Family - this one opened the second season of Masters of Horror for me. It was a nice opening: a family moves into a new home, and when they hit the mailbox of one of their neighbours, they get to know this recluse guy a bit more. He seems to be very nice, but in the meantime he shows certain psychopathic behaviour concerning the "creation" of a family. Acting was great, especially when you consider the twist in the end, which was also a nice one. I actually was a bit surprised, I had missed some hints, though. Cool little story, recommended.

Bug - Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon give a stellar performance in this weird film. Based on a play (and it's noticeable, as the set is 98% the same for the entire film), this story is about a woman whose ex has been relased out of jail on parole. She keeps getting phonecalls but when she answers the phone she hears nothing, making her think it must be her ex. While getting more scared, she meets Peter, an ex-soldier. Together they talk about theur fears, and they are having some sort of an affair. Peter also promises to protect her from her ex. However, Peter sees bugs everywhere: on the floor, in the bed, everywhere. This neurosis gets worse and worse and in the end it's hard to sepoarate fantasy from reality. While the acting is superb, this film was also a bit of a disappointment, as it isn't really a horror. With the title and the bugs in the description, I had at least expected some bug action, like in The Nest or The Swarm, but there isn't any. It is more a drama/thriller, and if it is horror, it is purely psychological. If you like that type of film, or if you are into "actors" films, then this is really a good one to pick. For gore or action, you should look elsewhere.

Bitch Slap - the description got me: three babes are trying to score some loot from a criminal, and they are working together as a team. With flashbacks (each going back in time a little further) however, it is explained that not everything is as it seems. Nicely done, it had a few surprises in the storyline this way. The babes look awesome, especially Julia Voth and Erin Cummings. From time to time this reminded me of the Bullets, Bombs and Babes films, but this one looked better made (no surprise there, btw). There were some funny jokes, some fighting scenes that could have been cut shorter easily and some nice explosions. The ending was a bit over the top, as I thought it didn't really fit the movie. Brainless entertainment for those who like to see some nice boobs and a bit of action.

edit: yay, page 100!

Lord Of Darkness - aka Sawney: flesh of man. In Scotland young women keep going missing and ending up dead and mutilated. The police is in the dark about who might be doing this, but a young journalist Hamish MacDonald starts an investigation and he soon finds out lots of stuff. He tries to help the police, but they loathe him for writing big headlines about the case, making the police look bad. So when one detective seems to like what he is doing, he goes on and when his own girlfriend disappears he puts even more effort in finding out about the killer. What i liked about this one was the setting, the landscape is gorgeous. Also, the killer's background was cool and also his lair and his "family". What I didn't like was the predictability, you simply knew what was gonna happen to the journalist and the "twist" was a bit lame. Still, I had fun watching this, it was better than average, but not by much. Nice timekiller.

Overtime - two guys, Raph and Max, hit on criminals who have been acquitted by their friend attorney, and this way they make lots of money. Raph, however has forgotten about his son's birthday and in between jobs he now has to get a present, hire a clown and find a birhday cake and bring it all home by 7 pm. If he fails, his wife might divorce him, so he is really under pressure. Things aren't getting any easier when the job he takes on the same afternoon he has to get all that birthday stuff, turns out to be very difficult, as the building they have to enter in order to kill a certain guy, is infeste with alien-like creatures. Horrorcomedy is a difficult genre, as most of them don't succeed in being scary and funny: most of them are just funny. This is one of those, too. It never gets scary, although the creatures could have been used in a scarier way. The jokes are OK, they go from lame to somewhat funny, I laughed a few times. It is also somewhat corny, especially in the end. But, since this isn't a huge production, I take my head off for the filmmakers, as they succeed in making something which is bearable to watch (and sometimes even funny), instead of those boring handycam "horrors" you see so often.

