Sunday, June 28, 2009

Horror Movie Review Preview: The Strangers

Coming Soon...The Strangers. After returning from a wedding reception, a couple staying in an isolated vacation house receive a knock on the door in the mid-hours of the night. What ensues is a violent invasion by three strangers, their faces hidden behind masks. The couple find themselves in a violent struggle, in which they go beyond what either of them thought capable in order to survive.


The Strangers

Lock the door. Pretend you're safe.

We tell ourselves there's nothing to fear - but sometimes, we're wrong.

What are you afraid of?

Because you were home.

Inspired By Real Events

Starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, and written and directed by Bryan Bertino The Strangers was nominated for several movie awards including Best Horror at the Saturn Awards, the Empire Awards, and the Golden Trailer awards. It lost to Hellboy II: The Golden Army (not a horror film:( ) at the Saturn Awards, lost to Eden Lake at the Empire Awards, and I Am Legend at the Golden Trailer Awards. The Strangers has received a 6.1 rating (out of 10) at IMDB and a 3.0 rating (out of 5) at Netflix.


Join us soon to find out if The Strangers is...inviting...

Friday, June 26, 2009

Horror Movie Review: Die and Let Live

Die and Let Live

Starring: Josh Lively, Zane Brosby, Sarah Bauer, Ashley Goddard, and Jonas Dixon

Directed by: Justin Channell

Written by: Justin Channell, Zane Crosby, Kris Kave, and Josh Lively

Production Company: IWC Films

Release Date: December 1, 2006

Zombies seem made for comedy. They are popping up everywhere, and really have been for a while. For instance, in 1941, Monogram advertised King of the Zombies as a horror comedy and in 1945 RKO released Zombies on Broadway with Bela Lugosi. These two films used Haitian-styled brainwashed zombies.

More recent Zombedies include Return of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Fido, Dead and Breakfast, and Braindead. We've looked at some Zombedies here at Horror Movie Night Orgy including Boy Eats Girl, Zombie Strippers, and briefly, My Dead Girlfriend.

When talking Zombedies, everyone talks about Shaun of the Dead, which I felt was a poor entry in the Zombedy genre being bested by B-Movie entries such as My Dead Girlfriend. Another Zombedy has come to show us how a Zombedy should be done...Die and Let Live.

Looking for a shot to hook up with his love, Stephanie, Benny tries to throw a small party. But Benny's best friend Smalls has another plan and Benny's amorous attempts are ruined by annoying Liz who has a crush on Benny, a large party with obnoxious drunkards...oh, and zombies. Can Benny win the girl AND save the day? By saving the day I mean, of course, rescue the Bambino's pizza dropped on the other side of the fence.

The comedy here is perfect. College antics, ribbing, and natural tomfoolery rather than forced slapstick. The very clever script supports this film that contains your standard B-Movie flaws: poor acting, poor effects, poor cinematography.

As for my 3 Essential B's pf B-Movies:

Bwahaha - in spades. The comedy carries the film, and really, the script should be the most important aspect of any film.

Blood - They use gore, but not too much. Having a low special effects budget but still using a lot of gore could have had a negative impact on the film.

Breasts - Lacking any nudity...but by the time the movie's over, you will have enjoyed the film so much you'll forget about the lack of breast.



Related Movies

These guys have all worked together on various projects...Here's the only other movie whose trailer I can find.

Raising the Stakes

Steve and Bob are two guys who enjoy their fanboy role-playing lifestyles a bit too much. Their obsession with vampire role-playing games leads them to decide to become vampires and get revenge on a world that doesn't understand them. Unfortunately for them, it takes a bit more than cheap Halloween makeup to scare people, so their attempts just lead to even more ridicule and physical harm. But that all changes when they discover a dealer of the occult named Maxwell Selwyn who can give them want they want: a potion that will turn them both into vampires. They fork over the money and sure enough, their dream comes true. They set out to finally get revenge on the world that rejected them... only to find they were better off with the cheap makeup.


Outtake of Lloyd Kaufman/

An outtake from Lloyd Kaufman's cameo...


King of the Zombies

During World War 2, a small plane off the south coast of America is low on fuel and blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crashland on an island. The passenger, his manservant and the pilot take refuge in a mansion owned by a doctor. The easily-spooked manservant soon becomes convinced the mansion is haunted by zombies and ghosts. Exploring, the 3 find a voodoo ritual in the cellar, where the doctor is trying to acquire war intelligence by transferring personalities into his zombies. But the interruption causes the zombies to turn on their creator.


