The V/H/S series loses everything interesting about it.
The framing story for this one is a shitty boyfriend wants to make a viral video but hasn't come up with a good idea - and then he realizes a low speed chase between the police and an ice cream truck is going to drive right by. To the frustration of his very attractive girlfriend, he runs out to record it. She somehow gets captured and the boyfriend follows the ice cream truck as it causes mayhem in the city.
Then other stories play. It doesn't even pretend to have the same conceit as the previous films. This is an attempt to freshen up the formula for the series, and I appreciate the attempt, even if I don't like it. It's definitely the worst so far.
A return to form for the V/H/S series. The framing story goes back to the premise 1 and 2 had - the people in the story are watching the tapes. In this case, a SWAT unit assumes they're busting up a drug lab, only to find a lot of dead people with their eyes pulled out and TVs strewn about. The team starts investigating this large and confusing warehouse, only to have each person get caught up in watching a video on one of the screens.
It's kind of a shame the wrap around story sucks. I liked the idea of it, but not the execution. It's chaotic and doesn't make any sense.
So a while back I had to get a colonoscopy, which sucks, and this involved having to stay up overnight drinking Evil Lemonade, and the kid was parent-sitting, and he had a brilliant idea, which was to make me watch Hotel Transylvania, and what I can say is that I enjoyed it under those circumstances but would not have under any other circumstances.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Well, I thought it was better than V/H/S Viral, which isn't saying much. This one is more intentionally humorous and trying for campy, which didn't work more often than it did. Like Viral, it didn't attempt to incorporate the other stories into the wrap-around, and I've decided that this is kind of a fatal flaw for a V/H/S movie.
Latest and last one for now. Instead of a wrap-around story to frame the events, the events on video are intertwined as much as possible. It's trying something different, and I think it worked. I miss the cult of cursed tape traders, though. The segments that worked for me were some of the best of the series, but the ones that didn't really didn't.
I really liked three segments here – One is a straightforward paranormal thriller, the other two were done very cleverly. The first is a found footage tape of seven friends going camping by a remote lake. They all get murdered, a later segment is related to what happens after the murders.
It's found footage of the murderer at a party that explains why the murders took place.
Overall ranking?
2 > 85 > 1 > 94 > 99 > Viral
I wouldn't recommend the series, though. Even the best is a mixed bag, much like most anthology horror.
Just watched a thing on Amazon, called Inside, with Daniel Dafoe. I mainly watched because I like Dafoe. And, he is pretty much the only reason to watch this flick.
An art thief named Nemo breaks into the penthouse apartment of a wealthy art collector, who seems to be on an extended trip.
Something goes wrong, and the burglar alarm system locks the place down. there is no getting out, Nemo's assistant, a voice on his cell phone, bails on him, and he stuck. Nobody else knows about him, and the penthouse is locked away from the rest of the building. The whole story is Nemo trying to figure out how to survive, and escape. and It does not go well for Nemo. He is actually fairly resourceful, and manages to solve a number of fairly hefty challenges, but, Being all alone kinda sucks.
__________________
“Logic is a defined process for going wrong with Confidence and certainty.” —CF Kettering
I originally saw this decades ago, when talking movies with another bad movie fan. I think I mentioned Mrs. Reasons and I liked "The Wedding Singer" and he pointed me to this movie — it features (a lot of) Angela Featherstone. (Come to think of it, the subject of the day might just have been "hot redheads in movies.")
At any rate, I rented it on video tape back in the late 90s and I liked it a lot, I'm pretty sure I rented it once or twice since then, and this week Tubi thought I might like it, and I said, "Hell yes, I do! Put it on the watchlist!"
This is typically put in the horror movie genre, and it's got some of those elements (violence and gore), but it's basically a supernatural romance. If this were a novel, it wouldn't be out of place on the modern fantasy romance bookshelf.
It's a strange film. It presents a world where the demons are just as pious as the angels, and their purpose is to torment the wicked. A particularly pious demon (Veronica, Angela Featherstone) has visions of Earth, and runs away from Hell to go there. She falls in love with a kind-hearted doctor and kills random evil-doers. All her activities get the attention of the police and maybe Heaven, too.
I still am surprised and delighted by this movie. It's not *good* but it's different in an interesting way. It's got that weird theological take on the forces of good and evil. It's got some clever visuals, like the scene where a demon cuts off the tongues of liars. It's OK if the main characters have sex, because she's not bound to human morality, and he's super OK with the horns and wings. I guess I am, too.
