House on haunted hill

House on haunted hill

First off a lot of people don't like this remake of the 1959 film... fuck them! starring Geoffrey Rush and a bunch of other people this is the story of a group of strangers who are picked at 'random' to spend the night in an abandoned insane asylum. The person who stays the whole night wins one million dollars.The original starred Vincent Price and the remake stars Geoffrey Rush who looks just like him actually and gives a fantastic performance. This would fall under the blanket of late 90's early 2000's new wave of teen horror slashers but I have a lot of personal reasons for loving this film.

Best bit

I really love this movie, I seen it when it first came out and it scared the crap out of me.The acting is pretty good, it looks really crisp, has a really cool stop motion credits into and the MUSIC is creepy as fuck, has a strong presence in the film with a great theme that runs all the way through it. Favorite scene is when the character of price is locked in this big metal chamber which was used in the 30's for supposedly curing insanity, turning a mad man sane or a sane man mad. He is bombarded with bizarre imagery and strange noises until he TRIPS THE FUCK OUT, what follows is equal to an 80's obligatory montage, a horrible series of images that don't make any sense but warped the fuck out of my mind.You know in horror movies when a character does that spiny blurry head thing and its freaky as fuck? yeah lot of that going on here. 

Worst bit

Id have to say the ending SPOILER ALERT its your average 'oh we defeated the evil just as the sun comes up' lark and its just a bit gay. Also i didn't like that the guy from Night at the roxbury got killed, the film would have been 100% cooler if he just started dancing with the homicidal ghosts to what is love?  

What it means to me

Ah yes, the main reason I wrote this review. I rented this motherfucker out with a friend and we watched it one night I had a free house. Letting nine year olds to rent eighteens films isn't a great idea when it scars them for life and gives them nightmares! in a good  way of course. I remember the shaky blurry face thing petrifying me but loving it at the same time. The next day we got up and watched it again, it wasn't as scary watching it in the light of the day and we even laughed at some of the bits, I tried to make fun of the scary parts so I wouldn't be scared!

Summing up

House on haunted hill (1999) is a great chiller/horror with a bit of who done it thrown in too. Id recommend it!

Re-Animator

Re-Animator

H.P. Lovecrafts Re-Animator was originally written in the 1920's but was modernized for this 1985 re telling. Taking a lot of inspiration from Frankenstein (even with the sequel being called Bride of Re-Animator) this is a great eighties gorefest. Like Night of the living dead and Evil Dead Before it this has become a cult classic from a very low budget. I think its become more so famous for its effects than the film its self and another thing that sets it apart from a lot of eighties splatter films is that there is a lot of humor in it! something that at times is the films downfall. Re-Animator is the story of mad scientist Herbert West and his creation of a serum that gives life after death but with horrible consequences, the people who come back to life end up going fucking insane. These aren't traditional zombies that eat everything in sight they mostly just go crazy and murder people. 

Best bit.

best bit in Re-Animator would definitely be the special effects. Eyeballs popping out of skulls, fingers being bitten off and zombie cat fucked against a wall to have its brain smear slowly down. The best gag of the film is when West kills a professor who was going to take credit for his serum and then injects it in his severed head. the body and head come to life and that's when the comedy starts to come into the film. The body and head act like separate characters with the body crashing into walls and the head sitting in a dish of blood looking over un impressed. But THE absalute best bit is when the head/body combo takes hostage the deans daughter, strips her naked and ties her to an operating table. She awakes to see the headless body infront of her ad begins to scream as the head rasply says "thats it! more passssssssssion"  as body lowers the head between her legs, a head giving head....... lol

Worst bit

Something that kind of annoyed me about the film is it feels kid of dated. It was only made in 1985 but it feels older than that, some movies from the seventies feel fresher than it. Everyone's clothes and hair is just old looking and looks more early seventies than mid eighties. Kind of looks like the set of murder she wrote with more blood and heads giving head, thank god Angela Lansbury wasn't around for that. One other thing that kind of grinds my gears is the comedy element that comes in roughly in the second act, its good and all but I think it would have been a stronger film if it focused more on the pure horror elements and less on the body walking around with its head in a bag and when he takes it out it says "Ahhh thats better" because the gore is really fucking good.

What it means to me

Hmmm I only seen this one not too long ago about 2 years maybe, picked it up on dvd. Always seen it in Fangoria an American horror magazine and the actor that played Herbert West is always going to horror conventions so I thought it must be good if it has this big a following, it is a great film but I gotta admit I was a little let down, little too much drama, not enough gore.

Summing up

A great splatter horror only let down by a bit too much love story relationship stuff, but the gore is really fucking good and the character of West is great and steals the show, see it!

The toxic avenger

The toxic avenger

The toxic avenger.... holy shit what do I say about this one... made in 1984 and on the budget of nothing this is one of them most haywire, gory, hilarious, cringe inducing 'superhero' movies you will ever see. it follows the story of Melvin a skinny unpopular guy who mops up at the local pool, he gets on the temper of the local jocks who bully him into falling into a convenentialy placed barrel of nuclear waste and turns into ZE TOXIC AVENGER!!! an unfortunate looking monster that strangely has a different actor for his voice. He runs around town fighting crime and getting his own back on the bullies that tormented him, gets the girl you know the rest. 

