SHOCKTOBER Movie Reviews!
I've decided that the only thing allowed on the tv for the month of October is horror movies. Goddamn it.
Andy gets to pick November's theme.
Anyway, this means my Netflix recent activity list is full of fun titles and there's been nonstop screaming in my apartment. Most of it from the television.
Popcorn (1991) ***
- I felt this was a fitting start to a month of horror flicks because it involves kids putting on a horror fest at their local theater and being terrorized by a man who is a master of special fx and might or might not be trying to make the ultimate horror movie. People get killed by old fashioned movie theater gimmicks. The acting isn't exactly good, but it's entertaining enough. Also fun to play the "what else was the person in?" game with the cast. I rated it 3 stars on Netflix.
Nightmare on Elmstreet (2010) ***
- Jackie Earle Haley is no Robert Englund, and this is nowhere near as enjoyable as the original. That goes without saying. Taken on its own merit, it's a little slow but competent. I liked it, for the most part. I loved the original, and would have liked this version a lot more were it not for the over-produced feel of it, but eh. I wasn't expecting much. I'm positively inclined towards anything Freddy-related, and I've seen much, much worse. So 3 stars, with one of those primarily being a star for effort. This movie is getting some extra credit with me for putting Freddy Krueger back in the public eye, which meant that he got released as MK9 DLC, which in general makes me happy. I own it now, and am comfortable with that fact.
From a Whisper to a Scream (1987) ***
- I love vignette films. This has Vincent Price looking bitter about being there (apparently he was actually bitter about being there), and you can see the framing device twist coming a mile away. Standard anthology film, with some decent premises and a few slow/weak parts. Bonus points for evil kids. I didn't at any point feel like it wasted my time. 3 stars.
The Burning (1981) ***
- Your basic vengeance-fueled slasher-at-camp flick, but made that much more enjoyable by the presence of a young Jason Alexander as one of the oddly competent camp kids. I questioned some of the character motivations (seriously, if you almost kill a dude by setting him on fire while you were at camp, would you go back to that area to be a camp counselor?), but over all it was silly, bloody fun. 3 stars. (Andy might go so far as to give it 4 stars, because it's one of the better-done vengeance flicks. A bad script, but the directing and acting was all very competent, and some of the characters were actually even compelling. He and I differ on opinions as to which is a better 80's slasher flick, this or Sleepaway Camp, both of which we like more than Friday the 13th. Gasp!)
Savage County (2010) **
- If you want to see modern kids be killed by a Hillbilly clan for pretty much no real reason, then I can give you a list of movies to watch. On that list might be Savage County. It's not too long, which is in its favor. It really wanted to be TCM, but it fell pretty short of its mark. I gave it an extra point because I didn't hate all of the kids (I even found myself rooting for short-haired punk girl!), and there was the requisite amount of blood, but I couldn't keep my brain from wandering during this film. The town cops are in on it for some reason, but that's not really a spoiler because they tell you that in the first sequence. I don't feel like every killer or family of killers has to give me their motivation for killing (see: The Firefly Family from Devil's Rejects, who so far as I can tell just kill for a hobby), but sometimes - especially if the cops are going to be in on it, too, and the kids are supposed to be locals, as well, who should probably know better - it'd be kinda nice. Still, I didn't skip a scene or turn it off, so 2 stars.
Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006) *
- The description of this movie gave it a plot. I feel like it must have been written by the director, however, because that plot really isn't anywhere in the film itself. The man who made this goes by the name Lucifer Valentine, and although I've not seen a picture of him I am PRETTY SURE I could pick him out in a line-up. He wants you to think that his "vomit-gore" movies are pushing some kind of line, but I failed to see it. It seems like he's a fan of the Guinea Pig films, but if you want upsetting gore effects you should just watch the Guinea Pig films. If you want to see naked college chicks puking a lot, you'd be better off finding a fetish site. If you really have to watch "Slaughtered Vomit Dolls," just watch the first fifteen minutes or so. The rest of the movie is just repetition of those scenes over and over. The sound-mixing is bad, the acting is bad, the effects are pretty amateurish. The only positive thing I can say for this film is that it might come in handy if you happen to have a band and want vaguely gross images to show behind your performance. Muted, it comes across like a bad metal video (but if you want a more upsetting bad metal video experience, you can watch Philosophy of a Knife). Some of the scenes reminded us of watching The vonHummer Hour, because it just seemed like reusing someone's bad home movies for a different purpose. But that just made us wish we were watching vonHummer. For low-budget, amateur film-making I preferred The Gateway Meat. I haven't instantly disliked a filmmaker this much since Ulli Lommel. 1 star.
