Sleepstalker - 1989

 The first movie about the fairy tale character of the Sandman came out in 1933, the most recent in 2017.  Obviously a character of some status, this little known horror movie also is sorta about the character.  Sorta.

Sleepstalker reminds me of those 3-4 middle Hellraiser movies that were barely about Pinhead and instead some stupid other story with Pinhead shoved in there in the end with 4 lines of dialogue.  It's also about the level of quality of those movies.

We begin with Griffin's family being murdered and the killer bing put on death row.  We get a priest who comes to the man on death row and gives him the ability to come back as living sand, which he obviously uses and comes back to murder some more.  Along the way some cops get  involved or whatever and some mild weird "scares" happen.

This is one that took me a long time to get through.  It moves at a glacial pace and is an hour 45 minutes which is probably about 45 minutes too long for what it is trying to do and how thin the storyline is.  Character have bad dialogue, stand around, plan things, discuss things, have zero chemistry or charisma.  It's a fucking dull, dull movie.

Then we eventually get to the priest who unveils what we already know, and cablam, final confrontation.  I dunno.  This movie is not good.  I'll give it like half a star. The effects are good, the few times they happen. It might deserve higher.  But ya know.

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural - 1973

 Halloween horror fest bayyyy-by!  The theme of the movies this year is "Tubi algorithm".  I am going to watch whatever it recommends in the first screen (or so) and this will be therefore random, and will also give you an interesting insight into what Tubi thinks I like.

Also known as The Legendary Curse of Lemora, and Lemora, Lady Dracula.

Lila is a angelic virginal singer who is a member of a church after her father is accused and found guilty of murder or something like that.  She receives a communique from her dad and sets off to find him after being told to come alone.  Doesn't sound fishy at all.  On the way, she enters an area full of cursed, psychotic people and things don't get much better when she finally arrives and meets cryptic Lemora.

The movie chugs a long and there are some pretty good sequences.  The beginning with the bus ride into town is really good, and though the movie telegraphs what is going on and what is going to happen, its a fun ride to take even with the outcome clear.  The usual lesbian undertones are present, there is a little nudity, and that's about the sum of it.

About 30 minutes were cut to make the version now available.  It's rated mature and nowadays except for the brief breast shot it's practically PG rated.  I wonder if the original cut had more violence and nudity.  This cut though, gets a relatively average 2.5.

Night Feeder - 1988

 I love how the IMDB for this says "the debut of Kate Alexander"  Yeah!  Because it was basically everybody's debut!  And also for a lot of them, their only film ever.

Night Feeder is a super Z grade slasher that no one has ever heard of.  Its amateur to the true definition, which we have seen a few times now on the blog, and the movie really looks, sounds, and feels like it.  As I may have said before, these can be divisive, a lot comes down to tone and atmosphere...

Night Feeder has main character reporter Jean in a city where young women's bodies are turning up with their brains sucked out of the heads.  She wants to write a piece on the news and begins to investigate, meets a charisma-less police guy Alonso, and gets sucked into the story.  

It cannot just be that, and so what it does instead is have a lot of weird nonsense shit whth the town blaming stuff on a weird band that sings exclusively about suicide, and having a weird subplot about prostitutes.  I tried to find the band on YouTube but I can't so you will just have to trust me, it's great.  Also great and jarring is the strange electronic score by one of the films 3 credited directors.

Sometimes you walk the line and find something which is yes Z grade but scratches the itch in just the right way.  I give it 4 stars.

The Chamber - 1996

 So I am at the thrift store and picking around VHSs, and the usual route here is to grab something unknown and random, and I pick up 1996's The Chamber in this context.

Bought for almost $4 million for a one-page idea around the height of the legal thriller, Hollywood banged down John Grisham's door to make another smash hit like The Firm.  The Chamber is originally going to star Brad Pitt and be directed by Ron Howard, that falls apart and eventually what we have here gets made.

Chris O'Donnell and Gene Hackman star in this southern story of a bomb which kills two children, and the fallout involving the killer being put on death row.  Sam (Hackman) has been in prison for 16 years and his grandson O'Donnell is a lawyer who decides to fight for him.  Sam is definitely a racist asshole, and guilty of many things, but is he guilty of the bombing?

The Chamber is a really odd movie in that we are watching our protagonist fight for a racist, and grow close to one, and Sam is not like the lovable curmudgeonly old dude who we kinda love.  He is a murderer, a slur blaring bigot who doesn't hold back and isn't trying to be on any good behavior.  Watching as we emote some sort of sympathy towards him for almost 2 hours is...an odd choice, to say the least.

We're all expecting bland leading man Chris O'Donnell to legalese his way to a happy conclusion and he doesn't, spoiler alert, so at least it does not pull punches.  I'll give it 1.5 stars and say it does move pretty quick.

Sweet Sixteen - 1983

 Also apparently stylized as Sweet 16.

I flick this on cuz Amazon recommends it and I get midway through before I realized I'd seen it before.  That's ok, I've seen a lot before.  I watched it again.  It was Don Shanks as the Native American character Jason that clued me in, I recognized him.  Don Shanks, I did not know, also played Michael Myers in Halloween 5.

Also, apparently, the role of the elder statesman character was supposed to be Leslie Nielsen.  A small change would've made this a lot better.  Nah, I kid tho, this movie is good.

Aleisa Shirley is one of the main characters, I don't know who I should say was the real main character, but she is a nice change from the typical focus.  Sexual and a bit catty she and several other people are involved in some killings in a local town.  It is all getting blamed on the Native character Jason, and the cops arrest him while others are still being hunted.

