlier effort. If you find this kind of thing even remotely appealing, consider Dead Alive a must-see movie.

The Shining DVD Movie Review

2009-01-14T08:31:00.002-05:00

The Shining... Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King's bestselling horror novel than a complete reimagining of it from the inside out. In King's book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick's movie is an existential Road Runner cartoon (his steadicam scurrying through the hotel's labyrinthine hallways), in which the cavernously empty spaces inside the Overlook mirror the emptiness in the soul of the blocked writer, who's settled in for a long winter's hibernation. As many have pointed out, King's protagonist goes mad, but Kubrick's Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is Looney Tunes from the moment we meet him--all arching eyebrows and mischievous grin. (Both Nicholson and Shelley Duvall reach new levels of hysteria in their performances, driven to extremes by the director's fanatical demands for take after take after take.) The Shining is terrifying--but not in the way fans of the novel might expect. When it was redone as a TV miniseries (reportedly because of King's dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film), the famous topiary-animal attack (which was deemed impossible to film in 1980) was there--but the deeper horror was lost. Kubrick's The Shining gets under your skin and chills your bones; it stays with you, inhabits you, haunts you. And there's no place to hide...

Thirteen Ghosts DVD Movie Review

2009-01-07T10:01:00.003-05:00

Thirteen Ghosts... Cool sets, gory make-up, and frantic energy are given high priority in this glossy remake of William Castle's 1960 haunted-house chiller. The original boasted its "Illusion-O" ghost-viewing gimmick, so this remake's producers--as they did with 1999's The House on Haunted Hill--up the ante on Castle's showmanship by spilling ample amounts of blood, guts, and ghoulish glory. The plot's essentially the same: An impoverished family inherits a luxurious haunted mansion, only this time it's an elaborate, maze-like mechanism of glass, gears, and Latin incantations--"designed by the devil and powered by the dead"--with a cellar full of tormented, undead souls. As the family (including Tony Shalhoub and American Pie's Shannon Elizabeth) enlists the aid of a psychic (Scream alumnus Matthew Lillard) and a ghostbusting paranormal (Embeth Davidtz), this updated 13 Ghosts grows loud and ludicrous, trading shocks for yuks and nuance for nonsense. It's fun, to a point, after which it's just exhausting.

Inside (Unrated) DVD Movie Review

2008-12-30T10:16:00.005-05:00

Inside... Hailed by several critics as the first great French horror film this millennium, Inside opens on a gory note and stays true to the bloodfest throughout. But rather than using splatter-gore for comedic effect, as did young directing team Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's predecessor, Hershell Gordon-Lewis, this duo timed their gore to build tragic suspense, scene after disgusting scene. The strength of Inside's plot is its simplicity, though the film is slow at first. Pregnant photojournalist, Sarah Scaragato (Alysson Paradis), has just lost her husband in a fatal car accident and is in recovery when her baby is due on Christmas Eve, in fact. Morose, she rejects friend and family visits, opting to stay home. A bewitched predator, played by Beatrice Dalle, senses Sarah's vulnerability and seizes upon it like a spider capturing prey in its web. The tale, woven around maternal psychosis, reveals Dalle's haunting preoccupation with stealing Scaragato's unborn baby. Each character who enters Sarah's house, the "war zone" as one doomed policeman puts it, encounters the wrath of two women fighting with mirror shards, knitting needles, scissors, hurled kitchen appliances, and even a homemade bayonette. Like the best horror thrillers about motherhood---Rosemary's Baby, Don't Look Now, Alien---Inside seizes ample symbolic opportunities to exhibit the primal obsession women have with babies. Even better, Inside invites feminist critique as do other female-centric horror films such as Ginger Snaps, whose plots not only include strong, vengeful female victims, but also sympathetic, criminal femme fatales. An entertaining "Making of Inside" featurette follows, revealing makeup and special effects techniques. Inside is for a specific audience; as scenes get redder and wetter, the squeamish may find it sickening---beware and enjoy.

Sleepy Hollow DVD Movie Review

2008-12-19T08:26:00.003-05:00

Sleepy Hollow... The films of Tim Burton shine through the muck like a jack-o-lantern on a foggy October night. After such successes as The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands, it should come as no surprise that Sleepy Hollow is a dazzling film, a delicious reworking of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Dark and moody, the film is a thrilling ride back to the turn of the 19th century. Johnny Depp stars as Ichabod Crane, a seemingly hapless constable from New York City who is sent to the small town of Sleepy Hollow to solve the mystery of the decapitations that are plaguing the town. Crane is a bumbling sort, with a tremendous faith in science over mysticism, and he comes up against town secrets, bewitching women, and a number of bodies missing heads. Christina Ricci, as beautiful as ever, is Katrina Van Tassel, the offbeat love interest who alternately charms and frightens Crane.

The film, while occasionally gory (as one should expect from a movie about a headless horseman), is not terribly frightening, although it is suspenseful. Both Depp and Ricci are convincing, and the art direction and production values give the village its harsh feel. Toward the end, once the secrets are revealed, the film does slow down; however, this stylistic horror film provides many tricks and even more treats.

Underworld (Unrated) Blu-ray Movie Review

2008-12-16T20:14:00.002-05:00

Underworld... Blade meets The Crow and The Matrix in Underworld, a hybrid thriller that rewrites the rulebook on werewolves and vampires. It's a "cuisinart" movie (blend a lot of familiar ideas and hope something interesting happens) in which immortal vampire "death dealers" wage an ancient war against "Lycans" (werewolves), who've got centuries of revenge--and some rather ambitious genetic experiments--on their lycanthropic agenda. Given his preoccupation with gloomy architecture (mostly filmed in Budapest, Hungary), frenetic mayhem and gothic costuming, it's no surprise that first-time director Len Wiseman gained experience in TV commercials and the art departments of Godzilla, Men in Black, and Independence Day. His work is all surface, no substance, filled with derivative, grand-scale action as conflicted vampire Selene (Kate Beckinsale, who later became engaged to Wiseman) struggles to rescue an ill-fated human (Scott Speedman) from Lycan transformation. It's great looking all the way, and a guaranteed treat for horror buffs, who will eagerly dissect its many strengths and weaknesses.

