The Code of the Walking Dead

The third season shows  that there is one rule that animates the living and the dead and that rule is keep moving.  It's been a long winter for Rick and the gang and the zombies have only grown in the size of their massive herds.  Herds?  Mobs?  What do you call a bunch a zombies?

Probably don't call them anything cause you are too busy running.  With so many zombies that's the only choice the gang has or get mobbed.  So the winters been hard, it's obvious that food and ammo are issues.  Lori is near ready to pop out a baby and Rick looks just a little mad around trhe edges.  Only Daryl seems still  to have his edge.  Maybe it's a diet of fresh owl meat.

Luckily, the gang finally finds the prison  that was a very important in the graphic novels that the Walking Dead was based on.  Immediately the gang can see the advantages of lots of thick wallls in a zombieverse.  Of course, to claim it you have to take care of all the walking dead prisoners and guards.  The guards were sort of funny to deal with because they were in riot gear.  That made them rather bullet proof which was bad, but the face masks kept the biting to a minimum which is the funny part. 

Overall, this was a great episode.  The team finally had a plan and acted like they have had some practice now in walking dead killing.  Little Carl might someday make me forgive his role in season 2 if he keeps up this way.  Also Lori was less annoying, yet still annoying.  Let's hope that level keeps dropping.   Tne new characters are adding some new blood and excitement.  The violence was very satisfactory.  Let's hope we are past the days of random walking, pointless bitchery, and forever rescuing Carl.

The Cabin In The Woods

Even if Joss Whedon hadn't kicked everyone square in the box office with the Avengers this would have still been his shining year.  Why?  Cause that genius wrote "The Cabin In The Woods."  If he was here before me right now I'd shake his hand and kiss him on the cheek.  He has created the victory lap for horror fans everywhere.  In the future someone will no doubt make a better horror film, a more scary horror film, but I have doubts anyone will make a more knowing horror film.

Now some folks say the less you know about this film the better.  I don't know about that, but I'll honor the fairly spoiler free coverage of the film.  Let's just say that it seems like a fairly average horror film.  A bunch of horny teenagers are going to a remote cabin in the woods to make out and party.  A creepy guy tells them not to go.  The cabin itself is pretty creepy.  They really shouldn't have gone because this can't end well.

It doesn't.

So why is everyone having LOL joy kittens over this film?  Well first, everything I just told is just the merest surface.  What's underneath not only explains why these teens are going to die, but why EVERY teen in films like this have to die.  Won't say anything more except, "Stockholm is down."

The other thing is that this film is often just side splittingly funny.  In a weird way parts of the film harken to "Office Space," where people fight against corporate (and worse) dehumanizatin with humor.  Whether it is an office pool or small pranks on some of the odder employees I think everyone can empathize with the situation and the humor feels real and unforced.  I know I'll never think of "speakerphone" the same way ever again.

The final and probably most important reason is that in the end they bring the goods home.  This is not a film that fizzles in the final reel but rather takes a big snort of moonshine and adrenalin puts on its Rambo bandana and goes completely barking mad Joe Pesci/Bruce Lee insane on the audience's collective ass.  It is one of the most joyful assault on my senses I've had the pleasure to witness in a long, long time.

So, stop reading this and GO SEE IT!

Apocalypse of the Dead

Well nothing much new here. The government makes a zombie gas. Zombie gas gets out. People turn into zombies. Police and their terrorist suspect get caught in zombieville. Along for the ride is a professor (no Mary Anne), a bunch of kids, and a fellow who's been getting ready for the zombie apocalypse for years.

The Serbian location does grant if not anything new at least the illusion of freshness. The acting, writing and make up are all fairly decent. It moves along at a brisk rate and if you like zombie flicks this is better than most.

The Portal

I now dread seeing a flaming horse running in the night. That is the logo of Maverick Entertainment and they are for all practical purposes the dregs of the industry. They are the guys that will buy the films the Asylum won't touch. Still, every dog has its day and "The Portal" is at least a false dawn.

