The Petrified Forest - 1936

 FUCK! I guessed one year off. 

I'm going back to Bogie. We just don't have actors like him anymore. To jump into that,  I'd say this: this role is almost expressly written to go unnoticed. He barely has any dialogue, and almost all he does is de-escalate the situation. He is dry and sarcastic,  a real dick and killjoy. But he stands out from the postcard Hollywood of everything else in this movie,  practically popping in like someone from now being all like eh... this shits kinda lame and wack, doncha think? Bogie annihilates the role,  no wonder he got noticed.

Based on a play, we get one of my fave things: minimalism. We got one set and mostly one room,  actors talking and yes, it's very entertaining. 

British lad Alan is wandering Arizona when he finds a hole in the wall restaurant where Gabby works but has bigger dreams. They hit it off and fall in love immediately. Meanwhile villain Duke and his boys are escaped convicts and radio broadcasts tell of their trip through Arizona. The criminals meet up with the star crossed lovers and the other shady characters in this nowhere town. 

Funny,  witty, but also simultaneously cliche beyond all words,  this is something to behold. There's meditations on fate,  love,  destiny, dreams,  reality, and everything in between. There's racial commentary. There's gramps, who's just thrilled to be there and wants to watch the bloodshed. It's all over the place. 

I had seen it before but not reviewed it,  and with rewatch it holds up. I love this movie. 

Nymphomaniac - 2013

 This is in fact the entire Nymphomaniac, parts 1 and 2, just didn't note it in the title. 

I have elevated Lars Von Trier to one of the most human directors in my head recently. After Melancholia, The House that Jack Built,  and Antichrist, I jumped into Nymphomaniac while I digested a weed edible. No I did not see all those movies in one day. 

Nymphomaniac actually got a theatrical release,  a bit,  and probably chopped to all hell here in the US.  It's on Hulu currently in the unrated (read: graphic AF) directors cut,  which is what I watched. 

The plot is very simple so let's just say it. A man finds a beat up woman in the street and brings her home. Her name is Joe and she begins to recount to him her life story as a self diagnosed Nymphomaniac. Her story begins "I first discovered my cunt at age three" and if you don't like that turn it off,  cuz that's what you're in for. 

The fascinating thing about this movie is first of all the novelty even in a porn obsessed culture to find fascination with the sexual acts,  but also the underlying humanity,  emotion,  and connection or lack thereof. Joe is a complicated,  vengeful,  dynamic and thoroughly understandable person with wants and needs, cruelties and loves.  If anyone thinks this was a great way to see nudity and went as a teenager,  I wonder wtf they thought when they walked out.

Part one is Joe's promiscuous youth,  loss of virginity and anal virginity,  getting into the real world,  and falling in love. Part two is her attempt at normalcy,  discovering submission, and a lesbian relationship which crumbles.  Both of these parts are told to asexual intellectual Stellan Skarsgård, who occasionally comments or asks questions but mainly acts as an audience surrogate. 

Shia LaBeouf is her love interest, Mia Goth is her childhood friend,  Willem Dafoe is in a small role,  and otherwise it seems to have very real people,  and depict very real sexuality. This is not a sexy movie,  though,  I would argue. I think there is a deliberate choice to have the actresses not seem very pleased and blown away by their orgasm and to not seem like sexpots as we might expect in the traditional way. They act like an alcoholic might with a beer,  he drinks it without noticing,  without desperation or joy. Detuned, in a pattern,  unaware. This movie is not lascivious. It is merely about a process,  one which it views as akin to any other process. 

This is one which will sit with you for a long time if you get it. The ending is very important and quite unexpected,  and I wasn't sure I liked it. But I've been sitting with Part Two and digesting it,  and overall there's just a LOT to talk about with this movie. 

This movie is why film is important. This is art, this is designed to make you think,  this is a challenge and it is about something we don't talk about enough, the human Condition. Or to put it another way,  Soul. 

I loved it and I give it 5 stars. 

Copycat - 1995

 The year is 1995. Se7en comes out and changes thriller cop films and ushers in a new Era of extremist grungy 90s aesthetic. But what ELSE came out in 95?

Copycat is by all definitions "some thriller movie" that most people don't acknowledge and which was certainly glossed over that year in favor of Se7en, which beat it to release,  but according to Wikipedia Copycat had some success and good reviews. 

Sigourney Weaver,  post Alien 3, stars as an agoraphobic psychologist or something,  and she helped stopped killer Cullum. Now a new serial killer is active in San Francisco and once again Weaver is tapped by cops Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney to help. Soon enough Weaver discovers their serial killer is copying well known killers from history,  and that he is somehow connected to Cullum, who she stopped years ago. Thus, the new killer may be after her. 

It's a solid cast,  and the dynamics of Weaver and Hunter together are nice. I guess originally Hunter was to be a male and love interest for Weaver,  glad they lost that angle. The new serial killer Foley is the weakest link,  and this definitely leans into the uber genius/ mega stylist way that all killers in modern media are depicted.

It's fine! It's solid. It's forgettable. It made me wonder,  though,  which completely forgotten nothing movie would be funniest to get a sequel now. The movie would have to be in no way well known, not very successful but not a complete bomb. No impact but large enough in scale to where it actually was released. I guess I'm saying Copycat here is a good candidate. I would go see Copycat 2: Copykill. Everyone is still alive. Cmon Hollywood. 

I'll give this 3.5 stars

The Stunt Man - 1980

 Wow.  I was way off on my guess of the year this one came out.  Feels a lot more 70s to me.

The Stunt Man is a relatively well known cult type film, one a bit off the general radar but still well within the overall realm of these kinda things.  We got Steve Railsback and Peter O'Toole in a genre which is kinda gone, one which I sorta forgot about...  This is the "whoa dude Hollywood is so wacky and crazy and there's drugs and girls and you'll make millions or it'll destroy you...wow dude" 

What was the last one of these types of movies?  Immediately I think of Boogie Nights and sort of Almost Famous.  Movies wherein its kinda a dramatic comedy, I guess, and its about the disenfranchisement of someone discovering their dream is not what they thought, or its a riotous romp about the insanity and audacity therein.  Once Upon a Time in Hollywood does not count, because it's about the Manson family stuff more.

The Stunt Man starts with a criminal, Railsback, escaping the police and bumping into a film crew.  He gets tapped to perform stunts by the directer, O'Toole, who takes an instant liking to him.  Railsback is promised to be protected and make money if he signs on to perform stunts in the movie, and soon he discovers success and happiness in this new niche group.  But things, naturally, are not all they seem.

I could easily see why this is in the cult realm, and I can easily see why people might really like it.  It has wackiness, silliness, and incredible stunts.  Its all real, and it shows some of the golden age of Hollywood insanity which truly must've been fun and fucking fucked up to be a part of at one point.  

It moves a bit slow and it really plays up the drama in the last part, which also highlights some of Railsback's relative inexperience as a film actor.  I hate to say it, but he just is not right for this part, or maybe its the writing I don't know.  Sometimes in the end its kinda amateurish.  But it's also bogged down by weird and convoluted writing and its sorta a who knows general feeling.  So, it doesn't stick the landing and that makes me give it about a 3.5.

