Mother's Day - Rebecca de Mornay is a mother whose sons rob a bank and then return to their old home, not knowing that it was sold in execution and the new inhabitants are having a housewarming with friends. One of the sons is shot, and he needs medical attention. One of the friends happens to be a doctor, so while he is helping him, the rest of the party is being held hostage in the basement of the house. Here, some pretty rough violence is displayed, with both torture and murder. Pretty visible that the director is the guy who made parts 2-5 in the Saw series. I read somewhere that this is a remake of the 1980 film of the same name, but there are only a few similarities, so if it's a remake, then only the main storyline has been kept: a mother has a group of weird kids who do her bidding when it comes to violent behaviour towards strangers. I must say that I was actually quite curious to see who would survive and the result was a partial surprise, although the final scene

Spoiler:

in the hospital in the room with the babies

was a bit meh. Pretty long film, it could have been a little shorter, but it's not overly long as you get entertained quite well. OK acting overall. Recommended.

At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul - the third Ze do Caixao film. I'm getting into it, or this film is just better than the two I saw the day before. Very slow and still some unneeded philosophical stuff ("what is death?" What is pain?" I mean, come on...), but now I could get into the story better. Ze/Joe has a girlfriend but she can't have kids so he wants a new one. To have her, he needs to get rid of his gf, and then of the boyfgriend of the girl he wants, who just happens to be his best friend. In the meantime Joe is being obnoxious, mocking the religious and/or superstitious beliefs of the loca townspeople. Some OK kills, bit nothing really spectacular. This film is carried by the atmosphere and the character of Joe Coffin. You'll either hate or enjoy it. I enjoyed it.

Pick Me Up - my first film in the Masters of Horror series. They all run for 60 minutes and technically they are epsiodes, but I'll review them sometimes anyway,. I guess. (I didn't do so on the Tales of the Crypt episodes because then I would have to write 6 reviews for a day, which is too much "work"). Pretty funny story, this one. A bus gets broken down and the passengers are being picked up by a trucker while the rest is killed off by a serial killer. However, the trucker turns out to be a serial killer too, so now nobody is safe anymore. Actually this wasn't so good, but the trucker saved it, he was very funny. I hope the other films/episodes are better.

Venom - early 80s British thriller/horror where Douglas Reed and Klaus Kinski work together with Susan George, planning to kidnap the son of a wealthy family. A snake ruins their plan, because the boy accidentally received a black mamba instead of a housesnake, and now this deadliest snake in the world threatens to kill off everyone in the house. The mamba is real, it was trained by the London Zoo reptile guy and he did a terrific job. Kinski tries to speak English in the meantime and Reed is acting the dumb criminal very well. The plan turns into a hostage situation and a clever policeman is set out to win this engagement. Good acting as I said about Reed, good cast and nice atmosphere. Not really a horror, more a thriller, but I enjoyed it anyway. Mildly recommended, as it is not a horror and not that good that everyone should watch it.

Tonight I Will Possess Your Corpse - the sequel to At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul. It starts with a 30 second summary of that film and then we continue the story. Coffin Joe is still a very weird and a bit fucked up guy, and again he starts his film with some bogus philosophical stuff. Soon after however, the film really starts to get going and we see Joe going on his search for a wife and son again. He dos a test with a group of women, and puts them in a room with hundreds of spiders. All women who scream don't ass the test and they are thrown intoi ampit together with lots of snakes. Joe and the winner woman watch this all through a hatch in the bedroom where the two are gonna try and make a son. One of the loser women curses Joe and he ends up in hell, which is filmed in colour while the rest of the film is in black and white. This part is cool, funny and very SBiG, as we see the red painted devils "stab" people with their tridents. I had fun with this Coffin HJoe film, I think I'm getting the hang of it. Recommended, just don't expect any reasonable storyline.

