Nov
30
2008
Very forgetful.
PLOT
A group of young soldiers are taken to an experimental lab where they’re tested for a number of different things. Michael Madsen turns up in a “whatever happened to his career?” role, playing one of the bad guys (natch). Supposedly the military started a group called Project Havoc where they planned to turn soldiers into Ultimate Killing Machines. All the kids are tricked into joining the group, not realizing what’s about to happen to them. The movie itself is fairly forgettable, though there were a few good looking people scattered around.
TRIVIA
Madsen has been in a few other horror movies lately including the not too bad movie House.
THOUGHTS
Sometimes I watch a movie for no reason except that it was cheap, such is the case with UKM. The movie itself was part of a two-disc set along with another movie from Cutting Edge Films for $8. That should have been an indication of what I was getting into, but sadly I missed it.
This movie was absolutely horrible and it was really crappy. The acting was bad and frankly it kind of gives a bad name to all low budget/straight to DVD horror movies. I was hoping to find some small redeeming factor in the movie, but I was really just waiting for it to be over. It also had that strange lighting that seems to hit so many movies made with the same budget.
Nov
29
2008
Ants, not bees. Would that really make a difference?
PLOT
A group of researchers head into the wilderness of Brazil where they fight against a nest of ants that have been attacking citizens. One of the men realizes that these ants are pretty different and contacts and old lover of his who quickly heads south. The ants are communicating together and adapting to their surroundings. It turns out that the groups has been using a special type of spray on the ants that’s caused them to mutate.
TRIVIA
A Sci-Fi Channel exclusive.
THOUGHTS
I have to plead temporary insanity on this one. I was at Wal-Mart after spending two days straight with a couple of teenagers and the next thing I knew, we were sitting at my house and watching this movie. Apparently I blacked out in the middle of the store and bought it or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
At one point, my fourteen year old cousin screamed that this reminded her of “the movie with the big bugs” that was apparently Starship Troopers. Don’t listen to that hype because The Hive is one big piece of steaming dog crap. It was so horrible, as in really horrible. The bugs look fake, the special effects look fake and the acting is incredibly wooden. The only real thrill we got out of our 90 minutes was making fun of the movie. Oh well, at least Tom Wopat was in it, any excuse for a Dukes of Hazard reference…
Nov
28
2008
Confused!
PLOT
Marie was the victim of a brutal and horrific rape, which led to her suffering from agoraphobia, in other words she can’t leave her house. When her boyfriend Jerrid attempts to touch her, she freaks out and sends him running out of the house. She decides to rent out part of her house to a man by the name of Tom, thinking she needs a little support. After her boyfriend finally gives up on her, she feels drawn to Tom. He cooks for her, treats her right and even manages to help her get out of the house and walk around for a little bit. When her friend Ricky and her sister both disappear after visiting the house, she starts to look at Tom a little differently. He stays up late at night, has a large abundance of tools that crush bone, grinds things a lot and when she finds out that he doesn’t have a job, she puts all the pieces together.
TRIVIA
Also known as Housebound.
THOUGHTS
Every so often I see a movie and I can’t really figure out how I feel about it. That was what happened with Kitchen Privileges. The movie seems to go off in a lot of different directions. At first you feel for Marie, then you wonder if she’s losing her mind, then you wonder what the hell Tom is doing, etc. It tries to be sly by fooling you into thinking one thing when it actuality something else entirely is going on.
I picked this up at Wal-Mart back around Halloween and it clearly stated Kitchen Privileges on the cover. Then I went to see what other people said about it and found that they saw the same movie, only it was called Housebound. Apparently it’s been out since 2000 or was filmed in 2000, but didn’t get real distribution until this year. That means some people apparently own a DVD copy called Housebound.
Anyway this movie is incredibly confusing. Just when you think you have it all figured out, something else pops up and twists everything around again. When it finally did end and tried to wrap up the whole movie, I was just left scratching my head.
