Mansion of the Doomed - a doctor has a car accident where his daughter gets blinded. Now he is obsessed with finding a solution for her problem. For this, he has to remove the eyes of living people, at least that's what he thinks,. When the first operation goes wrong, he needs more eyes, of course. The rest of the film is a long search for more eyes and at the same time trying to not be discovered. Some gross stuff, a very early role for Lance Henriksen, but all in all not really very special.

Yesterday was my birthday, so I had a birthday movienight. Some extreme, some zombies and some gore:

Schramm - whoa, this film is weird! It is only 65 minutes long, but it keeps you pushed back firmly in your chair. Some very gross things, all in a non specific order, normal stuff which happens everyday, you start to wonder where this is all going. Then you get some shocking moments, among which is a penis hammering scene. In the end, I started to smile, as everything came together and the sadness of the ending could not stop my overwhelming feeling of how good this actually was, as a film. Highly recommended. Beware, some shocks to be expected.

Boy Eats Girl - teen movie with zombies. A guy is in love with a classmate and when he accidentally hangs himself after supposedly having seen her with another guy, his mother resurrects him using ancient voodoo. She makes a mistake, so her son is not really alive: he has become some sort of zombie. He bites his enemies at school who in turn change into zombies. A search for the cure starts and then a race aganist time: will they save this guy before he turns into a zombie forever? Not really funny, some nice gore, but all in all too much teen stuff and I;m getign a bit tired of that. Also, the "cute girls" didn't look so good! WTF is that!

Doom Asylum - yess! Best one for last! Kristin Davis (from Sex and the City fame) stars in this way over the top gory horrorsploitation film. Everything is very exaggerated, the killings are great and there are plenty of them, over ten people get brutally killed in various ways. A great amount of gore, some nice jokes and the young body of Kristin keep you occupied until the grand finale. I enjoyed this one thoroughly. Highly recommended!

The Murders in The Rue Morgue (1986): This the adaption of Edgar Allan Poe's short story. It is about a double murder that the police in Paris can't figure out. How could the murderer get into the house, while the doors are locked from the inside and the windows are all nailed? How could the murderer push the dead body up the chimney? And where was the murderer from as possible witnesses are telling about a foreign language they heared? I like this movie a lot as it comes very close to the novel. There is a love story added by Hollywood, but it all plays out nicely. Val Kilmer and George C. Scott are great. George C. Scott plays the retired policeman who comes back to solve the case using his deductive logic. I like how they present the murderer just near the very end of the movie. I recommend the novel instead of the movie, because how Poe described the detective's thinking and logic is simply brilliant.

Devil's Advocate - long movie, in which the horror is saved for the endscene. Throughout the rest of the movie it comes by only sometimes, in a subtle way. So this movie is a thriller with some horror in it. The story is great, I liked it a lot. The acting is great too, even Keanu Reeves acts (as in: he shows emotions) pretty good, but in the endscene he gets blown off the screen by Al Pacino, but hey, who doesn't. I thought there was quite some disturbing stuff going on, and I was totally into it, and then: the end. Damn, another ending I really hate! The endscene I was referring to ebfore is great, but the movie should have stopped at that point! Instead, it goes on to make a stupid ending which turns the movie into something totally pointless! What a waste! So again, I recommend you watch this movie and press STOP in time, which is at 2hours and 10 minutes in. This way you will skip the ludicrous end.

A late happy birthday, Slayer!

+1

Thanks guys!

Cronos - an early Guillermo del Toro, his debut even, this original take on vampirism (the backside says it has Mexican roots or something). An ancient artefact from a 16th century alchemist can make you live longer, but you'll fear sunlight and lust for blood in return. An antique dealer uses it and a rich millionaire wants it. The latter's nephew uses all force to get it. Great story, good acting. Music was nice too. It wasn't really scary, more fairytale like, like Pan's Labyrinth. Recommended!

