Reviews

If you like leftovers, maybe Madman will be your thing. It tries to do what The Burning and the first two Friday the 13th movies did, but the execution feels lacking and the characters are less compelling even if it's a technically well-made film with some style and nice special effects.

It's your average campfire story come to life involving a deformed psychopath who went insane, murdered his family, and lives on a legend in the woods surrounding a summer camp until one of the kids wakes him up and allows his murderous rampage to resume.

Horror fans might recognize Dawn of the Dead's Gaylen Ross (under a phony name) as one of the counselors and a lot of the photography is nice and slick, but there's a heart that's missing.

A few inventive death scenes and spirited performances save Graduation Day from total disappointment. It gets a lot of the slasher formula right from the tragic prologue, to the neverending list of potential suspects, to the gory murders,to the final girl chase sequence in the last act, but it struggles with everything in between.

It all starts when Laura, a high school track star, dies tragically from a heart issue during a competition. Very soon after, the members of her team begin to die in a variety of creative ways as graduation day looms closer.

It spends a little bit too much time with some characters and too little on some of the more interesting ones. We learn very little about Laura's sister who appears to be the lead of the film and she disappears for large chunks of the run time, as she takes her time getting to the bottom of her sister's death. The film makes time for suspicious janitors, perverted music teachers, and sitcom-y principal/secretary comedy, but it doesn't afford the lead character much to work with.

Rod Steiger and Yvonne DeCarlo are two religious nutjobs who, along with their three middle-aged children who still dress and act like 8 year olds, terrorize a crashed plane full of twenty-somethings who stop by their house in the woods.

It's by the numbers at times and hysterically wild at other times with very strong performances. Steiger and De Carlo go for broke and appear to be having a good time playing such nasty and misguided characters. It's far from a gore fest, so those expecting a traditional slasher might want to go elsewhere, but the last act has got to be one of the least traditional and most surprising of a film of this kind. Once it reaches a certain point, you really have no idea where it's going next.

At Osborne High, someone is killing off their classmates in a variety of nasty fashions while wearing masks of their faces and sending their deepest, darkest secrets out for the entire student body to discover. Makani (Sydney Park) seems to have a secret of her own so dark and twisted that she'd rather die than have it revealed.

After a promising opening sequence where a football player is murdered in his secluded country home, There's Someone Inside Your House falls back into a mess of high school horror cliches complete with some of the most uninteresting characters in recent memory. There are so many and most of them blend together that it'll be easy to give up entirely by midway through the film.

It also has an unconvincing romance subplot with Makani and an apparent bad boy who everyone at school thinks is a sociopath. Add in a couple of somewhat interesting murder scenes and a predictable ending that at least as the decency to take place somewhere exciting (a cornfield engulfed in flames) and you have an incredibly unmemorable piece of horror filmmaking that you're better off skipping.

After the events of the last movie, Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is taken to the hospital by her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Mattichik). Once there, Laurie is sedated and takes a back seat to most of the action as Karen and Allyson begin to piece together that Michael has survived the fire they set and has been continuing his rampage of terror around town.

Halloween Kills offers little more than a series of bloody set pieces where Michael slices and dices his way through the town of Haddonfield. If you recall the scene in the last film where he went from house to house, aimlessly killing anyone he could find, that's basically what this movie is but with more brutality and gore. In the meantime, there's a go-nowhere subplot involving an inmate at the mental hospital with Michael and a crazed mob at the hospital.

There are a few well done flashbacks to 1978 and John Carpenter's music score is solid, but unless you're interested in non-stop gore with little suspense, fear, or plot, this won't be your favorite entry in the Halloween franchise.

Scotty (Rebecca Balding) can't find decent on campus housing, so she looks around until she finds the world's creepiest boarding house run by a mostly mute older woman and her 20-something son. There's also someone else living there who remains tucked away for fear of hurting themselves or others, but this might be the night they break out and wreak havoc.

Silent Scream feels more like an old dark house movie than a slasher movie, but it seems to be marketed as more the latter than the former, which might have been a mistake. It's not as flashy as some of the Friday the 13th clones that came later and focuses more of suspense than heads flying all over the place. Truthfully, it's all the better for it and gives us a chance to get to know a few of these character before they become kitchen knife bait.

