Knocked up (2007)

It's a comedy. It's pretty funny too.

Graveyard of the dead (2009)

Ok, this is it. This is most likely the worst movie I have seen in my entire life. It's the kind of movie that makes Jess Francos Mansion of the lving dead look like it was directed by George Romero. And the worst part? I paid money for it.

Ok, so back in the good old days in Spain a couple of templars, with their holy symbol looking like its spraypainted on their clothes, are out walking on the countryside looking for witches. They're walking and walking (even reusing some scenes of the walking. this is a practice they continue throughout the entire movie, althoug on some occasions they flip the scene) while we keep hearing the same meandering droneish music, some sort of oneminute loop going on and on for at least fifteen minutes. After a while they come upon two men which they start to threaten and when they do not comply the whipping starts. They whip him for at least two whole minutes and finish it off by cutting off his arm and head (I think. The editing is completely worthless, another practice they keep on doing throughout the entire movie). Then they start walking again and soon come upon a young woman picking flowers or something. They grab her and drag her to their lair and starts whipping her. For several minutes. Then they decide they need another woman to whip if they are to become immortal and go out to find one. Walking, walking, walking. They find another woman, drag her back and start whipping her. You know the drill now. In the meantime the men of the village realize they had had enough of this and decide to off the evil templars in a scene full of blood, awful editing and sfx that make Violent Shit look good. Ok, so this was the movies first 25 minutes. The longest 25 minutes I have ever encountered. And now it gets even worse... We jump forward to the present where some guy in a trenchcoat is walking around in the countryside looking for his sister. He walks alot, for what felt like an hour but probably is more like five minutes, shouting the name Miranda at least 50 times. He then finds his sister who is in a state of shock and doesnt recognize him at first. She keeps babbling about her husband who was killed by the Lords of the forest or something. She then runs off and we get the first in a looong serie of flasbacks. It seems that while she was living at home her father secretly lusted for her and soon tried to rape her. This is revealed throughout the movie and has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the events. Anyway, night soon falls and we see a group of people having the lamest party ever in the woods, stringing balloons in the trees and dancing to some godawful public domain music that make you want to pour acid in you ears.

We need a brake now. Did I mention that the movie is almost entirely nudeless, even though it has the production values of a porn movie and most of the actresses are wearing wigs? Well, if you buy the dvd there is a nice trailer of a movie about some nuns possessed by the devil where there is a very graphic scene where a woman is masturbating with a gun shoved right up her snatch. How's that for extras?

Anyway, now it is time for the templars to rise out of their graves. Well, the assholes that buried them seems to just have dropped them on the ground and poured some dirt and leaves over their bodies. You can actually see parts of their bodies sticking out of the leafpile just before they rise. And this is why I bought the movie, since this was supposed to be a tribute to Amando De Ossorios wonderful Blind dead movies. Yes, they do look somewhat similar to Ossorios creations, except for the fact that they doesnt seem to be blind and speak with their voices pitched down. So, now we're getting a bit of gore, eh? Well, sorta. The girls brother is the first one killed, rendering his presence in the movie useless. Why was he even there? There was no reasong whatsoever for him being featured in the story. The background story with the girl running away is poorly integrated into the story, and.. well, it's rendering me speechless. ........

.................................

Ok, so the blind dead walks around in the forest, killing all the partygoers in a series of unbelievably badly edited gorescenes until morning comes, they fall down and the girl lives. The End.

This is such a bad movie that you cannot even laugh at its ineptness. It took me two weeks to watch it, and for a movie thats only 70 minutes long (looooooooooong), that's telling you something. At first I thought this was some kind of poorly disguised fetishmovie for connoiseurs of whipping, but they stop doing that after the 25 minute mark. After that, we only get a couple of lingering shots on Mirandas clothed butt so I dont really know what the makers of this movie really want to say. It is that bad.

Normally I dont like to write these long flaming reviews of a movie I dont like, but I'm making an exception for Graveyeard of the dead. I paid for this, I have the right to call it whatever I like. And this is a warning. Stay away from Graveyeard of the dead aka El Retorno de los Templarios, whatever you do. Stay away.