It's not a good movie but it is certainly heads and shoulders above Maverick's usual fair. There's definitely a sense of ambition you don't usually see. Even the casting is better going from E and D list to at least folks you might have heard of like Roddy Piper, Stacy Keach and Michael Madsen. Each do their little bit of scene chewing and certainly help keeps up interest.

The plot is folks fear that there's a new Ebola type virus going around. It's certainly a rather nasty thing since people generally die with their heads blowing off. Well it shouldn't surprise folks that it's not a disease. Rather, folks have been finding the Portal (in this case a picture) and looking at it. Howard would tell you that's a bad thing. At first though it's nice, it's like drug high nice. Unfortunately, something comes through the portal and comes after you and then you are bleeding all over and your head explodes. Can Stacy Keach tell our young doctors how to avoid intent head aches? Well you'd have to watch to find out. If you are a horror fan there are some interesting things here and some atmosphere so it isn't a total waste.

The Corridor

The Corridor is a good example of what "Lovecraftian" horror should be. It's not about slime or alien things with names we can't pronounce without getting roaring drunk. Lovecraftian horror is about the human brushing up against something that defies our concept of a rational universe. In that moment humans suffer something of a psychotic break as they find themselves unable to cope with an inhuman (dare we say ahuman) universe.

In The Corridor several friends are spending a weekend in the woods. Supposedly just to have fun and guy binding, but really it's an attempt to heal. One of their numbers did have a literal psychotic break and in trying to help him several of his friends were hurt. Even though they "know" it's not his fault there is still considerable tension.

It gets worse as our recently ill character finds the aforenamed corridor deep in the woods. At first it doesn't seem much, sort of like a force field in the shape of a small room. Still, it's clearly unnatural and messes with our fellow's search for mental health. When his friends find out it definitely messes with their happy. At first I figured they wouldn't find the corridor and so the film would put the shakenly sane character against his friends. Lo and behold though they do find the corridor and as they go in the corridor grows.

Now, on face of it at this point while weird it's no more weird than say the Mystery Shack in Oregon. But there is some other force at work that grows turning them against each other as everyone's sanity is attacked. Whatever the corridor is, and we never learn really what it is at all, it seems to be trying to communicate with the men and it is turning them all crazy. The only one who's fighting against it is they guy just coming out from being crazy.

This is definitely an interesting film and worth watching. Certainly worth thinking about. Always be careful where you place your feet. One step can be the beginning of a journey.

Piranha DD

The original Piranha was a decent monster movie with some sly humor here and there. The remake was crass and vulgar but in a rather delightful way. The sequel is jut crass and vulgar. Worst of all it's lazy. It does nothing new and just apes the plot point of the first nearly beat for beat. When it adds something you can beat it was from some other film. It's like, "Hey remember Planet Terror? Let's give Ving shotgun legs!"

The plot involves a water park run by a sleazy corrupt step father of our final girl for this film. How sleazy is he? Well he's installed strippers instead of lifeguards and has a nude swimming pool armed with "Cootch Cams." He's also spreading graft and bribes around so he can secretly pump his own water and not be on the grid. Said water is of course filled with killer piranha and everything else works pretty much like you think it would.

The special effects are on par with the first film. They try to up the ante on the violence but scenes involving an unknowing three way between man, woman, and fish just wind up being ugly and not scary or darkly funny like in the first one. The cameos also are ham fistedly inserted into the film. Christopher Lloyd and Ving Rhamses manfully handle their woefully underwritten scenes. Gary Busey, though, just looks lost and David Hasselhoff was just sad. Admittedly, his role was suppose to be a sad role in that he was playing "himself" as a washed out overaged celebrity hasbeen, but there is no bite to his role to lift it up to something like comedy.

Look, it's no worse than most straight DVD horror films. But it disappoints because there was more money here, some decent actors and at least a pedigree of entertainment. Instead we get tired, lazy, and stupid writing supported by mostly lack luster acting. It's just sad.

