Horror Part 11

Satan's Little Helper - B+

I so badly wanted to give this movie an A, it is quirky, funny, and tense but, why does it always seem that there is a but, the kid who is the main character is so bloody annoying. Anyone under the age of 16 in a horror movie is nothing but a burden. They never ever die, and they have this annoying habit of being there just to spout one-liners and get into trouble. Basically what the kid in this movie does. The story is great, on Halloween the kid teams up with a serial killer in a super cool mask, and follows him around on his Halloween reign of terror. His sister and her boyfriend learn the horrible truth and go out to save him before he too becomes another victim of the silent serial killer. The title comes from the video game the kid is addicted to. In the game you help Satan commit evil acts in which you score points. Now I'm not sure if that is some sort of social commentary about the state of video game violence, from games such as Grand Theft Auto, and how it numbs kids to the reality of violence and makes idols out of those who commit these deeds. My favorite scene, hands down, goes to when the killer and the kid's sister are fooling around, at one moment it was funny, the next it is incredibly tense, in these kinds of films you always expect the unexpected and killing off the sister would be very unexpected. The photography is excellent, thanks in no little part to Westchester County were the movie was shot. The whole New England area is incredibly photogenic and when shot right it creates a distinct feeling which this movie accomplished. With the exception of the kid everybody does a great job of acting in a little B-Movie especially Amanda Plummer who is a hoot as the somewhat crazy mom. If it wasn't for the kid I would have loved this movie and it would have gotten an A. But the kid spoiled it by being in 85 percent of the movie with his annoying whiny voice and me saddled with the knowledge he ain't going to die.

Necro Files - B-

This is a horror movie cut straight from public access, it is one of the cheesier, sleazier things I have seen. The story is of a rapist who after raping his 201st victim is shot and killed by two cops, one a well meaning moron, the other a wacked out Bad Lieutenant from hell. They think the nightmare is over but when a Satanic Cult preforms a ceremony over his grave he returns to life this time as a cannibal rapist with a three foot long plastic phallus, no I am not making this up. He once again starts raping and killing until our two loose cannon cops return to make sure he stays in the ground. This is one of the lowest budget movies I have seen and still enjoyed. It is extremely obvious the makers of this film enjoyed themselves. Not having a budget, while making the entire movie look like it belongs on public access, albeit porno public access, it allows them to do just about anything their sick minds can come up with including Satanic Cults, Flying Killer Fetsuses and a Cannibal Rapist Zombie with a Three Foot Dork. I should not have liked this, a zero budget, really bad acting but yet there the inventive streak that ran through the entire movie impressed me, these guys set out to just go berserk with an hour and change worth of movie and they accomplished their goal. I applaud guys that just go out and make movies you can get away with a lot more when you don't have money but that freedom is double edged, you can have numerous naked chicks being killed by a cannibal rapist zombie but in order to do that you have to dredge the local strip club and find strippers who are willing (he-he) resulting they do get naked but it isn't spectacular. You can have gore but it is all animal guts and even though the girls were doughy you can't make cow intenstines appear to have come from a girl. Still this is one of the more energetic and creative horror movies I have seen in awhile so it earns it B-.

Necro Files 2: Lust Never Dies - D

We once again return to the bizarre, low budget, and sleazy world of Todd Tjersland who is best known for his Faces of Death knock-off series, Faces of Gore. In this outing Todd has gotten much more fancy (aka average) film cameras and better looking women who get menaced and killed by the killers. The first killer in our story is the older brother of the original killer in the first Neco Files. He wears a cheap Halloween mask but wears his normal clothes. He talks and rants a little more and the attacks and nudity are more explict too. Our two cops from the first movie, the oaf and the psycho are back trying to hunt him down. One sunny afternoon while incredibly intoxicated the older brother visits the grave of the first wacko killer, then proceeds to vomit then urinate on his grave, talk about brotherly love, but it is enough to bring him back from the dead, so he a re-undead cannibal rapist who gets right to work picking up where he and his 12 inch pants pal left off. While this movie has a much higher production value it quickly becomes very repetitious it is just naked women, fake blood and killing then repeat. The movie is only 69 (think they were aiming for that?) minutes long but too much of it was taken up with the same stuff over and over. It had almost no plot, it is basically a thrill reel for those into death fetishes. I was rather disappointed with this one, I enjoyed the first one, it was zero budget but they really had fun with it. Now with a higher, but stil not high enoguh to make it low budget, budget they just went for nudity and killing none of the creative weirdness of the first could be found anywhere aside from bringing the undead rapist cannibal zombie back from the death by puke and wee. A disappointing sequel to a truly bizarre movie.

