She-Demons of the Black Sun - a rtape-revenge film with a demonic touch, because the rape victim gets help from the devil and some female demons. These demons go by the rapists one by one to torture and kill them, although they leave that last act to the rape victim in order to get 100% revenge. OK film, nothing special. The gisl are looking just not hot enough, the effects are so so and the acting is at times atrocious. I also expected more supernatural action, but that's kind of lame in this one: torture and killing are making the most part of the film. I have seen worse, but I'm not recommending this.

Portrait of a Zombie - this film plays in Dublin, and because there were no subs it was hard to follow at times because of the accents. The few Americans in he film were followable, more or less. The story is cool: in a zombie outbreak, a family decides to keep their infected son restrained in his room and feed him some flesh to keep him quiet. This leads to all sorts of weird situations, in which the danger of getting bitten is all too present. The Americans are in Dublin to make a documentary on this family, but that's not the only thing they do: they become part of the program, in both positive and negative ways. Unfortunately, this file had an error, and after ~one hour, the image got stuck (the sound played on). So in order ot enjoy this one to the fullest, I have to watch it again, with subtitles I hope.

The Black Six - another blaxploitation from the box, the best one up to this point. Six American football players act in this film, they play a black biker gang who is gonna take revenge on a white biker gang after that gang has murdered the brother of one of the black guys. After a relaxed beginning, in which the gang doesn't know about the brother's death yet, they start making their moves. Some funny dialogue, some cool/bad action and a good song which continues throughout the film (not the entire time, but it gets repeated pretty often) make the tijme pass quickly. The endfight is epic. Especially bad moviefans can enjoy this one.

Death Journey - Fred Williamson stars as an open-shirted, cigar-smoking superhero who has to escort a crown witness from California to New York in this not so black blaxploitation. Lots of chases, lots of (fist)fights, where, you guessed it, Fred comes out victorious. In a sense, this movie is boring and repetitive. But it has Fred! And some good music, too. Second best of the box so far.

Apartment 1303 - apparently this was a remake of a Japanese original. It's a bad remake. Althought he story doesn't sound all too boring, this film is. The acting is atrocious: the younger sister who moves out has anorexic legs and keeps sobbing and crying and I sincerely hope I never have to see her earning money on screen again (unless... no, I won't even go there). The main part is for Mischa Barton, and she succeeds in not expressing a single emotion and not uttering a convincing word for the entire duration of the film. Why she has become an actress is a mystery to me. While this sounds like a film you might have some fun with because it is all so bad, it isn't. Effects are OK-ish, and the things which go wrong are irritating, not funny. Maybe I will watch the Japanese orignal one day, but it has to be when I have forgotten about this one, so that will take a while. Please don't watch this!

True Bloodthirst - lame rfeference to the vampire series (which I haven't watched, btw) in this scifi-ish actionflick with vampires being crammed into a suburb that is slowly but steadily turning into some sort of a concentration camp. When both peole and vampires are being found dead with their bodies torn apart, a cop comes in to get the killer(s). For this, he sollicits the help of a few prisoners who used to be vampire hunters. He also gets the company of some agent he doesn't actually want to be with. Together, this group seeks out a few vampires who might be able to help them to get more info on the subject and soon both these vampires, the cop and the vampire hunters are under attack by morphed vampire bats. Of course they have to fight them a few times, then there is a "plot twist" and an apotheosis, all pretty predictable. The cgi was noticeable, but could have been worse. Some mindless entertainment and this subject (where humans and vampires live together and there is a black amrket for blood trade) has been done many many times before. So: original? No. Good? No. Avoid? Not necessarily.

The Final Comedown - there is a lot of racism going on in LA in the 60s, and a group of black college guy and girls are gonna do something about it. The story is told in a flashback kind of way, therefore you get to see entire scenes in flashback, just to end up in the present again for a few minutes, before you go into the next flashback. This is a bit too much, but it's not spoiling the entire film. What does, is that the storyline is so very straightforward: guy is unsatisfied with racism, gets group of people with guns and they start shooting racists. The message does come across, though, but the film won't last long in anyone's memory I guess.

