WARNING: There may be considerable explicit language below but I tried to make the pictures as within-the-site guidelines as possible (The Burning pic was way too gory, so, because I disliked the movie so much, I decided I would try to find something to represent it's truly best quality.)
October 1st
Movie #1, around 12:00 AM - Blood Hook (1986 / directed by Jim Mallon)
Man, you just gotta love Troma. I don't know what I just watched. It was hilarious. At first, it seemed like a bad spoof of Just Before Dawn (a movie that's already half-Friday the 13th, half-The Hills Have Eyes) but then... what can I say? The dialogue is incredible and the characters are some of the funniest I've ever encountered in the slasher subgenre. Especially the main character's love interest acting as psych student ("If you feel comfortable killing me... well, that's fine; I'm an adult, I can live with it") and the "I was in the military!" gun fanatic ("I ain't square-dancin' with you people!"). The end was a little ridiculous, to the point where the Nic Cage lookalike deserved to get hooked. Actually, his idiotic stunts throughout almost took some of the fun out of the movie (you'd expect that bit with him using the police car microphone to be funny but it just made me want to punch the guy). And then there's... Bev D. She's no Kelly from Blades, I can assure you. Is she on heavy drugs or mentally... "special"? Whichever one she is doesn't exactly justify her acting like one of the robo-whores from Westworld. And points to whoever came up with the killer's triggering mechanism. It may be highly implausible (is it?) but it's downright genius for a movie with this limited budget. Cheesy / campy as ALL HELL, poorly shot at times, poorly acted at others but too much fun to miss.
See this!
Movie #2, around 2:00 AM - The Pit and the Pendulum (1991 / directed by Stuart Gordon)
Okay okay okay... headache time: they already made a "horror" movie about the Spanish Inquisition (which I hated) called Witchfinder General. Apparently, we didn't feel enough pain / slid into neglecting the suffering of the victims after the 80's slasher smörgåsbord so we (apparently) needed an update from Stuart Gordon. Honestly, what's the freaking pont: religion? Was religion that out of control in 1990? Is this some kind of commentary on the sex scandals of Jim Bakker and all those other guys who played with hookers? This thing is padded with too much very out of place humor when what it really does well is fiddle on and on and on with very hard-to-watch scenes of violence- mostly against the couple you see in the pic above. But... what makes this the slightest bit relevant? I guess you could call this a revenge film, but look at the means by which this movie considers it righting the wrongs of the bad characters. The husband gets in a sword fight and spills hot water on Stephen Lee in a few fleeting seconds during an action scene which - like the humor - wasn't warranted and... that's supposed to correct these assholes burning and boiling and slicing and viciously choking people to death? Unlike the heroic husband, Frances Bay gets in a few good licks though- the gun powder scene is one of the movie's few well-earned pleasures. And the scene where she tries to teach wife Maria how to use magic to escape the torture was a good idea that they abandoned in favor of beating her face against a wall and chopping off her tongue. Nice... Glad it was there.
UG!! Anyway, just like was the case with Witchfinder General, Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death was still a far superior film.
Movie #3, around 6:00 AM - Blood and Donuts (1995 / directed by Holly Dale)
I... kinda liked it. It took me awhile, but when it looked like one of them was in danger, I realized that I cared about the characters. And I appreciated the lack of cliches like the love interest being freaked out to discover he was a vampire - so here, they made her the one who just kind of knew all along - or the bad guys just somehow expecting him to be a vampire and therefore, Cronenberg's pistol would actually be a watergun rather than having normal bullets in it. And I loved the cute relationship between the vampire and the cab driver; they weren't exactly friends or like-brothers and there was no cheap homophobia or pointless weirdness. However, the movie is just too darn slow. Every scene takes forever to get where it's going and that itself takes a lot of getting used to. Oh yeah, and awful cover versions of classic songs. Absolute torture on the ears. The ending was a surprise, though. A big one.
Movie #4, around 8:00 AM - The Guardian (1990 / directed by William Friedkin)
This one's really easy to sum up quickly: well shot. The big budget is nice. The acting from the main cast might be good but the story is not interesting. The horror scenes are decent. Fast paced camrawork. The characters are boring as hell but the death scenes and the gore are literally amazing. Worth seeing for 2 scenes alone. But it's not a good movie. The special effects are also very good and it could have been good but it needs a better story and characters who don't make you want to fall asleep. Lastly, there's an entirely pointless moment where the villain is sexually assaulted, viciously beaten, thrown on the ground, and cut up with a knife. Look: I know she's an evil baby-killer. But is the movie trying to make us feel sympathy for her in this moment? Or is it just more open misogyny from director Friedkin? Between this and his Tales from the Crypt episode, it's clear this guy had no respect for women at this time in his career.
Movie #5, around 10:00 AM - The Burning (1981 / directed by Tony Maylam)
Very well shot, the acting is mostly top notch, and there are 2 excellent death scenes. One of which I've pic'd above [
this applies to earlier post from horrordvds.com's thread], neither of which I count as being the unbelievably overrated raft sequence. Apart from that- the music score isn't anything special, the story is shit, the characters have no character (which leaves all the charisma on the actors and most of them have none), there's enough pointless sleaze to fill the grand canyon, and it's infrequently ever any fun. It's stupid yet not compellingly stupid. However, the opening did show some promise and I did laugh once during the Burn Unit scene- although, I doubt that was its' intended reaction.
Movie #6, around 12:00 PM - Session 9 (2001 / directed by Brad Anderson)
I don't know whether to judge it as a ghost film or as a "mindfuck" movie. I think as the latter, some things probably don't add up. As a ghost film, it's just about done to perfection (fuck The Blair Witch Project; this is how you do it). I thought I was going to be bored in the first 4 minutes but the deeper you get into the building, the more atmospheric it becomes. The music is good, you actually become very interested in the characters, and the ending - even being padded with awful audio flashback clips - is great too. Oh, and... the murders are basically caused by a spilt pot of water? The fetch is pretty far here. But it's well worth the 100 minutes. Love the whole "Billy" thing, pretty damn creepy.
October 2nd
Movie #7, around 4:00 AM - Santa Sangre (1989 / directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky)
Hilariously campy but ridiculous and ultimately pointless art-religious horror film. Here's a thought: if he's going to be driven into the arms of a shemale due to his mother's emasculation... and it turns out his mother was dead the whole time we see him allegedly being made femme enough to go for a wrestler who is all-man except for a dress and a pair of fake-looking tits hung on for decoration... then, there's,
like:
no point. Except to stick on a Psalms poem quote at the end like it means something. Seriously, are we meant to believe his behavior throughout the performance-art section of the movie was inspired by his father's sole taunt of: "you're crying like a little girl"? Not nearly enough believable motivation. However... there is one amazing death scene worth sticking through the first hour for. And it is frequently funny, always outrageous, and pretty stylish. But I simply can't accept a movie this ridiculous as having any true meaning. Even as some kind of circus sideshow. It's a long damn movie.
It bothered me Andre and the puppets didn't try to take back Tunneler's body to bury it or cremate it. I was also bothered by the ending of the film with the new owner of the puppets keeping Blade, Pinhead, and Jester in a cage during drives to places to hold puppet shows and lets Torch sit in the passenger seat. Surprisingly, Torch didn't care his fellow puppets are locked up. Throughout the first film and during this second film up to that moment, the puppets looked after each other like a family. Torch must have a big ego thanks to his flame shooting arm.
