4 Stars « The Wolfman Cometh

Monster House (2006) [REVIEW]

October 24, 2011 Leave a comment

Back when I was a projectionist, the trailer for this movie annoyed the FUCK out of me. It started with that little girl singing, and I always had to listen to the very beginning of trailers to make sure everything sounded right. Because of that annoyance, I had a negative opinion of this movie. That all changed the moment I saw this photo:

In case you don’t know what this is a picture of, these are my friends Lazer and Steve-O Beevo. The story behind this picture is that, considering I was working at a movie theater and would get movie shirts to wear. The box was kept in the projection booth, so I had easy access to all of this cool swag. Lazer had mentioned how much Beevo enjoyed this movie, and I’m sure you can figure out where this story is going. I sent the shirts, with the only stipulation being I had to get a picture of these two wearing these XL sized shirts. Based on Beevo’s great taste, I had no other choice but to watch this movie. This movie taught me an important lesson: ALWAYS TRUST STEVE-O BEEVO.

A bunch of fucking perverts if you ask me.

There’s always that one creepy house that all the kids in the neighborhood is afraid of, and in this cartoon, that’s no different. DJ, voiced by Mitchel Musso, has noticed the crazy old man who lives in the creepy house across the street. Through some surveillance, DJ discovers that it’s not only toys that disappear from this creepy house, but also kids. With his best friend Chowder, voiced by Sam Werner, the two set off to figure out what’s going on. While exploring, they startle the old man who lives there, voiced by Steve Buscemi, and when he confronts the kids, he has a heart attack and seemingly dies. This might seem scary, but this affords the kids an opportunity to go inside. Through the help of some of the teenagers in the area and hearing their stories, as well as their new-found love interest Jenny, voiced by Spencer Locke, they are finally able to infiltrate the house successfully. They find that it’s almost as if the house is alive, which means there’s a way to kill it. The further they explore, they eventually find a large woman who is seemingly cased in concrete. At this time, the old man who lived there shows up, because he’s not dead, and tells the story of the house. Turns out that he used to live there with his very obese wife, and while building the house, she accidentally became encased in concrete. Her spirit is what caused the house to attack passersby because of her wrongful death, and it’s been the old man yelling at everyone in hopes of protecting them. He can’t leave the house, because it’s the embodiment of his wife, and he loves the house. Eventually, the house realizes the kids are trying to destroy it, which leads to the house uprooting itself and chases them to a construction yard. Luckily, DJ is able to blow the house up with dynamite, which frees all of the neighborhood kids of their fear, and the old man of his responsibilities as he gives back all the toys that the house confiscated. DJ and Chowder then have enough time to go trick or treating, because after all, it’s Halloween!

HAHAHA THE BABYSITTER’S BOYFRIEND DRESSES LIKE ME!

If you hadn’t seen this movie before, would you automatically think, based on the description, that it was a cartoon? And the weird thing is, the filmmakers had to make changes to ALLOW it to be PG. If they had kept the film the way they intended, it wouldn’t have even gotten a PG rating. The film had to include a sequence of the characters who had been “eaten” by the house emerging from the house alive and well to make the cut. There are plenty of segments that are intense and way too scary for kids, and considering that this movie doesn’t really dumb things down for kids is what makes it so much fun. Sure, there is physical comedy in it that’s silly and there’s a scene where Jenny points at an object and says it’s the house’s uvula, causing Chowder to respond with “Ohhhh…so it’s a GIRL house”, which is still pretty mature weiner/vagina humor for the intended audience. I think one of the cooler things about this movie was something I didn’t learn until watching the special features. This movie was filmed with actors wearing motion capture suits, and those motions were then animated with the character designs later on. Not really that new of technology, and plenty of movies before this had used it. The cool thing about this one was that after every scene was animated, the filmmakers had a device that acted as a handheld camera, which would then allow them to move the camera around in different ways for each different scene. Did that make sense? They would create a 3D environment using the motion-capture technology, cover everything in the character and object’s “skin”, and they could treat each scene as an actual environment that someone could move around in with a handheld camera, as opposed to things always being on tripods. I might not be making sense in my description, and I don’t care, because the results show fluid animation with an added touch of “realism” that gave you an animated movie that didn’t feel animated. I definitely recommend anybody to check this out, as it’s definitely one of my favorite Halloween movies that is supposedly for kids.

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Filed under 4 Stars, 4 Stars, Horror Film, Non-Horror Film

The Blair Witch Project (1999) [REVIEW]

October 23, 2011 Leave a comment

The summer this movie came out was a big one for me. I saw Shannon Elizabeth’s boobs in American Pie, I saw this movie…I guess those were the highlights. I went to see this with some friends of mine, escorted by my mom since it was rated R, and later that night we slept outside. My friends and I, not my mom. She was probably inside. We slept on a trampoline and boy oh boy, let me tell YOU how fucking uncomfortable it is to sleep on a trampoline. At least I get to look back on the experience and say how I was so brave that I slept outside that night. Remember how many people thought this movie was real? And the internet was becoming a “thing” so there were websites promoting this as real? I guess that’s a pretty cool way to market a movie, except for the fact that every goddamned movie that comes out now makes the same claims. Remember how easy it was for Ruggero Deodato to convince people that the stars of his movie, Cannibal Holocaust, were dead and then they had to show up in course to prove they were alive? Man, that was crazy! You can’t do that shit now with this whole “internet” thing!