The film can feel like it's playing it a little too safe with many of the cliches is uses, but it uses them competently and so much of this movie is interesting that it doesn't wreck the entire finished product.

Allie's boyfriend Sam cheats on her which leads to her kicking him out of the apartment and placing an add for a new roommate. Enter Hedra - a shy, but seemingly together young woman who fills the void. As great as things are at first, they start to deteriorate as Hedy shows severe jealousy and codependency. Hedy doesn't just want to be close to Allie, she wants to become her and she'll get rid of anyone who gets in the middle of her plans.

Single White Female is one of the stronger entries in the early 90's trend of trying to make everything scary (husbands, roommates, nannies, office temps, etc.) thanks to wonderful performances from Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh and stylish direction by Barbet Shroeder.

It does fall into typical psychothriller cliches by the finale when it abandons the relatively sound psychological horror of the first two acts and blossoms into a glorified slasher movie, but it's still very exciting and well done.

A young girl named Carolyn goes missing after a date with a jock and the rest of the town slowly begins to unravel due to it. Knives and Skin has a dash of Twin Peaks, some Riverdale, and a little bit of Short Cuts and puts them in a blender to create one of the strangest, but most unique films that I've seen in years.

Knives and Skin doesn't always work, but when it does, it's quite an experience. The pacing is slow and deliberate and it's more character study than plot driven whodunit. This lack of any tangible plot and its constant tonal shifts do hurt the film. At times, it seems like it wants to be a dark comedy and, other times, it wants to be a straight drama, but there are so many odd characters and strange sequences that throw you for a loop and make you question everything you're seeing.

At nearly 2 hours, it's a bit long, but by the end when everything comes together, you won't even remember the run time, but you'll remember how it made you feel. People expecting a creepy murder mystery or slasher film will be incredibly disappointed, but those who can judge a film on its own merits might really enjoy this and they'll certainly have to enjoy the performance of Marika Engelhardt as the missing girl's mother who has a slow descent into madness throughout the film. It's a brave, committed performance that deserves awards attention.

Extremities stars Farrah Fawcett as Marjorie who is attacked by a man in a ski mask on a routine trip to get ice cream. She manages to get away, but she forgets her purse and she starts living in constant fear that he'll use her drivers license to find her. To make matters worse, the police say there's very little they can do unless he does come back. One day, when her roommates (Diana Scarwid, Alfre Woodard) are out of the house, this man (James Russo) does return sans ski mask and is hoping to finish the job this time. But is Marjorie more prepared than she was the last time?

On the surface, Extremities sounds like any other typical slasher/home invasion thriller, but thanks to its stage roots, it plays out with more psychological mind games than your usual slasher flick. For example, the attacker, Joe, will try to make Marjorie think that no one will believe her and he even tries to turn her friends on her once they return and he's been captured.

Fawcett is in just about every frame of the film and her transition from meek victim to take no prisoners woman is a sight to behold. It's probably her finest performance. Scarwid and Woodard have a bit less to do, but are both incredibly effective with Russo sleazing up the joint (in the best way) as Joe.

Extremities is highly recommended for fans of thrillers.

It's been a long time since I've been fortunate enough to be this much on the edge of my seat throughout a movie. The Invisible Man takes an admittedly hokey premise, updates it, and infuses it with a truthful, emotional center and a brilliant performance by Elisabeth Moss.

When an abused wife escapes from her psychotic husband, she believes all her problems are gone. Even better, she learns that he's since killed himself and left her 5 million dollars. Eager to rejoin the human race, she starts trying to rebuild her life, but she starts to get the creepy feeling that she's being watched. Is her husband really dead or has he found some way to fake his death and continue terrorizing her. Even scarier, is she just going insane?

The Invisible Man works so well in no small part to a taught script and directing job by horror veteran Leigh Whannell and a genius performance by Elisabeth Moss who manages to make a woman staring at walls and empty chairs captivating.

Even better, the film's marketing hasn't given away every single twist like they usually do, so there are tons of surprises in store, each one upping the stakes for our heroine.

