Blood of Dracula's Castle - a young couple inherits a castle which is inhabited by an old(er) couple of vampires. They have a basement full of chained up women whom they use for draining blood. This was more vampiric than the other films I had seen from the Undead Collection (Last man on Earth and Nightmare Castle), but still not the real thing. It was all a bit tame, no blood really. Nice acting, especially the vampir who is getting nervous about his near future, but it was a quite forgettable experience.

The Gate - the backside of the DVD cover tells me that this filmis a mix between Poltergeist and Gremlins. Well, bith films are better than this one, but the second part is enjoyable enough. The "Poltergeist" part is full of good intentions, but it doesn't come off. The "Gremlins" part is better, the little monsters were typical Charles Band stuff, although it wasn't made by him. This film also stars a 14-year old Stephen Dorff (he looks much younger, though) and he is acting very well. There are some very illogical things in this, but overall I thopught this was fun. Recommended.

The Bloody Vampire - Spanish vampiremovie with a very classical vampire in it who keeps women imprisoned in coffins an sucks their blood regularly. The plot was a bit vague to me, but it involves a countess who is married to the main vampire, who in turn has a female vampire mate of his own age. The countess and her servant are trying to fight the vampires with the help of a doctor and in the end they win. Better than I expected, still I hope this Undead Collection holds more interesting films, or it will be tedious to watch through them all.

Lorna - Lorna is an unhappy woman and when her husband leaves for work on their anniversary without remembering that fact, she is depressed. Then she gets violated by an escaped convict, but instead of running away she lusts for him and takes him home. There she makes love to him and cares for him and wants to start a new life. Then her husband comes home early, because during the day he remembered the anniversary. Lorna changes her mind when she sees that the convict wants to kill her husband. All well ends well. Some brief nudity, not much interesting storyline.

Legend of the Mummy - an old guy who owns a mummy gets spellbound by it and goes into a coma. His colleagues and friends try to save him. When an old buddy of his is getting out of jail, it looks like all problems will be solved, but instead it gets worse. Nice acting, the storyline was interesting, the supernatural stuff is played out well, it makes you feel a bit creepy. I can't seem to ind a rip of this, so I'll rip it soon. Recommended.

Crypt of the Living Dead - after his father died, a guy goes to an island to bury him. On the island there is also an ancient tomb, of which the islanders say it contains a 700 years old vampire. The guy wants to open it, and when he does, the vampire gets released and starts killing off people. The audio was so muffled, on this DVD that I had a hard time following the storyline. I must have missed certain aspects of it completely, as I sometimes couldn't make out what they were doing. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it still is a shame that something gets released in such a poor state of quality. You won't miss out on anything if you skip this one.

Night of the Beast - yay, hilarious stuff for bad moviefans! A cult with people wearing black cloaks and weird ugly masks, young girls getting kidnapped and fed to The Child. An all-American cop is trying to solve the missing girls issue and makes love to every woman he encounters on the way. I loved the cheap sfx with the blood tears and the cult guys. What is INCREDIBLY stupid though, is that the movie is incomplete! Right in the middle of a sentence spoken out by an actor, the movie just stops. So I don't know how it ends, as my DVD doesn't contain the ending

I Stand Alone (1998) - Gaspar Noe's feature length and continuation/follow up of Carne (1991) remains his best work. I Stand Alone is the story of an unemployed French butcher who spirals further and further into a furious psychosis as he's unable to find a step up on the streets of Paris. Philippe Nahon is incredible as the butcher as we're treated to his increasingly violent inner ramblings and physical outbursts. I highly recommend watching Carne before I Stand Alone.

The Mist - heard some stuff about it, but it turned out to be different. At least for me. I think The Mist is a quite cool movie, with some good acting, nice gore and a decent storyline. The CGI is bearable with only a few exceptions. What I really liked was the situation right after the first attack on the supermarket (the people trapped in the supermarket was a nice touch towards DotD-1978), the tension, the dilemma of whether or not telling anyone, nice. What bothered me was the fact that the religious stuff is growing incredibly fast: it looked like some scenes which were meant to build up this part of the storyline were edited from the movie. It came way too sudden. The ending was great in an uneasy way. Recommended.