The Purge - a cool idea, this one: in future America, a group called The New Founding Fathers has installed an annual night in which all crimes, even murder, go unpunished. Paramedics, police and hospitals will be out of commission for twelve hours. This night, the Purge, was founded to let the aggression people buld inside over the year out of their systems. It also "cleans up" the streets from lowlifes, and gives good deals in security system selling. When the Purge night starts in 2022, James Sandin, the major salesman of secuirty systems in the neighbourhood, and his family dug in to survive. However, when a guy shouting for help is being let in by the son of the Sandins, the family suddenly becomes part of the Purge. What will they do to survive? What will become of the man? And who will see the light of day next morning? I thought this plot was quite original, the choices people make in such an extreme night could have been set a bit sharper, but acting is good, and atmosphere is grim at times. I had fun watching this one, although the ending could have been a bit better. Recommended.

Zombie Hunter - supposedly a B-movie because it wants to be one. Atmosphere was OK, but effects were so off that I didn't get into the film: pink (cgi) blood doesn't help the cause, gentlemen! The main charcater was talking like Batman, the girls were good looking and slutty when needed, the zombies looked a bit ugly and Danny Trejo was in this film for only a short time. Some stuff was funny, but the ugly cgi and the fact that the zombies weren't the center of the story made this film nothing above average for me. It was better than a whole lot of zombiecrap which has been produced lately, but in order to get out of the pit of mediocrity, the film should have brought more tension/better and more zombies. Mindless fun, but nothing special.

I have watched only a few films in the past few weeks, mainly because of WC:

Ghost in a Teeny Bikini – Fred Olen Ray film with a lot of lame jokes about sex, a lot of sex (softcore porn) and even musical. The story is very superificial, it’s about a girl (not coincidentally working in the superlow budget filmindustry where she makes softcore films with her boyfrind directing) getting a telegram about the reading of the will of her rich uncle, who has just pased away. They travel to a mansion where it all will take place, but of course there has to be a whole lot of sex before anything happens, and there is a superthing plot with a scheme, but it just serves to set a stage for numerous sex scenes. They are all a bit of the same, and when you have seen one, you can fast forward through the rest. The musical part of this film is actually hilarious: I hate musical, but in this one it made me laugh. I guess this is only for frustrated teens and for bad moviefans.

Frankenstein’s Army – a Red Army cameraman records a recon mission in Eastern Prussia where they stumble upon a bunker complex which shelters something really terrifying. World War II is coming to an end, but of course we all know that the nazis will do anything to stop the Red Hordes from the East. This film is directed by Richard Raaphorst, the Dutch director who started out with zombiefilm Worst Case Scenario, and when that was cancelled due to low funding, he started on this one: Frankenstein’s Army. You see the story unfold through the lens of the army cameraman, and although I’m no tinto found footage films, it kind of works in this scneario. Although acting could have been better (to say it mildly) and the war atmosphere is a bit lacking, the tension starts to rise when the group enters a bunker. Inside, they find a bunch of very well designed crazy creatures, who are supposed to be the nazi superwarriors. Of course you have to stop thinking rationally. Because otherwise you can’t really enjoy this film. If you do, you will see some cool monster action, a crazy surgeon and a cliche plot twist to laugh at. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Bloody Murder I – a cliche slasher, featuring a group of students, a summercamp and a masked killer. After a too long introduction of the very uninteresting characters, we get to see the first killings. The killer has to warm up a little, that much is clear. After having had several scenes which are total Friday the 13th rip-offs, the killer gets revealed and if you haven’t guessed right halfway through, you really need to see more slashers. Some kills were OK, but most fot hem were uninspired and lame. If you love slashers, you might get some fun out of a game you can play while watching this: which cliche was used before in how many films? For the serious horrorfan I say: skip this.

