Hotel inferno (2013)

Necrostorm brings us yet another fun goremovie after the wonderful Adam Chaplin and the fun but not nearly as insane Taeter city. This time they chose a dangerous path, something that could have doomed the movie from the start, namely having it totally in first person. And the fun, and cool, part is that it really works.

The lead character is a hitman that has been hired to kill two persons in a mysteriously empty hotel. He performs the deed but not before hearing some weird stuff from one of the victims. It seems that they were like him, hired to perform hits to appease something only referred to as "Her" and that he one day will share the same fate. Our hero gets upset over all of this and decides to get out of the place. Unfortunately the person who hired him does not like this one bit and sends a group of other hitmen on him. Ultrabloody carnage ensues. And then there is the question of the mysterious "Her"...

If you've seen any of Necrostorms movies you will know the format, a lot of overexaggerated makeup and absurd dialogues, and it works really damn well here. The plot is cool, never slowing down even once. There is a shitload of awesome violence that are a mixture of corny practical stuff and really well made digital ones, some of it really looks beyond awesome.

Seriously, this is one awesome schorcher of a flick. Slambang violence and über-gory splatter with a style that Necrostorm has patented as their own. There are very few low budget DIY movies that come even close to the awesomeness that is Hotel Inferno. Sure, there are negatives like its fair share of clunky dialogue and the somewhat anticlimactic ending but those are just minor stuff. If you liked Adam Chaplin and Taeter City you should have ordered this months ago. The rest of you should try it. Now.

The Prey (1984)

I really like this subgenre of slasher, the one where a group of mostly youngsters go hiking and fall foul of a redneck/mutant/psycho in some glorious scenery in an american national park. There are quite a few good ones like for instance Just before dawn and The Final terror. The Prey on the other hand is quite likely the dullest one of them all.

It's not like it's an outright bad movie. The direction is fine, the scenery is nice and there is a bit of the ole gore and nudity. The problem with the movie is its pace, it moves like a drugged snail on a carpet full of glue, there is at least one hour before anything remotely interesting happens. We do get some desperately needed mayhem towards the end but the movie is dead in the water by then, killed by long and boring scenes of walking and talking. Then there is the final nail in the coffin, an extended flashback of the events that caused all this. It plays out like a pornflick, a lot of boobs and uninteresting sexscenes which isnt so strange since all the actors in that scene are actual pornactors like John Leslie and Eric Edwards (one quick look at the directors resume explains why, three out of his sixteen movies are straight porn). The movie never recovers after that, you already lost all interest for what is going on.

The Prey isn't some crappy cheesefest like Dont go in the woods or The Forest, it's even worse. It's a competent but really damn boring movie which I frankly wouldn't buy if it was released on a restored bluray. Ok, I probably would. But not right away.

A night to dismember (1983)

Jesus fucking christ.

Doris Wishmans movie is such a big mess that your head almost explodes just thinking about it. It's a hodgepodge of reshoots (half the footage was lost when a disgruntled employee at a lab destroyed it) that barely make any sense whatsoever, though thanks to the wonders of the narrator we do get something that oh so slightly resembles a semi-coherent plot. How about a voiceover that says stuff like "Susan had accidentally fallen on an axe. She was dead." We also need to have a talk about the wildly inappropriate soundtrack that has jazzy seventies funk playing over supposedly tense scenes and horror cues that repeat themselves over the same scene. The whole thing was also shot with no sound, using about two different actors playing all the roles, not even trying to lipsync what the actor is saying on the screen.

Yes, mess is the keyword here but I'll be damned if I said that I didn't get any entertainment out of it. There is a shitload of really cheap and gory violence and the sheer insanity of the slapdash enterprice is spectacular. It does not deserve a higher rating but I will probably watch it again someday.

To make it easier for you to understand how inept this movie is, let us just say that A night to dismember makes Andy Milligans The Ghastly ones look like Suspiria.

Area 407 (2012)

I write this as a warning. People must be told of this abomination, they must be warned not to thread down this path.

If your idea of fun is watching a group of extremely annoying people bicker and scream about anything the this movie is for you. Think of it as an episode of Jersey Shore, just even less entertaining. Watch it only if you are interested in who is nominated in "The worlds most annoying movie character ever". The whole cast is nominated.

Seriously, this is the kind of "Movie" that gives Found footage a bad name. Every line of dialogue was adlibbed and you can tell that, there is not a single word or sentence that feels natural. I hate this movie.

So here is a spoiler so that you won't have to watch the movie. They are being chased by a raptor. You get to see the raptor for half a second. No one survives.

Savage water (1979)

From wikipedia:

Drone music is a minimalist musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics.

Savage water is probably the equivelant of drone music since all I could think of while trying to survive the aural and visual drones of this movie was Jet lag. My mind kept shouting to me "YOU! SLEEP! NOW! YOU MUST GO TO SLEEP!" while using large portions of my brains energy trying to shut everything down. I kid you not, this movie is exactly that boring.

Of course, if you really like watching amateur rafting instruction movies then Savage Water is a dream come true. There is a lot of talk about this being some sort of protoslasher but it's not. Yes, people are being murdered on a rafting trip but most of the time is spent watching people raft, eat and sing horrible songs. And let us not forget all the "interesting" and existential dialogue that the cast barely are able to spout.

