The Nesting (1981)

AKA: Massacre Mansion

Director: Armand Weston

Writers: Daria Price, Armand Weston

Composers: Jack Malken, George Kim Scholes

Starring: Robin Groves, Christopher Loomis, Michael David Lally, John Carradine, Bill Rowley, David Tabor, Patrick Farrelly

More info: IMDb

Tagline: There was only one thing more terrifying than leaving the house... staying in it.

Plot: A writer suffering from agoraphobia rents an isolated house so she can concentrate on her writing. She doesn't know that the house is a former brothel, and is inhabited by the ghosts of dead prostitutes.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

There's a good story here but it's in the execution that brings it down.  Ghost whores seeking revenge from the grave?  Are you kidding me?  How did this not work better?  Robin Groves does a great job in the lead as Lauren, the woman tormented by all kinds of things.  She's got a lot to do, acting wise, and she sells it.  She's even better when you consider it's her first feature and second credit.  Some of the other actors are lacking in skill but it's not enough to hurt the flick all that much.  It's a good looking film.   The direction and cinematography are pretty good.  It's the pacing that almost kills it.  It's 103 minutes and it should be much shorter.  There's A LOT of back story told in flashback.  It is necessary to some degree to do it this way because the audience needs to be kept in the dark until the right moment just as Lauren was.  The music often feels cheap.  That could've been a budgetary restraint but the more likely reason is that this is the only score Scholes composed and the last of two that Malken wrote.  So there's that.  There is a little bit of welcome nudity and there's at least one terrific and grisly death.  I guess I'm disappointed this wasn't better than it was. 

The Devil's Backbone (2001)

Original title: El Espinazo del Diablo

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Antonio Trashorras, David Munoz

Composer: Javier Navarrete

Starring: Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega, Federico Luppi, Fernando Tielve, Inigo Garces, Irene Visedo, Jose Manuel Lorenzo, Francisco Maestre, Junio Valverde

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The living will always be more dangerous than the dead.

Plot: After Carlos, a 12-year-old whose father has died in the Spanish Civil War, arrives at an ominous boys' orphanage, he discovers the school is haunted and has many dark secrets that he must uncover.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

When this hit video 15 or 16 years ago I was working at a video store and took home THE OTHERS (2001) which was out at the same time.  That one left me disappointed and so the next night I hoped to correct that by taking this one home.  This is much better.  Maybe someday I might revisit the former but I doubt it (I just thought is was too slow and I figured out what was going on too early) but BACKBONE is a good one.  It's more drama than horror but it works firmly as both.  I dig the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War.  That just adds to the depth.  The acting is excellent, even the kids.  It's a great looking picture with cameras almost in a slow, continuous motion.  The only thing I have to gripe about is something that's in all of del Torro's movies and that's his hard on for everything making a sound.  Pick up a slug and there's a loud squishy sound.  Pick up an apple with your hand and it makes a louder than normal sound and this goes on and on.  Why?  Someday I'd like to have a deep discussion about sound in movies with someone who is in the business.  I've got questions.  One thing I dig is the feel of the picture.  You can tell this isn't a Hollywood movie.  It's got a foreign feel and that's to its benefit.  I've grown as a film fan over the years.  When I first saw this, it was refreshing and unusual.  Now it's just a very good film.  Watch more foreign films.

The Sheriff's Strange Son (1982)

Original title: El Extrano Hijo del Sheriff

Director: Fernando Duran Rojas

Writers: Eric del Castillo, Barbara Gil

Composer: Rafael Carrion

Starring: Mario Almada, Eric del Castillo, Rosa Gloria Chagoyan, Alfredo Gutierrez, Luis Mario Quiroz, Roberto Carfiedo, Alicia Encinas

More info: IMDb
 
Plot: Set in the old west, the sheriff's wife gives birth to conjoined twins, she dies during labor and the ashamed sheriff decides to hide his children, years later he force the town doctor to surgically separate the kids but during the intervention one of them dies and his evil spirit possess his brother to take revenge.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

SPOILERS ON THE DUSTY TRAIL!!!  YARRRRR!!!

Westerns and horror are two of my favorite genres and I'll watch just about anything when they mix the two.  This Mexican oddity is a must-see for that reason alone.  It's a revenge flick for the dead conjoined twin who didn't survive the separation and he's pissed!  The movie's less than an hour and a half and it takes most of that time to get to the good stuff like the dead kid using his supernatural powers to kill everyone that has any responsibility in his death including his father hanging by his neck!  He's just the first casualty.

