The 10 worst horror movies I’ve seen

So, Halloween has come and gone, and already things are beginning to look a lot like Christmas again… So without further ado, and since I want Halloween to gain a little more steam, let’s keep talking about horror movies.  Now I’ve mentioned some good or at least enjoyable horror titles, but some people have always asked me which ones I like the least…  Ok, most of the time the just want to know what ones I hate the most and so here it is.  Some may be a little predicable, as I’ve probably talked about them before, but I’m laying it down on the line.  The rules are simple, one movie per franchise, only one remake, and I have to have actually sat through the whole movie at least once.  Now, with all that aside, lets start off with something that will probably piss people off.

10.    The Blair Witch Project.  Those that want to call me evil for adding this movie on here can frankly kiss my ass for all I care.  This is one of those movies where the hype and its clever viral marketing were I think WAY more interesting than the actual movie.  Though to give it credit, it was in interesting idea and in theory a good way to execute it.  What bugged me was that when I looked at the movie, I never really found it all that interesting.  I honestly found it to be really really dull.  None of the scares did anything for me and I just honestly didn’t see what the big deal was.  In the interest of fairness to all it did for the modern horror film AND the independent film industry it only barely makes the list, but being very very boring, and most importantly, NOT SCARY AT ALL… is a really disappointing thing for a horror film to be, and I just couldn’t not put this movie on the list.

9. The Happening.  Yeeeah.  This probably isn’t that much of a shock, if you are a living breathing human you know that this movie is terrible.  All you have to do is watch the trailer and you have all the worthwhile scenes of the movie.  Again it was, sort of an interesting idea, but the movie is just so laughably awful that it just mystifies you that the same guy behind something really good like “The Sixth Sense” would makes something this incompetent.  It’s just one dumb terrible idea after another and on top of all that, we have weak acting, just plain sloppy direction that makes this movie an utter joke.  And that’s the main reason it’s on the list, it’s just so insanely bad that it’s hilarious, only I don’t find it nearly as entertaining as say “Battlefield Earth”, but it comes awful close.  How can you possibly take something as stupid as Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg talking to a plastic plant at all seriously?

8. Friday the 13^th Part 8: Jason Take Manhattan.  THE TITLE!  SHE LIES!!!  In case you don’t want to take my word for it, this movie’s the lowest grossing of all the films in the series AND it was the last straw for Paramount studios as they unloaded the franchise off to New Line because of it.  So what makes this one the worst of Jason’s hacky- slashy- kill- the- pretty- young people outings?  One, it’s really dumb.  I mean the other movies were never masterpieces, but they were at least enjoyable or at the very least not instantly making you roll your eyes, but the moment the movie hits about the five minute mark, you know exactly two things are certain, one, this movie was seriously trimmed down to get an R rating, leading, plot holes and lots of deaths off camera.  But most importantly, you realize that the title, implying that Jason Voorhees is going to go on a massive rampage through New York city, was a cheat.  Yes, the last 15 minutes or so have Jason in NYC but he barely does anything once he’s there.  Also, this is the longest film in the franchise, clocking in at about an hour and 40 minutes, leaving us with about an hour and a half of nothing but a bunch of dumb teenagers on a boat.  Otherwise, it’s just a really bad slasher.  It’s totally generic and never reaches the heights of camp or make up effects the previous movies had.  I honestly think the only curiosity about this movie is that it’s Kelly Hu’s first major movie, and she’s not in it that much.  It’s just a stupid, misleading snooze-fest from start to finish.  Some fans really dislike “Jason Goes To Hell” for a lot of reasons, most of which I can understand if I don’t wholly agree with, but seriously, following this movie, you have to admit they at least tried something interesting.

7. Breeders.  This is just porn.  It’s porn trying to pretend that it’s an actual horror movie.  That’s it.  The premise is that there are a bunch of rapes that happen involving pretty women being attack by a guy in a bad rubber suit… I mean an alien.  That’s really all there is to this movies, there’s supposed to be this on going investigation thing to tie it all together, but the actual point of the movie is to get attractive women naked for no real reason, that’s it.  The box actually tries to sell the movie as a serious horror film, and that’s actually the reason I picked it up.  I figured if nothing else it’d be cheesy, but I actually felt pretty dirty after watching it.  It just likes to always take things that one extra step too far into just too uncomfortable to be sexy, but not intelligent or even just tasteful enough to be anything other than just total smut.  I have nothing against smutty movies for the sake of smutty movies, but this just wanted in vain to sell itself as something more.  But it’s just smut.  It’s not sexy, it’s just icky and stupid.

6. Devil.  Oh god this movie was torture to sit through!  There are bad horror movies, and then there are bad horror movies that like to slap you in the face with how much they suck every five minutes.  The premise of this movie makes no sense at all!  The idea that the DEVIL is going to show he is there to punish the wicked, by choosing to out right murder a bunch of people in an elevator, is about as clichéd as you get.  Then “Devil” decides to go that extra step with terrible and predictable dialogue, and the fact that about half way through, you realize that THE DEVIL(!) probably has much better targets.  Think about it, if the whole point of Satan offing all these people, is to prove to an unbelieving population he exists, wouldn’t it be better to say, kill a genocidal dictator?  Or a serial killer?  A cult leader praising a false idol?  I know the barest minimum of Christian theology and I was calling BS on this entire plot.  It’s like a bad “Twilight Zone” episode from that last attempt of resurrecting the series.  Again, I’d heard this was laughably bad ala “The Happening”, but God!  This was just insulting to all of our intelligence and I’m frankly glad it only had luke warm box office returns.

5. Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) *SIGH* yeah I don’t think this surprise anyone.  I really don’t have much else to add to what I’ve already said.  Basically I tried to separate my opinion about how it would size up on it’s own merits, and it still failed miserably as a horror movie, with all the call backs to the original movie just making me wish I was watching that instead.  I honestly hated this movie so much that even seeing clips in other reviews just makes me cringe.  I cannot stress how much I would love my $10 back from sitting through this movie.  As I have said many many many times, the only good thing about this movie, is that Jackie Earl Haley looks like he could be a good replacement for Robert Englund as Freddy Kruger, if only they could give him a script that was actually worth a damn.

4. Through the Eyes of a Stranger.  I got this movie in a boxed set with a bunch of horror films used for about $10.  It was one of those things that I just decided to watch on a lark one night and now it’s number four here.  This is an entire movie that works on its main character being a hypocritical idiot.  There’s a serial killer on the loose, she’s a reporter that’s made it quite clear to everyone that they should report ANY suspicious activity to the police, and all she does is play detective.  Hypocrisy on the character aside, this movie is just dull.  Its suspense is nonexistent and it may as well be telegraphing its climax with big flashy neon lights from the start.  It’s just a pointless, idiotic waste of an hour and a half.

3. Dario Argento’s Phantom of the Opera.  This is a two-for of disappointing.  It’s a director I really enjoy doing a terrible version of one of my favorite books.  I’m fairly forgiving when it comes to adaptations of novels, but when you take liberties that totally miss the point of the story that’s another thing entirely.  I was thinking someone that’s as much as of a visuals oriented director as him could really make something of this movie, but the set’s looked cheap, the phantom was just all wrong, and it just didn’t have any of the heart of the original story.  I cannot adequately describe the utter painfulness sitting through this load of crap.  It’s only an hour and a half of pure what the hell, and it’s not nearly as style as his other works like “Opera” or “Deep Red”.  This was just pointless, Julien Sands was actually not that bad in it though, again a better script would have been appreciated.

2. The Fourth Kind.  This is basically if you took “Paranormal Activity” or, well, “The Blair Witch” project and failed at knowing at all how these kinds of movies actually work.  I honestly don’t think of this as one movie, it’s more like two half movies squished together that are kind of telling the same story.   One half is a truly hilariously awful found footage movie, and the other a bland lifeless Hollywood version with a truly terrible lead actress (though it is Milla Jovovich, I don’t think they cast her for her acting ability.)  This is just a horribly dull and lifeless movie, that tries and fails to use a gimmick that has become a hot idea in recent days, but on top of that it’s just stupid.  It’s a poorly made movie, plain and simple.  It scores so high on this list because anyone that has the faintest idea of how to make a movie at all wouldn’t do ANY of the things they do in this one.

1. Hostel 2.  I FUCKING HATE THE HOSTEL MOVIES!!!  I really do!  I may despise the great majority of the “Saw” movies, but at least they tried to be something more than start torture porn.  Good god these movies are just awful.  They’re just so in your face about absolutely everything, and yet all they do is hold nothing but contempt for the audience.  And the sequel especially is guilty of this.  I can’t tell you how angry this movie gets me.  It’s just dumb, exploitive movie, with horrendous acting and some of the most unlikable characters I’ve ever seen in anything.  IT’s not even that I’m angry that this movie was sick, it’s more that I just hate when a horror movie purely thinks gore is what makes something scary.  Slasher movies, while they would fail or get predictable sometimes, at least made some attempt to build suspense, and “Saw” at least tried to have a story.  “Hostel 2” is just a pure mean spirited middle finger to horror fans from Eli Roth, and I honestly can’t do justice to how much I hate this movie without just ranting endlessly about the whole thing, and I honestly don’t feel like giving it that much thought.  It’s that bad.

So there it is.  The horror movie I absolutely hate the most.  Next time let’s get a little more fun, I’ll list out my all time favorite horror movies.   Until then folks!

