Rubbish

I didn't understand a great deal of this movie. I am most baffled by why this was even made at all.

Avoid this film unless you are an arty-farty buff who likes to pretend to know more than normal people.

This wasn't horror, it was barely fantasy, it was poorly filmed, badly acted and it didn't make any sense. This was, at its most basic, just a reworking of "Batteries Not Included" but without the feel good factor or cute little aliens. No wonder even Disney turned down this script.

"Puppetmaster" is badly directed/poorly edited, the acting is below average, there are huge plot holes where things are not explained at all, and the stop-motion puppet effects are not just really dated but were actually pretty archaic when the film was new too. Watch this to see how not to make a horror film.

It really is the acting, or lack of it, that lets this down. It's so deadpan that they might as well all be in Pet Shop Boys video. You get the feeling that once they'd all got dressed up, the actors decided that was enough to earn their money and gave up on the rest of it. I can't say I blame them either.

Well it's a Terry Gilliam film (you know that bloke who did the weird and unfunny cartoons for Monty Python) so what can you really expect? It doesn't even have the great set design of something like "Jabberwocky". Pacing is all over the place, dialogue is stupid and pointless, and every so often it tries to be funny and fails abysmally.

While there's still lots of gory fun including exploding heads, decapitations, gunshot wounds, eviscerations and other nastiness, "Battle Royale II: Requiem" just wasn't as good as the original. The main reason is that after all the excitement of the first half an hour or so it all gets very talky with huge boring sermons about how bad war is.

This film is a "Braveheart" (or even "Rob Roy") wannabe but with no big name stars, even more unintelligible dialogue, a lack of any acting skills anywhere and a contrived storyline that is only designed to make anyone British watching it ashamed to be so. A lot of people with "agendas" will overate "The Wind That Shakes The Barley" purely because of its subject matter. It's just nothing very original and isn't particularly well done.

Donald Sutherland mumbles, the rest of the acting is wooden, reactions to events are stilted, the sound is bad, the story is boring and the ghost attacks are all the same. It isn't scary in any way. In fact the scariest thing about it is that it got a theatrical release at all!

The opening scenes led me to believe that this would be a better version of "The Descent" but as soon as the new team of scientists turned up in the film I just knew it was going to stink. None of the characters were remotely interesting. Not even the presence of Russell from "Invasion" and Daniel Dae Kim from "Lost" were going to save this movie.

This is the reason why Robert Englund should stick to acting and not directing. The story, which is more or less "Carrie" all over again, is a complete mess and far too jokey to deliver any scares.

While I enjoyed the book by Hans Holzer, I can't say the same about this film. The special effects really aren't very special at all and it's just not scary. If you didn't know any better you would think it was a B movie. It went straight to video so it might as well be anyway. There are much better versions of the same story so this is really one to miss.

The titles are quite good but that's all. It's just not funny.
There are much funnier films than this which don't even try to be. Even the rubbish that Troma produces can be more entertaining.
This is definitely the worst movie of all time.

This is supposed to be a cult classic but I just can't find anything of merit in this low-budget piece of trash. It's just stupid and not even very well filmed. As a black comedy, I just don't get it. Peter Jackson did much better with "Braindead" a few years later.

One of the most disappointing films I watched in the 80s as a horror fan. It isn't much of a horror film at all and is much more like a comedy. The trouble is that I can't tell if the comedy is intentional or not. If it was supposed to be serious then it really failed abysmally.

This is even worse than the first "Basket Case". Slow, dull and not at all what you'd expect from a horror film. I don't understand the appeal of something like this to anyone. Some kind of rubber monster in a basket is just not scary.

They are all completely awful but this is by far the worst of the "Basket Case" movies. Whereas the previous instalments had some murders shot in lov light to hide how rubbishy the creature was, most of this film is well lit and only goes to show how bad the latex costumes of all the characters actually are. It just looks like a little kids' Halloween party to me. Horror fans should avoid this one.

Another total bomb. It's slow, the script is dull, and the creature that the doctor turns into is ridiculous. Having a big beard does not make you into a bat-creature!
It's sort of like a werewolf film but with bats instead of lycanthropes. That's about as close to a plot as it gets and the characterisation is pretty much non-existent too. It isn't gory, sexy or horrific in any way.

Roger Corman is far from being my favourite director anyway but this was just terrible. Even though it is very much a product of its time, that's still no excuse. There isn't a haunted cave and the "beast" is just some guy in a furry suit with extra arms. It should have stuck to just being a crime drama. Everything is so slow that it's ideal for falling to sleep to on a wet afternoon though.

This doesn't even rate in the "so bad it's good" category. It's just an awful poor man's version of "C.H.U.D." with a messy plodding story and no real gore or violence. I am amazed that this film is actually listed on here as it's the kind of thing you find in bargain bins in "dollar stores" in the US. The movie poster is the best thing about it.

Another very slow paced Italian horror with minimal plot and annoying music. The atmosphere isn't too bad but everything else is and that's probably due to its low budget.
It isn't really a sequel to "Beyond the Door" either. It just shares a couple of the cast members. The Marco kid is very annoying.

Utter rubbish with nothing at all to do with the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name even if it is mentioned in the opening credits.
The bizarre plot becomes more and more muddled as the film progresses with gaping holes everywhere. Mercifully, it is all soon over.
The only good bit is the set design. The acting is atrocious and there are no scares here for horror fans.

