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.