Cold Prey 3 (2010)

I. Don't. Like. Slashers. They are boring, uninspired and follow the same mold over and over again, and still people scream after sequel after sequel where the only difference is usually a different actor playing the psychopath. Ok, it's not really that bad. Most of my hatred comes from watching Friday the 13th sequels in my youth, getting less and less violent for each film. I can watch a slasher or two, there are some great ones like My bloody valentine and.. uh... the unrated My bloody valentine? So why is it that I actually like the Fritt vilt aka Cold Prey series? There is nothing new about these movies, they follow the usual pattern with teens heading into the hills, finding an old hotel and getting themselves killed? Main reason: Atmosphere. The norwegian mountains are awesomely barren and in the middle of nowhere, and the old run down, shiningish (what a magnificient word) hotel is an awesome setting. Good acting and cliched but wellwritten scripts help a lot. The first sequel even goes Halloween 2 on us, bringing the bodies of the first movie to a hospital with the only survivor soon being chased by the of course not particulary dead bad guy. Part 3, a prequel, is actually the worst of them yet, with an even more generic script but it still benefits from a good backstory and is way above a lot of other movies in the same vein.

So, what was supposed to be a review of Cold prey 3 turned into a review of the whole series. I still find myself amazed that I like them so much. Actually, the biggest gripe I have with the series is the presence of Johanna Mørck in part 2. She is a good actress but:
*spoiler*
watching her get killed just a couple of weeks before seeing her in Trolljegern somehow made the authenticity lessen slightly. I know, that is a retarded thing to be bothered about.
*end spoiler*

So, to end this review: Another proof that the Norwegians make excellent horrormovies, they even make excellent slashers.

Vampire doll (1970)

A young man travels out into the countryside to meet his fiance, Yuko. When he arrives at the secluded house he is told by her mother that she has died in a car accident. He spends the night at the house and hears some strange sounds at night, even seeing someone that looks just like his dead love. Later he sees Yuko outside the house and follows her to a grave with her name. Cut to some days later where the young mans sister is worried since she hasnt heard from him in some time. She persuades her boyfriend to take her to the house, but is told that he already left. For the sake of proper plotdevelopment she doesnt believe Yukos mother and fakes the car breaking down so that they can investigate what really happened. Cue eerie Japanese vampire. Yum yum.

Vampire doll is a fine piece of gothic horror, straight out of the Hammerverse with an atmosphere worthy of Terence Fisher, yet firmly located in the Japanese horror folklore. It has that certain something that the old Fishermovies had, never particulary scary but rich in wonderful colours and settings, making even the lesser movies of the era watchable. This is the kind of movie that leaves you with a warm feeling in your stomach. Not only is it awfully nice to look at, shot in an oldfashioned gothic style, it has bundles of creepy locations and bursts of really graphic violence, just like we want it. The character of Yuko is a perfect mix of the classic vampire and the look of the typical asian ghost, something we have seen a lot of in later years. We even get the classic evil hunchbacked character, a cliche in the extreme but it works just fine.

Excellent stuff indeed, and to top it off, there are two sequels (unrelated storywise though) that I really look forward to watching sometime in the near future.

Interplanetary (2008)

I do love my Alien ripoffs. Monsters in space is the ultimate drug and frankly, Interplanetary beats most of them. This is even cooler because of the fact that the movie was obviously made on a budget that wouldnt cover the cost of the food the actors are eating in the original chestburstingscene in Alien. It sets an example for the the alienripoffs to come, that you can make a good movie based on clichés as long as you treat them with respect. And a sense of humour.

The movie is set on Mars where one of those evil, faceless megacorporations has set up a small base, about ten people or so faced with the numbing task of protocol and paragraphs that comes with the territory. Two members of the scienceteam find an alien hand in a cave but one of them is killed by an assassin. The surviving member of the team naturally does the proper thing, that is documenting the find and broadcasting a message to earth, selling the news of the alien to the highest bidder. It doesnt take long before he is killed by an alien lifeform, all while a team of hired killers prepare themselves for killing the people on the base for an unknown reason. Yes, all this and boobs too.

I am fully aware of the fact that my reviews tend to look like this: First a small comment on the movie, then a semifunny plotdescription without spoiling too much of the plot (I hate reviews that break down just about the entire story from finish to end) and then some bits about the directing, acting, sfx etc. All in three decently spaced paragraphs. So, realizing that the first two paragraphs of this is just like it usually is, I will try to break off from this mold.

