Bloodmoon (1996)

Directed by: Tony Leung (not THAT Tony Leung, I presume)

Writer: Keith W. Strandberg

Here's a martial arts movie posing as a thriller. Or is it the other way around? Whatever the case, the fighting part of the movie is rather good, while everything else is pretty much horrible.

 

The structure is typical of serial killer movies: There's this guy that kills people left and right. In charge of the police investigation is a funny black guy who's of course unable to find the killer, so the chief of police (Frank Gorshin in yet another gratuitously over-the-top performance reminiscent of his Batman days) asks a retired detective (Gary Daniels) for help in order the prevent the crazy maniac from killing everyone on the planet and causing an apocalypse. Of course, the victims are not randomly selected and finding the connection between them means finding the killer and it will also give Gary Daniels an opportunity to win back his wife who's pissed off about something, blah blah blah... Fairly standard stuff, without a trace of innovation of any kind.

 

However, what's of interest here is the way the murders are committed - each of the victims is a champion of some martial arts discipline and the killer is beating them in their own discipline before killing them. He's like Michael Phelps among the serial killer martial artists. It should also be mentioned that he wears a dreadfully silly costume and he's a computer wizard who teases the police by sending them cheesy provocative messages.

 

The fights are numerous and well choreographed, which comes as no surprise since pretty much everyone involved in the movie is a martial artist of some kind (this includes the director, the writer and all the lead actors). Unfortunately, there are some scenes where nobody's fighting and instead they're trying to talk and what not and it's really embarrassing. The highlight of this cheesiness is the scene where Daniels wins back his wife. I blushed during that one even though I was completely alone. Having someone walk in while you're watching this scene is worse than being caught watching porn by your grandmother. Everything except fighting is cliché after cliché and it gets really boring and tiring after a while. If you're a fan of martial arts, I recommend fast forwarding through these scenes and if you're not, skip the movie altogether.

Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (2008)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

 

Feast II takes place right after the first part, in which, as we remember, a group of bar patrons was assaulted and pretty much wiped out by some disgusting monsters of unknown origin. To give a quick reminder, the only survivors were Honey Pie, who screwed the others by stealing the truck that was meant to be used as a means for escape, and the group who bravely fought the invaders throughout the night - Bozo, Tuffy and Hot Wheels. Unfortunately, we don't see those latter three in this sequel, so their destiny remains a mystery. Generally, Feast II is a bit short on stars, but that's perfectly OK, since deep characterization isn't exactly the point of the whole thing.

 

Biker Queen (Diane Ayala Goldner) arrives in the vicinity in the search for her sister Harley Mom. Unfortunately, we'll remember that she was earlier blown up by Bozo (Balthazar Getty), so the only part of her that Biker Queen discovers is a severed hand. Harley Mom was also played by Diane Goldner, but since she's John Gulager's wife, it would be a shame if she didn't appear again, so she got a new (but essentially the same) part. Instead of her sister, she discovers the Bartender, who also died in the first movie, but since it's Clu Gulager (John Gulager's father), it turns out he was only heavily wounded. He informs the Biker Queen about what happened to her sister, so she and her gang tie him up and they all set out for a small neighboring town of Smalltown so she can find Bozo and wreak horrible vengeance of him.

 

Smalltown is in the meantime completely devastated by the monsters and there are only a handful of survivors. By chance, the gang runs into none other than Honey Pie, so it's the Bartender who gets the first opportunity for revenge. He immediately starts beating the hell out of her and he bites her ear off. Then the gang shoots some other people and are finally united with the other survivors, who are an even more colourful bunch than the one from the previous film. They include Slasher, a used cars salesman and one of the most entertaining characters in the series, Secrets, his cheating wife, Greg Swank (her lover, played by Tom Gulager, John Gulager's brother), Thunder and Lightning, the midget wrestlers and the owners of the local key shop, their grandmother and some other minor characters. Throughout the movie, the group tries to reach the only safe place in town and that's the jail. However, they can't reach it because of the monsters, and besides an old drunk has locked himself in and won't let anyone inside.

 

Feast II is certainly an acquired distaste (I almost said taste). While the first part wasn't exactly shy about gross outs, the sequel takes things to a whole new level by introducing such beauties and monster raping a cat, a dissection scene with monster fluids of various kind flowing everywhere, another child being explicitly eaten, a dwarf cut in half whining about his penis being cut off, a decomposing elderly lady and the infamous catapult scene which I won't spoil, but it's certainly one of the most insane and disturbing things you've seen in your life, and yet at the same time so hilarious that you'll spend almost the whole time rolling on the floor with laughter and hating yourself at the same time because there's nothing funny about it. Yeah, right!

