Cube: Zero (2005)- Yet another group of characters wake up inside a giant prison-like death maze. Imaginative, well-made and gory, but somewhat disappointing; the last 20 minutes are extremely silly and it simply can't hold a candle to the excellent "Cube".
3 stars out of 5.
In the Mouth of Madness (1995)- An insurance claims investagator finds himself living in a pop horror novelist's story. A delightful susprise. Good plot, amusing performance from Sam Neill, great special effects (Courtesy of KNB effects group), great ending and Musculear direction from John Carpenter, being his old self once again with the injection of a dark atmosphere and a good douse of humor. 4 stars out of 5.
Demon Seed (1977)- Super-computer Proteus IV impregnates the wife of the scientist who created him. Intelligent, thought-provoking sci-fi horror film. Julie Christie gives a strong performance and the film boasts one of the best evil computers of all time (Even better than HAL-9000!). Kinda brought down by a few rather tasteless scenes and dated production values.
3-and-a-half stars out of 5.
The Grudge (2004)- A haunted house claims the life of all who enters it. Better -made than the original, the acting is okay (Except for Sarah Michelle Geller who's rather wooden as the lead), the ghosts are creepier and the atmosphere is darker, though it's way to short (86 minutes?), and feel like nothing more than just another unnecessary remake.
2 stars out of 5.
Proteus (1995)- A group of drug smugglers board a seamingly abandoned oil rig after there ship sinks, only to find the nasty results of genetic experiments still inhabit the rig. It's a cheap production, but it's got some cool monsters in it, especially a giant, shark-like, tentacle flinging beastie at the end. Pinhead-veteran Doug Bradely shows up to play an evil scientist near the finale.
Nice gore.
2-and-a-half stars out of 5.
Resident evil: Apocalypse (2004)- A fictional city is overrun by zombies and mutants after a T-virus escapes from an underground lab. Dumb, unrealistic and stupid. Littered with flaws (Why did the zombies in the graveyard come back to life if they weren't infected with the T-virus!?!?!?), this is a $50,000,000 mess with laughable dialog, wooden acting and stupid plot twists, one after another. The only good special effect is the nemesis make-up, which looked great, all the other effects are CG and look terrible. Just plain bad.
2 stars out of 5 (Just barely skips a 1.5).
Miner's Massacre (2003)- A group of dumb teens awaken the ghost of a demonic Miner after stealing some of his treasure. Well this isn't really anything more than a cash-in on Jeepers Creepers, though it's mildly entertaining in a 'so bad, it's good' kinda way. The speical effects are cheap but servicable and there is an okay amount of gore. Watch out for the hilarious 'decapitation' scene, where you can see the actress's shoulders under the bad guy's coat.
Director John Carl Buechler actually sent me an e-mail insisting that you couldn't see the actress's shoulders, but thanked me for a fairly positive review on IMDB, funny stuff.
2 stars out of 5.
Swamp Women: Very early Roger Corman flick (maybe his first?) about three women in prison who used to have three boyfriends, but the boyfriends were put to death for stealing diamonds. The girls know where the diamonds are, so an undercover policewoman poses as a jail inmate and they all break out. They go through the bayous of Louisiana (or someplace) to get the diamonds, at which point the plan is for the policewoman to take control and the other cops to move in. Not nearly as bad as I was expecting, it features a pretty good catfight in the middle of it. Not really any reason to ever watch it again, the characters are completely forgettable and the action is cornball city, but I got the DVD for 1 cent on Ebay.
Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity: an old favorite of mine, finally got the DVD. It's about two (scantily clad) slave girls who escape from the spaceship they're being transported on, and end up crash landing on a planet. A guy named Zed lives there, and another group of crash survivors (including Brinke Stevens) is also there. They find out that Zed likes to hunt people for sport. This is a great B movie. Good atmosphere, lots of cheesy dialogue, a bit of T&A, and a sense of humor.
