I watched Star Wars II and III.

Then I watched Star Wars Episode IV. Its such a radical difference in style, pacing, design, restraint, artistry... Shame the original trilogy isn't as good as the new ones.

Serious note, Episode IV == good, star wars II and III == suck big giant monkey balls.

Lemmy 2010 - just watched this documentary, fecking awsome.... if you like motorhead this is a must watch!

Deathstalker - another fantasy B-crapper with Lana Clarkson. This one has a ridiculous amount of fighting. If you would cut out all duels, mass fights and tournament fights, maybe a meager 5 minutes would be left of the 76 it has now. Luckily, it also has ridiculous sfx and a somewhat incoherent story about three powers, which when united give the owner a great amount of power. Sadly, Deathstalker is a pacifist and he destroys them all, stupid wanker. No chance for sequels, thx dumbass! Lana has some nice screentime, but while her belly looks better, this also means her boobs are smaller. Recommended for bad moviefans.

The House Of Lost Souls - a group of geologists has to stay over at an abandoned hotel because the roads are closed due to landslides. Soon they learn there is something special about the hotel. It kills people. At least, that's what it looks like in the beginning. Nice killings, also nice to hear a radio report of a football match between AC Milan and Real Madrid where Van Basten was mentioned I liked atmosphere, but I loathed the stupidity of the geologists. They never seem to miss one of their friends, they want to search the house for bodyparts with a metal detector (which makes sounds like a Geiger counter, btw), etc. Still, it is not a very bad movie. A mediocre Italian attempt.

The Lair Of The White Worm - Hugh Grant when he was young, how nice. In recent romcom times, I avoided his movies like the plague, but this one is OK-ish. Very British, which is all splendid and jolly, but there are times when I find it hard to follow the accents. Effects are great, I loved the big "worm". The woman-worm was not so very special, I even thought of it being stupid and too much on the brink of vampirism. Quite average, I had expected more of this.

Hidden (2009) - Norwegian horror/thriller about a guy who returns to his childhood home after his horribly abusive mother has died. I enjoyed the overall concept of the film even though it felt a bit pieced together. There were some nice visuals, good enough acting, and classically set up scares (mirrors, cloudy bathtub, dark basement, lots of dolls, etc). Fortunately, the final half hour of the film was the strongest even if the mystery was easy to predict.

Blood Creek (2009) - I didn't have great expectations going into Blood Creek, but I found myself very pleasantly surprised after just a short while. The Occult/Nazi element is always a big plus for me and the makeup on the principal threat was fantastic. The story and evolution of the characters was plenty engaging as we dig deeper into the family/Nazi visitor dynamic.

Rampage (2009) - Of all three of these movies, Rampage seemed to have the most popular success. I found it to be almost utterly pointless with horribly heavy-handed storytelling and cliched, thoroughly unlikable characters. 90 minutes of Grand Theft Auto would have been a better viewing experience as the bulk of the killing spree felt like the finale of Rambo or Commando only 90% of the dead were random, faceless civilians. Seriously, this guy had to have killed at least 100 people during the spree. I can buy a dozen, but 100? Rather than going on and on about all of the things that bothered me about this one, I'll just say that it's best watched while distracted by another task.

Women In Cages - wow, this one was bad in a nice way! A prison in Mexico or South America (in real life it is in the Philippines, as all extras are Philippinos) is run by Pam Grier who hates Americans because of their racism towards her in her past. So she tortures and whips, and the women all have to live with it. Nice WIP film, with escape plan and double crossing people all over. Where the hero came from was a bit of a mystery to me, maybe I missed him in the first scene if the movie. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Offerings - almost classic slasher story, with a traumatised child who wants revenge on his mom and the kids in the nieghborhood when he gets older. Some killings were quite creative, but somehow this film couldn't get me to enjoy it throughly. It is a nice film, but nothing really special to remember it by. Almost all things are predictable, or at least not very surprising. Maybe it is its age. Mediocre, so no recommendation, but no avoid warning either.

Holocaust II - mmm, what was that? A very weird film! It is about killing nazis who are still walking around unpunished after the war, but who was who and who wanted to kill who only was clear in one case. Who was the tarotlayer and future teller? What did he do in this film? Why was that redhead in the film? Lots of unanswered questions. Some brief nazi scenes, but most of it is looking for nazis and then killing them. I couldn't follow, it was very weird all.

