Horror Queen

A ghost in the mirror.

PLOT

Katrina is a poor girl who wanted to go to college, but couldn’t afford the housing. She ended up taking an apartment shared with several other people, all of whom seem to like picking on her. One of the men tells her a story about a girl who died there and now supposedly haunts the building, but she of course thinks it’s all nonsense. That is until the ghost decides to make herself known by haunting Katrina’s dreams…

TRIVIA

Part of the Ghost House Underground movies released by Lions Gate.

THOUGHTS

I have to say that I went into this not expecting a whole lot. I hadn’t really heard anyone talking about it, which usually makes me a little leery. This time though I spotted a sale and needed another movie to get the deal. I went through all the Ghost House movies and grabbed this one. I’m really glad that I did.

Room 205 isn’t particularly scary, but it kept me entertained. The girl playing Katrina was really good in the part. She even made me get a little teary eyed at one point and that’s not an easy thing to do…all the time anyway. I was actually watching this while trying to get some stuff done around the house (one of my bad habits) and I just couldn’t do it. I had to sit down and watch the whole thing. I’ve only seen three of the movies from Ghost House Underground, but now I’m looking forward to seeing them all!

Sex, sex and more sex!

PLOT

Madame O is a doctor that flashes back on a time when she was raped. This made her a little crazy in that she wants to have lots of sex and she doesn’t really care who it happens with. Ah yes, and she also caught syphilis from her little experience, which she doesn’t share with her paramours. In fact she even asks one if he’s “clean” before embarking on dirty unprotected monkey sex. She eventually mellows a little and gets married, but that’s not really the end….

TRIVIA

The actress playing the lead role only ever acted in this movie.

THOUGHTS

Dang that was a lot of sex. I honestly have no clue who told me to watch Madame O, or who recommended it, but I’m wondering know if (a) they thought I needed to get laid or (b) I’d enjoy a whole lot of sex in a movie. Granted the sex wasn’t really graphic, nor was it very exciting, but it certainly was there…the whole time.

I wanted to like this movie, but it just wasn’t my style. I can’t blame it on the black and white because frankly I’m a big fan of black and white movies. It was just really hard to get into the movie and I found myself getting really restless just waiting for the ending.

Stay away from the construction site…

PLOT

The movie opens right onto a rape scene, with a young blonde woman being brutally attacked by a group of men. Then we see a poor woman just trying to do her laundry when a guy in a mask shows up and kills her husband. Next thing you know, she’s booking it out of there and rightly so. Hell, I’d be gone too. Yep, then we get a young couple having sex until the moron guy leaves his naked girlfriend to go to the movies with his friends. After a few more killings, we’re introduced to a bunch of teens who head off to the same town where they plan on staying (for free no less) in a remote house. We also learn that there’s a mass murderer going loose in town, killing people with a nail gun.

TRIVIA

Supposedly the script for the movie was just a scant 25 pages.

THOUGHTS

The acting in Nail Gun Massacre is so bad that I found myself giggling quite a bit. I realize that the movie is fairly old and during the mid-1980s, this was how people tended to act in horror movies, but give me a break. I was also begging the girl towards the beginning to put on a shirt because she was half-naked for so long. You’d think I’d be used to naked girls in horror movies by now, but sadly enough, I’m not.

I also had to laugh at the killer himself because he was just so ridiculous. At times it even looked like he was going scuba diving and for awhile it looked like he was using a paintball gun. I know this movie has a lot of fans, but I’m just not one of them.

This one weirded me out…

PLOT

Angelica is the “worldly” college student from LA who goes to a small town to visit her best friend Emily. The two girls decide to go to a rave out in the woods, against the wishes of Emily’s mom. Once there they meet a man named Swan who they try to score X from. He convinces them to go back to his friend’s place to get the drugs. Of course Swan and his buddies, including a man named Chaos, all like playing games with young girls and guys they meet and now they want to have fun with the two girls.

TRIVIA

Roger Ebert and the director actually got into a very public debate over the film after it was originally released.

THOUGHTS

All right, there was one scene in this movie that I literally couldn’t watch. It involves a girl getting her nipple cut off while still alive and having said nipple shoved down her mouth. I actually had to turn down the television volume because I was worried that my neighbors might complain about the screaming. I also had to look down to the side and away from the television because I really couldn’t watch it. It made me feel like a kid again, when I watched horror movies from between my fingers. Another scene came towards the end with a knife and yeah…I reached for the fast forward button.

