The Morgue: Cold and Slabby
Current mood: indignant

The Morgue
*
DVD

Directed by Halder Gomes, Gerson Sanginitto

Written by Najla Ann al-Doori

Starring Heather Donahue, Lisa Crilley, Christopher Devlin, Brandon Quinn

Produced by Gerson Sanginitto, Carina Sanginitto

R
2008
84 mins

Congratulations, Heather Donahue!  You're well on your way to supplanting Eric Spudic as my new bad movie barometer!  Your career is a blistering wasteland of garbage, sufficient to make me wonder if you were actually cursed by the Blair Witch herself, or if any movie that doesn't feature you bawling to the point where snot dribbles out of your nose is just destined to be a total flop and languish in obscurity.

And you'll keep the stride alive that features you in such cinematic bulwarks as "New Suit" and "The Velvet Tigress" by signing on for "The Morgue", one of the first horror films I've seen in a long time where the back of the box will actually lie outright to the reader.

Anyway, this newest piece of Heather Donahue flotsam to wash up on the video store shelves is all about a young woman who's working as a night janitor cleaning up a morgue.  And one night, a whole lot of people come stumbling in with a whole host of automotive problems.  A series of unexplainable events flood on by, and by the end of the night, some of them might not survive.

Actually, the above synopsis is slightly a crock.  Why? Well, I'll tell you why, and I'll spoiler confidently so you don't have to waste your time on this steaming pantload.  

Because THEY'RE ALL DEAD, that's why!  That "astonishing twist" that the back of the box practically falls all over itself to describe?  That's the twist. They're all dead.  

That is NOT a twist.  See, the problem with calling that a twist is that it ignores a huge body of work that came before it that already USED that twist, and did it in a far better and more convincing fashion than The Morgue could ever DREAM of doing. We've been rickrolled by this alleged twist for YEARS now.  To call it "astonishing" is a lie of epic proportions, and frankly, calling it a twist at this point only cements its status as lie.  I was personally convinced that they'd all been dead since about the twenty minute mark, and frankly, I'd rather not see anyone else waste perfectly good time and money on this cinematic sludge pile than absolutely necessary.

Hence, the spoiler.

Clearly, I'm seriously torqued about this ridiculous little movie actually landing on shelves when GOOD movies go unappreciated and unseen.  So I like the thought of being just a little bit trollish and spoilering.

The ending, well, I've already made that pretty clear--suffice it to say that they're going to take about five or ten minutes to thoroughly explain that they're all dead just in case you're too damn stupid to get it the first time.  This should, of course, insult you like no tomorrow because it definitely got me interested in smacking somebody.

The special features include English and Spanish subtitles, along with a behind the scenes featurette and trailers for The Morgue, Bangkok Dangerous, Restraint, Artifacts, and a new, surprisingly freaky trailer for Fearnet.com.  It's not quite as freaky as the psychokinetic freakgirl in the dingy hotel room but it'll get the job done.  It's the best part of the disk.

All in all, blech.  The fact that only onomatopoeia will accurately describe this dreck should give an accurate portrayal of how I felt about it.  This is definitely one to avoid.

5:41 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Class of 1999: Cum Laude
Current mood: satisfied

Class of 1999
***
DVD

Directed by Mark Lester

Written by C. Courtney Joyner

Starring Pam Grier, Malcolm McDowell, Stacy Keach, Darren E. Burrows

Produced by Mark Lester

NR
1990 / 2008
96 mins

You know, with all the sputtering about declining test scores and assorted whatnot revolving around the state of education in this country, all the naysayers really need to pop themselves some popcorn, settle in for a movie, and watch Class of 1999, if for no other reason than to see how good we actually have it.

