ghoulieguru Reviews

The Machinist (2004)

Lean, Mean Thriller Machine

[6/10 · 8 February 2006]

With the Machinist, director Brad Anderson has created a love sonnet to Hitchcock. If the fact that it has Christian Bale in it rather than Jimmy Stewart throws you off the scent, all you have to do is listen to the music. The soundtrack to the Machinist sounds like Bernard Herman's greatest hits. This purposeful tip of the hat to Hitchcock, and Christian Bale's impressive portrayal of a man who is slowly losing his mind make the Machinist worth watching, despite the fact that it boasts one of my least favorite twist endings.

Bale plays a tortured man who hasn't been able to sleep for a year. The cause of his insomnia is unknown, but it's taking a toll on his health. To say that he's lost a lot of weight is an understatement. Bale is positively skeletal in this movie. As he struggles to maintain his sanity and keep his job at the machine shop, Bale tries desperately to understand why he can't sleep.

Things take a turn for the worst when Bale meets the new guy at work. He's a bald-headed, leering man who lost his hand in some kind of unfortunate circumstance, and now has two of his two sewed on his hand in place of fingers. This guy has a weird way of showing up just when something bad is going to happen, and pretty soon Bale thinks that Baldy has got it in for him. If you've seen SECRET WINDOW, HAUTE TENSION or even HIDE AND SEEK, the big twist of this movie will come as no surprise. Typically, I think this revelation is overused and cheap, which is why I didn't give this movie a higher rating, but at least the Machinist is done with some style.

Taking into account the undeniable Hitchcock style that Brad Anderson gave this movie, and the remarkable acting from everyone involved, especially Christian Bale, I would recommend this movie to horror fans who are interested in thrillers that move a little slower but are thick with atmosphere. The ending is a bit of a letdown, but as with HAUTE TENSION, the telling of the tale justifies at least one viewing.

Legion of the Dead (2005 Video)

Legion of the Lousy

[1/10 · 5 February 2006]

With the exception of the newly resurrected Full Moon movies, the Asylum distributes and produces the absolute worst horror movies on the video store shelves. The Asylum's legacy of lousiness continues with their Mummy epic, Legion of the Dead.

This movie is basically like Queen of the Damned with mummies instead of vampires and with Bruce Boxleitner and the kid from Gremlins instead of Aaliyah. This tepid tale begins when a couple of dirt bikers stumble on an ancient Egyptian burial tomb somewhere in the mountains of Los Angeles. You heard me right, this ancient Egyptian burial chamber is in the foothills of Los Angeles. Somehow those wacky Egyptians managed to make it all the way to California with a bunch of their loot and sarcophagus with a Queen Mummy in it. The Gremlins kid (can't remember his name) is an archaeologist who is summoned to the site after the two dirt bikers tell the cops about what they found.

The Gremlins guy leads a team on an expedition into the burial chamber. There's ten minutes of Indiana Jones shenanigans as our intrepid explorers make their way through into the tomb. Poisoned arrows, cryptic warnings written in hieroglyphs and trap doors abound. They make it through a winding maze of styrofoam cave walls and find a sarcophagus with an ancient Queen Mummy in it. Of course, they awaken this mummy from her slumber and it turns into an episode of Scooby Doo. The Queen Mummy reanimates a bunch of her mummy pals and they make short work of our explorers.

As far as the story goes, it doesn't get any more cookie cutter than this. It's shot on someone's camcorder, just like all the other offerings from the Asylum. The acting is cardboard. Overall, it's just a complete waste of time. My hope is that all lovers of horror movies will stop renting and buying these cheap, irritating movies from the Asylum. Maybe if they realize that they can't make a profit churning out these foul flicks, they will stop making them. I sure hope so.

The Mangler Reborn (2005 Video)

The Mangler Re-Bored

[2/10 · 31 January 2006]

Reggie Bannister from the Phantasm movies makes his move away from Don Coscarelli in this pitiful would-be sequel to the Mangler. The original, which was based partially on a Stephen King short story, was about a laundry machine that ate people. Robert Englund played the psychotic owner of the laundry who fed people to the machine. It was basically Little Shop of Horrors with a laundry machine instead of a plant.

This one jettisoned the supernatural laundry machine and went for a more straightforward serial killer tale. The story is about a repairman who buys the old Mangler on eBay and starts restoring it in his basement. Once the machine nears completion, it possesses him and turns him into its minion. The rest of the movie is about this repairman going around and getting meat for his machine. There's a lot of screaming done by women as he hits them repeatedly with a hammer. I have to wonder about the two guys that wrote and directed this movie, and where this misogynistic streak is coming from.

It seems like the writers/directors were going for that unrelenting Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Haute Tension, Saw, Hostel kind of vibe that seems to be all the rage these days. But the Mangler Reborn wound up being unrelenting only in its capacity to bore me.

The Jacket (2005)

Full Mental Jacket

[6/10 · 31 January 2006]

I can sum up this movie for you in one sentence: 12 Butterfly Monkeys Flew Over Donnie Darko's Ladder.

The Jacket is really a stew made from pieces of Donnie Darko, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the Butterfly Effect, 12 Monkeys and Jacob's Ladder. The thing about this stew is that the flavors all mesh nicely, and don't compete too much. It's a little bland, and probably doesn't deserve a full-on BAM! but it's better than canned soup.

This movie is a weird kind of psychedelic time travel paranoid thriller. Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) is a soldier in Desert Storm, and he gets shot in the head. Flash forward to years later, he's wandering down a lonely stretch of road and he runs into a little girl and her mother who are broken down by the side of the road. He fixes their car and continues on his way, until he's picked up by some guy who goes on to shoot a highway patrolman and frame Jack for the murder. Jack is found guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to treatment at a mental facility. The head doctor (Kris Kristofferson) utilizes some strange methods in his attempted treatment of his patients. The orderlies strap Jack into a straight jacket, fill him full of drugs, and stick him in a morgue drawer for 8 hours.