How has this stodgy, no-budget piece of awfulness managed to weedle its way into the horror genre? It's just a ludicrous, poorly scripted and badly filmed borefest featuring one of the worst actors for the role. Even if it was originally some kind of wartime propaganda film, it is still no excuse. The only horror about this movie is that it was made at all.

Just another laughably unscary vampire film set halfway between Hammer and Starsky & Hutch.
If are into 70s nostalgia pieces, it may justify watching it but it's not going to enhance the life of a real horror fan.
The weird thing is that everybody plays this so seriously.

One of many films which attempt to recreate Sheridan LeFanu's "Carmilla" but not the best by any means.
Roger Vadim certainly knew how to cast good looking women in his films and everything looks nice but it's supposed to be a vampire film! It just isn't a patch on Hammer's efforts from the same period.

Not to be confused with "The Legacy" starring Katharine Ross, it still has a very similar plot involving guests staying in an old house where they are getting murdered one by one.
Of course, here it's so low-budget that you don't actually see the murders except with shadows and a few blood splatters. There are a couple of exceptions but they really aren't all that exciting.
There isn't much action at all as it's really just a lot of talk. The dialogue itself is woeful too and the delivery is very poor.
I have a bad feeling that this film was supposed to be a comedy but how could that be when there is nothing remotely funny in it either?

Possibly the most boring monster movie ever made... or at least it would be if the monster actually did anything in it. You get a brief glimpse of the not so terrifying rubber beastie for all of 5 seconds.
A very good cast is ruined by an extremely uninspired script. James Earl Jones is something else... but not in any way that can save this from being a complete disaster.
It's all terrible in true "scraping the bottom of the barrel" B movie terms.
Yes, you will probably find this in bargain bins everywhere. Don't be tempted.

This is the weakest version of "Carmilla" ever filmed. It's very slow and lacks any real similarity to Sheridan Le Fanu's story (which only seems to have inspired the names of the characters).
There isn't much in the way of gore and, although there is as much nudity as you would expect in an early 70s Euro-horror, it's all quite listless and uninvolving.
Supposedly it is a very feminist film but the subtext appears to be extremely well hidden. It's all too boring for anyone to care anyway.

It's not even set in a bog but a lake. The creature that rises from the depths to suck the blood out of the locals is just a guy in a rubber monster suit and you don't see the kills anyway as the camera pans to the nearest bush everytime something happens.
Pacing is slow with appalling dialogue, the only acting demonstrated is bad, and the whole thing is just stupid.
It's the worst kind of cheap and shoddy B movie there is. Sometimes you have to wonder how awful films like this ever get released. This was filmed in 1978 but didn't find distribution for 5 years. It really should have stayed on the shelf (or at the bottom of a bog) forever.

Nothing happens for over an hour and it isn't much of a horror film at all unless the idea of psychically manifested midgets is scary to you.
Boring, insipid, weak, and pointless. I'm sure I could think of a lot more words along those lines to describe this rubbish but why bother?
What a complete waste of Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar.

It's like "Children of the Corn" but with geriatrics instead of the kids. What a load of nonsense. It's not scary at all.
Nothing happens except a lot of talking gibberish.
For those of you who care, the old folks use kids in their Satanic rituals to play with toys that resemble things in the outside world... or something like that. Just think of voodoo dolls and you'll be on the right lines.
You won't care anyway and will probably switch this off after the first ten minutes where nobody speaks at all.

Another absolutely awful remake which will be in the DVD bargain bins in three month's time or for sale with Rob Zombie's previous crappy horror films just to get rid of them.
Not as bad as some of the sequels to the original Halloween, and Sheri Moon can actually act a bit in this one, but it was obviously more than Rob Zombie could handle. The dialogue and script were appalling. It should have been two separate films and even then both would have sucked. The "prequel" was just overlong and boring.
The "remake" part, on the other hand, was rushed and lacked atmosphere, characterisation, acting ability and, more suprisingly, imaginative gore. I expected it to be far nastier. Effects were only average and the camerawork was very amateur throughout. Don't expect it to be scary either because it isn't. The only scary thing is that it took 17 million dollars to make this rubbish.
Michael Myers has been totally emasculated as the boogeyman now and this film has killed the "Halloween" franchise completely.
Nobody can replace Donald Pleasence as Dr Loomis either. Malcolm McDowell was just on the wrong side of laughable with some of the worst lines in horror movie history. Well, at least we won't see him again... I hope.
Just stick to the original John Carpenter version.

Boring '70s crapfest with hardly any plot, poor acting, terrible dialogue and a monotonous soundtrack. If you watch a dubbed version, it is even more ridiculous and cheesy.
I have no idea why people like this film other than having some weird need to be pretentious about pseudo-arty nonsense made in Italy. Dario Argento is simply one of the worst directors ever and every "giallo" he made was a meaningless mess. This is slightly more watchable than "Tenebrae" or "Inferno" but not by much.
Apart from a few pretty girls and some innovative gore scenes for the time, there really is nothing outstanding about "Suspiria" at all. In fact, it will seem very slow and tedious to most people and, of course, isn't scary in any way.
There are attempts at suspense but there is never any real payoff to any of them. Things just run out of steam or end up looking badly edited. The best description of this movie is the often used phrase, "sty le over substance".
I've yet to find any real horror fan who still likes this even though it was hyped beyond belief in the early days by people who simply didn't know any better.
It's something you'll probably watch once just out of curiousity and then wish you had your life back.

