Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on September 26th, 2007
The style of "Grindhouse" films were something of a cult legend. More often than not, they were crazy over-the-top horror movies or action movies that had insane action that usually involved a body count that could rival an Arrrrrnold flic. These were referred to commonly as "B" flics due to the shoddy quality of the films. Video would be scratched up, missing reels were all over the place and audio would drop at the most inconvenient moment. More often than not they would be shown at some crusty drive-in for the change in your pocket. Fast forward to 2007 where Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez decided to resurrect the forgotten genre and brings us two movies (Death Proof and Planet Terror) to the screen.
The films unfortunately did not do so well at the box office. They were scrutinized for being too long (due to the Double Feature, the movie experience was roughly 4 hours) and many people just didn't get "it". When it came time for the two movies to be released on dvd, they decided to release them separately. Planet Terror would be released in mid-October and the focus of this review: Death Proof would be released in mid-September. I had the opportunity of picking it up at Best Buy with a special limited edition tin that included three discs rather than the standard two found in the other editions. Being the huge Kurt Russell fan, I leapt right in and paid at the counter.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 25th, 2007
If you are a fan of the original Kolchak: The Night Stalker, you were more than likely disappointed in the remake a couple of years ago on ABC. Your hope is now once again restored. Supernatural is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to The Night Stalker. Like Kolchak, the
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 24th, 2007
Stop me if you’ve heard any of this before. Four teens set out on a road trip …
STOP.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 20th, 2007
It’s back, yet again, and looking for more brains. Dan O’Bannon’s lively zombie comedy tells the tale of a toxic spill reanimating corpses who, not content with wanting to eat your brains, are going to give you lip about it at the same time. Notable for its mix of horror, punk rock, gore, humour and nudity (this is the film that established Linnea Quigley as a horror starlet), the film has since been bested in terms of wit and gore by both Dead/Alive and Shaun of the Dead, but it was there first, and remains great fun. Never having caught the film in the theatres, I haven’t noticed anything amiss with the soundtrack, but the chatter out there among the film’s fans lets it be known that some of the songs have been truncated, so be warned on that front. Otherwise, have a blast.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 12th, 2007
I love horror movies, but lately Hollywood hasn’t done it for me, and Wrong Turn wasn’t an exception. So I wonder how a low budget sequel is going to manage to be better than its phony prequel. But I won’t judge this one until I’ve seen, lets just hope its nothing like The Hills Have Eyes 2, or The Grudge 2, etc.
Wrong Turn 2 takes off shortly after the events of the first film. Right away I’ll let you know that other than the mutant freaks of the first film, this movie has no other links to the first installment, i.e. characters. Slightly off topic, I’ve always thought a movie about a group of reality contestants fooled into thinking they were in a post apocalyptic world could be interesting. This is probably as close as my vision will get to being realized, as it’s about a group of people in a simulated post apocalyptic world who are competing for $100,000. Instead things start getting messed up at the cannibalistic mutants start to show up.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 11th, 2007
It’s good taste time once again, as we follow the unfortunate Amber (Grace Johnston) as she falls into the clutches of your usual gang of inbred hillbillies. These psychos have kidnapped a number of women. They then force them to fight to the death, with the idea that the winner will get to carry on the clan’s bloodline. Charming.
Lord knows the backwoods horror film is not, nor should it be expected to be, a bastion of quiet restraint, but we’ve got a pretty unequivocally misogynist premise here, and the execution does little to mitigate it, despite Johnston’s best efforts. The filmmaking is pedestrian, though not incompetent, but this is a cynical, exploitive work that is also derivative and dull.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 22nd, 2007
Every so often, a remake comes along that does the original proud. David Cronenberg’s The Fly is one. Philip Kaufman’s reworking of Don Siegel’s 1955 classic is another. For the three people out there who aren’t familiar with the plot, pods from outer space are replacing people with soulless duplicates. Donald Sutherland is the health inspector whose friend (Brooke Adams) is one of the early people to believe that someone close to her is no longer who he appears to be. Before long, Sutherland, Adams, Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright are running for their lives.