While Jack is in the drawer, he somersaults through time to find the little girl that he helped by the side of the road all grown up now. They fall in love, and she tells Jack that he died inside the mental institution. Now Jack has to figure out how he died and who killed him before time catches up with him. Basically, every time they take Jack out of the drawer, he knows a lot of stuff about the future that he shouldn't know.

It's a fairly interesting little concept, and it would probably be a lot more entertaining if it didn't feel so familiar. It's well-acted and directed with style. I can't find any flaws with the execution of the movie, and the production is slick and glossy. The main problem with the movie, and the reason I'm not giving it a higher grade, is that it's too familiar. That familiarity comes from having seen elements of the Jacket in all the movies I mentioned above. If the Jacket had been made before Donnie Darko or 12 Monkeys, it might have felt vanguard and unique, but as it is, this just winds up being a little bland for my taste.

Jack O'Lantern (2004)

Like Stale Halloween Candy

[1/10 · 27 January 2006]

Don't worry, I'm not really going to spoil anything for you. This old pumpkin movie is already pretty rotten and spoiled.

A bunch of kids are drunk and then kill somebody on the road. Years later, there's a stalker going around with a pumpkin on his head killing all the kids that were involved. It's like I Know What You Did Last Summer with a pumpkin man. This shoddy production is shot on somebody's home video camera with a bunch of actors who have been recruited from the local shopping mall. It's not really worth spending any more time on it. It's a waste of time for me to write, and a waste of time for you to read. Go ahead and pass this one by, trick or treaters, this movie is like the stale candy that somebody had left over from three years ago.

Ice Queen (2005 Video)

Not Thawed Out

[2/10 · 27 January 2006]

So, the set up for this thing is that some scientist has found a cave woman from prehistoric times frozen in the ice. She's the Ice Queen of the title. While en route back to civilization, the Ice Queen comes to life and rips through the pilot's throat, causing the plane they were traveling in to crash into the side of a mountain. The crash causes an avalanche, which deposits the plane, along with several tons of snow, into the main lodge of a ski resort.

It's late in the season, so there aren't a lot of people in the ski resort, but the few people that there are get stuck in the main lodge with a newly revived blue monster lady. The Ice Queen gets free and starts prowling around, killing ski bums and bimbos until she comes across this one ski patrol guy that she thinks is cute or something. He does his best to stop her rampage until they can put her back into cold storage.

This is like a low budget version of THE THING made by people that have seen too many Godzilla movies and teen sex comedies. The worst scenes of the movie are when the granulated sugar avalanche consumes all these little train villages, and the wet t-shirt contest that takes up the first twenty minutes of the movie. If you're looking for a movie that combines gratuitous nudity with really cheap production values, look no further. Ice Queen is for you.

The Devil's Rejects (2005)

See? Even Zombies Can Learn

[6/10 · 20 January 2006]

The follow up to House of 1000 Corpses winds up being a superior movie to its predecessor. With his second outing as a director, Rob Zombie has definitely come into his own as a storyteller. The movie has style and an energy that brings to mind Sam Peckinpah and some of the maestros of violence from the 70's. Even if you don't generally go for serial killer movies, you might take something out of this movie watching experience.

Now, I have to say that I found the first hour of this movie incredibly hard to watch, and I was about to turn it off. I started off hating the Devil's Rejects for all the reasons that I hated House of 1000 Corpses. At some point, these types of movies stop being horror films and become something akin to gore-driven porn. To me, there is a distinction between horror films and violent, gory exploitation films. In the simplest terms, I feel that a horror film should scare the viewer. I think we can all agree that causing a feeling of deep fear or dread is supposedly the intention of a horror film. With most serial killer movies, I can't say that I feel a moment of real fear. I feel like I'm watching a graphic, unrated version of the 11:00 news. Violent exploitation films like Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, or the Hills Have Eyes don't really terrify the audience, but merely glorify violence and seem to revel in the torture and rape of women. I haven't seen Eli Roth's Hostel yet, but I'm sure it's more of the same. If anything, it makes me wonder if maybe the directors of these films should invest in some therapy and save the rest of us from having to watch their excrement.

Occasionally I watch one of these films, and it starts out like any other violent exploitation movie, but then takes a turn and becomes interesting. This is how I felt about the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Haute Tension. While both of those movies started out like a standard gore porno (gorno?!), they wound up being more complex than I had originally thought. That was the case with the Devil's Rejects.

As I mentioned, the first part of the movie is difficult to watch, and it does seem like Rob Zombie is gleefully wallowing in the violence and depravity he's creating. In fact, he seems to take so much pleasure in how disgusting he can be that it made me question what Rob would do if anything bad ever really happened to him. I mean, this guy is a rock star. How bad could his life be? I'd be willing to bet that if a serial killer got a hold of his wife or his child, that he wouldn't think this kind of thing was so entertaining. Regardless, the movie was shot with a lot of style and had a soundtrack that would make Quentin Tarantino proud. The music is eerily appropriate throughout and adds a powerful counterpoint to the violence you're viewing on screen. So, even though I wasn't enjoying the first hour of the movie and I thought it was basically a porno movie, I had to give Rob points for crafting a really glossy porno. But still, I was getting ready to turn it off...