Not as good as the first one and now without the Davinci Code hype which caused it to be so popular in the first place.
The whole thing was as insipid as the Tomb Raider films but without anybody attractive to look at. Not even Diane Kruger was worthwhile.
The action sequences are messy and not at all exciting and the puzzles which the team figure out are even more contrived than something Dan Brown would come up.
A couple of on-location scenes set in France and London amused me for their sheer incompetence. Police with guns in the UK? Not likely even in Buck House is it really? The everso friendly French gendarmes in Paris were hardly stereotypical either... although rumour has it that there are one or two helpful ones out in the French countryside.
Is this a little kid's film? I've got an idea it is and that I probably shouldn't have watched it in the first place. It sucks.
No, really, it more than sucks. This was one of the most unpleasant films that I have ever endured. The plot is virtually identical to the first one except this time, Ed Harris is the bad guy who tries to make good at the end with the third self-sacrifice ending that I've seen in as many days.
Jon Voight and Helen Mirren take part in a very annoying subplot as Ben Gates' parents which doesn't quite work as they are probably the same age as Nicholas Cage.
Just watch paint dry instead.

Probably the most embarrassing thing, I've ever seen. There were no similarities to the "real" story of Sweeney Todd whatsoever other than the names and locations. This is the crappy Stephen Sondheim reworking of the urban legend with love stories and a revenge motif mixed in.
It had awful singing, terrible "music", very poor acting (when there was any acting), and it all looked horrible.
I hate musicals anyway but this had the kind of music that wouldn't be out of place in the improv singing section of "Whose Line is it Anyway?". It was that bad. It was extremely amateur and seemed like it was knocked together in about 30 seconds. There were no memorable songs and the lines might as well have been spoken.
The dodgy "cockney" accents made a lot of the words of the songs unintelligible especially when the notes were drawn out. It's a film that definitely needs subtitles.
As for the gore that some people rave about, well I've seen better in a low budget independent horror film than in this fiasco. It's not quite as cartoonish as "Kill Bill" but it is still completely unrealistic.
I wish that I could give this an even lower mark than I have. It sucked! Tim Burton should be ashamed of himself.

It's hard to believe that "The Attic" is by the same director who made "Pet Sematary" even though it is all over the poster and DVD sleeve. It's awful!
Not only is it one of the most badly acted, badly scripted and generally lacklustre horror films that I've ever watched but the stupid ending that was tagged on to make it a bit more supernatural ruined it completely.
The predictable story is all about Elisabeth Moss' character, Emma Callan, slowly descending into madness because she believes that her twin sister, Beth, is haunting her. The trouble is that she doesn't do the mad thing all that well and just ends up being a very poor imitation of Angela Bettis.
This same story has been done many times over the years, from "The Man Who Haunted Himself" to "The Machinist", and they are all better than this. There is just nothing new here for anybody.
It all looks good though as it was either shot on film or a high quality digital camera with one of those lenses that makes it look like film.
As usual, it isn't particularly spooky or scary. Apart from one scene there isn't much gore to speak of either and there aren't even any good nudie bits. Even the bath scene right at the start is disappointing although it has more tension and suspense than anything in the rest of the film.
I think we already have a contender here for the worst horror film of 2008 and it's still only the second week of January!

This was such utter crap that I'm not even going to review it.
Marley Shelton looked gorgeous in it and that's all I have to say.
If you think that this film is in any way good, clever, or ground-breaking then you need your head examining as soon as possible because obviously you have a similar vacuous cavity inside it to Fergie's zombie-eaten corpse.
I want the life back that I wasted watching this. This gets a 0 from me but unfortunately the stars system won't allow me to give it less than 1. Actually, no, I rate this as a -10. That's more like it.
What a load of bollocks!

I absolutely hated it. Not only was it yet another kiddie-rated PG-13 unscary monster film but it sucked on all levels. The acting was pure Hollywood drama school stuff where everyone pauses and tries to convey as much emotion as possible with eyes and teeth before delivering a line, the dialogue was poor and as unrealistic as could be, and the camerawork was so bad that I imagine a lot of people would throw up in the movie theatres or suffer some kind of epileptic seizure from all the whirling and spinning.
It was 18 minutes of wedding party, 30 minutes of "Oh my god... oh my god... oh my god... oh my god... boom... bang... shriek... boom... oh my god... oh my god", and then the rest was all "Run... oh my god... shriek... boom.... rarrrr... boom... boom... shriek... bang... run... run... oh my god... rarrrrr... oh my god... oh my god.... oh my god... boom..."
I give it 1 out of 10 for the ability to con so many people into watching it. It's just another crappy motion sickness inducing shaky cam film with about 5 seconds of CGI monster in it. It's more overhyped and poorly executed rubbish!
I can see it being used for the "Oh my god" drinking game in future though. Alcoholics will love it!

