Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 28th, 2010
Anyone who is looking for a direct sequel to the 2008 sleeper hit with Kiefer Sutherland or even a connection to the original Asian ghost film might tend to be disappointed in the direct-to-video Mirrors 2. This is absolutely one of those films where the name is used merely because of its franchise value, and the film's associations are mostly just a few familiar names. Add the same basic idea of a haunted mirror at the center of it all, and you pretty much have all of the connections this movie makes to either of the original projects. With that said, there is a bit more to like about Mirrors 2 than you might suspect on the surface.
This time it's Nick Stahl who plays a down-on-his-luck security guard at another branch of the Mayflower Department Store. He is Max, who has been dealing with a great deal of guilt of late. His fiancée was killed in an auto accident by a drunk driver. But Max was driving and wasn't paying attention to the road. He was playing a game of "find the ring" with his girlfriend when the tragedy occurred. As it turns out, Max's father (Katt) is the owner of the Mayflower Department Store, which is about to reopen its doors in New Orleans. The previous night watchman cut himself quite severely and quit his job, apparently going crazy during a night shift. Of course, we saw what really happened. It was an image in the main mirror that caused his injuries. The grand opening has been plagued with mishaps. Eleanor Reigns (Honore) has been missing for several weeks. Max discovers her spirit in the store mirror on his first night on the job. He also sees a vision of the store's executive buyer, Jenna (Romano) lose her head, literally. Later that night, he discovers that the woman really was decapitated by a shower door. He begins to see other prophetic images and decides something is seriously wrong here.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 27th, 2010
In June of 1987 many of us took to our local theaters to watch two future state governors tackle an alien creature in the jungles of southeast Asia. Director John McTiernan had combined the Rambo mercenary-styled film with that of a creature feature. The result was an impressive $60 million on a mere $15 million budget, and a franchise was born. From its first reveal in those Asian jungles, the Predator was an impressive sight. The creature was highly intelligent, to be sure, but it possessed those baser instincts of hunting and survival. It was a monster, but one who utilized advanced technological weaponry to accent its own fearsome brutal nature. It was the stuff that new nightmares would be made of. A sequel featuring Danny Glover and placing the creature in an urban setting soon followed. While that film is widely disregarded, I found it to be a rather good film. I still think it's an underrated monster movie.
It didn't take very long before the fan boys in Hollywood started getting their imaginations running wild. The inevitable question, since Frankenstein's Monster met up with The Wolfman -- who would win if we put the Predator against the Alien. It was a heavyweight fight just itching to play itself out at the box office. And, it did ... twice. The result might have destroyed both franchises. It seemed that these creatures had finally met their match, and it wasn't each other. Bad writing and wayward filmmaking brought down both creatures. It appeared as if they were both gone, forever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 27th, 2010
It was the summer of 1987. Horror movies had just gone through a recent splatter craze, and it seemed as though the genre might be dead, at least for a while. Then Joel Schumacher delivered his little low-budget vampire film The Lost Boys. While the movie didn't exactly tear things up at the box office, the film developed quite a strong cult following and had earned pretty high praise from the folks within the horror community. The movie was fresh and was just the kick in the pants that the sequel-weary crowd was looking for. The movie was dark but managed to provide a camp atmosphere at times that worked as a wonderful counterbalance to the blood and guts that was a necessary ingredient, particularly at that time. It was a breakout role for the young Kiefer Sutherland, who was moving out of the shadows of his iconic father and into his own. With this film and the critically acclaimed Stand By Me just a year before, Sutherland was able to arrive on the scene without riding his father's coattails. The two very different roles also allowed him to stretch those thespian muscles quite a bit. The Lost Boys captured teenage angst in a far more thrilling and realistic manner and combined it with vampires and humor. And while it dealt with very similar themes, this was no Twilight.
Among the most memorable performances to come out of that original film were those of Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. Haim would play the innocent kid just moving to a small town that happened to be infested with vampires. Feldman played Edgar Frog, a local comic-and-horror-lore geek who was aware of the vampire problem and saw himself as a modern-day Van Helsing, fighting the bloodsuckers whenever he encountered them. The two Coreys, as they would go on to be known, had wonderful chemistry and stole the film right out from under the adult cast and the evil doings of the teenaged vampire clan led by Sutherland. The two ended up doing several films together before having a somewhat public falling out.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 27th, 2010
Written by Diane Tillis
Hush Little Baby is a direct-to-DVD film presented by the Lifetime television network. Already you can make assumptions as to the quality of the film and the heightened drama that is associated with all Lifetime films. Hush Little Baby is parallel to any horror film about a possessed child who torments his/her parents, minus any suspense or gore.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 26th, 2010
Written by Diane Tillis
I will admit, the moment I saw the cover of the DVD I was already convinced this was going to be one of the worst films I have ever seen or a close second. The cover has a dark figure cloaked in a blue throw blanket and is holding a leaf blower as a weapon… a leaf blower?! Four Boxes turned out to be one of those independent thriller films that should have been left on the cutting room floor.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Michael Durr on October 24th, 2010
Sometimes when you have two reviewers in the family, you have to save your better half from a movie they simply don't understand. I found myself in that situation when my wife took on the daunting task of trying to review The Haunting from the Fright Fest collection. She couldn't put together the various religion themes into a compelling review, so I decided to help her out since she's done the same for me many times over. So did I understand the goings on? Well kinda.