Its actually rated quite highly by a few. I thought it was pretty good, it has that methodical insomniac tone that I enjoy.

The ending is hilarious too.

Oh yeah, the stuff I heard about was not if it was good/bad, but about what was in the mist. It turned out to be something else

Had a busy week, so not much time for movies and no time for posting reviews. Here is what I did get around to see:

The Sadistic Baron von Klaus - a very early Franco film. It is actually a whodunnit, and only near the very end of this movie we can see some moderate glimpses of what made Franco famous later in his career. The rest of the film is a classic thriller with a hint of the supernatural. Although the acting is nice, the storyline sometimes stutters. All in all this film is OK, but not really special or anything.

Horror Express - this one was interesting. It has Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, two of the greatest in classic horror. Telly Savalas shows up too, but he only does so in the last part of the movie. The story is OK, it is about a fossil from Siberia which is thawing out and then killing people. It reminded me of The Thing, although this one can talk when it is inside a human host. It is not scary, but it is a good film. Recommended.

The Bat - there are several films of this name and this one is from 1959. It stars Vincent Price, so I expected something good. It was a bummer. Instead of a horror, this turns out to be a crime movie, where a killer is nicknamed The Bat. Meh. Halfway through I knew who the killer was, so it became boring. When they started showing killings of which I highly doubt they could be fatal irl, I gave up on this one. Avoid.

Mondo Topless - some sort of documentary on topless dancing. It is about nothing, it just shows dancers topless, and then they say a few words about their work. This lasts for 1 hour. That's it. Only for die hard Rus Meyer fans.

Terror Creatures from the Grave - wow, this was boring! A new kind of boring was born when this movie got made, geez! It is about people getting resurrected from their graves after they have died a death by torture centuries ago, they were accused of spreading the plague. But, here it comes: we never get to see them! It is all left to suggestion and some screams in the dark. On top of that, the quality of the picture and sound were below par. This made this a very, very forgettable experience to watch this "film". Avoid. Like the plague. Pun intended.

Society - saving best for last is one of my rare qualities. When grabbing the DVD from the shelf, I noticed it was a Brian Yuzna film, and I love what he usually produces, so I was curious. The first hour is a typical 80s film with some weird suspicious stuff going on. The final scene is unforgettably gory. Inbetween there is fine acting, good music and an interesting storyline. Everyone should see this film, recommended!

Deported Women of the SS Special Section - another nazisploitation gem I got around downloading after the reposting of the Ultimate Exploitation Collection. A group of women is tossed together in a prison camp and some of them are meant to serve as "field whores" and if I understood it well it wws supposed to be linked to the Lebensborn project of the nazis. You never see any woman actually serve as part of Lebensborn in this movie, but of course there is plenty of mistreatment and involuntary sex. I really liked the way the women take revenge in the end, it was quite original. This one is not as cruel as Desert Tigers or Ilsa, but not as tame as Salon Kitty either. Somewhere in the middle.

Dead Sexy - an inverted rip-off of Basic Instinct: the suspect is a man now and the cop a woman. Very soon, you'll learn there are two guys who could be the killer, and the storyline tries to confuse the viewer as much as possible, so you're gonna switch between them. This, however, goes on a little too long, making it overstretched and therefore it looses its interesting side and it becomes dumb. Regular sex (which looks alike each time, btw) gives this film a necessary touch of sleaze. It is not a hilariously bad movie, but I didn't have to drag myself through it either. OK, nothing special, is my verdict.

Dark Night Of The Scarecrow - I was pleasantly surprised in two ways with this film. First, it is a VoMiT rip and usually I loathe watching their/his/her rips, because of their awful quality: broken frames almost all the time, ghosting, blending, wrong deinterlacing, it is almost always there. But not with this rip. I guess they/he/she learned how to use a different program, or they/he/she acquired a talented new ripper, because this rip looked pristine. Both video and audio were good. Let's hope it stays that way. Second, on to the movie: in a lot of killer movies, the balance between the stoy which leads up to where the killer comes from and what he is doing in the rest of the flick is off. Not in this film: in 20 minutes you know why the killer is gonna slash his way through his enemies and then it takes a nice long while before all four of them are dead. The growing anxiety among those men is great. I really liked this one, recommended.