By the way....  My guess for the year was 1974.  This is straight from Wikipedia: " The script was first written in 1970 when the rights were first sold. The film was shot in 1977 with post-production conducted in 1979. The picture had trouble getting distributed until 20th Century Fox picked it up and released it in 1980."  I fucking knew it wasn't 1980.

Saw IV / Saw V - 2007/ 2008

 I'm going dual review because this series is not giving me a lot to say, and in fact I barely remember what happened in these films despite having just seen them recetnly.

Saw IV is really a black hole in my memory.  I believe it is the one where good cop Rigg is supposed to save a couple guys who are attached in a warehouse somewhere.  One guy has a chain around his neck, but if he dies, he electrocutes Costas Mandylor who is next to him.  There's basically no really good traps in this film, and the end is a confusing series of reveals that basically go to show that Costas is now the new killer.

Saw V has the Mandy-man back as he puts a group of five people to a test where one of them keep dying in each new room they go to, and in the meantime... hell I dunno, other traps happen I guess.  Except again, they're not especially memorable nor good.  

A huge problem is that they picked a lot of actors in these movies which look similar and have the same vibe.  Sorta cop looking brown haired men with similar levels of acting and forgettable names litter the screen, and half the time I'm like...who is that?  Then the editing style and the clusterfuck reveals in these movies just make me sit there thinking, "what? who?"

But basically they also elevate Jigsaw to a super-genius level degree, which I guess he was already, but he also could read the future to damn perfect accuracy.  They made a huge mistake obviously killing off Jigsaw too early, and these movies go to some lengths to have a reason for a flashback or a backstory or whatever, while they play a clumsy game of pin-the-franchise-on-the-new-guy, which they tried with Amanda and now Hoffman.  

These are the slogs in the series, lets hope that 6 gets better.  I give both of these about a 1.5

Conquest - 1982

 I started this movie on Freevee with no idea what it was, and was pleasantly surprised by the opening and the directorial credit, Lucio Fulci.  I haven't seen all that much from him, but I'm a big fan so far.

Almost immediately I was googling "best Lucio Fulci movies" and reading lists and reviews from bigger film nerds than me, and I was doing it partially because of the thought, if this isn't one of his best I'm going to be surprised.  From the list I was on, Conquest was rated at number 2.  

Conquest is a sword and sandal adventure movie with a fantasy element.  But more than that, it's an atmosphereic romp full of awesomeness.  You get introduced to what this is going to be early on when the you notice every woman in this is either topless or naked, there's incredible fake decapitated heads, and awesome spaghetti sauce used as blood in a head splitting scene.  

There's bad movies, good movies, so bad it's good, etc.  This is just plain good, in fact great.  The main character is a somewhat unexplained mystical dude with a magic bow and arrow who is pursued by the topless, masked evil villainess Ocron.  She sends leagues of baddies out, including super cool looking spider dudes and bear dudes.  There's this other good guys Ilias who helps our hero out, and there's lots of violence blood and nudity along the way.

The overused phrase "fever dream" is not enough to descirbe this movie.  This is a fever dream that took acid.  The movie is all sorts of nonsense, helped by a foggy, blurry shooting style and apparently more fog IN the camera.  Conquest may have the unique filming location of Fogland, Italy.  All this gives it loads of fun and loads of atmosphere, which combined with good pacing and a plot so simple you never even think about it, these things make the movie fun.

I kept thinking because of how fun it is exactly that this movie would be a great one to put on at a party, silent in the background.  No one would really notice it, but if they did for some reason they might legitimately start watching it, confused out of their fucking minds, ignoring the party and the option of getting laid just cuz this is so enrapturing.

I give it 5 stars.

Teenage Exorcist - 1991

" Teenage exorcist, teenage exorcist.  He's got the devil on the run, oh yeah..."

We have all encountered better poster than the movie, better trailer than the movie, better clips than the movie, how about a better intro song than the movie?  Thats either sinking to a new low or raising to a new high.  

Teenage Exorcist does peak early with this fucking rockin intro song.  Prime late 80s early 90s hair metal feeling jam.  Then the movie is a crummy would be comedy teen thing which, I will admit early, might be sorta fun with some friends and drinks, but for solo sober viewing on a Tuesday morning, well it doesn't quite fit the bill too much.

Teenage Exorcist itself is associated with Fred Olen Ray, one of the many Z-grade film guys that makes things that exclusively sell on double sided DVDs in valu-paks for $3.99.  He wrote this garbage, and by that I mean he sat down and wrote a few sentences. This is likely about what he wrote:

Its a comedy about teenage possession and it involves exorcism.  Some girl is possessed, her sister and sister's husband come over, comedy ensues, and eventually they get a priest who accidentally orders pizza instead of calling for a the priest.  Pizza guy arrives and promptly the movie randomly focuses on him?

Eddie Deezen is the name attached to this, fresh off his Spielberg appearance in 1941.  He is supposed to be the most funny of all the other funny things, instead nothing is funny, and boy does this movie drag.  I paused it many times to see how much of this shit was left.  Its not violent, there's very little nudity, its not funny, and it consists mostly of just the same thing again and again and again.  They try the exorcism, it doesn't work.  They try something else, it doesn't work..  repeat.

With some friends, its maybe a 2.5 at best, for solo Tuesday its a one.

Legion of Iron - 1990

 "Ain't you heard?  Superman's black." 

This was the line that made me want to write a review of this during the watching of it rather than wait til the end.  I don't need to finish this in order to give a review, we've all seen these kinda things before.  

This is some prime 90's stuff that you'll find as a gem if you dig through some Charles Band, some Troma, and some of those other halfwit distribution companies.   This stuff is low budget sleazy dirtbag shit, which is exactly what you're looking for, what you want, need, and love.

There's a lot of rape but no nudity in this flick which was surely shot in some warehouse somewhere.  Main character Billy is a football star who is kidnapped along with his girlfriend and taken to an underground gladiator type event which supposedly makes millions of dollars - they must have a bad accountant because none of this supposed wealth is ever visible.  Poor actors who were likely never in anything else cavort around, peacocking and strutting like it ain't no thang.  Then we watch as fights happen and an uprising begins amongst the gladiators, and that's the paper thin plot.

According to IMDb the director has an upcoming project, which will be released soon.  I'll bet anyone $1000 that it never comes out.

Saw III - 2006

 How did I nail the year of this Saw entry?  How?  I'm supposed to be bad at years after 2000.

Saw is keepin on going guys, and I'm like 4 days late writing this review, as I saw this I think last Friday or Saturday.  Saw II I think I saw in theaters, and I think by this time in the franchise I was not going to see them in the theater anymore.  In fact, none of this felt familiar and it's possible I have not seen this movie before.

Saw III, about 45 minutes in, feels like a series of connected vignettes more than a proper Movie movie.  I'm not sure why this is because the plot is very present throughout the movie, and all the vignettes are tied quite closely, but yeah, I don't know exactly but it did really feel that way.

The third entry here focuses and a cancer ridden, dying Jigsaw character who has Amanda still working for him, and they kidnap unhappy wife Lynn to keep Jigsaw alive while this guy Jeff goes through a series of rooms containing the people that had something to do with his sons death.  We also have sort of a prequel in this movie, as it contains flashbacks to the setup of the first Saw.  Perhaps all these things are why it feels like a few vignettes.