Before the fall aka Tre Dias(2008)

We've heard and seen this scenario before - A giant asteroid/comet is heading towards earth and the earths governments are doing everything they can to stop it, either destroy it och disrupt its heading. Before the fall takes this premise, and does something entirely different with it. Instead of chronicling the plans to stop the threat, the movie is set on Earth who is being told that all efforts have failed. The asteroid will hit the Earth in three days and there is nothing we can do. The hero of the movie, Alejandro, lives in a small spanish town and is seen as a lazy person, someone who is a bit slow in head, and who is always overshadowed by his brother - the hero of the village who in his youth helped the police catch a serial killer who was killing children in the area. Ale intends to spend his last days doing nothing while the rest of the world tries to find some safe place even though there is no chance of survival but his mother believes that the killer that his brother helped put away has escaped from prison to get revenge. She forces him to drive to the countryhouse where his brothers children are spending their summer. When they arrive they realize that the children know nothing of the coming end and Ales mother intends to keep it that way. The next morning, Ales mother is found dead, drowned in a nearby stream. Then a stranger arrives, claiming to be a friend of their father...

Yes, this is no ordinary End of the world flick. There is some of the looting and killing that you might expect, but only in small scenes that never really interfer with the mainstory. Instead, we follow Ale on his journey from the black sheep of the family to the protector as he tries to keep the children in the dark and at the same time protect them from the stranger who may or may not be the escaped killer. This is a moody drama/thriller as we follow Ales awkard attempts to keep the siblings from finding out what is going on and keeping the stranger out. Towards the end the movie kicks into another gear which works just fine and as long as you dont expect a high concept scifithriller, you will be rewarded with a somewhat slow moving but tense thriller. The acting is good throughout, the movie, especially the lead actor who plays a character who everyone has very low expectations of and who seems to have resigned himself to being just that loser everyone thinks he is, and he has a problem with being someone else, someones hero. He just doesnt know how to. The fine script keeps you on your toes from the beginning to the end, with just one mistake - a really stupid and unnecessary scene just before the ending. You know it when you see it. Other than that this is slowmoving but good thriller with an original story and a professional execution. Rewarding.

Whiteout (2009)

I wonder why there arent more movies set in a truly cold environment? Antarctica and places like that are perfect for horror and thrillers, since the weather itself is as deadly as whatever beasties or psychos the movie serves up. I can accept the fact that it is somewhat harder to actually shoot a movie in such an environment, but can it really be that much harder than shooting in a jungle or the dull forests of Vancouver? Whiteout is a movie that uses just such an environment as a setting and while it may be flawed and full of cliches, it still gets its snowy landscapes just right and that is worth a lot.

Kate Beckinsale plays a Us Marshall posted at an outpost in Antarctica, due to some rather cliched personal reasons which are told with flashbacks throughout the movie. She is preparing to resign and go home, but just before she can do that someone finds a corpse in the snow. All this points towards a geological expedition which found something buried in the snow (a russian airplane. We see that very plane crash in the beginning of the movie) and now someone is going around killing people for the content of a crate in that plane, all while the great storm known as the Whiteout is approaching and everyone is evacuating. But who?! Well, you figure that out long before Kate does.

That is the major problem with the movie - the story. It has a story which is ok I suppose, but it isnt really that exciting. It's full of cliches and the "twists" arent especially hard to figure out. On the other hand, this means that you can put your brain in hibernation and just enjoy the rest of the movie which isnt all bad. The story may be a bit stale, but the movie looks incredibly good. The photography is truly awesome and the canadian locations are a feast for the ole eyes. The directors manages to wring out a fairly decent amount of suspense of the material he has, even though none of the actors really seem to give their best. A shitload full of cliches but at least they come in a shiny package. In the end, Whiteout is a fairly decent thriller and you can do a hell of a lot worse than this.

Goyôkiba (1972)

Razor Hanzo is a no bullshit guy. A bit like if Charles Bronson was living in Japan in the days when there were no filthy gaijin influences. He is a policeofficer in Edo but has some rather unorthodox working methods, which isnt exactly approved by his superiors but Hanzo is so fucking tough that he doesnt care, he hates them anyway since they're all whimps. When he is not out chasing criminals or corrupt officers, he spends his days torturing himself to become even tougher and also pounding his giant penis with a piece of wood to make it even.. harder? Hanso's speciality is coaxing information out of female suspects using his giant tool by putting them in a fishnet, lowering them down on his rod and then spinning the net until they tell him everything when he threatens to stop pounding them. Yes, only in Japan.

But it works, it really does. Shintaro Katsu, previously known as Zatoichi in a series of 20+ movies which I really should get down to watching some day, is awesome in the titlerole, displaying good actingskills and a natural authority. Watching him pounding his meat feels completely natural. Add to this a great funky score and some decent bloodshed we get a good movie for all the lovers of the red geysers of the 70s samuraimovies. The sexual bits are a bit odd, but unless this is your first japanese movie they feel pretty natural with the period. This is only available on dvd in a box with the two sequels, and I really look forward to watching more of this mayhem.