Now, I don't want to give away anything for those of you who haven't seen it, but I will say this: with the Devil's Rejects, the end justifies the means. While I hated Rob Zombie for dragging me through an hour of depravity and seemingly pointless violence, I loved him all the more for the way he twisted around my concept of good guys and bad guys. By the end of the movie, I was fully engrossed and I found myself having all kinds of strange feelings about the three remaining members of the Firefly clan and the Sheriff who hunted them down. As much as I hate to admit it, I don't think that the ending of the movie would have been nearly as powerful without the violent and disturbing build up of the first hour. End analysis: After House of 1000 Corpses, I thought this retired rocker was just a zombie, both in name and in intelligence. But I take it all back. I think this Zombie has a brain. This is not the work of some wanna-be bad boy who wants to be shocking. This is not an exercise in depravity with no real purpose. This is actually a well-crafted story by Rob Zombie, who apparently has something to say after all.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)

A Better Beginning

[6/10 · 20 January 2006]

Every employee at Morgan Creek should be taken out into the courtyard and flogged for burying this movie and letting Renny Harlin unleash his worthless Exorcist prequel on the world in its place. There are certain ideas and concepts that are just meant to be movies, and doing a prequel to the Exorcist is one of them. I really can't understand how anyone could possibly screw up the story. Even Michael Bay should have been able to make a good Exorcist prequel. But Renny Harlin did the impossible, he made a bad Exorcist movie and all the while they had Paul Schrader's version hidden away in a closet.

Now, this is not a great movie, and it doesn't live up to its full potential, but it's not as much of a crime against nature as the version that was released theatrically. If the producers had actually supported Schrader and helped him trim this movie down a bit, we might have had the prequel we were all hoping for.

For anyone who doesn't know the saga of the Exorcist prequel, I will give you the Cliff Notes version. Warner Brothers and Morgan Creek decided to make a prequel to the Exorcist that would basically be the story of a young Father Merrin and how he came to be the Exorcist. Yes, I thought to myself when reading about this... good idea, finally. They hired Caleb Carr, a novelist best known for his book the Alienist, and Paul Schrader a director who's best known for writing Taxi Driver. Okay, now I was starting to get excited. Paul went and shot his movie, but ran into problems when he screened the movie for Morgan Creek and the big brains decided that it was too long and not scary. Caleb Carr started screaming that Schrader was destroying his words. They fired Paul Schrader and brought Renny Harlin in. Renny reshot 90% of the movie and put his hack fingerprints all over it. That was the version that was released theatrically with a pretty dismal box office response.

Meanwhile, Paul Schrader's version languished on the shelf until recently. This movie follows the same basic premise as the Renny Harlin version. Father Merrin suffers a crisis of faith after being forced to watch as Nazis massacre an entire village. He's in Africa and he discovers an entire church that has been buried in the desert. But while the plot line is basically the same, the two movies couldn't be more different. In Schrader's film, Merrin is a tortured man who's struggling with complex issues of faith. In Renny Harlin's film, Father Merrin is more of swashbuckling archaeologist like Indiana Jones. That's basically the difference between the two movies. One is a drama, and one is an adventure. The problem is that neither film is really a horror film. Schrader's film, while certainly more brooding and esoteric, is not that frightening. The possessed boy in DOMINION is nowhere near as scary as Regan was. That might be because there isn't really any identifiable threat in the movie. We all know that Father Merrin is going to survive whatever hellish experience he goes through, because he shows up in the later movie. So, since we know our main character is going to live, there's not a lot of peril in the movie. We are able to disengage from it and never really feel frightened or worried that Father Merrin might not make it out of this experience alive. This is a flaw that should have been handled in the concept stage. This is not a fault that can be pinned on Paul Schrader. In fact, I think Schrader did everything he could with the material he was given. It's still a flawed concept, and the producers obviously didn't give Schrader any money for CG because the hyenas in this movie look like they came right out of a video game. That's the only reason that I didn't give this movie a higher score, and it has nothing to do with Schrader or his direction. It has everything to do with a poorly conceived concept and a lack of care on the part of the producers.

The saddest thing about the Saga of the Exorcist Prequel is that Morgan Creek and Warner Brothers missed a great opportunity and we, the horror fans, are the ones who suffer for it. This movie is definitely worth a rental if you are a fan of the Exorcist series, and if you felt betrayed by Renny Harlin's movie. This will ease the sting just a little bit for you. I don't know if I can recommend adding this movie to your collection, because it still has some problems. Despite the fact that none of the fault can be pinned on Paul Schrader, this movie still ends up getting a C+ in my grade book. It's better than Renny Harlin's, but still not as great as it could have been if the producers had stood behind Paul Schrader from the beginning.

House of Wax (2005)

Return to the Dork Castle

[4/10 · 19 January 2006]

Dark Castle continues its assault on the horror genre with this little gem starring Paris Hilton. The plot line concerns a bunch of teenagers on their way to somewhere, who get waylaid in a strange little town where everything is made out of wax. A more apt title for this travesty would have been Town of Wax, but then they couldn't have claimed it was a remake of an old Vincent Price classic. As it is, this movie shares nothing with the original except for the name. This was clearly just a case of Dark Castle wanting to capitalize on the success of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, so they did their best to copy it note for note, substituting Elisha Cuthbert for Jessica Biel. I think Jessica and Elisha might be wearing the exact same tank top though.

Just pathetic. Even when he was alive, I don't know if anyone would have called William Castle a genius, but he was well known for coming up with cheap gimmicks to promote his movies like skeletons dropping from the ceiling of the theater at a key moment. If William Castle could see how badly Dark Castle is tarnishing admittedly shlocky name, I think he might claw his way out of the grave and strangle the whole lot of them. Rather than taking William Castle's name and making poor remakes of his movies, Joel Silver and his happy band of idiots should have set their sites on Ed Wood. He was probably more their style. Then they could have called their company Dark Wood. You know, come to think of it, I better shut up. Knowing how these guys think, they might think that was a good idea. That's all we need, a remake of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The Hollow (2004 TV Movie)

Not Entirely Hollow, Not Solid Either

[4/10 · 18 January 2006]

File this one under: Great concept, mediocre execution. The story is about Ian Cranston, a High School kid who carries the bloodline of Ichabod Crane. As soon as Ian moves into Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman returns to life to finish the Cranes off once and for all. Kind of a neat little idea, and it could have been fun movie but the concept got lost somewhere along the line.

