Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) -review by Rabid Fox

 

Texas Chainsaw (2013)

I’m usually hesitant to check out sequels, especially ones that occur years or decades after the original. I’d seen the reboot Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the prequel to the reboot, and though they were okay, I didn’t think they were as good as the original Tobe Hooper TCM. This 2013 flick was a direct sequel to that original Hooper film and I was surprised to end up enjoying this sequel.

In the beginning…

The opening credits provide a quick recap of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre all the way up to the iconic escape by the lone survivor (um, spoilers I guess?) and the classic image of Leatherface waving his chainsaw around.

                    Chainsaw light saber

The sequel opens immediately after, with the survivor recounting her horrific experience to local Texas police. After hearing about the tragedy, a local posse decides they’ve let the weird Sawyer clan go about their creepy ways for too long and decide to enact some vigilante justice by burning down the residence.

The Sawyer family that inhabits that house of horrors has a brief and bloody shoot-out with the posse that doesn’t end well for the family.

The scene recalls some of the imagery from Rob Zombie’s Devil’s Rejects and the scene even uses the ever-excellent Bill Moseley to portray one of the original TCM cast AND we see Gunnar Hansen (the original Leatherface) make a cameo in that showdown scene as well!

 

As the house burns down, the posse rummages through the wreckage of the house to ensure there are no survivors; one of the group members, Gavin, comes across a surviving Sawyer family woman and her infant daughter. Gavin kills the mother and picks up the baby, bringing her to his wife who is excited to have and raise a baby of her own.

Cut to…

Years later and the little girl, Heather, is working as a meat cutter at a grocery store and we’re quickly introduced to her boyfriend, Heather’s slutty girlfriend who has eyes on the boyfriend, and a couple of other friends who are planning a road trip to New Orleans – fun!

As Heather is making travel plans she is contacted about the death of a grandmother in Texas she never knew existed and this also clues her in to being adopted.

The grandmother has left her a sizable estate and Heather asks to detour the group’s trip so she can claim the inheritance.

Along the way they also pick up a nice-looking, charming hitchhiker who asks for a lift to Louisiana. Then the group arrives at baller Texas mansion. So here’s where most people would be like “hey, I guess finding out I was adopted ain’t so bad, look at this awesome mansion I get as a prize!” Don’t worry, I was thinking the same thing and I knew what movie I was watching.

So the group looks over the house and finds that it is awesome.

Heather gets a big bunch of keys to the place and they come across a mysterious locked door tucked away from everything else. They take a break from rummaging to go to town and stock up on some necessities. The nice-guy hitchhiker convinces them that he should stay back at the house because, charming smile. So that works and he immediately grabs the big set of keys to start ransacking the place. But he also knows there must be treasure hidden behind that super secret door so he heads there for his big payday.

Well payday he shall receive because behind that door is the other survivor of the house burning/massacre from the original film: Jed Sawyer aka Leatherface. PAYDAY (i.e. bashed in the head)!

Meanwhile, in town, the rest of the group (well mainly Heather because she’s hot) catches the attention of the mayor and police, some of whom were part of the original house-burning posse and one of whom is just a young, good-looking, nice guy (because that worked out so well with the hitchhiker).

So the group comes back to the house, see that it’s been picked over by their hitchhiker buddy and decide he must have moved on. One of the guys goes to start dinner while Heather goes poking around the house again. The guy finds his way down to Leatherface’s bedroom and sees that the hitchhiker didn’t make it out after all.

Meat hook, chainsaw, lots of cool blood and guts = Texas justice and one less “main group” member. Heather also stumbles on a corpse upstairs (grandma?) and runs out in a panic. This doesn’t go unnoticed by chainsaw man who then turns his attention to the young and bouncy.

She makes her way to the family cemetery and tries hiding among the tombstones and even tries hiding in a fresh grave; clever, but not too clever for Leatherface, who begins sawing down towards her in a view that was clearly meant for the 3D release of this film.

Now remember when I referred to Heather’s friend as slutty and into Heather’s boyfriend? Well good for you for paying attention! Here’s where that becomes relevant: while Heather is being hunted in the graveyard and on the brink of being chainsaw-ed in the face, we see that the slutty friend has stripped down and cornered the boyfriend in the nearby barn, an offer he couldn’t refuse.