Movies and beer

I was home at a friends house this weekend, drinking beer and watching a heck of a lot of movies. It would take me days to write reveiews for all of so I'll write a couple of short sentences about all of them:

We started with Pitch black on bluray, which was quite nice on a really big screen. The movie is still pretty good, with nice characters, great sfx and a but of the ole violence.

Movie number two was Cloverfield. At this time we were getting a bit drunk and did not follow the movie 100%, at least until the monstermayhem started. It is as good as ever though, with awesome sfx.

After that another friend arrived, our host cooked up some chili con carne with garlic bread and we started watching the old grindhouse classic I drink your blood. A fun movie, though I remembered it as gorier. Not that it is without violence and blood, on the contrary. Great schlock with a bunch of satanic hippies with rabies.
Brilliant plot.

Now the beer started flowing and the movies got even better with the norwegian nazizombiemovie Dead snow, a cool and gory movie. You cant fail with nazizombies. Unless it's Zombie lake.

After that we watched an old 80s classic, the remake of The Blob. This is how a remake should be, updating it with cool sfx and tons of gore. An extra plus for a big budget movie that actually kills a little kid.

Wes Cravens The People under the stairs was next. A bit of an underdog this one, with a good plot and acting, but gets a minus for having an annoying kid in the leadrole.

At this time the clock was about 2am in the morning, so just one more movie. The Fifth element. Great european comicbook scifi really.

All in all, a great evening with good company, tasty food and yummy beer. I got home at six in the morning.

Edit: We actually saw one more movie, William Malones criminally underrated House on haunted hill - an excellent horror movie with good suspense and great acting, especially from Geoffry Rush who shows you that being hammy is an art. And I even like that demon towards the end, one of the few who does it seems. :)

The Tournament (2009)

I like my headshots big and messy, no doubt about it. When The Tournament starts we are treated with the glorious sight of someone getting his head turned into little pieces with a bolt gun (a great cameo by John Lynch from Infestation and Hardware amongst others) and I know I am in for a nice ride. Sure enough, The Tournament is full of heads blown to bits, bodies exploding and the old favorite, the giant squib. That's enough for me. The story is just an excuse for violent mayhem with 30 of the worlds best assassins gathering in a town in Great Britain for a competition - who is the best of them? All the while a bunch of millionaires are betting on the outcome and alcoholic priest Robert Carlyle gets drawn into it all by mistake.

And that is all there is. A shitload of cliches. The good assassin, the eeevil assassin (so evil that he kills a golden retriever just to show the audience how eeeevil he is), the former winner who is back in the game again and then there is the cannon fodder assassins, the rest of them who are just there to be shot to pieces. All in good fun. It's not exactly Francis Ford Coppola, but it sure as hell works while you watch it. The actors are as good as the material and both Ving Rhames, Kelly Hu and Robert Carlyle do a decent enough job. The actionscenes are nonstop and never gives you a chance to get even the slightest bored. Good fun for the family. For some reason the movie has been on the shelf since 2007 and very recently went straight to dvd which is a shame since this is better than a lot of the actionmovies hollywood churns out, especially since it was made on a budget significantly lower, the measly sum of four million euros which is approximately seven million $. Recommended.

99.9 (1997)

It could have been so good. Well, at least thats what I thought when I read the plot of 99.9, but what I got wasnt exactly what I expected. My own fault I suppose. Not that it is a bad movie, just a bit muddled, and the plot makes it appear more horror than it really is.

99.7 starts with a bang and an really intriguing event. A naked man is running for his life through the stoned walls of a small spanish village. Something unseen seems to be hunting him and when he stops to hide he sees something forming on the ground around the corner, like something bubbling out of the stone. He continues his flight when he hears something and climbs up on a roof, but slips and impales himself on a metalfence. A friend of his, Lara who is a host on a radioshow that specializes in the occult, receives a package with a videotape and some newsclippings about the mans death. When she views the tape it is full of mostly static, but also weird sounds and images so she decides to find out what really happened. It seems that her friend was investigating life after death in an old abandoned house with a strange history, where faces seemingly appear on the walls all by themselves.

