The word "this" is the link

Blood Redd - one of the worst werewolf movies I have seen in my entire life. Acting: Standard (over)acting. All women roll their eyes repeatedly, sometimes for no reason at all. Bad effects: everything imortant happens offscreen, the blood on the wall looks to much "put on" and the ripped bodies look superfake. Music: I can't remember any music, not a good sign. Camerawork: apart from some nice low angle shots and some original stances, it was very middle of the road, nothing special. Setting: almost the entire film plays out in a living room, boring! Story: a girl goes to visit her grandma, a guy from the nursing home is in her house and when grandma is found dead, something violent and bloody erupts. Who is the real werewolf now? Meh, seen it before. Small redeeming factor is the ending, that was quite cool, but not worth waiting 85 minutes for.

Navy Seals vs Zombies - a team of Navy Seals is dropped into Baton Rouge (and not New Orleans, like it says on imdb) to rescue the vice-president and any other survivors from an attack. The city is sealed off from the outside world and the Secret Service and the police are offline. The CIA has an idea what's going on, and together with the Seals, they make a plan to confront the danger: fast running zombies. The storyline is very simple and doesn't require any thinking. The dialogue between teh Seals is full of cliches and how the plot evolves is pretty predictable. So, this is a no nonsense actionflick with zombies. If you like that, then go for it. A nice film for when you are tired or anything.

Deathgasm - pretty funny New Zealand horrorcomedy, with a touch of Bad Taste (there s even a T-shirt reference in the movie ). Brodie gets placed in his uncle's family because his mother is being put into an institution. This family however totally differs from Brodie: he is a metalhead, the family is a god-fearing middle of the road bunch of people. The cousin is actually a bully at school, and Brodie finds out personally. Soon he meets Zakk, a fellow metalhgead and together they form a band called Deathgasm. When they play a song they found on some old sheets, they awaken a demon who comes to earth to take over. Before that happens, though, many people turn into minions of the demon, eating pother people alive. To save the planet, Brodie and Zakk must act fast and come up with a solution. I had a good time watching this, there are many metal references and I enjoyed the music too, of course The humour is good enough, it only gets corny a few times. Atmosphere is something like in Bad Taste as I wrote in my opening sentence, and of course that is a good thing. I recommend this, especially for metalfans or for fans of Ozzie/NZ indie movies.

Rebirth of Mothra II - spin-off of the Godzilla films I guess. How the story evolves is pretty similar to those films at least, this one seems to be focused on kids even more. The main characters are kids and the bad guys are actually quite nice persons once you get to know them a little better. There are some fantasy creatures which you may know from Godzilla films, like the twins who sing the Mothra song, and some which were new to me like the Gorgo. There is some mumbo jumbo story about a lost kingdom under the sea (Atlantis, much?) and there is an underwater variant of Godzilla. The whole thing is aimed at children, so make sure you are one when watching this, or be very much out of your mind.

The Asylum aka Exeter - Patrick is a guy who works as a volunteer for the church. He helps cleaning up an old building the church bought recently to turn it into a youth center. This building used to be an asylum between 1916 and the late 70s, when it was closed down because of abuse and mistreatment ofthe mentally retarded children whiuch were supposed to be helped there. When Patrick's friends learn about the building, they throw a huger party there, and the next morning, during the afterparty, a small group of them is left to drink and drug some more. Then an evil spirit appears and possess Patrick's little brother. While trying to perform an exorcism, the spirit kills and jumps persons, and one by one the remaining partygoers are getting possessed. Patrick tries everything in his power to stop it, and he gets helped by a girl he just met on the party. The story is not really original, but it is an OK film. Acting is sometimes really close to overacting, effects are good enough, but some stuff gets really repetitive (like the banging bedlegs). Best aspect of the film is the presence of Brittany Curran, she really looks like a sweetheart in this one. Average film, not recommended, but not an absolute avoider either.