So, post coitus I’m pretty sure, they hear the sound of screams and chainsaws so they come running out to help, distracting Jed and allowing Heather to make a break for it.

They non-killers that are still alive manage to make it to their van and they try to make a break for it. They go speeding up to the closed gate that helps keep out the riffraff and since there’s no time to stop and enter the gate code, Mr. cheating boyfriend/driver decides to crash the gate because that’s what everyone in TV and movies does. But the driver is black and this is Texas so I assume the gate is racist and therefore the van crashes into, but not through, the gate. Hahaha! Wasn’t expecting that. So now they have to get the gate open which gives Leatherface time to catch up just in time for them to drive off but also giving him a chance to slash through one of the tires. He isn’t letting these people drive off, he lived through that humiliation once dammit! So now the van flips and crashes, driver is now dead,  slutty friend unconscious and assumed dead, Heather, not dead, runs into the woods and comes across a county fair going on (oh yeah the fair was mentioned in passing earlier).

 

So a chainsaw-wielding dude strolls through the fair unnoticed… oh wait, no, the cops see it, call it in, and now they know that Jed survived the original fire.

 

Somehow, not really important, Heather gets to the cops and Leatherface disappears back to the house.

Heather describes her ordeal to the cops, including the Sheriff and Mayor, who were at the family massacre years earlier, and they have a heated debate about how to proceed. The Mayor orders one of the cops to enter the house and track down and kill Jed, Hilarity ensues, including one of the more pleasantly surprising deaths in the movie (I won’t spoil it for you but I was pretty surprised!). So while the officer is checking out the house… by himself… like an idiot, Heather is left in an interview room while the Sheriff and Mayor are using Face-time to see what the lonely police officer is seeing inside the house. In the waiting room with Heather is an evidence box containing all of the information related to the incidents at the Sawyer house and what the posse and, more importantly her adoptive parents, did to Heather’s family. Heather sneaks out of the police station and runs into the young, good-looking cop from earlier. Remember how that didn’t work out so well before? Well it doesn’t work out well this time either. The cop ends up taking Heather to an old slaughter house to help bait Leatherface into showing up.

Everyone (Sheriff, Mayor, pretty boy cop, Jed, and Heather) all converge on the slaughterhouse and the climax of the film is another showdown where they try to kill the killer. Lots of gruesome footage here and a neat ending that may surprise some.

Gore:

Plenty of good stuff. Hooks and chainsaws and whatnot.

Sex:

Only implied. There’s no hot nudity, just some good-lookin’ scantily clad people.

All in all…

A much better sequel than I had anticipated, Texas Chainsaw was fun, had some great gory effects and even a few genuine, non-jump scare, surprises.

– Rabid Fox

The Devil’s Due (2014) -review by the Director.

 

The Gist:

Zach is in love with Sam. They’re soon to be wed, those little love birds. Zach is a sycophant codependent. Every move Sam makes he is there with his video camera.

Zach and Sam will have no need for long term memory because Zach is literally recording everything they do. In fact that is how we watch the ‘Devil’s Due’ through video cameras.

OBGYN:

When you are on vacation, lets say your honey moon and you are drunk and tired. It’s your last night of your vacation. You just want to get home to your hotel, have sex one more time and get some sleep before you catch a plane in the a.m. Don’t, and I mean don’t, go with some ostentatious cab driver hyper-pressuring you to go to this wild party only the locals know about.

Because you might drink to much tequila and end up put in a room that acts as gateway to hell. In this room you might get boned by the devil and subsequently get pregnant with his hybrid love child. This is exactly what happened to Zach and Samantha. Her slit was filled with satanic seed.

 The palm reader knew where this was going.

Through the hand held and surveillance camares we watch Samantha come to term.

Being pregnant with demon sperm effects a girl. Sam is a vegetarian and she eats raw meat in the grocery store. She has some type of super power, while eating deer in the woulds she kills some kids by throwing them violently into the air. 

          Get away you nosey fuckers!