Saw 3 is perhaps the begin of a decline here, as the only great actor is relegated to bed duty (literally) and the other stories are okay enough but not that gripping or compelling.  I mean, I kinda couldn't care less about a lot of this shit.  The traps are pretty good, I suppose the one I'll remember the best is a guy who is drowning in liquified rotting pigs.  Interesting?

I'll give it a solid 2.  It's ok.

Saw II - 2005

 Man, its weird to think that Saw is officially 20 years old this year!  Both seems like too long and too short given it has ten sequels.  For sure always a fast moving franchise.

Is Saw the series with the most legitimate sequels?  I don't think any of this series was ever direct to DVD, streaming, etc.  It has always retained theatrical release.  I guess you can say the same about Friday and Nightmare though, Halloween.  The older series.  Okay, never mind, wtf dude shut up.

Everyone was talkin Saw in 2004.  It was the biggest theatrical event since Sixth Sense or something in a lot of ways, in that it felt like it was a breakthrough scary movie that was revolutionizing horror.  The original is a classic, and I'll watch it if I do indeed watch all these Saw movies, but we'll see man.  I remember the middle Costas Mandylore bits being a drag and a half.  Well, I just did Hellraiser though so I should be ok.

Saw II, I remembered one thing.  The pit of hypodermic needles in the room.  That's it.  I remembered it was a group of people I guess, and I think I vaguely remembered one of the guys went crazy and started killing people.  Is this movie basically a remake of Cube, by the way?  Think about it.

Saw is a big hit, obviously we need to rush on a sequel, original director passes, so new director Darren Lynn Bousman and the writer of the first one Leigh Whannell tackle this one.  Some large building somewhere, like 8 or so people wake up to find themselves trapped with Jigsaw traps everywhere, one of the people is the son of crooked cop Donnie Wahlberg who finds Jigsaw himself and tries to save his son.  

Saw II I remember being kinda disappointed in when I saw it initially, and 19 years later, ya know, its like fine.  There's little to say about it.  The nail mask is cool, the needle pit is cool, nothing else really stands out.  They also take a significant dive into B-movie actors here, declining from the Carey Elwes and Danny Glover in the original.  These guys do their job fine enough though, and they're mostly wallpaper parts anyways.  

It won't hurt you, but isn't that kinda what it's trying to do?  Also, the flashy in your face style of editing here hasn't aged well, and I'm glad we've left it far in the past.

Hellraiser - 2022

 And thus, the cycle comes to an end.  Sounds like an apt Pinhead quote, since I don't have a real one I'll just make one up right?

Hellraiser had fallen completely off the radar of all somewhat respectable folks by this time.  Lingering in straight-to-DVD hell since Hellraiser 4, the majority of the series was now something a fan would have to actively seek out should they be interested.  Budgets had been slashed, main characters killed off off-screen in horrible detective movie sequels, actors had left, there was basically no choice left but to reboot the series.  It comes out straight to Hulu, which is the equivalent of straight to DVD now.  Step up?

The big news on the release of this newest installment was that Pinhead was now female.  It is so odd and stupid what people choose to complain about sometimes.  There is a lot to say about this movie, and specifically what doesn't work with it, but female Pinhead is not high on the list.  I mean, the woman who plays her has zero charisma, barely any lines, and doesn't get to do anything cool in the movie, how about complain about that instead?

The main character looks like a boy in a wig first of all, and a wig that's like "80's hair metal band" themed.  I could not take her seriously, and she's not a great actor either, so start there.  And then, add in a 2 hour movie where it ponders around and there's a LOT of nothing happening in this movie.  

The plot is basically thin to nonexistent - a young group of friends gets ahold of the puzzle box somehow, and play around with it, they almost specifically do not open it in the traditional way (?) but cenobites come anyways, and some of the people are killed off, and yeah, I dunno.  That's all. 

I paused this minimally 8 times to see how much was left.  It would feel like a gigantic amount of time went by, then I'd pause again, and only like 6 minutes had gone by.  This thing oozes by SLOW dude.  Pacing is definitely a problem, and the other problem is basically nothing happens in this fucking movie.  I couldn't even tell you how it ended, and I basically watched it less than 48 hours ago.  It officially does not retain any kind of memory.

I wish there had been some redeeming factors, but this is firmly in the bottow of the franchise for me, which goes more or less, from worst to best:

Inferno aka Hellraiser 5

Judgment aka Hellraiser 10

Hellraiser 2022 aka Hellraiser 11

Hellseeker aka Hellraiser 6

Revelations aka Hellraiser 9

Deader aka Hellraiser 7

Hellworld aka Hellraiser 8

Hellraiser 3

Hellbound aka Hellraiser 2

Bloodline aka Hellraiser 4

Hellraiser

This one gets like 1.5 or something.

Hellraiser: Judgment - 2018

 I'm so close I can taste it!  Reboot tomorrow and I'm done with this series.

So for lucky number 10, well what do they do?  They had just bucked the whole "let's have another movie and jam Pinhead in there" thing with the last movie, so why not take it back to there with Judgment, a movie where for the first 20-45 minutes, I had no idea what was going on.  Did it get better, did I get what was going on?  I mean, not really...  sorta?  Kinda?

We begin with a cop opening the mystery box and some random character being interviewed by the director of the movie as a new cenobite, the Auditor.

This guy then brings in a fat man who eats paper, vomits it into a tube, and nude girls play with the vomit, and none of this is ever explained.  Does it need to be?  I mean, not really I guess.  Fuck it.

We have glancing shots of a new Pinhead who is .2% better than last movie's awful Pinhead, and in the meantime some plot unfolds.  We get an extremely basic serial killer plot, two detectives are investigating it and they're saddled with a plucky new female recruit.  They go about their business, you guess the twist, and eventually one of them shows us the mystery box and they jam Pinhead in like it ain't no big deal.

This movie was fucking stupid.  And worse than that, slow.  And poorly acted.  And no good effects, and no Pinhead, and the whole thing is just a dud.  People said the last film was the nadir of the franchise?  No, these "other movies" with Pinhead unceremoniously dumped in are WAY worse!  This shit is fucking horrible!  If it was not for the nudity and the sheer ridiculousness of the ideas here I would not give it any stars instead I will give it:

Hellraiser: Revelations - 2011

 Wikipedia:  "An ashcan comic is a form of the American comic book originally created solely to establish trademarks on potential titles and not intended for sale."  

This concept would ensure that you kept a property rather than have it lapse out of your control, basically.    And boy oh boy is Hellraiser Revelations a ashcan film.  Made for a $300,000 budget and rushed into a very quick production, this sequel was made without Doug Bradley as Pinhead and marked the beginning of the end which would eventually result in the newest reboot, which yes I will watch for this blog.

Revelations is going to be a hard film to defend but I am going to do my damndest.  

Yes, I did like this.  No, not kidding.  No bits here.  I mean, it's at least kind of easy to see why when you look at the depths of the last 3-4 movies.  They had completely left the Hellraiser concept behind in favor of awfully written detective movies.  The acting in this movie is atrocious but at least its a fucking movie about Hellraiser instead of some cop who maybe killed his wife.

