42nd Street Forever Vol. 5 (product link) Documentary / Thriller Starts off with a bang with several martial arts-related titles, including "Mad Monkey Kung Fu" and Sonny Chiba's "The Bodyguard" (it would have been amusing to have Sonny Chiba star in Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard"--probably would have had more ass kicking and less singing). It earns points right out of the gate for having more martial arts trailers than any other trailer compilation I have seen. It has a good mix of action, horror, and thriller movies, plus the annoying ten minutes in the last third where they feel compelled to throw in a few family movie trailers, which I've always felt breaks flow with the rest of the drive-in sleaze fare. Another great collection of trailers from "42nd Street Forever".
Lucifera: Demonlover (product link) Horror / Erotica A decent, not great, gothic horror movie. It's too bright and sunny to be a good gothic horror movie, it lacks the appropriate gloom and cobwebs. It has more of a feel of a nunsploitation movie, minus the nuns, with the devil tempting women into sin in the 16th century. Feels a little rudderless at times, but all in all it's pretty decent.
Proof that Troma will release awful movies even if they have to go to the Ukraine to find them.
The title is misleading. These movies look like they were made last week, and unless I'm mistaken it's been, oh, twenty years since the fall of the Soviet Union. So the "Soviet Underground" title is rather misleading. Aficionados of mix-tapes and other collections of the bizarre will recognize parts of "Shameless And Tasteless", which feature the crazy old lady who laughs just like you'd expect the witch in a Brothers Grimm tale to laugh.
Aside from a couple of fairly silly ideas--Killer Bra being chief among them--the bulk of this is obnoxious and annoying, which are the two chief characteristics of a Troma movie in my opinion. If you like Troma movies, then you will find a lot in common in these movies. If you can't stand them, don't blame me if you hate this strange clump of junk.
Black Devil Doll (product link) Horror / Comedy As ridiculous and over the top as you'd imagine it to be, and probably more. It doesn't revel in the crude misogyny of the subject matter, it wallows in it. It probably will freak out plenty of people, but that is part of the charm: whatever you think they can't possibly do in this day and age, they do it, and do it a couple of times. My favorite part was the opening rating's animated sequence, because it gives you a really good idea of what this is going to be: a super dark comedy blaxploitation homage.
It can be a little one-note time and again, and for being only a little over an hour long it really stands out, but this really is a one-joke kind of movie so repetition is expected. Ultra crude and it knows it, it's not five-star material, but they get praise for just going the ridiculous distance.
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Freaky flick. If you think this is crazy, you need to see the original it's based on.
Nightmare Man (product link) Horror / Thriller A movie with a lot of good bits that just don't knit properly together. There is a good idea, good spots of dialogue, a few dashes of decent gore, even a few creepy moments; but it also has spots that don't work or go on too long. Unlike Rofle Kanefsky's previous outing into the world of horror, "The Hazing", this lacks that certain "it" that makes the witty self-aware dialogue mix with the horror and gore. It was decent, just not great.
I have to admit I like this movie. It isn't as good, stunning, or visually appealing at the original (Leatherface's first appearance from behind that huge metal door in the original still gives me the chills when I see it), but on its own it isn't half bad. It manages to straddle a line that pretty much every other remake misses: the line between updating the movie and not losing complete touch with what you are remaking in the first place.
The original "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is a cinematic steak, while this is a good fast food hamburger: both satisfy but you can't confuse one for the other. This movie scores points in the gratuitous department: you have lots more chainsaw killings, actually turning it into a chainsaw massacre, buckets more gore, and lots of Jessica Biel running around in a tank top and low rise jeans. It is junk food cinema, no doubt about it, but it never infuriated me in the ways, say, the "Friday The 13th" remake-reboot-reimagining managed to do by sucking all the fun out of the movie.
In the world of remakes, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is king simply because it didn't completely botch the job. I will totally understand how people will not like this movie for its gratuitous nature and simply because it lacks the artistry of the original, but as Platinum Dunes films go, this is about as artistic as they will ever get.
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This film is really, really nasty, far more explicit than the excellent original. But you're right, it goes stand alone as an effective gory horror film.