Evil Dead - the remake. I loathe remakes usually, I avoid watching them in general, but sometimes I see one and most of the time I don't like what I see (Total Recall), or it is OK-ish (The Thing). Other remakes I consciously don't watch as I don't want to spoil the original (The Fog, Dawn of the Dead). When I saw this one coming up, I thought I'd give it a go, knowing that it would never be as good as the original. A good thing is, that this film doesn't try to do that: there is no Ash and the coolness and dry humour are lacking. You could also say that it is a bad thing, but I don't think a new Ash would be acceptable to fans of the original and the lack of humour, well, I think some humour could have been put in, but the director chose not to. So it's a new take on the old horror story, with several tributes to the original: the car in the woods next to the cabin, some camera shots, the skull necklace, etc. Some epic scenes are remade, but there are also some missing, which is a bit weird imo. There is a lot of gore and it is "real gore" which always is a plus. There are also some very nasty scenes in which several different bodyparts are being dismembered. The scares are a bit lame, they are mostly done by very loud noise, and thus this film doesn't really succeed in being scary (I remember the demon in the basement being pretty scary with that maniacal laugh). The final scene has raining blood which is cool and there is also one more trick up the director's sleeve. The real ending is a bit oif a letdown, though. So, all in all: mixed feelings, but for a remake this is pretty well done. I bet this film would have been praised by the fans if it was released under a different name.

The Thing with Two Heads - hilarious weird flick from the 70s, in which a racist white doctor has terminal cancer and wants to transplant his head onto another person's body. Unfortunately for him, the only body available is that of a black convict from death row. There is a gorilla on which they tested the head transplant and it looks quite cool, and when he escapes later in the film, the man in the suit notices he is being filmed and then immediately switches from normal walking to "ape walking" When the transplant is comp;lete, the two heads keep on bickering and the second head is slowly taking over the control ofr the body. This was quite well done, but there is also a chase scene which takes up almost 1/3rd of the entire film and that is a bit too much. The police cars rolling down hills or flipping head over tail without any reason or cause were quite hilarious again. I had great fun watching this weird mixture between mad scientist and blacksploitation. The music is great too. Recommended for those who want something different, and for bad moviefans.

The Zombie King - wow, what a rip-off. It advertises with Edward Furlong (which is something you might wonder if it is the wise thing to do nowadays) and Corey Feldman, and both play minor roles in this flick. The film has scenes which are repeated in it's entirety, and the story is a rip-off of so many other zombieflicks, I must have missed some in the process. The humour and the main group of survivors are obviously "inspired" by Shaun of the Dead, they even have some kind of an anti-hero (the mailman) like in Shaun, wo, like in Shaun, at first doesn't seem to notice there is a zombie outbreak going on. The subplot about the voodoo zombie stuff was OK and the drunk priest was also pretty cool, but then the ending is very much Night of the Living Dead. Not as bad as I expected, but since my expectations were pretty low, it doesn't mean it's a good film. Only for die hard zombie fans.

Cottage Country - the guy from Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Tyler Labine, stars in this comedy with horror elements. He plays Todd Chipowski, a not so very assertive guy who goes on a weekend in a cottage with his soon to be wife Cammie. When they arrive, they soon find out that Todd's brother Salinger is also present in the cottage, otgether with his slutty girlfriend Masha. Cammie wants them out asap, and when Todd confronts Salinger about this, they get into a fight and then Todd accidentally kills him. Since Cammie doesn't want to spoil their weekend, she decides it's best to sweep it under the rug. But there is still Masha, and the rest of the weekend... Although not as good as Tucker and Dale, I still had fun with this film, there are several funny scenes, and the final scene is brilliant. Although the real ending takes a bit off of that, it still makes for a good finale. Acting is cool, but the storyline is what makes the film work. Recommended, just don't expect a Tucker and Dale 2, because then you will be let down.

Spiders - a piece of a Russian satellite crashes into a NY subwaytunnel, and then the city gets infested with spiders which of course grow exponentially. A subway traffic controller turns into a hero who saves his family and the entire city of New York. This has all been done before of course, and with loads of cgi and the majority of the cast acting really bad, you will never get a good film. I must say that the giant spider was pretty well made, but actually this was a Godzilla film where the fighting scenes were with real soldiers fighting a cgi spider instead of a man in a monstersuit fighting miniature armies. Also, when Christa Campbell is not wearing sexy outfits, she isn't an asset to the film. She obviously wants to be seen as a serious actress or something, but this attempt failed for sure. The army guys are a pile of cliches and when the guys running the city of New York allows a huge stack of highly explosives to sit inside the subway system, they should consider taking on different jobs. Really bad film, enjoyable for bad moviefans.

