I had forgotten this film existed until I was trolling for flicks for the Horrorshow. Thanks, Netflix! All that bitching I did about Dracula 3000 still applies, though. The Prophecy is a slick little 90s film that did as much for trench coats as The Matrix. But, bizarrely, that film is more beloved. Hmm... Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Prophecy”
October Horrorshow
October Horrorshow: Dracula 3000
What a putrid mess. Films this bad don’t seem to come along all that often. Sure, bad movies get produced all the time. The film landscape is littered with poorly made schlock-fests. But this...this is an endeavor worthy of mockery, a movie that makes no pretense of clinging to anything of value. This movie, in other words, is typical of the quality of film that one gets streaming from Netflix. As Felix Salmon of Reuters pointed out this past January, no model exists whereby Netflix can afford the streaming rights on more than a handful of good movies at a time, so everyone out in the tubes with a subscription gets treated to movies as bad as Dracula 3000. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Dracula 3000″
October Horrorshow: Grabbers
Oftentimes, this reviewer laments the overuse of CGI. For example, it was the CGI that kept me from enjoying any of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies (that, and I could feel myself aging as I watched). All the flying camera angles and busy shots with too many monsters to count bored me. I’m not joking. I found it tedious. I fell asleep during the first film, and gave only cursory glances to the sequels; just long enough for me to confirm that, yes, there was still too much CGI in those films, as well. The biggest problem I have with CGI is that, to this point in cinematic history, it still does not look real. Many filmmakers are also tempted to defy physics when it comes to CGI, but we humans have an instinctual sense, informed by billions of years of evolution, of how objects should move. Defy that with CGI, and it only serves to take me further out of the experience, not closer. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Grabbers”
October Horrorshow: You’re Next
Right now, here in New York City, the sky is overcast and the air is a crisp 60 degrees (that’s 16 degrees for you Loyal Seven from points far and wide). It’s a typical fall day, and that sucks. On days like this, I worry the sun won’t make another appearance until it’s too cold out for clouds to form. But, I shouldn’t worry, because it’s October, and that means it’s time for the Sixth Annual October Horrorshow here on Missile Test, where I watch and review horror films for an entire month. The good, the bad, the putrid...it doesn’t matter, so long as there’s blood. Today’s film has buckets of the stuff. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: You’re Next”
October Horrorshow: Anaconda
What a gloriously stupid movie. It makes me happy to write that sentence again; something I have not done since way back in May. But, this flick deserves it. If I had not already named another film the official film of this year’s Horrorshow (revealed at a later date), then Anaconda would have won the distinction running away. Anaconda is a fantastic example of the heights to which a shitty movie can soar. It features a soon to be breakout superstar, a fading has-been whose Oscar is gathering substantial amounts of dust, and a rapper in the midst of crossing over into movie stardom. It hails from a time when CGI was in its infancy, yet relies on these effects too much. It’s self-aware and amateurish at the same time. It’s a piece of shit, and I love it. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Anaconda”
October Horrorshow: Ringu & The Ring
It’s the October Horrorshow! It’s no secret that I hate autumn. It’s a shit time to be alive here in the northern latitudes, where the air takes on a chill, the days become noticeably shorter, and every plant from here to Seattle looks like it’s dying. Thank goodness, then, for Halloween. The festival of death is a yearly finger in the eye to the fall season, when we, and by that, I mean me, watch lots and lots of horror flicks. I choose to embrace nature’s inexorable slide into hibernation by watching fake snuff films, paradoxical as that is, and I love every minute of it. Like last year, there’s a full slate of reviews this year. No gaps. And the first is a double billing.
Ringu is the king of J-Horror. It’s not an undisputed title, but, as of this October Horrorshow, Ringu ranks as the highest-grossing horror film in Japanese history. That’s a fairly good argument in the film’s favor.
From 1998, Ringu is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Koji Suzuki. The film was directed by Hideo Nakata. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Ringu & The Ring”
October Horrorshow: Halloween 5
What a putrid mess. Halloween 5 is a shameless cash grab. (The full title is Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, but that full title seems only to exist on posters and other promotional material. The title card of the actual movie has no subtitle.) Halloween 4 was a cheap b-movie that sought to bring a recognizable brand to heel after the failure that was Halloween III. And it worked. Audiences didn’t like the fact that Michael Myers wasn’t the villain in the third flick, and producer Moustapha Akkad took notice. He brought back the slasher icon for the fourth installment, and saw a tidy return on investment, so it was inevitable that there would be a fifth. Of course, since abject cheapness didn’t hurt the bottom line with Halloween 4, there was no incentive to produce a quality product with Halloween 5.
Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Halloween 5″
October Horrorshow: The Changeling
John Russell (George C. Scott) just had the worst day of his life. While on a winter vacation in upstate New York, he watched his wife and child get run down in the street by an out of control dump truck. A few months go by, and John, a composer of classical music, decides it is time to begin his life again, and takes a job teaching at his alma mater. The new job is across the country in Seattle, and John needs to find a new place to live. At the suggestion of a friend, John locates a house through the local historical society. It’s quite the place. Victorian, high ceilings — it even has a music room. Any house or apartment with a music room resides firmly in the 1%.
The house had been unoccupied ever since it was willed to the historical society, and for good reason. The place is haunted. In fact, John would never have been able to secure a lease were it not for Claire (Trish Van Devere), the member of the society that showed John the house. She’s relatively new to her job, and thus didn’t know about the issues with the house. Also, she’s smitten with the gruff old composer with the surprisingly soft smile and history of personal tragedy. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Changeling”
October Horrorshow: Shutter (2004)
Shutter was a new experience for me. As far as I can remember, I’ve never seen a movie from Thailand before. If there were a line in Vegas on whether or not the first Thai movie I chose to watch would be horror or shitty, what would that line be? Or would that be a sucker bet? It is October, after all. The month of blood and death. Of course I’m watching horror. So the only question is, is it shitty horror? Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Shutter (2004)”
October Horrorshow: I Sell the Dead
I never thought I would see anything personally familiar in a film that takes place in 1850s Ireland. I have never been to Ireland. I have never been to the 1850s. But I have been to Staten Island. If that makes no sense to you, dear reader, don’t worry. It will. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: I Sell the Dead”