Horror Part 05

Audition - A

Friends of a recent widower decide to have a phony casting call to find their widowed buddy a new wife. They go through several rather yummy applicants and then we decide on Asami, who is extremely attractive. He tells her that he will call her, and we cut to a scene of Asami's apartment and she is sitting on the floor staring at the phone like she would like to bore a hole through it with her eyes. She is waiting for the phone to ring, now that is fairly weird and sets the tone for this Japanese Fatal Attraction. Then the phone rings and the movie becomes a journey into the mind of madness when a large bag in the background starts thrashing and a man's voice comes out. Now we really know this woman doesn't exist in the same plane of reality as the rest of the world. The movie spends the next 90 minutes building up to the last 15 minutes which are so amazing it ensures Takashi Miike a place in movie maker heaven. Now be warned this movie is more intense, and real than any horror movie ever made in this country and is even more extreme than most Japanese horror movies. This is one of the finest examples of Social Horror, this sub-genre is owned by the Japanese. Social Horror believes that the normal looking people around you are in fact more terrifying than the monster that lurks in the closet or under the bed. The Japanese are able to make these movies to their full extent because this country is so bound by Religious and Moral constraints. This movie is not for everyone but if you have a strong consitution watch this amazing film, it will freak you out.

Fade To Black - C-

Really cool premise but flops in the delivery. Eric is a loser who spends all day in his room watching movies on 8mm while his wheelchair bound step-mother makes his life hell. He finally snaps and starts thinking he is in the movies. He starts making himself look like famous Hollywood actors, Dracula, the Mummy, James Cagey, and Hop Along Cassidy and exacting revenge, not really but sort of, on those who made his life hell while he romances an Australian Girl who looks like Marilyn Monroe but looks more like Blondie. The movie sounds interesting but never manages to be interesting. The plots really don't interact well, the cop plot really doesn't do anything until the final ten minutes and the romance plot starts then concludes then starts again. The inner cutting with the classic film clips was good but often misplaced. The acting is good, the kid who plays Eric is convincing as a loser turned psycho but he really doesn't kill anybody until almost the end of the movie the people he targets before die from accidents. It could have been a lot better than it was.

Castle Freak - A

Stuart Gordon again makes a Lovecraft inspired tale with Jeffery Combs and Barbara Crampton but this time Dr Herbert West is nowhere to be seen, instead it is a troubled couple with a blind daughter who inherit a creepy Italian castle with a secret locked in the basement. Of course the secret escapes and kills a hooker, of course Jeffery gets fingered for the crime and is forced to leave his wife, and blind daughter in the castle with the beast. This wasn't bad but I didn't like the falsely accused plot line, only Hitchcock made these work well and they really aren't good for a slasher movie, it always seems illogical to believe the guy did it when it is clear the monster/slasher/etc could only have done it. The blind daughter was a unique twist and a good vulernable character. The movie is probably one of the few Full Moon titles that wasn't shot in Hungary or Romania but the castle is owned by the president of Full Moon so it was probably cheap to shoot there. It is pretty good creepy castle flick with the old deformed monster. Jeffery Combs is of course great and for 5 bucks the movie was well worth the price.

Dawn of the Dead 2004 - C+

This is best described as an action movie with zombies as the villain. The story is barely the same as George Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead, a group of people trapped in a mall during the zombie armageddon but this time we have a lot more people, which mean more zombie food and more people to have conflict with one another. But the movie reeks of action shooter and is never really all that scary. One problem is the zombies, now I'm all for breaking tradition when it is cool but making the zombies super fast actually lessens the tension, because before they moved slowly, oh so slowly, and when somebody is being chased it is really tense due to the length it takes for the zombie to move, now they move like lightning which is a better shock but kills all tension. Remeber these guys are dead, now I know when I'm dead I doubt I'm going to move fast at all, in fact because you are rotting you will move like shit. This movie stole the fast moving zombie from 28 Days Later, which isn't about zombies but infected people who are still alive and pumping with adrenaline. The movie runs a little too long once the principles get to the mall, too much control for supremacy and really those three rent a cops can't beliavably dominate Ving Rhames for anything, the entire time I'm just waiting for him to go 'Boo' and all three of them shit themselves. The movie hosts an Canadian All Star cast, including Matt 'Max Headrone' Fewer, Byod 'Nero Wolfe' Banks, and Sarah 'Go' Polley. You know who lives the minute you meet them, there is no secret there. Good first time outing for the director but I think he is more suited to action movies than horror, he can't seem to grasp the pacing. This movie doesn't add anything new to the zombie formula but is a decent shoot em up with zombies.

