Saw

This is the first installment of the famous seven (seven? are you kidding me?) film franchise of "torture porn" films (a term I disagree with but I'll save that discussion for one of the sequels in case I run out of things to talk about). The plot is there's some killer named the Jigsaw Killer because he takes a jigsaw puzzle-piece shaped slice of flesh from each of his victims, although that is 100% ignored forever after they mention it briefly once, so I think they were just attempting to justify the name of the movie or killer or both. Anyway, two guys are trapped in a room and they've got to figure out how to escape with clues! It has an interesting premise and ok execution, but the main problem is I think you're sorta supposed to agree with this killer's philosophy of nobody truly appreciating life until they're forced to eat a buncha razors or something, but he comes across sounding like a 19-year old who just discovered Ayn Rand. Just shut up already, Mr. J. S. Killer!

RATING: 71%

Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror

Children of the Corn V is yet another 90s horror movie made in an attempt to cash in on the success of Scream. It borrows heavily from 80s slasher movies, including lifting a handful of sequences straight out of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. It features cameos from genre veterans like Kane Hodder, Fred Williamson, David Carradine and the little ginger kid from Picket Fences. It's easily one of the better Children of the Corn sequels, which is hardly high praise. The first two acts are pretty slow and uneventful. Other than some pre-credits kills, there's really no action until an hour into the movie. Despite a few fun parts in the third act, it has one of the dumbest ending bits I've seen in a while.

Rating: I Know What You Did With This Sequel%

Fun Fact: Adam Wylie, who played Ezekiel, was also in Child's Play 2.

(Image from Wikipedia)

Resident Evil: Retribution

Not exactly sure who is retributing who here, but for this series of movies I guess having your title sound like the name of a nu-metal album is more important than having it make sense. Speaking of making sense, Alice, our stalwart hero, finds herself captured by the Umbrella Corporation (UMB [NYSE] $12.84 -3.81). She must fight her way through a buncha computer simulations to escape, and if there's any truth in the world it's that nothing is more fun than watching somebody play a shitty video game for two hours! In the end it turns out the true monster is man, specifically the man who greenlit five fucking Resident Evil movies.

RATING: 26%

Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering

What do Magic: The Gathering, the Gathering of the Juggalos and Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering all have in common? Damned if I know. But seriously folks, Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering is not a good movie. It has nothing in common with the other movies in the franchise except for children and corn. The dialogue is terrible, the tone is inconsistent, even the editing is kinda shitty. It's almost a shame too because Naomi Watts is in the lead role. Yes, that Naomi Watts, the one you had no idea was in a straight to video Children of the Corn movie.

Rating: I > II > IV > III%

Fun Fact: Naomi Watts had a small part in Joe Dante's Matinee.

(Image from moviepostershop.com)

Resident Evil: Afterlife

It's the fourth movie in the Resident Evil series and you're watching it because, I dunno, you wanna be the cool aunt and you're babysitting your ten year old goth niece or something? There's not really a good other reason to get caught up in these flicks (I mean, a non-blog related reason). So in this one Alice gets de-superpowered, ends up in LA with some jerky survivors with whom she must make her way to a floating oil tanker that promises safe haven. Now, question - why if all of humanity is basically destroyed does the evil Umbrella corporation keep running military experiments to sell to the now non-existant governments? Answer - cuz heavy metal, dude, kablow, did you see that one zombie get totally shot in the face?

RATING: 45%

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest

So far none of the Children of the Corn movies have been particularly good. The first movie was just alright and the second movie essentially got by on absurdity alone. The third movie felt incomplete and yet overstuffed at the same time. It never really felt like there was a main character in the movie. There were basically four leads and each one of them had a partial story arc. Either it was a beginning and an end with no middle or a middle and an end with no beginning. And despite being set in the big city, there never seemed to be more than 100 or so people around. There were a few moments of quality ridiculousness in the last half hour of the movie that I actually enjoyed, but they hardly made up for the overall sloppiness of the movie.

Rating: It's all direct to video from here%

Fun Fact: Michael Ensign, who played Father Frank, was also in a bunch of way better movies like Ghostbusters, WarGames and House.

(Image from Wikipedia)

Resident Evil: Extinction

You know what's pretty irritating - when a movie series of more than two films decides to forgo the traditional, lame "numbering" in favor of just a colon and an "extreme" title like "Apocalypse" or "Extinction." Well now I gotta keep looking up which movie is next on the list to watch, idiot movie execs! Anyway, this movie is beautifully shot, using a Mad Max style desert wasteland to great cinematic effect. Now Alice has to help a group of escapees get to a promised land in Alaska but oh no! The Umbrella corporation is, uh, cloning her and also there's an evil super scientist that stands in her way. I am watching these movies because it's Halloween season, but they are not horror flicks, just action movies that happen to have zombies in them.