Detention

Ok, sometimes you just have to get slapped in the face with the proverbial fish to get out of a funk.  This month has been rather lacking in films of the OMG variety.  There's been some nice films to be sure, but sometimes you aren't in the mood for nice.  You want the extreme, you want the crazy, you want a film that will fish slap you silly.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you..... "Detention."

This is just brilliant.  The creators must have watched every teen film from "The Breakfast Club," to "Heathers."  Then they watched every slasher film, and then topped it off with "The Back to the Future" films.  Then I am fairly sure they took more than their share of drugs and probably my share and the state of Kansas' as well.  Then after they woke up from their coma they went and made this film.

To talk about the plot really wouldn't convey just how crazed this film is.  Let's just say it does involve the following:  detention, prom, slasher, explosions, datings dos and don't, and a stuffed time travelling bear.  Every film should have one of those.  The amazing thing is that they managed to be so original while uprooting whole scenes from other films.  You will be watching and you'll just about say "Hey that's from "The Breakfast Club."  Before you can finish your thought though you get fish slapped with something just from the left field of absurdia.

Definitely go see this, and bring friends.  Bring strangers.  Bring strange friends!

I Kissed A Vampire

I really like projects like "I Kissed a Vampire," not because it is ground breaking but because it shows that people can still make a difference from the ground up in an industry obsessed with 200 million dollar blockbusters. "I Kissed a Vampire," started life as a web series and became popular enough to be made into a movie. It's a simple musical about the boy and girl next door dealing with being turned into vampires. Their source of temptation is the bad boy rocking vampire Trey Sylvania and his bad girls. Their one hope is in the dubious hands of Dan Hellsing.

The music is bright bouncy pop tunes. The actors are appealing. Some of the lines are amusing. It reminds me a lot of the Buffy episode that was a musical. Definitely, not deep but fun and sometimes folks that counts for a lot in this world.

Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice

Sooooo... eight years after the first corny killer kid movie we have this. I think they were just a leeetle over optimistic to label this the "final" sacrifice, but to their discredit they did their worst to make this the final Children of the Corn movie. If the first film was tepid then this is just a hot mess.

People finally notice that there are a lot of dead adults in Gatlin. So there is a news van and a couple of reporters, and some cops. Oh then there is our hero who is a disreputable journalist with his willfull son in tow who decide to stop in town and see if there is a story to be had in one of the largest mass murders in US history. Meanwhile, a local kid in the WORST cgi scene outside of "The Lawnmower Man," becomes possessed by ....black bubbles and starts the cult over and kills people pointlessly. Will they recruit the journalist's son? Will the journalist live to fight the black bubbles of evil? Yeah, well... no one cared. I mean really no one cared.

Besides the bad plot, bad cgi, horrific acting, the thing the bugs me most is how they treat the mass murder. Granted the film has a dollar forty budget but we are talking about a bunch of kids that murdered AN ENTIRE TOWN. That deserves the hysterical frothing of the mouth journalism of Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers." Here we get sort of a "meh." And that says everything about this film.

Children of the Corn (1984)

The original Stephen King story, "Children of the Corn," was an eerie, scary read. That was about it. Didn't really have any deep meanings, and it wasn't the greatest story ever written. It's not even the greatest Stephen King story ever. Yet, it was the foundation for this movie, a revamp, and nearly too many sequels to count. Exactly why I cannot begin to guess, the mystery of Hollywood I guess.

The original film was released in 1984 and sort of falls into the slasher category. A bunch of kids get religion real bad, and it's a real bad religion. They follow "He Who Walks Behind the Rows," and they believe he wants them to kill all the adults of the small farming community. This leads to a fairly shocking scene of mass murder that kicks off the film.

We then cut to a couple on the road to a better place. Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton play Burt and Vickey and basically that's about all we know about them before they run down a kid in the middle of the road. It's ok though, the kid had his throat cut so they didn't REALLY kill the kid. Anyway, they find their way to Gaitlin to report what happened and find it is creepy central and full of killer kids (well mostly teens but you understand). So first they have to fight the kids before having a showdown with Mr. He Who Walks Behind the Rows that we never get a good look at. In the end they leave the town with the two "good" kids and everyone is happy.

