J.R. Bookwalter marathon, The Eye 2 and more

[Mr_Vindictive]

Had a busy weekend and am just now getting the chance to do some reviews.  I sat down Saturday night and had a marathon of Bookwalter flicks and then watched a few other decent flicks this week.  First, the marathon:


The Dead Next Door (1985) -  Everywhere you go, you hear about indie flicks.  They are everywhere and in some cases, making more bank than the big budget films out there.  But, indie has lost it's meaning in the past few years.  Indie now means a film with a 10 million dollar budget instead of a 100 mil budget.  But, what about the true indie flicks?  What about the ones made on a shoe-string budget that were made out of love?  That's exactly what The Dead Next Door is.

This is a flick that I've been looking forward to seeing for years now.  I had rented it from two different mom and pop video stores in the past, but in both cases the VHS was so old and ratty that it was unwatchable.

So, thank God for Anchor Bay.  I put in a pre-order for this flick about a month and half ago and received it via Deepdiscountdvd.com on Monday.  I couldn't be happier with the nine dollars I spent on the flick.

The film starts off with a zombie outbreak in Akron, Ohio.  We are treated to newscasts of the event, people being chomped on, and in what is one of the funniest scenes of the film - zombies renting Dawn Of The Dead/Evil Dead/Creepshow at a video store.

Flash foward a few years later, and the zombie plague has swept the nation.  The government has setup an aptly named group called the Zombie Squad to erradicate the zombies and to try and find a cure.

The zombie squad along with an insane doctor (who loves his hat) hit the road, and travel to Akron to find the cure.  Once they are there, they find a crazy religious cult that sort of worships the zombies, and as you could guess, everything goes to hell for the characters from there.

I really enjoyed The Dead Next Door.  It's not a masterpiece by any means, but it's pure entertainment.  There wasn't one spot in the film where I was bored or wishing I was watching another flick.  The gore in the film is superb, the acting is sub-par, and the storyline is similar to numerous other zombie flicks out there...but it just works.  Bookwalter's excitment and love for the genre shows through in nearly every grainy scene in the flick, and really draws the viewer in.  Anchor Bay also loaded this DVD with extras, that I unfortunatly had to stray away from in order to continue my marathon.  This DVD is well worth buying though, especially for any zombie fan.

Note: Sam Raimi produced this film and if you pay attention, you'll notice that the character of "Raimi" in the film is actually voiced by none other than Bruce Campbell.
8/10




Skinned Alive (1989) - Skinned Alive was directed by Jon Killough and was produced by J.R. Bookwalter after they worked together on The Dead Next Door.  The story revolves around a woman named Crawldaddy and her son and daughter as they travel in their van killing people and skinning them alive to make clothing and such.

This film wasn't as good as The Dead Next Door, but it once again shows the love of the genre.  Skinned was a bit more tongue in cheek than Dead Next Door but some of the humor just didn't hit me right.

The true standout in the flick though was Scott Spiegel who plays Crawdaddy's son Phink.  From beginning to end, they guy was a joy to watch.  The guy plays pure insanity pretty well.

Overall, it's not a bad flick.  I picked it up on a 2-disc (4 movie) boxset from Brentwood video for about 5.00 on deepdiscountdvd.com.  Worth the money even if the the other films on the disc suck (haven't seen them yet).
5/10




Street Zombies "Ozone" (1993) - Some of you might remember my review of this film from a few weeks ago .  I went back and rewatched Bookwalter's do or die flick and it has gotten marginally better now that I know the guy shot it for only 3,500!  Still though, it's a bad flick and takes a little help to get through.  Not recommending anyone pick it up unless you are a pure masochist.  It is interesting to note though that Bookwalter shot this film just to see if something so low budget could make a profit.  If it did, I'd be surprised.
2/10



That's it for the Bookwalter marathon.  Dead Next Door was the high point for the guy and everything eventually went downhill from there.  Now, if he were to finally make a sequel to Dead Next Door like has been rumored for years then I'd be at the video store the day of release.

Well, here are some pretty standard reviews of some other flicks I checked out this week:



The Eye 2 (2004) - A few of you might remember me posting a review of The Eye a while back.  After that a few of you went out and rented it and were quite impressed if I remember correctly.  So was I, and I was even more interested to see if The Pang Brothers could pull off a sequel that works as well as the original.

Yes, yes they can.

For me, The Eye 2 surpassed the original Eye in most every aspect.  The Pang bros have become masterful directors that know how to milk a scene for every bit of tension and how to creep out the viewer without revealing too much.

The film is about a young woman named Joey.  Within the first five minutes, she commits suicide after her boyfriend breaks up with her.  Seconds before she passes out from the various pills she took, she sees her room is filled with gray figures.

She is rushed to a hospital and her stomach is pumped.  She then finds out that she is in fact pregnant by her ex-boyfriend and that's when the film starts to pick up.  She sees ghosts everywhere after that point.  Some are commiting suicide in the subway, some are following her friends and some are watching women in public bathrooms.

Joey eventually leans why one has been following her and what the ghost's intent is.  The film has a huge twist in the last 40 minutes or so that I never saw coming.  Very interesting storyline with quite a few scares thrown in occasionally.  

The Pang bros have a way of injecting huge amounts of tension in a scene by their direction and the score that they pick for each scene.  This flick is literally an edge of you seat flick despite is subtely.  It's very much in the same vein as Ringu and Ju-On but is far better.  Well worth seeing, do yourself a favor and rent this flick.
8/10



The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Glaxay (1981) - Finally got around to renting the six episode BBC mini-series of Douglas Adam's fantastic book.  I had seen bits and pieces over the years but had never gotten around to watching it completely until now.

Overall it wasn't too bad.  Simon Jones was great as Arthur and David Dixon plays Ford to a tee.  The only real problem with the film is that it is so obviously outdated by todays standards.  

Worth a rent if you're a big fan of the books as I, but not for everyone.  My wife for example kept getting annoyed by Zaphod's second head which was comatose for a good part of the series.
6/10


I did catch a few other flicks on cable this week, but nothing to really write about.  Anyway my hands are killing me now.

[dean]

>>>The film starts off with a zombie outbreak in Akron, Ohio. We are treated to newscasts of the event, people being chomped on, and in what is one of the funniest scenes of the film - zombies renting Dawn Of The Dead/Evil Dead/Creepshow at a video store.


I must say this a good start to any movie really.  Not enough romantic comedies and serious period pieces these days start with zombie chompings...

Those Bookwalter films sound great, I will hopefully be able to find some around here to watch.

On another note, I also just borrowed the first series of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but have yet to watch it all.  So far so good though.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Dean,

If you're a fan of zombie flicks then you'll get a kick out of Dead Next Door...just don't expect the picture to be high quality.  It was shot completely on 8mm.

[dean]

I'm sure I don't have a problem with 8mm zombie indie films of which the picture quality [and quite often the content] is of a questionable nature.  

Perhaps addiction is a better way to describe how I feel about these kind of films.  

I just hope I'm able to get myself a look at Dead Next Door: it would crush me to find out that due to a limited budget, it isn't available here, since Dead Next Door did sound very interesting.

Anyway I have some spare time tomorrow, I'll have a look around some places!

[lester1/2jr]

I thought "the eye2" was boring