10 underrated horror movies. Part 2

5. Leviathan.  This is one of many many “Alien” knock off, but honestly, this one is pretty much my favorite.  It’s about a mining team on the body of the ocean, that’s being lead by Robocop.  (ok, it’s just Robocop actor Peter Weller, but that just sounds way more funny and awesome.)  They find a sunken Russia battleship and on board is an experiment in human genetics to make a race of fish people… Really.  All hell breaks loose and it’s up to Robocop, Winston from “Ghostbusters” and a cute British woman to bring down the evil fish man creature before it can make it to the surface.  Yeah it sounds silly, but the movie actually takes itself pretty seriously, and that’s always welcome.  Yeah, if you’re petty you’ll just thumb your nose and dismiss this movie as an “Alien” clone, and yeah, it pretty isn’t hiding that, but at the same time it’s a really good monster flick.  The main attraction here is some above par acting, and really really good special effects from the late great Stan Winston.  Seriously, this movie is available to stream on Netflix, and it is well worth the hour and a half, you will not be disappointed.

4. The Burning.  This to me is the best straight forward slasher movie.  It has a great set up, in the form of Cropsy, a man burned in a prank gone wrong.  It has very likable characters including a VERY young Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld” fame, great make up effects from the make up genius Tom Savini.  It does that one thing you almost never see in the typical slasher movie, it gives you very VERY likable characters.  These characters actually feel like real people, and seeing them get killed actually makes you feel so sorry for them.  It’s how I’d like them to always be done.  It’s well paced, fun, interesting and it has a great story idea.  As a slasher movie, it’s really hard to find anything wrong with it.  IT just working really well and you should give it a look.

3. Opera.  I’m am a HUGE HUGE fan of Dario Argento’s older work.  His newer stuff has been pretty hit or miss with me, but back in the day, he made some damn good ones.  Opera is one such movie, think of it as kind of a version of “Phantom of the Opera” where the psycho is stalking the young singer… and then forcing her to watch him kill people.  No, I’m not even kidding about the forcing part, one of the most horrific images ever, he tapes sewing needles to her eye lids, so she can’t look away.  Added to that the music is really impressive, and it does one of the better takes on the classic story.  If you’re looking for a something kind of weird, but still awesome, “Opera” is that movie.  Pick it up, it’ll make a great double feature with “The Abominable Dr. Phibes”.

2. The Exocist 3.  This movie is just great.  No, I’m not kidding.  This movie is simply amazing.  It’s a great character study, at the center of which is the always amazing George C. Scott.  Brad Doriff, plays an imprisoned mental patient.  The movie has a great mystery at the center of it.  And holy shit, I cannot stress how hauntingly beautiful this movie is.  Taking place after the original “The Exocist”, this installment has had a somewhat a checkered past.  IT was written and directed by original author William Peter Blatty, who based most of the plot off his novel “Legion”  (Yes, like that terrible Paul Bettany movie I’ve previously reviewed.  Don’t even go there.)  However, during production, the producers figured, ‘Hey, this is a sequel, but it doesn’t have an exorcism in it… WE NEED TO FIX THAT!’  And to whatever idiot thought that, you deserve whatever is waiting for you in the dumb ideas circle of hell.  That aside, and the fact that the exorcism at the end comes pretty much out of nowhere, this movie is still amazing.  People want an unheard of horror movie?  THIS ONE!  It’s just a freaking amazing.  The only thing keeping it from number one, is that, well, most critics put it as there number one.  Because it’s being more and more discovered thanks to that, I’m giving it the second spot.  I feel that if I’m making an underrated list, I should give number one to a movie that I keep hearing people haven’t even HEARD of.  So without further ado…

1. Dog Soldiers.  This is a great horror movie.  It’s about a group of British soldiers that get ambushed by werewolves and have to hold up in an isolated cottage.  This movie has everything.  It’s that rare movie that is self aware, but in a good way.  Everytime the guys come up with an idea that might save them, something come up that keeps it from happening.  This movie is just amazing.  It has awesome effects, a fun story, and some seriously, SERIOUSLY good acting.  It’s just perfect.  It’s fun, it can be scary when it needs to be, and it just leaves you feeling so good after seeing it.  Seriously, if you can’t have fun seeing a movie that has a hard core commando guy getting into a fist fight with a werewolf, I don’t ever want to know you.  This should be the top of your list if you haven’t seen it yet.  It’s just awesome.

So that's my list, and it was hard to simply narrow it down.  Maybe next year I"ll do more movies next year.  Next time though, the bad news.  I count down the 10 worst horror movies I've ever seen.  Stay tuned!

10 underrated horror movies. Part 1.

And here we go, leaving the cheese behind us and moving on to the more substantial for those looking for genuinely interesting and yet no over played to the point of meaninglessness on TV.  So with that in mind here are the rules of this list.  1.  It has to be a horror movie that either no one has heard of, or that very few people seemed to have seen, at least in the regard of general public horror movie knowledge.  And 2, most importantly, it has to actually be good, as in you watch it feeling like you’ve seen a good movie, not just a good HORROR movie.  I’m also going to go out of my way not to name things I’ve either already mentioned as something to track down or reviewed as such, so allow me to again throw out my recommendations for:  “Ginger Snaps 1&2”, “Daybreakers”, “Martin” and “The Company of Wolves”.  Ok, now that that’s out of the way, the actual list.  Since I’m working hard on this, and that requires not only re-watching these movies, but also ranking and giving micro reviews, I’m going to do this in two parts.  So here’s part one.   Part two will follow later this week.

10.    The Japanese version of “One Missed Call”.  Thanks to the success of “The Ring”, a sad part of the remake trend going on in Hollywood is the idea of just taking a Japanese horror movie and doing it again without adding much, except maybe sucking.  This was one such movie, no, I haven’t seen the remake, that being said if you haven’t either, do yourself a favor and pick THIS movie up.  The premise is simple, a bunch of unexplained deaths are connected by a foreshadowing phone message received by the victims.  This movie is damn well shot, has some effectively disturbing imagery and a solid pace.  However, what I think really sets it apart is that where most horror movies would have the phenomenon dismissed by the general public, this movie chooses to go the opposite route and have everyone actually believe it.  It actually gives more suspense because it causes a great panic that just makes you even more interested in what’s happening.  The pay off is good, the story is  well played, and the movie just goes on to be a good idea well told.

9. “Audition”.  Yes, it’s another Japanese movie, but I promise it’s the last one.  Basically I like to describe this movie as “Fatal Attraction” if you put it on steroids, and then had it OD on meth.  A widower has finally decided that he should seek a new wife, at the advice of his friend he has a fake movie audition to pick the one he wants.  He chooses a quiet, meek and unassuming type of woman and begins to court her… Then things get weird.  How weird?  I’m not telling, you need to track this movie down as I feel it has one of the greatest build ups in modern horror and yet the movie is so dense and well made that it’s open to several kinds of interpretations over multiple viewings.  It share it’s director with the previous entry, Takashi Miike, and you really get the sense that this guy really knows his craft and that he’s just a superb film maker.  Not to mention this is one of my favorite movies of all time.  It’s just a weird and interestingly wild ride from start to finish.

8. “Near Dark”.  It’s a vampire movie with half the cast of “Aliens”.  That should be enough to get you to watch it, but if I needed to share more I’d say that it to me is one of the better done vampire movies.  Being one of those rare movies that tries to mix genres and ACTUALLY succeeds, it’s got great intense scary moments, balanced by well directed action sequences.  Those fans of director Katherine Bigelow’s Oscar winning “The Hurt Locker” should probably get off your ass and pick this one up, as it showcases her talents were evident from the very beginning as this was her first outing as a solo director.  It has a good grasp on how to incorporate the vampire mythos and it has some absolutely gorgeous photography.  Those dreading the fact that “Twilight” has basically ruined the vampire genre oh yourself this movie.  It’s just a damn solid vampire story.

7. “The Abominable Doctor Phibes”.  While I’ve made it no secret that I absolutely HATE the “Saw” movies, I can at least acknowledge some of the appeal.  The idea of a killer that comes up with elaborate traps to kill people is interesting, and it’s an unfortunate extension of the slasher genre’s appeal.  Some like to think of it as the whole morbid fascination with death thing and blah blah blah.  I sadly have to just agree with the idea that it’s nothing but a different kind of porn.  Now, if you want to see how you take the concept of a killer that does elaborate traps to kill people and see how it’s actually done well, you need look no further than “The Abominable Doctor Phibes”.  Starring the always awesome Vincent Price in the title role, the film chronicles the tale of a man bent on taking out all the doctors he blames for the death of his wife.  To express the biblical nature of his rage, he takes them out using various interpretations of the 10 plagues of Egypt.  All the actors turn in good performances and while the film seems to want to dance into the realm of camp/cheese now and then, it’s still got a cast that takes the material like it’s actual scripture and really sell this impossible idea as some what plausible.  It’s a really interesting flick and I feel one of Price’s best performances.  It has a sequel, “Doctor Phibes Rises Again” which is most certainly higher on the camp scale, though still I feel is enjoyable.  Both films are worth a look this Halloween, I promise you will not be disappointed.