The biggest problem with "The Eye" is not that it is a remake of one of the most insipid and dull Hong Kong supernatural thrillers ever made, "Gin Gwai", but that it isn't any improvement over the original either.
The consensus appears to be that this film is just boring. Boring isn't a strong enough word to describe it though. It's tedious, dragged out, and makes you want to stab yourself with a fork to stay awake for the 97 minutes running time just in case anything happens at all.
I watched the original a few years ago and didn't really like it so I was hoping that there was going to be some new angle to this. Unfortunately, apart from changing the locations, the names of the characters and a few subtle plot differences, it was actually worse.
I can't blame the actors for this one. Jessica Alba is alright to look at and there is no doubt that she can act and look worried really well. The story here was just so thin and the dialogue was so bad that nobody could have made any more of it. Alessando Nivola however plays such an unconvincing doctor that I would actually dread to have someone like him involved in any post-surgical recovery process in real life. Shouting at your patients and telling them that they are wrong a couple of days after they've had cornea transplants is not a good bedside manner!
There were a couple of moments where I thought that things would pick up. A jump scare involving an oven fell flat though and the others disintegrated into horrible messes of CGI. There was no tension, no suspense, just no atmosphere whatsoever. It could have been a daytime TV show about boiled eggs for all the emotional impact it had.
The ending was just like a deleted scene from "Final Destination". The whole movie is supposed to build up to this final act as an explanation of why Sydney Wells is seeing things in the first place but it just felt tagged on and was very rushed. It didn't really make any difference though because I'd already written this whole film off after the first ten minutes anyway.
I'm not sure if anyone would like this film. It's not going to appeal to fans of the original and for older horror fans it's just like a very bad version of "Eye" from "John Carpenter's Body Bags" (1993). It's very dated and dull. That's a terrible way for a new film to be.

Total crap from start to finish. This is yet more proof, as if any was needed, that Neil Marshall is totally incapable of making a decent horror movie and should give up now.
Let's look at his track record. "Dog Soldiers" was hardly inspirational unless you are really into soldiers fighting werewolves, "The Descent" was only interesting to fans of butch lesbian potholers, and now this awful ripoff of half a dozen better genre films has pretty much destroyed what little credibility Neil Marshall was trying to build up as a director.
Out of all the things to do, why did he try to mix "Resident Evil", "28 Days/Weeks Later", "Escape from New York/LA" and the "Mad Max" trilogy all in one film? Did he think we wouldn't realise? How stupid does he think his audience are? Or was it supposed to be a parody? If it was supposed to be a parody then it certainly wasn't funny.
I'm giving it the 1 out of 10 rating because I quite liked the idea of Scotland being sealed off from the rest of Britain. I can quite understand why Hadrian had the wall built originally and I know that it was in every Englishman's mind after "Braveheart" came out that we should probably build it back up again. A better idea, of course, would just be to build a 20 foot high wall around Neil Marshall to stop him making any more films.
I just couldn't believe what I was watching. Rhona Mitra as a one-eyed Snake Plissken wannabee demonstrated the subtle lack of any acting ability whatsoever that has become her trademark, while the rest of the cast ranged from "who can be the biggest looney" to "I've got my money so I'll just shout and swear a lot". Yes, Bob Hoskins, this means you!
I'm dying to see if John Murphy sues Tyler Bates over the "28 Weeks Later" soundalike background music. I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't incur a few more lawsuits for plagiarism too.

Just a poor man's version of "Ils" mixed with "The Devil's Rejects" plus proof, if any was needed, that Liv Tyler's face only has one expression no matter what situation she is in.
It's one cliché after another, lots of predictable jump scares (of which only the first one actually has any value), and it was just awful. I didn't care about the two main characters or what happened to them whatsoever.
Apart from several continuity errors (the biggest being the holes in the front door), everything was telegraphed so far in advance that the jump scares just fell flat and, because they were mostly based on loud sounds, it soon got annoying rather than frightening. That again was the biggest problem, it just wasn't scary.
I didn't find it very realistic either. The only credit I can give it is that the couple started out by not being the typical weaklings that usually get menaced in this kind of "home invasion" setup. But then they just got stupider and stupider and all the typical cliches started sinking in... running away and tripping, splitting up, investigating scary noises. The whole thing just showed complete contempt for the audience.
If you'd NEVER seen any other horror movie in your life then this wouldn't be so bad. But most people will have seen all the formulaic parts of this dozens of times before.
I'm not sure if this was a PG-13 but it certainly wasn't all that gory. There was blood but only as an aftermath. There wasn't a lot of on screen visceral action.
Also, there was no real sex or nudity. There was a moment when I thought Liv was going to get a knee trembler but it came to nothing. We were even cheated when she took a bath.
It just sucked. As one member of a group of teenagers said to the others as I was leaving the movie theatre, "That was the worst horror movie I've ever seen. I wish I'd watched Indiana Jones instead".
Don't waste your money watching this. Wait for the DVD then you can fast forward through it. I have never been so bored by a theatrical horror movie release in my life. 0 out of 10.