Retroactive: A woman gets picked up by a couple and over the course of the drive, the guy kills his wife and starts chasing the woman through the desert. Lucky for her, there's a secret government research lab out there, and she gets sent back in time to the beginning of the movie, where she gets picked up again and tries to improve the situation, but screws it up even worse. Repeat several times. Not too bad, James Belushi has a great time hamming it up as the evil redneck, but the repetition of the same plot gets sort of boring. It is quite clever how little details that you didn't notice the first time come into play in subsequent repetitions. Good for a rental if you're quite bored.
Teenage Catgirls in Heat: It's Troma. Need I say more? Got this one for free when I bought Slave Girls. An ancient Egyptian cat god (insert $5.00 plastic statue of cat to represent god) comes to life and causes all the cats in the area to commit suicide. They are then reincarnated as women that go around doing corny immitations of cats. Two cat hunter idiots try to get to the bottom of this mystery. Halfway through they forget about that plot and one of the cat hunters goes on a date with one of the cat women, which consumes half the movie. The ending is so incredibly corny that it defies explanation. This movie manages to stretch it's short run time into what seems like several hours.
Leviathan: Probably the best Alien ripoff ever, right up there with Carpenter's The Thing (at least in my opinion). At an underwater mining facility, one of the crew finds a sunken Russian ship, and brings back a flask of vodka. A couple people drink it, and turn into monsters. This movie has great characters, pretty good special effects, excellent acting and the plot moves along well. Only complaint is that the monster is pretty cheesy looking.
Cheecky-Monkey wrote:
> Resident evil: Apocalypse (2004)- A fictional city is overrun
> by zombies and mutants after a T-virus escapes from an
Fictional city? It was Toronto - the skyline (minus the CN Tower), the freeway, the city hall. That much of the movie I liked - they just shot Toronto and called it Raccoon City. Didn't even try to disguise it. There's something amusing about seeing a city you know get nuked in a movie, at least if it's not one of the ones that always get picked on.
Hockstatter,
I remember seeing Retroactive when it premiered on HBO in the late 90s. I want to say that the film was an HBO original. I don't remember much, except for Belushi reciting the stupid "beltbuckle" joke over and over and over.
Leviathan is a great flick. I remember being scared to death by it as a child, once again with HBO. I finally got around to renting it a few years ago, and it still holds up pretty well to this day. As you said, one of the better Alien ripoffs so far.
Post Edited (02-25-05 20:34)
Saw "In The Mouth Of Madness" awhile back
Here's some dicsussion In The Mouth Of Madness (http://www.badmovies.org/bbs/read.php?f=2&i=47067&t=47067)
I'm surprised In the Mouth of Madness isn't better known. I was never recommended it so when I rented it I was very surprised by how good it was.
One of carpenter's last good films in my opinion.
I'm trying to rememember a rather low-bugdet independent movie I saw a few months back
It was about a guy who steals a time-travel device from his place of business when it is attacked and everyone else of killed.
He shoes it to his two friends and they decide to use it to win at gambling by carfully going into the future and relaying the information on what would win back through the phone lines (or something)
Also, 'someone' (government) ist trying to kill them
Leviathan has been among my favourites since I saw it at the theatre (in high school or shortly after). Good looking movie, and did a nice job with the deep sea setting, which was popular at the time. But the characters were what really made it stand out for me. Very underrated, even for a knockoff. Although, it's definitely more a knockoff of The Thing than Alien. I wouldn't call The Thing an Alien knockoff, because it's a pretty faithful adaptation of the original J.W. Campbell story from 1951.
Also agree that In the Mouth of Madness is underrated. Nice attempt by Carpenter to be Lovecraftian.
In The Mouth Of Madness is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, Carpenter flick. I was completely surprised when first viewing the film. Strong story, great acting, creepy Lynchian townsfolk. One of the best horror films of the 90s.