RATING: 51%

Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice

Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice is a ridiculous movie. It is, however, a very specific type of ridiculous movie: it's a cheap horror movie from the early nineties. It's the type of movie that I suspect we'll see become increasingly popular among the "so bad it's good" crowd. The script for Children of the Corn II is seven kinds of dumb, with endless exposition crammed into every scene. The primitive CGI special effects in this movie are incredibly laughable. There are two good kills though, both of which made use of practical effects and both of which could have been in just about any other horror movie. The ridiculousness of this movie made me realize that there are several more installments in this series and I honestly have no idea what I'm in for.

Rating: Not as good as Ghoulies III%

Fun Fact: Christie Clark, who played Lacey, was also in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge.

(Image from gruesomehertzogg.com)

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

This sequel picks up where the first left off - Alice (Milla Jovavich) wakes up in a hospital bed after an unknown amount of time to discover (gasp!) there's a zombie apocalypse! I mean, a Resident Evil Apocalypse! The virus has spread into Raccoon City, and it's up to a small group of adventurers featuring our old friend Alice, Jill Valentine, a pimp played by Mike Epps, and a generic white cop I can't even remember the name of. The plot is ludicrous but the action is pretty good - Alice now has superpowers because she got injected with Zombie Dust when she was asleep. Anyway, she has to beat the rocket launcher boss from Resident Evil 3, and whereas I had to have a backpack full of herbs and ammo to do so circa 2001, she manages to do it by making him feel feelings. So that's what the red herb was for!

RATING: 52%

Children of the Corn

If I had reviewed Children of the Corn after seeing it years earlier, I would have said that the movie was boring. Now, having it seen again, I'm willing to say that the movie is slow and uneven. It's 90% killer kid cult action and 10% cheap special effects trying to imply supernatural forces. Also, since most of the cast is made up of child actors, there really isn't much violence. Except for when it comes to the ginger kid, who gets his ass kicked by the adult male lead. There are some great shots in the movie that reminded me of Night of the Living Dead, seeing killer farm kids emerge from the corn fields makes for a great image. Overall, the film has a solid premise that gets shortchanged by the under-cooked supernatural elements and lame special effects.

Rating: 58%

Fun Fact: Robby Kiger, who played Job, would later play Patrick in The Monster Squad.

(Image from moviepostershop.com)

Resident Evil

(In a continuation of me and Quammy's Halloween tradition, I am going to review two horror franchises, starting with everybody's favorite video game adaptation, Resident Evil!)

Everybody hates this movie, and I can sort of see why - it suffers from a lot of the problems of early 2000s action movies (including CGI that looks faker than the original Playstation One game, confusing storyline, needless SWAT guys in heavy armor), and strays pretty far from the source material. At the time avoiding zombies for half the film was a detriment, but now, in 2014, years after we've reached Peak Zombie, that is totally fine. Anyway, we all know the plot - a virus leaks and an evil corporation tries to cover it up but that doesn't exactly go so well! I'd also like to point out that this movie franchise is the longest running theatrical action franchise to feature a woman in the lead (apart from Underworld, and that actually might be it), so extra points for that.

RATING: 57%

The Beyond

Lucio Fulci is a great Italian horror director who prefers to assault the reader with surreal moments of intense violence or beauty rather than create any sort of narrative. In The Beyond, one of his most beloved (?) films, there's, like, a house in Louisiana with a door to the titular the beyond? I'm not entirely sure and I've seen it a few times. Well, some spiders eat an eyeball out of somebody's face and there's some zombies and etc, what more do you want?

RATING: 79%

Atom Age Vampire

Don't let the title fool you - there's no actual vampire in this movie (plenty of atoms though). This is a not-so-great film about a doctor who murders for science/horniness. One interesting (insensitive) thing is that the Doc murders people near the port, where hundreds of refugees from Hiroshima are arriving. It's the oldest Western movie that I know of to reference the real human horror of the atomic bombings of Japan. Too bad it's in such a shitty movie.

RATING: 31%

New Tale of Zatoichi

This is the third Zatoichi movie and the first one in color. Here our pudgy blind samurai friend returns home to find out his old mentor has turned into a bad guy! Zatoichi considers retiring with the woman he loves and having a nice life where he doesn't slice up evildoers but there are, like, twenty movies left in this series so I'll let you guess what he decides.

