Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile (1974)

After Alan Ormsby-Honda heard of his twin brother's success with Gojira, in 1953, he bided his time and came up with the ultimate Kaiju, based on the real killer and, maybe, necrophiliac, Ed Gein. The result was Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile, or like it was called in it's Japanese release: エドGein対メスの恐竜, which means literary "Ed Gein versus the Female Dinosaurs. He casted Roberts Blossoms, fresh from the success of his latest Tokusatu: "FIGHT! STRIKE! Pale Poetry Old Man, You Rule!", 110 episodes of Kaiju-action between a superhero reciting poetry and rubber monsters from France.

Shot in Canada, because the actors are more beautiful there, Ormsby and his team constructed a impressive miniature landscape in the form of a barn and a house, ready to be burned down at the end - a detail that was missed because lack of time and it's just explained in the end. It tells the story of giant monster Ed Gein, who can skin other monsters alive with his Mega-Laser-Action-Beam (from his nose) and an impressive knowledge of wrestling moves. It's cheesy, but never childish. The "female dinosaurs" (to quote the Japanese), Macobbalon, Maureenselbytron and Sallyorgon delivers a good fight before they're killed off one by one in spectacular, explosive fashion.

Much like the Koreans and Yongary, Ormsby-Honda hoped for a similar success - and it worked well. The script is gritty and quite violent for being a Canadian Kaiju, with impressive special effects and a wonderful dread all over the film. It's moody and has a lot of atmosphere, a dark and quite nasty monster movie the way only the Japanese-Canadian could do it. Especially Blossoms impresses with a multi-layered portrait of a monster who just wants to kill other monsters, but in the end kills one to many and is put under psychiatric care.

The film became quite a success and a sequel was planned, Ed Gein vs. Mecha-Ed Gein, but was scrapped because Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel made a similar movie, much like Toho's Destroy All Monsters, with a whole family of flying, rotating, fire-breathing rednecks called the Sawyer Family. The movie is mostly known as The Texas Chainsaw Monsters, but we fans prefer to call it by it's original title: "The Super-Angry Flying Machine Man - The Friend of All Children" (that's a direct translation from Japanese).

Still controversial today, it's also one of the best Japanese-Canadian Kaiju-productions ever made. The miniature work is impressive and the fight between Ed Gein (or Ezra Cobb as he's called here, legal problems during the production) and the enormous Maureenselbytron is the highlight. Blossoms continued to work in television doing the lead in "Super-Mega-Canadian: Strike Force 10000!" and "Canadian Rider 1-2-3: GO GO GO!". Ormsby-Honda later tried to revive his success in the early nineties with Ed Gein vs. Mecha-Dahmer, but it failed at the box office.

It truly deserves a special edition blu-ray release and IF they can dig up that alternate ending, where Ed Gein is fighting a giant "Walrupus" I'm sure it's not only me that will be very happy!

The Saw Saga (2004-2010)

I've spent the last couple of days watching every Saw-movie again. Why? Just because I could and I kinda liked them. So here's my comments after each one, written directly after I saw each one of them.

Saw, now a classic in the horror genre, and also a thriller that holds up very well. It feels fresh and unique, even after six sequels and countless rip-off's. Leigh Whannell's script (after a story by him and James Wan) plays a perfect game of thriller ping-pong, keeping the mystery intact to the very end. I remember how the twist made me jump, and I still think it's a good one - even if it feels less logical the more I analyze it. Interesting is also how cheap it looks. It's first now I can see clearly how everything is shot in one house, inside, with quick production design and not always thought-through direction. But still damn good.

I find SawII quite intriguing. Maybe it was just luck that this sequel wasn't based on an original Saw-script? There's something that differs the one from the first, something more than just a bigger cast. Can't put my finger on it. Anyway, that's what makes it a good sequel, more unexpected. It's a bit more tricky to keep every character alive and interesting, but it's not badly written here. The twist is actually a damn fine twist, one of the best ones in the series. Still not as magical and unique than the first.

Saw III was the first one I saw in the theatre and boy, this is a lot nastier than the first two - they're both quite lame regarding the graphic violence. But here! I turned away my head a couple of times, including a lot of the skull-surgery scene. The first time I saw it felt like the best sequel, but that feeling has diminished a little bit. It's still a very exciting thriller, with a neat twist and a couple of fun surprises. I also thing the acting in this one is the best so far. This is also the sequel when things start to get confusing, and I still have four movies left! Sigh...

When you see every part of this series at least one year apart it's easy to mix them with each other. I always thought that Saw IV was the weakest one, the big letdown, but I must have confused it with the next one - maybe. This is actually not a bad film. It has better pacing - and is shorter - than the Saw III and kinda hangs together better. It still leaves one big question hanging at the end and I'm not even sure they will bother to answer it. It's also nice how it hangs together with the last part very carefully, and it wouldn't surprise me if they where shot back-to-back. The twist is fine, but not the best. Alright. Let see what the next one has to offer!

But what the... I've always lived in that illusion was the worst one! But nooo, it's actually a nice companion piece to the part before, both more or less a deconstruction of the male ego. Part V have now - I need to say - the best cast of them all. The ensemble victims are all excellent, which is needed to keep the interest up. The weakest spot is, as usual, Costas Mandylor, who seem quite detached to his character. He's okay, but not fantastic. And yeah, this part has the simplest - but worst - final trap! Nasty as hell!

I totally forgot, but Saw VI is the absolute weakest. Mostly because it's more visible that the writers have run out of ideas and the flashbacks and earlier unknown links between characters and scenes just doesn't work to the same degree as earlier. I like most of the acting and there's some fine ideas, but it doesn't hold together. The best thing with it is that it's very anti-capitalistic, and keeps that message all through. Alright one left...

Saw 3D is different in several way. First of all it's a lot more polished and brighter in style than the rest, the blood and often the gore effects is red (almost pink sometimes, which makes me think of almost every movie made in the seventies) and cartoonish. It also, like Hellraiser: Hellworld, Jason Goes To Hell and New Nightmare, acknowledges the crime as something commerical, something that can be made money from. It takes one step out from the traditional storyline and shows a little bit more around everything. I personally think Saw 3D is a fun movie, one of the better ones and a lot better than the first. And it's also very nice to see THAT character back in the... game.

That's all, ffffolks. 

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

I've been a lifelong fan of all things Hellraiser - but ironically I never read the story it's based on from the beginning. I think it's too late now anyway, I'm more of a non-fiction reader and most of my time is focused on movies and music. Hellraiser 2 is by far the best in the series, but I've always had a very soft spot for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. It's the first sign of the franchise going a more goofy and silly route (not as silly as many others, and it always kept some kind of seriousness) and in this movie it means some outrageous technological Cenobites and an unhealthy dose of crappy nineties fashion and music.