The Glow – Dean Cain and Portia de Rossi are Matt and Jackie, a young couple who by chance get to live in a nice mansion in NY City. The other inhabitants are elderly people and one more young couple. The elderly people are really nice to Matt and Jackie, but when the other couple disappears, Jackie starts to suspect that something is wrong in the house. Matt however, doesn’t see anything out of place and tension between the two grows. When people start to die around them, even Matt can’t close his eyes to the truth… Quite enjoyable, this TV flick, but the problem is that you know almost in the opening scene that there is something off with the elderly people. The fact that they are way too nice for total strangers and so much stuff happens with “a coincidence”, should rise the suspicion in even the most gullible viewer. There are some cool scenes where the “conspiracy” is getting total, for example

Spoiler:

when the female jogger is used to drive a wedge between Matt and Jackie

. The ending was a bit meh, I mean why did the

Spoiler:

police suddenly believe Jackie, while there were around 8 elderly witnesses against her?

. Still, enjoyable enough, atmosphere can be gripping at times, but overall it is just a tad above average.

Incident on and off a Mountain Road – Don Coscarellis episode in Masters of Horror. A deformed serial killer lures lonely victims into his desolate home and tortures and kills them. In his attic he keeps an elderly man who comments on stuff (which is a tad weird). His latest victim is Ellen, a woman who is trained in survival by her violent husband. In flashbacks we get to see this training and the abuse by the husband. So now the killer has to take care that he is gonna be the next kill. Nice story, OK twist in the end, I liked it.

The Unknown – aka Det Okända. Five biologists go on a research in a burnt out forest in the north of Sweden. They find something weird and slimy. The next day, one of them is getting sick: she doesn’t want to east anymore and when one of the other biologists takes a look in her mouth, he sees something black crawling away. This is the start of a story which has been done before: who is infested with the “alien” and who is still human? Although it is not very original, it is pretty well executed. Good things: acting is good to great, atmosphere is nice, paranoia all around. Bad things: no effects and no gore. This makes it a bit of a student’s film. Nevertheless it is an OK film, which you can enjoy thoroughly when focusing on the acting and the setting.

Stir of Echoes – Kevin Bacon gets hypnotised by his wife’s friend and he sees a little girl who was murdered. His son also talks to somebody invisible. His wife thinks he is going crazy and she starts looking for help: her friend and a cop she meets on a cemetery tell her stuff which is quite unsettling. In the meantime, Bacon’s character keeps searching for clues, and when a second hypnosis tells him to dig, it looks like he is both finding the clue and losing it totally. Nice story, with a cool twist. I didn’t see it coming at all. The little boy didn’t act superb, but the rest of the cast is great. The scary part of this film isn’t in the ghost stuff , it’s somewhere else. Recommended.

A Brush With Death – a cliche storyline about 5 cheerleaders going ona trip, they meet some weird locals and there is a house nearby where a murder was committed. The backcover of the DVD says that they go into the hoiuse because they are curious. Well, it takes over one hour(!) for the film to get tot his part of the storyline and then it is over in 15 minutes. So when you have some time to kill, I recommend you to watch the last 15 minutes of this film, if even at all. It is bad, but not in a funny way. It is boring. Very boring.

The Reaping – a small village is plagued by mysterious stuff of biblical proportions. Hilary Swank is a researcher debunking miracles all over the world. She goes to Haven, the small village, to see where the bloodred river comes from, and the raining frogs, and the dying cattle. She brings her former assistant and also gets some help of local people. It seems a little girl is the source of all trouble, and now the question is whether this is true or not. The storyline is OK, although the whole christianity thing wasn’t necessary imo. The plagues weren’t as spectacular as I thought they would be, but the film succeeded in keeping me interested and it also had some (little) surprises for me. Part of the plot is very clear from the beginning, but the other part isn’t so much. OK film, mildly recommended.

