Reviews

This is NOT a horror film; it's just Old Mill Entertainment farting out another plotless messterpiece of edited works. This company has been leading the pack in low/no budget junk and might be considered the zero-budget equivalent of The Asylum.

This "film" is nothing more than soft porn (if you couldn't tell by the talents' names) and re-edited clips of old films. There is no horror to be found in the things, unless you count the horrific loss of time you might have if you watch it to the bitter end.

Cue cast, crew and their friends and family pushing up the rating with +10 reviews.

I am ashamed and embarrassed to admit I watched this all the way through in the hopes that it might get better. It didn't.

I swear to god, I am so sick of hipster/slacker 20/30 somethings showing lack of respect for personal space, common sense, and just about everything. If you are looking for something or hunting something in the woods (or anywhere for that matter), you don't go crashing through the brush like a stampede of cattle or talking and yelling at the top of your lungs. Any real hunter out there might have shot these imbeciles just to have the quiet! Someone also needs to put the word out: the Blair Witch Project "shakycam" effect is so tried and old. It tires your viewers quickly, distracts from the film and in general ruins the entire show. I have seen several films in the past couple of years that might have really had something if this "personal documentary" "shakycam" crap wasn't involved.

This film was a huge waste of everyone's time, is mis-billed as a horror film and lacks any redeeming value. Do not waste your time on this. Learn from my fail.

...comes this collection of five tales of terror, related by the undead projectionist and staff of an abandoned drive-in theater! Guaranteed to remind you of days gone by (provided you are old enough!) where you and your sweetheart would cuddle whilst watching the B-movie of the week, or where your buddies (whom you stashed in the trunk) would crawl up through the seats with the bootleg beer you smuggled in.

Of particular note are the featurettes FALLING APART and THE WATCHER. I felt these two were the best of the bunch.

FALLING APART is about a socially conscious doctor who takes his Hippocratic Oath seriously and helps all, whether they be homeless or wealthy without regard to their inability to pay (and with several sharp commentaries on the nation's healthcare status). Unfortunately, he decides to help someone who is afflicted with some sort of sore and becomes sick himself, to the point where his flesh is falling off of him. He and his wife are then kidnapped by government agents (with an IC and a mini capacitor stuck to the sides of their heads - how camp!) and thereafter experimented on with a cure. This is a rather nasty episode.

THE WATCHER centers on a pair of couples off in the wilderness to have a good time, however the cannibal mutant on the loose in the woods has other ideas.

The special effects range form pure dumb to halfway decent and mirror exactly some of the effects of films of eras gone by. The Projectionist reminded me of The Cryptkeeper and the old days of Dr. Shock from WPHL-17 in Philadelphia, as well as the old Chiller Theater (with the 6-fingered hand!) programs.

This film was a tribute and was well-done. I am wagering that it was intended to be a little cheesy and that adds to its class!

And those are the good points! Paolo Bertola has allegedly spent 2 million Euro on this piece of epic fail and has nothing to show for it.

I have previously written (ad nauseum, I guess) how offensive I find it when they can't even get uniforms right. Well, these jibronis (sp?) can't even tell which service they are in, calling themselves Marines. They are in green fatigues with some hand-made unit patch (often on the wrong shoulder!). These do not even begin to approximate the patch that 2LT William Calley wore. Further, look at the officer's ranks. They are at least 3x the normal size and were obviously hand-made. They spent all that money and can't even get the uniforms right? What special effects? The smoke was CGI for god's sake! There were even CGI helicopters! There were several good explosions and some good blood and carnage, however, military protocol and procedure for a combat zone was not followed. Further, people do not scream for hours and hours, or grab hold of a rifle sling to be pulled to safety when both of their legs have been blown off. They bleed out. They die. I've seen combat and I've paid the Price of the Eagle. It's one of the most bone-jarring and horrifying experiences I have ever had in my life and I do not sleep well from it.

Damnit, if you're going to make a movie about Vietnam or any war, at least hire some people who have been there and can tell you what it was like and how it should be represented. Spend some money on quality props and actors.

What is is about Italian cinema that they always manage to screw up when they try to make a movie about Vietnam? The same thing goes for the latest zombie trash, Eaters, which was also an Italian job. It's unrealistic, full of impossible situations and innuendo unique to the Italian mind. Some things should just be kept within a country's borders. This film is one of them.

It is my belief that this film was made and released around the time of the anniversary of the My Lai massacre solely to capitalize on the human misery of the situation. It was not factual and does not represent anyone who was on the battlefield that day in any accurate form.

You know, in the last few years, it seems the foreign cinema is out to show Hollywood what it's all about. There have been great French horror films in the last two years (Prey and La Horde come to mind) and now there is Phase 7 (Fase 7) from Argentina.