Jaws (30th Anniversary Edition) DVD Movie Review

2008-12-15T11:05:00.003-05:00

Jaws... In the vastly overrated 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, author Peter Biskind puts the blame for Hollywood's blockbuster mentality at least partially on Steven Spielberg's box-office success with this adaptation of Peter Benchley's bestselling novel. But you can't blame Spielberg for making a terrific movie, which Jaws definitely is. The story of a Long Island town whose summer tourist business is suddenly threatened by great-white-shark attacks on humans bypasses the potboiler trappings of Benchley's book and goes straight for the jugular with beautifully crafted, crowd-pleasing sequences of action and suspense supported by a trio of terrific performances by Roy Scheider (as the local sheriff), Richard Dreyfuss (as a shark specialist), and particularly Robert Shaw (as the old fisherman who offers to hunt the shark down). The sequences on Shaw's boat--as the three of them realize that in fact the shark is hunting them--are what entertaining moviemaking is all about.

Prom Night (Unrated) DVD Movie Review

2008-12-12T09:06:00.003-05:00

Prom Night... An attractive cast of young performers lead by Brittany Snow (Hairspray) is the main selling point for Prom Night, a remake of the 1980 Canadian slasher film starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Snow makes for a capable lead as the sole survivor of her family's massacre at the hands of an obsessed teacher (Jonathan Schaech), who returns three years later to finish his campaign on the eve of her senior prom. While no one's idea of a classic horror film, the Paul Lynch-directed Prom Night offered viewers a modest whodunit angle in between the killings; here, the villain's identity is known from the get-go, and what's left is a string of mechanical stalkings (which feature a surprisingly modest amount of blood) and reams of turgid teenspeak, which is handled as best as possible by Snow and her cast mates. The end result is a dull, suspense-free chiller that manages to make its mediocre source material seem inspired by comparison. Older moviegoers may note the presence of actors Idris Elba and James Ransone, both used so well on The Wire, and so thoroughly wasted here.

The Changeling DVD Movie Review

2008-12-12T09:03:00.003-05:00

The Changeling... When a recent widower (the wonderfully overemphatic George C. Scott ) moves into an antique Washington mansion, his realization that he may not be the only resident leads him toward a deadly secret that refuses to remain buried....The best haunted-house film since the legendary Haunting, this potent, classy combination of the mystery and horror genres eschews explicit gore and dumb shocks in exchange for a subtle creepiness that occasionally builds to a terrifying peak (watch out for that seance scene!). The result is a satisfyingly intelligent horror film with an intriguing dash of Watergate-era paranoia. Director Peter Medak went on to direct the considerably more gratuitous and somewhat less effective Romeo Is Bleeding and The Krays.

Event Horizon DVD Movie Review

2008-12-11T10:23:00.004-05:00

Event Horizon... Lawrence Fishburne and Sam Neill head up a strong cast as the reluctant leaders of a rescue mission sent to find out just what in the hell (literally) happened to the crew of a long-vanished experimental spacecraft in this dark and thundering descent of a horror film. Although this extremely stylish haunted spaceship movie may be guilty of ripping off half a dozen better films (including Don't Look Now, Hellraiser, and especially Andrei Tarkovsky's great Solaris), it's difficult to deny the gothic razorblade effectiveness of the end result. Not a "fun" film by any stretch of the imagination, but a thrillingly ruthless shocker that may leave more susceptible viewers in need of a long shower and a high-voltage night-light. For the full effect, watch it with all the lights off and the volume cranked up to 11.

Day Watch (Unrated) DVD Movie Review

2008-12-11T10:20:00.004-05:00

Day Watch... The dizzying supernatural Russian epic started in Night Watch continues with Day Watch, in which once again the battle between the forces of Light (the Night Watch) and Dark (the Day Watch) threatens to crack open the world as we know it. The plot centers around Anton (Russian superstar Konstantin Khabensky), an Other (one of many beings with varied supernatural powers) whose son, Yegor, has joined the Day Watch, who are grooming him to be their superpowerful savior. Anton's protoge, Svetlana, also has high-capacity power, and if Yegor and Svetlana come into conflict, the resulting devastation could shatter everything. The key to success seems to lie with the Chalk of Fate, a simple piece of chalk that can rewrite reality. Day Watch is full of plotholes and underdeveloped story points (at one point, to keep him safe, Anton's consciousness is switched into the body of his Night Watch colleague Olga--but mere moments later the Day Watch knows what's happened, before any suspense could be mined from it; as a result, this promising plot twist seems only to exist to allow for some girl-on-girl action), but it's forgivable. As with the first film, Day Watch bubbles over with its wildly imaginative world, its ravishing style, and its fantastic visual effects. If a Hollywood blockbuster had half as much creativity, it would be praised to the skies and be the hit of the year. Don't let the subtitles put you off (particularly since even the subtitles reflect the movie's wit and imagination)--Day Watch is a cinematic feast that any movie fan should devour.

The Thing from Another World DVD Movie Review

2008-12-02T12:52:00.004-05:00

The Thing from Another World... With its modest special effects, lean plot, and small cast of lesser stars, this 1951 thriller remains a sturdy blueprint for fusing horror and science fiction. The formula has been employed countless times since, fleshed out with more extensive and elaborate production values, and manned by higher profiled marquee names, but the results have yet to improve on The Thing from Another World, Howard Hawks's lone foray into sci-fi.

The story begins as military airmen are dispatched to a remote Arctic research station where scientists have detected the crash of a spacecraft. An effort to retrieve the saucer-shaped vehicle fails, but the team returns to the station with the frozen body of its sole occupant. When the extraterrestrial pilot is accidentally thawed, the crew, headed by a tough-talking pilot (Kenneth Tobey), grapples with a massive, chlorophyll-based humanoid (James Arness) thirsty for blood and in no mood for galactic diplomacy.

Hawks takes only a production credit for this low-budget exercise, but his filmmaking style transcends Christian Nyby's nominal direction: rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, an ensemble of comrades whose professionalism is tempered by wisecracks, and unsentimental female characters (embodied by feisty romantic interest Margaret Sheridan) recall Hawks's signature works, while propelling the plot over any potential gaps in credibility. It's hardly surprising, then, that The Thing from Another World remains among the most influential science fiction movies ever shot, or that it remains exciting entertainment a half century later.

