Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 20th, 2014
"Tales of monstrous, man-eating anacondas have been recounted for centuries by tribespeople of the Amazon Basin, some of whom are said to worship these giant snakes. Anacondas are among the most ferocious and enormous creatures on Earth."
Today Anaconda would have most certainly been made as a "found-footage" film. All of the makings of one of these trending movies are there. We have a documentary crew in an isolated area, and most of them get killed. Fortunately, the trend wasn't so big in 1997, and so Anaconda got to be the film that it turned out to be. Now Mill Creek is offering a budget-priced release of the film in high definition on Blu-ray. Is it worth even that price? Read on...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 15th, 2014
There is nothing wrong with your monitor. Jonathan Glazer controls all that you see and hear. That tiny speck of light you see is just the beginning. The beginning of an experience you will not soon forget. The light appears distant...cold... foreboding. It's coming closer to us, or we are coming closer to it. The distant star grows while you are assaulted with some of the most bizarre sounds you have ever heard. It's somewhat uncomfortable. You squirm in your seat. The light grows; its alien forms finally settles into an unexpected familiar form. Still, it's all rather unsettling. Jonathan Glazer controls more than all you see and hear. For the next two hours he controls your sanity... your very humanity.
Your introduction to Under The Skin explains little. There are some general ideas you'll begin to assemble. You'll figure out rather quickly that Scarlett Johansson is an alien. The characters you'll encounter have no names. Many of them will not speak. After the first sensory experience, the film fools you into believing you're back on solid ground. Scarlett Johansson drives about the streets of Scotland talking to strange men. She asks directions and inquires about any family or friends they might have. It doesn't take us long to understand that she's hunting, attempting to separate a single prey from the pack. Before she snares her first victim, we know exactly what she's doing, even if we never understand completely why.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 14th, 2014
"Isn’t it wrong to sing and dance when someone has just died?"
When I first hear a film is going to attempt to be a horror musical, all I can do is simply shake my head at the thought of how bad this may be. But that’s not to say that I couldn’t be very wrong. Repo! The Genetic Opera was a rock opera that I had a blast with, and I’m not ashamed to admit I even purchased the soundtrack after the release. Where my concern usually rests with the idea of horror musicals is that I’m worried it will turn out to be no better and possibly worse than The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I’ve never liked the film, and it’s just something I’ll never be able to understand, how it’s gotten such a ravenous cult following, though I can appreciate that Rocky does have an audience, and week after week fans turn out in costume to sing along and in some locations even perform along with the film. Stage Fright is a film that aims to attract that same audience that embraces Rocky, but goes a step further by delivering a solid slasher film as well.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on June 30th, 2014
What happens when you splice together the killer-couple kicks of Bonnie and Clyde and Natural Born Killers with the ritualistic depravity of torture porn offerings like Hostel and Saw? I'm not really sure who — if anyone — was looking for an answer to that particular question, but that didn't stop Scavenger Killers from going to extreme lengths to provide one. Unfortunately, this low-budget slasher flick/wannabe satire is entirely too clumsy and non-committal in its tone to pull it off.
The Killers at the center of this movie are a sanctimonious judge (Robert Bogue) and a buxom defense attorney named Clara Lovering (Rachael Robbins) who doubles as his lover/accomplice. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mention a character's, ahem, physical attributes while relaying the plot of a film, but I mention it here for two reasons. Firstly, Robbins' IMDb page features credits like Bikini Bloodbath Car Wash and Vampire Lesbian Kickboxers (I wish I was making this up); so I have a feeling she knows exactly where her bread is buttered. More importantly, all of Scavenger Killers plays out as if it were written by a particularly immature and debauched 13 year old boy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 25th, 2014
When the first Wolf Creek was released it was one of those films that had a lot of hype around it, and when I got around to watching it, I dug it. It’s one of those films where the more I’ve watched it the more I’ve gotten to appreciate it, not just for its gore, but the film has a solid story, and I appreciated that the film at no time allows you to get too comfortable. At any moment a character could be brutally murdered. It’s the character of Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) who could equally make me smile with his crude outback charm or make me squirm with uneasiness the moment his hands took hold of a weapon. We Americans seem to enjoy the notion of our Australian characters being in the vein of the playful Crocodile Dundee, but Jarratt takes his role of Mick to some dark, terrible places.
