BLUEBERRY (2004)

Directed by Jan Kounen
Written by Matt Alexander and Gérard Brach
Starring Vincent Cassel, Michael Madsen and Juliette Lewis

Blueberry (Vincent Cassel) is a Marshal for a small town in the west. One day he runs into Wallace Sebastian Blount (Michael Madsen), a man from his past, a man that he thought he had killed many years ago. After Wallace escapes from the jail with the help from his men, Blueberry and a couple of men go after him. They track him into sacred Indian territory where Wallace is on the trail of a legendary gold mine. What Wallace and Blueberry eventually find is something totally different and totally unexpected.

Basically this movie is just one long flashback, with the first 20 minutes or so the flashback that shows what happens between Blueberry and Wallace when Blueberry was a young man. At first this is really just a straight forward western but towards the end it spirals into some trippy ass shit that I really can’t explain. It’s just something you really have to see for yourself. Speaking of trippy about halfway through the movie when Blueberry is taking to his Indian friends for treatment after being nearly beaten to death by Wallace, he is given something to drink. Shortly after drinking it he starts hallucinating and we are treated with what he’s seeing. Although it’s really nothing more than just a bunch of CGI snakes, spiders, other insects and what looks like some kind of wacky octopus (?) it is executed fairly well and is pretty cool to watch. I believe they even try to make it where you feel like you are tripping yourself. And at the end of the movie we are treated with another trip scene that last about 20 minutes! Now this trip was just plain fucking wild and by the end of it I was starting to get a little dizzy and loopey myself. It was pretty great!

Like I said earlier it does spiral into something else at the end of the movie and I really couldn’t tell you what is all going on because there weren’t any subtitles for the Indian language. There is quite a bit of Indian dialog throughout the movie and with it not being translated for you it does take away from the movie a tad. Perhaps there are subtitles on other releases, I don’t really know. I have the Russian release and so all the menus and stuff were in Russian. Hell it took me several attempts just to get it on the English language track.

But don’t really let any of this deter you from checking this movie out. It’s worth seeing just for the visuals alone, for it is a beautiful and well shot movie. Tetsuo Nagata did any outstanding job at the photography for this film, beautiful stuff. Jan Kounen also deserves to get some kudos for his directing on this. I’m not familiar with any of his other work but he did a hell of a job on this. Jean-Jacques Hertz and François Roy do a fine job at providing some nice music that really fits the film. I would like to find this soundtrack.

Surprisingly enough there is a fairly big cast on this with the likes of Vincent Cassel (IRRÉVERSIBLE), whom I’m a big fan of, Juliette Lewis (NATURAL BORN KILLERS), Michael Madsen (KILL BILL), who does a nice job as the villain of the movie, Temuera Morrison (STAR WARS: EPISODE II - ATTACK OF THE CLONES) and Ernest Borgnine (THE WILD BUNCH) who has a funny part as the wheelchair bound Sheriff. Eddie Izzard (THE RICHIES) is also in this as a German with the worst German accent I’ve ever heard, hell it seems like he hardly even uses it.

At first I was going to recommend this to Western fans but this is really like no Western you’ve ever seen before. Overall I found this to be a very good movie that is visually stunning that I would recommend to everybody, whether or not it’s a film for you remains to be seen.

8/10

ASYLUM (2007)

Directed by David R. Ellis
Written by Ethan Lawrence
Staring Sarah Roemer, Mark Rolston and Jake Muxworthy

A group of college kids break into a restricted part of the new campus dorm, which used to be an old asylum in the 1930’s, and unknowingly release the ghost of the former head doctor. Now Dr. Burke is free again to help the sufferings of the teenagers, unfortunately for them.

This is a decent enough movie from director David R. Ellis, who you might know from directing films like FINAL DESTINATION 2 and CELLULAR. There are mainly fairly no name actors in this movie which stars Sarah Roemer as Madison who also played in 2007’s DISTURBIA. But most fans of the genre or movies in general should recognize Mark Rolston who plays Dr. Magnus Burke. He played in movies like ALIENS, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and a ton of other films. He does give a decent performance.

One character in particular was really annoying and I really couldn’t stand him as I can’t stand those people in real life. This character is Tommy played by Travis Van Winkle. He’s annoying cause he’s one of those loud mouth asshole’s that never knows when to shut up. So it was nice to see him get what he deserved. The character of Rez played by Randall Sims had some nice comedic moments which helped the movie out.