 

The best thing about Feast II is the complete disregard for human existence. While there was some teamwork in the first part, here it's almost nonexistent. Slasher is perfectly happy to throw Greg to the monsters, not as a means of escape, but simply for revenge. Greg at first tries to save an infant trapped in a car, but then he throws it in the air and runs off while monsters eat the baby. At the end of the "successful" test of the catapult (resulting in the death of the midget grandma), Slasher sings and dances. The whole group simply throws an injured biker girl to the monsters, et cetera. This is precisely the reason why people who should know better dismiss it as being "poorly written", "having undeveloped characters", "not being scary" and similar crap, completely missing the point of the whole thing.

 

And the point is to be entertained while watching people suffer and dying. Well, not exactly "people", the characters here are one-dimensional caricatures, and that's the way we love it. They are not likable and we are not supposed to feel any kind of connection to any of them or to root for them. They are simply there to die and amuse us. And their deaths are unpredictable and almost without exception hilariously funny. Some are the result of the work of the monsters, some happen by pure accidents and sloppiness and there's also a handful of scenes of people killing other people. It doesn't make sense to talk about "leading" and "supporting" characters in the traditional sense because literally anyone could be dead at any minute. This whole series is notorious for its violence and monster bodily fluids, but for me it's this total disrespect for our fellow man (both by the writers and the characters in the film) that makes it so unique. This could have been made with far less explicit violence, maybe even without the monsters, and it would still retain its charm.

 

Sloppy Seconds is not as claustrophobic as the first movie. While the main theme is similar (some people locked in some place, fending off the monsters), it has more locations and more outdoor scenes, which is a welcome change.

 

If you are lucky and still haven't seen this film (provided that you love horror and comedy and are a bit crazy), do yourself a favor and assemble a group of equally bloodthirsty friends and enjoy like you've never enjoyed before.

 

A few words about the DVD. Unlike the previous one, this one is seriously lacking in extra material. The subtitles are missing again, and there are only a two short featurettes - the 10 minute making of, which is quite informative and entertaining, but obviously rather short, and the five minute "Meet the Gulagers", which is a nice look at the way the three generations of Gulagers appear in the movie. John is the director, his father Clu, wife Diana and brother Tom play some of the "lead" roles (put in quotes because of... just read one of the earlier paragraphs, dammit!) and the baby that meets an unfortunate demise at the hands of that bastard Greg is none other than Tom Gulager's infant son. So it all gives quite a funny perspective on some of the events - like Diana Goldner beating her father-in-law, or Tom Gulager throwing his own son to the monsters.

 

Feast II and Feast III were shot back-to-back and in fact pretty much constitute one movie, which was split into two simply for the running time. So, unlike the first part, this one ends more abruptly than the Lord of the Rings movies. Since it's in essence just one movie, everything I said for the second part also goes for the third part, so I hope its review won't be this long and boring. Over and out.

Feast (2006)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

Disclaimer: If you're expecting an objective review of this movie, you came to the wrong place. Feast (the whole series) is one of my favorite things ever and I love it to death. Every single second of each of the three movies. Okay, almost every single second (we'll come to that later). I pity people who are unable to enjoy it, because in this world there's nothing like Feast, never was and probably never will be, unless by some miracle we get Feast IV, and chances for that are really slim, seeing as how Dimension screwed up the Piranha franchise. Oh, well...

 

Now that we got that out of the way, what's this thing about, anyway? The plot is the simplest possible - patrons in a bar in a middle of nowhere are forced to fight off the invasion of some horrifying man-eating monsters of unknown origin (which is, strangely, explained in the trailer, but not in the movie). The bastards are fast, strong, ugly, extremely hard to kill and show zero regard for human life. This last thing also goes for some of the humans.

 

Surely, we have seen similar stories before, but its treatment is what elevates Feast and its sequels to the level of a masterpiece of modern cinema (note that I'm not saying "in my opinion". Feast is a masterpiece, it's a fact of life and people who think otherwise are simply wrong.) Basically, it all boils down one main thing: This is a perfect combination of horror and comedy and it succeeds where its more famous predecessors like An American Werewolf in London and Shaun of the Dead failed.

