Reviews

Glenn McQuaid's I SELL THE DEAD is a jubilant send-up of Hammer horror - a genre film squarely aimed toward laughs, but with enough scares to keep fans of both satisfied.

The film's staggered plot revolves around a graverobbing duo (Larry Fessenden and Dominic Monaghan), first introduced in the wraparound story. As one of them is beheaded, the other begins to recount their lives together to a strange priest (Ron Perlman, doing his best Darby O'Gill impression) - and thus begins an anthology of tales that ultimately lead back to the film's very first moments.

In the first tale, young Arthur Blake (Daniel Manche) meets Willie Grimes (Fessenden). Desperate to help his starving family, he learns the bodysnatching trade, finds himself indebted to a ghoulish doctor (the wonderful Angus Scrimm), and eventually forming a deep familial bond with Grimes.

In the second story, grown Arthur (Monaghan) and Grimes are on a most peculiar dig: unearthing a garlic-saddled woman with a wooden stake through her heart. Unschooled in such folklore, they remove the items and find themselves face-to-face with the undead. After subduing the creature, they realize that unearthing the strange, supernatural, and altogether unworldly might just be a financial windfall. The only problem, they quickly discover, is that this trade is already handled by a vicious gang of thugs known as The House of Murphy.

And in the final act, Willie and Grimes (along with their new partner, played by the lovely Brenda Cooney) hear stories of a shipwreck that has left a crate containing a zombie washed up a nearby island. They head out to make a quick retrieval, but end up facing off against something far more deadly - The House of Murphy.

For a low budget film, the performances in I SELL THE DEAD are uniformly solid and the decor is a sight to behold. Having shot the feature in America, McQuaid and set decorator Devin Febbroriello do an amazing job of placing the film in a time that never existed, and a unnamed British isle that certainly seems real enough to have existed.

Accompanied by a beautiful, haunting score and a fine supporting cast of lesser-known faces, I SELL THE DEAD is one of the finest genre films to have hit the States in the past decade: a genuinely heartfelt love letter to the films of yesteryear, while still holding its own as solid modern entertainment.

In the past few years, Japan's genre film-making scene has undergone a startling transformation, quickly changing its focus from the darkly supernatural (RINGU) and the stomach-churningly narcissistic (GUINEA PIG) to more lighthearted subject matter, with equally - if not, more - violent images. The result is a mishmash that seems to have culminated in VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL.

Naoyuki (STACY) Tomomatsu and Yoshihiro Nishimura, the man responsible for 2008's high-octane action/splatterfest TOKYO GORE POLICE, return to their signature pressurized blood sprays with VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL - a markedly different but equally entertaining romp that provides nitro-fueled action, over-the-top humor, and piles of gore that look like they belong in an early Peter Jackson flick.

The plot is goofy, yet endearing, as sweet young vampire Monami falls for Mizushima, "the only acceptable boy in school." Unfortunately, Mizushima is already dating Keiko, the borderline psychopathic daughter of the school's wimpy vice principal. When the two girls duke it out over Mizushima's affections, Keiko is left dead - but that's when we discover that her father also fancies himself an amateur Frankenstein, and has been carving up kids for months in an attempt to discover the secret to eternal life.

Now, orgasmic with delight to have his own daughter on the slab, the Vice-Principal uses a new-found secret to reanimate Keiko - combining the strongest body parts of the school's staff and students.

All this leads to the titular battle, which explodes from the depths of the high school gymnasium to the top of Tokyo Tower. Combining a plethora of practical and CG effects, the organ-bursting final twenty minutes of this gem feel less like TOKYO GORE POLICE and more like the work of Tex Avery... Of course, its Tex Avery covered in blood, snorting six lines of coke, and slicing at your eyes with box cutters.

VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL wallows in this absurdity throughout, with tons of tasteless humor and a score comprised almost entirely of 60s go-go music. Ganguro girls (a subculture of Japanese schoolgirls who mimic African American culture) are ruthlessly ridiculed - turning them into Sambo-styled caricatures who pledge allegiance to Obama and refuse to drink coffee unless its completely black. There's also a clique of wrist-cutters and a chain-smoking Chinese professor played by JU-ON/GRUDGE director Takashi Shimizu, who manages to shamelessly sneak in a few nods to his own popular film series.

The pacing is slick, and at a comfortable 85 minutes, VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL doesn't pad its running time with any unnecessary side plots. While one wishes that the battle between bloodthirsty Monami and mecha-Keiko would have taken up more of the film, there is a rather sizable amount of buildup necessary to get us to the showdown.

When it comes down to it, directors Nishimura and Tomomatsu have created a picture that has no preconceptions about what it is or what it's supposed to deliver. Between the explosive arterial sprays and the hunchbacked school janitor named Igor, there's a film with real heart - made by filmmakers who grew up worshiping the movies they are now a part of.

It won't be long before VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL takes its place in the splatstick hall of fame, sitting in good company with BAD TASTE, FRANKENHOOKER, and many of this gorehound's other not-so-guilty pleasures. If you have the opportunity to catch this hilarious little film, make sure you don't skip out.