Return of the Living Dead

When a bumbling pair of employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to re-animate as they go on a rampage through Louisville, Kentucky seeking their favorite food, brains.


Fido

Timmy Robinson's best friend in the whole wide world is a six-foot tall rotting zombie named Fido. But when FIDO eats the next-door neighbor, Mom and Dad hit the roof, and Timmy has to go to the ends of the earth to keep Fido a part of the family. A boy-and-his-dog movie for grown ups, "FIDO" will rip your heart out.


Dead and Breakfast

Six friends on a road trip stop for the night at a Bed and Breakfast in the sleepy town of Lovelock. After a night that leaves both the Inn's owner and chef dead, the gang finds themselves under suspicion by the local Sheriff. But that's only the beginning as nearly all of the town's quirky residents become possessed by an evil spirit and pin down the friends inside the B&B.


Braindead

A young man's mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey. She gets sick and dies, at which time she comes back to life, killing and eating dogs, nurses, friends, and neighbors.


Boy Eats Girl

A boy declares his love for his girlfriend, only to die the same night. He is brought back to life by his mother as a flesh-craving zombie, who sires more teen undead while trying to control his, er, appetite for his beloved.


Zombie Strippers

In the not too distant future a secret government re-animation chemo-virus gets released into conservative Sartre, Nebraska and lands in an underground strip club. As the virus begins to spread, turning the strippers into "Super Zombie Strippers" the girls struggle with whether or not to conform to the new "fad" even if it means there's no turning back.


My Dead Girlfriend

College professor Steve plans to propose to his occult-loving, vegetarian girlfriend Amy. But after he accidentally kills her, he uses an incantation book to bring her back. They drive to a cabin in the woods in order to wait for her to get better. But when his friends show up to party at the cabin, Steve has to keep them from figuring out that Amy's now a zombie.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Horror Movie Review Preview: Die & Let Live

Coming soon...Die and Let Live. When Benny tries to impress his crush Stephanie by throwing a party (with the help of his friend Smalls), he finds himself in quite a dilemma: a nearby medical testing facility has had an outbreak of test subjects for an experimental virus that revives the dead. When the infected undead show up to the party, it's up to Benny and Smalls to try to save the day.


Starring Josh Lively, Zane Crosby, Sarah Bauer, Ashley Goddard, and Jonas Dixon, Die and Let Live was released on December 1, 2006 in Morgantown, West Virgina and finally made it to DVD January 29, 2008.

Join us soon to find out if Die and Let Live...is to die for...

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Horror Movie Review: Lost Boys: The Tribe

Lost Boys: The Tribe

Starring: Tad Hilgenbrink, Autumn Reeser, Corey Feldman, and Angus Sutherland

Directed by: PJ Pesce

Written by: Hans Rodionoff based on characters by Janice Fischer and James Jeremias

Release Date: July 29, 2008

Some sequels just shouldn't be made. Most have, at least, potential. Poltergeist II: The Other Side is a prime example. It has a great predecessor, great characters that can return, and, well, poltergeists! But in this case we had execution fail! Carol Anne's disembodied voice talking about "the other side", creepy. Seeing "the other side", yawn. Robbie being attacked by the tree outside, scary. Robbie being attacked by his own braces? Trying a bit too much for a Nightmare on Elm Street feel. All poltergeist activity caused without physical manifestation, creepy. Old country preacher looking physical manifestation of poltergeist? Bwahahaha...and it doesn't make sense if we're talking evel spirits from ancient Indian burial grounds, you know?

But then there are those sequels that, when you hear they exist, you have to ask, "Why?" The Exorcist II, The Birds II: Lands End, and Lost Boys: The Tribe.

I knew what I was getting when I Netflixed Lost Boys: The Tribe. A straight to video sequel of a movie released 21 years ago. But sometimes you have to face the evil and call it by its proper name to weaken the evil, and this evil's proper name is...crap.

Orphans Chris and Nicole move to Luna Bay to stay in one of their aunt's properties. Pretty quickly they get wrapped up in some local surfer vampires. Lead surf-pire Shane falls for hottie Nicole and begins turning into a vampire to join the Tribe.

Chris, realizing something is amiss, befriends Edgar Frog, vampire hunter, to help save his sister...roll credits.