Found footage is a bad start as two teens go to Mexico to fuck prostitutes, and we're off for a bang as they end up meeting some weird drifter who gives them the puzzle box.  I want to see a movie about one of these weirdos who goes around giving the box to people, whats they're fuckin story??  The guys open it and Pinhead comes.  Lets get it out of the way, Pinhead looks terrible and is horribly acted.  Then one of the guys comes back home from Mexico but something is amiss.

But yeah!  I mean the dialogue about suffering is back, the creepy skinless dudes who want blood are back, the hooks and shit, even the wierd totem pole thing from Hellraiser 2 and 3 are back.  At barely 75 minutes is slides on by, and it is not at all a good movie, but the bar has been set incredibly low by this point, I'll fucking take it brah!  I kinda liked it.  I'll give it a 3.5

Wicked City - 1987

 Now here's something I did not know, this was apparently made into a live action film in 1992?

Wicked City was one of these early seminal Japanese anime films that we knew of in the west when I got into anime and manga in the late 90s.  I remember watching Akira, segments of Evangelion, this, Jin-Roh, and then more came out like Trigun and Hellsing as the world caught on that this shit was en vogue at the moment.

Wicked City also epitomizes what made it to the west early in, in all of the examples above.  Sci Fi, action oriented, kinda strange and offbeat but extremely stylized and cool content which was also sometimes darkly sexual.  I didn't watch it around this time but the other thing that had made it over and made a splash was Urotsukidoji:  Legend of the Overfiend, which is basically just hentai with a plot.

Wicked City is related to that, they're distant cousins, cause this is about as mainstream as tentacle rape ever got, and there is oral tentacle rape in this movie, which sent me on a bizarre spiral of remembering the early days of anime collecting and the allure and the taboo this stuff used to represent.  It also goes hand in hand with the odd pedestal but also sickening head-shakiness that Japan as a country used to iliicit when I was in my teens, seriously we basically all assumed that entire country was fucked up.

This movie presents a main character, Taki (love those chips man) who is a secret agent protecting us from the dark universe creepy monsters that are trying to invade us circa the year 2000.  He is teamed up with a woman from that universe after his girlfriend turns out to be a spider monster, and with this new partner he forms an instant attraction and partnership.  They must protect some pervy old man while they are doing whatever, but all is not what it seems....

 There is cool action violence, there is sex and nudity, and there is comedy in this.  Its definitely for adults, but it also has that timeliness to it where it was clearly made for guys age 10-25 or so, back when rated R meant, eh you can likely watch it anyways.  

I used to own a Wicked City t-shirt, and it also took me down an avenue of cool shirts I used to own.  I wonder what happened to like, all of them, I have no idea.  Guess I just got rid of them as time went on.  I'll give this 4 stars.  It's really fun, moves quickly, and it stood the test of time.

Hellraiser: Hellworld - 2005

 Yes, because one of them (the last one) sat on a shelf for three years we ended up getting two Hellraiser movies in one year

I could not tell you what Hellworld here is about.  I have been watching it drunk for an hour and all I can say is Henry Cavill is in it as is Lance Henrickson, and Henry Cavill is fucking crushing it with charisma, vim and vigor, pep, etc.  He's definitely got charm yo.  There's some vague thing about an evil website where the box is opened and yeah, that's it. No plot.

First of all, fuck yeah.  Make it on a website.  Who gives a fuck.  Next movie, have it be from a Tik Tok.  Make it as contemporary as possible, please, so that it ages horribly.  This movie fuckin sucks/rules more than ever.  This is the definition of so bad its good in every way almost.

There is more Pinhead, its more of a classic Hellraiser movie, and thus we end the streak of "dumb movie plot with cenobites in it".  This is a proper Hellraiser movie and WHY DID WE DITCH THIS?  It's fucking great!  This is a great movie!  Make more like it, fill it with gore and cenobites and weird dialogue about pain and suffering and shit, I'm in forever.  HOW CAN YOU MISREAD YOUR AUDIENCE SO BADLY???!

Maybe I'm amped about the return to form or maybe its actually good, you won't know unless you watch it, and to make you feel like you should I'll give it  a 3.5

Hellraiser: Deader - 2005

 I was thinking in my head the whole time I watched this the main actress was a fake Ashley Judd.  I was going to call her that in this review.  Then it occurred to me:  Ashley Dudd.  She's not bad, but that is far too good to pass over.  Ashley Dudd.

Ashley Dudd stars in this direct to DVD follow up to the last two specific Hellraiser movies.  Last two because...AGAIN, they're doing some sort of incidental story with a cenobite or two jammed in to sell the horror freaks on it.  This one was also directed more to capitalize on the recent success of Japanese horror movies like The Ring and Pulse, and thats also apparent.

Ashley Dudd is a reported who recently did an article titled "How to be a Crack Whore" and that made me laugh.  She gets put on a new case by her pervy boss.  The new case, footage of a girl shooting herself and being brought back to life.  Dudd goes to Romania to investigate and stumbles across the puzzle box and the underground cult of weirdos who are playing with it.

Deader is a fine movie in comparison to the last two.  There are some real atmosphere parts, the acting is way better, and the movie moves quicker.  The cenobites and Pinhead still take a backseat, but at least Pinhead is in it for more than 2.5 minutes like that other dumbass movie.  

Not a good movie by any means, but hey.  I'll take what I can get.  2.5 stars.

Hellraiser: Hellseeker - 2002

 Ugh.  Another non horror movie crammed unceremoniously with Pinhead to make it interesting.

This is why people give up on this series.  This twosome is rough.  Now straight up, I will say this is better than the last movie.  Way better.  Maybe its the acting caliber, they have that guy from the Allstate commercials in this movie, and he isn't great, but he is way better than the last awful actor.  There is also a lot of sex in this movie, and tits, so that helps.  They also bring back Kirsty from the first 2 movies!

So basically, Allstate guy is some sort of office worker, and is having weird visions and problems all the time after a car crash he's in kills his wife.  He is the prime suspect in a murder case, and a few detectives are giving him the old harassment that's only reserved for white collar white men.  It is slowly revealed that Allstate was having loads of affairs, was in general a crappy guy, and there's more to the dead wife than he thought.  His wife?  Kirsty!  

The annoying dream within a dream, crazy fake reality thing is overplayed a lot in this movie, you're tossed around more than a crouton in a salad.  You don't know what's happening half the time, but it also doesn't matter cause in the end they're just killing time to get to the reveals, and a lot of the middle stuff bears no consequence on the movie.  The problem is though, it's also not particularly well done, well shot, violent, or cool, so a lot of the movie you're just waiting.

Shrug.  I couldn't tell ya.  It's not a good movie.  But it's better than the last one.  I'll give it one star higher.

Hellraiser: Inferno - 2000

 I've reached the part of these movies where most people stop, and where they get truly horrible,

I think it's poignant that on Wikipedia they specifically say "this was not adapted from a pre-existing script with a mild shoehorning to put cenobites into it".  You're denying that FACT because it is true and you really don't want people to know it!  Right?!  Surely this was not the original idea for a Hellraiser movie.