Zach is realizing something is wrong. He, very slowly and far too late, uncovers the whole thing is a satanic plot. 

Devil’s Due isn’t an exact remake though it does follow closely the basic plot of Rosemary’s Baby except you see the movie more through the husband’s perspective rather than the mother’s, a subtle deviation from Roman Polanski’s film.

Acting:

I thought the acting was good.

 A lot of Sam lying around is exciting to watch.

Gore:

Some mutilated deer, a post caesarian section which isn’t very gory (nothing like Inside), some blood spitting, a huge needle going stuck in Sam’s belly bump, one decent boo-scare, some death by devil jedi force power.

Sex:

No nudity, no devil fucking, it’s only implied. Sam in a bikini, some clothed butt shots by her codependent hubby.

Something like this would have made the movie a lot better!

Directing:

Good job, telling a whole story with a video camera, that can’t be easy. Remarkable sound quality for watching something recorded with a surveillance camera, a hand held video cam, and a spy cam.

 Aww Satan junior is kicking, hard. 

Due Date: 

Before I say anything too critical I want to say I do like movies shot like this. Shot like Paranormal Activity, Blair Witch, Cannibal Holocaust. They create tension and realism. I think making a movie like this, with ‘an actor using a video camera’ ( I say that because in reality the actor is not really recording, the film crew is. It just looks like the actor is doing it.), is brave and takes talent to tell the story.

I love horror movies, this is a horror movie, and it’s not that bad.

 Don’t mess with a girl make a gateway to hell.

But that being said it’s not a movie you should go see at the theater, buy the DVD, or even rent at red box. It’s a film you might check out when you have a world class hangover, are suck home while your friends are out snowboarding, and it happens to be on cable. 

The story is predictable as hell. The movie lacks punch, gore, sex, sometimes it’s down right boring. How do you make a movie about being pregnant with Satan’s baby and it is boring? Somehow Devil’s Due accomplished this. A big plot hole is why doesn’t Zach watch all this footage he has taken? You could have found some clues there buddy.

The Symbol used in the movie the C with two dashes is explained to be a cult symbol for 1 John 2:18 about the anti-christ. While that is explained by the priest. We get no further details. Why or from where this symbol comes from is never explained. Is it really from a satanic cult or is it a symbol the writer (Lindsay Devlin) just arbitrary used because she thought it looked cool?

On a purely personal note, the part that really upsets me, and this is even true of a good devil baby movie like Rosemary’s Baby, is that in the end, the devil worshipers get their antichrist and the movie ends! We never get to see what happens. I just invested 90 minutes watching a 9 month occult pregnancy and I don’t get to see what shenanigans Satan junior get’s into. All I saw in Devil’s Due was that Demon’s Son’s head glows orange. I won’t spoil who lives or dies if you still want to see what Zach has on his SD card.

Unfortunately, in conclusion  I’m going to have to give this one a thumbs down. I hate to do it. I really wanted to like this one, but it just wasn’t satisfying enough.

This is the look on my face at the end of the movie too!

-The Director.

Killer Condom -review by Gorehound

 

Troma produced films aren’t for everyone. I, for one, love them. Lloyd Kaufman is a genius when it comes to low-budget movies. As a makeup artist you have to love the over the top makeup effects and copious amounts of blood.

Killer Condom starts off in a brothel. Something evil is lurking in the night stands hungry for penis. The main character is a gritty gay detective Luigi Mackeroni.

Even though he’s a cop he enjoys paying a cute boy toy to ram his huge cock in some man-gina.

After Detective Mackeroni loses a testicle to the ravenous rubber it becomes personal.

Killer Condom is in German, which is bizarre because it takes place in New York City. So if you don’t speak Deutsch you will be reading subtitles. Not a big deal, but I’m warning you if you don’t like reading during a movie. There is plenty of sex, tons of blood, penis, a creepy drag queen, and gore. You may find yourself cringing and holding your crotch like this guy.

Fear not, the Killer Condom isn’t a freak of nature. There is a larger plot to this dick dissecting madness. You’ll just have to watch the movie to find out more.

