Valentine, 8mm, Shockwaves, Jurassic Park 2 & 3, Trollhunter, Hide & Creep, Hellraiser 5: Inferno, Dementia 13, Wolfen

Apr 15, 2011

Valentine (2001)

I know I've seen this before, maybe more than once. It really is that forgettable. The thing I took away from this movie was how ugly our shoes were in the 90's and early 00's. Big clunky ugly, heavy heeled things. Appalling. Oh and Marley Shelton is ADORABLE. 

Apr 16, 2011

8mm (1999)

I made Chris watch this with me. I had seen it before but he hadn't. It was a rather restrained role for Mr Cage. He pulled back the lunacy until the very end, well done! It makes me laugh how we were so "Oh a movie about snuff films!" back in the day. Now? Ha! They didn't show any real gross violence (strike one). The sex was pretty non weird for a supposed underground (strike two), and they didn't even show the money shot of the whole thing! STRIKE THREE. It did, however have Peter Stormare who scares the shit out of me for real. Also Joaquin Phoenix is sweetly amoral. Don't get me wrong, I actually really liked it. It was a good movie, even if they did wuss out on the ending. I'd say watch it. Good fun.

GONE TO VEGAS !! BACK SOON!

Apr 22, 2011

Shock Waves (1977)

Back from Vegas with a bang! How can you not love Nazi Zombies? SERIOUSLY HOW?? This is such a fun movie! The people are stupid, it has Peter Cushing and NAZI ZOMBIES!!! SO. MUCH. AWESOME.

Apr 23, 2011

Jurassic Park 2&3 (1997, 2001)

We did a double header creature feature. They are very different movies but both enjoyable in their own ways. 2 brings back Ian Malcolm (sexy scientist extraordinaire!) and his kid (ugh, hate that trope) and girlfriend (Julianne Moore). Dinos are still around, and San Diego needs to be saved. It was pretty corny, but I have to say I LOVE DINO-SOURS! 3 was actually a better movie as far they go, with more action and Sam Neill reprising his JP1 role. The Velociraptors are back and there is a new scarier bigger ickier monster too. It also has Pterodactyls! Like Pterri from Pee-Wee's playhouse! 

See? I'm biased but I liked the JP movies. Good clean fun. With people getting eaten. The best kind of fun!

Apr 24, 2011

Trollhunter (2010)

I've had this movie for a while now and I've tried to convince Chris to watch it with me. He thought it sounded stupid until he saw a trailer on some website. Then he was all "Why haven't we watched this? It looks amazing!" Sometimes I could beat him with a pointy stick. Anyways, it was like a Norwegian Blair Witch with Trolls instead of witches. Super effects (especially if you like the Gnomes book when you were small like I did) and really good acting. The Trollhunter himself was grand to watch. What a super chill dude. Really good film. Search this out, it will be worth it. 

Apr 25, 2011

Hide And Creep (2004)

Now this is a low budget flick worth watching! I bitch about movies that have shitty effects/acting/writing but this surprisingly had all three and still manages to work. The premise is as thin as my softest sheets, but it is truly entertaining still. The director also wrote and stars in it. He is particularly good as Chuck. Which is his name IRL. Coincidence? I doubt it. Somehow this turned out to be great fun. If you like zombies (and if you don't.. why are you reading this? Really?) go on, watch it. It's on Netflix.

Apr 25, 2011

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)

Look, I like this movie ok? I know the gazillion sequels, remakes and re-boots are annoying as shit, but this, this is different. It has Craig "one expression" Sheffer in it! He of Nightbreed fame! It's a very Noir-ish thriller with very little Pinhead in it at all. It's a time travel/mindfuck of fun.

Apr 26, 2011

Dementia 13 (1963)

Francis Ford Coppola's first foray into directing. He came from Roger Corman's stable of hired hands and you can sure see that influence here. Alternately cheesy and creepy, this is full of stereotypes and overacting. All a staple in this genre/time period. Most enjoyable.

Apr 27, 2011

Wolfen (1981)

Holy shit this is the worst. Just the fucking worst. A terrible movie with niether werewolves or shapeshifting depsite what (the very young) Edward James Olmos says. Boring, long winded, and using way too much heat sensing filters, this will make you want to claw your eyes out for relief. I couldn't care less about the hippy bullshit eco warrior nonsense and the noble savage angle. BORING. Ugh this movie made me so unhappy that I wanted to kill a unicorn.

The Fly 2, Feast, Blair Witch 2: Book Of Shadows, Beyond Re-Animator, Live Evil, Cruising, Fright Night, La Horde, Waxwork, Waxwork 2: Lost In Time, Aftermath, Jurassic Park

Apr 5, 2011

The Fly 2 (1989)

Eric Stoltz was so very young here. And it had that girl from Melrose in it! A gross yet unsatisfying sequel. I took no notes, how weird right? Cannot recommend unless you are a rabid (I am killing myself with the funny here people) fan.

Apr 5, 2011

Feast (2005)

This was so much filthier than I remembered! A plenitude of humping and semen jokes. How can that be a bad thing! There is no gore lacking and it is loud, crass, vulgar and hilarious. Plus, where else will you Henry Rollins wearing pink ladies sweatpants. Except at his home maybe? I don't judge. Big awesome movie. Go watch it now.