The deaths are really nothing special, I thought, but I’m sure that some people will like them. And there is hardly any gore in this unlike some people have stated.

My only real complaint of this movie is that I couldn’t hardly see a damn thing. Most of the movie takes place at night and it seems like the only things lighting the scenes were either a flashlight or a 10 watt bulb. So it was hard to make a lot of things out and it really irritated me, badly. But that was really the only bad thing about this movie. Everything else was pretty decent and enjoyable enough. Although I probably would only recommend this movie to the fans of haunted asylum films or those similar to this. So if you like those types of films then you should give this a rental.

6/10

PATHFINDER (2007)

Directed by Marcus Nispel
Written by Laeta Kalogridis and Nils Gaup
Starring Karl Urban, Moon Bloodgood, Russell Means and Clancy Brown

A young Viking boy is left all alone after all the others on the ship he was on die sometime after reaching the shores of North America. He is soon found by a Native American woman and brought back to the village where they decide to raise the child as their own. Flash forward 15 years and now the boy who they called Ghost is now a young man and while he is out on a hunting trip another boat full of Vikings have arrived and soon find his village and slaughter everyone. Later when Ghost is trying to get his revenge along with some other natives from a neighboring village are captured, the Vikings force him to show them the way to the other villages so they can cleanse this world of the savages and settle down in the new land. But the Vikings never figured one of their own would betray them for the savages.

Marcus Nispel, yes the same Marcus Nispel that directed the remake to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE returns to the big screen with this nice little period/fantasy piece. Personally I found this movie to be a much better and far more interesting film than that remake. After watching this I’ve went around reading reviews on numerous different websites and I was surprised to find that most people didn’t like this movie. Their reasons varied from site to site, such as the characters were shallow or the story was to predictable and shit like that. Now I’m not a professional film critic so I can’t really say anything that shit, nor do I really care to. I could care less about any of that because I found this to be a fun and interesting movie and that really all I care about, is if I have fun watching this. I’ll let other people worry about the little things like that if they wish to. This is not like many of the Period type films that have been released in the recent years. Most of those films had huge budgets and hundreds of actors, extras and crew members. PATHFINDER was nearly the complete opposite as this had a small budget and only a handful of actors and crew members. It was interesting listening to Marcus on the audio commentary telling about the many tricks that they had to use to make it look like the village was much bigger than it actually was. As well as the tricks with the actors and extras in a way that it looked like there were more than just a few that they actually had. PATHFINDER was pretty violent in some scenes, the only problem with that is that most of the blood was CGI which does suck. This film was released in both PG13 and Rated R so I would get the Rated R version like I got, because I’m sure all the fighting and “violence” is pretty lame in the PG13 cut of this.

The film is pretty dark in the lighting and the color palette and it might seem that some of the same shots and techniques are pretty similar to the TCM remake. That might be cause Marcus brought along Daniel Pearl, who shot both the original and the remake of TCM, as his Director of Photography on this film. Daniel always does a good job with the cinematography in my opinion and continues that streak with this film. Jonathan Elias provides a sparse score, yet I felt that it fit the film well.

Karl Urban, who you might know better as Eomer from the LORD OF THE RINGS films, gets the starring role as Ghost the grown-up Viking kid and does a decent enough job with what he had to do. Moon Bloodgood gets her first major role as Starfire, the love interest of Ghost and whom also helps with fighting off the Viking horde. We also get the wise Russell Means, who you might remember from such films as THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and NATURAL BORN KILLERS, plays Pathfinder the elder member of the Native village and brings yet another solid performance to the screen. And last but not least we get Clancy Brown, who always seems to play great villains is the leader of the Vikings. Overall I would say that the acting in the film is pretty solid by all who are involved.

I do have one complaint and that is the use of language in this movie. Personally when it comes to period type films such as this I prefer to have the native language of whatever culture we’re watching. For instance, the Native Americans in this movie are speaking English, why? Well, I probably know why, but I would prefer to listen to the natives speaking some native dialect. The Vikings on the other hand are speaking another language, albeit a poor form of Icelandic but at least they are speaking something different.

Overall I would recommend this movie to anybody that enjoys period/fantasy films and who likes to see Clancy playing a cool villain.

8/10

LIGHTHOUSE (2000)

Directed by Simon Hunter
Written by Simon Hunter and Graeme Scarfe
Starring James Purefoy and Rachel Shelley

A ship carrying some prisons, guards and a few other people hits a rock near a lighthouse and sinks. The survivors reach the shore but unfortunately for them another, more dangerous prisoner, the notorious murderer Leo Rook, has escaped the ship before the sinking and has reached the lighthouse ahead of them and has quickly taken care of the lighthouse crew. With any means of escaping the island or calling out for help being destroyed the others must now survive the night and keep their heads with the maniac on the loose. Who, if any will survive??