Marebito (product link) Horror / Mystery A wonderful example of atmosphere making a horror movie. The film is claustrophobic, hypnotic, and exceptionally strange, filled with plenty of "did I just see that?" moments. Not entirely a horror movie, more a mix of horror/myth/vampire/plain straightjacket crazy. I really loved the wandering through the subterranean world underneath the city, which was at once both modern and yet hearkened back to Greco-Roman mythology of journeying into the underworld, complete with creepy dead guy with lantern. It's much more a horror movie whose overall feeling of isolation, gloom, and madness makes you feel creepy, almost like you are going to catch something from watching it, as compared to the filmmaker showing you a ghost, a guy with chainsaw dripping with gore, or a cat jumping out of the closet to make you scared.
Uneven but at least decent HK version of "Ten Little Indians".
The movie has a bad habit of violently swapping from serious to comical without any notice. Oftentimes in the same scene you have jokes mixed with soap opera drama. What is really infuriating is that, if done in one style or the other it would have been a pretty good movie, but the strange shuffling of the two made parts of the movie really feel awkward.
Some of the characters too couldn't seem to find a groove; especially the second girl, Lily, who goes from terrified, to suspiciously guilty, to bitchy, and often all in the same couple of minutes. It was probably done to make you unsure who the killer is, and it almost works, but it was done too over the top.
I had hoped for something better from Herman Yau, the guy who gave us the gore feast "Ebola Syndrome", but this doesn't seem to be his cup of bloody tea. There are some good gore moments, but the whole mystery movie isn't something that is done well, with maniac bipolar mood swings every couple of seconds. There is a pretty good movie in there--the last twenty minutes or so really helped bring me around for this movie with the running, falling, door mauling, and a decent conclusion--but you have to be able to put up with some off-putting moments to get there.
Schoolgirl Report 5: What All Parents Should Know (product link) Erotica / Drama The always reliable "Schoolgirl Report" has all the requirements to make a solid 70s sexploitation movie: girls, nudity, and sex. I do give it credit for making a lot of it awkward like real teenage life. I'm not sure if it was intended or a byproduct, but they do manage to capture that hungry awkwardness that so often characterizes the teenage years.
A pair of 60s sexploitation oddities where, as with all Something Weird discs, the combination of all the parts--the double feature, shorts, and trailers--is much better than any of the individual parts alone.
The first feature, "The Beautiful...", is a very East Coast style exploitation film that is a whole lot of nothing set to very art narration. Basically the movie is a very 60s art class with lots of nude models and plenty of conversations about what art really is--photography vs. painting. What makes this one palatable is the incredibly hilarious looks most people wear in this movie: the women all look bored and borderline sedated, and the main character, when he does its insane, like he's watching "2 Girls 1 Cup", you have to see it to believe it.
"Behind Locked Doors" is a much more traditional drive-in movie with an actual plot, such that it is, with plenty of nudity, trippy lighting, and lots of perversion.
Neither is particularly great, but there are worse ways to kill a couple of hours--dentistry for instance. If you are a fan of exploitation, give these two a spin. You'll probably have a good time.
The most lighthearted movie about a guy who grinds people up into sausage.
Yes, it is a strange statement, but this movie--a mix of 60s German Krimi films, "There's A Secret In My Soup" cannibal movies, and comedy--manages to keep the mood light and it really makes the movie work. The movie is really held together by Victor Buono, most famous for "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane", as the corpulent butcher who makes the best sausages in Vienna and the many funny outfits he wears. The movie is amazingly blood-free. All the killings are strangulations and, aside from a few scenes where meat is butchered, it's all gore-free. True, if you are a vegan you'll freak, but what can you do?
The movie has a certain charm about it, it doesn't take itself seriously and has fun with what should be a rather gruesome concept. If you check this out, be sure to get the Something Weird DVD of it so you can check out the great extras including a short called "Cannibal Massage", which is one of the oddest short movies I have seen--now that is a disturbing cannibal movie.