The young owner of The Boiler Room, a hip night club for goth kids, needs something new to spend his money on and gets a strange pillar for a couple of bucks. It's of course a cursed pillar, including the Pinhead-demon - who just wants out to raise a little hell again....

Originally it was meant for writer Peter Atkins to direct, but the company thought he had to little experience as a director and asked genre veteran and cult favourite Anthony Hickox to take over the wheel instead. It's impossible to say what could have happen with Atkins doing the directing but I think Hickox, with his usual flair did a pretty good job with a silly script. Maybe he made it more silly with his directing, I have no idea, but the man is a visual genius and always packs his productions with creative camera solutions and colourful characters - so even here. He likes his slow-motion or prankster-style attitude when it comes to on-camera gags and gore (even if it could have been even gorier...).

So even if the style and story is quite far away from what happen in the first and part 2, it still hangs together very good with the mythology - and gives us a clue to what will happen in the very uneven, but also underrated, part 4 (who became an Allan Smithee-movie after the production company took the movie away from its director). I actually like how the story departs from the usual Hellraiser-gloom and dives right into neon-lights and pseudo-goth kids dancing. It's like the filmmakers trying to spoof the fans a little bit, poke fun at the darkness and sadomasochistic themes - just like they did with the fun Hellraiser: Hellworld many years later.

And yes, regarding the CD-cenobite. I need to quote David Zuzelo in his review of Hellraiser: Revelations: "Dear Clive Barker. You signed off on CD FACE, how the hell can you not sign off on this? The checks are probably smaller, but the reputation doesn't shrink any further in my opinion". Yeah, this was regarding Clive Barker's hate of the Revelations-movie, when he's one of the men (aka producers) behind the silliest Cenobite of them all! Money talks. I kinda like the Cenobites in this film It's nice to see some new faces, so to speak, and these aren't bad - even if they seem to make things explode rather than torture people with chains and hooks that much. But they're nasty bitches and that's what we like, I guess.

Hellraiser III isn't exactly a heavy-weight sequel, but it's never boring and delivers some interesting ideas, some gore, some nudity and a nice change of location. Instead of British social realism and ugly mental patients we get young, hot men and women getting torn to pieces. I like that. It feels good. 

Watchers (1988)

The 80's was a special decade, a decade of horror movies that obviously had a younger audience in mind. You have more kid-friendly stuff like Gremlins and The Monster Squad, movies that still manages to be far more adult and interesting than movies for kids nowadays. Then you have flicks like Silver Bullet, Fright Night and even Troll 2! With young actors in the leads, starring in movies with violence and gore, foul words - and still having that cool youthful imagination that 2011's Super 8 tried - and succeeded - to generate. Watchers, one of the few Dean R. Koontz movies who's been produced, is also one of these odd hybrids of full-blown horror and entertainment for older kids. It also got three sequels, all produced by Roger Corman. Gonna get to those someday, but tonight it's the original movie and nothing else!

A secret lab is destroyed in a explosion and two creatures escapes from there, a hyper-intelligent Golden Retriever (what else, this is a Dean R. Koontz story!) and a ultra-violent hairy monkey-something-beast who wants to kill the dog. Anyway, the dog - named Furface later - takes shelter in a car belonging to a young Corey Haim (who also was the star in Silver Bullet by the way...) and they instantly fall in love - in a non-sexual way of course. But guess what?! The monkey-something-beast is after them and starts killing everything that comes in it's way! A government official, the forever-bad guy Michael Ironside, is also on the hunt for both the dog and the monkey-something-beast and he's also one of those fuckers that stops for no one!

Watchers is more or less a child of it's time. It couldn't have been made earlier or later, it's just a very typical eighties kiddie-horror with some gore, violence and bad language. And it's also quite good. It was years and years ago since I read the original book so I have no idea what's left, but the storyline is very typical for Dean R. Koontz: very straightforward, a damn dog and a monster killing lots of people. It might be annoying with a smart dog (the second worst to a precocious Japanese kaiju-kid!), but at least it's not playing basket or using a skateboard!

I've mentioned gore a couple of times, but it's not that gory actually. But still an okay amount of bloodshed and nasty human remains. The attacks are vicious and violent and that little hairy critter is sure hungry for human eyes! A couple of squibs and a little bit and a little bit of that makes it a bloody movie, but never extreme. It was enough for me, mostly because I like monsters and even a monster movie without a drop of blood can be worth watching.

Michael Ironside is a good baddie, as usual, but does his routine in his sleep here and never feels as dangerous as he should be. But he's good, no complains really. Corey Haim was a good teenage hero and carries the whole movie on his back, which is something I rarely acknowledge when it comes to stars in his age. But this was also a time when the roles in genre movies was a bit meatier and less childish. They took the young adults serious instead of spoil them with McDonalds-chewed easy watching crap.

And have you noticed how strange a dog looks if you looks at it for a longer time? The eyes! The eyes! It's a like deformed freaky human on four legs and a constant urge for disgusting food! Which reminds me of my wedding night... but that's a whole different story.

Fun movie, I liked it. One day I will watch the sequels also!

Father's Day (2011)

I must admit I was sceptical, and I'm rarely that when it comes to movies as you may have noticed over the years. Why? The blame is on Dear God No, the cinematic train wreck that totally destroyed a good and fun premise with being totally talentless. Hard words, but hey... I don't like every movie being made, believe it or not. Both that movie and Father's Day are neo-Grindhouse, inspired by the failed (but to me, brilliant) experiment by Tarantino and Rodriguez. I even enjoyed Machete and Hobo With a Shotgun, even if none of them was perfect in anyway. Father's Day is in the same genre, complete with a pause for commercial in the middle - more on that later on - but succeeds in it's goal.

A one-eyed avenger, a gay male prostitute named Twink and a closeted priest walks into a bar. That's a quite description of what happens in this movie, but with out the boring "funny" twist. Instead we have dark tale of these three characters chasing the brutal serial killer Chris Fuchman, "The Father's Day Killer", who rapes and eats innocent fathers! He's been gone for many years, but when he appears again Ahab, Twink and Father Sullivan has to join forces to stop him for good, because all of them lost a father because of Mr Fuchman. From strip bars and car chases, to hell and heaven, this is the ride of their lives!

I know, this sounds kinda serious - and hell, yeah, it is serious - like all good movies should be deep inside, but it's also filled with slapstick, gore, silly jokes, nudity and sex of all kinds and of course explosions. I felt the same way when watching The Taint, another fine movie from 2010. This is made by people who have mature minds, but immature humour. And together that becomes a lot of love and passion. Like always in my case I fall in love with characters, Ahab, Twink and Father Sullivan feels like real humans in a twisted way, not only because the actors do a good job, but because there's some serious interesting twists with their characters. Ahab, a (very handsome) macho-hero who dare to be weak, Twink, a gay guy who are allowed to be gay and Father Sullivan who is way more than just a stiff priest. Even if they all have very defined story arcs and - in a way - stereotypical - they also break the rules and stays away from the boring, (hetero) normative Hollywood-crap. Maybe I'm reading to much into this, but I know intelligent people when I see them.