Sound familiar? Yep, pretty much the same as the original. But with worse acting. And some things don't make sense. They are surfers, but very little surfing is shown. It just seemed odd that that seemed like a big connection between Shane and Chris, but other than, "Dude, we're both great surfers who dropped out of the spotlight! Tubular!" (not an actual quote), it's left alone. Think about the cool stuff they could have had vampires do while surfing! But nada...

You keep expecting there to be a secret head vampire, but there's not...and something's not right about two kids of similar age with one being the lead vampire and the other, not...I was hoping the aunt, which would have provided a novel twist, but nope.

There are, however, two redeeming features of the film: 1) Corey Feldman returns as Edgar Frog. He makes the movie barable. He makes it funny. His one-liners a re cheesy and fit the character perfectly. And Feldman's over the top acting is still better than everyone else's. 2) Nudity! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, all of us who, when watching the original, spent the entire movie waiting for the nude scene with Jami Gertz as Star, the scene which never came, we get ample nudity! Thank you Moneca Delain!

I am disturbed to discover that there are plans for a 2010 straight to video release of Lost Boys 3...Hopefully, things fall apart before that happens. If you're just looking for a movie with Corey Feldman and breasts that you'll make fun of during and after the viewing? This movie is for you. Otherwise, pick something else up.








Related Videos

Lost Boys

The original cult classic, Lost Boys.


Amusement

Tad Hilgenbrink (Chris) stars in Amusement. Three women are stalked by a killer with a grudge that extends back to the girls' childhoods.


Nature of the Beast

Autumn Reeser (Nicole) starts in ABC's television movie Nature of the Beast.


Terror Inside

Corey Feldman followed Lost Boys: The Tribe with Terror Inside. Joe obtains geological smaples for the university to study, but while doing so unearths a strange, oozing liquid which transposes his sense of pain and pleasure. Returning to the town to woo Marie, Allen discovers a drastic change as cute storefronts have been replaced with dark tattoo parlors. Can he find the cause of the change in the town...and his love?


Trick 'r Treat

Moneca Delain stars in Trick 'r Treat. Four interwoven stories that occur on Halloween: An everyday high school principal has a secret life as a serial killer; a college virgin might have just met the one guy for her; a group of teenagers pull a mean prank; a woman who loathes the night has to contend with her holiday-obsessed husband.


From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter

Director PJ Pesce had previously directed vampires in From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter. Set 100 years ago in Mexico, this horror/western is the story of the birth of the vampire princess Santanico Pandemonium.


Man-Thing

Hans Rodionoff wrote the straight to video adaptation of Man-Thing. Agents of an oil tycoon vanish while exploring a swamp marked for drilling. The local sheriff investigates and faces a Seminole legend come to life: Man-Thing, a shambling swamp-monster whose touch burns those who feel fear.


Poltergeist II: The Other Side

Sequel that had potential, but blew it, Poltergeist II following the Freeling family to a new house, but more supernatural terror.


Exorcist II

A sequel that shouldn't have been created, Exorcist II asks, "It's four years later...what does she remember?" A girl once possessed by a demon finds that it still lurks within her. Meanwhile, a priest investigates the death of the girl's exorcist.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Coming Soon...Lost Boys: The Tribe. After their parents die in a car accident, Chris Emerson and his sister, Nicole, move in with their quirky Aunt Jillian in her California beach town. Soon Nicole falls for a local surfer, who, unbeknownst to her, is also a vampire. Now Chris finds himself battling the whole gang of vampire surfers in an effort to rescue his sister.


Never grow old. Never die. Never know fear again.

Starring Tad Hilgenbrink, Autumn Reeser, Corey Feldman, and Angus Sutherland, this 2008 film is a sequel to 1987's cult vampire film Lost Boys.


Join us soon to see if ...Lost Boys: The Tribe...has heart.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Horror Movie Review: Cursed


Cursed

Starring: Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Milo Ventimiglia, Joshua Jackson, and Judy Greer

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: Kevin Williamson

Release Date: February 25, 2005

Awards: Nominated in the 2005 MTV Movie Awards for Best Frightened Performance by Mya (Lost to Dakota Fanning in Hide and Seek)


If you do a plot keyword search of the term "Werewolf" you will pull up 183 titles including Big Fish, a decidedly non-horrific drama. So filter out everything that is not a horror film and you still have 155 films, although some are questionably tagged, such as F. W. Murnau's vampire flick, Nosferatu. The first werewolf film is either the 1925 silent feature Wolf Blood about a lumberjack given a blood transfusion from a wolf and convinced he is turning into a wolf, with no actual werewolf effects, or Universal Pictures 1935 Werewolf of London. That's almost 2 werewolf pictures a year. At this point you almost wonder what else can be done with the lycanthoropic legend.

