Fields of the Dead (2014)
A film I deleted after 22 minutes. 22 minutes of wasted time. I just hate films, which start so slow. I am just not interested in watching people eat, sleep, camp and have mostly meaningless conversation. Apart from that, the acting was uninteresting. The usual bitches, which make one a bit happy, when they are eaten by zombies. Does it get better when actually the action begins? After 22 minutes I did not care anymore.

Not yet, yes I know I viewed them in the wrong order but the gf wanted to see this one.

Dead Mine: avoid
Shutter (the remake): avoid
Nothing left to fear: avoid

Rose Red - the Stephen King miniseries, lasting for 4 hours and a bit. I had already watched The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, the prequel for this. That film was a bit tame and even boring at times, so I hoped this would be more interesting. The answer: yes and no. Yes, because the acting is better, the characters are more interesting and the atmosphere is a tad scary from time to time. No, because overall, little is happening inside the house except for the fact that people get lost in it (and with good reason: the house keeps rebuilding itself). The scenes with ghosts are too few and far between, and only half of them are (somewhat) scary. The length didn't give more depth to the story, but it did to the characters. It is way easier to understand why professor Reardon goes through such lengths to get the proof she so desperately wants, because there is so much buildup in the beginning. I enjoyed watching it, but I also felt it had some lack of action, it was too spread out. I never read any King books, but I have seen several series and films now. This one is better than Golden Years for sure, better than The Langoliers too, and also better than Desperation. I sincerely hope that the remaining series are better than this one, though. The Stand and Storm of the Century, here I come!

The Fall of the House of Usher - classic with Vincent Price. Well done, this film. With only four castmembers and some extras (who only appear in one scene), the filmmakers succeed in making an interesting film. Credits go to the cast, because acting is top notch in this one, and it carries the entire film. It had to, because there wasn't much else. Set consists of the house only, with a model for exterior shots. This house is very much a house of horror indeed, I bet most kids would draw something like this when you would ask them to make a picture of a haunted house/ghosthouse/spooky house. The story itself wasn't the best Poe I had ever seen, but like I said, the passion with which it was brought to the screen by the four actors, made this a very nice watch indeed. Atmosphere is OK, pretty typical for a film like this, I never got scared and I didn't feel too much for the different characters, so it wasn't the masterpiece I was expecting a little bit after reading tons of positive reviews before buying this one on DVD. Still this film was interesting, and you wouldn't waste your time watching it. Once is enough, though.

Slices - anthology with 5 movies. The wraparound wasn't much, but wasn't annoying either, so it was OK. The first story was The Exterminator, about a future world in which a company keeps the world population controlled by exterminating people who aren't fit for society. An employee of that company takes revenge on his boss by torturing him. Nothing special, but an OK opener for this anthology. The second story is called Dead Letters and it's about an author of horror stories who has a writer's block because of the death of his wife. His friend tries to get him going again, but then the author discovers something awful and goes to extremes to get what he wants. Bad effects and bad acting, but some nice twists. Also OK, but nothing special. The third story, Nightscream, was about vampires and it wasn't so bad. May be this was the best story there was. Short but entertaining and with good gore. The 4th one was called The Range and shows you how zombies fared in the Old West. Funny but not very convincing, but I laughed at the zombies and the cowboys, good going. The last one, Turnout, was quite boring. It's about three friends on a hike in nature and then an old killer shows up. Low budget fun, with some good and some uninteresting tales. Better done than the Theatre of the Deranged anthology, so if you like low budget stuff, be sure to check this one out.

Lady Frankenstein - aka La Figlia di Frankenstein. Rosalba Neri stars as the main character in this Italian cultfilm based on the famous monsterstory. When her father dies because he is killed by his own creation, she sets out to make a new one in order to save her father's reputation. For this, she wants to transplant the brain of the old guy who has been in love with her since ages into the skull of the halfwit servant she has sexual feelings for. In the meantime, her father's creation goes on a rampage, causing the villagers to from an angry mob and the film to end ina cliche manner. The acting is so so, the effects are laughable. The sound is OK and the logic of the story is absent, but all this made me njoy this nItalo Frankenstein even better. I loved the wrongness of it all, and of course the looks of Neri. For Italo and bad moviefans only.