He Knows You're Alone - C

A reluctant bride to be is stalked by a serial killer who only kills brides and the people around them. While her friends get whacked one by one, a hard boiled renegade cop whose bride had been killed years before tries to hunt him down before it is too late. This is a very vanilla slasher movie, a very Halloween clone, the three girls, the musical sting, the scenes of the killer appearing and disappearing while stalking the fair heroine. The only inventive and I think somewhat cheap moment is that we meet the killer without a mask in the first ten minutes, come on at least give him a mask or shadowy his face just seeing the killer when he isn't that fearsome, the best looking slasher who didn't have a mask was the killer from Slumber Party Massacre, that guy looked like a real honest to god psycho. This movie had some great tense moments but it never really connected with me for some reason.

Bay of Blood - B

This is the first DVD Release of Mario Bava's film Twitch of the Death Nerve or its 13 other titles. This is a great example of how important a good DVD Transfer is. It is almost the same film, save for a few frames cut out of the gory deaths, mainly the machete to the face seen. But the audio and colour are so shot at times it makes this great movie really hard to watch especially when the sound totally fades out or the screen becomes black as night and you can't see a thing. If you want to watch this movie make sure to rent Twitch of the Death Nerve from the Mario Bava collection it is totally uncut and is a much better transfer, meaning you can actually hear and see everything that is going on.

Camp Blood - D

Group of people go into the woods and are killed off by a psycho clown, yes a psycho clown in the forest. The movie is cheap and comes across as being very cheap. There a good scene were one of the guys beats up the psycho clown and then chases him to a bigger fight in a river. The only problem is that we are supposedly lost in the woods yet during the river fight in the background you see a 6 lane Interstate Bridge in the background and graffiti on the rocks, kinda kills the illusion of being lost in the woods. If the involved parties had put a little more effort into making the film it could have been salvagable but unfortunately they decided you didn't need lights or actors to make a movie.

Spliced - C

Mary is having sleeping problems which are leading to some rather bizarre nightmares. Her parents think it is all because of those awful horror movies she watches at the multiplex. But when those she wishes harm to start having strange accidents she starts to fear something in one of the movies has gotten out. The movie is okay, it has a few problems, namely the real lack of the slasher until the last ten minutes. The other problem is the flow of the movie, it spends too much time focusing on the teen angst and not enough on the actual horror, this isn't an episode of Dawson's Creek this is a horror movie. When it is a horror movie it is really good, especially the whole downloading the movie to see how to destroy the killer part was very good. I would have liked a lot more slashing and a lot less I have angst and I am a teenager stuff. The girl who played Mary was very good at being both spunky and vulernable. The ending was a little strange but it works to some extent. This entire movie could have been better if it stuck to its horror roots.

WatchUsDie.com - C+

A group of girls live in a house that is a 24 hour reality TV show, now I know what your thinking, you're thinking this is going to be chalked full of female nudity but surprisingly there is very little although the girls run around half clothed the entire time. This is a pretty good all girl slasher, it certainly won't win any awards or fame as a classic horror movie but it does deliver more than I was expecting. The acting was very good, the girls deliver their lines effectively and with emotion. Some of them look like they were just scooped off the set of a porno movie but I think that was the intent. The killer scores lots of points with me for looking so cool, he wears a long black cloak and an expressionless white mask. But they don't use him for the entire movie, he is just there for a couple of the killings, the rest of the time it is just a pair of hands. I realy think the misused such a cool costume. This is a great cheap thrill slasher movie, if you are willing to turn your mind off and enjoy the slashing then you will like this movie.