Shot digital, I guess, but processed with the traditional grindhouse-effects like scratches and dirt, this movie looks stunning. I was a little bit afraid first that it would look flat and amateurish, but it's actually a stunning visual cheapie. The colours are vibrant, the handheld camera (hendheld like Cassavetes or the good old seventies) creates a very intimate atmosphere, but there's also bigger, more mainstream shots that rivals a lot of indie-movies I've seen in this genre. It has some problems to. Sometimes the pacing slows down, it feels a bit repetitive, but it's for short moments and never causes any bigger harm.

As for the action and gore this movie delivers a lot of fun stuff. The main action scene is an Indiana Jones inspired car chase with people jumping from car to car, hanging outside with their feet dragging against the road. It's not an expensive sequence, but it looks good and actually quite dangerous. The gore is nowhere near the amount that The Taint delivered, but when it happens it's Gory with a capital G. The effects are really nice and when the movie takes a final twist at the end it gets even more cool and very old-school.

There's a lot of good things to say about Father's Day, but one of my favourite parts is the commercial break in the middle where they show a trailer for the fictional movie Star Raiders. I don't know if I'm correct here, but it feels a lot like a homage to Luigi Cozzi's masterpiece Starcrash! That made me happy!

Father's Day is out on DVD in the UK and it's a wonderful DVD with a neat cover. It has no bonuses though, which is a disappointment. I've heard about a blu-ray coming out and if that's true - and it's region all - I will upgrade this directly.

It's not a movie for everyone, but it sure is a movie for me. And that's what counts here.

RIP Ray Bradbury: The Veldt (1989)

Ray Bradbury died today, 91 years young and an author I consider to be my absolute favourite. He's the sole reason why I started to write myself and has affected my view on the dark and macabre in ways I didn't knew was possible.

I was five years old when I first experienced something Ray Bradbuy created. It was November 16th 1983, on TV2, Sveriges Television ("Sweden's Television"). Tord Pååg premiered his TV-play Savannen, based on Bradbury's 1950 short story The Veldt. It scared me like nothing else before that and still when I close my eyes I see a short clip of bloody, white clothes, laying on the floor. That's it.

That version is impossible to find, so I took the time to watch the 1989 version included in The Ray Bradbury Theatre TV-series, a Canadian project that produced an impressive amount of Bradbury-adaptations. Often cheap, but skilfully directed and with good actors. Here the story is set in a very eighties future with a stylish colourful home and kids dressed like Darth Vader and Princess Leila. Their nursery has taken over their life and the paranoid mother wants them to turn of their holographic 3D, stereophonic, room. The environment in there has grown more hostile: a savannah with very angry animals...

The Veldt is not so much about the dangers of technology as the danger of children. Evil children, egocentric children - sometimes using their still pure minds to manipulate and destroy. It's an effective story and even here, in a cheap Canadian TV-version, you can feel the chills going up your spine when watching the doomed parents trying to understand what's wrong with their dream home and their not so innocent children.

It's a powerful and dark story.

I wish I could see the Swedish version again. See that shot that's still in my mind, still haunts me when I close my eyes. Maybe it was the fear of loosing my parents, who was going through a difficult time then, or maybe the interesting possibilities of the future.

Because The Veldt is mainly about taking control over your life and let go of those grown-up that calls themselves your parents.

See you on the red planet Mars, Ray.

Darfur (2009)

Yesterday I watched Renny Harlin's 5 Days of War (you can read my comments at the NinjaDixon tumblr), a good b-action movie disguised as a message-movie disguised as a b-action movie. Everything at once. Today I watched a similar movie, Uwe Boll's Darfur. Now, most idiots out there have seen House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark and decided that everything after that is the same thing. Now, I like these two movies - they are simple entertainment made for a lot less money than shitstorms like the Transformers or Twilight-franchises. What's interesting with Boll as a filmmakers is for every "silly" movie, and with that I mean über-commercial popcorn-movie he makes something totally different. Movies like Tunnel Rats, Stoic, Seed, Max Schmeling etc is very different from House of the Dead. They aren't even "fun" violent movies, they are plain disturbing and says more about humanity than very few other movies. Cynical stories about how humans really are. Darfur is the latest of these dramas, a very, very disturbing account of the genocide in Darfur.

We follow a gang or journalists and photographers on a routine mission in Sudan, together with representatives from an organizations that's there to observe. Only observe. They arrives to a small village and spends some time there interviewing the villagers. When they leave they see a Janjaweed convoy getting close to the village and they decide to go back, to just be there as international journalists - hopefully to stop the warriors from attacking the village. But everything goes very wrong...

Darfur is a very realistic movie. It's improvised by the actors and Boll also takes a documentary-approach in the style. Lots of handheld camera, without getting too shaky, lingering close-ups on sweaty faces and a camera that won't stop filming even when something we don't want to see happens. Some less intelligent reviewers have stated that this is just violent porn, that it's entertainment - but believe me, there's nothing entertaining or funny with what we're seeing in this movie. It's graphic yes, but I've seen worse - its more that first half hour of meeting the villagers that makes it so hard seeing them die from the hands of their enemies.

The acting is also very impressive, and its even more fun that Boll only uses actors like Billy Zane, Matt Frewer, Edward Furlong, Kristianna Loken etc - all who do amazing jobs creating realistic characters. I'm not familiar with the South African actors, but all of them are eerily realistic (some of them are also real victims of the terror in Sudan). I'm happy to say that Darfur is very far from the typical DTV movie and I'm actually quite happy that a lot of people out there probably choked on their pizzas after work watching this drama. They probably expected something very different.

Maybe it should be mandatory for every person involved in Lundin Oil to see this movie, for example our incompetent Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt, who was involved in the genocide in Darfur indirectly through his work with Lundin Oil and still goes free. You know, you get a lot of power with important friends and millions on the bank. Here in Sweden we call him The Genocide Millionaire, and it's a quite fitting name for him - and a big shame for Sweden.

Give this movie a chance, read up on Lundin Oil and Carl Bildt, and ignore the real war-porn being produced in Hollywood: Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down and the rest of the crap!

King Solomon's Treasure (1979)

Director Alvin Rakoff has directed two trashy, but very entertaining movies that I hold close to my cold and evil hear: City on Fire and Death Ship. He mostly directed for TV and these two and today's King Solomon's Treasure are three of those rare he made for cinema. A co-production between Canada and the UK but shot on location in Swaziland, like so many other movies related to the UK during the seventies (someone know why?). Maybe the least know and appreciated version of H. Rider Haggard's classic adventure novel, but with competent people both in front and behind the camera it's slightly better than the aggressive morons writing on the IMDB suggests.