Since I've been on a Russian kick lately with the brilliant "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" films, and then the passable "Trackman", I decided to watch "Moscow Zero" from 2006 as well. I wish I hadn't.
If you've never heard of this film, here's a brief plot outline: "In Moscow, the priest Owen hires a team to guide him in the underworld to find his friend Sergei that is missing while researching the legend about the existence of demons and an entrance to hell beneath the city." And that's it. It's all just a load of running around tunnels looking for the lost archaeologists with a lot of meaningless waffle as dialogue.
I actually fell asleep two or three times and had to watch it over again which made the torture even worse. There was just nothing to this film to keep my interest. There were no scares, was no tension or suspense, and was no action other than the aforementioned exploring of the tunnels. I was hoping that I'd missed something in this because, from the blurb on the DVD cover, it promises "horrifying caverns" and "terrifying secrets". What I didn't expect was that it would deliver such horrifying acting instead.
Seriously, Val Kilmer and Vincent Gallo are so wasted in this that you wonder why they even bothered to show up. In fact, Val Kilmer is only in one scene yet takes top billing in a similar way to how the recent spate of Tony Todd and Robert Englund cameos in dozens of lacklustre indie horror movies fool a lot of people into renting those. Yes, I too have been duped a few times and such practices annoy the hell out of me. But I digressed.
"Moscow Zero" is simply the most tedious and mindnumbing waste of 82 minutes that I've encountered this year. I've given it an overall rating of 1 out of 10 though simply because I can't give it the "Zero" it deserves. I should have learnt my lesson from Coke as this product is as insipid as a bottle of tasteless brown water too.

Having just watched the screener of "My Name Is Bruce", the latest comedy-horror starring Bruce Campbell as himself, all I really have to say is, no matter how big of a Bruce Campbell fan you are, you probably aren't going to like it.
For those who don't know, the plot basically consists of Bruce playing a not exactly true to life version of himself and taking on a murderous Chinese god of bean-curd called Guan-Di who was accidentally unleashed by a teenage Bruce Campbell fan. It's hardly up to the standard of "Army of Darkness" and for those expecting anything similar to "The Evil Dead", you'd better think again. This movie is total crap from beginning to end with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
It's very cheaply done, lines are delivered with no apparent comedic timing (just look at the "I can speak...what's the word... English" one in the trailer), and the gore scenes are substandard even for the worst independents out there. The monster, Guan-Di, is the most ludicrous thing I've seen outside of the CGI pinata in "Survival Island"!
I really don't know why Bruce Campbell went ahead with this project since it's bound to be panned by everybody except his most extreme fanboys and, even then, anybody who praises anything in "My Name is Bruce" is just likely to lose all credibility in front of their peers. If this is supposed to be an example of bad filmmaking just to be funny then it has failed since it's not funny and is just bad.
I suppose it could be defended by saying that it's all in fun and is a great big parody of one of Hollywood's most famous B movie actors as seen by himself but, if this is an example of Bruce Campbell's directorial skills then he'd be better off just sticking to cameo roles in "Spiderman". I'm sure he'll get them too since he let Sam Raimi's weird looking brother Ted appear in at least half a dozen roles in this film.
I hated it. Like most of you reading this, I loved Bruce Campbell in "The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead 2", wasn't so convinced by "Army of Darkness" and watched his numerous TV appearances with a mixture of delight and horror as he went from good roles like Autolycus in "Xena: Warrior Princess" to absolutely atrocious parts such as "Jack of All Trades". This was certainly nowhere near the quality of "Bubba Ho-Tep".
I was really looking forward to seeing "My Name Is Bruce" but it turned out to be one of the most disappointing things that I've ever had the misfortune to watch. For that reason, I've given it the lowest rating possible.

"Les cauchemars naissent la nuit" is yet another one of Jess Franco's least known and even lesser rated movies and for good reason too. It's awful! I couldn't make head nor tail of what was supposed to be going on and could barely stay awake throughout the whole pointless experience.
Supposedly this was a "lost" movie that was only rediscovered recently and hacked back together again. In my opinion, it should have stayed lost as there is very little entertainment to be had from it at all. It certainly hasn't been restored much as the quality was terrible and the dubbing even worse.
I watched the "Hardgore" Region 2 DVD version but I'm told that there is another original French language version with subtitles also available. I really don't think it would make a lot of difference though because the movie would drag in any language and probably still look as if the camera lens was covered in vaseline.
It was all just too slow and too uninvolving. I can easily admit that the three women in the film are gorgeous as, I'm told, is Jess (or Jesus) Franco's trademark but HorrorNews.net's Dai is much better looking than all of them put together. Yeah, that would be a three-headed, twelve-limbed monster of course if you really want to get pedantic. You know what I mean. They are all ok to look at in small doses but the nudity just becomes samey after a while even though when you first see Diana Lorys (who plays Anna) you can't help yourself from just wanting to look and look.
I didn't really like the blonde Colette Giacobine all that much either on an acting level or nude. I can't exactly put my finger on it (well, not on what you are thinking I want to finger anyway) but she wasn't right for the part of a character who supposedly has a kind of hypnotic control over others. She's not bad to look at at all but she's just sort of awkward and amateur somehow compared to Diana Lorys. This may be more evident in the French language version but even with dubbing you can tell how the two don't exactly gel or have any chemistry between them.
The third girl who a lot is made of on the DVD extras and the sleeve itself is Soledad Miranda (as Susan Korda according to the credits). She was also Lucy Westenra in Jess Franco's Spanish version of "Count Dracula" starring Christopher Lee. I wouldn't say that she's wasted in her two or three minutes of onscreen time here but what seems like a subplot (until the end when everything is revealed) could just as easily be cut out and nobody would even notice. The only reason it even exists is to finally show a heterosexual sex scene which gets interrupted in the worst way possible and to give both Soledad Miranda and Jack Taylor (as her boyfriend) a couple of cameos. Neither of them even get given character names.
The trouble with the nudity and eroticism in "Nightmares Come at Night" (the UK title) is that it doesn't have any real climax to it. There's a lesbian love scene with a lot of out of focus fades in and out which is beyond annoying and several other even more fake sex scenes later but none of them really make you want to bash one out while viewing. Even for 70s exploitation cinema this is all very poor.
Perhaps the only saving grace of the whole movie is Paul Muller's role as some kind of doctor. I'm not sure if he is supposed to be a psychiatrist or just a G.P. but either way he is a lot more to do with the plot than you'd first imagine. From his first moments on screen where he is tormenting birds in a cage, you just know that Dr Paul Lucas isn't all he seems and the performance is one of the better ones since everyone else is so wooden.
"Nightmares Come at Night" is a badly-paced and confusing mess at best. At its worst, it's a dull as ditchwater 70s hack job with T & A all over it. There's some fake blood at the start, very little on screen violence afterwards and nothing very horrific or scary about any of it. It's more of a thriller than a horror film and so even including it on the "Hard Gore" label is very deceptive and misleading. There's nothing in this to give you "Nightmares" apart from the thought of ever watching another Jess Franco movie again.