Best bit

Too much to choose from, too much cheese! really bad one liners, some pretty cool special effects like when he gets dumped in the toxic waste then runs home and starts mutating is pretty cool. Also there's a fight with a random street gang and one of them is in drag for no apparent reason?! what the hell! I love the eighties! what kind of eighties film would it be without a montage? they were all over the place then and with scarface coming out the previous year it was inevitable, gotta have a montaaaaage.In this specific montage there's a scene of toxy ( I think that's his name you never really hear it ) faces the city in the background and throws his  fists at it in a 'come at me bro' fashion, Epic. Not to mention the gore! there's so much of it! there was a deleted scene where the gang of bullies drive around on a Friday night looking for people to run over (what else ya gonna do sure?) and run over a kid and his head explodes all over the road, it looked very real and graphic like something from the news!

Worst bit

If your looking for a film with production this isn't it. The editing is actually horrendous and its not even trying to be funny its just done really bad, jerky cuts really throw you off at times but that's the only real flaw, some people might consider the acting terrible but that's part of the films charm. also it hasn't aged very well, only made in eighty four and looks pretty crap.This isn't a B movie, its a Z!

What it means to me

I vaguely remember seeing this on television one night when I was very young, I remember Melvin falling into the acid and my dad kept changing the channel and I kept wanting him to go back to see what happened.Always stayed up late to watch what horrible films I could get away with! I recently found it on dvd pre owned in a gamestop for three quid and had to get it, Watched it with some friends and quoted the hell out of it. 

Summing up

Great little film to watch with friends for the absolute laugh, more so for the pure eighties cheese and nothing else. "Oh Melvin, you're beautiful!!!"

 

Step Brothers

Step Brothers

Step Brothers is a wacky comedy starring Will Ferrel and John c. Reilly and directed by Adam Mckay and was released in 2008.This is the story of two middle age losers who find each other when their parents marry. They get off on the wrong foot for a while but eventually come together and realise they are basically the same person which leads to a whole barrel of laughs as they try and get jobs.Both Ferrel and Reilly steal the show as being twelve year olds in 40 year old bodies and who could forget possibly forget the best thing to come from this film, boats nd hoes.Two things this film thought me, never ever wake up a sleep walker and don't ever touch another mans drum kit.

Best bit
Sooooooooo many good bits in this movie, nearly every line is a quote but I think the best bit is where unknown to each other they both sleepwalk and do ridiculous ridiculous things like destroy the house in the most outrageous fashion, or after their sleepwalking fest and Brennans mother wakes them up and they whimper "the clown has no penis" and "ill kill you leonard nimoy"....  I also really like the guys room loads of cool little things in the background you notice on multiple viewings like the 2 Metallica and Heavy Metal posters. And seriously I gotta get me some boats nd hoes..... Oh yeah there's drums in the movie too! =]

Worst bit
Hmmmmmm worst bit.... fuck no I cant do it to one of my favourite films! suppose when the two guys face off against a group of actual twelve year olds and get their asses kicked is a bit stupid, just because you have the mind of a twelve year old doesn't mean you have the body of one?! KICK THE SHITE OUT OF THEM! well.... there is the whole police thing to worry about but still! its pathetic how they do absolutely nothing and because of it Brennan gets a belly full of white dog crap.



What it means to me
Really wanted to see this in the cinema but I think I just missed it so picked it up on blu ray when it came out. I also remember staying in a college friends after a night out and the next day we were hungover wrecks and needed cheering up, so what do we do? stick on motherfuckin Step Brothers. soon our hungover wails were replaced with YOU DESTROYED MY BOAT YOU GOONS! to be quoted  forever.

Summing up
If you haven't seen Step Brothers..... stop reading and fucking see Step Brothers..... Bitch.

Night of the living dead (1990)

Night of the living dead (1990)

Night of the living dead is the remake of the 1968 film of the same name. Directed by Tom Savini the man who ALMOST did the special effects makeup for the original if it wasnt for that whole Vietnam war thing but did them for the two sequels Dawn of the dead(1978) and Day of the dead (1985). Everyone knows the story, few people caught in the middle of a zombie epidemic hold tight in an abandoned farm house for as long as they can. This is a fantastic film for fans of gore and splatter (directed by the king of splatter himself) but also physiological horror, as there are a lot of personality clashes going on with paranoia and tension very high.

Best bit

Best bit in my opinion would be the first 15 minutes, the intro because it simply is genius. it plays very close to the 68 version with similar dialogue and the characters looking almost identical. but when it comes to seeing the first zombie the audience expects it to be the same gimic, but its not. and then when you least expect it, BAM hideous zombie scares the shit out of you. and from there its basically the same story as the original except modernized, the characters are more real rather than 60's stereotypes where the husband regularly gave his wife a few slaps when she was being hysterical. one thing that made the original unique for its time was casting a black man as the lead which at the time was unheard of.

Worst bit

One scene in the film that annoys me just shows the stupidity of this character is when the inhabitants of the house realize there is a gas pump just up there road where they can fuel up and get out of there. they approach the pumps fighting off zombies as they do, one guy in the back of the pickup truck leaves his torch there and hops out to unlock the gas pump, after realizing he had the wrong keys he proceeds to take out his shotgun and blow the lock off! IDIOT! which then causes the whole thing to explode. just thinking about the what ifs which might have happened  if he didn't do that really grinds my gears.... 

What it means to me

I remember the day I got the dvd of Night of the living dead vividly because it was the same day I went to funderland with my cousins and got sick candy floss in the back seat of the car! i was about 12 at the time. Cant remember how I managed to get the dvd must have got someone to buy it for me. It was around this time my mam was getting pissed off with the amount of 18s movies in my collection! my horror obsession really kicked off at that age.

Summing up

Night of the living dead (1990) is one of the best remakes ever. Excellent directing, very good acting and GREAT special effects, a real horror hounds movie! hard to track down tho! hope yis all had a good halloween =]