A rare slasher flick from England. Now this is my second viewing of this movie and I do admit that I liked it a lot more the first time I saw it a few years ago. I first came across it on the site Xploitedcinema.com and it looked and sounded interesting to me so I decided to check it out.

There really isn’t anything that separates this from the usual slasher fare, except for maybe the score. It does have a nice orchestral score that one would expect from a bigger non slasher film perhaps. It was a nice change of pace from the normal hard rock soundtracks that have been accompanying the majority of slasher films these days. And the piece of music right at the end when the last people standing have finally overcame the evil Leo Rook is a surprisingly touching piece.

As for the acting I felt that everyone did a decent job. The good thing about this was that the people in this movie were adults not the usually teeny bopper and young adult, so there weren’t any of those annoying roles or parts that usually come with those movies and that was a real plus. There were no real big names in this or really anybody you would recognize with the exception of the main guy, James Purefoy, whom you might have seen in A KNIGHT’S TALE and RESIDENT EVIL.

The kills are really nothing special as they don’t even show most of them but we do get to see a couple of throat slicings that do come with some nice blood sprays. There are a lot of decapitated heads in this as the killer likes to collect them, it seems and line them up on the seat of his lifeboat. But we hardly get to see any of those decaps actually happening.

Well like I said there is really nothing to special about this movie but it was a decent effort from the British in the beloved slasher genre. It is worth checking out if you are a lover of said genre. Since I didn’t enjoy it as much the second time around my score for this has fallen just a bit but I would probably still give it a decent 6.5 out of 10.

6.5/10

MIDNIGHT SKATER (2002)

Directed by Lucas Campbell
Written by Lucas Campbell and Andrew Campbell
Starring Cory Maidens, Nick Jackson

People are being killed at a small college, and a group of kids believe it’s the work of the Midnight Skater. A mysterious person who skates around the campus at, well…midnight. These kids finally get fed up with everything and decide to take action. They get together and come up with a plan to stop him.

While this is going on we also follow around a couple of drug dealers who are peddling the drug ‘Z’ to all the college kids. But this drug starts to take a strange toll on the users. They all become zombies after awhile.

But one night all hell breaks loose on the campus! Everybody turns into zombies and now the group of do-gooders must run and try to fight off these fiends as well as the real murderer. But who wins in the end? Do the zombies take over the world or do the good guys prevail? And do we ever find out who this midnight skater truly is??

MIDNIGHT SKATER is a pretty low-budget movie and the quality of some of the shots are not all that great, especially the night shots. But certainly don’t let this turn you off from seeing it, cause if you like blood and guts, then this movie is for you! We are treated with enough blood and guts to satisfy any gore lover out there. There are a lot of limbs being chopped off as well as some ears falling off. There are, also some detachments of the male anatomy that will make all the guys cringe out there.

The acting is alright. There are no Oscar performances in this movie but who really gives a shit with a movie like this? They all did their job pretty well. One character I kinda liked was Richard. He’s a disturbed individual to say the least and he has some pretty funny, cheesy ass lines in the movie. Another funny character is Alvin. He’s roommates with Richard and he’s a little weird. He also has an inflatable sheep that he keeps in his room.

The music’s pretty good. You’re treated to a new take on the old MUNSTER’S theme, that was pretty cool.

Well this movie has a little bit of everything. Lots of blood, guts, dismemberments, necrophilia, zombies and some sword play! There is a lot of perverseness in this movie folks!

I for one found this movie highly enjoyable and fun to watch, but I can understand how some people out there might not enjoy this and find it stupid and what not. But no matter, that’s their problem, not mine. So I would check this out if you ever get the chance you just might be surprised.

6.5/10

OZONE (1993)

Directed by J.R. Bookwalter
Written by J.R. Bookwalter and David Wagner
Starring James Black and Tom Hoover

A tough cop, Eddie Boone is injected with a new, mysterious drug called ‘Ozone’ when a bust goes terrible wrong. Not only that but he also looses his partner who is taking away by some strange creatures. Now Eddie must find out what’s happening to him and also find his partner before it’s all to late. He runs into a lot of strange things and people and is eventually taken to the lair of the mysterious ‘Drug Lord’, who has some big plans for Eddie…and the world!!