Zebraman - a real life loser wants to be a superhero and he chooses Zebraman, an old hero from a cancelled TV series. At first everything goes wrong, which is kind of funny. But then, this film takes off into the shit direction. The superhero, who is a junior high teacher irl, wants to protect a handicapped kid in a wheelchair and they both start crap like "if you believe in your dreams, you can make them possible". Bucket, please. After you cleaned up the floor, you will have to sit through this for another hour (assuming you were halfway when the puking started). I'd say, it is not funny enough for bad moviefans and not good enough for superhero fans. Avoid.

Le avventure dell incredibile Ercole aka Hercules II - wow, another incredibly bad fantasyfilm. Hercules has to find the seven lightning thingies because Zeus lost them. To get these, he hsa to fight a lot of enemies, both in forests, caves, ruins and outer space. I loved it when they did a scene in Hadrians Villa ruins, outside Rome, because I have been there. Also, it is kind of ridiculous to film a mythological story amongst ruins, right? I had great fun and laughed a lot at the stupidity in this. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Death Ship - several well known actors in this one, like George Kennedy and Richard Crenna. The story itself I found not so very intersting for some reason. There is this ship and when you see it you have a problem, as it will try to kill you. It was all a bit lame, there was no explanation of why the ship's voices were in German (well, they find one later, but it is very incredible and instead of "Aaah, that's why!" I was more like "Noo, lame!") and it is also very coincidental that the one family survives the ordeal in its entirety. Meh. Not recommended.

Le Pact des Loupes - I remembered this being more of a werewolf movie than it actually is. A lot of action, fighting, etc. Because I already knew the plot there wasn't anything surprising about this movie. I was wondering though, if the monster is cgi or not. In close-ups it looks like a lion with a mask, but in wideshots where it jumps around the forest it looked very much cgi. I like this film, so watch it if you haven't yet.

Vampires - I remembered this one especially for its fake fireworks effects on the burning vampires, but all the rest was great. A lot more fun than I had expected (this was also very long ago when I watched it the first time). If you're a Carpenter fan, you have to see it, although it doesn't have as great music as the early Carpenter movies, it still has enough horror and fun to enjoy. If you haven't seen any Carpenter movie, I'd recommend starting watching a different movie, as this one isn't very typical of him.

The Beyond - this one is very gory and the story is not very good, but for a Fulci non-giallo it is. I find most Fulci giallos good stories, but his other films lack in that dpeartment. The Beyond is OK. Effects are good enough, some of them are pretty fake, others look great. I like stuff like the plumber who is called Joe and it reads "Joe's Plumbing" on the side of his van. This video nasty is a must see if you haven't watched it yet.

Rosemary's Baby - very psychological, this one. Although most kids said nothing happened in this film, there was actually more happening than I remembered, like the gruesome suicide. Still, this is a long movie and you have to be patient. The strength is in the final scene, where you feel powerless when you see what happens. Also, you have to take the somewhat over the top acting of Mia Farrow. A classic, still, after 42 years.

Two Evil Eyes - this one has two stories, one by Romero and one by Argento. It starts with the Romero one, called "The Facts in the Case of Mr Valdemar". This mr Valdemar is dying, but his wife (Adrienne Barbeau) and her lover plan on keepig him alive just long enough to cash the inheritance. When Valdemar dies beforehand, they put him in the fridge in the basement. But then he is not really dead and starts haunting them. Acting is great, I love Barbeau. The thing with "the others" is a bit weird and I'm not sure what Romero meant by them. It is a bit slow paced in the beginning, but the second half is good. The second story is called "The Black Cat" and it stars Harvey Keitel as a photographer who kills his girlfriend's cat. This cat however, keeps returning to harass him and he goes a bit crazy. When he chooses a radical solution, he finds himself on a path which lads to more and more destruction and in the end he probably wishes he had chosen otherwise. Good acting again and the atmosphere in this one is scarier than in the first segment. Great music and nice Savini effects on the cat. Recommended.