Three British gentlemen, lead by the charismatic adventurer Allan Quatermain (John Colicos) travels to the deepest regions of Africa to find King Solmon's Treasure, which is a lot of gold of course. The two others are the mumbling Sir Henry Curtis (David McCallum) and the stiff military Captain Good R.N. (Patrick Macnee). Well in Africa they meet dinosaurs, giant crabs, a mega snake and the beautiful Queen Nyleptha (Britt Ekland) and of course a lot of bad guys who also want the gold!

This is a very cheap movie. Forget grand cinematography and big epic action scenes. Instead there's a lot of papier-maché, shaky handheld close-up scenes in the battles and very few actually built sets. Almost everything is there, for real. For some people this might be a let-down, but personally I like the grittiness that this is generating. It never feels big and expensive so the actors has to give it all to make it better and more exciting. The cast is very fine and seem to have a lot of fun. John Colicos is a great choice to play Quatermain. He's not young or "cool", he's looks like a middle-aged grey-haired blue-collar worker with more experience than sex appeal. And therefore also a lot more convincing. McCallum is the comic relief and do it without being annoying. Patric Macnee is excellent as usual, what to expect from such a veteran actor?

I always liked when filmmakers with a very small budget decides to don't give a damn about that obstacle and do whatever they want even if it looks the budget. This was obviously the idea behind this movie, because it has not less than four different kinds of rubber monsters! Neither of them convincing, but it's they're there! Instead of not showing anything we get a lot of monsters for little money. I prefer that instead of nothing. The coolest creature are the giant killer crabs, chopping their way through wood to get themselves some human flesh! They're stiff, hardly moving and very unconvincing, but they're doing their job and it's an excellent sequence.

The lost city, that Quatermain always finds in the end, is also just one tiny temple, made from Styrofoam and masonite, and crumbles like the best Peplum-city in the end during the traditional volcanic eruption. Not bad actually. It looks OK, and the destruction looks OK - and that's also the final opinion about this movie: OK. It's out on a DVD in Germany, a nice fullscreen print, and it's well worth buying for lost city-aficionados like me or just those who saw it as kids and wants to experience some good old-fashioned adventure romp!

Metal Tornado (2011)

Cheap and generic isn't just my life in three words, it's also a part of exploitation movies since the dawn of movie history. It's nothing wrong with being generic, it's part of the game - and the best game for generic scripts is the disaster genre. I think we all can agree that not one single disaster movie is an original movie - and don't defend the 70's masterpieces in the genre, they stole everything from melodrama-king Douglas Sirk and older disaster movies like San Francisco, Deluge and When Worlds Collide. It's also my favourite genre and I never grow tired of seeing either miniatures or CG models getting torn aparts by natural disasters. It's all the same to me.

SyFy Channel has been a saviour of disaster porn for a number of years, spurting out cheap flicks over and over again. After other storm-themed movies like Ba'al: The Storm God and Ice Twister, NYC: Tornado Terror and Space Twister comes Metal Tornado - a movie I don't think is a SyFy original to be honest, but belongs to that specific genre and got released on the channel last years. What makes it interesting for me, as a trash aficionado, is that it's a Canadian production and produced by my favourite exploitation man: Pierre David! Yeah? You know him I hope? He produced Dolly Dearest and Scanner Cop - and yeah, a bunch of David Cronenberg's films. Good, I knew that you knew who he is...

Lou Diamond Philips is Michael Edwards, some blahablaha-scientist, living alone with a troubled teenage son. He's dating his co-worker Rebecca (Nicole de Boer) and that causes some friction between him and his son. Anyway! He's working on a new energy source: taking power from sun flares, sucking it down with some weird space machines into gigantic battery packs down on earth. Something like that. Of course something goes wrong and the energy creates a magnetic tornado who starts to eat every metal thing it can find and of course it's going towards Philadelphia! How can Michael and his team stop it? Will he make peace with his son? Will everyone hug each other in the end? Watch the movie and you'll see...

Seriously, for me - as a very forgiving fan of cheap TV movies - this was quite OK. There's absolutely NOTHING original with it. The story goes from one metal tornado-incident to another - just like a creature feature from SyFy, and Lou Diamond Philips is a good hero running around looking worried, sitting behind computers looking worried, hugging survivors looking worried. I like Lou, no doubt about it. He's good and even if this was an easy paycheck he delivers some acting - which is rare in these movies.

The effects are mostly very cheap (surprise!), but effective. The tornado itself looks silly like hell, but I can buy it just because the story never drags. This is a movie for people who wants to sleep when watching it, just to wake up when some disaster happens. I mean, I can't even pretend any of you will like it - but I like it and that's the most important thing with the movies here at Ninja Dixon!

I have an avid reader who always comments on my blog, and he/she wanted to read about a SyFy movie and here's one for you! Hope you enjoy it!

Humongous (1982)

I starred in a slasher once, the ill-fated Camp Slaughter from 2004, not to be confused by Camp Daze who later changed title. Anyway, I played the traditional fat nerd and gets killed after fifty minutes. So it's a quite big part and after being shown in cinemas and on DVD it was a year or so with people recognizing me on the street - not because they liked the movie, but the opposite. To tell me how bad the movie was and to quote all the "funny" critics who told everyone what a crappy bunch of actors Camp Slaughter suffered from. Maybe it's true, but what I mostly remember is the fun shooting - on a real camp, close to the water and forest. That's why I might enjoy watching these old slashers so much, to experience once again the pleasures of shooting a slasher in the summer, having fun with friends and getting killed in a bloody way.

Humongous suffers from the same thing as all slashers from this time: a lack of story. The characters are also unusually underwritten. Yeah, I've always considered the old slashers to have quite interesting characters - not original - but easy to like or dislike. In Humongous they're a bit to flat, and what's left is an attractive cast with very little to work with. But who cares? Well, except me? These meatheads ends up on what they think is a deserted island - with dogs - but believe it or not, it has a crazed humongous killer walking around crushing everyone who dares to come to the island!

The director, Paul Lynch, tried his luck in the slasher-genre with the semi-classic Prom Night a couple of years earlier. I can understand the love for it, but personally I've always felt it to be too slow and with a very annoying soft visual look that took away the grittiness. It's mostly a nice way to see Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis do what they do best: looking serious and scream. Humongous is both gorier and grittier - and no "soft" look to distract me, but instead it's almost too generic. I mean, we have seen this hundreds of times before - and this flick even reuses a couple of very specific ideas from earlier movies in the same genre. Sure, this was probably just a tax shelter production, but a little bit more inspiration from the writers could have been nice!

Instead Humongous lives on a couple of very effective set-pieces and a nice big brutal killer who like to toss around his victims like big dolls. The production value, the locations and sets looks excellent and saves the movie from a complete failure. The actors are cute and good-looking, always good, and the editing effective and makes the most of the sequences. The only scene standing out as a complete failure is the worlds slowest chase scene at the end. It's so slow that it's hard to understand how it could be SO slow! I mean, it must have been visible during the shooting of the scene! A couple of plot holes and some very uneven acting is something I could complain about also, but I'll be quite and stop whining.