The Invisible Man is an absolute must see for any serious horror/sci-fi/thriller fans.

The Bloodstained Shadow doesn't do anything you haven't seen a million times over and the killer is so obvious from the start that you spend most of the overstuffed run time wondering why no one is calling out this person. It doesn't have the style, excess, or general unease of an Argento giallo and, instead, feels uncomfortably sandwiched somewhere in between a movie of the week and a less spirited episode of Murder, She Wrote: Jessica Goes To Italy.

There are a few attempts at the sleaze a lot of giallos are known for, but it's a mostly polite, too-classy affair with only the occasional instance of camp when a priest and child molesting piano teacher have a battle over who is more corrupt.

The characters are poorly drawn and uninteresting to follow and the film just doesn't seem to understand this and treats us to long sequences of them going about their day to day lives. Even worse, most of the murder scenes (the highlight of just about any giallo) aren't very creative or interesting.

Last night, I was going to take a pill to get to sleep, but it turns out that The Prey works a thousand times better than any Advil PM. Obviously made to cash in on the Friday the 13th hysteria, The Prey features an admittedly attractive cast of 20-somethings who wander off into the woods and are picked off one by one by a charred gypsy.

There's not much rhyme or reason for anything that happens in this movie and good luck trying to remember any character names. Gail is the only memorable character simply because she has the annoying habit of checking and re-applying her makeup in pretty much every one of her scenes.

There's a fairly useless side character of a forest ranger who talks in baby voices to deer and eats cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches whenever we're not going on hikes with our leads. To make matters worse, every scene transitions to the next via overlong sequences of nature that go on forever. I'm convinced that, if you took these shots out, the movie would be 15 minutes long. I could almost believe that they ran out of money midway through and, when they got more funds, the original cast wasn't available so they decided to beef up the forest ranger scenes and nature footage just to make the film feature length (it barely qualifies at just under 80 minutes).

That said, there are some decent effects here and the music score isn't too bad. It's just a shame that, right as the film starts to take off, it ends.

How far would you go to be eternally youthful? If you're Miriam (Catherine Deneuve), you turn men and women into vampires and keep them encased in crypts once they start to deteriorate and look like death. She and her current lover (David Bowie) are looking for a cure to his rapid aging symptoms and they meet a doctor (played by Susan Sarandon) who might just be able to help. But will she be drawn into Miriam's seductive web herself?

As directed by Tony Scott, The Hunger is a triumph of style over substance. It mostly feels like a first draft script that has, somehow, been elevated by Scott's inventive staging, gorgeous photography, and the chemistry between the main trio of actors.

The Hunger isn't the kind of movie you watch for gripping dialogue or mind bending plot twists. It's a simple story, well told and well shot. Deneuve drenches the screen in her charisma throughout in a role that doesn't require her to say much, so it's an even greater feat that she's able to tell the audience everything they need to know from her body language and facial expressions. Sarandon gets the most full character in the film and she handles it with her typical professionalism even if she seems to be under the spell of a bad haircut. Still, The Hunger is, more or less, Bowie's film for the first 30 minutes or so and he's the one we identify with the most. He's been both blessed and cursed with eternal life, but a failing body. Bowie captures this terror beautifully and his is the character we think most about when the film comes to an end.

Even if you're not traditionally a big vampire movie fan, The Hunger might just satisfy your thirst for a well made, intriguing horror film.

Trilogy of Terror II is a lot like the original film in that they are both decent stories and less exciting ones peppered throughout the runtime. Dan Curtis returns to direct this sequel with somewhat mixed results. For starters, Lysette Anthony, while mostly competent, seems like an odd choice to replace someone like Karen Black, who, love her or hate her, had a unique style that made her incredibly watchable on screen. Anthony's never terribly interesting or quirky enough to carry off some of the lesser stories, but she proves decently capable when she's only required to bug her eyes and scream in fear. I'm guessing that's all her audition called for, so I guess she delivers in that respect.

The first story is a mediocre, but not entirely un-engaging film noir-esque "we should murder my husband and collect his money" story with an ok twist at the end. It's the least exciting of the stories, so at least we get it out of the way.

