LAID TO REST(2009) Entertaining and gory slasher film from Anchor Bay Entertainment that harkens back to that particular sub-genres heyday , the good ol' 80's. This is everything that the awful HATCHET claimed to be. I went into to this expecting something mediocre at best but in the end i was pleasantly surprised. We start out with a girl waking up inside of a coffin with no memory of who she is or how she ended up there , she looks around and See's a figure outside dressed in black with a mask that is a chrome skull , hence the killers name , Chrome Skull , and a video camera strapped to his shoulder messing around with some corpses. The mysterious masked man notices she is awake , she escapes and the chase is on. Throughout the whole movie he will eliminate everyone and everything that stands in the way of him catching his prey and if your a gore hound you will be tickled pink (or should i say red?) with the bloody results. The motivation of the killer is never explained , which is fine by me , in my opinion that just makes him seem all that more ruthless and brutal . This movie is exactly what the original slashers were , movies that tried to come up with inventive and disgustingly bloody ways to kill people and it succeeds in spades. If your looking for deep meaning and symbolism this ain't the movie for you but if your a die hard slasher fan like myself you should dig it. Two dismembered thumbs up!

BLOOD(1974) A film by B-movie master Andy Milligan and like most movies by Milligan this is a strange , low budget slice of drive in cheese , stinky moldy cheese. A doctor who is a werewolf is married to a woman who is a vampire , supposedly the grand daughter of Count Dracula. They move to America and live in a house with their weird assistants and a bunch of carnivorous plants. The plants are used in experiments the Doc is conducting to try and cure his lycanthropy and his wife's vampirism and the servants are used as guinea pigs and suffer physical and mental disabilities as a result of his failures. I dont know why he goes to all the trouble he does to cure his wife , the don't like each other , they tell each other every few min. "i hate you". For what its worth , and this is not necessarily praise here but this is actually one of Milligans better films , but for some reason its not as widely known and is very hard to find , there are some DVD-r copies floating around on the Internet and if you look hard enough you my find it if you for some reason think you need this. For those not familiar with Milligans works , the best way i can describe it to you is it is the lowest of low budget drive-in cinema , an art that has been lost in this day and age , it takes a certain type of patience to sit through this kind of stuff , i personally love this kind of shit , i grew up going to the drive in and saw endless amounts of cheesy flicks so Ive built up a tolerance to low budget absurdity.

BORDERLINE CULT(2007) Wow, this is probably the least entertaining and annoying film i have ever seen in my life , so sub par in fact people like Andy Milligan and the other B movie filmmakers of the 60's and 70's look like fucking geniuses. Directed by Ulli Lommell , who directed the 1980 drive in classic BOOGEY MAN , who in recent years has been reduced to directing other direct to DVD drivel. There is not really any plot here to speak of at all , just a bunch of spliced together segments with absolutely no motive or sense about them at all. Virtually no gore to speak of , nothing at all to attract even the biggest bad cinema fan. A woman takes other women to a house that is apparently on the US/Mexican border , where this guy that looks like Drew Carey tortures and kills them, there is another guy wearing a top hat who buries the bodies. At some point in the film each character looks directly into the camera and talks about themselves for 2 or 3 minutes and that's about it as far as any narrative goes. At the end of the movie Mr. top hat guy says "we're done" , the woman says "420 , i like that number" and they then turn and walk away and the credits role , no explanation , nothing to tell us why they killed these people. This is beyond bad , crap , doo doo. It hurts my feelings that someone would waste money and time making junk like this , an absolute waste of film . Avoid at all costs.

FEAST(2005) Highly enjoyable gore filled fun that is one of the better horror flicks of the 2000's . This is the winner of the 3rd Project Greenlight , a foundation/contest run by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to help new filmmakers get their movies made and distributed , i applaud them for picking and taking a chance on a film like this instead of some sappy love story or cgi filled action drivel. The patrons of a rural bar in a small desert community are forced to fight for survival against a pack of carnivorous monsters who are hell bent on eating them, not much background is given on where the monsters come from but that's o.k. , there is enough positives things going on here to make that not matter. Filled with over the top gore scenes and characters that are killed almost immediately after being introduced , it keeps you thinking throughout , who the hell is going to survive , the ones you think are going to be the hero are killed off as soon as you get to know them , this is one of the points that makes this so good , it makes the viewer feel that the characters might as well just let themselves be eatin because there is no hope for survival anyway , just total desperation. Violent , gory , shocking and one of the few horror films that actually has funny attempts at humor , this succeeds on all levels. Even more impressive knowing this is the directors first film.You should definitely check this one out!