It's hard to pinpoint what's wrong with the Hollow. For the most part, it's shot pretty well. There are some scenes that are really dark and grainy, but for the most part the movie looks better than most of these low budget horror flicks. I can't really fault the actors, even though Nick Carter is nobody's idea of a talented thespian and whoever thought casting Judge Reinhold as a football coach should be fired immediately. But the movie is carried pretty solidly by hottie Kevin Zegers and the girl from 8 Simple Rules. The real standout as far as acting goes is Stacey Keach, who really seems to be having a lot of fun with the role of the old grave keeper. I can't fault the writing, because while it's a little clichéd at times, there is a solid pacing to the story.

I think the problem with this movie is that it doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. Part horror movie and part after school special, it winds up feeling like an R.L. Stine Goosebumps episode with some nudity in it. The Hollow's biggest flaw is that it's uneven. The next biggest flaw is the way the Headless Horseman looks. He has a head, for one thing... and it's a completely ridiculous looking pumpkin head. As it is, the Hollow is worth a rental if you're a fan of the old Disney cartoon and are interested in seeing a modern day retelling of the story. I don't plan on adding it to my collection, but if you have kids that are like in their early teens, they might enjoy watching it on Halloween night.

High Tension (2003)

High on Tension, Low on Logic

[7/10 · 18 January 2006]

In High Tension, two girls go out to a farmhouse to study for the weekend. When a psychotic killer shows up on the doorstep and starts ripping his way through all the inhabitants, it's up to one of the girls to survive and try to free her friend from the killer's clutches. What follows is a graphically violent survival horror movie that is positively relentless. This movie is like Texas Chainsaw Massacre on crack. What I really liked about it was that the heroine made good choices throughout the movie. This is not the typical horror movie bimbo that screams and trips over nothing when she's running away from the bad guy. By the end of the movie, this girl has turned into a bit of a maniac herself. At one point, she reminded me of Patricia Arquette's character in TRUE ROMANCE, when she kills James Gandolfini. Bottom line is, this girl has got brains, and she's got guts. Points go to the French director for creating a female protagonist that defies expectations and conventions. The filmmakers also get points for good cinematography, writing and editing. All in all, this is a glossy and polished production. However, there is one flaw that keeps it from being a perfect horror movie.

If you plan on seeing this movie, and you want to be surprised by the twist, stop reading now.

The one and only problem with Haute/High Tension is that it uses a twist that has recently become my biggest pet peeve. This is the latest in a long line of movies where the main character is actually the killer but doesn't know it. Like HIDE AND SEEK, SECRET WINDOW or THE MACHINIST, the whole movie is a build up to the big reveal that the person we thought was the hero of the movie turns out to be the bad guy. In general, I think this is an incredibly cheap way to end a movie. To me, it ranks right up there with having the whole story turn out to be a dream. These are Twilight Zone endings that worked for Rod Serling back in the 50's or whatever, but they're completely telegraphed and transparent these days. The other problem that springs from this ending is that it calls into question some of the things that happened earlier in the movie. The story doesn't hold up to the scrutiny unfortunately. For example, there's a sequence where the killer is chasing our heroine in a car. She's driving a sports car and he's driving a truck. It makes you wonder, if she's really the killer, who's driving the car? There are quite a few holes like this that don't hold up afterward.

Still, despite this hokey and contrived ending, High Tension is an effective and creepy thriller. It's definitely worth a rent, and you might even consider adding it to your collection after you know the twist because it's crafted so well.

Hide and Seek (2005)

Tired and Weak

[4/10 · 17 January 2006]

Robert DeNiro seems intent on ruining what's left of his career by being in poorly constructed and conceived horror movies. First, there was Godsend, now Bobby follows up with another mediocre effort in Hide and Seek. This movie is only partially saved from being complete garbage by Dakota Fanning and one of the alternate endings that you can find on the DVD. In the end, it suffers from the use of what is rapidly becoming the most overused horror film twist of the century.

The story is about a single dad (DeNiro) who's struggling to bring up his daughter (Fanning). She's a troubled little girl who has apparently made up an imaginary friend to help her get cope with her lack of a mother figure. The problem is that Dakota's imaginary friend keeps threatening to hurt people if Daddy doesn't start paying more attention to Dakota. The body count starts to rise when Daddy tries to send Dakota to a shrink and get her to play nice with the local Milf's kid. We are led to believe that Dakota has suffered some kind of psychotic break and she is actually doing all the murderous things that her imaginary friend is doing. Throughout, DeNiro plays the patient and exasperated father, trying so hard to understand how his little girl could be so twisted. But this is exactly where the movie goes wrong. I found it really hard to believe that Daddy would be so understanding when his daughter kills the family cat and then shoves the nice blonde hot Milf lady, Elizabeth Shue, out the window. All dad does is send her to her room with no supper.

It turns out that Daddy's lack of reaction to the murders is because of the big plot twist. If you intend on watching this movie and you want to be surprised... well, you're out of luck. The twist is telegraphed pretty early on. But if you want to try and figure it out for yourself, you should stop reading this review now because here comes the big reveal:

Daddy is actually the imaginary friend.