Drive-In Cult Classics - 8 Movie Set

2008-12-02T11:46:00.003-05:00

Drive-In Cult Classics

Pick-Up:
An off-beat story about two young women whose lives are forever changed when they hitchhike a ride in a mobile home.

The Sister-In-Law:
A punchy story about the sexual entanglements of four people and how their moral conflicts lead to heartache and destruction.

The Stepmother:
A high-living architect who - as a result of his violent temper - finds himself enmeshed in two accidental deaths. When he discovers his 2nd wife having an affair with his teenage son...there's almost a third murder!

The Teacher:
She corrupted the youthful morality of an entire school!
An explosively tense story about a beautiful, provocative 28-year-old high school teacher whose seduction of one particular student proves fatal.

Trip with the Teacher:
A chilling experience in terror as a group of female students and their pretty teacher are ambushed, while on a field trip, by two sadistic bikers, forcing the women to learn a lesson in survival.

Best Friends:
Two young couples taste the free and easy life on a cross country motor-home tour until love backfires and tragedy follows.

Cindy and Donna:
Two sisters, growing up in a middle-class home with parents too preoccupied with booze and sex, find that being grown up doesn't mean acting like their folks, as experiments with drugs and sex teach them.

Malibu High:
High school senior Kim is having her share of problems. Her grades are poor, her boyfriend dumped her for a rich girl and her financial situation is disastrous. So she makes an after hours deal with one of her teachers to improve her grade point average. Soon, she is working her way through the faculty room and taking on paying customers.

Lady in the Water (Widescreen Edition) DVD Movie Review

2008-11-17T12:09:00.003-05:00

Lady in The Water... Or, if you prefer, I See Wet People. M. Night Shyamalan's attempt at a newfangled mythology--about a depressed apartment superintendent (Paul Giamatti) who discovers a sea-nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) who may hold the key to humanity's hopeful future--is intriguing enough to capture the imaginations of children and adults who haven't lost sight of their innocent sense of wonder. Cynics, on the other hand, will likely scoff at Shyamalan's awkward fantasy, which includes one victim--a film critic--widely interpreted as Shyamalan's revenge against reviewers who panned The Village. Shyamalan originally improvised this melancholy fantasy as a bedtime story for his children; unfortunately, it still feels mostly half-baked and ultimately ineffective due to a number of plot holes and inconsistencies that a writer as talented as Shyamalan should've been able to avoid. For those wishing to learn more about the film's troubled history, and Shyamalan's petulant split from Disney studios, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale is an interesting read.

The Village DVD Movie Review

2008-11-17T12:05:00.004-05:00

The Village... Even when his trademark twist-ending formula wears worrisomely thin as it does in The Village, M. Night Shyamalan is a true showman who knows how to serve up a spookfest. He's derailed this time by a howler of a "surprise" lifted almost directly from "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim," an episode of The Twilight Zone starring Cliff Robertson that originally aired in 1961. Even if you're unfamiliar with that Rod Serling scenario, you'll have a good chance of guessing the surprise, which ranks well below The Sixth Sense and Signs on Shyamalan's shock-o-meter. That leaves you to appreciate Shyamalan's proven strengths, including a sharp eye for fear-laden compositions, a general sense of unease, delicate handling of fine actors (alas, most of them wasted here, save for Bryce Dallas Howard in a promising debut), and the cautious concealment of his ruse, which in this case involves a 19th-century village that maintains an anxious truce with dreadful creatures that live in the forbidden woods nearby. Will any of this take anyone by genuine surprise? That seems unlikely, since Emperor Shyamalan has clearly lost his clothes in The Village, but it's nice to have him around to scare us, even if he doesn't always succeed.

The Sixth Sense DVD Movie Review

2008-11-17T12:00:00.003-05:00

The Sixth Sense... "I see dead people," whispers little Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), scared to affirm what is to him now a daily occurrence. This peaked 9-year old, already hypersensitive to begin with, is now being haunted by seemingly malevolent spirits. Child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is trying to find out what's triggering Cole's visions, but what appears to be a psychological manifestation turns out to be frighteningly real. It might be enough to scare off a lesser man, but for Malcolm it's personal--several months before, he was accosted and shot by an unhinged patient, who then turned the gun on himself. Since then, Malcolm has been in turmoil--he and his wife (Olivia Williams) are barely speaking, and his life has taken an aimless turn. Having failed his loved ones and himself, he's not about to give up on Cole.

This third feature by M. Night Shyamalan sets itself up as a thriller, poised on the brink of delivering monstrous scares, but gradually evolves into more of a psychological drama with supernatural undertones. Many critics faulted the film for being mawkish and New Age-y, but no matter how you slice it, this is one mightily effective piece of filmmaking. The bare bones of the story are basic enough, but the moody atmosphere created by Shyamalan and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto made this one of the creepiest pictures of 1999, forsaking excessive gore for a sinisterly simple feeling of chilly otherworldliness. Willis is in his strong, silent type mode here, and gives the film wholly over to Osment, whose crumpled face and big eyes convey a child too wise for his years; his scenes with his mother (Toni Collette) are small, heartbreaking marvels. And even if you figure out the film's surprise ending, it packs an amazingly emotional wallop when it comes, and will have you racing to watch the movie again with a new perspective. You may be able to shake off the sentimentality of The Sixth Sense, but its craftsmanship and atmosphere will stay with you for days.

