The Hamiltons - a family of which both parents died is now trying to cope. The eldest son is trying to fulfill the role of the father, but he has a hard time doing so. They move from town to town, because everytime they get into trouble, they have to move again. The trouble is that they are capturing people and holding them in their basement. Francis, the youngest, has a problem with his family's behaviour and he tries to do something about it. When there are two grils in the basement, he goes down and films them, gives them food. Will he be able to help them, or will he just be like the rest of his family? Quite a surprising film, this one. The eldest son trying to be a father really feels awkward, great acting job there! The outcome is also not really cliche, so I'd say go and watch this if you want to see something which you don't see every day. Recommended.

I watch TV today!

Blood Hook - I bought this Troma slasher from 1986 on a disc together with two other films (a triple B-Header), Blades and Zombie Island Massacre. I had already seen those two, but not Blood Hook. While Blades was a cool flick and Zombie Island Massacre a bit of a letdown, I had mixed expectations of this one. For the first hour, I sat and was almost bored. Almost, because the story itself was crazy enough and the acting was wooden at best. Some actors were even trying to give the expression "wooden acting" a totally new dimension. But I hung in there, because I read in a review that the last 30 minutes would be cool. And so they were! After the first blood is spilt in the 56th or so minute, the movie steps it up a bit an from that moment on you won't be bored until the end credits roll. You will know who is the killer if you hadn't guessed it already and you will see the killer make some really dumb moves and even more so the killer's victims. Wow, stupidity just got to a new low! This combined with the fact that the killer uses his fishing equipment to make the kills, makes this movie a top notch Troma experience. Not only for fans of Troma, but for all bad moviefansm this is a must see!

Megaforce - in an apocalyptic future, the world is governed by dictators. A gang of rebels, the Megaforce, is trying to fight them. While it isn't really clear what their goal is (overthrowing the government, taking it over, or just push out the military), they make the most of their actions. They have motorcycles with rocketlaunchers, they have desertbuggies with riotguns, and they have Hercules transpotplanes to deliver them anywhere they want. They also have a nifty car driving around filled to the brim with supertechnology, which can for example disable enemy weaponry (it's a bit like M's work for James Bond). Funny thing was that the Concorde was considered to be futuristic back in the 80s, because it is mentioned as a way to be transported quickly in the film, while we have already witnessed the demise of the Concorde. Megaforce often shows it's fireworks in the movie, and if you like cheesy scifi flicks from the golden age, then this is a movie for you. The acting is a bit odd at times, and some characters act very weird (like the villain, Guerera). But a superhero in spandex, saving the world and therefore getting the military chick: who doesn't want to see that? Recommended for bad moviefans.

Lake Placid - it had been a while for me to see a crocodile movie. I had low expectations, because I already saw so many before, but I was pleasantly surprised! The sarcastic humour really made this one for me. The story is of course over the top and unbelievable, but I had some real fun watching the dialogue in this one. Some names too, in the cast: Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda and Oliver Platt are part of the success of the film as they do a really decent job. The ending was also very much OK, I loved it. Only drawback is that it was never anything close to scary. But: best crocodile movie I have seen in a long while. If you had to pick the best three ever, this one should be among them. Recommended.

The Incredible Shrinking Man – I bought this DVD with the German title “Die Unglaublichen Geschichte des Mr C”, but this one had English language and a lot of subtitles, so no problems for watching. This film is a 50s classic and in my experience, there are two types of classics: the hilarious ones which are filled with boring dialogue for an hour and after that you get to see a ridiculous monster, and the ones which are actually quite good, especially for their time. This film belongs in the latter category, althoug at times the effects were a bit so so (at a certain point you can see through the shrinking man, unintended). What makes this film good, is that it gets interesting quite fast and keeps the interest of the viewer for the entire length of the film. The story is well made, the effects are usually OK (except for stuff like I wrote above) and the ending is good. If you want to see something different, or something interesting, go watch this, Recommended.