Horror Hotel - B

This is a movie that is all about atmosphere. A young college student travels to a remote New England Village to work on a research paper about witchcraft for her professor, the ever creepy Christopher Lee. She learns that the other guests at the inn are in reality a coven of undead witches and she is going to be there sacrifice. The movie is directed by John Moxley who directed 30 different TV shows over 30 years including Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, Jake and the Fatman, Mannix, Shaft, the Avengers, and on and on but he is the most famous for the Night Stalker, at one point the highest rated TV movie of all time which was spun off as the series Kolchak the Night Stalker two of my favorite horror shows. He does a fabulous job with a couple of sets and fog. It is a low budget movie that doesn't have the usual blood and nudity that modern low budget horror films today have so he relied entirely on atmosphere and a ever present feeling of dread. It is a little campy at times but is still a great horror film.

Witchhouse 3: Demon Fire - B-

Four cult horror stars make up 99 percent of the movie, Debbie Rochon, Brinke Stevens, Tanya Dempsey, and Tina Krause in a movie about aspiring filmmakers shooting a movie about witchcraft, which of course leads to a witch appearing and chasing the girls around. It is a pretty simple story, after watching it I thought it belonged in the Witchcraft series or possbily the Witchhouse series is going to take up the Witchcraft mantel. After the bring the witch back from the dead the middle act is pretty good, lots of good suspense as the witch stalks the girls. The third act does a great job of delivering a wonderful twist that I was not expecting. The acting is really top shelf for being from Tempe Entertainment, best movie studio in all of Tempe Arizona, the girls know their stuff and deliver the lines with confidence that you normally don't find in a cheap horror movie. The movie is a bit short and has a hot tub scene with three girls that doesn't devolve into a boozen induced lesbian sex scene, I thought that was against the rules of cheap horror, when three chicks are drinking in hot tub sex between at least two must erupt, Aristotle said that.

Blood Feast - B-

This is the first gore movie made in 1963, it was way ahead of its time. Understand that the Cultural Revolution that happened in the US wouldn't start for another three years when this movie was made. It was called the worst movie ever made which is partially right, it isn't exactly Shakespeare but it isn't so much about the story as it is about the gore, which for 1963 is rather shocking. Faud Ramses runs a catering service that specializes in cooking people, namely shapely women. One of the things that drove me nuts was the awful underwear the women wear, man we've come a long way in the female underwear department, and it is all good. Nobody in this movie was a professional actor which is pretty standard for a film of this calibre. This probably freaked people out when it was first shown, it is a bit campy these days but it did start the entire gore sub-genre so it get a good grade for being historically signifcant.

Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat - C-

The Father of the gore film Hershal Gordon Lewis returns after 30 years of semi-retirement with a parody of his films with Blood Feast 2. The grandson of the original Faud Ramses returns to his grandfather's store, finds the ancient Egyptian statue and starts up where old grand pappy left off. The movie is a good parody of gore films but it gets way to repetative way too fast. After the first ten minutes it becomes the same setup done over and over again. The women in the film are all pretty hot, the guys are all morons but that is expected. My favorite character in the movie is the least used, Veronica Russel who plays an unnamed secretary has a couple of really funny lines in the movie but everybody else just chews on the dialogue, including our star Spud McConnell. The rockabilly music found through the movie is really good and gives what is clearly a modern movie a early 60s feel to it. Best line in the film; 'I Was Just Dropping Hints Like Navy Guys Drop The Soap In The Shower.' Not the place to start with Hershel Gordon Lewis Movies but all in all not bad for a guy who hasn't made a thing in 30 years.