Yesterday I have seen:

Penny Dreadful – this film could have been renamed to Movie Dreadful. While the acting isn’t even so bad, there are simply too few things actually happening in this film. A girl called Penny has a youth trauma about car accidents, and in some kind of shock therapy, she and her therapist go on a trip. By car, of course. When they hit a hitchhiker on the side of the road, they take the hithchhiker (who has barely a scratch) in, out of mercy. Later, it turns out that this person actually is a serial killer and now they have to survive the night. The amount of things which give the serial killer a bigger chance of success are numerous. The main characters are really very, very stupid and dumb. Still, with this garbage script, they manage to act a decent role, but it isn’t enough to save this pile of bollocks. Only the last 15 minutes are interesting for horrorfans. The rest of the film has a nice ase study of how to show fear to the big public, but it is really very boring. The fact that I was thinking of the nice stills that were made of a nightly forest says enough, I think. Skip to minute 75 and you might live.

Carny – a cliche monsterfilm, which proves an important point for starting filmmakers. What we have here is Lou Diamond Phillips, starring as a small town sheriff who gets to deal with a monster on a travelling carnival visiting his forgotten village. Some say it is the Jersey Devil, but in fact it is a beast made of cgi, which turns out to work quite fine as long as it stays in the dark. This film thrives on not showing what you wanna see, as kills, and monsters, are kept out of sight for as long as possible. Even when the priest, protesting the carnival because of presumed devilish intents, is talking to an audience, you don’t get to see the crowd. Probably because there isn’t one. Still this film entertained me quite a lot. The point it proves, is that if you want to make a low budget horrorfilm, please don’t make a slasher like Penny Dreadful, but make a monsterflick like this one. Because no matter how bad and cliche ridden, you can still have some fun watching it.

Bloodletting - I thought this would be some kind of slasher, and it was, but it was a weird one, in a positive way. I hadn't noticed before watching, but 5 minutes in and I knew this was quite low budget. The story is simple: a girl is obsessed with serial killers, so she confronts a guy and reveals to him that she knows he is the infamous killer stalking her neighbourhood. Together they go on a killing spree, in which she operates as his assistant, to learn the skills of a serial killer. There are plenty of kills, and some dialogue which is funny at times, but most of the time it's more of a filler. Some kills are quick and clean, but there are also some gruesome scenes, like the one in which

Spoiler:

the girl bites of a dick,

which is shown in a quite gory way. In the end the film goes a bit over the top, as there are some plottwists which are somewhat ridiculous. Still, this film entertained me more than I had expected. Recommended, just don't epxect any high end production values or anything.

Got a link?

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12727&hilit=bloodletting
Its back in share
From what I remeber I enjoyed this

Thanks my friend.

LOL, I just know noticed that my spoiler tags weren't really working OK Fixed it.

The Deaths of Ian Stone - I was expecting a weird movie, in the style of Final Destination. A bit slasher, a bit parallel universe. It was nothing like a slasher, ad it wasn't so weird. It did meet some of my expectations, though. Ian Stone is a normal guy, he plays hockey in college and has a cute girlfriend who still lives with her parents. One night, after having driven her home, he sees a body on the road, next to a railroad crossing. While checking it out, he gets attacked and then hit by the train which is passing by. Next thing he knows, he is in an office, looking at a pile of work. Upon coming home, a different girl is waiting for him: his life has changed completely. He sees several familiar faces, though After a while, he finds out that he is a target for some mysterious killers. And each time he dies, he gets a new life. Now he tries to find out what is going on and how he can stop this. The story was interesting, the feeling of being lost was pretty well done in this film, as Ian is never "at home" in his own lives. I was also guessing what would be the cause of all this. The p[lot was not really original, but still, I was surprised by it. Entertainig film, even though the cgi is below par and some scenes near the end reminded me a bit too much of the Matrix trilogy. Some castmembers are pretty women, acting overall is good and atmosphere really got me in this one. Good job, recommended.