SEE NO EVIL(2006) WWE wrestler Kane (Glen Jacobs) stars in this , the first horror movie produced by the wrestling company who are trying to branch out into other forms of entertainment . While this is flawed its not nearly as bad as a lot of other reviews that i have read made it out to be. Long time porn director Gregory Dark helms this slasher about killer Jacob Goodnight who uses an axe and a hook on the end of a long chain like a lasso and kills and plucks out his victims eyes and then stores them in jars in his lair which is located in an old abandoned hotel. A group of juvenile delinquent teens are sent to the hotel to clean it unaware that the reclusive killer is hiding inside. Along with the teens is a cop who had a previous run in with Goodnight a few years earlier , which we see in the intro to the film. Each of the teens is introduced via pop up text on the screen detailing what there crimes were , i thought this to be a pretty cool element , not something you see everyday. Throughout the film there are flashbacks showing Goodnight's messed up childhood with his religious zealot mother who used to lock him in an animal cage and a little background on how his penchant for eye plucking began. Another cool detail in the movie is when the killer is about to strike flies start buzzing around his head. The setting of the hotel is a good choice , perfectly gloomy , dingy and dirty , the type of place you would expect a murdering maniac to hide out. Kane also does a commendable job as the killer , his days in the WWE certainly helped with his acting ability , his wrestling character for those of you who are not familiar with the sport is that of a monstrous , hulking and brutal man who was set on fire by his brother (The Undertaker) and now he just wants to hurt people. The pacing is just about right , not to much time is wasted between the good and plentiful gore scenes. I was actually surprised with the amount of gore here , i was expecting it to be pretty tame since WWE targets its programing to younger audiences , this is definitely not for the kiddies. So even though the plot is not exactly the strongest this is a decent movie overall , much better than i actually expected it to be.

KNOCK KNOCK(2007) On the surface this looks to be nothing but some low budget slice'em and dice'em slasher film , which it is , but its a little more , its also a homage to the giallo films of Dario Argento and other like minded Italian filmmakers and the director here has apparently watched a butt load of the flicks because he cops the style perfectly. The downside to this is that most of Argento's films are style over substance , they look great , there is plentifully gore and creepy settings but they don't necessarily have the best plots and this can get a little confusing sometimes. I'm saying this as an Argento fan , i love a lot of his movies but they do tend to be nothing more than surreal , dream like set pieces that make little sense. I didn't really know what to expect going into this , i did after all pick this up for only 5 bucks at a mega super department store on a Halloween end cap , not necessarily the kind of place you expect to buy a masterpiece of cinema. I kind of thought it was going to be some cheap looking shot on video mess that looked horrible but as i stated before the it looks great but everything else is middle of the road at best. A killer is knocking off a towns teens in gory fashion based on the type of work their fathers do and the reason for this is because , once again in typical slasher movie style , it's because of a cruel joke that was played on him by this particular set of teens fathers and he was horribly disfigured . Even though this is not bad impetus to get the blood a flowin' It's been done before countless times , there is absolutely nothing here that we haven't seen a bazillion times before , teens get into typical horror movie teen situations and get killed by the maniac and the cops investigating the murders are some of the most cliche ridden characters ever put to film . The fx are another point of contention , even thought the gore is decent its nothing spectacular and the make up for the killer is pretty sucky , it looks like a bad paper mache mask or as i read somewhere else , it looks like his face is covered in wet toilet paper. Not a terrible effort but nothing to write home about either.

REST STOP (2006) The first feature film from Warner's RAW FEED imprint is unfortunately a mostly unsatisfying film . Nicole and Jess are a young couple who runaway to go to sunny California , when they pull over in the title rest stop Nicole goes to tinkle in a nasty ass bathroom not even fit for the lowliest of beings , when she returns Jess is is gone , he's been abducted , now stranded in the middle of nowhere Nicole spends the rest of the film trying to get away from a madman in a yellow pickup truck and as the film unfolds we discover that there may be a supernatural answers to the happenings that make the situation seem even more dire.