This movie is pretty solid as a slasher.  The tropes at this point are to make the victims unlikeable, but it will get worse from here and this is not as bad as some time later on in horror movies.  The kills are pretty minimal, I think this must've been made when the MPAA was cracking down a little on blood.  There are a couple topless shots and a little full bush.  Can't go wrong there.

I like it, I'll give it 4 stars.

Lost Highway - 1997

 Who knows how I got into David Lynch.  I believe I had heard the name at some point in my early teens, and it is possible my good buddy in high school Ben introduced me to Lost Highway possibly.  We liked it cuz it was insane, had Marilyn Manson and Rammstein in it, and was very transgressive.

I have rewatching both Lynch and Cronenberg throughout the years, revisiting my old teenage favorites, and seeing what does near-middle-age me think of them?  Lost Highway is memorable for many things, one of which being the standard Lynchian weirdness, but also I think in a lot of ways it serves as an interesting bridge from what Lynch was to who he became later, I see a lot of the relaunch of Twin Peaks in this, as well as a lot of Eraserhead, in a mashup perhaps a bit like Balthazar Getty turning into Bill Pullman.

It's somewhat hard to describe the plot (no surprise) but basically Fred (Pullman) and his wife (Patricia Arquette) begin receiving scary VHS tapes on their steps.  They call in cops, who have no answers, and then a tape reveals Pullman killing his wife, which he is then pronounced guilty for.  He randomly disappears from his cell and is replaced by Balthazar Getty, a delinquent non-related guy who soon enough gets involved with a woman that creepy mob dude Nice Guy Eddie is dating, also played by Patricia Arquette, and from there a creepy underworld is exposed.

Filled with Lynch moments, there are individual sequences in this which you've never seen anything like before and really will not again.  I simply do not understand how some things have not been copied, drawn from, influenced the cinema of others.  Sure, he has some thematic copycats, but I don't really understand why people don't copy this.

Thematically, hell, I'll throw in my take about the two real questions to ask:  What happens in the movie, and then, What is the movie about?

What happens:  I think if we look at this as literally as possible, it is about a man discovering his wife is cheating on him.  Pullman sees Arquette at his jazz club, and if we accept there are not two Arquette's, she's also maybe mixed in with Nice Guy Eddie.  Pullman goes a little crazy and grows distant from her before murdering her one night, killing Eddie and a few of his men as well.  He is caught and arrested.  He embarks into a fugue state and imagines himself as someone innocent (Getty), and draws many psychotic conclusions about her life that justify him murdering her. 

Thematically, I think it is about growing distant from people, and the sort of bizarre moments we wish that someone was dead or gone or would just get lost or whatever.  This film explored the reality of how dark those thoughts are, how evil exists even in the mind of innocent people, and how we use justification in different ways to explore the dark recesses of the human mind.

This movie is worth a rewatch, y'all.  It stands up.  I would love to see a high def transfer, the full screen pan and scan DVD I watched is an awful experience.

Scream - 1981

 So Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven....just kidding.  Also known as The Outing 

Scream is a simple name for a bizarrely simple but also way too complicated movie.  Scream stars nobody and was directed by a guy mostly known for stunt work, this movie supposedly started filming without a finished script or an ending in mind, and boooooyyy does it show.  

Scream is a simple enough idea, a bunch of people are at an abandoned town in the middle of nowhere and a dead body shows up and soon enough they're being hunted by a mystery killer.  The town is too far (more on this later) from anything to go get help so they try to band together and use their wits to escape the situation.

Okay, so they say it is 30 miles from the nearest help.  You know guys, I'm a hiker.  I did 13 miles, half of it uphill with an elevation gain of 3000 feet.  I did this in about 5 hours.  The average person walks a 20 minute mile.  Just wake up and head out at 6am, you'll get there by nightfall.  It is not that hard.  I'm tired of movies saying they're too far to walk to get help.

As the strangers wait in this town, random things also start happening to them.  A pair of motorcyclists come out of nowhere and they try to use the bikes to get help.  But then later the weirder one - a black cowboy comes out of nowhere with the body of their friend, drops it off, evades all questions and leaves, and is never explained.  WHAT???

The good things about this though is that the music is great, and the bizarreness does achieve a level of atmosphere that sorta pulls you in.  This is not as amateur as it could be, and the low 2.3 rating on IMDb seems a little wrong.  I'd give it like a 2 I guess.

The Vampire Happening - 1971

 Cruising through Amazon, hey I haven't watched a 70's sex vampire movie in a while.... eh, why not.

Produced by and starring Pia Degermark, this is a pretty damn fine definition of the 70s cult grindhouse movie scene.  We have topless women aplenty as a woman inherits a castle with a creepy painting of her dead relative, who looks exactly like her.  

Pia begins roaming the castle and soon enough finds a tomb in the basement, opens it and wabam, her relative is released because her relative was a vampire in the tomb.  The two women look alike and so the clumsy butler tries to kill the vampire and keeps making mistakes and pursuing the wrong woman.  This is a horror comedy, which I was not expecting, and even more what I would not have guessed was that it is actually somewhat funny!

It's a romp to see these deceptions and silly shenanigans going on and soon enough tons of people are getting turned to vampires.  There is a great Abbott at a local church who gets flashed by a vampire woman and then seduced in the woods and turned into a vampire himself, and so he is also getting into trouble and converting people to vamps.