Disturbia - Not a horror, this one. There is a serial killer theme going on in the background, but it's more a thriller, if anything. Kale, a boy who lost his father in a car accident, punches his teacher in class and therefore gets house arrest. He has a tracking device on his ankle, so he can't leave the premises unnoticed. If he'd do that, he'd go to prison anyway, so he is very careful. Out of boredom, he starts to spy in his neoighjbours, one of them being the newly moved in Ashley (played by the beautiful Sarah Roemer) and her family. Spying on her is no punishment, but in the meantime, Kale sees a lot more than just this beautiful girl next door. On the news he hears abhout a serila killer being on the loose, and he starts t suspect one of hs own neighbours to be this killer. Together with his friend and the girl next door he is trying to find more clues. Is he on the right track, or is he slightly going mad? Nice film, good story. It was a bit slow at times, perfect for a summernight like last night. I was never shocked or scared, though. The ending was a bit meh, as it was

Spoiler:

a bit too much of a feelgood movie

but I was entertained enough to not trash this. So: not bad, but keep in mind it is no horror and quite tame for most of our tastes.

Sarah Roemer

Basic Instinct 2 – in this sequel they try to repeat the success of number one, and therefore they try and re-create the first film almost entirely. So this film becomes some sort of an imitation, and though in this film almost all scenes, famous and infamous, are present (and done in a somewhat slightly different way) it doesn’t succeed. It isn’t coherent, the film doesn’t look like a unit, but more like a chain of scenes shot after each other. Some of the more daring scenes from the first film are missing completely, and no kill is made on scrfeen at all. An attempt is made to create a central theme, but the main actor is struggling with himself more than he can focus on the role, the plot “twist”can be seen coming from miles away and I think that everyone who said “No” to reprise his or her role in this film is really happy he/she did so. Poor Sharon Stone, her money situation must have been really bad. If you try and detach it from Basic Instinct, than it is simply a B-thriller, with little suspense. This film is only useful to watch as some kind of game with nerds who can re;ate toe ach scene in the firfst film or something. Oh, and painful mistake: the film is set in London, yet the sports star who is on the front page of a newspaper is supposedly playing “soccer”, while in civilised countries it is called “football” of course

The Dark - there are quite some films with this title, so I disregarded this film for a while until I found out I hadn't seen this one. This one is the 2005 film with Sean Bean and Maria Bello who play a couple which is divorced. She visits him on the Welsh coast with their daughter Sarah, and while they are there, they find a mysterious box without a fitting key. A little later, they have a weird epxerience: a bunch of sheep suddenly jump over the edge of the cliff. Shortly after, Sarah suddenly disappears while taking a walk along the rough cliffs of Wales with her mother. After this, Adèlle (the mother) has a talk with Dafydd, the local guy who is a friend of James (the father). Dafydd tells her about the Celtic legends of the region, and about life and death and the bridge between the two worlds. While James starts a search together with some local fishermen, Adèlle starts investigating about the legend, and also about the building where they found the little box. She hears noises: is it Sarah calling? She sees visions of a little girl: is that Sarah having returned? James doesn;'t believe in all this, but Adèlle keeps going, to the bottom of it all. This film has a small cast, so acting and setting are really important. Acting is OK to pretty good, and the setting is cool and adds some mystery to the story. Still, the film couldn't really grab me. Since I have a kid of my own, parent-kid stuff usually gets to me more than it used to, but not in this film. It was just too distant, for some reason. The ending was OK, but also a bit predictable. It never got scary, although the weird stuff (with the sheep) was a tad unsettling, but only a little. A lot of missed chances, I'd say, as the story was pretty good. Maybe better next time.

