Tagged: review
‘Superstition’ from 1982 = Good Ol’ Retro Scares Galore!
You ever have those movies that sit in your Netflix dvd Queue forever and then after years FINALLY arrive?! First off yeah I still got a dvd account with Netflix, the selection is totally way better and I also have the streaming too-so there. Anyway, get over it people, my point is I’ve got like 200 movies in that damn thing and most of em’ I probably will never get the time to check out. Surprisingly a movie snuck it’s way into the mix, ahh yes….’Superstition’ from 1982. I was pretty happy when it came in the mail, I’m always down for a good 80’s flick but I’ve been under the assumption these days that if I haven’t heard about a movie by now then it probably isn’t anything to write home about. Yep, I watch way too many movies, a lot of clunkers but every now and again I see something pretty damn cool that takes me by surprise.
‘Superstition’ (AKA “The Witch”) is one of those movies, from the opening scene it’s clear that you’re in for a bit of a treat. It’s essentially a haunted house movie, with some creepy witch business cleverly thrown in. The opening sequence has a some numb nut teenagers making out near a creepy old house in the woods, their sexy times get cut short by some meddling pranksters who give them a scare with some creepy props they’ve fastened in the trees above. After the two lovebirds flee for safety of course the pranksters can’t resist going into the house to fuck around. What follows are some impressive over the top gory kills, one of them gets thrown up into the ceiling, then winds up decapitated with his head in a microwave oven & eventually we get to see it explode. The other kid witnesses this and ends up being severed in half by a closing window. This opening sets the stage for a pretty entertaining little horror story. We have a bunch of religious nonsense as our main character is a priest who decides to fix up the property which belongs to the church readying it for a family to move into. Weird shit goes down almost instantly but you guessed it, the show goes on with little worry from anyone!
This one is definitely worth a watch, it’s only about 80 minutes long too, which I love, because one thing I’ve been noticing is there are a lot of movies from the 1980’s that would be fucking fantastic if you just cut 20 minutes out of their run time. Superstition succeeds in bringing some cool ass scenarios to life while trimming all the usual boring 80’s B.S. plots that go nowhere out of the mix. It’s a lean mean super solid retro haunted house movie, with some cool old school 17th century possessed witch flashbacks neatly inserted to give you the scoop on just what the hells going on. It’s got a ton of ridiculous characters in the frenzy of things as well with some comedic moments sprinkled in for good measure. I also think it’s got a pretty rock solid finale where the priest runs around with a magic cross he uses to ward off evil and blast open doors. Anyway I could go on but hey if you’re looking for a good gory 80’s haunted house movie look no further Superstition has got the goods!
Comic Review: The Dregs #1 Begins an Intense Urban Mystery!
The Dregs is a new series from Black Mask and the debut issue is great, engaging & totally original read. I love comic books that genuinely bring something new to the table and The Dregs is totally fresh one that at least for the time being doesn’t seem like it’s been done before. It take place in Vancouver BC and begins an intriguing mystery to life in a city that’s rapidly gentrifying. The main character here isn’t handsome or rich, we follow a drug addicted homeless man as he embarks on a bizarre journey to find one of his friends who’s suddenly disappeared from the streets without a trace. Lucky for us his whereabouts are revealed to us within the first few pages, very unlucky for him though.
The story starts off with quite an opening that you’re likely to be thinking about long after you put down the first issue. The Dregs looks like it’s going to be tackling some real world issues as we see the hip yuppy filled city from the eyes of the people who actually live within it’s darkest corners. For me I’m seeing a lot of what’s happening within the pages of this debut issue happening for years within my place of residence Portland, Oregon. People have been being pushed out of their homes now for year and recently at a more alarming rate that ever before. Many cities all over are getting complete makeovers, filling quickly with shiny boutiques, high priced coffee houses & hip over priced restaurants. The wealthy are flocking to places while housing and rent prices have shot through the roof. Continue reading
Movie Review: ‘Mosquito’ the Proper Sequel to ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’!