I liked this movie, but I have also not seen one like this is a while.  So was it good or am I just nostalgic?  I dunno, but I do think this was a pretty good one.  A little overly long, but it does a good job of keeping things light and it knows what it is.  Count Dracula shows up later doing the whole "I vant to suck your blood!" thing and it's great.  I'll give it 3.5 stars.

Blue Monkey - 1987

 I'm straight up marathoning anything that sounds horror adjacent right now, and half of them or n=more are not getting reviews, sorry.  It's cuz most of them deserve only a few sentences...there's not a lot to say.

Also known as Insect!  Hell yeah with an exclamation mark.

Insect! stars Steve Railsback as a detective, though that will barely come up, all we really need to know is he's the good guy.  Dr. Steve is in this hospital concurrently as a old man is brought in who cut himself on the thorn of an unknown plant, and the man promptly dies.  Soon enough a worm like insect crawls out of his mouth and is kept in a jar by the hospital, and other people are showing symptoms of the worm disease.

This is a Canadian low budget movie and you can tell before you look it up, cuz there's for sure some nice "aboot" Canadian accents in here.  It's also very minimal, one setting, basic but cool and effective monster, and small cast of characters that work, have some decent chemistry, and even has a decent child actor.  Also, fucking very cool poster:

This is not a great movie, nor is it even that good, but it is fun enough and it is what you expect.  Real effects and a quick pacing help out a lot, and you could definitely find worse out there.  I'll give it 2.5 stars.

Wendigo - 2001

 So I am at the library and this is on a shelf and I'm like, "eh whatever, sure" and I grab it.

Wendigo is a early 2000s independent film, starring Patricia Clarkson and Jake Weber.  I put this is in and I'm watching kinda expecting this to be a SyFy adjacent stupid monster movie.  I am always down for a Wendigo movie, I like the creature and I like stupid movies so like, whatthefuck.

But as this movie goes on, I kinda get drawn into the plot and as this approaches an hour and then 75 minutes I'm already guessing, is there no Wendigo in this movie?  And if that is the case, which it is, what's the angle?  The angle is using this interesting backdrop, this mythology to drop a ambiguous element to this "other suspense" movie and then to ask questions.

The other real actual plot involves a family on vacation way out in the middle of the northeast somewhere, and they run into some yokel rednecks who are immediately hostile after the family hits the guys deer with their car.  The awkwardness takes a stronger turn when it turns out this guy is their neighbor, and then when the family finds bullet holes in their house, and then when the neighbor is spying on them.  

The couple's kid finds a weird Wendigo figurine in a store, and opens up the door to this alternate viewpoint, and to cut to the point - yes - there is a Wendigo in here, but always done in a weird way where it is possible or probable that it is a imagined or hallucinated.  The Wendigo itself looks pretty cool and the rest of the movie isn't hinged around it, so it works.

I was not expecting a rather arresting drama film when I rented a movie called Wendigo, but it is definitely more that than a horror.  So therefore, I give it 3?

Rat Man - 1988

 How bizarre is it that in one of the last shots of the rat man in Rat Man I paused it and said "I know that guy!"  I did think it was Weng Weng at first but it is in fact Nelson Dela Rosa, of The Island of Dr Moreau with Marlon Brando.

Rat Man, oh man, where am I going to go with this.  There is a lot to say, there is also nothing to say.

I'm on a fucking spree right now, in fact the other movie I just watched...inport this later... that one gets a three out of five, I liked it, its solid..  Rat Man comes up as a suggested thing on Tubi (the only streaming service you need, and its fuckin free, Tubi, sponsor me!!)  Rat Man is a completely unknown 80s horror?  Slasher? Thriller? Or something?  Genre undefined.  Idea, for that matter, undefined.

Basically plot wise, a genetically mutated rat man is killing people.  Where, when, how, I dunno I wasn't fucking paying attention you dig?  One does not "watch" rat man - one just kinda challenges oneself to get through it sober, then gives up and goes to the gas station about 5 minutes before they close buys two tall boys and drinks those with some Jager - which is awful, do people actually drink this?

Yeah it is a true story and no, I didn't pay attention to Rat Man, but I mean come on, its called Rat Man and stars a midget!  Question - would this ever have a snowballs chance in hell of getting made now?  Would this ever, and I repeat ever not get canceled?  Can midgets act as mutants anymore?  Surely the answer to this is no.  

Rat Man had bad kills and a no real effects and was clearly made on a miniscule "I work at a gas station " budget, so for what it is its ok, but overall I cant give this more than 1 star.

Red Corner - 1997

 My friend and I got this 90s Richard Gere thriller on VHS and started it, got maybe 30 minutes in before he pulled the plug, saying, "this shit is boring"

Red Corner is and was a relatively unknown cash in on the then current China and Tibet crisis.  Made not so much directly about China but rather about how awful China is, Richard Gere is lead as an American who is found with a dead Chinese woman after a night of sex and gets framed for her murder.  The corrupt, awful Chinese government gets placed as the villain while Gere goes up against them.

I mean....I dunno right?  I don't know what to say about this.  Number one, it is way too long at 2 hours.  We know he's not guilty cuz it's a Richard Gere movie, so its a movie about constructing the pieces to prove his innocence.  There's mild tension in some of the court room scenes as we watch the difficulty he has with the system there, but overall he is always granted enough leeway to prove his point.

Bai Ling is his attorney and sh'e pretty good, and other than it is extremely averagely made.  It was a bomb, got bad reviews, and will somehow live forever, which is odd.  I give it like 1.5 stars.

Witchtrap - 1989

 So I confused this with the other Kevin Tenney with movie, Witchboard, which I previously reviewed on this blog.  That stopped me from writing the review a while but bam here we are with Witchtrap.

