Sublime - mmm, what to say? It wasn't all bad, but it wasn't very exciting either. It is more a mystery/thriller than a horror, that's for sure. There are a few horrorish scenes, but it is too little to put this one in the horrorgenre. I watched this because the Raw Feed group got my interest (through Otis and Alien Raiders, which I both liked), so I went and bought all their films. This one, however, is a lot different from the titles I just mentioned. Acting is OK, the nurse looks juicy and the setting in the hospital (especially with the weird eastwing) is cool. The theme is "how your worst fears can become true" and maybe that's personal, but my biggest fear isn't waking up in a hospital noticing somthing went wrong during the operation I just went through. So that didn't shock me, really. The most interesting part is where George the patient, is trying to find out where he is, what went wrong and who the hell those people are visiting his room to change his IV drip (and what's in that?). But it has to end someway and I didn't lik that too much: it was the

Spoiler:

Sixth Sense

trick once again. And I already know that one. So while this isn't a bad film per se, I don't think I'll ever give it a rewatch.

Yesterday. A Cadaver Christmas
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1692235/

I was surprised. It is a cheap one. Really cheesy... As usual I expected a 'delete after 5-10 minutes cell phone cam crap zombie flick', but it was actually "watchable". Or I was in a fitting mood.

Rest Stop - the next Raw Feed on the menu. I was surprised, but not in a positive way. Firstly, I had exopectations, and maybe they were too high, but the "teens get kidnapped by weirdo who does torture stuff on them" theme has been done to death. So this wasn't anything new. This looked like a second take on Monster Man, and the torture itself was next to invisible: added up it is maybe one or two minutes long in the entire film. Secondly, the weirdness

Spoiler:

where Nicole keeps seeing stuff which isn't really there, like the missing person from 1971 and the entire scene with the cop, I mean wtf?

was too much for me. It also didn't add shit to the story, imo. So, major letdown for me. I hope part two is better.

The Devil's Rock
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1712578/

Yep, very good one. Usually I am not a fan of movies, which contain nazis. I think nazis have already been dealt with ad nauseam. But who can say no to a beautiful naked, red skinned and murderous cannibalistic she-devil?

Cabin in the Woods - nope, i din't like it. Well, it wasn't that bad, but i could give only about 5/10. I hoped -

Spoiler:

at least - some "twisted" ending - and there was no BIG twist.

Don't know. Nothing special. I could say only one word - overrated.

Only thing that i liked, was
when

Spoiler:

all those creatures came out from the elevators

Macabria: please use spoilertags. Like this [spoiler ] [/spoiler ] (without the spaces).

Believers - third Raw Feed in a row. My expectations were a little lower after having seen Sublime and Rest Stop, but it turned out to be better than those two. It isn't horror, but the story is about a weird cult where things can get quite scary. There is also some sort of supernatural stuff, with the Teacher (the cult's leader) healing people from fatal injuries. It is quite OK how the two paramedics develop, both in a different way. The film takes off pretty quickly, but after that it takes a while to get things going a bit further. This is to keep you in the dark a bit, but it is also a bit boring. Towards the end it becomes more interesting again with a nice climax. The actual ending I liked, I hadn't seen that one coming.

@ Macabria: thx Your review proves that not reading about a movie can be good, btw

Sanctimony - the names of Casper van Dien, Eric Roberts and Michael Pare on the cover made me buy this movie, because I thought success would be assured in the SBiG department. Well, it is a bad movie indeed. The acting is atrocious, the "I'm a bad guy, whoa" looks are overwhelmingly bad, the storyline is full of plotholes (after the first time the cop goes after some snuff crew, this part of the storyline is entirely ignored, wtf?) and uninteresting: within a few minutes you will know who the killer is. It is a very bad rip-off of

Spoiler:

American Psycho

I must say that the final scene was so much overdone that it became cool again. So Uwe Boll delivered once more. More a crime/thriller than a horror, btw.

The Hunchback - a 1997 film on the famous story. I actually had never seen a film on this before, so whether or not it was true to the book I don't really know: I only read that it isn't really. I didn't miss anything because of that. Salma Hayek is almost always nice and this one is no exception. Most other castmembers are performing well, too. The story is classic, of course, but I must say that Paris in late 15th centiry could have been pimped a bit more: right now it was a square, a facade of the Notre dame under construction and a bunch of houses. Also, it seemed only some 100 people lived in Paris by then. This is more a kid's film, no scares except maybe for Quasimodo's face, which looks great in make up department way.