Well, I must say that I have heard a lot of good things about J.R. Bookwalter’s OZONE, and for the most part I can see why. I can see how it might have revolutionized the shot on video industry. After watching this it’s hard to believe that this movie was shot for only about 3,500 bucks!

I thought J.R. Bookwalter did a pretty darn good job with all the things that he had. Who knows what he could have giving us if he had a little more to spend. I really liked the camera angels and movements used throughout this movie. They were pretty wild and cool. A lot more imaginary, you could say, than what a lot of other movies use. The lighting was pretty wild too. They used a lot of colors to light this project. And I do mean a lot of colors, I think I saw just about every color light there is! You don’t see that in many movies.

OZONE does have a nice score to go along with it. The music really fits the atmosphere of this movie and helps out quite a bit.

Although some of the ‘zombie’ makeup looked a little cheesy, the make-up FX were pretty good on this movie considering the budget that they had to work with. There’s a cool scene when one of the characters’ body melts down to nothing but a skeleton. You also get treated to a ‘zombie-child’ like creature.

The acting is pretty good in this flick. James Black who plays Eddie Boone does a nice job. And that’s important since this movie really centers around him and his character, so you would have to have someone who could carry this movie and I thought that James did that. Who knows if it would have been as good with someone else in that role.

Overall OZONE is a pretty decent flick that I would recommend, especially if you’re into lower budget movies.

7/10

THE SIGNAL (2007)

Directed by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush
Written by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush
Starring Anessa Ramsey, AJ Bowen, Justin Welborn and Scott Poythress

THE SIGNAL is an interesting movie in the fact that there were three directors on this each directing a different act or “transmissions” as they are called in this movie. Each act has their own unique look and feel about them which is an interesting way to make a movie and these three guys did a fine job directing and writing this movie. There are very few modern American made films that I have enjoyed but this was a nice diamond in the rough.

The story starts off with two lovers, Mya (played by Anessa Ramsey) and Ben (played by Justin Welborn). Mya has to return home to her husband, Lewis (played by AJ Bowen) before he gets to suspicious of her adulterous affair. And this begins our first “transmission” (directed by David Bruckner) entitled Crazy in Love. Mya returns home and shortly thereafter all hell breaks loose with the signal starting to get to people and make them go crazy and start killing people. Lewis is one of the ones affected and kills a friend of his. Mya escapes and hides out till mourning and then makes her way to Terminal 13 to meet up with her lover Ben.

Along the way she crashes her car and has to walk the rest of the way. Shortly thereafter the second “transmission” (directed by Jacob Gentry) called The Jealousy Monster begins and basically follows Lewis. He finds Mya’s car in front of an apartment building and we’re introduced to two new characters, Clark (played by Scott Poythress) and Anna (played by Cheri Christian). The majority of this act takes place in Anna’s apartment and is a big change of pace from the first act. There is a lot of dark humor here and had me cracking up throughout the act. Ben shows up and saves Clark from Lewis.

The third “transmission” (directed by Dan Bush) called Escape from Terminus begins and basically follows Ben as he tries to reach Terminal 13 to find Mya. Clark tags along but they are not the first ones to reach the terminal. Lewis has beaten them to it. Now Ben and Lewis have to fight each other to the death to find out which one gets to have Mya.

As I said before THE SIGNAL was a pretty nice change of pace from the usual crap like remakes and sequels and the like that America has been releasing here lately. To me what made this film work as the fact that there were three different directors who each added there on flair to the movie. My favorite act was the second one, with its dark humor and funny dialogue. I’m not sure if the film would have been that strong without this act. There is plenty of violent acts in this one with some decent amount of blood and lots of head wounds.

All of the actors did a good job and I would say that the stand out performance comes from Scott Poythress who plays Clark. I loved his character and what he did with him. AJ Bowen who played Lewis also did a pretty darn good job with his character.

I would definitely recommend this movie to anybody, especially those of you that are looking for something different. Those of you that are tired of the endless remakes and sequels that are coming out of Hollywood these days, look for this nicely done low budget film. You just might be surprised.

8/10

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE (2006)

Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
Written by Shinya Tsukamoto
Starring Hitomi, Ryuhei Matsuda and Shinya Tsukamoto

A couple of people are killed brutally but the cops first think it’s just suicide, but a new detective, Keiko Kirishima (Hitomi) on her first real case begins to think that these people were actually murdered after noticing that they both called the same number before they died. She begins to suspect that they were killed in their dreams and enlist the help of a Nightmare Detective to go in the dreams on her and her colleagues to help catch this maniac butcher before he kills anybody else.

