The Dead Don't Die - a Jim Jarmusch zombiemovie with an all star cast: Bill Murray, Steve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez, Danny Glover, Rosie Perez, Tom Waits and more. Story is simple: town gets to deal with zombie plague. What makes this movie stand out a bit more are two things: the dry humour of Jarmusch, occasionally having the characters step out of their role and just play the actors they are: "I know this isn't gonna end well, Jim gave me the script". The other is the ending which is kind of absurd and throws you off a bit, not so typical for a zombiemovie. It's also a tad longer than most, around 100 minutes but it's easy to keep watching. I had fun watching this, it's above average in my opinion and certainly beats the dozens of cgi ridden infected shizzle films I have seen over the years. Recommended!

Perkins' 14 - in a sleepy town a police officer is working hard, trying to cope with the fact his son got abducted ten years ago. Having flashbacks all the time, he suddenly has a hunch that the guy they are holding in a cell at his station might be the guy who took his son. He pays a visit to the house of the man, where he finds a creepy basement filled with cages. The cages are empty however, and there is blood on the floor... driving back he finds out the town is in chaos: murdering creatures run around. The police officer is a trained professional, but nothing could have prepared him for what he is about to encounter. After Dark film with a nice plot, I liked it. At first I was a bit confused but soon enough you know what you are dealing with. Acting is OK and effects are good. I loved the fact that there are some subplots which give some depth to the characters and also the ending was pretty cool. Recommended.

Horror High - never saw this before, even though I had seen Return to Horror High (with George Clooney in one of his first feature film roles). That being 13 years ago already, I didn't have any memories of it. This one was also made 14 years before Return to... so it raises the question how connected the two films actually are. The storyline of this one is simple and straightforward: Vernon, a biology nerd, has beef with several people in his school. The janitor, the English teacher and of course the jocks. When he is forced to drink some of the stuff he was experimenting with on his guinea pig, he turns into a serial killer, just like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which they were reading in  English class. Now everyone who picked on Vernon has to look over his or her shoulder, because he might be coming! Some nice kills, effects are OK. Acting is sometimes a bit overdone, this isn't really a movie that will stick (like Return to... won't), but it was nice to see "the original".

Empire of the Nightwalker - aka The Caretaker. In Australia people are getting a strange sickness. They can't stand daylight any longer and have several other symptoms which give away vampirism immediately to the somewhat experienced horrorfan. When a man hires a doctor to take care of his mother who also fell victim to the disease, it turns out this doctor is a vampire himself. By coincidence the man gets company from a man and a young couple. Soon an angry mob appears at the door of the house demanding they get to kill the vampire. While the vampires don't tolerate other vampires in their territory and also don't want to be staked by angry mobs, and the people want to stay alive, they forge an alliance in which they help each other against their enemies. In the meantime the disease of the vampirism doesn't stop spreading... Quite an original take on vampires, I enjoyed it, SOme stuff was a tad boring at times but overall this was quite entertaining. Recommended, especially if you like vampires.

Video Violence - bought this one in a doublepack with part 2 as well, so I'll review that one later. Pretty low budget but it doesn't really show in production values apart from the image being a bit desaturated. Story is about a couple from New York moving into a small town, the guy is running the local videostore and his wife is in public service. When someone returns a tape and the assistant wants to watch it, the guy declines at first, but after a while they are watching it anyway: what they see is someone being murdered in a gruesome way. The guy can't get this out of his head and things get worse when an unknown person drops more of these videotapes on his desk after his assistant disappeared. His wife is trying to help him in his own private investigation, as the local police don't believe him and even seem to actively construct him in his efforts. It goes all into a climax when a customer is being abducted right in front of the videostore and the couple goes in hot pursuit... Acting is OK for the most part, just some castmembers are overdoing it a little. Gore is pretty good and one line in the film really struck me, when a woman replied "We are just ahead of our time", because movies like Saw and the other torture porn weren't invented yet when this came out. Some insght into the future there! Recommended.