Luckily, from now until the end of time, we will get to see this shot parodied in anything that parodies anything ever, and it will never be funny ever.

The film starts with the premise that the following film we would see was recovered a year after three individuals went missing in the woods of Maryland. The reason they were in the woods was that Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard, and Mike Williams are exploring the legend of the “Blair Witch”. We see the local residents of the town telling stories involving some Blair Witch lady, as well as the stories of a man who was supposedly under this witch’s influence who murdered seven children. Supposedly he would take two into his basement, make one face the corner, then kill the other. After their interviews with the residents are done, they head off into the woods with cameras, maps, and a vague idea of where to go. The trio get a little lost, and claim to have heard things on their first night camping out. While exploring deeper into the woods, they start seeing strange figures made out of sticks, as well as strange piles of rocks. They camp out again, and the strange noises seem more persistent. The paranoia and confusion of being lost, without knowing where to go, starts making them irritable and delirious. The noises persist at night, more violent and loud, and one morning, Heather and Mike wake up to find Josh missing. They continue to explore, both looking for him and looking for a way out. That night, they think they hear Josh screaming, and wake up to see a bundle of sticks, wrapped in a piece of his shirt, with some bloody teeth and other bodily items in it. Continuing to find their way out, that night they think they hear Josh screaming and pursue the sounds, only to find a house. This is the house that the seven children were murdered in, and when Mike disappear into the basement, Heather finds him, only to see him standing and facing the corner. The camera is hit violently, falls to the ground, and the movie ends.

They couldn’t even afford a pot to piss in with this budget! So he pees in the corner like an idiot.

Although “found footage” movies are relatively interchangeable these days, this film really did set the standard of this time of movie-making. It creeped me out the first time I saw it, and that last image of Mike standing in the corner stuck with me for a long time. This film certainly isn’t perfect, but when it comes to reality-based horror films that don’t have big name actors, this really gets the job done. The way this movie was filmed was also pretty innovative in the way it was filmed, considering none of the actors even really knew what was going on. For example, there is a scene where Heather is looking for the map, and between her and Josh bickering and getting more agitated, Mike lets them know that he was so frustrated that he kicked the map into the river, and Heather and Josh react genuinely. The same goes for all of the things that are experienced in the middle of the night, that the actors were instructed to record what was going on and react naturally. The directors, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, were the ones running through the ones, making cackling noises, clacking sticks together, and smashing their tent. I’d say that the actors did a sufficient job of managing to improvise their reactions while also remaining genuine to each given objective. When they go from anger, to rage, back down to delirium, they are all feelings that people can relate to when they’ve been in a similar situation of extreme frustration. Well, I guess I didn’t really notice until now how much Heather Donahue was overacting, but maybe she was intending to be annoying in how she reacted to everything, and if that was acting, she did a great job.

They interviewed this woman at one point, and I can’t really remember why they made fun of her so much. Maybe she is a witch? Or something? I don’t know, go watch it yourselves.

As terrified as I was to watch this movie in theaters, I have to say that this is one of very few movies that are more enjoyable at home than they are in theaters. When you’re in the theater, and everything is really quiet and dark, you can hear and see and react to everything very clearly. You know that you just heard what the characters heard and saw what the characters saw. When you watch this movie at home, there are a lot more distractions and things that can steal your focus. Even if you are watching it in the dark, you might not have a theater quality sound system, or you might not have the volume turned all the way up. This means that when the characters are telling each other to be quiet or to listen, you too tell the people you are with to be quiet to see if you can hear what’s happening. Or maybe you’re watching it alone, and it just forces you to turn the volume up a little bit. I’m sure there are lots of people who talk shit on this movie because they’re jealous about how much money it made, or have justifiable reasons to dislike it, but these filmmakers took a simple idea and pulled it off quite well. They were able to come up with an original character, that of the “Blair Witch”, create mythology around it that seemed genuine, and just ran with it. Even if the film itself isn’t a milestone in the genre of horror, the film-making process opened up the doors for tons of potential filmmakers, and let them know that if you had the funds and the time, you could be the next Blair Witch Project.

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Filed under 4 Stars, Horror Film Tagged with cannibal holocaust, daniel myrick, eduardo sanchez, heather donahue, josh leonard, mike williams, paranormal activity, shannon elizabeth boobs, the blair witch project

The Others (2001)

October 21, 2011 2 Comments

Holy shit, this movie came out ten years ago? I can’t really remember why I was excited to see this movie or why it was getting a publicity, maybe it was just because Tom Cruise produced it and his then-wife was in it. Also maybe because it was some guy from Spain directing an actress from Australia who was pretending to be British? Or maybe just the fact that The Sixth Sense was so popular just two years earlier that people had more faith in haunted house movies. I saw this in New York with my brother and I think my mind was blown over the fact that the movie started after 10PM, which wasn’t really something that happened in Massachusetts. Life in the big city, huh?!

The beginning stages of when Nicole Kidman cut her face off, then attached it back to her face, and every month would tighten it more and more.