As others die, it feels like it's going to continue until the doctor who performed the operation gets some extensive notes in the mail on how to perform an exorcism!  I know, right?  Sweet!  Now the movie is almost over.  He performs the exorcism attended by the surviving kid and the beautiful young woman who ran the orphanage.  The chanting is over and everything goes quiet.  Success!  Nope.  The kid is dead.  Shit!  Then the woman drops dead.  More silence.  The fuck?  Then she gets up and she's possessed by the first dead kid and she cycles through his voice, the other kid's voice and her own.  The end.  What the hell?  Keep going, damn it!  You can see this isn't any normal Western.  The first half (and more) suffers from the usual drama that's dragged out a little more than necessary but it's what you get in the last half hour once the dead kid shows up that gets thing rolling and moving fast. 

Wind Chill (2007)

Director: Gregory Jacobs

Writers: Joe Gangemi, Steven Katz

Composer: Clint Mansell

Starring: Emily Blunt, Ashton Holmes, Martin Donovan, Ned Bellamy, Ian A. Wallace, Donny James Lucas

More info: IMDb

Tagline: There Are Worse Things Than Dying

Plot: Two college students share a ride home for the holidays, but when they break down on a deserted stretch of road, they are preyed upon by the ghosts of people who have died there.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No

When I saw that Steven Katz, the guy who wrote the incredible SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE (2000), also wrote this picture, I just had to see it.  VAMPIRE is still his best work by a long shot.  I liked the atmosphere a lot.  Mansell's score and the snowy isolated location work really well to create a sense of dread.  Most of the film is in the crashed car location (inside and out).  I liked that but the film starts to get tedious and even once the ghosts start showing up, it only helps a little but it takes a while to get to the end which just kind of sits there.  It's not a bad picture but the pacing and lack of devotion to the characters (on my part) didn't help.  The Tri Star DVD has a nice anamorphic widescreen image and the extras include a commentary track, an 18 minute making of featurette, and 12 trailers (none for this film).

Ju-on: The Grudge (2002)

Director: Takashi Shimizu

Writer: Takashi Shimizu

Composer: Shiro Sato

Starring: Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa, Kanji Tsuda, Kayoko Shibata, Yukako Kukuri, Shuri Matsuda, Yoji Tanaka, Yoshiyuki Morishita

More info: IMDb

Plot: An evil curse and vengeful spirits seem to linger upon a house where the horrific murder of a woman and child took place and anyone who sets foot inside the house is marked for a terrifying haunting which will not rest. One by one, those who have been tainted by the house begin to die, and nowhere is safe.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.  Twice is enough.

When I first saw this a decade ago I dug it.  I guess I didn't mind the pacing so much as it was fresh and intriguing (plus I was trying to figure out what the fuck was going on).  Now the pacing is definitely the deal killer for me.  It's not horrible but the hour an a half feels like two and a half.  OK, so I guess it's pretty bad.  Maybe I was sleepy or something.  The ghost sounds (throat clicking) was nice as well as the appearances of the ghosts but it just wasn't enough.  Showing what happens to the different residents of that home was neat but it's also repetitive.  Maybe it's too soon to look back and think about what the horror scene was like when this came out or this might just be a one or two time watch and that's it.  I'm going to give the sequels and the American remake a pass. 

The Ghosts of Edendale (2003)

Director: Stefan Avalos

Writer: Stefan Avalos

Composer: Vincent Gillioz

Starring: Paula Ficara, Stephen Wastell, Andrew Kirsanov, Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe, Patrick Hasson, Nathan Lum, Ethan Grant, Jay Brown, Robert Lane, Maureen Davis, Cynthia King, Arthur Guzman

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Some people are dying to make it in the movies.

Plot: A young couple moves into a neighborhood obsessed with the frightening silent movie history that took place 80 years before. As the boyfriend also becomes obsessed, it becomes apparent that something more is happening.