Because in Class of 1999, major metropolitan areas like Chicago, Detroit and Seattle, among others, have been swallowed up by gang violence and drugs.  The schools in those areas, not surprisingly, have basically shut down because it's hard to get the Crips and such to leave their drug businesses for six hours so they can make first bell.  Thus, the Department of Educational Defense, which sounds like a half-baked nightmare of the kind only the Bush administration could cook up, is called in to try and reopen the schools from the nightmare of the "free-fire zones".  They answer the call in spades by refurbishing old androids and loading them up with educational software, then sending them in to teach.  

You can imagine how badly this will go wrong.

Which is the thing about Class of 1999.  You've got to bear in mind that this was originally released back in 1990, which was a time when we were just starting to come down off of Rambo movies, and the Cold War was actually still fairly warm.  We believed in action movies very heavily back then, and man, did we get them out of Class of 1999.

Sure, the writing's a bit hackneyed, at least the dialogue is--there's actually nothing much bad to say about the overall plot itself, which was also a bit hackneyed but was also set nine years into the future, so they have plenty of plausible deniability.  They wrote it for the future, after all, and who knows where that'll wind up going? That and most of the special effects don't look too bad.  After all, they depend heavily on explosions, and do explosions ever really go out of style?

Of course not.  Just ask Michael Bay.

Oh yes, I went there.

Frankly, there are lessons to learn here about how to make a low-budget movie that manages, somehow, to not look dated despite the fact that it's now officially legal and able to vote in the United States.  Not just the explosions, either--you'll notice that much of the effects work is makeup rather than CG based, and that lends it an extra note of endurance.  And of course, getting solid actors to handle the roles--Keach, McDowell and Grier all handle their action roles with the kind of authority you'd expect from long-since masters.  Keach is an appropriately smarmy jerk, McDowell is well in his element as a well-meaning principal gone too far and Grier manages to make you believe she's an android hellbent on ending gang violence in schools.

Besides its longevity, Class of 1999 is actually just plain fun to watch.  This is a comparative rarity in low-budget filmmaking these days and it's one I'm glad to see back in full force.

The ending is solid, satisfying, and involves lots of things and people blowing up or burning.  What they did to that android gym coach I wouldn't do to a dead dog with leprosy.

The special effects are a bit sparse, but functional, including English and Spanish subtitles, and trailers for the Terminator 2 Extreme DVD version, "Alien 3000", "Rottweiler", "Shockwave", and "They Are Among Us".

All in all, Class of 1999 is a fun, fairly satisfying romp through the annals of low-budget film history, and a worthwhile trip to take as long as you don't expect too much out of this unapologetic target range of a movie.

5:01 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Phantasm IV: Really Confusing Companion Volume
Current mood: confused

Phantasm IV: Oblivion
***
DVD

Directed by Don Coscarelli

Written by Don Coscarelli

Starring A. Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Bill Thornbury, Angus Scrimm

Produced by Don Coscarelli

R
2008 / 1998
98 mins

Well, this is it, folks.  At least possibly.  Ignore for a moment the swirling rumors around the upcoming Phantasm V, which even Angus Scrimm describes as so far-fetched that we shouldn't "hold our breath" to get our hands on.

For the time being--and likely for all time--this is the last Phantasm in the Phantasm series, and thanks to Anchor Bay, we've got it back on special edition DVD.  Anchor Bay seems to specialize in antiquities restored to ever-loving life, and there's no two ways about it--Phantasm IV: Oblivion is one of those antiquities.  I never thought I'd hear myself say that about a movie released when I graduated from high school, of all things, but there's no two ways about it.  It's ten years old, and in movie time, that's a lifetime.

Regarded by some as the most confusing of all Phantasm installments, and indeed lacking somewhat in action, Phantasm IV: Oblivion seeks to wrap up some of the loose ends of the series by sending our favorite combat duo of some guy with a ball in his head and the horniest ice cream man on the face of the earth off to discover the secrets of the Tall Man, a strange sort of figure who may or may not be possessed by demons or other intelligences during experiments in otherdimensional travel, who's out to conquer the world by stealing corpses and becoming "Lord of the Dead".