Writer and director Greg Mclean unfortunately hasn’t had the success I would have expected considering the strong following for Wolf Creek and his fun follow-up Rogue. Now with the release of Wolf Creek 2, Mclean returns to the familiar territory of the untamed outback, and how does he fare? To put it simply, this movie is insane; it’s unrelenting and pretty damn funny at times.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 24th, 2014
It’s hard to believe it was way back in 2001 when Joy Ride was first released. You can lump me in with the crowd that didn’t expect there to be a sequel, much less a third entry into this series. The second Joy Ride I seemed to have missed altogether, so when I was given Joy Ride 3, I have to admit I was a little hesitant about checking this film out. Now that I have checked out the Blu-ray and all its extras, all I can think is that I had a good time with this film.
The film starts out strong, bringing us into a seedy motel room where a couple of meth addicts are up to no good. When the two are tapped out of meth, they decide to use their CB radio to lure in an unsuspecting driver. It’s no surprise that the trucker they end up getting is Rusty Nail, and he seems to be more than happy to oblige these two addicts. How the rest of the opening sequence plays out is better seen than ruined in a review, but I will say this is one of my favorite openings for a horror film in some time. It’s fun, it’s brutal, and it’s bloody. It’s the perfect way to kick off this kind of film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 9th, 2014
For most who have heard about the West Memphis Three, it is because of the HBO documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. It was a documentary that sparked the interest of many and fueled a movement to free Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley for the murder of three young boys in 1993. It was a documentary that attempted to expose the trial as a witch hunt in which the only things the boys were guilty of were listening to heavy metal, wearing black and participating in Wiccan practices. Numerous documentaries later and with the support of Hollywood A-listers such as Johnny Depp and Peter Jackson and musicians like Metallica, Marilyn Manson, and Eddie Vedder, the West Memphis Three finally were freed from prison in 2011. As for the answers to who is responsible for the murders, many will theorize, but it would seem only the child-killers would know what really happened that night. As for Devil’s Knot, just what does this film present to us, the viewers? Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to carry the same emotional punch as the documentaries, despite the impressive cast that it boasts.
Colin Firth plays Ron Lax, an investigator who comes into the case against the West Memphis Three and attempts to help the defense team as best he can, while Reese Witherspoon comes in playing the role of Pam Hobbs, a parent to one of the deceased children. The film balances back and forth between the characters and how they are dealing with their grief and the investigation, yet despite the efforts of these two Oscar winners, both fail at getting the viewer to care at all about them.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on May 21st, 2014
“You just never know who’s gonna be at the door.”
A virginal babysitter with bad cell phone reception is terrorized by a masked killer in Mischief Night. You don’t have to be a gorehound to know this is basically the plot of every slasher movie ever made. So it’s natural for viewers to expect some sort of swerve to differentiate this horror flick from all those that came before it. With the flawed, micro-budgeted Mischief Night, that swerve comes courtesy of the film’s intriguing assertion that a “boogeyman” can come from anywhere.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 14th, 2014
"I was cast into being in the winter of 1795 a living corpse with a soul, stitched, jolted, bludgeoned back to life by a madman. Horrified by his creation, he tried to destroy me..."
We all know the story told by the young teen wife of a poet: Mary Shelley. Told to entertain guests on a stormy night, it has become the stuff of legend. Brought to life by Colin Clive's mad scientist in the shape of Boris Karloff in the Universal Golden Age of horror, the monster has had a face. Since that time studios from Hammer to Paramount have left their own marks and scars on the creature that often mistakenly bears the name of his mythic creator. The name of Frankenstein.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 1st, 2014
It’s easy to envision the elevator pitch for Devil’s Due. You only need five words: “Rosemary’s Baby meets Paranormal Activity.” The upside is obvious. The idea of a demonic pregnancy has terrified and unsettled expectant mothers since Ira Levin published Rosemary’s Baby in 1967 and Roman Polanski adapted it for the big screen the following year. Meanwhile, the Paranormal Activity films made low-budget/found-footage domestic horror hugely profitable. The downside? You’re probably not topping Rosemary’s Baby, and horror audiences seem to be suffering from an acute case of found-footage fatigue.
“Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists will come. Therefore we know is the last hour.”