I'm ever the optimist when it comes to movies, despite the fact that my optimism gets crushed by what I see seemingly every time. I disliked "City Of Rott" for its bloated, pointless plot and awful animation, so when a friend showed me the DVD of "Dead Fury" I immediately recognized the artistic style like a bank robber on a wanted poster in a post office. But I thought maybe the first was crude due to budgetary restrictions or possibly the inexperience of the creator, who, after making it, learned some lessons and put those lessons to work in his second feature. Oh boy was I wrong.
Everything that is wrong with "City Of Rott" is done doubly, so in this movie, to start with, it's still 60 minutes too long. After the first twenty, the movie has overstayed its welcome. You have a host of terrible characters: the girl sounds like Alvin of "Alvin And The Chipmunks" during his drag queen phase, and everybody else sounds like the same guy trying to pretend to be three different people and failing. The script is horrid. They call it a parody in a cheap attempt to hide the fact that every line makes you groan in either disbelief that somebody thinks this is funny or that you can't possibly believe somebody wasted money to make this. The animation is cheap as ever, and is embarrassing considering some of the Flash animation I've seen on the Internet that was done for nothing. The gore is back, and the gore really is the only thing that keeps this from being a zero-star movie, so you can guess that A) I'm a gorehound and B) it's a lotta' gore.
City Of Rott [Extended Directors Cut] (product link) Animation / Horror A one-joke type of movie that is dragged out to insanely bloated lengths. This could have been good if it was twenty minutes, thirty at the max, but the creator wanted it to be feature length, so you are trapped with an hour of pointlessness. The gore is pretty good, especially when surrounded by the extremely cheap animation. I know it's artsy to be as insanely primitive as possible with animation, but this is too much. I've seen too much anime to even find an excuse for the crude animation of this feature. It's laziness masquerading as edgy and hip.
Zoo [2005] (product link) Horror / Thriller Amazing series of short films, my favorite being "Seven Rooms" for how incredibly creepy it is. It is a wonderful use of atmosphere and an example of how to build dread so that it nearly suffocates you. The rest of the films are also really good, and each is completely different from the others, giving you six unique psychological horror movies.
Asylum Of Satan / Satan's Children [DOUBLE FEATURE] (product link) Horror / Thriller Intriguing Satanic drive-in match up of William Girdler's "Asylum Of Satan", a definite departure from his later works like "Grizzly" and "Day Of The Animals", and "Satan's Children", a strange Florida satanic colony story. The addition of some solid if not rather common trailers and a pair of odd shorts makes up this disc. Like all Something Weird movies, the enjoyment is often more a combination of all the extras than any of the individual parts alone. "Asylum Of Satan" is a pretty solid creepy haunted house/Satanism mash-up, while "Satan's Children" wins for pure WTF moments. A decent pairing of cheap and sleazy exploitation features.
Satan's Children (product link) Horror / Thriller Southern fried Satanism at his most prisoner-esque. Once you come to the colony, you can never leave. Filled to the gills with all the awful 70s fashions and design choices possible, the leader of the cult looks like the creepiest 70s porn star, with his bad moustache and thigh-length leather jacket.
Pure exploitation sleaze from start to finish. It does have an interesting twist of having a guy being the exploited character when normally you'd find a woman--if that creeps you out it's probably best to stay away, since they go the full nine exploitation yards on him.
It is overall a bit aimless. They had a hard time filling the full run time, which was under 90 minutes; but if you are an adventurer in the lands of exploitation, this is a rather singular movie to explore.
Asylum Of Satan (product link) Horror / Thriller Solid intermingling of haunted house and satanic themes, which come together to create a visually creepy if a little uneven movie. My favorite character is the hospital's administrator, or whatever she is, who looks just like Terry Jones in drag in some "Monty Python" sketch. There are a lot of good fears populating this movie: the fear of asylums, of being committed against your will, creepy people in long white robes, doctors sporting Van Dykes, and my personal favorite: snakes in the swimming pool. The plot does drag somewhat and gets a touch repetitive, but the awesome visuals of the place really make it a great drive-in treat.