 

Simply put, this is the way to do it. An American Werewolf in London has some masterfully directed horror scenes (the beginning in the woods, that amazing subway sequence which makes you shiver, etc.), but it also has comedy (the porno movie scene, for example) which takes a lot of the impact of the horror scenes, so we end up with a movie that's too scary to be a comedy and too funny to be a horror. Similarly, Shaun of the Dead, even though it has zombies, is essentially a drama with some elements of comedy and horror, which are again clearly separated. For me this simply doesn't work (I'm one of the minority that prefers The Howling to An American Werewolf and I've never been a big fan of Shaun). If you already have great horror scenes, why downgrade them with comedy instead of making a pure horror? I think the real horror-comedy is just like a regular comedy, except it's too gruesome for you to show it to your grandmother. It has to have the same tone from the beginning to the end, where the comedy and horror scenes are not separated, but the comedy is contained in horror. So, the goal is not to have a scary scene where a werewolf kills a guy and then a funny scene where someone is telling a joke in a bar - you're supposed to have a funny scene where a werewolf kills a guy.

 

And Feast is that movie! It's a pure comedy from start to finish, and quite original at that. Right at the beginning we get a supercool infodump where each of the characters is introduced by an onscreen title, stating his or her name (or, rather, nickname), some fun fact and life expectancy. The real fun begins when we meet The Hero - he's handsome (I guess), charismatic, immediately takes the leadership, organizes the defense, gives orders and his life expectancy is, quote, "pretty f***ing good". And he dies two minutes later! So we are left with a leaderless motley crew of seemingly completely incapable losers and there's more than 80 minutes of the movie left! So right from the beginning you are aware that you're watching something different.

 

The non-stop fun here comes mainly from the movie's unpredictability. Melton and Dunstan simply avoided all clichés in their screenplay and in some scenes they made deliberate fun of them. For example, in all movies of this type (where a group of different people are forced to unite in a fight against a stronger enemy) there has to be a scene where someone takes the spotlight and starts to talk about working together, helping each other and similar crap. Here, Henry Rollins has the honor of having the opportunity to give an emotionally charged motivational speech to the others (all while he's wearing pink underpants) and while he encourages them, one guy rolls his eyes and Balthazar Getty simply asks "Are you gay?". This is just one example and the movie's full of them. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about, and if not - take my word for it, because I'm not spoiling more than necessary. Anyway, the fact that you simply have no idea who's going to die next and that everyone is primarily thinking of saving his (or her) own ass is a source of almost endless fun.

 

In addition to having brilliant and unpredictable characters, Feast is also a truly action packed movie. I've said that the monsters are deadly, so survival is the primary (and only) goal. Finally we have a film without stupid drama and stupid romances and big speeches and similar crap that almost always pops up and ruins everything. Not here. If the characters are not dying (which is pretty often), they are arguing with each other and making plans for the action, so we don't know who lost their father in Vietnam and who was left by their boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife etc. - and we don't care! We only want to see another horrifying death (man or monster, it doesn't matter) and the movie flawlessly delivers. In short, watching people die has never been this fun (except in Feast 2 and 3).

 

Another thing where Feast is different than (most of) the other horror films is its gruesomeness. It's not just that the monsters are eating people, crushing their heads, tearing off the limbs, et cetera - there are other things that will make you think "Now did I just see THAT?". Just one example is when people in the bar decide to show one of the monsters they've killed to other monsters, to demonstrate the human superiority (another brilliant idea by Henry Rollins). So, what do the other monsters do? Naturally, they eat the body and immediately proceed to have monster sex, resulting in another small monster a few minutes later. Some of the things they do to people are even worse (for example, I could live without the head rape scene, but this "could / could not / live without this or that" discussion will be an important part of my upcoming review of Feast 2, so I won't elaborate further here).

 

John Gulager's direction perfectly fits Melton's and Dunstan's screenplay. The pace is extremely fast, the camera frantically flies all over, but manages to catch everything important (makers of found footage films, take note!) and it doesn't shy away from violence. If there's a scene where a head is supposed to be crushed, we see a head being crushed. When a heroine is beating a trapped monster's head, we see monster teeth flying all around. Nothing is left to our imagination and I'm grateful for that. Speaking of monsters, we get the opportunity to see them in full glory and they are really well made and horrifyingly ugly, thanks to some great make-up work by Gary J. Tunnicliffe.