The Vampire Bat - well, this is from 1933 so what to expect. It is not spectacular what you get to see, nor is it a very exciting story. The vampire is in human form in this film which makes it a whole lot easier for the art department of portraying him. Acting is quite good. Nice but forgettable, I'd say.

Sint - a new Dutch horror, so I went with a group of friends to see it in the cinema. The story is based on a Dutch feast in honour of Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, which has been celebrated in the Netherlands for centuries now. The director is Dick Maas, who also made De Lift (later remade as Down) and Amsterdamned. To appreciate this film you have to know at least something about the Sinterklaas feast, because all jokes are related to it. I guess it won't be relased for the international market, because 1) that will be too expensive to do and 2) Sinterklaas is only celebrated in Holland and Belgium and some former colonies, making it hard to become popular in other countries. The film itself is about an alternative explanation of the origins of Sinterklaas: he is presented as a renegade bishop in the Middle Ages who extorted villagers with his gang for money and virgins. When one village doesn't take it anymore and kills him, he returns the night of the 5th of December every 32 years to kill again. After this medieval intro, we get a scene set in 1968 where a family is murdered by Sint, this scene is great, as the gore is all around the house. After that the movie continues in today's Amsterdam. Schoolkids (who are unfortunately played by actors who are close to their 30s irl) get to meet Sint while he has returned for another killing spree. The only surviving son of the murdered family, now a cop, hunts down Sint in order to stop him. The main character and the cop make a plan which involves explosives. Will they be able to stop Sint and his murderous gang? What I didn't like was that the main character is played by Egbert Jan Weeber. I thoroughly dislike him and his acting. It was the major drawback on this movie for me. Apart from that, there are several other actors who aren't acting very well (this is why Dutch people always flame their own cinema, because of the actors wo read up their lines, instead of acting out their characters) and part of the cgi is very ugly. The jump of the Sint on his horse from one rooftop to another across a street looks 200% fake. What I did like was the humour. Dick Maas is known for his plain jokes, and I like them, simple and straightforward. Nice touches about the Sinterklaas feast all over the place. Some of the cops act really well, and most of the cgi is bearable. The chase across the rooftops looks great, especially the topdown views. I enjoyed this film, it isn't so scary (my wife was there too and she doesn't like horror at all - she only got scared one time), but it is funny. Recommended for Dutch and Belgian people. If it gets released internationally, make sure you read up on the Sinterklaas feast first.

Cannibal Girls - watched these when I got home. This is not a cannibal movie like I expected, with rainforests and tribes and all. It is about a Canadian restaurant where people eat first and then get eaten. It was a bit boring, the cannibal action wasn't very present (you only see it twice or something) and the pace was slow. Acting was OK. The ending was a bit surprising. I'm glad I watched this one first, it wasn't so good.

Moby Dick - another VoMiT rip which was good, so I hope their rips will maintain this quality. The storyline is well known, of course, but it is set in modern times. I liked the way they adapted it. There is a lot of cgi, the submarines and the whale are both from the computer. It looks like the cgi gets worse when you get further into the movie, In the beginning I was thinking that it might be better than I expected, but near the end it was butt ugly. It is all very over the top, and I liked that. Renée O'Connor (from Xena Warrior Princess) is present to save whales, but when even they get eaten by Moby Dick, the hunt is on. Recommended for bad moviefans.

The Evil - a lot of ghosts in the house. Tip: never remove old bronze crosses from locked doors. After having struggled against numerous ghosts, which he relased himself, the main character ends up in a weird setting of all white, where an old man is talking to him until the woman in the movie saves the day. Atmosphere is good for a ghost movie, creepy, a bit unsettling, but never over the top. Effects are OK, the wind effects are a bit boring but the shiny appearances were a bit creepy too. Recommended.

Did you come across a version of Sint on the web already?
I've seen some parts of it in the media and already have a feeling that it ain't great. Especially when you refer to Egbert Jan I can see him just killing the movie with his poor acting.
But still need to watch it to have an honest opinion ofcourse

I will check out the evil in the meanwhile.

cheers

Been digging The Walking Dead

Alucarda - Nice nunsploitation flick with creepy self-flagellating nuns, decent boob quotient, a better-than-most story, hilarious and ill-fitting science/religion monologues by the doctor, and a fantastic payoff in the last stanzas.

