Starring: Fiona Dourif, Brad Dourif, Chantal Quesnelle, Danielle Bisutti, A Martinez, Maitland McConnell, Brennan Elliott, Summer H. Howell, Adam Hurtig, Jennifer Tilly, Alex Vincent
Plot: After her mother's mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the
talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be
the key to recent bloodshed and chaos.
My rating: 7/10
Will I watch it again? Yes.
I REALLY like this franchise! The last two films (4 (Bride) and 5 (Seed)) took a left turn in Albequerque and went from horror to comedy/horror. This one goes back to its roots for a straight up horror movie and it's good. I loved the atmosphere of the house. It's almost entirely set there so the house needs to have some personality and variety. The kills are good but more importantly, Mancini delivers the goods when it comes to making a good horror movie that DOES NOT RELY ON FUCKING JUMP SCARES! There are none. Having Nica (Fiona Dourif, Brad's daughter...neat...and she does a great job!) confined to a wheelchair works very well and it doesn't feel gimmicky at all. What's better is that there's a great fucking reason why she's paralyzed below the waist. I loved how this story ties into the previous and how it expands on Charles Lee Ray's history. The movie looks great and it feels at just the right length. The Blu-ray looks outstanding. The sequel, CULT OF CHUCKY (2017), dropped a few days ago and I'm anxiously awaiting that one.
Plot: The true history of Japanese Unit 731, from its beginnings in the 1930s
to its demise in 1945, and the subsequent trials in Khabarovsk, USSR, of
many of the Japanese doctors from Unit 731. The facts are told, and
previously unknown evidence is revealed by an eyewitness to these
events, former doctor and military translator, Anatoly Protasov. Part
documentary and part feature, the story is shown from the perspective of
a young Japanese nurse who witnessed many of horrors, and a young
Japanese officer who is torn between his sincere convictions that he is
serving the greater purpose, and the deep sympathy he feels for an
imprisoned Russian girl. His life is a living hell as he's compelled to
carry out atrocious experiments on the other prisoners, using them as
guinea pigs in this shocking tale of mankind's barbarity.
My rating: 4.5/10
Will I watch it again? No.
OK, so I'm settled in to my comfy couch, I pop in the DVD looking for some foreign horror knowing nothing about this except it has something to do with the infamous Unit 731, one of several Japanese centers for human experimentation (just like what the Nazis did) from 1930 until 1945. The movie starts. It's fullscreen and B&W. A prisoner is in the middle of two Japanese soldiers treading through thigh-high snow. The soldier in front is carrying a Samurai sword so you figure this is going to play a role somehow. It does. They stop and the prisoner is beheaded. That's all that happens for probably 7 minutes. Then the opening credits roll, looking and sounding very much inspired by the opening credits and music to SEVEN (1995). So far this is the first 13 minutes of the picture and that's all that's happened.
This gal and the guy below are the two Japanese we see a lot of
and they mostly do what you're seeing here.
What follows is part documentary (I watched the English dub version and the narration is mixed too low with the music and sound effects too high, making it difficult to hear at times), part interview with a Russian interpreter, Anatoly Protasov, who lived in the neighboring town as a med student, and part docu-drama, taking us inside Unit 731 as if we're watching the experiments. The documentary part is OK but the narration volume was an issue. The interview with Protasov was the best part. The problem I have with this is almost entirely with the "recreations". Remember how stylized the opening credits in SEVEN were? Put that in B&W and you get an idea of how the editing of these scenes are. Writer/director Iskanov gets really involved with these scenes (and there are A LOT of them) with the editing, visuals and sound. It might be neat for the first torture scene but this technique is used extensively over the next four and a half hours. That's right, it's two minutes shy of 4.5 hours! I discovered that when I hit the remote button and I was only an hour in and I saw the remaining time left. I thought it was a mistake. It was not.
I finished it but I cheated a little by fast forwarding through the torture scenes, stopping frequently to see if there was anything worth watching that I hadn't seen already. The torture scenes might be the reason a lot of people seek this film out. I was hoping for some good gore but I was left disappointed. They're OK but there's a lot left to be desired. It's in B&W which hides a lot of the effects when they're sloppy or poor (part of the reason I think this is shown in B&W), the editing is fast and cuts quick enough that you don't get a good look at much (which also shows the lack of talent that would normally go into making something look real), and it's all been processed to make it look like old footage when you know darn well it's not and the dirty look just adds to the list of things that don't work well enough in this picture. There are other little things like the prisoners don't resist AT ALL until the knife enters them or they're in serious pain. The female prisoners also wear makeup. Really.