I finally hooked myself up with a copy of ‘Mosquito’ from 1994 and was quite pleased to find it was worth the effort tracking down. I’d been curious about this movie for a long time, I actually have owned a ‘region 2’ dvd for years but never could get it to play on any player. So recently I found a proper American copy of the movie, which boasts a couple interesting people in major roles. Ron Asheton (R.I.P.), legendary guitarist for The Stooges as a heroic but bumbling park ranger & Gunnar Hansen (R.I.P.), the original Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a tuff guy military dude. What a random combo huh? That alone was enough to peak my interest.
Being that this movie was released in 1994 I was always a bit skeptical on whether this one would rely on some horrendously shoddy amateur CGI for it’s pesky monster insects. Boy was I wrong, Mosquito ended up being a comically inspiring practical effects creature feature that could have easily been released in 1984. It feels like it’s an 80’s flick in every way imaginable. We get some nifty fx here done by way of puppetry, animatronics, cartoons and full on stop motion animation. Talk about utiltilizing all aspects of the fx spectrum, Mosquito goes the distance or at least tries it’s hardest with the budget it had. That’s not to say the special effects are amazing, quite the contrary, however the movie has some serious charm for the effort it goes to try an make this as epic as possible. This is clearly because the film’s director Gary Jones has been an fx who’s worked on films like Evil Dead II & Army of Darkness. There’s also cool RV crash and a real exploding house too. So yeah they were trying to cover their bases here on the action.
The plot is your basic ‘ufo crashes near a small town and pesky monsters attack the locals’ and that’s a good thing because it’s trying it’s best to be on par with movies like Critters or The Blob. It’s pretty heavy on comedy but at the same time really tries it’s damnedest to be fully bad ass. I really dig Gunnar Hansen in this movie too, he’s a total asset and they make sure to give you exactly what you want from him. A wise choice to give Gunnar his trusty signature chainsaw to do battle with the blood sucking beasts. There’s a line where he comes busting out with his chainsaw and says something like “Man, I haven’t handled one of these babies in 20 years”.
As Hansen never reprised his Leatherface role in a sequel you might be able to say perhaps the man behind the mask made good and helped fight off some killer mosquitos 20 years later! Hey maybe this is cannon in the Texas Chainsaw universe?! The further adventures of Leatherface…Anyway This is a super fun, totally cheezy 90’s monster movie if you are looking for a good party movie ‘Mosquito’ delivers the goods and then some!
Comic Book Review: Black #3 Continues The Conversation…
I just checked out issue #3 of Black Mask’s controversial new series “Black” which tells a unique superhero story where only black people have superhuman powers. I’ve been pretty intrigued with the series so far & it’s interesting spin on the superhero genre. The series is produced by an all black team focusing on the continual racial tensions rising in our country. It tackles some tough scenarios where blacks are brutally abused and killed by white people and with all the media focus these days covering the racial divides this book fits in nicely with the current conversation that has been finally addressed and put into the mainstream.
That being said so far each issue has had a very similar theme and the tone of the book is dark and clearly angry. It reminds me a bit of the vibe that the X-men once had as mutants dealt with discrimination from the public who feared their superhuman powers and differences from “normal” humans. Issue #3 continues the story of an evil corporation looking to exploit the the superhuman powers of the teams main character by way of tissue sample. It makes you face some things you might not want to address normally in a comic and it’s likely going to start conversation in the comic book world amongst readers of all skin colors. So far I find it a solid read with some pretty sweet artwork to boot.
Continue reading
Blade Runner: The Force Awakens…I Mean 2049!
Wow Blade Runner is officially back with this brand new trailer for the upcoming sequel! I’m really not too sure how I feel about a sequel to Blade Runner which is easily one of my favorite Science Fiction movies ever. It really doesn’t look like Ridley Scott has had much to do with this either which is a shame. Though I did enjoy The Arrival & Prisoners which were both directed by Denis Villeneuve who’s helming this sequel.