The Snake God - aka Il Dio Serpente. When I bought this, I expected something along the lines of Amazonia or Papaya dei Caribi. None of that. Atmosphere is great, but overall this is quite a tame film, with some nudity, yes, but no violence. Sleazy does it, and both Nadia Cassini and Beryl Cunningham make the best of their erotic powers in this film about voodoo cults who worship lagre pythons on Caribbean islands (even though there aren't any pythons there in real life, but hey, who cares?). Some scenes are way too long, like the ones with the groups of Creoles dancing (they take up to 10 minutes at times), so the story could be told in 15-20 minutes instead of 95. Atmopshere saved this one, but I'd rather watch a cannibal movie or something with a bit more varierty next time. Again, for Italo and bad moviefans only.

Scalps - early Fred Olen Ray film with all his trademarks: fast switching days and nights, wooden acting, imagery which looks like it's shapeshifting, rotten dialogue, ridiculous effects, Scalps has it all. If you are into bad films, this is a must see. The illogical behaviour of the characters, the "possessedness" of one of them, I laughed out loud regularly. The artwork on the DVD I have is impressive, way more impressive than anything happening in the film. The ending is, well, go see it. You won't believe me anyway. Recommended for bad moviefans!

For the Rose Red felt like B-adaptation, just like the remake of "The Shining". I was fun to watch, but not scary at all. Sometimes quite laughable in fact.

The Stand: I have it on DVD, because I like it that much.

Storm of the Century: Watch this in winter, when the snow falls.

Mmm, that might not be in 20 years, so I guess I'll pick a different moment

Gothic & Lolita Psycho - a little bit of a letdown, this one. It is actually a slasher in the J-sploitation subgenre. So, lots of blood and lots of choreographed fights in manga-like situations, like you have seen in so many Japanese crazy films before. The main character is on a quest of revenge with 5 victims to kill, and she processes them one by one, one a little harder than the other one (especially number four, as she keeps coming back). Why this is a letdown, is because there was nothing new to add to the J-sploitation, and because the DVD cover told me that the actress actin g the main part won the Best Buttocks Award a few years back, while in the film you see nothing of it. If you are a fan of these films, you can easily go andd watch this one as it isn't a bad film or anything. But for me, not a real follower of the J-sploitation, it was a bit run of the mill.

Fade To Black - more a thriller than a horror, this film is an ode to filmwatching, but also a tale of extreme adoration for one's hobby with all it's deadly consequences. Eric Binford watches movies almost all the time, quotes from movies in his conversations, and falls in love when he sees Marilyn O'Connor (played by Linda Kerridge, who indeed looks stunningly like Marilyn Monroe). When she stands him up, he goes berserk and starts killing everyone who ever bothered him in the past: his aunt, some guys from his neighbourhood (one of them is played by a young Mickey Rourke), a producer who steals his idea for a movie, etc. etc. Each time he dresses up like a movie hero: Dracula, the Mummy, Hopalong Cassidy, etc. In the end

Spoiler:

he meets his demise because the police catches up with him, and in a dramatic move he falls from a roof after having tried to kidnap Marilyn O'Connor and having fought a firefight with the police

Never really scary, but a nice watch anyway. Acting is great, especially by Dennis Christopher. I wouldn't recommend it to horrorfans, though.

The Conjuring - the director of this film also made Saw and Insidious. While Saw got raped by endless and imo useless sequels, the first one was quite cool. Insidious made me shiver when I watched it and The Conjuring is another great film in the oeuvre of James Wan. It's based on the experiences of Ed and Lorraine Warren, whose career has given us films like The Amityville Horror and The Haunting in Connecticut. The Perron family (husband, wife, 5 daughters) moves into their nnew home, a remote house on Rhode Island. Soon they discover there is something more to the house than they had expected: they find a boarded up basement, they smell rotting flesh and at night the kids get pulled by their feet. After a short while they ask the Warrens for help. A battle against the evil supernatural presence begins. I expereinced some frightful moments in this film: goosebumps a few times and some scary scenes, especially in the first part of the film, when you don't get to see much. I really loved the scene with the bedsheet blowing away in the wind, wonderful (and scary!). Later on, you get to see more of the evilness, but that just diminishes the amount of fear in the film: I love the scare of the unknown. Cool 70s music, great atmosphere, good acting by a nice cast with Ron Livingstone and Lili Taylor as the family. I really liked this film! Highly recommended.