Horrornight at school again:

The Fly - great music and the first baboon are the only things attractive until Jeff Goldblum goes armwrestling, after that this film is a wild ride with Goldblum turning more and more into a fly. It was ages ago since I saw this one and I thoroughly enjoyed the rewatch. No wonder this became a classic, and also that many people think his is Cronenberg's best. It is at least Cronenberg's most accessible movie, it has a very limited amount of weirdness (and by that I mean filmmaker weirdness, not horror of course). A must see for every horror fan. Highly recommended.

The Fog - this was a heavy case of nostalgia for me. It was my first Carpenter movie ever and it made me a Carpenter fan for life. I remember I was like 15 years old or something when I saw this on TV and it scared the living daylights out of me. This time around I thought it wasn't so scary, and the plottwist (it isn't even a twist, really) wasn't surprising at all. What time and age can do to a person... Still, it has Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau and of course Jamie Lee Curtis, the music is superb and the atmosphere is cool. Not the best Carpenter, but still recommended, maybe even highly.

Bram Stoker's Dracula - I had seen this one the most often before showing it at school. I remember this had an erotic edge to the Dracula story. This time I noticed that actually Van Helsing is quite funny in this film, his rude humour is totally my kind of joking. Missed a large part because I dozed off, but since I almost know this film by heart, I didn't mind.

Braindead - I forgot almost everything about this film. I only remembered the Simian Raticus, the priest and the lawnmower scene (and not even correctly, as it turned out). It's about 15 years ago I saw this one. I can still safely say that it is a masterpiece in the horrorcomedy genre. I enjoyed this one very much, as it felt almost new to me. Hilarious stuff all over the place, from some 20 minutes in until the end. Highly recommended.

The Amityville Horror - the film I had seen the most recently before last night. Still, it was long enough to not have a review of mine here apparently. Like I wrote in the Horrornight at school-thread, the kids didn't appreciate this film. Although I do myself, I can understand why they don't. It takes very long for something to happen, really. The hints at a "presence" are very small and not very spectacular. Atmosphere is great, but I must admit that I myself was thinking of hurrying it up a little a few times: the film could have been shorter. The climax is still great, but why do we have to wait almost two hours to get it? Acting is good, atmosphere is very good, music is great. It's a classic, but it also drags a little here and there.

Nightmare on Elm Street - this one was very long ago for me too. I only remembered young Depp and the Krueger scenes with the "nails" scratching the iron pipes. Very 80s this one, good music in here too and I think it is a strongpoint of the film that you don't really get to see Freddy very well. Not scary for my standards today, but nice story and cool performances from Englund, Depp and John Saxon. I smiled when a girl concluded at the ending that it must have been the mother, all this time

Dead Silence - from the makers of Saw, so I expected something gory and slasher-like. It isn't. It is actually quite OK, but not superb in any way. The best thing is the plottwist, I totally didn't see it coming. The story is about a female ventriloquist who got lynched because a boy disappeared after a show of hers and she got blamed for it. Now her restless spirit keeps roaming the countryside, you know that stuff from many other films, of course. The doll is quite cool, but not really scary, the acting was OK, sound was OK too. Best part is the cinematography/photography, as some scenes were realyl atmospheric, like the ones in the graveyard where the dolls are buried. So while this isn't anything groundbreaking, it is worth the time watching it.

Quicksilver Highway - advertised with the writers (Stephen King and Clive Barker) this flick makes the most out of the names, but doesn't deliver. There are two stories, linked with a wraparound starring Christopher Lloyd. The first is about some plastic jaws which have a bite for people, and the second one is about hands starting a revolution to free themselves from the body they're attached to. I read that a reviewer wrote that it's mor comedy than horror and I agree. I laughed a few times, but I never got scared or anything: it is just too absurd and hilarious for scares. Lloyd does his thing nicely and the other members of the cast are OK too, but this is a film to forget, at least that's what I think I'm gonna do.