It also though could be the first warning sign that this sequel might not be a real memorable chapter of the Blade Runner mythos. Another thing is the film’s synopsis which sounds like well….The Force Awakens:
“Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.”
It’s become typical that Hollywood is a bit stuck on trying to come up with original ideas, at least this synopsis isn’t the most inspiring. It’s almost like these sequels are just secretly remakes with not a lot in the way of really expanding the stories in new directions. However, this is just a trailer and let’s not forget, we’ve still got Jared Leto to add to the equation. Let me guess though he’s the “Roy Batty” replicant they’ve got to hunt down? I hope he leaves at least his horrible Joker tats and grill in the Suicide Squad!
Seriously though, I don’t wanna hate on this movie too much because it might end up being the next Mad Max: Fury Road which was hands down a modern masterpiece in my opinion. The teaser trailer also looks promising just in the fact that they’re clearly not hiding Harrison Ford in the way they hid Mark Hamill in The Force Awakens. Maybe this will end up the perfect companion to the original movie?
Movie Review: ‘Beyond The Gates’ and its Sinister VHS Board Game…
‘Beyond The Gates‘ is the first feature film from Jackson Stewart, an indie horror movie I’ve been super excited about for a long time. Last night I dropped the seven bones on Google Play to check it out. What originally really excited me about this movie was it’s central focus on a sinister VHS board game from the 1980’s called…you guessed it “Beyond The Gates”. These creepy VHS games were pretty popular back when I was a kid, so of course I automatically dug the nostalgia factor that this one had to offer from the start. I also was quite happy to see Graham Skipper (The Mind’s Eye, Almost Human) as one of the leads and also horror icon Barbara Crampton (From Beyond, Re-animator, We Are Still Here) as the creepy host of the VHS board game.
This one has a lot going for it from the get go and it’s quite an intriguing little mystery. Long story short, two brothers come to find that their alcoholic father has gone missing leaving behind his business, an old video store that he started back in 1992. Ah yes, the local video store, what great memories I have of those. Well as the brothers meet up to box up video tapes, close shop and reminisce about their childhood they discover the old VHS board game in the office.
Things get stranger when they realize the VHS tape from the game was the last thing their father had watched before he disappeared. This begins a series of bizarre events as the brothers and one of their girlfriends decide to give the game a try. I don’t want to give away any clues of the story, it’s a pretty engaging movie and a great dramatic story of two brothers finding peace with each other and their past. There’s a lot in this movie that I can relate to personally and that honestly is the strongest aspect of ‘Beyond The Gates’. It’s got a lot of heart.
I did like this movie, however it could have been one of the best horror movies of 2016 if perhaps it had a bit more of an imagination with the horror side of things and hey maybe a bigger budget? The horror aspect of this one kinda let me down. There were a couple of cool scenes that seemed like they were warming us up for a knock out finale. Sadly that knock out never really arrived, in fact the finale seemed like something that we might have expected to see around the half way mark. The movie had a 3 million dollar budget and personally I think they could have stretched it a bit and really given us a more surreal adventurous final act. I’ve seen movies with smaller budgets go a lot further than this. To me it seemed like a good movie that maybe ran out of money near the end of filming. The potential for some truly crazy stylized 80’s horror was definitely there but it lacked the imagination to give fright fans a truly memorable experience.
Overall I liked this movie more as drama and if I’d have known ahead of time that that’s more of what this was I’d be a little less critical of the horror aspect of things. That being said I still give it a thumbs up for a sweet yet creepy story that knows how to pull at your heartstrings. Check it out!
Yoga Hosers: Should Kevin Smith Just Give Up?!
I’ve never been a gigantic fan of Kevin Smith, but I’ll admit I did like his two Clerks movies (yeah both of them). I’ll also admit I was totally surprised that he made an excellent thriller, Red State. Yep those were all good movies, but as a whole I’m really not a big fan of much else he’s done. With that being said, after he made Red State I was fully convinced he just might have found his niche by way of horror movies and was pretty excited to check out ‘Tusk’. That movie, in my opinion, was truly a painful watch. It just plain sucked in every way. It was a wasted attempt at making what could have been a unique horror movie.