She encounters a deranged family of religious fanatics in a motor home that are essential to the plot and are the catalyst for the strange goings on but from what I've seen and read elsewhere alot of people missed that point entirely.
This movie tries real hard to fit into the same category as movies like SAW , WOLF CREEK and HOSTEL and in some ways it succeeds , it has the same type of brutality and has the torture/gore scenes much like those films and also like those flicks it becomes very tedious and frustrating. There seems to be an unfortunate trend in horror today in where filmmakers think they need to brutally torture victims to death in order to shock the audience instead of building tension and telling a coherent story. Also this thing seems to keep going around in circles with no resolution , in a way i think the filmmakers did this on purpose so you could feel the isolation and desperation of Nicole but after awhile it gets overbearing and hard to watch. One of the killers victims is still alive , being held prisoner in the grungy rest stop bathroom and is trying to warn Nicole and help her escape. Making an appearance here is Joey Lawrence as a cop who ends up being brutalized by the deranged driver , his is one of the better performances in the film and one of the few positives here i might add . Another point that brings this down is the lead character , she has got to be one of the dumbest , brainless people Ive ever seen in a horror movie , that's pretty bad because there are countless dumb asses in the history of horror flicks. Despite all the faults here its not totally horrible , it moves along pretty good for awhile before it gets frustrating , a more satisfying ending that brings everything together could have made this a lot more tolerable and the director does a decent job as far as the look of the film goes and there is decent fx for such a low budget movie. Ive definitely seen a lot worse but that's still not good enough. Watch at your own risk.


REST STOP 2: DON'T LOOK BACK(2008) Right from the get-go let me state that I'm giving this movie a higher mark than its predecessor , there has been marked improvement so , in my opinion that should be worth something. Even with the filmmakers failed attempt to inject humor into this bringing it way down on the Mikey-o-meter , there are some good things going on here. The main thing that makes this better is the fact that we get some background on the killer and the crazy motor home family , stuff that was hinted at in the first movie gets reveled , the family it seems picked up the guy in the yellow truck and tortured and killed him , his ghost comes back and gets revenge by knocking them off , so it seems that everyone here , including the girl in the bathroom in the first movie are ghosts doomed to walk the earth and haunt those that stop to use the bathrooms , so at least some of the confusion from movie #1 has been cleared up. The story here picks up a year later with Tom , brother of Jess in the first movie , along with his girlfriend and one of his buddies going on the road to investigate his brothers disappearance , they of course end up stopping at the same rest stop and suffer the same fate as everyone else who has been there before them , for the most part these three are unlikable characters you really don't give a crap about so that ends up hurting this a bit . It has very little gore considering the type of movie it is but the gore that is here is well done and it was nice to get some of the confusion cleared up , but even though i rate this higher than the first its still nothing to jump up and down about . One thing that makes all this a bit more tolerable is that you can find both movie on one DVD for a low price , Wal Mart often has this in the $5 dump bin . Again watch at your own risk.

THE STRANGER BESIDE ME:THE TED BUNDY STORY(2003)
Not really a horror movie in the traditional sense but the events portrayed are truly horrifying indeed. This tells the story of Ted Bundy , one of America's most well known serial killers , it follows the story of his killings , his capture and his trial through the eyes of crime writer Ann Rule , who's accounts of the horrific crimes is up close and personal as she was a friend of Bundy's and she tells the tale of how she watched the investigation unfold.
The film is based on Rules book of the same name , in which she writes of how as a former police officer and then an aspiring crime writer was helping the cops solve a string of grisly murders in the Seattle area all the while the killer was right in front of her face , this once the crimes were solved for sure would have been a terrifying revelation. This also shows how , as many of us had heard , that Bundy was a charming , very intelligent man but it also shows how he was a pathetic scared little wuss who was an attention whore , he really seem to enjoy all the press his crimes were getting and how he went to the electric chair still proclaiming his innocence. It also tells a little of Bundy's strange childhood , the break up with a girlfriend that may have sparked the serial killings and it also hints that though never proved that his murderous ways may have started early in life at the age of 14 when a young girl in his neighborhood disappeared and was never found. This ends with a great quote from Rule that can be taken to be about crime in general " There is no answer. There is no consolation. Evil just exist and we don't know why". Over all this is an extremely enjoyable made for TV movie originally aired on USA network.
Highly recommended if you like true crime / serial killer films , this is one of the best of the bunch along with HELTER SKETER about the Manson family , and TO CATCH A KILLER about John Wayne Gacy , both by the way also made for TV films. I also recommend Rules book this is based on , as a matter of fact as is often the case it is even better than the movie.