Movies I did NOT watch today and never will:
The Witches Hammer
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400944/combined



Sounds good? Yep, thought so. Deleted this piece of crap after ten minutes. Very fast cuts... perfectly if you intend induce an epileptic seizure in certain people. As a stylistic device only idiotic and asshole directors use it. And from the ten minutes of acting I saw... lowest of low quality. Thanks, but no thanks.

Bosque de Sombras - aka The Backwoods. Gary Oldman is the British-Spanish Paul who returns to Spain because he has bought a house in the woods over there. He brings his wife/gf and two of his friends, also a couple. On the way to the house they stop in the local bar where they have some strife with a few of the villagers. When Paul goes hunting the next morning with Norman (his friend), they find a little girl in an abandoned house: she is kept like a dog there and they free her and bring her back to Paul's house. Soon, the villagers they met in the bar before are at the door, armed with rifles: they're looking for the girl. Now Paul comes up with a plan to save the girl. Gripping Spanish film, where some stuff happens which you have seen in a lot of movies before, but then it just ends differently. There are several examples of this in this film. I must say it surprised me: it is quite unorthodox. Gary Oldman is great as Paul, and Paddy Considine is also great as the somewhat dull Norman, who takes matters into his own hands after a while. Not so much horror, but really interesting. Recommended, if not highly.

Def By Temptation – a blaxploitation from the 90s. Bill Nunn (Radio Raheem from Do The Right Thing) and Samuel L. Jackson have small roles in this Troma adaptation where a guy who wants to be a minister, becomes the victim of a succubus. Groovy music alternated by 90s rap music form a cool soundtrack, but instead of the flyness of the 70s blaxploitations, this film has a total lack of flair. It is a bit clumsy, like the effects for the succubus’ different manifestations (the best one is in the backseat of the car near the end of the film), but this makes it a treat for bad moviefans. I laughed out loud a few times at this clumsiness, so I had fun. Don’t watch this when you’re looking for a serious film. If not, however, you can safely pick this one.

What Have They Done To Your Daughters – aka La Polizia Chiede Aiuto. Claudio Cassinelli stars as a detective in this Massimo Dallamano police giallo. A girl is found in an attic, hanging on a rope fom the ceiling. Soon the police finds out she is murdered. Now the classic search for the killer starts, and luckily, it is mostly Cassinelli and he doesn’t wear a uniform (which I find always a bit of a letdown in gialli). The scenery around Brescia is beatiful, the mystery unravels nice and slowly and the discovery of the prostitution thing adds some nice personal drama too. Sometimes there is a lot of blood, and some kills are very nice, especially the one during the parking garage chase, around the 1 hour mark. I didn’t guess the killer right, but it all made sense: more than in the average giallo I might add. I liked it, although it had a little too much police for my taste. I prefer the detective or the desperate relative as a main character in the giallo. If you want a typical giallo, you should go look for a different one, but this isn't a bad film at all.

Curse of the Maya – low budget zombieflick with Joe Estevez. A Maya family got killed one day and now they’re back as zombies to haunt Joe and his fiancée. This one is a bad movie fans paradise with a lot of really cool nonsense, like a zombie coming out of a trunk, scenes where it changes from day to night and back in seconds and people falling over the wrong way when getting shot. There are also some blatant prejudices, like the Latino farmers who can’t drive a car. Location wise it is wrong too: the film is supposed to be on the Mexican-US border, but no Mayas ever lived there. The final scene has some great effects too, as a plus I can say that the plot is solved in a nice way. Highly recommended for bad moviefans.

Bloodwork - this one surprised me in a positive way. I sat down with zero expectations, but it turned out to be not as bad as I thought it would be. Two students join up for medical testing, to make some quick money. The stuff they get injected, is supposed to make people heal better, but it also tones down their emotional level: this creates emotionless zombielike creatures who are addicted to the stuff. Although this sounds like a Body Snatcher rip-off, it comes out quite nicely. The acting is OK, especially the weirder persons do a good job. The process of getting more and more addicted/weird should have been slowed down a bit, maybe some stuff was edited out: now it makes a jump, sort of. But, the overall storyline is pretty cool, with the test animals, the friendship between the students stressed out, the experiment with the stuff getting out of control, etc. There is enough gore to go around and near the end there is a Counterstrike-like scene, I kept thinking "The bomb has been planted" The ending is cliche, but that's OK. So, a positive surprise, mildly recommended.

Dead Cert - mix between crimefilm and vampirefilm. It takes quite a while for it to make the switch, the first (longest) part is a crimefilm about a retired bad guy who now tries to go legit and is opening a club. On the spot where the club is, however, an old vampire has his hiding place, so after a while the guy gets into trouble with the vampire and his minions. In the meantime he has some household drama with his wife, which is probably meant as character development, but it fell a but flat on me. The vampirepart is pretty straightforward: not bad, but also not very surprising. So, final verdict: quite average British horror, nothing shockingly good or bad in it.

