What a gloriously stupid movie. I’ll be honest. Many of the 1950s flicks in this month’s Horrorshow have been a real slog to get through. That’s really something, considering how many of them are only around an hour or so in length. Today’s ’50s flick is a short one, too, clocking in at only 71 minutes. It didn’t have much of a budget, either, so a decent amount of that short running time is spent expositing. But, without any reservations at all, From Hell It Came is an incredible shitty movie. It’s essential viewing for the shitty movie fan. Continue reading “It Came from the ’50s: From Hell It Came”
Tag: Supernatural Flick
October Horrorshow: Split Second
Split Second, the 1992 flick from director Tony Maylam and screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson, has all the look and feel one would expect from low-budget Hollywood sci-fi schlock of the era. Everything is lit with colored gels, the film stock stinks, sets look cobbled together from whatever was piled out back behind the lumberyard, most location shots are dirty alleys, the original score is synthesized crap, and, in star Rutger Hauer, there is a fading Hollywood action flick veteran looking to pay some bills. In more ways than just this abbreviated list, Split Second is kin to the products of the Roger Corman gristmill, only this movie comes from England. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Split Second”
It Came from the ’50s: The She-Creature
Being a shitty movie fan is most rewarding when some obscure piece of cinematic ineptitude turns out to be entertaining. It’s impossible to know beforehand how one will react to a shitty movie. Every entertaining shitty movie is an unexpected surprise — the reward that makes slogging through the muck worth it. Today’s ’50s flick is part of the muck.
Released in 1956, The She-Creature comes from American International Pictures. AIP may have released a good flick here and there, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head. It really was a clearing house for schlock. Continue reading “It Came from the ’50s: The She-Creature”
October Horrorshow: Haunting on Fraternity Row
What a vile, vile movie. It could have been worse. Oh, so much worse. But, this flick still managed to plumb the depths of taste, artistry, technique, and every other highfalutin term about film one can come up with. It’s the type of film that counts on awakening the hormonal 13-year-old boy in all of us. I’m not even sure 13-year-old boys would like this trash much, though.
Haunting on Fraternity Row comes to us via writer/director Brant Sersen and fellow screenwriter Jeff Cahn. Released last year, Haunting tells the story of a massive end-of-term fraternity house blowout that turns deadly when a ghost spoils the show.
It’s the last Luau for seniors Jason (Glee alumnus Jacob Artist), Tanner (Jayson Blair), Dougie (Ashton Moio), and chapter president Grant (Cameron Moulène). This will be the last great party before they head off and become responsible adults. They plan to get drunk, stoned, wired, laid, and everything else that occupies the mind of the young fraternity member. Tanner, in particular, is a real treat. He’s a hunky meathead who is wrapping up his sixth year of college, and is looking to end the Luau with his sixth Luau threesome in a row. These are the people that occupy this film. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Haunting on Fraternity Row”
October Horrorshow: The Eye (2002) & The Eye (2008)
I started out this review for a single film, and not two. But, about a half hour into watching The Eye (2008), I realized I couldn’t write a review without first watching The Eye (2002, original title Gin gwai), to see what the filmmakers of the newer version stole from the original. That’s because The Eye is not so much a remake of Gin gwai as it is another version. The only changes are on the surface.
Directed by the Pang Brothers (Danny and Oxide Chun), from a screenplay by the brothers and Yuet-Jan Hui, Gin gwai tells the story of Wong Kar Mun (Angelica Lee). When Mun was a toddler, an accident left her blinded. Now, as an adult, she undergoes cornea transplant surgery to restore her sight. Only, from the moment she first opens her eyes in a Hong Kong hospital, something isn’t right. There appears to be an extra person in the room when the bandages are removed. Her sight is very blurred, so she can’t make out more than a dark figure. It presages troubles to come. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Eye (2002) & The Eye (2008)”
It Came from the ’50s: Bride of the Gorilla
If one is going to make a shitty movie, don’t be a burden on the audience. Get in and get out before people start getting bored. Running time can often be the difference between an amusing jaunt through the world of substandard cinema and a hateful experience. In general: the shorter the better. Other filmmakers should take a lesson from writer/director Curt Siodmak. He went to the extreme with his 1951 flick, Bride of the Gorilla. It tests that general rule about running time, for Siodmak and company brought this sucker in at an astounding 66 minutes. That’s a long episode of Game of Thrones, not a feature film. Yet, I watched the damn thing, and it did indeed pass in little over an hour. And, believe it or not, that was all the time it needed. This is a shitty movie, without any doubt, but Siodmak did make a tidy little package. Continue reading “It Came from the ’50s: Bride of the Gorilla”
October Horrorshow: Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum
Horror junkies have been blessed by video on demand. Online streaming services have become a glut of horror films, as small, independent creators have been able to get their work out there for people to see. It’s been great for foreign horror flicks, as they have also been gaining prominence on streaming services, probably because they’re affordable to license. South Korea has been well-represented the last few years, with Train to Busan being the standout. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum also hails from the ROK, and fits in well with the frenetic style that has come to typify South Korean horror. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum”
October Horrorshow: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
There’s a whole lot of plot in this shitty movie. Friday the 13th was a franchise tottering along towards its demise by the time Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday was released in 1993. The producers must have thought that expanding the lore around Jason Vorhees would make up for older plot ideas that had gone stale. It was the wrong way to go.
Directed by Adam Marcus, from a convoluted screenplay (the victim of precipitous rewrites, apparently) by Jay Huguely and Dean Lovey, Jason Goes to Hell is one gigantic mess of a movie. A viewer could be forgiven if they thought this flick was a continuation of the previous film in the series, as characters refer to previous, unseen events to which they were witness. But the flick before this was Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. None of the characters in that shitfest are in Jason Goes to Hell. Nor are any characters from Part VII, VI, V…all down the line. This movie feels like a sequel to a movie that wasn’t made, and that’s kind of weird. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday”
October Horrorshow: Hereditary
Some horror flicks are designed to scare, while others are designed to provoke dread. They are two very distinct emotions. Fear has a crisp flavor, and can be as extreme as panic or as mild as butterflies in one’s stomach. Dread is something more profound. It’s an emotion of desperation and inevitability that makes fear look like mother’s milk. Dread is the certainty, not just the possibility, that something very bad is about to happen. Dread is oppression. Dread is doom. Which makes a film that revolves around dread something of a difficult watch. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hereditary”
October Horrorshow: Ghost Stories
Adapting their own successful stage play, writers and directors Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson have crafted a ghost flick that is, at times, among the most frightening that has been made this decade, and at other times is a cataclysmic rush to an uneven finale.
From 2017, Ghost Stories is somewhat of an anthology film, but the three separate tales that make up the film are bound together by a wrapper story in such a way that it can be considered a single narrative, as well. Nyman plays Professor Phillip Goodman, the presenter of a British reality show that debunks psychics. In an early scene, viewers see Goodman expose a spirit medium as a fraud. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Ghost Stories”