Linnea Quigley stars in this awfully acted fantasy horror movie that was clearly made to try to capitalize on the bizarre success of Witchboard.   Linnea doesn't actually star, but that is to say that no one in this movie has been in much, and when I say the acting was bad earlier, that is a vast understatement.  It has been a while, dear reader, since I last saw anything this incredibly subpar and it's refreshing to see again.  I'm not watching a lot of movies these days, and I forogt what this was like.

Witchtrap involves an old building that the main woman Agnes (2 other IMDb credits)  wants to ride of a demonic presence.  She gathers a team which has a "speaker" person, her husband, and a "body" person, Whitney.  She summons the evil and the evil stars doing evil stuff and killing people.  Its what you expect and it even has full frontal from Quigley until she is killed off.

I dunno.  What does one say more about this?  Its not a good movie.  It has basically no production value, but what they do with very little is impressive.  Quigley's death is cool, she gets impaled through the throat by a shower nozzle!  Pretty cool, unique.

She really is the queen of low budget nudity.

It gets a lot more audacious and cool as it nears the end, and basically sticks the landing, so bad acting aside it's a lot of fun.  It really has that nice late night stoned bad movie vibe, so I will give it a solid 3 stars.

Darkroom - 1989

 I might have said I am googling "lesser known slasher movies" and then searching them on my phone.  If I didn't say that, well, I am.  This is in conjunction with re-re-re-rewatching Friday the 13th series with my girl.

So yeah dude, I find Darkroom and I put it on, its free online and most of these are not.  Darkroom is sorta you're whodunnit type slasher, though not aggressively steered that way.  I called dwho the killer was pretty early on and honestly they don't try hard to hide it.  I expected a lot more red herrings.  

There's a paper thin plot of a family living in the middle of nowhere and someone is killing their neighbors and soon enough after them.  The killer is a photographer, though that plot gets dropped midway through the movie in favor of just focusing on the victims.  

The victims are fairly flavorless and bland, but then again, the movie is fairly flavorless and bland so at least they match.  As we near the end and the killer is revealed, we have a completely revealing flashback with bizarre and creepy undertones.  I can't think of many slashers right off that do this, and its not like it is handled well in this movie but it is unique and memorable, so this does have that going for it.

Darkroom won't rock the boat nor make you think too much, but it will keep you watching and it offers some decent times to be had.  I guess I'll give it like a 2.

Silent Scream - 1979

 I'm busy! Sorry, ok. It's summer,  I'm out hiking and camping and I have not been very interested in watching movies. 

So I Google lesser known slasher movies and this comes up. I've been rewatching Friday the 13th with my girl and I do like these so much that I immediately thought of that today when I was thinking of putting something on while I worked. 

Silent Scream is a pretty early slasher,  another one to add to the proto list,  but obviously after Halloween. Silent Scream also copies the idea of the older actor coming in with gravitas so this starts Cameron Mitchell as a cop guy. 

Silent Scream plays out as we follow our main girl Scotty as she seeks a place to live. She finds a boarding house run by the mousey Mason who lives there with his enigmatic mom and sister,  and few other roommates. They all get to know each other and the roommates go to the beach where one of them is murdered. Now it's a murder mystery and a few more bodies show up while the cops investigate. 

Silent Scream is a relatively tame one,  a movie without a whole lot to say but I guess at the same time it was early so I can't exactly slam it. It's pretty good! Overall. But not exactly great. It goes down easy and it's fine overall,  probably a solid 2.5 stars. 

Puppetmaster / Puppetmaster 2 - 1989 / 1990

 Ok ok ok, I was a few years off guessing the years, I guessed 1992 and 1993, but hey, what can I say I am impressed they made this in 1989.

Puppetmaster I have seen a couple of times.  I thought it had at least one known actor, I struggle to remember who I thought was in this movie, but no one is in it, spoiler alert.  The opening film to this series is also like, completely made to have sequels?  Both in the way that is doesn't explain anything but also in the way that it leaves the puppets and company intact.

"Completely unexplained" is an odd direction to have a living puppet movie go in.  It does not work.  Basically old guy Toulon is the puppetmaster and pupper maker, and he has an unknown amount of unexplained living puppets.  They're all minimally malevolent, moreso leaning towards being actively violent.  They follow the twisted will of their strange maker, and the movie follows that.

It's also very slow and has barely any puppets in it until the end.  So, it kinda sucks.  Mostly it is bad actors saying dull lines in overdone cartoonish sets and costumes.  When the puppets are on screen its an obvious highlight, and the kills are fun and imaginative.  But its like a 1.5 out of 5.

Puppetmaster II is obviously done at a higher budget, with the knowledge your audience wants the puppets in it more.  So it answers the call and has more deaths, more effects, more puppets, and more passion.  

The plot is basically Toulon comes back deformed and wrapped in gauze, and he reconnects with his puppets while we get some flashbacks and he works towards...some goal or something.  It's a who cares excuse for fun, and it is.  I give it a solid 3.5 stars.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 - 1986

 After sitting dormant for 12 years, a sequel to the dominant horror movie was finally made.  It eschewed expectation and divided audiences.  Now, my turn.

TCM is one of my favorite horror movies.  Seriously, go rewatch it or watch it for the first time.  The editing, the allusion to violence rather than the vision of violence, it is masterful in more ways than you remember. The soundtrack, I mean everything is just expertly done.  

