Some recent movies I watched - ECHO and STAN HELSING

I was offline for a few days this weekend due to an internet problem, and also I've had top be out of town a good bit. But I did check out a couple of movies in the interim, and thought I'd share my thoughts with you . . .

ECHO is a pretty well-done ghost story with some genuinely creepy moments in it. A recently released convict is looking for work, and for financial reasons has to move into the apartment where his mother died while he was in prison. He quickly finds out that his monther had descended into paranoia and madness and starved herself to death . . . and that the apartment is full of strange noises and inexplicable occurrences. The neighbor is an abusive cop who beats his Latino wife constantly . . . and the terrified wife seems to be crying out for help. But when he finally calls the police after an exceptionally loud quarrel breaks out next door, they break into the apartment to find that it has been vacant . . . for several years. As he begins to research, he finds that the abusive cop killed his wife, daughter, and himself almost a decade before. But he still sees them . . . in the hall, throughout the building, and in his apartment! What can he do to lay them to rest?

STAN HELSING is an enjoyably goofy horror spoof. It was funnier than any of the run of the mill SCARY MOVIE type films - partially because they gave it an R rating and thus did not have to constantly hint at raunchy stuff the way the PG-13 spoofs do - if they wanted to include a raunchy joke, they went ahead and included it and moved on. The plotone is simple - Stan is a video store clerk who is being stalked on Halloween night byt he scariest monsters of all time - Freddy, Jason, Pinhead, Chucky, and the Creeper. Stan and his bud and their two girls are on their way to a Halloween party as soon as they can drop off some prn videos that the store owner's mother wanted. Problem is, she lives in a huanted gated community, and the gates shut behind them as they drove in! This film contains homages to all the good horror films of the last 20 years, and some bad ones as well! There is lots of crude himor and a little bit of nudity (especially in the deleted scenes), and overall it's a pretty fun film.