Taboo (2002) - D-

Unfortunately this isn't part of the famous porno series of the same name, no I've heard better dialogue in porn movies. A group of obnoxious friends, who apparently really hate one another, get together at this spooky remote mansion and play a game of taboo, exposing their deepest darkest secrets to one another. Then a year later they get together once again and start dying after exposing their secrets. The movie has way too many twists, after the first twist the movie actually was good for roughly five minutes of its entire 78 minute run time. But as the old saying goes too make chefs spoils the broth, too many twists spoils the film. The acting is better than average, with stars like Amber Benson of Buffy fame, Eddie Kay Thomas of American Pie fame, Nick Stahl from Carnivale they all do a good job of delivering the lines but the writing is so beyond awful I just wanted to pluck my ears off, and worse are the situations the movie puts you in, and even worse is this twisted moral message the movie tries to convey. In other slasher movies the virgin survives the immoral people die but they never tell you about it, in this one it is so beaten over your head you just want to scream. This movie really deserves an F but the acting and those five minutes when I actually enjoyed the movie give it just enough to bump it to D- but be warned this movie does suck.

Rosemary's Baby - A

'This Isn't A Dream, This Is Real!' Roman Polanski's masterpiece, the story of a woman who moves into an apartment and becomes impregnanted with the child of Satan. This is an amazing movie that really showcases Polanski's gift to make you feel like the entire world is against one character and you. Mia Farrow is a wonderfully vulnerable character, she is just a frail little thing with this entire apartment building arrayed against her. The scene where Lucifer comes in and has his way with Mia when she is hallucinating is extremely memorable as being so disorienting and creepy. Also this movie makes Scrabble scary when Mia is trying to figure out the hidden message in Hutch's book on witchcraft. This movie isn't as bizarre as the other two movies in his unofficial apartments of horror trilogy, those being Repulsion and the Tenant. The moral of the movie, never make friends with crazy old people in apartment buildings they are probably a coven of witches that want you as a vessel to carry the seed of Satan. Wonderful creepy movie plus Mia Farrow is quiet a fox as Rosemary.

Death Mask - C

This is a weird little movie, first off it stars James Best as Wilbur, best and probably only known as Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on the Dukes of Hazzard, well he's now much older and runs a production company that has made one film, guess which one. The movie stars James Best as a scar carnie with some serious women issues. He reminds me a lot of Ray Dennis Steckler in the Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies, down to the black hooded sweatshirt. The only person who understands him is Linnea Quigley who really outshines everybody in this film as Angel. Wilbur carves himself a mask that allows the evil in him to exact revenge on all those that wronged him. The movie is shot at a very convincing cheap carnival in Florida which gets a lot of Florida natives to populate and gives it that extra cheap sun baked meth junkie feel that only Florida can give. The movie isn't all that bad for having such a tiny budget but it isn't a real good one either. Linnea does a good job but then again she alway does.

Bewitching - D-

A bad community college theatre troupe goes to an abandoned theatre in Hollywood to make a bad community college play. Ironically the actors are themselves bad community theatre actors they aren't even good enough to be community college level actors. That being said the movie sucks, the plot sucked, the only saving grace is that for a few minutes I wasn't sure who would actually survive. I thought it would be a cool idea to take the main character that you'd followed for the first 2/3 of the film and kill her off and have the goth chick be the actual heroine, but this movie is way to small time to try anything like that. I knew this movie was going to be bad when I found the IMDB listing for the movie and it had only a writer and a director listed and then when I popped in the disc the only other thing on the entire disc is 6 chapter stops, not even spanish subtitles or trailers. But then again what do you expect from a movie with a 67 minute run time, too long to be a good short film not long enough to be a good movie.

From Dusk Til Dawn 3: Hangman's Daughter - A-

A wild west telling of the From Dusk Til Dawn story, and the origin of Satanico Pandemonium. The movie isn't nearly as bad as everybody says it is. It took me a ridiculously long time to actually find this movie short of buying it. The story was written by Robert Rodriguez so it has touches of his signature style in some of the fight scenes and the opening sequence really feels like it is a Rodriguez scene. They story follows Michael Parks who plays Ambrose Bierce, who is looking for Pancho Villa, and a bandito called Madrid who end up at the Titty Twister, long before it was called the Titty Twister. Where Santanico Pandemonium takes her place among her vampire kin. It is a good Spahgetti Western and crazy vampire movie. My only real problem with the story is Reese, the ugly chick who wants to be an outlaw. She was the most annoying character in the movie and when they hung her I cheered that I wouldn't have to here her awful voice anymore. But she did survive at least to the end which sucked because she really needed to die a lot earlier. Look for Jango Fett, New Zealand Actor, Temuera Morrison, who plays the scared hangman. It would have been a lot cooler if Robert Rodriguez did it but this was still a really good effort and a really enjoyable drive-in style action flick with zombie wookie vampires.