Scarlet Diva - not a horror, it's a drama drenched in sex and drugs. It was a movie which was quite incoherent, I felt like there wasn't really one storyline. Some scenes jumped to each other, I was sometimes wondering whether a certain part of the plot would be finished or not. The only thing which made it a bit bearable was Asia Argento, because I think she is hot. I just hope that her other films are better, and hopefully more in the tradition of her father. If you like Asia, watch this. If not, skip it.

The Haunting of Hell House - I wasn't expecting a modern day classic horror. Yes, that sounds weird. Well, it is made in 1999 and it has all ingredients of a classic horror movie like Hammer used to make them. A 19th century setting, some students busy with science, a weird house with a history. But: the special effects were much better and the story was much worse. The acting was OK, but not as outstanding as in some Hammer movies. So while it has some merits, this modern classic cannot compete with the old classics. Just skip this one.

The Bat - silent movie from 1926, I had already seen the 1959 remake and you can read the review of that one a few pages back. Since the storyline is the same, there were no surprises there. A few minor things were different: the bat now actually looked like a bat, wearing a ridiculous costume on its way to robbery. In the end, when the bat gets apprehended, he gets away one more time, only to get trapped in a beartrap the maid set in the beginning of the movie. This was a nice touch, but overall this wasn't for me. Apart from the fact that I already knew how the story would go, the acting was a bit laughable and overdone and the movie being a silent one didn't help either. Not my thing, maybe it is yours.

Witches Mountain - pffft, what is up with that Undead collection? The number of movies in it being about vampires is maybe 5, while there are 20 movies in the box. So here is another one not about vampires, but about witches (you guessed it). And again, it is from Spain. Luckily for them, they now have Del Toro and other great directors, because in the 70s the quality of Spanish cinema was dramatic if you go on the movies in this collection. Boring from start to 10 minutes before the end, almost nothing happens and the movie goes at snail's pace. Near the end suddenly something happens, but it can't save the movie. Please help yourself and don't watch this garbage.

The Puppet Masters - after Macabria suggested that the movie I was looking for was this one, I looked forward to watching this. I wasn't disappointed. It had all the great stuff I was expecting from it and even more. There is Donald Sutherland, there is good music, there are these great alien monsters and the infected people. It is cheesy, yes, but at the same time there is tension too. Soon enough you will start wodnering whether someone has an alien on his/her back or not. I remember when I watched this back in the days when it was released (1994, I watched it maybe in 1995/1996) and I thought it was really scary. Now it wasn't scary anymore, but there were remnants of the tension I mentioned above. Of course I could guess a lot easier which people wereinfected and which weren't, but still. I liked it and I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching a movie that I had seen so long ago. Recommended. (I omitted the "highly" because I think I'm biased by nostalgia)

Disturbed - story about a mental institute where a murder has been committed. The warden of the institute wants to cover up, to keep the good name of the institute. Meanwhile, some of the people involved are getting into contact with the police. The warden starts seeing things and wonders what is wrong. Good acting job of Malcolm McDowell and some of the other actors in this very boring story. It won't take you long before you find out what is the plottwist in this one. The DVD I have this film on, is one of the worst in my collection: you cannot rewind, you cannot see how much running time is left and after 55 minutes, the film pauses, the disc starts spinning anew and then the second part of the film starts at 00:00. Wow, I didn't know they were made that bad. Avoid if you want to have fun.

Wild Gals of the Naked West - blegh, those early Meyer films have only one merit, and that is that they contributed to his experience as a director, making it possible for him to make better movies later. This obne is about nothing again. First, we get to see one of the most low budget scenes ever. It is about US cavalry fighting Indians in the Wild West. We see a trumpet, a sword, a statue of a horse and a spear being stuck in the ground. Meanwhile we hear some noises. That's it. You don't see real horses, people or anything. Then a cowboy starts to tell us about a town. What follows is some mindles slapstick. It is very, very unfunny. My brain almost couldn't take it. Only watch this when you are very, very far away or when you are almost asleep.

Frogs - yes, this one made up for the lost time on the two previous films. A photographer ends up in a family house in the middle of a swamp. The pater familias, wheelchaired, plans to poison all reptiles and frogs in the swamp to ease the surroundings. After a while, nature strikes back. This 70s horror has it all: a cheesy tagline "Today the pond, tomorrow the world!", loads of stock footage of reptiles, frogs being thrown into scenes (you can actually see them coming from a height they cannot have ever reached by themselves) and death scenes of people trying to look helpless. Great fun! Not so much gore, that is the only drawback. Recommended.