Return Of The 5 Deadly Venoms (product link) Martial Arts / Action/Adventure Put 5 Deadly Venoms in a movie, add some disabilities, and throw in a couple dozen dead bodies, and you have a recipe for another excellent Shaw Brothers movie. This joins "The 5 Deadly Venoms", "Masked Avengers", and "Flag Of Iron" as my favorite Venom movies. It takes some time setting up, because you need to explain how everybody ended up the way they did; but once it gets going it's pure, classic Shaw greatness that will be a welcome addition to any kung fu library.
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Probably my favorite Venom's film next to the Original, and Invincible Shaolin!
This is an excellent film. I usually dislike Chiang Sheng, but he plays his character of the young hero quite well before and after his injury. Lo Meng's gift for physical humor is also very well displayed.
Moon Child [3-Disc Set] (product link) Drama / Thriller A movie that had no clue what it wanted to be, even after two incredibly long hours of pretty boys and their drama. The movie yo-yos between angsty soap opera drama, yakuza gun battles, and a vampire story, and isn't able to cover any of them properly. The movie knows it has two dreamy leading actors and tries to turn it into a vehicle for them, but the vehicle has no wheels and no motor and it's left to the audience to push it along for two hours.
There are good ideas here--vampires, yakuza, guns, and dog vomit (yes, definitely one of the stranger elements you'll find in a movie)--but none of them are worked out, leaving the movie to stagger about with practically no story for the first hour, and then huge leaps through time for the second.
Stick with "Wild Zero" if you want a good Japanese movie staring musicians.
Everything in this movie is tooled down from the first. We have 3 stories instead of 5, and all 3 are hopelessly weak. The only halfway decent one is the Stephen King-based short story, "The Raft", where they are attack by an oil slick that moves like dragging a Hefty bag through the water. Everything in this movie was aimed at being unspectacular and easy, from the humdrum acting, to the unimaginative camerawork, to the horrid synth keyboard soundtrack. It completely misses the point of what the original "Creepshow" was: a love letter to the old EC comics, not just some cheap throwaway half hour "Tales From The Crypt" write-offs.
Id (product link) Thriller / Horror Drenched in heavy religious symbolism and blood, "Id" manages to join a select few movies that are completely insane and yet extremely compelling at the time. The best way to explain this is to say it's as if Jodorowsky made a film version of "Animal Farm". It gets a half star deduction mainly as a warning to other viewers that this movie is extremely strange and symbolic. Don't try to follow it, it does not lend itself to being followed, unless you have a deeper understanding of Buddhist religion than I do.
Nezulla The Rat Monster (product link) Horror / Science Fiction The usual mutant monster/government facility story that does manage to catch me a couple of times by introducing the standard double cross way earlier than I was expecting it, and by actually including some outside drama with the medical center that this isn't all contained in one location. I'm a sucker for these kinds of movies, and I watch them because they're essentially cinematic junk food. So every once in awhile when you toss in a couple of peanut clusters into the standard chocolate bar that is a mutant monster movie, it never goes unnoticed.
Art Of The Devil 2 (product link) Horror / Mystery Drawing heavily from the Shaw Black Magic movies (the opening scene with fish hooks coming out of the guy's flesh is a real kick, but it does set you up for the rest of the movie) and of all things "The Killing Of Mr. Griffin", which was a big book when I was in school. The movie does a good job of handing out the gore and torture, which will probably scare off many with its level of intensity. I think after awhile the flashbacks became confusing and it could have done with a little less of the high school drama, but all in all it was a pretty solid Thai horror movie.
This is Alfred Hitchcock's first truly Hitchcock film. He made two films before this but this was the first one to set out his signature trademarks: blondes as damsels in distress, fear of the police, and an innocent man out to clear his name.
It is a silent film and I have found it takes a certain type of person to really enjoy a silent film. It is much more of a visual medium rather than a multimedia experience of modern film. "The Lodger" does run a little long for a silent movie, I've found the best silent movies run an hour to an hour twenty, but this one goes the feature length distance at an 108 minutes, which will be a tough row to hoe for many--especially those who've never seen a silent film before. But what it lacks in dialogue and soundtrack it makes up for with amazing visuals and some great trick effects. My favorite scene in the movie is when the lodger is pacing about his room and the floor dissolves to a clear plate of glass so the audience and the people below can watch him pace about.