I know that horror movies change genre and experiment around...I get it, and I like Halloween 3 a lot actually, and I am up for a lot when it comes to these.  But the trick is to have that balanced with either good writing, or a decent actor, or just SOMETHING.  Also, maybe try keeping it the horror genre?  At least?

Instead, this is a detective movie, this zero charisma cop guy finds the puzzle box, opens it, begins to see hallucinations of cenobite twins occasionally, but basically this box barely affects him.  Instead, he goes about searching for "The Engineer" an unknown baddie which I guess kidnapped a child.  He goes about, the plot chugs right along, things kind of happen, and then it all wraps up in a twist ending which you'll see coming.

I mean, I just don't know why you take a dark, bloody, gothic series about torture and the fallacy of mankind, man's greed for blood and his taste for violence, and turn it into this. Once Pinhead does show up, at the very end, for a 2.5 minute scene, the reveal is dumb, and it doesn't fit with the other movies either.  They don't do this shit!  This is not their bag!  They use hooks and chains and CDs like in the last movie.  They don't just talk you to death.

This movie is boring, flat, not even remotely scary, again, pretty sure it's not supposed to be...  I don't know.  Don't watch this.  I'll give it half a star for the very end.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II - 1988

 Okay, so this particular look is closed, but I have a ton more sequels after part 4!

Memory is a weird thing.  I thought this movie had a sequence of the main girl from Hellraiser, the final girl and survivor Kirsty, on a thing fog covered cliff with the Chatterer and Pinhead coming at her from the sky...  It did have a cliff, and a guy in the sky, nut no fog and it was not Pinhead.  Who knows the last time I saw this, and I also remember severely disliking it.

From the director of Def-Con 4, Amityville 1992: It's About Time, and Ticks, this dude Tony Randel is basically a blog fave!  

We pick up right where Hellraiser left off, Kirsty has been admitted to a mental unit somewhere, and she is trying to say there's evil out there.  The psychiatrists get ahold of the puzzle box and open it, and now the cenobites are back, as well as Julia from the first movie is reincarnated, with a sex and power starved dude at his whim to provide female bodies for her.  Written by the guy that would go one to create Wishmaster.

This is one that's a bit slower, but still fun.  They don't have the cenobites around as much, and when they are, they're not necessarily doing as much.  There's a lot of Kirsty and near mute Tiffany, and there's a whole lot of reasoning with and bargaining with the cenobites.  So, in this way, there is not as much evil chaotic action violence in this movie, and I didn't have the romp of a good time I had with part 3 and 4.  

In the last 30-40 minutes, it really picks up and a lot of cool shit happens, so I will give it plenty of credit, and they also have a horrible affect of a plastic baby with its mouth sewn shut.  Great stuff, guys.

I give it 3 stars.

Past Lives - 2023

 So I'm reviewing an Academy Award nominated film in theaters now (presumably)?  Yea, its not Grindhouse, but I have artistic license here.

I go to Past Lives in a foul mood where I arrive 30 minutes early and sit in the theater, thinking about leaving and just going home several times, Then the movie starts, and at first I'm sorta wondering what this is and where it's going, the first shot is a little odd and the initial set up a tad clunky, but then the movie keeps going.  

Past Lives is an unconventional love story, and more importantly, a universal meditation on life, the unexpected things which occur, the experiences we have we form us and define us, and most importantly, things in our life that don't work.  Expectation, growth, change, maturation, and the lives we choose for oursleves, these things are talked about in the film without a single word of dialogue about them, they are screamed about and cried over and destroyed in rage without a single scene of this happening in the film.  

The plot regards a young boy and girl who are attracted to each other, and go out on a date.  They are Korean, and the girl's family is about to immigrate to Canada, so this short lived romance ends in relative heartbreak.  12 years later, they reconnect on Facebook, begin chatting, and clearly reignite a mutual interest in each other.  Then, 12 years even more since then, them both having moved on and having life changes, they reconnect one more time in a devastating and realistic way.

The realism is this film is what most attracted me to it.  We have been so thoroughly trained to watch movies in a way where we know what's going to happen, what to expect, we even know which line of dialogue is coming next.  When the characters say I love you it is as telegraphed as when they kiss.  We know the rise and fall of their love like the back of our hand; it is foreseen and the music swells and they share a look and we know what is going to happen, and it does, to no one's surprise.

What we don't see is the reality of life, what really happens, which is awkwardness, expressionless silence, a chasm of misunderstanding, unexpressed feelings, disappointment, and undefined emotion making our choices a sheer living hell sometimes and complete bliss others.  This is perhaps the most realistic, close to home movie I have ever seen in my life.

A film which has really changed me, which I am still wrestling with three days later with nary a break in my thoughts whirling about it, this is one of the strongest debuts I've ever seen, one the best films I've seen period.  This is definitely in my top 5 of all time right now.  I highly recommend it.

Teorema - 1968

 Sometimes I like to read my own reviews.  I enjoy remembering the movies, and remembering even writing about them.  I recently reread my review of The Decameron.  Maybe hindsight gives rose colored glasses, but that was a movie which I really loved, still think about, and I would give 5 stars now.

It sent me on a quest to view more Pier Paolo Pasolini, and this was at my library, so I rented it..  Cool.  Plot line says Terence Stamp seduces a family in a controversial bizarre art film.  I'm into that.

The thing about this movie, really, is that it is all shot in a vague, lyrical, and I think at times purposely obtuse sort of way.  If you want a movie which has a narrative plot structure, with conventional dialogue, with a three act structure, look elsewhere.  If you want an experimental, avant garde thing which defies convention well now you're coming to the right place.  

And yeah, that plot is accurate.  Terence Stamp arrives and everyone in this family seems to be drawn to him in an illusive, irresistible way.  The first odd thing about this movie is that we see nudity from Terence Stamp in the beginning, but then no other nudity exists in the film.  For Europe and post Hayes code, I don't know why there is no nudity in this movie.  Then, after Stamp does this, each family member which he had sex with experiences a revelation said verbally, and then a reaction physically and mentally, completely unexplained.

Roger Ebert's review talks of the underlying philosophical meaning of the film, and so does the wikipedia article.  I understand that Pasolini was a Marxist, an incredibly left wing gay man in a difficut time, and I think in a way this is an attack on conventional culture, on straight laced hetero-normative society.  Not in a clear or even realistic way, and I am saying that in a fully embrasive way; insult this society til you're blue in the face, go for it.

I think my personal enjoyment of this film was mixed.  There are a lot of completely inexplicable things happening at all times which seem to want to need explanation or follow through that you do not get.  Then there's some things which you understand and they still stay with, they grind them into the dirt and you're sitting there saying enough already.  Then there's oddly stilted acting and dialogue, which makes one wonder if that's intentional or not....  It's really like nothing else.

I think this clearly fits into the broad realm of experimental and arthouse cinema, from a time when things truly were actually experimental unlike now.  These movies are very difficult to rate in any conventional way, but I will say when I turned it off I hated it and now I kinda like it more.  So I'll give it a 2.5, I guess.

52 Pick Up - 1986

 I never told y'all about my other Roy Scheider movie!  Well, this was it.

It occurs to me that modern blogs are just podcasts.  And Yes, to answer the question, I have thought about doing this as a podcast.  I want to do something like "No One Else is Talking About This" where I review movies that have basically no presence online.  The problem, virtually everything has a blog, a podcast, a hidden hairy weirdo who is talking about it somewhere in the digital world, and I don't want to hunt that hard.

