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.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 of
f , 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.
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