Meat Cleaver Massacre - reading the title, I expected to get some slasher with a meatcleaver, hacking his way through several innocent victims. But: it's not that. In fact, there isn't a slasher. Even better: there isn't even a meatcleaver! There is a guy half in a coma after his family has been killed and he barely survived the attack: now he is taking revenge by summoning a demon to kill the wrongdoers. So this movie goes into competition for worst movietitle ever. The movie itself isn't so superbad, not a masterpiece, but it is OK-ish. The intro and outtro of Christopher Lee could have been skipped without losing any quality, though, What is he babbling about? Also, the story could have been made a little more exciting: now it is just the demon gouing to guy nr 1, kill him. Next day, demon goes to guy nr 2, kill him. And on, etc. So, nothing really special to commemorate.

Samurai Princess - guess what I think of this movie (hint: it is Japanese). Apart from what I usually post about Jap movies, this one also tries to put some morale into the story by making the audience think about the dilemma of humanity. Is it human to kill an android because they threaten humans according to your law? Wow, deep. What I disliekd a lot, was that seevral effects were cgi, like the white milky stuff coming from the princess's mouth and the blood from the girl who gets sawn in half by a rocket propelled chainsaw. Real bummer. Some other effests are great though, like the endboss. This must be your thing: weird craziness and gore by the bucketload. If you like this, watch it.

Planet Outlaws - a Buck Rogers adventure. Very childish sfx, like it is supposed to be in '50s scifi movies, although I must say the launchings looked pretty OK: it was the flying sequences which looked stupid/funny. The story itself is about a people fighting against their oppressors and their attempts to get help from Saturn. Typical movie for its time, the oppressors are of course the reds. I really liked it for its badness.

Frankenstein General Hospital - this was a funny surprise! I thought it would be dull, maybe, but it turned out to be a bit like Airplane/Naked Gun, only in a hospital where a doctor is working on a secret experiment, which is the Frankenstein-like monster, of course. The jokes are a bit dumb sometimes, but the dialogues are really funny. I guess I was in the right mood for this one, because I laughed out loud a few times. Recommended. I'd write highly, but I think I;m biased because of the mood.

Dementia 13 - an early Coppola movie and a good one too. The sotry is a slow starter, but after a while (some 20 minutes) you will get into it. The whodunnit is nicely set up and although it is not really very surprising, the twist is nice enough, especially for 1963. The acting is good, although the doctor overacts a bit. Recommended.

Shutter - J-horror, co-produced with some US people. Win-win situation on both sides of the Pacific, they must have thought. I'm not such a big fan of J-horror, but this one is OK. Of course there are the semi-invisible ghost people and the incredible things happening. The ending was great. I really liked it, and it sets this movie apart from so many crappy attempts at making a horror movie and then ending it with "it was all a dream" shit or something. Not this one. Recommended.

The Plague of the Zombies - only Hammer movie about zombies. I liked it: it sticks close to the traditional zombiestory, about voodoo from Haiti and the undead aren't ravingly mad people shouting BRAAAIIINSS all the time. But it isn't boring like so many other "traditional" zombiemovies. The story is well done, and I liked its Britishness: the accents and the politeness. Cleverness and zombies can be in one movie after all. Recommended.

Horror in the Attic - talking about clever: this movie needs a little more viewing concentration than the average horror flick, where you can easily grab a beer, return to your seat and don't miss out on anything important in the storyline. You'll get confused more easily if you do so with this one. Jeffrey Combs is great as a doctor treating a guy who is accused of murdering his girlfriend and therefore ends up in a house with other recovering mental patients. The house is weird and has a strange chest in the attic. The acting is great: apart from Combs there is Seth Green and although I don't like all his parts, he does this one very well. Also, you'll want to see how this ends and that is always good. Recommended.