Cry Wolf – story of this slasher is quite cliche: a group of students plays a game about lying. The liar (the wolf) is to be exposed and then he loses. New guy Owen Matthews plays it out so well that he gets into the “cool group” almost immediately. A girl named Dodger has his special interest, and they play some more. Soon an unknown person appears online, and Matthew thinks it is one of his new friends. Since he doesn’t want to be had, he replies ironically, but when the first dead bodies show up, he tries to find out who does all the killing. A nice lot unfolds, but I guessed the killer right pretty soon, and it is nothing new if you have seen a slasher or two before. The Dodger girl did look nice, though. Quite average, but I had fun.

The Stepford Wives – I bought this DVD for one Euro, and it was listed in the horrorsection. This film is not horror, though. I watched it with the wife and we both had some fun with this film: the humour is quite sharp at times, so it’s a black comedy indeed. The story is about a very successful woman, Joanna Eberhart, who is fired at the TV station she is working for after a man who participated in one of her shows threatened to kill her

Spoiler:

and indeed killed his wife because of the show

To start a new life, she and her family move to Stepford, a nice and quiet community where everyone seems to be very happy: the women are always smiling, the men are having fun all day. Together with a woman named Bobbie and a gay guy from New York Joanna tries to find out why everything is so picture perfect in Stepford. In the meantime, her husband gets absorbed by Stepford’s men’s society. When Joanna eventually finds out what is causing all this, it might be too late. Funny film, more a family film than anything horror or scifi, so I guess I wll never watch it again., but I did have fun watching it.

Baadasssss! – this film is about the origins of he blaxploitationgenre. It has the same title as a documentary about this (sub)genre, but this is a movie about Melvin van Peebles making the film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. His son Mario Van Peebles directs and stars in the lead, just like his father did back in 1971. It’s a very cool film about how to make a movie with no ,money and almost everyone against you. Things go wrong on a daily, almost hourly basis, but there are also some nice things happening, like the band Earth, Wind and Fire trying to break through and seeing an opportunity to do so via the film Van Peebles wants to make. This film is like the film it is about, with a largely black cast and crew, the 70s feel is imitated almost perfectly and how the story develops is a bit fairytale-like, but I guess it is at least close to the truth, as the most parts of the film are loosely based on reality. I had a lot of fun watching this, and if you like blaxploitation, or want to know more about it’s origins, this one is a must see. Recommended.

Orphan - aka Orphan Esther. A family wants to adopt, because their last baby was stillborn and they want a sister for their son and daughter. John and Kate, the parents, have had some problems in the past, with alcohol and faithfulness, but their relationship is back on track again. When they visit the home for girls, they meet Esther and they are enchanted by her. She's from Russia and is very eloquent and polite. They choose her for adoption, and everything seems to go well, she especially bonds well with John and deaf daughter Max(ine). At school she gets bullied because she wears old-fashioned clothing, and after a while one of the bullies falls of a slide in a playground: it looks like an accident, but Esther was there. As it turns out Esther is almost always there if something bad happens to a person in her surroundings. Kate starts investigating, but she hits a brick wall at both her husband and her therapist whe she wants to share her thoughts. Meanwhile, more bad stuff happens and when Kate thinks her children are in danger, she goes to extremes to protect them. Good story, nicely built up. I thought acting was done really well, especiialy by Isabelle Fuhrman, then a 12-year old, playing Esther. I also have a weak spot for Vera Farmiga, I noticed her already in The Conjuring, and in this one she's good as well. The only thing which was a bit of a pity in my opinion, was that

Spoiler:

Esther really wasn't a child. Children like this scare me in films, like Damien in Omen. But in this film Esther is an adult with a rare hormonal disease, causing her to stay little. While it was a good explanation, it still felt a bit stupid.

Not much gore, but this film doesn't need it. You will get some chilly feelings while watching this, and I again noticed that having kids yourself really makes a difference when you watch films like this. Recommended, maybe even highly.

Recently I moved and in my new house I’ve got a small cinema, with a screen, a beamer and a surround set. It makes watching movies even more enjoyable! I’ll post pictures one day when it gets finished (some furniture still in production).

Just Before Dawn – a nice classic slasher from 1980 to inaugurate my new home cinema. A group of youngsters goes into the mountains to see a plot of land which recently became the property of one of them. On theiur way up they get warnings not to go there, but of course they go anyway. One of the people who warns them

Spoiler:

soon gets killed

and from that moment on the movie really gets going. There is a nice atmopshere to i tand the great 80s feel is all too present. Scenery is quite OK although some more shots of the no doubt beautiful landscape would have been nice. A subplot about a girl

Spoiler:

who turns out tob e family of the slashers – which is btw quite predictable

develops nicely and overall the story has enough to it to keep you interesting. A recommendation for slasherfans.