[REC] - Had been meaning to watch this one for a while. Never seen Quarantine and now I don't need to! [REC] was definitely one of the best horror flicks to use the handheld/documentary convention. Some great, believable gore within the proper context of the film was a real treat. Great pace, great infection, great job culminating the film in a kick-ass last scene.

No, but I didn't search for it either. People who expect a great film when they know it is a Dick Maas horror, aren't really living in reality

Dead End - this film is for 90% a good film, I really liked it. The acting is good, the story is OK, atmosphere is a bit creepy, all done very well. But... then there is this ending. And it totally ruins it! It is so incredibly lame that I'd advise everyone who is gonna watch this fil to press STOP at 75 minutes. You'll never know how it will end and it is better that way, believe me. Recommended without ending, avoid with ending.

Shewolf of London - mmm, a classic where there is no real werewolf. Instead someone plays out people's fear of werewolves. Very original for its time, but I don't like it. When there is 'vampire' or 'werewolf' in the title, I just want to see them in the movie too. So that was a bit of a disappointment. All else is OK, acting etc.

Prison - a prison is re-opened after 30 some years, and the ghost of the last executed prisoner is returning too. So people get murdered and the warden thinks it is one of the prisoners. It doesn't take loing until he finds out he is wrong. In the meantime some prisoners want to escape and a woman from the Boiard of Prisons wants to nail the warden for misconduct. Really liked this one, Viggo Mortensen in his early acting career does abgreat job, as does Tommy Lister. The horror part is a nice touch to this prison drama and there is enough gore to go with. Recommended.

Pterodactyl - bwahaha, what were they thinking? That the butt ugly cgi actually looked like pterodactyls? That the characters were believable? That nobody would notice that the actors knocked over by the "pterodactyls" actually drop way before the cgi birds arrive at the scene? Ridiculous, this film. A school example on how to not use cgi. Only for bad moviefans.

Good to know.

Yes, you really have to press STOP like 5 minutes before the end, or maybe 10. Then it is an enjoyable flick. Just don't spoil it by watching the end.

The Devil Bat - Bela Lugosi is a doctor who kills people by making them wear an aftershave and then sending his ginat bat after that person. What makes this film hilarious, are the large bats. They look incredibly fake, they fly very slowly and they scream out loud (anyone knowing bats irl know that they flap their wings very fast and only make noises which are inaudible for humans). The plot is nice and the way the doctor is exposed in the end is also nice. The bats make this a treat for bad moviefans.

The Unholy - wow, this was enjoyable! It has Hal Holbrook, satanism and a lot of gore too. Of course this film is again about the eternal fight between good and evil, but it plays out nicely and it looks great! Sfx are nice and the settings and atmosphere are good too. The nonsense and the gore make this enjoyable for bad moviefans too, but the film itself is not bad. I dare even say it is good. Recommended.

You are spot on, the ending was shit

Agreed! I think the first 3/4 makes the film a massively underrated gem... The end is thundering buttocks.

Siege of the Dead (2010) - Thoroughly satisfying German zombie flick that falls just under feature length left me wanting to see more from the filmmakers. Classic mystery infection premise, well done non-shambling zombies, nice acting, really fun action, and interesting character dynamics packed into less than an hour shows great restraint and dedication to telling a concise, solid story. Definitely recommended.

If ever a film needed a fan edit...

Fight for Your Life (1977) - Three sociopath convicts (led by William Sanderson 30 years before E.B. Farnum) end up invading the house of an African American family and terrorizing them for the bulk of the film. Racist degradation turns to rape turns to... revenge! This is a unique, underrated home invasion, rape/revenge movie with generally good acting, some unexpected dark turns, and a very satisfying payoff.