The Beast of Bray Road - B+

A werewolf movie that is actually based on a real story. In rural Walworth County Wisconsin there is a creature that lurks about in the woods and is frequently seen on Bray Road. Now I doubt it is a werewolf like the movie portrays but there is something out there. The movie revolves around the new Sheriff and his attempts to stop the killer werewolf that is picking apart the locals. While the writer/director does a good job of portraying rural Wisconsinites, their main past time is drinking, but he still used actors that were still young attractive Southern California types, and as much as people in Wisconsin would like to believe that, it isn't the case, it isn't even close. Aside from that little picky problem, and the fact that the entire movie was shot in the Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles, this is a very good werewolf movie. It doesn't blaze new trails in the sub-genre but it does stick close to the path and suceeds in making a good werewolf movie. If you had watched this movie and thought, gee there are a lot of familiar faces in this after watching the Undead Pirate flick, Jolly Roger: Massacre At Cutter's Cove, then you would be right. Those two movie are from the same Direct-To-Video company, Asylum Entertainment and they use a lot of the same actors. They are all really good at their roles and the high quality of the movie makes this a very enjoyable werewolf experience while it isn't the Howling or Ginger Snaps, it is still better than 99 percent of the other werewolf movies out there.

The Legend of Hell House - A-

Welcome to the Belasco House, one of the best spooky house movies made back in the day when it wasn't what you saw but what you felt in a spooky house movie. This movie features the forgotten Emperor, Clive Rivell who played the Emperor in the Empire Strikes Back, he is the blue floating head that talks to Darth Vader, but more importantly it stars Roddy McDowell in a non-ape role. This is a great mood movie, you see the horror, it is all mental. The best scene has to be the Godzilla fireplace during the psychokinetic dinner. If this movie was made in this day and age the end would have to be some great huge fight with a monster. This movie relies on solid acting and good music. Excellent story by Richard Mathison one of the greats, albeit forgotten greats of horror writing. Great old school haunted house movie, if you can make it through the slower pace you will be rewarded with a good movie.

Bloodmoon - C+

Very amorous high school students are being killed by their crazed biology teacher with of all things barbed wire for being so amorous. The barbed wire is a rather nasty way of killing someone, very kinky. Everybody in the movie seems to get naked, they have literal truck loads of extras they brought in for the express purpose of getting naked and becomming fooder for our psycho bard wire totting teacher. This is one of the few Aussie Slasher movies I have ever seen, it isn't too bad for being from 1990 when slasher movies really were at their lowest ebb. The large amount of nudity in the movie somewhat surprised me, they really poured on the breasts in this one. It really isn't a bad thing but normally you have to watch porno to see that much bare female flesh and they didn't cheat by using it all up in a shower scene. The two main characters aren't the main characters of the movie though, the killer is the main character, he gets the most screen time of any character in the movie but you can't side with him because he is the killer. All in all a better than average slasher movie, and better than most from the early 90s.

Stink of the Flesh - D+

Dude who uses a hammer and twelve inch nails fights zombies until he is brought to a house in the middle of nowhere so he can screw this guys crazy wife. Some army guys who look like nancy soldiers of the future arrive and they play it is a George Romero film and try to act way cool. This movie is part zombie kung-fu, part deformed fat sex comedy, and mexican wrestling which is all wrapped together in an indie movie that acts like it is way too cool to really be a movie. The people in this movie with one exception all run twenty pounds overweight which makes no sense this being the end of civilization how can you continue to eat like there is a Safeway just down the block? The sex in the movie is also disturbing mainly because the participants are all rather unattractive which includes the attractive chick because for most of her sex scenes she is blue because she is a zombie and chained in the shed so the husband of the doughy sex addict can ride her like a government mule in the literal sense. There is nothing inventive in this movie, once the soldiers from the future arrive it turns into a derivative of a George Romero movie. There was a lot buzz about this movie in genre circles, why is it that buzz always equal hippo flop? Are genre fans seriously this stupid that now they see anything that isn't made by a Hollywood studio as being edgy and cool? Trust me there are a lot better movies out there that involve sex and zombies. Stink is an apt term to describe this pile of hippo shit.