End of Man - aka Finis Hominis. Marins now stars not as Coffin Joe, but as a man who walks out of the sea one day, totally naked. He changes into some sort of a new messiah, and he gets followers. You get to see some 40 minutes of events from normal life in which End of Man (the messiah-guy says that that's his name) intervenes. Coloutred scenes and scenes in purple interchange and add to the weirdness of it all. Of course it started again with some philospohical nonsense, with a punchline ("everything exists for a reason") which neatly justifies the making of this nonsensical film. The second half is a tad better, as a story starts to develop then, about a family planning to do away with a rich uncle. That was nice and End of Man does justice here, too. It was a while ago since I saw a Marins movie, and with the Coffin Joe flicks I was a bit into it, but he lost me again on this one. Very odd film.

Serum - omg, this was one bad film. It makes the impression on you that this might be some sort of a zombieflick, a Re-Animator-like film, maybe. It isn't. It is a weak film about student's relationships, involving silicone boobs and betrayal. Only the last 20 minutes there is something which resembles a zombie in the far distance. It has been made by a guy trying to figure out a cure for all diseases, but instead of curing people, it turns them into bloodsucking monsters. The end. Mediocre to bad acting, uninteresting storyline, bad sound and bad photogpraphy. Avoid this one.

Watched this one lately: Fairytale 2012
Did not expect much, but was really surprised. Can really recommend it.

Cutting Class - early film for Brad Pitt and it is a fun film if you like 80s slashers, and also if you like your movies far from perfect The plot is a bit childish, but maybe this film was aimed at teenagers to begin with, so that's acceptable, in a way. Popular boy wants beautiful brain babe, and dismissed mental hospital patient wants her too. People die: whodunnit? Pitt is the popular boy of course, and he is pretty much a dick, but during the film he develops a bit of a soft side too. Nothing overwhelming, but this is what you get in this movie when it comes to versatile characters. All other characters are very onesided and superficial. The father of the babe acts like he is supposed to be a comic relief, and it isn't very funny. All in all it's quite enjoyable because it is a very "wrong" movie in a lot of ways (check out how the teachers treat their female students) and very 80s at that. Only for bad moviefans, I suppose.

Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures - aka A Estranha Hospedaria dos Prazeres. Another Mojica Marins film, where he is a pensionholder who is actually Death. So his pension, where a lot od sexual action is going on, is sort of a metaphor for the transition from life to death. Or something. I coud be totally wrong hre, of course, but I have this feeling I'm starting to understand a little bit more of these Marins movies, and therefore I like them better. Although I still think he should start sooner on the plot: 15 minutes of weird dancing scenes and unnecessary philosophical rambling are distracting from what the film is about imo. If you don't mind weirdness, go for it.

Giallo a Venezia – not a very typical giallo, it is very sleazy. The police finds a murdered couple, and one of the cops is intrigued by the fact that the woman was drowned first and then dragged onto the bank of the river. He starts an investigation, and in the meantime you (the viewer) get to see a lot of flashbacks about the weird sexual habits of the man of the murdered couple. These sex scenes are long and quite boring, and they are sadly the main attraction of this film. The storyline is quite rushed and therefore it isn’t a very interesting one. It lacks plot twists, so it can be argued if this is a giallo at all. The kills, of which there aren’t many, have some real cruelty on display. Especially the first kill is very gruesome. However, since the rest of the film is dragging so much, it can’t be saved by a few shocking murders. I watched a bleak VHS rip of this, and it seems to be the only one available.

Needle – an old machine called Le Vaudou Mort is being used by a killer to haunt some students. The machine uses voodoo and the victims get killed from inside. It all sounded very, very familiar, not only because it is very much like Box of Shadows (which could be considered a rip-off of Needle, btw), but it also rang several other bells. Some of the kills are really gory, but apart from thos moments, it was quite boring, so I syteadily lost interest. The plot twist was kind of meh, but it was nice that they repeated all kills in the final scene, so I could see the few that I missed (because of me losing interest). So, some nice moments, but by far not enough to make a good film.