In the first scene, we are treated to news from No-Do, people who bring us the truth in Spanish government and holy news. The movie moves to Blanca (played by Maria Alfonsa Rosso )who has woken up after 60 years of sleeping. She is the last patient of her kind and is left to fend for herself since the hospital is closing down. Miguel (played by Hector Colome)asks her if she has anywhere to go and Blanca nods her head. She confuses the priest with the late Bishop who apparently passed away a month ago.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 24th, 2010
Former pirate radio DJ Mike Raven plays Victor Clare (a case where the actor has a scarier name than the character he plays), reclusive artist who, one strongly suspects, has the unpleasant House-of-Wax-y propensity to pour molten metal on his models in order to bronze them. A group of characters with varying agendas gather at his Cornwall abode: his senile wife; his sexually ambivalent model; his weak, alcoholic son (Ronald Lacey, a long way from the menacing Nazi he would later play in Raiders of the Lost Ark) and impatient daughter-in-law; a neophyte art dealer and his girlfriend, Millie (Mary Maude). Victor becomes obsessed with Millie, determined make her his artistic muse. Meanwhile, the cast is being gruesomely bumped off one after the other.
Raven comes across very much as a poor man's Christopher Lee. He has the height (more or less), he has a deep voice, and he even looks not unlike Lee. But he has none of the master's screen presence, and isn't as frightening as he clearly should be. Most of the film is a rather dull plod, with characters wandering about, flirting or sniping at each other, and repeating conversations ad nauseum. The murders come along every so often to spice things up, but given Victor's obvious villainy, one might well wonder why the film is being so coy about the killings, and refusing to show us the killer.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 20th, 2010
*Walks slowly through Raven Hill Cemetery* Oh! Well hello there! I didn't know I would have company way out here. Hmm? Oh that's Abercrombie, he is just a hermit who hangs out here. He is mostly harmless. Here, have a seat, and have some Zombie Juice. Well, since you are here, I suppose I can share this movie review with you tonight. Fresh from the crypt we have a movie called Fragile. How fitting is it that we are in a graveyard full of skeletons when this movie stars Calista Flockhart? Har har. Bad joke? Who said I was joking? There she is hanging out by that tomb... -Calista waves- Huddle up by this fire here, and I will spin my tale. Ghoul Ribs anyone?
Welcome to Mercy Falls Children's Hospital. Meet Susan (Susie Trayling), a night nurse at the hospital. She is listening to the TV talk about a bad train wreck, while she appears to be packing up some boxes. When she turns around, there is Maggie (Yasmin Murphy) standing there and she looks quite frightened. Maggie tells her that "she" is coming, and that she can feel her coming. Susan tells her that they won't be talking about that anymore and sends her back to bed. Maggie reluctantly goes back to bed, in a room with other kids. A glass on her night stand starts to shake and a boy in the next bed wakes up screaming. Next you see Susan and Robert (Richard Roxburgh) rushing the boy on a stretcher to an X-Ray room. Robert asks the boy what happened, and he says he doesn't know. They take one X-Ray, and there is a bad fracture to his leg. Robert and Susan discuss what happened, and Susan doesn't know either. They go to take a second X-Ray, and just as they hit the button, the boy turns and screams. A second fracture appears.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 19th, 2010
Mention the name Roger Corman and several things spring instantly to mind: boobs, blood and gore. The man has been the king of the low-budget film since the 1950's. His movies often graced the screens of drive-ins all over the country. There wasn't an idea in the movies that Corman didn't try to exploit at one time or another. He also gave some of the most successful and influential filmmakers their start in the business. People like James Cameron and Martin Scorsese started in the Roger Corman factory. When you went to see a film produced by Corman, you knew exactly what you were going to get. There were no pretenses that he was engaging in some serious film contributions. He was out to make a buck, and all he cared about was that he managed to entertain a bit along the way. The one thing you don't expect is a healthy dose of feminism. It seems kind of a contradiction in terms, but the Slumber Party Massacre films were Corman's nod to the feminist movement.
Many of the Corman films have stood the test of time. They might be good for a few laughs along the way, but they usually entertain as well today as they did upon their release. Unfortunately, I just can't put the Slumber Party Massacre movies on that list. I tried. I really tried to enjoy these films. I understand them for what they were, but they really don't hold up as well as the better Corman material. Each sequel is worse than the one before. The characters are just bad, and the story is even more absent than you'll typically find on these kinds of films. But they have their cult following, and that's the audience that this DVD collection is tightly targeted on, to be sure. If you're just a little curious, remember what happened to that cat. There are so many better Corman films to satisfy that morbid curiosity. This collection is strictly for the already-initiated who have developed some unnatural attachment to the material. Not so bad, after all. The set is considerably cheaper than the therapy necessary to cure that itch.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 19th, 2010
Two friends – Marie and Alexia– head out to the country home of the latter’s parents. In the middle of the night, a killer breaks in, slaughters the family, and makes Alexia his prisoner. Marie is locked in a battle to save her friend and not become a victim herself.
Of such simple storylines are horror classics made. Leave it to the French, who, after all, invented the horror movie, to pump such gloriously bloody life back into the cinema of atrocity. After an early bit of extreme nastiness in the opening minutes of the film, the movie gets down to serious terror and atrocity barely a quarter of an hour in, and from that point on never lets up. The murders are extremely gory and among the most brutal of recent memory. The suspense will leave viewers clawing their flesh until they bleed. The resolution won’t satisfy everyone, but on balance, it worked for me. We have recently been deluged with so many films that either remake or ape the hardcore masterpieces of the 1970s, but here, at last, is the true inheritor of the mantle of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Last House on the Left. It doesn’t try to recreate their vibe. It simply applies their lesson: assault the audience without pity. This is one brutalized audience member who is profoundly grateful. Forget Saw. It’s The Brady Bunch next to this.
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