London After Midnight - A

While this movie is still lost in 2002 a film historian gathered up all the surviving still of this movie and with the original script pieced together what the movie would have looked like from the photographs. It is the tale of Professor Burke who is investigating the strange suicide of Roger Balfour. Five years later a strange man and his daughter buy up the house, he is a strange looking character. Could he have had a hand in the murder of Roger Balfour? And is he a real vampire? This movie stars the Man of 1000 Faces, Lon Chaney who does double duty as Professor Burke and the mysterious vampire. The vampire is another of Lon Chaney's monsterous masterpieces, the wire appliances that pull his eyes open and kept his mouth that ghoulish smile must have been hell to wear. This movie is for silent film fans only, it is really the ultimate in minimalist silent film making, it is nothing but pictures and words which unless you go in expecting that can be thoroughly disappointed. I enjoyed it but I went into expecting to enjoy something this esoteric.

Mark of the Vampire - A-

This is a loose remake of London After Midnight but in this version the vampires are real not just a ploy to catch a murderer. This movie re-teams director Tod Browning and Bela Lugosi who previously made Universal's classic Dracula. There is a lot of talking in this movie and not enough vampire. This is a vampire movie we have Bela Lugosi cape and all here but we spend more time with the inspector and company running around the house. It is still a very well made movie, Tod Browning knew what he was doing and did it well but I was hoping for more vampire and less people. Odd note of trivia Tod Browning made London After Midnight as well so he knew the road he was going down. Good 30s chiller but probably not fast and lively enough for today's ADD audiences.

Motor Home Massacre - F

A group of 'friends' take a motorhome into the woods were they are stalked and killed by a psycho wearing a tarp and carrying night vision goggles. While this sounds like a standar and salvagable slasher plot, you would be wrong. What followed was 90 minutes of terrible acting, bizarre and incoherant editting, losy writing, and a hideous burnt orange 70s version of the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile. Other than the fact that each character was some horrible stereotype they all seemed to hate each other which is a really strange way to get them all into a motor home for the weekend, usually I try to stay away from tight spaces with people I don't like. I normally find something I like in any slasher movie but there wasn't a single redeeming factor to be found anywhere in this disaster.

Devour - C-

College kids log onto a website called Pathway that starts making them think their doing horrible things but are they or is it all just a dream. This is a better version of Disturbing Behaivor but it still isn't all that good. The movie stars Jansen Ackles, which is a bizarre name for a white guy but he is that hunky cute teen soap opera star in such shows as Smallville. My favorite actress in the movie is Shannon Sossamon mainly because she is really, really cute. Her career really is a love or hate with me, I hated Rules of Attraction, and 40 Days, 40 Nights but I liked A Knight's Tale despite Heath Ledger, and the Order, again despite Heath Ledger. I think she needs a better agent or something because she could really do good work if she was given decent roles. Dominique Swain is also in the movie and what a surprise she plays a slut, she really is typecast for life as the blonde slut. Also look for Bill Sadler playing a creepy know-it-all, just like in Disturbing Behaivor. The movie is muddled and confusing, you really have to be a world class director to pull of a movie like this where you aren't sure what is real and what isn't and sadly the director wasn't able to make it work so I spent most of the movie just scratching my head wondering what was going on. One of my pet peeves of this entire style of movie is always the hero no matter what he does is always blamed for everything which really flies in the face of logic, how could your average all American hunk turn into a raging psycho with no history of violence before? See I am thinking too much, definitely a lot more than the writer and director did. If you like teen thrillers like Disturbing Behaivor or anything on the WB this is right up your alley, if not well you probably won't like it.

Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind - A

Bold Cheung has problems, his wife is cheating on him with his boss, the most powerful man in town. Both his wife and his boss want him out of the way so they devise a scheme to get him to stay in the haunted temple for a night where a sorcerer will use his black arts to kill Bold Cheung. But of course the other sorcerer who was taught by the same master is out to help Bold Cheung save his life. After the firs two attemps fail, the town boss decides to frame Bold Cheung for the murder of his wife. He of course escapes and the sorcerer resorts to more and more powerful magic, at one point turning Bold Cheung's hands against him like in Evil Dead, except Bold Cheung's hands aren't cut off by a chainsaw. The final showdown is a no-holds barred kung-fu sorcerer contest where only the best survive. This is a wonderful combination of kung-fu, the supernatural, and comedy presided over by kung-fu's clown prince Sammo Hung who not only stars in the movie but also wrote and directed it. My favorite part in the movie is either fighting the zombie in the temple where Sammo, or Bold Cheung, keeps dodging his attacks and making the sorcerer bang his head, or when Sammo's hands turn against him and he starts beatin up everybody in the restaurant. This is a lot of fun, it is plenty of kung-fu and ghost story to go around and a must watch for fans of either genre.

CrossBones - D

Another failed entry in the reality tv meets horror movie world. A group of reality contestants and 1 camera man, talk about small time, go to an island to play their cheap knock-off of survivor. They find a treasure map that belonged to Red Blood the Pirate who just so happens to be a zombie thanks to a voodoo curse. He comes back to dig his treasure up and get more booty, and I mean in the round fleshy sense, not the glittering gold sense. This time it is way, way, way too much bad reality and too little horror although the horror, when it rarely makes an appearence, is pretty savage. The killer undead pirate in question does kill people with a certain degree of savagry that you normally don't see. Normally you get one single stab with the knife and a musical sting, here Red Blood chops, mangles, stabs repeatly, and finds other ways to go overkill on his victims. That really is the only thing that saved it from an F. They actually have the gall to spend ten entire minutes with each actor desperately trying to spit out lines to the camera like this is the Real World, that was too much to take so I started fast forwarding I managed to make it through the entire movie in a half an hour by fastforwarding whenever two characters starting talking to each other. This movie should have been a lot better but it was screwed up when reality TV came into the plot.

The Halfway House - B

If you've ever seen a chicks in prison movie you know them all. A girl goes into prison to either find her sister's killer or save her sister after she was falsely imprisoned. She befriends some inmates while despite being criminals still have a heart of gold against wicked prison officials and ruthless cutthroat gangs. Thrown in some lesbian action and a couple of shower scenes and you have a chicks in prison movie from the 70s. Now fast forward to the 21st century, change prison to halfway house, change wicked prison officials to evil Catholic officials and throw in a basement dwelling Cthulu like creature and you have The Halfway House. I'm not saying it is bad either there are times that I can thoroughly enjoy sleaze especially when the filmmakers know what they are doing and intend to exploit the exploitation genre to its limits. Mary Woronov stars as the evil nun who controls the basement Cthulu and feeds the troubled girls of the halfway house to it. The rest of the cast are basically unknowns or have starred in a few minor low budget films but they all do a good job with their roles, they know what they are doing and the play it to the hilt. The basement Cthulu was incredibly cheap looking but with this movie's budget the fact that they showed the monster at all is bold. This is a good example of a 21st century exploitation film, it isn't high art or going to win much praise but it is fun something that most of the high art and award winning films seem to lack these days.