The Carpenter - Wings Hauser plays a ghostly carpenter who fixes a house where the reguilar workers are very slow on doing anything. When the woman of the house falls in love with "the carpenter", things are getting nasty. He kills everyone who is in their way and uses his tools to do so. Therefore, this is a B-movie rip-off of Toolbox Murders. Not really good, but enjoyable enough. If you like B-movies, this one is OK.

The Terror - this oldie with a very young Jack Nicholson has some classic goofy sfx. The storyline develops OK, but near the end the plottwists are very fake and unbelievable. A major character turns out to be someone else totally, yeah, right. A bit dull, this movie, it could have been a lot better.

Dr. Jekyll's Mistresses - aka El Secreto del Dr. Orloff. Mmm, a bit boring. A mad scientist found his wife with another man and he killed the man, turning him into some sort of a zombie. Now their niece comes to visit them and she finds out about the zombie, who kills people who are wearing a certain cheap necklace. It all is kind of classic, but not quality wise (it is still a Franco). Nothing special, please move along.

Eve and the Handyman - another early Russ Meyer where nothing happens. There is no storyline, we see "funny" clips with the handyman in it, we don't get to see any tits (it was 1961, so I can get that) and I mostly watched this ffwd. It saved me almost an hour.

Oily Maniac - from the makers of The Mighty Peking Man, we get a horror movie where a crippled guy turns into a monster covered in oil. He is some sort of Batman, protecting people who are victims of crime and injustice. This is a bad moviefan's must see. It is really cool to see the oil dripping into a room, going across the floor without leaving any stains, then it turns into the oily maniac who kills one or more adversaries and then he goes laying down on his belly, slowly turning back into the crippled man with stop-motion. After the change back the man has a few oil stains on his face. Hilarious. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Doomsday - mmm, not so bad. Well, at least not as bad as I thought it would be. The outbreak of the virus is a bit weird and poorly explained, but the immediate aftermath and the containment are nice to watch. I loved the historical references (Hadrian's Wall) and the story develops nicely and somewhat predictable, but not stupid-predictable. Rhona looks nice and is ace in everything, a bit like Beckinsale in Underworld. There is some nice gore and a few good fights. The ending was meager, but it could have been way worse. Mildly recommended.

Son of Hercules: Land of Darkness - haha, this one is bad! This piece of crap with a very fake dragon, a bear which doesn't look threatening at all (in fact, I was thinking the bear would become friends with Hercules), some ultra stupid guards and soldiers, and bouncing rocks make this strong-man action drama complete. I laughed out loud regularly. For bad moviefans only.

The Galaxy Invader - same thing, different monster. A guy in a rubber suit has a small white sphere and a weapon. The weapon gets its energy from the sphere. It can blast down a building (well, almost). Some redencks are gonna hunt down this monster and it is just crazy. The scientist who is trying to save the creature for science meets his doom (haha). For bad moviefans only, again.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb - a nice Hammer classic, which isn't set in the 19th century for a change. It is the late sixties/early seventies instead. A mummy which was excavated by a team of Egyptologists seems to regain strength and to start a new life within the body of someone else. Is that really what is happening or is it something else? This interesting storyline is told in a nice movie with the gorgeous Valerie Leon (see pic below) in the lead role. Some of it is a bit ruffled up but most of the storyline is told in an even pace and although the outcome is quite predictable, there are still a few minor shocks to be had before it reaches the end. Recommended.

Behind the Mask: the rise of Leslie Vernon - wow, nice movie! A filmt eam wants to make a documentary about a serial killer and he takes them with him on his trips where he prepares for a big night of murder. He plans to kill a bunch of teens and his nemesis, his former psychiatrist. He explains to the crew how he prepares for every murder, what the chances are of succeeding and which techniques are used best. When the night finally begins, things turn out differently, but it is up to you to see if that is a problem for the serial killer. Although this is not the first movie where I saw a filmcrew following a murdering guy, I still thought it was quite original. The acting was well done and over all it is very enjoyable. Highly recommended. We have it here : viewtopic.php?t=15075


Valerie Leon

Shock - psychological horror, with ghosts and things in the mind. Last work from Mario Bava, it builds up and takes it's time, but then when it starts rolling, it is nice. The visions and people not believing, etc. is OK, the kid is pretty scary. The voodoo-like thingy could have been worked out better, there were possibilties to take it further even. Acting OK, storyline ends in quite an unusual way. I liked that. Recommended.