More Masters of Horror:

Haeckel's Tale - nice Gothic setting with a Frankensteinish theme (scientists, a student who wants to create life with help of dead bodies, etc). Ernst Haeckel is looking for life after death and he visits a guy who can broing dead animals back to life. Ernst thinks he is a charlatan, but when he later finds rescue in a home as shelter for the weather, the same guy is at the door at a certain point, and the beautiful daughter of the home owner goes with him, into the forest. Ernst follows, and sees a gruesome display. Very nice atmopshere, but man, it does take long to get to the point. The final scene was a bit meh, imo, but the core of the plot (what she does when she goes into the forets at night) was hilarious, imo. Nice one.

Sick Girl - a lesbian entomologist gets a package from a strange sender, and it contains an even stranger insect: she has never seen it before. While she finds love with a girl who has been sitting in her office's lobby drawing all the time, the insect spoils the fun: it bites her new girlfriend who now starts to deteriorate, bith physically and mentally. It is some kind of a rip-off of The Fly, as the girl transforms slowly and steadily into a huge insect monster. her final appeareance was yet again hilarious. Although it has never been scary for me, thewse series offer me great laughs: Masters of Comedy Some annoying stuff in this episode, bit with a great finale.

Jack Frost – a serial killer on his way to his execution gets in a freak accident and is poured with some acid fluid, turning him into an evil snowman. This snowman now comes back to haunt everyone who had something to do with his arrest. Hilarious premise for a fun slasher, and I enjoyed it a lot. Some great oneliners pass by, and while it never gets scary, it is funny as hell. It is ridden with cliches, but because the film never takes itself too seriously, that’s OK. There are some great kills, for example with shooting icicles, and the snowman himself has to be dealt with with anti-freeze. So: loads of brainless fun, I had a laugh. Recommended.

The Gathering – Christina Ricci plays Cassie, an American tourist who gets hit by a car while on holiday in England. While she recovers, an ancient church is being discovered with a strange depiction of the crucifixion. After Cassie gets out of the hospital, she moves in with the family of which the woman hit her with her car and takes care of the children. The son seems to be catatonic, because his mother died a while back (the woman is his stepmother). Cassie tries to break through to him, while the church leads an investigation on the crucifixion scene. Soon, Cassie starts seeing people in the town who aren’t visible for others… Nice film, nothing superb, but it is good enough to give it a try. Ricci is in shape and the other cast members act pretty good too. Somehow the atmosphere stays at a mediocre level: I think it was supposed to be creepy, but it doesn’t work out really.

Daybreakers – a new way to portray vampirism is hard to find, and in Daybreakers we don’t get to see something entirely new. The premise of a future where humans are an endangered species and vampires are about to be extinct because of shortage in food is nothing new. However, the execution of the story is great. Very good cast (Neill, Defoe and Hawke are the star names, but the rest of the cast is great too), interesting storyline and where The Gathering left me wanting in the atmosphere department, Daybreakers totally makes up for it. The vampire police even had some Minority Report-like scenes, in which it was almost like they knew what was gonna happen before it actually did happen. This creates a paranoid atmosphere, and it helps the film a lot. The ending is kind of funny, although I doubt it was meant that way. Some nice drama, some good gore: recommended.

The Hearse - after having seen the cover of this DVD, I was surprised to see it was a film from 1980. The cover made it look like it was only a few years old. OK, onto the movie: Jane Hardy just got divorced and she wants to spend the summer in the house her aunt left her. However, her aunt practiced witchcraft and weird stuff is going on in the house. All villagers dislike Jane a lot for living in the haunted place, but she persists and soon makes a few friends. However, this doesn't make the scary stuff go away. The movie is quite slow, and there are scary moments, with good atmosphere, but it is few and far between: most of the time the story goes on and on about non-scary stuff, and it gets boring a little. The strongpoints of the film are the atmosphere and the music. The music is superb! It is a classic 80s horror soundtrack and I loved it. The plottwist is a bit disappointing, as a kid would have seen it coming. I recommend everyone to listen to the soundtrack. If you can do that without watching the film, why not.

