Tag: Bloody Flick

October Horrorshow: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

Halloween H20 movie posterWhat a clumsy title. H20. Does it relate to water? Not at all. That’s a zero on the end, not the letter ‘O’. H20, then, is the shortened version of what this movie should have been called — Halloween: 20 Years Later — only shoved right in the middle of the title. Beware films that can’t even get their titles right. As it turns out, though, this flick is redemption for a franchise that had been foundering for the entire 1980s and ’90s.

Halloween III is the stepchild no one talks about, while Halloweens 4 through 6 are little better than straight to video cash grabs, relying on brand strength over competence. The plot threads in 4-6 were so tangled and messy that for this film, all that nonsense was retconned. No more Jamie Lloyd, no more Undertaker impersonator, no more missing baby. The series went back to the core elements that made it such a success in the first two films — Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Once upon a time, horror flicks couldn’t get enough Jamie Lee Curtis. She starred in five horror flicks from 1978 through 1981. Her piercing scream became instantly recognizable to horror fans. In fact, her first line in this film is a vintage scream, as her character, Laurie Strode, awakes from a nightmare. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”

October Horrorshow: We Are Still Here

We Are Still HereI love a good anonymous horror flick. How anonymous is We Are Still Here, the movie from writer/director Ted Geoghegan? The plot summary on Wikipedia currently sits at 152 words as I write this. That’s it. In this day and age, a film really has to fly under the radar to get such a sparse entry on a site whose editors can be quite verbose.

We Are Still Here takes place in snow-covered New England in the year 1979. Husband and wife Paul and Anne Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig and Barbara Crampton) have relocated from the city following the death of their college-aged son in a car accident. They have chosen to move into a century-old house on the outskirts of Aylesbury, one of those insular New England towns that populate fiction. It’s full of people who have known each other since birth, and is very mistrusting of outsiders.

Like all small towns in a horror film, this one has a dark secret. Long ago, the house the Sacchettis purchased was home to the Dagmar family, who were accused by the townsfolk of selling human bodies to medical schools and Chinese restaurants in Boston. After facing some small town retribution, a curse was placed on the house and any poor souls who occupy it. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: We Are Still Here”

October Horrorshow: The Relic

I love a good monster flick. Hell, I love a mediocre monster flick. Which is good for The Relic, because, while it’s a passable diversion, it’s not the second coming of Alien.

From way back in 1997, The Relic, from director Peter Hyams, features one of the more complicated beasties I’ve encountered in my decades of watching horror flicks. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Relic”

October Horrorshow: Trick ‘r Treat, or, Charlie Brown’s an Asshole!

Despite its association with horror, few horror movies are Halloween themed. This might be a good thing, or it might be a missed opportunity. I don’t know. What I do know is that in seven years of doing the Horrorshow, comprising over 150 reviews, only the six movies from the Halloween franchise that I’ve reviewed so far have taken place during the annual celebration of all things morbid. So, today’s film is a nice change of pace, and an acknowledgment of a time of year that so many of us enjoy. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Trick ‘r Treat, or, Charlie Brown’s an Asshole!”

October Horrorshow: Shivers

Shivers movie posterHas David Cronenberg ever made a movie that wasn’t about sex? On some level, probably not. There’s also nothing wrong with that, despite the prudish direction the moral majority has taken the United States in the last 35 years or so. Good thing for us that Cronenberg is a Canadian, right?

Shivers, from 1975, is Cronenberg’s first feature film, and it is all about sex. It’s not a fetish exploration like his later film, Crash, but sex is a central theme. In Shivers, a well-meaning but certifiably insane doctor named Hobbes (Fred Doederlein) has infected a resident of a new residential tower in Montreal with a parasite. The mad doctor told his financial backers and research partners that he was developing a new method to regrow organs, when in fact his true purpose was to return man to an animalistic state, a state where life would be one endless orgy. But, he screwed up, and the film opens with him trying to destroy the teenager whom he infected with the parasite. In the opening scenes, we see the doctor kill the girl and then himself, in a brutal but well done little introduction to the film that juxtaposes the modern living aspects of the apartment building with the brutal horror hidden within its walls. Even in his first film, Cronenberg starts off by showing he understands pace and storytelling. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Shivers”

October Horrorshow: Harbinger Down

Back in 2011, Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc., got screwed. ADI, an Academy Award winning practical effects company, had worked hard on the remake/prequel of The Thing. But, sometime during post-production, the decision was made to replace all of ADI’s work with CGI. The resulting effects were poorly received, and with good reason. They don’t look good. They’re the type of effects that make film buffs pine for the time before CGI was a thing, when makeup and puppetry were king in horror flicks. My biggest issue with the CGI is that it is clearly CGI. It never manages to cross over into believability. It looks like a cartoon is intruding into a live action movie. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Harbinger Down”

October Horrorshow: The Toolbox Murders

There’s nothing quite like a 1970s exploitation horror flick. That’s not a compliment. Often such films can be entertaining if there’s a sick spot a viewer needs to scratch, but just as often it can leave a viewer feeling a little filthy by the time the credits roll. Such is the case with today’s film. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Toolbox Murders”

October Horrorshow: Hatchet III

I had high hopes for this flick. Admittedly, those hopes were unrealistic. But, Hatchet II was last year’s official film of the Horrorshow, one I had a lot of fun watching, and I was looking forward to more cartoonish gore and general silliness. All the ingredients were there. Same writer/director, same stars, what looks to be the exact same sets, but this time around, the results are not the same. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hatchet III”

October Horrorshow: Saw III

Here I go again. The absolute worst thing about torture porn is that it’s like driving by a car wreck. I cannot turn away. But, I think that may have something to do with the first two Saw films. They were tamer in comparison to Saw III. The level of physical injuries inflicted on characters in the first two films was gruesome, but this third entry in the series was where my gore threshold was finally crossed. I think it was the moment when a member of the cast almost drowns in shredded putrefied pig that did it for me. This came after seeing a man pull steel hoops from his flesh and a woman have her ribcage ripped from her body. I applaud the effects folks who came up with this stuff. They did a professional job. I just think they did it too well. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Saw III”

October Horrorshow: Saw II

Like the poor characters who populate the Saw franchise, I seem to be a glutton for punishment. I roundly excoriated the first Saw film and the torture porn subgenre of horror in yesterday’s review, yet here I am, writing a review of another Saw flick. I can’t seem to look away, and that’s part of the point of these films, right? During the progression of the series, plot continued to descend further into a convoluted pastiche that existed only to place characters into harm’s way, where they were confronted with machinery designed to maim them and delight us viewers. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Saw II”