MOTOR HOME MASSACRE(2005) The title here lets you know what your getting into even before you pop this DVD into the player , a bunch of lunk headed annoying teens/20 somethings pile into a vintage RV and proceed to get slaughtered by a maniac with a machete and night vision goggles and i don't blame him one bit , this group of folks are so damn annoying i would want to massacre them too , especially the character that plays endless practical jokes on the other kids in the RV , he's just an asshole , I wish they would have killed him off early in the film but they waited until the last 15 min. of the flick so i had to , along with his poor friends , endure his stupidity throughout . This is your typical brainless 80's style slasher movie with some decent but cheap gore effects , the blood is waaay to bright red and the twisty turning ending that is totally stupid and horrible , so horrible in fact it almost spoils what enjoyment you do get out of the film , there was absolutely no sense in ending it that way. The really bad attempts at humor also knock this down a notch or two , a good example is the store keeper they encounter on their way to the camping area , this character is riddled with so many horror movie cliches its ridiculous and his jokes and sight gags are so bad a 10 year old boy wouldnt think they are funny . But still with all the bad things going on here i guess if your in the mood for some mindless slashing it will do and since i only paid $3 for it i can say i got my moneys worth : ) Fair to middling at best.

AMUSEMENT(2007) A pretty decent little b-movie here with some creepy moments and a couple of good gore scenes. The movie is comprised of three segments , each titled after the name of the main female character in each. 1st up is "SHELBY" about a girl and her boyfriend who are on a road trip and get into a convoy and the boyfriend keeps spouting some bullshit about the art of a good convoy that repeatedly had my eyes rolling in an oh-my-God-what-kinda-crap-is-this fasion. After they meet up with the other vehicles in the convoy they are talked into taking a back road because of bad traffic and they are then led off of the main highway and pretty soon the horror unfolds , you pretty much need to throw logic completely out of the window for the twist here to work but its still a decent segment . Next up is "TABITHA" about a young lady (Katheryn Winnick of SATAN'S LITTLE HELPER) who goes to her aunts house to baby sit 2 young boys and is terrorized by a madman in a creepy clown costume , this is the best segment here with some good tense moments involving the clown guy, even if you do see it coming 100 miles down the road. 3rd up to bat is "LISA" about a girl who goes out to a bar with her roommate , the roommate decides to let a guy she just met drive her home (duh) but she never arrives so Lisa and her boyfriend decide to go to a seedy hotel they think she might be at to find her , big mistake. Like the 1st segment you have to suspend all logic for this to work , both segments would require the killer to orchestrate something really elaborate to get the people where he needs them to be , an almost impossible task and also the killer would have to be a master of disguise for the film to work AND where the hell did he get all the money to pull off this elaborate scheme? We end up finding out that the 3 girls and the killer are all tied together by the fact they went to middle school with each other , something that's hinted at in the opening credits , and that the three ladies played a cruel joke on the young man and now hes out for his revenge , pretty silly plot but it somehow works. Not a bad effort as long as you throw away your sense of reason , but don't we need to do that with most horror movies ?

MIDNITE MOVIE(2008) A highly entertaining stab-n- slash pic that was a real treat to watch. Was it original , no not at all , but the advantage this has over a lot of other movies is the fact that the filmmakers knew exactly what kind of movie they wanted to make and went for it with gusto , they tapped into why fans like these kinds of movies and went about things in a tongue in cheek joking kind of way but loving and respectful of the genre at the same time , much the same way SCREAM was. It borrows from several different movies for its plot , but the main two that come to mind are DEMONS and POPCORN , especially POPCORN.
The film is about an actor/director named Ted Radford who in 1972 killed the entire cast of the horror movie he was working on titled THE DARK BENEATH , he has been imprisoned in an asylum ever since and somehow somone thought it would be good therapy for him to watch his film, ha ha , what kind of dumbasses run this place , anyway this was a bad idea of course because he soon escapes his restraints and kills everyone in the hospital before making his escape. Jump forward 5 years and a small town theater is having a midnight showing of the film , the first public performance since the murders , a detective who has been hunting for Radford has the wherewithall to think that he might show up to the screening of the movie and he would be right . During the screening the audience become victims to the killer in the movie when he is able to freely move from screen to theater and he pulls the audience members into the film also, confusing reality and movie , that aspect of the film is a little dicey but is explained by the detective with some silly mumbo jumbo talk at the end of the movie. That silliness doesnt hurt it to much though , this is a very fun movie that i would recommend to any 80's slasher fan. Good job guys.