The Happening DVD Movie Review

2008-11-17T11:30:00.007-05:00

The Happening... You'd expect the end of the world to be no day in the park, but in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, a day in the park is where the end begins. One otherwise peaceful summer morning, New Yorkers strolling in Central Park come to a halt in unison, then begin killing themselves by any means at hand. At a high-rise construction site a few blocks over, it's raining bodies as workers step off girders into space. And all the while, the city is so quiet you can hear the gentle breeze in the trees. That breeze carries a neurotoxin, and what or who put it there (terrorists?) is a question raised periodically as the film unfolds. But the question that really matters is how and whether anybody in the Middle Atlantic states is going to stay alive. The Happening is Shyamalan's best film since The Sixth Sense, partly because he avoids the kind of egregious misjudgment that derailed The Village and Lady in The Water, but mostly because the whole thing has been structured and imagined to keep faith with the point of view of regular, unheroic folks confronted with a mammoth crisis. Focal characters are a Philadelphia high-school science teacher (Mark Wahlberg, excellent), his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and math-teacher colleague (John Leguizamo), and the latter’s little girl (Ashlyn Sanchez). Instinct says get out of the cities and move west; most of the film takes place in the delicately picturesque Pennsylvania countryside, with menace hovering somewhere in the haze. There are no special effects (apart from a wind machine and some breakaway glass), but the movie manages to be deeply unsettling in the matter-of-factness of its storytelling. Especially effective is its feel for what we might call the surrealism of banality. One warning sign that someone has been infected by the neurotoxin is irrational or erratic speech and behavior, yet Shyamalan has a genius for dialogue that sounds normal and everyday as it's spoken, yet flies apart grenade-like a second later as its logic (or illogic) sinks in. Then there's Deschanel's eye-rolling dodginess about the messages some guy has been leaving on her cellphone. Or the fellow (Frank Collis) who addresses his greenhouse plants as though they were his children--has a stray toxic zephyr wafted his way, or is this just his idea of normal?

The Strangers DVD Movie Review

2008-11-17T11:24:00.004-05:00

The Strangers... A lean, briskly paced and exceptionally creepy thriller, The Strangers earns its scares the old-fashioned way: through atmosphere, sound design, and a simple yet undeniably upsetting central premise that allows for maximum tension throughout its running time. Attractive young lovers Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are already having a bad day--she's turned down his marriage proposal--before a knock on the door in the middle of the night announces a full-fledged siege on their remote vacation home by a trio of masked assailants. The film's first third delivers the most consistent shivers as the visitors make their presence and intentions known to Tyler; the second half grows more frantic and bloody before a gruesome finale that may leave viewers either rattled to their core or bothered by its empty nihilism. Speedman is fine as the downtrodden male lead (who's seen tucking into a carton of ice cream after being rejected), but it's Tyler who impresses the most by shouldering the lion's share of the terror. First-time writer/director Bryan Bertino impresses by forsaking the current passion for over-the-top violence (save for the finale) in favor of more traditional means of generating fear, and if his project borrows heavily from other films, most notably the French chiller Them (which shares its "inspired by a true story" origin) and Michael Haneke's Funny Games, at least he's taking from the best. The sound design is among the many technical standouts, and the unsettling score by tomandandy (The Hills Have Eyes) pleasantly evokes Ennio Morricone's fuzztone-heavy work for Dario Argento in the early '70s. On a completely unrelated note, LP fanatics should appreciate how both the film's heroes and villains share an affinity for folk and country music on vinyl.

The Midnight Meat Train - Blu-Ray Movie Review

2008-07-02T12:02:00.007-04:00

The Midnight Meat Train... This story is about a commuter's run-in with a New York subway serial killer and a horde of subterranean cannibals. Next stop is death. When Leon Kaufman’s (Bradley Cooper) latest body of work – a collection of provocative, nighttime studies of the city and its inhabitants earns the struggling photographer interest from prominent art gallerist Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields), she propels him to get grittier and show the darker side of humanity for his upcoming debut at her downtown art space. Believing he’s finally on track for success, Leon’s obsessive pursuit of dark subject matter leads him into the path of a serial killer, Mahogany (Vinnie Jones), the subway murderer who stalks late-night commuters ultimately butchering them in the most gruesome ways imaginable. With his concerned girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) fearing for his life, Leon’s relentless fascination with Mahogany lures him further and further into the bowels of the subways and ultimately into an abyss of pure evil inadvertently pulling Maya right along with him.

1408 DVD - Blu-Ray Movie Review

2008-06-30T08:34:00.004-04:00

1408... As creepfests go, 1408 is right up there with The Shining, also inspired by a Stephen King work and featuring a menacing hotel and the wobbly sanity of a writer lodging there. "It's an evil [bleep]-ing room!" intones Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the smooth but vaguely sinister manager of the Dolphin Hotel. John Cusack is stellar as Mike Enslin, a cynical Everyschlub who writes "occult travel guides," but believes in nothing, especially anything resembling an afterlife.

What happens in room 1408 of the Dolphin may change Enslin forever--if he survives the first hour. The thrills range from jumpy "gotcha" moments involving mirror images, to more traditional horror fare like bleeding walls, to truly diabolical touches like the recurrence of the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." (Shudder.) The film does a nice job of weaving the operatic horror effects with the truly heart-breaking backstory of the death of Enslin's young daughter and his marriage--perhaps the only two things Enslin has ever believed in. And thankfully, there's just enough humor to leaven the intensity at key moments; Cusack is unparalleled when it comes to delivering a self-deprecating wisecrack, even as his life passes before his eyes. Get your adrenaline pumping and check into this room. Oh, and sorry, no refunds.

George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead DVD Movie Review

2008-06-30T08:32:00.004-04:00

George Romero Diary of The Dead... has always come up with new ways of treating his zombies, and Diary of the Dead is no exception: Romero keeps his dead fresh, with an original approach to the undying subject. This one purports to be the video record of a group of young people who are shooting a low-budget horror movie when the terror strikes: corpses begin re-animating, intent on chewing the living. Our heroes trek across Pennsylvania, encountering the staggering zombies as they go. Other pieces of video are incorporated, which gives Romero a chance at some great set-pieces, including the brilliant opening sequence, a live local-TV feed that goes horribly, horribly wrong, and a home-video tape from a family birthday party, where the party clown turns out to be a dead ringer. All of Romero's Dead films are political, and this one's no exception, with a stark view of the way things are today; it doesn't offer the Hawksian heroics of the survivors in Dawn of the Dead or Land of the Dead for comfort, just a group of bickering, shocked youths. There's too much talk about the detachment of watching things through a lens, but in general this is a bracing, intelligent movie. Plus, there's some excellent splatter.

The Machine Girl DVD Movie Review

2008-06-30T08:29:00.003-04:00

The Machine Girl... Ami (Minase Yashiro in her film debut) is a tough but otherwise average high school girl trying to lead a normal life. Her world comes crashing down when her brother and his friend are killed by ruthless bullies. As Ami tracks down the ringleader she is surprised to discover the bullies' association with a sinister ninja yakuza family. When she goes after her revenge she soon finds herself in over her head and minus her left arm. Barely surviving Ami escapes and seeks out shelter from two kindly garage mechanics. They take pity on her fitting her with a high-powered machine gun where her arm used to be. She then teams up with the chainsaw-wielding mother (Asami) of her brother's slain friend and together they unleash an unholy non-stop over-the-top kill fest against the equally creative machinery (drill bra flying guillotine) of their relentless ninja enemies.