Prowl - heard a lot of bad stuff about this one, but it cost me only one Euro, so I gave it a spin. Nice opening, although a bit cliche, but the scenes with the trip out of town and the truckride are great: the standard group of teens/students finds out that the truckload is blood in bags, and then they end up in some sort of a garage. Soon, some bloodthirsty creatures show up to hunt them. These creatures walked straight out of 30 Days of Night, so there is nothing new about it. I dislike this type of "vampires", in my opinion a vampire should be an intelligent creature with one big flaw: a thirst of blood. Not some zombielike monster who can barely talk. Well, it shouldn't be a surprise what happens to the group, and the plottwist is a bit meh. Not that I don't like it principally, but I have seen it too often lately. So I agree with the bad rep this flick has, with the exception of the truckscene, which is cool.

Fair Haired Child – a 15-year old girl who is a bit odd gets kidnapped by a weird couple and locked up in their cellar. There she finds a strange boy who can’t talk, so he writes his messages to her in the sand on the floor. This way, she finds out about a terrible secret, and they both make a plan to escape from it, and from the cellar too. Strange little film, with some scenes which come off as theatrical, like the actors are in a play instead of in a film. Best parts are atmosphere and plottwist, although the twist was a bit farfetched, imo. The monster was quite scary, btw, and the way it was filmed was cool, a bit stop motion-like. Not a must see, but one of the better Masters of Horror titles.

Chocolate – a guy who works on flavours in the food industry gets hallucinations in which he can see through the eyes of a woman. He is intrigued by this and goes on a search for this mystery woman. He experiences her life in glimpses, and sometimes that is pretty hard. When he sees her murdering someone, it gets tricky and when he finally finds her, it gets ugly too. The way the story is told is interesting, but the problem of this film is that the story itself was not so interesting. I had trouble keeping my attention to it. Nice acting, but overall this one was lacking for me.

Dance of the Dead – in the near future, the world has gone though the Third World War and it brought a lot of destruction. There are several pockets in which people still are able to live. In such a pocket, Peggy runs a diner with her mother, after her father and sister have died in the war. When a couple of punks come in to eat, she falls for Jak’s charms. That night, she goes into town with him, to the Doom Room, where Robert Englund is an MC presenting a show where dead people do a “dance”. There she finds out something horrible… Simple film, but effective enough. The twist was cool and the post apocalyptic setting is believable, even though it is not very elaborate. It isn’t so much a horror film, but I enjoyed it. I have seen better episodes of MoH, but the bad rep of this one is not justified, imo.

I thought you were talking about this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0926063/
and was totally mind-fucked.

I guess you are talking about this garbage:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0643102/

Hehe, yes, "that garbage". I disagree on the garbage rep, like I said. Simple, but effective enough.

Yesterday I saw

Constantine - for years I thought this was a bad film, as I went on the reviews it got when it came out. Recently the reviewers have become more positive apparently. I gave it a try because I could buy it for 1 Euro. The story is a bit of a mixture between The Prophecy and Bloodrayne. Bloodrayne because a semi-mixed creature plays a vigilante role to help protect the world against evil creatures, and The Prophecy because of the angelic touch. Keanu Reeves is a "special person" who sees demons and sends them back to hell when they break the rules of the truce between them and mankind. When the twin sister of a female cop jumps off a roof, he gets entangled in a story which he won't forget anytime soon. The sotryline was a bit so so, the acting was OK (Rachel Weisz is a tasty babe, btw), but the cake is taken by the special effects. This is how cgi should be used, although it can be even better (which is the case when you don't notice it is cgi youre looking at). Enjoyable enough, but not a candidate for a rewatch soon, I guess.

Survive! - aka Los Supervivientes de los Andes. I can be short on this one. It's part of a box called "5 horror classics", but it isn't horror. It is a film about the planecrash in the Andes on which the film "Alive!" is based too. Only this one was made 16 years earlier. Almost two hours, but atmopshere is good enough to keep you interested throughout. Less overly dramatic than Alive!