See? A fourth piece of text. Interplanetary is good stuff. It is very low budget (I havent looked at any of the extras on the dvd yet but it cant be more than your average 70s Dr Who episode) but with a script as fun as this, you gladly forget about the shortcomings and just sit down to enjoy. Most reviews describe it as a mixture of Office space and Alien, and that is a decent explanation. The actors wont win any awards but they do make the comedy in the script work and they most certainly dont bring it down which is more than a shitload of bigger budgeted movies with bigger "talent" (as in I directed a musicvideo - now give me $200 million to shoot a movie with Angelina Jolie) has made. Actually, the movie feels like a lost episode of the original Outer limits, with added boobs and gore. I seriously recommend this to anyone out there that enjoys some decent scifi with monsters. There is still hope for the Alien ripofflovers out there, people like me. Now, let us wish/pray for a sequel. Interplanetarys?

Ha! A fifth paragraph. Gotcha.

Bosque de muerte (1993)

If you want to make a decent horrormovie there are a few rules. The most important one is: Keep the viewer interested in what is happening on the screen. Bosque de muerte is a mexican slasher that fails miserably with that. When you want to make a horrormovie you should try to have an even flow of events, a little gore here and there, a little excitement, a couple of thrilling events. This movie does nothing of that. It just sleepwalks with a group of mexican youths (played by 30 year old actors) going to a house in the country all while the girl whose dad owns the house sulks over the fact that her mother died there fifteen years earlier. Of course, this will have an impact on the youths lives but only after about sixty minutes into the eighty minute long movie! That's right, nothing happens until there's twenty minutes left. People go around moping, having silly flashbacks and fish. Someone disappears but you have no idea of what happened to him until after the seventyminute mark. Then all of a sudden we get a couple of violent murders, the killer is revealed in a groaninducing sequence and then its all over. Just like that.

It's a shame since the movie actually starts out fairly well. We see a couple of people doing stuff in the woods while someone is watching them with a scoped rifle. We skip forward a few minutes and we find out that the guy watching is a forestranger and the people in the woods were sawing down trees illegaly, so naturally he shot off the leg on one of them. Without even batting an eyelash, the police even congratulate him on a job well done. I like movies that open with some sort of bang and Bosque de muerte does a fine job of that. Unfortunately, it's all downhill after that, the rangercharacter is introduced as someone who has a deep love for the forest and that's why he shot the guy but nothing is made of it. It has no impact whatsoever on the plot other than introduce him as a red herring. The final fifteen minutes are actually fairly decent as horrormovies go, gory and exciting but why not sprinkle some of the red on the rest of the movie? It's never really boring, like Iced for instance, just kind of meanders on, then all of a sudden it's over. Not as bad as it sounds actually, but nothing I would recommend to anyone, other than for the fact of the novelty of watching an mexican horrormovie.

Black magic with Buddha (1983)

I've learned something today. Evil Thai mummybrains arent something you should mess about with, it's as simple as that. And if you do feel like keeping them for your own personal gain, make sure you feed them regularly. They do tend to get rather mad if they are hungry. Like any other pet really. That's something the protagonist of low budget Hong Kong sleaze Black magic with Buddha learns when he goes to Thailand, takes home a brain with magic powers to use for his own personal gain. You see, our hero is somewhat of a looser. Only somewhat though, for a CAT III hero he is actually fairly likeable. He means well I suppose, he just doesnt seem to think of the consequences of what he is doing, and the fact that it kills his sister and his wifes family, well, he never seems to care that much about it. He comes of as a bit... nice but dim. I dont really know what to make of him, but he's not as cartoonishly evil as they usually are. Anyway, all this leads up to a glorious whopper of an ending full of yuck and gore and as these types of movies go, Black magic with Buddha is on the cheap but nicely weird and energetic, and never boring.