Humongous is a good slasher, a lot better than some of the others from 1982. What it misses is more graphic gore and the script could have needed some more originality. The DVD from Scorpion is a must purchase. It's uncut (first time I see it uncut by the way) and for a movie that always looked dark and murky on VHS, it finally looks good.

Incubus (1982)

I have a soft spot for the work by director John Hough. With The Legend of Hell House as his big horror masterpiece, minor movies like American Gothic and even Disney’s try on family-horror, The Watcher in the Woods, has been forgotten – at least as works by him. So it was a bit of a surprise when I realized it was Hough who directed Incubus, a Canadian supernatural thriller that I’ve avoiding for years – mostly because I heard it was boring and nothing special. Of course I shouldn’t have listen on all the opinions over the years, so now in 2011 I finally bought the DVD and sat down to watch this trashy piece of horror.

John Cassavetes, in full slumming-mode, is Doctor Sam Cordell. He’s the new doctor in the town of Galen (which means “Crazy” in Swedish by the way…) and has moved there together with his eighteen year old daughter Jenny (Erin Noble). Suddenly a woman is raped in an extremely brutal way and her boyfriend is killed at the same time. The rapes continue, and someone – or something – is more or less destroying the women during the “act”. He/it leaves red-tinted sperm in enormous amounts and soon Sam suspects that it might be something supernatural going on. Jenny’s boyfriend, Tim (Duncan McIntosh) has horrible nightmares and claims to be connected to the killings, maybe even the rapist himself…

Hands down, Incubus is a very sleazy and trashy movie, which makes it even more surprising that John Cassavetes decided to star in it. But an actor of his stature brings also a lot of quality to something that usually would star lesser known people and be less regarded as a serious production. Not that he’s giving everything he’s got. He’s clearly sleepwalking through the part and understands that he’s not really that important for the story. The main character is the murder- and rape-scenes and the unhealthy dose of sleazy atmosphere! Now I make this to sound like something extreme, but it’s not. It’s more the dialogue, the subject itself. I promise you will never hear the word “sperm” as many time as in this movie again, often in the combination with “severely damaged uterus” and other graphic expressions regarding someone who’s been raped to death by a demon. It has some blood, but only one scene with some graphic gore – very nicely done – but once again, nothing extreme. It’s just very violent.

It might be the daring mission to have made a movie that never even tries to be “entertainment” in the 1982 sense of horror entertainment that attracts me with this film. It’s a dark and cynical, a bit pretentious, but well-made and filled with atmosphere. This is very far from the typical eighties horrors, which is a blessing in disguise. If you expect to watch something that fits with beer and popcorn and some drunk friends, this might be the only eighties horror movie you should avoid. If you want to see something more complex, but still sleazy and violent, this is it. The first half is the better part, with better pace and more “fun” and terror. The second part offers a very nice demon-monster, but have a tendency to repeat stuff we already seen or knew since earlier, and it was a couple of time I glanced at my iPhone to check the updates on Facebook. It picks up during the finale and in the end it’s a quite good horror movie, dare I say underrated?

Judge for yourself, buy or rent the movie and give it a try. Let me know what you think about it!

Resurrection (1999)

I, for one, welcome Russell Mulcahy’s decent into DTV and gun-for-hire jobs after the entertaining but overrated Highlander. If he continued to one of those big fancy Hollywood directors he would have ended up being completely soulless and just another mainstream-maggot among the others. He made one of the finest thrillers after Highlander, for example the Ricochet and one of Dolph Lundgren’s best films, Silent Trigger. Tale of the Mummy from 1998 is also one fine piece of DTV classic, very underrated. The year after he teamed up with Christopher Lambert once again for the Seven-rip off Resurrection. Maybe “rip-off” is a bit unfair, but it’s surely inspired by David Fincher’s classic serial killer thriller, and also a damn fine thriller on its own.

A serial killer is hunting down victims in Chicago (mostly in Toronto, this is a Canadian production) and seem to take one body part at the time. An arm, a leg, a head, and soon the workaholic cop John Prudhomme (Christopher Lambert) understands that the killer is building the body of Jesus Christ! Together with his partner, the fast-talking Andrew Hollinsworth (Leland Orser) and an enthusiastic profiler from FBI, Gerald Demus (Robert Joy) they seem to get closer to the killer, or is the killer getting closer to them?

Resurrection shares a couple of similar themes and plot twists with Seven, but I still think it’s in the same level of quality, Sure, it does not have Brad Pitt or Morgan Freeman (which, to be honest, I’m very happy about – Pitt I like, but Morgan hasn’t been a good actor since Seven), but I still think this is one of Lamebert’s finest moments as an actor (he was also co-writer and producer) and overall has a stellar cast of excellent actors. Leland Orser and Robert Joy are both among the best, and even David Cronenberg makes a small performance as Lambert’s priest. He’s a good actor, and it’s always fun to see him show up in genre movies.

Resurrection never bog down with extra character development or romance, everything is very smartly built into the story and it’s just not necessary to stop and think. It’s all there, at the same time as the thrills and scares. Because first of all Resurrection is a serial killer thriller, a quite graphic one. Not much graphic violence, but a lot of gory aftermaths with shocking and realistic special effects. Mulcahy, always an extremely visual director, shows off his talent in a couple of very impressive set-pieces. A pro at work, and it would be good if more could realize what a master he is – after all, he also directed the best Resident Evil film!

Hidden away in the DTV corner of history, Resurrection is one of my favourite serial killer thrillers and it deserves a better place in movieland. The region 1 from Colombia Tri-Star boasts a great widescreen version and an audio commentary by Russell Mulcahy. Get it!

Rituals (1977)

I wonder if it’s possible writing something new about Rituals? I’m not sure really, because it’s one of those rare genre-movies that are only exploitation on the surface, while it really is such a more competent and intelligent piece of adventure/thriller/drama than the mainstream-media probably realize. At a first glance Rituals is just a rip-off on Deliverance. Yeah, that could be true. It’s easy to see the similarities, but Rituals has one thing that actually makes it better: a couple of drunk doctors.

You see, Deliverance – which is a masterpiece, one of the most perfect movies EVER – has Burt Reynolds. Über-macho-warrior Numero Uno. In Deliverance there’s Burt doing the protecting and deep inside we all know that Burt will save the day with his bow and arrow somehow. In Rituals we have five quite pathetic doctors who want to do their “ritual”, be men, get drunk, smoke some weed and then go back to their families and jobs they really hate. Their ritual is to take a long walk, but still never face danger or adventure. Just do something macho they can brag about to their colleagues afterwards.