Nicole Kidman plays the mother of two children in 1940′s England in a giant mansion. Her husband is away in the war, but luckily the beginning of the film shows three individuals being hired to take care of the house. The small catch is that these kids have a rare disease that doesn’t allow them to be exposed to sunlight. It’s a giant empty house, filled with groans and creaks, but it’s hard to tell what’s normal and what’s supernatural. The children tell tales of seeing other people in the house, but their mom just thinks it’s children playing tricks. It isn’t until she experiences things firsthand, such as doors forcefully opening or closing, music from the piano, running footsteps, and even her daughter appearing as an old woman, she starts to believe them. When the frustrations get to be too much, Kidman tries to travel to a neighboring house, only to be met by a dense, impenetrable fog, and also her husband, back from the war. The strange activities seem to stop for while the husband comes back, but things still seem off. The husband disappears, and then shit starts “popping off”, as the kids would say. With the discovery of grave markers on the property and questioning why the caretakers are at the house, we learn that the caretakers are ghosts! No! As the kids and their mom take refuge in the house, the activity seems to culminate in seeing multiple apparitions who are conducting a séance. We then learn that it is in fact Nicole Kidman and her family that are ghosts, and the people all the activity that they thought to be “ghosts” were people trying to contact their spirits! The film ends with the family refusing to acknowledge they are ghosts and vowing to stick together and stay in their house….FOREVER!!!!!

KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!

I really only remember there being two or three good scares in this movie, with one towards the end of the movie being pants-shittingly scary. After watching this movie again, there are definitely five or six segments that could creep you out, but there’s an emphasis on “could”. Unfortunately, with all of my haunted house movie viewings, they all seem to lose their creepiness the more you see it. Knowing when all of these surprises and scares are coming makes them seem cheesy, but I really have no one to blame for that except myself. The isolation of the family in their home adds to the creepy ambiance of the whole movie, and the twist at the end definitely surprised me the first time I saw it. Because the story isn’t really too original or unique, the twist is what makes this move stand out from most other contemporary haunted house movies. You can also believe that Nicole Kidman could be driven insane with the amount of care she is paying to her children’s disease because she is a raging bitch throughout most of the movie. In fact, you kind of wish that her kids were the ones to kill her so that she’d shut the fuck up. Did I mention that the fog got thicker because she was attempting to leave the home she was haunting? Well that was why, but since I fell asleep while writing this review, I’m not even sure I’m making sense right now. If you’ve never seen this movie before and like haunted house movies, I recommend checking this out, but if you’ve seen it before, do yourself a favor and hold off on repeat viewings as much as possible so that it doesn’t lose anything with repetition.

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Filed under 4 Stars, Horror Film Tagged with Alejandro Amenábar, england, ghosts, haunted house, nicole kidman, skin disease, the others, the sixth sense

Lake Mungo (2008) [REVIEW]

September 12, 2011 5 Comments

YES I FUCKING FELL ASLEEP FOR TEN MINUTES OF THIS MOVIE. Just wanted to make sure I got that out of the way before I went any further. Despite missing a few minutes of this movie, I feel as though I can give it an accurate review, because if it was a good ten minutes, maybe it would have kept me awake. With yesterday being 9/11 and all, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to sort my shit out on Netflix and I managed to trim things down to under 100 movies, which made me feel quite accomplished. With so few movies, I started Googling things like “haunted house” and “ghost” movies, because those are what generally creep me out. I stumbled across this movie, which I was surprised to see on Netflix Instant, and even more surprised to see had an average of 4 stars. That’s a fucking lot! Especially for a horror movie that I hadn’t heard of. I decided to take a break from watching Breaking Bad to give this a shot.

Special cameo from that bitch from The Ring

This film is a fake documentary, a “mockumentary” if you will, about an incident that happened near Lake Mungo in Australia. A family was spending some time there when their daughter went missing while in the water. There was absolutely no trace of her, other than a few days later (or something), her body is recovered. Despite the body having decomposed and not having concrete proof of it being the daughter, it was assumed to be her. Obviously the family was bummed and tried to move on, but had some difficulty. The mom tried finding solace in talking with a psychic, the dad tried to keep busy, and the son started getting involved in photography. The son started taking pictures of his backyard once a day, every day, as a personal project. He did this until one day he noticed a figure standing in his backyard, and even though it wasn’t crystal clear, looked just like the daughter. It was some blurry glowing light, it looked like a solid figure. Weird, right? After that, there is footage revealed of what a video camera recorded while left on in the house, and we see another solid figure walk from one room to another that looked just like the daughter.

Ghost? Bigfoot? We may never know…

Thinking the daughter might still be alive, the family starts investigating her friends to see if she had reason to just disappear. This led to some cell phone footage of their daughter at a party, at Lake Mungo, where she is seen to be burying something. When digging up what she has buried, the daughter’s cell phone is recovered. Upon investigating the cell phone, there is footage found from that night. We then see footage of the daughter, presumably alone, exploring a figure she saw near the lake. As the gets closer and closer to the figure, we see then that the figure she sees is what her own decomposing corpse looked like, there’s a brief and seemingly terrifying encounter, and then the footage stops. Days later is when the daughter dies. The family decides that they couldn’t explain the answers that this footage has provided them with, and moves out of their house that held all the memories of their daughter. As the movie ends, we are shown more pictures and footage that has already appeared in the film, but this time we zoom in on different parts and see the figure of the daughter, which most viewers probably hadn’t noticed was there the whole time.