Yes, it sounds like a horrormovie and from the start it feels like one too. But when Laras investigation never really unfolds anything other than that the locals dont want to talk about the house, you start to lose interest. Then, all of a sudden, the movie takes a bit of a turn from horror and into straight thriller territory which made me disapointed. It doesnt ruin the movie, it just goes into a direction that isnt as interesting as I hoped and the "twist" itself isnt especially shocking. Not that 99.9 is a bad movie, on the contrary. The direction and the superb cinematography makes the movie great to look at and the actors perform their tasks well. There is good talent behind and in front of the camera so if you like your suspense on spanish you can do much worse. I just expected something entirely different.

Gojira aka Godzilla (1954)

Since there's been quite some time since I saw a lot of the Godzillamovies, I decied it is time to watch them all over again, but this time in order. I suppose this is a good way to o.d on rubber, but what the hell, it's a nice way to go. I'll only watch 1 or 2 a week though, starting with the original. Gojira. The classic.

We all know the plot. Nuclear tests mutates a dinosaur into a giant, firebreathing beast that starts to move towards Tokyo, and soon turns it into a pile of rubble, not even trying to disguise the fact that is a response from the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, which makes the movie so much more horrible. The special effects are very clearly effects, but the black and white and the details of the buildings makes it totally belivable. As far as effectswork go, Gojira is still on par with most of the sequels (and much better than quite a few of the Jun Fukuda movies).

It is as hard for me to praise a movie as it is to totally destroy one. When a movie is a good as this one, I dont want to analyze its good bits with a thousand words, I just want to bow before it, point towards it and say "Behold, the glory and perfection that is Gojira (1954). It is that good. There is nothing of the camp and silly stuff that came with most of the sequels (which in itself is an awesome thing, just not really comparable with the original) and Gojira truly deserves it's classic status. That's it. I have nothing more to say.

The Hills run red (2009)

The Hills run red is another one of those Backwoodshorrors that has started to flood the horrorgenre the last few years, and while it's not an entirely successful movie, it is still better than a lot of its peers.

Our "hero", Tyler, is obsessed about a lost horrormovie called The Hills run red who ran at a few cinemas in the early eighties and was promptly banned for being one hell of a sick movie. No one has seen it of course and Tyler is determined to track it down and make a documentary about it. He finds the directors daughter strung up on drugs at a stripclub and manages to get her off the crap all while his best friend starts fucking his girlfriend because he is neglecting her. Oh, poor her. The four of then start on a journey to find the house where the director shot the movie, and perhaps the movie itself. Well, you know what is gonna happen. A lot of gore that is. And a decent amount of nudity.

The worst part of the movie are its characters, mainly our trio of documentary filmmakers who goes around being assholes towards each other and not really helping us care for their fate at all. On the other hand, William Sadler is always good as a bad guy and he seems to relish the fairly small part he has in the proceedings and Sophie Monk as the daughter aquits herself well, even in the scenes where she doesnt show her breasts which unfortunately is most of the movie. Another, though rather minor weakness, is the script which actually feels short. It's almost over before you know it and although a good pace is good entertainmentwise, this movies backstory could have benefited from being fleshed out even more. But enough shittalk, what about the good stuff? The Gore! There is a lot, mostly in short scenes from the movie that our characters are looking for and it is mostly really well done except for a scene or two with rather poor looking cgiblood. Not that it really hurts the movie, since there is a lot of the old school stuff. Axes in heads, bodies torn apart, faces cut to pieces, you name it. Yum yum. The coverboy in the piece, Babyface, is a decent villain with his creepy looking mask and one scene towards the end of the movie where he actually talks had me howling with joy. You'll know it when you see/hear it. What else can I say? Dave Parker has created a good horrormovie which perhaps doesnt really have anything new to offer but serves up one hell of a gory and wellmade dish with a fun story and some good scares. Recommended for gorehounds and horrorfans overall.

Monsters Vs Aliens (2008)

Well, what can I say? It's a good animated movie with tons of references to all the glorious b-movies from the past, including Mothra and the Blob. The movie looks awesome, has great voiceactors (Seth Rogens B.O.B. being my favorite) and is perhaps a bit too PG for this blog. But I still loved it.

Wanted (2008)

There's nothing like a decent headshot or five to liven up a dull trainride and Wanted sure did that for me the other day. Watching it on my Iphone that is. It starts out with a bang (and a nice cameo by David O'Hara) and keeps you entertained throughout the entire movie. Good stuff. James McAvoy plays this loser working at a nondescript job that he hates, living in an shoddy apartment with a bitchy girlfriend who is being plowed by his "best" friend. All of a sudden he is approached by Fox (Angelina Jolie) who tells him that his father who left him at birth has been killed and that he is to take his place in a brotherhood of assassins who keeps the world from falling apart. He doesnt really believe this at first but after being almost killed he joins the society and is subject to a rather brutal initiation, on his way to be just that kind of assassin who can control the path of the bullet a bit more than usual.