Horns - a film which combines drama, comedy, fantasy, horror and crime in a way which made me quite enthusiastic. Daniel Radcliffe plays Ig Perrish, a guy who has the most beautiful girl inthe village as girlfriend. One day he gets areested becaiuse she is found dead. He wants to prove his innocence by tracking down the real killer, but in the process he gets angry at god and therefore grows horns on his head, as a sign that he is league wth the devil now. From that moment on, under the influence of the horns, everyone speaks his mind openly around him and he learns many dirty little secrets of his townsfolk. In the meantime, the search for the killer goes on and Ig has to go through several very painful scenes with his family and with his friends because he gets to know the ultimate truth, which isn't a lot of fun. There was a moving, albeit a little corny (and precitable plotwise) scene about love near the end, and the final scenes were quite over the top, but overall I enjoyed this film a lot and I would recommend it for sure. It is worth the two hours.

The Butcher - cultfilm from Maik Ude, a German guy who was 16 years old when he made this film. It is ultra low budget and has no subs but since the storyline isn't the most important thing it is OK, and besides my German isn't too bad either. In this hour long film nothing much develops, there is this character which has risen from the grve and now hacks and slashes his way through a German town, making very random victims. The kills are mostly offscreen, but there is plenty of gore, and by watching the bellies of the people walking around, you can tell who is gonna get it next The weapons are conveniently laying around for the killer on the locations where he meets his victims, and some people are gonna be killed twice, because they play various characters (which isn't too obvious because of the no subs thing and the sound being muffled often). It has a great old-fashioned VHS look, and since I bought all three Butcer filsm recently, I am curious to see how this looks in a more modern day version. Only for bad moviefans.

The Barbarians - aka I Fratelli Barbari. Ruggero Deodato, who made such infamous films as Cannibal Holocaust and House on the Edge of the Park, also made some very family friendly films, and this is one of them. The story is likje a fairy tale: two brothers live in a group which resembles a travelling circus, and one day this group gets attacked by a warrior leader. He wants to steal a magic ruby so he can be all powerful, but the ruby is smuggled out aand hidden in the wastelands. When they grow up, the barbarian brothers escape their imprisonment and go search for the ruby, meeting up with a young woman on the way. These three characters encounter monsters, warriors and have to complete their quest in time in order to save their queen. I had fun watching this, it has the usual bad sfx and the bad guy overacting. The landscapes were nice and the brothers act funny sometimes, although it is mostly children's humour. OK to watch for once, but there are funnier fantasy films to see, like Barbarian Queen.

Monster Shark - aka Devil Fish aka Shark: Rosso nell'oceano. Lamberto Bava wanted to cash in on the Jaws success, so he made this film Monster Shark. It's about a team of scientists discovering a huge sea animal and they want to capture it alive to research it. In the meantime however, this creature has killed several people so the sheriff wants to kill it. Other people also get killed, obviously not by the shark, so the sheriff has his hands full to solve both the animal and the human killer problems. Acting is pretty bad in this one, there is a romance which is very predictable, the bad guy is grinning 95% of his screentime and the bathing suits and the hairdo's are very much 80s. The development of the plot is only mildly interesting, and there are several plotholes

Spoiler:

like what happens with the girlfriend of Peter after the bad guy hangs up the phone on her

but the most ridiculous thing about this film is

Spoiler:

that the monster is not even a shark, but some mixture between a fish and an octopus

Some great fun with the monster for bad moviefans, and also with Cortez, the super muscled but not so brainy police officer.

Bloody Pit of Horror - 60s Gothic horror from Italy, this must be good! And it sure is, when you are a bad moviefan. A group of models and the crew (photographers, etc.) are planning on taking a photoshoot in a castle, but nobody answers the door, so they climb a wall to get in. What they don't know, is that this is the castle where the medieval Scarlet Executioner lived and died. While they are inside, they find out that a seclusive man is actually living in the castle. After some hesitation, the man agrees on the crew staying overnight. That night, the executioner seems on the prowl again, and one by one the members of the crew and the girls start to die. The story feels quite classic, and the atmosphere is great. At first it's a bit odd, but once in the castle, the atmosphere goes to the right level. Effects are laughable, so this is where bad moviefans can have their treat: the methods of torture by the executioner are ridiculous, but the spider and it's web take the cake. You must see it to believe it. Good fun for 74 minutes, go see it.