Resident Evil Retribution
Typical 'Resident Evil'. Nothing to complain, nothing to praise. Fine when you are in the mood for shallow action horror.

The House That Screamed - aka La Residencia. This film is a double feature with the third film I watched today (yesterday), and it is an Elvira's Movie Macabre DVD. So you can watch both films with and without Elvira's intro, outro and inbetween comments. I chose to watch both films with Elvira, as I liked her in the movies I had seen (Mistress of the Dark and Haunted Hills). Actually this film, House Tha Screamed, is quite good. Very atmospheric, OK acting and a good storyline. The ending was great. This 1969 film plays out in a girl's school where the female boss is ruling firmly: girls get locked up or whipped when they do stuff wrong. Her son is being kept away from the girls, but from time to time he manages to sneak out with one of the girls and have secret meetings. There are also girls disappearing one at a time, but it is not sure whether they escaped the regime of the school or something else happened. This is some kind of giallo-type movie, and it is quite well made. In hindsight I regret it a little that I chose to watch this one with Elvira, so I think I'm gonna rewatch it without her, to make the movie's impact on me greater than now. I can safely recommend this film to anyone, my version was dubbed, so if you can find a Spanish version, please tell me.

Psychomania - a motorgang goes to commit suicide collectively, because they found out (through the leader's occultist mother) that they can come back after death and then they are totally invincible. This makes for some weird scenes, where for example a guy drives out of his grave on his motorbike. Also, the gangmembers are gonna try to kill themselves in almost every possible way, which results in some odd situations to say the least. As resurrected people, the gang (aptly called The Living Dead) is wreaking havoc in their hometown, but not everyone in the gang is convinced that this is the way to go. Nice 70s film, I loved it to see what was shocking to people back then Cool atmosphere with the gang and the occultism. Not much horror as in gore stuff, but I thought this was quite enjoyable.

Maneater of Hydra - aka La isla de la muerte. The second "Elvira" film and since this film was way worse than House That Screamed, I had fun with Elvira's comments inbetween, at some points I thought exactly the same as what she was saying as a comment. The storyline is vrey simple: a group of tourists ends up on an island, where a professor lives who grows weird plants. Some of them are carnivorous, and they have to be fed regularly, so the presence of the group of tourists is not coincidental. Acting is below par, effects are laughable and the behaviour of some of the characters is totally incomprehensible (get an accident with your car, just leave it in the middle of the road; get attacked by a plant, don't move an inch; etc.), so this is a treat for bad moviefans.

Meat is Meat - aka The Mad Butcher of Vienna. Mmm, yeah, well, this is indeed bad. I read that this was a bad 70s movie, but since I have a large heart for old movies, I gave it a try. I can now safely say that you should avoid it, unless you're into the Bavarian sex flicks humour, as this movie is full of it. Almost no horror, and bad jokes all over. Skip it.

Slaughterhouse of the Rising Sun - this one starts out really promising. It is a film which wants to make you believe that it was found footage from the 70s, much like TCM. The music, the teint of the film, the ,mood, everything is just right: it is very believable that this is indeed a 70s film (while in reailty this wa made in 2005), except for some gadgets which are worn by the hippies, as I don't think they were available back then. But then again: I'm not sure about that. A girl, recently released from a mental hospital, gets stranded in a desert after having been assaulted by some rednecks and then she gets picked up by a hippie "family". She goes with them and after a short while, in which they used serveral kinds of drugs, they stumble upon a desolate house. In the house, the girl sees apearances and when one of the hippies dies, the rest wants to have a seance, in which she even sees more weird stuff. She starts to go crazy, and the hippie family gets slaughtered one by one. This part is the weakest of the film. While it began really good, it goes down and down and the second half is really dumb, to say the least. It isn't too long, so I didn't really mind, but it's a shame they couldn't keep up the level from the beginning.

Shaft in Africa - how cool is Shaft? Really cool! Although he now has to go underground to round up a slave trading network in Africa, and therefore is lacking his natural habitat of NY City, he manages to keep being cool and entertaining. The music was again not as good as in part one, but it wasn't bothering me as much as in part two, because the environment was so different, it also called for different music. If you're familiar with Shaft you know what to expect, if not, then I advise you to frst watch a different Shaft, as this one is kind of atypical, although Shaft keeps of course spitting out oneliners and fighting the bad guys while making love to the beautiful ladies. Longest Shaft-film of them all.