Snake Club: Revenge of the Snake Woman - this was really bad. Not only the story is bad, but the acting, the editing, the camerawork and especially the sound is bad. The sound is so bad, that often you can't even hear what the characters are saying. There is loud music in the background (also pretty annoying) and it gets tuned down when people start to have a dialogue, but most of the time it is so muffled that you simply can't make out the content of the dialogue. I don't think I have missed much, however, because the storyline is so thin. It's about two guys hiring a guy to steal a statue from a museum (yet they keep on saying they aren't criminals, and the cop who is talking to them doesn't arrest them). This statue holds the spirit of a mythological snakemonster, and when it gets in contact with blood, the monster can escape. So, stupid plan number one is: take a statue which shouldn't be in contact with blood from it's safe location inside a museum, across the streets to your own house. Of course the guy who steals it gets shot (by the cop) and then blood squirts on the statue. The guy hides in a nearby gogo dance joint and the monster possesses the prize girl there, Trinity. She in turn bites other girls and kills guys. There is also some sort of a curse which will ensure her reign of the world for the next 100 years and it is a bit complicated, especially because it doesn't work. The curse says something about her killing a guy and if she succeeds she will reign the 100 years and if she doesn't succeed she will be defeated. Yet, she kills several guys before she eventually gets defeated, so far for the curse. So actually this "movie" is a real mess. Isn't there anything good to say about this? Yes, there is. At first, if you like bad moviers you will also like this one, as it is really bad. Second, the women are pretty, some are quite hot even. Thirdly the blood being spilled is genuine and not cgi. The gunshots are cgi, however. Really, only for bad moviefans.

RoboGeisha - another Japanese madness film by the director of Machine Girl. This time it's about two sisters, of which one is forced to work as some kind of a slave for the other one. When they get recruited by Kageno Steel Company, their roles get inverted and their rivalry grows. The company has only one goal and that is to create an army of half robotic girls and build a superbomb to destroy Japan. Why they want that stays a mystery, but this kind of films isn't well known because they explain plots so well, so no problem there. Loads of cgi effects, and that remains a pity imo, but the story is so crazy that I can somewhat live with it. These films would be so much better if the effects were more practical, but OK, they aren't, period. Crazy stuff happening in this one is that the girls get machinegun breasts, they shoot ninja stars out of their asses, and in the end

Spoiler:

one can turn into a tank and the pagoda the company is housed in, turns into a giant robot who is gonna drop the bomb into Mount Fuji.

I had real fun watching this one, recommended, especially if you like this genre.

Captain Battle: Legacy War - another David Palmieri film, like the Snake Woman film I watched the other night. Again, it is very bad, but not as bad as Snake Woman, although my judgment might be influenced because I already saw that one and know what Palmieri's standards are. The storyline of this one is bad: Sam Battle gets wounded in Iraq and then he loses an eye according to the plot summary, but in the film he keeps both eyes. Then he gets injected with an experimental serum, giving him superpowers. Now he can follow the footsteps of his grandfather, a hero from WWII who fought the nazis. Coincidentally, his hometown has been taken over by neonazis, so the enemy is sort of the same, and in the suit of his father, Sam now is Captain Battle, fighting evil. To give an idea of how bad this is: "northern Iraq", where the film starts, is obviously somewhere in the US, as the "bunker" is a piece of concrete tagged all over by graffiti artists. Sam gets wounded because two Iraqi's attack him and his partner (yes, they are on patrol with only two soldiers), while screaming "Allah Akbar!". They have a cgi firefight with plastic guns and in the end one of them blows himself up, like warriors in Iraq really blow themselves up only to kill two soldiers. Miraculously, only the Iraqi's are dead, both Americans survive. I must say that the leader of the neonazis (she is called the Necromancer as if she has some kind of magical powers) looks hot, but apart from that this is a film which totally blows again. Himmler, the nazi they resurrect, is wearing a GDR police cap, instead of a nazi officer's cap. I wonder if Palmieri knows the difference. One plus over Snake Woman is the sound. Although there are again some scenes in which the background music muffles the dialogue completely, there are many scenes in which there is no music at all, making the talking audible at least. So while Snake Woman is really the bottom of the deepest pit, this is only slightly better, but still sewer material. For bad moviefans only.