RATING: 76%

V/H/S/2

So I didn't really like the first movie in this anthology series, but then a few different people told me the sequel was worth it because there was one great segment included. Unfortunately, every person forgot which number segment it was so I was doomed to watch this whole movie. Like the first one, some people are compelled for some reason to watch a bunch of snuff films, which, despite the fact that this takes place in modern times and every individual short film was shown in context to be shot digitally, have all been transferred down to big ol' unreliable VHS copies. Anyway, there's a boring ghost one, a boring zombie one, A TOTALLY BONKERS AMAZING SHORT HORROR FILM THAT DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE PACKAGED IN THIS SHITTY DEAL, and a boring alien one. Just watch the third segment and you'll be fine.

RATING: 85% (Third segment)
RATING: 26% (Whole movie)

The Crusade

Early Doctor Who serials are divided up pretty evenly between those with historical premises and those based in science fiction. It's my understanding that the historical serials were never particularly popular and were eventually abandoned after the first few seasons. Having seen about a half dozen of these historical serials, it's easy to see that they often follow a basic formula. One or more of the travelers get captured and those remaining find themselves rubbing elbows with a famous historical figure while the rest of the plot unfolds. The Crusade definitely has some of this formula working for it/against it, but for the first time you get a sense that the characters have learned from their previous experiences. Barbara is captured in the first few minutes of the story and yet she never despairs and never stops trying to escape. Having survived more than a dozen impossible scenarios by this point, she remains unfazed in the face of certain death.

Rating: You ask for the impossible very lightly%

(Image from aintitcool.com)

The Tale of Zatoichi Continues

This is one of those sequels that returns exactly to the scene of the first movie, like Back to the Future II (time travel) or Return of the Jedi (Death Star). Here Zatoichi returns to the place he was sort of forced to honor-kill the dying samurai in the first movie, but a buncha people are super pissed at him! Unlike the first movie, Zatoichi quickly and frequently fights large gangs of assassins because we don't have to wonder if it's a myth that he's so great (because why would they make 26 fucking movies about him being a good liar). It's not as good as the original but it's still fun to watch Zatoichi act like a loveable clumsy doofus until he's forced to kill approximately 100 people with his cane sword.

RATING: 66%

The Tale of Zatoichi

I just recently finished watching all twenty-whatever James Bond movies and wanted a new series to watch, so why not the Zatoichi samurai movies I asked myself, and I said ok, sure, just watch 'em. In this first film of the 26 film saga, Zatoichi, a blind masseuse, shows up to a gambling house. It turns out Zatoichi is basically the Japanese Daredevil (though, hm, it beat Daredevil's creation by a year so I suppose Daredevil is the American Zatoichi) - he may be blind, but he has enhanced other senses and swordsmanship to take over. Anyway, he's one of those swordspeople who realizes killing is bad, m'kay, so he doesn't want to get involved in a big gambling house war, even after he meets a dying samurai named Hirate who befriends him and begs him to fight him. I'll let you guess whether or not these two swordsmasters fight by the end of the film!

RATING: 76%

The Web Planet

This is a serial that really pushed the limits of what Doctor Who was capable of accomplishing, despite its meagre budgets and limited technical resources. Yes, you can spot the seams rather easily, but you can also tell that the cast and crew of the show were giving it their all. Time, unfortunately, has not been kind to The Web Planet, it's generally regarded rather poorly when compared to other serials from Doctor Who's early years. The Doctor and his companions don't really drive the plot of The Web Planet, they're mostly supporting characters in a larger, unfolding story. But at six parts, the serial ends up dragging on too long. Also, most of the alien creatures encountered by the Doctor and his friends speak in halted speech patterns, making their scenes feel endless. And while some of the effects are impressive, some merely distort the recorded images making everything hazy and out of focus.