In 2005, Wes Craven took a stab at the werewolf and gave us Cursed. In LA, orphans Ellie and Jimmy get attacked by a werewolf and are cursed with the mark of the beast. Jimmy figures out what is going on and begins to embrace the change. As people start turning up dead around the siblings, Ellie begins to accept the implausible truth. In order to return to their normal lives, Ellie and Jimmy begin trying to find the werewolf that started it all...and kill it.

There's nothing really special about the plot or anything about the film. It's kind of a paint by numbers flick. Craven seemed to try and give this the feel of The Lost Boys, replacing vampires with werewolfs. However, the setting of LA rather than a small Californian town eliminates the cut-off-in-an-alien-environment feeling we got from Michael and Sam in Santa Carla.

We see some Teen Wolf thrown in as Jimmy embraces his change to escape his role as tormented geek by standing up to the bully and winning the girl. Finally add a touch of Jack Nicholson's Wolf performance brought to us by Christina Ricci as she becomes more aggressive in her work, and the puzzle is complete.

It's not a complete loss if you're a Ricci fan, as I am, but it adds a level of disappointment that she would accept this role. It's fun watching Milo Ventimiglia as Jimmy's bully rather than flying around trying to save the world, but it's hard to swallow the character as overly stereotypical as it is. And the lead werewolf is a good choice, except the script seemed to leave off some of the werewold clues that Jimmy and Ellie show. A special nod should be given to Scott Baio who plays himself being a mistreated TV guest.

Considering some of the names involved (Ricci and Craven), it's a shame that this wasn't a better film that tried to do something new rather than chew up the same old things we've seen from other films. The film really was cursed...



Related Trailers

Sleepy Hollow

Christina Ricci starred as Katrina van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod Crane is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate the decapitations of 3 people with the culprit being the legendary apparition, the Headless Horseman.






The Village

Jesse Eisenberg starred as Jamison and Judy Greer starred as Kitty Walker in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village.






Pathology

Milo Ventimiglia stars as Ted Grey in Pathology Alyssa Milano. A group of medical students devise a deadly game: to see which one of them can commit the perfect murder.






Shutter

Joshua Jackson starred in Shutter, the remake of a hit Thai horror film. A newly married couple discovers disturbing, ghostly images in photographs they develop after a tragic accident. Fearing the manifestations may be connected, they investigate and learn that some mysteries are better left unsolved.






Deadly Friend

Wes Craven also directed the 1986 Deadly Friend. Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux) is the new kid in town, who has his own invention, a robot named BeeBee. Paul becomes friends with Samantha (Kristy Swanson), the girl next door, but his efforts to see her are frequently thrawted by her abusive and jealous father Harry (Richard Marcus). On Halloween, Paul plays a prank on his sinister neighbor, Elvira (Anne Ramsey) a mean evil old woman who lives across the street from him. However in a fury, Elvira destroys Paul's robot BeeBee. Several weeks later, Samantha is murdered by her father. In a desperate attempt to save his new love, Paul implants BeeBee's microchips into Samantha's corpse and successfully brings her to life, but he doesn't realize that his friend has become an unstoppable monster bent only on murder and destruction.





The Faculty

Writer Kevin Williamson also wrote the screenplay for The Faculty. Students suspect that their teachers are aliens after bizarre occurances.






Hide and Seek

Dakota Fanning beat Mya for Best Frightened Performance at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards for her role in Hide and Seek. As a widower tries to piece together his life in the wake of his wife's suicide, his daughter finds solace -- at first -- in her imaginary friend.





Werewolf of London

Possibly the first werewolf film, Universal's 1935 feature Werewolf of London. While on a botanical expedition in Tibet Dr. Wilfred Glendon is attacked in the dark by a strange animal. Returning to London, he finds himself turning nightly into a werewolf and terrorizing the city, with the only hope for curing his affliction a rare Asian flower.






The Lost Boys

Cursed seemed to try to recreate the tone of this 1987 vampire flick. After moving to a new town, two brothers are convinced that the area is frequented by vampires.






Wolf

Jack Nicholson preceded Christina Ricci as a professional dealing with lycanthropy at a job. Publisher Will Randall becomes a werewolf and has to fight to keep his job.






Teen Wolf

This is a more comedic tale about a highschooler who discovers that he is a werewolf.