Now you do have to add some material to stretch a small story to film length, but what they did here was fairly criminal. First off, there were no "good" kids in the story, they were all psychotic little snookers. Secondly, Burt and Vickey were far from a happy couple in the story. The tension in their relationship added further suspense in the story since you were never sure if they could reach out and help each other. Finally, there was no happy ending, except perhaps for the killer kids but even they had to deal with a new ruling from their god that they get live one less year.

So basically they took a spooky story and turned it to a standard Hollywood type story. Add to that fairly uninspired direction by Fritz Kiersch (his other big film was "Gor" and that should tell everything), and just a shoddy overall production. It's a wonder that this film somehow inspired a whole host of sequels. At least the first "Howling" was good, for example. This is at best bland with a few scenes not withstanding. I supose it works mostly because the audience WANTS it to work. We get a special feeling of taboo from seeing children killing their parents that we don't get from a Jason or a Freddy Krueger.

Critics probably liked it because they could write how "corny" it was. We critics can be easy to please sometimes.

The Shrine

This atmospheric little chiller works because it doesn't answer questions.  It lets the mysterious stay mysterious.  It does this mostly through a fish out of water type plot where a bunch of journalists are investigating a small Polish village.  English is not spoken, the inhabitants are not friendly and we the audience aren't blessed with subtitles so we are in the same boat as the characters.  The journalists are there looking for a missing person.

What they find instead is inexplicable.

There's a fog like cloud that doesn't move.  There is a statue of a demon within the cloud.  When the inhabitants find out that they've visited "the shrine" they try to capture and kill them.  The rest of the film is a very tense sequences of captures, deaths, and escapes. 

This is a very good horror film that works hard to more than just violence.  You find yourself thinking about it and the whys it never answers.

Arachnoquake

Ah Syfy.......

....well at least this was better than "Piranhaconda." How can the set the bar so low? What film won't they show? Actually that's been answered over at Topless Robot and after you watch it you'll weep that your children has to live on an Earth with such a horror.

Back to the task at hand, our hero for tonight is very laid back.  He thinks nothing of coming in hung over two hours late and missing one of the tour boats.  The good news is his boss is his dad.  The bad news is that his boss is his dad.  Our hero gets demoted to tour bus (do we really want him on the road in his condition??), and picks up a bunch of meat, um I mean tourists.  What no one knows is that an earthquake the night before has released a bunch of spiders small and large.  It was an..... Arachnoquake!  DUH DUH DUUUUUUUHHHHH.

Now when I was young and played Dungeons & Dragons I noticed many game masters were always trying to surprise the players with something new.  It didn't matter if it made any logical sense as long as it did the damage.  So you'd come up with humming birds that spit acid, or man eating giraffes.  The same principle applies here with these spiders.  The range in size from hand sized to two stories high.  They have sonar.  They can implant eggs in people that pop out as baby spiders at very inconvenient times.  They are poisonous and use webs like sticky lassos.  Oh, and they breath fire.  Cute aren't they?

With such an array of powers the number of meat//actors gets small real quick.  Luckily, there is resupplies from the mililtary, red neck bubbas, a girl's soft ball team on a bus, and our heroes dad and sister on a boat.  Even still things are looking bleak, but wait!  There's a queen spider and if you kill it all the other spiders will die.  And the scientist pretty much pulled that one out the rear end, one hopes for a goodly amount of preperation H.  Can our hero man up, get responsible, and kill the queen?  Yeah, you already know.

The film at least moves fast, and no one is too painful to watch.  I again like the musical choices.  There is definitely a feel of New Orleans.  So overall if you like bad films you could find worse than this.

Piranhaconda

Well this was another waste of hours of my life, but not as bad as some things Syfy ironically call "movies." At least here old hand Roger Corman keeps things spinning along at a pace that you ALMOST don't see the gaping plot holes.