http://www.alternativerealities.tv/

Watch FRIGHT NIGHT THEATER starring horror host "PUMPKINMAN" on his ALTERNATIVE REALITIES TV premier tonight April29th @ 9pm , he will be showing the Bela Lugosi classic WHITE ZOMBIE. This is a new host with only a couple of shows under his belt and he can use you support, you can also check him out on facebook and you tube.

I found this extremely amusing. An actual street in Holbrook , Arizona. HA HA!

cafepress.com/societyforascarierplanet

Saw this on the net , it seems to be , the best i can figure out from an Australian newspaper THE HERALD SUN.

A GIANT billboard promoting a new horror movie has parents at a primary school screaming for action.

Mothers at Albert Park primary say their children are spooked by the enormous Scream 4 poster that towers over their school.

It features the masked "Ghostface", an evil knife-wielding killer.

Parents said the billboard was inappropriate and liable to give their impressionable youngsters nightmares.

Mother of two Leah Takach said she feared it would give her sons Felix and Noah bad dreams.

"I have walked past it with my two boys, aged five and seven, on the way to school and they have both mentioned it," she said.

"It is not a very nice picture. I have had to try to explain it is from a horror movie. They do tend to dwell on this kind of thing and wake up in the middle of the night frightened."

Another school mum, Janine Barrett, said her two young children, Jensen and Addison, had also been disturbed by the image.

"It's a very odd spot to have something like that - across the road from a primary school," she said.
Ms Barrett says she wants the poster removed. "It's a horrible mask," she said.

I will agree that placing this across the street from an elementary school seems like a rather odd place but come on people , its not very scary , Ive seen scarier looking things on the cartoon network. As a matter of fact that kid on the left is scarier looking than the mask, it looks like he has a little Linda Blair in him to me, and i find it curious that you say it scares your kids but you were willing to stand in front of it to take the pic. My 3 year old would think its cool , he loves monsters , he begs to look at my collections of horror stuff all the time , maybe your kids are a little too sheltered from the world ,probably the kind of children that are scared of Scooby Doo, its all pretty silly if you ask me and a strange thing to make the news, some people just like to stir shit up i guess.

CHAIN LETTER (2010)

A group of teens are sent a chain letter on their cell phones and/or computers and are told that if they break the chain they will be killed. They of course blow it off thinking its just a silly prank but soon find out that its no joke when they are knocked off one by one in various gory ways by an unknown killer. The makers of the movie try to get you to play along with the characters in their guessing game of who is the killer, but the truth is the characters are so underdeveloped and they appear on the screen and die so fast, you really don't have enough time to care about their plight.

More or less this is a tale warning us that yes , technology can be helpful in someways but in the wrong hands and the fact that we are obsessed with it as a society , it can also be deadly. That ends up being an area where this fails because the technology angle is good and one that i agree with , but in the end they don't take it far enough . Its funny that the very same day that i watched this movie i saw a segment on the news warning people that their smart phones had GPS devices in them and that criminals were using them to track people and commit crimes, that's exactly what the killer in this film does. I'm sure that made this a bit disturbing to some people. Another thing they do is bring up that maybe there is some kind of anti-technology cult out there behind the killings but again this is never explored in depth.

I found it to be a decent movie but very ,very flawed, it did have an old school slasher film vibe to it and i love old school slashers. The gore FX are done well so gore hounds will get a kick out of that point.

The filmmakers hearts were in the right place but in the end this has so many holes and under utilized points in the plot it seems unfinished . That fact is further hammered home by the abrupt ending. A film that could have been great but because of the makers inability to flesh out certain plot angles makes this only a fair effort. Maybe you can get it right next time guys.