After this weak I'm-the-killer-and-didn't-know-it revelation, we are expected to buy that Daddy was going around killing the cat and shoving Shue out the window and he was completely oblivious to the fact that he was actually the killer. Oh, how I wish that Hollywood would stop using this device. It's so cheap, and it's such a convenient and weak way of resolving the story. You might as well tell me it was all a dream. These movies make me so angry. Just when I was starting to think that the writer was really going to have to be clever to create a solid resolution, it turns into a Twilight Zone episode. When you lead me down the road through this long, taut thriller and then reveal in the end that there really wasn't a bad guy, it's kind of a letdown. It worked in ANGEL HEART, people. That was like twenty years ago. It has not worked in a horror movie since. Well, I take that back. It worked in HAUTE TENSION, but it doesn't work in IDENTITY, SECRET WINDOW, THE MACHINIST and especially not in HIDE AND SEEK.

This lame reveal is so cliché now that I don't even know if you could consider it a twist at all. In fact, I think that this twist might be my new pet peeve, worse even than the Occurrence at Owl Creek I'm-Dead-and-Don't-Know-it reveal. Yes, I think that the I'm-the-killer reveal is just a little bit worse. Like I mentioned at the start of this review, there are several alternate endings that are included on the DVD. There is one ending with Dakota Fanning that almost pulls this movie out of the fire. It still doesn't excuse the use of this tired old twist, but it made me feel less angry. In fact, the alternate ending is the only thing that kept me from giving this movie one star.

Hammerhead (2005 TV Movie)

Like Hitting Yourself on the Head with a Hammer

[1/10 · 16 January 2006]

Where the hell are all these uncharted islands where prehistoric monsters lurk, evil doctors perform their experiments, madmen hold the ultimate karate championship, and the uber-rich hunt humans for sport? I had no idea there were still so many uncharted islands out there, but if you take into account the number of movies that utilize one of these mysterious islands as a location, you'd have to assume that there are at least 50 of these suckers out there. It always winds up feeling so damned convenient and I immediately deduct points from any movie that uses this hackneyed device. Hammerhead is the story of a mad scientist who is conducting experiments on one of these uncharted islands, so the movie already had a lot to make up for before it even began.

The island in this movie used to belong to Dr. Moreau, but has recently been purchased by the Re-Animator himself, Jeffrey Combs. Old Jeffrey is doing some kind of cutting edge stem cell research, which has led him to start working with sharks while searching for a cure for cancer. If that sounds familiar, that's because this is roughly the same basic set-up as the smart shark facility in Deep Blue Sea, not to mention a host of other Nu Image movies. So apparently, Jeffrey's son was dying of cancer which prompted our mad doctor to start experimenting on his progeny. He did some kind of super fancy gene splicing and so forth, turning his son into a shark-man.

William Forsythe leads a crew of unknown actors to the island to look into the doctor's experiments. If someone would have given him a sailor's hat, William would have been a dead ringer for the Skipper from Gilligan's Island. In typical Bond Villain fashion, the doctor decides that all of these intruders would make nice chum for his son. Not chums, like buddies... chum, like shark food. So enter shark-boy who starts stalking the Skipper and his cohorts all over the island. They, of course, make half-hearted attempts to escape and are thwarted over and over again while being chased by a guy in a rubber shark-man suit.

The movie didn't make up any of the points that it lost for taking place on one of those dastardly deserted islands. It's funny that this movie is called Hammerhead, it made me think of an old joke. Why do you hit yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when you stop. That's pretty much how this movie is. The only reason to watch it is because it feels so good when it's over.

GhostWatcher 2 (2005 Video)

Another Clock Watcher

[2/10 · 16 January 2006]

After the horrible experience I had while watching the original Ghost Watcher, I was seriously considering just leaving this one on the shelf. I guess I was in a masochistic mood, because I rented it anyway. Thankfully, this sequel is nowhere near as rotten as the original and I was able to sit through the whole thing without falling asleep or throwing my television out the window. The bar was set pretty low after the last one, so I can't say that I'm surprised that this was a better movie, but better doesn't necessarily mean good and it still had me watching the clock to see when it was going to end.

In Ghost Watcher Deux, this Goth chick gets into a car accident with her mother in which the mom is killed, but the Goth girl survives because she can somehow heal unnaturally fast. After the accident, Goth chick starts hearing voices. She has all these nightmares during class and she's not sleeping well. Her dad is worried about her, so he calls the Ghost Watcher for help. For those of you who didn't see the first movie, the Ghost Watcher a female Ghostbuster who goes around helping people cope with their spectral issues. With the Ghost Watcher's help, the Goth girl finds out that she's actually hearing the names of people who are going to die. From that point on, this movie becomes a low budget version of the Mothman Prophecies.

This sequel is not much of an improvement from a story standpoint, and the acting is just as bad as it was in the first Ghost Watcher movie. However, the production values on this one are slightly better, and it seems like the director is learning something about how to shoot a horror movie. There were a couple moments in this movie that were almost scary, but it never really got there. And points taken off for the use of really horrible music by struggling local garage bands. If the writer/director continues to improve exponentially, maybe by Ghost Watcher 5 or 6 I'll be willing to write a more positive review. For now, the Ghost Watcher series is still lucky to scrape by with two stars.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

Not Guilty

[7/10 · 16 January 2006]

You know, I didn't go see this movie in the theater because everything that I had heard about it led me to believe that it was essentially the Ally McBeal Halloween Special. I wish that I hadn't listened to the haters and actually gone to see this movie on the big screen, because I ended up enjoying it on DVD. My hesitance to see the movie came primarily from the fact that I knew that about half of the movie took place in a courtroom. But what seems like a completely unworkable concept, a courtroom drama with a demon, actually ends up being a fairly effective and creepy horror movie. The Ghoulie Guru Jury finds the Exorcism of Emily Rose Not Guilty of being a bad movie.