The story is that Michael Madsen, further insuring that he has left the acting wing, is a doctor of herpetology who's been looking for the "River Demon."  Turns out the River Demon is pretty darn easy to find.  It's a huge snake with super sized fangs and a permanent "I am so pissed face."  In about 30 seconds it eats all the party except for Michael who gets away with one of its eggs.  Of course momma river demon is going to hunt him down.  Luckily the woods are filled with a highly unlikely number of babes in bikinis to slow the snake down.  One reason for the babe-age is that there's a film crew filming a crappy movie (hey what a coincydink!) with our hero the manly stunt man and the brainy chick.   Everyone else is just meat for the beast.  There is also a band of crooks who plan on kidnapping the film crew.  It's one of these geniuses that names the big ass snake "Piranhaconda," followed by "I don't believe I said that."

I'm with you there dear.

Now I like giant snakes as much as the next geek.  There are a few problems here.  Nowhere is there piranhas or anacondas, nor is there anything particularly piranha like or anaconda like its look or behavior.  When I heard the title I had in my mind's eye a swarm of anacondas just like going town like a flesh shredding storm.  One giant snake running around just doesn't do it after being teased so by the title.  I will say that it's strikes which were so fast as to create huge clouds of blood was ambitiously absurd.  Other than that though it really lacked personality and you could only just begin to pick at the bad CGI as you wait for the next bikini babe to get smacked off the face of the Earth.

As for everything else, as I said they kept things rolling along.  No one is so bad that you wind up slapping your forehead against an available object.  I liked the music which had a surf music quality.  Loved the location shots, wish I was there.  So overall I was able to watch it.  Next week Syfy is showing a new film featuring giant, firebreathing spiders.

God help us all.

Descendents

Well here's a nice change of pace.  This is a zombie apocalypse that tries to be a little different.  The zombies are everywhere and the zombie virus responsible is even worse than usual.  It's air borne so anyone not wearing breathing equipment zombs out fairly quickly.  Well....not everyone.  Some young kids develop and immunity to the virus.  They can be spotted because of bloody slits on their necks.  Even better there is something about these kids so that full fledge zombies won't attack them.  This becomes something of a super power as the military first tries to capture and test the kids and then later try to kill them.  It helps your odds of survival if you can lead the armed men running after you into a zombie ambush.

Our little heroine is one of these special children.  The film goes backwards and forwards telling her tale.  Backwards showing what happened to her mother and her being captured by doctors for testing.  The forward part is her alone trying to survive.  She finds other children like her and together they all go to the sea because that is where her mother will be.  The film itself is mostly desaturated so it looks mostly black and white except for blood.

Over all its a pretty good film that tries just a bit too hard to be arty.  I mean really the whole "Let's use children to show that war really, really sucks" has been played out for years.  Still, it's suspensful and surprising, specially the ending.  I won't give it away save that it invokes a certain "Lovecraftian" perspective.

Raw Meat

This is an odd little film. Long ago some tunnel workers under London were trapped by a blast. The company that had hired them made no attempt to dig them out. They didn't die though. They been living under there on rats and each other for decades, even breeding. Now though there is only one left. He is both a horrible monster and a total innocent. He now attacks people at the tube station dragging them down for a bit of nosh. Meanwhile, in the world above Donald Pleasance plays an eccentric police officer who's interested in the sudden number of missing people. Unfortunately, the rest of the world, including a snotty college student his girlfriend and Christopher Lee as a government hush hush wonk, still don't care. What happens verges on as much tragedy as a film about cannibal can muster. It has very interesting music, nice photography, and definitely if for no other reason should be watched for the "Mod" fashions.
Definitely worth a look.

Humans Vs. Zombies

Pretty thin pickings here.  This is basically generic zombie 101, and barely up from a student film.  Zombies infect a local college and students and a crazy guard have to defend themselves.  The only two interesting things in this movie is one guy is sort of venting his inner Jack Black and is really getting into the zombie killing and near the end of the movie the students try to kill the zombies with their LARPing skills.  Did not work out so well.  The movie tries for a downer ending but you have to actually care for folks for that to work.

