Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 19th, 2005
Synopsis
A young boy murders his mother’s abusive lover while his little sister watches the act in a mirror. Years later, the siblings are grown up. The brother is mute, and the sister (Susanna Love) is haunted by nightmares of that night. Seeking to purge the past, she revisits her old home, and sees the lover in the mirror. In terror, she smashes the mirror, thus unleashing the evil contained therein. Wherever fragments of the mirror show up, terrible deaths occur.
Or at least as terrible...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 17th, 2005
Synopsis
Seth Brundle (David Goldblum) is on the cusp of perfecting an functioning teleporter, a device that will transform the world. Eager to share his creation with someone, he strikes up an acquaintance with science journalist Geena Davis. She is initially skeptical, but is soon converted, and as the work progresses, the two fall in love. Then, in a fit of misplaced jealousy (he believes that Davis is seeing ex-boyfriend John Goetz), Goldblum teleports while drunk, not knowing a fly is also in th...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 13th, 2005
Synopsis
After the events of the first film, Naomi Watts and her young son are starting a new life for themselves in a small town. But the curse of Samara reaches out to them, as not only are there more victims of the lethal videotape in this town (thus driving home Watts’ guilt for having copied the tape herself), but Samara strives to possess Watts’ son.
Everything is here, conceptually, for a pretty gruelling exercise in horror. Every mother’s nightmare is played on as Watts is suspected...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 5th, 2005
Synopsis
In 19th-Century Edinburgh, medical doctor Timothy Dalton needs bodies in order to further medical science. He avails himself of the services of two scoundrels (Johnathan Pryce and Stephen Rea), who provide him with extremely fresh specimens. Disturbingly fresh, as assistant Julian Sands is quick to realize. Dalton contends that the ends justify the means, even if those means are murder.
The story of murderous grave robbers Burke and Hare has been committed to screen in one form or ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 4th, 2005
Synopsis
Based on Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw, this is the tale of a repressed governess (Deborah Kerr), who arrives at a country estate to care for two young children. She soon becomes convinced that the ghosts of the valet and the previous governess are haunting the place, and have evil designs on the children.
The Turn of the Screw is not only one of the masterpieces of the ghost story in English literature, it is also the very model of ambiguity. Are the gho...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 27th, 2005
Synopsis
Vincent Price is in definitive creepy form as a millionaire who invites an oddball group of characters to spend the night in a sinister house. If his guests survive, they will be paid $10 000. Price is at war with his wife, and it is pretty clear that each would love to see the other dead. Strange events start occurring in the house, with one young woman in particular being driven to the edge of hysteria by one monstrous apparition after another.
Affectionately remade a few years b...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 8th, 2005
Synopsis
The surviving characters from the cliffhanger ending of Dracula II: Ascension pick up the chase. Pursuing Dracula (or rather, the much-older being who uses that name, and who was said to be Judas in earlier installments, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, either) are Jason Scott Lee as Uffizi, the vampire-killing priest now slowly turning into a vampire himself, and Jason London, whose girlfriend was snatched at the end of the last film. They travel through a Romania beset ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 26th, 2005
Synopsis
Guarding a treasure of what looks like a few novelty store swords and chocolate dollar coins in a cave that could almost be the fabled Bronson Caverns of many a 50s B-movie is a monster that sometimes looks like a bad CGI centipede, but most of the time is a guy in a baggy rubber suit. The treasure, we are told, was left by Viking Conquistadors, and yes, you read that correctly. Why the alien monster is guarding the treasure is never explained. Anyway, the beast slaughters a bunch of people ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 20th, 2005
Synopsis
In a perpetually gray, rainy, decrepit Bucharest, a series of strange murders is taking place. Brutal street-cop in search of redemption Sean Pertwee is paired up with enigmatic Interpol agent John Light. Light is not, of course, what he seems. Angels and demons are at war, as ever, and the demarkation lines of the battle are very blurry. Are there any good guys at all? Hard to sasy, but Kari Wuhrer had better hope so, as she is being used and stalked, respectively, by the different sides, a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 17th, 2005
Synopsis
Direct-to-Video queen Kari Wuhrer headlines as hard-edged reporter willing to risk life and limb for a story. Her editor sends her to Bucharest (your first hint of the pic’s minimal budget) to investigate a strange cult of people who call themselves “Deaders.” The members of this group appear to have died and been resurrected by the charismatic leader. Wuhrer descends into the underground, and reality goes all rubbery after she finds and opens a Lament Configuration, summoning Pinhead into h...