Nov
27
2008
You never know who might be on the line…
PLOT
Dr. Lindsay Gale has a call in radio show where she offers help and support to those in the LA area. She starts getting phone calls from a man who claims he suffers from severe headaches and uses the name Ramone. She grows concerned, but has no way of knowing that Ramone is actually a photographer named Kirk who just happens to love raping and mutilating women. He even rapes and kills a woman she knows, but there’s nothing she can do. Then Kirk has a prostitute he’s with call into the show and proceeds to kill her while on the air. She seeks help from two detectives, including Chris McCabe who she launches a ridiculous romance with later in the film. Once she does this, Kirk decides to come after her himself.
TRIVIA
The original title of the film was The Hollywood Strangler. However Crown International, which distributed the film, made the producers change the title.
THOUGHTS
I went into Don’t Answer the Phone without a lot of expectations and damn it if I wasn’t entertained! This movie is exactly what I mean when I say I like bad horror movies. It isn’t very good, the acting isn’t that great and the death scenes are fairly tame. Yet I put it in one night before I went to bed and ended up staying up to watch the whole thing.
There’s a great scene where a caller phones the show and tells the detective that her young son keeps tying up his action figures and throwing them against the wall. The kid also cut up his goldfish with a pair of scissors and she wants to know if she should do something. In a response that I found hilarious, Gale offers her the number of a support line. Another scene involves a bunch of addicts flushing all their drugs down the toilet because they heard a cop was in the building. This is the kind of movie you’ll find here.
Don’t Answer the Phone isn’t a classic and most of you won’t like it, but I found it pretty entertaining and well worth the $5 I paid for it off Amazon!
Nov
26
2008
One of my favorite things about this documentary is when they take a few minutes to discuss April Fool’s Day, one of my favorite horror movies of all time. One of the men states fairly loudly that it isn’t a cheat, but that the makers of High Tension used a cheap. Damn skippy buddy! The director of April Fool’s Day even accepts responsibility for the fall of the slasher film before quickly saying he doesn’t and the distributor of the movie should be blamed.
Towards the end it starts to lose steam a little. They talk about Silence of the Lambs and Scream as revitalizing the horror movie genre and spend way too much time patting the makers of Scream on the back. They gloss over the fact that those movies spawned a lot of low budget and high budget movies that sucked, just the same as we saw in the 1980s. In fact, some might argue that movies like I Still Know What You Did Last Summer are far worse than movies like Cheerleader Camp.
Going to Pieces is still an excellent documentary and I’m glad I took the recommendation of a friend and watched it. It glosses over horror movies made earlier and focuses on the slasher films of the late 1970s and on, starting with Halloween. Plus they bring together not only John Carpenter and Wes Craven, but a lot of lesser known directors working during this time. Any movie that not only mentions My Bloody Valentine, but shows clips and an interview with the director, definitely gets two thumbs up from me.
Nov
25
2008
Damn it, my mom was right…
PLOT
Gar and Tre are a brother and sister who eat the flesh of the living and are cursed by a witch who makes them age quicker than they should. When they realize they can keep living by eating young people, they turn to cannibalism pretty hardcore. Gar becomes Mark and a few centuries later he learns that he has to have a child if he wants his sister/lover to stay alive. This leads to him walking in on Linnea Quigley wearing only a towel and somehow managing to marry her. We never see them fall in love or anything, it literally goes from the towel scene to the wedding and then her giving birth. Quigley doesn’t get a name and she’s actually billed only as Bondi’s mom. They have Bondi, who Mark has to sacrifice on her 16th birthday. Still with me? Bondi gets an amulet from her father and then makes the mistake of riding with a bunch of stoners who attempt to rape her. She calls out for her dad, holds the amulet, the van crashes and she manages to escape. Unfortunately she ends up at Tre’s house where a bunch of teenagers live and she settles in with her aunt, not knowing what’s about to come.
TRIVIA
Other titles for this movie include Sanctuary for Evil, Nightstalker and Curse of the Living Dead.
THOUGHTS
This is one of those movies I picked up cheap during the Amazon horror movie sale and for some reason my dad actually watched it before I did. Actually I forgot to change my address when I placed my order, the movies went to their house, he opened them and took a couple he thought looked interesting. Later he called to tell me what a piece of garbage this was, effectively ruining it for me. I had never seen it before so I sat down to watch it, knowing that someone else hated it. If it weren’t for that, I’m not sure how I would have felt.