When A Stranger Calls - the 1979 film. It starts out with a scene in which a babysitter keeps getting calls from a strange man who just keeps saying "Did you check on the children?" and nothing else. When she gets help from the police, the man, who turns out to be a psychotic killer, gets caught. However, he manages to escape the insane asylum he is put in, and years later he is haunting the same woman again, now not the babysitter of someone else's children, but a mother to her own. Opening scenes and the ending are great: suspense is solid, the music is brilliant! What makes this movie less than perfect, is the long and sometimes really slow middle part, in which we see what the psycho is up to when he is out of the asylum, and the detective trying to hunt him down. This was somewhat confusing, as there are many scenes with a certain woman and she doesn't have anything to do with the babysitter from the beginning. But, in spite of this, this film really got me going and deserves a recommendation. There is no gore, and therefore it isn't really a horrorfilm, but I really like to recommend it anyway, especially for the music.

Judge Dredd - I had seen flashes from this, but never the entire film. After "When A Stranger Calls" I was in for some action, so I put this one in. I got what I wanted: spectacular world, lots of action and some nice oneliners. Stallone plays Dredd, a street judge in a world where the government has tried to eradicate crime by making supercops who are judge, jury and executioner in one. While fighting a gang, he meets Hershey, a young female judge who is specialized in law. When Dredd later gets into a conflict, and he gets accused of numerous murders, he needs her assistance. Despite her help, he gets convicted. Escaping from prison, he sets out to get revenge together with a dumb sidekick who is good with computers. Together, and later with Hershey back in the game, they solve the conflict and all ends well. Nice feelgood movie in scifi setting, all cliches came along, from the love interest to the betrayal by loved ones. The only drawback was Rob Schneider, the sidekick. I just can't stand him for some reason, so I think this film would have been even more enoyable without him in it.

The Astronaut's Wife - I could buy this one for something around one Euro, so I gave it a try. I heard stuff about this film having similarities to Rosemary's Baby, and since that is a classic, I was curious to see how that would turn out. Well, it turns out a bit weak. Although the synopsis isn't so bad (the contact with two astronauts at work on a satellite is lost for two minutes, and after they have come back it seems like they aren't the same persons anymore), the way it is put into a film is meager. Soon you know there must be something wrong, because oterhwise the film, running for almost 110 minutes, would be really boring. And when one of the astronauts dies, you are sure of the outcome already, it is just how it will come out which can make you watch until the end, only to be disappointed: the ending is, well, a letdown. Instead of some spectacular climax, it is just that

Spoiler:

the astronaut tells his wife what has been going on, only to die in the next moment. The alien then takes hold of the wife's body. Which is really dumb, because he could have done that before.

The connection with Rosemary's Baby is easy to make because the wife gets pregnant by he astronaut after he has returned, and the twins she bears are a bit weird. But so far the similarities. While in Rosemary's Baby the viewer gets to doubt whether Rosemary is becoming mad or she is the only one seeing it all right, in this one this question doesn't even have to be asked. Save yourself 110 minutes and go watch something different, even if you are a big scifi fan.

The Final – a group of kids who are the victims of bullying, plan to take the ultimate revenge on their classmates on an upcoming party. They get themselves some weaponry and some extreme outfits (one is dressed up as an SS officer, for example) and after having put some sort of tranquilizer in the drinks, they start their revenge-session. All the popular boys and girls are now chained together on the floor, witnessing some gruesome scenes of torture, for example when the beauty queens get some biting smear on their faces. It all builds up to a climactic scene

Spoiler:

where the most popular girl has to cut off the fingers of the most popular boy (this scene reminded me a bit of Bloodsucking Freaks) After this, the whole thing collapses and the bullied boys and girl succumb to their own violence

Acting is OK, sometimes a bit overdone, but overall quite good performances by little known people. Atmosphere is also good enough, I had some cringing moments during the torturing. But, and this is quite something, there are some really huge errors in this film. You could say it is editing only, but you could also think that it is actually really sloppy by the filmmakers:

Spoiler:

there are several scenes in which a person gets killed and then later on we can see him walk around in the house again. Best example of this, is when the SS guy gets killed outside of the house, and the next shot we see is him standing inside the house, listening to Dane, like nothing happened. In another scene, they start a torturing, but then after the cut from the scene we go back and the girl who was about to get tortured simply disappeared and the chair she sat on is empty.

