Alex Aja's remake is actually a step up. It's still a needlessly gory and cold-blooded redux, but I admire his audacity to keep the film as hardcore as the original. Bonus: The mutants actually ARE hideous, and the revenge killings are satisfying in the most brutal extremes.
I only saw the movie once, and other than thinking it wasn't as good as the book, there was only one thing I remembered about it - the little boy's laugh. Why do I remember it? When I saw that movie, it was over at a friend's house where we were having a slumber party. I'd never met her family, and her younger siblings were in bed by the time we got there. Cut to the next morning, I wake up and hear this child laughing that sounded EXACTLY like the kid in the movie. I wonder if it is relevant to mention that this is the same girl's house where, later in the year, I had the nightmare about the gigantic spider. Nah.
Frankenhooker--1990 This movie was fun! I mean, how can you go wrong with a cover like that? Plot: This amateur mad scientist's fiance is killed in a lawn mowing accident, and he saves her head and a few other body parts to hopefully bring her back to life. Since he needs other parts to make a complete woman, he recruits prostitutes. He harvests the parts by inventing a kind of "super crack" that makes people blow up after they smoke it. Then he stitches the parts together, puts his girlfriend's head on it, and has his new woman. Initially she has the memories of the whores he killed, and she goes back to the streets and picks up a couple of tricks, whom she ends up killing inadvertantly. After her head comes off when she is punched by the pimp of the whores they used, her fiance stitches it back on, and she returns to consciousness with her old personality. Spoiler After an accident where HE (mad scientist) is killed, SHE puts him back together with the remaining hooker parts, using his detailed notes as a guideline! Not the best movie from a technical standpoint, but that isn't the important part with a movie like this. The special effects were actually really good for a low budget movie like this; when the hookers who smoke the super crack blow up, they blow up in a bunch of sparks. Like I said, not technologically correct, but good explosions anyway. Oh, another plus is that they show A LOT of really nice tits in this movie; supposedly some of the whores were Penthouse pets. I give it an 8 out of 10.
Speaking of sillier, more comedic fare, a few weeks ago, I remembered an old British "horror" movie I had seen a few minutes of as a kid. The only things I recalled was that it had musical performances in a disco club between horror stories (seriously), and a monster who killed his victims by whistling. Thankfully, that was enough information to find the Vincent Price film The Monster Club, completely posted on Youtube. It tells three unrelated stories, one of them mostly comedic in nature, and the other two entertaining, with some neat visuals, but neither scary nor gory. The place where the film especially shines is the interludes between, with Vincent Price and John Carradine narrating at a "Monster Club", a weird 70's disco spot filled with people in rubber suits. These parts are both intentionally hilarious (Price is excellent, even in this absurd movie), and unintentionally funny. (The musical performances, stage comedy bits, and spastic dancing by the "monsters") Maybe it was just me, but I found this film hilarious and oddly entertaining. (I rated it a 67/100; top 35 percent of my rankings) Edit Never seen the original, but I didn't even think the Aja remake was particularly good. (And I'm a big fan of his)
Speaking of Aja, his breakthrough film High Tension truly lives up to its name. A true grit 70's style exploitation slasher: It has suspense to knock your socks off and truly realistic and grotesque murders, but it practically ruins itself with a "twist" ending that is not only nonsensical but literally impossible. See this movie becasue it's worth it, but do yourself a favour: stop it after the driver of the car is killed near the end to avoid having your intelligence insulted deeply.
The movie was alright, the "It's a good life" remake (including Bart Simpson in a rare screen role), and "Nightmare at 20,000 feet" with John Lithgow were the best two segments. Vic Morrow, the bigot character in the first segment was killed on set with two children when a helicopter crashed on them. I was always a huge Twilight Zone fan since my dad pushed me into it when I was young. I used to tape the marathons on the Sci Fi channel. Some of my favorite episodes: Spoiler I think my all time "favorite" was Night Call, in which an elderly woman starts receiving eerie phone calls late at night from her dead husband. Basically the ringing and the old lady's shrieks scarred me for life. Another classic is Twenty Two about a dancer who has a recurring dream of visiting room 22 of the hospital she's staying at, it turns out to be the morgue ("Room for one more, honey!"). Though the show had some really bad 60's camp in some episodes, for the most part you won't find a much better written story on any film/tv show. Ok back to horror movies... Brainscan A favorite of mine where Edward Furlong becomes a murder suspect after playing a video game that uses hypnosis. Not the highest production values and they throw in a Freddy Kruegger like character to boot but I really enjoyed it. It hit home with me because I used to have a recurring dream of murdering someone and spending the rest of the dream hiding the body and running from the cops. Nothing is scarier than waking up thinking you've killed someone and the cops are showing up any minute.
Anybody ever see The Cube? A low-budget canadian horror that spawned 2 or 3 shitty sequels. But basically, these fuckers are trapped in some high tech government cube, with nasty traps enplaced in random cubes. And they are trying to figure out how to get out of it. That's all. Scary shit.
It's a film with a pretty large cult following, and I enjoyed it, even though I laughed at the end, Spoiler when figuring out whether a three digit number was prime was supposedly "astronomically difficult". Still, that only spoiled it slightly.
