April 16-
22
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When you watch it with the right sound system/equipment, this is a wicked viewing experience. Some bad acting, but that's understandably paramount to the Horror film. If you can forgive the acting (Molly Ringwald is terrible here) and the crappy dialogue, the style and music and violence combine together to make one hell of a hilarious, bloody, dark film. I would advise anyone check this out. Oh yeah, Carol Kane gives one of the best performances of a killer I've ever seen in a movie. Those eyes are creepy!
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For a remake, this is definitely not as bad as it gets. But of course, it's not what a great horror film should be. The killer is stupid. There's nothing special about this dipshit. The teen characters are all "picture perfect" cut outs from teen magazines. The children when they are awake are whining, cliched babies. But, I did feel some tension building. The middle of the movie is okay. The part where the girl is alone in the huge, quiet house. All the horror parts are bad, but the build up isn't so bad. It's all because this is a huge, creepy ultra-modern house. Basically, the Tenebre-effect is in full effect here too. So, I like where this movie takes place. It's just that none of the people involved are worth a damn and that's bad stuff.
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It's not a masterpiece but it has its' funny and very enjoyable moments. John Cleese is just great, whatever he does. I was also surprised at just how sexy he was in the movie, completely out-hotting Kevin Kline, whose performance (KK) wasn't as genius as all the critics claimed. It's really his same socially over the top schtick as always. No real difference between this and Dave (other than the size of his chest, he had more muscle mass here). That famous scene where Cleese takes off his clothes in front of the family not knowing they're there is amusing. Not hilarious like I guess the critics thought, but I enjoyed it because Cleese is surprisingly beefy in the movie. The comedy itself wasn't that funny, but the characters were amusing and entertaining.
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I saw most of this very good Australian romantic comedy, Hotel de Love. I really hope this comes out on DVD someday! I want to buy it now.
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Just to give you an idea of what you're in for if you ever watch it, "Proctor" from the Police Academy movies is the main character. Yeah, the bumbling cop-guy with brown hair suck-up to the asshole cop-guy with the gray hair. I didn't really laugh but I've had worse viewing experiences. The funniest scene is the "role playing" scene with Karen Black's corrupt politician's parents. "
What's wrong with that?!" This is low budget and not very good.
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On a whim- checked this one out. I thought it was
great. The scenes where Kakihara and his goons were beating up and mutilating the prostitutes seemed completely unnecessary but, whatever. I at first found it hard to believe that a woman would ask to be raped. But anyway, the movie was about sadomasochism. That was the point of it. People getting pleasure from pain. And it covered all the important bases. And it was very well made.
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Wow... this one's
terrible. There were a couple of good scenes in the movie. The ones where Reggie and "Mike" (played by a different actor) are driving around ghost-towns looking for some sign of The Tall Man. But all the stuff inside the mausoleums, crematoriums, embalming rooms, houses, all that - just plain suck. A lot is ripped off from the first movie. A lot of the new special effects are awful. The new "digger" Golden Ball was kind of cool, and the Tall Man's acid-frying scene was okay, too. But the plot sucked, the acting was nothing special, the religious stuff didn't mean anything... Almost everything was a complete waste. This is the kind of movie that must have invented the "sequels suck" slogan in horror. Because when people say "sequels suck," they're talking about Phantasm II.
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It wasn't very good. The first scene (with the ditsy Elizabeth character) was great, but after she dies it gets very boring and slow. Too much about a boy and his brain (and that was better done in Brain Damage), until he has his Supercrack Hooker Party. That scene is hilarious! From there to the end of the movie, it gets a lot more fun. He brings Elizabeth the Frankenhooker back to life and she is an absolute laugh riot. But since the movie is uneven, about only half of it works. Jeffrey is a boring character. Played by the very lifeless James Lorinz (of Street Trash fame...
sort of).
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And well, what can I say? If you saw it, you probably know it's not very good. But it is definitely better than most of the shitty horror movies coming out these days. There are a lot of stupid mistakes made here. Most of them small - the music is just like every single other horror movie, it's a movie about ghosts so there's a lot of crap about secrets and the main character must "find out" stuff. A real cut 'n paste movie. But the production values / style is very good. The acting is very good. The CGI is surprisingly lowkey and only in one short moment can you tell. The worst thing about the whole movie (other than the fact that you don't see anyone being killed, the most graphic scene is a woman flying through a room while wrapped in a bedsheet) - is that it rips off Se7en (just like James Wan's other movie, Saw), and...
Darkness Falls. WTF?! Darkness Falls was so bad, even the remakes of this decade are better!