I had heard a lot of good stuff about Chaos, which made me fairly weary. I figured that it wouldn’t hold up to the hype and that I’d end up feeling really disappointed. Surprise, surprise when I actually liked it. Maybe like is too strong of a word…it definitely impressed me more than I thought it would. Ah, and I also got a kick out of the racist cop who doesn’t seem to realize that it’s not 1937 anymore. All in all, it was a really unsettling movie and it made any lingering bondage fantasies completely disappear from my mind…Plus it has the kind of ending that you just don’t see coming.

Wowza, lots and lots o’ lesbians.

PLOT

Paul is an author, writing for an S&M magazine (wow, how do I get that job?) when he stumbles across a prostitute and invites her back to his place. He learns that she’s been to several black masses with her johns and decides to let her know that he’s a former priest. Apparently he was kicked out when he wouldn’t shut up about black masses. He decides to hunt down the people performing those rituals and make them pay.

TRIVIA

There’s also a very graphic all sex version of this movie out there. Considering the amount of sex in this version, I wonder how much they really changed!

THOUGHTS

I really wish I could say something smart or witty about this movie, but I really don’t think I “got” it. There was a lot of sex, I mean a lot of sex, even for a 1970s movie. I think I saw more completely naked women in 90 minutes here than I have in my entire life…and I watch a lot of horror movies. My momma always told me to be polite so I’ll just say that I didn’t like this movie and I couldn’t get into it.

Sorority girls, a haunted house…wait, haven’t I seen this movie before?

PLOT

Once upon a time, there was a small brothel operating out of a historic house in a small college town. A female worker and her john are brutally murdered there and people begin to whisper that the old place is haunted. Ah yes, and there’s a little boy who’s mom works there and is kind of a pervert, trying to pay another little girl to get naked for money. Gee, wonder where he picked that up! Anyway, thirteen years later a local sorority sends their pledges out to the same house as part of their initiation rites. If they want to be part of the cool kids, they have to spend the night there. The girls’ boyfriends all decide that it will be fun to set up some spooky things at the house and try to scare the girls. Yet it seems like the ghosts of the house don’t want anyone to have fun.

THOUGHTS

Basically I went into this movie not sure what to expect. For some reason the copy I got, had the date 2002 listed on the front, but this was obviously a 1980s kind of movie. It was a lame 1980s movie at that. It didn’t have any great jumps or good scares, or even any interesting kills. By the time it was over, I was already forgetting about it.

The inbreds are back!

PLOT

The movie picks up with one of the only survivors from the first movie telling his story about what happened to his therapist. Basically it seems like an excuse to use 4-5 minutes of the first movie and tie the characters together. A group of kids are planning a motorcycle trip out into the desert and this obviously makes Bobby a little nervous. He realizes that he just can’t go back out there, but that doesn’t stop the rest of the characters from heading off on their trip. Of course once they get there, they realize that the inbreds are still running wild and of course they’re after our little group of teens.

TRIVIA

Wes Craven wrote and directed the sequel. He later claimed that he didn’t like it, but only did the movie because he needed the money.

Kevin Spirtas has appeared in several other horror movies over the years and under more than one name. He’s known to non-horror movies fans for his role on “Days of Our Lives”.

THOUGHTS

Personally I thought there were a little too many flashbacks to The Hills Have Eyes. I’d start to get into the current storyline, only to suffer through a flashback and start to zone out. I think they showed the best scenes from the first movie here in flashbacks. Plus they waited until a large chunk of the movie was over before they revealed yet another connection to the first movie, in the form of a female character.

I admit that I liked the original The Hills Have Eyes, but I wasn’t too crazy about the sequel. It did seem a little campy sometimes and there were a few too many flashbacks. It didn’t feel like something Craven would write or direct.

Molly’s back, but she isn’t nearly as cool…

PLOT

Molly apparently hasn’t recovered from the events of the last movie and what happened. This becomes abundantly clear when she’s taken to a mental institute where they want to discuss what happened. Actually they want to experiment on her and a group of patients by sending them into the virtual world where their inner thoughts and hopes are exposed. When people start dying in the virtual world though, they also die in the real world. A figure in a dark cloak chases them around and Molly sees herself as a killer. But what is real and what is part of the virtual world?