The only parts that don't work in this movie are the courtroom scenes. I don't like courtroom dramas, and this one has all the clichéd moments. The impassioned speeches from the defense, the surprise witnesses, the whole bit. I don't like movies where you spend 90 minutes waiting for the verdict to be passed down by the jury. But, if you can get through the courtroom scenes, there are some great moments in this movie. I can't help but think that this movie would have been so much scarier if it had been linear. Most of the scariest scenes are told in flashback, which takes away all their venom. I already know that the priest survives the scary exorcism scenes because he's the one telling the story. It's the same thing that crippled the Exorcist prequel. We all know that Father Merrin survives, so why should we be scared? However, if they had told the story linearly, then the whole structure would have been even stranger. You would have had 45 minutes of a scary movie and then 45 minutes of a courtroom drama. As it is, mixing the two up seems to be the only way to really make this movie work.

In the end, I wound up liking this movie a lot more than I thought I would. I also think it's a better demonic possession movie than either of the Exorcist prequels. The scenes of Emily when she's possessed are almost as scary as some of the better moments from the original Exorcist. I also like the fact that the movie grounded the idea of demonic possession in medical fact, a bit like the old 70's movie THE ENTITY. It's not a perfect horror movie, because the courtroom scenes really do drag the thing to a grinding halt every time, but this is a solid rental for fans of the genre and might be worth adding to your collection if you can't get enough of the demon possession movies.

Frankenstein (2004 TV Movie)

A Half-Formed Creation

[5/10 · 16 January 2006]

Marcus Nispel clearly shows himself to be a talented filmmaker with this film. His Frankenstein has all the style of his Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Without a doubt, the man knows how to shoot a movie. However, despite the striking visuals, this movie winds up feeling a little vacuous. In a way, the movie itself mimics the creature of its title, being the somewhat half-formed, brainless and empty creation of a brilliant but misguided mind. In this case, Marcus Frankenstein started with good intentions and constructed a beautifully shot film, but neglected to put the brain into his creation. This version of Frankenstein suffers because it teeters on the brink of being unique and distinctive, but never really commits. Perhaps it's because it was made for television, and it's clearly been made with a strong PG aesthetic in mind.

This story is not as much of a straightforward adaptation as a revisionist's version of Mary Shelley's novel. Frankenstein himself is much more like the Terell character in Blade Runner. He's an egotistical, megalomaniac named Helios. Even with its departure from the standard Frankenstein story, this version feels much more in line with the tone and intention of Shelley's novel than most of the past cinematic versions of Frankenstein. Even keeping the tone intact, the story operates on a completely different engine, acting like a version of Seven, with Parker Posey playing the detective who is hunting down one of Frankenstein's psychotic creations.

While I'm on the subject, I need to vent momentarily. Parker Posey really is one of the worst actresses around. I used to like her when she was the quirky girl in movies like Best in Show. But her ridiculous vampire queen in Blade: Trinity and her laughable portrayal of a shotgun-toting detective in this movie have made me lose all respect for her. But not even Parker's silly acting can completely ruin this movie. Although it does feel a little thin at points, this is still an interesting and somewhat new approach to an old myth, beautifully shot and edited by Marcus Nispel... who may be a modern day Frankenstein.

Eternal (2004)

Bathing Beauty's Basic Instinct

[5/10 · 14 January 2006]

This is a pretty good pseudo-vampire thriller along the lines of the Hunger. It takes historical fact, sex parties and obsession with the taboo and blends them all into fairly decent thriller. The basic storyline is about a cop who's wife goes missing. As he attempts to find out what happened to her, he gets drawn deeper and deeper into the fetishistic world of a dangerous woman who turns out to be Elizabeth Bathory, the famed countess who bathed in human blood to keep her youth. Eternal combines elements of the Hunger, Eyes Wide Shut and Basic Instinct into one movie. Strangely enough, the combination is not entirely unpalatable.

Acting is fairly solid throughout and the movie has some strong cinematography. The director makes some interesting choices and I think the only thing that I hold against him is the fact that he seems to have the same girl-on-girl fixation that so many other guys have. As a result, I had to watch a few more lesbian sex scenes than I would have liked, but they weren't too graphic and most of them ended quickly. I don't know if I would classify this as a horror movie, but if you're looking for a sexy thriller with a little bit of a bite to it, you might enjoy ETERNAL.

Devon's Ghost: Legend of the Bloody Boy (2005 Video)

Strike Three... You're OUT!

[1/10 · 13 January 2006]

I'm completely confused by the title of this movie. For one thing, there is no ghost. For another thing, I don't know who the Bloody Boy is. This is one of those horror movies that you watch and wonder seriously if there was ever a script for it, or if they just kinda made it up as they went along. The story concerns a High School where there's a legend about some kind of murderer who dresses up in a baseball uniform.

This guy makes a weapon out of a bat with a saw blade and goes around killing a bunch of hapless teenagers. It's your basic wanna-be Kevin Williamson slasher with a Baseball Fury from the Warriors. Clichés and boredom follow. All of the high school students are in their thirties, the guys have receding hairlines, and the Asian kid knows karate. Since there is no ghost, it's clearly trying to be a Kevin Williamson movie, and I have no idea what the Bloody Boy is, I've thought up a more appropriate title: I Know What You Did Last Baseball Season.

No script for the movie... Strike one!

Clichéd teen characters who are actually in their 30's... Strike two!

Karate fight between the Asian kid and the Baseball Fury... Strike three! You're outta there!