6. Trick-r-Treat.  So, there is a sub-genre in horror that I think needs more attention.  A sub-genre that I feel can truly showcase a director’s horror chops, or in some cases, allow several directors to collaborate on the same goal.  It’s the anthology movie, a film that is made up of more than one self contained story that are all tied into one another by one unifying theme.  I had oh so many movies I wanted to put in here, the first two “Creepshow” movies, the original “Tales from the Crypt” and it’s sequel “The Vault of Horror”, but I decided on this movie as a place holder for all of them for a couple reasons, firstly, it’s the most recent example of this kind of movie.  But mostly I picked it because it was one of those movies that’s underrated because it never really took off.  It was produced by Bryan “X-men 1 & 2” Singer’s Bad Hat Harry production company, and seemed to be getting a release with advertisement on the DVD release of “300”, but sadly that never happened and after touring the festival circuit for a spell the movie landed on DVD.  It’s a shame because the movie has a great cast and all the stories work really well, being tied together by happening on the same night and being seen by the same odd figure.  Honestly if you want a really good Halloween movie that takes place on the actual night that ISN’T John Carpenter’s classic, it’s this one.

Lunatic’s Top 10 cheesy horror movies

Happy October readers!  The lunatic is back and like numerous critics I’m here to give you a bit of a skinny on horror movies.  Since I’d rather not bog you down with too many details, or spoil things greatly, I’m going to do a series of top ten lists that will hopefully give you some ideas of things to track down on Netflix, or torrent, on and god bless you if this is the case, go to a video store and rent.  That stated let’s get into the first, and honestly my favorite, of the lists:  MY top 10 cheesy horror movies.  Now I feel that maybe I should lay down a little definition here, namely of what a cheesy horror movie is.  In terms of horror movies, Cheese seems to have many many synonyms;  Schlocky, campy, kooky, etc.  For me, it’s definition is pretty straight forward, it’s pretty much a silly, or stupid idea for a movie that has no right to be any good, and most times usually isn’t, but because of any number of reasons it’s just really really entertaining.  Things like old black white 50’s sci fi movies fall neatly into this category, and so naturally with the horror having the restraint of a five year old on a sugar high when it comes to bad ideas, a lot of it’s content does as well, and so since Halloween’s meant to be fun and is best spent with friends, here are what I feel are some of the 10 best movies to watch during this movie that celebrates the lavishly macabre.

10.    Piranha:  No, not the movie that came out last summer, I mean the one from 1978 that was produce by one of the masters of cheese Roger Corman.  I went over his deal back in my list of guilty pleasures so I won’t tan that gent today and instead talk about the film itself.  Basically “Piranha” is one of the literally hundreds of movies that have come into existence thanks to the massive success of “Jaws”.  Admittedly, most of these movies are really really bad, though I always find some amusement in them, “Piranha” however, is actually pretty descent.  The premise is that of two people that are looking for missing persons in an area and in the process they unleash a giant school of piranha into a river and it proceed to wreak havoc and it’s up to our two heroes to stop them.  The movie actually has some pretty good effect for the time and most especially on the budget that is clearly limiting.  It has some memorable performances from B movie icons like Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) and Dick Miller (Gremlins 1 & 2, Bucket of Blood, The Howling, the guy gets around.)  It’s also well directed by Joe Dante who later went on to make things like “Gremlins” and several other projects that were actually pretty good, though not well known.  The movie was a pretty good hit for what it was and spawned a sequel “Piranha 2: The Spawning” (James ‘Aliens, Terminator’ Cameron’s first movie as a director.  Seriously.)  which isn’t that good, but still fun to watch, as well as two remakes.  As far as “Jaws” knock offs go this one pretty much stands out as the best, and I highly recommend it for those looking for a fun time.

9. The Blob.  This entry is a two for as I think both versions of  “The Blob” are very good.  The plot is basically the same in both movies, a mound of alien slime comes down in a meteor and starts to devour the people of a small town, getting bigger and bigger the more it consumes.  The only people that know it at first are a group of teenagers that no one believes until it’s too late.  Both movies have really good casts, the remake notably having one of the first roles of Shawnee Smith, better known as Amanda from the “Saw” movies. (I still can’t decide if that was a step up or down for her career after this.)  The original was also one of Steve McQueen’s earliest roles and it actually showcases the kind of charisma that he was known for in his later roles, which if you’re a film buff like me this is just fascinating.  But we’re talking about cheesiness and each of these movies has their own version of it.  The original’s charm really comes from the primitive effects and how they can be simultaneously impressive and yet laughable as it seriously looks like the actors are being chased by a giant mass of jell-o most of the movie, and the remakes comes from the fact that it is extremely over the top with the violence and gore.  I personally prefer the original version for it’s more interesting character and fun, dated dialogue, but the remake is worth a look too.  Take your pick, or even better, double feature!  It’s Halloween dammit!  Live a little!

8. Killer Klowns from Outer Space.  This movie really shouldn’t need much explanation; it’s about killer aliens that resemble demonic clowns coming to earth to feed on humans.  That’s really it, they use all different kinds of over the top weapons and methods and it’s just a silly good time.  Yeah the movie is stupid, but honestly, are you really expecting much from something called “Killer Klowns from Outer Space”?  Honestly if this movie wasn’t over the top and silly I would have been more disappointed.  Bottom line, this is pure unadulterated fun and I can’t recommend it enough especially if beer and a good sense of humor is involved in your movie nights.

7. Return to Horror High.  No, this is not a sequel to anything, I thought the same thing when I first stumbled across this one in the used DVD section of my local record store and I figured with a cast that includes an early George Clooney and a post Brady Bunch Maureen McCormick, how could this not be cheesy awesome fun?  And it is, oh god it is.  This movie knows exactly what it is and loves to play with the fact that it’s a movie, by having the plot being a movie about making the movie while making a bunch of not entirely unwarranted jabs at the then prominent slasher genre.  (oh for the days where something that was cheesy fun wasn’t buried by shit like “Hostel” and “Saw”.)  It’s kind of like the little movie that could.  It knows what it is and it lets loose, all the jokes work and when it lets in the horror elements they work for the most part too, making the humor that much funnier.  I paid about $5 used for this and it was worth every penny, and it makes me wonder if Clooney remembers this.  Funny how a lot of well known actors start out in horror movies isn’t it?

6. Jason Goes To Hell.  Yeah, it was kind of inevitable that a Friday the 13^th movie would end up on here, I mean they live off of the cheese factor they have, and I really feel that this one is the funniest.  Jason gets blown up by special forces in the opening and most of the plot centers around him going around possessing people in the hopes of finding a host that can fully resurrect him.  All the while he is being chased by a some what insane bounty hunter, who for the record, is the most awesome character ever in the franchise.  It’s got a lot of hysterical lines and some fun over the top acting and when I feel like seeing Jason hack his way through teenagers, I grab this movie.  Hell it one of the earlier movies that my favorite effects house, KNB, worked on and they did some very nice work here.  If you must see on of the Jason movies, I highly recommend this one, it’s one of the more interesting and entertaining ones.

5. Dr. Giggles.  Now, if you just want a straight forward one off slasher, “Dr. Giggles” is your movie.  It has an over the top killer played by the awesome Larry Drake (remember him from “Darkman”?) and it has some very creative kills and a lot of clichés played for laugh in what amounts to the perfect tongue and cheek style slasher.  There really isn’t much more to say, this is one of the better slasher and if you don’t take it too seriously it’s a lot of fun, check it out.

4. Motel Hell.  The movie that had the desire to try and be what essentially amounts to a spoof of the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and damned if this movie isn’t funny!  It’s a really dark kind of humor, but it all works.  The plot is basically a girl is in a car crash and is saved but slowly starts to learn that her saviors aren’t exactly all there upstairs, especially in there obsession with their home made Bar-B-Que and it’s “secret” ingredient.  This is probably one of the most quotable movies on the list, most especially the line that became the film’s tagline:  “Takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s Fritters!”  I love this movie and the DVD comes packaged with a really good psychological thriller called “Deranged” and I highly recommend snagging it up, you won’t be disappointed.

3. The Night Stalker/The Night Strangler.  Another double movie DVD and what basically amounts to a two movie pilot for one of my favorite TV Shows of all time;  “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” In which, Darren “dad from ‘A Christmas Story’” McGavin plays Carl Kolchak, an investigative journalist that has a knack for always ending up stumbling onto stories involving the supernatural.  These movies, and later the show, have been acknowledged as one of the biggest influences “X Files” creator Chris Carter had when planning out that show and you can see it’s influence watching it now.  Also, aside from being just a hoot and a well executed, if slightly tired premise, the night stalker movies make for a fun watch as Kolchak gets in way over his head again and again and must rely on his cunning and dumb luck to make it out alive.  The movies have a notably darker tone than the TV shows, mostly because they were originally meant as one off movies and only spawned the show because the movies were giant ratings generators.  “The Night Stalker” follows Carl as he tracks down a vampire in Las Vegas, and “The Night Strangler” was basically the same movie except with an alchemist in Seattle.  Both were written by the awesome Richard Matheson and McGavin just owns the role of Kolchak.  Well worth the watch, and a lot of fun around this time of year.

