Recent Viewings

Hellraiser - A woman finds that her dead boyfriend is living in her attic, and he needs fresh bodies to make him fully human again. She obliges. I didn't care for this too much, dull characters and a slow moving plot. Since they showed the torture / slaughter chamber thing right at the start, you pretty much knew what to expect at the end.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II - The daughter from the first movie just can't get free of that darned puzzle box. Turns out her doctor has had a lifetime fixation with it, and he manages to bring the mother from the first film back to life. Then they all go to hell, which is fabulously created here. I thought this one was vastly superior to the first one. Better characters, marvelously weird and artistic atmosphere, and lots of action.

Hellraiser IV, Bloodline - In the future, one of the descendants of the original LeMerchand guy that invented the puzzle box has devised a method to close the thing forever, using his space station. Just as he's about to put his plan into action, the Marines show up and want to know why he's evacuated everyone off the station. The rest of the story is told via flashbacks, going back in time to the original LeMerchand and why he created the puzzle box, then skipping ahead to the present day where another LeMerchand descendant has a run in with Pinhead. Then it cuts back to the future and the Marines have a go at Pinhead. I liked this one a lot; the three different stories kept it quite interesting and the film had a wonderful atmosphere about it. The ending was perhaps a tad dumb, but not overly disappointing.

Hellraiser VI, Hellseeker - A guy and his wife are driving, and he loses control of the car and it plunges into a lake. He escapes but his wife drowns. From then on he seems to become unstuck from reality, going from one weird scene to the next, unable to figure out what's going on. There's a really good twist ending to this, and it makes perfect sense which is quite satisfying, but that doesn't change the fact that the first 95% of the movie didn't make any sense. Maybe it will be better if I watch it a second time.

Shrieker - some college kids move into an abandoned hospital (cheaper than the dorms), but little do they know that years earlier a mass murder took place there. And now the Shrieker is back! Pretty good characters and it manages to create a spooky atmosphere. The ending is rather goofy though. Pretty satisfactory movie overall.

Wickeds - semi-comedic zombie/vampire/ghost movie about some kids that go to a haunted house to party, but unfortunately some grave robbers have robbed the wrong grave and now all the dead have come back to life. So the grave robbers hide out with the kids in the house, and they all scream at each other for the remainder of the film. This one was pretty awful. It's got that Troma feel of painfully bad comedy. Characters were almost all annoying. Really annoying. The only good thing about it is a long makeout scene with a girl in pink underwear and her boyfriend. The pink undies are the best part of the whole damned movie.

Witchouse II - Blood Coven. Some college kids are called to a small town to do DNA tests on a couple of corpses. Turns out the corpses were witches, they take over the bodies of the kids, but two kids are left to fight them off. This was the worst movie I've seen in many years. The director ripped off the handheld camcorder idea from Blair Witch, and basically jettisoned the entire plot of the movie and replaced it with utterly pointless garbage that he could use his camcorder gimmick on. There's a long stretch of camcorder interviews in the middle of this thing that had me rolling my eyes like they've never been rolled before. And the main character is such an unlikable little smartass I just wanted to beat him senseless. I sent this thing back to Amazon for a refund. It's just that bad.

Hell Night - some kids have to spend the night in a spooky mansion in order to get into a fraternity/sorority. This one starts out pretty bad, but about 1/2 hour in (when all the fraternity hijinks are over) it gets really good. Imagine the final stalk scene from a Friday the 13th film stretched out to 45 minutes or so, and it manages to maintain the suspense and sense of fright the whole time. The characters were probably good at the time (early '80s), but unfortunately they seem like the thinnest of cliches now. Still, a classic piece of '80s cheese. I really liked it.

The Hazing - to get into a fraternity/sorority, some kids have to go on a scavenger hunt and then spend the night in a spooky mansion. This one mixes a cheesy plot with really funny characters, and manages to have a pretty spooky atmosphere in the old mansion. One girl is in a skintight spandex spacesuit outfit, another in a Playboy bunny outfit. There's plenty of T&A to go around. Very entertaining overall. great movie to watch with some buddies and some beers.