As you can tell by the plot NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE does take a little bit from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and I can already hear all those Freddy fan boys getting all up in arms over this. To those people that would go around saying that they stole from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET I say sit down and shut up. All it really does is take the whole dieing in your dreams concept and take it in another and more interesting direction. For me I’m glad that the Japanese and Shinya Tsukamoto took this in the direction that they did instead of having American make yet another boring and shitty sequel or even worse, a remake of this very tired NIGHTMARE franchise.

I am sad to admit that this is the first movie that I’ve seen of Shinya Tsukamoto. Fellow Japanese film fans may recognize the name as the director of TETSUO and A SNAKE IN JUNE and others. I have pretty much all of his films on my to watch list already and after watching this one I’m going to have to go and move them up. Shinya does a fine job on this film as the director, writer, cinematographer, editor and producer. He certainly had his plate full on this film and pulls it all off greatly. Hell he even plays a part in the movie as 0, the bad guy of the movie.

People that hate shaky cam may be turned off by the camera movement in this film. The camera felt like it was always moving and I thought it helped to keep the movie going cause this one doesn’t seem to bog down or start off slow like a lot of Asian horror movies tend to do. I never really noticed the shaky cam till the nightmare scenes and you were looking from the killer’s P.O.V. then things got pretty crazy. And the nightmare scenes are pretty cool, I thought, watching the victims getting sliced and diced from some unseen force. Until later in the movie when we finally get to see what is really going on. And this was shot in a way that they make the redness of the blood really stand out.

Like I said earlier I didn’t think this movie started off slow or bog down as the kills start off pretty early in the movie and the pace seemed pretty evenly paced to me. And that is sometimes hard to say about J-horror and other Asian horror films, so you might and I hope you are as pleasantly surprised as I am.

The acting is all pretty decent. It is really kind of hard for me and perhaps American’s in general to properly judge Asian acting. Sometimes it feels like there is a lot of over acting but who knows, maybe that’s how they act over there, but there really wasn’t all of that overacting stuff in this movie and everyone does a decent job overall. Hitomi who plays the lead detective Keiko Kirishima does pretty good in this movie. They said in the “Making Of” feature that this was her first speaking role in a film. She’s also easy on the eyes, so that’s a nice plus.

Overall NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE is a well done and interesting film that I would pretty much recommend to anyone, especially the fans of J-horror. Of course there are still some of those “What the fuck” moments and the ending perhaps doesn’t make the best sense but it is a very enjoyable film in my opinion and one that I look forward to adding to my collection. Now I got to get off my ass and watch those other Shinya Tsukamoto movies.

8/10

NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS (1975)

Directed by Aldo Lado
Written by Roberto Infascelli and Renato Izzo
Starring Irene Miracle, Laura D’Angelo, Flavio Bucci and Macha Méril

Two school girls, Lisa (Laura D’Angelo) and Margaret (Irene Miracle) are taking the train from their school in Germany to Lisa’s parents’ house in Italy. A couple of thugs are also on the train after jumping on it while running from the police. We meet these thugs during the opening credits doing some bad things to Santa Clause. Halfway through the trip the train is stopped and searched for a bomb, so Lisa and Margaret decide to catch another train to their destination. Unfortunately for them the two bad dudes plus their new horny woman friend they made on the train decide to switch trains as well. The three baddies corner the two girls in their cabin and spend the rest of the night raping and torturing them. After one girl is killed and the other commits suicide the three get off the train at the next stop where they get a ride from a couple to their house. Unfortunately for these bad guys they got the ride from the wrong people, who just so happen to be the parents of Lisa. Eventually they piece things together and realize that their daughter and friend were killed by these people and so the take their revenge on them.

If any of you have ever seen LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT then you should be familiar with the basic plot of NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS. In fact it was even released in the U.S. as THE NEW LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, well that and a ton of other names.. It’s been several years since I’ve seen Wes Craven’s movie so it is hard for me to point out a lot of similarities right now.

This movie starts off rather slowly with not much happening for the first 30 minutes or so. It does start off with a “unique” opening ballad through the opening credits though which I’m sure will make most people turn the movie off right away. But not I! I kinda like it and it’s cheesy 70’s Italian goodness. We also get a decent score from the master Ennio Morricone. Nowhere near his best work but it works well enough for the film.