2. The Stuff.  This movie is about sentient killer ice cream trying to take over the world.  I’m serious, that’s the plot.  Would you believe me if I said that the movie is actually really good?  I know, I wouldn’t believe me either but seriously, this movie is just great.  It’s basically a weird hybrid of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and the previously mentioned “The Blob”.  It has a solid cast and relishes in good social satire about marketing and American commercialism in the 80’s.  I mean where else do you get to see Paulie from “Goodfellas” take flamethrowers to a giant glob of Hagaan Dais ice cream?  That’s just too awesome to miss.

1. Night of the Creeps.  I’m not going to beat around the bush, this movie is amazing.  It’s one of those movies that you can tell everyone involved took the ludicrous material 100% seriously, not only that had fun making the actual movie and it just one of those things that really really shouldn’t work but in a strange way does.  The premise is that in the 1950’s, an alien parasite gets released on Earth (really.)  and infects a young frat boy who is then put into cryogenic storage until the 80’s when a couple of frat pledges inadvertently let him out and release the parasite out to the campus.  (really.)  It’s up to a hard edged detective, a co-ed, and her dorky love interest to kill the alien menace and save the world as we know it.  I have no words folks, this is B movie awesomeness at its finest.  It’s just a really impressive well made movie and has basically served as inspiration for a lot of other movies down the line, most notably the equally fun 2006 film “Slither” (Nathan Fillion versus a giant carnivorous slug monster, enough said.)  This is just one of those movies that’s sadly become a forgotten classic and I just can’t recommend it enough.  It’s well written, well directed and just a ton of fun.  Find it!  The DVD is loaded with extras and isn’t that expensive, it’s just an all around fun time.

This concludes this list, but fear not!  I shall return with a list of the top 10 horror movie I feel don’t get quite the attention they should next time.  Until then, this is the cinema lunatic saying Happy Halloween!

Darkman

You know, back in 2001 when the hype behind the first “Spider Man” movie was hitting full force, I was hit with my first moment of movie geek self awareness.  A group of my friends and I were sitting down to lunch, chatting up coming movies as my more movie inclined friends were want to do, and the subject of the upcoming super hero movie came up.  One of my friends mentioned this:  “I can’t see why they gave it to Sam Raimi, I mean, why give it to the guy that’s only really known for ‘Evil Dead’?”  That’s when I piped in, “Because he did ‘Darkman’.”  I was the only one that knew about this movie apparently and that was just a moment of personal pride for me.

I digress, “Darkman” was a 1990 mid-low budget action movie directed and co-written by Sam Raimi.  The story behind this lost gem of the masked hero genre, is that Raimi wanted to make a movie version of the pulp radio drama “The Shadow” but was unable to get the rights, so he just threw his hands up and said “Screw it, I’ll make my own dark, pulp style super hero!” (not actual quote).  This film was the result, basically taking influences from things like The Shadow, but also the old universal horror movies most especially “Phantom of the Opera” and in fact I’ve summed this movie up as a super hero version of Phantom more than once.  The premise is that a scientist, played by Liam Neeson, is developing a new form of prosthetic that basically acts as a skin substitute for people to far gone for traditional skin grafts, the only problem is that the material is sensitive to UV light and only lasts 99 minutes before it melts.  Tragically, due to circumstances beyond his control, his lab is blown up by gangsters with him inside and he ends up with burns covering almost half of his body.  He then ends up as a John Doe and is subjected to a new medical treatment that involves serving the pain receptors to his brain and due to lots of other medical techno-babble, he basically doesn’t stop producing adrenaline giving him enhanced strength and endurance.  Armed with this and his ability to replicate other people’s faces, he goes onto to seek revenge against his attackers and tries to re-establish his connection with his girl friend.

This movie is really damn good, it’s not perfect, but it’s extremely well done.  The movie moves at a good pace and has plenty of well built up and executed action beats peaking with a crazy chase towards the conclusion involving Darkman hanging off a helicopter.  A lot of this goes back to the two things, the cast and the director.  Most of the time in late 80’s/early 90’s the things that, depending on your opinion, kills the movie is that the actors tend to either be really really bad or not taking the movie seriously enough.  I personally feel that even if you want to make fun of bad or over the top acting, it’s better when the people involved take their work seriously, part of why I like watching “Battlefield: Earth” so much is that even though his performance is insanely stupid and bad, John Travolta is taking himself so seriously that he makes it real entertaining.  The same kind of thing can be applied here, only here it’s a movie that’s kind of silly, but the actors take it at face value and honestly try and make it work seriously.  Liam Neeson in particular is praise worthy playing the title role, a part that was actually written for Bruce Campbell, and you can really tell this from how the character plays out.  But Neeson is able to pull off the over the top moments and add a tragic depth to them that, while I love Bruce Campbell, I don’t think Campbell could have pulled off as good and Neeson just has such great chemistry with the awesome Frances McDormand.  Likewise Larry Drake really goes whole hog on the villain Durant, he’s just a slimy, evil for the sake of evil gangster character that makes you feel that while Darkman is somewhat an anti-hero, these bad guys really really have it coming.

All these performances are well used by Raimi who I seriously think does some of his best work here, the man clearly had a low budget, but you got every penny of that money on the screen and it was really entertaining.  His kinetic style really makes you laugh and glue yourself to the screen because it’s just super entertaining.  This energy is kept up by what I think it one of Danny Elfman’s better scores where he comes up with themes and atmosphere that’s just awesome to listen to.

I really don’t think I could say this any more loudly folks, “Darkman” is just awesome.  It’s fun, dark, entertain and a great little super hero action flick.  Check it out.

4.5 duplicated bad guys out of 5.

Since it’s October now, I have a lot of people that ask me about horror films to see and which to ignore, so coming up is going to be a bunch of top 10 lists, starting later this week/sometime next week with the top cheesy horror movies, followed by a list of the top 10 underrated horror movies, the 10 worst I’ve ever seen and finishing off with my own top 10 favorites.  Get ready for it!

Troll Hunter

Hm.  Mothra, Werewolves, Vampires, and now trolls…  I really have been a monster kick lately haven’t I?  Anyway what can I say about “Troll Hunter”?  At the most simple you can describe it as a Norwegian and much less nauseating version of “Cloverfield”.   Don’t get me wrong, I liked the idea behind “Cloverfield”, but good god!  There’s shaky cam and then there’s, well “Cloverfield”.  But really the similarities are only superficial in that it’s a found footage movie about people seeing giant monsters.

The main plot focuses on a group of film students (meaning that there is little to no excessive shaking of the camera.) that find a man named Hans while they are filming a documentary on bear pouching.  It turns out that Hans is actually a government sanctioned hunter of the trolls spoken of in ancient Norse mythology, which the government has been denying the existence of for years.  That’s really the movie’s big hook, that the rules of troll mythology are actually real rules and the movie goes in depth about several aspects of it in a scientific way.  For example, they explain why it is, that trolls will turn to tonen if expose to sun light and the titular hunter’s main weapon is a giant UV lamp that he carries.  Also, Hans stresses that it’s very important that everyone involved not be Christian as the trolls apparently can smell the blood of a Christian man.  Touches like this make “Troll Hunter” as intriguing to watch as it is entertaining.

I’m not going to beat around the bush on this folks, “Troll Hunter” is a really REALLY good movie.  The cast is all believable, as far as I can tell since I don’t speak Norwegian.  In particular Otto Jespersen as Hans, who plays the man as world weary and cold, jaded to the years upon years he has been working in this job and Jespersen really makes it apparent the toll it’s taken on him emotionally.  In addition director André Øvredal really works hard behind the camera, building up each of the troll sequences so that they are never redundant or boring, but also making the in between dialogue scene stand out as well, this guy is a real talent and I hope this movie leads to great things for him.  The effects used to render the trolls may not look that impressive as this movie was made on a tight budget, but they are well executed effects and I think that the execution, not the actual detail on the things face is what makes a good effect, and the ones from the climax of the film are just out of this world impressive in terms of set pieces and effects.

This review really isn’t going to be that long because there’s A LOT to this movie and I don’t want to spoil it because I really encourage everyone to go out and rent it.  It’s one of my favorite movies released in the states this year.  It’s well thought out, brilliantly directed and just a power house monster flick that frankly we are very lucky to still get anymore.  Seriously, give this movie a watch!

5 Trolls out of 5

Next review:  Darkman

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

You know, as a huge bastion of movie knowledge, I get asked for recommendations ALL the time.  Especially around Halloween, where I really should just start charging for the sheer amount of lists I end up writing, and two movies I always, ALWAYS recommend are the 2001 cult film “Ginger Snaps” and its 2003 sequel “Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed”.  These are the epitome of great horror movies.  The first film centering around two sisters, one of whom is slowly turning into a werewolf in a not all that subtle, but still very well done, metaphor for puberty.  It was a solidly paced, well written horror movie with great performances and amazingly pulled off make up effects.   It was so good an idea that in 2009, “Jennifer’s Body” tried the exact same plot, and failed hilariously.  It came out and made some waves at festivals and did pretty well on DVD so a couple years later two sequels were made back to back.  “Ginger Snaps 2” was a sequel that I was actually not really looking forward to because, as I have come to learn, when a good horror film gets a sequel it’s rather redundant and underwhelming.  This was the exception, I recommend it just as much as the first one, actually I recommend watching both of them in one sitting, it’s quite interesting.  This time, Ginger’s (werewolf girl from movie one.) sister Brigitte is the one turning.  She’s taking steps however by injecting herself with monkshood which is delaying the transformation, but in hot pursuit is a male werewolf intent on mating with her.  Not helping matters is when she ends up in a rehab center and her injections are taken away.  This movie is how I’d love all horror sequels to be done.  It ups the stakes, it adds growth to the characters, it takes where the original started and keeps going replacing the puberty metaphor with drug addiction and withdrawal, not to mention this ending is just perfect, creepy and totally not going to be spoiled here.