Brain Dead (2007) ***
- I was curious if this is a remake. Not really, but it's cute. Something about the characters reminds me a little of Head of the Family, which gives it a whole extra star for nostalgia reasons. It's a zombie-as-caused-by-aliens film. Low-budget done effectively. I smiled a lot and enjoyed myself. Admittedly, I was also coming off of the abuse that was Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, so I might have been positively inclined towards anything that wasn't another Lucifer Valentine flick. Nothing here really stood out as particularly new or innovative, but it seemed like the people who made it had a good time making it, and that goes a long way for me. 3 stars.
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (2010) ***
- I have a love/hate relationship with the Saw films. On one hand, they have killer traps and a psycho who is motivated by a twisted sense of moral superiority. He doesn't just want to cut you up, he wants to teach you a lesson. On the other hand, they're invariably convoluted in a way that I can only really some up as "Scooby Doo bullshit." Every Saw movie has both entertained and disappointed me in some way, including the first, with some leaning more one way than the other. Over all, I like the premise, and I love crazy contraption deaths, so I believe I'm the target audience for these movies, even though I've outright loathed some of them. The first Saw I liked right up until the Scooby Doo ending. The second I disliked quite a bit, but - if I remember right - Saw 3 managed to apologize for some of the second one. Or maybe I hated Saw 2 and 3, but 4 made up for them in some way. They all kind of blend together. Was it 4 and 5 that were terrible? I don't even remember 6, but I apparently didn't hate it, according to Netflix. Anyway, whatever. The Final Chapter is the 7th Saw movie, and the least-loved according to Rotten Tomatoes. However, it did such an adorable job tying up the loose ends while going full circle that I kind of wanted to give it a big ol' hug. 3 stars, but if the franchise does actually die there forever and is allowed to rest in peace, I might bump it up to an all-encompassing 4, despite being dumb, just because I do have to love a big messy horror franchise that aspires to have continuity and wrap itself up. That said, the smart money is on "Saw 8: Jigsaw In Space" come 2013.
Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) **
- Surprisingly dull for a Hammer film. Some British hippies, led by a dude who goes by the name Johnny Alucard (lol), rez Dracula. It gets a bonus for having Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as Van Helsing and Dracula, and does have good quotes and hilarious wardrobe decisions, but the majority of the film is a snoozefest. Andy and I started watching it, but ended up just having it on in the background while we did other things, because it couldn't really hold our attention. As much as I wanted to like it, I just couldn't get into it. 2 stars.
Black Sabbath (1963) ***
- Another horror vignette movie! The stories in the trilogy are very predictable, but well done. I've a fondness for ghost stories and Boris Karloff. The colorization on this film is a bit distracting, but it still reads like a classic. The sets were very rich and detailed. I especially liked the set of "The Telephone," with its crazy random cherubs. Seriously, who is this woman supposed to be? Probably would have gotten an extra star for nostalgia if I'd seen it in my youth. One short in particular - about a thieving nurse and a vengeful ghost - was quite memorable. 3 stars!
Carver (2007) **
- Campers get killed by hillbillies again. It was all right, but I don't remember much about it. There was a decent body count, and it wasn't incompetent, there just wasn't really anything compelling about it. I think the motive was that the bad guys were making snuff flicks or something. Like I said, I don't really remember. 2 stars.
Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island (2007) *
- I like campiness in my movies. Gay movies and horror movies. This is a gay horror movie, which probably hurt it in that they were trying too hard to make it campy and silly, so it just flounders about for a bit. A cute kid is pledging to a fraternity that his boyfriend (who is a Star Trek geek ♥) is already a part of. That part is cute. The rest of the movie, dealing with a killer clown and a Yankee Doodle Gypsy Curse is just tedious. After a while the sound became out of sync with the visuals, which gave it sort of a surreal edge that didn't make it any more enjoyable. I tried to like it but it just failed on too many levels. I can't even justify giving it 2 stars, so 1 it is. :(
Recycled Parts (2007) *
- It's an evil doctor movie. It meanders, there's no real point to it, and if you can make yourself care about any of the characters then you're a more generous person than I am. It does make me want to return to Fraternity Massacre and see if I can give that movie two stars (but I know I wasn't able to in the first place, so I'm not gonna waste my time with it again). There was nothing compelling here from a technical or creative aspect. It does have an actual narrative, which puts it half a step above Vomit Dolls. That's about it. 1 star.
Hell Night (1981) **
- This is a standard premise (young frat pledges stay in a haunted house, get killed off one by one) done competently. It's cute enough, though it's a bit slow in places, and I might have given it a better rating if Linda Blair didn't annoy the hell out of me. But she does, so 2 stars it is.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2005) **
- It's pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but with sound. I gave it two stars because I loved the original, and I can understand how that love might make someone want to recreate it shot-for-shot with sound. It's clumsy and maybe there was a better use for their time, I'll admit, yet at the same time I'm kind of grateful that they didn't use their resources to make Vomit Dolls. They tried. There was love there. And it wasn't unwatchable. It just also wasn't particularly necessary.
Madness (2010) **
- More teens (or more accurately early 20's, though they're wearing cheerleader uniforms) are killed by hillbillies. It was more compelling than Carver, in that I actually cared about a character and remember what happened. So, about on the same line as Savage County, not quite as fun as Brain Dead. The fight put up at the end by one of the last survivor characters was reminiscent of much better films (High Tension!), and there were some decent kills. It really came just shy of three stars, but the fact that it never gives you even a casual motivation on the part of... well, anyone, really... kind of hurts it. These dudes hunt down and methodically slaughter a LOT of people in a very short time span, implying that they aren't exactly in the middle of nowhere, so far as through-traffic goes, and it doesn't give me any hints as to who they are or what they were doing it for. They're a little Hills Have Eyes-ish, but the mutants in Hills at least partly killed for food, and these guys dump perfectly good meat in lakes and bury people alive. Still, I would have given it three stars if not for the uneven technical aspects (acting, sound-mixing, and so forth). It was a good effort! Bonus points for it being a Swedish film, with Swedish actors trying really hard to sound American. Also for having a romantic scene between one of the hillbilly killers and a puppyish male actor that ends in Deliverance-style rape (despite his having two cheerleaders tied up in another room). At least he turns on soft music. Actually, this is a much greater 2-star movie than many of the other 2 star films on this list. I kind of need more stars.
Bikini Girls on Ice (2009) **
- There are girls in bikinis who get murdered by a long haired garage owner(?) who looks like he wanted to be fronting a metal band. This was really a throwaway flick, but it was technically much better than the one star movies I watched, so I felt like it deserves two stars. If you want to see girls in bikinis get murdered, this will deliver, and that's what I wanted to see. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't memorable or remarkable and has garnered a lot of one star reviews. Those people, clearly, have not watched Slaughter Vomit Dolls. This was definitely a "have on in the background" sort of flick, but wasn't any worse than that.
Spike (2008) **
- Beauty and the Beast remake with a horror twist. Not all that bad, actually, but it gets docked a star for being irritatingly pretentious. I liked the "forest salad," the lesbian couple, and the premise (twisted fairy tale). I disliked the fact that the movie dragged on for just about ever, and basically all the dialogue between the monster and the girl. They kept hinting at a backstory that is never explained in any way, really, and then just when you think you can't take anymore they wrap it up with a melodramatic ending that makes you think, "Wow, that was almost cute." It had some decent technical aspects which, combined with the lesbian couple, save it from being a one star movie. All other things the same, it could have been saved with a better script. Alas!
And there we go for week 1! I'm able to average about two movies a day or so. Some of it ends up being background to chores or art projects, though, depending on how well the movie can keep my attention. I readily admit to FFing some of Vomit Dolls. I feel no shame about that.