 

Feast, while being innovative, original and unprecedentedly disgusting,  still retained some conventional storytelling elements (for example, most of the characters are not completely insane), which proved to be a winning combination for most horror fans. It's rightfully considered a cult classic now. However, the sequels inexplicably managed to surpass it in insanity, so I enjoyed them even more (!). They will be reviewed here shortly and at the end of the review for Feast 3 I'll bitch a bit about the wasted potential of the Piranha series (I'm not exactly sure what does that have to do with Feast, but it crossed my mind, so...)

 

Just a quick note about the DVD - it contains about 40 minutes of additional material, including deleted scenes, outtakes, the making of feature and some interviews. John Gulager, Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton (who's very thin and looks like a total nerd, just like me, hahaha! :-) ) and some of the producers offer some interesting information about how the movie was conceived and realized, but my favorite part is the interview with Gary J. Tunnicliffe, the mastermind who designed the monsters (and even played one of them). He's a really funny English guy, totally interesting to listen to. Look for the funny story about the way he told his father that he wanted to do make-up. If you're one of the two regular visitors of this blog, you might remember him as a co-writer and co-director of the horribly bad movie called Megalodon . Fortunately, his special effects are spot-on.

 

Anyway, this movie is brilliant. Get it. Seriously.

Dark Circles (2013)

Directed by: Paul Soter

Writer: Paul Soter

I'd like to begin this review by saying "I'm not easily scared, but...", however, that would be a blatant lie. I'm very easily scared. Give me one Japanese long-haired ghost, and I'm already throwing a blanket over my head. So, the fact that I find this one of the scariest movies in recent years doesn't say much. However, scary or not, I think it's a very well made movie that's worth checking out, particularly (damn, what a difficult word for a non-English speaker!) for the performances of the two leads.

 

The movie starts with some cheerful music to which a young woman is enjoying the company of her newborn baby. This idyllic scene is quickly interrupted by a loud knock on the door. When the woman opens it, she finds a really scary bitch that's apparently injured (but we know better, right?) because there's this huge red spot on her belly. The young woman (the other woman is also young, but we will differentiate between the two by calling her a scary bitch) takes her in and proceeds to call help, but makes a mistake of leaving her baby unattended. Next thing you know, the scary bitch shows her true intentions and it isn't pretty.

 

Virtually plotless, the movie's sole intention seems to be to scare the viewer by having the scary bitch pop out of nowhere in almost every scene and do whatever the scary bitches usually do. In that regard, Dark Circles isn't unlike Shutter (of course, I'm referring to the Thai original and not that stupid American remake), but it's less scary and much more ambiguous. Who is that woman? Is she a ghost? A figment of their imagination? Does she come with the house? Is she perhaps real? I don't think this ambiguity was Soter's conscious intention. It just came as a natural consequence of the decision to put the scary bitch in just about every bloody possible scene, without a slightest regard of its context. One of the main characters is dreaming - what is (s)he dreaming about? Why, the scary bitch, of course! The husband is looking at some pictures and who's that on every single picture? You guessed it, the scary bitch! The wife looks through the window and lo and behold, it's the scary bitch standing by the tree in the garden! The wife looks in the mirror and take a wild guess who passes in the background! The scary bitch!

 

So, if scary bitches scare you, you'll probably find this scary, if not, you'll either stop watching after 15 minutes, or you'll try to ignore the nuisances and concentrate of what (I guess) is supposed to be the main theme of the movie, the relationship between the lead characters (a young couple with a baby), their personal problems, the way they deal with the parenthood, etc. This drama part is generally well written and is greatly enhanced by very good performances by Jonathon Schaech (damn, what a difficult last name for a non-English speaker!) and Pell James. They make their characters believable and even likable, in spite of their almost constant arguing.

 

I said "generally" in the last paragraph because everything isn't perfect. The young parents display a surprising lack of communication which can't just be explained by their, you know, lack of communication. The problem is the necessity to keep the story going to full length, and if they had a real conversation, the movie would be over in 15 minutes.

 

"You know what, darling? I keep seeing this scary bitch everywhere."

"You too? ZOMG, and I thought I was going crazy!"

"You're telling me! Now let's get the *censored* out of this house!"

This doesn't happen until nearly the end of the movie.