Tokyo Zombie - zombie comedies can be fun, but I'm totally done with remarks on the DVD coer saying that this is "The (fill in country name) Shaun of the Dead!". In this case, the DVD company wants me to believe that this is the Japanese Shaun. It's a bit of a bad sign, as if a comedy omly can be good if it is similar to Shaun. Just to be clear: I liked Shaun, but this is getting a bit too much for me. This film is more a comedy than a zombiefilm. It's about two not too clever guys, working in a fire extinguisher plant which is situated on a large garbage dumpsite called Black Fuji. At this plant, they fspend their days practising jujitsu, because the older guy believes he is dying of cancer and he thinks he needs to pass his knowledge onto the next generation. The years of dumping garbage at Black Fuji results in rising zombies at the site, because it wasn't just garbage which was dumped there. The two guys get mixed into this apocalyptic scene, and now the jujitsu can be used against the undead. Somewhat funny, this film, some jokes I found really really corny and dull, but others were quite good. Most of the time I was thinking about the zombies not getting enough screentime, and the gore was also minimal. So if you want to watch a classic zombiermovie, pick a different one. If you want to see some dumb and weird Japanese humour, you can go for this one.

Wendigo - bought this one in a package for cheap. And yes, this is cheap. The story isn't even that bad, but man, this is so unscary that it went from interesting opening, to boring middle part and anticlimactic ending. The whole wendigo-thing only played a minor part in it and I fear that the director tried to do some sort of psychological horror, where in the end "everything was not real, but a parallel for things which happened in the real life of the boy" or some rabble like that. Well, like I said, the beginning is promising, with the harassing neighbour thing. There were some moments that almost ebcame creepy. But as soon as

Spoiler:

this neighbour dies

the creepiness is gone and then the moivie drags itself through the middle part. The wendigo only appears very late in the film, and in a ridiculous form too. Worthless waste of film, and it might be a waste of your time too, unless you like snow or deer a lot.

Phantom of Death – aka Off Balance aka Un Delitto Poco Comune. An attempt by Ruggero Deodato to make a giallo. Where he used to make very violent films which pushed many boundaries, like Cannibal Holocaust and The House at the Edge of the Park, this seems a bit of a strange move. Not only is it not his genre, the genre itself had already died pretty much in the 70s. Nevertheless, Ruggero takes us on a ride, but it is a ride in a cheap mused car. In a giallo, one of the cool things is that you get hints and red herrings and you have to guess who did the killing. If you read the backside of the DVD of this film, you will know who did the killing before even the first seconds of the film roll over your screen. The killings themselves are pretty cool and very gory, although there aren’t so many, two or three more would have been better imo. Edwige Fenech made her appearance, almost 20 years after her first role in a giallo, in the heydays of Sergio Martino. At first I didn’t even recognise her The first vhalf of the film the police is still guessing, the second half is the hunt. That second half is a bit of a failure, imo. When it would have been a little shorter, and then more to the point, mayb e it would have become more interesting. Now you are just waiting for the inevitable to happen in the story, which is a bit boring. OK Italo effort, but below average. If you want to see a giallo, go look elsewhere.

One Million Years B.C. – fantasy about prehistoric tribes and monsters. The most surprising thing about this film is that there is almost no talking. The cavemn and –women only grunt some noises and mouth a few word-like things, but there is absolutely no dialogue. This “realistic” touch is a bit out of place, because the rest of the film is so super unrealistic, that they could have added dialogue without spoiling anything. The tribes wear hides, but there is only one mammal in the entire film, the rest are insects, spiders or reptiles. The reptiles are supposed to be dinosaurs, which is another unrealistic thing of course. Ray Harryhausen made some nice stop motion monsterfights with the all too famous clash between the Tyrannosaurus and the Triceratops included. There is a large tarantula, like they ever existed. The cavemen survive falling off cliffs which are pretty high. Now I know they were tougher than us nowadays, but this is stretching the limit a bit, imo. The most important cavewoman, Raquel Welch, is way too styled and beatiful, but this helps the film instead of making it unrealistic Well, a lot of things to point at, but also a lot of charm, a nice 60s atmosphere, and although it is a tad too long, still a very nice watch.

The Orb – a group of friends go hiking, and then a meteorite falls down from the sky. It produces a blue beam and a sphere: the orb. It posesses people, turning them into zombielike creatures: eyes turn red and the possessed person will bite the necks of other people, killing them. Come to think of it, it sounds more vampiric than zom bie-esque, but it doesn’t matter. The storyline is insultingly simple: orb possesses person number one, who goes and kills one or two people, than gets killed himself. Usually by being beaten on the head several times with a blunt object, but sometimes by falling out of a tree (smart). Then the orb transfers to person number two, same shit happens again. Then the orb transfers to person num ber three, etc., etc. Boring! You also have to really love green and blue colours, as they used green and blue filters on the film extensively. Unfortunately it makes everything look ugly. Acting is at a starter’s level, with some dialogue spoken like it was being read from a paper and atmosphere is lackimng. Bad film, even for bad moviefans this can be annoying. Be warned!