An anthology horror with the dubious distinction of introducing Art the Clown (Terrifier 1 & 2) to the world.
The movie starts with two older kids and their sitter post-trick-or-treating. The eldest gets a video tape in his bag. Of course he wants to watch it, and stupidly the babysitter allows it. It's a short where a young lady gets kidnapped by Art and wakes up attached to a long chain that trails off into darkness. Once that ends, the sitter turns it off and sends the kids to bed. Then she stupidly watches the rest of the tape.
There's two more stories, they all are a combination of scary and lame. The middle short is a lady home alone in her new house in the country, whose house gets invaded by lame aliens. The story was a bit tense to start, but once the alien shows itself, it's rather silly. The third story is a lady driving cross country who winds up getting stalked by Art. This has fun and gory parts but it kind of ruins the scariness since Art can be wherever at any time and there's no limit or rules to him. The Terrifier movies, as terrible as they are, provide a much more coherent concept behind the character.
Well, it's cheap, tacky and sometimes gory, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy parts. I can't recommend this unless you really love the Art the Clown character or really dig anthology horror.
Ernest Borgnine is Corbin, a high priest of Satan. He's after the black book, stolen by the ancestors of the Preston family (William Shatner, Ida Lupino, Tom Skerritt). Shatner goes to confront Borgnine, and loses. When Skerritt learns of this, he, his wife (Joan Prather), and his colleague (Eddie Albert) go back to try to save the rest of his family.
Lots of really stupid Satanicky stuff happens, and the good guy (Skerrit) wins, or does he?
This has received a bit of hate over the years, and it's not deserved. I think people were mad because John Travolta has a bit part, and they pushed him up in the credits to sell the film. People were probably also mad because they used Anton LaVey as a consultant, back when that might have scared people.
I've known about this for a while, and I can't believe I waited until now to watch it. This is hugely entertaining schlock. The most important person in the film is Ernest Borgnine, and he's worth the watch.
They don't make westerns like they used to.
Michael Fasbender plays Silas, a low key bounty hunter who befriends a young Scottish lad (kodi Smit-McPhee) who is looking for his Lost Love who came to America with her father.
What the young lad does not know is that his dearest and her father have a price on their heads, and Every Bounty Hunter in the West seems to know about it.
The boy has a number of misadventures along the way, and finally arives at his love's new home trailing a motley crew of misfit furtune hunters.
The requisite shoot-out leaves a lot of bodies, and a viewer who might wonder how it would have worked if Director John Maclean had actually played it for laughs, instead of, well, whatever it was that he was going for - Irony? yeah, maybe that was it.
__________________
“Logic is a defined process for going wrong with Confidence and certainty.” —CF Kettering
Oh man, The Devil's Rain is one of my favorite bad movies, one of my favorites with Ernie Borgnine, and definitely my favorite film with Travolta in it. The latter has one brief speaking role, and that's it.
Who could say no to that face?
__________________
hide, witch, hide / the good folks come to burn thee / their keen enjoyment hid behind / a gothic mask of duty - P. Kantner
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor (2023)
What do you do when you want to make more Hell House, LLC movies, but have effectively completed a trilogy? You find a new creepy place to have a haunted house and link it to the original movies.
Cold-case investigator Margot goes to The Carmichael Manor - the place where two unsolved murders took place. She's given an unprecedented 5 days to conduct the investigation — most people don't stay more than 1 night. She takes along her girlfriend Rebecca and brother Chase. In the first few days, Margot discovers some information that links these murders to both the Abbadon Hotel (the location of the original series) and her own unsolved attempted abduction as a child. Margot becomes obsessed with working through these clues, but Chase and Rebecca are being haunted and they're freaking the fuck out.
In all of these found footage movies, the question they need to answer is, "Why didn't you get out as soon as weird shit starts to happen?" and "Why are you still filming?"
This movie provides a semi-reasonable excuse for most of the people. Margot is obsessed - easy. Chase wants to protect his sister, so he stays. Rebecca wants to get out now, but is reduced to bargaining with her obsessed girlfriend, and each event leads her to delay just a bit more until it's too late.
Why did they keep filming? Well, Margot needs the footage for her website. It's lame, but I get it.
The Hell House LLC series is really creepy right up until the final "scare" where the filming then stops. There's a lot you can do with creepy clown mannequins in surprising places and juggling balls placed in the middle of an empty hallway. Unfortunately the last jump scare always seems to be something grabbing at the protagonists and it's just not as scary as the buildup.