When I first thought about reviewing this slasher, I wondered how I could turn the words "complete and utter crap" into something more meaningful. Every film has its merits so perhaps those four words wouldn't be entirely accurate even though that was the overall impression that I got from watching the screener.
I'll start off by giving some kudos to the first time director, Ric McCloud, for having no less than 5 credits on IMDB for this film. He not only directed, produced, wrote, and edited the thing but was also a stunt driver in it. Also, since he managed to involve nearly the entire state of Minnesota somehow, I have to mention that you will probably never see such a huge list of credits for family members and friends who all helped out on the movie as you will find at the end of this one.
But having given him his props (as you hip Americans say), "Unholy Reunion" is simply not a good film. I wanted to like it but it was so very amateur that I just couldn't get past the bad acting of the leads, poor dialogue, ridiculous (yet amusing) fight scenes and general awfulness of it all.
Since two actresses that I've known for a long time were involved in this, Nicola Blessing and Rachel Grubb, I was hoping to heap lots of praise on them for their performances but, even though it's likely to put my friendship with them in jeopardy, I really can't. Rachel Grubb gets most of the mentions across the internet for "Unholy Reunion" even though she only has a very small role at the beginning. It's not a bad role and she doesn't do a bad job at all considering what she had to work with but I have to say that if she hadn't got her norks out then her part would be quite forgettable. Yes, I watched this because I wanted to see her boobies too. Is that such a bad thing? No, she's a lovely girl with a Bettie Page haircut who just happens to have some nice orbs. I can't fault her there at all.
Nicole Blessing, on the other hand, who has a much bigger part as drug-dealer Liz really doesn't do very well at all until the end. It's a big waste of her talent to get caught up in projects like this and, unfortunately, she doesn't get her bunny rabbits' noses out to make her performance memorable at all. I did like how she looked and the fight scene where she knocked out the female psycho played by Jessica S. Lange (not THE Jessica Lange obviously) but she didn't even get a chance to really act until the end.
It's not just her though but everyone involved seems to get a bit better as the film goes on. If you based any opinion on the performances in the first 20 minutes or so of the film then you'd probably dismiss the whole lot as a pile of crap and hope to never see any of these people work again. Yes, that is harsh but the "party scene" with its terrible dialogue and poor camerawork is even worse than watching "Cloverfield" and that's saying something. Actually there's probably nothing much worse than watching Phil Berbig (as the psycho Adkov Telmig) since he really has no real menace to him and doesn't come over very psychotic at all. Flawed writing or miscasting a nice guy who can't act into the role of the villain? I'm still not sure.
That's really the trouble with all these ultra low-budget independents though as people tend to rely on family, friends and acquaintances to fill the parts. Sometimes a filmmaker gets lucky and a few talented individuals stand out but unfortunately nobody stands out in a good way in "Unholy Reunion" apart from Shannon McDonough (as Vicky) who does look genuinely frightened during the denouement.
The only saving grace of the whole film is not blonde Jessica S. Lange's very predictable twist from becoming the nice Rebecca Davis into a crazy version as I really couldn't tell the difference but Jarrod Crook's performance as Scott (her kung-fu loving boyfriend). The fight scenes were so well choreographed that you just have to marvel at Jarrod's energy even if they are somewhat ridiculous. They aren't exciting as such but are well done and you can see the work that went into them.
Other than that I can't recommend "Unholy Reunion" to anyone. It's not just that I don't like these handycam-filmed, glorified YouTube videos in general but also that this one is a particular stinker. The only memory that I'll take away from watching "Unholy Reunion" is how all the actors stared into space for about 2 minutes after their characters were killed to make it look as if they were dead. It worked the first time but after that it just became boring and made me want to sit and stare into space myself rather than watching the rest of this film.