 

I haven't really talked about the plot, but you have probably gathered that there's this young couple with a baby, whose relationship is plagued by the scary bitch. There's also a lack of sleep, but that's also caused by the scary bitch. The scary bitch was probably supposed to be a means of support for the general character drama, but as I said before, Soter couldn't resist, so she got so much screen presence that she practically became the lead character herself, pushing the drama to the background. There are many scary scenes, which are mostly based on the well established patterns ("But honey, if I you are in another room, then who the bloody hell is this woman who lies in our bed???????"). There are also many completely unnecessary jump scares. However, that's all just the writing problem. The direction is spot-on, both in drama and horror parts. Soter has obviously seen his share of classics and he did a good job on emulating them and with his obvious talent I'm sure he'll soon find his original expression, which will make his subsequent movies kick ass.

 

By the way, this is Paul Soter from... Broken Lizard!?!?!?!

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

Directed by: Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Yoshihiro Nishimura

Writers: Shungicu Ushida (manga), Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Yoshihiro Nishimura has been one of my favorite directors ever since I saw the wonderful Tokyo Gore Police. I definitely prefer him to his colleague Noboru Iguchi, who (with the exception of The Machine Girl, which I loved) reaches for vulgar toilet humor too often, and besides, in my opinion, he harbours a bit unhealthy obsession with human ass.

 

Strictly speaking, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is primarily a Naoyuki Tomomatsu movie, but Nishimura is credited as a co-director and he also did the special effects, so he had a huge influence on the visual side of the movie, if not for the story. Speaking of Tomomatsu, his name wasn't familiar to me before, but after this movie I'll give him a chance, though titles like Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead and Eating Schoolgirls don't promise something that would be my cup of tea.

 

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is a successful J-sploitation splatterfest, which works simply because it's so damn entertaining. If you've seen any of Nishimura's films, you'll promptly find yourself on familiar ground when some cheerful pop music starts to play while fountains of blood flow and severed body parts fly around in slow-motion.

 

Basically, it's a story of a high-school love triangle, where a poor young boy called Jyugon is sandwiched between Keiko, the vice principal's daughter and (I guess) the most popular girl at school, and Monami, an extremely cute newcomer with mysterious background, with both of them wanting him to be their boyfriend forever. So, why the hell did I just call him "poor"? Well, for one, Monami is a vampire and wants to turn him into one, and Keiko is a bitch, at least at the beginning. Then she dies, is revived by her father (who, in his free time, is an insane Dr. Frankenstein wannabe) and turned into a horrifying cut-and-paste monster made of body parts stolen from different people. And she's still a bitch! Jyugon chooses the lesser of two evils, so he and Monami are forced to fight the disturbingly enhanced Keiko and her mad father throughout the rest of the movie.

 

As with other similar films, the plot is just there to serve as an excuse (heh, like we would need one) for hilarious over-the-top violence, body parts abuse and colourful characters which never get boring. To list everything would be impossible (not to mention undesirable), but some of the highlights are a wrist cut competition, a club of black wannabe girls (this alone in America would probably put the author in jail for a long time due to racism), vice principal who dresses like a witch doctor, inventive body part combinations (a severed arm used as a propeller, eyeballs instead of nipples, to mention just a few trivial examples) and of course endless mutilations whose crowd pleasing potential is immense.

 

It's recommended to see this in the company of your male friends, especially if you can pair it with a similar but longer film, like Nishimura's Helldriver. You can also play it to your girlfriend if you want to get dumped quickly. Whatever you do, don't miss it.

The Evil Below (1988)

Directed by: Jean-Claude Dubois

Writer: Art Payne

Sunken ships! Lost treasures! Curses! Underwater sequences! Mysterious deaths! Wayne Crawford! June Chadwick! If this doesn't sound like the best thing ever (not counting the Yoshihiro Nishimura films, of course), I don't know what does. Unfortunately, The Evil Below hardly lives up to its potential. While the leads are perfectly fine, both the screenwriting and the directing are beyond pale, which all abounds to something that probably won't bore you to death, but also won't feel much more stimulating than staring at a blank wall.

 

Wayne Crawford plays Max Cash, the captain of a small boat that's about to be confiscated by the bank or something, because Cash hasn't paid it off yet, and he doesn't have any cash (notice the striking irony of his name in relation to his financial status). The salvation apparently comes in the (beautiful) body of June Chadwick, who rents his boat to find a mysterious sunken Spanish galleon called El diablo, which was supposedly packed to the brim with various kinds of stolen treasure.