Andy gets to pick November's theme.
Anyway, this means my Netflix recent activity list is full of fun titles and there's been nonstop screaming in my apartment. Most of it from the television.
Popcorn (1991) ***
- I felt this was a fitting start to a month of horror flicks because it involves kids putting on a horror fest at their local theater and being terrorized by a man who is a master of special fx and might or might not be trying to make the ultimate horror movie. People get killed by old fashioned movie theater gimmicks. The acting isn't exactly good, but it's entertaining enough. Also fun to play the "what else was the person in?" game with the cast. I rated it 3 stars on Netflix.
Nightmare on Elmstreet (2010) ***
- Jackie Earle Haley is no Robert Englund, and this is nowhere near as enjoyable as the original. That goes without saying. Taken on its own merit, it's a little slow but competent. I liked it, for the most part. I loved the original, and would have liked this version a lot more were it not for the over-produced feel of it, but eh. I wasn't expecting much. I'm positively inclined towards anything Freddy-related, and I've seen much, much worse. So 3 stars, with one of those primarily being a star for effort. This movie is getting some extra credit with me for putting Freddy Krueger back in the public eye, which meant that he got released as MK9 DLC, which in general makes me happy. I own it now, and am comfortable with that fact.
From a Whisper to a Scream (1987) ***
- I love vignette films. This has Vincent Price looking bitter about being there (apparently he was actually bitter about being there), and you can see the framing device twist coming a mile away. Standard anthology film, with some decent premises and a few slow/weak parts. Bonus points for evil kids. I didn't at any point feel like it wasted my time. 3 stars.
The Burning (1981) ***
- Your basic vengeance-fueled slasher-at-camp flick, but made that much more enjoyable by the presence of a young Jason Alexander as one of the oddly competent camp kids. I questioned some of the character motivations (seriously, if you almost kill a dude by setting him on fire while you were at camp, would you go back to that area to be a camp counselor?), but over all it was silly, bloody fun. 3 stars. (Andy might go so far as to give it 4 stars, because it's one of the better-done vengeance flicks. A bad script, but the directing and acting was all very competent, and some of the characters were actually even compelling. He and I differ on opinions as to which is a better 80's slasher flick, this or Sleepaway Camp, both of which we like more than Friday the 13th. Gasp!)
Savage County (2010) **
- If you want to see modern kids be killed by a Hillbilly clan for pretty much no real reason, then I can give you a list of movies to watch. On that list might be Savage County. It's not too long, which is in its favor. It really wanted to be TCM, but it fell pretty short of its mark. I gave it an extra point because I didn't hate all of the kids (I even found myself rooting for short-haired punk girl!), and there was the requisite amount of blood, but I couldn't keep my brain from wandering during this film. The town cops are in on it for some reason, but that's not really a spoiler because they tell you that in the first sequence. I don't feel like every killer or family of killers has to give me their motivation for killing (see: The Firefly Family from Devil's Rejects, who so far as I can tell just kill for a hobby), but sometimes - especially if the cops are going to be in on it, too, and the kids are supposed to be locals, as well, who should probably know better - it'd be kinda nice. Still, I didn't skip a scene or turn it off, so 2 stars.
Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006) *
- The description of this movie gave it a plot. I feel like it must have been written by the director, however, because that plot really isn't anywhere in the film itself. The man who made this goes by the name Lucifer Valentine, and although I've not seen a picture of him I am PRETTY SURE I could pick him out in a line-up. He wants you to think that his "vomit-gore" movies are pushing some kind of line, but I failed to see it. It seems like he's a fan of the Guinea Pig films, but if you want upsetting gore effects you should just watch the Guinea Pig films. If you want to see naked college chicks puking a lot, you'd be better off finding a fetish site. If you really have to watch "Slaughtered Vomit Dolls," just watch the first fifteen minutes or so. The rest of the movie is just repetition of those scenes over and over. The sound-mixing is bad, the acting is bad, the effects are pretty amateurish. The only positive thing I can say for this film is that it might come in handy if you happen to have a band and want vaguely gross images to show behind your performance. Muted, it comes across like a bad metal video (but if you want a more upsetting bad metal video experience, you can watch Philosophy of a Knife). Some of the scenes reminded us of watching The vonHummer Hour, because it just seemed like reusing someone's bad home movies for a different purpose. But that just made us wish we were watching vonHummer. For low-budget, amateur film-making I preferred The Gateway Meat. I haven't instantly disliked a filmmaker this much since Ulli Lommel. 1 star.