Desperate Souls (2005)

Evil Dud

[1/10 · 13 January 2006]

In DESPERATE SOULS, a bunch of teenagers who go for a hike in the woods are possessed by demons and they start killing each other. The basic storyline is like EVIL DEAD but this movie has no style whatsoever and doesn't have the benefit of Sam Raimi's direction. This is more like Evil Dud.

I'm surprised that this awful movie wasn't made and distributed by the Asylum. It had all the shoddy production values, cardboard acting and horrible video camera quality of most Asylum movies. The storyline was extremely hard to follow, and after a while I just stopped trying to make sense of it. I'm not even sure exactly how or why these teens were possessed by demons. There's a vague reference to an ancient book of Druidic magic, which I guess serves the same purpose that the Necronomicon did in Evil Dead.

To give you an idea of how flaccid and forgettable this movie is, I can't even tell you how it ended. This should be filed with every movie from the Asylum and CreepFX under Complete Waste of Time and Money.

The Gingerdead Man (2005)

Cookie Cutter

[2/10 · 13 January 2006]

Another lame movie from the newly resurrected Charles Band and Full Moon, this is basically just CHILD'S PLAY with a cookie instead of a doll. Gary Busey overacts for the entire 10 minutes that he's actually in the film as a grimacing, murdering maniac who returns from beyond the grave to possess a gingerbread man.

From that moment on, the story revolves around the owners of a bakery trying to escape from the bakery while the gingerbusey tries to kill them while making lame Freddy Kreuger one-liners. This is almost bad enough to be enjoyable if you watch it after drinking a bottle of whiskey, but then chances are it would just put you to sleep.

I've said it before in my reviews Full Moon's other recent flops like DOLL GRAVEYARD and DECADENT EVIL, but it bears repeating. Band should be banned from making any more horror films. The really sad part is that I used to like Full Moon movies. They were just bad enough to be enjoyable, and I have quite a few of the Full Moon movies from the 90's sitting on the shelf with my Troma flicks. But these recent movies are poor and shoddy in comparison, and they lack the humor and campiness that the early Full Moon flicks had. These recent ones aren't worth the time it takes to watch them, much less review them.

Dead Meat (2004)

Meat Loaf

[2/10 · 12 January 2006]

Mad cow disease finally gets its own horror flick with this latest offering from Fangoria and the Irish Film Board. In this case, this ultra-violent strain of mad cow disease can be passed on to humans, turning them into zombies. It's hard to think of this set-up as being anything but a rip-off of 28 DAYS LATER with cows instead of monkeys being the initial carrier of the infection.

So this bovine infection starts causing people to attack each other in rural Ireland. Maybe I'm just getting numbed by all the zombie movies, but this one seemed like a weak attempt to capitalize on the zombie craze. Unfortunately, I think that the expiration date on zombie movies may be coming soon, if it's not already passed.

There's one pretty good moment where this girl sucks out a guy's eye with a vacuum cleaner, but otherwise this is a pretty standard zombie flick. You just can't make the same old zombie movie and expect people to be scared. You have to find a way to make it unique. Look at poor George Romero, who returned to the genre that he helped create, only to find mediocre box office success. As much as I hate to admit it, it might be time for filmmakers to take a little break from zombie movies, at least until they can find a fresh approach.

This dead meat is not fresh or very nutritional. It's more like meat loaf. When you've got meat that's about to go bad, sometimes the only thing you can do is mix it up with other ingredients and make it into meat loaf.

Doll Graveyard (2005)

Dull Graveyard

[2/10 · 12 January 2006]

Charles Band invites you into his Dull Graveyard...

This movie starts with a little girl playing with a bunch of dolls. She mistakenly bumps into a table and breaks a vase. Her father comes downstairs and decides to punish her by forcing her to bury her little buddies in a grave outside. She somehow trips and falls into the grave, killing herself. Dad buries the daughter with her beloved toys. Flash forward to thirty years later, a new family has moved into the house. The youngest son is a nerdy geek who likes to collect action figures. Imagine his joy at discovering a whole gaggle of antique dolls buried in his back yard! These dolls come to life and start protecting their new owner by killing everyone that ever picked on him. There are no spoilers here, I'm not giving away anything that isn't on the back of the DVD case.

Charles Band returns to what he knows best, making evil puppet horror movies. But just because this is what he knows best, doesn't mean he's any good at it. This is really just a reboot of Puppet Master and Demonic Toys with a new set of evil dolls. The production is shoddy, shot on a cheap DV camera with horrible lighting and a soundtrack that someone did on a Casio keyboard from 1982. Not to mention the fact that the puppets are the best actors in the movie.

Ever since Charles Band came out of retirement or hiding, the Blockbuster shelves have been graced with horrible Full Moon movies that are a few pegs below what they used to be. Even in his prime, Charles Band was nobody's genius, but time has definitely taken its toll. Titles like DECADENT EVIL, DOLL GRAVEYARD and THE GINGERDEAD MAN prove that you can't keep a hack director down. Band is back, folks.

Dead & Breakfast (2004)

Zombie Horror Picture Show

[5/10 · 8 January 2006]

Heralded as the American answer to Shaun of the Dead, this horror comedy is a hit and miss affair. It's not quite as funny or as clever as Shaun of the Dead, but what it does have going for it are some good performances, stylish directing and a guitar-picking narrator who serves as a Hillbilly Crypt Keeper.

The movie starts off like so many other teen horror movies. A bunch of twenty- somethings on their way to someplace. It gets late and they decide to find a place to stay overnight. They stop at a local gas station, which serves as an introduction to our narrator. He's a guitar-picking gas station attendant who sings about what's happening in the movie. At first, he seemed like a completely bizarre and incongruous addition to the narrative, but after a while I found myself thankful that he was in the movie. His catchy little ditties wound up being the glue that held the rest of this flick together.