The sequel was long anticipated and in the meantime I think director Tobe Hooper began to subtly hate the creation he'd made.  Just like George Lucas, I believe these creatives set out with the Intention of subverting the expectation, and honestly...of fucking with their fans.  Tobe Hooper left the horror genre in the dust and decided to lean into a comedic and over the top aesthetic for the sequel, and basically lampoon his own creation while still making the first of many official sequels.

TCM II introduces us to Dennis Hopper, a cop who is scarred from the downfall of the first movie and is planning revenge.  This sequel also introduced us to more of Leatherface's family including Viggo Mortensen, Stretch, The Cook, and of course... the legendary and incredibly divisive Chop Top.  Chop Top exemplifies the film itself in many ways and the difference from the original, and is a lot like the sequel:  overbearing, overdone, exaggerated, and annoying.  Some like him, most hate him.

TCM II isn't all bad...  but it is close to all bad.  There is a long sequence in a radio station that is so annoying and stupid you'll wonder why you're watching the thing.  There is also an abundance of scenes like that one, where the killers are just out, in the daylight, and no one apparently notices them or cares.  Its a really, really stupid movie.

I'm busy, I'm moving, life is crazy as usual.  Blog entries will decrease again.  But, I might watch all 15 Puppetmaster movies....so  there is that.

Thunder 2 - 1987

 Who knew that the movie I randomly rented from the library a while back, Thunder, had two sequels which my Idaho library has, for WHAT reason exactly??  Also known as Thunder Warrior 2.

Tried to find the filming locations just now, not listed, but I feel comfortable saying it is vaguely in Arizona.  

The first Thunder felt like it was directly a First Blood copy, and they could have definitely made a Rambo: First Blood Part 2 clone.  But I bet that was too high budget, or maybe it was just uncopyable.  But either way this movie takes a detour and strikes out on its own.

Thunder 2 takes off by having main star Thunder get hired by the police.  One of the cops is dirty and selling drugs, the sheriff is a good solid dude.  Thunder gets framed for this that or the other, and then the cops are after him.  Its all A to B to C.  Straight forward.

The cool thing in this is the helicopter sequence which goes on forever, and seems like it was shot completely incompetently.  But yeah!  Solid sequel.  I give it a 3.

Fear - 1990

 I dialed it back a little bit to 1990 but kept the same genre - that being serial killer movies.

This was a made for TV movie starring Ally Sheedy that I found in my neverending search for serial killer movies that were in the 90s.  It also got suggested to me because of watching In Dreams, so now the algorithm is giving me movies with a psychic bent to them.

These movies are often pretty similar - main character and evil killer are linked in some weird telepathic way, killer gets off on it and our star is frightened until they get a cop to help them and then they begin to see that they can use this power to control or affect the killer.  Then it keeps going and eventually the killer is after our main character.

This does describe to a T both Fear and the movie I watched after, Hideaway with Jeff Goldblum.  What can I say man, I am in the mood to watch these!  Hideaway is great, mini review says come for Jeff Goldblum stay for the crappy CGI and the over the top nature of the film.  3.5 stars.

But now Fear, Fear is a good one with a truly creepy vibe at times.  We have the killer "The Shadow Man" going after women, and Ally Sheedy is a psychic who's helped cops in the past track down two other killers.  Now she is after Shadow, and making a new boyfriend, and doing all the other classic stuff in between.  Spoiler alert the killer is awesomely played by Pruitt Taylor Vince, and the end sequence in a mirror house is awesome.

Its a fun movie, my girl liked it, and I would see it again.  Not bad for Made for TV!  It premiered on Showtime July 15 1990, almost exactly 34 years ago.  Weird.

8mm - 1999

 There are those iconic movies from youth that you remember forever, and for me this is one of them.  I'm using youth in the broad definition since this came out when I was 13, but I definitely remember this from some time close to then, I do not remember exactly when I first saw it.

8mm was one of those movies that you heard people talking about in that reverulatory way, the way people talked about Se7en and Silence of the Lambs.  They would whisper about its darkness, scariness, it's moral depravity.  I saw it, loved it, and have watched it many times and probably introduced people to it.  But like many things on this bog that are a rewatch, it's been years, minimally 10, since I have watched this movie.

Its also strange that this movie has had very little legacy.  Now, there was a straight to DVD sequel 6 years later, but I would think with the popularity of true crime and such, this could easily be translated into a TV show.  But it's more than that, its that this movie doesn't get talked about much, from what I see.  People name drop American Psycho more than this, and that movie came out later than 8mm.  

Nicolas Cage stars as private investigator Tom Welles, who is called in to investigate a supposed snuff film that was found in the private collection of a dead man.  He begins the hunt looking for the girl who is shown being killed in the video, and that leads him on a long and dark journey into the past as well as into the netherworld of underground pornography and the weirdos involved.  Along the way he meets Joaquin Phoenix as Max California, a grungy deadbeat who works at a porn store and helps him.

There's a lot of truly creepy shit in this movie, which is why I find it strange that this isn't as talked about as other stuff.  This was Andrew Kevin Walker's follow up to Se7en, and while I guess you could say that his career overall never achieved the heights of Se7en again, this is a really cool follow up that people who like dark movies should be talking about. 

Another thing that's certain is that this movie simply stinks of the year 1999.  I have been watching a lot of movies from that year, trying to find what is the most "1999" movie, and this is up there is it's nihilist, audacious slime.  Apparently, it is way less dark than what Walker had written, which makes me wonder, how crazy and dark was this originally?  Its a great rewatch, I'll give it 4 stars.

In Dreams - 1999

 I'm still doing it, everyone.  I am still watching 90's serial killer rip offs of Se7en.  You can't stop me.