My rating: 2/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Look at that poster.  Does it look like a horror/Western?  Hell, the first two genres listed on IMDb for it are Horror and Western (yeah, I realize that it's probably added by anyone who wants to update it, but still).  I guess part of my disappointment with this is that this isn't what I thought by a friggin' long shot.  But then the other part could be because it bored the piss out of me.  OK, so I exagerate a little.  At no point did urine escape my urethra but it really taxed my ability to stay awake.  90 minutes a f Rachel (Ficara) seeing things wasn't doing it for me.  There are several scenes where she's nude in a hot tub or a shower (really, several) without showing any nudity.  Call me a pig but this picture could have used the scant nipple or two or three.  Ugh.  I really wanted to dig this one.  Oh, yeah, the DVD cover says it's from the maker of THE LAST BROADCAST (1998), which I've heard really good things about so I was looking forward to checking out this "horror/Western".  It's time to move on...

The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

Director: Peter Cornwell

Writers: Adam Simon, Tim Metcalfe

Composer: Robert J. Kral

Starring: Virginia Madsen, Kyle Gallner, Elias Koteas, Amanda Crew, Martin Donovan, Sophi Knight, Ty Wood, Erik J. Berg, John Bluethner

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Some things cannot be explained.

Plot: After a family is forced to relocate for their son's health, they begin experiencing supernatural behavior in their new home, which turns out to be a former mortuary.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Drinking game: Take a drink after every single jump scare (i.e. instant loud crash of music and sound accompanied by something on screen instantaneously appearing on the screen intended to make you jump)

I don't know why I bother with crap like this.  I gave it a shot, not knowing it was going to be laded with jump scares.  They happen so often it feels like a comedy, like I'm supposed to laugh or something.  It's ridiculous.  I couldn't take the movie seriously.  To make it worse, I watched the unrated, 102 minute extended cut.  The special effects are nice but the music and sound effects are in your face like someone walking backwards in front of you with their hands in your face while you walk down the street.  It's annoying as hell.  And why are movie haunted houses old, two story homes on a few acres of land?  How about making THE HAUNTING IN A MOBILE HOME?  I'd fucking go see that movie.  The carved corpses were neat and the ectoplasm was kind of cool but for crying out loud; why did the picture have to try so fucking hard that the only way it could illicit a reaction out of the viewer is to startle them with sudden loud noises?  Where's the fucking talent in Hollywood these days?  I'm so frustrated with the seeming lack of people around who care about making a genuinely scary movie without resorting to cheap carnival tricks.  AHHHHH, I'm so cheesed right now.  Maybe I can get three bucks for the fucker on Craigslist. 

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

Director: Brian Gibson

Writers: Michael Grais, Mark Victor

Composer: Jerry Goldsmith

Starring: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Heather O'Rourke, Oliver Robins, Zelda Rubinstein, Will Sampson, Julian Beck, Geraldine Fitgerald, John P. Whitecloud

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They're back.

Plot: The Freeling family move in with Diane's mother in an effort to escape the trauma and aftermath of Carol Anne's abduction by the Beast. But the Beast is not to be put off so easily and appears in a ghostly apparition as the Reverend Kane, a religious zealot responsible for the deaths of his many followers. His goal is simple - he wants the angelic Carol Anne; but the love of her family and the power of psychic Tangina once again unite, along with an elderly native American, to fight for her life.

My rating: 4.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Holy shit, where do I start?  I've only watched this once before it was in the theater on its original release.  I remember not liking it but I couldn't tell you why.  Now I can.  The first film, POLTERGEIST (1982), is a solid scare flick with everything going right and one that hasn't lost its effectiveness.  The first half of the picture isn't all that terrible I guess.  It's unrealistically abundantly optimistic.  There's a nice tracking shot when Kane shows up at the Freeling house.  Jerry Goldsmith is back to score the film (a plus) and you've got Julian Beck being all creepy as shit as Kane. 

Then we start to get into some strange goings-on here and there that don't really add up to all that much.  It's boring.  And the finale when we're 'on the other side' is ridiculously campy but it clearly wasn't supposed to be.  Goldsmith and Beck are the best things about this flick.  And then comes the third and final film that makes this one look good.

