Horror Queen

THE PLOT

Sheriff Wayne is ready to leave his small town behind and head to the big city with his college professor wife. However he still has to get through his last day and that’s when the birds decide to attack. What starts off as a small attack quickly spreads until the aggressive birds are going after everyone they come into contact with and even those that try to hide. His wife Cynthia stops by a local farm where she’s been tutoring a young girl and is surprised to discover the reason why the birds are attacking.

FUN TRIVIA

Sean Patrick Flanery has also turned up in “The Dead Zone” as well as the Masters of Horror episode “The Damned Thing”.

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS

First off, this movie isn’t terrible, it just isn’t that great. My friends and I had our fine time of trading jokes, all using the Kaw pun. I guess it’s basically what you’d expect from a movie about a killer group of birds where Alfred Hitchcock isn’t involved. Flanery is acceptable as the sheriff, but we’ve all seen him do better than this. It’s an okay movie though I’m glad someone else picked it out and that I didn’t seek it out on my own.

THE PLOT

Two slackers working at a film processing lab find a hidden movie titled Macabre Pair of Shorts with a warning label on the front. Smart guys that they are, they decide to screen the film for themselves. The film tells three separate stories, with a wraparound of a vampire couple watching television. Once the film within a film ends, the guys are horrified to find that the film itself has come to life and is now eating everyone insight.

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS

I think this is probably one of those horror movies that was filmed and shelved, only to find a release because of one minor celebrity in the film. Remember that Texas Chainsaw sequel? Here it was David Boreanaz though he doesn’t appear for very long. His character’s name is David and he has a total of three lines in the whole movie.

This was still a little better than I was expecting. You should know that this is more of a parody than anything else, so it’s best if you don’t take it too seriously. I even laughed a few times. Everything that you want to make fun of: the acting, sets, plot, whatever is all fodder for the film because it actually wants you to laugh at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. I wouldn’t buy the movie, but it was still better than I expected.

FUN TRIVIA

David Boreanaz from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” actually has a small role in this movie. It was his first on screen acting job.

Three horror vignettes in the Tales from the Darkside vein…

THE PLOT

The first story, Beyond Death is about a group of filmmakers who venture into an abandoned building to work on their latest project. Once there they uncover a hidden coffin with a body inside it and decide to make it part of their zombie movie. Only they don’t realize until it’s too late that something inside that coffin is still alive.

The second story, Brides of the Dead takes a page from reality shows. A group of young women are sent into a supposedly haunted house and forced to do different “scary” things with the winner getting a million dollars. The women quickly learn that someone is playing a game with them and killing them off one by one.

The Rotten Dead is the third and thankfully last segment of Tales from the Grave. Three drunk buddies venture into the woods to see the “witch’s house”, but are chased off by a half-naked boy. Somehow their work accidentally kills a cat that turns out to be a male witch in disguise. Later they’re confronted by an old woman (mother of the boy) who curses them and things start to go wrong. The same woman uses her powers to change herself into a young, good looking woman and really starts to play with them.

THE GOOD

The first story I enjoyed, up to a point. Towards the end it got a little silly, but it wasn’t too bad. The makeup in the first story was really good, a lot better than some I’ve seen, especially the guy missing a nose.

The third had one thing I loved: a James Dean look alike. This guy had the hair down pat, not to mention the white tee and blue jeans. Then again this movie is from the 1990s so he was probably just trying to look like one of the guys from “Beverly Hills 90210”. Random note: they actually used the same Coca-Cola mug that I and 7 million other people own. There was also a moderately disgusting scene in which the young witch gave “birth” in the middle of a kitchen.

THE BAD

Whoever cast the first story obviously had Rob Zombie on the brain since the lead zombie looked exactly like the singer/director.

The second vignette was pretty terrible, from the acting and sets to props and camera work. They tried to do the “reality” show angles with different actresses wearing handheld cameras and it gave the segment a very pedestrian feel. I also hated that every single woman was wearing as little clothing as possible. If I had to run around on national television in over the knee boots, a bra and boy shorts, I’d probably shoot myself. Doing it for a significant other though? Well, that’s a whole different ball game…

THE BOTTOM LINE

I definitely enjoyed parts of this or at least parts of the first one, but things went downhill from there. Unlike other movies that have some kind of wraparound to connect the different stories, this just leapt from story to story without any continuity. There should have been at least one thread to draw together the different stories. I’m not going to recommend Tales from the Grave though I can think of several hundred movies that are far worse.

Tired of hearing about Charles Manson? Try Timothy Bach on for size.

THE PLOT

In 1969 Timothy Bach was a famous rock star who quit singing and set up a hippie commune at Camp Utopia. After downing a bad batch of LSD, he killed everyone at the camp and disappeared into the woods. Now it’s 30 years later and a group of young, stupid people decide to camp out at the old Utopia settlement and it looks like someone isn’t happy about that.