Cherry Falls - B+

Somebody is killing virgins in Cherry Falls. The daughter of the sheriff, played rather low keyed by Brittany Murphy, is considering going all the way with her boyfriend who looks like he should be a roady for Pennywise or something. The other virgins in Cherry Falls, all rather worried they are going to die before they can get some, truly a classic high school fear decide to have an orgy to make sure none of them get killed, while an interesting solution to your problem but it doesn't kind of make you a huge target to the insane killer who wears a long black wig instead of mask making the killer look like they belong in a Japanese Ghost movie rather than a slasher. Of course the final showdown happens there with the sheriff played by Michael Biehn coming to save the day. This movie was very original from the killer to the motive and with a nice big budget it was shot very crisp and clean but the entire movie felt very reserved like they were holding back on everything from gore to boobs. Yes there are no naked people in this movie which seems incredibly odd for a movie that your crux is losing your virginity. The gore was very light as well making me think this movie was killed by purtinical producers breathing down the necks of the filmmakers. Brittany Murphy did an okay job, she really didn't seem to want to be in this movie but was doing it for a paycheck, everybody else from Michael Biehn to Jay Mohr and beyond all did a good job, they seemed to dig into their roles with a knife and fork. This was a better than average slasher and an exceptional post-modern (god I hate that word) slasher but the lack of gore and nudity made the movie feel unbalanced and detracted from what could have been a new classic.

Shikoku - A

Sayori, a 16-year-old girl who's able to communicate with the dead. After Sayori dies, her distraught mother tries to raise her from the dead, not exactly the course of action I would take, but if it wasn't taken there would be no movie. But Sayori's friends aren't so sure this is a good idea, they must play a lot of Playstation and know about zombies from Resident Evil, they know what happens when you come back from the dead. In an attempt to stop Sayori's mother, they investigate Shikoku Island, a mysterious place also known as The Kingdom of the Dead, not exactly a vacation destination with a name like that. This is a very subtle ghost story that is more about a person's ghosts of the past than actual ghosts. Hinako who was Sayori's best friend moved away when she was young and when she finally returns years later she learns all the sad truths about what happened since she was away. She starts seeing the ghost of Sayori and the locals tell her to leave. I can related to that feeling, aside from actually seeing ghosts. I moved away from my hometown of Pueblo Colorado many years ago and I can related very much to Hinako's sense of feeling out of place when you return. The old saying you can never go home again is a sad but true saying. This is a very subtle ghost story, it isn't what you expect after watching all the Americanized versions of the Ringu, Ju-On and so on and so forth. This movie got to me, I very easily related to the main character and I think that instant understanding of where she came from helped me really get into this movie. I doubt many others will find this movie as interesting as I did, it moves a little too slow for American Audiences and can be very Japanese at times which if you aren't familiar with some of the customs and ways of Japan it is confusing. Chiaki Kurimaya stars as Sayori, for those who don't know who she is she was Go-Go Yabari in Kill Bill, which sadly is probably all she'll be remembered for in this country, she plays a great broodying ghost and Yui Natsukawa is also great as Hinako, the girl who feels out of place at home. Probably to slow and too Japanese but I really connected with this movie and enjoyed it, even if it made me a little depressed.

The Curse of El Charro - B+

Four girlfriends head out in the desert to go clubbing. Maria is still suffering from her sisters tragic suicide but does everything she can in order to have fun this weekend. When a mysterious killer shows up, this is a whole lot easier said than done. Will anyone survive or will they all be cursed by El Charro? Firstly this isn't Curse of El Churro, this isn't death by a deep fried sugary treat, although I am very sure the Churro has killed more than El Charro. The acting is good, the cinematography is singular, the movie is half road movie, half slasher flick. The first half takes us to some weird places and meets weird people then when the characters arrive at the villa it turns into a slasher movie. There are a few slight issues here and there which are for the most part fixed by the stylish cinematography and good acting. I really liked Andrew Bryniarski who plays El Charro, one of his previous roles was as Leatherface in the recent remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The movie can be a little confusing at times and the logic strays here and there but it is a solid and different slasher movie.