Maybe the Japanese issued eye liner to their female guests. The most unusual I-haven't-seen-that-before scene is when a prisoner is force-fed disease-laced cockroaches into her vagina (and, yes, they show it). That was different but I couldn't help but think of how cutting edge the prisoner's pubic styling was and it was so smooth around the landing strip. Again, maybe pre-1945 Japanese were that progressive with their prisoners. I'd always heard different. Hmmm. The more you know. Anyway, between the documentary bits, the interview bits and the recreation bits, it's the interview I found most interesting. The visual 'horror' is so over produced that it adds to the already phony looking gore. Maybe these scenes are over produced to hide the lack of good gore and horror that should've been there.
It's an ambitious film (IMDb says it was four years in the making and I believe it) and I might've given this a little higher score if it hadn't been sooooooo long but the pacing (especially that first 13 minutes where almost nothing happens, and nothing that's pertinent to the story) drags this 4.5 hour flick into endurance test territory. It's a curiosity and i think that people who focus on the gory aspects of films might dig this a lot more but only if you don't mind the quick edits of stylized torture. I dug the droning music. I think it fit the film well considering the extreme length of the picture. I watched the Unearthed 2-DVD Limited Edition set. The first film has one extra and that's a several minute long intro from the director and two other people (the director sat in the middle and said very little). Disc 2 has a making of documentary (45 min), A Glimpse of Hell featurette (13 min) which is a longer scene (but in color) from the film that is made to look like vintage documentary footage of nude dead bodies piled on cots in a small room, 3 deleted scenes (3 minutes), an interview with actress Manoush (13 min), an interview with Iskanov (this feature didn't work for some reason), music videos for Dead Before Born and Forgive Me, the soundtrack, photo galleries for production, map of Unit 73, Khabarovsk from 1900 to present day, trial documents and finally trailers for 7 films but not for this one.
Plot: The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for
the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as
the Iran-Contra Affair.
My rating: 7/10
Will I watch it again? No.
I've heard that they use movie magic to keep Tom Cruise looking younger than his years and I'm starting to believe it. Cruise does a fine job in this picture. He's fun. I dug the flick and there are a few moments of "will he make it?" and "how the hell is this going to turn out?" but the film misses the boat by not building a compelling story so that the climax has more weight. Don't misunderstand. There are a lot of very good scenes and it is an enjoyable movie but it never felt like like momentum was building in the sense we were being taken on a journey that will end with an emotional punch. Instead, we're just hanging out with Sears (Cruise) on some of his little adventures. That alone is good enough but I'm not sure what the filmmakers were going for if they wanted the audience to have that emotional connection. Regardless, it's a good film. When I got home from the theater I checked out Barry Seal's Wikipedia page and it looks like the film is loosely based on Seals but shares little of what happened, at least as far as the big picture is concerned.
Writers: William Kotzwinkle, Brian Helgeland, Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat
Composer: Craig Safan
Starring: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Danny Hassel, Rodney Eastman, Andras Jones, Tuesday Knight, Toy Newkirk, Ken Sagoes, Brooke Theiss, Brooke Bundy
Tagline: You shouldn't have buried me, I'm not dead
Plot: The last girl from Elm Street is still bothered by dreams about Freddy;
soon he returns and kills her, but before she died she wills her power
to a new friend.
My rating: 6.5/10
Will I watch it again? Yeah.
This one picks up shortly after the last one, making it sort of a two-parter. So far the series is doing a decent job of continuing the story. People die and others are drawn in. I liked how Alice was a daydreamer. You know instantly that it's going to at the very least give her some trouble and us some fun with Freddy. I really wish they'd give more screen time with Freddy. He gets a good deal, I suppose, but his role is pretty much the boogeyman that comes to add to his teenage body count. I guess I want more substance. The acting is OK but we're not watching the movies for anything but Freddy doing what he does best. There is one cool shot that I really dug. When Kristen's (Knight) mother dopes her up with sleeping pills and Kristen quickly loses her struggle against them, the camera is constantly moving above and around her for the entire time until she drops. It was an effective visual to match what she was feeling. Nice. As always, Englund is fun as are the effects and kills. Look fast for a Linnea Quigley cameo inside of Freddy's belly near the end. You can't mistake whose boobs these belong to...
I'm not thrilled with this franchise as a whole (so far). None of the films up to this point are great or even very good. I like them enough to justify watching them but they just aren't doing it for me. If it weren't for the wonderful kills and effects I probably wouldn't bother but there's enough here and there to keep my interest. The Blu-ray (from the box set ANonES Collection with all 7 films) looks great. They all do.