One of my main complaints is that this movie doesn’t really make sense. Somehow Mark and Quigley have a sixteen year old daughter, but they haven’t aged a bit. Granted Mark’s supposed to be immortal, but what the hell’s up with Quigley? Plus halfway through the movie it shifts to focus on Bondi and she really isn’t interesting. She’s walking along and a van full of random strangers drives up and offers her a ride. After thinking about it for 3 seconds, she hops in and then is shocked that they want sex. Plus there’s a creepy scene where she starts crying for her “daddy” as they’re going to town on her. Can we say incest? Plus we already have the incest from her dad and aunt anyway.
Don’t go Near the Park has a lot of fans, probably more than I ever imagined. Unfortunately I just wasn’t crazy about it. I will say that the commentary track is great, much more interesting than the movie. Quigley mainly sits around and doesn’t say much, but the director opens up a lot about the movie and his thoughts about making it.
Nov
24
2008
Who’s there?
PLOT
Knock Knock starts off with a hot girl hearing a knock on the door. Thinking it’s her boyfriend, she opens up the door and of course no one’s there. The knocks continue until she’s killed. Then it jumps to a group of high school students (yeah right) talking about random bull shit. One girl is upset because her grandfather suddenly came back into her life and she wants nothing to do with him since he wasn’t around when her father died. Turns out the grandfather is a cop and when teens start dying, he teams up with a blonde female detective who dresses like a slut and encourages her to use her looks. Seriously at one point they interview a suspect and he tells her to let her hair down and “use the Prom Queen look”; I’m surprised she didn’t just rip off the low cut shirt and micro-mini right there! Oh and there’s a mentally handicapped boy who keeps popping up to do random things and something about how all the victims had parents who played football together in high school.
TRIVIA
If you found the woman in the bar a little scary, you have a right to your opinion. She’s played by WWE “wrestler” Stephanie Finochio.
THOUGHTS
Have you ever sat down to watch a movie and at some point realize that you’ve already seen it before? That’s what happened to me with Knock Knock. I saw it on the shelf at Wal-Mart, even had a conversation about it with one of the workers and it still didn’t register in my head. Towards Halloween their horror movie shelves were getting a little thin and since it was relatively cheap, I stuck it in my basket.
I sat down to watch the movie and never once thought it looked familiar. Then it hit the 18 minute mark and one scene in particular brought it all back. I rented this movie back in the summer from Hollywood Video! I wrote a review about it for one of the other websites I write for, complaining about that one scene and the woman playing the detective. Suddenly I felt stupid for buying something that I hated to begin with and had already forgotten about.
Basically if you want to watch a movie that you’ll instantly forget about, go for Knock Knock.
Nov
23
2008
Two couples, one killer.
PLOT
Jack and Stephanie are a married couple having some serious problems. We learn this while following them as they drive down an old country road. She’s a singer and when she tries to put her CD on, he freaks out and they bicker about their upcoming marriage counseling session. They stumble across an accident in the road and a feisty cop tells them a “shortcut”. After an accident that cuts their tires, they wander down the road and find an old bed and breakfast and another couple who had a similar accident. The lights go out and they find an old woman named Betty, her son Pete and her husband Stuart who run the inn. They act a little strange, but they’re nothing compared to the Tinman. The Tinman appears outside the house and instantly issues a challenge to the two couples: give him one dead body by sunrise or face his wrath. Each couple has their own ideas of how to get through the night, but no one knows who will be left standing once sun comes…
TRIVIA
Bill Mosley as Stuart has been all over the horror movie map. If you don’t know this guy by now, I want to know why the hell you read my blog.
THOUGHTS
House is interesting because it starts out as your typical slasher movie and then brings in elements of black magic and ghosts. It also lets you learn a little more about the characters as the movie progresses, which is good because in the beginning it’s hard to feel sympathy for any of them. Stephanie for example just seems like a raging bitch, but after awhile you start to feel sorry for her and actually want her to survive.
There’s a reason movies don’t focus on multiple characters and that’s clear in House. Each character has some hidden secret that the Tinman taunts them with throughout the night and it gets hard to follow everyone. Two characters share the same secret, but it’s told from two different angles plus you have two more stories coming out from the other characters. It gets a little confusing at times.