THE OTHERS(2001)
This is a big budget suspense thriller starring Nicole Kidman that was very highly acclaimed by many critics at the time of its release but many horror fans were scared off by the fact that it was PG 13 and most PG horrors are underwhelming to say the least. That fear is unwarranted though as this is a very good ghost story, a modern throwback to such films as the classic THE HAUNTING(1963 ) , a film that relies more on mood and atmosphere as apposed to all out in your face scares.
Kidman stars as Grace , a devoted mother who lives with her 2 children in an old secluded island mansion while awaiting for the return of their husband/father from war.
They start to see and hear unexplained things around the house and Grace struggles with this thinking are we crazy or is this house really haunted .
Three mysterious servants who creepily appear on the door step one day add to the mood and seem to know whats happening but they withhold what they know until they think the family is ready for the truth , all the while Grace tries to get to the bottom of what or who is haunting this family.
The children suffer from a disease that requires them to be kept out of bright light and they go to extreme lengths to insure the children's health , heavy curtains are all pulled shut across the windows , dim lighting is used so very little light is ever in the home , they must shut one door before they open another to insure no light gets in , all this adds to the overall creepiness of the film.
There is not one unnecessary moment here , every scene no matter how insignificant it seems at the time all come together and fall perfectly into place in a good twist ending. At 104 min. it may seem a little long and slow moving to some but being a fan of old school horror movies i found this to be very entertaining and many notches above most big budget horrors.


THE MAD(2006)
Billy Zane stars in yet another zombie comedy, a trend that seems to be endless, jeez enough already guys.
Zane plays DR. Jason Hunt , he and his girlfriend Monica are on a trip to his cabin to spend some time away from the city , along for the ride is his daughter Amy and her boyfriend Blake , the makers try to create comedic situations by pulling the generation gap card , the kids laugh at the adults because they are so uncool and Zane tries to prove to the kids how cool he is by telling them time and again about when he used to play in a band , and that they were a very cutting edge band that were ahead of their time , in the end proving how uncool he really is. Alas the jokes do not work because they are not very funny.
While on the trip they decide to stop at a country diner for some down home cooking. During their meal some of the other customers start acting crazy , we soon find out that the diner has been getting beef tainted with toxic chemicals from a local farmer , everyone who eats it turns into flesh craving fiends. Zane and the rest of his clan fight for survival along with the diner owner and his step daughter , while under attack the group argues among themselves over if the ghouls are really zombies or are they just sick with something like mad cow disease, another bit that is not funny.
In conclusion we get an unfunny horror comedy with a fair amount of blood but nothing that pushes this above an R rating despite the DVD box displaying the unrated tag almost as big as the title. I could take it or leave it, it doesn't move me either way.


DELTA DELTA DIE! (2003)
Scream queen Julie Strain stars as Mother Fitch , House mother for the DELTA DELTA PI sorority, the most popular girls on campus. The Delta girls are getting ready to have their 20th anniversary and decide to have a bake sale , the problem with that is their baked goods are made with human meat , pretty soon male students start disappearing and get ground up to make the filing for the Delta house pies.
An inquisitive reporter for the school paper is suspicious of the Delta girls and he starts to investigate the young men's disappearances and a former member of the sorority who knows their culinary secret, played by Brinke Stevens, sets out to stop them.
This is an unashamedly micro budget B movie filled with bad acting , cheap gore and tons of nudity. As bad as this is i cant hate on it to much for the simple fact that i got the disc for free because i have a Friend who worked on the film, he even has a scene in it , he's the guy near the beginning who buys a pie from the Delta girls and says"Id die for that Delta pie" Silly stuff for bad movie freaks only.




HALLOWEEN(2007)
John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN(1978) is a classic that cant be topped so you must keep that in mind when watching this movie. Rob Zombie apparently knew this when he made this and didn't try to copy the original film , he took the basic elements of it and tweaked it to fit his own twisted vision.
What he came up with is the dark , nasty world of a white trash family filled with abuse , within the family is a young boy who's mind is warped to the point the he becomes an emotionless killing machine.
What we essentially end up with is the original movies plot of a maniac escaping an asylum to return to his hometown to kill his younger sister. What Zombie adds to the mix is a back story detailing what happened to him to turn him into a monster.
Mr. Zombies vision is an extremely violent , brutal world filled with nasty characters , deplorable people that you hope to God don't really exist. A world so disgusting that you feel dirty and depressed after watching and because of that the movie is successful. You wont be cheering for the killer like you do for Jason or Freddy , this ain't no film for the young teenage crowd ,this is dark horror from the underbelly of America . His version of Michael Myers is a nasty S.O.B with a big knife and no conscience. Forget about the original for a bit and go into it with an open mind and you ll get something out of it.