See, yeah...you cannot walk into Phantasm IV: Oblivion and expect to get it.  In fact, if this is the FIRST Phantasm you see, you will be so abjectly butt-lost that you will be demanding your ninety eight minutes back.  But when you consider Phantasm IV as it was meant to be considered, as a capstone to the insanely great original series that earned Don Coscarelli his eternal place in the Masters of Horror list, you develop a healthy respect for it and you're glad it exists.

I read a few articles about Phantasm IV: Oblivion and discovered that it was actually meant as a way for Coscarelli to release hordes of deleted scenes from previous movies.  In fact, the first movie lost a great deal of footage in order to be released--originally the MPAA was going to slap the scarlet X on it, but after judicious cutting from Coscarelli, it was released as an R.  Thus there was plenty of extra footage to do stuff with, and this was well before anyone even know what a DVD was let alone how many extra features could safely be packed into one, so Coscarelli can be forgiven for wanted to get the word out.

The ending may well be the most confusing part about Phantasm IV: Oblivion and is anything but satisfactory, but that's the nature of the film.

The special features include English subtitles, audio commentary, a behind the scenes featurette, and trailers for Phantasm, Tenebre, Phenomena, and Phantasm IV: Oblivion.

All in all, Phantasm IV: Oblivion definitely doesn't pack in the action and horror and suspense the way the first three did, but that's really not its purpose.  Phantasm IV: Oblivion was designed to be a companion volume, a pack of extra features that really wouldn't have been necessary had the original three been released later on.  But the extra information, and the hope of a Phantasm V, is welcome and worthwhile.  But only after you watch the first three first.

5:46 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Masters of Horror Season 2: Just Like A Regular Skull
Current mood: surprised

Masters of Horror season 2
***
DVD



I'm really rather amazed that I got the opportunity to watch this in the first place.  Fewer copies of season two were released than season one, and quite possibly with good reason.  Though there were other incentives to pick up season two, the constant muttering of the fans had some valid complaints.

The season two box set is ironic, when you consider it fully.  Yes, indeed, it comes in an absolutely freaky case that looks like an exact replica of a human skull.  Pull off the top and an array of DVDs are found within.  But Masters of Horror season two is exactly like a real human's head, and not just for the amazing skull case;  it's a masterfully designed casing holding a mix of the good and the ill.  Just like a real human head.  I'm somewhat opposed to this, however, as it required some titles to be double-packed on one DVD--Family is the B-side of The Screwfly Solution's disk and that's not a good thing.

Yes, the fans were correct. Season two was quite a bit inferior to season one, but it's crashingly unfair to say that season two was BAD.  No, not in the least--it wasn't bad at all.  It just wasn't good compared to the first.  Why?  Well, I'm going to put forth the suggestion that it just averaged better.  Strange thing to say, I know, but look at season one--only Deer Woman and Chocolate were anything less than good.  And the best of season one--Pick Me Up, Homecoming, and Cigarette Burns--were inspired masterworks of horror. Takashi Miike put forth possibly the very first work of horror that Showtime refused to show.  The rest were at least good, and that makes a pretty high plateau to achieve.

By comparison, there are fewer high points and more low points to season two.  I'm still offended by the existence of The V Word--a VAMPIRE story?  In Masters of Horror?  Honestly--surely masters of the art can do better than rehash old mythoses into the modern era.  Vampires are done and to death--I'm sick of Lestat and his buddies mincing his way through horror movies, and only slightly better are the coked-up madmen of movies like 30 Days of Night. At least that's a bit original.  But even in this it was still a relatively successful film--just because I'm not all that into vampire stories doesn't mean vampire buffs won't enjoy it.  Bringing in chronically ignored pulp-horror figure Bentley Little for "The Washingtonians" was also a good move that showed a commitment to at least try--when's the last time you saw anything vaguely related to Bentley Little?  Yeah, I figured--like I said, chronically ignored.  Do yourself a favor--go out and read his book The Store and see if you can look at a Wal-Mart the same way ever again.