I wish more of these movies would be released on proper dvds, it's a genre that is like on open vein of gold for us gorehounds out there. Black magic with Buddha is a fine example of it, full of sleaze and fun stuff, but has never been released on any proper media. The version I saw was a download, most likely from a horribly cropped vcd where you could not see the first and last words of the subtitles. Fortunately, it is still easy to follow the mayhem on the screen but I would most definately like to have this on dvd. Silly, gory and wonderful entertainment. Thanks to Jack J for writing about this on his lovely blog Backyard Asia.. I stole the picture from him. Shame on me. And shame on Ben for stealing that brain.

Pumpkinhead 4: Blood feud (2007)

Pumpkinhead 4: Blood feud is another one of those movies that for budgetary reasons are shot in Hungary or Bulgaria. The environments over there usually look great and are an excellent substitute for the "real thing". The only problem is that the casts are filled up with people not having english as a native language. Not the biggest problem out there, but Pumpkinhead 4 is supposed to be set in redneck county and has hungarian actors either trying a hillbilly accent (failing miserably) or being poorly dubbed. It's not a major issue, but big enough to get your attention. But, other than that, Pumpkinhead 4: Blood feud is one of the best Syfymovies I've seen so far.

As I mentioned the movie is set in redneckcounty with two clans of hillbillys being enemies over some shitty issue that only the elders remember. Jody and Ricky, each a member of the separate clans fall in love but the rest of the families wont have anything to do with it. While sneaking away for some nooky in the forest, Jodys brothers manage to get Rickys sister killed in an accident (well, they were going to rape her but she fell down a slope and broke her neck). Ricky, pissed as hell and obviously has seen the earlier Pumpkinheadmovies, raises our favorite demon to kill everyone. Problem is, he never saw the endings of the earlier flicks and there will be hell to pay. And some boobs. And a surprising amount of gore.

Pumpkinhead 4 is easily the goriest Syfyflick I have ever seen (I wonder if that has anything to do with my earlier statement of it being one of the best?). Heads are crushed in beartraps, torn off and stomped on. The titlebeast itself looks as cool as it always has and is 99% of the time a guy in a decently animated rubbersuit. My only little grain of bitching is that you get to see it way too much! In full daylight! I want a bit of shadow to put some mystery into my rubbermonsters, is that much to ask? Pumkinhead maims his way through a large cast of mostly dubbed hungarians, all with names like Billy-Bob or Emmet, all completely without any distinctive charactertraits that helps you tell the apart or sometimes even what family they belong to. Lance Henriksen pops up in one of those cameos that he seems to do hundreds of these last few years and he is still the best actor in the movie, even though he probably did it in 45 minutes. But who cares about that? Pumpkinhead 4: Blood feud is a fun, gory and fastpaced straightforward monstermovie. It stays far away from even trying to reinvent the genre but sometimes that is good. Corny and gory good.

Sanctum (2010)

Have you seen Bruce hunts lovely little monstermovie, The Cave? My review of that underrated flick here. Sanctum is just like the Cave, only without monsters and even more hollywoodian sentiments. It's not a bad movie, on the contrary, it's just... a bit predictable and stupid.

Richard Roxburgh (who is a way better actor than this material deserves) plays one of those superpeople that only exist in movies, spending all of his time cavediving because "he cant handle a normal human life with mortgages etc". At the moment he is part of a team exploring an underwater cave in Papua New Guinea. The financer of the expedition, a young daredevil millionaire, arrives on the scene, bringing with him Roxburghs estranged son. The moment you find out who the characters relation, you realize that dad will die, but not before them finding each other again. That is not a spoiler, that is generic hollywood scripting at its laziest. It doesnt take long before a giant storm hits the place, starts flooding the cave and forcing the survivors to try to find another way out. Yes, people will sacrifice themselves. Yes, people will turn on each other. Yes, exactly when you know they are going too.

There isnt a single scene in this movie that feels fresh or in any way surprising, we follow the usual paths with any "twist" having been telegraphed half an hour earlier. It is based on the scriptwriters own experiences being trapped in an underwater cave but I hope to god that they didnt behave like this back then because this is just so stupid, so ordinary. All of this is a shame, Sanctum could have been a really nice ride with a bit more imagination. The director does what he can to milk out some suspense out of the script, the caveclimbing and divingscenes are well staged and the actors do a fine job, even better than the material deserves. You can do much worse when it comes to entertainment, just turn your brain off while watching.

Still, the movie is really inferior to The Cave. Sanctum could definately have used a couple of decent monsters to liven things up. At least a tentacle or two.