The Final Days of Planet Earth – miniseries with Gil Bellows and Daryl Hannah. A space mission aimed at mining on the moon comes back to earth unfulfilled. On their way back, something weird happened and the captain of the crew has disappeared since then. An archaeologist digging for Indian remains and some settler artefacts (quite unbelievably, he finds an entire 17th century ship, lol) gets in contact with a reporter after his digging site has experienced an earthquake and is subsequently filled up with concrete. The reporter puts him on a track where he finds out more and more about a secret society of aliens running the town, planning to take over the world. While this story is quite ccliche and ridiculous, I had fun watching this. It was a bit too spread out imo, the effects were laughable and the “plot twist” was clear to me after the first 15 minutes, but the acting was OK enough (although Hannah could have been a bit more convincing) and the ridiculousness of the story kept me watching. I somehow love films about alien attempts to take over our sorry planet. I wouldn’t recommend it to other people than alien-lovers and bad moviefans, though.

Crypt of Dark Secrets – a double bill with Naked Witch on a Something Weird DVD. And again, this film is not bad, good, exciting or boring, but above all very weird. A quite beatiful woman is dancing naked in the woods for a good part of the film (which doesn’t run for very long: 70 minutes), and the story is super simple: a Vietnam veteran keeps all his money in his breadbox next to his cabin on a deserted island in the Louisiana swamps. Some thugs learn of this (by overhearing a conversation in the bank, I mean, how secure do you want your customers to be?) and then they go to the island to kill hi mand take his money. The naked woman however, is a witch, and she can turn into a snake. While being a snake, she witrnesssed the murder and now she resurrects the Vietnam vet and after that she gets revenge on the killers. Why she would do so, and why the movie isn’t over after the killers are all dead, is a complete mystery to me, but hey, Somethig Weird, eh? Recommended for bad moviefans and admirers of female nudity.

Evil – aka To Kako. Greek zombiefilm i n which a few miners contract a disease which turns them into zombies after a while. One of them gets it at hiome, one of them in a stadium watching football and a third while he is out dancing in a discotheque with his friends. This secures the spread of the disease and soon the majority of the Athenians is hungry for human meat. A small group of survivors (a taxi driver and his customer, the daughter of the first zombie, her neighbour, a soldier and a father who had to kill his own child because she turned) now tries to find a way out of this apocalyps. The zombies are a bit too fast for my taste, but the gore was delicious! The head explosion was cool and the other bloody details were very nicely done. I didn’t really understand the ending, but the humour in this film was just enough and I enjoyed watching this Greek entry in the zombie genre. Recommended.

The Initiation - this 1984 slasher felt really good: it had everything I love about slashers. An nice atmopshere, 80s music, cute girls, blood and guts and an idiotic twist at the end of the storyline. Main character is Kelly Fairchild, played by Daphne Zuniga, and she is haunted by a specific nightmare which keeps returning. In this dream, she sees a fire, her mum and dad, and a small girl with a knife. As a student, she wants to investigate recurring nightmares, because of her own experiences with it. Her parents think nothing of it, especially her mother insists on her not investigting, because "they are just dreams and will go away someday". At this point in the film I had an idea how this might turn out, but I didn't count on the idiotic twist, so I was wrong. OK, back to the plot: to join a sorority, Kelly and her friends have to fulfill an assignment for which they have to break into Kelly's father's department store. One of these friends is Alison, played by a yet unspoiled and good looking Hunter Tylo (Deborah Morehart). Once inside, the killings increase, some with creative ingenuity. It had been a long time since I had such a good feeling after watching a slasher. This one is among the classics, imo. Highly recommended!

The Damned Thing - the Tobe Hooper contribution to Masters of Horrror season 2. I only had one hour left so I picked an MoH episode instead of a movie. A while back I had seen season one and it had some good and a lot of mediocre entries. This one falls into the latter category. Sean Patrick Flanery is a sheriff with a trauma: his father killed his mother and then got squished by some invisible force. Now an adult, he experiences the same thing all over: the people in his town are growing more and more aggressive, killing each other or themselves in violent ways. He has to find a way to end the power of the force to be able to live in peace. I said this was mediocre and that goes for almost everything. Some castmembers do a good job, but most of them are mediocre. Effects are almost non-existent, the story isn't really very interesting, so it was quite a letdown after watching The Initiation. Let's hope there are better episodes yet to come.

