What are some flicks you've seen lately? (part 5)

[Cheecky-Monkey]

Dead Birds (2004)-- A group of convicts hide out in an Alabama farmhouse after a bank robbery. However, they soon learn something horrifying also inhabits the farm, too. Really cool, different horror film. Cast is excellent, the movie looks good, the score is creepy as hell, the make-up effects are great (Though there is some dodgy CG used now and then) and it's very gory at times.
Good, spooky fun that's much better than expected.
3-and-a-half satrs out of 5.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)-- For no apparent reason, the dead begin to come back to life and the world is thrown into a hellish apocalypse, except a group of people taking refuge in a mall, fighting for their survival. This shold have been terrible, but it was easily the best big-studio horror film of 2004! Good acting, nice sense of humor, sharp screenplay, the make-up effects are some of the most convincing I've ever seen (There's almost no CGI in the entire film--Hallelujah!) and it's easily the goriest flick to come out in a while. See it!
4 stars out of 5.

Hellboy (2004)-- A horned, red-skinned demon (Ron Perlman) working for a secret gorvernment paranormal agency fights Rasputin, a re-incarnated being who's trying to end the world. Good fun. Perlman is PERFECT as hellboy. The animatronic creature and make-up effects are superb, but the unconvincing CGI tends to cheapen things. Very enjoyable despite some short comings.
3-and-a-half stars out of 5.

Cabin Fever (2002)-- A group of intensley stupid teens rent a cabin in the woods, but soon become infected with a flesh-eating bacterium. Can't believe the hype this movie got. Banal dialog, bad attempts at humor, so-so acting, stupid characters, no atmosphere. Cool gore, but not worth watching--at all.
1-and-a-half stars out of 5.

Resident Evil (2002)- A mutating T-virus is released into the ventilation system of a top-secret laboratory, and super-computer Red Queen kills eveyone working there. When a team of soldiers are sent in to investigate, they are stuck battling zombies and mutants half a mile underground.  Occasionally atmospheric, but the acting is wooden, the CG-based monsters fail to arrouse anything but laughs, the gore is unconvincing and its too stupid and obnoxious for it's own good (and who's brilliant idea was it to put that truly hideous heavy metal into the "action" scenes?). Cool ending though.
2 stars out of 5.

Zeram (1991)-- Two goofy electricians are thrown into another dimension and hunted by an alien creature. A female bounty hunter must save them before its too late. Strange little movie, but entertaining. The special effects are usually quite nice-looking (Especially a stop-motion alien near the end), the production values are strong, the characters are likeable, and there are some exciting action scenes.
Worth renting.
3 stars out of 5.

Phantoms (1998)-- After returing to their home town, two girls discover everyone is missing or dead, and strange things begin to happen as night draws near. This is an incedibly underrated film, based on a great book by Dean Koontz. The atmosphere is strong and haunting, the screenplay (penned by Koontz himself) is intelligent and eerie the acting is very good, and the special effects, from the boys over at KNB studios, deliver the goods.
Very well-done movie that should have gotten a lot more recognition than it did.
4 stars out of 5.

[Fearless Freep]

Ironically, I just finished watching "Iria: Zeiram The Animation", a great anime based on the same two main characters, Iria and Zeiram, although with a completely different plot.

[Alaine]

The ring 2

[saintmort]

I finally got Netflix so i'm finally getting to see all those horror movies that I could never find...ANYWHERE

so far I got Tromeo and Juliet which I gave *** out 4.

Right now I'm watching the Original Dawn of the Dead which my blockuster didnt' carry. So far it's pretty darn good, I really wanted to see it before I see Shawn of the Dead or the Remake so it was very necessary to see this even more so.

Punk Rock Holocaust or bloodsuckin' Freaks is coming in next I forget which

I also purchased the sleepaway camp Survival Kit this week for $20 (God bless yardsales). But I've already seen and loved that series.

[Wence]

"Demolition University" 1996
A really boring stinker...

[odinn7]

'Saw'...oh god, more crap. Somewhat interesting twist but highly ridiculous with way too many plot holes. Of course, I should have used the "Ed-O-Meter" on this. My a-hole brother in law (Ed) thought this movie was the greatest thing since 'The Core' and 'Dude, Where's My Car'. Usually when he thinks a movie is good, I know to stay away from it but I paid no attention to the Ed-O-Meter this time. My mistake.

[Mr_Vindictive]

I actually had a pretty decent time with Saw.  It was what it was and it kept me entertained for an hour and a half.  It wasn't as all out gruesome it was made out to be, but oh well.

As for my week, my wife finally got me to watch The Notebook.....and it was actually a damn fine film.  Well worth watching.