Jurassic Park Adventure Pack DVD Review

2008-06-27T10:42:00.003-04:00

Jurassic Park... Steven Spielberg's 1993 mega-hit rivals Jaws as the most intense and frightening film he'd ever made prior to Schindler's List, but it was also among his weakest stories. Based on Michael Crichton's novel about an island amusement park populated by cloned dinosaurs, the film works best as a thrill ride with none of the interesting human dynamics of Spielberg's Jaws. That lapse proves unfortunate, but there's no shortage of raw terror as a rampaging T-rex and nasty raptors try to make fast food out of the cast. The effects are still astonishing (despite the fact that the computer-generated technology has since been improved upon) and at times primeval, such as the sight of a herd of whatever-they-are scampering through a valley.

The Lost World - Jurassic Park
In the low tradition of knockoff horror flicks best seen (or not seen) on a drive-in movie screen, Steven Spielberg's sequel to Jurassic Park is a poorly conceived, ill-organized film that lacks story and logic. Screenwriter David Koepp strings along a number of loose ideas while Jeff Goldblum returns as Ian Malcolm, the quirky chaos theoretician who now reluctantly agrees to go to another island where cloned dinosaurs are roaming freely. Along with his girlfriend (Julianne Moore) and daughter, Malcolm has to deal with hunters, environmentalists, and corporate swine who stupidly bring back a big dino to Southern California, where it runs amok, of course. Spielberg doesn't seem to care that the pieces of this project don't add up to a real movie, so he hams it up with big, scary moments (with none of the artfulness of those in Jurassic Park) and smart-aleck visual gags (a yapping dog in a suburb mysteriously disappears when a hungry T-rex stomps by). A complete bust.

Jurassic Park III
Surpassing expectations to qualify as an above-average sequel, Jurassic Park III is nothing more or less than a satisfying popcorn adventure. A little cheesier than the first two Jurassic blockbusters, it's a big B movie with big B-list stars (including Laura Dern, briefly reprising her Jurassic Park role), and eight years of advancing computer-generated-image technology give it a sharp edge over its predecessors. While adopting the jungle spirit of King Kong, the movie refines Michael Crichton's original premise, and its dinosaurs are even more realistic, their behavior more detailed, and their variety--including flying pteranodons and a new villain, the spinosaurus--more dazzling and threatening than ever. These advancements justify the sequel, and its contrived plot is just clever enough to span 90 minutes without wearing out its welcome.

Posing as wealthy tourists, an adventurous couple (William H. Macy, Téa Leoni) convince paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and his protégé (Allesandro Nivola) to act as tour guides on a flyover trip to Isla Sorna, the ill-fated "Site B" where all hell broke loose in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. In truth, they're on a search-and-rescue mission to find their missing son (Trevor Morgan), and their plane crash is just the first of several enjoyably suspenseful sequences. Director Joe Johnston (October Sky) embraces the formulaic plot as a series of atmospheric set pieces, placing new and familiar dinosaurs in misty rainforests, fiery lakes, and mysterious valleys, turning JP3 into a thrill ride with impressive highlights (including a T. rex versus spinosaurus smack-down), adequate doses of wry humor (from the cowriters of Election), and an upbeat ending that's corny but appropriate, proving that the symptoms of sequelitis needn't be fatal.

From Beyond DVD Movie Reivew

2008-05-20T10:55:00.003-04:00

From Beyond... The second H.P. Lovecraft adaptation by Stuart Gordon FROM BEYOND is pure Lovecraftian science-terror. Out-there scientist Dr. Pretorious (Ted Sorel) and his assistant Dr. Tillinghast (Jeffery Combs) are working towards breaking through earthly perceptions and revealing a new alternate universe. They do this by stimulating the pineal gland of the human brain which enables people to see the strange creatures that inhabit a parallel dimension. Unfortunately these creatures can now see humans as well and they are none too pleased with it. Dr. Pretorious is killed by the floating monstrosities but the police blame his assistant for the murder and lock him up. Only Dr. Katharine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) believes the insane tales of Dr. Tillinghast and it's up to her to shut down the experiment that threatens to unleash the other-dimensional creatures on this universe forever. Great special effects and solid performances by Combs and Crampton complement a near-perfect realization by Gordon of Lovecraft's vividly detailed and chilling vision of scientific possibilities.

The Orphanage - Blu-Ray Movie Review

2008-05-05T08:35:00.003-04:00

The Orphanage... It's only his first film, but Spain's Juan Antonio Bayona has already figured out the secret to a successful supernatural thriller: emphasize character over special effects. Like Walter Salles's Dark Water and Alejandro Amenábar's The Others, The Orphanage pivots on a pretty woman and an unusual child. When her old orphanage goes on the market, Laura (Belén Rueda, Amenábar's The Sea Inside) and Carlos (Fernando Cayo) settle in with their son, Simón (Roger Príncep). Once acclimated to the remote seaside surroundings, they plan to re-open it as a home for special-needs children. Meanwhile, their seven-year-old doesn't know he's adopted or that he has a life-threatening illness. He does, however, have a lot of imaginary playmates. When Simón disappears without a trace, his parents contact the police, but to no avail. Because Laura has been hearing odd noises and having strange visions, they proceed to consult a medium. Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin, speaking perfect Spanish) is convinced they aren't alone. Carlos has his doubts, but Laura makes like a detective and revisits her childhood--through photographs, home movies, and exploration of the spooky stone manor--to determine who or what abducted her son. Produced and presented by Guillermo Del Toro, The Orphanage is less fanciful than his works, though it does bear a vague resemblance to the ghostly Devil's Backbone. There are a few gory make-up effects, but Bayona mostly preys on our fear of the unknown to craft a first-rate fright fest.