I did watch Kiss the Girls finally as well, my mini review is going to be its good not great, stop having the killer be someone who knows the girl, and also stop having the killer be a cop.  I think its very interesting that they say Elwes didn't rape Judd, but other than that it's whatever.

In Dreams was directed by indie director Neil Jordan.  Funny, relevant quote from WikiPedia:  "Co-writer Robinson criticized the film the year after its release, stating: "It was a complete and utter mess from top to bottom. I thought Jennifer Eight was a low point, but Christ almighty, this hit the floor and dug."  Yeah dude, they though this was worse than my recently reviewed film Jennifer Eight.

So this is yet another serial killer thriller, one which this time stars Annette Bening, Robert Downey Jr, and Stephen Rea.  This was made at the height of Downey's drug abuse, and he was imprisoned the same year this came out. 

Annette Bening is a relatively normal woman who's always had strange dreams, and it seems that now they are getting weirder, and have recurring motifs about children and drowning.  It might be related to a spree of child murders in the area that involve drowning, and soon enough Bening's child is killed and she is more involved.  They find stuff to prove her dreams are prognosticating the kills and bam, just like that you have another stupid serial killer movie.

What's strange about this and why it gets an entire review is the weird amount of time they spend with crossdresser or maybe trans character Vivian that RDJ plays.  There's very long, bizarre, surreal scenes with Bening and Downey in somewhat sexually laden, cryptic scenes that kinda go nowhere...?  They're quite cool and give the movie a bit more points.  But the rest of the film is so bland and so average that this part is all it really has.

Its a strange one, and one that stands out amidst these types.  I give it 3 stars.

Beasties - 1989

 Thank you to video stores. Seattle WA is where I am and where my friend and I rented this DVDR. Viva Scarecrow Video. 

Beasties is a zero budget 1989 horror Sci fi with little release and less legacy. According to the Wikipedia only 200 copies were made and sold before it was shelved. It's an odd duck and my friend picked it at random from the selection in Scarecrow. 

Nelson and Laura are the main characters in this very indie horror sorta movie. It's a very nonlinear plot as aliens land on the earth,  these guys discover them,  other conflict happens,  and that's about it. 

Surprisingly good practical effects and nudity help elevate this movie,  but the convoluted plot is a bit hard to follow. Towards the end things get easier,  but overall it's also incredibly slow. There's a gang of leather clad Goth dudes around to complicate things, and yea that's about it. It's a weird movie. 

I don't know if this movie even exists in any format or available,  but it's a fine watch if you find it. 3 stars. 

A Streetcar Named Desire - 1951

 In a haze of barely getting any sleep,  super strong coffee that made me feel a bit insane,  and bizarre emotional state I turned on and watched Streetcar in the very early morning a few days ago. 

Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh star in this extremely well known film directed by Elia Kazan, based on the play by Tennessee Williams. This movie was a smash success, got Leigh an Oscar,  and has been annulled into history,  but have ya actually seen it?

First of all, Brando is so fucking good in this it's a crime that he didn't get an Oscar. He is palpably unpredictable, with a easy charisma that only is mirrored by his offensive character and dialed up reactions. One moment Brando is oozing out sexuality and charm,  the next he's bristly, dangerous,  and explosive. He is doing a ton of acting business,  eating food,  hunching over,  interacting with the background. It's incredible. 

Then,  I'll merge Vivian Leigh and the overall plot/ end. Tennessee Williams had a sister with mental issues,  and the fact is women historically have been declared insane for no reason,  but the acting here is so over the top and theatrical,  and the end so trite and predictable that it's hard to not subtract points for it. Leigh is hard to watch,  she gets mildly better by the end,  but it is an impossible thing to perform overall I'd estimate,  and she isn't great in it. She's declared insane and carted off,  and that's so much a product of its time it's laughable. 

But there's a ton here that is easy to like, and I did like it,  and I would say watch it for Brando absolutely. 4.5 stars

Pharaoh's Curse - 1957

 Only off by one year when I guessed!!!

Pharaoh's Curse was one of the suggestions after I finished Spider Baby, so yea.  Why not.

There's a book I've been wanting to leaf through called Egyptmania Goes to the Movies.  I am a little bit obsessed with Egyptian lore in films, and I love the mummy stuff, the tomb stuff, the stuffy guys in almost suits getting ropes and lowering themselves into caverns...I adore this type of movie.

This is a prime example of that sorta thing, also a prime example because it is 66 minutes long, you won't remember a single character name, its harmless fluff with some awesome sequences, and it is a classic fucking CLASSIC Hollywood movie.

Early on, a captain leading an expedition starts hitting on a married woman who he is taking out the the pyramids.  She is definitely interested, and turns out she is only on the expedition to break up with her hubby anyways.  She breaks up with him about the same time he has discovered a way into the tomb, and a sarcophagus is opened, and thus they have the curse on them all.  A creepy woman appears and guys start getting picked off.

I couldn't tell you exactly why I like this movie and this genre, but it does it for me, and I would say this is right in the mix with the rest of them.  I'll give it 3.5 stars!

Spider Baby - 1967

 Cruising through podcasts, getting inspired to watch a werewolf movie specifically, but I hear this recommended as well and then I go start the movie several minutes later.

Spider Baby was a small budget black and white horror movie that came out several years after it was filmed in 1964, and marks a later era film for star Lon Cheney Jr.  Lon plays the uncle of two demented young girls and one full on insane boy.  Sid Haig plays the boy in an early role for him.