Ralph Konig wrote the comic book Killer Condom which the film is based on. Although I like this movie, Troma has better offerings, like Terror Firmer and The Toxic Avenger.

Killer Condom isn’t one of the most famous or infamous Troma movie, but I still recommend watching it for a good laugh.

– Gorehound

I Spit on Your Grave (1978) -review by Gorehound

 

This classic celluloid makes me wet!

The movie starts off with the main character Jennifer. She is a writer getting away from the city to concentrate on her new novel.

She is a ‘tight little number’ according to the white trash, degenerate, retards she runs into at the po-dunk gas station.

She arrives at her getaway cabin which is most relaxing, just what she is looking for.

This is when these guys decide to pay her a visit. They believe her to be the right bitch to deflower their retard friend. Only they didn’t know just who they were fucking with.

The degenerates, Jonny the leader, Stanley, Andy, and the simpleton Matthew, break into her house and the fun begins. This is followed by rape, revenge, and tons of gore.

It has about a thirty minute legendary, horrifying, rape scene, wow!

There is bush, tits, and ass. Can’t go wrong there. Did I mention the vivid rape scene! For all you jungle bush pussy lovers and anal pervs this is right up your alley.

The best parts are when she comes back and tortures every single on of those sub-human fuckers in her own unique way.

I won’t give away the fun parts. Let’s just say you should NEVER rape a woman.

She will fuck you up and spit on your grave!

This movie is a ‘MUST SEE!’

-Gorehound

“I find myself imitating Matthew’s voice quite a bit. I love a good whiner. “I didn’t even get to cum”. My favorite line from him however is when she tells him she’s from New York and he replies with “you come from an evil place”. The millennium edition DVD has a really great commentary by Joe Bob Briggs that is really worth listening to. It’s a guilty pleasure in my collection. What can I say? the complete lack of a musical score (there is NO music in the movie) was an interesting choice, adding tension with sound and dialogue, I’m a sucker for that beautiful Connecticut forest location, and country bumpkin characters are always amusing to me.” -Horror Aficionado Lawrence Tolbert

Jacob’s Ladder (1990) -review by the Director

 

This film came out in 1990. It’s been under the radar for me. I’d heard people say it was good, but enthusiasm sells and no one seemed to love it. One of my fellow aficionados Chris Webb, was the enthusiastic sell. After he told me how much he liked it I found it on Netflix and sat down for a watch.

The first rung:

The movie starts off slow and cautious. Jacob (a young Tim Robbins)  is working as a mailmen. He is living with a co-worker, Jezzy, an attractive emotional and sexual latino girlfriend. Jacob has flash backs to vietman where he was a solider. He was apparently badly wounded in action but survives. He also has flash backs to his first marriage. His marriage evidently disintegrated after the death of his young son Gabe (a young Macauly Culkin) who’s death he feels somewhat responsible for, though he was hit by a car.

Down the Ladder:

This is a cerebral thriller. As the movie unfolds it becomes harder and harder to distinguish which reality is the one Jacob lives in. Is he dreaming while in Vietnam, living with Jezzy, still married and dreaming.

There is a steady dread overwhelming to the film. Jacob feels he being followed by demons. He meets up with other me members of his squad in the war. They join with him to expose a government experiment called the LSD ladder, and it goes wrong. Then we aren’t sure if Jacob was even in the war. He is in a mental hospital having tests done on him. Then it’s unclear if he ever survived the war. It’s all a mystery.

Jacob is metaphorically scaling down a ladder into insanity. 

Acting:

Tim Robbins is great and establishes himself as the even greater actor he will become. Danny Aiello plays Jacob’s chiropractor and pseudo psychologist. He has some great lines and all the scenes with him and Jacob are magic. Those seemingly innocuous moments in the movie are the grounding between Jacob and reality. Good stuff.

Gore:

The movie has it’s moments of violent war gore. Some demon special effects and boo-scares.

Sex:

Jezzy get naked several times and they have sex. T & A stuff.

Directing: 

The directing style is grungy and strong. This movie was probably ahead of it’s time. Their are gloomy and bizarre shots that obviously inspired latter film makers. The whole movie has a gritty surreal feel. It’s very slow yet it draws you in. It cries out for a satisfying ending to clear up all this madness.