Still, I liked this about as much as the first one, and overall this series impresses me.
Porter Wren (Adrien Brody) is a columnist/investigative reporter for a local newspaper, and both he and the newspaper are past their glory days. The paper just got bought by billionaire Hobbs, and during the celebration Wren meets Caroline (Yvonne Strahovski), a recent widow of a wild and reckless filmmaker. She tempts Porter with access to information about the filmmaker's death and the fact that she looks like Yvonne Strahovski. She easily seduces him and he sets out wrecking his life for her and the story.
At that, a bunch of mysteries pile up, and things get worse and worse for Porter until he finds the clues that lead him to solve what I thought was the central mystery. Once that's done, there was one last twist, and it actually ruined the movie for me with an undeserved ending.
The filmmaker's death is the result of a dare between him and Caroline. She is tasked with having sex with someone unexpected. When she stumbles on the billionaire, she succeeds, but tells him a deeply personal story to gain his trust. It's a secret she hasn't told the filmmaker, and he obsesses over it. Eventually he chains her to the freight elevator of the abandoned building and swallows the key to force her to tell him. She kills him (in self defense, IMO), and then removes the key from his body. She leaves the body to be demolished in the building and cover up any traces.
The filmmaker, also obsessed with recording every element of his life has recorded this, and Porter eventually finds the recording of his death. He confronts Caroline with a copy and then out of curiosity, he also asks her the story. The final twist is this story, and it's extremely undeserved. I think the film would be better if the audience never learns it:
When she was 9, she wanted a horse, begged for it, and her stepdad finally agrees to it if she lets him sneak into her room at night, do whatever he wants, and never tells. She complies, and doesn't get a horse on her birthday. She confronts him and he tells her he didn't lie and she'll get her horse the next day. He takes her to a farm, shows her her new horse, and then shoots it in front of her. The end.
So, Porter's life is ruined, Caroline is getting married to someone who has actual prospects, his wife (Jennifer Beals in a thankless role) and children leave him, and he's probably jobless and broke now, but he got all the answers.
Seriously, that last twist is so undeserved. This movie is based on a book, and I'm mildly curious if this a problem with reducing the story to movie length, or if the structural problems are inherent in the story.
However, I enjoyed this more than it deserves. Strahovski is an A+ Femme Fatale, and I'm always a sucker for a halfway decent mystery.
Watched before I listened to "Kill by Kill" podcast's "Sawgiving" episode.
Supposedly set between Saw 1 & 2, Jigsaw/John Kramer (Tobin Bell) is dying of cancer, and he reaches out to an institute with a radical alternative cure. They have him come to Mexico and get the treatment. He soon discovers this is an elaborate fraud, so he treats the fraudsters to justice, Jigsaw style.
To paraphrase the "Kill by Kill" podcast, they made a real movie! This is one of the few to have a standalone, interesting story. It also does something the other movies don't - Jigsaw (and his acolyte Amanda) interacting with their victims and each other.
The movie kind of ruins it in the last act by going back to the "Saw" series trope of assuming their viewers are all idiots and show a bunch of flashbacks how Jigsaw had everything planned out. This movie in particular didn't need it, I got it well before the flashbacks explained it all in useless detail. Still, this is probably the one I liked the best since the 1st.
Then: Black Christmas (2006)
I put this on because it was 95 minutes and I was curious. It's generally regarded as a terrible remake/reimagining of the classic Black Christmas (1974), and... it is.
Well, it's actually a competently made, fairly thrilling slasher movie, but the characters as written are terrible in comparison to the original. They're all 2000s mean girls, barely distinguishable from each other. They increase up the number of kills in the new one, so there's less time with each of the ladies — oh, each one has a distinguishing feature, one is an alcoholic, one is a southern belle, one is the only "nice girl," but they're all just pretty cardboard cutouts set up to be knocked down in some brutal scene.
Taken on it's own, this is an OK slasher. Compared to the original, it's a shame.
The Dyatlov Pass Incident is a real unsolved incident in 1959 Russia where 9 people died. This movie is a fictional story about a student filmmaker who decides to make a documentary about it, and arranges an expedition with 4 other students to go to the site. Because this is a horror movie, the expedition clearly doesn't go very well.
This was fine. I thought what little they show of the mystery was kind of interesting, but I didn't like the movie overall. We're not really given a lot of opportunity to care about these students, and the lead actress's American accent was uncomfortable.
I remember how upset people were at this movie, and so it always held a bit of fascination for me. It's been somewhat hard to find, and I never worked too hard to find it, so I have never seen it until tonight. Mind you, I've seen Part 2, which rehashes the entire plot, but I've never seen the full film.