Brain Dead (2007) ***
- I was curious if this is a remake. Not really, but it's cute. Something about the characters reminds me a little of Head of the Family, which gives it a whole extra star for nostalgia reasons. It's a zombie-as-caused-by-aliens film. Low-budget done effectively. I smiled a lot and enjoyed myself. Admittedly, I was also coming off of the abuse that was Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, so I might have been positively inclined towards anything that wasn't another Lucifer Valentine flick. Nothing here really stood out as particularly new or innovative, but it seemed like the people who made it had a good time making it, and that goes a long way for me. 3 stars.
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (2010) ***
- I have a love/hate relationship with the Saw films. On one hand, they have killer traps and a psycho who is motivated by a twisted sense of moral superiority. He doesn't just want to cut you up, he wants to teach you a lesson. On the other hand, they're invariably convoluted in a way that I can only really some up as "Scooby Doo bullshit." Every Saw movie has both entertained and disappointed me in some way, including the first, with some leaning more one way than the other. Over all, I like the premise, and I love crazy contraption deaths, so I believe I'm the target audience for these movies, even though I've outright loathed some of them. The first Saw I liked right up until the Scooby Doo ending. The second I disliked quite a bit, but - if I remember right - Saw 3 managed to apologize for some of the second one. Or maybe I hated Saw 2 and 3, but 4 made up for them in some way. They all kind of blend together. Was it 4 and 5 that were terrible? I don't even remember 6, but I apparently didn't hate it, according to Netflix. Anyway, whatever. The Final Chapter is the 7th Saw movie, and the least-loved according to Rotten Tomatoes. However, it did such an adorable job tying up the loose ends while going full circle that I kind of wanted to give it a big ol' hug. 3 stars, but if the franchise does actually die there forever and is allowed to rest in peace, I might bump it up to an all-encompassing 4, despite being dumb, just because I do have to love a big messy horror franchise that aspires to have continuity and wrap itself up. That said, the smart money is on "Saw 8: Jigsaw In Space" come 2013.
Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) **
- Surprisingly dull for a Hammer film. Some British hippies, led by a dude who goes by the name Johnny Alucard (lol), rez Dracula. It gets a bonus for having Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as Van Helsing and Dracula, and does have good quotes and hilarious wardrobe decisions, but the majority of the film is a snoozefest. Andy and I started watching it, but ended up just having it on in the background while we did other things, because it couldn't really hold our attention. As much as I wanted to like it, I just couldn't get into it. 2 stars.
Black Sabbath (1963) ***
- Another horror vignette movie! The stories in the trilogy are very predictable, but well done. I've a fondness for ghost stories and Boris Karloff. The colorization on this film is a bit distracting, but it still reads like a classic. The sets were very rich and detailed. I especially liked the set of "The Telephone," with its crazy random cherubs. Seriously, who is this woman supposed to be? Probably would have gotten an extra star for nostalgia if I'd seen it in my youth. One short in particular - about a thieving nurse and a vengeful ghost - was quite memorable. 3 stars!
Carver (2007) **
- Campers get killed by hillbillies again. It was all right, but I don't remember much about it. There was a decent body count, and it wasn't incompetent, there just wasn't really anything compelling about it. I think the motive was that the bad guys were making snuff flicks or something. Like I said, I don't really remember. 2 stars.
Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island (2007) *
- I like campiness in my movies. Gay movies and horror movies. This is a gay horror movie, which probably hurt it in that they were trying too hard to make it campy and silly, so it just flounders about for a bit. A cute kid is pledging to a fraternity that his boyfriend (who is a Star Trek geek ♥) is already a part of. That part is cute. The rest of the movie, dealing with a killer clown and a Yankee Doodle Gypsy Curse is just tedious. After a while the sound became out of sync with the visuals, which gave it sort of a surreal edge that didn't make it any more enjoyable. I tried to like it but it just failed on too many levels. I can't even justify giving it 2 stars, so 1 it is. :(
Recycled Parts (2007) *
- It's an evil doctor movie. It meanders, there's no real point to it, and if you can make yourself care about any of the characters then you're a more generous person than I am. It does make me want to return to Fraternity Massacre and see if I can give that movie two stars (but I know I wasn't able to in the first place, so I'm not gonna waste my time with it again). There was nothing compelling here from a technical or creative aspect. It does have an actual narrative, which puts it half a step above Vomit Dolls. That's about it. 1 star.
Hell Night (1981) **
- This is a standard premise (young frat pledges stay in a haunted house, get killed off one by one) done competently. It's cute enough, though it's a bit slow in places, and I might have given it a better rating if Linda Blair didn't annoy the hell out of me. But she does, so 2 stars it is.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2005) **
- It's pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but with sound. I gave it two stars because I loved the original, and I can understand how that love might make someone want to recreate it shot-for-shot with sound. It's clumsy and maybe there was a better use for their time, I'll admit, yet at the same time I'm kind of grateful that they didn't use their resources to make Vomit Dolls. They tried. There was love there. And it wasn't unwatchable. It just also wasn't particularly necessary.
Madness (2010) **
- More teens (or more accurately early 20's, though they're wearing cheerleader uniforms) are killed by hillbillies. It was more compelling than Carver, in that I actually cared about a character and remember what happened. So, about on the same line as Savage County, not quite as fun as Brain Dead. The fight put up at the end by one of the last survivor characters was reminiscent of much better films (High Tension!), and there were some decent kills. It really came just shy of three stars, but the fact that it never gives you even a casual motivation on the part of... well, anyone, really... kind of hurts it. These dudes hunt down and methodically slaughter a LOT of people in a very short time span, implying that they aren't exactly in the middle of nowhere, so far as through-traffic goes, and it doesn't give me any hints as to who they are or what they were doing it for. They're a little Hills Have Eyes-ish, but the mutants in Hills at least partly killed for food, and these guys dump perfectly good meat in lakes and bury people alive. Still, I would have given it three stars if not for the uneven technical aspects (acting, sound-mixing, and so forth). It was a good effort! Bonus points for it being a Swedish film, with Swedish actors trying really hard to sound American. Also for having a romantic scene between one of the hillbilly killers and a puppyish male actor that ends in Deliverance-style rape (despite his having two cheerleaders tied up in another room). At least he turns on soft music. Actually, this is a much greater 2-star movie than many of the other 2 star films on this list. I kind of need more stars.
Bikini Girls on Ice (2009) **
- There are girls in bikinis who get murdered by a long haired garage owner(?) who looks like he wanted to be fronting a metal band. This was really a throwaway flick, but it was technically much better than the one star movies I watched, so I felt like it deserves two stars. If you want to see girls in bikinis get murdered, this will deliver, and that's what I wanted to see. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't memorable or remarkable and has garnered a lot of one star reviews. Those people, clearly, have not watched Slaughter Vomit Dolls. This was definitely a "have on in the background" sort of flick, but wasn't any worse than that.
Spike (2008) **
- Beauty and the Beast remake with a horror twist. Not all that bad, actually, but it gets docked a star for being irritatingly pretentious. I liked the "forest salad," the lesbian couple, and the premise (twisted fairy tale). I disliked the fact that the movie dragged on for just about ever, and basically all the dialogue between the monster and the girl. They kept hinting at a backstory that is never explained in any way, really, and then just when you think you can't take anymore they wrap it up with a melodramatic ending that makes you think, "Wow, that was almost cute." It had some decent technical aspects which, combined with the lesbian couple, save it from being a one star movie. All other things the same, it could have been saved with a better script. Alas!
And there we go for week 1! I'm able to average about two movies a day or so. Some of it ends up being background to chores or art projects, though, depending on how well the movie can keep my attention. I readily admit to FFing some of Vomit Dolls. I feel no shame about that.