End of the Ladder:

This movie just moved to slow for me. I couldn’t get into the mind rape. I found myself liking it then wanting it to be over. Though I wanted closure so bad I stuck it out to the end. It’s probably going to have people that like it, and maybe love it. It’s a quality movie and I hate to say it’s bad. I just didn’t dig it. You might, but you will have to decide if this is your kind of movie and take a chance.

-The Director.

Zombieland (2012) review by the Director

 

Here we go again:

Columbus Ohio (Jessie Eisenberg) a young anti-social yet happy go lucky guy finds himself in a zombie apocalypse. He makes clever rules, which he writes down, and carefully follows.

These rules are repeated throughout the movie on the screen. Columbus hooks up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who is a roughneck natural zombie slayer. Columbus cracks observational humor throughout the movie, which sometimes annoys Tallahassee yet amuses him enough to stick with the ‘scrony little spitfire.’

Zombieland:

After a great intro of crazy zombie shenanigans…

Tallahassee, who names everyone after the city they come from meets Columbus.

Tallahassee and Columbus raid a super market in search for Twinkies, Tallahassee’s favorite treat, which reminds him of life before it went to crap.

After butchering all the Zombies in the store they hear a little girl crying for help. That is when the two meet up with anti-heroes Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock her little sister.

The crew eventually teams up for while before Wichita and her sister split ways to head to their ultimate destination, a childhood amusement park. The plan here is for Little Rock to have her last peaceful fun a child should have before a hard life living in Zombieland, a world ruined by people turned into flesh eating monsters (metaphorically not much different than the world now). Columbus forms a crush on Wichita, which because she is super hot and let’s face it, there aren’t many eligible girlfriends running around.

Their is trouble and gun fights, tension, and a lot of actually charming and funny jokes.

What makes Zombieland unique is it’s not a straight up horror. It’s also an adventure comedy. It’s made like a horror movie. Its chock full of graphic gore living easily up to it’s R rating. Yet it has a playful, satirical feel. It’s a fun movie and highly entertaining.

Shaun of the Dead is the definitive the fan favorite cult zombie comedy. Personally I didn’t like Shaun of the Dead as much as this one. I wanted to like Shaun better, it was more violent and more terrorizing. There is no denying Zombieland has a charm and it gets under your skin. I think Zombieland is more American dark comedy and Shaun of the Dead is more British or Irish type macabre comedy. Booth are worth seeing and I’m sure I’m the minority in liking Zombieland better.

Zombieland tightrope walks its comedy and violence, keeping it just a little bit cartoony and fun without loosing the terror of a zombie take over. I think their trick is almost never killing a human character. If they had humans dying it wouldn’t have felt like fun, it would have been another horror zombie movie. That’s why Zombieland is a comedy about zombie horror and Shaun of the Dead is a zombie horror movie that happens to be funny.

Acting:

Woody Harrelson is great in comedies and he is having fun in this one. Emma Stone is cute and plays the tough girl yet vulnerable role well. Jessie Eisenberg is kind of a dork, but his is smart, has great timing and delivery. I really enjoyed his semi-nerdy role. Though he seems weak, his is tough enough and certainly smart and discipled enough to survive in Zombieland. He sells the character great.

Gore:

A couple smashed heads, blown apart zombies, endless shotguns kills, zombies stabbed, ran over, exploded, on and on, lots of bloody gore. Nothing horribly disgusting but very violent and not for young children.

Sex:

Nothing, just Emma Stone looking sexy.

Directing: 

Triple threat writer, producer, director Robin Fleischer helms this boat. Slick high budget Hollywood studio produced, the movie looked great. Nothing particularly creative, but its wasn’t an artsy, low-budget movie so it was made the traditional way, high quality, no mistakes, no chances taken, nothing gained, nothing lost. The movie never takes itself too serious, the Zombie Rules Columbus comes up with are written on the screen! It’s funny though, and the rules are good zombie survival skills, they keep Columbus alive.