The Changeling - ghost story, but this ghost is not so much killing people as in other films. It also isn't as scary as in, say, Poltergeist. Atmosphere does a lot, though, and when the composer in his new house keeps hearing the pounding sounds at 6 am everyday you feel that somehting is wrong. The storyline unfolds nicely, if you watch with a bit of attention you can unravel it pretty soon, however. Funny to see George C Scott in a non-military role for once. In the end there are some things which are not so logical, not even for a horror movie. Still, this is a good film, recommended.

After horrornoght at school I was very tired, so I watched only one movie:

Aerobicide - predictable slasher, I knew from the start who the killer was. Between the killings we see a lot of workout, which is fun the first time (the spandex asses smile at the camera all the time), but gets a bit repetitive and annoying after a while. The killings themselves aren't spectacular and they are mostly alike. Actually the best thing in this movie is the opening scene with the tanning machine. All the rest is a bit boring and predictable. I'd say you don't have to watch this movie.

The Exorcist - Before I watched this I had a strange feeling that I might not like it - don't ask me why. But it turned out to be very entertaining. The acting was very good and it didn't feel like a movie that's almost 40 years old. Somehow there was a scene missing, where the possessed girl crawls up the wall. Maybe that's only included in a different cut. The ending came a bit abruptly, but made sense to me. I'm excited how the sequels link to this one, at least I hope they do in some way. Recommended!!!

It makes me actually feel very old and sad when I look at this pages and sadly realize that almost all the movies being review I have already seen, even though I always think I'm watching too little and too much of it is garbage. Have I really watched that many stuff or are just the years getting down on me?

Never mind.

Recently I watched Long Time Dead (2002). It's an English horror, but the only clue as to that are the occasional accent slips of the characters. And maybe the rave party. Maybe. Anyway, what do we get in the movie itself:
* A bunch of "young people" get drunk and/or stoned and mess with supernatural stuff and by accident summon a supernatural monster thingy, which then proceeds to slaughter them one by one? Check.
* A (supposedly) "creepy old man" with a bunch of supernatural shit in his house that everybody believes to be an evil Satan-worshipper (literally), but who in reality is a good guy who's out there to protect people from the evil monster thingy? Check.
* One of those "ancient" books that are conveniently just lying around and describe the supernatural monster thingy in every detail in modern English complete with "ancient" drawings in pencil? Check. (and this one they didn't even steal from a library!)
* Parents of one of the characters have history with the supernatural monster thingy and their offspring is the reason it comes back? Check.
* A bunch of boring, interchangeable characters that you have no interest in and probably won't even bother telling apart or learning their names, since all but one will probably get slaughtered within the next hour? Check. Spoiler: they do get slaughtered and I still don't remember their names or even how many of the buggers were there.
* A person falls down the stairs and dies from that? Check. Well, ok, I'm actually fucking with you on that one, they survive (though not for long, an I-beam to the head when they're trying to get up is pretty convincing). But if they didn't, it would be pure Hollywood.

It's also cheap, so cheap that they actually don't ever show the monster itself and really save on special effects to the point that the monster is most of the time invisible and is only indentified by people invariably mentioning that they "smell something burning" when it's around. Yes, that's actually what happens until the big finale. Unfortunately until we get TVs with "smell-o-vision", such ideas are going to come off as this one did right there - weak. And perhaps not smelling particularly nice.

But don't take my words for it, this is as Special-Effecty as we get:





I know, it's still better than SyFy movies.

Also, about 80-90% of the "thrilling" moments are those when they're building for something to happen and then it turns out to be something completely harmless - like passers-by or a friend coming back. Consequently when the monster finally turns out (well, not really turns out) to kill somebody, it comes off really flat.

And in the final bit, in case you didn't know, a fire demon can be destroyed (or banished? it's not explained) by fire. Apparently only. Just because. It's never explained. I guess they took "fighting fire with fire" literally.

Yup. England didn't go to Hollywood, so Hollywood apparently came to England.

Well, 4/10 for me, dunno why, maybe I'm going soft in my old age. Well, 3.8/10 would be more like it. OK, here's why:

Spoiler:

The monster wins. It kills everybody and gets the revenge on the guy who originally banished it 20 years earlier... Then I guess it just sits down and chills with a pint of Guinness. Or at least that's what I would've done.