            What is going to be talked about here is the third sequel, “Ginger Snaps Back:  The Beginning”, which as the rather dumb title suggests, is more of a prequel set during frontier times.  Shot right after “Ginger 2”, we find our two heroines Brigitte and Ginger wandering through a forest after the coach they were traveling in has crashed.  They come across a Fort where the men are constantly fighting werewolves and things are looking bleaker by the minute as the girls arrive and Ginger is once again bitten.

            So how is the movie?  *sigh* it’s really disappointing.  Don’t take that the wrong way, it’s not a terrible movie by any means, I’ve seen and reviewed far far worse, but following on the heels of two horror movies I would give either 5’s or at the very least 4.5’s to respectively?  This is really remarkably underwhelming.

Let’s start with the good, Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins are incredible as Ginger and Brigitte like always.  The movie has a very gothic, fairy tale-like atmosphere to it that kept giving me flashbacks to Neil Jordan’s excellent “The Company of Wolves” (WATCH THAT, NOW!) and ANYTHING that can make that claim is doing something right.  The make up effects are still great, many of the supporting bit characters are very well performed, and the film has a very interesting conclusion.

But, as I said this movie was not nearly as good as the other two.  I find it hard to really say why this is, since it had a lot of things that I liked about it.  Like the camera work and the costume and production designs, are all spot on, so what’s wrong with it?  The script, that’s what.  It’s just so lazy!
  This movie is sadly padded, not as padded as things like “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” but the movie really doesn’t go anywhere.  I kept waiting for the plot to start, but it just never seemed to happen until about the halfway point and even then the movie still drug like a sloth on the back of a turtle.  It was just a clichéd “group of sexist and superstitious men blaming all their ills and bad luck on the arrival of two women.” Type of story, even though that makes no sense as it was implied that the fort has been fighting off werewolf attacks for awhile before the girls were even lost in the woods! Not helping things are the stereotype priest character that is the main instigator of the whole deal.  This character is just ridiculous and has no right to exist other than to give this movie a cheap way to build tension, one that I might add, barely works.  Every single time the movie looked like it was going somewhere, the priest would do something or something else would happen that basically made this movie have the same five or six scene played on a loop!  It gets really old even faster than you'd think.    

There’s a lot of good elements here, but they’re going to waste because this script is just a badly written cliché that’s hoping its visual aesthetic will make up for its short comings.  It’s a lot like how I felt about Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” now that I think about it, only not QUITE as much of a train wreck.  This movie had a lot of potential but it never really rises to the occasion to take advantage of it.  It’s not a terrible watch, but as a big fan of the other movies it’s almost inexcusable how just plain old average it is.  I would recommend it, if only for the cinematography and performances, but I would much rather you go out and watch, or re-watch, the first two movies instead.

2.5 lycanthropes out of 5.

Next time:  Troll Hunter.

Fright Night (2011)

You’d think that from latest year’s rather incendiary and hate filled review of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake that I have a deep and passionate hatred for horror remakes in general, especially lately with nearly every horror movie that comes out these days being a remake, but don’t take that to mean that I hate remakes in general. That said there are things that I feel a remake should be held to. For starters, a good remake should start off with the same idea as the original, but then use that premise to do its own thing. The original “Fright Night” was a cheesy and fun vampire movie from 1985, and it was a basic boy who cried wolf story. Charlie Brewster starts to suspect his new neighbor is actually a vampire and when no one believes him he goes to the TV horror host Peter Vincent (played wonderfully by the late great Roddy McDowall) to take care of the problem, but in the midst of this, the vampire Jerry Danridge (Chris Sarandon) is in hot pursuit. It’s a solid flick but not without it’s flaws and it’s very of it’s time. So how is the remake? It’s actually really good. The movie takes the same basic premise and goes another direction with it. In the original Charlie’s played as a bit more of a nerd, which works fine but there were things to him that still felt a little odd like how he goes to Vincent thinking he’s a real vampire hunter, fine if he was like 11 or 12, but this kid’s in high school. In the new movie Anton Yelchin play’s Charlie is much more like, well, any character Shia LeBeouf has ever played. But what makes Charlie in the new Fright Night work is that Yelchin can play him with a little more charisma than LeBeouf tends to bring to his parts. He’s mostly a FORMER nerd that’s started to break into the cooler cliques thanks to his hot girl friend Amy played by Imogen Poots. Most of the nerdiness and early suspicion of Danridge actually comes from his friend Ed played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse who is also good and has basically perfected playing these kinds of characters at this point. But the real stars are the vampire and vampire hunter. I’ve never been a huge fan of Colin Farrell but I’ve also never really hated him save for parts that were just very poorly written anyway, but here he’s great. He adds just the right amount of malice, charm, and sheer insanity, not to mention he’s yet another vampire that actually ACTS like a vampire (suck it “Twilight”!) A lot of the movie’s suspense really comes from the fact that Farrell is just really damn intimidating. All this said, he’s totally blown away by David Tennant as the new Peter Vincent, who plays the character as pretty much a spoiled play boy/occult scholar/vampire hunter/ Vegas night club act and when he’s on screen you just can’t help but love this guy. He is really funny and you can tell Tennant is having a hell of a lot of fun with the part. However though Tennant steals the show with the part that added attention does drag up pretty much the only flaw I have with the movie which is that with all the things to make Vincent work in a time where TV horror hosts don’t exist anymore it does seem a bit like this is reaching, and while it is a little bothersome, it never becomes a deal breaker as the rest of the script is well written and the movie keeps a solid pace and I actually feel it does a lot better job tension with it than the original did. The director Craig Gillespie really seems to get that this movie works better if you have a gradual mixing of the horror and comedy, the film opens in a manner that’s indicative of a horror movie, but when the movie’s in its down time the characters get to be quirky and fun and it makes the audience actually give a damn what happens to them. Which is how a horror film should work, though these days rarely does. Final verdict is that “Fright Night” is the first truly good horror remake to come out in a long while. It’s atmospheric and well paced with a solid cast that all really bring their A game and if no other reason you should see it to be reassured that while “Twilight” is pretty much the worst thing to happen to vampires as far as pop culture, at least there are people that still know how it’s done and what really makes it work. Hell, even if you like “Twilight” Farrell’s sex appeal as a vampire should have gotten you in the seats already anyway, just don’t expect him to sparkle. (And no, I don't care what your reason is Stephanie Meyer, you will never ever convince me that was a good idea.)\

4.5 fangs out of 5.

 Next up Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning.

Rebirth of Mothra/Trigun Badlands Rumble

I’ve already said that I’m a fan of Godzilla and due to this I have recently be looking into other movies that fight into the genre the big G occupies, known as daikaiju (Giant Monsters.). I mentioned back when I was talking about “Godzilla: Final Wars” that I have a particular fondness for the movies of the Heisei era (Roughly 1984 to 1995ish) that I started looking into other things from that particular time period to expand my horizons in. The first thing I picked up was “Rebirth of Mothra” which peaked my interest because, well, Mothra has always kind of been the silliest of Godzilla’s enemies, with the possible exception of Hedorah the giant sludge monster. My first thought was wondering how Mothra would fair in her own movie again as she was first seen in “Mothra” in 1961 (no I haven’t seen it, but it could still be potential review material.) before taking full time work in the Godzilla movies. How was it? This movie is just weird. Not weird on the level as something like a David Lynch film or early Coen brothers movie, but still really damn weird. Featuring things like Mothra’s twin fairies riding on a miniature version of Mothra called Fairy and then getting into what can only be described as a dog fight with another, evil fairy riding what I went on to call the flying Derp-asaurus (according to Wikipedia it’s really called Garugaru but I can’t recall a specific time that they said it in the film) The plot is that Mothra has laid an egg to continue on her work as Guardian of Earth, draining a massive amount of her life-force. But at the same time a logging company has uncovered a prison containing a great evil sealed long ago and I’m sure you can see where this is going if you have a working brain. However, the plot isn’t really what daikaiju films are about, it’s the monster on monster battles that bring in the audience and as such having a stock plot is not that big a deal, but half the time this feels like a balls to the wall monster battle and the other half is like a bad Disney movie about a family coming together. That said the effects are all good and it’s all fun if you like that kind of thing, but there really isn’t much to say other than it’s an average at best monster flick that doesn’t do anything significantly special or different other than a few wtf moments that are more just odd than entertaining, I recommend it if you really like Mothra but that’s about it.

