Directed By: Paco Plaza
I was a pretty big fan of both [Rec] and [Rec] 2 when I first saw them (and I think covered in previous years). I even enjoyed the American remake of the first, called Quarantine when I saw it, even though it’s almost identical with a couple of neat differences thrown in. They were strong entries in the found-footage genre so when I saw the trailer for this I have to admit I kind of checked out. But was I right to?
Directed By: Mickey Rose (But really Michael Ritchie)
So first a lesson in trusting opinions. This appeared on a list I read about ‘Underrated Slashers’ and it promised scares and laughs wbile noting the ‘satire’ to be had from this early offering. So naturally I watched it and dear lord that was a long 96 minutes. So the lesson is: don’t listen to anyone, ever.
Directed By: Roy Ward Baker
Today we take our first, but not last, foray into Hammer with another attempt at the Quatermass stories. I covered their initial attempt, The Quatermass Xperiment last year and liked the slice of quintessentially British sci-fi. I’m not sure how happy Hammer were though (And indeed original writer Nigel Kneale) since the Quatermass here is much more of what was originally intended, and of course, there’s that glorious Eastman colour.
Directed By: Renny Harlin
Oh Renny Harlin, what to make of you. From the heights of The Long Kiss Goodnight and Cuthroat Island to following some drippy Americans around a snowy hill. Welcome to The Devil’s Pass or The Dyatlov Pass Incident if you’re nasty…and lived in another country.
Directed By: Kevin Connor
“Sometimes I wonder about the karmic implications of these actions.”
I don’t know how to categorise this one. Perhaps we should go with ‘black comedy’ instead of ‘horror’, but even that doesn’t quite do it justice. Back when I was one of those people who browsed newsgroups, someone on alt.horror used to have a line from this flick as their signature and I still remember it now, which probably goes to show how much I was on there. So for a good few years of my life the title was usually in the back of my mind, even if I never sought out the movie.
Thankfully that all changed.
Directed By: Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman
The brain sees what it wants to see, so goes a repeated refrain in Ghost Stories and in this case it’s what drives a paranormal debunker? What really gives someone the right to go into someone’s home and tell them that what they experienced and felt isn’t real? If I tell the debunker that there was a ghost in my room, who are they to tell me there wasn’t?
Directed By: Olaf De Fleur
Psychics are generally a shady bunch of people, pretending to contact the dead and generally robbing grieving people of their money, so I’m usually happy to see them get taken down a peg or two (Can you tell that today has been a long day?) and that’s just what a new offering from Netflix uh…offers.
Directed By: Michael Barrett
Foreign shores, ominous warnings, spooky children, Temple has everything that should make it good, yet why is it so uneventful? I’ll attempt to answer all that and more just as soon as I think about how you waste so much potential.
Directed By: Enzo G. Castellari
“One thing’s for sure, it wasn’t a floatin chainsaw.”
Saturday’s usually seem like a good time for a creature-feature, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and dip into the murky world of Italian ripoff cinema with this blatant retreading of Jaws, it’s hardly finger-on-the-pulse stuff being as it came some 6 years later. Continue reading
Directed By: John Grissmer
“Well, it’s not cranberry sauce!”
I wanted something that I hadn’t seen or heard about for a Friday night, and when I run across something with this title I can’t belp but think 1) I’m in and 2) It would be better with an exclamation at the end. How do you make Blood Rage better? You call it Blood Rage!
Is This Thing On? 