They are all losers. Even Hal Holbrook, as the wise and older doctor who refuses to let someone die in his job, preferring to let them be vegetables for life instead of dead, is a weak mother. During the whole movie he goes from being a gentleman to the savage he despise so much, and in the end… well, let’s say that he’s not so innocent anymore. These are normal human beings, so far away from stereotypes or cliché-ridden characters you can get. All of them have their major faults, but it’s hard to dislike them because we all know that we probably would react in the same way if something similar happen to us, or even less terrifying!

Shot in continuity, which mean they shot the movie in the same order as the scenes in the script, which helps a lot in this trip to hell. It’s clearly visible on the actors, not only with make-up and costumes getting dirtier and dirtier, but the eyes, the voices and reactions. It’s a very physical movie, and none of them are any athletes, which makes it even more filled with tension. One unique thing with Rituals is that there’s a gay character, and nothing more. He mentions an ex-boyfriend, and that’s it. It’s no big deal, it’s nothing amazing or disgusting or bizarre or politically correct. It’s just the way life is. And that what Rituals in the end are about, acting and dialogue. Probably the most naturalistic I’ve ever seen in genre movie. They could have done it so much simpler, so much more stupid. But the script is smart, the characters multi-layered and the direction flawless.

Rituals are of course also about terror and horror, and even if it’s quite slow compared to other movies in the same genre, it manages to spellbind the spectator for 100 minutes. Not more graphic violence and blood, except in the end, and it’s more of Deliverance than a typical horror movie.

I’ve said it many times, Rituals is a masterpiece. A classy, emotionally charged backwoods-thriller with everything from great drama, excellent acting, blood and violence. It has it all. The Code Red DVD is a must in the collection. The print(s) used is not fantastic and quite rough, but superior to all previous incarnations of this movie. So throw away that ugly motherfucker of german big box, those blurry tapes and watch the movie like it should be watched.

Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe (2005)

An ambitious title for a very cheap movie, Vampire Wars is actually a very fun and entertaining pilot for a TV-show that never was realized on the channel formerly known as The Sci-Fi Channel. It’s a tongue-in-cheek mix of horror and action, with some healthy but not to annoying doses of humour.

A crew of vampire-hunters is roaming the universe, killing vampires and making jokes with each other. One day a new member arrives, the young and ambitious Damian (Dominic Zamprogna) who are suppose to be the one that will be captain after tough-guy Churchill (Joe Lando). After a disastrous mission Damian is left alone in command with his skeptical group of vampire-killers under him. But one mission is left, and they’re forced to follow him…

This is a very cheap production, but wait. It’s not cheap in a bad way. First of all, we have this whole universe where every planet looks like some Canadian backwoods-forest, including old warehouses. The computer animations leading to each planet it something that was primitive even in 2003 and everything, from the sets to the clothes look homemade. What really makes this movie worth watching is the slick direction by Matthew Hastings and the nice cinematography (I guess, 35mm) and the cool vampires and random monsters showing up to enlighten the story.

Universe is based on different vampire-tribes, two of them are The Voorhees and Leatherfaces. Another one is like a parasite-worm who controls its victims and makes them hunger for human flesh. The Leatherfaces is the most primitive, with human skin on their faces and spears and stuff. The Voorhees is the typical punk-goth-hybrids with bad hygiene. Leader of them are Michael Ironside, who seem to have a lot of fun in his performance.

The gore is not bad at all, mostly blood that spurts everywhere, but a few gory impalings, limb-rippings and lots of gory aftermath too - way more than a lot of other SyFy-movies. Vampire Wars is one of those “b-movies” that knows what it is and never hides that fact that the budget was a dime or two, but still manages to delivers good entertainment, blood, a quite witty script and lots of adventure to the audience.

For us who are much into monster-movies there’s a fun surprise at the desert-planet, the monster from The Terror Within 1 and 2 makes a cameo! Yes, it shows up very unexpected and tries to kill our heroes! Not to surprising, because the producer of this movie is Andrew Stevens who starred in The Terror Within 1 and 2 (and even was the director of the last one!).

If you find it for a buck or two, this is a movie I can recommend.

Rampage (2009)

Our dear German doctor Uwe Boll has during the last years become one of my favorite directors. Yes, it's true. I both appreciate his wacky no-brainer popcorn-flicks and his steady work of dark, brutal dramas which often are so cynical that it's hard to understand how he got the guts to release movies with such downbeat endings. In Rampage he deals with something all people seem to fear, and that is happening everywhere - not only the US.

The star is Brendan Fletcher, a fine actor whom you seen in many movies, often small parts, during the 15 years. Even in a few Boll-movie too. Here he play Bill, a slacker, a nobody who still lives with his parents. He's 23 and life is shit. But what no one knows is that he's been doing some planning and preparations for some time. Weapons and a kevlar-suit is now ready in his close and tomorrow it's time for Tenderville (or Centerville, the name changes) to meet it's maker. Armed to the teeth he starts shooting everyone he sees, starting with blowing up the police station. Why? Well, we're not sure because he just don't seem to care about anything. But somewhere in that chaotic mind is a plan, a quite disturbing plan...

I really only have one complaint with Rampage, and it's the first part which is a bit drawn out with a lot of cutting back and forth what's happening right, in his head and in the future. It's to much repeating. But if you'll survive that you're gonna see a very impressive and disturbing little movie which actually surprised me. Shot with a lot of handcamera, improvisations and in a autumnal little American small town (but shot in Canada I guess as usual) this is a moody movie, filled with excellent acting and beautiful cinematography. Boll likes to stay with the actors and lets them talk and talk until there's something good, which he uses and intercuts very good with the rest of the takes. It's a special style, which fans of Dogme might recognize, or of course all the US indies using the same technique.

When Bill finally flips the movie regains it's energy that it somehow lost during it's first act (which not is bad, just a bit to drawn out as I mentioned above - and now I also see purpose with that). With different guns and even a knife he starts killing his way through Centerville, which is a dream for us fans of bloody squibs and general mayhem. It's very violent and it's hard to watch execution after execution, but at the same time we're so focused on Bill persona that we tend to distance ourselves from the violence. We're actually curious what he's up too.

Everything with Rampage is very well made, and together with Doctor Boll's other "serious" movies this is another classic of radical, intelligent, arty and über-violent European cinema set in the US (aka Canada). Guys like Boll is needed in the mainstream cinema because with this one, Seed, Tunnel Rats and Stoic he tries to fuck things up. He don't want us to sit there after the movie feeling good, feeling happy. He wants us to fucking understand that life can be shit, and that some of us is hiding way to far down in our cuddly rabbit-holes.