Can you see the ghost in this picture? CAN YOU? How creepy is it when you see it? That’s what I liked, is you had to really search for whether or not you could see what you were seeing. (Hint: she’s in the window)

Okay guys, you got me, you know I always get creeped out by that doppelgänger bullshit. I guess the idea of seeing yourself but it not being yourself just scares the shit out of me. Also the idea that this character saw herself and didn’t think to tell anyone about it seems really creepy. Think of that fact that there are almost 7 billion people on the planet and you realize at least one other person is bound to look just like you. I also really liked the fact that this was shot as an actual documentary, rather than the Blair Witch/Paranormal Activity style of handheld cameras. It was presented as a weird event that just happened to a family that was documented after the fact and once all the dust had settled. I also really enjoyed that the figure they were seeing wasn’t something obscured or vaguely resembled a ghost, but it was obvious that it appeared as a solid figure that had actual weight and mass to it. Granted, I did fall asleep, and there were some slow parts, so it’s not getting the best rating it can, but considering how creeped out I got at the idea of encountering your own rotting corpse and how terrifying that would be, I definitely recommend this movie to any other fans of ghost movies.

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Filed under 4 Stars, Horror Film Tagged with after dark horrorfest, australian films, ghost footage, ghost pictures, ghosts, haunted, lake mungo

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010) [REVIEW]

August 24, 2011 2 Comments

2010? 2011? WHAT THE FUCK?! Oh, this movie was made a year or two ago and was originally going to be released in 2010 but isn’t getting an actual release for a few more days. BUT I FUCKING SAW IT! It was one of those preview screening things and it was bullshit because they stole our phones. They made us put them in these high-tech manilla envelopes and I was nervous they’d see all the naked pictures I have of the dog. Whoops! Before we go any further, I’d like to mention that no, I haven’t seen the original. Why? Because I didn’t really give too much of a shit about it to track it down. I knew that Guillermo del Toro was behind this remake, at least as a producer and co-writer, and it had to do with little goblin creatures. Would you believe that Guillermo would be involved in a movie about scary little goblin creatures? He is! And it’s this movie! As a warning, this one might have spoilers, but they shouldn’t be too spoil-y considering this is a remake.

Guy Pearce? What are you doing here, you super stud! You are from Australia!

The film starts in an old timey mansion where we see the assumed owner of the mansion trip his maid on the stairs and then smash her teeth out of her head with a chisel. He offers them to unseen creatures who live in a hole in his basement, but he gets sucked in and is never heard from again. Cut to present day and we see Guy Pearce’s character, Alex, picking up his daughter, played by Bailee Madison, from the airport. They make their way back to the house that he has bought and is remodeling which is, surprise surprise, the mansion from the opening. We learn that the little girl was sent to live with her father in this new house, which isn’t something that the two of them are really all too excited about. Add to that the fact that the daughter, Sally, also has to adjust to her new quasi-stepmom, Kim, played by Katie Holmes. As the three adjust to life together, Sally discovers that there are small creatures in the basement that she can talk to, who seem to want to be her friend. When she unlocks the barrier that has clearly kept these creatures trapped in a hole for 200 years, that’s when shit starts getting serious.

Holy shit, remember when Katie Holmes was a “sex symbol”? Then everyone saw her boobs in The Gift? And now she is Tom Cruise’s zombie? That’s sad.

It starts with Sally hearing these creatures in and around her bedroom, which make her a little nervous. She also finds out that they are afraid of the light, but this doesn’t seem to matter much as they are trying to be friends with Sally. These creatures start destroying Kim’s clothes and stealing small objects, all the while Sally is being blamed with the presumption that she’s “adjusting”. When Sally tries to confront the creatures, their malicious intentions become obvious and Sally begins to fear for her life. With Kim trying to figure out what could be happening, she goes to the library to learn more about the former owner of the house. The previous owner was a famous artist whose last drawings were of these creatures that Sally had been describing. When it comes time to move out of the house to get away from these creatures, they gather up enough little goblins to overtake Alex, Kim, and start trying to drag Sally down to their world. In a final effort, Kim frees Sally, but instead Kim is the one pulled down to this world, never to be seen again. Some months later, Alex and Sally return to the home and leave a drawing intended for Kim. The camera then goes down into the basement to hear the goblins talking to one another, and we then he a goblin-ized version of Kim’s voice explaining how they have all the time in the world to wait for Alex and Sally to come back to be captured.

I’m glad they didn’t take the “Technology will find the answer!” approach in this movie and kept it relatively lo-fi feel to it. Just look at that old timey digital camera! That’s digital, right? Attached to a mini printer?

This movie was another one of those cases of having one good thing I liked, and one bad thing I didn’t like. For example, I thought the little girl did a good job, but then we had to deal with Katie Holmes. I enjoyed that early in the movie, the goblins were just shown in the shadows and their eyes were reflective like all those nightvision nature shows, which was cool, but then they were shown too regularly and they ended up being silly looking instead of scary. The few “scare’ moments were pretty successful, judging by the reactions of everyone else in the theater. It did seem a little long, even though it was only an hour and forty-five minutes. I walked out of the theater feeling underwhelmed, wishing for something as terrifying as The Orphanage was. Ya know, because Guillermo del Toro was also involved in the non-directing aspect of things. But then I went home and learned a little bit more about the original and…

SPOILER ALERT: This is what the goblin’s face looks like. Well, it’s not actually a spoiler, since this is an image from the trailer, you idiot.

