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