My Soul to Take

On the night that the Riverton Ripper was killed, seven children were born. Sixteen years later, on their collective birthday, the Riverton 7 are stalked by an unseen killer. Has the Riverton Ripper come back from the dead? Or has one of the Riverton 7 become possessed by the killer’s soul? My Soul to Take should have been an easy layup for Wes Craven. It’s a supernatural slasher that borrows from several of his previous films. There are elements from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Serpent and the Rainbow, and Shocker in it. And yet, the film is a bit of a mixed bag. The main problem is the script. Seven characters are too many for the movie to follow. Only four of the Riverton 7 get a decent amount of screen time. The remaining kids, along with the rest of the side characters, float in and out of the movie. Mostly showing up just in time to be killed off. At various points, the script also tries to tackle a couple of serious issues but never takes the time to fully develop them. And the ending feels both unearned and like it could have been replaced by any number of alternate outcomes.

Rating: 61%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Revenge of the Creature

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is captured and taken to Florida, where it's put on display at an aquarium. After a few weeks of being gawked at by yokels and prodded by scientists, the Creature breaks its chains and goes on an old fashioned killing spree. Who could have ever seen that coming? The Creature also kidnaps the pretty lady scientist who'd been studying it. From there, it's up to our man Clete (yes, his first name is Clete) to rescue the girl and get his own revenge on the Creature. Released the year after The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge feels like a bit of a rush job. There's some recycled footage from the first movie in it and a few of the underwater scenes look like they were filmed in a hotel pool. But despite having been mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000, it's not all bad. While it's definitely a step down in quality from the original film, it still has some charm.

Rating: 55%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

Freddy's Dead is the Scary Movie of the Elm Street series. Everything in the movie is a joke. Each kill sequence is packed with big Looney Tunes gags. There's virtually no atmosphere or suspense in the film. It's pretty much just comedy and violence. And additional back story. We can't forget about that. This time around, it turns out that Freddy was once a family man with a wife and a daughter. And when the parents of Springwood killed Freddy, he was granted his powers by dream demons. Because somebody felt that part of it needed to be explained. The Nineties was a tough time for horror movies.

Rating: 61%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Jaws 3-D

There are two constants in the Jaws franchise: each film contains a giant great white shark and in each film members of the Brody family are terrorized by said shark. The third film in the series, which debuted during the brief revival of 3-D movies in the 1980s, shifts locations from Amity Island to a Sea World park. Dennis Quaid plays Chief Brody's grown son Michael, a Sea World big shot, who once again has to face great white terror after a shark gets locked inside the park. I can't imagine how anybody at the actual Sea World park thought it would be a good idea to let them make a movie wherein a number of patrons and park employees are brutally killed. The only way you're likely to see this movie today is in its current 2-D home video version, which renders the 3-D efforts comically anticlimactic.

Rating: 65%

(Image from impawards.com)

Jackass 3D

If you're already familiar with the Jackass crew, I don't really need to tell you what Jackass 3D is about. It's exactly what you think it's going to be, except this time it's in 3D. To their credit, they actually use the 3D very well. Some of the best moments in the movie come when the stunts are shown in super slow motion. I could describe some of the movie's highlights for you, but the whole Jackass 3D experience is funnier (and more painful) if you go into it cold.

Rating: Ouch%

(Image from onlinemovieshut.com)

Piranha 3D

I've mostly been avoiding the recent resurgence of 3D movies, so I have no idea if Piranha 3D is indicative of the overall experience and/or enhancement that the 3D gimmick is supposed to offer. I personally haven't been to a 3D movie since I saw Captain EO at Epcot in the late '80s and all I really recall from that flick are the puppety type creatures singing and dancing alongside Michael Jackson. What I can tell you about Piranha 3D is that it has more blood and nudity in it than I have seen from a mainstream, theatrically released horror film since the Friday the 13th remake. And as far as horror remakes go, Piranha 3D manages to be one of the better ones made in the last few years, on par with the Dawn of the Dead remake from 2004. I recommend checking the movie out if the title or trailer piqued your interest at all, but don't feel like you need to see it in 3D, nothing will be lost when the movie hits DVD.

Rating: 78%

(Image from impawards.com)

Robot Monster

I'm not immune to the "so bad, it's good" allure of some movies, but there are movies out there that are so terrible that they should never be watched by anyone, ever, under any circumstances. One such movie is 1953's Robot Monster, you know, the one with the guy in the gorilla suit with a fishbowl on his head. Yeah, that one. Shown in 3-D, because adding a gimmick to a piece of shit movie is a timeless ploy, the film's sheer level of suckage more or less caused its director Phil Tucker to attempt suicide. Robot Monster attempts to tell the story of an evil alien called Ro-Man who tries to hunt down and kill the last few people on Earth using his death ray and blah, blah, blah. This movie sucks ass and for some reason it features a bunch of stock footage of lizards fighting.

Rating: 1%

(Image from Wikipedia)

My Bloody Valentine 3D

My Bloody Valentine 3D is a crappy 3D remake of the 1981 slasher film My Bloody Valentine. When shown in theatres, My Bloody Valentine 3D used stereoscopic projection technology to acheive its 3D effects. When viewed on DVD, the film is shown in a crappy red and blue anaglyph format that won't really work on your TV. No big loss though, unless you're really into swinging pick axes.

Rating: 58%

(Image from chud.com)

Friday the 13th Part III

When the cops arrive to clean up after his last killing spree, Jason hightails it away from Crystal Lake to nearby Higgins Haven (killing a few people along the way). Lucky for him, a young lady and her horny stoner friends have flocked to the same area for a weekend getaway. With a group of angry bikers hiding out in the barn and a hockey masked killer lurking in the shadows, will any of our horny protagonists survive? Come for the lousy 3D gimmicks, stay for the... um... did I mention he wears a hockey mask in this one?

Rating: Shot with a spear gun%

(Image from moviemonsters.net)