 

Of course, any kind of sunken old ship with lost treasure would simply suck without an appropriate curse to go with it, so the people on the island suddenly start turning up dead, including Max Cash's father. It doesn't take Isaac Newton to observe that everyone who died was somehow involved with the hunt for the treasure and, as our heroes investigate further, it becomes more and more obvious that the origin of all the fishy things that happen is supernatural in nature. Heh, this almost sounds like a contradiction in terms.

 

This story is a great starting point and could have been made into a really good B-movie, hadn't the authors (almost on purpose, it seems) avoided everything that would made things more interesting. For example, they never bothered to bring an element of danger for the lead characters in the treasure hunt. The underwater scenes are okay, but it's because underwater scenes are cool by default and not because there's anything special about them here. There aren't any real elements of danger like, say, failed oxygen bottles or giant octopuses or megalodons or... well, you get the idea. The movie even lacks the almost obligatory scene where one of the heroes is kidnapped and the other one forced to go and get something from some shark infested waters.

 

The murder scenes are obviously not the main focus here because they are next to non-existent. We see a supporting character alone somewhere, then he or she hears something (some of them also see a shadow of something that looks like a man with a hat), then he or she sees something (but we don't) and screams and the next day he or she is dead. Where's the blood spewing, where are the cut arteries, chopped off limbs, ripped-out hearts, bellies cut open? Well, they are in Yoshihiro Nishimura movies, one of which I'm going to see tonight, but they're certainly not here.

 

With all this left out, the only thing left to focus on are the lead characters and their relationship. The motive of a ship captain (or, more often, a private detective) and his client falling for each other despite (or exactly because of) their totally conflicting characters has been done to death before and it calls for some witty dialogue, arguments, fighting, things to liven up the relationship a bit. Unfortunately, in this movie, even though Crawford and Chadwick look good together, they are given only the most boring and generic lines. What a waste of good actors :-(

 

The Evil Below is, despite my good will, a movie that's hard to recommend. You can find better underwater sequences elsewhere and you can most definitely find movies where Wayne Crawford and June Chadwick are put to better use. Try for example Forbidden World, or a more recent Art Payne - Wayne Crawford collaboration Snake Island.

Ghost Machine (2009)

Directed by: Chris Hartwill

Writers: Sven Hughes, Malachi Smyth, Sven Hughes (original story)

To tell you the truth, my hearing isn't what it used to be and I watched this movie late at night, so I wasn't able to turn the volume up as much as it was required. The point I'm getting to is - I heard almost nothing of what the characters were saying at the beginning, so I had only a vague idea of who they were and where the story took place. Sure, they are some military types and it's some kind of abandoned prison, I gathered that much, but I missed the finer details.

 

I guess it wasn't that important anyway. The point is - we have some people in some abandoned prison (presumably) and they set up a rather cool setup for a military virtual reality simulation. Basically, in the simulator they run through the same rooms and corridors that exist in the real life, with the difference that in the simulation they have full military equipment, including weapons of choice. Neat!

 

The slight problem is - a scary female ghost has infiltrated the simulation and is killing people right and left. And it has that irritating super power ripped off from Freddy Kruger that anyone who dies in the simulation dies for real. It also seems to have a power to modify the scenery, erase a staircase here, add a wall there and similar. It seems that sometimes being a ghost rocks.

 

Fortunately, it's not one of those scary long-haired Japanese ghosts, otherwise I would've promptly stop watching. The ghost is well done and a bit scary, but it doesn't stare at you through the screen and the way it eliminates people is anything but ghostly - it uses chains and brings devastating damage to their physical bodies.

 

For what it is, Ghost Machine is a finely made film that keeps interest throughout, but there's hardly anything spectacular in it. For this kind of movie, to elevate above the average status, one ghost is not enough. Had the budget allowed it, they could have made a full scale ghost vs. military war, where the ghosts would use a Hellraiser-like arsenal of chains, hooks and similar stuff, while the army would respond with their ultrafancy futuristic weapons like plasma guns, BFG 9000, railguns et cetera. Oh well, maybe in the sequel... Overall, Ghost Machine is far from a must-see, but it's worth checking it out for its rather original idea.

Storage 24 (2012)

Directed by: Johannes Roberts

Writers: Noel Clarke (original idea and screenplay), Johannes Roberts (screenplay), Davie Fairbanks (screenplay), Marc Small (screenplay)

 

I really like it when a movie lives up to its title. This one promises us Storage 24 and boy do we get it! A whole truckload of Storage 24! In fact, the entire movie takes place... in STORAGE 24!.