And let's face the unpleasant fact--season two lost a lot of its best masters and was forced to turn to lesser masters.  Here--see if you can appreciate the differences.

Season one originals that left:  Takashi Miike, Larry Cohen, Lucky McGee, Don Coscarelli, William Malone, John McNaughton

Season two replacements: Norio Tsuruta, Peter Medak, Tom Holland, Rob Schmidt, Brad Anderson, Ernest Dickerson

Not to complain about Norio Tsurata--he did Premonition, which was sweet.  But let's be honest here--which of these names will you more readily identify:  the replaced...or the replacements?  Tom Holland did direct the first Child's Play movie, but the last thing he directed was Thinner back in 1996, and nothing after until 2007's We All Scream For Ice Cream.  Rob Schmidt may have directed Wrong Turn, but does that REALLY qualify you for Masters of Horror status?  I say it ranks you for ASSHOLES of Horror status.  How far down the ladder were they willing to go?  Charles Band?  Uwe Boll?  Ulli LOMMEL, for crying out loud?  Any one of them has directed more than THREE TIMES the number of movies Rob Schmidt handled, but somehow Schmidt's a "master"?  

Shenanigans, anyone?  I'm calling shenanigans.

But anyway...it's like I said.  it wasn't that Masters of Horror season two was bad--say what you will, but watching George Wendt pour acid over a corpse, break for lunch, and then start talking to dressed skeletons in "Family" just tickled me pink--it just wasn't as good as season one.  There is plenty to like about season two...and here's the rundown:

The Screwfly Solution. An amazing array of niftiness where the menfolk run as amok as the womenfolk have always thought us capable of.

Jeffrey Combs in The Black Cat. Jeffrey Combs has yet to turn in a bad performance, and I will always--ALWAYS--give bonus points to anyone who brings in this spectacularly effective actor.

Sounds Like. You've got to love how there's a problem, and then its polar opposite for a bit, and then right back to where it was.

All in all, Masters of Horror: Season Two may not have been as good as the first, but there's still nothing really bad about it by a long shot.

3:29 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Side Sho--Too Much Freak, Not Enough Carnival
Current mood: discontent

Side Sho
**
DVD

Directed by Michael D'Anna

Written by Frank Fox, Paula Fox

Starring John David Hart, Toni Robider, Dana Poulson, Elizabeth Bailey

Produced by Paula Fox

R
89 mins
2008

Just when I think that I can't find any movie more condescending, unintentionally funny and cringe-inducing, along comes Lions Gate to show me how wrong I am.  Lions Gate has introduced me to a whole lot of crap--from their amazingly dull direct to video pics to the horrible, horrible career of Ulli Lommel, it seems like Lions Gate has a knack for finding some of the most godawful nonsense on the face of the earth.

Oh, sure, they've had their successes--Drive Thru, for example--and they've put out plenty of solid pieces that I've enjoyed immensely.

Side Sho is not one of these.  

Side Sho is the thoroughly predictable and thoroughly familiar (I seem to remember seeing something almost exactly like this but I can't quite seem to remember where) story of a family taking the kids to softball camp when the father, who's writing a book on old roadside attractions (oh wow...that sounds REALLY familiar...where have I heard of that??) whereupon he and the family discover a side show--rather, a side SHO as the W is missing from their sign--in the middle of the swamp.

Of course, said sho is creepy as all hell, mostly because of the carnival barker running things, and as the family van suddenly breaks down trying to get away from the sho, they run afoul of the sho's many secrets.  Like it used to be a prison camp.  And it's packed with heavily inbred psychopaths who want to get a couple fresh branches for the family tree in the form of the family's young daughter and her best friend who inexplicably came along.  