THE GOOD

Some of the death scenes weren’t too bad, especially when Timothy goes on his rampage during a flashback sequence. I’ve seen better scenes shot for even less money, but it still wasn’t that terrible. I’m also glad they made their own connection to Charles Manson since that was something I picked up on, though it’s hard not to. One of the characters referenced those murders happening at the same time, to explain why no one ever heard about the Camp Utopia murders, even the girl who lived in the town.

There’s one scene where the Ranger is trying to make conversation with a dead body that had me laughing my butt off for no good reason. He’s just trying to calm his nerves and relax a little rather than feel uncomfortable and I really loved it. Then again, Ranger Rogers was the only person in the movie I even remotely liked.

THE BAD

This looks like some college student decided that he/she should be a director and all their friends should be in the movie. Then they decided that they might get laid if they cast a couple of no talent hot girls in the lead roles. All of that leads to completely unbelievable characters that sound like they’re reading directly from a script strategically placed behind a tree.

Another random comment: three seconds of kissing and the girl’s ready to get naked? Man, I must be the lone wolf in the world since I’m more into foreplay than that. Three seconds of kissing isn’t even enough to make me think about touching you, let alone taking off my clothes. Then again I guess I’m just special. Oh well, at least it led to a nice after school special discussion about safe sex.

Yes and let’s not forget the gratuitous girl running through the woods scene where her thong is prominently on display, sticking up above her jeans. Maybe I should start dressing like that too; it’d bring a lot more people to the blog. On another note, I wanted to smack the hippie loving chick because she reminded me of a former roommate. If you want to live in a commune, live in one and shut the hell up.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Wow, 2 minutes into the movie and there’s already nudity? Less than three minutes later we have the first death? I wasn’t expecting that. Unfortunately the next death didn’t occur until the 41 minute mark if you skip over the Camp Utopia scenes. That’s a long time to wait for a (very) lame kill, especially when the movie doesn’t have anything else going for it.

My friends and I can’t even take a regular picture of us with a digital camera and yet I think we could make a better movie than this! Maybe there’s still hope for our Ducks on a Plane idea…People without talent should really stop making movies. Just because you have a camera and access to editing equipment does not mean you’re a filmmaker, keep that in mind.

THE PLOT

Otis is obsessed with his sister-in-law and dreams of what might have been. His solution is to kidnap girls, make them relive his life and then murder them. Unfortunately he nabs a young girl by the name of Riley, not realizing that her family isn’t going to stand for it. When Riley escapes his clutches, her parents and younger brother decide to make sure he gets his payback.

THE GOOD

This is the most random cast: Daniel Stern, Illeana Douglas (who I love by the way), Kevin Pollak and Jere Burns who you might remember from “Dear John”. Yet somehow they all pull it together. Stern is pretty great playing the dad who isn’t quite sure he wants to inflict bodily harm, while Douglas is fantastic as the mom ready to do absolutely anything and everything to the letch. Even Burns as the incompetent FBI agent is good and a nice change of pace from how regular agents are portrayed in movies. It’s also hysterically funny in parts and I found myself pretty caught up in the plot. Who wouldn’t think about doing the same thing in their position?

THE BAD

How much longer is Ashley Johnson going to keep playing a teenager? I know she’s still young, but it feels like she’s been playing one forever! A couple of times the movie slows down in places, but it’s nothing I couldn’t handle.

TRIVIA

The same writers, director and producer also did the flick Sublime, which I wasn’t crazy about. Hard to believe that I enjoyed this one so much!

THE BOTTOM LINE

I’ll be adding this to my list of movies I want to pick up in the future. I found it humorous and even laughed out loud at parts. It’s far better than any horror movie parodies of recent years.

THE PLOT

All Ed wants is to get the script he wrote turned into a movie. The production company wants to cast a buff action star, Ed can’t get anyone to listen to him, there’s a creepy janitor running around and if things weren’t bad enough, someone keeps killing off people associated with the movie. First it’s the lead actor, followed by the director, producer and even the casting director.

THE GOOD

At least it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Far too many horror movies made for the straight to DVD market attempt to take things very seriously, but that isn’t a problem here. I even found myself laughing at times like the faux blow job scene. No one associated with this movie has any dreams of winning an Academy Award and that’s probably a good thing.

This one cuts down on the violence and gore by showing only enough to progress the story, but you know what? I actually liked that. It’s nice to see someone about to get offed, only to have the camera cut to a silhouette instead. Also I enjoyed the scene of the action star’s hair falling out, though I want to know what he put on it in the first place.

THE BAD

Too many red herrings considering that the real killer was pretty easy to figure out. At one point the killer is even considered a red herring, more to throw off the audience. It was kind of annoying. I was also disappointed by the lazy ending that didn’t make a lot of sense. You’re left wondering what happened to the last victim and if he’s dead or not.

STRANGE FACT

Elizabeth Daily who plays the casting director Joanne also goes by the name of E.G. Daily. If you’ve ever seen or heard of The Rugrats, she’s the voice of Tommy.

THE BOTTOM LINE

A fairly mediocre little horror movie. Not the worst I’ve ever seen, but not the best either. I’m not going to go off on a hunt to track down a copy and I doubt I’d ever see it again, but I’m not complaining about the time I spent watching it.