I also watched Devil (2010) by M. Night Shyamalan. In my defence he hid his involvement pretty well, so I didn't know until the credits rolled. Also, he did not direct it, so it wasn't totally boring, but he still wrote it, so it was only some 80% boring, 19% predictable and 1% unoriginality. 2/10 for nothing really offensive and at least some pace at which it happened.

Exorcist II is less than half as good as the first one, sadly.

Supernova (2000). And about 30 minutes in I realised that I have already seen it (perhaps several times) on TV. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with it, it's just that there isn't anything really good in it. Everything is just flat, stereotypical and predictable to the point of being forgettable and downright boring. It just goes on through the motions with the stuff you've already seen numerous times and characters that you've already seen numerous times doing things you've already seen numerous times. I know there seems to be a limited number of things you can put in an sf action movie that takes place on a spaceship with several members of the crew and a single antagonist, but this looks like nobody was even trying. And it's by the same guy who did, among other things, The Warriors, 48 Hours and Red Heat, so he should be capable of at least squeezing a little bit of emotion out of it. Then again, he's also the same guy who did Last Man Standing, so who knows... Anyway. The FX are nice, but that's about it. A 3/10 at best.

Trolljegeren
i just loved this movie all film in that same blair witch style, but theres very beautiful nature of Norway plus TROLLS just great entetaiment really, recommend for some evening, when youre not in "horror mood" - through it has few scary moments. 8.8/10 from me. Now

The Beyond - Yes the Fulci movie. Pretty bad movie and not in an SBiG fashion. The acting is real bad. Actually it seemed to me that only the leading actors (the man and the woman) could actually act. The story is pretty simple. A hotel is reoccupied, but unfortunately built upon a gate to hell. Strange and deadly things are happening. The too long killing sequences made this one hard to stand. I mean a one minute scene with spiders eating a man. Ok, it is gory, but boring. I had to fast forward it... If you liked House By The Cemetery, you will love this movie. If you didn't like that movie either (like me) skip this one also.

Hehe, not a Fulci connaiseur, lol

Picked up watching movies again after a break.

Trolljegeren - I agree with Macabria, it was funny. There were some jokes which are only funny for Norwegians I guess, because they are about fables I don't know anything about, but others were more universal. I did get into the movie quite well, the acting was natural and believable enough. The stubborn hunter is great! At some moments I thought something extreme was happening, but then the movie just went on like nothing happened, that was a minor drawback. The trolls were all cgi, but it was cleverly handled: all in the night and some through nightvision goggles, good job! Not 8.8 for me, but good enough for a fun 100 minutes.

Parade of the Dead - a Roger Corbin film, to my surprise (I just released Bloodsuckers from Outer Space, also made by him). This one is quite crappy. It is a shameless advertisement for a band called the Hilltop Hoods, who make Aussie hiphop. This means that every 2 minutes a scene is interrupted and you get 4 minutes of hiphop. Maybe this is a bit exaggerated on my part, but it felt like that. The attempt to mock themselves with the wigger in front of the TV ranting about the badness of the movie didn't help. Only at the end of the movie it starts to look more like a movie. By then it is too late. Shame.

Serial Mom - This movie is about a mother that kills people who offend her family or her believes in any way. Like: guy cheating daughter => guy is murdered. Neighbor not recycling => neighbor gets recycled. It is done as a comedy with quite some gore in it. I recommend it for younger viewers, because it was a bit too hilarious for me. The ending and the last part of the movie are a bit strange: The mother is captured and manipulates the witnesses at the court so that she is actually not found guilty. And it says that this is based on true events. I wonder if that is supposed to be a joke too?

BloodRayne 2 Deliverance - vampires and western. Sometimes they mix well, somtimes you get the feeling you are watching a western with a small twist. The latter is the case with this film. The storyline is OK, but the vampirism comes across like a gimmick. Also, how Rayne is gathering her posse, is kind of incredible. Forcing people to cooperate, threatening them if they don't, has proven disastrous in the past. Although she escapes the most complicated situations, there is collateral damage, and I liked that. It would have been way too soft if all kids would have survived, for example. Rather mediocre, but since I expected utter trash, I was a bit pleasantly surprised. Wouldn't really recommend it, though.