Oh crap, I just remembered where I'd seen that whole "carnival book" thing.  House of 1000 Corpses, the gigantic steaming cinematic shitheap from crime against film audiences Rob Zombie, used it to kick off the whole opening sequence.  How desperate do you have to be to rip off Rob Zombie?

But I'm being a bit too harsh, in all honesty.  The last half of Side Sho proves to be a frenetic killing spree as hubby writer runs amok trying to save his family, and butchers him some freaks in a high-speed-metal fashion that's actually somewhat watchable.  If you can get past the sludgy, derivative, mildly exploitative first half, you might actually get some fun out of Side Sho.

However, if you do see this, I recommend strenously that you not watch it through to the end past the end credits, because if you do sit through this drivel and watch the end part, you will be spectacularly insulted.  I sure was.  The ending is a pretty fair thrill with a nice twist, but going past the end credits does horrible things to the whole thing and drops the average through the floor. It's that bad, really.

The special features include a making-of featurette, a blooper reel, and trailers for Side Sho, Bangkok Dangerous, Twin Daggers, Dead Clowns, Frontier(s), and The Shadow Walkers.

All in all, Side Sho is really too unpleasant to recommend, but if you do watch it, you may find yourself less disappointed than I am.  A solid second half is not enough to induce forgetfulness on the lousy first half.   

3:25 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Alive or Dead--Day Late, Dollar Short

Alive or Dead
**
DVD

Directed by Stephen Goetsch

Written by Stephen Goetsch

Starring Ann Henson, Angelica Modana, L. Flint Esquerra, Gretchen Busenitz

Produced by Paul Koslo

R
83 mins
2008

There are only so many things I can say about "Alive or Dead".  The upshot is that only a few of them require expletives.  The downshot, meanwhile, is that few of them would ever get put on a video box.

The plot of "Alive or Dead" doesn't really help the position at all.  Basically, some random chick stumbles across an abandoned school bus.  This alone doesn't mean very much until she notices the hand-lettered "help me" sign written across the back window.  Did I mention it's dark and in the middle of the desert?  So all these wonderful events combine to form a horrible picture--and as our random chick gets on the bus and discovers what happened, the picture only gets worse as the bus drives away, with her on it.  Now, she's got to save who she can, fend off the various unpleasant types she'll run into after the bus finally stops, and discover a whole lot of weird stuff along the way.

"Alive or Dead" starts off with some of the worst phone sex I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through.  Seriously, it's like watching a regular sex scene with your parents in the room. It's embarrassing just to sit through it.  It's so spectacularly INEPT.

And when the main characters actually describe the opening minutes as "That's like the beginning of every shitty horror flick I've ever seen.", all I could do was laugh uproariously and try desperately not to choke on my muffin.  For some reason I covered this one in the morning.  But anyway.

Because, yes, this plotline IS unnecessarily familiar.  Yes, this HAS been used unto death and beyond.  Which forces me to wonder why they even bothered using it in the first place.  I mean, come ON, surely there's any of a hundred better concepts to use--why this miserable rehash that's been done so many times before that even your own script makes fun of it?

The preposterousness level only continued to climb throughout as our killer took the bus ot what amounts to a castle in the desert.  No, seriously.  A CASTLE. In the DESERT.  Bars on the windows, turrets, real old-world stone construction.  A proposition that, once again, even the movie itself will make fun of.  What, do they think they have some kind of a license on stupidity just as long as they openly mock it themselves?

Why, why, so much why?  Well, there's not a whole lot of reason running behind this sucker's eyes, but they're going to do something at least somewhat interesting at about the middle of the movie.  I won't say what, that'll spoiler like no tomorrow, but I'll admit that it's actually a pretty good surprise.  In fact, it's surprise enough to make me revise my estimation of this sucker upward a bit.

The ending will include a couple of very nicely done surprises.