This might give the film a cult following of course, as it is this kind of editing which Tarantino made fun of in Pulp Fiction. It might also mean that we will never hear from these filmmakers again of course. I had fun watching this, and I say “Cult!” so: recommended.

Splice – film by Vincenzo Natali, the guy who brought us Cube, so you know you can expect something weird. And weird it is indeed. Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley star as a science couple who are trying to save their biotechnological facility by coming up with a breakthrough in science: a successful mixture of human and animal DNA. One day, they create a new kind of organism, and they take it with them when it turns out that not everyone is hapy to see it. They try to raise it like it was a human child, but of course it isn’t and when blood begins to flow, they will have to draw a line. But they keep hesitating, and before they know it, everything goes out of hand. Brody and Polley act very well in this film, a mixture of emtions and action, and it is really well done. The other actors have a less important role, and of course the organism is played by an actress, but it’s hard to estimate how hard that was to do. Part of the creature was cgi, so that’s why. The cgi by the way, was really good. This is how it should be made in every film. Story was OK, it was easy to get into it. There were some endearing and sokme grotesque scenes with the creature. All in all I enjoyed this one, so that’s another recommendation there from me.

Mindhunters - a group of seven FBI students who want to become profilers have one final mission before graduation: on a remote island they need to solve a serial killer case by profiling him and predicting his next move so he can be caught. Their teacher is under investigation because his methods are known to be extreme, so a special agent from the Department of Justice also comes along on the mission. On the first day, while looking for traces, one of the students dies. At first the others still think it might have been an accident, but soon it turns out that they are being hunted down by a real killer. Now a pretty long whodunnit starts and I must say that it was quite cool how it turned out, although the motive was really weak, imo. Acting is OK, the wheelchair character was pretty annoying. Location is cliche but fits the story right, some of the kills are really cool. I also thought it was cool that

Spoiler:

Christian Slater is the first victim, you would think a name like that would survive longer

LL Cool J must be a friend of the director, because he was in Deep Blue Sea too, and it isn't the greatest actor of them all, so... More a thriller than a horror, this was quite cliche but also not so bad that it as hurting my eyes. Not enough for a recommendation, though. Rainy Sunday afternoon, anyone?

The Uninvited - Anna gets dismissed from a mental hospital because her therapist thinks she can handle the outside world again. She was in there because of the tragic death of her mother in a fire a few years back. Back home, Anna lives with her father and Rachel, the woman who used to hurse her mother. Together with her sister Alex, she starts an investigation into the background of Rachel, because Anna gets violent and confusing visions about her, and about her mother. Anna has nightmares and sees things which aren't there. Rachel and Anna's father are trying to think about sending Anna back to the mental hospital, but Anna sees this as a way to thwart her investigation. Every lead Ana gets, brings her closer to a conclusion, but the conlcusion turns out to be something else. Nice plottwist, not really original, but it worked quite well. I was positively surprised by this film, it isn't scary or anything, but the buildup is good, the atmosphere is to the point and the acting is OK too. I had fun, recommended. Also, look out for Arielle Kebbel, she is Alex in the film.

The Arrival - a rather cliche story about some astronomer believing in aliens and after hitting brick walls everywhere goes out on hios own to investigate and of course finds alien life. Although it really is quite cliche, it is a pretty well executed cliche. Charlie Sheen is very believable as the troubled and paranoid astronomer and the aliens are also pretty cool with a touch of scariness and a touch of wonder. The cgi was quite good, especially if you take into account that this is fom 1996. At a certain point I had strong beliefs that the makers of the Half Life game series had watched this before they came up with certain ideas for their famous fps. I really was in for this kind of film yesterday, that's why I enjoyed it throughly: sometimes it is just that you want to see a certain film and your expectations are met 150%. This was such an evening. That doesn't make the film so geat, but a really bad film can't create such a situation at all. So not really recommended, but still a very nice watch if you want to see a (somewhat) classic scifi film with aliens.