Primeval - reality mut have been a them tonight, because the crocodile this film is based on really exists. Gustave, a huge Nile Croc, keeps killing people like there is no tomorrow, and amidst a civil war, a TV crew is gonna try and capture Gustave. I have seen a fair share of crocodile movies, and this isn't one of the better ones. Africa is portrayed very nicely, but Dominic Purcell (I really dislike him, I don't really know why) and the rest of the cast are spoiling the movie. Wtf is that black Ameruican guy talking trash on Africa all the time? And why are the Africans portrayed as aggressive rapists full of bloodlust and when they aren't, all they want is to go to the US? Blegh! The monster is OK, but nothing really special. I switched to watching YouTube vids on the real Gustave while this film played in the background. Says enough, I think.

The Langoliers - got some Stephen King mini series in the mailbox recently, because I was curious. I wanted to see whether I'd like it to watch something horror which is longer than usual. I started with this one because I had three hours to watch something and this one runs for exactly that time. I haven't seen any King miniseries before (correction: I have seen It and it seems to be considered a miniseries as well), just movies, like Silver Bullet and Night Flier. Some are good, some a little less good, but the only thing I didn't like was Quicksilver Highway, so I have quite a high esteem for Stephen King. How would this fare in a three hour watch? Well, it went OK. The best parts are the atmosphere (the fear is "in the air" so to speak, although you don't know what to fear for a very long time) and the characters, as in a miniseries you get way more time to get to know them. They are all a bit odd, but most of them are interesting enough. Some could have been developed a little better, like the teacher character, but most of them are good enough. The length is a strongpoint as well as apitfall, because sometimes you have to wait quite some time befor something happens. At some points this adds to th atmosphere, in other points it stimulates boredom. The storyline is OK, although

Spoiler:

the whole time thingy

didn't really appeal to me. The biggest joke are the sfx, as the Langoliers don't look like they are described earlier in the film and they look as fake as the goblins in Troll 2. Prehistoric cgi, so to speak. You need some patience to sit this one through and you might need a small bukcet for the ending. Still, this is a good film to watch, as the strongpoints exceed the flaws. Recommended.

Golden Years - Harlan Williams is a 70-year old janitor at a research facility where one day an experiment goes wrong and he gets showered with some biochemical stuff. At forst nothing seems to be wrong with him, while others who were closer to the accident die a gruesome death. After a while, however, he notices he is getting younger every day. Because he is now a specimen, the CIA is hunting him down in order to get him back to the lab so the doctors can study him. A former colleague of the CIA agent in charge is frustrating the hunt by helping the janitor and his wife escape. A journey through the Unitd States follows, with the CIA guys hot on their heels. I don't know what it is with this mini series, but I thought it wasn't very horror-like. In the beginning there is this Re-Animator atmosphere, and after a while an atmosphere of paranoia is built. But as soon as something really hooro-ish happens, like

Spoiler:

when Harlan is hitchhiking and then gets the glow in his eyes and an earthquake occurs

it is very short lived so it cant develop really. This leaves a long (6 hours) miniseries which is a drama about getting old, mixed with a chase which reminded me a bit of Enemy of the State. Intnsity goes up and down (I think that's because of the length) and episodes 1 and 4 were OK, 5 had some moments and then that's it mostly. The ending sucks quite heavily. I think the makers should have chosen to make the ending better developed and cut out some non-interesting scenes inbetween, as there are enough of them. I had fun watching this, but it isn't horror and it isn't among the best King work either.

Desperation - a weird sheriff is collecting prisoners in his small town in the middle of nowhere. In that town, an old mine called The China Pit is re-opened and it brings about a horde of demonic creatures, and the sheriff works together with them. I liked this one, although it is sometimes a bit messy on the script side and the little boy who keeps bragging about god and whatnot is kind of annoying, but the demonic thingy was quite cool and it's origins also well explained. Ron Perlman steals the show as the sheriff, but Tom Skeritt isn't bad either. Better than Golden Years, imo.