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem DVD Movie Review

2008-04-29T08:59:00.003-04:00

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem... For those who found 2004's Aliens vs. Predator too lightweight in the gore-and-guns department, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem offers a marked improvement in both categories, as well as a respectable amount of rumbles between the title extraterrestrials. Set in the 21st century (which predates the story to all of the Alien features), Requiem sends a crippled Predator ship crashing to Earth in a small Colorado town; unbeknownst to the locals, the craft is loaded with H.R. Giger's insectoid monsters, which make quick work of most of the population. As the human cast is slowly whittled to a few hardy (if unmemorable) souls, a Predator warrior also arrives to complicate matters and do battle with the Aliens, as well as a ferocious alien-Predator hybrid (dubbed a Predalien by the sci-fi and horror press). Visual-effects designers and music-video helmers The Strause Brothers (who make their feature directorial debut here) keep the action on frantic throughout, which is wise, since the dialogue and characters are threadbare at best; that should matter little to teenage male viewers, who are inarguably the film's key audience. Fans of the Alien franchise, however, may find the offhanded nod to the series' mythology given during the finale its sole saving grace.

Awake DVD Movie Review

2008-04-09T11:01:00.003-04:00

Awake... There's a hint of classic noir in the twists and turns that make up Awake, a medical thriller that hinges on an alarming real-life condition known as anesthesia awareness, which keeps surgery patients awake but immobile during surgery. Hayden Christensen is top-billed as the scion of a wealthy banking family in desperate need of a heart transplant. Seconds after the operation commences, he discovers that he is fully conscious, yet unable to move; and what's worse, the entire procedure is slated to fail in order to claim his considerable fortune. Once the scheme is set in motion, Awake moves into high gear, and the stock characters established in the exposition-heavy opening show their true (and decidedly scurrilous) colors. Unfortunately, the suspense is undone by Christensen undergoing what appears to be a confusing out-of-body experience, and a conclusion that begs for more suspension of disbelief than most audiences will be able to summon up. Christensen and Jessica Alba (as his new bride) are attractive but bland; instead, it's Howard who delivers as the film's conflicted antihero. The supporting players, including Lena Olin as Christensen's overprotective mom, Christopher McDonald, and Arliss Howard also lend considerable credence to the material.

The Mist DVD Movie Review

2008-04-09T10:57:00.004-04:00

The Mist... Writer-director Frank Darabont, who showcased the softer side of Stephen King in his film adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, turns to darker material for The Mist, his latest King adaptation about a group of ordinary townspeople trapped in a supermarket by a mysterious fogbank. Thomas Jane is top-billed as a Maine illustrator who attempts to calm the frightened shoppers, but his job is cut out for him from the get-go, first by the discovery of malevolent creatures lurking in the mist, and then by the mad mutterings of Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), a local eccentric who calls for Old Testament-style sacrifices to appease the supernatural forces. Darabont delivers monster movie thrills and understated social commentary with equal skill, and he's well supported by his cast (which includes Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, William Sadler and Jeffrey DeMunn) and the vivid special effects by KNB EFX, which effectively mix CGI with models and stop-motion animation (the terrific monsters were designed by legendary comic book artist Bernie Wrightson). And for those curious about how the novella's downbeat ending has translated to film, suffice it to say that Darabont's conclusion is at once different and more unsettling than King's.

Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection DVD

2008-03-12T10:56:00.003-04:00

Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection... For the first time ever find all 156 complete episodes of Rod Serling's groundbreaking series in one box set packed with exciting extras! Travel to another dimension of sight and sound again and again through these stellar remastered high-definition film transfers.Extras include the fascinating Serling bio-documentary Submitted for Your Approval compelling interviews with the show's writers the series' unaired pilot audio commentaries with Martin Landau Leonard Nimoy Cliff Robertson and much much more!System Requirements:Running Time 4524 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSICS Rating: NR UPC: 014381247428 Manufacturer No: ID2474CUDVD

Peeping Tom DVD Movie Review

2008-02-19T10:05:00.003-05:00

Peeping Tom... Director Michael Powell lays bare the cinema's dark voyeuristic underside in this disturbing 1960 psychodrama thriller, Peeping Tom. Handsome young Carl Boehm is Mark Lewis, a shy, socially clumsy young man shaped by the psychic scars of an emotionally abusive parent, in this case a psychologist father (Michael Powell in a perverse cameo) who subjected his son to nightmarish experiments in fear and recorded every interaction with a movie camera. Now Mark continues his father's work, sadistically killing young women with a phallic-like blade attached to his movie camera and filming their final, terrified moments for his definitive documentary on fear. Set in contemporary London, which Powell evokes in a lush, colorful seediness, this film presents Mark as much victim as villain and implicates the audience in his scopophilic activities as we become the spectators to his snuff film screenings. Comparisons to Hitchcock's Psycho, released the same year, are inevitable. Powell's film was reviled upon release, and it practically destroyed his career, ironic in light of the acclaim and success that greeted Psycho, but Powell's picture hit a little too close to home with its urban setting, full color photography, documentary techniques, and especially its uneasy connections between sex, violence, and the cinema. We can thank Martin Scorsese for sponsoring its 1979 rerelease, which presented the complete, uncut version to appreciative American audiences for the first time. This powerfully perverse film was years ahead of its time and remains one of the most disturbing and psychologically complex horror films ever made.

Ghost Story

2008-02-13T10:02:00.000-05:00

TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded — with what caution — with what foresight — with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it — oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly — very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! — would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously — oh, so cautiously — cautiously (for the hinges creaked) — I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights — every night just at midnight — but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.

Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers — of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back — but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out — "Who's there?"

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; — just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief — oh, no! — it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself — "It is nothing but the wind in the chimney — it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "it is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel — although he neither saw nor heard — to feel the presence of my head within the room.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little — a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it — you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily — until, at length a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the-crevice [[the crevice]] and fell full upon the vulture eye.

It was open — wide, wide open — and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness — all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses? — now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! — do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me — the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once — once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.

I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye — not even his — could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out — no stain of any kind — no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all — ha! ha!

When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock — still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, — for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.

I smiled, — for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search — search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: — it continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness — until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.