I'll just keep doing what I'm doing for now, such as watching averagely slow, nothing movies like 52 Pick Up.  Roy Scheider is a rich politician who is having an affair, and one day blackmailers show up to kidnap the mistress and demand payment.  Then they kill the mistress with his gun and dmeand now a lifetime of payments or they'll tip off the cops to her murder.  Rather than give in, he attempts instead to turn the various gangsters against each other, and that's the plot.

Also starring Ann-Margret and Vanity, this movie is a dialogue-filled kind of...uh...thriller I guess.  It's sort of not anything?  It has some elevated aspects, the violence and nudity reveals the decade from which it was born.  But ultimately, it doesn't grip me any particualr way, and it has an hour 45 of Roy boy walking around, talking to people, with a outcome you can see coming.

I liked it enough, I guess, but its a two star affair.

Hellraiser 3 - 1992

 I've sorta jut decided to watch these until they get awful.  My memory of this series is that it took a steep, steep nosedive after Hellraiser one.  So how does a rewatch work?

Well, my review of Hellraiser 4 I gave 4 stars.  So, I mean, in the pantheon of sequels, thats what, one of the best???  Mind you, part of that is the campy, stupid, I wanna watch this with a beer in one hard and my cock in the other, but still 4 stars is 4 stars.

Hellraiser 3, well, I dunno what to say.  Is this just coinciding perfectly with my mood?  I have been horribly anxious and depressed, lonely, and wanting to experience some sort of suffering.  Yes, I do want to suffer.  It's fine guys, its fine.  

Hellraiser seems to fit perfectly, with a lot of verbose talking about suffering and then these dope as shit monsters.  Also, the campy acting and the awful plot lines make it so bad its good and make the time fly by so, who knows dude, its fuckin working for me right now. (smokes blunt)

Hellraiser 3 stars Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Terry Farrell.  She does not show those gorgeous Trill titties, but she does get given the puzzle box after Pinhead, trapped in a piller from the end of Hellraiser 2 presumably, kills the guy who bought the piller.  Dax (Terry Farrell does not play Dax, rather she plays Joey, but I'm going to call her Dax) is having recurring dreams with her father, who was in the war, and through this she connects with Pinheads alter ego, a WWI soldier.  It all comes down to Dax vs Pinhead, of course, and the end is cool.

So I mean....  I loved it?  Its stupid, its badly made and poorly acted, people either playing it up or playing it straight poorly, and there are none of the trademark bloody skinless bodies the series had had so far, but somehow I still loved it.  It feels so 90s TV in a very calming nostalgic way, and the violence and nudity are just extra little candies for me to keep me going.  

They also just keep inventing new cenobites, and in this movie they have a fucking cenobite who throws CDs at people!!   Its like having a modern cenobite attack people through their fucking Insta or something, its so fucking topical and stupid and I LOVED it.  I give it 3.5 cause it is not quite as fun as Hellraiser 4.

Night Game - 1989

 I binge drank and watched a couple Roy Scheider movies last night.  This one sounded slasher adjacent, so of course I put it on.  I also drew pictures of insects.

Fuckin KICKASS poster, no joke.

Night Game follows police detective or whatever he is Roy Scheider as a serial killer is in town killing people.  We pretty early on are seeing plenty of baseball scenes too, setting it up for us the audience that these will be linked somehow.  Is this the slasher-like film with the most baseball scenes?  Probably.

So we watch as they put the pieces together and a few more kills happen.  It seems that the killer uses a hook and specifically targets young blonde women, and in the meantime in a creepy plot piece, Roy Scheider is dating a blonde who is young enough to be his daughter.  Naturally, she gets targeted and its just about the time that Roy figured out who the killer is, and wham bam, thats the movie.

Not a movie with any legacy, this isn't one to satisfy everyone.  The violence is taken down a notch, and its more of a tension murder mystery, but with all the baseball stuff, as well as the killer's face shown to us very early on, it cuts the tension to nothing.  Then with the Roy Scheider character, he's not really likable and nothing much else happens in the movie, so you're left sorta wondering...who is this for?  What is this, exactly?

I liked it enough though, it's not too long and it has plenty of kills, and it has some comedic parts (I mean you laugh at the movie, it's not like the movie is actually funny).  I'll give it 3 stars.

Hellraiser: Bloodline -1996

 "I smell the exquisite stench of what you really are" is the quote from this which Velvet Acid Christ stole for their awesome song off Calling Ov The Dead.

Adam Scott and the Polish brothers star in this last theatrical production of the Hellraiser franchise.  Do other people cite the Poish brothers?  They have no lines and they play the cenobite twins in the latter half.  Man am I getting ahead of myself.

This is as close as they would get to Hellraise goes to space.  Because in the first part of the movie, a robot reopens the mystery box and summons the demons aka the cenobites and they're in a spacship.  Cue the flashbacks which reveal how the box was made as well as a random story of trying to close the box.  Adam Scott plays a French evildoer who opens the box and feeds off the demons until they kill him, and the Hellraiser otherwise pursues Merchant, the main character, to open a larger portal from the hell dimension to let more demons through.

Is that confusing?  Well, it makes sense, and the movie isn't one that I would put into the whole category of "what the fuck is going on." In fact, I remember this series as being one that quickly fell off the bandwagon and was a fucking disaster basically, and I was pleasantly surprised at this enty.  It moves quickly, it's entertaining, definitely not scary, but really something to behold.

The movie has a definite so bad it's good feel, as well as having genuinely good effect moments. I enjoyed it overall, cause honestly it doesn't drag, and it's a fun ride. I give it 4 stars. 

Lured - 1947

 I'm including this in a working list, in my head if not alluded to in this blog of proto-slashers. 

A slasher is/was born of the mystery movie, the detective idea or even revenge story. It's simply taking a basic idea, that of a dead body and no apparent killer, and it's upping the stakes to multiple dead bodies and perhaps an elusive or otherwise unstoppable killer. As time goes on you focus more on the violence or on the killer, but you also don't have to, that is common but is not one of the universal tropes of the slasher film. 

Lured is definitely this. For the time, it also has a large body count, that of 8-9 rather than the more typical 1-3 around this time. We follow the "final girl", we follow an investigation, and we have "scares" concerning the villain. 

This all said, there is a rather large chunk in the middle about some underground labor force or something, and we really get sidetracked on that.  This movie is surprsingly long for the year, at like an hour 45.  

Holy crap, I thought I finished this review a long time ago.  So I'm cutting it short.  I give this 3 stars.

Angst - 1983

 There are movies that are labeled Video Nasty and then there's Angst.  Also known as both Fear and Schizophrenia.

I have probably heard tell of this Austrian horror movie before, but I have never seen it.  By the way, there are movies that are free on Youtube, Pluto TV, Tubi, etc, that are not coming up when I search for them on my Roku.  I have to individually go to that channel and look for them, what the hell is up with that?

Angst stars Erwin Leder.  In the beginning of the movie, he is locked in jail for committing a crime.  His narration mentions doing something to his mother, and then doing something to a 72 year old woman.  It is unclear exactly what he did, he does not specify, but he just finished serving maybe 7 years?  I don't remember.  He gets released and in voice narration as he leaves prison he says he fully intends to go commit more crimes.