AE: Apocalypse Earth - Adrian Paul, known for the Highlander TV series, is a sergeant on a spaceship somewhere in the future. There is some chaos in the opening scene and they have to evacuate earth. They crashland on a certain planet where they see some regular and some white painted people run away from something. Soon they find out that what they ran away from are invisible aliens, who are actually not so hard to kill. Together with some other survivors, the group tries to find a spaceship so they can return to earth. They get help from a native woman who has green skin, and is hardly visible when she walks around in the forest. There are several really corny scenes between this woman and Adrian Paul. The white painted people were actually the masters of the regular people, but now the invisible aliens are there, they start to work together. There is one ridiculous scene in which they fire at methane gas coming out of the ground and it causes a huge (cgi) explosion. They end up finding the spaceship, but then they find out something they couldn't have seen coming... Mediocre at best, this scifi has several dumb mistakes, but since this is an Asylum film, you shouldn't expect any better. There is an android called TIM, and it is a Data from Star Trek rip-off. The greenskinned woman goes into water regularly, and everytime she gets out again, some of the "green skin" has washed off. Add the corny scenes with her and Paul, and you have quite a bad film with some funny stuff in it. Acting is OK-ish from some of the cast, and really bad from others. The plot tries to have some "deep thought" in it, but it fails miserably. Only bad moviefans should try this.

World War Z - just came back from the cinema, watched this one with my wife, she likes James Badge Dale and the Walking Dead, so I was able to take her to this zombiefilm. Well, I must say, this wasn't so good. The 3D stuff was quite nice, some shots, especially the wide shots over cities, with helicopters flying around, were really nice and beautiful. But why weren't there zombies shot into the camera? Why wasn't there more stuff exploding towards us so we could see more use of this 3D thing? Now it was only sometimes that I thought it was a great idea to make this in 3D. The plot: the beginning is good, the opening credits have a nice sequnce with hints at worldwide disease and the introduction of the family is OK. The only thing I was wondering about was the youngest daughter, as she played her role like there was something wrong with her mentally, but that's never explained really well and it never actually becomes clear whether she was or wasn't. After the first explosion, things start to go wrong: the explosions seem quite random, when they get to

Spoiler:

Israel, the zombies breach the wall because a group of people is chanting loudly, while there are hundreds of soldiers around who could stop that immediately considering the security measurements. Also, they get into a plane taking off just by waving their guns, like any pilot would stop for that. When the plane takes off, it heads to a WHO center in Wales, and when it crashlands, it coincidentally crashes very close to this WHO center

I didn't like the "zombies" one bit. They were infected, allright, but they weren't zombies. They could run superfast and they could jump skyhigh, at one point they even jump into a helicopter from the ground... I don't want "zombies" to be able to do that stuff, but maybe I'm a puritan when it comes to this kind of things. It was never really scary, although the tension is building in the lab scene and that was quite cool. There was no gore. Unbelievable. A zombiefilm, and no gore? Acting was OK, but the plot had several overly dramatic family things which I don't want to see in a zombiefilm. The ending was also a bit meh, it opened the door wide to a sequel and although I liked the way

Spoiler:

Pitt found out how people could handle the zombie problem,

it couldn't save the film. Nice blockbuster maybe, but not for horror- and or zombiefans.

OK, back from vacation. Watched some crap yesterday:

Apocalypse Z - aka Zombie Massacre. Bad zombieflick with a title that implies trying to rip off World War Z. The cast is almost entirely non-American and most have heavy accents, making watching the dialogues either a challenge or a funny experience depending on where you stand. The most extreme case is Uwe Boll, who plays the role of the American president (yes, really), and a very riughtwing extremely militaristic president at that. This is all quite weird as they are all supposed to playh Americans, except for a few of the mercenaries. These mercenaries are supposed to blow up a powerplant in Romania where a zombie outbreak has occurred. Of course, as a cliche moivie shpould be, the mercenaries are being double crossed by the guy who gave them the assignment, and to make matters worse, there are a lot of zombies and actually the mercenaries aren't so good at fighting them. The zombies were OK, but some of them looked more like mummies. The effects however, were all bad cgi, although a few shots had mediocre cgi and looked a little better. The entire film looks a bit like it is a game turned into a film. There is a briefing like you get in games like Vietcong, CoH and RA, several scenes are filmed in an FPS perspective and there is some sort of an endboss. This doesn't make the film any better, like the4 cliches, of which the daughter thing of the main character is the most annoying. Go watch this if you're a bad moviefan, otherwise help yourself and skip it.