3 little fairies out of 5

 Since I had little to say on this choice of movie for this week, and it took me awhile since the last post. I’ll fill out this one with another review, and since we’re in Japan this time, let’s talk anime. “Trigun” is a famous manga by Yasuhiro Nightow about a lone gunman named Vash the Stampede, though in contrast to the typical stereotype of the uber gun man that can kill six people before anyone else could fire a shot, Vash actually hates violence and has sworn to never kill anyone. The story is much more about how he travels the frontier world of Gunsmoke and changes peoples lives for the better while trying to come to terms with a dark past that hasn’t quite finished with him the way he’s finished with it. It was adapted into a very well received anime series and just last year we got a follow up to the show in the form of a feature length animated movie. Done by studio Madhouse, who also did the original series, the animation is very fluid with great attention to detail and characters that never go off model, not to mention fight scenes and gun fights that would make even the great John Woo blush. The story is such that 20 years in the past Vash gets caught up in a bank robbery where the gang turns on their leader, who has now come back seeking revenge. Along the way he runs into old friends MillyThompson and Meryl Strife, but also fellow gun slinger Wolfwood appears as the body guard of the gang leader, Gasback. Also along for the ride is Amelia, a female bounty hunter that Vash can’t seem to leave alone. “Trigun: Badlands Rumble” is the kind of thing that I’d like to see more of when it comes to action movies. It’s serious when it needs to be, but it can be really funny without being stupid, unlike some other movie I saw this summer that I promise I will stop going on about, and it also knows how to make the action pop and get you on the edge of your seat. I went to a screening of this movie that was dubbed because while it is originally Japanese, I strongly prefer Trigun’s dub if for only for one reason, Johnny Young Bosh IS Vash. The way this character is, equal parts serious goof ball, bad ass and philosophical mentor, is really really hard to pull off without having the right balance and while in Japanese on the show it’s ok, it worked so much more for me when Bosh was doing it because he just seems to feel comfortable with the role in that way people like Harrison Ford naturally just slid into the roles of Han Solo and Indiana Jones. All the other people do the job just fine though as a fan of the original series I was rather disappointed when I found out that Jeff Nimoy wasn’t voicing Wolfwood in the dub but I’m just nit picking at this point. The point is that “Trigun: Badlands Rumble” is well worth the watch, I dare say even if you don’t like anime you should give this a watch. It’s fun, funny and well just plain old fashioned entertaining. At this point it’s not out on DVD yet, though it will be available September 27. Track it down if you can.

 4.5 trick shots out of 5

 Next up: Fright Night (2011)

Guyver 2: Dark Hero

You may have been noticing that I have been somewhat lagging in between my reviews. The reason is really because I’m getting to a point were I’ll see a newer movie on DVD or in theaters and I’ll really have nothing to say. Either because it’s just aggressively average and all I can say is that it doesn’t suck, or there just isn’t really enough to make a review out of. You have no idea how hard it is to write a review for something as intensely mediocre as “Skyline”. But the real reason that I’m having trouble is that, well, I’m really not all that interested in a lot of the new movies coming out. I’ve honestly always been way more interested in the obscure and foreign, especially lately. Yeah, go ahead and call me an elitist film snob, I really don’t care. This is my blog, I will use it how I want, and talk about what interests me. So in that vain, let’s take a brief trip to Japan.
Bio-Booster Armor Guyver originally started life in the 80’s as a manga written by Yoshiki Takaya. Its story is that of a high school student named Shō Fukamachi, who finds a weird object that attacks him and grants him a powerful armor called The Guyver. However, it is an item highly sought after by the Chronos organization who send wave after wave of shape shifting monsters called Zoanoids to retrieve it from Shō, threatening his family and friends in the process.
Guyver gained a fair amount of popularity in Japan, spawning two OVAs (the Anime equivalent of Direct-To-Video/DVD) a feature film called “Out of Control” which was totally fine as stand alone movie, despite ending on a cliff hanger. And two separate seasons of six episodes each, which have some spotty animation and a hilariously bad dub, but are still enjoyable in their own right. The most recent iteration was a 26 episode televised Anime series that ran from 2005 to 2006.
I’m not here to talk about any of those however, at least not at this time. I’m here to talk about the two live action films produced by New Line Cinema in the early 90’s. Due to the popularity over seas, the still relatively small film company picked up the American film rights and handed the keys to Special Make up Effects Artists Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang, here giving their first go at directing. For a first shot, it’s actually a pretty damn good effort, the action is well shot and the fight choreography is really good, especially for something that clearly didn’t have a glorious budget, which is also a good description for the suit and creature effects. However, from what I can infer and have read or heard over the internet, producer Brian Yuzna enforced some creative changes on the first film. Notably a marketing campaign that made it appear that Luke Skywalker him self Mark Hamill was the title character, instead of the supporting role that he actually had. Worse still, it was decided that casting Jimmie Walker as one of the main Zoanoid characters would help bring in a wider audience and an appeal for the younger crowd. Not that Walker is a bad actor, but when they make him into what I can only describe as the result of a tequila fueled one night stand between one of the Gremlins and Jarjar Binks, then add that this thing raps in the movie, whole new level of horror is created. These changes pretty much ruin an otherwise enjoyable little B-movie.
This brings us to the sequel, Guyver 2: Dark Hero. You think that with a first outing like that the sequel can’t be any good, right? I mean if the movie made enough money and Yuzna was still on it, we’d probably get a movie that was full of potential that’s drug down by attempts to pander to everyone. Well that’s the thing, Yuzna wasn’t attached to this movie, a fact that you can clearly tell was a relief to returning director Steve Wang. The film’s rating was bumped from PG-13 to a much more freeing R and the Jive-a-noid is nowhere to be seen. Is it a great movie? Not really, but for mid 90’s low budger cheese it’s actually pretty damn entertaining.
The premise this time since the origin story is out of the way is that Sean Barker, The Guyver, has found out about an archeological dig where they may have some answers for him concerning the armor. However, once he’s there he realizes that Chronos is up to it’s old tricks again and they are soon beset by the evil zoanoids.
Again, the fight choreography is very impressive, with the added ability to show the Guyver doing what it’s actually know for, killing things brutally, makes the plot more interesting. Plus, to Wang’s credit you can tell that he’s doing the absolute best with what clearly couldn’t have been that big a budget.
It’s movies like this that make me hate things like the Transformers movies. This is a low budget action movie that shows how a director actually works with his constraints and makes a movie more enjoyable through how he cuts or shoots a scene. Things like Transformers just blow their wad on bleeding edge CGI robots and shove them in your face… After, of course, they show off the jock strap clad ass of a middle aged man, dogs humping and a giant robot’s testicles. (No, I’m not ever letting that one go, now shut up!) It’s clear that Steve Wang just had much more respect for the original source material than Bay did.
I know, I’ve harped on this before, but I’m going to do it again, the robots in Transformers barely do anything in their own movie. Not only that, when they actually do something, it’s over way too quick and they may as well have not been in the movies anyway. By contrast, “Guyver 2: Dark Hero” is only about 90 minutes long, and the Guyver appears for four fight scenes in the entire run time. All four last about five to seven minutes a piece. Put simply, the title character appears, and actually does stuff, in over a third of the actual movie, and when he isn’t they are revealing aspects of his character or having the bad guys the Zoanoids doing things.
The bad news when it comes to Guyver 2, is that the acting is pretty much terrible. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, but it is pretty awful, notably the female lead and the main villain. However, this doesn’t take away from the film’s entertainment value. If nothing else it adds to it with some great potential for riffing.
Basically if you’re looking for something to have at a night of cheesy monster movies, “Guyver 2: Dark Hero” is more than worth your time. It has a couple hiccups here and there, but nothing to jarring. Check it out.

2.5 rubber monsters out of 5.