Blood Sisters - C

This is one of the films from the fading era of explotation heroine Roberta Findlay. This is a typical sorority hazing ritual in a haunted house, albeit a haunted whorehouse. Pranks are played, girls have sex with their boyfriends, and a weird killer stalks them. It is pretty straight forward except for the fact that nobody dies until 58 minutes into the movie. This really is a strange feature of many east coast slasher movies of the 80s, in west coast slasher movies you get more death, more gore, better looking and acting actors, and usually the settings are a little more believably creepy. This movie isn't as bad as most east coast slashers but you really have to space out your deaths, 5 people die in the span of about 4 minutes in this movie. Roberta Finley was infamous in the 60s and 70s for making sex filled explotation films including the infamous Snuff but by 1987 it was the twilight of her career and she didn't have the same explotative spark she had in the 60s and 70s. I've seen worse, this has its moments but it could have bee a lot better.

Amityville Horror - D

A disfunctional 70s family buys a house in Long Island New York and is terrorized for two weeks until they flee. Almost thirty years after the movie first came out almost everybody has heard the story in one form or another. I'd seen two History Channel specials before I saw the movie and sadly those two specials are infinitly better with the movie. It is only two hours long but while watching it I swore I'd been watching it for the entire two weeks. It is a movie where nothing really happens, there are a few incidents but nothing really happens. A kid gets his fingers mashed in the window and a teenage girl with the world's ugliest dental appliance gets trapped in a closet and those are the two major visual scares, the rest is just people acting weird and scary music. The movie isn't really scary unless you consider 70s home furnishings and clothing are terrifying. This movie really isn't scary and extremely boring and overly long. I would assume the 2005 remake will be more active than this one so wait for that and don't bother with this one.

Devil's Backbone - A

History is a chronicle of ghosts. This is a wonderful ghost story that takes place almost 70 percent of the time in daylight, and not like cloudly daylight but in bright shining Spainish daylight. Also the ghosts are not typical ghosts, the principle ghost is a kid, a kid with a huge gash in his head that constantly leaks blood. The setting is set during the Spanish Civil War, at the end actually and the boys in this orphanage are war orphans with little to eat and little possessions of their own. The adults that run the orphanage are war wearing, the mistress is missing her leg, the doctor is an impotent man in all forms of the word, the handy man is a psycho with a secret, and the girl seems to be the only one without any flaws. The young handy name is played by Eduardo Noriega, Spain's version of Brad Pitt, who really plays a psycho really well. This is Guillermo Del Toro best film because everything links together so well. The best feature of the film is the characterization of children. In Hollywood kids are these sparkling clean kids that spout off one liners and are always free of actual harm, they may be in danger but harm never comes to them. These kids swear like I did when I was a kid and if you are offended by harming kids this movie won't be for you because kids die, more than a few kids die. The movie is a fabulous movie about ghosts, one of the best scenes involves a ghost who's harbingers are flies that was a great scene. Wonderful movie with a lot of mood, intense emotions, and some shocking scenes that make this one of the best ghost movies I've ever seen.

All The Colors Of The Dark - A-

Puts the Psycho in Psychadelic. This Italian Horror movie starts the ever beautiful Edwige Fenech as a woman haunted by the murder of her mother and is desperate to find a way to escape the terrible nightmares of the incident. She tries psycho therapy but has little success then her downstairs neighbor suggest Black Magic. Now I don't think that is a sure fire way to stop having nightmares, maybe a way to start having them but not to stop. Well she goes and is drawn into the web of rituals and tripping dreams. During a meeting she is forced to kill the woman that invited her to the black mass in the first place. Now she is trapped and desperately wants to escape but the cult's blue eye killer is after her to make sure she doesn't. Not as good as the other Edwige Fenech things I've seen like Strip Nude For Your Killer or Case of the Bloody Iris, but Edwige is so hot I enjoyed the movie. It also lacks a few more of the Giallo features like a big body count, men treating their women like crap, and a view from the killer's POV. The movie relies a lot on trippy dream sequences to make you question what is really happening and less on murders and mayhem, which is okay but we really need murders to keep a horror movie running. One of my biggest problems with the movie is that several of the main characters look too much alike, Edwige is Edwige but her husband and one of the cult big shots look too much alike as does the woman who introduced Edwige to the cult and Edwige's sister this makes the movie a little confusing in a few places because you get the characters mixed up. All in all a good trippy 70s cult horror movie with the yummy Edwige Fenech.