Tagline: Their wild beauty marked them for death by . . . The Haunted Strangler
Plot: A researcher investigating a notorious serial killer who was hanged 20
years earlier seemingly becomes possessed by the long dead strangler.
My rating: 7/10
Will I watch it again? Maybe.
Before I forget, who the hell is responsible for the gross error of getting Jack the Ripper off by 8 years? It clearly states in the beginning that the hanging is in 1860 and then a title card says it's 20 years later. Soon after, Rankin (Karloff) is at police headquarters in the evidence room and there's a box labeled Jack the Ripper which wouldn't happen until 1888. That's just a minor gripe. That didn't keep me from enjoying the movie. It's pretty good. The makeup job on Karloff is fantastic and it's great how he was able to disfigure himself. Neat-O! It's a good story despite being a little far-fetched but Karloff et al make it fun. It's got good atmosphere and a good ending to go with it. I enjoyed it and I wasn't sure I would. These sub-80 minute horror pictures from the 50s can be really spotty but this one turned out very nice.
Starring: Nick Frost, Wes Craven, Marilyn Burns, Michael Berryman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Joe Bob Briggs, Emily Booth
More info: ?
Plot: A collection of films so full of gory but-munching and dismemberment they have been banned across the world.
My rating: 7.5/10
Will I watch it again? No.
This is one of those compilation clip shows but there's a difference. It was made for British TV, it's got some great people from the horror industry talking about the films and the clips are gory and peppered with nudity. The problem is that it's yet another clips show. Another problem is the title. These aren't the worst of the gory movies but some of the best. I know what they mean by it but it bugs me. The clips are fun and it's neat seeing people talk about their pictures like Craven, Lewis and all and I never get tired of hearing Joe Bob Briggs talk about the pictures. The films covered include THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE EVIL DEAD, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, ZOMBI, CANNIBAL FEROX, BLOOD FEAST and THE STORY OF RICKY-O. I'm finding that I enjoy this type of video less and less because not only have I seen them all (and a few of them many times), I also know a lot of the trivia the people throw out so I'm not learning anything. For 45 minutes, there's a lot packed in here and it's definitely worth the horror fan's time.
Starring: Brandon Salkil, Erin R. Ryan, Ethan Holey, Bella Demente, Josh Eal, Dustin Mills, Dave Parker, Jackie McKown, Brian Clancy, Jake Benson, Jeremy Ryan
Plot: In New York City, potent strands of bath salts have surfaced and have
attracted the most devoted bath salt junkies. A young aspiring chemist
has developed an even stronger batch... but something has gone horribly
wrong.
My rating: 5.5/10
Will I watch it again? No.
A few years back I met Dustin Mills at a Comic Con and picked up his first picture, PUPPET MONSTER MASSACRE (2010) and I enjoyed it. So then I was keen to check out some of his other work. ZOMBIE A-HOLE (2012) was a step down but then this was only Mills' second film. BATH is his fourth (he's currently finishing his 18th) and though I can see he's getting better, there's room for improvement. I mostly dig his creativity. He's not one of these cats that's content to have static, boring shots. His camera moves but it's not all over the place. The acting isn't bad but it's obvious that they could use more practice but don't take that as a dig. I actually like the cast but they're young and more acting experience isn't going to hurt any of these kids. One thing that bugged me, and this is something that A LOT of low budget films have as well as non-seasoned filmmakers, is that many scenes go long and the actors are allowed too much time to say their lines with pregnant pauses in-between sentences. Things like that slow things down too much.
There were more than a few moments when the sound went from very loud (like during action scenes of zombie violence) to too soft when the dialogue kicked in seconds later. Fiddling with the volume on the remote became a chore. But hey, who the fuck cares when you've some outstanding nudity!
Yowza!!! These broads have great racks and it's nice to some healthy naturals on the screen for a change. There's lots of gore to keep the horror fans happy. I really dug the various masks used for the zombies and drug dealing gang, The Dragons (I think). Mills dabbles in a lot of different effects and movie making techniques which help but it's not a cure-all for some of the other parts that are just OK. There's more to talk about like the opening six minutes but I'm getting anxious to start the next flick. Oh, the movie is only 70 minutes long but don't worry; subtract 6 full minutes of slow moving end credits so that'll leave you with barely an hour of movie. If this sounds like it's worth a look, it is and it won't cost you much in time.
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