That was about it for me.  I did happen to pick up some other flicks this week that I have yet to watch:

2001
Clockwork Orange
The Shining
(All 3 were 25.00 in a box set at Sam's Club)

also picked up:

One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest and Wall Street (5.50 WalMart bin)

[renegadefury]

-Gemini (directed by the guy that did Tetsuo), weird tale about twins,  very artsy, although not as experimental as Tetsuo was

-Day of the Animals, got pretty bored of it fast, not that many animal attacks, too much talk about stuff I didn't care for

-Spook that Sat by the Door, I think the race issue is kinda outdated though, but good movie about some black ex-CIA agent that got some ghetto to revolt against America (reminds me of Marxism with the class warfare thing, although I don't think the movie promoted violence to be the answer)

-Day of the Beast, one of my favorite films now, finally a movie that actually knows the difference between death and heavy metal, funny clever script, ironic ending, only got this thing for $2 on VHS too

-Humanoids from the Deep, not as gory as reviews on a bunch of sites have said before, but was entertaining

[mjp]

Looking for a movie I saw when I was about 6 or 7 yrs. old.  I'll go into it in a sec.

Thanks for the tips on Phantoms, etc.  I will look for them.

I recently PURCHASED, for some reason, "Horror of the Blood Monsters."  It is AWESOME!!  One of the worst movies ever made.  It is so horribly bad in nearly every conceivable facet that it is an abosolute joy to watch.  For sci fi, there are so very many things that make no scientific sense that it comes up hilarious.  The scenes inside both mission control and the "spacecraft" kept me cracking up.  When the director decided to add Philipino black and white weird asian caveman horror scenes, my jaw just dropped open.  I had this huge smile on my face the whole time watching it.  It definitely gives Plan 9 From Outer Space a run for its money.  Highly recommended.

Back to my quest to find a movie whose title escapes me:  the defining moment of the film came when, on another planet, the hero, in order to save the day or escape or both, had to dive into and swim through an entire swimming pool filled with human blood!  I MUST FIND THIS MOVIE!!!!  It must have been made in the early to mid-sixties.  Please help me in my quest, I implore you.  If you don't know, pls. send my message to someone who might know about this movie with the blood swimming pool.  I think there was some stuff about being able to shrink people down to 6 inches in size as well but the blood pool is indelibly etched upon my cortex.
Thanks for your movie reviews!
Sincerely,
mjp

[peter will]

Funny I have seen all of those movies in the past few months?

[h.p. love]

Dr. Strangelove or:  How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love the Bomb - I caught way more of the humor in this one this time around, probably because I'm several years older (and maybe even wiser) now. Peter Sellers is hillarious (as usual). Is it just me or is this movie even more relevant now? George C. Scott's performance is great. "A kraut by any other name..." #18 on IMDB, so it has to be good right? ahem.

Castle Freak - Always fun to watch Jeffrey Combs but this flick by Stuart Gordon is not fun to watch. Gordon purposely left out any dark comedy and as a result it's just too misogynistic. It's not a "bad" movie, and the creature make-up (a full body make-up job) is excellent, but I just didn't enjoy it. And I never really like seeing a monster rape a woman and biting off part of a breast. Again, maybe the getting older thing I mentioned above. I mean, the monster/woman scene in Basket Case is somewhat relevant to the story. Here it just seems like unnecessary pandering to people you wouldn't want to meet. This also explains why the daughter is a blind character, so we get to watch the monster almost rape her as she sleeps and then again later. Can't recommend this one at all.

Harry and Tonto - Got this at the library when I got Dr. Strangelove. It's is a road movie from 1974 starring Art Carney. I really liked it. It is sentimental but also really funny. Carney (Harry) and his cat (Tonto) motor west from NY to CA. Really liked this they-don't-make-em-like-this-anymore flick. I love the scene where Carney gets thrown in jail for drunken public urination and has his shoulder healed in the jail cell by an american indian medicine man whom he pays with a pair a pair of undershorts. Also the part where the aged Carney hitchhikes a ride with a high priced hooker.

[Lycurgus1985]

Well, after a long while, I finally got around to seeing The Beyond, Fulci's unofficial sequel to The Gates of Hell.  I have to honestly say I wasn't impressed at all.  In fact, I had an abysmal time sitting through this due to the execution.

The Beyond starts off on the right foot, opening with a surreal atmosphere as a woman reads through the Book of Eidon while Sweick, an artist guarding one of the seven doorways to Hell, is executed rather graphically by the townspeople that claim he has cursed the town.  However, this is where the movie begins to lose its' steam.  It goes all downhill from there.  

Flash forward to present day 1981 where a young woman named Liza has inherited a hotel which she plans to restore and reopen.  Suddenly, within a day's time, a person nearly dies from falling off a scaffolding, a plumber named Joe gets murdered when some unknown person gouges out his eyes, and a corpse (which turns out to be Sweick) turns up in the basement.  If all that happened to me in one day, that would be enough warning signs for me to tail it the hell out of dodge.  But no, Liza decides to play it dense and push forward with her plans, saying this is her only chance to make it as a success.  With a hotel with a bad history attached to it and now many accidents/corpses popping up already?  Is she really that dense?!  Not to mention she had ambitions to become a fashion designer before she got word she inherited the hotel.  Liza, if I were you, I would hightail back to New York and persue that career of a fashion designer once more.