Not for everyone, but I've found that I can really sink my teeth into a good silent movie, and this is one of the greats.
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This is an excellent film. Those put off by silent films are missing something worthwhile.
Hitchcock's forte was visual storytelling. Even after he made the leap to talkies, you can still see his command of the visual medium. You can watch any of his films with the sound off and it still works just fine.
Deadgirl (product link) Horror / Thriller A movie that has a message and really little else. It tacks on cliched high school drama mainly because it needs to flesh out its 108 minute runtime with something other than zombie sex. The lack of backstory--why is she there? what happened to her?--are absent in exchange for more message with which, like all modern movies with a "message", it batters you over the head until you stop caring.
Sex And Zen (product link) Erotica / Comedy The "Emmanuelle" of Cat III. A huge budget skin flick that has some great humor, supernatural elements, and plenty of lovely ladies but an ending that falls with an Earth-shaking clunk. This is a 5-star movie but loses a half star for keeping the actual ending of the book it's based on. The rest of the movie is pretty light and easygoing and the ending botches it.
Girl's Night Out [12-Movie Set] (product link) Horror / Thriller Extremely low budget, extremely amateur, but if you can manage to get past that there are three decent stories here. They are each rather different in their approach and execution--nothing radical, but at least they went at it with their own ideas rather than just rehashing the ideas of other people like most super low budget horror movies. The budget and the talent pool hampered things a bit, but I found it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared.
Die Hard Dracula [12-Movie Set] (product link) Horror / Comedy I won't lie. I watched this movie strictly from its title. I was expecting some kind of John McClane vs. Dracula movie, but instead it is a jumbled mess of half-baked Dracula movie notions that were contrived to get the director to Europe for a couple of weeks. It really is a cheap Charles Band movie, yes they can actually come cheaper than Charles Band movies.
Not perfect, but all in all pretty good. It draws heavily from "Evil Dead", with lots of stomach-turning spray-downs with maggots, green slime, blood, and other unpleasant fluids.
The first fight reminded me a lot of fighting a Deadite, including gagging her with a ruler--yes gagging with a ruler. The scares consist mostly of startle scares, and the movie does have a hard time developing any atmosphere, which is really sad considering the first two "Evil Dead" movies owed a lot to their surreal atmosphere. But it seems no Hollywood-made horror movie is capable of producing atmosphere anymore, they need the big bang scares or they don't have a horror movie.
One of my biggest problems was Justin Long, and this is probably entirely my issue, but I loathe him as an actor. He is the personification of the smug, narcissistic hipster, something his endless Apple commercials have never helped dissolve. Speaking of Apple, this movie has so much Apple product placement I swore Apple produced the damn movie. But Justin Long has always been an actor I can't stand, and I knew going into this movie I was going to dislike it because he was in it. And at least he doesn't disappoint, I couldn't stand him at all. But Alison Lohman and the rest of the cast did an excellent job. My favorite was Dileep Rao, who plays the fortune teller. He was really great and says my favorite line in the entire movie in relation to animal sacrifice.
It's still a mainstream horror movie, and because of that constraint it will never reach "Evil Dead" levels of greatness. That partially came from the independent financing of the movie--they were never constrained by a studio telling them what this focus group said or that they were going to miss their demographic. It does do a good job and is enjoyable, but I wanted more from Sam Raimi. You'd think after ten years of "Spider-Man", he'd be burning with all sorts of gruesome ideas.
Sexy Battle Girls (product link) Action/Adventure / Comedy Great goofy fun, from ninja pens, to high tech chastity belts, to the dildo kendama, this is a great parody of the "Sukeban Deka" series. Cartoonish and fun, I really love the hilarious musical stings in the movie that are cut straight from a '70s cop show. This is a must-have for fans of pinku silliness.
From Dusk Till Dawn (product link) Horror / Thriller Pure popcorn fun. I'm not the biggest Tarantino fan out there, but I have to admit I do like this one. The energetic pace and Salma Hayak smooth over the rough edges here. I do applaud this movie for having the shaggiest vampires in history--or, as Tarantino calls them in the DVD commentary, "Zombie Wookies". If you want your vampires to be actual monsters, then this gritty crime road movie will definitely satisfy.