Screaming Dead - the misleading cover made me believe this was a monsterflick, instead it is a ghost film, and a bad one too. A lot of ex-softporn stars have roles in this B-flick in which they play models for an extreme photographer, who wants to do a session in an old mansion where there is supposed to be a torture cellar. The company lending him this location, sends a representative (C-actor Rob Monkiewicz) to keep an eye on things. Instead, this guy keeps his eyes on the women most of the time. The film is quite boring and only after some 55 minutes, there is something which vaguely resembles horror to be seen: a ghostly appearance in the house. Like in Apocalypse Z, the effects are below par and a bit childish, like they were made by a 15-year old. In the last fifteen minutes, you finally get some horror action, but the plot (the way to stop the ghost thing from doing evil stuff) is so ridiculous, you have to see it to believe it. Again, for bad moviefans only.

The Asphyx - Gothic horror from 1973. It starts out in present day 70s, but after the opening credits we are back in the 1870s. A doctor is experimenting with a camera which can record moving pictures. He accidentally records something of which he at first assumes it's the human soul departing the body at the moment of death. Later, he finds out that it is in fact the asphyx, the ancient god of death, trying to get into the dying person. Soon he is on a path of experiments on which there is no easy return. A very atmospheric British horror, with a Frankensteinish feel to it: 19th century scientists challenging death. Acting is great and so is character development. A lot of attention is put into the story, the music and the setting. The effects are cool too, the asphyx looks good. The minus points are that it takes quite some suspense of disbelief to enjoy the story. For example, when

Spoiler:

the doctor's son dies, that looks ridiculous

Also, some of the scientific equipment is anachronistic. However, this doesn't spoil the film, which keeps being a nice watch. Recommended.

The Curious Dr. Humpp - aka La Venganza del Sexo. This film was released by Something Weird, and that should give you an idea of the content of this flick. A lot of sexscenes, lesbian as well as heterosexual, but they serve a purpose this time: the main character is a doctor who keeps a monster which kidnaps couples having sex in order to steal their libido. He needs this so he can stay alive, while the people whose juices are stolen, turn into zombielike creatures. A reporter willing to go further than the police starts investigating, and after a short while, he finds himself on the grounds of Dr Humpp's mansion. Here he meets the loyal nurse of the doctor, sees the creatures and encounters a talking brain in a jar which explains the doctor's desire for world domination. If you think this is too much by now, you should probably skip this film, but if you like cult weirdness you will enjoy this one.

Messiah of Evil - atypical zombiefilm. A woman goes to a Californian village to see her father, whom she hasn't seen in a long time. Upon arrival, she meets a group of weird hippie-like people and she lives with them for a while., She starts noticing strange things happening in the village, which correspond with the events described in her father's diary, for example the groups of people appearing every night on the beach and standing around bonfires. When one of the hippie-like people leaves the group and then gets eaten by the strange people in a supermarket, things start to clear up a little for the viewer, but it will take you to the final scenes to grasp this plot completely. Very nice plot indeed, OK acting, great atmosphere and also nice music. Only minor things are the "zombies" because they can run (first time I ever saw them run in an old movie) and the pace of the movie: it is at times so slow that you can easily go to the toilet or grab a drink and come back without having missed anything. Still, this doesn't mean that the film gets boring. On the contrary, it is very interesting. Recommended.

Dark Skies - a family experiences a lot of weird stuff happening in their house. Furniture is moved, birds crash into their house massively, they forget a few hours at times, it is all a bit confusing and scary. Of course there are fights over this as the man refuses to believe what's going on at first, and with tensions already high because of money problems, this doesn't really help. More signs of alien presence occur and in the end it seems like the inevitable will happen... This was a very nice film. the atmosphere was eerie and tension was built up nicely. I wasn't scared once, but I kept having this uneasy feeling almost all the time. Acting was quite good, I really felt into the story and because the people seemed so normal, it was also quite believable. The kids did a great job too, especially the oldest son of the family. The creepiness stemmed mostly from the fact that you don't see a lot, which improved the film for me. The ending was not too predictable, and one which I could easily swallow. Sound was good and camerawork too. Really nice job, recommended.