The next story is based on a similar segment from Curtis' Dead of Night entitled Bobby about a woman who makes a pact with a demonic entity to bring back her dead son with predictably horrifying results. Curtis appears to have stuck very close to the original script (and even some of the shots are almost identical) and it probably works the best out of all the segments. The final reveal, unfortunately, comes across as more laughable than terrifying.

The final story brings back the infamous Zuni fetish doll and picks up right where the original story left off with the doll being taken to a museum to be studied as it terrorizes the night staff. It has its effective moments, but it can't quite compare to the claustrophobic terror of the original story.

Trilogy of Terror II is a merely respectable sequel that's not bad to have on in the background if you're bored.

A group of 20-somethings are lured to a house under the guise of doing some sort of Big Brother type reality show and they end up getting killed one by one in various grotesque ways.

Kolobos doesn't really make that much sense, but it's well made, decently acted, and has a handful of unforgettable images that will stick with you for awhile and I'll take that over a generic, by the numbers Hollywood movie anytime. I suppose you could chalk all the weirdness up to the nightmare logic of the film. In this way, it does resemble a Bava or Argento film. The dialogue, character arcs, and storyline might be a bit flat, but it's never dull and the film looks excellent.

The ending seems to be the major issue with everyone and I'd agree - it feels tacked on and strange and almost like they were trying too hard to explain everything while, somehow, managing to make everything even more convoluted.

Besides that, Kolobos is a likable and enjoyable piece of nightmare cinema that comes highly recommended.

There's an insanely brash and annoying teenager named Callee who only has one friend - a shy gay guy named Ian who's latched onto her because he doesn't see any better options in their backwoods town. Though she has no talents to speak of, Callee wants to be special more than anything else in the world and when a serial killer comes into the picture, she takes a break from screaming at her classmates (and teachers) about various forms of perceived bigotry and decides that pretending to be one of the killer's latest victims is a better way to get her dream.

While borrowing from several teen movie cliches (Heathers, Scream, Jawbreaker, and Female Trouble came to mind a few times while watching it), Triggered creates something unique and unlike anything I've ever seen. The character of Callee is so disgustingly unlikable from the first few lines out of her mouth that you just want to punch her and, yet, Meredith Mohler's performance (while occasionally over the top) is grounded in what seems like real human pain. Jesse Dalton is equally wonderful as Ian and he's very much the eyes and ears of the audience throughout. Amanda Wyss shows up in what, at first, seems like a glorified cameo, but she ends up featuring much more heavily in the film than I was initially expecting which was a very pleasant surprise and she gets a few wonderful moments (including a moving/hilarious bit where she's telling Callee about the worst year of her life as Callee scrolls through her phone, not caring).

The comedy and drama sometimes play better than the slasher/horror aspect (though, I did jump a few times and I rarely ever do that), but the film never bored me and I was always totally invested in the story. I'd recommend it.

There's something to be said for good trash that knows when to call it quits. Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers gets in, gets out, and you don't feel like you've wasted too much of your time. In fact, you'll probably have a pretty good time with it if you go in with the right expectations.

This movie isn't great art and it doesn't have anything important to say, but it keeps things breezy and light for its short runtime and seems to have a great sense of humor about itself. Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer are fun and committed as always.

Apparently, this was shot in 5 and a half days and I'm pretty wowed by that. It certainly looks and feels low budget, but it's well put together and doesn't suffer from heavy padding like a lot of these films do.

Definitely worth seeing for low budget horror enthusiasts.

I'm not going to sit here and say that Scared Stiff is some sort of lost classic of the genre. It's not. It has pacing problems and you're never quite sure if it's a haunted house movie, a "she's losing her mind" movie, or an installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, but when it gets something right, it really gets it right.

A single mother pop star moves into a spooky antebellum mansion with her child and boyfriend and not only begins to unravel the house's gruesome history, but starts to believe that she's actually seeing the previous owners in her day to day life.