Frankenfish - B-

Something is eating people deep in the bayou of Louisana, it is up to a marine biologist and a medical examiner to get to the bottom of it and survive attack by giant mudskipper. This is an above average monster flick. The problem with monster movies is they often fall smack dab into the Jaws convention, giant rare animal terrorizing a group of people that get picked off one by one until the unlikely monster killer rises to the challange, usually after everybody else is dead, and gets the job done. I'm only a passing fan of this genre, the past few years with the advent of cheap CGI there has been a flood of giant monster movies like Python, Boa, Boa vs Python, you get the idea your average Sci-Fi Channel Weekend Afternoon Movie. Until the 3rd act this was a really good monster movie, we had killer fish eating people, good gore, and a unique twist to the monster tale, a white hunter who wants to go hunt these killer mudskippers. But the 3rd act really flops, they kill one character that shouldn't have died but because she made one lesbian remark she had to be killed and she is half asian so her death has to be half assed. They also completely misused the white hunter and his goons brining them in way too late in the movie. The movie goes to China Chow, a British actress who is not only really hot but managed to change tops four times while on the same boat ride into the killer fish infested bayou. This is an above average monster flick, worth a watch, probably best if served with a large group. Great scene is when the crazy Ricardo starts cooking the first he killed, that is a man who wastes nothing.

Christine - A

John Carpenter and Stephen King join forces to make a movie about a car that possesses a high school loser and turns him into a sauve psychopath. This movie was made at argueably the peak of Stephen King's career, the movie was in pre-production before the book was actually published. John Carpenter does a great job of using Los Angeles locations to recreate a small town anywhere. The movie is shot very well, but it lacks gore, something rather unusual from John Carpenter who had just come off the Thing. The movie belongs to Keith Gordon who goes perfectly from awkward nerd to complete psycho. The psycho version of Keith is wonderful, he really goes the distance. This is one of three Stephen King books I've actually read and finished, the other two oddly are Carrie and Cujo. What these three books have in common besides starting with a C is that they are all under 300 pages. I've tried to read It, The Shining, and the Stand and was not able to finish one of them. It I tried to read five times and never could get through more than 500 pages worth of the book. This movie works were the other Stephen King movies often fail because the book itself is short and to the point, it doesn't waste time going into these long flashbacks like It or Dreamcatcher. You can't stick a 40 minute flashback in a movie, those things just don't work. Stephen King could make better books and hence better movies if somebody would just tell him to write shorter books. They can be 500 pages they just can't be 1500 pages. This movie also really gets a lot of help from John Carpenter who does the movie right, too many Stephen King movies are done by second stringers or hacks who really can't handle the material. One of the best Stephen King movies out there.

Deep In The Woods - C+

A strange confusing but at times rather good French horror film. A group of actors are summoned to a mansion to perform for child's birthday. They arrive and strange things being to happen, now I'm not totally sure what really happens for about twenty minutes of the movie and what is a halluncination but then a cop arrives to warn them of the rapist in the woods. Now the movie starts to fall apart because the very next thing you see is some of the actors wandering in the woods. There is no explanation on why they're out there it is like the house just disappeared. Once the actors start dying it becomes a little too standard for a film that started off so surreal. Basically the movie tries to convince you that everybody is the killer in the last twenty minutes and after you say okay he is the killer for the fifth time the movbie loses you. I guess this is a standard French B-Movie, probably French audiences would say okay this isn't all that bad but I see very few French films and for better or worse I have a certain level of expectation and this movie didn't live up to its full potential. But it has broken a streak I've been having lately of French movies being either stellar like Brotherhood of the Wolf or god awful like Baise Moi. Could have been better if they'd followed through with the surreal angle into the 3rd act.

Female Vampire - C

Another oddball Jesus Franco film. It being a Jesus Franco film there are a few thingss you can count on, one it will have ten titles and eight of the ten are different cuts of the same film, two it will involve Lina Romay, and three women will be naked. This is a simple movie, Lina Romay is an vampire countess who has returned to her home island, albeit it was shot in coastal Portugal, to do what all naked female vampires do, have sex and drink blood, and other things. This is one of the few Franco movies I've seen that barely makes an attempt at a plot, it is really a porno movie without the mess. What makes this movie stand out and make it so enjoyable is the amazing music, it really doesn't belong in this film at all, it is really amazing to listen to. Lina spends the entire movie naked over covered in a macramé table cloth called a dress. I've also seen the much more explicit Erotic Kill which was a German release which really borders on hardcore porno. Lina drinks the blood from her victims in a rather unique way, lets just say that the blood is drained south of the border. I've never seen that before but the rest I have, if not for the music this would a fairly standard Euro-Softcore Porn movie.