Gwendoline - I had some high expectations of this one, especially since it's cult status and the description on the backside of the DVD. Four of the six opictures on the back, and the big one on the front, are about the last 30-35 minutes of the film, which is quite misleading indeed. But OK, there is still plenty of room to be entertained, but I must say that I was a bit disappointed. It's not that the spotry isn't crazy enough, or the suits aren't weird enough. But somehow this fantasy/scifi-like film didn't really grab me. Gwendoline is a woman who is searching for her father, who got lost while trying to catch a rare species of butterfly. Together with her friend Beth and the testosterone bomb/sailor Willard she sets out on a trip to Yek Yeik (or Yik Yak as it says on imdb), but of course they get in trouble with the queen there and they will have to fight for their lives. As I said, the story wasn't too interesting, atmosphere was OK, acting was often over the top, especially by the Asians. Some fun for bad moviefans, but there are better/worse films out there.

The Giant of Marathon - I only bought and watched this because of Mario Bava working on it. It was in the beginning of his career, so it's an atypical film in his oeuvre. It's a peplum about the Persian-Greek wars, with some twists to history and of course the inevitable lovestory and a subplot about betrayal of Athens. Acting is OK-ish, and the rest of the film is what you might expect from a film like this: especially the effects are below par, but tht can be a fun factor as we all know. What wasn't so enjoyable were the ssound and the image on this DVD: both were quite low quality, which made following the film unnecessarily hard sometimes. This could have been a Hercules film, seeing that Philippides, the hero of this film, can almost do everything Hercules can. And of course he wins, the bad guys get punished and the woman rides of with our hero into the sunset. The end. Only for fans of te genre.

Piranhas II, die rache der Killerfische - aka Killer Fish. In the wake of monstrous water creature movies at the end of the 70s, this film was made by Antonio Margheriti. It stars quite some familiar names like Lee Mayors, Margaux Hemingway and Karen Black. The story is about a jewellery heist, after which the booty is being hidden on the bottom of an artificial lake in Brazil. The crimeboss puts piranhas in the lake without notifying his associates and all have to wait 60 days to collect the spoils. Of course some of them don't have that patience and they try to get to the bag with jewels before that: piranha attack scene ensues. The sideplot is about a model (Hemingway) doing a shoot in the jungle, and they get mixed up with the criminals, who are also eyeing each other with suspicion, especially after the first associate was killed. Now they all want to get to the bag asap and then get the hell out of Brazil, but that's not gonna be an easy task. This film is not so much a horror film, despite the piranhas: there is simply too little gore in it and the number of piranha attacks is to be counted on one hand. Acting is so so, some castmembers try their best, others are overacting a lot. Atmosphere was OK, and apart from the twist in the final scene (about the whereabouts of the jewellery), everything was quite predictable. OK watch, but nothing to remember really.

The Butcher II - way better production values compared to part one, for example image quality is better, there is actually some music which seems to be made for the scenes, there is a more believable cast (not just children and one mom, lol). The story looks like it has more thought gone intpo it than before, so there are really some imporvements. This doesn't make it a good movie, though. The effects are still laughable, especially the girl who gets sawn in two looks extremely fake. The killer still has no reason at all to kill all those victims, but at least the settings in which he does it are made a little more credible. Looks promising for part three, this is still for a niche audience though.