Hardgore - C

This is one of the very rare movies from the 70s that combine both hardcore pornography and splatter gore, hence the title. In the movie a man commits his daughter to Fox Hollows, a mental institute because she has 'uncontrollable nymphomania with masocistic tendencies' basically which means she will screw everybody by the end of the movie. Her stay in the asylum is puncutated with trippy dream sequences invovling sex, a guy in a mask, talking skull that bleeds, and lots of crazy 70s acid head cinematography. She slowly learns that there is a cult in the asylum that uses the patients as sexual sacrifices incluiding one very memorable scene involing a guillotine and sex with the blade as the climax. For a porno movie this has a lot of gore and even a plot, but never lets you forget this is first and foremost a porno. This is not for most people, it probably isn't even really for hardcore horror fans. But there is a small segment of the population that will find this oddity, if they can find it at all, interesting. It is a unique blending of 70s porno and 70s Satan movies.

Ginger Snaps - B+

Two outcast sisters who have a hobby of staging and photographing fake suicides. One night Ginger, one of the two sisters, is attacked by a werewolf, a werewolf that is eventually hit by the local drug dealer's cable truck in a spectacular splatter. Now Ginger starts to grow hair in unexpected places and starts to change her personality. Yes this movie uses being a werewolf as an analogy for puberty. Slowly Brigette, Ginger's sister, and Sam the drug dealer who did the job of splattering the first werewolf. Killing Ginger is out of the question so they try to find a way to cure her lycanthrope. Unfortunately there is no listing for Lycanthrope in the Physicians Desk Reference so they try a bunch of holistic remedies as Ginger slowly becomes more and more unstable as the next full moon which just so happens to fall on Halloween. This is a good movie, certainly a lot better than most werewolf movies but I didn't like all the teen angst that filled the movie. Yes I understand that it is key to the story but there is so much of it, you start to drown in it. The acting is good, both Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle were great as moody goth sisters but I really like Mimi Rogers who play the out of it suburbanite mother of our two misfits. This is a good werewolf movie that play too heavy on the teen angst and not enough on the actual werewolf.

Flashback - C-

A girl witnesses the brutal murder of her parents she spends many years in an institution before being released so she can teach rich drop-outs French. Of course their rich kids and this is a horror movie they have to be nasty and they plan to prank their new French teacher. This of course goes terribly awry and she becomes the psycho killer she had feared for all these years. She goes about hacking and slashing until the end which salvaged the movie by having an interesting ending. One of the biggest detractors of this film is the rather bad dub job that was done on this film. It sounded like it was a chopsockey film from the 70s. The cinematography and the acting was good, I especially like the girl with the pink dyed hair who meets her end in a woodchipper. The humor was all right but it felt tacked on, they introduced this group of characters which has nothing to do with the film just so they could have some cheap laughs. This movie was interesting but flawed in its execution. It is probably the best Germany Slasher I have ever seen but then again how German Slasher have I seen at all?

Baron Blood - B-

Peter returns to Austria during a break from his graduate studies in college to see the region where his family is from. He finds out that the castle where his sadistic relative, Baron Otto Von Kleist, use to torture his victims is being turned into a hotel but they are keeping the original name, Schloss Teuffel, which means Castle of the Devil and keeping all the grisly instruments of torture. Not exactly the kind of stuff that is going to draw the luxury hotel crowd but hey it was the 70s everybody wasn't thinking right then. He meets up with the shapely hotel manager, Eva (ever notice that all hot German chicks are named Eva, strange huh). Together they decide to see if they can raise the undead spirity of Baron Von Kleist as a sort of joke, not a ha-ha joke, more like we're drunk lets do something stupid. Well they do manage to bring him back from his tormented repose and he gets right back into the swing of killing everybody in the castle with his torture devices. The movie was tailor made for a director like Mario Bava, lavish sets and elaborate deaths but something just didn't fit. We have a smattering of deaths and then zip for the rest of the movie, if you are going to make an Italian movie and have only 5 deaths make sure they all don't happen within ten minutes of each other. Mario Bava does a great job of making atmosphere and photographing the creepy castle but the writing slipped up and it hurt the film.