Raptor - hehe, another one of those brainless flicks where a secret government project is given up and then a mad scientist continues and breeds dinosaurs. The raptors are cool, but I don't get it where the Tyrannosaurus suddenly came from. Apparently they were breeding several species of dinos! Eric Roberts is the hero policeman with an animal behaviour doctor with big tits next to him, fighting the raptors. The ending gave me a deja vu, I really, really felt like I had seen that before, but maybe it was just that I had been checking this DVD before by skipping through it and saw it then. Well, now I saw it all. I had fun. Don't expect a good movie though.

Pledge Night - fraternity horror: a pledge who accidenally was killed in the 60s, returns to haunt the fraternity house. A typical late 80s flick (it is actually made in the last year of the 80s, 1990), this one contains hardrock in the soundtrack, it has girls with long blonde hair and shoulder fillings, and it has that atmosphere which I'm a sucker for. The pledge pranks are OK, for some they might not be funny, but I thought some of them were. The killer is, well, I don't know. He is a zombie, but he can become invisible, he is also quite smart. So I wouldn't know what to call him. Drawback of my DVD is that the subs went out of sync with 35 minutes to go, but apart from that, this was an enjoyable viewing experience. Recommended.

Puppet Master II - yay, I love the puppets! My fav from part 1 was Blade, but I have a new favourite puppet: Torch! Because he has FIRE!! Yess! The paranomral people are funny, but they act quite well, I nearly started to take the film seriously. In the end this is some nice and mindless Charles Band puppet action. Forget about the Toulon appearance, he is just bad. Watch it for the puppets, and give me Torch for my next birthday please!

The Psychic - giallo by Fulci. A woman sees things and thinks that they are visions from the past. Because of those visions, she discovers a skeleton walled in in the house she is going to live in. With her shrink and the police, she tries to find out who the killer is. But when she finally starts discovering things, it is not what she had expected. It is a nice thriller with some supernatural stuff going on. Fulci builds up tension nicely, the music is great. It could have been paced a little faster overall, but this is a nice movie and I enjoyed it a lot. For the first 30 minutes I was guessing which direction the film would take, but after a while I knew it, it is not very complicated. There were some twists which weren't so hard to guess either, but still pretty inventive. Recommended.

Reptilian - Godzilla rip-off in many ways. The giant monster is awoken by human activities, it is then steered by aliens, it is attacked by the army in great numbers without any success, it turns sides after a while and then suddenly is a "good" monster and it has to fight another weird monster in the endscene. It is all very much over the top, which is great. The aliens are somewhat hard to understand without any subs. CGI is sometimes very ugly, sometimes it is OK-ish. I really loathe it when fire is cgi in movies, blegh. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Mulberry Street - zombieflick. In the first half of the movie next to nothing happens, so I almost fell asleep. In one scene a guy gets bitten by a rat and then he is infected: he turns into a zombie, a modern one (able to run and everything). Then when the action breaks loose, the camera is swaying to all sides, the editing is erratic and it becomes hard to follow what happens. If you want to show the audience that it is all very chaotic, well, congratulations director, you succeeded. But if you want to have them follow the storyline, you failed miserably. It was next to impossible to do so. Avoid.

Dead Set (2008) - BBC miniseries where Big Brother house members are the last to find out that the zombie apocalypse is happening around them. The series is alternately funny and dark with some quality gore in the later parts. I assume that people who have seen Big Brother would get a greater kick out of Dead Set than a Yankee like me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Triangle (2009) - Another UK flick. A group of yuppies go yachting, their ship is lost to a storm, they seek refuge on an empty cruise liner. The story centers around Jess, a young, distraught mother who is trying to navigate the mysteries of the ship and get back home to her son. Triangle is successfully disorienting and I found myself easily immersed in the mystery.