End of the Line (2007)

Once when I was seven or eight years old, I was playing together with my best friend Caroline in her family's apartment. She had a guinea pig I remember, and we used to play with that creature a lot. Now, this was many years ago of course, and my memories of Caroline is getting blurrier and blurrier. But this time will forever be printed into my mind. When we sat there on the floor, a man entered the room. His eyes where blank and he started at us. We we're scared of course, and the only thing I remember him saying was: "You're gonna go to heaven now...". We ran out, to our mothers who was in a nearby building, to safety. This could be one of the reasons I've become such a proud atheist, and probably also the strongest reason for being so affected by Maurice Devereaux's End of the Line. 

Karen (Ilona Elkin) is a doctor on her way home after a chaotic day at work. The world seems to go crazy, and the nut-jobs are even more at the hospital than ever. One of her patients also take suicide earlier that day, which don't make anyone happier. On the train strange things start to happen, and after the train stops in one of the tunnels she and her new friend, Mike (Nicolas Wright), sense that something is very wrong. At the same time, all over the city (maybe the country or the world), all the members of a sect gets a message on their beeper: The end is near, try to "save" as many as possible. With saving, it means that they should kill everyone that's not a believer so god can save them before the demons, Satan, arrives again. Now Karen and Mike, together with other survivors, has to fight their way through the dark tunnels, empty trains and watch out for murderous sect-members in every corner!

Wow, this is the second time I've seen this movie and it's a masterpiece. It's low budget, but still... fuck, it looks amazing and is one of those movies that actually involves you. The characters are very well written, even if they just are fuck-ups. These are flesh and blood, both alive and dead - if you get my meaning. Most important, the growing relationship between Karen and Mike works, and you believe in how they react to each other - and even hoping that they will find each other sooner or later. I'm sure they did that by the way, if you put the details together and realize that there's not Armageddon, just the insane ideas of a Christian sect. But even Satan is not for real, I'm sure you will be pleased with the horror and gore that this movie delivers. It never becomes a splatter movie like Deveraux earlier movie, Slashers), but has strong and nasty kills with a couple of very graphic and bloody effects. Here it feels more realistic, for example it's not easy to chop of someones head - and it's proven in this movie. The gore reminded my of the Italian horror flicks of the seventies, where gruesome murders often stayed gruesome, and not became cartoonish. 

I've seen a lot of the evil things that religion can do, and somehow I think whats happening is in this movie isn't that unrealistic. People blame problems, "sin", disasters and everything else on Mr Satan or God Almighty, and decides that they are the ones to order non-religious Christians how to live. In this movie the Christian takes upon themselves to save people by killing - which has been done before in history - but never in this way. Still, we have attacks and murders in the name of who's god it is just that day, from Catholic's hiding their problems with pedophilia inside the church, to Islamic fundamentalists crashing airplanes into World Trade Center. Everything in the name of their god and their religion. 

This makes End of the Line even more powerful, and mixes gore and traditional horror, with something very true - and very real.

Far Cry (2008)

Okey, let's roll out the cheesy-popcorn-entertainment-movie of the week, Uwe Boll's Far Cry! You know, I'm sure a few of you are very upset about Uwe destroying the legacy of some game here, but I just don't care. At all. Far Cry belongs beside BloodRayne and Alone in the Dark, just wacky unpretentious violent action-movies that have nothing to say except to deliver some explosions, some silly dialogue, gore and slow-motion. And I just love that so fucking much!

Til Schweiger plays Jack Carver, a german ex-soldier working as a captain at some lake in Canada (at least it's shot in Canada). His friend, Max Cardinal (Ralf Moeller) work's nearby at a island, guarded heavily by military. On that island, no one else than Udo Kier experiments to transform ordinary soldiers to super-soldiers, not capable of dying and that can go on killing and fighting without any rest or food. A female journalist, Valerie Cardinal (Emmanuelle Vaugier), the niece of Max, arrives to write a story about the island... and soon she and Jack is trapped on the island, trying to get out alive!

First of all, there's one weak thing with this movie: the comedy. It's a little to much comedy for my taste, but if you ignore that you have a very entertaining and violent action movie - far from the big Hollywood-productions of course - but with three excellent action sequences, some gore and a very high body count. Most of the movie is on this Canadian island, and the location look kinda cheap. Like an Italian action movie from the eighties, at least the outside of the secret lab. The inside is more fancy and echoes Resident Evil and stuff like that. 

The first big action scene is a car chase in the forest, which feels old-fashioned and I'm not ashamed to say that I think it's very good. Explosions, stunts and good editing. The next one is a boat chase, not as intensive but it works damn fine and Uwe makes a lot out of very little. The last 30-40 minutes it's a blast. Some graphic gore, lot's of squibs, people that are thrown around in slow-mo (Uwe never misses to include a cool shot, and that makes this movie so awesome) lot's of action. Don't expect The Matrix though, this might be more for us nerds out there that want's more old style action.

Except the comedy I can't complain so much, it's a fun movie with lots of action and violence. The actors are good and seem to have fun, Udo Kier is good and I hope the open ending leads to a (at least!) DTV-sequel. I want to see more super-soldiers killing people in ultra-rapid!

Crazy, silly, a bit stupid and well made. This is a movie for us that likes our DTV-action juicy and gory.

Tunnel Rats (2008)

I've never made any secret that I like Uwe Boll and already from the beginning understood what he was up to. Hell yes, I even enjoyed House of the Dead - a silly, stupid and 100 % entertaining trash-movie that perfectly knew what it was. What irritates me nowadays is that some critics still complaining about Uwe, just for the sake of it. He could go out there and make a new... Casablanca and they would find something to moan about. Slowly some people out there has started to understand the talent of Uwe and also actually give Seed, Tunnel Rats, Postal, Stoic and the upcoming Rampage good reviews.

When I did some research about Tunnel Rats I read the review at DVD Talk, and it's a positive one... but the reviewer just has to nag about something, and throws in some empty words like this:

"The basic story was sketched out, but the actors developed their own characters and wrote their own dialogue. It explains a lot, and I have to cut the production some slack for a creative choice that is either incredibly gutsy or incredibly lazy." - really, would he even have mention it being lazy if this was Lars Von Trier or De Palma?

"Its as if Boll reached a point where he couldn't contain himself any longer and had to push it over-the-top; unfortunately by doing so, he's spit in the face of every man who served in one of these platoons." - This reviewer haven't watched the movie! Really, those words are just retarded. There's a deep respect for the characters, both Americans and Vietnamese - but I'm sure this person just wanted a mainstream, no criticism-kinda movie.

"...but most revealing is his research into making "Tunnel Rats," which sounds to have been nothing more than reading a few books about the Cû Chi tunnels." - Yeah? What should he have done? Do they really expect a low budget movie to spend money to Vietnam and do research in the actually tunnels? I'm sure a fuckload of movies has been based on research in books.

"The most horrifying aspect of the interview is learning that Boll plans to do at least two more dramas, based on real-events, one about Darfur and one about an incident in a prison regarding rape and torture. Boll explains that the improvised dialogue approach will be utilized in these films as well. I shudder to think of the end result if "Tunnel Rats" is any indication of how he handles real-life." - Okeeeey? The movie is good, the dialogue works fine... so why should it be a bad thing for him to make two more movies in that way?

