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.