Under the Bed - this one was a little hyped, and although it has it's charms, I don't think it is entirely justified. A boy returns home after having been away for a few years following a fire which killed his mom. He is welcomed by his father, his father's new girlfriend (played by Musetta Vander, of Oblivion fame) and his younger brother. The two brothers reunite in a fight against a monster under the bed. Nobody believes them so they are on their own. Dealing with the trauma of their mother's death and defeating the monster aren't easy tasks. Although it seems to be an original plot, there are several things in this film which they imitated, like the Poltergeist-like thing with going into another dimension (that had been done in Insidious too, btw) to lure the monster out. Sound was the utmost annoying thing in this film. My TV goes to 100 on volume, and I had to put it on 60 to follow the dialogue, but when the monster came, I had to bring it down to 25, otherwise I would wake the entire neighbourhood. I think that it is not only annoying as hell, it is also very cheap to make your scares simply loud bangs. Acting is so so, some of the family mmebers act a little cliche (the father), others are a tad uninteresting in their acting (the oldest brother). The monster is, well, what you expect. But: the film gave me a good feeling on atmosphere, it was almost old-fashioned. Nice touch, and that saved it a bit for me. Not great, but not bad either.

Crawlspace - I thought this was a scifi film with spaceships and all, but it wasn't. It's about a secret facility in Australia where the Australians worked on a super human being (again), of course in cooperation with the CIA. Well, guess what happened: something went wronmg and now a special forces team is entering the facility, finding loads of dead soldiers and also a blonde woman who doesn't remember who she is and what she is doing in the building. She is one of the targets to be destroyed, though, but sin ce the captain seems to remmeber this woman is his wife, he protects her. Because it is their task to extract the science team from the facility, the team proceeds, bringing the woman with them. The scientiost aren't so talkative, but they are very protective about their project, so threatening to shoot the test subjects makes them explain everything. From then on, it is a mindbattle, in which the subjects act a bit like Scanners. In the final scenes there is some sort of explanation about the mindpower stuff, but it couldn't save the film from being a bit boring and cliche. Oh, for he record: there are three films with this title, a slasher from 1986, one film from 2013 which is a remake from the 1986 film and this one from 2012. This one hasn't got to do anything with the other two. I hope the other two are better too, btw.

13 Eerie - a nice plot at first sight: six forensic students are gonna have a field day on the grounds of an old prison. Their professor has left a few bodies there for them to analyse, but after a while it turns out they aren't exactly dead. Now both the students and the professor have to fight for their lives. The beginning is good enough, the interaction between the students is a bit cliche, but as soon as they start to investigate the bodies, it becomes interesting. When the bodies are becoming alive, it quickly goes downhill, as the make up for these "zombies" is so so and their actions are a bit boring. Run, fight, run, fight, run, etc. The only thing which kept me watching was Katherine Isabelle's presence. I really like watching her, but I sincerely hope that next time she chooses a better project again, like American Mary. The ending is a bit meh, as it doesn't leave you with much guesswork and it could have been finished properly with ease.

Dead Souls - Johnny Petrie, a boy about to graduate from high school, finds out that he has been adopted when he was still a baby. It turns out he has inherited the family property, a secluded farm. His "mother" doesn't want him to go to it, but when she is in hte hospital for a few days, he takes the opportunity to set out to the farm. Upon arrival, he meets a girl who has been living there and together they tour the building, where, unknown to Johnny, a fatal family drama has occurred 17 years ago. After a while, when he has started to find out more and more with time, he plans to free the souls of his family, but what kind of sacrifice does he have to make to succeed? Nice atmosphere and OK storyline make this film quite watchable. There aren't any groundbreaking things in it, but is a fine ghostmovie and if you like those, you can easily go and watch this one.

Knigt of the Dead - pfft, garbage. While "zombies in a medieval setting" may sound nice, these filmmakers managed to deliver it in a totally uninteresting and ugly looking package, making watching this film closely a real challenge. There isn't an actual storyline, at least it isn't really clear: there are a few knights and a priest and they find a woman on their way and they are being hunted by a group which wants what they have (a grail apparently, but I didn't actually see it). They walk long distances and have a fight every now and then. Sometimes they fight zombies, sometimes they fight humans. That's it. There is nothing more to it. The ugliness is in the colour scheme of the film, as it is almost entirely without any colour, it all looks very bleak. Sometimes that can be done in order to set a certain atmosphere, but that isn't the case in this one. This one was just a waste of time to watch and totally forgettable. Avoid.