Leviathan was pretty good, certain the best of the underwater "The Thing" clones from around that time like "Deep Star Six". I knew a guy in school when this first came out who claimed he had seen it and proceded to tell me the "story". He hadn't seen it, but what he described was even better than the real film. It was some weird mishmash of stuff he gleaned from the trailer, "The Satanic Verses", and devil worship stuff I'm convinced he stole from various horror movies and heavy metal albums. I'm disappointed that it hasn't been made into a film.
Saw "Proteus" on cable years ago, time filler pure and simple. Decent effects.
I liked "In the Mouth of Madness" and have little to add to other people's comments except: Best Lovecraft film not based on actual Lovecraft source material.
"Best Lovecraft film not based on actual Lovecraft source material."
Couldn't have put it better myself.
I remember Demon Seed. Your right, it's Veeerrry dated, and a total 2001 ripoff, but good sci fi none the less.
Do a search of this forum; In the Mouth of Madness has been brought up numerous times in several contexts.
Great Film.
AndyC wrote:
> I
> wouldn't call The Thing an Alien knockoff, because it's a
> pretty faithful adaptation of the original J.W. Campbell story
> from 1951.
>
Nitpick: Who Goes There was was written (or published) in 1938.
How did demon Seed rip off 2001? the only similarities I noticed were they both featured evil (sorry, 'misunderstood') computers.
I thought it was the 30s. But I checked the copyright on my copy of the story (ironically, so nobody would catch me with the wrong date) and it said 1951. It was a compilation of classic stories that were made into movies, so I think it was the movie's copyright, although it was right next to the title "Who Goes There." I need to look at that again, and figure out what the heck they've done. Serves me right for checking my facts :)
The idea of a self aware computer is one. And there's the scene where the computer insiminates the wife and gives her some sort of cosmic vision where she flys through the cosmos in a display of color and whatnot similar to the famous scene in 2001. It came off to me like they sat down and asked, "what if 2001 was a horror movie?"
Seems like a very small similarity to me. Demon Seed has very little in common with 2001.
Still, it wasn't particularly original either. Computers were coming of age at that time, still not well understood by most people, and there were quite a few stories of computers built too well, that figured out how irrational and self-destructive their masters were. Pretty standard SF fare, and an idea that fit well with 70s-style preachiness - the inhuman machine that could teach us a thing or two about being human. Demon Seed's only real claim to fame is that it went one further, and added sex , also a big deal in 70s cinema. Wonder how many people paid money just to see a woman get raped by a computer.
That;s certainly not why I rented it.
No, but it's what the movie's known for.
If that's what it's known for, then the people who say that obviously didn't pay much attention to the movie! Those_scenes_took up very little screen time. We didn't even see_it_happen!
Now, you should know that a movie's reputation doesn't necessarily reflect what's actually in it. People are very good at taking the more provocative aspects of a movie like this and blowing them out of proportion. The racier they make it out to be, the more disappointing the reality usually is. Filmmakers have been known to encourage this, because it puts bums in seats.
Personally, I'd never heard any of this about Demon Seed until after I'd seen it in the late 80s. But discussing it with coworkers afterward brought a few variations on the "movie about computer rape" theme, from those a bit older than me.
Why so touchy about it? You sound like you think I'm accusing you of something.
People are very good at taking the more provocative aspects of a movie like this and blowing them out of proportion.
"Entrapement",...Catherine Zeta Jones, butt sliding under string...
Yeah, I'm reminded of Basic Instinct's reputation, centred almost entirely around a tiny glimpse of Sharon Stone's beaver.
Saw Troma´s "Nymphoid Barbarians in Dinosaur Hell" today.
Although it is total trash and nonsense (like nearly everything troma has produced) it is not very funny. Some actions and dialogues are ok but altogether this is a boring film. The best is probably the title...
On the back of the cover you can read s.th. like:
"Nymphoid Barbarians in Dinosaur Hell: Forget the brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus and prepare for TROMASAURUS..."