Category Archives: Reviews: Movies

Movie Review: 10 Rillington Place

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10 Rillington Place10 Rillington Place (1971)
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Starring Richard Attenborough, Judy Geeson, John Hurt, Pat Heywood, Isobel Black

Being a fan of horror movies for over 40 decades, one would think that “we’ve seen it all”. But that is not even close to being true. In fact, not only is there plenty of movies that I still need to see, there are still a ton of titles out there that I’ve probably not even heard! And while most of them probably aren’t the greatest, there are some out there that are truly amazing pieces of cinema. The kind that after you watch it, you wonder just how in the hell have you never even heard of this movie, let alone seen it before. 10 Rillington Place is a prime example of this.

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Movie Review: Cooties

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cooties-posterCooties (2014)
Directed by Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion
Starring Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Aliso Pill, Jack McBrayer, Leigh Whannell, Nasim Pedrad, Ian Brennan, Jorge Garcia

I guess there is something to be said about a film that we hear a lot about before the film, but then we don’t too hear much after it comes out. Sometimes we don’t even realize that it was even released. This film is a perfect example of this, at least for me. The only reason I found out it came out was that it showed up at Redbox when I was scrolling through the titles. Should have given me a clue right there. But I rented it anyway.

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Movie Review: Coherence (2013)

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coherenceposterCoherence (2013)
Directed by James Ward Byrkit
Starring Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Lorene Scafaria, Elizabeth Gracen, Hugo Armstrong, Alex Manugian, Lauren Maher

It doesn’t happen too often these days, when a movie that you know nothing about completely blows you away. A movie that captures your attention, your admiration, and carries you through to the end credits while you anxiously await what happens next. Coherence is one of those films.

Without giving anything away, the movie is simply about a group of friends getting together for a dinner party during an evening when a comet is passing by the Earth rather closely. When the power goes out, they go outside to take a look around the neighborhood and notice one house down the street that still has power. But once a couple of them walk down there to investigate, things get a little strange.

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Movie Review: Society

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societybluraySociety (1989)
Directed by Brian Yuzna
Starring Billy Warlock, Devin DeVasquez, Evan Richards, Ben Meyerson, David Wiley, Tim Bartell, Charles Lucia, Patrice Jennings, Ben Slack

This strange and simple little tale about paranoia, but told in a way you’ve never seen before. Young Bill Whitney somehow doesn’t feel that he fits in with his rich family, that he doesn’t really belong with the rest of society that his family and their friends are part of. He just can’t place it but just can’t shake that feeling. Plus, the nightmares that he’s having aren’t helping, neither are strange things that he thinks he sees, but just couldn’t be real. But soon Bill finds out just how different he is from these people…or really, just how different they are.

Brian Yuzna, a name very familiar to horror fans, mainly due to him producing Re-Animator (1985), made his directorial debut with this film. It was part of a 2-picture deal that he had made, with the second feature being the sequel Bride of Re-Animator. While Yuzna isn’t a great director, a fact that he’s more than ready to tell you himself, he still can make a decent film. Sometimes they are great, some not so great, but for the most part, they are entertaining. But what he gives us with Society is something that comes from a very dark and twisted mind.

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Movie Review: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne

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STRANGE_CASE_JEKYLL_2D_BD-500x500The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)

Directed by Walerian Borowczyk
Starring Udo Kier, Marina Pierro, Patrick Magee, Howard Vernon, Gérard Zalcberg

“Eroticism, sex, is one of the most moral parts of life. Eroticism does not kill, exterminate, encourage evil, lead to crime. On the contrary, it makes people gentler, brings joy, gives fulfillment, leads to selfless pleasure.” Walerian Borowczyk

That above quote really fits Borowczyk’s work, or at least of the little of his that I’ve seen. I have to admit that I’m not the biggest fan of what I’ve seen so far, but mainly because it is a little too…artsy for me, to be perfectly honest. Years ago, back in the grey market days, I had a title called The Bloodbath of Dr. Jekyll that starred Udo Kier. But the quality of the print was so bad, I never got around to watching it. But I had seen Borowczyk’s Immoral Tales, which featured a segment involving the Countess Bathory. So I knew somewhat the kind of strange and art-house type of films that he was known for, most primarily for The Beast (1975). But now, thanks to Arrow Video, this strange and for the most part lost film has not only been released, but in a great presentation, giving a whole new audience the chance to see it.

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Movie Review: The Human Race

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humanraceThe Human Race (2013)
Written and Directed by Paul Hough

A good friend of mine told me about this movie when he had seen it at a film festival, which sounded interesting because the fact that it is about a race and the main actor is really missing a leg. Plus, it was directed by the son of John Hough, who directed Legend of Hell House and Twins of Evil, two of my favorite films. So I knew I was going to want to give this film a look when it came out. Of course, like a lot of movies these days, they get lost in the numbers with so many other titles. But I recently got it from Netflix and figured now was the time to check this flick out. And so glad I did.

A group of people suddenly appear at a strange location with messages coming to them in their head, in their own voices, giving them instructions on what to do and what not to do, and lastly….to race or die. They are told that they need to move along the path pointed out by almost weapon looking arrows, and if they are lapped twice, they will die. So right away we get the name of the title, The Human Race. Of course, we learn later the brilliant play on it. Because they are scared and not understanding what is going on, some don’t follow the instructions and end up dying in very gruesome way, which in turns makes the crowd even more afraid.

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Movie Review: Mark of the Devil

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markofthedevil-arrowMark of the Devil
Directed by Michael Armstrong & Adrian Hoven
Starring Herbert Lom, Udo Kier, Olivera Katarina, Reggie Nalder, Herbert Fux, , Gaby Fuchs, Johannes Buzalski, Adrian Hoven, Ingeborg Schöner

It has been quite a while since I sat down with this notorious little film. And after watching it, I remember why it has been so long. For me, this is a very brutal and disturbing film. Not in the sense of something like Cannibal Holocaust, but because this really is based on historical fact, and what the church and their underlings did to innocent people, for reasons of greed, lust, jealousy, and just about every other sin there was. I mean, you have a group of nuns being attacked and raped in the first few minutes of the film, so that sets the tone pretty quickly. Watching this story unfold once again in front of me, it brought forth my feelings towards this kind of religious fever and terror from a group that is supposed to be about peace and love. In his book Horror Films of the 1970s, author John Kenneth Muir writes that this “film exists solely to catalogue man’s brutality against man.” I completely agree with that, but think that is the reasoning behind it, to show what we as a race have done to each other. This film shows a very unsettling period of time then, and sometimes makes me think we could go through that all over again.

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