This is yet another one of those films that I put off watching for ages because I had the suspicion that it was going to be crap. I didn't watch it when it first came out as a straight-to-DVD release in 2003 and tried my hardest (albeit mostly unsuccessfully) to avoid it when it was shown on TV horror channels ever since. I really didn't want to ruin the happy mid-80s' memories I had of Stuart Gordon's "Re-animator". But, you know how it is, you get bored and eventually spend an hour peeling the security tape off the DVD case and, before you know where you are, the damned thing has somehow got into the player and you're watching it. That's my excuse anyway and has nothing to do with the fact that I got the DVD for $2 from a certain auction site.
It's now been 18 years since Brian Yuzna took over helming with "Bride of Re-animator" and that was hardly a good film either although, with hinesight, it is a lot better than this. Fabiana Udenio really had more to do with making that film memorable than anything else for me as it really added nothing new. 13 years on from "Bride of Re-animator" Brian Yuzna went the comedy route with "Beyond Re-animator" which doesn't bode well for next year's planned "House of Re-animator" either.
I can't quite put my finger on why but "Beyond Re-animator" just failed to deliver. Although obviously low-budget, it was a good story, had reasonable amounts of gore, good actors and sexy actresses (especially Elsa Pataky), but it just had the wrong pace and tried hard for humour when it should have gone for scares. Oh and it's a Spanish production so there are a lot of unknown Spanish actors in it in case anyone wondered. That doesn't always doom a movie to failure but I have noticed a trend... which reminds me to stick to Pedro Almodóvar rather than Jess Franco in future too.
The story is much the same as the other two in the series. Dr Herbert West is still re-animating bodies albeit now from inside a prison where of course he is encarcerated. A new prison doctor arrives who turns out to be a kid who saw the results of Dr West's experiments when one of them killed his sister. Then a reporter turns up who looks just like the boy's sister and there is a love affair thing going on just to bulk out the plot. The reporter turns out to be more interested in "the experiments" than her original prison story and ends up getting more than she bargained for when she is predictably killed by the evil warden and then re-animated herself. That's not much of a spoiler as all this pretty much occurs within the first ten minutes.
The new spin on things in this movie is that Herbert has now discovered how to harness the "nanoplasma" which leaves the body at death and is responsible for human consciousness. Thus begins a lot of body swapping nonsense, first with a couple of rats and then between different people.
I kept losing interest when all the quirky prisoners were doing their thing and I lost it even more when I realised that I really wasn't going to see Elsa Pataky (also in "Snakes on a Plane") get totally naked. There is a minor sex scene and one shot of her squashed boob but it was down to the also attractive Raquel Gribler to get hers out instead. And glorious they were too! You'll remember them for a long time, trust me on this.
A more amusing scene worth mentioning involves a re-animated, dismembered dinkle fighting a rat. It soon stopped being amusing though it must have pleased the director because it also continued throughout the end credits. It wasn't that funny.
So, apart from Elsa Pataky, there really weren't any great things to mention about this film. Jeffrey Combs does his usual performance but is just too much of a nice guy to instill anything really sinister into the mix... well, that's if you can call his role as Herbert West, a man who re-animates dead bodies, a nice guy! He's certainly more sociable this time round but you know he's still obsessed.
The ending left the way open for the possible fourth film in the series which I hope doesn't actually come to anything. I really think it's time to give up on this story now. I can't see it going anywhere else except further and further down in quality and it's a shame because the original "Re-animator" was an absolute genre classic.
Final verdict: Watch it if you want to but don't expect miracles. Herbert West himself could not raise this movie from the dead.

I just don't get it. What is the younger generation's fascination with these Underworld movies? Is it because they have about as much emotion as a bad X-box game or is it just all the hype that surrounds each release? To me, the first two Underworld movies were like watching blue and black paint dry and this prequel, rather than sequel, was no better.
I've seen some reviews where people have said that "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" is like a vampire and werewolf version of "Spartacus". Bullshit! Although there is a definite homage to some scenes in "Spartacus" (and a ton of prison based movies ever since) there's simply no comparison between this vapid mess and an Oscar-winning epic full of cinematic excellence. At its best, "Rise of the Lycans" is yet another "Romeo and Juliet" based fantasy but with more bloodshed and action than usual. At its worst, it's just more blandness with wooden acting, pitiful characterisation and hardly any plot.
Now I'm sure that there will be people that think I'm writing this out of some kind of spitefulness because uber hot Kate Beckinsale wasn't in it and there will be others that think that I've become too old to enjoy these fantasy rather than horror movies for what they are. To that I say, if a movie stinks then it will for any age group whether it has a PG, PG-13 or an R rating on it. I can't even believe that "Rise of the Lycans" got an R rating either because apart from a few over-the-top blood spatters and beheadings, there was nothing much worse in this computer generated crap than you'd see in the remake of "King Kong". Ok, there's bit of sexiness at one point where you don't get to see anything and Viktor the vampire could be made out to be shit-yer-pants scary if you're about five years old but an R rating for this? Do me a favour.
The praise for "Rise of the Lycans" that I've seen around the net has all usually included the words, "not as bad as I thought it was going to be" and then goes on to enthuse over Rhona Mitra being no worse than Kate Beckinsale and Michael Sheen being sexier than Scott Speedman. What the hell? It was definitely as bad as I thought it was going to be and the only reason Rhona Mitra is no worse than Kate Beckinsale is because neither of them can act worth a shit in the first place.
As for Welshman Michael Sheen yelling a lot and bulging his eyes out in pain or constipation every time he got chance to show his manly chest off, well, I'll leave that for the girls to decide about. His acting was textbook action hero stuff which makes Jean Claude Van Damme look like a Shakespearian in comparison.
Apart from the deep-voiced "James Earl Jones" soundalike Kevin Grevioux everyone in the film appeared to be British and delivered their lines loudly and mechanically to the point of embarrassment. Yes, I get it, they are vampires and supposed to be cold and emotionless but, even so, this was cringeworthy stuff especially for Bill Nighy with his scary blue contact lenses.
It just felt to me as if, once the actors got their costumes on, that was all that they thought was required to carry the parts. There's no chemistry between anybody, no empathy evoked by any of the characters and it's all just a matter of waiting for the special effects to try and deliver something. Unfortunately even the practical effects look fake and the CG werewolf battles make it even worse.
Once again, the film suffered from the "quick cut/handheld cams" combination that makes knowing who is doing what to who pretty much impossible. I don't think I've seen much worse since "AVP 2" but just about all the action movies lately have been full of this nonsense and it needs to be stopped right now! Lots of clanging, growling and grunting were added almost haphazardly to the mix to make it exciting but it just got on my nerves. At least the audio kept me awake though because everything else was so boring.
I honestly can't recommend "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" to anybody sane or over the age of six as its just not involving enough to be entertaining. Yes, it's all very blue and everyone looks really pale so it's probably a must see for Delft pottery collectors the world over but, for a horror fan, no.