The Night Porter - in the search for completion of my nazisploitation collection, I encountered this title, so I gave it a try. I got the Criterion Collection DVD, which gave me a hint towards the content of the film, this wouldn't be an Ilsa or a Fraulein in Uniform kind of film. And indeed, it isn't. The storyline is way less superficial than in most nazisploitations, and so you could argue that this is not a nazisploitation at all. There sure is nazi stuff in the film: the main character is a survivor of the concentraon camps, and she meets her former torturer in a hotel in Vienna, as he works there as the night porter. At first she is scared, but after a while she gets more and more obsessed with the thought of being with him, and they indeed get together to revive their sadomasochistic relationship which started back in the camp. So yes, there is sex and torture like in most nazisploitations, but the sex is less vulgar (as it is mostly voluntary sex that you will see) and the torture is more subtle: no sawn off bodyparts for example. When their relationship develops, other former nazis are starting to worry that their comrade might sell out so they start stalking the couple, to the utmost extreme. The ending is very dramatic, but fits in the story very well, as opera plays a large role in the film, the storyline itself develops like a story from an opera too. Very well done, a recommended film, just don't expect too much gore and there is no actual horror at all.

Caligula 2 The Untold Story - after Tinto Brass' Caligula, his fellow Italian directors wanted a piece of the pie which was called Romesploitation (or whatever). Joe D'Amato, our good old porn director, atributed to the pile with this film. Clocking in at 124 minutes, it is quite pressing on your perseverance, as the story is quite slow at times and the pornscenes are long and dragged out. Some fo the pornscenes fit OK into the story (there is more story than porn to begin with, a good thing imo), like the one in which the new concubines have to learn how to please a man. Others are a bit out of place, even though the setting of a decadent Roman party is logical, it still seems a bit artificial especially because it climaxes with cumshots like in normal porn. The cruelty of Caligula is obvious, and nobody is safe in his palace. Plans and plots develop, but most are discovered and then Caligula strikes back in anger. So apart from all the sex there is a large amount of violence in this film, with the execution of some plotters by impaling them entirely being particularly cruel. Not a film for the squeamish, there is a chance you might be grossed out by the sex, the violence or the vomiting. For bad moviefans or avid fans of D'Amato this is of course a good piece of cinema.

The Pit and the Pendulum - I had already seen the one with Lance Henriksen, but not the Vincent Price one, so here it was. This was a rather short film, which felt a bit longer due to it's pace. A long time nothing happens in the film: a man is looking for his sister who recently died and he wants to see her grave. The family who lives in the castle where the woman died is holding him off for mysterious reasons, but he perseveres and finally finds out the truth, of which you might think that he didn't want to know that at all. The pendulum, one of the ccoolest thigns in the film, only appears 7 minutes before the end, which was quite a disappointment, in my memory it played a larger role in the Henriksen version. Price acts like he always does: like he is on a stage in a theater, old school but also gripping and taking you with him on the journey his character is making in the story. Fun to have seen this one, haven't read the Poe story so can't comment on how close it stick to the original story.

Three faces of Terror - aka I Tre Volti Di Terrore. Sergio Stivaletti's second film. Having made special effects for films by Argento, Bava and the like, his experience in Italian filmmaking is priceless, but making a film yourself is something different. Wax Mask (his first film) wasn't a very orignal film, and this one isn't either. It's an anthology in which the wraparoiund story seems vague and stupid, but it makes sense in the end. The separate stories are far from original, you could call them classic when you are being positive. "The Moon Ring" is about two guys going into an Etruscan tomb and when one of them steals a ring off a corpse, he unleashes an ancient curse and turns into

Spoiler:

a werewolf

"Dr Lifting" is a story about a woman who wants to look like her best friend and therefore goes to see a plastic surgeon, who has a certain way to make people look exactly like the erson they want to resemble. "The Guardian of the Lake" is about three people camping on a lakeside shore when they are being warned by a local (mmm, where did I see this before - oh right, everywhere) that they shouldn't disturb nature. Well, of course nature actually does get disturbed and a giant monster appears

Spoiler:

to eat them all

The only original thingy about this one is the ending of it all, as all stories are ending while they are unfinished. There is one more scene in the wraparound and then you get to see the endings. And then once more to the wraparound, that was quite nice. Worst thing about this film is that the Italian actors are trying to speak English and they are obviously struggling, it sounds really strange and ridiculous at times. Unfortunately I must say that Stivaletti is not a very good director, so you better pick something else from the huge arsenal of Italian cinema.

