Horror Queen

Recommended by a friend…

PLOT

Jennifer Hills heads to the country where she plans to work on her book. At first things seem fine, but then three men in town start bothering her fairly often. She makes friends with the grocery delivery guy Matthew, who’s partially mentally retarded. One night though the three men grab her and violently rape her. They continue raping her and she finally gets away. She finds her way home, only to find the men waiting for her where they rape her again. This time Matthew joins in and afterwards, they tell him to kill her, but he only fakes it. She then decides to take her revenge against each man in her own unique way.

TRIVIA

Also known as Day of the Woman, The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill and I Hate Your Guts.

I Spit on Your Grave is slated for a 2009 remake.

THOUGHTS

First of all, I didn’t pick this movie on my own. I actually have a hard time watching any movie that shows scenes of rape and knowing the premise of I Spit on Your Grave, I knew it would be a difficult watch. Yet a friend recommended it and I finally watched it…now I feel disturbed on a lot of levels. There are scenes in this movie where I literally had to look away from the screen. There was also an entire scene involving castration in a bathtub and an ultra creepy scene that came later. I can easily see this one sticking with me for awhile.

Seen it before!

PLOT

Detour starts off with two women driving and planning their wedding. They’re quickly dispatched by a group of rednecks in the woods. The movie then jumps to the day after a rave in the desert where a group of young college kids are heading home. There’s the guy in baggy jeans, the two bimbos, the goth girl, the perfect couple and the driver. They climb in the motor home and stop for gas where one guy claims he sees someone watching him in the bathroom. They take a shortcut because they‘re planning on stopping off and picking up some peyote, the rednecks attack and of course people start dying.

THOUGHTS

The problem with Detour is that it’s all been done before. It’s a rehash of The Hills Have Eyes combined with a few other movies and none of the kill scenes are even remotely original. The other problem is that the acting is really bad and I mean really bad, even for a straight to DVD horror movie. I spent a lot of the movie just watching and rolling my eyes. At the same time though, Detour actually wasn’t that bad. I found myself laughing a few times and even liking a few of the characters. It was a lot more than I ever expected.

Creepy in a different way.

PLOT

Agnes starts getting weird phone calls where the caller doesn’t say anything and she thinks it’s her ex recently released from prison. Her friend RC introduces her to a guy Peter and the three end up partying in her hotel room, drinking and using cocaine. Peter stays after RC leaves and the two start to bond over their hard lives and ends up spending the night. Her ex Jerry turns up and after hitting her, he takes off while Peter helps her take care of her bruises. They sleep together after they bond again, but he wakes up in the middle of the night after being bitten by a bug. He tells her that it’s an aphid and she keeps telling him that she can’t see anything. Eventually he tells her that he was infected by something in the army and is worried that she has it too. Slowly Agnes finds herself getting wrapped into his life and trapped in his own psychosis.

TRIVIA

Based on the play of the same name.

THOUGHTS

I know that Bug isn’t technically a horror movie, but I find it incredibly creepy so I decided to give it a quick review. This movie is scary and intense on a lot of levels that modern day horror movies can’t reach. The entire movie is closely contained, taking part in only a few different rooms and it has a slightly claustrophobic feel. On top of that, the sheer acting is creepy and the plot is off the wall and strange too. The only thing I can say is that if you haven’t seen it before, you should see it now.

Kind of like a foreign flick.

PLOT

The movie opens with a scene showing a man driving a dead woman and two screaming babies to a house in the middle of nowhere. It then jumps to Marie, a woman who was tracked down by a notary. He tells her that her deceased parents left her their farm in Russia and she needs to go back to claim it, but it’s all news to her since she was adopted and could never find out about her birth parents. She decides to head to Russia where she meets Nikolai at her parents house who turns out to be her twin brother. As the two of them get drawn into the house, they realize that the night their mother died keeps replaying itself and they’re about to discover exactly what really happened.

TRIVIA

Part of the 2006 After Dark Horror Fest.

THOUGHTS

I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone, but the ending of this really irritates me. It basically has a daughter saying she didn’t care what happened and that she’d never try to discover the truth. Gee, what a way to watch out for your parents! The Abandoned is an okay movie, but I have to admit that I barely remembered anything about it when I watched it recently. I remembered that the woman was heading back to Russia and she’d find her brother, but that was it. I wish I could pick out one really good thing from the movie, but it was really only just okay.

Obviously not my blog because it’s not even a year old. Rather it’s my own birthday, the Horror Queen herself turns 29. Unlike my other friends who consider it the “death” of their younger years or the last year to have any real fun, it’s just another birthday for me. Tonight I plan on kicking back with some neighbors, having a few beers…okay, more than a few beers and having some fun. We’re celebrating the birthday of myself and another person in the building and we may even pop in a few horror movies. Too bad I don’t own a copy of Happy Birthday to Me, that would be the perfect compliment…

Eh.

PLOT

Walter is a down on his luck college student who needs a quiet place to study. He decides to rent a room at an hold house, even though the landlord isn’t crazy about renting to a student. He gets close to a woman in the building and her young son, even helping them when she finds a rat running loose. One of their neighbors tells him it’s just a warning sign of what’s coming and warns him about the rat with a human face. Walter laughs it off until he sees the rat and starts suffering horrible nightmares. Is there something more sinister afoot or is it all in his mind?

TRIVIA

Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft.

Directed by Stuart Gordon.

