Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 6th, 2003
Synopsis
Carrie White (Angela Bettis) is going through the last word in high school hell. She has nofriends, she is tormented on all sides, and she has no comfort at home, thanks to her religiousfanatic mother. Carrie also has a powerful psychokinetic talent, one that will inevitably beunleashed once the pressure builds too high. Cut down from a 180-minute mini-series to 132minutes, this version will disappoint those who wanted to see the whole thing, but at the samet...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 6th, 2003
Synopsis
Jenny Wright is Virginia. She works at a used bookstore by day, and by night freaks herselfout with the frightening books of Malcolm Brand. Her life becomes a nightmare when themonstrous protagonist of Brand’s I, Madman appears to her in the real world, and startsre-enacting his crimes. Appearing well before the postmodern exercises of the Screamseries, In the Mouth of Madness and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, this littlefilm anticipates tha...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 4th, 2003
Synopsis
Glenda Jackson is a job placement consultant who wants to resign. Peter Finch is a doctorwho has more than his fair share of neurotic patients. Both Finch and Jackson are in love withMurray Head, a young artist who really loves himself more than either of his two lovers. Jacksonand Finch know about each other, and try to reconcile themselves with having to share Head. Asensitive character study, Sunday Bloody Sunday rivets with its superlative performancesand ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 3rd, 2003
Synopsis
Made at the height of Roger Corman’s successful Edgar Allan Poe series (with his perennialstar Vincent Price), these two pictures, while similar in tone to the Poe films, adapt two differentwriters. Tower of London, a remake of the Basil Rathbone/Boris Karloff film from 1935,is a version of Shakespeare’s Richard III, with Price taking on the role of the villainoushunchback, plotting and killing his way to the throne of England. The Haunted Palace,...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 28th, 2003
Synopsis
Mother Karen Black, father Oliver Reed, young son Lee Montgomery and great-aunt BetteDavis escape New York to spend the summer at a country home. They get the huge mansion fora song, but the only catch is that they have to look after the aged owner of the house. Black takescharge of providing for the unseen old woman, and soon becomes dangerously obsessed withthe house. Strange accidents befall the family, and with each bad thing that happens to them, thehouse, which...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 28th, 2003
Synopsis
People have been disappearing from the Russell Square station of the London Underground.The attention of the police is only really drawn, however, when one of the vanished turns out tobe a man well-placed in the Ministry of Defence. Inspector Donald Pleasance (wonderfullycranky and rude) is on the job. Meanwhile, two university students are also caught up in themystery. The reason people have been going missing is because they are being kidnapped andeaten by the last...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 27th, 2003
Synopsis
Richard Matheson, one of the most important talents in the horror field (his filmed novelsinclude Hell House, The Shrinking Man and I Am Legend -- the latterdone twice, as The Last Man On Earth and The Omega Man), scripts this twoblack comedies. In The Comedy of Terrors, Vincent Price is the scheming owner of afuneral home. He has taken over the business from doddering and deaf Boris Karloff, and,desperate for money, forces t...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 27th, 2003
Synopsis
A violent storm drops power lines into the swamp area of Fly Creek, Georgia. Driven madby the electricity, hundreds of thousands of giant, biting worms rise to the surface, and are heldback only by daylight. Three young people realize that something is up, but the adults won’tlisten, just as in The Blob, one of Squirm’s models. Come nightfall, the wormsattack. Squirm takes its time getting to the main event, and most of the build-up has aHardy Bo...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 26th, 2003
Synopsis
Egyptology professor Boris Karloff is on his deathbed. He has just spent his fortuneacquiring a jewel he believes will open up the gates of the afterlife for him, and he demands to beburied with it, threatening to come back from the grave if his wishes are denied. Naturally, thejewel is stolen, and as a group of interested parties descend on his mansion, Karloff rises. ThisBritish film, made in the wake of the huge success of the early Universal horror classics, is als...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 22nd, 2003
Don’t be fooled into thinking that Y Tu Mama Tambien is just another trite love triangle movie, one that would have some catchy Sum 41 or Weezer song in all the promos. This movie is about far more than that. It’s about the nature of friendship, the consequence of action, teenage machismo, self-realization and learning what it means to enjoy life. This isn’t the Mexican version of Road Trip, either. They don’t get into wacky hijinks or the comedy of the absurd. Almost everything about Y Tu Mama T...