Abraham Lincoln Vs. Zombies

God love you Asylum. Your mockbusters just keeping getting more insanely weird. Of course choosing to rip off "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer" leaves little room for sanity. But for once I salute you.

The plot is pretty straight forward. Before being president Abraham had experience with the walking dead so he's not surprised to hear of them infesting a fort the North needs. So he enlists a small cadre of agents to come with him with his trusty scythe in hand to liberate the base. The charm of the film is besides Lincoln we meet Stonewall Jackson, a very young Teddy Rosevelt, and a conflicted John Wilkes Boothe. Don't worry there's plenty of beheadings and other mindless violence, but the historical asides just make it one demented scene to be sure.

The film rarely flags. While crazy, the characters don't act with the usual horror movie dumbness. The Lincoln make up was unconvincing. Some of the sets didn't work. Also, near the end they step over the line when Lincoln would proclaim "Emancipate this!" while beheading zombies. But overall, it was a fun film in a stupid way. Definitely a good film for a Saturday afternoon.

Woman In Black

Woman in Black is a good old fashioned ghost story. Why shouldn't it be one one of the companies involved is the newly reformed Hammer studios. The trips across the benighted moors wouldn't look out of place in a Cushing/Lee film. Sort gave me a sense of nostalgia.

The film's plot is pretty standard. Troubled man who has lost his wife and is trying to raise his son is giving the job of going through the papers at an old mansion to put them in order. Of course the place is haunted and there's a tragic past that must be discovered.

Traditional ghost stories are often like mysteries stories and this is no exception. Our hero much figure out who the mysterious woman in black is and why is she still haunting the world. In finding these things out he might be able to avoid a grim fate.

This film is well acted and has beautiful sets and photography. It might seem to drag a little to younger viewers but I welcome a film that doesn't have MTV shakey cam every other shot. I could do well with a few more "retro" films like this.

The Tenant

Now here is the equivalent of simple comfort food, except with more screaming of course.  No new ground is broken here, but what we have here a certain amount of craftsmanship and a well told tale.  It begins decades ago in an asylum/pre-haunted house.  Our doctor isn't mad but he's highly irrate.  After a life of being held back by a bad leg he is searching for a way to clear up such conditions in the womb.  He thinks he's so close but his mania for his project has put the asylum in crisis and a serious hole in his pocket.  His wife has had enough and tells him he has to quit because she's pregnant.  The head nurse/igor hears this and she is mad, in both ways.  The doctor can't stop his project!  So she injects the baby with the latest batch while still in the womb.  Smart move.  The wife has twins but one twin is twisted pretty bad and kills the mother in childbirth.  Later the Doctor goes over to fenced in cradle with a teddy bear and a gun.

Things do not go as planned.

Cut to the present.  A van full of deaf kids, an ex con, our heroine, and guy who wants to be Bruce Campbell but isn't up to it are driving in a bad storm.  Van goes blooey.  They find asylum/haunted house.  Have brain fart storm that going in is a marvelous idea.  Let the blood bath commence.  None of these characters here are terribly original, but the actors try to make a good go of it.  I like that some of the victims of deaf, it does change things up a little.  The beast is pretty nasty but still human enough that it sometimes generates a little sympathy for its condition.  The violence is pretty brutal but thankfully not to the level of Hostel or other torture pornish films.  Overall a good old fashioned horror movie.

Creature

Well Creature has a bunch of (ALL TOGETHER NOW) young city kids who take a trip into the (ALL TOGETHER NOW) backwoods swamp where a bunch of (OH TAKE A GUESS) inbred hayseeds give them grief and tell them the legend about the hideous monster in the swamp. So of course our young city kids/idiots decide to go see the house where the monster was born. Guess what, there is an aligator monster and it begins eating people. There is a non surprise surprise ending.

This is pretty by the numbers to the point of numbness. There are only two saving graces. It's a well shot film. Nice use of color. The other thing is nice use of Sid Haig. Oh he basically reprises his role from "House of a 1000 Corpses" (Without the clown suit), but he was good there and he's good here. He's creepy and menacing but also funny. He definitely keeps the film interesting.