I'm a huge fan of Timur Bekmambetovs Russian fantasymovies Nightwatch and Daywatch, but when I read he was doing this I wasnt really sure if I wanted to see it. The reason? Angelina Jolie. She used to be a decent actress (watching Stolen years a couple of weeks ago reconfirmed this for me) but in the last few years she has become something else, somehting that makes it hard for you to see anything else than the person you read about constantly in the gossip press. Sure enough, she is the worst part of the movie but she is still the kind of professional that doesnt ruin the movie. But that scene, that I suppose is for all the fanboys, when she steps out of a bath naked with her back towards the camera is pretty freaky. Her arms are so thin that she looks positively anorectic. Really disgusting. But other than that, this is a really fun, violent yarn that keeps you entertained from square zero which is a good feat. It helps that you have a bunch of fun actors in the others parts like Thomas Kretschmann, Terence Stamp and Konstantin Khabenskiy from the Watchmovies. The violence is bloody and hard, the direction is perfectly over the top and all the flashy cameramovies actually work for once. This is another one of those bubblegummovies that are perfect for a slow afternoon or a cold trainride.

Iced (1988)

A buch of friends goes skiing, with one of them a bit unstable resulting in him being scorned by the girl he likes. He then kills himself and five years later they are all invited to a cabin in a newbuilt skiing area, not knowing that are all going to pay... Yes, a classic slasherplot.

Iced makes me want to go medieval on it's ass. Plain and simple. "Thou shalt remain in obscurity, never to be seen again!!" It has all the ingredients a nice slasher should have, boobs and violence, but this is proof that even that wont help. It took me two weeks to watch the damn thing, with the biggest problem being a scene at the 55 minute mark that made me want to vomit everytime I turned on the movie. And even better, the killer murders one victim fifteen minutes into the movie but after that we get just talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk until after the hour when the killing starts. Most of these kills are pretty unspectacular, especially the old radiator in bath gag, and even worse is the icicle in the eye bit, which isnt shown at all! Shame upon the makers of Iced...

Iced, this little masterpiece that we're talking about, was written by Joseph Alan Johnson who also acts in the movie (I was gonna say that he is the worst of the lot, but with such a group of masterful thespians, I'm not sure). He was also seen in Berserker and House of lost souls, the tv-movie by Umberto Lenzi where he also was the absolutely worst actor. Not a bad feat, considering the poor (and appalingly dubbed) actors in HOLS. He fills Iced with tons and tons of dialogue, to make sure that we realize that all the characters are having lots of problems with their relationships, which is exactly what we want when we are watching a slasher. Johnson even writes himself a juicy sexscene which in itself is very odd, since he starts dreaming about it before the characters even meet. The "seduction" scene where Johnson tries to seduce one of the ladies is the scene I could barely get past wher the two are lying on a rug in front of the fire, staring into each others eyes and saying stupid things. Fucking hell, what is this drivel?!? AAARGH!

Where was I? Oh, yes. Iced. If you manage to watch the first 60 out of 85 minutes you actually get to some violence and there is a nice scene where an asshole doctor gets a skipole through his throat. Other than that the violence is pretty dull or not shown at all. One of the damsels in distress shows herself naked several times which somewhat adds to some sort of entertainment, but her haircut is straight out of the darkest abyss of the eighties so I dont really know if I should be aroused or go mad by the sheer sight of it. And then there is the twist towards the end... the reveal of the killer. We see the killer standing outside the cabin, and then cut to the remaining survivor calling the killer who is at home asleep, waking him up. Eh? Yes, that is somewhat spoilerish but who cares? He is the only available alternative anyway. It is just idiotic. To top it all off, we get a another 5 years later twist which is so corny and dumb that it just makes me smile.

There is just one more thing I want to mention before we wrap this up. The guy who plays the cold cokesniffing punk with a gun and the worlds smallest ponytail, doesnt he look a lot like the guy who gets his head sawed of with a chainsaw in House of lost souls? I'll fix some screenshots later...

Oh well, this is 85 minutes I'll never get back. There isnt much talent behind or in front of the camera and they killed themselves with the slowest pace since Tarkovskijs Stalker. There is a nice kill or two towards the end but this is basically only for the slasherfreak who has to see everything. Everyone else, keep away. Very far away.