The special features will include English and Spanish subtitles, audio options, an audio commentary track, a making-of featurette, and trailers for "Sight", "Frontier(s)", "Saw IV", "The Descent", and "The Devil's Rejects".

All in all, "Alive or Dead" was a pretty fair idea that just took way too long and made too many mistakes to execute properly.  Too unique to call bad and somehow too derivative to call good, a single rental here will not go to waste if you need something new to watch.

9:29 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Retribution--One of Those Chatty, Boring Japanese Horror Movies
Current mood: grumpy

Retribution
*
DVD

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Starring Koji Yakusho, Manami Konishi, Tsuyoshi Ihana, Joe Odagiri

Produced by Taka Ichise

R
2008
104 mins

Japanese movies are always an exercise in bizarrity.  The only problem is, you never know until you get to watching them just what personality will be in today.  Seriously, it's like a Dilbert strip I once read where Catbert's off firing some guy with multiple personalities and he's spent all morning firing the twins and the astronaut and the little girl. Japanese movies really are a lot like that.

The question of the day, of course, is who's in?  With Japanese movies you have only a couple possibilities. You have the chatty lunatic who can't stop talking about ghosts and death and assorted whatnot, and you have the bloodsoaked maniac who can't kill enough people to keep himself satisfied.  Watching movies with the maniac can actually be a fun, thrill-packed, adrenaline fueled ride to oblivion that's worth every minute.  But the chatty lunatic's movies tend to deal in subtlety so thick you can't breach it with a pickaxe and dynamite.

"Retribution", sadly, is one of the latter.

I'm actually understanding how this came from the director of "Pulse"--that sucker was a chatty lunatic movie too, frankly, and what's really creepy is Wes Craven actually made it BETTER.  BUt anyway--Retribution is all about a detective investigating the drowning death of a young woman who, apparently, got drowned in a mud puddle.  Which is a hell of a way to die, especially as the clues begin to coalesce around the detective and look more and more like he was the guy who held said young woman's face in the mud puddle.  And, as more mud puddle victims start showing up around town, the detective is left to wonder if he's the killer.

You can see where I'm going with this already.  I spent large portions of "Retribution" bored out of my ever-loving skull in exchange for the occasional payoff of something freaky, like a chick in a red dress slowly flying up past a window.  And frankly, that's not enough payoff for me to sit though a half-baked crime drama where the murder weapon is a mud puddle.

The ending...oh wow.  You thought the rest of the movie was half-baked, the ending is about a quarter baked.  I had to go back three or four times to make sure the DVD didn't skip.  It didn't...it's just that bad.

The special features include English and Spanish subtitles, audio options, an alternate ending (which isn't all that much better, really), a making-of featurette FOR the alternate ending,  and trailers for The Eye, The Eye 2, Ju-On: The Grudge, Ju-On 2, Premonition, Werewolf Hunter: The Legend of Romasanta, and the freaky Fearnet trailer.

All in all, "Retribution", sadly, will not bring terribly many thrills along with it, which puts it low on the totem pole for Japanese imports.

12:25 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Primal--Yet Another Horrible Movie Involving Sasquatches
Current mood: peeved

Primal
*
DVD

Directed by Steffen Schlachtenhaufen

Written by Steffen Schlachtenhaufen

Starring Bethany Davis, Brian Girard, Biz Urban, Jack Grigoli

Produced by Patrick McManus



2008
R
80 mins


Okay, I confess going into this one that I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of it.  I have seen very, VERY, few good movies involving sasquatches.  In fact, the last time I saw even CLOSE to a good movie involving sasquatches it didn't even involve sasquatches at all, but rather was Lalo Schifrin's "Abominable", which featured abominable snowmen.

"Primal", sadly, has absolutely nothing to suggest that it will be anything better.

The plot of "Primal" resembles very closely a slew of other movies that are almost exactly like it. Basically, a group of college students loosely connected to an oil drilling firm goes out into a woods where it's likely no human being has before trod. And of course, they'll be running into something out there, namely a host of bloodthirsty protohuman monstrousities that'll be out to kill and eat them.