TRIVIA

A sequel to Ripper: Letter from Hell.

THOUGHTS

I have to admit that I absolutely loved the first Ripper movie, so much so that I’ve probably recommended it to far too many people over the years. At the same time, it was a pretty obscure little movie and most people I know, have never seen it. That makes me wonder why they even made a sequel. Is there some underground cult following that I just don’t know about?

Anyway, when I heard about this movie, I was a little hesitant. I actually sat down twice to watch it, but kept putting the movie away and watching something else instead. Now that I have seen it, I should have just skipped it.

Ripper 2 uses the Molly character, but replaces the actress and trust me, this girl is no AJ Cook. While Cook made you believe that she was fairly helpless, this girl is just kind of there. She doesn’t have any real presence and considering she’s the lead, that’s kind of sad.

The plot also doesn’t make sense and the whole movie is fairly confusing. I pretty much wish I had skipped this one entirely and sat down to watch the original again.

He’s coming home…

PLOT

Dr. Giggles is the name given to a mental patient played by Larry Drake, thanks to his love of cutting people up and his belief that he’s a real doctor. He escapes at the beginning of the movie and rushes back to his old hometown. At the same time Jen is living her life and trying to ward off the advances of her boyfriend Max. As everyone prepares for a big party, she learns that she has a heart defect that requires immediate surgery. She doesn’t tell her boyfriend, who naturally runs off and sleeps with the town slut and she catches them. Hey, guy just thought you weren’t interested in him. Then of course Dr. Giggles pops up and starts killing off teens, but seems way too interested in Jen…

TRIVIA

Glen Quinn had a role in Campfire Tales, which is another cheesy horror movie that I love. He later went onto play a role on the television series “Angel” as well as several seasons on the show “Roseanne”. Sadly enough we lost this actor a few years ago.

THOUGHTS

It’s probably not cool at all to admit this, but I fucking love Dr. Giggles. I held onto my old VHS copy for far too long, especially considering that I didn’t own a VCR. I love the fact that Holly Marie Combs was in it long before “Charmed” and Glen Quinn, years before anyone knew who Roseanne was. In fact, I watched this movie three times in a row when I finally bought it on DVD and it didn’t even phase me.

This isn’t the greatest movie at all and the kill scenes were all pretty lame, but damn it if I don’t love this movie.

Will young people never learn to stay out of cabins?

THE PLOT

Michael books a week long stay at a fairly big lodge for some time away with his girlfriend Julia. When they arrive they find the lodge in a state of disarray with food left on the stove and things still cooking. Just then the caretaker Henry arrives, covered in blood and claims he was cutting up venison in the garage. Can you tell where this is going? Julia later ventures into the garage and doesn’t see any signs of meat or blood, but doesn’t find this weird at all. The couple then attempt to have sex at every turn and in every room in the house, while also partaking in a little recreational fun. On their first night alone Julia spots a strange girl outside the house who seemingly disappears when Michael appears. They decide to put that behind them and enjoy the rest of their stay, not realizing that the caretaker is keeping an eye on them…

FUN TRIVIA

The original title for the movie was Reservation, but changed later to The Lodge.

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS

What’s with all these non-committal women suddenly turning up in horror movies? Here the couple have been together for three years, but Michael points out that Julia has problems committing to him and he expresses some jealousy at her wanting to take kickboxing classes from a good looking man. He brings along an engagement ring, but never really mentions it again. At some point I’m sure we’ll see a happy couple in one of these movies.

In terms of acting, well if you want to see overacting at its finest look to the scene where the couple are stuck in a car together while the caretaker comes after them. The girl then turns into one of the worst actresses in the world, screaming and crying to the point where I just wanted him to kill her.

Once we see the girl up close later in the movie, she actually redeems it for awhile. The makeup done on here was creepy enough to make anyone freak out a little. Also there is one twist in the movie, but it’s a fairly expected one that doesn’t add a whole lot to the plot. It also doesn’t help when an actor appears in the movie and then disappears without a word.

The Lodge is a fairly predictable straight to DVD release. It’s a story that’s been done a hundred times before and will be done a hundred times more in the future. There’s nothing really memorable about it and I’ll probably forget about it in a few weeks.