Legend of Hell – the second film I watched on my big screen was obvioulsy a lot worse than the first. Ittenbach had impressed me lately with making movies which were getting less and less nonsensical. This one however, next to tops his earliest installments. Acting is atrocious, with just a few exceptions, and they get good reviews because of the others being so utterly bad. The storyline is a bit hard to follow and therefore the film is confusing, yyou have to watch closely to see in which level of life or astral zone they are now. The editing is done poorly and the sound sometimes simply stops, but maybe that is only on my copy of the DVD. Luckily there is again enough blood and guts to keep watching this until it’s over, Ittenbach uses his trademark with abundance. If you just want gore, go watch this, if you are looking for a good film, skip it.

I just watched the new Godzilla. Most of the time I thought I made a mistake and got some Asylum mockbuster. But no, it was the real one. If Uwe Boll films the next Godzilla, I am sure it will be a great piece of art, action, and genius story telling.... compared to this utter piece of crap.

Keep My Grave Open – I wanted to watch both of the films on the double feature on one night: this one and Beast of the Yellow Night. This being a massive borefest though, almost brought me to sleep and I didn’t finish the second film. This one is supposed to be about a maniacal killer, but instead it’s about an insane woman who

Spoiler:

imagines almost everything

and that is clear from the first scene in which it happens. So apart from the killings being very slow and dumb (and also almost bloodless, which should be punishable by law), the “plot twist” isn’t a twist at all. This isn’t even a so bad it’s good movie, it’s that bad. For the first time I was thinking about the money I spent on this one and what I could have bought instead. Avoid.

Beast of the Yellow Night – a man makes a deal with the devil, because he is being hunted down by the military. He wants to stay alive, so the devil gives him life in exchange for his soul. The man continues to live, and he never grows older. Problem is, that from time to time this man, in his normal life a notorious killer, transforms into a man eating monster (read: a guy with an ugly ape mask). His wife fights for a chance to get him treated, while the police is hellbent on arresting him, to make society safer. Bad Philippino horror, with lame transformation scenes and bad dialogue. The image is so bad, that if somebody moves across the screen, you see several “bubbles” (they look like burning spots, but you can see through them) appear. Sound is muffled often, but since the film isn’t really so interesting, that isn’t exactly a problem. Some scenes are funny, especially when

Spoiler:

the ape man is invincible and the army and police are trying to shoot him

but most of the time you are wondering what the filmmakers were thinking when they made this. Another very bad film with just a few minimal laughs. Both films prove that the 70s also brought forth some worthless crap. Avoid, too.

Luther the Geek – Troma film which starts out with a dull intro which is too long. It has scantily clad babes, but it also has the lame jokes of Kaufman, so I skipped through it entirely. Then the film starts, and it starts promising, with a VHS-like intro with matching font: this is 1990, baby! After a short opening scene in which we can see the root of alle vil, the movie starts with Luther being released from a mental hospital: one of the worst decisions in this film. Luther immediately starts killing people, all the time acting like a chicken. Making cluck cluck sounds, swinging his arms like they are wings, etc. He actually bites people’s necks, and it is a very bloody business. Luther ends up at a house where a mother lives alone after her husband dies. She gets attacked, and when the daughter and her boyfriend come home, there are even more possible victims for Luther! I loved the atmopshere, the guy playing Luther is actually quite scary as he is so over the top crazy, the blood and gore are plenty. Recommended.

Get Christie Love! - another one from the Urban Action box, only two left after this one. This one is about a female undercover agent, trying to find out the whereabouts of a ledger, which contains all information of drug trafficking in the area. She has quite an unorthodox approach, comes forward pretty quickly to the targetwoman and uses some kung fu style fighting when necessary. Music wasn't really good, but atmosphere was OK-ish, with some actors doing decent jobs and most of them being half assed. More a filler than a real movie, so if you have some 75 spare minutes, you might give it a spin. Not a movie to remmeber after a longer time, though.