Michael Madsen pops up in the beginning as a cop and then promptly disappears. Just when you think “god is this what his career became?”, he turns up again. I have to admit that between him and the actor playing Jack, I more than had my fill of hot men.
I actually liked House, more than I thought going into it. It has a lot of different elements going on at one time, but they combine together nicely. The ending’s a tiny bit hokey, but considering the rest of the movie, I can deal with that.
Nov
22
2008
Ah, I remember those 976 numbers!
PLOT
All right so we kind of have two lead characters here. There’s Spike who’s your basic bad boy from the 1960s, which is odd since this movie is from the 80s. Basically he smokes, drinks, has sex, wears a leather jacket and rides a motorcycle. Then you have Hoax, his cousin who seems really innocent and slightly retarded, kind of like Carrie White. Hoax’s mom is Spike’s aunt and she’s religious to the point of insanity. Spike starts calling 976-EVIL, a horrorscope hotline and at some point it starts raining fish. Hoax calls the line, does what it says and ends up killing Spike’s girlfriend. Another character pops up, a reporter that wants to find out about the fish and then gets caught up in the phone line.
TRIVIA
Directed by Robert Englund, man that guy sure gets around.
THOUGHTS
I hadn’t seen this movie in a long time, but I remembered it being really good so I was excited when my copy came in the mail. After sitting through it, yeah I’m not so sure about this one. 976-EVIL starts out following Spike and all his “bad boy” goodness and then jumps to Hoax, who I could care less about. Hoax is basically annoying and hard to handle in small doses, let alone when he becomes the focus of the story.
I’ll be completely honest here and say that I didn’t really remember this movie at all. Once it started playing, I realized that with the exception of Spike, there wasn’t a single thing I remembered clearly about the movie. That said, I didn’t really like it. It was hard for me to follow certain parts of the movie and at times I definitely started zoning out. I had to literally force myself to follow along. It’s safe to say I can skip the sequel.
Nov
21
2008
What I won’t do for my friends….
PLOT
Ivan is a mutilator as in he mutilates himself in front of large crowds. We learn through flashbacks that he was abused by his alcoholic father (played scarily sexy at times by Jim Van Bebber) and saw his father rape and kill a woman. At times he runs across his girlfriend/ex-girlfriend, but has hallucinations where he sees her as a demon who delights in torturing others. No matter where he goes or what he does, he’s incapable of connecting with another person so he inflicts violence on himself to deal with his pain.
TRIVIA
Written, directed and produced by Andrew/Andy Copp who probably had about 7 billion other jobs on the film.
THOUGHTS
Remember last month when I reviewed The Atrocity Circle from writer/director Andrew Copp? Well this is his first movie and one I finally had the pleasure of seeing thanks to Netflix and some juggling in my queue. When I say pleasure, I mean that in a nice way since I found no pleasure in this movie. It’s so twisted, warped and fucked up that I literally watched it twice because I just couldn’t look away from the screen.
Let me explain just how I felt about this movie by quoting my own message I sent Copp after seeing the movie. “I feel the need to protect my nipples at all times and never let anyone near them ever again. I’m also going to need you to promise me that you’ll never say the words ‘suck my dick’ to me ever…seriously, I need you to make that promise”.
That is seriously the email I sent Andy after watching the movie. Before you get the wrong idea and think he’s the type of guy who runs around telling random people to suck his dick (maybe he is, I don’t know him that well), let me clarify. There are two scenes in this movie that seemed to burn themselves in my mind. One involved Jim Van Bebber constantly screaming “suck my dick” at one point and another involved him doing something to the nipples of a dead body. I swear after watching half the movies I watch, I have no idea how I ever manage to have sex with anyone!
Something I really dug about this movie was the lack of dialogue. Large chunks of the movie went by without a single character talking and it really captured my attention. Sometimes when characters start babbling, I tune out but here I was forced to follow along. I probably didn’t “get” the movie the way Copp intended, but at least I tried.
The Mutilation Man was completely twisted. At times I felt like I couldn’t look away from the screen and then there were times when I wanted to hide my eyes. I didn’t because I’m a big girl, but you get the picture. See it if you want, but know that I’ve warned you in advance…