The movie centers around the lead character Coco and his wife, who are expecting a child. We learn that the wife is 7 months along. The story opens with them stocking up on groceries like they always do and bickering a little. They see a huge rush of people come in and furiously start shopping but don't really think anything of it.

When they return to their condominium building and begin sorting groceries, they receive a call during dinner that one family member is to go to the lobby. Coco goes down and is informed that the building is in quarantine and the Ministry of Health will have people come and check on them.

Coco and his paranoid maniac friend Horacio band together as the residents of the quarantined building begin to turn on each other for food and because they think someone is infected.

Coco is a slacker. An oaf, who is decidedly pacifist, and is content to let his pregnant wife change lightbulbs. When Horacio arms him and gives him a bio-suit, he is clumsy and twice gets knocked silly by wall-mounted concussion grenades.

The violence gets bloody at the end with a surprise twist. I won't give this one away, so you'll have to watch the film. I saw it with English subtitles that were pretty spot-on, but it was nice to be able to practice my Spanish a bit as well.

All-in-all, this movie should be destined to be nominated (and maybe win!) an award or two, and is one of the better foreign films I've seen this year. Hats off to everyone involved. You had my attention for the whole movie and I actually enjoyed it! Thank you!

From watching this film! Good grief, what the hell was I thinking watching this? You know how some people mix foods that should never be mixed, like Italian sausage and peanut butter? Imagine this film: Dennis Weaver's Duel meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

This cinematic train wreck starts out with a home movie of someone being stabbed and a guy licking blood off a blade and then some blood-spattered girl being chased by some guy in a bunny suit. She hides in the back of this logging truck and it starts and goes barreling down the highway.

The next thing we know we have a car full of friends coming up behind the truck and passing it. Not one to have his doors blown in, the truck driver passes them and slows down again, which prompts the car driver to fly by again. Now the truck driver is really unhappy and comes from behind, ramming them. They finally pull off into the berm and the truck pulls behind them. After about a ten minute standoff with one of the girls trying to reason with an unknown driver through a tinted window, they decide to wait him out and see if he leaves. I've never heard of anything so dumb, but apparently the guy sees reason and takes off.

We next flash to a scene where he drags the bloodies girl from the back of his truck, chains her to a tree and his truck and rips her in half. All off screen, of course. he then takes the time to find this group of friends driving along again and run them off the road into a field and disabling their car. Now I also have to ask at this point: how the heck did they fit four grownups in the back of the car? One of the group decides to try and fix the car and jacks it up, when the truck driver returns and rams them again. The jack collapses and the first protagonist is dead. Thereafter ensues a bizarre tale of walking through the forest, begging for a chance to use a telephone from some redneck, and being set up for the kill by some girl and her boyfriend who direct them right into the Bunnyman's cabin.

Now, Bunnyman is no slouch when it comes to murder! His cabin is adorned with a retarded hunchback who scuttles around, several medical posters and all sorts of implements used for dissection of his victims, of which a chainsaw and a nail gun appear to be his favorites. Most of the kills occur off screen and there is very little in the way of special effects except for splashing blood. The characters don't have much in the way of development and seem to get over the death of their first friend all too quickly.

I'm sorry. I was just not impressed with this movie. It lacked direction, character and plot development, and overall didn't make much sense. It might be good to watch if you happen to be under the influence of illegal pharmaceuticals or you want to sit back and laugh at a B-movie with your friends. Just don't expect to be seriously entertained!

....is what this film says in its best Marlon Brando voice. Unfortunately for the film and any unsuspecting viewer, it just never quite makes it into the ring.

First off, let's talk about the beastie that is supposed to be the star of the show: the Black Hodag. Originally a mythical creature from around the city of Rhinelander in northern Wisconsin in the US (look it up!), our film version is, shall we say, quite the literary license! This thing stands upright on two combat boot-clad feet with a leather jacket, spiked gloves and an apparently spiked mask. It lays a single egg (forget how many years apart) in order to perpetuate the species.

Now, our preternatural badass goes around ripping up a little town, chewing up and spitting out the residents because they had the temerity to honk it off back in the 1800s. With me so far? Enter the college kids, on a trip to a remote locale to get away from it all and deal with the grief of having a friend fall off of a balcony and kill himself. They even invite one of the people they messed with all through his life (and expect all to be forgiven). As the townspeople begin to be shredded and disappear, and a mysterious stench that would knock a buzzard off a honey-wagon begins to spread through the town, the college kids attempt to party they way through their grief. Too bad for them, because the creature doesn't differentiate between townsfolk and visitors. Not only that, but one of them has a plot of their own, adding to the general confusion and mêlée. 'Nuff said about the plot, which is rather weak.