This is one of the few movies where doing research made me enjoy it more, in retrospect. The more and more I thought about some of the themes and concepts, the more and more creepy I thought it was. In the original, it is supposedly made clear that these goblins are trying to take their victim to make that person “one of them”. This was never expressed in the remake, but lends credence to why we heard Kim’s goblin voice at the end. Also, in a scene where Sally leaves a tooth under her pillow and wakes up the next morning with an old coin underneath it brings about a new, more terrifying concept of where the Tooth Fairy came from. No, I don’t mean that movie starring The Rock. Those hints at a larger mythology are what really made this movie more than what I had anticipated, and even if the movie itself wasn’t blowing my mind, I really enjoyed the creativity and mythology involved. I can easily complain about not having enough of that backstory as to why these little creatures existed, why they were there, and all that other bullshit, but I know that if I had gotten that information, I’d wish there was more mystery. I might not watch this movie repeatedly but I can certainly enjoy and respect what they were attempting to accomplish.

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Filed under 4 Stars, Horror Film Tagged with don't be afraid of the dark, goblins, guillermo del toro, guy pearce, katie holmes, pan's labyrinth, remake, the orphanage, tooth fairy

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) [REVIEW]

August 21, 2011 4 Comments

Do you know those kinds of movies where you see the trailer and immediately say “Oh man, I’m totally going to see that movie when it comes out!”, only to not ever see that movie when it comes out? Well, that’s what this movie was for me. Maybe it was because I had seen the fake Machete trailer years ago, and then saw that it turned into an actual movie that I had discredited these new “grindhouse” type films that I waited so long to see it. Some things really do seem too good to be true. With this movie, the title alone is awesome enough that I had doubts any movie could live up to that, especially considering the titular hobo was played by none other than Rutger Hauer. In retrospect, I’m glad that I watched this movie after the “hype” around it died down, because it definitely made it more enjoyable.

Poor, poor little Abby. One day, someone will come and rescue you from the yellow world you live in.

Right from the opening credits you realize you are watching a movie intended to be an homage to films from the 70′s that had these long, boring opening sequences with all of the credits being shown right away. In fact, Rampaige asked if this was an old movie or a new one because it was so convincing. A rail-riding, shotgun-less hobo makes his way into Hope Town, which has had its signs changed to “Scum Town”, and the hobo gets a sense that nobody gives a shit about any of the crimes that take place. He sees prostitutes, muggers, and children being kidnapped, and no one is doing anything about it. While in town, he sees a lawnmower, which sparks an idea in his head to raise enough money to buy a lawnmower so he can start his own business and maybe get back on his feet. While exploring the city, he comes across the prostitute Abby, played by Molly Dunsworth, being verbally and physically assaulted. When the hobo intervenes, Abby gives the hobo a place to stay and some new clothes, starting their father/daughter-esque relationship. What the hobo doesn’t know is that he stopped Slick (Gregory Smith), who is the son of Drake (Brian Downey), and Drake is the one who runs the town. From the crimes that take place and even to the police force, Drake is the one running the show. Let’s just say that the hobo picked a bad day to save a hooker, because now Drake has his sights set on him.

It seems to me like giving this guy a duct tape diaper attached to a shotgun wasn’t really an efficient use of time, but who am I to argue with a hobo with a shotgun?

After raising enough money to buy the lawnmower, the hobo goes to the pawn shop, only to have robbers come in and threaten to kill everyone. Our hobo notices that price of the lawnmower is exactly the same as the price of a loaded shotgun, so he grabs that instead and starts killing bad guys. Clearly this man has snapped and is sick of the way people are being treated, so he goes on a rampage killing as many bad guys as he can. This gets Drake pissed off and offers money to citizens for killing any and all homeless people in hopes of getting to the one toting a shotgun. Eventually, these offers catch up to the hobo and he is taken captive by some sort of demonic figures, known as “The Plague”, who appear to work for Drake. Abby, after realizing what has happened, confronts the unruly masses and lectures them about how the homeless are the ones who rule the city, and everyone should fight the cops. Everyone is persuaded to do so, and it all starts by going after Drake. When Abby arrives to see the hobo about to be killed by The Plague, she intervenes and saves the hobo, but not without being critically wounded. When Drake looks to find help, he is only met by the unruly masses, and despite the hobo being about to blow Drake’s head off, he is shot down by the police. Poor little hobo.

Homeless people used to be at risk of catching the plague. Well it appears that this one has to be nervous about The Plague catching HIM! Am I right?!

I’m glad I waited so long to watch this, because it was my low expectations that made me enjoy this movie. I felt as though it was able to honor the tradition of grindhouse movies in all of the blood and death and gratuitous violence, but was well-paced enough that I didn’t get bored. Normally, that’s the issue I have, that no matter how insane older grindhouse movies are, I can get bored and lose interest. Maybe it was because the first death involved someone’s head being ripped off with barbed wire and then having a lady in a bikini start doing stripper moves in the spraying blood that kept me interested in what would happen, but that’s a good a reason as any. I also found Rutger Hauer to successfully portray a sympathetic homeless person that made you want him to succeed, while also balancing the insane personality that you would expect from a hobo with a shotgun. I’m sure grindhouse aficionados could tear this movie apart, but for me, it was just a fun movie. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack is pretty awesome.