The Uninvited (2009)

Directors: Charles Guard, Thomas Guard

Writers: Craig Rosenberg, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard, Kim Jee-Woon

Composer: Christopher Young

Starring: Emily Browning, Arielle Kebbel, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Massar, Kevin McNulty, Jesse Moss, Dean Paul Gibson

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  Fear moves in

Plot: Anna Rydell returns home to her sister (and best friend) Alex after a stint in a mental hospital, though her recovery is jeopardized thanks to her cruel stepmother, aloof father, and the presence of a ghost in their home.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I didn't realize that this was an English remake of Kim Jee-Woon's Korean film, A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (2003), which I own but haven't watched yet.  Now I'm REALLY wanting to see the original.  THE UNINVITED has some issues like a few jump scares (fuck, I really hate those - it's the cheapest way to get a reaction), and a major push to make you think something where they're pushing so hard that you seriously start to question it and look for alternatives. I came up with a couple of alternatives with one of them being partially right. But then there's the final seconds that kicked some ass and made it even better.  I can't spoil it but it improves the film.  Early on I was impressed with the main theme and that it sounded like Christopher Young (he's been one of my favorite film composers for 25 years).  It had a touch of his score from FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC (1987) (a fantastic score, btw) which was lovely and haunting. When the end credits rolled that's when I saw his name and smiled.  So this flick is better than most of its kind in the past decade but now I'm craving to see SISTERS since it's probably even better, as they usually go with original foreign films.  I'll find out tonight.

Lady in White (1988)

Director: Frank LaLogia

Writer: Frank LaLogia

Composer: Frank LaLogia

Starring: Lukas Haas, Len Cariou, Alex Rocco, Katherine Helmond, Jason Presson, Renata Vanni, Angelo Bertolini, Joelle Jacobi, Jared Rushton

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The year is 1962. The place is Willowpoint Falls. Nobody talks about what happened in the school cloakroom 10 years ago. Now, in the dead of night, Frankie Scarlatti is going to find out why.

Plot: Locked in a school closet during Halloween 1962, young Frank witnesses the ghost of a young girl and the man who murdered her years ago. Shortly afterward he finds himself stalked by the killer and is soon drawn to an old house where a mysterious Lady In White lives. As he discovers the secret of the woman he soon finds that the killer may be someone close to him.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

 Well color me surprised.  Here's a well-acted, scripted, directed ghost story that really works.  It's more for kids but don't show it to them too early because it can get pretty scary for the tots during that final fifteen minutes.  The ending seems to keep ending and keep going but it's not a deal killer.  The shooting of a certain someone is devastating.  It's interesting how this picture was able to successfully and powerfully working racial injustice.  It was very effectively handled. I'm shocked that this is his second and final film.  What happened to this guy?  Based on this film he had a very promising career ahead of him.  Who knows.  It's a shame he never returned to film.  He had something here.

The Nun (2005)

Director: Luis de la Madrid

Writers: Manu Diez, Jaume Balaguero

Composer: Luc Suarez

Starring: Anita Briem, Belen Blanco, Manu Fullola, Alistair Freeland, Cristina Piaget, Paulina Galvez, Natalia Dicenta, Lola Marceli, Tete Delgado

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  Not all water is holy

Plot: A group of teenage girls are terrorized by Sister Ursula, a nun that believes she must rid the world of all sin. After Sister Ursula mysteriously disappears, the Catholic school is shut down. Many years later, the women, all grown up, are terrorized by a ghostly nun. The daughter of one of the women sets out to find out what happened all those years ago.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? No, not even with your crucifix.

Part of the Nunsploitation Project (July & August 2013). Click here for more naughty nun insanity! 

Ugh.  This is the last of the  Nunsploitation pictures on my list to watch for the project.  It starts out OK but then it gets ridiculous with the kids (teens/20-somethings) getting involved.  The last twenty minutes gets rid of a lot of characters (there was one neat kill, a pipe through the chest, but it wasn't nearly as effective as it could have been) but by then I'd already given up.

The underwater photography, though, looked fantastic and it gave the film a nice, eerie vibe but the story and direction couldn't make it work effectively. One of the characters says, "If she kills in water then maybe the only way she can die is in water." Really?  Since the nun was murdered by being drowned in a bathtub 18 years ago, she somehow can only kill those responsible by being surrounded by water which means the sink or tub overflows and there's a shroud of water around her as she walks or floats around the house chasing her victim.  I guess if you can buy that then you can buy that the only way she can be killed is to be underwater with the ghost nun and stab her to death or something.