FREDDY VS JASON? ALIEN VS PREDATOR? GODZILLA VS KING KONG? ...Frankly, they've got nuthin' on these girls.

The first FEAST was a wonderfully over-the-top riot, which was disgusting and wild while still offering an engrossing plot, interesting characters, and enough thrills to become something more than just another gross-out monster movie. It was easily one of my favorite genre films of the past several years.

Sadly, FEAST II is the polar opposite from beginning to end - an embarrassing pile of unentertaining garbage from a crew that obviously had the potential to make something great.

I picture the pitch meeting for FEAST II going something like this:

STUDIO EXEC: So, you want to make a sequel to FEAST? What have you got?

GULAGER: Well, the monsters had huge penises in the first one, why don't we just go with that?

STUDIO EXEC: But... uh... that wasn't... the only plot point.

GULAGER: But if we put more penises in the sequel, it'll be... EXTREME!

STUDIO EXEC: I don't follow you.

GULAGER: ...And baby eating! And melting old people! And vomit! And naked midgets! And pee! And cat raping! Horror fans love that kind of crap!

STUDIO EXEC: But don't they generally like being scared?

GULAGER: Nah! If we throw in an all-girl biker gang and bring my dad back from the dead, it'll be cool.

STUDIO EXEC: My god. That's just insane enough to work.

But it isn't. At all.

The movie is a colossal mess on almost every level, from the ill-contrived jokes to the anti-ending, seemingly placed there to chide you for sitting through the entire film. The director's girlfriend returns for no reason other than to be on-set with him, they cleverly place a huge log in the toilet during a bathroom fight scene (Ooh! Edgy and funny!), and the movie's bluescreen effects are on-par with those of a middle-American meteorologist's weather panel. Why didn't they just film the movie on a REAL ROOFTOP?! Ugh!

The director has stated repeatedly that he wanted to make something even more over-the-top than the first FEAST, but now seems upset that nobody else finds his immature sense of humor even remotely entertaining. he showed such great potential in FEAST, and I rooted for him during all of Project Greenlight. Why is this where he went next?

As a lifelong horror fan, I've seen my fair share of shocks, and nothing in this mess is there for any reason but the cheapest of cheap shocks. Eating a baby and raping a cat? Come on, guys. That's the best gag you could come up with? Its not offensive or shocking. It just feels... cheap.

I expect FEAST III to go out of its way to break even more taboos, but I won't be along for the ride. In the running time of just one sequel, FEAST's makers somehow went from one of the most hilariously fun, daring horror films to a piece of Troma-grade trash.

Next time, get your heads out of the third-grade gutter. We want horror, not barf jokes.

I saw SLASHER in Germany last year and, while competently filmed, it has major problems that will unfortunately pull you out of the film before you have a chance to have fun with it.

First, the positive: The cast is uniformly good, and all of them are amazingly attractive. There is ample nudity from foxy women, and there is no shortage of bloodshed. The locations are beautiful and nothing seems forced. A cameo from Timo Rose regular Thomas Kercmar is also great fun.

But, as the blood begins to flow, the problems arise: First, the blood is a wee bit too pink-ish, and there are too many deaths that don't take full advantage of the gore. An experienced German FX pro like Olaf Ittenbach could have made mediocre effects into something special - and that's what we want from a movie called "Slasher".

The final chase scene is staged very poorly, with day turning to night, and vice versa, within seconds. One can argue that the heroine was running for days, but it doesn't come across like that and just elicits laughs.

On top of that, the film tacks on a twist ending that makes absolutely NO sense. It doesn't leave you wanting to re-watch the movie and feels extremely awkward. It turns a fun slasher movie into a convoluted mess, leaving myself and everyone else in the crowd rubbing our heads in utter disbelief.

But if you can get past the let-down of a final act, the film is shot quite beautifully and tries to be true to its 80s roots. Had the film just continued on as a straightforward slasher film without any twists, it would have been fantastic. When will filmmakers realize that we don't always need a twist - and sometimes its okay to just have the emotionless killer be an emotionless killer? For German horror fans, I think this film is actually a step in the right direction. It brings much higher production value to the horror scene than films by Andreas Schnaas, Timo Rose, or Heiko Bender, but could take a cue from their straightforward gore (a tried and true method of success). For American fans, you might be put off by how "Hollywood" this seems, but its still worth a viewing - just to see what the German horror filmmakers are up to these days.

6 out of 10. Let's see what the makers of this film come up with next.

I picked up a copy of Doomed to Consume direct from its filmmakers last year - and although its taken me almost a year to leave a comment on the IMDb, I was quite impressed. The guys who made this obviously had a vision that was compromised by their minuscule budget, but they did the best with what they had - and the result is a very fun, micro-budget zombie-fest.

The film centers around the typical premise of a group of individuals caught up in an outbreak of the undead. Taking place primarily in Middle America, visions of lumbering undead are juxtaposed eerily against numerous beautiful landscapes. The result, while possibly coincidental, delivers well.

The special effects are good, throughout, but the team behind this film could do well by hiring a true effects artist who really knows the trade. Although convincing, the gore effects never rise above average-to-good, and when you're dealing with zombies, really great gore is essential.