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Filed under 4 Stars, Horror Film Tagged with blade runner, exploitation, grindhouse, hobo with a shotgun, rutger hauer, the hitcher, the plague

The Broken (2008) [REVIEW]

July 30, 2011 Leave a comment

Pretty sure that this movie made its way into the queue as I was browsing the “Supernatural Horror” section of Netflix Instant. The horror selection is generally pretty shitty, at least as far as the lesser-known films, since there actually are a good amount of enjoyable films that I’ve already seen. I think this movie had an average rating of 3 stars, which for something on Netflix that I hadn’t heard of, is pretty damn good. I was a little hesitant when I saw that this was involved in the “After Dark” horror festival, considering I have only seen one that was tolerable. Most of them have been pretty bad, but Rampaige and I love that supernatural horror stuff, so we threw caution to the wind and gave it a shot. Oh yeah, and this one’s going to have spoilers, before all you babies start crying.

Don’t stand too close to that mirror OR IT MIGHT EXPLODE AND SOMEONE WILL COME OUT OF IT TO TRY TO FUCKING KILL YOU AND REPLACE YOUR LIIIIIIIIIFE!!!!!

We see a Dr. Gina McVey, played by Lena Headey, looking at the x-ray of a rare disorder where a man’s heart is on the right side of his body instead of his left. We follow the doctor to a family dinner, which is rudely interrupted by a mirror mysteriously breaking. The next day, Gina sees her exact double in the same car as she drives, and thinking that’s weird, follows that person home. She goes into this double’s apartment and sees pictures of herself with her own father, and is freaked out about this. As she drives away, Gina gets into an accident. After the accident, Gina asks to stay with her boyfriend since she is still rattled and confused by the events of the day. Her boyfriend looks exactly the same, but something seems different about him. Weird, right?! Other people who were at the dinner are also having strange experiences involving mirrors mysteriously breaking, and the whole movie just kind of gives you a sense of unease, and that something freaky-deaky is going on. What we find out throughout the course of the movie is the fact that every time a mirror breaks, it is a doppleganger coming out into the world, and Gena’s friends and family are slowly being replaced. We Gina goes back to the apartment of the “double”, she sees her own dead body laying in the bathroom. It turns out that when Gina went to investigate the double in the beginning of the movie, the original Gina was killed by the double, and every time we saw Gina after that scene, it was actually the double! But she forgot all of that shit because of the car accident! But the car accident fucked with her brain! So when she goes back to the hospital to give herself a physical and see if she is healthy…WE LEARN THAT HER HEART IS ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HER BODY INSTEAD OF HER LEFT! THE X-RAY FROM THE BEGINNING WAS ANOTHER DOUBLE! CRISS ANGEL MIIIIINDFREEEEEEAK!!!!!!!!!

Now you’ll know what all of your outfits will look like if you are bleeding from the head on the floor of a bathroom while also suffocating from a plastic bag.

Those might seem like sarcastic capitalizations back there, but they are genuine. The movie itself was about 90 minutes, and the discovery that she really is the double happens about fifteen minutes before the movie ends. You could kind of predict that something weird was going on with the friends and family, but that reveal took me by surprise. Add to that the nice tag at the end with the x-rays, which I had to explain to Rampaige, I was quite entertained. The movie was a slow burn towards that final reveal, and even though it was slow-paced, I was still engaged. Maybe it was because it was made in the UK and I wanted to think it was cooler because it was made by British people, but who knows. I was also really glad to see a movie deal with the concept of dopplegangers, which to me are terrifying. Not so much the idea of a duplicate of you trying to kill and replace you, but just the idea that there is an exact duplicate of you out there, somewhere, doing what they want to do. The mythology of dopplegangers being harbingers of death is pretty interesting too, like the fact that Abraham Lincoln claimed to have seen and dreamed of a doppleganger. Maybe it was because I had expected so little that I enjoyed it so much, but all that matters was it was short, it had a fun twist, and I would recommend it to others.

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Filed under 4 Stars, Horror Film Tagged with after dark horrorfest, doppleganger, lena heady, sean ellis, supernatural horror, the broken, the broken movie

Scream (1996) [REVIEW]

April 17, 2011 4 Comments

I briefly contemplated including this film in my horror movie franchise review, but seeing as there are only three films, I guess now four, I didn’t really think it was worth it. However, considering the new one was just released, and this first film is the only one I’ve seen more than once, I figured I should remind myself if this series was any good or not. I think this might have been the first R rated movie I saw in theaters, and I thought I was really cool. Well, I mean, I still think I’m really cool, just now for different reasons. I also think that I liked this movie so much that I tried writing my own sequel to it, and maybe wrote one full page. It was mostly just a scene of someone making themselves lunch for the next day in their kitchen at night, sneezing, and someone else saying “bless you”. Would you believe that the reason I thought that was scary was because I was always afraid of that happening when I was making my lunch for school the next day? What are the odds!

Almost positive that I had this picture clipped out of a magazine taped up on my wall in my room when this movie came out. I was so cool!