Later on, Liza encounters a blind woman named Emily who we later find out is the woman reading the Book of Eidon in the beginning.  Emily warns Liza to get out of dodge as well.  However, Liza continues to play her role as a blonde relentlessly and refuses.  Emily eventually pops up at the hotel and warns Liza again, telling her the history behind this place.  Even when some supernatural events happen during this conversation, Liza insists she doesn't believe in ghosts and still pushes forward with her plans.  Hell, even when the supernatural events happen to her, she still doesn't get a clue she might have overstayed her welcome.  God, I wish this dense as anti-matter b***h would die already.

If that wasn't enough, we even get treated to the stereotypical and repetitive cliche of Liza telling her love interest, John, about these horrifying events yet he doesn't believe her to pad the runtime.  Please insert numerous head smashes into wall here.

So, some more people die.  A useless hunt for the Book of Eidon (which really serves no purpose now since we've learned the same things in the beginning prologue of this movie that we learn when it is rediscovered by John) is brought in to pad the runtime.  Liza and John both finally get a clue about their situation and somehow end up at the hospital for a groan inducing climax which I won't spoil for you nonetheless.  

As you can see, The Beyond really skimps on the plot development big time.  I mean, I know Lucio Fulci's films had simplistic plots to begin with, but they had 90% more story than this one does and were handled in such a way that the events would hold you by the balls relentlessly.  It's really sad that all the stuff the characters find out we discovered in the very beginning of the movie!  The Beyond just feels like an excuse to show off a bunch of gory deaths and supernatural events strung together poorly by the most mircobacterial plot ever.  It's also amazing just how much Fulci sacrifices logic for the events that occur in the movie.  I know Fulci tends to sacrifice logic here and there in previous movies but at least it was plausible to some extent like the characters were terrified to the point of shock or wanted to find out some more information from others before attempting their proposed actions to deal with the situation.  But here... Just cap me like Old Yeller, please!  For example, when John is taking out zombies with his gun, he goes for headshots because he finds that it puts them down permenantly.  However, when he encounters zombie Sweick, he shoots him in the torso multiple times instead, wasting all his bullets!  You goddamned fool!  Shoot him in the head!  UGH!  Both you and Liza deserved your damned fates in the movie.

What was even worse is that the film establishes no atmosphere outside the opening scene.  Most of the action in the film happens during the day, eliminating suspense.  Then this is beaten like a dead horse when the film drags along by focusing on a certain death/gory scene for way too long or the film foreshadows the events of what is to happen just a little too much.  Wow, am I ever on the edge of my seat... ready to hit the eject button on the DVD player.

This brings me to another terrible point of the film, the effects.  The makeup effects for the death scenes were especially cheap looking.  You could tell what was liquid latex, prosthetic, a puppet, a dummy, a piece of wax posing as a chunk of skin, all the way through!  What was also unintentionally funny is sometimes the blood would not squirt out of a person's wound, but out of some random spot.  For example, when one of the doctors at the hospital gets a bunch of glass shards piercing his skin, most of the blood is squirting down his forehead instead of the actual wounds.  In fact, Fulci didn't even bother to have any other of the zombies made up.  The only zombie that actually looks remotely decayed and creepy is Sweick.  There isn't even that much gore in this film.  All of Fulci's films beat this one out 2 to 1.  Man, Fulci got extremely lazy with this half-assed job of an italian horror movie.

It's not just the gore effects that are cheap either.  Some of the creature effects suck really badly too.  For example, when the spiders attack Martin, you can tell which spiders are real and which are fake.  It's especially amusing to watch the fake spiders wobble along.  Hell, I didn't even know that spiders squeaked like rats either.  I guess you learn something new each day... :rolleyes:

Ok, I need to stop now.  My head feels like a scanner has tapped it and is trying to make me a repeat of the highlight gore scene of that movie.  I really cannot comprehend why or how people actually like this movie.  This is the kind of film that makes me appreciate Zombie, another Fulci movie I loathe, a lot more and believe me, that is saying quite a bit for me.  Hell, that one at least had atmosphere and creepy AND convincingly gory deaths.

I need to watch something else to wash this piece of dreck out of my mind.  I think Mario Bava's Shock will do nicely.

It's a damn good thing I only rented this!

Overall Rating:



1 out of 5 Wolfies

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Post Edited (04-02-05 22:15)

[george]

I have seen Uzumakin and Saw???

[Cheecky-Monkey]

Mike, you're a moron.

[Brother Ragnarok]

Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) - What a ride!  Two solid hours of almost nonstop action, both human and monster.  The fan reaction has been about as polarized as the U.S. during Dubbya's reign of stupidity, though.  It's not a perfect movie, and there have been better Godzilla flicks, but it's a helluva lot of fun.  I must say, Gigan steals the show.  His redesign is probably the coolest thing Toho has ever done.