Apr 6, 2011

Blair Witch 2: Book Of Shadows

I think Chris and I are about the only people who liked this movie. The characters are tropes in the most literal sense, the writing was pretty juvenile and it doesn't even take off until the 3rd act. Yet, I find it kind of compelling. I like the missing time stuff, and also the witch girl is so fucking fluffy bunny it makes me laugh. I have no idea why this gels in my brain but it does. Go figure. OMG EVIL WITCH!

Apr 6, 2011

Cruising (1980)

Al Pacino gets to look for the "HOMO KILLER ON THE LOOSE" as the headlines from this caring sensitively shot thoughtful little drama explains. Or he gets to look in leather daddy clubs where there is no boundaries and a moustache (not the ironic ones of today) is de rigueur. This movie truly left me confused at the ending, and I was paying attention this time! The scenes of gore are fairly decent and seeing how damn dirty NYC was is a set piece on it's own. I can't say it was fun to watch (except to moustache count) but it was a slice of .. something. I did need a shower after it was over.

Apr 7, 2011

Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

Oh Herbert West, you can't keep a good re-animator down can you? Now our intrepid hero (?) is in prison but the hijinks's continue with a new whiny assistant. Truly gross with some great gags (both gore and the funny kind!) this is pretty darn entertaining stuff here. The ending is a gong show of prison movie meets grindhouse gore fest with a torso that just won't quit. Really fun. Really really fun.

Apr 7, 2011

Live Evil (2009)

There is no excuse for a movie with this many recognisable faces in it to look as shitty as it does. Like it was filmed on my cell phone from 2004. It looks worse than the home movies my husband made me watch when we first started dating in 1997. THAT HE MADE YEARS BEFORE THEN. The sets were clearly like crew members houses or something, and the writing? Holy drive a doughnut truck through those plot holes bad. Not only did it look shitty, it was shitty. Shitty shitty shit shit. The Vampire party scene in particular was such a terrible anti-thesis of glamorous Vampire awesomeness to watch, it hurt my feelings along with my sensibilities. This made me want to punch a baby really hard. It was that bad. A STUPID DOLL VAMPIRE BABY. Holy hell what a mess.

Apr 8, 2011

Fright Night (1985)

Everyone loves this movie. It's funny and campy and gross. Three things that go good together. Like tuna fish, mayo and pickles. The Horror Movie Community is up in arms about this being re-made but I'm excited to see it. I always thought there was one incredibly miscast role (besides Jerry's sidekick who was a smirking douche.. but I digress) in this and hope to see if that can fix it. I'm looking at you Amanda Bearse. You were neither cute girl next door or hot slut vamp. Just a creepy mom haired squealer who let her boyfriend treat her like garbage. However, Chris Sarandon was pretty fucking spectacular as Jerry. He will be hard to replace. What a delicious flick. And I can still hear "Hahahaha BREWSTER" in my head.

Apr 9, 2011

La Horde (2009)

First French Zombie movie I've seen. It looked fantastique! You never know why the zombies happen, or have any back story on it at all. You just get tossed into a cop revenge drama (which was not that well thought out or written) that goes South really really fast. The characters were mediocre aside from the Old Man Trope they pick up who is a welcome addition at that point. The effects were decent, but it left me slightly cold. Don't really know if something was lost in translation but I couldn't have given less of a shit about the people in this world. They were all icky. Maybe my cereal box French doesn't allow for that kind of cross border idealism. Meh.

Apr 10, 2011

Waxwork

Apr 11, 2011

Waxwork 2: Lost In Time

I remember liking these a lot more the first time around. The characters seemed like barely sketched out ideas of characters than fully fleshed ones. I think they just went with what place holders they had and then had to make the best of it. The first one seemed to be the better of the two but number 2 did have a great appearance by Bruce Campbell that was the highlight of that sad mess. Regardless, neither of these stood up to the test of time (haha see what I did there?) and I would say nay to Waxwork. 1 and 2.

Apr 11, 2011

Aftermath (1994)

This short by Nacho Cerda has one of the shortest IMDB descriptors ever. It tells you the whole film. If you don't want to be spoiled quit reading this, and don't read that either. You've been warned. 

Yeah yeah, necrophilia. How can one be blase about it? This had a moment that shocked me so much I gasped out loud and scared my dog. But you can't sustain that. Cerda does try, but weirdly, this could have been cut by almost 10 minutes and still had the effect he wanted. Disturbing and truly gross, I'd suggest this only for the truly sick. Which I am one of apparently. Well isn't that nice?

Apr 11, 2011

Jurassic Park (1993)

Almost 20 years later and this movie still works on all levels. The effects look great still, that T-rex is one of my favourite movie baddies of all time. Gorgeously shot, wonderfully told tale of science run amok. Classic monsters never looked as good as these. LOVE.