 

Fortunately, there's a hideous alien monster that kills people in there, because, you see, a storage (24 or otherwise) in itself isn't a particularly interesting setting. Imagine this being a drama, where people just go around and talk and yell at each other and we have to wait all the way to the very end of the movie for someone to day of cancer... in a storage. I imagine that would really suck, even if the storage in question had been the infamous... Storage 24!

 

Apart from being faithful to its title and set in the Storage 24 (I would've felt really cheated if it had been Storage 23 or something), this was also a surprisingly cool movie. Generally, a low budget and a claustrophobic setting are a recipe for disaster, but Johannes Roberts turned out to be a pretty skilful director who managed to make it all work.

 

First of all, there are no crappy introductions - right at the beginning, the people in Storage 24 are startled by a loud noise, which upon further investigation turns out to be caused by a plane crash. One of the guys finds his car crashed by a plane engine and I thought at that moment that it would be really cool if he yelled something like "Donnie Darko, you son of a bitch!". Johannes Roberts obviously had different opinion, so he avoided this cheesy and nonsensical Donnie Darko reference.

 

The important thing about the crash (even more important than a squished car) is that it was a military plane that was carrying something really nasty. Our heroes soon find themselves locked in the Storage 24 (I don't really remember how that happened, I have this nasty habit of missing out on important details in movies) along with the mysterious content of the crashed plane. It's not a real surprise that said content is extremely hungry... and not a vegetarian.

 

The thing about that thing is that it's a very good looking thing. Don't get me wrong, it's not Cindy Crawford (hell, it's not even Keira Knightley!), in fact it's even uglier than most male members of the human population, but the design is great and worthy of a film with a much larger budget. Its mouth look slightly like Predator's and the body somewhat resembles a giant insect even though it walks on two feet and it likes eating people's faces with that hideous mouth of his.

 

So, anyway, it looks great, and there are plenty of scenes where you can see it in full glory. Low budget movies usually use that irritating monster POV during most of the killings and only show it at the end, but here it isn't like that. I imagine this was a wise production decision - save money on location and use it to make a decent looking monster. And it provides some nice bloody killings - for example, it was great when some older guy came to face the monster and tried to confuse it with his trash talk and the monster got pissed off and instantly ripped off half of his face.

 

The movie also avoids some usual clichés in the character department. Not only the black guy doesn't die first, he becomes the leading hero (!). We don't see this very often (we did in Creature two years ago, but that's about that). Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that the actor who plays that lead role was also a producer and one of the writers, but be that as it may, he's a very likeable character.

 

There's also some drama between the characters, which thankfully never gets overdone. The black guy has this blonde ex girlfriend who left him for unknown reasons and only later he finds out that she's been screwing his best friend for quite some time. That "best friend" is some white guy who looks OK at the beginning, but shows his true colours when crap hits the fan and turns into a major asshole. Luckily, all of these people (including another blonde and some other guys) are normal grown ups, so we don't have to put up with another brunette-blonde-stoner-black guy-geek formula that usually comes up when a film deals with younger people (teenagers or students).

 

Basically, these are the two main ingredients that make this movie not suck - the characters that resemble real life people and a well made monster. There's also some well placed humour scattered around, for example when the ugly Predator-like monster gets distracted by a toy puppy. Of course, this is not Alien or Halloween and you won't feel that kind of tension, but you will (probably) be entertained.

 

I also have to mention the ending, without spoiling it, of course. It's that usual twist ending that's certainly been seen before, but the way they did it here was quite... interesting. I certainly don't mind that kind of stuff, I immensely enjoyed the robot at the end of Feast 3, but some people will probably find it a bit out of place.

Road Rage (2000)

Directed by: Sidney J. Furie

Writer: Greg Mellott

 

 

Here's another review from the old blog. Click here to see this with some screenshots.

 

I don’t know how many of you are car chase scene addicts – I sure am! A car chase in a movie is like a great instrumental break in a rock song – it tends to overshadow everything else and I always wish there was more of it. Take for example the 1972 film Fear is the Key. It begins with a mindblowingly great (and long) car chase, but the rest wasn’t that good. In Bullit, which was of course a great film, car chase scene was the best part, too.