Three The Hard Way - in this blaxploitation, Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly combine their strength to take out a white syndicate which is planning to exterminate all black people. This is one of the most exaggerated blaxploitations I know, and therefore I enjoyed it thoroughly. Apart from the usual stuff about jiving muddafukkas, there are way over the top action scenes in which one of the three heroes takes on entire armies of the neonazi looking syndicate soldiers. Explosions abound, cars just have to drive off a parking garage to go up in a ball of fire and smoke. The syndicate is being shown as all powerful, yet their grand masterplan is to exterminate all negroes in... three cities in the USA. Talk about world domination, eh? I had great fun watching this nonsense in which Kim Kelly of course never picks up a firearm but instead does everything with kung fu, Jim Brown and Fred Williamson are portrayed as intense lovers and morally superior fighters for the cause and in the end the evil syndicate is beaten and all neonazi wannabes are dead. Music wasn't supergreat, but also not bad. If you want to see an over the top blaxploitation, this one is your film.

Insidious 2: This is the sequel to part 1 and I was pleasantly surprised. It integrates very well into the first part. Usually sequels are way worse than the first instalment, but since the director and the main cast is the same, it all worked out here. If you have seen part 1, the plot is that not the father, but an evil spirit returned from the spirit realm into the father's body. The father must kill in order stay in the living realm and soon the family notices his strange behaviour. They try to stop him and get the father's spirit out of the spirit realm, but other evil spirits are trying to stop that. It has some nice scares. I recommend it, if you liked the first part. I heard that there is also a part 3 that is a prequel. I might check that one out too.

Der Todesking - until recently, I had already seen Jörg Buttgereits most well known films: Schramm, Nekromantik 1 and 2. Due to some fortunate event I was able to buy Der Todesking finally, as it had been very expensive in the past. This film has the Buttgereit feel all over it, but apart from that, it is quite different from the Nekromantiks. It's a set of seven segments (I wouldn't call all of them stories), in which suicide and/or violent death are the main theme. It reminded me a bit of Faces of Death, without the pretense that this was real or anything. Every segment is a day in the week, and where Monday and Tuesday actually had a connection, all other segments were not connected in any way other than the main theme. Some segments were a tad shocking, like the one in which a camerawoman starts murdering people at a concert, and others were visually not so spectacular, but made you feel really uneasy, like the segment in which you see the camera going slowly over a high bridge and you get to see name after name of different persons with different professions and ages. It isn't mentioned, but you understand that all these people hurled themselves off this bridge at one point. Inbetween the segments, there are images of a decaying dead body and that was not adding anything to the film for me. It was very fake and also a needless and cheap attempt at shocking the audience. While I feared that this film might make me depressed, it didn't. I was left with a gloomy feeling, though. If you have never seen a Buttgereit I'd recommend weatching the Nekromantik films first, as then you might know what you are up to when giving this one a spin.

The Whip and the Body - one of the earlier Mario Bava films, and you could call this a proto giallo, in a Gothic setting. Christopher Lee plays Kurt, one of two sons of a count which is near his death. Kurts brother Christian has married Nevenka, the woman who was actually meant to marry Kurt. While Christian longs for a marriage with Katia, he now has to deal with his old father who disowned Kurt, the unexpected return of Kurt to the castle, and the women who both want another man. Soon after his arrival, Kurt is found dead, though. And while everybody is trying to find out what happened, the count dies, too. Now everyone starts blaming each other, but Nevenka is convinced that it is Kurt's soirit, returned from the grave. Is that really the case? Or is there a human murderer loose in the castle? Super atmospheric, with good acting and nice music, this film has a lot going for it. The mediocre effects and the lack of anything happening beside the whodunnit are the downsides. Still, this is a nice example of early horror cinema and you should check this one out if you have the chance, especially if you are a Bava fan or a fan of Gothic horror.

Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead 3 - after having seen this, I wonder why this wasn't just made as one film. It is too long for three and a half hours and if they would have cut one or one and a half hour the film could have been quite cool imo. Right now it felt as more of the same with a stupid plot twist about sex in the end and badly cgi'd infected people. The talking penis and the rape zombies aren't as fun anymore and the story fell a bit flat. Even for a J-sploitation this was a tad below par, you might watch it as a curiosity, but don't expect a good J-sploitation: it might have been one if it was just one film.