Scared Stiff starts out as a typical haunted house film. The lead character is plagued with visions and dreams of the wicked slave owner who used to live there and she thinks she's losing her mind. All of a sudden, it seems as if her doctor boyfriend can't be trusted either and it turns into one of those "is she crazy or being gaslit?" movies, before pulling out all the stops in a genuinely imaginative and nightmarish final act.

It's not as if Scared Stiff is brilliant, but it's competent and the final act is incredibly memorable, creepy, and downbeat.

Don't Open The Door comes from S.F. Brownrigg who made the equally bizarre Don't Look in the Basement which has become a drive-in/grindhouse/cheapie VHS and DVD staple for years. While this film doesn't have exactly the same kind of manic, low budget energy that film has, it has enough charms of its own to make it worth a watch.

Don't Open the Door follows a young woman who returns home to the house where her mother was murdered and begins receiving strange, obscene phone calls from a psycho who wants her dead.

The acting, much like Basement, is enthusiastic but amateur hour. No one is really awful, but no one is exactly brilliant either. You get the feeling that you're watching the area's most competent community theatre actors having a good time. The concept is solid, but the suspense and scares seem to be put on the backburner until towards the end of the film, which gives us a lot of time to watch the leading lady take a bath or go exploring the house, which isn't terribly exciting.

Where Don't Open the Door excels is with the creepy phone calls and the mood. The phone calls are perhaps some of the genre's creepiest and most unsettling. It also manages to produce a fairly haunting ending.

With a little more effort put into the script, pacing, and scares, this one could have been a contender, but as is, it's an interesting regional time capsule. It's worth seeing once.

Splatter University doesn't have an awful lot going for it. It looks the cheap, the sound is lacking, most of the performances are awful, and the gore effects rarely convince, but there's a certain low budget 80's charm that keeps you tuned in for its fairly short run time.

Francine Forbes makes for an incredibly appealing lead and she's easily the best actor in the film. Thankfully, we spend most of our time with her (although, maybe not enough time). She plays a young teacher who's replacing a teacher at a local college who's just been brutally murdered. Needless to say, the murderer isn't done yet and seems to have an issue with both the teachers and the entire student body of this university.

There's not a lick of suspense or terror in this movie and, as I said earlier, even the death scenes feel a bit uninspired, but Forbes keeps us invested and along for the ride. The finale does manage to surprise due the sheer mean spiritedness of it all, so I've got to give the fimmakers props for that. I certainly didn't see it ending that way and it was a genuine shock.

Splatter University is more of a movie to play in the background than one you really need to pay much attention to. It's saved by charm, Forbes, and a shocking finale.

Wow! Where to begin?

Hospital Massacre seems like one of those movies that an alien from a different planet would make about humans. So many characters behave in such ridiculously bizarre ways that no one seems like a real person. It's probably best to turn off your mind before going into this one and just rolling with it.

The story itself might make zero sense, but it seems as if it's just a coat hanger to hang a series of gory, imaginative death scenes on and those scenes are certainly memorable. It's never terribly gory (in fact, it tends to cut away before it shows too much most of the time), but the scenes themselves are unlike anything you've ever seen. Watch a nurse turn a corner and come face to face with the killer at the end of the hall who's walking towards her with a sheet stretched out in front of him. Like most of the film, it's hard to tell if this is dreamlike and creepy or incredibly hilarious.

Much like the same year's Halloween II, there are only a handful of patients in this entire hospital and the people in charge must be trying to save money on electricity, because there are so many dark corners and hallways everywhere.

Barbi Benton isn't half bad in her meager role which just consists of her looking scared, angry, or hysterical. At least when she isn't being subjected to hysterically gratuitous nude examination scenes.

I'm not sure what Hospital Massacre was intending to be, but it sure turned out fun.

Final Exam is kinda what would happen if someone made a made for TV slasher movie in the early 80's. There's absolutely no gore that I can remember (maybe some blood on a knife at one point?), but the filmmakers seem like they're trying to create suspense and characters that you can root for. I guess that's not most slasher fans' bag, but I really enjoyed it.

Some will probably say it's boring, but I'm glad they put more of a focus on character and suspense than blood and guts. It's not quite Halloween (or even Friday the 13th), but it has its effective and memorable moments.

Definitely not worth flunking.