The Evil (1978)

Back when I was perhaps 10-11 I got ahold of an album by Venom, the *hrm* masterpiece that is At war with Satan. Even back then I remember the record to be pretty much worthless but it was a cool cover and had this text in the fold that spoke of the final war between God and Satan which enticed me a bit. One of the lines where something like "And the seven keys to the gates of hell lie unguarded" which immediately gave me an idea. I was to write a novel about this guy who found the keys to the seven gates of hell and gave himself the mission to close them all. This was some 25 years ago and I dont remember much else than that the gates where in places such as Hill house, the Amityville house and the Bermdua triangle. One part even had the here hijacking a plane to fly over the bermuda triangle and parachuting himself into it. Michael Bay, are you hearing this? I dont remember much more other than the fact that that I recall ripping the end or at least a part of the story from Gus Trikonis fun little flick The Evil. This little tidbit just came back to after watching the movie again after 25 years which means that this review is pretty much soaked with nostalgia. But you know, it is a fun little movie with is pretty much generic as haunted housemovies go but does what it is supposed to do and has fun with it. And, it has that plottwist that I ripped off, which is I dare say, one of the weirdest plot twists I have ever seen to this day.

Richard Crenna, Rambos old chief in command to most of us or that millionaire in Judging Amy who were supposed to marry Amys mother to some, like my girlfriend for instance, plays a college professor who buys an old house that he intends to restore. He brigns a group of people with him and, voila, the house traps them all inside, Andrew Prine starts to saw his hand off and they start to die on by one. Seems this house is built upon... something bad.

Simple story, but Gus Trikonis is a capable director who keeps the action moving at a nice pace although it does have a but of tv-movie feel sometimes, something which at least the handsawing bit helps us dispel. The kills are a bit simple and ungory which adds to the tvfeeling, but they are at least effective and one scene where a young woman is dragged into a piece of stairwell which suddenly is pitch black is a really evocative one. The actors are decent, Richard Crenna and Andrew Prine are always watchable, but yet again, there is that tv-moviefeeling again. Was this shot for tv? Does anyone know? Imdb doesnt say anything about it. Oh well, none of that makes it a bad movie. The scares are sound, the atmosphere is good and as seventies haunted house movies go, you can do a lot worse.

Then there is that plottwist. The following text will be full of spoilers of the events in the end of the movie so if you dont want to be spoiled I recommend you stop reading NOW.

The whole reason for all of this is that the house is built upon the place where Satan fell when he was cast out from heaven, and acts as a prison for him. Richard Crenna removes a cross from a hatch he finds in the cellar, which means he releases Satan from his prison. So far, this is a decent plot for a horror movie, but there is a scene toward the end where Crenna and his wife fall down into the hatch and comes upon some tunnels. Crenna starts wandering around and finds a large white room where Satan himself sits upon a throne, as an old guy in a suit. Now, if Satan manifested himself upon Earth, wouldnt he have chosen a more distinct, evil form than Victor Buono? It gets a bit anticlimactic and very unscary. But then again, I suppose he can choose whatever form he wants and it could be that he chose this form, the rather common for for God, just to mock him? In the end, it would have been much cooler if there was this slobbering beast in the room, covering both walls and ceiling. Tv-movie anyone? The goof-factor gets pretty high, but never really ruinds the movie because its just so fucking weird. I would love a nice dvd of this with a commentary track explaing what the hell they were up too.

END SPOILER.

A fun little frightflick well worth spending 90 minutes with. Thats enough for me.

Oh, I actually finished that novel. I think it was 60 pages long or something like that. I have no idea where it is today and I think it's best it remains like that. I wouldnt want to be sued you know.

This...

is love. Pure, unconditional love straight from the heart.

Is it...

an evidence of my extreme laziness or proof that the new digital society is beneficial to us all when I download Superstition from the internet, just because I am too lazy to locate any of the two dvdreleases I have..?

Review roundup

Since I'm way behind my reviewing and I'm home sick with an infected tooth (I have pus in my head. That's something you dont get to say every day) which means I'll probably watch a lot more movies I'll just tot down the latest movies I've watched with a few sentences. Just to get rid of them and help catch up:

The Prodigy (2005). Microbudgeted actionmovie doesnt have much of a script or any good actors, but the actionscenes arent half bad and shows some talent.

War dog (1986). Swedish actionmovie tries to look american but is so obviously swedish and the goofballfactor gets pretty hugh marks because of that. On the other hand, the actionscenes are pretty long and well made and the violence is gloriously bloody with squibs larger than most movies I can think of.