Tusk was a complete 180 from ‘Red State’ that had me a bit confused about what I thought was his new found talent dabbling in the horror genre. Well things got even worse last night when I decided to give his latest movie “Yoga Hosers” a shot on Netflix. It’s streaming there if you’re looking to waste your time & lose a few brain cells while you’re at it. ‘Yoga Hosers’ is the second installment of his “True North” horror trilogy and was meant to be an homage to movies like Critters & Gremlins. The end result is far from coming anywhere close to the magic of those movies. I can honestly say Yoga Hosers is easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s so bad I had to stop it 3/4 of the way through. I just couldn’t take how much it sucked (and I LOVE bad movies) but there’s just nothing worse than a totally bad comedy. It’s not ammusing watching jokes fail over and over and over.
Smith seems to think he’s totally dialed in to the pre-teen / millennial comedy too but during the experience you see a cast of characters who’re just extensions of his dated sense of humor. His daughter, along with Johnny Depp and his daughter star in this wretched horror comedy that get’s more irritating with every passing minute. We’re given a horde of flat repetitive Canadian “humor”, bad cg, idiotic senseless plot and some incredibly stupid “monsters” for the main characters to face off against. Through all of this you can picture Kevin Smith behind the scenes secretly thinking he’s somehow created the next cult horror comedy classic. Far from it. This is some of the worst attempts at comedy I’ve seen in ages and it led me to the question: should Kevin Smith call it a day?
My first thought was a solid yes but after thinking about his last two movies and just how much they sucked it got me thinking the exact opposite. I mean Red State was a really good movie and seeing that Kevin Smith does indeed have one more film left in this trilogy called “Moose Jaws” I’m actually thinking that he could really change direction here and give us something truly memorable. I only say this because Smith has gotten a LOT of shit from critics and fans on how fucking bad Yoga Hosers turned out to be. It seems a bit of a long shot since most of the cast from Yoga Hosers will be again returning for the next movie. ‘Moose Jaws’ is said to be an homage to Jaws but with a giant pissed off moose. I say let’s give it one more try Kevin, shift the tone of Moose Jaws and give us something intense and scary. Hold off on the humor and make these terrible characters from the last two movies iconic. I’ll give you one more try Mr. Smith but after this trilogy it just might be time to call it a day. For good….
Ho-Ho-Holiday Horror Movies You May Have Missed!
It’s December 2016 is a time for some serious holiday celebration! Sure I’ll be watching a ton of the usual classics like Santa Claus: The Movie, Elf, Rudolph, Gremlins etc etc. However I’m going to be busting out the Christmas horror movies again this of course and hopefully here I’ll be able to give you a few ideas of some movies to check out if you’re feeling like mixing it up a bit this year. We all know about the classics like Black Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night, last years instant classic Krampus. Well here’s a few you may have never heard of but you should definitely seek out this season!
3615 code Pere Noel / AKA ‘Deadly Games’ (1989)
A true lost & forgotten gem of a movie. If you search the net for Christmas Horror movies, you for some crazy reason won’t find this one on any of the lists. However this french film, which I first saw last year, is easily one of the best Christmas horror movies of all time. It’s a rare one and finding a version of it with subtitles can be pretty difficult, I got a copy off of Ioffer.com.
Searching this one out is totally worth it though as it plays out like the ultimate 80’s Amblin style “Home Alone” hybrid of a film. It screams of the 1980’s and features a super cool kid obsessed with action movies who lives in a gigantic castle style mansion. During a snow storm on Christmas eve, he finds himself home alone with his grandfather where the house becomes under siege by a crazed maniac who is convinced he’s Santa Claus & is hell bent on punishing all those who’ve been naughty. This one deserves a proper release and then it rightly deserves to be a new addition on ALL Christmas horror lists.