Man, I have to remember posting here more regularly. Now I have to post about 4 days instead of one

Orca Killer Whale - I had seen one scene from this movie way back when, and that scene was so hilarious, that I really wanted to watch the entire movie. I was a bit disappointed in the bad movie kind of way. Where the scene I watched had an orca setting a village on fire (yes, indeed, it is THAT hilarious), the rest of the film was generally OK or good. Nice acting and a storyline which is believable enough, although they stretch the abilities of the orca a bit for the film's sake. I'm not sure if I should recommend this. It is Free Willy for unsentimental people.

Hood of Horror - nice trilogy of short stories. One is about a female graffiti artist, one is about a racist couple who want to throw four black 'Nam vets out of their home and the last one is about a successfull rapper being confronted with his past. Lots of new faces in this one, mostly young black actors/actresses. The stories themselves are OK, nothing really special. The one about the rapper is the most intelligent when it comes to storyline. The gore is mediocre, some of the acting is great (especially in the second story). The only thing which was really dull were the scenes inbetween the movies with Snoop Dogg in them. They were not my thing, too much of the "yo yo my bro, howzit hangin'?" kind of stuff. You won't miss out on it if you skip it, but if you like black cinema, go watch it.

Atom Age Vampire - another film from the Undead Vampire Collection which is not really about vampires. My guess is that maybe half of it is about the fang people, the rest of it is (partially) related to the subject. This one is about a mad scientist experimenting with eternal life, and of course it goes wrong. He has to keep killing in order to stay young and attractive. When he can't continue, he turns into a gruesome monster. It was a lot of meh, avoid.

Graveyard Disturbance - aka Una Notte Nel Cimitero, directed by Lamberto Bava. Nice horror story about a group of teens who nick a liquor store and then flee from the police. They hide out in a bar and the monstrous bartender tells them about a bet they can win: if they spend the night in the tomb downstairs and survive, they get a treasure. It really is enjoyabel, although it sounds very cliche. The only thing wghich is a bit of a drawback is that you keep the idea that they all will survive throughout the entire movie: you never get the feeling that they will be killed or anything. A lack of scares, but the overall atmosphere is good. Nice, I liked it. The monsters were cool too. Mildly recommended.

Possessed - Danish horror starring Udo Kier. A mix between Outbreak and Body Snatchers, only not of the same importance as those movies. It is not a masterpiece, but the storyline is interesting enough, with intertwining stories about the disease and the police hunting a mad priest. A doctor goes as far as digging up a body to get a sample from his spinal fluid, and risks his relationship and career. The mad priest uses molotov cocktails to kill his victims, who, in his mind, bring back satan on earth. Good acting, good writing. Recommended.

Virgin among the Living Dead - this was weird. This Franco movie is about a woman going to castle which is believed to be uninhabited by the villagers in the surroundings. The woman, however, encounters her family inside. The reading of her father's will is soon to be held in the castle. In the meantime, she gets hints rom her dead father that he was murdered. Some sort of a thriller develops, but it never gets scary. The ending is very weird. Then, when the words THE END already have crossed the screen, some more scenes appear: a woman and some zombies. Several times. These scenes have nothing to do with the movie and I wonder why they are there on the DVD. It makes it easier to call this movie "... the Living Dead", because in all the rest of the movie there aren't any zombies or vampires. Weird.

Horrible Sexy Vampire - a bad vampire movie from Spain. Again, a castle and a weird family. The family will states that nobody outside of the family, except for the butler, may enter the castle. Therefore, the descendant of the family cannot take his fiancee with him. When he does anyway, his uncle, now a vampire, is gonna hunt them. The vampire is invisible most of the time, which is kinda dumb. Sometimes he switches from visible to invisible and back, which looks stupid (he never reappears in the same place, always a tiny bit to the left or right). The acting is meh, the dubbing is mediocre. Avoid.

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder - I really felt like watching this one. I heard some good stuff about it, that it was closer tot he original than the sequel. Well, that is true. The cynicism from part 1 is back, and the propaganda messages are great. It is so very obvious that I'd really laugh out loud if there are still people thinking this is a bad film without abny message (like so many people thought about part 1). The story continues like there never was a part 2 (which is a good thing). The return of Casper van Dien is great. The "Marauder" part in the tiel refers to a machine which resembles the Starcraft 2 Goliath a lot. Highly recommended!