This is Zombieland:

A fun way to spend 90 minutes. It’s not great but it’s very entertaining. If you are looking to watch something a little light hearted with clever banter but still want your horror fix, its well worth watching. I recommend seeing it.

-The Director.

The Purge -review by the Director

 

Release the beast:

In a not to distant future, America is run by the ‘New Founding Fathers.’ A new law is enacted that allows everyone to go fucking nuts one day a year. Nothing is illegal, murder, rape, child molesting, whatever horror you can dream up you can enact onto your fellow man and it’s perfectly legal for 12 hours. It’s called the Purge.

Time to Purge:

It’s purpose is to release all your pent up anger and frustrations by going on a killing spree, vandalism, or the like. Because of the new Purge act crime is at an all time low. Everyone feels it’s psychologically in their best interests to purge. I will discuss my philosophical view of the purge in a bit.
The movie is a thriller. I felt quite uneasy watching this film. It creates a lot of anxiety just watching it.

The plot; a wealthy family with a super duper security system in a well to do neighbor hood are tucked in for the Purge. The family goes about their activities for the next 12 hours, the purge length. Outside the house is monitored by cameras.

The young boy in the Sanders family of four, besides Dad, Mom, and older sister, sees a wounded black man in the street crying for help. He opens the house and lets the guy in. The family freaks out and the guy runs and hides in the house. Before they can do much, there is another incident in the house I won’t spoil. After that a group of privileged rich college age kids come to the house demanding the black man be released to them so they can perform their right of purging on him.

The polite ‘Patrick Bateman’ type leader of the group (Ryhs Wakefield) warns the Sanders  if they don’t give the guy up they will break in and kill them all.

I won’t spoil the movie, but they do end up  turning off the power, making the sanders use flashlights, and breaking in, the thrills continue.

Acting:

Ethan Hawke plays the father James Sanders. He is a seasoned A-list hollywood actor and of course is good in the movie. His wife is played by the beautiful Lena Headey, its a tough role, she does okay, she is very striking so its easy forgive her somewhat rigid performance. Everyone else is good. The Polite Leader of the Purging co-eds, charismatic Ryhs Wakfield plays a great villain. His character is a little thin as is everyones actually. But what he and the other characters symbolism is very much relatable. Which is, what you do throughout this movie. You constantly find yourself thinking, what would I do in this situation?

Gore:

This being a horror movie there is violence. Mostly ungainly visceral fighting, stabbing and shooting. Not a gore fest.

Sex:

Some kissing, nothing really.

Directing:

The movie looks great, the highlight is the use of the door’s peep hole to see the psycho co-eds in creepy masks.

There is a lot of low light flash light stalking well shot.

Good use of security cameras to tell the story and well excited close ups to show emotion, concern and fear of course.

Rating?

Yes see this movie. Its well worth watching. Is it a classic? No way. Will you watch it again? Probably, to enjoy with a date, friend, or if it happens to be on TV.

Philosophical angle:

The invisible ring concept: If you had an invisible ring, a ring that by wearing turned you invisible, would you steal, exact revenge, or engage in voyeurism and rape if you could get away with it? Maybe you would. What if everybody had invisibility rings? It would be chaos. Unless there were ethics, morality, consequences the foundation on which civilization is built. Why is it okay for you to get away with murder when no one else can?

In the movie, the Sanders boy, pretty much fucked everything up by being disobedient to his father and opening the security door into the house. There are two reasons why he may have done this. I think it demonstrates the lazy discipline we see in modern family dynamics. Kids are aloud to question their parents’ authority without much consequence. Which on the one hand might encourage critical thinking skills and debate skills but it also creates a dark side. Kids actually don’t know more than their parents. They need to listen to their parents and teachers. If they refuse to listen to them, they will have to listen to the police and judges. They might need to be locked up with the rest of people who don’t respect civilization’s laws.

Secondly the kid most obviously opened the door to the hurt man because he took pity on him, even though it was dangerous to himself and his family. The families empathic capacity is well demonstrated later in the movie. The sudden realization of ‘what have we become’? I can’t live with myself if this is how I’m going to act.’