The story begins with the delivery of a letter to Lon Cheney's family.  The mailman is killed when one of the girls lures him into the window of the house and the other girl stabs him with a knife.  This has clearly happened before, and Lon emotes a bit of disappointment and disapproval, but more bad news comes when the letter reveals that some of their distant family is to arrive that day.

When the family arrives, the characters are more revealed.  One of the girls is obsessed with spiders and basically considers herself to be one, her killing game akin to trapping a bug in a spiders web.  The other girl is a bit more sane than that, but not by far, and Sid Haig is just a complete insane weirdo who is also a bit butal and/or blood hungry.  We go from there as the family meets, and the characters get roped into each others lives.

It's a very strange movie, and it's for sure a forerunner to what I feel would become the groundwork for some of the psychological horror present in a filmmaker like Rob Zombie's work.  This was a prime hunting ground for like 2002-era horror movies where the characters are not just evil but also twisted, and their twisted obsessions were explored as almost equal to their destructive desires.  I'm sorta glad that trype of horror is gone, but yeah this was definitely an early foray into it.

This being an early exploration, it does manage to unsettle a bit.  The sheer perversity of these characters gets under the skin a bit, and tiny moments speak volumes.  There's also quite a high body count, and the movie moves quickly, and overall I would say this was quite a head of it's time.  I think this is a great horror movie perfect for those who want to explore the genre, and I give this 4 stars.

FeardotCom - 2002

 Originally intended for Zalman King?  The director of Blue Sunshine?  Damn, why could that have not worked out?

FeardotCom has been an oft referenced film on this blog, one of which I have always wanted to see.  I love this little subgenre, niche, whatever you want to call it, where a new technology comes out and that is the focus of the terror.  I mean, is not Slenderman a somewhat recent, somewhat example of this?  Social media used as the source of the scares.  

FeardotCom stars Stephen Dorff, Natasha McElhone, Jeffrey Combs and Stephen Rea is the story of a ghostly evil website where people go to and witness live kills...  Or something.  Its at least implied that's what they're doing on the website, never definitely shown, and sometimes it just seems as though you click around and then you are doomed to die in 48 hours.  Detectives Dorff and McElhone investigate, and we go from there.

This movie was not the obnoxiously stupid movie I wanted it to be, it got kinda close, but it was too boring and slow.  I wanted a gloriously early 2000s idiot-fest full of awful CGI, jargon talk about the internet, and nu metal.  But this is too plot driven with too many boring investigation scenes.  Again, this reminds me of the middle of the Hellraiser run.  I mean, literally replace the girl on the website with Pinhead and this movie is that.  They never do explain how the girl on the website would know the characters names, but obviously we know Pinhead would know that.

FeardotCom does have the hilarous website of FeardotCom.com in the movie, likely because the actual fear.com was taken.  So it is fucking stupid, and just not fun stupid.  Which means it gets like a 2.

A Murder of Crows / Jennifer 8 - 1998/1992

 Someone please stop me from watching these.  Someone, help!

I love it, to be clear.  I thought about writing a review for the Cuba Gooding Jr movie Murder of Crows, then opted not to.  Then I watched Jennifer 8 which was another serial killer investigate-y movie and thought, surely these two could share a mini review.

A Murder of Crows had Cuba Gooding Jr only a few years after his Oscar for Jerry Maguire, and boy had the man taken a significant down grade in movie quality.  Two years later he's starring with Tom Berenger in a sub par murder mystery movie.  Yikes!

Cuba is a lawyer who grows a conscience and loses the job, only to be left dry of opportunity when he meets an old man who gives him a book he's written.  The book is titled A Murder of Crows, and is about a series of lawyer murders.  Old man dies, Cuba published book, turns out book is based on reality, and now Cuba is framed as the suspect, and is on the run to find the real killer.

Jennifer 8 stars Andy Garcia as a investigator who is on the case when a hand is found at a local garbage dump.  He is sent to interview a possible witness, a blind woman played by Uma Thurman in an early role, and they begin to form a romantic attraction while the case obviously has more bodies turn up and intrigue build.

The things these both have in common is the tropes they follow.  The cop falling for the witness is an obvious trope, and the main character framed for the murders is the other.  They also both have elaborate genius level games the killer follows, and both involve a twist, both involve the killer going after someone close to the main character....I mean damn, they're very much "follow the formula" movies.

Jennifer 8 is better but slower, Murder of Crows is just downright bad.  I give Murder a 1 and Jennifer a 2.5.

Resurrection - 1999

 Let's keep this streak going as long as we can huh?  Loving these dumb 90s-00s thriller horror mystery movies.

Resurrection is directed by Russell Mulcahy and reunites him with Christopher Lambert from Highlander.  This movie was not released in the US, where it came out straight to DVD or VHS or what have you.  This one is more of the same as we've had in plot so lets get to it.

Lambert is a cop and a body turns up missing an arm.  That leads them to another missing an arm, and a guy that looks like the stereotype of Jesus missing his head.  There's a killer out who is trying to reconstruct the body of Jesus Christ, to create some sort of a resurrection before Easter comes.  It's a ridiculous plot for a ridiculous movie.  

The second or third, fourth fifth tier of this movie is palpable in every way.  When we get to a crime scene, the camera work goes all "mega cool" with skewing the image and twisting it around, going to mega slow mo and thrashing hand held shots.  Then super fake way too red blood is sprayed everywhere and torrential rain comes crashing down... its style over substance in every way feasible.