The story of perfect paranoia is infinitely flexible, adapting itself perfectly to the tenor of the times (assuming, of course, the filmmakers are halfway competent). Kaufman’s film distinguishes itself from its predecessor by playing on our worst fears concerning big city anonymity and alienation, and by introducing the infamous pod scream, which leads to one of the most chilling final frames in film history.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 3rd, 2007
One hundred years after Abraham Van Helsing and allies fail to annihilate Dracula, the vampire arrives in a small American town looking for an amulet that, if destroyed at the prescribed moment, will usher in a reign of darkness. Recruited to aid in this project are versions of the Wolfman, the Frankenstein Monster, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Opposing Dracula is the titular Monster Squad, a group of monster-crazy boys and one very little (and very adorable) sister, who befriends the Monster.
I first caught this film during its original theatrical run, and enjoyed it then. Twenty years later, it looks even better. This is the kind of movie that Stephen Summers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) evidently thinks he is making, even though he is utterly unable to do so. Director Fred Dekker’s acknowledged model is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and as in that film, the monsters are treated with respect, remaining figure of fear, not of fun. There is much humour in the film, but the stakes are real. There is a sense that the battles could have a real cost to them (and when the monsters attack, people do actually die). There are also enormously poignant, heartfelt moments (when was the last time you teared up at a Summers film?). The special effects have aged somewhat, but have accrued all the more charm for that. Dekker’s love of the classic Universal films imbues every frame, right down to replicating the out-of-place armadillos and phony-looking bats from the original Dracula. This is, from top to bottom, the dream of every classic monster fan made flesh.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 20th, 2007
While expecting her husband home from a business trip, Sandra Bullock receives word that he has died. But the next morning, when she wakes up, he is still alive, and hasn't even left yet on the trip. Next morning, he's dead again, and it's the day of the funeral. Understandably, our poor heroine is a might discombobluated as she deals with having become unmoored in time, struggling to save her sanity, her husband, and her marriage.This film was thoroughly trashed at the time of its theatrical release, and there are, it must be said, plenty of things wrong with it. Some temporal elements are inconsistent as the days move around (why, for instance, does Bullock's older daughter not show, on the day the news of the husband's death is received, the facial injuries that she received a few days prior?), the pace flags after a fairly taut first half-hour, a theme of incarceration mysteriously disappears, and the explanation for why this is all happening is weak, not to mention that the purpose for it all is rather pointless. So yeah, all of that is wrong. As a supernatural thriller, the film doesn't work. But as an old fashioned weepy melodrama, it has a certain daffy power. Bullock gets to chew up the scenery in some wonderfully OTT moments of Grand Guignol soap opera. The film also stays true to the weepie form with its heroic/tragic conclusion. As a piece of whacked entertainment, engaging in no small part because of all the things it does wrong, but also because it takes itself so seriously and plays the emotional heartstings for all they're worth, this isn't on part with such classic weepies as Now, Voyager, Stella Dallas or Mildred Pierce, but it could hold its head up alongside the likes of The Other Side of Midnight.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 6th, 2007
It’s no secret that horror films these days severely lack originality and overuse violence and gore instead of actually scaring the audience. Sometimes this works and when coinciding with an actual story can make for a good movie. The Hills Have Eyes remake from 2006 wasn’t half bad because there was a tiny amount of depth in the story, combined with the violence that audiences have come to love. But ultimately for me, it didn’t hit the mark, it was just another typical horror movie. I really don’t think the s...quel will offer anything beyond it, but here’s hoping it will.
The Hills Have Eyes 2 takes place two years after the 2006 film, and offers no closure on the events left open at the end of the original. There is now military presence in the area, and I can only assume that means the surviving family members of the first film informed the government of the mutants. Regardless, in the opening scenes of the film some research scientists are brutally murdered and it’s obvious that the mutants are still around and still pissed off. Meanwhile a group of soldiers is dispatched to the location of the scientists to deliver equipment, but upon arriving it’s discovered that the camp is abandoned. It now becomes a search and rescue mission, where the cannibalistic mutants begin picking off the soldiers one by one, hoping to capture the females for breading purposes. The group must now band together to overcome the threat of the mutants and ensure their very survival.