Rating: We've been dragged off our course. The question is, is it some natural phenomena, or is it intelligent, deliberate, or for a purpose? Hmm%

(Image from bbc.co.uk)

The Romans

It's 64 AD in Rome and the Doctor couldn't be happier. It might actually be the first time we see the Doctor in a really good mood. We also get to see the Doctor in a fight at one point, his first real physical altercation in the series. And not only does he kick the guy's ass, afterwards he gloats that since he's so used to outwitting his opponents he forgets how much he enjoys "the gentle art of fisticuffs." The Doctor also seems very much in his element when he inserts himself into a conspiracy by assuming the identity of a murdered musician. In hardly any time at all, he gets up close and personal with Nero. Things don't go so well for Ian and Barbara though. Ian gets beat up, he becomes a galley slave, he gets shipwrecked, he gets captured, he almost gets thrown to the lions, and then he's forced to fight a friend to the death. Barbara has a rough go of it too, but even though people are trying to kill her it's mostly just her running away from a horny Nero Pepé Le Pew style. Throughout their ordeals, Ian and Barbara remain pretty calm and focused on escaping their captors, which they eventually do. But while all that is going on, the Doctor is living it up in Nero's court. He plays tricks on everyone as he pieces together the murder mystery that landed him in Nero's lap. He even ends up inspiring Nero to start the Great Fire of Rome. And then, as the city burns in the background, the Doctor and Vicki slip quietly out of Rome and head back to the TARDIS.

Rating: There's one thing you've got to learn about me. When I say we go to Rome, then we go to Rome%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Hellraiser: Revelations

Ok, so I got caught up in studying for my doctoral exams or whatever, but I couldn't just let this rest because if I didn't review it then I watched it in October for nothing. Nothing! Anyway, this movie, the 9th entry in the Hellraiser series, was made to retain copyright, and has just about as much cinematic quality as any legal rider. The lesson that I learned in October so you don't have to is that only the first two Hellraiser movies are worth watching. You're welcome!

RATING: 6%

The Rescue

After the opening credits, The Rescue starts with a brief shot of an empty cave. The TARDIS slowly fades into view. The police box's overhead light blinks. The episode's title is shown. The writer's credit appears. Normally these events would be followed by a cut to the people inside that police box; the show's main cast. Instead, we cut from the TARDIS to a crashed spaceship and the first of it's two survivors: Vicki. In 1965, when this episode first aired, Vicki was kind of a big deal. She was to be the first new companion to join the Doctor's escapades through time and space. The Rescue isn't really an important serial because of its story*, it's important because it establishes that the characters on this show are temporary. The cast could and would ebb and flow around our titular Doctor. Though no one at the time, probably not even the show's own producers, had any idea just how temporary that Doctor could also be.

Rating: Yes, I see. An easy way to get out of a locked room%

(Image from doctorwhomindrobber.com)


*I'll break it down real quick for you: Vicki and Bennett are stranded on the Planet Dido (make your own jokes here). Their rescue ship is still a few days away. Periodically, a scary bug man named Koquillian comes by and freaks Vicki out. Long story short: Koquillian is really Bennett in disguise. He was just trying cover up for killing a whole bunch of people. The Doctor and his companions show up, bust Bennett Scooby-Doo style and essentially nag Vicki into joining them.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Right place, wrong time. While the Doctor finally succeeds in getting Ian and Barbara back to London, he overshoots the date of their original departure by about 200 years or so. In this era, the Daleks have already managed to invade and conquer the Earth. While some resistance fighters do persist, the bulk of the remaining human population have either been forced to work in the Dalek's deep mines or they have been converted into remote controlled slaves (aka Robomen). When the group gets separated after their arrival, Barbara and Susan find themselves travelling through London's sewers with a group of resistance fighters while Ian and the Doctor fall into and out of the Dalek's custody. The serial ends with the Doctor leaving Susan behind on Earth, in a move that is somewhat cold (she is his granddaughter and Earth isn't exactly in great shape when he leaves) but would prove to be only the first in a never-ending series of cast changes.

Rating: One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back%

(Image from littleredumbrella.com)

Planet of Giants

As our intrepid band of travelers prepare themselves for their next adventure, the doors of the TARDIS fly open unexpectedly while the ship is still in transit. At first it seems as though everyone has survived this latest snafu unscathed but after briefly exploring their surroundings our heros come to realize that they have been shrunk down to an inch in height. If that weren't enough of a setback, the Doctor and his companions must deal with a powerful insecticide that has killed everything around them as well as a Film Noir murder plot that is unfolding among the regular sized inhabitants of the area. While there's great potential in shrinking down our characters, the serial does so little with the premise. Two of the three episodes end in cliff hangers that are immediately undercut in the following episode, wasting any possible payoff they offered. The serial also pales in comparison with other properties that have used similar premises, so don't hold your breath for any man vs giant insect battles à la The Incredible Shrinking Man (which had come out seven years previously). The show's producers must have known they had a bit of a dud on their hands as the serial was edited down from four episodes to three.