No doubt I now grew very pale; — but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased — and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound — much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath — and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly — more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men — but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed — I raved — I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder — louder — louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! — no, no! They heard! — they suspected! — they knew! — they were making a mockery of my horror! — this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! — and now — again! — hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! —

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

Wait Until Dark DVD Movie Review

2008-02-11T10:31:00.001-05:00

Wait Until Dark... Audrey Hepburn's last Oscar nomination was for this adaptation of Frederick Knott's famed stage thriller Wait Until Dark about a blind woman, a con man (Alan Arkin), and a doll full of heroin. Thanks to Hepburn's husband, a photographer who does a good deal of traveling, she's unknowingly come into possession of said doll, which was given to him on a plane by a comely young drug runner who winds up dead. The murderous Arkin, aided by sympathetic henchman Richard Crenna, will let nothing stand in the way of his obtaining it, even if it comes down to assaying multiple "personalities" in order to visit and terrorize Hepburn; Crenna is unwillingly enlisted to help. However, the "world's champion blind lady" is more than up to the task of defending herself in her basement Manhattan apartment in a heart-stopping climax that to this day still defines the way horror movies with jack-in-the-box psychos are made. Despite the obvious staginess of it all, it still works magnificently, thanks to Hepburn's steely will and Arkin's deadly, sadistic madman. A helpful hint: turn out all the lights when you watch it; theaters back in 1967 did so, killing the guiding lights during the film's last 15 minutes. We can't tell you why, but trust us, it's worth it.

Fido DVD Movie Review

2008-02-08T08:37:00.001-05:00

Fido... It doesn't take long for the hilarity of Fido's central idea to kick in: the world is reeling from the Zombie War, and the undead are being contained in two different ways. Some of them are roaming loose in fenced-off wilderness zones. The rest are, thanks to the good people at the ZomCom corporation, docile and domesticated--indeed, available as house servants for the upwardly-mobile. Such is the case with the Robinson family, a suburban clan who seem to have stepped straight out of an old episode of Lassie. Little Timmy is happy about the new manservant, whom he promptly dubs "Fido," and Fido himself is fine as long as the mechanical collar around his neck doesn't malfunction. Fido is played, in a stroke of inspiration, by the Scots comedian Billy Connolly, although you wouldn't be able to recognize him without already knowing he's in the movie. Dylan Baker and especially Carrie-Anne Moss are just right as Timmy's parents, who have accidentally wandered out of a John Cheever novel and into a George Romero world. Director Andrew Currie skillfully gets the 1950s satire and the zombie action right, although there's no way to disguise that this premise is too thin to spread out over feature length. For a while, though, Fido hits a stride--a staggering, vacant-eyed stride.

Forced Entry DVD Movie Review

2008-02-01T14:18:00.002-05:00

Forced Entry... After Hours Cinema is extremely proud to be able to present this special DVD edition of a true classic. Since the time of its theatrical release, Forced Entry has become something of a grindhouse legend. Part slasher film and part adult cinema, it certainly must have shocked contemporary audiences and still continues to pack a powerful punch today. Recently released from duty, a deranged Vietnam vet - Harry Reems brings the carnage home with him and declares war on New York City s female population. The no-name loner finds work at a one-pump gas station, where he is able to obtain information on customers that pay by credit card. Armed with his intended victims addresses, along with his trusty gun and knife and the sounds of a distant jungle battle screaming in his brain, the homicidal maniac forces his way into the homes of innocent young women...to act out his most violent psychosexual impulses.

The Devil's Backbone DVD Movie Review

2008-01-29T08:57:00.001-05:00

The Devils Backbone... Seething passions, wandering ghosts, and an unexploded bomb fill this beautifully filmed tale of war and suspense. Though The Devil's Backbone was advertised as a horror movie in the States, it's really more of a drama that happens to have ghosts in it. During the Spanish Civil War, young Carlos is abandoned at a completely isolated orphanage. The tensions therein have been building for years, exacerbated by the unexploded bomb resting menacingly in the courtyard. Bullies scheme, tempers flare, and a ghost that visits Carlos's bed seems to be the key to it all. The movie is full of excellent performances, especially by Marisa Paredes as the gruff-but-kind headmistress, Eduardo Noriega as the handyman with secrets to keep, and Federico Luppi as the benevolent professor who likes to keep deformed fetuses in jars. A rich, satisfying drama with some good, spooky fun thrown in.

Secret Window DVD Movie Review

2008-01-28T11:08:00.001-05:00

Secret Window... Johnny Depp gets high off another acting challenge in this tricky adaptation of a Stephen King yarn. Although the mood in Secret Window is too sinister to allow for the mischief of his Pirates of the Caribbean turn, Depp still manages to embroider his role here with plenty of quirky business. He plays a writer, depressed and nearly divorced, who's stuck in an isolated cabin when a stranger (John Turturro) arrives, accusing him of plagiarism. Writer-director David Koepp does his best to make the rickety material compelling--he gets the maximum out of the cabin set, for instance-but the problems inherent in the King story eventually win out. The climactic scenes are particularly unpleasant, especially in contrast to the cleverness of Depp's performance.

30 Days of Night DVD Movie Review

2008-01-25T10:13:00.001-05:00

30 Days of Night... David Slade directs this nerve-jangling adaptation of the popular graphic novel series about a mob of vampires that overruns a remote Alaskan town in the grip of 30 Days of Night. Josh Hartnett and Melissa George are the film's de facto heroes (he's the stoic town sheriff and she's his estranged fire-marshal wife) but the picture's real MVP is Slade's camera (along with cinematographer Jo Willems), which careens across the town's snowy landscape to detail the vampires' horrific assault on its inhabitants, which are quickly pared down to a hardy few. The script, co-written by the source material's creator, Steve Niles, along with Pirates of the Caribbean's Stuart Beattie and Hard Candy's Brian Nelson, proudly wears its influences on its crimson-stained sleeve and boils down the graphic novels to a series of tense and extremely bloody standoffs between Harnett and George's band of survivors and the vaguely Slavic and ferocious bloodsuckers led by Marlow. And if the characters seem stock and the finale begs suspension of disbelief, the set pieces leading up to it are sufficiently supercharged with suspense and violence to please most horror fans. Standouts in the supporting cast are Ben Foster as the film's Renfield figure and Mark Boone Junior; the disturbing score by Brian Reitzell also merits a mention.