Aldo Lado does a good job of directing this one I thought. If you’re fans of giallo films then you’d be familiar with his name and the two nicely made films that he made in the genre. It’s really to bad that he didn’t do to many more like these. It was an interesting choice to shoot the raping and torturing of Lisa and Margaret in eerie blue lighting and being cut with scenes of Lisa’s parents having a Christmas dinner with friends.

The acting is about as good as you can expect from this kind of film. Most of the main cast should look familiar to fans of Eurocult cinema. Irene Miracle does a good job on her first film and is pretty cute, to bad she hasn’t done to many other notable films. A funny and interesting note (to me anyways) is that she was born in Oklahoma!!

Anyways, I thought NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS was a decent little film. In fact I think I might even like it just as much, if not more than LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. It was interesting reading that this was a Video Nasty when there really wasn’t anything graphic going on. The sex and violence are pretty tame, especially by today’s standards. Although I liked it I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone, just the people that like films like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT or fans of Eurocult cinema.

6.5/10

SEEDPEOPLE (1992)

Directed by Peter Manoogian
Written by Jackson Barr
Starring Sam Hennings, Andrea Roth and Bernard Kates

Tom (Sam Hennings) goes back to his hometown of Comet Valley to investigate some old meteors. But what people don’t know is that they are really alien seed pods and when one old fool lets one loose a couple of aliens take over some local townspeople and brainwash the rest into helping them uncover the main “seedcone” that contains hundreds of seed pods. Now its up to Tom and the town drunk to save the day.

I don’t think I had ever heard of SEEDPEOPLE or as my copy says DARK FOREST until a few months ago when I kept coming across this on one of the sites that I get my DVD’s from. I found the cover somewhat cool and the plot outline interested the shitty B-movie alien lover in me so I put it in my wish list for awhile and then I finally decided to get it a few weeks ago. I didn’t really look into this movie before hand for some reason but after I bought it I looked some things up and then I noticed that Charles Band and Full Moon Entertainment were involved with this. Yikes! I thought I just made a big mistake for I normally don’t like Full Moon stuff, even that stuff is to shitty for me! But I was pleasantly surprised by this.

The cast is pretty much made up of relative unknown actors. The only one I knew was Andrea Roth, who played a big factor in me getting this movie cause I wanted to check her out when she was young and hot. Overall the acting in this is really not that bad considering what kind of movie this is. You won’t find any great or memorable performances although Bernard Kates does do a nice job at his role as Doc Roller the “crazy drunk” who knew what these things were from the beginning.

There are a couple of cool scenes that take place early on in the movie when the aliens are overtaking some bodies. One guy looks like he gets spunked on by one of the seedlings when he gets completely covered in a lovely milky white substance. Another one happens a few minutes later when a farmer gets hit by another seedling but instead of getting splooged on he gets attacked by these big pollen grains which look exactly like corn pops. Well, they seemed cool to me anyways.

SEEDPEOPLE did have a fairly decent orchestral score which was a nice surprise as, for some reason, I was expecting some shitty rock music. The opening theme was a solid piece of music that you could easily find in a much larger film.

I guess they could only afford three rubber alien costumes and all I can say about them is they are deliciously shitty…yet cool at the same time. Does that make sense? Eh, probably not, but they are kinda cheesy and crappy looking but I liked them nonetheless. You get one that flies through the air, one that curls up and rolls along the ground (think an overly large Critter from the CRITTERS series) and one that walks on its hands and seemingly has no legs. Interesting.

Well, I’ll go ahead and end this one with these parting words. Most people would probably rate this with the likes of some shitty Sci-Fi original movie but I find SEEDPEOPLE to be so much more enjoyable than that. I would recommend this to people that love shitty B-movies about aliens. If you don’t fit in this category then I would probably advise you to stay away.

7/10

DEEP STAR SIX (1989)

It’s really no secret that I love Horror movies. I enjoy a lot of different movies and genres and the like, well with the exception of modern American horror movies but that is a rant for another day. Most the people that know me know that I particularly enjoy the Giallo, Slasher and Zombie genres. But there is another genre of horror that has a place in my heart and that is the Monster or Creature sub-genre, however the hell you want to label it. From the long line of Kaiju films featuring the likes of Godzilla and Rodan to Mothra and Gamera. I don’t know what it is but watching men in big rubber monster suits stomping around on miniature sets is so damn fun and entertaining. Then there are those crazy “nature runs amok” films featuring a wide variety of insects and animals, from spider movies like KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS to ant movies like PHASE IV to movies about rampaging reptiles like ALLIGATOR. I’m sure you’ll read about some of these films in future columns.

