Recent viewings

[3mnkids]

Control~ A psychotic killer who is sentenced to death is given the opportunity to participate in a behavior modification study.

I've had this movie for a couple of years and just never got around to watching it until tonight, I wish I had waited longer. It has a good cast with Ray Liotta and Willem Dafoe but the movie is a mess. They try to hard to make you sympathetic to liotta's character and its predictable.

[Rev. Powell]

STRANGELEAND (1998): Dee Snider tortures teens (with needles, not by playing them cuts from the Twisted Sister reunion album). A shallow peek at modern primitive culture can't save this incompetent, rote shocker.  The detective tracks the killer down by following a trail that starts when he accidentally leaves a huge septum spike at a crime scene.  This movie will make you want to stand up and scream "we're not going to take it!" at the screen.  1.5/5.

[Ash]

Reeker (2005)

This film has been playing on cable lately and I finally watched it in its entirety the other night.
Check out the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quwxIT43DNo

Don't let the trailer fool you...
Despite a few "kinda cheesy" special effects, this was really good!
It's a horror movie on a "different level".
You'll understand what I mean by that when you see it. 

Watch this movie at night with all the lights off.
3 out of 4 stars.   

[3mnkids]

Cry wolf~ another one Ive had for awhile and never watched. A group of kids send out an email about a serial killer and guess what? people start dying. well, sort of. The acting is alright but seriously, how many movies can they make about poor little rich kids with too much time on their hands? Its so lame. This one is going back into the box I found it in.

[indianasmith]

I finally saw DONNIE DARKO this week.  What a strange, bizarre little film.  Still not sure if I liked it or not.  But hey, any movie that has Drew Barrymore as an English teacher can't be all bad.

[hellbilly]

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind: Original Theatrical Version (1977)

I actually prefer the Extended version because too many favorite scenes are missing in the Theatrical cut. Still a great film 

[lester1/2jr]

The Filthiest Show in Town (1973)-  This is pretty obscure and where noted has gotten mediocre reviews at best, but I really liked  it!  It's a cheap corny but spirited take on the censorship issue with a dating game type show being put on trial for obscenity.  There's lot of South Park meets Laugh in humor, some of it actually funny, and a good atmosphere of irreverence and "we're not really actors" sort of charm.  4/5

The Wanderers (1979) -  This movie had a a solid story based on The noir ish book  "the Wanderers" though it's heavily watered down in favor of american graffiti meets Animal House humor.  The acting is fine and it's colorful and there are some laughs here and there but it just doesn't ROCK.  Just doesn't grab the camera and go "aaaaaaaah" the way a movie should.  3/5

[Jack]

Creepozoids (1987) - In a post-apocalyptic future, several Army deserters take shelter in an abandoned building.  There's acid rain, so they can't leave.  Things are looking good until they find a severed head laying on the floor, but they just kick it under a desk and don't worry about it.  Well, they probably should have paid a bit more attention, because there's a monster running loose!  They keep forgetting they're holding guns in their hands, and just stand frozen in fear.  It never occurs to them to hold something over their heads to protect them from the acid rain, and run to one of the other nearby buildings.  The final showdown is a hoot - one guy is in a dimly lit room, and he keeps walking right into the creature!  Luckily it just wants to lift him in the air and shake him around a bit.  Then he does it again, and again, and again.  The soundtrack was the best part of this - classic '80s synth score suitable for an aerobics video, with overly dramatic scary music, especially considering the utter cheesiness of what's taking place on screen.  Linnea Quigley gives us a quick topless scene, and the other characters are fairly likable.  The plot is your most basic Alien ripoff.  3.5/5.  I enjoyed it 

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: MAD MONSTER: This is a season 1 episode and it's even weaker than the other season 1 episode I saw (THE CRAWLING HAND).  The experiment is an episode of a Commander Cody serial (silly kiddie fun), followed by MAD MONSTER, a 1940s formula cheapie with mad scientist George Zucco injecting dim handyman Glenn Strange with wolf's blood to turn him into a werewolf to kill his enemies.  I laughed out loud once, when Servo speaks as the mad scientist and says, "Nice caboose on that girl---wait, that's my daughter!  I AM mad!"  Host segments feature skits like Servo falling in love with a blender are pretty lame overall.  Things would get better immediately next season when Kevin Murphy took over Servo and TV's Frank came on board.  2/5.

[Jack]

Dead Man's Hand:  Casino of the Damned (2007) - A guy inherits a casino from his great uncle, and takes a group of friends along to check the place out.  Unfortunately the great uncle killed some mobsters, and they're back from the grave looking for vengeance.  This pretty much stunk.  The characters were uninteresting cliches, the "scary" parts were completely tongue-in-cheek, the ending was lame, the theme music never set the right mood, and on and on.  Since they only had 20 minutes worth of plot, we got 40 minutes of blah blah blah between these uninteresting characters.  And no nudity - just the slutty girl in her undies a couple of times.  I'll be real generous and give it a 2.5/5, since it had that Full Moon charm, but if you're not a big fan of their movies, I'd definitely skip this one.

[3mnkids]

The Grey Zone~ This could also go in most depressing movies. Set at Auschwitz this tells the story of a group of Sonderkommando who revolt. Its brutal and heartbreaking.

[indianasmith]

I watched MESSENGERS 2: THE SCARECROW this weekend.  It's a R-rated improvement over the first one; not as scary, but the scarecrow is definitely evil and creepy, and the sexy neighbor lady was quite attractive!

[Pilgermann]

District 9 -- I loved this!  It starts out as a faux documentary about alien refugees in South Africa and their relocation by the government that goes terribly wrong, but eventually it becomes a mostly straight forward narrative.  It's very intense and not for the squeamish, but it has a very human element amidst the mayhem and inhumanity.  I hope that this film gets good word of mouth because it deserves to be seen far more than crap like Transformer 2 and G.I. Joe.

[indianasmith]

THE CRYPT - five bosomy female thieves and their ex-con boyfriend decide to rob some graves in an underground crypty where wealthy folks back during the Depression buried their jewelry with their dead, only to be terrorized and killed one by one by the walking ghosts that live in the catacombs - goofy, totally implausible plotline, but the ghosts are fairly scary and the girls are cute enough.  Worth a rental after it drops to be bargains shelves, but probably not as a new release.

[Jack]

The Pool (2001) - Some kids have a graduation party at an indoor water park, and a slasher starts killing them with a machete.  This takes place in Prague, where apparently no two people have the same accent.  You've got a girl who sounds like Natasha from Bullwinkle talking to Sam from Lord of the Rings.  Then an American, a Philippino, and a guy who just sounds like he got dropped on his head as a child join the conversation.  It's almost comical, and makes it really hard to pay any attention to the story.  The dialogue and acting is actually far better than most slashers - when the killer explains his motives at the end, he is one pi$$ed of psycho!  Unfortunately all this good acting and writing just goes into producing some horribly unlikable characters.  By the time the killer showed up, I had a list prepared for him of who I would like slaughtered first.  Of course the worst of them lived.  The deaths were gory, we got two boobs, and the atmosphere was sort of good.  A few plot holes - like the whole front of the building is glass, and the kids have a fire axe, but they never try to escape that way.  They do spend a bit of time trying to knock down a steel door though.  3/5.