THOUGHTS

I recently watched Dreams in the Witch House again and I literally didn’t remember a single thing about it, though I’ve seen it twice. Even now I’m starting to forget about it again and it’s only been a couple of days since I saw it. The problem with the episode is that it doesn’t have anything really memorable. It’s there, you watch it and then you forget about it. Everything is fine, but it doesn’t have any real oomph.

More about the movie, less about the director.

PLOT

Trish and her brother Darry are heading home from college, taking the back way because she wants to get away from a breakup. They see an old truck pass them on the road and then see the same guy dumping blood stained bundles into a well. Darry convinces Trish that they have to check things out, which leads to him investigating the area and her accidentally dropping him inside. What he sees inside freaks him out so much that all he can do is talk to the police. They then run into a psychic who saw them in trouble in one of her visions. Before they can or the police can do anything though, the man in the truck comes back…

TRIVIA

Director Victor Salva is on board to direct Jeepers Creepers 3, which will follow Trish and her son.

THOUGHTS

Every time I mention this movie to a horror loving fan, I get a lecture about Salva who molested a boy in the 1990s. They claim that Jeepers Creepers is like a love story to himself, fascinated with a teenage boy. You know what? I could care less about the director and what he did. There’s something about suspension of disbelief and remembering that you’re watching a horror movie here. That said, I actually kind of like Jeepers Creepers. Even my own father likes this movie and he despises horror movies. It has some nice comedic elements and anyone with a sibling will notice how realistic their relationship is on screen. I like it, but it’s not the best movie of all time.

Mm, Henry Thomas…

PLOT

Jamie is struggling to handle his job and new life after going through a divorce. One night he starts experiencing the feelings of another woman. He tastes the elegant chocolate she eats, sees her having a fun orgasm in the bathtub, you know, all that usual stuff. He eventually meets a woman and after a night of sex, he flashes to the other woman and has a seizure on the bed as she has sex with a man. He gets obsessed with her and tracks down Catherine, but not before he sees her kill her lover. Eventually she tries to kill him and as the two of them struggle, he can’t figure out if he’s seeing through his own eyes or seeing through hers…

TRIVIA

Aired in the first season of Masters of Horror.

Directed by Mick Garris who also wrote the short story Chocolate.

Garris has done several collaborations with Stephen King. Frewer (actor in the episode) starred in the television adaptation of The Stand and Thomas starred in Desperation, also from King.

THOUGHTS

The twelve year old girl inside of me is about to come out for a minute because I love (love, love) Henry Thomas. E.T. remains one of my favorite movies of all time and even though he’s all grown up now, I still love him. That said, Chocolate isn’t the best Masters of Horror episode. Matt Frewer as Jamie’s friend Wally is without a doubt the best thing about the episode. I always think about him as the Trash Can man from The Stand, which firmly establishes the Stephen King connection here. The whole plot idea is interesting, but there’s something about it that doesn’t really work for me.

More proof American filmmakers can’t remake foreign horror flicks.

PLOT

Josh is a guy who gets attacked by a weird ghost and then is later discovered dead by his girlfriend Mattie. Mattie starts getting IMs from his computer, but she decides that there must be a problem with the computer. She finds out that the new owner of the computer Dex has never turned it on, but the messages keep coming to her and her friends. She gets a letter from him that he mailed before he died, along with red tape and a note. Dex then finds messages Josh sent to a mysterious doctor and a virus he was working on to stop “them”. Turns out that a virus caused ghosts and spirits to escape into the real world and now they’re out for death. Oh and they can come through any signal.

TRIVIA

Co-written by horror movie icon Wes Craven.

Followed by two sequels (which I also reviewed) that went straight to DVD.

THOUGHTS

I have to admit that I actually own Pulse, not because I thought it was a great movie, but because it was cheap and I hadn’t seen it before I bought it. The first time I watched it, I actually thought it was fairly good and now that I’ve seen it again, I wonder what I was smoking back then. The only real fun about the movie is Kristen Bell as Mattie and some of the supporting characters. I love some of the background characters and I’ll admit that some of the CGI stuff wasn’t bad either. Pulse still wasn’t that good of a movie though.

I probably shouldn’t like this, but…

PLOT

Nicole and Jess are running away from home together because apparently generic looking Jess wants to be a big movie star. He acts like a dick the whole time, like she wants to go home when he discovers that they have no place to stay once they get to Cali and he calls her a baby. The couple has a run-in with a guy in a yellow pickup truck and then engage in some quick sex. They stop at a rest stop so Nicole can pee and when she comes back, he’s gone. She finds a cigarette on the ground and thinks he’s playing a joke so she gets pissed off. The truck reappears and tosses out Jess’s cell phone and she runs off, only to find a weirdo family in an RV. They give her a ride, but then kick her out after she finds their mutant son in the back. Nicole finds proof in the bathroom that the guy in the tuck has been chasing girls for years and he’s soon after her. She gets help (kind of) from Joey Lawrence as a cop, but even he might not be able to help her.

TRIVIA

John Shiban who directed Rest Stop wrote the screenplay for the sequel.

THOUGHTS

Rest Stop is pretty much a terrible movie, but damn if I don’t love it. I’ve probably seen it more times than I’ve seen some of those “classic” horror movies or much loved favorites. The first time I saw it, I did a little happy dance when Joey Lawrence popped up as the cop and then did another little happy dance when he meets his end. I also like the girl playing Nicole (Jamie Alexander), though it’s now fairly clear that she’s a straight to DVD horror movie kind of actress. Most people who have seen it claim that it’s horrible, but I kind of like it. If you get the chance, check out some of the theories online about the movie and what it means!