Captain America: The First Avenger

So, a heads up about “Captain America”, stay through the end of the credits, they include the first teaser of the upcoming “Avengers” movie. Now, the review proper can begin.
Captain America has always been a staple of the universe in Marvel Comics, if for no other reason because he’s one of the three key members of Marvel’s super hero team, The Avengers. However, Capt. has had a rough time making the transition from page to screen. There were two made for TV efforts done in the late 70’s with cult B movie action star Reb Brown in the title role, which were boring and nonsensical not to mention embarrassing for all involved. Then in 1990 the first theatrical attempt came out, it was slightly better if for no other reason it had Captain’s arch nemesis, the Red Skull, in it and featured more of his back story from the comics, buuuuuut it was another real dud because it’s action was boring, Captain America really didn’t do much and it had a whole bunch of WTF moments in it.
So not only does this new movie have the pressure of trying to actually bring this character to the big screen in a respectable way, it also has to be able to put the last remaining pieces together for the Avengers team up. This is no easy task, so how did it do? Amazingly!
This movie is extremely good. Other critics have called it the best of the Marvel Studios adaptations, and I whole heartedly agree. The main reason being that, for once, “Captain America” takes itself 100% seriously. Yes, you heard right, a movie about a guy that fights evil in a costume that is basically the American flag, takes itself seriously. The big problem that I can see with the other movies is that they were trying to hide it’s Americana origins by either down playing it and just turning him literally into Batman on steroids, or just kind of vaguely hint at it in the film’s opening before going the exact same route.
This time, the film’s action is set in the midst of World War 2, and Steve Rogers is trying to enlist in the army to help defeat the Nazis, but is unable to do so because of his own poor health. He’s then given an option to do so as a test subject for a super soldier serum. However, when the scientist is murdered and the last of the serum lost, Steve is the only such soldier to be created and thus becomes Captain America.
What makes this work is Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. He plays the character’s intense good guy, stand up for what you believe, never run from a fight persona with a HUGE amount of sincerity. In fact his performance helps the film over come one of its bigger flaws as far as special effects, because while you can in fact tell, really easily too, that they are using CGI to make him look puny and scrawny early on, Evans performance really make you not care. I’ll elaborate on that in a moment but the fact that the actor in the role is actually playing it straight, as a good man that got the chance to be a great hero is actually something that makes it really enjoyable. In fact the first time that you see him in the Captain America costume, he’s doing so to sell war bonds and boost national morale in the fight against the Axis. You’d think that he’d be resentful or emo about this, but no, he takes it seriously and goes at it like it was just as noble as if he were actually punching Hitler in the face, instead of just some guy in a costume.
All the other actors also take this very serious. Tommy Lee Jones almost steals the whole movie as Steve’s CO, and Stanley Tucci is very moving as the scientist that gives Steve his shot at glory. The love interest, played Hayley Atwell, is actually really interesting as a character first and as if director Joe Johnston hadn’t given us a delicious enough sundae, her chemistry with Evans is so good that I finally get to have some proof that I don’t hate a movie for having a love story because this one is actually, you know, well told and interesting.
Added to this, it has really stellar action and the way they have the good Captain fight in the movie is impressive and creative, it’s almost as if he has no real style to his fighting, more he just dives in and uses his own will power and cunning to make it out alive, again, going back to how seriously they took his character. On top of that, you can actually see every single punch and know who is shooting at what… You getting all this Michael Bay? Do you need a pen and paper to write notes on? The action has weight, and yet, it’s done quite simply. For action to be good, you need to have a tenable, emotional connection to what is going on. This movie’s villains are basically explained thusly, I’m not making this up, they are more evil than the Nazis. No, I’m serious, they just set them up to be unapologetically evil and could only be shown as more so if you saw them murdering puppies or something like that. And yet it actually works, you hate these guys and want good guys to bring them down. So when you see the Captain bash a guy’s face in with his shield, you punch the air yelling “YES!” I would like to invoke the great Bruce Lee here. When it comes to any kind of action or fight scene, the most important thing is that “We need emotional content”. And “Captain America” has that in spades. When you see someone vaporized in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” it’s just manipulative, it’s quite literally the movie telling you: “This is bad, you should be really concerned and sad now, or something I guess.” In “Captain America” the organization Hydra also has vaporizing weapons, but when you see someone get vaporized here, it feels like it’s out of a war movie. You get upset when these people die, even if you’ve never seen them before or knew their name.
In fact the only problem I can really find with “Captain America” is that it has a few moments where the effects kind of show that they are really just Special effects, but that’s not a bad thing. Things like the original “Clash of the Titans” or even further back, “King Kong” are the same way, but the films really makes them work through performances, story and other such things. Like I said earlier, early on the effects used to make Chris Evans scrawny and out of shape aren’t quite up to snuff but at the same time, Evan’s performance makes up for it and it goes back to that emotional content argument from before.
When all is said and done, I loved “Captain America”. It was well written, perfectly paced and a testament to how you can make something hard to adapt into a workable product. It never compromises or feels ashamed of itself. If “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” was the perfect example of the lowest grade I can give a film, “Captain America: The First Avenger” is the perfect example of the highest grade I can give a film. It’s well written, solidly directed and wonderfully performed. I highly recommend seeing it while in theaters and can’t wait to see the Captain in action in “The Avengers” again and hope that his own sequel is swiftly to follow.

I give “Captain America: The First Avenger”

5 moments of uncommon valor out of 5.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

You may have noticed if you read my blog with any regularity that I have a big thing for bashing on Michael Bay. The main reason is that I really don’t like his movies (save for “The Rock” which I’ve already gone over) or directing style all that much. It just seems like the exact combination of elements to really put me off, plus the whole Platinum Dunes remaking every good horror movie thing earns him no points in my book. But the big reason that I can’t stand this director is because he has made two movies that I cannot stand, at all, even if you paid me millions of dollars I would not say that these movies were even remotely good. One was “Pearl Harbor”, a movie that was incredibly boring, not to mention kind of insulting if you ask me since it was supposed to be this big tribute to the men lost in tragic event of the title, but was actually a really badly written love story that went exactly nowhere. The other was “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. Now, I didn’t grow up with the transformers, they were around and I have fond memories of that one animated movie with kick ass music, but I was never hardcore into them. I just want people to know that I’m not some whiny fan boy or something like that, especially since I thought the first live action movie was a perfectly average summer blockbuster, meaning that it’s not actually that great a movie but I at least thought it was somewhat entertaining. However, when the sequel came out, I left the theater and the first thing that came out of my mouth was “That was the worst theater going experience of my life.” I HATED that movie so much. It was a stupid, low brow intelligence insulting piece of shit that ran waaaaaay to long and had nothing redeeming about it. The fact that I had to add giant robot testicles and the bare ass of a middle aged man to a list of things that shouldn’t be in a Transformers movie should explain why I really really disliked that movie.
So in a way, this third and dear god please let it be the last installment of the franchise gets to be a great catharsis for me because I can vent all my frustrations on the second movie and bash it’s sequel at the same time, oh SPOILER ALERT! “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” sucks! In fact, the nicest thing I can say about this movie is that yes, it IS better than “Revenge of the Fallen”, but since that puts the bar so low that it’s actually gone through the core of the Earth that really isn’t saying much, especially since it still has most of the same problems. For one, over two thirds of the movie is Shia LeBouf complaining that life isn’t fair… When’s he’s had a free ride to an Ivy League school, dated two super models, has a car that turns into a robot AND got a freaking medal from the president (which he will not let you forget. EVER!) Dude, shut up! If you’re life sucks than mine is completely a waste of existence by comparison. Also, I’m really starting to notice that outside the fact that Mr. LeBeouf is pretty much the textbook definition one note, Sam Whitwicky is actually a HUGE asshole. He insults the Autobots all the time, is so freaking self entitled that even Al Bundy would tell him to let it go, and to top it off SERIOUS anger problems. He flies into pointless blinding rages so often in this movie, and HE’S the one the audience is supposed to indentify with?
Then there are the numerous amounts of comic relief characters that serve exactly nothing for the plot, John Malkovich is kind of funny but totally pointless. Ken Juong is only there to give off a plot device and give us a really bad stereotype with some really bad homophobic humor before giving us the most satisfying death of the movie. John Turturo is back and as “zany” as ever, the list still goes on and on. Why? Why so many human characters in a movie ABOUT GIANT ROBOTS?! While we’re on it, the Megan Fox-bot version 2.0 (real name Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is just as wooden as, and only slightly more visually attractive than the last model, not to mention it’s pretty clear that they just went into Microsoft Word and did a find/replace on the names. Plus the exploitation of her is offensive and horribly so. Yes Michael Bay, I think she’s cute too, but I don’t need an almost full minute shot of her ass, thank you.
That’s always been the overall problem with these movies. It’s supposed to be about the robots, they’re in the title, the posters feature them prominently, all the previews show the footage that has them, you get my point. So someone tell me, please explain to me in detail. WHY ARE THE ROBOTS THE B-STORY IN THEIR OWN GODDAMN MOVIE?! NO! I am NOT more interested in the stupid conspiracy sub plot! NO! I am NOT interested Shia LaBeouf being jealous of his girl friend’s boss! NO! I do not give a damn about what has happened with the guys from N.E.S.T.! For the love of God, it’s so simple, you call the movie Transformers. That to me means they must spend just as much time, if not MORE than the human characters in this movie. Adding even more insult to that, most of the action is actually the army doing stuff with most of the robot action being done off screen or only done in the last minute or so of a fight. To the people that say they want to see this movie for “robots fighting”, you will leave very disappointed. Bay has described this movie as “Black Hawk Down”, only with a homeland bend… and giant robots. Ok, ignoring that Michael Bay will NEVER make a movie as good as “Black Hawk Down” and while we’re at it, will NEVER have the kind of clout Ridley Scott has, how is this a good idea? Not to spoil but, the plot of “Black Hawk Down” was that everything went tits up and it was all about fixing the upwardly inclined mammories, in the process showing the soldier’s drive and determination to get out alive. This is not a bad plot, but it doesn’t really give much room to let the whole giant robots thing happen.
And on top of all this, Bay screws with his stupid pitch even more by not letting it have a coherent tone. One scene will be dark, and those with kids planning on seeing this, charred human remains and people being vaporized here. Then, we’ll turn around and have some horribly crowbarred slap stick or bawdy jokes, you know things that four years olds wouldn’t even find funny. For a frame of reference, before sitting down to write this I re-watched about 20 minutes of the animated Transformers movie. In that 20 minutes, yes a lot of the robots were killed, but they were major characters, giving their deaths weight, not to mention you could tell which robots were which a whole hell of a lot better, something the new movies can’t claim. Plus even the dark opening of one giant robot destroying an entire planet worked because it established a major threat that started the plot going. This 20 minutes was by far better thought out than this 200 million dollar, 155 minute live action movie!
Folks, I seriously could go on and on complaining about this movie. I have merely scratched the surface here and as I write this review, the movie has already made more than 162 million dollars in the states… A fact that just makes me feel so depressed. Yes, it’s just a movie, but for someone that loves movies as much as I do, knowing that one of the highest grossing movies of the years is going to be a bloated two and half hour mess of a movie, who’s only positive is that it’s slightly less painful in some regards to the last movie makes me just feel so… Defeated, I’m just done with this. Don’t go to this movie, at all! Oh, and Happy Fourth Everybody!