The V Word - two bored guys go into a morgue at night to check out the dead body of a guy they knew. They try not to be scared so much in order to show their manliness to eah other, but soon the events in the morgue turn too creepy for both of them. Not all bodies turn out to be dead, and blood starts flowing. The next morning, one of them wakes up with a weird feeling. The visit to the morgue has left some permanent marks and he is can't leave the morgue behind for sure. Quite uninteresting, this MoH episode. Acting wasn't so bad, but the story simply couldn't grab me. Michael Ironside is always cool even in this, but he couldn't save this either.

Sounds Like – a MoH episode about a guy named Larry, who works for an IT helpdesk callcenter. He has extremely good hearing, so he can hear stuff which is inaudible to the rest of the world (like the vibrating of someone’s breathing). This is useful in his job, but it can be very annoying too, as he hears a lot of noise all the time and it is driving him mad. Besides, the death of his son still sits in his mind and he can’t cope with it. All this brings Larry to a point from which he can only go downward. This stpryline sounded original to me, but also a bit boring. How could this become a horror film? Well, in the first few minutes I weas thinking that this could really beome a nice surprise, bbut then I noiticed a really big flaw in the film: Larry hears stuff out loud, stuff like people eating vegetables. But, he only hears it sometimes. This “gift” is very selective: he goes to a restaurant and at forst has a conversation with his wife. It’s already a bit strange that he hears his wife talk normally, like any other person. After a few minutes, he starts hearing the eating noises, while it would have been more logical if he heard them from the moment he entered the restaurant. Things like this keep happening thorughout and they make this a fail, imo. It is also quite hard to try and ignore it, as it is so omnipresent and vital to the storyline. The stuff which doesn’t have much to do with the hearing thing are OK and there is even a really gross scene in it, but I wouldn’t watch it again.

Lesbian Vampire Killers – this was quite funny. I didn’t expect a comedy really (although the backside of the DVD stated: “Genre: horror comedy” – which should have given me an idea at least, lol), but I got one anyway. At first I thought the filmmakers were trying to be the coolest kids in town, with their comic effects and their page turning scenechanges. The exaggerated dumb characters were not helping to improve my view on this film either. But when the story started to get going, there was a lot to have fun with: some nice jokes, a lot of beautiful babes, nice vampire action and a cool atmosphere. I had fun, even though it was pretty predictable at times, but I could have seen that one coming, of course Recommended for some mindless fun with good looking babes.

The Screwfly Solution - the first episode of MoH in season 2 that I really liked. Made by Joe Dante, this little story is about the battle of the sexes taken to the extreme (I bet the makers of Doghouse watched this one and decided to give it a twist). Aliens have created some sort of a species specific disease only attaching to males of the Homo Sapiens. It makes them really aggressive towards women, killing them eventually, and two scientists are gonna look for a cure. One of them tkaes a vaccine just to be sure, but the other one is sure he will be able to contain himself when it comes to his own woife and daughter. They are driving north in the meantime, toards Canada, because the disease seems to be limited to the southern states in the US. Soon they find out that that is not the case. Moreover, when dad pays a visit, things aren't like they used to be. Pretty gory at times, this short story had my attention all the way thorugh. Acting was OK, the only flaw in the plot was the not-taking-the-shot thing, imo. That was way too predictable, but the desolation of this story, the feel of the main character had it's impact. Well done, recommended!

Right To Die - MoH ep by the maker of Wrong Turn. A dentist and his wife get into an accident where she burns to her death. Almost. In the hospital she is revived, but the dentist wants to give her an ending with dignity, so he opts for euthanasia. But, while his wife is in the hosptial, she has some near death experiences, and everytime she flatlines, someone who bothered her in her life dies. So the dentist changes his mind and now wants to keep her alive. Seeing her condition, this is gonna be one hell of a challenging task. There is quite some gore in this one because the wife doesn't have a skin anymore, so it reminded me a bit of the early Hellraiser films in that aspect. This is what makes this little film good, because the storyline starts out well enough, then takes a nice tuyrn, but the ending is confusing

Spoiler:

because the dead wife opens the door for the dentist, suggesting that all of it was a dream or a plan to murder Trish the dentist's assistant.

Really weird and I didn't like it at all. Almost all which came before that was OK, so it is safe to watch it, just be warned about the ending.

Valerie On The Stairs - I can be quite short on this one. It was boring. Usually I get scared (at least a bit) by ghosts, but this one was not scary at all. The demon was also really, really fake although Tony Todd tried to make something out of it. Acting was so so, except for Christopher Lloyd, man, that guy can act! He alone made it so that this doesn't receive a zero score, but a little bit higher. Still, I wouldn't recommend this. Seeing that Mick Garris (who directed this) also made Riding The Bullet, I'm not surprised. I get a bit nervous for The Stand now, I really hope that will be better than this and Riding...