Frailty, Cloverfield, The Signal, The Thing (1982), In The Mouth Of Madness, Day Of The Triffids (2010), Dead Snow (2007), Cropsey

Feb 16, 2011

Frailty (2001)

How can you go wrong with demons and righteous killings? Well you can't. Directed by Bill Paxton, this is a fabulous little gem. Full of tension and religious crazy, it's a really wonderful movie.

Feb 18, 2011

Cloverfield (2008)

It's funny, both Chris and I hate the shaky cam with the flaming passion of a thousand fiery suns, yet this movie is a win for both of us. Chris in particular LOVES it. I do love an unhappy ending and this fits the bill to a T. It surprises me that Chris likes this as much as he does, he is far more of a lovely optimist than I am. We're all just enigmas aren't we?

Feb 19, 2011

The Signal (2007)

We watched this for the first time in Vegas when we stayed at the Paris. The TV there sucked, it was a small tube TV but we always watch at least one movie there and I really wanted to see this so.... It was transfixing. I love a 3 view film and was completely wowed by this. Great performances, and an amazing idea made into a fantastic movie. Small budget doesn't mean small film. I love this movie. LOVE.

Feb 20, 2011

The Thing (1982)

Not a woman in sight. Except the chess computer who gets trashed in the first 10 minutes. You'd think as a woman this would be an issue for me, but HELLS NO. We watched this with commentary as it is like the 20th time I've watched it, and JC doesn't disappoint. He and Kurt Russell have a grand time dissecting and discussing this classic. Amazing.

Feb 21, 2011

In The Mouth Of Madness (1992)

I had no idea Mr Carpenter considered The Thing, ITMOM and Prince Of Darkness to be a trilogy. His Apocalypse trilogy to be precise. The end of the world is a great subject. This Cthulhu-esque Lovecraftian end of days tale is so fucking fun to watch. Sam Neill is hilarious and super fun to watch. I'm on a roll with good stuff right now...

Feb 21/22, 2011

Day Of The Triffids (2009)

And the roll ends here. Argh. This was laughable, campy and sin of sins, boring. We stuck it out for 4 hours, and I am not a better for it. I may have lost a few IQ points but Chris and I did piss ourselves laughing a few times so it wasn't a total loss. It only mostly was. :(

Feb 23, 2011

Dead Snow (2007)

One of my pals came over to knit and she has a small obsession with getting me to watch horror movies with her, so I picked this one. We laughed, she covered her eyes, we cheered, she covered her eyes, we groaned, she covered her eyes. It was a great success. Great fun and nice knits in it to boot. NAZI ZOMBIES.

Feb 24, 2011
Cropsey (2009)

This aforementioned friend finally convinced me to sign up for the free month of Netflix. My first pass through, I found this documentary that I have been WEEING to see for ages! So hurrah for that! I may have built this up a little so was a titch underwhelmed. The story was pretty interesting, but it wasn't that compelling for me. Maybe if I was from Staten Island, but it left me a little bit bored. Oh well, the glory of Netflix is there is always more...

The Dead Next Door, Graveyard shift, The Ninth Gate,

Jan 7, 2011

The Dead Next Door

I watched this on a recommendation of friend, He suggested I give it a watch as it had a super secret financier/producer (Sam Raimi) and thought as a fan of the genre I might enjoy it. And I did, kind of. I love when I see passion on the screen. It doesn't really matter if the movie is a blockbuster or even particularly good. If the people involved in making it love it, it shows. This was no exception, but holy shit did it have it's flaws. I reckon being shot over a 4 year period would impair any one's sense of continuity, and this suffered greatly from that. Also, all the leads looked vaguely like other more famous actors so I was cheering them on by their doppelganger names. Come on David Boreanaz dude! Watch out Kirstie Alley lookalike! Holy shit David Arquette guy! That was pretty fun. What wasn't was how stupid the Zombie Squad (who I would have assumed were pretty good at what they did right? I mean they ARE the Zombie Squad...right?) but alas. No. They were dumb as paint and prone to walking into hordes of zombies and/or accidentally sticking body parts into a zombies mouth. Oh well. It was a totally not making sense, hot damn mess of a script, splatter-fest but GODDAMN. The gore gags were AMAZING for such a low budget production. Really top notch for what they were. I wish more film makers would toss their hearts up on the screen. It may not be award winning cinema, but both Chris and I had a pretty good time watching it. Thanks Trev!

Jan 8, 2011

Graveyard Shift

I am a HUGE Stephen King dork, and yet somehow missed this fine piece of film making. Really, I'd never seen it before. And I wish I could still lay claim to that. This was silly. Silly silly silly. But the giant rat/bat thing was kinda cool. And I got to tick off a HMOTD. so yeah..

Jan 9, 2011

The Ninth Gate

I am a fan of Roman Polanski. His work has this quality to it, I don't know what it is, but I've enjoyed all of his movies that I've seen and he did make one of my all time faves, Rosemary's Baby! That will for sure be on here somewhere. So even this horror movie with no horror in it (it was only about a book ABOUT Satan. Go figure), was really pleasurable to watch. Sure Johnny Depp was in it and he is one of a handful of actors I'd watch read the phone book for fun, so maybe that was part of it. But I liked it, even on repeat viewings. Take from that what you will.