Day of the triffids (2009). Recent remake of John Wyndhams classic scifistory is a decent watch. The triffids are cool (I'm a sucker for tentacles), the actors are good but the story never really goes anywhere. It has a asatisfactory ending, but feels more like a pilot which I suspect the writer intended it to be.

Wicked City (1992). Liveaction version of an anime based upon a book where the world fights against monsters in human disguise. It has everything you would expect when based on a japanese horror source: Tentacles, violence and a wild and cool story. Highly recommended for fans of that genre.

Eastern promises (2007). Another proof that David Cronenberg is one hell of a director. An awesome thriller set in the russian mob part of London with superb actors, nuff said.

Versus (2000). The ultimate proof that style over substance works when there is enough talent behind the camera. An awesome action/horrorflick with tons of gore and cool fightscenes. I'll write a real review as soon as I get the Ultimate edition which is on it's way home to me as we speak.

National treasure: Book of secrets (2007) Sometimes is nice to know exactly what you are going to get and the National treasure franchise is a PG-rated version of Dan Browns blockbuster. Here a bad guy only dies if he is REALLY bad or sacrificing himself and any kind of broken relation is mended toward the end. If you want to turn off your brain for two hours, this is perfect. And it has Ed Harris as the main villain for gods sake.

Furankenshutain tai chitei kaijû Baragon (1965)

Aaaaah, there is nothing like a juicy, well made Kaiju when it comes to entertainment. When you have the best team gathered with Ishiro Honda at the helm, Eiji Tsuburaya on the sfx, Nick Adams and Kumi Mizuno in the cast and Akira Ifukube doing the music, you know you are in for a good time.

You see, the heart of the monster of Frankenstein was seized by the germans during the second world war and sent to the japanese when the germans realized they were going to lose the war. A feral kid eats the heart and later starts to grow to kaijusize. In the meantime Barugon awakens from his/hers/its underground lair and, well, what do you think a giant rubbermonster does?! You know it will end up with a huge fight between our two big fellas but then there's that damn octopus.. When I read what I just wrote it kinda blew my mind. There is a reason why I love Giant monster movies and Frankenstein conquers the world is a damn good example of why.

I dont really know what else to say, this is high grade kaiju. To quote myself (and spare myself of coming up with something new to write): "When you have the best team gathered with Ishiro Honda at the helm, Eiji Tsuburaya on the sfx, Nick Adams and Kumi Mizuno in the cast and Akira Ifukube doing the music, you know you are in for a good time." The only thing I could bitch about is that Frankensteins monster, however well played, is a poor substitute for a good rubbermonster, and while we're on the topic of that, Barugon is a pretty crappy one. And what the hell is up with that ending? This will be a spoiler, but what the hell, you arent watching Japanese monster movies for its intricate plots... Frankensteins monster defeats Barugon but all of a sudden a giant octopus pops up and drags the monster into the sea. The End. Wtf? Well, it is still an awesome movie.

The House of lost souls (1989)

I tend to get nostalgic from time to time, for the good old days. With that I mean all of the nice exploitation that poured out of Italy in the seventies and eighties. Those days are gone now, but now and again I find some movie from that period that I've missed and Umberto Lenzis La casa delle anime erranti aka The House of lost souls is such a movie. Just like people can be lyrical about a favorite movie that they havent seen in 20 years, I tend to be a bit more positive towards just a little glimpse of those days. One out of four movies that Lenzi and Lucio Fulci (Two each) directed that were supposed to be shown on Italian TV but were in the end deemed too violent and instead shown at the cinema. None of the movies are excessively gory, but still features a lot more violence than your average tv-movie. And any movie whose first kill is the annoying, wiseass little kid is a favorite in my book.

The story is nothing special, yet functional. A group of geologists have been spending a couple of months in the Italian mountains looking at rocks (I'm amazed no one killed the little annoying kid and buried his body under some rocks. No one would've found him) but are waylaid by landslides on their way home. The find a small hotel late at night which looks a bit run down, but the owner lets them in. One of the geologists (The kind of girl that always appears in an Italian horror movie. Screaming and crying all the time, on the border of hysterics) has this condition where she is able to see things from the past (choice dialogue: The doctors gave you a reasonable explanation, they said you had psychic powers) and sees a woman and a small boy being killed by a psycho with an axe. Yeah, you know where all of this will end up. It seems the former manager was a nice fellow who liked to murder his guests and now the ghosts of his victims are out to kill our lovable geologists in the same way as they were killed: Decapitation.