The plot is solved about an hour into the movie, and from there we still have 45 minutes, which is a huge problem, and in the end, its overly convoluted and ridiculously stupid.  Its a completely insane movie which totally fits both the type it is, and the year it came out.  The movie is almost so bad its good, its also almost kinda okay in just  conventional way...but its not, so it gets a 1.5.

Fallen - 1998

 I'm really enjoying this weird run of unknown late 90s thrillers that were either similar to Se7en, and honestly even the Hellraiser movies fit into this category loosely, which is probably why I liked those so much.

Fallen comes up and its 1998, something about copycat killings or deaths that continue.  This instantly makes me think of Copycat, which I liked, so naturally I put on Fallen.  Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, and Elias Koteas star in this strange movie which also reminded me a little bit of the far-in-the-distant-past God Told Me To.  That movie explored "what if that excuse was true?"

Fallen takes on a similar route, because it might be the only movie which explores, "what if the idea of demon possession was real?"  Demon possession as the claim when some real life people kill, as when some people explain it to themselves, aghast that a real person could have committed some heinous act.  They shake their head and wonder what ol' Beezlebub or whatever is up to.

I just fell down a quick IMDb rabbit-hole trying to find more movies like these.  I started this with Oxygen, I watched Bone Collector, and then Hellraisers got me really into this, and recently Suspect Zero and the others have really isolated:  this weird little time and genre was really fun, cuz it was very dark and weird, but also tonally very all over the place, with a ton of experimentation.  Nothing speaks to me as much as vibe movies, too, which most of these very much are.

Plot-wise, Fallen has Elias Koteas get the gas chamber in the beginning, and his essence leaves and hops body to body to continue to fuck with Denzel Washington as Hobbes, the detective who got him captured.  Eventually Denzel uncovers the evidence that Azazel is the name of the demon which was infesting Koteas and is now free, and as unlikely as that idea seems, it eventually gets proven true, and now he's up against a supernatural force.

The movie is definitely a vibe film, and as it goes on it harkens back to classic film noir, especially through the soundtrack.  That move was definitely not one I expected, and the atmosphere in this one is seriously interesting.  It makes this stick out and become cozy, which I guess is the other piece of the puzzle about why these are hitting for me.

Whatever the reason may be, these are great and I'm enjoying them, and I give this 4 stars.

Wicked Stepmother / Deadly Illusion - 1989 / 1987

 I had a Larry Cohen double feature just now, for no other reason than they were both free online and I generally like the guy.  Good thing I didn't start with these two or I might not have watched more of his stuff.

Wicked Stepmother I didn't even finish honestly.  I might later today, depending how much is left, but I also might not.  Nothing is really worse than a bad comedy, and while I have seen worse than this, it's just not interesting or entertaining, and I can't even really follow the plot, mostly cuz I'm completely not paying attention, looking up campsites on my laptop while its on in the background.  Who gives a shit.

In Wicked Stepmother, Bette Davis has her last role as an evil stepmother who marries old guy Sam and changes him into a TV-watching, hair-growing slave.  Better Davis left the movie midway through, so her character also takes the form of a young beautiful woman who charms and plays with the other people in Sam's family, and it kinda just keeps going, seemingly without a real plot or laughs.

In Deadly Illusion, Billy Dee Williams is a private detective who is approached by a man and asked to kill the man's wife for $100,000.  Billy goes to the woman and sleeps with her but does not kill her, and the next day she turns up dead anyways and he is the prime suspect.  Complication builds and builds, and the story takes some twists and turns, and yeah, that's about it.

Both of these feel like pretty second tier B movies, not in a thoroughly bad way, but just in a shrug-worthy way.  I doubt most people would have anything to say about this after watching it besides, "Uh, yea, you know, it was fine."  Wicked Stepmother is outwardly bad, but Deadly Illusion would be a great candidate for my eternal question, "what random ass movie should get a sequel now?"  Deadly Illusion 2: The Illusioon Returns.

I dunno.  I'll give Stepmother 1 star and Illusioon 2.5.

Miracle Mile - 1988

 In the first 10 minutes of this movie I realized I had seen it before, years back in one of my "apocalype films" runs where I was watching a bunch of movies of that type.  I stuck with this and rewatched primarily cause I remembered this movie being really good, and on rewatch I was not disappointed.

We start with a nice location shooting at the LaBrea tar pits, which was walking distance from where I used to live in LA if you wanted a bit of a long walk.  Harry is a schmo-regular-man without a real life, finally finding a girl he likes and arranging a date with her.  They decide to meet at a restaurant at 1am, Harry oversleeps, comes there late, and intercepts a random phone call with a stranger telling him the world is about to end, nukes have been launched, and the apocalype is coming.

What's awesome about this movie is the almost real-time unfolding of what happens next.  We follow Harry as he tries to figure out what's going on, tells people around him, and then decides to try to get to this girl he just met, Julie.  As he involves more people, things get more and more complicated, and as they begin to react, the world gets more and more chaotic.  Soon, a panic has set in and Los Angeles is plunged into a riot.

Miracle Mile is a unknown of, bomb movie which I don't think has been reclaimed by the cult film scene, and it's movies like that that make me love movies and keep searching for more.  This movie hits all the right keys, and thats not even a stupid pun in regards to the excellent score by Tangerine Dream.  Its creepy, fun, adventurous, tense, dark, and comic when it needs to be, and it masters the pacing phenomenally.  The best thing about this is the slow ramp up, and by the end you might very well be on your toes cringing worn out by the stress of this pretty short, low scale movie.

This is the type of thing to seek out, this is the type of thing that freaks like me are doing this whole "movie watching thing" for.  I loved it and I give it 5 stars.

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