The Purge itself has an insane yet utilitarian value to it. It deals with over population, criminals, conflict with races, and basically eliminates the stupid people. How? The first people that start killing each other are the criminals this results in less criminals. The racists begin killing minorities. Minorities fight back, the two kill each other weakening their numbers. The elite set out to purge the homeless from the streets, this results in less homeless people. The young psychopaths that threatened the Sanders were not fit for society. There was nothing lost by eliminating some elitist bastards. Over all, all the killing helps lower the population. The people wise enough not to purge survive and benefit society. The people that engage in the purge, because they are lunatics, hopefully get killed, again removing some of the lunatics from the society.

The Purge teaches you who your friends really are. If you are locked up in a house with people, even if they are family and friends, it’s perfectly legal for them to bash your brains in from behind if they feel inclined. The people who wear a mask and are secretly miserable might go on a killing spree, killing their boss, so don’t be an asshole boss, or other two faced ‘friends’. It’s a great time to kill your spouse or abusive father.

What would you do during a purge, go kill minorities, kill an ex boyfriend, kill cops, or stay home and try to avoid the rampage outside? The intention of the Purge is to eliminate the maladjusted to make life better for the rest of society. Of course no well adjusted society would have a Purge Act.

-The Director.

Evil Dead (2013) -Review by Chris Webb

 

Hello horror aficionados. Everyone knows that I feel there is no need for remakes. I appreciate what new writers and directors can create. Bringing fresh ideas to the horror table. I’m delighted when these newcomers can think ‘outside the box’, entertained by what they can construct out of relatively original ideas rather than clever or not so clever cash cow remakes.

On my death bed I will continue to say Evil Dead 2, as it is, will always be the best horror movie of all time! (it is).

That being said I did enjoy the new versions of Nightmare on Elm Street and the Texas Chainsaw reboots. I did not dig the remake of Psycho, because well, it totally sucked balls!

Touching our precious Evil Dead, I felt that was going way too far. It’s practically statutory rape. However Sam Rami did what Wes Craven, Toby Hooper, and Clive Barker did, they sold out, hopefully for millions. Can you blame them? No.

So I reluctantly watched the Evil Dead (2013). I tried to keep an open mind, stubbornly, but I did. And you know what?

I FREAKING LOVED IT!

The cast for the revision of Evil Dead, to its credit, was hand picked by Sam Rami and Bruce Campbell.

They chose no famous actors, which I love, and then covered them with blood.

The writers changed the names, changed the hero, changed the story a bit, creating new problems for the characters to face, gave it a whole new twist, vicious new death scenes, priceless stuff.

The Evil Dead fans, even jaded ones like I was, should grin ear to ear.

They didn’t forget the gore fans. All the gorehounds will chow down on the blood caked buffet served up in this flick.

Did I want to hate it? Yes. Did I hate it? Nope, I loved it.

Great tip of the hat to Mr. Rami’s iconic ideas trudging on into the 2010s.

I give it four decapitated thumbs way up!

-I’m Chris Webb and I approve this message.

Maniac (2012) -review by Chea

 

Franck Khalfoun’s remake of the 1980s original,

2012 Maniac is shot in first person with gore and nudity.

A third generations mannequin restoration shop owner Frank (Elijah Wood) is a delusional cereal killer with serious mother issues.

Suffering from chronic migraines, and manic depression he has ravenous blood lust episodes of stalking and uncontrollably killing women which he then scalps.

He staples the hair to his mannequins who, he hallucinates, to be alive and antagonizing him.

He becomes obsessed with a French photographer named Anna who photographs mannequins for an art exhibit.

You can guess how that pans out.

This movie is very visual and whimsical with many dream sequences and flashbacks of him as a child watching his mother and her string of men and drug abuse.

I give it 4 stars. I think it’s much better than the original and really takes you down the path of a maniac. Through their eyes. It has a great soundtrack as well. 

-Chae

The Wolf Man (1941) -review by the Director.

The Wolf Man (1941)

 

During the continuing era of scientific enlightenment the curse of the werewolf becomes an unbelievable reality. Relatively naive Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) comes to England to learn and take over his aging father’s (Claude Rains) inheritance and business. Lawrence’s brother has murdered in a hunting accident, which also serves the plot as to why John wants his son to move in with him.