The reviews at the time panned it hard, saying it had no redeeming value, but it's really just sort of grimy, sleazy, gory fun. If you like 80s slashers, this is a bit slow, but has an amusing concept and some creative kills. It's not good, but I enjoyed it.
"It's a Wonderful Life" except the main character who wishes not to be born stopped a spree killer the previous year. Since she wasn't there to stop him, the town is now cursed. She teams up with local "weird girl" to try to get her life back.
If slasher movies can be cute, this is kind of cute.
Gary Busey is spree killer who murders a man and his son in a diner and leaves the daughter for dead. He's caught soon after and because they can't afford to film in a courtroom set, we fast-forward two years and learn that the daughter testified against the killer and got him sent to the electric chair. She's now running the family bakery, her mother's drinking, and she's tempted to sell the business because it's all too much.
They get a mysterious deliver of "gingerbread spices", and they use it to make a gingerbread man, who bakes into a living cookie with Gary Busey's voice. The gingerbread man then terrorizes the people in bakery.
This is a cute idea with a dogshit execution. I'm not sure this is actually a movie. It's 60 minutes and long-running credits.
I had two movies on while doing things yesterday, and both were surprisingly not actually crappy:
Influencer (2022)
Social media influencer Madison (Emily Tennant) is alone in a Thai resort, unhappy because her shitheel boyfriend didn't come with, she doesn't know what to do in Thailand, and she's getting frustrated with the influencer lifestyle. She meets another young lady, CW (Cassandra Naud), who shows her around, gains her trust and then... takes over her life. The movie then switches to CW's perspective, living off Madison's credit cards and stalking her next victim. The plot thickens when Madison's boyfriend comes to town looking for her.
Detention (2019)
Set during an extreme authorianism regime in Taiwan in the 1960s, a military school has a secret book club, reading banned books. This is considered criminally seditious, and the entire book club gets caught, Two students, Wei (Jing-Hua Tseng) and Fang (Gingle Wang) return to the school, only it's decayed and filled with ghosts and spirits. The two slowly unravel what happened to the book club. This is a movie about young, stupid love and young stupid idealism, and how that might cause trouble during an authoritarian regime.
The story was pretty hard to follow with it non-linear storytelling and had some janky visual effects, but I generally liked it.
An adaptation of "The Thing on the Doorstep" by H.P. Lovecraft, this is an homage to the Stuart Gordon Lovecraft adaptations from the 1980s.
Dr. Elizabeth Derby (Heather Graham) is a psychologist with a nice, comfortable life, but she gets obsessed with Asa Waite (Judah Lewis), a patient who comes to her with because he's been having out of body experiences. Asa has been exposed to a person/entity who can, through a cursed incantation, transfer themselves to another person. Now that entity has decided it would like to experiment with gender and targets Dr. Darby. Dr. Darby recruits her best friend Dr. Daniella Upton (Barbara Crampton) to help her get out of this predicament.
So, if you're choosing a Lovecraft story for a low-budget horror, you can't go wrong with this story. You just have to rely on getting decent actors, and I think Graham and Lewis do quite well. My main complaint with this movie is the director, who seems to have a really cheesy aesthetic, which sort of works for this story, but I think it's pushed a bit too far.
This was released as Dracula 3D, but I think they changed it when it came out on video.
The fact that it was originally released in 3D explains a lot. For an Argento film, this is boring visually. The lighting is pretty bright and even, not what I was expecting. Otherwise, this is Giallo maestro Dario Argento remaking Bram Stoker's Dracula, but with a lower budget and his own ...sensibilities... applied.
Only for people who want to complete Argento's filmography.
Mace (Patrick Stewart) is a retired government worker who is going into early onset Alzheimer's. He is also paranoid about being assassinated and plays elaborate wargames with his pool cleaner. His wargames and get him in trouble with his daughter and his doctor is worried about loss of cognition, so his daughter requires him to get in-home care. In steps Andi (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), a lovely young woman who is willing to take on such a difficult patient.
Is Mace really in danger from his old boss at the DIA, who is now a major Presidential candidate? Is Andi someone he can trust? Will his pool cleaner stop doing bad old Hollywood impersonations?
I suggest you find out. This is a wild ride, with Stewart going full out, and honestly looking amazing. It's often hard to decide if this wanted to be a comedy or a drama that is accidentally funny at times.
Re: Seen any crappy movies?
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