The thing that ultimately bothered me about this picture is that there are an awful lot of leaps of logic that don't have any explanation behind them.  How is the nun able to come back at all?  Why wait 18 years to exact revenge? Why? Why? Why?  I don't need my hand held but there are so many aspects that aren't explained it feels like the film makers had no explanation and thought it would just be cool if this and if that.  That's fine but at least try with the story before making a picture.  There are also continuity shot issues and such.  There's also very little in the exploitation of nuns. No nudity, no nun hanky panky, just a few kills that hardly begin to make up for a lack of everything else. So, does this constitute being classified as a Nunsploitation movie?  It does have a nun but the killing ( the only non-nun-like behavior she exhibits) is done when she's a ghost.  If you want to be technical about it, then yes, it probably belongs on the fringes of the sub genre but I wouldn't discuss it alongside most any of the Nunsploitation pictures of the 1970s.  Those were a different breed altogether.  If you must see it, it's on Netflix streaming right now, which explains why I wasn't able to take any screenshots.  You're not missing anything all that great anyway.

MoH 213: Dream Cruise (2007)

Director: Norio Tsuruta

Starring: Daniel Gillies, Thom Irvine, Ethan Amis, Maky Soler, Tiffany Martin, Ian Moore, Gregory Pekar, Katsuhiro Nagano, Yoshino Kimura, Ryo Ishibashi, Miho Ninagawa

More info: IMDb

Plot: Absolutely terrified of the sea, an American lawyer reluctantly goes on an ocean cruise to be near the wife of a client, with no idea of the grim situation that awaits them all.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? No.

This final episode of the series did nothing for me.  I didn't care about the characters and once the shit hit the fan and there's murder and ghosts, I cared even less.  And the ending?  Well, I'm just glad it ended.  I don't know what the characters were thinking with their last move to get away from the ghost but I reckon it was a last ditch effort and they had to try something.  Then it just got silly and cliched with a predictable and uninteresting finale.

Mama (2013)

Director: Andres Muschietti

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nelisse, Daniel Kash, Javier Botet, Jane Moffat, Morgan McGarry, David Fox

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A mother's love is forever.

Plot: The senior partner of an investment brokerage Jeffrey has a breakdown and kills his two associates and his wife. Then he takes his three-year old daughter Victoria and the one-year old daughter Lilly and drives his car through a winding snowing road. He has a car accident and fall off a cliff, but he brings his daughters to an abandoned and isolated cabin to kill them, but the children are saved by a creepy ghostly creature. Five years later, Jeffrey's brother Lucas finds the children that were raised without social relationship and claim that they have been raised by Mama. Lucas disputes the custody with the children's grandmother but Dr. Dreyfuss, who is studying the girls, selects Lucas to take care of the children. Lucas lives with his girlfriend Annabel, who plays in a rock 'n' roll band, and Victoria and Lilly moves to their house. Soon Lucas and Annabel find that the girls were not delusional and they are not alone in the house.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

THE SPOILERS AND MR. CHICKEN...YARRRRRRR!

Jump scares?  Check.  Crappy story?  Not really.  Jump scares?  Check.  Little-to-no character arc?  I'm shocked that it's got one. Lousy ending?  Not exactly.  Jump scares?  Check.

I didn't expect to like this but I have this monthly movie pass that lets me see whatever I want in the theater.  I feel like I don't see enough horror films in the theater so there I was.  If it weren't for the fucking jump scares I would have liked it a whole lot better.  I'm willing to forgive the little plot holes the show up every once in a while if the picture is effective.  The ghost design and effects are outstanding.  I was very impressed.  I LOVED the way the ghost would sink to floor/ground level so that only her long hair moved across the floor/ground.  Nice!  Hell, I even liked the girlfriend's character arc.  The ending was fucking great.  Killing the guy, beating the snot out of his girlfriend and killing one of the two little girls was amazing. I couldn't believe my eyes.  They had the balls to do something cool for a change.  Oh...wait.  The guy's not dead.  He gets up and joins his girlfriend and the little girl that survived and they're going to be a happy family.  THE.FUCK?  The witch reached into his chest, pulled out something, he falls to the ground lifeless.  Don't give me some bullshit that he's alive.  When the ghost killed herself and the girl did his 'essence' come back suddenly?  That's the only excuse they've got.  I can't believe this.  This is bullshit.  Take out that little bit and the jump scares and this would have been a solid 8/10.  What a fuck up.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Director: William Castle

Starring: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig, Elisha Cook Jr., Julie Mitchum, Leona Anderson, Howard Hoffman, Skeleton

More info: IMDb

Tagline: See it with someone with warm hands!

