October 13th

Brotherhood of Blood (2007) directed by Michael Roesch & Peter Scheerer
The first of 8 Ghost House Underground movies released in 2008.  Oh man, I hope this one isn't representative of the others.  Brotherhood of Blood was crafted with the same care and quality that one would typically find in a Skinemax flick.  Wretched acting, inept storytelling, a predictable twist, horrible vampire makeup and nauseating editing (do we really need 300 cuts per action scene?) come together to form an unholy stinker of a film.  Let's put it this way: the very first person thanked in the credits at the end is Uwe Boll.  'Nuff said. (3/10)




Inferno (1980) directed by Dario Argento
What a disappointing sequel to Suspiria.  Inferno retcons Helena Marcos from that prior film into being only one of three witches who somehow rule the world from New York, Rome and Freiberg, Germany. Inferno pursues the witch living in New York, the so-called Mother of Darkness.  I think my main problem with Inferno is that there's not much of a story here.  Suspiria's easily described as the story of young woman discovering evil things going on at her school.  Inferno lacks that easy kind of hook.  It's about a young man traveling to New York to investigate his sister's disappearance, but that's really only the last half of the film.  Surrounding that, there's stuff going on with the other witch in Rome -- which doesn't even belong in this film, really -- a man being ridiculously attacked by cats (and killed by a hot dog vendor!), a woman swimming in a flooded basement and people being killed for reading the wrong book.  Honestly, if the the book The Three Mothers is so dangerous to the the Three Mothers' cause, why did they wait so long to yank copies of it off the shelves?  And, how are the Three Mothers controlling the world when they're so damned easy to kill?  The first one is stabbed by a freakin' ballerina and the second one accidentally sets her own house on fire.

I was not surprised, after reading the IMDb trivia, to discover Argento was sick during the filming of this movie.  His style is severely muted in this film, even compared to Deep Red.  The murders are boring and not as graphic.  The colors aren't as intense.  There are fewer fancy shots.  Goblin isn't doing the music.  The whole movie feels like he just didn't have the energy for it. (6/10)