Stagefright - B

During the production of a truly bizarre play that involves a serial killer wearing a giant owl's head, interpretive dance, and some wickedly serious 80s Saxaphone Tunes, a crazed actor breaks out of a mental hospital where one of the actresses went to have her ankle looked at. Now that sound a little silly but hey actors aren't exactly that bright. Well the costume girl gets offed with a pick axe to the mouth, talk about a mouthful there. With all the clamour over her death the coke snorting Fosse-esque director decides to make a few changes and milk the publicity for all its worth. He holds a late night acting session for a select few actors and actresses and instructs his leading lady to hide the key so nobody can escape. Now I've seen a lot of horror movies before and that has to be one of the most creative ways of locking people into an area so they can be picked off by the killer, they did it to themselves. Well the leading actress becomes the second victim which really gets them into trouble because she was the only one who knew where the key was. Now they have to find the key and some how escape. The rest of the movie is pretty straight forward subtraction, one by one the actors get killed in some rather grisly ways including chainsaw, axe, and power drill. This movie was made in Italy but it lacks one very key Italian horror movie staple, naked women. Nobody gets all that naked in this movie despite the interpretive ballet is all about sex, and it is even more bizarre when you learn the executive producer was Joe D'Amato, the Italian king of horror sleaze and it was written by his buddy George Eastmen. I mean holy brain tumors Batman, these two guys are making a film that doesn't have any sex in it and even more insane is that nobody gets naked. Maybe by 1987 these two guys were so exhausted from seeing naked women that they just decided to never again make a movie with a naked woman in it, or a more believable scenario, brain tumors all around. Aside from the lack of naked ladies this is a good and at times extremely suspenseful movie with one of the most absurd monsters ever, a guy in a dance skin wearing a giant owl head, even more evidence for brain tumors. Directorial debut for Michele Soavi who would go on to make the cult fave the Cemetery Man.

Bloody Birthday - D+

Halloween meets Village of the Damned with an unhealthy mix of bad 70s clothing. I really think they need to put a warning label on movies if the 70s clothing gets too bizarre, they have warnings for language, violence, sex, why not bad fashion? This movie is as bare bones a slasher as can be. We have three killer ten year olds who go about murdering people at random and the only explanation giving is that they were born during a solar eclipse and this made them evil. It is kinda weird to have kids be vicious spree killers and it is even weirder when one charges the other two twenty five cents to watch her sister, the once MTV-VJ Julie Brown, strip naked and dance around. The movie isn't believable in the slightest and the lack of a good plot hampers it ever getting good. The movie has a cameo by famous actor Jose Ferrer as a nameless doctor, what he is doing in this movie is beyond me, he must have had some serious gambling debts or something that would make him be seen in this questionable movie and under his real name. A weird movie that is just plain bad, if you want horny teens being killed by a slasher watched Friday the 13th or Halloween, if you want killer kids watch Village of the Damned, if you want horrible 70s clothing watch an after school special.

Prom Night - C-

Canadian Slasher that stared Jamie Lee Curtis as she rode the wave of scream queen stardom that followed Halloween. Unfortunately it is not her best work, the movie seemed to hang like a millstone around everybody in the movie including Leslie Neilson, this was his follow up movie to Airplane talk about going in different directions. The movie is a revenge film that was turned into a slasher movie obviously to milk a few more bucks with the slasher craze. It is the first slasher movie to feature red herrings, several in fact, to the identity of the killer from the ultra creepy school janitor, to a catatonic burned psycho pedophile to Leslie Neilson himself. But everything in this movie goes about ten minutes too long, from the opening scene to the deaths on prom night, to the conclusion it was like they'd written a half an hour movie and desperately wanted to make it into a 90 minute feature. There are some rather funny scenes in the film that I doubt where intended but as the film ages things become accidentally funny, namely the fat curly haired bozo who drives the pimp van everything about him and his character is hilarious and terribly pathetic that you can't but laugh everytime you see him. The other laughable thing is the awful Carrie knock off plot with one of the popular girls and this John Travolta Saturday Night Feature reject the makers of this film were trying to rip off every horror movie of the last five years while making this. Watching the disco prom was rather surreal but only because I look upon disco as one of the shameful moments in our country's history, right next to Slavery and the Interment of the Japanese in World War 2. This D movie gets the C only for the fact that they tried for at least 2/3s of the movie to make us think everybody could be the killer, you always get points for creativity in my book.