Plot: A millionaire offers ten thousand dollars to 5 people whom agreed to be locked in a large, spooky, rented house overnight with he and his wife.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

This weekend it was a Vincent Price double feature at the Scorethefilm pad with this one starting the show.  It's been an awful long time since I saw this and I'd almost forgotten how much fun it is.  The dialogue exchange between Frederick (Price) and his wife, Annabelle (Ohmart), near the start of the film is wonderfully sinister and hilarious.  The rapid, scathing jabs at each other are deliciously fun and I would love to see a movie with just these two going at each other for 90 minutes straight.  Price is a master at making anything sound great but he's perfection when he's actually given something good to recite like what he has here.  This picture could easily be lost among a gazillion like it made from the 30s-50s if it weren't for Price, Castle's direction and Robb White's hoot of a script.  The cast perform their parts with all seriousness (Cook had me in stitches at just about every turn), if not too much so.  I'd forgotten who the killer was and everything having to do with the ending so I was surprised at how it went down.  It's an awful lot of fun and a great cap to what would otherwise be a silly little horror film.  It's still goofy but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

An American Haunting (2005)

Director: Courtney Solomon

Starring: Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, James D'Arcy, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Matthew Marsh, Thom Fell, Zoe Thorne

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Possession Knows No Bounds

Plot: In 1818, the family began to experience disturbances on their property. The spirit began to grow, becoming aggressive and singling out the father, John, and his only daughter Betsy. The family desperately searched for the cause of the spirit in the hope of finding a way of defeating it. It developed voices and began speaking to the family. Then, finally it pronounced a death sentence on John.

 

My rating: 4.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Jesus, no.

This picture looks good.  It's got name actors, a decent score and bleak, cloudy, moody atmosphere.  What it doesn't have is anything to keep my attention.  It's unnecessarily slow and repetitive.  By the time I got to the end where the big 'reveal' is, I had stopped caring an hour earlier.  Seriously, when it felt like it had run its course and the end was near I checked the time and still had 45 minutes to go (half way through the picture).  That's not a good sign.  It's a dimly lit film.  I don't think the sun came out more than twice if that.  There is one thing, however, that takes the cake.  It's the best carriage flip I've EVER seen.  Fuck me sideways, this few seconds is amazing.

I know, right?  WOW!  Too bad the picture that contained it couldn't muster up anything close to that exciting for the 91 minutes that surrounds it.

The Frighteners (1996)

Director: Peter Jackson

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace, Jake Bussey, Chi McBride, R. Lee Ermey

More info: IMDb

Tagline: No Rest for the Wicked.

Plot: After a car accident in which his wife, Debra, was killed and he was injured, Frank Bannister develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts. After losing his wife, he then gave up his job as an architect, letting his unfinished "dream house" sit incomplete for years, and put these skills to use by befriending a few ghosts and getting them to haunt houses in the area to drum up work for his ghostbusting business; Then Frank proceeds to "exorcise" the houses for a fee. But when he discovers that an entity resembling the Grim Reaper is killing people, marking numbers on their forehead beforehand, Frank tries to help the people whom the Reaper is after!

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

Here's yet another one that's been on my list to watch for more than a decade and I'm finally getting around to it. It starts out much sillier than it ends. For as playful as it is it's got a lot of adult weight to it which I really dug. The story is good and the performances stand up even better but it's the special effects (by WETA, the same group that handled the LORD OF THE RINGS pictures) that are fucking outstanding! NICE!!! Overall it's a fun movie and worth seeing. You'll see some of Jackson's style and sense of fun throughout and with Michael J. Fox bringing his likability you can't go wrong. OK, you can but not so wrong you'll hate yourself for it in the morning.

Dorm (2006)

Director: Songyos Sugmakanan

Starring: Charlie Trairat, Chintara Sukapatana, Sirachuch Chienthaworm

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Every dorm has a tale. But this tale, you will never forget.

Plot: When 12-year-old Ton (Trairat) transfers to an all-boys boarding school, he's taunted by his peers and terrified by their tales about the ghosts that inhabit the school. Ton is utterly miserable -- until he befriends a mysterious fellow pupil.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? It could happen

Excellent ghost story out of Thailand! It's less on horror than most would like but it's a very well-told story that has charm, humor and tenderness...and a ghost who dies every evening at 6pm. It starts out like a lot of typical Asian horror films but before you know it, you're going somewhere unexpected and poignant. The performances by the children, particularly Trairat, are first rate. Highly recommended.