Magic – I thought this would be some kind of slasher, with Anthony Hopkins as a ventriloquist who uses his doll to kill people. Well, it wasn’t a total miss, but I wasn’t right about this film either. More a thriller than a horror, this film is centered around Hopkins, who plays Corky. Corky used to be an assistant to a magician, but since the magician got old, he has to fend for himself. His first performance goes awry because he cracks, and therefore, he starts to perform with the help of a dummy: Fats. They get famous and when Corky can make the big break, he somehow gets scared and hides in a place of his youth, to find that his teenage love is still around there. Now Corky wants to win her over, but since she is married, that will create some problems. Superb acting by Hopkins, who even does the ventriloquist thingy very well (I read that he got trained by a professional ventriloquist for this film). The other castmembers are great as well, especially Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith. Atmosphere is loose at the beginning, but gets tighter and tighter because you know things can’t end well, but there are some surprises in the film too. Nothing spectacular when it comes to blood and gore, but it isn’t the type of film for it. The ending got me a bit confused, because

Spoiler:

then Peggy starts talking like she is the ventriloquist and I was wondering if that meant that she was the culprit alla long, or not

Overall a fantastic film, highly reommended!

The Hive – ridiculous monsterfilms, you gotta love them. In this one, the monsters are ants. You never get to see any ant, though, just streams of bad cgi which are supposed to portray millions of ants together. In SE Asia, the ants are trying to take over an island, so a superteam of bugbusters is being called in: Thorax. The Thorax guys use some kind of scifi blastguns (it reminded me of the blue beam gun of Halflife 1) with which they can eradicate thousands of ants together, and they will also contaminate each other and therefore the killzone will spread. To spice things up, a female entomologist is being brought up, but she turns out to be the love interest of the Thorax leader only, while there could have been a nice and predictable plottwist there. When you think you have taken enough ridiculousness now, then the ants start working together and forming tentacles in the air. In the end they even

Spoiler:

make one giant superant, consisting of millions of ants

which will burn your last remaining braincells. This idea I had already seen done with zombies in one of those J-sploitatin horrors, but this took the cake. Ridiculous, a recommendation for bad moviefans, you will laugh your ass off.

Dreamscape - this film was different than I expected, but it had the weird psychedelic dream scenes I was hoping for. A young Dennis Quaid stars as a guy with psychic powers who gets sort of abducted by a university to help them with a project on dream research. In this project, he enters the dreams of others, using his superconcentration, to help those persons overcome their fears in their nightmares, thus giving them back their lives. Chrisytopher Plummer acts as the overseer of this project representing the government, and Max von Sydow plays the head scientist. Great acting and a nice atmosphere make this thriller a good watch: some sort of a Cold War conspiracy comes looking arouind the corner to spice things up a little, especially because the president himself is having nightmares too. Now Quaid's charatcer must try and stop the people who want to contain the president. If you pay even a little attention, you will know the plot in some 20 minutes, so I guess this was made for kids or something. Still, it's a nice watch and I would watch it again.

Leprechaun: Origins
Forget it. Has absolutely nothing to do with the old leprechaun movies. It is a generic grunting monster, which runs 90min around and kills some ... as much generic characters, which you forget two minutes after they die. A boring non-story. Want some proper reviews? Go to imdb. I agree with all 1-2 star reviews.

Just tried to watch Night Crawlers 2009. Thanks, but no thanks. There are worse movies... much worse, but I still deleted this one. Forced 'humor' = comedy fail. Boring story, stupid acting = horror fail. Looks more like a student project.

Idol of Evil: Hell Is Forever
Deleted after 5 minutes. I don't know what this film is about. But sometimes it is enough to hear two or three spoken sentences, see one or two camera pannings, a few movements to recognize a very bad and cheap work. And I am not willing to waste my time on cheap crap.

Deranged - based on the real events surrounding Ed Gein, this film portrays a deranged killer called Ezra Cobb, who starts out as a loving and caring character nursing his sick mother. But when this mother dies, Ezra can't live without her and he decides to dig her up anbd put her body in the house, just like she were alive. He talks to her and lives with her like nothing happened. After a while, he takes this hobby a bit further and start to look for more "company", and if they don't want to come by themselves, he will make them stay forever. I have seen Gein movies before, but this one was quite OK, the acting was pretty well done, especially Ezra and the mother do a good job. Some of the other characters are a tad thick, because even when everything is pointing to Ezra, there are still some people believeing he is innocent, but overall this was quite a nice film. I had never heard of this one, but I can recommend it, especially for fans of TCM-like dinners with "the family" and Ed Gein followers.