Too Hot to Handle - 70s actionflick in which the main character, Samantha Fox, is a hit(wo)man with a contract for five people on the Philippines. By different means she gets to them: seduction, disguise, etc. and then kills them, sometimes in pretty in ventive ways. A cop and his partner are hot on her heels, but then she falls in love with the cop, making things a little bit more complicated. I had a laugh with this film: I think the term wooden acting was first used after this film came out. Both the cop and Samantha seem to have a hard time to speak their dialogue, and some others have the same problem. There are some weird things, like when Samantha gets into a handfight with a Filippino, they both suddenly find a fighting stick, conveniently laying around on each side of the boat they are fighting on. This film also has cars exploding spontaneously and seasoned criminals overrreacting on stray bullets. So I had a great time watching this B-film which is too much in almost everything. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Crawlspace - the 1986 film. Klaus Kinski is the center of this movie, all other castmembers just function as his sparring partners. Kinksi plays the ex-nazi doctor Gunther, running a tenement house. He selects only young girls to be his tenants and he spies on them via the crawlspace/airducts in the building. He has a fascination for death, so from time to time he kills one of his tenants with elaborate killing devices he made in his room and selects a new tenant afterwards. After each killing, he goes into a secluded room to play Russian roulette with himself, as some sort of katharsis. Aside from this all, he also keeps one tenant in a cage in his room, to talk to. When Lori Bancroft, a new tenant, meets with Josef Steiner, the brother of a man who supposedly got killed by dr Gunther, she starts investigating and finds out about the doctor's secret room and machines. Kinski as the mad ex-nazi killer is almost perfect, and the entire film revolves around him: this is both the strength and the weakness of this film. I had a good time watching this, although some more kills would have been nice. Recommended, unless you hate Kinski.

Empire of the Ants - very bad monsterfilm with super ants of gigantic proportions. Take out almost all cliches in the book and you have this film: company secrettly dumping chemcial waste? Check. Animals growing to gigantic sizes because of it? Check. Money driven people ignoring the danger? Check. Although I must say, this time it wasn't the annual festival which is the only way to pump the local economy, but a fraudulous woman (played by Joan Collins) who tries to sell fake plots of land as investment. The ants look ridiculous, there are pov-shots which are really low budget and the scenes withb the ants have the classic mistake you can see so often in Godzilla films too: the ants differ in size depending on which kind of shot they are in. Approaching the humans they are like a few meters tall, but close up (when they eat people) only their heads are about 2 meters wide already. The ants also scream in an annoying way. The ending was a bit ambiguous for me: on one hand it was quite OK and a bit original

Spoiler:

as it turns out the queen ant turns the local townspeople in some sort of human slaves, a bit like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers

but on the other hand it was ridiculous

Spoiler:

when Joe enters the truck with FLAMMABLE on it in fat letters and takes it for a spin around the building where the queen ant is in, I thought he would make a ring of fire to trap the queen ant or something, but instead he simply jumps out and then the truck explodes by itself

A must see for bad moviefans, all others should steer clear of this one.

ill try this one, thanks

Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned - Chuck is about to marry, so his best friend Sammy throws him a party at a bungalow. This bungalow is owned by Gordon, of whom the bunch of friends think that he is gay and secretly in love with Chuck. Gordon is the misfit at the party and when Sammy invites three strippers, he refuses to be part of it and withdraws to his bedroom. The strippers give Chuck something to drink and soon he passes out, and after a short while, his fiancée calls up and says she has to come by. Sammy tries to save the day by removing the strippers and telling the fiancée that they have to leave the premises, but all of a sudden the strippers return because their car broke down. Now it turns out that the strippers aren't really what they seemed to be. Although this is very much low budget, I had fun watching this. The strippers aren't exactly hot, but the gore was really something, especially when you take the budget into account. The story was also OK, but the ending was really cliche and therefore a bit of a letdown. Not really a bad movie, but I guess this is only for low budget, independent filmfans.

Dead/Undead - a small group of teens is on some sort of a religious camp because they are rich and spoiled and they need a bit of shaping up. At the camp, the two guys helping out tell a ghost story at the campfire, and of course this story turns out to be true. It's about a monster called the Sorcalak, a creature which grows stronger everytime it kills and also everytime it gets killed (yes, the logic eludes me too). It is centuries old, and when the teens run into it, the gore flows aplenty. Bad film. It was so cliche and boring that I almost fell asleep. Only the gore is cool, but story, acting, and everything else is below par. It also isn't a funny bad movie so I'd say avoid this one altogether.