Rating: It's most puzzling. It's a big mystery, my boy%

(Image from avclub.com)

The Reign of Terror

In his haste to return Ian and Barbara back to their original time and planet the Doctor ends up setting the TARDIS down just outside of Paris during the French Revolution, which just happens to be his favorite era of human history. After a brief period of exploration in the French countryside Ian, Barbara and Susan are all arrested and taken to jail while the Doctor gets knocked unconscious and left behind in a burning building. From there it's a series of schemes and prison breaks as our heros try to avoid a date with the guillotine. The Doctor provides some good comic relief with his impersonation of a French public official while his companions are mostly left alone to contemplate the ethics of participating in historical events while knowing they are ultimately unable to alter the course of history. Two of the serial's six episodes are missing but have been reconstructed for home video in various forms, including animated versions using the original production audio.

Rating: I'm rather tired of your insuations that I am not master of this craft%

(Image from starburstmagazine.com)

Ghoulies IV

Ghoulies IV isn’t really a horror movie so much as it’s an action movie with some supernatural elements. Heck, it’s barely even a Ghoulies movie. The familiar puppety oddballs we’ve seen in every other installment in the franchise have been replaced by two little people in Ghoulie costumes with inexpressive masks. The story follows Jonathan Graves, the lead from the first Ghoulies movie, who’s become a play-by-his-own-rules cop who is really into kinky sex. One of Jonathan’s ex-girlfriends is attempting to steal a jewel that will allow her to release her dark master from Hell. She coincidentally brings two Ghoulies to Earth who proceed to watch the events of the film unfold without ever really getting involved. It’s literally 75 minutes into the 83 minute film before any of the characters directly interact with the two Ghoulies. At one point I was impressed by an action sequence involving a runaway car and multiple vehicle crashes, but it turns out that said sequence was edited into the film from an entirely different Jim Wynorski production.

Rating: 36%

(Image from racksandrazors.com)

Critters 2: The Main Course

The original Critters movie ends with the ominous reveal of a batch of Critter eggs left behind in the Brown family barn, making a sequel all but inevitable. It would seem though that these eggs have a seriously long incubation period as at least two years pass between the events of the first two films. The eggs eventually hatch after being purchased by an unscrupulous junk dealer, unleashing a new wave of killer Critters on the small town of Grover’s Bend. Critters 2 is a good companion to the original film, much more so than the two direct to video sequels that would follow a few years later. The effects still look good and the overall tone of the movie blends horror and comedy effectively.

Rating: 67%

(Image from impawards.com)

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)

C.H.U.D. II - Bud the C.H.U.D.

If you dialed the wayback machine to 1999 you'd find a young Quammy digging through boxes of VHS tapes at his local flea market. It was there that he would find a copy of C.H.U.D. II - Bud the C.H.U.D., just a loose tape with no case or artwork. He would buy said VHS tape and take it back to his dorm room to watch on his roommate's VCR. If you were to watch his expression, you would see the enthusiasm slowly disappear from his face as the movie played out. Many questions came to his mind, questions like: "Hey, wasn't that guy on Head of the Class?" "How can this be a sequel to C.H.U.D. if none of the C.H.U.D.'s look like the C.H.U.D.'s from the first movie?" and "Why does this suck so hard?"

Rating: 44%

(Image from moviepostershop.com)

Hellraiser: Hellworld

The 8th film (why) is about a bunch of kids who play an Internet game based on the Hellraiser series. Of course, nobody in Hollywood knows how the internet or video games work, so it doesn't really translate. Anyway, this movie is essentially a slasher movie that is only tangentially related to Hellraiser in any way, almost like the script they used wasn't even supposed to be a Hellraiser movie (it wasn't). To top it all off, and I'm not spoiling anything because you're spoiling your own life by watching this garbage, the whole movie basically turns out to be a wacky, murderous dream! I feel like I've made some great choices this October.

RATING: 19%

Hellraiser: Deader

A reporter goes to investigate some zombie cult in Hungary and ends up accidentally solving the Lament Configuration. In the first movie it seemed so difficult for Frank to actually figure out how to open the box and summon the Cenobites, but by part VII everybody just does it as soon as they pick up the box first thing. This movie is terrible, but it has two notable scenes. The first is a legitimately visceral scene in which the reporter is trying to pick up a folder in a cramped bathroom without touching a suspended rotting corpse. The second is a legitimately silly scene in a goth club on a moving subway train in which there are naked twinks, topless grandmas covered in flour, and speakers blasting public domain elevator music. These movies want to portray some type of goth counter culture but they are so very clearly made by a bunch of squares.

RATING: 19%