Iron Rose - Rose de Fer. An atypical Jean Rollin film: there are no vampires and there is almost no nudity. A couple enters a graveyard to make love, but when they get out of the tomb they were doing it in, it is dark. They are gonna try to find thei way back, but they fail and they keep on wandering about the graveyard. Slowly they are losing it: will they eventually make it out? Although atypical, there are still long drawn out scenes in which almost nothing happens, which makes the 77 minutes feel almost twice as long. The idea was nice, but the way Rollin put it into film is poor at best. I wanted to see it for completist's sake, and that's the only reason I can think of to watch this. Not very memorable.

Motel Hell - this is the other film on the double feature with Deranged, and it is about farmer Vincent's smoked meats. They are famous for their taste, countywide! The secret recipe however, asks for some unorthodox measures on Vincent's part: he traps people on the road nearby (for example by blowing their tires with a shotgun) and then treats their bodies such that they can be sold as smoked meat

Spoiler:

he has a secret garden where he "plants" the people. Their vocal chords are getting sliced so they can't scream while they are being "planted", and when they have been in the ground for a while, their bodies get smoked

One day he traps a couple of which the man is quite old but the girl is young, and Vincent has a weak spot for her. He cures her and is trying to keep her around for good company and maybe even a little more, but this goes against the wll of Ida and Bruce, the sister and brother of Vincent. Although both Ida and Bruce have very different reasons for disagreeing with Vincent, trouble is brewing in meat smoking paradise. Funny horror, this one. Especially the "production line" scenes are cool. Acting is OK, nothing really special and atmosphere is great. I had funwatching this one, although the ending was a tad abrupt. Recommended.

Fear - a girl with psychic abilities helps the police to catch murderers and rapists in several cases. She is able to enter the mind of a person via some objects that person touched. She writes books about her experiences, becoming famous in the process. In the next case, she encounters a serial killer who is psychic too. He can enter her thoughts now, and therefore he is always one step ahead. Everytime he kills someone, he writes "Fear Me" on the wall, written in blood. The psychic girl fears him indeed, so she needs to make sure he gets apprehended, or her life wll be a living hell. This movie was on a double feature which I bought for Parents. I had read some bad reviews on it, so my expectations were low. Nonetheless, I thought that this movie was not that bad. It's not very exciting, but there are some nasty kills (although almost always off screen) and acting isn't so bad. The ending was actualy quite entertaining. Could have been better still, but it's not a pain to watch imo.

Thirst - a woman gets abdicted by a society which consists of people believing they are the descendants of Counbtess Bathory and the like. Therefore, they need blood and turn into vampires. They won't live in old castles and hunt down unwitting bypassers, but they made a factory with breeding grounds instead. In those factories, the blood is produced on a daily basis and the vampires never have to worry about it. Kate Davis, the woman, fights the assumption that she is a descendant too, and tries to escape the claws of the society. In the meantime, the leaders of the society try to turn her. Chantal Contouri does a great job playing a woman who is torn between two worlds: the one she is from and which she knows really well, and the one she is being sucked into and is a total mystery to her. Atmosphere is cool: from vampires to bloodfactories in one swoop of the camera, nice! I really enjoyed this one for it's originality and it's weirdness. Recommended.

Good Against Evil - the backside of the sleeve of this film stated that this was "a cross between Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist". It's quite to the point, but it raises unjustified expectations. What happens, is that the film starts out as a Rosemary's Baby rip-off (can't be more positive about it), and then around halfway it stops and then continues as an Exorcist rip-off. The two stories are so much different, that they could have been two separate films. Only two characters from the first story re-appear in the second, and one of them even seems to have forgotten about all his actions in the first story (in which he was madly oin love with girl A, buit n the second film he simply goes for girl B like there never was any girl A). Funny thing is to see a young Kim Cattrall being the love interest of that guy in part two, but overall this film was very forgettable: a cheap trick to try and cash in on the succcess of the previously mentioned classics.