A lot of people are raving about Quentin Tarantino's latest movie and I'm sure you'll all end up watching it eventually whether you really want to or not. I watched it just to find out what all the fuss is about and I wish I now had those 2 and a half precious hours of my life back. It sucked!
Here are my ten reasons why.
1. They can't even spell the name of the film correctly. It should be "Inglorious Bastards". Even with the differences between British and American English neither word in the title is spelled properly. Not that I expect much more from the land of "Dunkin' Donuts", "Kwik Fill" and "Toys'R'Us" anyway.
2. Apart from the first 30 minutes or so, the rest of the movie is just a load of talky nonsense with no action at all. If people aren't being scalped, beaten to death with baseball bats or shot then I have no interest in watching a movie like this anyway. I couldn't care less about the second World War.
3. Yes, it's a war film. I have no interest in war films whatsoever. It's not even a good or realistic war film such as "Saving Private Ryan", "Das Boot" or even "The Great Escape". It's also far too much like "The Dirty Dozen" and so it sucks on all levels that pertain to originality or historical accuracy.
4. Did I mention that it's 153 minutes long? That's actually over 2 and a half hours (by three minutes). WTF? Who has the patience to watch anything that long unless it's porn? Not me. And how are you expected to watch something like this in a movie theatre with a Coke the size of a bucket without needing the toilet at least 8 times? I probably missed any good bits (if there were any good bits) after the first bit of brutality because I was too busy draining my little Quentin in the bathroom.
5. There just weren't enough subtitles. I don't need them for the French and German but I do for anything Brad Pitt says in any of his movies. How the hell did he become a Hollywood star when he can't even speak properly? I can't even blame it on his fake teeth this time like I did when he was slurring his way through "Interview with the Vampire". Having also just watched "Benjamin Button" with the subtitles on all the way through (because I couldn't understand anybody in it), I think it's down to his ludicrous attempt at a hillbilly accent. I think it's time for him to get some elocution lessons and then use his own voice in future. Some acting lessons wouldn't hurt either.
6. I've got nothing against Eli Roth as a director except that all his horror movies suck but now he thinks that he's an actor. Based on his whiny performance in "Inglourious Basterds", he can think again. Oh yeah, and he looks fat too. It's time to drop a couple of hundred pounds there, tubby.
7. I've never seen a single Quentin Tarantino movie that I liked. This was a chance for him to redeem himself but yet again he failed. Too much dialogue, too little action, and it looked as if it was knocked together in a week. Finding out later that Quentin Tarantino spent ten years on the story doesn't do much to help his case. Ten years to come up with this crap? I've written better blogs than his screenplays and they only take me about 5 minutes. If he'd come clean and admitted that it took him all of an hour then I'd have more respect for him. But then again, maybe not.
8. The only thing that would have made "Inglourious Basterds" memorable would have been if the characters played by Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent had got nakedly gangbanged in all directions several times throughout or whenever the story lagged. Actually if it had just been 2 hours of Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent naked then it would have been worth $10 of anybody's money even if they just stood there and did absolutely nothing at all. As it was, both actresses were wasted and this dismal failure of a movie has raped their careers no matter what the box office returns are.
9. There are no characters to care about in "Inglourious Basterds" because all they do is yap meaningless drivel rather than give any insights into themselves for the audience to empathize with. You actually get more characterisation in 3 minutes of a Bugs Bunny cartoon than in the whole of the this movie. So anyone who tells you how brilliant Tarantino is at creating caricatures is just insulting real artists (even animators) the whole world over. Even a blank piece of paper has more emotional depth than a Quentin Tarantino script.
10. Everything you want to know about this movie is shown in the trailer. How long is the trailer? About 3 minutes. That means that the rest of "Inglourious Basterds" is entirely padding. 2 and a half hours of padding!!!
My verdict: 0 out of 10. If you have $10 and a bored afternoon then I do NOT suggest that you watch this movie at all. Just buy a can of paint, find a room in need of decoration, get out your brush and do a wall. Yeah, watching paint dry will be far more beneficial.