Our heroes check in to a local B&B, which is inhabited by a strange cook and a weird proprietor. I have to admit, at this point I started waiting for the cast from the Rocky Horror Picture Show to turn up, and then they would all start doing the Time Warp. Soon thereafter, one of the guests opens a magical box and becomes a zombie. The movie quickly becomes the musical version of Night of the Living Dead.

As far as zomedies go, this one is on par with UNDEAD, not as good as SHAUN OF THE DEAD. It's got some funny moments, and it's directed in an interesting style. Borrowing from CREEPSHOW, the director did a lot of comic book panel transitions that gave the movie a unique flavor. I guess the director has been hired to do the remake of Creepshow, which isn't so much an inspired choice as an obvious choice after watching this movie. I'm not sure I'd want to remake a George Romero movie, but that's just me. There are some solid performances from the anal retentive nerd-turned zombie and the town Sheriff, and of course the ever-popular Jeremy Sisto. In the end, this is good for a night's rental if you like horror comedies, and might be worth adding to your collection if you enjoyed Shaun of the Dead or Undead.

Cursed (2005)

Howly Crap!

[4/10 · 7 January 2006]

Howly Crap! This may be the worst werewolf movie ever!!

The movie that reunited the Scream Team of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, Cursed is one of several R-rated horror films that suffered from the runaway box office success of PG-13 horror films like the Ring. Apparently, the big brains at Dimension thought that they needed to try to make Wes Craven's werewolf opus into a more teen-friendly film. No doubt this after-market butchering of the film hurt CURSED quite a bit, but sadly it's not the only reason that this movie is a flop. The unrated version that you can get on DVD now is slightly better than what came out in the theaters, but this is still a pretty mangy werewolf movie.

Christina Ricci and her nerdy brother are bitten by a werewolf in the first ten minutes of the movie. After that, we watch as they each gradually discover that they are lycanthropes. Christina Ricci is some kind of talk show producer. As the full moon approaches and she turns more vulpine, Christina starts taking control of her career and standing up to her bitchy rival at work. She's basically like Jack Nicholson's character in WOLF. In the meantime, nerdy brother starts going through his own transformation. His storyline is a pretty straight adaptation of TEEN WOLF. He's the nerdy guy who suddenly becomes a hunk and gets the hot cheerleader. There's also a third member of the family who is infected... the Golden Retriever. The retriever becomes a were-dog-wolf. Yes, it's as ridiculous and goofy as it sounds. I think even with an R-rating, someone should have vetoed the Were-Retriever.

Aside from the Were-Retriever, there are all kinds of other ridiculous characters in this movie. Josh Jackson meanders through every now and then for no particular reason. I still can't figure out for the life of me why Scott Baio is in this movie, playing himself. I kept waiting for him to either show up later in the movie, or be killed in a really disgusting way. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that actors should ever play themselves in a movie. It hardly ever works, unless you're John Malkovich. And then there's our main characters, Christina and her nerdy brother. I guess they're supposed to be orphans. I never really figured out what happened to mom and dad, but they are never seen in the movie. It's like Kevin Williamson was trying to figure out how he could have a brother and sister turning into werewolves without the parents finding out, and so he just decided not to have any parents. Nothing like taking the easy way out there, Kevin.

I think maybe that's the problem with the whole movie. Kevin Williamson spent too much time on Dawson's Creek or something, and ended up writing a werewolf movie that feels like an after school special. This movie is nowhere near as good as some of the indie werewolf movies of the last couple of years like Ginger Snaps or even Dog Soldiers. With the way this movie turned out, I wouldn't be surprised if Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven were found to be responsible for setting the plight of werewolf movies back ten years.

Cup of My Blood (2005)

This Cup is Empty

[2/10 · 7 January 2006]

In CUP OF MY BLOOD, a pornographic photographer finds out that he's meant to be the last Guardian of the Holy Grail. This is basically a soft-core porn version of the DaVinci Code. If you are practicing Christian or are easily offended, you might want to skip this movie and the rest of this review.

The movie starts off like the Ring, but instead of a video tape that kills anyone that watches it, it's an old wooden box which contains the one and only Holy Grail. Everybody that opens the box and sees the Grail dies a horrible death. Enter the pornographic photographer, who is struggling to take artistic pictures for a porn website. His boss is a stereotypical creepy businessman who keeps telling the photographer that he's trying too hard. As you might imagine, this gives the filmmakers plenty of opportunity to show nekked ladies. It spirals into soft-core mediocrity pretty quickly.

Somehow, the photographer realizes that there's a secret code hidden on this porn website called "The Second Cumming". He clicks on a link and is given a series of clues that lead him to discover that the Holy Grail really exists, and that he is the meant to be inducted into a group of Sacred Knights that protect the cup... kind of like the old Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I couldn't really tell if the filmmakers were trying to be clever or shocking and irreverent. The end result is that it's not any of the above. It comes off more as a poorly executed live action version of a South Park episode. This actually might have made a good South Park. I can almost see Cartman web-surfing through a bunch of porn websites and finding out that the cup of Christ exists and that he's supposed to be the Guardian of the Holy Grail. When you start thinking that a horror movie is akin to South Park, you know you're in trouble.

While our porn photographer tries to deny that he's destined to be a Templar Knight, he's almost seduced by a girl that he used to photograph. She turns out to be a demon, or a succubus or something. The succubus tries to get her hands on the Grail, but our porno photographer wins out and protects the cup of Christ from the demonic bimbo. This movie is pretty empty. It's not shocking, it's not controversial, it's just boring. Whether or not you are easily offended, you can skip this one and not feel like you've missed anything. Watch an episode of South Park instead.