Creature from Black Lake - mmm, not much to see in this film. It is about a Bigfoot-like monster in the Louisiana backwoods, but it takes very long to even find the monster, and when it is found, you mostly see it in the dark. However, when it comes out, it is simply hilarious: a classic case of guy-in-gorillasuit monster. Cool! There is also some nice rednecksploitation, but overall this 70s unknown flick isn't offering very much. One to watch with friends so you can talk stuff over in the meantime, as you won't miss much while doing it. Just look out for the monsterscenes, as they are quite cool.

Eden Lake - a young couple has the weekend off and they go and have fun in the wild. Soon, however, they get disturbed by a gang of local youth. This gang is teasing and annoying them, and slowly but steadily the tension grows. When at night the first violence occurs, the rest of the film is a strain of ever growing misdemeanors, with abuse/torture, and extreme peer pressure. The film doesn't hold back for the viewer's pleasure, so one could call this unpleasant viewing. You don't get to see anything in detail, but isn't any less in your face because of that. Quite harsh, also because it is very well possible that this will happen one day. Or maybe it already did somewhere. Grim atmosphere and some great acting, especially by the kids, make this some experience. Recommended, if not highly.

Nightmare - haha, what a load of crap! Haylie Duff has trouble sleeping so she goes to university and specialises in sleeping problems (boy, that's really sad already - the large bunch of kids I know with problems studying psychology so they can "help themselves" comes to mind). Her mother died in a carcrash,m and this trauma keeps haunting her. At university she meets a guy who says he udnerstands what she's going through, but at first she thinks he is a stalker. Only later she realises that he can be of help battling the dreamwitch or something which is troubling her. Yawn. Very much Nightmare on Elm Street-like. This film is so idiotic, it should be a comedy instead of a horror, It is never scary or anything. Just a waste of time imo. Luckily it only cost me 2 Euros or something.

i liked Eden Lake too,
few really not bad scenes there was

dirty, bloody - mmmmm, Kelly Reilly was very very sexy

Der Todesengel - aka La Vittima Designata. I got the German DVD of this one recently, and I watched it yesterday. It is a giallo-esque movie, the atmosphere and the music are totally like the great ones, but there isn't a (serial) killer and there are only two kills in total. However, the mystery is there, and it is quite cool to follow the storyline, as it is unravelling slowly throughout the film. Some stuff you know rightaway, but other stuff is quite surprising, and the end is quite special, although I guessed it when the film was nearing the final scenes. It is also typical Italian in the dramatic use of imagery and sound: well done, Maurizio Lucidi! Recommended, just don't expect real horror.

Taste the Blood of Dracula - classic Hammer horror, with yet another different view on the Dracula story. This time a few bored rich men are experimenting with satanism, but when they kill Dracula's servant, he swears revenge. A bit weird, as in all other stories, Dracula isn't well known for his love for humans, servants or not. Now he is gonna make sure the men are gonna be killed by their kin. Victorian setting of course, and some nice scenes, but unfortunately they are all in the beginning of the film, and it waters down further on in the film. The ending is also quite meh, if you ask me. Not the best Lee Dracula, I recommend the 1958 one or Dracula has risen from the grave instead.

Rest Stop 2: don't look back - better than Rest Stop: dead ahead. But the major flaw of this film is that you have to have seen the first Rest Stop, otherwise it is hard to appreciate the good things in this film. In this film, the brother of Jesse, Tom, is going to look for him and Nicole. They end up at the same rest stop and Marilyn, Tom's girlfriend, sees Nicole there. This is the same way of "seeing things" as in part one, so that's what I meant with the major flaw. Jared, Tom's friend, also sees Nicole. Then Tom disappears and the crazy driver gets a hold of Marilyn and Jared as well. What I really liked in this part, is that you see that the crazy driver

Spoiler:

is not just one person: after he has killed someone, or a group of persons, those victims become the new killers

This was one of those things which made this film better than the first one, as back then this didn't come off so well. So actually this film could have been great when they were both shortened a bit and then glued together to be one film. Because now I can't recommend this without having seen the first one, but the first one isn't so good.

Hellboy - a mix between a superhero movie and an adventurous horrorfilm. It is never scary or anything, but there are many monsters which Hellboy has to fight, and this is a bit Batman-like (a non-human superhero fights off evil). I had fun watching this film, although there were some obvious goofs of which I thought they could have been prevented, especially with a budget like this. But overall this is a nice film, I definitely want to see part 2, and when my kid grows up I can introduce her to horror via films like this, so that's all good. The Selma Blair storyline was a bit uninteresting, but in the end it plays quite a large role anyway. The cgi was OK to good, not disturbing like in so many cheap ass movies. The best part was the Kroenen character, the surgery table scene was certainly memorable (great effects there, btw). Another good Del Toro film, I say.