Scarecrow Gone Wild - D+

The title alone should warn you that this movie is going to be bad but I thought it may be one of those so bad its good kinda situations but unfortuantely it isn't. The movie has a less used idea in the slasher world, the unstoppable killing machine is linked to a comatose scrawny nerd who was put into said coma by a bunch of jocks who hazed him a little too hard. After that is falls apart into a supremely subpar slasher. There really isn't any good nudity, it all seems tacked on, the gore isn't great either. When you remove nudity and gore you really pull the two main legs out from under the slasher film so you're left with acting and plot and guess what, this movie doesn't really have strength in either. The one interesting feature this film has is a guest appearence by Ken Shamrock, a big time UFC Champ as a sports captain, I'm not totally sure what sport it was but he does kick the ass of the scarecrow and kick it good. Probably one of the better scenes of the film, watching the UFC World Champ beat the living snot out of a poor stunt man for five minutes. I was hoping for something more than I got, this really needs to be watch only if you've watched everything else and you need a dose of slasher action.

Flesh For The Beast - B-

It is a fairly common setup, group of ghost hunters go into a rundown haunted house and are picked off one by one, but this has a twist, a kinky twist. The place isn't haunted by ghosts but Sucubuses or is it Sucubi. For those who don't know what that is, lets just say it a female demon that awakens a man's sexual desire so yes this movie has nudity in it. Directed by Terry West who is best known for the Seduction Cinema films like Lord of the G-String, Spiderbabe, and Witchbabe: The Erotic Witch Project 3. When I saw this I immediately said welcome to softcore country at least I'll see some naked women. But I was surprised he actually managed to make a horror movie about sucubi and have it not completely turn into a softcore farce. Yes there is nudity, yes there is sex, it is kinda hard to get around those when your dealing with this subject matter but it doesn't dominate the film, it is first and foremost a horror movie and it does a pretty decent job. It isn't exactly high art but I've seen a lot, lot, lot worse. The acting is very solid, I was convinced it would be cast with lots of softcore actors who chew on dialogue more than they say it but it was filled with actual actors including the guy that does the voice of Hank Venture on the Adult Swim Gem of the same name. I got a kick out of hearing Hank Venture in the guy's voice when he back into the corner and squealing 'The Power of Christ Compells You'. The heroine of the film is Jane Scarlett, supposedly the next big Scream Queen, which essentially dooms her to fail, nobody sets out to be a Scream Queen they are given the title for their accomplishments, think like an actor being given an honorary degree from some university. She is one of the weaker actors in the film, she is really nervous most of the film and it shows harshly but she seems have little trouble taking her clothes off, which does help her to become a real Scream Queen. All in all I was surprised by this little haunted house movie, it has more guts than boobs but it has both so it is a good B Grade Horror Movie. The one piece of trivia to watch out for, one of the documentarians is wearing a Sawa T-Shirt from Kite which makes sense because the movie is produced by Media Blasters who also released Kite.

Samhain - D-

Think Texas Chainsaw Massacre set in Ireland but Ireland is really Canada and the movie really sucks. The only thing that makes this movie even remarkable is the large number of porn stars in the movie, basically if they take their clothes off they are a porn star or Richard Greico. Why in gods' name the movie is set in Ireland is beyond me, other than the use of the Samhain legend and cannibal subplot, it could have been easily set in Canada or the moon it would have worked so much easier. The acting aside from the ever yummy Bobbie Phillips is beyond piss poor. I mean the acting is so horrid, and the writing makes it almost impossible to watch, one character is such a total dick that I could barely actual watch it. The pace sucks, we have two murders in the first three minutes and then nothing for 45 minutes out of a 80 minute movie but inbetween they cram in a million fake scares that it totally ruins everything. With the exception of the large number of porn stars in a non-porn movie I would have given this one a big fat F, I was attempted to give it an F+ but does that really exist?