Three years ago, general audiences were treated to a Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature known as Grindhouse. While fans generally loved the hell out of it, it didn’t go over well with the general public and was quickly ushered out in the majority of theatres within the initial 2 weeks. What everyone seemed to the love the most were the faux trailers. One of those trailers was Machete which placed Rodriguez’s minor role baddie Danny Trejo in a starring role. Now, they made a movie about it and beyond the break, you will find the review… Read More…
There definitely hasn’t been a shortage of dark romance lately with endless variations on the vampire mythos, but here’s something you don’t find everyday; a novel starring an ancient seductress of the sea with a legend rooted in Greek myth. The Siren has taken on many forms in her literary history. In Greek mythology she is a bird-woman luring sailors with her deadly song, but Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Everson cast his lead as an ageless sea nymph in his latest novel Siren. You may remember a similar Siren who lured sailors to their death with her killer pipes in Homer’s Odyssey. Since, she has enjoyed bit parts in modern pop culture (notably O’ Brother Where Art Thou and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), but hardly ever the lead role. Everson has the perfect combination of influences to resurrect her from the depths of her watery slumber with seemingly effortless grace. He proves that the Siren has a timeless quality that can seduce and frighten modern audiences. Everson expands the Siren’s already varied mythos by exploring the psychology of fear and seduction in the old port town of Delilah, California. Read More…
A lot has been written about the making of this much hyped creature feature. The director, Gareth Edwards, shot, edited, and created the special effects all on a laptop for a budget of $15,000. Based on that fact alone, the film is impressive. How can one make a monster movie for that little amount? Well … the film is a different type of beast than just a monster on the rampage film. If you go into it thinking you are going to get a cross between Cloverfield and District 9, which the trailers so far have shown, you will be disappointed. This is not to say this is an entirely bad film. In fact, Monsters is quite an interesting film, if one you might not expect.
Read on for more of the review…
Welcome Brain Destroyers to the first edition of what I’d like to call HorrorFAIL, where I brave some of the god-awful drek ever put on celluloid and share the experience with you, the valued reader. Also please keep in mind that I am an unabashed spoiler, so read at your own risk if you don’t want to know how this one ends. Today we are looking at the 1977 slasher film Drive-In Massacre. Before we begin a definition:
mas·sa·cre (Verb) – to kill unnecessarily and indiscriminately, esp. a large number of persons.
Keep that in mind as we continue on this review. Especially the key phrase “large number”.
I’m a child of the 80’s (born in ‘81) and I honestly think that is when horror hit its stride. Granted, I dig films from the 70’s more, but 80’s was when the nonsensical slashers came out. It was the decade of the VHS boom where people who didn’t have a local drive-in or a theater that showed exploitation films could now adjust their tracking to see promiscuous ladies and masked killers clash and slash with a bloody pan and scan glory. VHS was never the best way to see a film but it gave access to what was out there and planted the seed for the future. Then cable hit and mom and pop video stores started feeling some of the pressure. Kids, like myself, could sneak down to the basement and flip on the television to watch a trashy film on Cinemax or HBO. I know what you are probably saying right now….”I came here to read a review of this damn movie not hear your life story.” However, I think it is important to lay the groundwork and background setting as it is my firm belief after watching Piranha 3D that Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes remake & Haute Tension) is not only a fan, but has adapted in into one of the best homage films of past decade. Read on…
David Moody’s Hater (reviewed here), the first novel in the Hater trilogy, closed with such an unexpected cliffhanger could you imagine waiting 4 years for the sequel Dog Blood?! As soon as I finished Hater, I made a trek to the city just north of me to a lesser known chain, not sure if I’d actually find it. When I arrived, I practically ran to the display that houses new releases, knocking over innocent bystanders (don’t worry, I’m not a Hater!), but it wasn’t there. “Don’t panic,” I told myself. I checked the fiction/literature section. They have Hater, so certainly they have Dog Blood, I thought. I checked the end displays and the summer reading displays in the center aisle, but to no avail. Finally, as I was heading toward the exit, in a last ditch effort I scanned the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section and there it was! Same beautiful cover, but this time the journey with Danny McCoyne would be unmistakably more arduous.
Before reading this review I must warn you that in doing so you are doing yourself a great injustice. Much like last years District 9 or House of the Devil, the viewer’s experience will be greatly enhanced by having read as little as possible about the film they are about to see. If you want to spoil yourself, read on…
David Moody’s Hater is not a book you can miss. With a matte white cover splattered in a glossy bright red, “Hater” scrawled across the front, Moody’s first US release stands out from anything else on the shelves. I drooled over the cover since the time it hit bookstores, but for some reason it just never made it to the checkout counter with me. I wondered how the content could possibly live up to the cover, but 3 months after the paperback version was released, and with the second part of the trilogy (Dog Blood) on bookshelves, I finally picked it up to find out. Read More…
It’s been a while since Christina Ricci has graced our presence with a new movie. So with names like Ricci, Justin Long, and Liam Neeson in the film you would think this had the potential to be a box office success but due to bland reviews it received after it was premiered at the AFI film festival last year the film went on a short run limited release to theaters and is now being released on DVD. The film is directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo which is based off her original screen play. Read More…
Ok so this film jumps right into a young man giving a tour of a house to some new prospective tenants, and you see someone walking in after them (only their feet) and they jump in a closet close the door. Cue credits and you officially have my attention. This film is directed by the real brother of “Sookie Stackhouse”, Mr. Andrew Paquin. Anna Paquin and her on screen and in real life lover Stephen Moyer also make brief appearances in this film. I will have to say from the moment this feature started I was intrigued and I was asking for more!
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