The movie starts a bit dull, and its not helped by some really bad acting and even worse dialogue. But then, at the 35 minute mark, something magic happens. The little annoying fuck follows a ghost boy and ends up with his head in a washing machine and is wonderfully decapitated. After that, anything remotely bad was simply forgotten and I enjoyed the movie to the fullest. Yes, the acting is horrible, especially our hero who is played by Joseph Alan Johnson, writer and star of the "classic" slasher Iced and there is another fella here who looks exactly like the cokehead from that movie but I cant verify it with Imdb. I'm gonna have to make some screenshots later. Umberto Lenzi might not have had much of his heart in it, but even then he is still a professional and the movie looks good for its budget. The gorescenes are obviously toned down a bit and a promising scene with a chainsaw cuts away at precisely the wrong moment but we do get a bunch of nice decapitations. Add to this a halfway decent score by Claudio Simonetti using a pseudonym and we get a cozy little Italian exploitation movie. Not as good as Hell's gate or Ghost house (both shot during the same timeperiod) but good entertainment on your tv or on the Iphone.

The Final destination (2009)

You know, I never thought that watching people get killed in excessively gory ways could be boring but Final destination 3D (or whatever the fuck its actual title is) comes awfully close to being just that. The three previous movies were all decent timewasters but this one... The acting and dialogue is so fucking worthless that it makes any Bruno Mattei slop look good and Dardano Sachetti a coherent writer.

If you've seen any of the other movies in the series, you know what to expect. This time the accident is on a race track, resulting in lots of people killed but the main character keeps getting these visions (you can actually see him searching his mind for his lines) and in the end, it doesnt matter. The kills are silly and gory (and the only thing worth watching this movie for), there are a couple of tits and... no, I cant come up with a third positive thing. This movie sucks and should only be watched if you really dont have anything else to watch. Even Camp Rock is better than this. Let us hope that this truly is the Final destination, unless the next movie is set at Camp Rock and features the Jonas brothers getting messily killed over and over again.

Patrick still lives (1980)

Patrick still lives, a very unofficial sequel to Richard Franklins Aussie sleeper, is a sleazy masterpiece of unprecedented power. Loaded to to brim with nasty gore and near hardcore sexploitation imagery, entertainment doesnt get better than this.

Yes, the plot is stupid. Our psychic psycho gets a bottle to the head and succumbs to a coma in which his angry dad makes him get revenge on those who supposedly were at fault. Stupid yes, but it gets the job done and Patrick does lots of nasty things such as poker through the vagina and out of the mouth, hook through the neck and carwindow to the neck, all in glorious, graphic detail. The special effects arent exactly Dick Smith material but are ok for such an obviously low budget movie. To top it of, the direction is lazy and uninspired but all that gore and closeups of masturbating women, and the site of a very well maintained 43 year old Mariangela Giordani in her best milfmode parading around wearing next to nothing raises the entertainment value next to a Kaiju movie. Gloriuosly gory trash. And to top it off, the movie is shot in the same house as Burial ground! Go and get it NOW, or Patrick will make you masturbate in front of him! Be sure to get the unrated version of course.

Noroi (2005)

Do not dismiss this as just another Blair witch project ripoff. It has some similarities, but Noroi is a fake documentary (along with some found footage towards the end giving some sort of explanation to the events that transpired) where BWP is a Cannibal holocaust ripoff. Plain and simple.

We follow Masafumi Kobayashi, a supernatural investigator who specializes in releasing documentaries based upon his investigations. From the start we know that something went horribly wrong since his house has burnt down, killing his wife and Kobayashi himself is missing. We view his last documentary, about a series of supernatural goings on, seemingly unrelated at first, but they all have something to do with a legend of the demon Katugaba. It would be stupid of me to reveal anymore since the fun of it all lies in following Kobayashi along and discovering for ourselves what mysteries he unveiled.

There is an awful lot of handheld camera here, but it is nowhere near the shakiness of the worst of its ilk. Since Kobayashi is recording a documentary (and not the first he has done) it is all done in a fairly professional style and doesnt have that tendency for the camera to float all over the place in intense scenes. The movie reminds me a lot of my favorite playstation games series - Project Zero and gets a real boost from being based upon a mythology which is quite different from what we are used to in Europe. The performances seem realistic and just about my only complaint is some cgi that unfortunately looks just like cgi and not an enhancement to what is being displayed on the screen in front of us. This is a minor complaint and Noroi survives those instances with its strong story and the genuine creepiness which is all over the surroundings. A good horror movie with decent scares which I will recommend to all fans of J-horror, especially for those who wants a good those of asian horror without those longhaired ghostwomen.