There’s also a sub sub-genre, if you will, of films that feature sea creatures or underwater terror and that is where this particular movie that I’m about to talk about comes from. I’ve mainly chosen to write about DEEP STAR SIX because I just recently bought the DVD and I’ve finally been able to go back and revisit this favorite of mine when I was younger. Sometime around 1991 my parents had borrowed a tape from my step-aunt that had a couple of movies on it. I can’t recall what movie was on it that made them borrow it, but some time later I fast forward through the tape to see what all was on it and came upon this crazy monster flick and I was instantly hooked.

I guess I could tell you what this movie is about. A crew of scientist and Navy personnel are sent down to the bottom of the ocean to install some missile silo’s. Of course they are near the end of their mission and the dude in charge of installing the silo’s, Dr. John Van Gelder, starts rushing things cause he doesn’t want to miss his quota and lose his funding. So when he is told that there is a cave or something underneath where he wants to place a silo at he just tells the people to blow it up and get working. The cave is a lot bigger than they thought and when they blow it up it pretty much destroys the whole sea bed where they are wanting to work. After they lose a probe that was sent down into the depression, two members of the crew go down in their sub-like vehicle to retrieve it who are then quickly taken care of. As you might have guessed the cave was the home of some deep sea monster and now that it’s home is destroyed it is on a rampage and won’t stop till all the pesky human home wreckers are taken care of.

You won’t believe who directed this little gem, I know I had no idea who directed it until I got the DVD and noticed that none other than Sean S. Cunningham of FRIDAY THE 13TH fame. There are no big stars in this, but there might be a couple of names you might know like Nia Peeples and Miguel Ferrer. The person I always remember in this movie is Greg Evigan. Now I’m sure everybody is wondering who in the hell is Greg Evigan? Well, if you grew up in late 80’s you might remember a TV show called MY TWO DADS which starred Greg Evigan, Paul Reiser, who coincidentally enough went on to play in a monster flick himself, ALIENS and Staci Keanan from STEP BY STEP fame. Unfortunately ol’ Greg hasn’t done much in the world of horror since, although I did notice him on some Sci-Fi Channel movie awhile back but without his trademark beard he’s hard to recognize. Good ol’ Miguel Ferrer plays a total asshole in this, which he sure does do a lot in movies. It’s nice to see him get what he deserves later in the film.

As with most monster flicks this isn’t the greatest movie but it is highly enjoyable. There are some nice kills and some decent gore. The one that I remember the most involves this air gun like thing that looks like a spear and when you jab it into something it inflates that object. Needless to say someone got a little careless and instead of jabbing the monster he jabs a fellow crew member and well bad things happen obviously. What I really like about this movie is the monster itself. We don’t get to see it a whole lot but when we do it looks fucking awesome. Know what else makes it so awesome? Well since this was the days before CGI it’s an actual practical monster! It’s nice seeing this mechanical, animatronic monstrosity terrorizing these poor hapless people. Even all the numerous underwater scenes are done with miniatures and things like that, which makes it heads and shoulders above anything done in today’s CGI infested world.

So, if you’re tired of all the CGI dreck that is shown on the Sci-Fi Channel like every weekend and want to check out a real monster movie that uses miniatures and mechanical things as opposed to all the needless shoddy CGI to get their story across then I would suggest looking into this movie. You just might be pleasantly surprised. Oh and Mr. Greg Evigan, if you ever read this, and I certainly hope you do, please…please hook me up with your daughter!! She’s smokin’ HOT!

LEPRECHAUN (1993)

I had a very tough decision on what to write about for this first column. I went back and forth on many different topics and movies, but when I was listening to the FE Talk Radio show for September 9th and I heard these guys bashing this particular movie I thought to myself, I shall write about LEPRECHAUN. Yes folks, LEPRECHAUN! Now, before you bash my opinion of this movie or start sending the hate mail my way let me say that I have no delusions that this is a great film, because it’s not and I know that but I personally enjoy LEPRECHAUN and since most people that I know and pretty much everybody from this site hates it, I thought it would be a great example of what you may find in future columns.