I completely agree. I remember when I saw this, it really had me hooked in, until the ending which left me scratching my head, wondering what the fuck just happened. It made no sense, since like you said it made earlier scenes in the movie completely impossible. Spoiler for example, one of the very first scenes when it is intimated the killer is getting a blow job in his van, and then he dumps a severed head out the window. If the chick ends up being him, then how the hell does this scene work? There are many others, but this is the first that comes to mind.
The Relic This was a surprisingly great horror film, which starts slow and becomes a grabber. The majority of takes place in a musuem, where guests are tapped inside with a truly horrifying looking beast running around decapiating them. It was one of the first horror movies to use a CGI monster, The Kathoga, which is still a knockout: agile like Spider-Man, teeth like fence pickets and intelligent (It reminded me of Zuul in Ghostbusters a little). This one's definetly worth a look. Jeepers Creepers This is probably the best-looking Hollywood horror film of the last 20 years. They use the dusk-lit southwest locations brilliantly, creating the perfect environment for a full-blooded horror film. It's scary, exciting, and the monster is one of the coolest looking EVER (with cool-ass weapons to boot), but the ending (like so many horror movies) is merciless and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. The sequel is meh at best. Some disagree and they're welcome to it, but I loved this flick.
My signature is the only good thing about Rob Zombie's Halloween II. The only reason I watched it is because I was a captive audience at my best friend's house when this arrived from Netflix, otherwise, after the abomination that was the first one, you couldn't have paid me to watch it. Seriously, the sheer volume of F-bombs in Zombie's movies make them nearly unwatchable. I can swear with the best of them but when I can't understand what they're saying, perhaps you ought to tone it down a bit. Coincidentally, I feel the same way about Bob Saget's stand-up act. You can't discern what the joke is about through all the obscenities.
I rented Event Horizon from Blockbuster yesterday, and I've gotta say I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not gonna say it was amazing or revolutionary, but it was an entertaining flick. It felt more sci-fi than horror for a good deal of the movie, but I'd say it is worth a watch for any fans of the genre.
Event Horizon is fantastic. They had to cut a shit load of stuff from it as the studio deemed it unsuitable, and then most of that footage got destroyed (this was before the days when we had DVD's and special features). The video messages from the ships previous crew are deeply disturbing.
It's by no means a brilliant flick (like the scewne where Sam Neill is teaching astronauts basic quantum physics like they're retards) but its horror scenes were as intese as the scariest films and its deliberatly extreme violence was REALLY something else if you use the pause button in one utterly repulsive scene.
Big horror movie fan and I find it crazy that my roommate was just talking about "The people under the stairs" sounds like I'm gonna have to see it. "Frailty" is a great movie! I don't really care for Matthew Mcconaughey as an actor but I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, Bill Paxton did an excellent job in his directorial debut. I didn't see anyone mention "The Descent" I thought it was a ruthless movie. Of course it scared the shit out of me even more when I went spelunking 2 days later.
Speaking of movies we watched when we were younger that suck now, I watched Darkness Falls last night for the first time since opening night. And holy fuck I was a pussy when I was younger. That movie blows ass. But in my defense, a power outage starts the shitstorm in the movie, and the night I saw it we had a huge storm and my house lost power while I was in my basement at like 2 am. I think the memory of that was way scarier than the movie itself. I also watched Fido yesterday, and while it certainly wasn't horror movie scary, it's about zombies, so I feel like it belongs here. Basic synopsis is, zombies have been harnessed with control collars in 1950s-esque America, and are used like a combination of pets and slave labor. A lonely boy gets a zombie, who gets free manages to munch someone. Bizarreness ensues. I can't even decide if I liked it or not. I think I did. It was funny in a perverse way. And subtly fucked up. The more I think about it the more fucked up it seems. Hm. I have Drag Me to Hell, Audition, Ichi the Killer, and Dead Alive all on my Netflix queue... I'm pretty pumped for all four.
One horror scene that totally stand out for me: When I went to see Blade I was expecting a semi-violent action thriller about vampires. I did not expect to see a two-hour gorefest with an spectacularly gross opening scene for the ages: The blood rave. It wasn't fake looking "Evil Dead II" blood, but full-on real looking, and gallons gallons of it spraying out the the sprinkler sytem onto everyone. The entire theatre lost its collective shit. It was so brilliantly calculated too, showing the view of the single human in the centre while all the other vampires, completely soaked in blood, are cackling and laughing at him. I was jumping out of my skin the first time I saw it, because sort of extreme is not usually seen in a major studio feature. Then, Willie Mayes Hayes shows up in bondage gear to kick some serious ass.
I saw The Crazies today. Pretty fun watch. It may have been the several cups of coffee I had before watching it, but it had me more on edge than almost any movie I've seen in theaters. It had a few plot holes but overall I'd reccomend it pretty highly to fans of the genre. Has anyone out there seen the old Romero version?
Yes, it's cheap, hammy, bloody and campy. It actually kind of sucks, it's as if Romero dressed all the "Army Villains" in white suits just so he could have more of a bloody effect with bullet wounds (like John Woo in the climactic shootout to The Killer).