 

So what if someone made a movie consisting entirely of car chase(s)? Road Rage is that movie! Unfortunately, it’s really horrible. Okay, before we get into details, to respond to a question you’re asking – yes, of course, there’s Duel, a brilliant film, one that certainly predates Road Rage and serves as an obvious inspiration for it. However, Duel was primarily a thriller (or even horror), not an action movie. The main character being pursued for no reason by something large and terrifying and seemingly undestructible is a theme that has more in common with, say, Halloween than your regular car chase movies.

As much as I’d prefer to continue writing about Spielberg/Matheson’s masterpiece, sadly, we have to turn our attention to Road Rage, which, as I said, is a real action movie with lots of car chases and crashes. Similar to Duel, the main protagonists get into trouble straight away and are being chased to the very end. Everything else is different. First of all, there is no mystery about the pursuer’s identity – Casper Van Dien and his annoying female sidekick Sonia are being chased by her idiotic ex-boyfriend and his two equally idiotic friends. All three of them are dumb jocks (actually, two of them are, I don’t know about the third one) who look like they couldn’t tie their shoelaces, which is extremely disappointing especially if we, again, remember Duel and its mysterious antagonist whose face we never see.

 

Be that as it may, those three morons for some reason always appear on our heroes’ tail when they least expect it. They are never too upset about their truck exploding or falling off the side of the road or other similar minor annoyances. For example, they try to attack them on a gas station, hit a gas pump instead, there’s a big explosion, the truck is totally destroyed, but minutes later it’s as good as new. I don’t understand if they got a new one, or quickly fixed the one that exploded or... For a movie with such a simple story, it sure has its share of whatthehell moments. 

 

So, anyway, how the heck have they managed to ruin such a great and simple idea? Surely, a few continuity errors can’t be such a big issue. Well, the main problem is the screenwriter, who should be shot repeatedly in the head before he “writes” anything else (unfortunately, this movie is more than 10 years old and in the meantime he has “written” quite a few of them, which I’ll try my best to avoid). The characterization is absolutely horrible and the dialogs are the worst. Almost everyone has two or three (not very impressive) lines that they repeat over and over until you get sick. Take the main bad guy, the ex-boyfriend. Aside from looking like a complete dork, he constantly repeats how he loves Sonia. Remember, this is happening at the same time while he’s trying to kill her. His fat sidekick (the non-jock one) only cares about his truck not being damaged so it’s “You scratched my truck! Don’t hit my truck! You’ll ruin my truck! Don’t ruin my truck!” over and over and over again. As a bonus, his acting (if you can call it that) is terrible.

Sonia is really cute and while her conversations with Casper are made of the worst clichés ever (“You are a rich girl! You have everything!” “No, I don’t! My life sucks!” “No, it doesn’t!” “I love stars!” etc) it’s all relatively bearable until about halfway through the film when she finally loses her grip and starts yelling “I want to talk to him! Let me talk to him! Why is this happening to us? I wish I was dead! Let me die! I want to talk to him! Let me talk to him! Why is this happening? I want to die!” and similar. You get the idea. Anyone less cool than Casper would’ve probably thrown her out of the damn car under her stupid ex-boyfriend’s wheels. Anyway, Casper’s the only one that manages to fight the idiotic script and come out with some dignity left.

Or is he? There’s a scene when he and Sonia are out of gas and they stop a ranger (played by Catherine Oxenberg) to try to get a ride. The bad guys appear and immediately attack, Catherine gets out of the car and shoots at them, but they hit her and she rolls over to the side of the road. So, surely, our heroes immediately go there and help her, right? Wrong! They take her car and get the hell out of there without even turning their heads to see if she’s alive! And I presume we are supposed to root for them? Remember, this is Casper’s wife we are talking about! He probably had a lot of explaining (and dish washing!) to do to make up for that. If anyone cares, the ranger apparently did survive, but she didn’t appear again. Her sole purpose was to provide a new car after Casper’s limousine ran out of gas. 

 

Also, one of the first scenes in the movie is Casper being headbutted by that loser ex-boyfriend, which sucks big time. Johnny Rico would certainly have none of that!

 

Fortunately, the movie is not completely unwatchable. The action scenes are pretty cool, especially at the beginning, but there’s also some nice car chasing through the beautiful Canadian country at the end. Too bad they didn’t hire someone at least competent to write the script. Hell, I think even Kevin Smith would have written it better!