0 out of 5

And to show you that I don’t just have contempt for movies that you can just turn your brain off for, here’s a list of movies that fit that description and are by far more entertaining than all three of the Transformers movies, combined.

- Godzilla: Final Wars (the only way I will sit through another Transformers movie is if Ryuhei Kitamura is announced as the director)
- Broken Arrow
- Commmando
- The Punisher: War Zone
- Lethal Weapon 1,2,3 & 4
- Die Hard 1, 2, 3 & 4
- The Rock (Yes, there is an entertaining Michael Bay movie, fair is fair.)
- Robocop 1 & 2
- True Lies
- Hard Boiled (You can watch it dubbed if you don’t like subtitles.)
- Top Gun
- Man On Fire
- ANY of the James Bond movies.
- El Mariachi
- Desperado
- From Dusk Till Dawn 1, 2 & 3
- Once Upon a Time In Mexico
- Sin City
- Planet Terror
- Machete
- RED
- The Fifth Element
- The A-Team
- Predator
- Predators
- Blade 1 & 2
- Hellboy 1 & 2
- Supercop 1 & 2
- City Hunter
- Police Story
- Rumble In The Bronx
- G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra (Yes, there IS a movie based on toys that I give a recommendation to!)
- Air Force One
- Heat
- Ronin
- Collateral
- Drunken Master 1 & 2
- Under Siege (Yes, I would much rather watch Seagal than this!)
- Hot Fuzz
- Evil Dead 2
- Army Of Darkness
- Assault on Precinct 13 (Either one, though I prefer Carpenter’s original a lot more.)
- Escape From New York
- Escape From L. A.
- John Carpenter’s Vampires
- Enter The Dragon
- Fists Of Fury
- The Chinese Connection
- Return of the Dragon (Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris, enough said.)
- Shoot ‘em Up
- Crank 1 & 2
- Speed Racer
- Kung Fu Hustle
- Kill Bill
- The Wild Bunch
- Conan The Barbarian
- Total Recall
- The Professional
- L. A. Confidential
- Domino

Super 8

Trying to write a review for this movie is pretty hard because while J.J. Abrams’ “Super 8” is by no means a ‘perfect’ movie, it is really freaking good and it’s hard to make a very interesting review out of something like this because I don’t want to spoil the movie, but it’s hard to explain why the movie is so good while avoiding them. Thankfully being hard doesn’t instantly translate into impossible and thus, here we go.
The plot of “Super 8” is basically summed up as “E.T.” meets “Cloverfield”. In more details it’s about a bunch of kids in the late 70’s/early 80’s (They reference George Romero a lot, so I’m going to assume that Dawn of The Dead had come out, which puts this in the 1979 neighborhood.) that are making a zombie movie and while filming one night they witness a huge train crash. The military shows up and weird things start happening as they realize that what they filmed may be more important than they know.
So let’s get to what works, for the most part the script is really good, working in that character driven way that made things like “The Goonies” and “E.T.” work so well. Added to that the cast of young actors all play their parts well, seriously the kids are the best actors in this movie, Elle Fanning in particular is amazing and here’s hoping that this movie is the big jumping off point for a great career. Lead Joel Courtney does a nice job giving me flashbacks to Henry Thomas as Elliot and Kyle Chandler plays his father the deputy with a great balance of sadness and obsessive professionalism that creates a great dynamic between father and son.
However, as good as the movie is, I still have some quibbles with it. What really works is all the stuff with the kids and how they deal with seeing the train crash and what they do in its wake, and if the movie had stayed focused on that it’d be pretty much the template for a 5 star rating. Unfortunately it doesn’t, we spend just as much time with Chandler’s investigation of the weird goings on, and there’s a large amount of the story that’s devout to a military cover up story. Neither of these stories are really that well done and when you’re seriously wanting the b plot to go away so that the movie can be fun again, you really might as well not have the b plot.
But like I said, “Super 8” is a really really good movie despite those flaws I mentioned, which I feel to be minor hiccups in an overall damn good movie. I say go see it, it’s one of those rare summer movies that should be seen and is probably the closest we’re going to come to getting the spark that gave “The Goonies” such popularity and staying power for a long time.

Super 8 gets

4 mysterious disappearances out of 5

X Men: First Class

Marvel again, this is starting to look more and more like summer 2008 all over again. When it comes to comic books, you can find few series that can get as convoluted and confusing as the X-men. Be it the long continuity, the numerous characters, or the massive and I do mean MASSIVE amount of books they can have out in any given time. I’m a casual comic reader that’s starting to step his toe in to the vast waters of comic geekdom, but I can honestly say I am terrified by the sheer thought of trying to read X-Men, even with the help of things like Wikipedia to explain things. All that said, I do at least admire the characters and have been a fan of the animated TV shows and the first couple of live action movies. “X-men” and “X2: X-men United” were both very well done summer popcorn movies, but I felt a little bit of what I have come to call “Kill Bill Syndrome”, referring to genre style movies that get sequels that either lacked it’s predecessor’s narrative finesse or well paced character development, but had some stand out set pieces were just epic and made you not care too much, or vice versa. A great example is the two most recent James Bond movies. “Casino Royale” was a well played character driven movie with a couple decent action scenes but can drag at times, while “Quantum of Solace” had lots of great action but little substance outside bringing Bond some closure left over from the last movie. The first two X-men movies were very similar, the first one was all about action scenes with maybe some underlying racism/homophobia/prejudice metaphor the series has always been praised for, but that’s about it. The second movie had a much more substantive plot with some character development, particularly with Wolverine and Iceman, and MUCH more of the prejudice metaphor comes out here, though not too much in the way of stand out action. But as fair as I can be with movies, as much as I tend to give movies the benefit of the doubt, “X-men: The Last Stand” pretty much killed my enthusiasm for any further movies in the franchise, it was pretty weak both plot wise and in it’s action. The characters were bland save for Kelsey Grammer as Beast and Vinnie Jones as The Juggernaut, giving us that wonderful internet meme. (google “I’m the Juggernaut Bitch!” if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) It was lame, and actually pretty stupid at times, which is also why I didn’t see the Wolverine spin off, though from what I’ve heard and what little I’ve seen, I was the smart one there. So how is the new prequel “X-men: First Class”?
AWESOME!
This is seriously the first really really good super hero movie since “The Dark Knight”. Which is ironic because what made “The Dark Knight” work so well as a sequel was that all the set up was done in “Batman Begins” so we got to go right into the action and the movie got to surprise us with how much more dark and foreboding it was. This is basically the story behind all the things they mentioned all the way back in the first movie, we know that Magneto becomes a bad guy, we know that by movie’s end Professor X is going to end up in a wheel chair and we know that mutants are going to end up with a bad rap that won’t get any better, so how could this actually be better than the first X-men movies? Yes, I said it, this is far better, though the answer is a little tough to put into words besides just saying “HOLY SHIT THAT IS THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER!”
A lot of the credit has to go to the two leads, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, most especially Fassbender, who basically gets to create his own sequel to “Inglorious Basterds” in the first act by killing Nazis that have gone into hiding, only since he’s Magneto he gets to use super powers. But while his villainous side is great, he adds a lot of humanity to the part as the film progresses. McAvoy’s Professor Xavier has a great humorous side as well as the acting chops to make it work with lines that sound like Star Trek techno babble version 1.0. The supporting cast is also very great with Jennifer Lawrence as the new Msytique, who actually talks a lot more and, you know has a character past being Rebecca Romijin in practically nothing but body make up. Nicholas Hoult does a great job as Beast who also has a well played romantic subplot with Lawrence. And rounding it is out is Kevin Bacon as villain Sebastian Shaw, giving a nicely over top the performance in addition to yet another way for me to dominate in the six degrees of separation game.
But what is the plot you ask? Why, simply that Sebastian Shaw is set upon destroying humanity. He chooses to accomplish this by instigating an international incident at the height of the Cold War via the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the US has contracted Xavier and Magneto to create their own mutant team to stop them. To put it as an associate of mine did, it’s summed up like this: “How do you make the Cuban Missile Crisis awesome? Throw in superpowers.”
The mutant fights scenes are well handled giving everyone a chance to shine, and also showing that Matthew Vaughn’s ability to make “Kick Ass” actually… Kick ass, was not merely a once in a lifetime fluke. He also seems to get that with something like X-men, you can’t screw up the quiet moments either. Even when nothing much is happening on the screen visually, which is rare, the atmosphere and tension is so thick you’d need a bayonet the size of Michael Bay’s ego to cut through it. It’s filled with intrigue, suspense, and well rounded characters keep you so interested in every frame of this movie. Even things you know are coming, like Magneto’s turn to evil, pack a huge dramatic punch because it’s so well handled and built up to.
All this said, it is not without its short comings. January Jones of “Mad Men” fame, is certainly easy on the eyes, but doesn’t really have a lot of range, not helped by her character being not particularly well written as the stock femme fatale cliché. Also while Jason Fleming does add a lot without saying much as teleporting mutant Azazel, his character does remain a bit of a mystery, which in theory is ok, but something about the execution bugged me. But these are all nit picks, and don’t really spoil the movie.
Do I need to say anymore? Go see this movie! If you’ve seen it already, SEE IT AGAIN! Show the studios that this is what we want from comic book movies!

X-Men: First Class gets from me:

5 STARS out of 5