When I said that "Primal" had absolutely nothing to suggest that it will be anything better than any other sasquatch movie, I meant it.  "Primal" is packed to the ever-lovin' blue-eyed GILLS with all the worst mistakes a filmmaker can make.  For instance, some productions might spend money on squibs and bloodpacks and whatnot when having a camper get attacked by a shaggy mutant beastie--not "Primal"!  No sir!  When campers get killed in "Primal", the camera shudders like it's going over twenty miles of bad road on a tripod with a missing leg.

Oh, and even better yet, the costuming for the sasquatches makes them look like kids in bad Halloween costumes.  One particular sequence underscores it nicely as a sasquatch is caught walking and we're looking at its feet.  Unless we're supposed to believe that sasquatches have no bones in their feet, we sit and watch as a toe bends at a ninety-degree angle.  

Which all adds up to one great steaming pantload of a movie.  For crying out loud, can NOBODY handle the sasquatch genre?  Is this just a complete loss for anyone who tries it?  It's looking more and more like that's going to be the case, so I'm at a loss to explain why anyone actually tries it.

Worse yet, in a desperate bid to stretch this sucker out, they've tacked on a subplot involving a meth lab.  Frankly, you'd have to be ON meth to consider this a good idea.  It's a clear waste of time and space, and I can't even begin to imaging why it's here in the first place.

The ending is sort of out of left field, but I do give them credit for the unique way in which they rolled the end credits.  I like the whole "message board" thing--it's not done often and thus is worthwhile.

The special features include English and Spanish subtitles, as well as trailers for "The Eye", "Saw IV", "Catacombs", "Haunted Forest", "Attack of the Sabertooth", "Cerberus", "Komodo Vs. Cobra", "Caved In: Prehistoric Terror", and the really freaky Fearnet commercial.

All in all, yet another sasquatch flop for Lions Gate forces me to wonder why the genre even exists.

6:41 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine--It Sticks With You.
Current mood: anxious

The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine
***
DVD

Directed by Olaf Ittenbach

Written by Thomas Reitmair, Olaf Ittenbach

Starring Natacza S. Boon, James Matthews-Pyecka, Daryl Jackson, Beli B. Felsenheimer

Produced by Yazid Benfeghoul, Ricky Goldberg, Leo Helfer

NR
91 mins
2008

You know that guy?  That guy who has all kinds of funny jokes and great stories and really knows how to be the center of a party but sometimes gets carried away?  Yeah, that guy!  That guy you wish you could get to quit drinking after three tequilas because BEFORE that he's unbelievable.

Well, if that guy were a DVD, he'd be The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine.  Hands down.

The plot is fairly simple--the Verlaine Commune is suddenly wiped out by a couple guys in clown masks one Christmas night.  Founded by a wealthy musician, the Commune now has but one survivor of that horrible Christmas: Verlaine's young daughter Rebecca.  After coming out of a coma, Rebecca grows up and sets out to live her own life, having forgotten the night on the Verlaine Commune.  At least, until her dad starts appearing on television.  And only she can see him.  Now, she's got to find out who the guys in clown suits were and get them back to the Verlaine Commune, where the recently dead commies can exact horrific and blood-soaked vengeance.

In fact, a LOT of this movie will be blood-soaked.  Normally, special effects in low-budget films like this really don't have a lot of punch, but man, did the Verlaine crew ever know where to pick it up!  The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine, as a result, is horrifically graphic, but also, believable.  I can believe that, when a chick gets an axe through her forehead, it looks a LOT like how The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine showed it.  I can believe that those things Rebecca keeps seeing are horribly murdered ghosts.  I believe this movie, and that's a long step.   Rebecca's hallucinations are constantly and consistently freaky, and the opening dual-nightmare sequence is a tiny packet of joy bursting onto my TV screen.