Thankfully, the performances more than make up for this very mild setback. Again, noting that we're watching mostly amateurs, the characters are well-defined and quite believable. Their reactions to events are understandable, and a scene where they find themselves in a cornfield after dark is surprisingly effective in delivering tense scares.

The film wraps up nicely, but an additional scene that feels like the filmmakers were aiming for a Resident Evil-like sequel comes off as rather weak. As I said in the beginning, the filmmakers were obviously aiming high, and actress Nicole Blessing is beautiful to watch, but having a final shot of her in a Matrix-esquire outfit comes off as awkward, rather than cool.

Still, for its few minor faults, Doomed to Consume showcases a lot of talent wrapped up in a tiny, bloody package. When one considers the hundreds of millions Hollywood uses to keep us entertained for 90 minutes, it never fails to impress me when a movie made for a few thousand dollars keeps me glued to the screen for the same amount of time.

I truly hope that the makers of this z-movie gem can find a heftier budget in the future and more fully-realize their vision, although as this film proved, it isn't money that makes a film good. Its heart.

Amateur horror filmmakers, check this one out if you wanna see how its done right.

Demoni is, for lack of a better phrase, a near-perfect film. It is both surreal and natural, indie and mainstream... It is hilarious and terrifying while simultaneously subtle and opulent.

The film's message asks if media violence truly causes real-life violence by posing it in a fictional universe where a horror film physically manifests demons in a cinema-house, butchering its viewers and thus, turning them into legions of bloodthirsty monsters. Director Bava's take on this question neither dismays or affirms it, but offers viewers the opportunity to ask of themselves. Would they allow themselves to turn into monsters because of the cursed film, or would they seek salvation from the rampant demon plague? On the other hand, Demoni can be viewed simply as a no-holds-barred splatterfest, filled to the brim with hilarious caricatures of every social class, drooling monsters, and gallons of grue. Just when you feel as though you can't take another horrifying moment, a character spurts out a line of dialog that has you rolling on the floor in hysterics. While subtle and plotting, the film rarely has a dull moment - from its dreamlike opening sequence on a subway, set to Greig's "In the Hall of the Mountain King", to the apocalyptic finale on the demon-infested highways of Italy.

As the film's hero begins riding a dirtbike impossible over the tops of theater seats, brandishing a Japanese sword and slicing at demons as 80s power metal drowns out the scene, the true nature of this grand guignol of film-making is revealed. What started as reality has now been reduced to a dream-like fantasy world where invincible monsters and equally-invincible heroes somehow co-exist. A helicopter smashes through the roof of the doomed theater, offering escape from the monsters, but as the film's heroes discover - escaping the lair of the beast is only the beginning...

Demoni is one of the most entertaining, wonderfully over-the-top horror films of the 1980s. Its titular demons are an obvious inspiration for 00's love-or-hate fast-moving zombies, while the deep rooted concepts still gleefully resonate.

To any self-respecting horror fan who has yet to delve into this gem, do yourself a favor and pick this one up today. Demoni is absolutely not to be missed.

Return of the Evil Dead is, in my opinion, a superior film to the acclaimed original Blind Dead movie. This time around, the body count rises tenfold and the galloping, sword-swinging Templars are multiplied by nearly as much. Watching armies of ghouls race across the countryside, waving their blades and wriggling their tiny skeletal arms, can be truly chill-inducing.

This time around, a local celebration is invaded by the Templars, who take their vengeance on the townspeople - eventually chasing the mayor, a fireworks technician, his estranged lover, and a few horrified others to a nearby church. Barricaded inside, the survivors take it upon themselves not to stop the Templars, but simply to escape with their lives.

The performances are uniformly decent, although numerous day-for-night shots are so jarring, they take away a large portion of the needed tension. The effects are all done well, with a bit more grue this time around... but still a relatively gore-less affair. There's some nudity, a bevy of hilarious characters, and a thrilling (albeit unsuccessful) escape through an underground passageway.

Any way you look at it, this film is a step up from the thrilling original. If you're in the mood for some silly, creepy fun - look no further than this little gem. Return of the Evil Dead is an absolute blast.

Night of the Demons is a terrifying, intense film that managed just the right amounts of humor, gore, and scares. Its first sequel, while far more comedic, still managed to tell a solid follow-up story, deliver the gory goods, and pop in the occasional scare. This final entry in the Night of the Demons series is a dismal nightmare of a film, unable to be frightening or funny in any way.

The film's central characters are all wholly unlikable, from beginning to end. The nightmarish Hull House, which featured so prominently in the first two films, is now nothing more than a series of bland hallways that resemble a Victorian-styled nursing home. When the monstrous Angela appears at one point, displaying her awesome might, a police officer who enjoys sleight-of-hand tricks smirks, challenging her to another "magic trick". Ugh. No wonders she kills him.

This movie is an agonizing hodgepodge of bad movie plot holes and script re-hashes. I love bad movies, but this isn't even fun. Do yourself a favor and stop watching this once-grand series after Part 2.