Burnt Offerings - Oliver Reed and Karen Black play Ben and Marian Rolf, a couple who can rent a house for summer in a bargain deal. It is a big and beatiful house and it only costs 900 dollar for the entire summer. The only thing which they have to do in return, is to care for the mother of Mr and Mrs Allardyce, who lives in the attic. Ben thinks it's a catch, but Marian convinces him to rent the house anyway and she will take care of Mrs Allardyce. At first everything seems to be OK, except for the fact that they don't really see Mrs Allardyce, but the longer they stay in the house, the more weird stuff happens. Ben almost kills their son, for example, while swimming in the pool. Marian seems to be a bit absent after she has visited Mrs Allardyce in the attic. They find out what makes the house tick when

Spoiler:

Ben's aunt, who was living with them in the house, dies: it starts rebuilding itself, repairing broken parts

Now the family has to choose: stay or leave? Good film, this one. It doesn't really have a lot of scary moments, but it has this tension all the way through, this film really gets under your skin. It has nice music which swells at the right moments, instead of coming in with a loud bang from nothing, like is the trade of today's directors mostly. Acting is superb, especially Reed is good in this one. Black performs nice too, but I don't really like to watch her, I don't know why. No gore, but it isn't the film for that, so no problems there. The ending is great too, more movies should end like this. Highly recommended.

Witches' Hammer - aka Kladivo na carodejnice. Czech film from 1970, with a story similar to Witchfinder General, except for the fact that this one is more "arty" and has a smaller focus on torture.

Spoiler:

The persecution is even more extreme in this one, as high clerical figures also get sentenced. The ending is also quite different, and actually more disturbing

Very nice pictures, I really loved the shots of the circling crows, they were very astmospheric. Some landscape shots completed the surroundings, the remainder were interior shots (there was a little lack of outside shots of buildings, while in Czechoslovakia one should be able to find many old buildings suitable for a film like this). Acting was good, and it was nice to see a film where I didn't know anyone of the cast, sometimes that gets a bit in the way of immersion. The film being from 1970 almost can't be a coincidence, after having had the Prague Spring of 1968, crushed heavily by the Red Army. Almost without any form of disguise, the suppressive regime from back then in Czechoslovakia is being criticised in this story. Not a film which will make you happy, but it is very well made. The only little drawback for me was that there were some Czech texts at the beginning and the end of the film which weren't subbed, so I had to Google translate them myself. But that doesn't say anything about the quality of the film of course, which is beyond doubt. Recommended, maybe even highly.

Poultrygeist Night Of The Chicken Dead - Troma about chicken zombies. It reminded me a bit of Terror Firmer: a bit long (although not way too long, like Terror Firmer), a first part which drags and is only full of piss and poo jokes, a second part which goes way over the top in gore and absurdistic gross stuff. This one had me laughing more, though. Some of the jokes were actually good, like the one where Arbie and Wendy are making love in the graveyard and a serial killer comes along and starts jerking off and Arbie says to Wendy while she is running off: "Try to see it as a compliment!". This Troma film is more in the style of South Park, as in that it is criticising a lot of American society, like the gay thing ("America is juist not ready to accept a gay Mexican sandwich"), the war on terrorism (the woman in the burqa gets blamed for every murder there is), the fastfood industry (the theme of the film) and the gun lobby: ""Say, where did you get this gun?" "I got a whole stash of them here, I keep them hidden with the children's promotional items." So, while the fuirst part was a tad hard to get through (although Kate Graham looked nice in her cheerleader outfit), the second part made me laugh regularly and had some of the goriest creatures and some of the most grossed out events I have ever seen. From what I have seen, this ranks among the top 10 of dirtiest films, along with Terror Firmer, which was even dirtier. Only for fans of Troma, bad moviefans in general or gorehounds. You might also enjoy this when you like what Parker and Stone make. Recommended if you are one of those.

I really like this one too. I watched it as a kid and searched for it off and on for years. I couldn't remember the name or much about it. Finally, a few years ago I was watching it and it slowly started to seem very familiar, then I realized it was the film!
The same thing happened to me with Black Christmas.