And so on. This guy think it's a (quite) good movie, but probably afraid of the Boll-bashers out there and a lack of journalistic integrity, he writes a lot of shit that he never would if James Cameron did or said the exactly same things.

Well fuck him. Tunnel Rats is one impressive and very violent Vietnam-movie. It's tells the story of a platoon specialized in cleaning up and destroying the underground tunnels that the Viet Cong uses in the jungle. The ad-libbed dialogues are great, and don't seem forced or weird. The actors are excellent, and with having a strong director leading them the acting is very coherent and fits the story perfect.

It's in South Africa too, which works better than it should. The jungle is slightly different, but the overall feeling gives an eerie illusion of being in an Asian jungle. But the story itself, the action and characters takes away any thoughts on the location. This is a good movie. The action? Well, it's not an action movie by any means, but it has one bigger jungle battle where the gore and blood flows between the trees. Actually, the whole movie is quite brutal and the effects by Olof Ittenbach is really nasty.

But most of the time we spend the story down in the tunnels with the soldiers, both Americans and Vietnamese. It's dark, claustrophobic and violent. In one scene a soldier has to cut up the body in front of him to be able to move forward for example. Great idea, and very unpleasant too. This movie shows no mercy, and there's no happy Hollywood-ending - thanks for that - so prepare to feel slightly uncomfortable after watching this flick.

Okey, sorry for my ramblings about that other review, but I get easily pissed at stupidity - and I can't accept that people have other opinions than me ;)

Slashers (2001)

Maurice Devereaux directed one of my favorite horror movies during the last years, End of the Line, the brilliant and violent movie set in a subway during the end of days. What I didn't know then was that I owned one of his first movies, the crazy one-shot movie Slashers! Yes, the amazing idea here was to create a splatter-movie, a full feature, with the illusion that it was one single take. Like Hitchcock's Rope, but with gore and set during a Japanese TV-show.

Slashers, the biggest TV-show in Japan, has an international special. Six participants from the US are welcome to be able to win 18 million dollars. The only thing they have to do is to stay alive being chased by three typical slasher-killers: Preacherman, Chainsaw Charlie and Doctor Ripper! They are in a big indoor arena, with several floors, basements, different environments and of course places to hide, have sex or just to attack the killers themselves. 

At first the six participants keep together, but soon the start to fight inside the group, and greed shows it's ugly, ugly face...

The big thing with this movie is the one-take-concept. When the participants first runs into the arena until the last one comes out at the end, the camera never stops. A Japanese cameraman is running together with the team, trying to film the gory murders and intrigues. Like Rope this is made with hidden cuts, for example when the camera pans fast or the camera man runs into someone by mistake. Because it's gonna resemble a horror movie the light is flickering all the time, and this is also a way to hide cuts. It works quite well, but of course some cuts are very visible. But I can understand that. The first version of the movie was two hours long, and I guess they wanted to cut it down - and it's hard to cut something that's gonna be one single take. It works fine though.

Acting? Yes. A lot. And over the top. Some people chews the scenery like madmen, and some just overacts a little bit. So overall I can't say that the acting impressed, and some of the dialogue where also very clumsy and should have worked better with a lot of editing before they started to shoot the movie. The slashers is the best actors, but the point with them is also to be very extreme and with forced oneliners to throw around in every scene.

What make Slashers so fantastic is the splatter. Everything is in one single take, and the effects are spectacular. You see people get cut in half, chop their own head of, get killed by chainsaw, getting sticks into their eyes and ears and a lot more. Everything with practical and VERY gory effects. The effects team must have worked very fast sometime, because when the camera turns away for a few seconds to film reation shots the (invisible) team switch bodyparts, people to lifesize dummies, insert hoses with blood and a lot more. Even if you don't like the acting, you will love the splatter.

Slashers is a big gimmick-movie. But it's very ambitious, has great effects and even if the budget was low there's some fun sets, a cool Japanese TV-studio with a full audience (even if some of them of course look like Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese and so on - I guess the amount of japanese extras isn't that big in Canada?) and it's never boring. With a camera on the move all the time, it's easy to forget bad dialogue and some even worser acting - because you know that someone will get killed in the most spectacular way the minute after.

It feels like a modern Grand Guignol, which could have been the title of this movie to. The Fangoria DVD is the only good DVD to get. It's out of print, but it's unrated and completely uncut, has tons of extras and is in the correct ratio. I hope someone else will release it again so you also can have some fun.

Recension: Hemoglobin (1997)

I have a weakness for films set in small towns near water, such as Dagon, Messiah Of Evil and Dead & Buried. Hemoglobin is almost a painfully underrated little Canadian shocker which manage to be truly macabre ... and cozy.

Roy Dupuis plays John Strauss, who with his wife Kathleen (Kristin Lehman) arrives to a small island to see if they can find traces of the rare and unusual blood disease that he suffers from. Once on the island they find a doctor (Rutger Hauer) who sit and drinks in his cottage and feeling sorry that he ended up on this shitty island.

But of course, going there also means unpleasant things, not only alcoholic doctors. Byrde Gordon is a nasty, mean bitch who terrorizes her own family... and everybody else that she sees. She's the owner of the local funeral service, and has mismanaged it so much that the authorities has ordered that the graves should be moved. But many of the coffins are empty, and that's not only the result of Gordon's habit of stealing from the graves. There's something else lurking on the island...

It turns out that 300 years ago a Dutch family of smugglers moved to the island, the Van Daam's. Very rich, but also with a tendency to inbreeding - so one day they got burned to death by the rest of the islanders. But what no one really knew is that during all these years, Van Daam family has mutated, evolved and inbred themselves to a magnificent bunch of grossly deformed, almost legless monsters. Trolls as I call them. Moreover, they're also hermaphrodites, cannibals and living in a sophisticated tunnel system under the island.

And when the corpses is gone from the island they just need fresh meat...

Many people hate this movie, and I really can not understand why. It is certainly not bad. It's is no masterpiece either, but the cozy factor is good, the actors and the script is competent (of course, because Dan O'Bannon was involved in it) and it is still has plenty of blood, gore and nudity to satisfy horror fans. The monsters/trolls are quite unpleasant when they drag themselves around, but still there's some kind of "humanity" over them. Or maybe I'm just reading in to much in the storyline.

The screenplay is written by, among other people, Dan O'Bannon. A screenwriter I love. It's easy to see that he was involved in the story and characters, because there are those little touches that only O'Bannon could come up with. And a movie that dares to kill of some children and mix incest in the storyline is always fun ;)

The violence is quite graphic and effects are well done, so why complain? Come on! Here we have some legless killer trolls eating children! It's a dream come true!