Butcher III: Zombies im Blutrausch -

This review could have been written about Butcher III, with some obvious exceptions of course. From Butcher II to III there aren't any improvements, it's just more of the same. Enjoyable enough if you have seen the other two, but like with Rape Zombie, this could have been made into one movie, which then would have been better than the two separate ones now.

Agoraphobia - a film which starts out as a drama, then becomes a ghostfilm and finally turns into a thriller. Faye has agoraphobia and in order to cure her, she follows therapy and part of that is confronting your fears. Therefore they move into the house her father left her in his will. She gets help by her husband Tom, her best friend and Nina, a girl who is helping her out doing household stuff and also keeping her company while Tom is away for work. After having seen some strange stuff and hearing noises, she doesn't feel comfortable in the house anymore, but TOm can't help her because he is so busy. Her doctor wants to prescribe more medication, but she doesn't want that. When Nina dies in the laundry room, things start to speed up. The plottwist was pretty predictable, and the execution was rather poor: how could a person be so very careless when there is so much at stake? Stupidity has risen to new levels for sure. Most of the film acting was OK, it is just that the predictability and the lack of interesting things in the storyline which make me never going to see this film again.

Night of the Wild - an Asylum film, which is a somewhat redeeming factor for me these days, because it explains why stuff sucks in films. At the start of the film something falls from the sky. It's green and glowing, and it makes dogs savagely mad: they start to attack people, not in the least their owners. All around town people get torn apart by the jaws of their canine friends, and while some of them deserve to die (one guy at a gas station doesn't even notice the huge green thing stuck in the hill above his station), some others are quite unfortunate (like the blind guy whose dog goes wild too). The family of the main characters works hard to survive and in the end they escape with a plane. Problem solved? For them, maybe. Quite a weird ending, nothing much of a development in the storyline. No problem, it is Asylum. Only for those who want to see stuff happening in a row and don't expect an actual climax at some point.

The Encounter - damn, I fell for it. This is just one of those shaky cam "found footage" films about alien encounters. It has every cliche, from a naked guy being found in the woods, to strange sightings and the army intervening. Acting is OK-ish, but never very intense: you actually don't really care what happens to the characters. A plus is that you get to see the aliens pretty well, but it is quite uninteresting overall and the obivous "we are not alone" message is a bit too much. Near the end I didn't really get the flashbacks, maybe they had to fill up time so we got to see some stuff twice. Forgettable film.

Nocturna - a vampireflick which wasn't too original, but entertained me enough to have a fun 90 minutes. It's about two vampireclans, who live quite close to human society. When a cop gets a new partner (the mayor's son), his biggest task is to prevent anything happening to the young man. It doesn't take long or this guy gets involved with the vampires, and you get to find out that there is a feud going on between the two clans. With some hired guns, the police and two vampireclans out for blood there is enough reason to show some action. The makeup was good, the acting was pretty well done and the storyline was cliche but OK. Not anything groundbreaking, but fun enough to give it a watch.

The Last Witch Hunter - thought this would be some blockbuster-like adventure/fantasy film or maybe a nice horror suited for bigger audiences. It turned out to be the first. The story is like a fairytale, it is violent, but the Grimm tales actually were very violent too. Vin Diesel never escapes from being Vin Diesel in this film, a bit like the action heroes from the 80s, but less pronounced. I never got scared or anything, the witches are a bit of a charicature, like they were appearing in a comic book or something (as I'm typing this I realize that the film might even be a comic made into a film, but I'm not sure about that). The entire film is a cgi fest, and while I was watching this, I concluded that cgi is always worse than plastic effects, because even when cgi is done great, like in this film, it still looks worse than plastic effects. That's why I will always be in love with 70s and 80s films way more than with modern movies. While this wasn't really bad, I will skip films like this in the future, they are just not my thing.