HALLOWEEN 2 (2009)
Rob Zombie takes us back to his version of Haddenfield and somehow comes up with an even more brutal version of Michael Myers than he gave us in the first flick.
This movie deals with Lori Strode played again by Scout Taylor Thompson and her struggle to keep from succumbing to insanity after surviving the events in the first movie.
The focus tends to stay more on her and Dr. Loomis than the Michael character , he is brought slowly , progressively more to the forefront of the film as he makes his way closer to Lori , all the while brutally dispatching those who get in his way.
When i first started watching this i had the feeling that this was going to be better than the first movie but as the film unfolds the visions/dreams Michael was having about his mother became tedious and by the films end it was hard to make sense of what was actually happening , then on top of that Lori ,who has been having nightmares through the whole film does finally go off the deep end and starts having some of the same visions as Michael , so it was hard to differentiate reality from dream , that ultimately moves this a notch or two below the first . I did like the way Mr. Zombie chose to present Dr. Loomis though , he has him turning into a media whore, writing books ,making TV appearances , doing lectures and basically getting rich off of the name Michael Myers, sadly this portrayal is believable , there are people like that out there. That's one of the things that makes this film work, believability. That and like the first movie , its a gritty portrayal of white trash America that many people never get to see but are completely fascinated by it when they do get to see it , much the same reason people watch TV shows such as COPS , GANGLAND and LOCK UP , its a gritty , raw , dirty , brutal slice of realism.

RIDING THE BULLET(2004)
This is a Stephen King adaption directed by Mick Garris and unfortunately it is one of the lesser films in both men's cannon. Alan is a college student/artist who tries to commit suicide on his birthday because his girlfriend tells him she wants to break up, his attemp isnt successful because his gal pal and a bunch of other friends bust in on him in the middle of the act to give him a b-day party and are able get him to the hospital before he dies. The girlfriend tells Alan that the break up was a joke , just a way to set him up for his suprise party (What a stupid woman , what the hell kind of joke is that!). After recovering in the hospital he gets a call informing him his mother has had a stroke and he's soon off hitchhiking home to visit her.
Along the way he has hallucinations and crazy dreams and he relives his life through flashbacks and ponders the world in which he lives in. The closer he gets to home his dreams and hallucinations become weirder and more vivid. He is chased through the woods by some rednecks with a shotgun and eventually ditches them and winds up in a graveyard where he comes across the grave of a man named Geoge Staub who died on his birthday. Leaving the graveyard he is picked up by a car and the driver turns out to be the ghost of the same George Staub who's grave he saw . George soon gives Alan an ultimatum , he has to pick if he will die or his mother. Is it drugs, a dream or is Alan insane? Unfortunatly i cant give you an answer because this is one big confusing jumbled up mess of a film that makes no sense what so ever.It is definatly not one of the better King adaptions. Dont bother with it .


HELL NIGHT(1981)
Linda Blair stars in this sucessful mix of the haunted house and slasher genres from the awesome 80's. On Hell night Fraternity and sorority pledges are locked inside a supossidly haunted mansion , Garth Manor , that legend says was once the scene of a massacre and of course the chapter leaders have rigged the house with various tricks in attempt to scare the bejesus out of the pledeges. Before long we find out the lengend is true and the college kids are stalked and killed off by a maniac . Even though plot wise this has all been done before there is something here that elevates this one a couple of notches above alot of other slashers , things like a good script , good dialog and beleviable characters . Even though this isnt as gory as most 80's slashers what it lacks in that department it more than makes up for it in suspense. Availible on a double feature DVD with FADE TO BLACK(1980) from Anchor Bay .Good stuff , recomended.

FADE TO BLACK(1980)

A crazed movie fan played by Dennis Christopher (BREAKING AWAY) , who lives a lonley existence as an outcast , he is often belittled and bullied by those around him , he eventually is pushed too far and snaps and gets revenge on his enemies by dressing up like characters in his favorite movies and acts out murders in the style of the characters he portrays.
A great idea that ultimately fails due to a lackluster perfomance by the usually good Christopher and the fact that its an overly long movie at 102 min. and is hinderd by a talky script that makes this somewhat tedious and boring.
It has its moments but its a case of too little too late for this one. Extremely dissapointing , if handled correctly this could have been great.