The Christmas Tale (2005) Continue reading
Movie Review: ‘Night of Something Strange’ – Horror Potty Humor at it’s Worst!
I’ve been looking forward to checking out the new horror comedy “Night of Something Strange” for quite some time and finally this week I decided to check it out via rental on Google Play. From what I’d heard about it and seen in the trailer, it looked liked a super fun homage to splatter flicks of the 1980’s with an unhealthy dose of comedy splashed in for a good time. I’m all about a good indie horror comedy, in fact the horror comedy is easily one of my favorite genres. However ‘Night of Something Strange’ just really didn’t do it for me. I give them a serious ‘A’ for effort but when you’re making a movie like this it’s extremely important to nail down the comedy aspect of the horror first. That can be a hard task & precisely where this movie really falls flat, at least for me.
This one is all about grossing you out in every middle school way you can imagine. That’s perhaps who this movie’s comedy might truly appeal to. For me though gross out poop, pee and sex humor gets old real quick. NOSS is jam packed with potty humor and as the movie plays on it continuously tries to top last the poop, pee-pee, gross out sex scenario with something more “outrageous”. It simply tries way too hard to get a reaction, kinda like if Seth Rogan wrote the script for this when he was thirteen years old but with “gross out” dick jokes and zombie rape scenarios sprinkled throughout. Yeah the movie has a lot of undead raping & it’s not really the kind of stuff that’s offensive, since clearly it’s incredibly unrealistic looking and it’s actors aren’t exactly out to win an academy award with their performances. So none of it will stick with you for days or scar you as the scenes aren’t even the least bit convincing. That’s a good thing, because I’m not a fan of the rape-y horror movie. It’s all just too damn stupid, and though I do like me some ridiculousness this one tries way too hard.
This flick is essentially an 80’s horny teen throwback movie with even more horny undead creatures roaming around the grounds of a spooky motel. There’s a few scenes that are actually pretty well done and the practical effects here are at times actually pretty impressive. It also looks pretty nice too, it just suffers from a ton of stale comedy. I don’t know, maybe when I was twelve years old this would have been funny? However it’s just trying way too hard to gross us out with farts, poop, dirty tampons, boners & nasty sex humor around each & every corner. It’s also maybe about 20 minites too long. I haven’t got much else to say about this one, (I really like the poster art at least) but if you dig this kind of mega excessive potty humor then hey, this movie delivers the goods and then some!!
Child’s Play 7: Chucky Goes Back To His Roots?!
There’s been some rumbling lately from director Don Mancini about the next installment of the Child’s Play/Chucky horror franchise and it’s sounding like it might go old school and get personal. From some photos shared recently it’s looking like the Child’s Play 7 is touting the tagline ‘Chucky is finally coming home’ in a recent tweet. What many are speculating is that Chucky will be squaring off against his old nemesis, an all grown up Andy Barclay. In the recent tweet he tagged Fiona Dourif, Brad Dourif, Summer H. Howell & Alex Vincent with a picture of Mancini with an old house in the background along with the tagline.
In the post credits scene of Curse of Chucky we saw Andy Barclay get a mysterious package sent to his house, of course inside was good ol’ Chuck!! What we then saw was Andy ready with a shotgun firing a shot at Chucky when the screen suddenly goes black. So what the hell happened? I’m guessing this next movie will give us the gory details. What I’m hoping for is that the two to finally settle the score on screen in an epic battle that ties all of the movies together. Child’s Play full circle.
There’s even a rumor we might see Chucky’s son Glenn/Glenda back in action. But given the tone of the last movie perhaps he’ll either end up being an ally of Barclay or a more well rounded, psychotic menace. We’ll see, but count me in as the last movie was hands down one of the best of the series. I loved the horror aspect being front and center along with a much more seriously scary tone.
Could part seven be the series finale? If so I hope it delivers the goods because Andy & Chucky need some resolution in their lives!
Universal Dork 