Saw IV DVD Movie Review

2008-01-25T10:07:00.001-05:00

Saw IV... Even death itself can't bring the savage games of Jigsaw to an end, as Saw IV proves; if anything, the fiendishly clever serial killer (once again played by Tobin Bell) is equally capable of dealing out violent death while lying on a morgue slab as he was in life. Saw IV also offers a class reunion of characters from the previous three films, each once again up to their necks in Jigsaw's schemes. Chief among them is Sgt. Rigg (Lyriq Bent) from Saw II, who must place himself in Jigsaw's shoes in order to rescue Detective Matthews (Donnie Walhberg), who was abducted by the killer at the end of Saw II, and Forensic Hoffman (Costas Mandylor from Saw III), from another elaborate murder device. Meanwhile, FBI agents led by Scott Patterson (Gilmore Girls, Aliens in America) attempt to track Rigg as he carries out Jigsaw's horrific notion of justice from beyond the grave. Casual horror fans may find the endless puzzles and relentless nihilism of the Saw series wearing thin with this fourth entry, but the franchise's key selling points--the Sadean excesses of Jigsaw's macabre creations--remain as bloody and unsettling as ever.

Why You Should Download Full Horror Movies

2008-01-16T15:54:00.000-05:00

Why you should download full DVD movies? Recent statistical research reveals that an average American spends more than 4.5 hours watching TV daily. A good number of that is spent on movies. Since you can rent, buy, or even download DVDs, let us try to understand why to download full horror DVD movies seems to be the best option.

Cheaper to Download
Renting a movie can cost you a couple of dollars. And you get to watch it once and never own it. Buying a horror DVD from the local stores can easily set you back from $10 onwards easily. For the same amount of money you spend to rent or buy, you can download full DVD horror movies, not one or two but at least a dozen or more.

Convenience & Instant Delivery
Downloading full DVD movies online has to be the lazy man?s method. You can do so as and when you feel like it. If you feel bored during the weekends, or just cannot sleep at night, you can watch one. There is no need to leave your home and drive to the stores to buy a show. At such unearthly hours, they would not be open at all!

No Physical Storage
Have you recently checked out your storeroom or your disc racks or cabinets? Chances are you would be shocked to see piles of horror DVDs collecting dust. Mind you, these can take up a lot of space. And after a while, they can be damaged due to the humidity or whatever elements of nature. This is something you never have to live with when you download full DVD movies.

Safe and Fast Downloads
Nowadays, technology gets so advanced that it no longer takes hours just to download a
horror movie. You know that such files often are at least 500 Megabytes and can take a long while to download. The sites that offer unlimited movie downloads these days run on faster engines. Also, the environment is safe and protected from virus and malware threats.

There you go, four good reasons why you should download full DVD movies online instead of buying or even renting one. It only takes a minute for you to get started.

The Lost Boys DVD Movie Review

2008-01-16T12:00:00.001-05:00

The Lost Boys... a 1987 thriller was a predictable hit with the teen audience it worked overtime to attract. Like most of director Joel Schumacher's films, it's conspicuously designed to push the right marketing and demographic buttons, and granted, there's some pretty cool stuff going on here and there. Take Kiefer Sutherland, for instance. In Stand by Me he played a memorable bully, but here he goes one step further as a memorable bully vampire who leads a tribe of teenage vampires on their nocturnal spree of bloodsucking havoc. Jason Patric plays the new guy in town, who quickly attracts a lovely girlfriend (Jami Gertz), only to find that she might be recruiting him into the vampire fold. The movie gets sillier as it goes along, and resorts to a routine action-movie showdown, but it's a visual knockout (featuring great cinematography by Michael Chapman) and boasts a cast that's eminently able (pardon the pun) to sink their teeth into the best parts of an uneven screenplay.

One Summer Night

2008-01-16T11:53:00.001-05:00

The fact that Henry Armstrong was buried did not seem to him to prove that he was dead: he had always been a hard man to convince. That he really was buried, the testimony of his senses compelled him to admit. His posture -- flat upon his back, with his hands crossed upon his stomach and tied with something that he easily broke without profitably altering the situation -- the strict confinement of his entire person, the black darkness and profound silence, made a body of evidence impossible to controvert and he accepted it without cavil.

But dead -- no; he was only very, very ill. He had, withal, the invalid's apathy and did not greatly concern himself about the uncommon fate that had been allotted to him. No philosopher was he -- just a plain, commonplace person gifted, for the time being, with a pathological indifference: the organ that he feared consequences with was torpid. So, with no particular apprehension for his immediate future, he fell asleep and all was peace with Henry Armstrong.

But something was going on overhead. It was a dark summer night, shot through with infrequent shimmers of lightning silently firing a cloud lying low in the west and portending a storm. These brief, stammering illuminations brought out with ghastly distinctness the monuments and headstones of the cemetery and seemed to set them dancing. It was not a night in which any credible witness was likely to be straying about a cemetery, so the three men who were there, digging into the grave of Henry Armstrong, felt reasonably secure.

Two of them were young students from a medical college a few miles away; the third was a gigantic negro known as Jess. For many years Jess had been employed about the cemetery as a man-of-all-work and it was his favourite pleasantry that he knew 'every soul in the place.' From the nature of what he was now doing it was inferable that the place was not so populous as its register may have shown it to be.

Outside the wall, at the part of the grounds farthest from the public road, were a horse and a light wagon, waiting.

The work of excavation was not difficult: the earth with which the grave had been loosely filled a few hours before offered little resistance and was soon thrown out. Removal of the casket from its box was less easy, but it was taken out, for it was a perquisite of Jess, who carefully unscrewed the cover and laid it aside, exposing the body in black trousers and white shirt. At that instant the air sprang to flame, a cracking shock of thunder shook the stunned world and Henry Armstrong tranquilly sat up. With inarticulate cries the men fled in terror, each in a different direction. For nothing on earth could two of them have been persuaded to return. But Jess was of another breed.

In the grey of the morning the two students, pallid and haggard from anxiety and with the terror of their adventure still beating tumultuously in their blood, met at the medical college. 'You saw it?' cried one. God! yes -- what are we to do?'

They went around to the rear of the building, where they saw a horse, attached to a light wagon, hitched to a gatepost near the door of the dissecting-room. Mechanically they entered the room. On a bench in the obscurity sat the negro Jess. He rose, grinning, all eyes and teeth. I'm waiting for my pay,' he said.

Stretched naked on a long table lay the body of Henry Armstrong, the head defiled with blood and clay from a blow with a spade. Written by by Ambrose Bierce