The Curse:

Lawrence, a stereotypical man of the 1940, comes to an old European town, home of his father’s mansion. He begins the tale with spying on the town through his father’s telescope. Instead of looking to the stars the horny man notices the beautiful and also an incongruous stereotypical 1940s American woman Gwen Conliffer (Evelyn Ankers). what is a woman like her doing in Europe, running an antique shoppe.
Lawrence asks Gwen out on a date and she denies him several times. He is woefully persistent in his courting. it’s uncomfortable, he is boarding on stalker behavior. Gwen sells Lawrence a can with a silver wolf handle. They discuss the werewolf lure which they both believe is a silly myth. Gwen who we latter find out is engaged finally agrees to a walk with Lawrence. Lawrence is sort of disappointed when Gwen brings along her friend Jenny for their walk.

The two women and Lawrence visit a Gypsy caravan. The women want to have their palms read. Maleva, the fortune teller, sees the sign of the pentagram in Jenny’s palm. Both women are freaked out. Jenny goes off running. Bela (Bela Lugosi) a Gypsy man turns into a werewolf. He chase Jenny down and mortally wounds her. Lawrence uses his silver cane to beat the living shit out of the wolf. As the Wolf dies he turns back into his mortal form.
Lawrence is confused. The police get invoked thinking Lawrence is a murderer. The problem is, Jenny was clearly attacked and killed by some kind of animal and Lawrence assues them he killed a wolf not a man. In the fight, Lawrence is wounded. His wound quickly heals and he begins to experience strange feelings. Soon as the wolf bane blooms and the full moon rises he will shape shift into the Wolf Man. The rest of the details I shall leave to the viewer.

Acting:

Lon Chaney Jr. is particularly good in his role. He captures the innocent fish out of water nature of his character. He is well mannered and kind. A gentleman before his sanity begins to break down ultimately giving way to the wolf man curse. His father John played by Claude Rains plays the enlightened skeptic, business man, and loving father quite well. He is confident in his stance until the mythical curse is no longer a myth by necessity. Werewolves are real.

I of course, as I mentioned in the Mummy (1959) review, found the 1940s era acting too notable and dated. I wished the characters had acted more timeless, but that is how people acted in the 40s so I shouldn’t be so xenophobic of the decades. I’m only warning you that the movie will have a distinct 1940s feel.

Gore:

Other than off screen beatings and a wound, nothing. Its all PG.

Sex:

Nothing, Lon Chaney Jr’s hairy legs if you are a homosexual man with a hairy leg fetish.

Directing:

George Wagner’s directing is suitable. The ubiquitous fog in the woods is done well, creating a creepy malevolent atmosphere.

One silly goof was when Lawrence transformed he was in his pajamas wearing a wife beater. When he lurks in the woods as the wolf man, both times he changes his outfit into a mechanics jumpsuit. Why the wolf man does this is never explained. The viewer just accepts it. I suppose movie goes in the 40s were not so continuity savvy as later movie watchers would become.

Full Orbit:

What is so fantastic about the Wolf Man is that until this point no one had ever made a werewolf movie (except for a less famous Universal movie Werewolf of London, six years the elder. Werewolf of London is more a Jekyll and Hyde movie as well, though it introduced the transmitting the curse via bite and hints at the moon). The mythos was there. But no one had created a popular Hollywood movie about it. Elements of the Wolf Man sub-genre created by Universal Studios, in it’s purest form, are still prevalent in today’s werewolf movies and books. I personally like the were wolf make up in this film and especially in the remake of the Wolf Man (2010). Even though the were wolves of American Werewolf in London and the Howling are very cool there is something about the very human looking were wolf of the Wolf Man movies that seems more like what a were wolf would look like instead of the wildly fantasy themed Minator looking were wolves in later werewolf sub-genre films like Dog Soliders and the Underworld film for example.

When the nostalgic mood is right, take a trip back and watch the original Universal Monster movies. These films were pioneers of the fantasy sub-genre of monster horror. They should hold a special place in a horror fan’s heart.

-The Director. (with additional input from reviewer Lawrence S. Talbot)