We follow this man in an almost real time way as he goes about town, dementedly fantasizing about people, and then he finds a house, breaks in, and when the family returns he brutally kills the three of them.

Angst had music by Klaus Schulze from Tangerine Dream, and has really interesting camera work all the way around.  The darkness and the psychopathy present is also fresh and groundbreaking, even now 40 years later.  

This is truly one of the most disturbing movies I've seen, and I've seen a lot of movies.  It is because we are only with this killer, and we're in his head, and the pounding score makes us sick, and the intensity is at 11, and something about this feels extremely visceral and real and...just sickening.  Like I said, I have seen a lot of movies, and I can see why Gaspar Noe said this was a personal favorite.

Barely 80 minutes long, this is a breeze, and feels very realistic in a sick and twisted way.  This feels like one of the more brutal, realistic, soul-crushing horror movies, the movies that I can understand being banned.  It was not labeled a video nasty, but that's probably only because it was barely released.  

I don't know what to rate this, cause I have to say, I really didn't enjoy it, but it was for the right reasons:  the movie made me kinda sick and uneasy and want to look away...so god...5 stars?

Suspect Zero - 2004

 Funny, I don't remember this movie coming out in 2004.  But maybe that's cause it was a colossal failure with limited release.

What does one really say about late-to-the-party gritty serial killer movie Suspect Zero?  Well, it had a cool cast.  Aaron Eckhart is a distraught police investigator, Carrie Anne Moss is his sidekick, Ben Kingsley is the serial killer.  Produced by Tom Cruise, what could go wrong?

E. Elias Merhige of Begotten and Shadow of the Vampire directs this extremely bland and overly stylized thriller.  Seriously speaking though, the amount of talent involved in this is phenomenal.  The writers are also just absolute Journeyman level caliber, tons of projects at their backs, and yet this movie just clunks along in a horrible way, and I could not tell ya who is to blame.

Ben Kingsley is seen killing a few people and Aaron Eckhart is investigating the murders.  The murders have the eyes cut open and a big circle with a slash cut into the bodies.  Aaron Eckhart connects this to a map that shows a ton of kills and an idea of a perfect serial killer, a killer without patterns and without any of the other fallbacks. 

Merhige has some weird experimental film techniques here and there, and there are certainly attempts at atmosphere, but it somehow just never quite works.  I dunno, its an interesting case study, but I would just say it's too little too late.  That and the acting is sometimes quite bad, there's obvious "why this why that" type stuff too.  One example is they stumble upon a serial killers graveyard, there are triangular patches of graves dug everywhere.  But...did he kill all these people at the same time?  WOuldn't some of them not be freshly dug?  Eroded? Grown over?  It's these type of things that riddle the movie with problems.

I think it got blamed on Merhige, who has not done a film since, and that's too bad, cause Begotten is cool.  I will give Suspect Zero two stars though, and that's very generous.

Deluge - 1933

 It's been a minute since I watched anything this old, and the film Deluge was released, on all days, on the day my grandmother was born!  August 13 1933.

Deluge is barely over one hour, and was a disaster movie based on a book written in 1928.  It begins with an unexplained apocalyptic event that destroys New York.  I have to say, really cool special effects for the time with miniature work and match cuts and superimposed images.  Fun shit, and the destruction of the city it total.  

From there, we follow survivor Claire as she lands on an island and is held by two rapey men that she eventually escapes from.  She finds nicer, more humane Martin.  They survive a cruel post-destruction world where the rapey dude from the island follows Claire and Martin as they go about finding the remaining humans.  He rallies a group to try and hunt down Claire with him, and in the meantime it turns out Martin's family is still alive.

Deluge is a strange and definitely uneven movie, the insane destruction at the end leads into a taut thriller that then becomes a weird drama screwball comedy at the end?  I'm not sure why.  

Considered at one time a lost film, this is a fun one that a fan of stuff like this should watch.  If you like old movies and early destruction movies like King Kong check this shit out yo!

3.5 stars.

In a Lonely Place - 1950

 It seems I get into specific winter moods sometimes, and this is the second time I've gone on a Humphrey Bogart kick in the winter.  Last winter I watched the Bogey Bacall films and a few more, In a Lonely Place is the first one this year.

In a Lonely Place was one of the first movies that came up when I googled "classic film noir".  And this was what made me rent it.  Then I get it home and it's starting out a little bit weird and...why did this come up as classic film noir?

I've seen a fair bit and I would say Dark Passage is much more of a classic film noir than this.  This movie was directed by Nocholar Ray and stars Bogart alongside a bunch of people I did not recognize.  The film is centered around a girl who was last seen with Bogart's character Dixon Steele, and who was then dumped along the side of a highway.  In the meantime, Dixon gets involved with his neighbor Laurel who begins to learn just what kind of man Dixon is.

There was a lot of this movie that I did not see coming, and a lot of this movie that was a lot darker than I expected.  The cops are tentatively doubtful of Dixon Steele, but we as the audience assume he's innocent.  What's dark and unexpected is that the shade they end up casting on him is from an abusive, controlling, and angry nature.  

It's genuinely scary and shocking the way that Bogart turns in this movie, and it is an acting highlight from him for sure.  It's one of the better written films he was in, not that he was in many stinkers obviously.  For those wanting a dark, strange, but classic feeling film, I say check it out.

American Psycho (s) - 1991/2000

 I just finished rereading the book American Psycho and then I rented the movie for $3.99 on Amazon in the next few minutes.  I have't read the book since about 2003ish and I haven't seen the movie in well over 15 years, how do they hold up?

American Psycho as a book is incredible to believe was actually published.  The book is obviously well written, is a satire, and it is brutal, but moreso it is trying to be offensive in every single way possible and slamming you over the head with it in every way.  The main character commits every sin, breaks every taboo, is racist and sexist and homophobic, and all while wearing this guise of not just normalcy but upper crust priviledge that you are foced to contend with what it is saying; we allow and even encourage depravity in our society and we enjoy looking the other way when it shows it face.

The book and the movie both center around Patrick Bateman, a 27 year old Harvard graduated Vice President at a law firm who does nothing (sloth) all day except worry about his image (pride) and envy what others have.  He dines out at the best restaurants (gluttony) and fucks various prostitutes and others girlfriends (lust).  He is also a serial killer (wrath) who wants everything (greed).  

The first 150 pages are a showboat of his moral depravity in various ways as he goes about the little playground that is New York to the rich, and you begin to wonder where this is all going, until he kills a homeless man.  Similarly, in the movie, that is paralleled.  Once that wall is broken, there are brief sexual forays and violence, clulminating in a crazy night of killings and him getting chased by the police, where he gets away and the end is left ambiguous.

There is certainly in both mediums a heavy amount of suggestion that nothing is indeed happening, that deaths are made-up and that the character is simply experiencing drug hallucinations or fantasies or what-have-you.  

The whole dialogue in this case about book versus movie is pointless, because the book is obviously way better, but the cool thing about both is they have stylistic flourishes, hilarious scenes and dialogue, and they truly paint a realistic picture of just how disgustingly vapid, empty, and inhuman the characters in their subject matter are. 