Drew Barrymore gets a phone call that sounds like the wrong number, until the voice becomes more and more threatening, and uses personal information until she realizes it’s someone who knows about her. She sees her boyfriend tied down outside, and if she answers horror movie trivia correctly, he will be spared, but sadly, she fucks up and he gets killed. Then the killer gets into the house and kills her too. The rest of the town is shocked with these murders, especially Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, because this murder is about a year after her mom was brutally murdered. The calls start focusing on Sidney, who narrowly escapes the killer not only at home, but also at school. The school principal closes school temporarily until the police can figure out what’s going on, and then he gets killed. Matthew Lillard‘s character has a huge party and a bunch of people show up, including students, the local deputy detective Dewey, played by David Arquette, and a trashy news reporter played by Courtney Cox. The teens get more and more drunk, and people start getting killed. First is Matthew Lillard’s big breasted girlfriend, played by Rose McGowan. Next is the cameraman for Courtney Cox, then Sidney’s boyfriend, played by Skeet Ulrich, gets attacked, and then we see Jamie Kennedy‘s character get attacked, not to mention Deputy Dewey, and, well, I think that’s it. Sidney sees that her boyfriend is still alive, and rather than being relieved, it turns out that he, along with Matthew Lillard, were the ones responsible for the murders. Skeet claims that Sidney’s mom was a whore who caused his parents to break up, and Matthew Lillard was just a psycho in general, so they planned all of these details of how to get away. There are a few snags in their plan, they end up dead, and Sidney, Dewey, Courtney Cox and Jamie Kennedy all survive to make a sequel! Hoo-ray!

Well yes, I did buy this costume from Spencer Gifts when this movie came out. Who didn’t have one!?

I remember thinking how scary this movie was when it came out, and it’s still a pretty decent slasher film, I just never quite realized how funny it was. Not necessarily laugh out loud funny, more so that it was quite self-aware, coming from Wes Craven, and there were quite a few moments where the dialogue caused moments that seemed to force the actors to look at the camera and wink. For example, Rose McGowan is trying to calm down Sidney because she is “starting to sound like a Wes Carpenter” flick….WINK! See what she did? She combined Wes Craven with John Carpenter, two huge names in the horror movie industry. Or when the principal, played by Henry Winkler, startles the school janitor, dressed in a fedora and a green and red striped sweater and calls him Freddy…WINK! Get it? Because Freddy Krueger was a janitor? Oh, and Linda Blair was in this as a reporter, so there’s that. I would say one of the things that stops it from getting a better rating is that there are too many of those references, and you forget whether you are watching a scary movie or watching a Scary Movie, which was intended to make lots of horror movie references and mock them. What works about this movie is how self-aware it is, and how it states typical scenarios and rules you can follow, and then makes sure to do things in a different way. If this was toned down a little bit, it might have been a little more successful as a horror movie, because we get it, you know you’re a horror movie, and there are lots of repetitive things that happen in all horror movies.

Yuck. People looked like shit in the 90′s.

I would say this movie is responsible for a huge surge of movies made in the late 90′s that all thought they were really clever and all had to do with teenagers. This isn’t to say that there weren’t scary movies before this that focused on teens, but based on the success of this, everyone thought it was box office magic, and caused shit like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and lots of shit involving 20 something actors from TV shows where they played teenagers. Most of them were shitty and terrible, but at least it reminded producers that horror movies could be both financially successful and relatively successful with critics. Seeing Wes Craven return to a genre that he really helped create with A Nightmare on Elm Street 15 years earlier was met with an overwhelming reaction to see more smart horror, rather than the typical girl showing her boobs, then getting murdered. Which reminds me, there aren’t any boobs in this! How strange is it that a horror movie from the 90′s had no nudity in it, and even includes dialogue about how a big breasted girl always takes her shirt off in scary movies? And by the way, Rose McGowan was still a babe in this movie. I guess they decided that any time a different movie would have had a topless girl, this movie chose to play Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” instead. Fine with me, Nick Cave is awesome. Also, Matthew Lillard makes sure to show everyone how long his tongue is, multiple times, just in case you were wondering.

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Filed under 4 Stars, Horror Film Tagged with a nightmare on elm street, boobs, courtney cox, david arquette, deputy detective dewey, drew barrymore, freddy krueger, halloween, henry winkler, i know what you did last summer, jamie kennedy, john carpenter, katie holmes, knife, matthew lillard, mid 90's, neve campbell, nick cave, phone calls, red right hand, rose mcgowan, scream, scream 4, scream trilogy, self-reflexive horror movies, sidney prescott, skeet ulrich, slasher, stab, stalker, teaching mrs. tingle, wes craven

Hellraiser (1987) [REVIEW]

March 23, 2011 2 Comments

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCCKKKKKKKKK. I realize that just by typing the title of this post, I understand that I now must review EVERY film in the Hellraiser franchise. I bet Rampaige is fucking pissed. Wait, strike that, I KNOW that she’s pissed. She already told me. I saw this movie around two years ago, and gave it a whole-hearted “meh”. Granted, I also wasn’t working all that much at the time, and spent a good portion of my day watching movies in my bed, on my laptop, while also looking at the internet. I guess in retrospect, I really wasn’t paying close attention to what the fuck was going on. And to be completely honest, this review might show you that I still don’t quite remember what the fuck was going on, but at least there are a few more details I could recall.