The Evil (1978)

Director: Gus Trikonis

Starring: Richard Crenna, Joanna Pettet, Andrew Pine

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: Escape is just a nerve-shredding scream for salvation!

Plot: A psychologist buys an old mansion at a bargain price and asks a colleague and his students to help him fix it up. Things are fine until a cross is removed from a stone door in the basement and satan himself starts wreaking havoc on each person one by one. Their only hope of ever leaving alive or dead is the ghostly resident that built the house.

My Rating: 6/10

Would I watch it again? Maybe, just maybe, when that widescreen DVD comes out.

#23 on Dusk to Dawn Drive-In Trash-o-Rama Show Vol. 1 (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)

#39 on 42nd Street Forever Vol. 2: The Deuce (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)

For the most part this is a standard haunted house movie. THE haunted house movie of the 1970s was to come out a year later, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR. At first I thought THE EVIL was a quickie response to TAH until I came to the imdb page to find that it pre-dates it. You can see by the plot that there's really nothing special. What is special, and this is important to the horror fans, are the kills. They're fantastic.


Remember that scene in the beginning of JAWS (1975) when the night swimmer is being jerked all over the place by the shark? Well, there's a scene in this one where the same thing is happening to this poor girl in a lighted room. The way it was shot and edited give the illusion that she's being tossed around by an invisible force. It's really well done and effective. Toward the end the evil spirit starts ripping her clothes off, stopping with her underwear. I guess he didn't have enough practice to take that bra off. Stupid ghost. It would have helped.






There's another great moment reminiscent of EVIL DEAD (1981) where Prine's character starts cutting his own hand off with a circular saw! Nice!!!



At one point their dog, Kaiser, gets possessed and attacks one of the girls. It's one of those 'jumps out of the darkness' kind of scares but the cool thing is that part of the sound effect for the dog includes the Tie Fighter scream from STAR WARS (1977). It's a little subtle but it's there and, for us SW nerds, it makes it that much cooler.

Oh, there's another kick ass scene where one of the kids is climbing down a cable from the 3rd or 4th floor at night during a severe thunderstorm. Crenna's up top waiting for the kid to make it to the ground but the wind picks up and starts flailing him all over the place ending with a lightning strike that sets the poor dumb bastard on fire!!! He doesn't hold on for long before he falls to his flaming death!!! Fucking AWESOME! It's shit like this that can really make a movie worth while.





The ending is kind of bizarre as they fall through the hole in the basement to come face to face with the devil, played fiendishly by Victor Buono. At first it seemed out of place but Buono's just too much fun hamming it up and I really dig the atmosphere. He's defeated and Crenna & Pettet make it out alive. There's a decent body count and every one of them met a lovely end. What more could you want?


I would have loved to have seen this in a big, dark theater. I'm sure it would have been more effective but the fullscreen overseas DVD is all that we've got for now. It's said to be coming out in Sept/Oct of this year in a widescreen release. It's definitely worth a rental if you dig that late 70s haunted house kind of thing.

The Abandoned (2006)

Director: Nacho Cerda

Starring: Anastasia Hille

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: Death never runs out of time.

Plot: Upon hearing that her birth mother has died, an American woman (Hille) who was raised by adoptive parents travels to her Russian homeland to take over the family farm she inherited. But almost immediately, she senses something's wrong. The plot thickens when she discovers she's not alone -- and seeing ghosts takes on a whole new meaning.
My Rating: 7/10

Would I watch it again? Yeah

I quite like this film. It's essentially a ghost story. A ghost story done right which gives you loads of atmosphere. The isolation of the farmhouse, the gloomy, overcast weather, the dampness and the cold...it's all there.


I like that the setting is on the other side of the world and not localized. It feels reminiscent without being comfortably close, if that makes any sense. Very good camerawork and framing and a good score that establishes mood without bringing attention to itself. Good performance from Hille, too.



THE ABANDONED is a slow burn so it's not for everyone. But then it doesn't overstay its welcome at only 99 minutes. It's a Spanish film (in English) and it appears to be writer/director Cerda's only feature fiction film to date. Too bad. There's some real talent at work here and I'm definitely up for more. If you like the 'creeps under your skin' kind of slow-paced and atmospheric horror, this one's got your name on it...just don't leave it behind. Ahahahahaha.