It all started on one hot day in the summer of 1993 when my parents and me would make the journey to the nearest town 15 miles away to the closest place to rent videos, a little mom and pop store called J. R. Video. Remember that name, cause I’m sure this store will come up in many more of these columns. Anyways, when we got there I did what I almost always did and went straight to the back corner of the store where they hid their small Horror collection. By this time I had already seen most of the videos that were placed along the wall, some numerous times. So, as I scanned the titles saying no the various FRIDAY THE 13TH, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and HALLOWEEN movies, all of which I’ve already seen, my eyes came across the box cover to LEPRECHAUN. I picked it up and started reading the description on the back and I was instantly hooked. Sure it may sound a little stupid now, but when I was 14 I thought it was pure err…Gold! I noticed that the Leprechaun was played by Warwick Davis who was the star of one of my favorite movies at that time, WILLOW, so that also had me interested. So I picked it out and just couldn’t wait till we got back home so I could watch this sucker.

Later that night after making the trip back home and messing around a bit I finally decided to put movie into my VCR and give it a watch. And I can honestly say that I loved it! I believe that I love it for many of the reasons that other people hate it. I loved the cheesy acting and dialog from the Lep and that death by pogostick was crazy funny. Of course I have to admit that I was turned on by Jennifer Aniston even before her nose job. And I also enjoyed seeing some actors that I knew from other movies, such as Ken Olandt who I knew from another one of my favorite movies at that time, the 1987 flick SUMMER SCHOOL, which crazy enough also introduced me to a little film known as THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. If you’ve ever seen SUMMER SCHOOL you’ll know what I’m talking about. Mark Holton also had a part in this playing the dimwitted Ozzie, who was, again from another one of my favorite movies at the time, 1985’s PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE where he played the hated Francis. Seems like I had a lot of favorite movies at this time, huh?

Later on I found out a good use for this movie, scarring the girlfriends. I don’t know why but this movie seem to scare the shit out of every girlfriend that I had in the mid to late 90’s. Was the movie really that scary or were the girls really that lame? I’m sure it was probably the latter but I didn’t care I just had fun making them watch this movie and watching them jump or bury their heads when the lame scares happened. Plus it was fun having the girls jump all over me and holding onto me for protection. Hey I was a horny kid growing up, so shuddup! Then in the late 90’s I would marry a girl that was deathly afraid of LEPRECHAUN, I’m not joking either. We sat down to watch it one night and it totally freaked the shit out of her, so much so that she turned it off. Some might say that she just turned it off because she found it fucking stupid and whatever but this was not the case, she was freaked and crying her eyes out. She flat out refused to ever watch LEPRECHAUN again and banned me from watching it while she was in the house! She would even freak out whenever I would do the imitation of Mike Myers in WAYNE’S WORLD when he would try to scare Garth by holding a flashlight under his face and say “I’m a Leprechaun” and would usually end up with me being punched more often than not in the face.

It just goes to show how different people can see the same movie in totally different lights. You may hate the movie and think it’s the stupidest thing ever. I love the movie and find it highly enjoyable in a cheesy kind of way. And my ex-wife is scared shitless by it. Go figure.

NOTE: The site that I mention above is Fight-Evil.com which I also write this column for.

Reviews Index

Here you shall find the links to all of my reviews.

A
ASYLUM (2007)

B
BLUEBERRY (2004)

L
LIGHTHOUSE (2000)

M
MIDNIGHT SKATER (2002)

N
NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS (1975)
NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE (2006)

O
OZONE (1993)

P
PATHFINDER (2007)

S
SEEDPEOPLE (1992)
SIGNAL, THE (2007)

Articles Index

Here you shall find a link to all the articles that I have written.

LEPRECHAUN (1993)

DEEP STAR SIX (1989)

This is just going to be my own personal blog where I can write about my random musings on films and such and a blog that I can share with friends. I know that there are a ton of blogs like this one out there (and some are just outstanding!) and I'm not going to try to outdo any of them or try to be better than them. I will try to, hopefully post about movies that a lot of people haven't seen and hopefully turn them on to some new and interesting stuff. I also hope to make friends with all the fellow bloggers that I have been following for some time now.

Since I like a wide range of genres you might see from time to time a review or write up on Kung Fu films or those awesome Asian Historic Battle Epic type movies, but there will mostly be horror related movies and stuff.

I hope you keep coming back and see what I think about things ranging from Fulci movies to Italian post-apocalyptic movies to shitty remakes and the modern Hollywood bullshit mainstream movies, etc. etc. You can also check out my website where I will be posting all of this at as well at www.pogotheklown.com. So enjoy and please feel free to leave me comments and tell me what you think. It's always good to hear from fellow movie enthusiast's. Cheers!