The strangest thing I found about the movie on this rewatch is that some of the shots are embarrassingly amateur, and the soundtrack despite being by John Cale is completely unremarkable.  If not for Christian Bale, this movie would likely have completely failed.  But it is riddled with talent beyond him, and they have quite the cast in this, Willem Dafoe, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Jared Leto, Chloe Sevigny, it's a massive cast of future megastars.

The book is an insane experiment that I wonder what else is even similar to.  The movie is fine, a good coming of age movie for me and one that I will always look back on fondly, but honestly 3 stars is what it likely deserves.

Below - 2002

 In 1998 Darren Aronofsky put out his film Pi, and several studios chased after him to write or direct a movie for them.  He signed one deal for a film called Proteus which was going to be a combo of submarines with aliens.

Because Hollywood is as Hollywood does, this movie instead became whatever it is, which is a box office bomb submarine ghost movie directed by the guy that did The Chronicles of Riddick.  The movie that this became is Below, oddly enough starring Zach Galifianakis, Bruce Greenwood, and a bunch of other "that guy" type people who you probably saw in a 90s movie or an odd single episode of a TV show.

Below did turn the aliens into ghosts, and the submarine in the movie is picking up random pings and noises and odd things are happening everywhere and its all very scary and shit.  They also pick up female science officer Claire, who begins to stir up trouble on the ship cause she's a female but also cause she uncovers a story of a dead submarine captain, she sees signs of the ghosts, and she isn't under the new captains thumb the way the officers are.

Below isn't really scary or interesting, it moves quite slowly, and relies on an atmosphere for effect, but for me, it didn't do much.  I do not understand watching something that is in close quarters and getting claustrophobic, just like I couldn't watch something up high and feel fear of heights.  I'm not there.  I can parse that out real quick.  Other than that, nothing is really made clear or dangerous enough for you to be interested in the goings on so you watch, bored, wondering about the making of instead.

It could have been worse, but overall its one of those movies that's not even fun to talk about, so I will only give it 1.5 stars.

Evil Dead Rise - 2023

 Evil Dead is a franchise every horror hound knows, whether they've seen all the entries or not.  To set the record straight, I have seen them all, including the original Evil Dead.

Evil Dead was basically a student project level amateur horror movie by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell, and they made it on a shoestring budget but with enough passion and blood and guts that it caught peoples attention in the long dead zombie genre.  It has an archetypical cabin in the woods approach where some friends raise a undead presence that has a horror comedy appeal, and it goes from there.

Some of the tenements of the series which entails The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Evil Dead (2013), and now Evil Dead Rise are: lots of blood and guts, living dead, unseen monsters shot from a first person perspective, and horror comedy.  Also, the isolated cabin the the woods approach is common, though does not appear in Army of Darkness.

Evil Dead Rise is the most recent legasequel or reboot or whatever we're calling it now.  Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are on as co-producers and in the beginning a lady at a cabin in the woods goes crazy and kills her friend and boyfriend.  Flashback (?) to an apartment complex where mom sends the kids out for pizza and an earthquake happens, and a chasm opens up into an old prison (?) where one of the kids find a vinyl record (?) with the incantations that when played bring forth evil dead.

Convoluted much?  Yeah, this is a plot of convenience if I've ever seen one.  Why not just have the book turn up from a mystery package or a fucking weirdo or whatever else you could do here...?  The evil dead infests the mom of the family and now its mom versus three kids and their aunt, her sister.  

Here's the thing guys, it's not scary.  I'm not even sure it's trying to be.  But it is entertaining, and it moves quickly, and makeup and the setting are pretty cool.  But also, there is no horror comedy, the apartment setting is not inherantly scary or interesting, and the gore is the only thing to keep you watching.  There's a few cool ideas, but really I don't know why this is necessarily "The Evil Dead" besides just to cash in on IP, there is nothing about this that really is reminiscent of the rest of the franchise.

I think it was in the end fine for what it was though, I will give it 2.5 stars.

The Prowler - 1981

 Also known as Rosemary's Killer.

Here we have a prime 80s slasher that I have not yet reviewed, lets fix that eh?  I had definitely seen it, but it had been a while, and this one is a good one.  It deserves to be watched again.

The Prowler begins with classic WWII footage and reading of a Dear John letter to an unknown soldier.  Then we cut to a high school where the girl who wrote it, presumably, is hunted down and killed on graduation night.  Now in the modern day of 1981, the school has not had a graduation since, but they are about to kick it back into gear.  Because of this, a killer reappears and bodies start stacking up.

It's a fairly simple premise, we don't watch these for their originality.  What we watch them for is bodies, both dead and naked.  Also, it helps if effects are by Tom Savini, even if it's mostly cut out by the censorship people.  

What this movie has is an iconic looking killer with a pitchfork, and that dareisay is just about all you need to be a successful slasher, and this one is certainly good.  I'm trying to do the math in my head about why it isn't as well known and in fact it was not a financial success, but I can't even really say.  I guess it probably got buried by all the others.

Spoiler alert in the end of Friday the 13th a kid Jason leaps out of the lake and pulls down the final girl, it is then revealed to be a dream sorta.  Sorta because all the sequels that actually star Jason point towards that this did happen...?  At then end of this one, the final girl gets grabbed by a suddenly reanimated dead body, then that is a dream.  So by Friday the 13th logic, the sequel to this should have that dead body, that murder victim, now being a killer and hunting people.  I wanna see it!  Prowler 2.

I liked this, I'll give it 4 stars.

Pandorum - 2009

 The year is 2009.  My ex-girlfriend and future ex-wife is really into Ben Foster.  We rent this movie because of him and watch it and everyone instantly forgets it ever existed the very next day.

There is an epidemic of movies that completely vanish from memory, and this is one of them.  It's some gritty super stylized space horror movie co-produced by Paul WS Anderson.  The guy who made Event Horizon goes for take 2 in this Sunshine/Event Horizon/Sphere/every other movie like this redux.  Also, the ship is called Elysium in a world where the movie Elysium came out 4 years later.

The aforementioned Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid star in the movie, where they wake up on a spaceship that seems to be empty at first until they discover there's crazy creatures living aboard and some renegade humans that are surviving ala Aliens.  Space madness took hold aboard the ship of course, and also some Firefly shit happened, cuz it gave birth to the same creatures.

The movie telegraphs everything that will happen for a lot of it, and the rest is middling, emphasized by very of-the-time style, effects, and grittiness.  Everything is covered in an oily gross liquid, and everyone is sweaty and ugly.  The characters do not have much depth, the ship apparently has endless rusty basements where someone can live, or pools of unknown liquids can coagulate.

Shot in confuso-vision, where you cannot tell what is happening half the time, and spoken almost entirely in spat out whispers, this movie is ridiculously of the time.  Also, this movie makes the weird common mistake of having characters name things...?  These guys get space madness, which they call Pandorum.  WHy would they call it Pandorum, exactly?  Its insanity.  They wouldn't randomly decide to name insanity after Pandora's Box.  Why would they do that?

In the end, its exactly what you might expect, and it certainly didn't require a rewatch.  If you want this type of thing, go watch Sunshine instead.