I still don’t quite understand why this guy has all those pins on his face.

This dude and his wife and some dumb fuck daughter move into a house or something, only for the wife to realize that her husband’s brother, whom she used to fuck on the reg, died there or something. While moving, the husband cuts his hand open which soaks into the floor boards, causing the brother to start coming back to life. Apparently the brother was fucking around with this old timey Rubik’s Cube and accidentally got taken to hell by demons. The demons are called Cenobites, which make me think they’re a movie theater treat. The wife discovers the brother being reanimated and he tells her that he needs more sacrifices so he can suck their souls or something and get more flesh on his bones. The wife starts luring men in, and the brother comes more and more back to life. The daughter starts picking up on what’s going on, and finds the old cube, which summons the Cenobites. This is when we meet “Pinhead“, along with a couple of other freaks. She lets them know that the other dude has escaped hell, and leads the Cenobites to him in exchange for her life. They get there, and exchange her life for his, and take that other bitch too, and everyone’s superfucked. Oh, except the daughter. And her dad is dead.

YOU’RE TOTALLY RUINING THAT SUIT, DUDE.

I think there’s a few details I left out about the cube, but that is pretty much it. Definitely liked this movie a lot more this time, while paying attention, than I did last time. The biggest compliment to this movie is definitely its visual style and the special effects. This movie was right on the cusp of computers replacing everything, along with claymation (ugh) taking over, but it is on the good side of that cusp. Meaning, there were lots of really cool practical effects, such as a skeleton coming to life and rising from a pool of mushy blood and guts. Also the visual style of the Cenobites was really neat and reminded me of the inventiveness of Guillermo del Toro, but this movie being made in the 80′s. Even if the story doesn’t do much for you, everything going on with the visuals were pretty cool.

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Filed under 4 Stars, Horror Film

Best Worst Movie (2009) [REVIEW]

March 12, 2011 Leave a comment

Documentaries are hard to review, because, ya know, things like “story” are hard to judge. So are “acting” or “special effects”. I guess what it comes down to is how well the film conveys or documents certain ideas and themes. I feel as though most documentaries are meant to convince you of a certain opinion, and use clever editing to get their point across, which makes them less about documenting and more about persuading. It’s pretty rare when a documentary focuses just on documenting events that take place without trying to convince you of anything. This film is definitely more of the latter, rather than the former. This documentary chronicles the rise in popularity of one of the worst movies ever made, Troll 2, and how that horribleness has made thousands of people fall in love with it.

George Hardy. Always smilin’, always lovin’ life.

Considering Troll 2 was made in 1990, it was a little bit difficult to say when it started being considered a “cult classic”. One step in it gaining notoriety is when it was highlighted as one of the worst things ever at the UCB Theatre in New York City, where it was also screened. This was one of the first screenings to showcase how entertainingly bad the film was, but certainly not the last. The actors from the film, who had been almost completely oblivious to the cult phenomenon, started getting in touch with one another as these screenings started getting press. It wasn’t until George Hardy, the main actor from the film, and Michael Stephenson, the young boy from the film, went to a screening at the UCB Theatre that they really got an idea of the cult following this film had, which is why Michael Stephenson decided to document their appearances at more and more screenings.

Margo Prey, the one actress who refused to be involved. Fuck, just look at her, it was probably for the best.

The more screenings that take place, the more you enjoy the actors and see their excitement over something that they had known for years was terrible. The more screenings there are, the more actors show up. Even the director makes his way from Italy to attend some of the screenings. George Hardy, just being excited to spend time with his fans, even starts traveling overseas to conventions in support of Troll 2, only to go unrecognized. He even makes his way to some horror film conventions, and is visibly depressed when he sees other actors who have been in one film their entire lives spending all day in hopes of being recognized. He decides to take part in one last screening of the film, which was held in the town where Troll 2 was filmed, sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX. After this screening, most of the actors go back to their normal lives, losing interest in the attention brought to them by this film, but not ruling out taking part in another film.

Claudio Fragasso, Italian director of Troll 2, or “Goblin“, has shitty Italian facial hair that makes him look like a troll, or “goblin”.

This documentary sounds kind of sad, but luckily it centers around George Hardy, who is clearly a down-to-Earth person. You feel compassion over his sadness at what his life could have become, but he perseveres and goes back to his life as a dentist. One of the more interesting points are the comments that the Italian director makes throughout the film. He starts off kind of poking fun at the whole thing, and taking all the comments with a grain of salt. However, the more and more he watches it, and the more he hears actors tell stories of how insane it was making this movie, the more agitated and defensive he gets, trying to claim he made the best film with what he had. The whole concept of movies like this, movies like The Room, and movies like Birdemic: Shock and Terror, is really strange, especially when you get to hear from the filmmakers themselves. There’s plenty of movies that I’m sure all parties involved with are embarrassed of, but we still watch them and laugh at them. Seeing Tommy Wiseau speak about The Room or James Nguyen speaking about Birdemic without even the slightest hint of embarrassment is almost empowering. They don’t care that people enjoy these films because of their lack of quality, because all they care about is that there are hundreds and thousands of people coming to these screenings to see them speak. Whether you have seen Troll 2 or not, whether you have movies you love to hate or you don’t, it’s an interesting portrayal of a strange concept.

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