But there are problems.  Make no mistake.  The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine depends so heavily on jump scares that if you've got no adrenal gland at all this movie will bore you to DEATH.  And the gore effects that really look like gore?  They have a tendency to get wildly out of control.  Like wildly.  Like splatter on the CAMERA LENS wildly.  And then they start tearing arms and shoving fists through people and a couple cops get torn apart for no clear or good reason and then there's the POWER DRILL and--!

You see what I mean.  You just want to start screaming at the TV, okay, OKAY!  Dial it DOWN a notch, huh?  There's a LIMIT, and you people aren't just crossing the line, you are crashing through it like extras from the fucking Dukes of Hazzard! 

I can see The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine shrieking "Yeeeeee-haaaaa!" as it takes a bright orange car with a Dixie flag on its roof off a sweet jump while an ineffectual cop mumbles and screams unintelligibly in the background about how he's "gonna git dem Verlaine boys"!

The ending, meanwhile, is jam-packed with multiple twists, including an absolutely priceless twist at the end.  Plus, lots more action and blood-soaked carnage.  Lots and LOTS of carnage.

The special features include audio options, Spanish subtitles, and trailers fro The Chambermaid, Live Feed, Experiment, and Magus.

All in all, The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine is a blood-drenched over-the-top gorefest that depends on a half-decent storyline and lots and LOTS of blood.  It should be a fun rental for virtually any horror buff.

9:47 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Sight--One to See
Current mood: bouncy

Sight
***
DVD

Directed by Adam Ahlbrandt

Written by Adam Ahlbrandt

Starring Clayton Haske, Allison Persaud, Frank Traynor, Tony Luke Jr.

Produced by Clayton Haske

R
81 mins
2008

Sometimes the scariest things are the things you can't possibly understand, and Sight is going to prove that point out nicely.

How, you ask?  Simple--Sight is all about a guy who sees ghosts.  He thinks he's alone in the universe, and everyone else thinks he's insane, but soon, he meets someone that changes his whole picture of the universe.  Cheery happy thought, really...until you find out that, one, she also sees ghosts, and two, she's got a really cranky ex-boyfriend.

Oh, and did I mention that none of that is really true?

Yeah.  That's the kind of movie that Sight actually is.  It's one of those movies that's going to mess with your head like no tomorrow.  Sight spends a whole lot of time being one massive freakout.  The folks behind Sight actually manage to use the inferior grainy quality of their video to project an atmosphere of disjointed menace in which the dead are constantly watching...and they're often pissed.

They've also backed up their play with some downright creepy makeup effects--this is almost stuff that regular folks could be doing for Halloween, but they've put it together in such a fashion that it's actually plenty scary.

Normally, I know I rail on disjointed movies as being confusing and shoddily executed.  This time, as happens sometimes, is different, and the disjointedness adds to the fear by making everything so damn unlikely to happen that watching any of it happen is a baffling and irrational conclusion.  It contradicts logic by its very existence, and yet, you have a record of it happening right in front of you.

Oh...and every so often, they'll stick in a little extra something that makes things even creepier.  There's this absolutely priceless sequence where an elderly blind woman is trying to close a closet door, and complains that it always sticks when she tries to shut it.  It's only when Jeffrey, and by extension you, sees why it sticks that the whole thing makes sense in a really dark fashion. 

Lemme put it this way...the next time you hear a regular bump in the night, you'll start to wonder just what made it.  And that's the sign of a decent horror movie.

The ending is packed with the screech of poorly-played violins and even more fun with ghosties.  Most of the loose ends will be taken care of, some more satisfactorally than others.

The special features include English and Spanish subtitles, as well as trailers for The Eye, Retribution, Seance, and The Backwoods.

All in all, Sight should prove to be a scary little pocket of glee, not without its problems and a marginal ending, but should still be plenty of spooky fun for anyone willing to take a crack at it.

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