The acting is so wooden and stilted in parts, that it's a blessing when there is action without any talking. There is plenty of viscera and gore, mostly filmed through a color filter so the budget doesn't show so badly. It's interesting to note, that most of the actors did nothing before this and nothing after this and those that did wisely chose to change their career path to something more appropriate, like boom operator! There are some innovative dispatches of victims, and even a few comical moments as well as an occasional flash of tit.

With a budget and a more believable monster, this film really might have gone somewhere. As it stands, I'm giving it four stars for effort and because there really was some thought that went into it. Don't rent this, but if it happens to come on cable or you can con your drunk buddy into renting it, it's worth a watch.

...but it just had its moments that redeem it somewhat and save it from the rubbish bin of cinematic history.

Let me be blunt: As a combat and long-term Army veteran, nothing pisses me off more than seeing incorrectly worn or cobbled together uniforms. This was full of them. From the Colonel wearing small US Marine rank on an Army uniform as well as two unit patches on his right sleeve, to the oaf wearing the Sergeant Major rank with a cobbled together uniform. That's usually the kiss of death for a film as far as I'm concerned. I won't watch it any further. I find it personally offensive, if you can believe that.

Then you have the tough-guy clandestine unit. Rag-tags with long hair and bad attitudes fighting amongst themselves. Doesn't happen in a real special ops unit. Fighting between the members is quickly dealt with and usually winds up in a transfer to another unit for the aggressor.

Having said this, the action was good and special effects were above average with a few exceptions. One was the suicide headshot at the end where the blood spray clearly comes from the side of the door across the viewing window. The other was one of the baseball grenades that was thrown and the explosion clearly occurs to the right of it. lots of technical goof-ups like that.

The other thing that really rustled my jimmies was the smart-mouthed female who insists on joining the group as part of her mission. Seriously, anyone, male or female, who tries to jump in with a crack unit and runs their mouths like that to the unit CO, is going to more than likely get beat to a bloody pulp and left behind. Pity it didn't happen here. In my opinion, she added little or nothing to the movie.

The movie premise is possibly real enough: find a terrorist organization that is training in the wilderness. Then the group finds that the organization is using US supplied weapons. There is more! The real reason is that a killer cyborg has escaped and is running loose in the jungle there with enough state-of-the-art equipment to render it invisible. The predictable slaughter happens, but in some innovative ways! This is a rip-off of the Predator series with a twist to the plot. Plain and simple.

In summary, lots of things to make you hate the movie, but then there's just enough to keep your interest. It's a 3-beer and half-a-pizza kind of movie for a rainy weekend afternoon when you've nothing else to do.

I thought I would be disappointed in the film. I was wrong. We have the flight crew of some small airline (with nice wide leather seats all the way to the last row!) who have to deal with the usual set of obnoxious and helpless passengers. One of has smuggled lab rats with a deadly virus on board (calling them hamsters!). Big fat guy tries to help them stow the rodents in an overhead bin, big fat guy gets nipped on the hand. Disaster and destruction ensue as the virus takes him over and everyone he bites also gets infected. Passengers and crew wind up quarantined in a locked up terminal where the infected slowly pick them off one-by-one, including some CDC hazmat types who come in to try and treat them. All-in-all, the effects were good and the acting rapid-fire. This was a welcome relief from a lot of the junk I had the misfortune to watch lately. The director made the most of every cent of his budget, which is a heck of a lot more than I can say for some of the stuff that has come out lately. Yeah, it's re-hash, in the genre of 28 Days/Weeks Later and REC (in fact, the director gives credit to both the original Quarantine and REC in the end credits), but the story was good, the characters believable, and by golly, in this day and age, it just might even be possible. Go see it, rent it, or view it however you wish. This is 86 minutes you will not regret. I'm glad not to have to complain about a junk movie for once!

....reserved for anyone who was involved in the making of this dog turd. Cast, crew, directors, they all belong there. This is another direct-to-video production which utterly fails to deliver. Had this had a budget (especially special effects) and some real actors, it might have gone somewhere. No real gore, and there were several moments when I thought some soft-core sex scenes might save the day, but alas, they were either edited out or stopped before they occurred. There are few instances of well-read lines and acting, but mostly it's a little wooden. There were really no special effects to speak of, and even the scene where Charlie Watts is being buried on the beach lacked any reality to it. They had time for a twenty minute conversation while he is supposedly being buried alive, but the amount of sand being piled on him never increases. Lame. If I could sue to regain the time I lost on this junker, I would, but then it would have to be shown in open court as evidence and I would not want to subject a jury to this, however perhaps the judiciary is deserving.