The Dark Lurking - this movie started with so much shouting over comms, that I needed subs to follow it all. After that, we get to see a band of spacecrew (some soldiers, some technicians and a test person) trying to escape a gang of mutated human beings. These mostly act like zombies, but they look differently (we learn there are at least 5 different forms of mutation in the beginning). The acting is bad. There are overly obvious types of characters, like there are the whiny bitch, the scared guy, etc. The action is as OK as it is over the top: the amount of bullets fired in this film beyond belief. Brainless entertainment, nothing special, though.

Alice In Murderland - I wanted to watch this one because I saw the poster and immediately thought this one had to have nice looking chicks. Well, the poster promises a lot and the film delivers only a bit of it. It takes like 40 minutes before they start wearing the costumes, before that there is just some uninteresting chatter. When the party starts, there is still some fighting going on between the girls. The killings start and they are incredibly fake/low budget, only the shower killing scene is a bit OK. The whodunnit is quite OK. At first I had one suspect, then another came along, and I was right about one of those, but the way it played out was different than what I thought. Film was saved for me by the gorgeous Marlene Mc'Cohen (see below, first pic is from the film).

The Last Exorcism - a cameracrew follows a reverend to make a documentary about him. He is a fraud and he openly admits it to the camera. He even shows the tricks he has when doing stuff like healing people and exorcisms. When he answers a call for an exorcismin a rural area, he and the camerarew encounter stuff that they didn't expect. I had fun with the fraudulous stuff, like how he shows the smokedevice in the crucifix. Somewhere around the middle of the movie it drags a little, it seems like the director was hesitating on which direction to take with the film. The ending is cool, although not very original. I must say that I didn't really expect it to play out like that. Nice, mildly recommended.

Anno 2020 I Gladiatori del Futuro aka 2020 Texas Gladiators - another incoherent effort from Italian cinema. Sequences of fighting follow each other, but the storyline is hard to follow (or maybe it was missing). It is a post nuclear world and a bald guy with an army of soldiers carrying shields with forcefields declares himself the new world order. Some renegades fight him and of course they win in the end. Kind of useless, this film.

Hyenas - bad cgi hyenas acting like werewolves. The changeover is very ugly too: when Christa Campbell turns into a hyena it looks like shit. The plottwist was not a surprise to me, as I picked up the first clue they gave away about it. Storyline is simple and straightforward, acting is OK, but like said, the cgi ruins it. Oh, and the explanation about how hyenas got to the USA is ridiculous. It is nice to see Christa's (censored - you don't get to see the nipples) boobs, though.

Paura nel buio aka Hitcher in the Dark - a guy picks up hitchhiking girls and then kills them, until he picks one up who looks like his mother. He intends to keep her, so he locks her up in his Winnebago. From time to time she tries to escape, as she clearly notices that the guy is mentally off. In the meantime her boyfriend is looking for her. This wasn't as much horror as I hoped for. There aren't a lot of killings, I had expected way more. The film isn't bad, but the story starts to drag after a while, and I noticed that I started to think about other stuff besides the film. Effects are not very good, some of the wounds are obviously make up. The ending is good, although not really a surprise. Don't watch this when you're in the mood for horror, otherwise it is an OK movie.

Forbidden World - genetic engineering on a spaceship goes wrong and a mutant creature escapes. Now the crew and the soldier they hired have to find and destroy it. The creature is intelligent and makes smart moves. This film is very gory and I loved it. The way the problems are solved is also very nice and pretty original. The woman who wants to communicate with the creature reminded me a bit of Pierce Brosnan in Mars Attacks! Recommended.

Dolls - I like Charles Band movies and this one isn't an exception. Atmosphere is great, the acting (especially by the elderly couple) is great, the way they portray the girl and the importance of youth is nice. The coolest thing was the punk girl doll and the eye thing she did. I had a good time watching this, highly recommended!

Island of the Living Dead - mmm, "Vincent Dawn" has made better movies than this one. The zombies are OK, I liked that they are slow. The story which leads to the zombies is OK, but could have been done better. The action part of the movie is good, the setting reminded me a lot of House of the Dead, but although this movie isn't very good, it is still way better than HotD. The ending was quite cliche, but the last scene with the zombie fighting the girl was cool. For a modern day zombiefilm I'd say watch it, because it is cooler than those trendy films with zombies wildly running around.