Paul Kener only made two movies, this one and the überdull abomination that is Wendigo and both are excrutiatingly boring and inept. That is one hell of a legacy Kener left behind. Two of the dullest movies of all time.

And I would buy it on blu-ray.

RoboCop (2014)

Paul Verhoevens original 1987 powerhouse of a movie is a true classic, which means that Jose Padhilas remake had a tough time from the beginning to fill those supremo shoes of gigantic squibs and melting people. Let's face the facts - the 2014 version is nowhere near the original.

I will admit my expectations were pretty damn low, I was expecting something along the line of Robocop 3, a great embarassment to the whole saga. What I got instead was something that might not actually be the perfect remake but at least a good actionflick with some pretty good acting from Kinnaman and especially Gary Oldman as the conscience of the movie. The two hours were over before I realized it which by itself is a good grade and the only things I can complain about is the fact that it is really tame when it comes to violence ( RoboCops gun has been changed to a stungun... ) and there is a little too much focus on Murphys family. And way too little ED-209. And no Miguel Ferrer snorting coke off some prostitutes breasts. Come to think of it, the characters are pretty bland compared to the original, there is nothing as fun as Clarence Boddicker here and Michael Keaton is a poor substitute for Ronny Cox which also means that the ending is nowhere near as cool as in the original.

So, in short, if you want to see a fun scifiactioneer you could do a lot worse. The original is still a hell of a lot better.

Blood beat (1983)

O K . . .

A young girl goes with her boyfriend to visit his family for the first time over Christmas in rural Wisconsin. Once there she meets his mother who takes an instant dislike to her, sensing that she knows her from somewhere. Pretty soon people starts to die and you know where this is going...

No, actually you don't.

People start to die, yes but they are killed by a ghostly samurai who only shows up when the young girl has an orgasm.

And then everything starts to look like an 70s episode of Dr Who, filled with flashing lights and laser effects. I kept expecting Tom Baker to pop up with his giant hair and googly eyes.

This isn't exactly sane. I'm guessing there was some kind of subtext to all of this but I missed it. Actually, I wasn't even looking for it, by the time all the lasers and the psychic powers started popping up I was kind of getting ready for it to end and be over with. Blood beat has an interesting look to it and is fairly original for a supernatural slasher movie but to be frank it's also not very entertaining. There is a bit of blood and a couple of atmospheric scenes but most of the movie is just bad acting and overbearing music. A true oddity which I suppose should be seen by slasher fans, just don't expect your average movie.

Superstition (1982)

Back in 1985 or 1986 when I was 11 or 12 a friend and I managed to persuade his mom to let us rent Peter Medaks wonderful ghost story The Changeling, an event that clearly set events in motion when it came to me being a horrormoviefan. I loved the movie and was totally freaked out by it but before it was a trailer of another movie that seemed totally awesome: Superstition. My friends mom was persuaded once more and she called the video store to make sure that we were allowed to rent the movie which we did. A bad (and very good) decision.

Superstition made me so scared that halfway through the movie I "suddenly realized" that I had to go home, I had promised to be home for dinner. I didn't sleep well that night but I was so intrigued by this horror movie that I came crawling back next day to finish it. an even worse decision. This meant that I was so scared that for the next two weeks I dragged my mattress to my parents room to be able to sleep at all.

And since then I have not looked back, horror movies became my life. This means that I cannot watch Superstition without eyes tinted by nostalgia, I still remember some of that awesome fear I felt even though I don't feel it now. I recognize that some of the acting is not so good and that several scenes are pretty damn cheesy, especially the flashback where we see the witch being drowned in the pond where all the evil emanates from in the present day. But I still fell to this day that the final thirty minutes when all hell breaks loose are more intense than a shitload of more recent movies. This movie takes no prisoners, even kids aren't safe here. The jump scares are efficient, the score good enough to have on a record and the house an excellent location for a bloody tale of revenge from the grave. Superstition is a superb example of 1980s horror, a little cheese served up with gallons of suspense and theatrical blood.

But like I said, I cannot watch this movie properly. It is too big a part of who I am, it played its part in shaping me into the person I am today. For better or for worse.

I have this original poster, someday I'll put it on my wall. Someday.

I just realized that this wasn't much of a review, more of a journey down memory lane so I'll add some stuff here. This is a movie about a family that moves into an old house with a dark past and start to die one by one. And it's pretty good. And gory. You should watch it if you haven't already.

Rush (1983)

Jesus, I don't know where to begin with this cheapo mess of a movie...

The carefully constructed plot-line about that there are no plants left after the nuclear war but about half of the movie takes place in a forest?!?!

The wonderfully racist dubbing of the japanese scientist (played by an Italian actor who makes no real attempt to look asian, I suspect the japanese thing was added in the dubbing)?

The dialogue. What the hell were they on while writing this?

The fact that the only scene that looks remotely post apocalyptic seems to be set in the same city-scene as the one in Rats - nights of terror?

The stupid stupid stupid ending where the radioactive sky suddenly clears up and Rush just smiles at the camera?

But this isn't really a bad movie per se, it's just the script that is awful. The cinematography is surprisingly good and the action scenes aren't half bad though all the weapons and vehicles seems to be leftovers from a World war II movie. It could have used a bit more violence and nudity, it's pretty tame.

If you like Italian exploitation and Mad max ripoffs you could do worse, it's good clean fun.