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Complete fun. This is also the baddest that you will ever see George Clooney.
Since QT wrote and co-produced it, I think it's fair to call it a QT film, even though he didn't direct it. But anyway, I didn't dig it, hence the "no". :)
I Drink Your Blood (product link) Horror / Thriller What is worse than dirty hippies invading your quiet rural American town? Satanic Hippies invading your quiet rural American town, attacking all the good girls, and dosing gramps with LSD. But what is worse than Satanic Hippies? Rabid Satanic Hippies running amok through said quiet rural American town. This is drive-in gold, completely insane, exploitative, and lots of silly fun.
Kichiku Dai Enkai (product link) Horror / Thriller One of hell of a rough movie. I've seen plenty of violent movies, but this one really blew even me away with the scenes of torture and violence. There is a scene that I can't figure out how they managed to do it without actually kicking the living hell out of the guy.
For a school project, this movie runs circles around most Hollywood movies. The violence is a bit much but manages to work well with the overall grim tone of the movie. Not everyone's cup of tea. If "Ichi The Killer" made you freak out, this movie will make you turn inside out.
Kite (product link) Animation / Thriller Grim, brooding, violent tale of assassins and love. While I prefer Umetsu's second feature, "Mezzo Forte", over "Kite" for its rather light levity in addition to the blood-soaked violence and dirty sex, this too is an excellent blending of violence and sex.
Mezzo Forte (product link) Animation / Action/Adventure Fantastic adult anime. This is a great, smart, funny thrill ride that has an exceptionally fun energy about it that makes it a real great title. Umetsu really finds the perfect balance between comedy, action, and dirty sex that he started with in "Kite", minus the grit, and adding the humor that makes this click just right.
The Black Tavern (product link) Martial Arts / Action/Adventure I really like the Shaw Brothers movies that are set in the snow. I can't exactly explain why (trust me, I just spent five minutes here trying to figure it out), but I really like the whole feel of the snowy background in the movie.
Much like "Shadow Whip", there is a great deal of whip action here, complete with removal of heads with it. The ending fight is a doozy: blood, guts, and wagon wheels. You can't go wrong with a movie that manages to kill pretty much everybody you meet in various and inventive ways. The characters are just as wild and inventive as their deaths, especially the guy who sports the helmet with horns who charges like a bull. Top notch Shaw Brothers sword fighting film.
Clocking in at nearly three hours, this is probably a bit too top heavy for most audiences. But unlike many three-hour-long movies, this actually makes incredibly good use of the lengthy time and develops a good and complex mystery.
This is another adventure of Kosuke Kindaichi, but it is a little different because you aren't even introduced to him until almost half an hour in, and then you don't know who he is for another twenty minutes. It was a bit like Ian Fleming's "The Spy Who Loved Me". In the book James Bond isn't the main character. Rather it is one of his flings. In this, Kindaichi is leading the investigation but the movie centers around the young heir to the family fortune.
This is very much an old school style mystery movie with hidden family secrets, horrifying sins of the past, and plenty of murders, although probably not enough for a modern audience over a three-hour run time. I really enjoyed it, but this is one of my favorite genres.
Kadokawa Mystery And Horror Tales Vol. 1 (product link) Horror / Thriller One rather bland ghost story, one kidnapping gone wrong, and one "Desperate Hours"-style thriller that decides it must have a twist ending. More pulp crime thriller than horror story, I think they tossed the first story in just to add the word horror to their title.
The first ghost story feels really out of place after watching all three, and the last one I think had an unnecessary twist because they felt obligated with the first two having twist endings. All in all not great, but each was at least well put together and well acted. I did like the idea of having more pulp style crime thrillers in it rather than just straightforward horror, but each was slightly flawed which reduced my enjoyment, and all in all they didn't meld together well.
The Fiend [1972] (product link) Horror / Thriller Somewhat ineffective cobbling together of various exploitation themes, from religious mania to sexual mania, that has some high points but overall doesn't really satisfy.
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