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

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

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.