October 19th

The Stepfather (2009) directed by Nelson McCormick
Dylan Walsh makes for a really bland Terry O'Quinn.  You never get a sense that he's as insane as O'Quinn.  Sure, he does the thing where he paces the floor and mutters to himself when he's upset -- my favorite from the original -- but he does it so quietly and with such reserve, it really doesn't look that crazy.  The entire movie is similarly bland.  There's a lot of swimming in the pool and dropping the kids off and speeches about family.  The director also seems to take great interest in Amber Heard's bikini-clad body and inserts her into every scene he can.  It's a long, 100-minute wait for the eldest stepson to put the puzzle together in order to have an inevitable battle with the stepfather.

And, like Stepfather II, the killer isn't even a stepfather.  The entire movie takes place before the wedding.  What a rip. (4/10)




Just Take One (2010)
United Monster Talent Agency (2010)


Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006)
Great documentary covering the slasher era from 1978 to the late '80s.  Many major -- and some minor -- figures are interviewed.  I discovered that Betty Palmer is an absolute treasure.  I remember hearing that she was embarrassed by her F13 roots, but she must've gotten over it.  She's a hoot in this documentary.  Felissa Rose and Amy Holden Jones are similarly great in their interviews.  And, I can always listen to the scholarly Wes Craven talk about horror.  Carpenter, too.

The end of the documentary implies that films like Hostel and Saw are taking the mantle of the slasher film in this era.  This is something I've been pondering, myself.  Is this true?  Is the so-called torture porn genre the successor to the slasher genre?  While I might agree that we're in the middle of a torture porn cycle right now -- similar to how we were in a slasher cycle in the '80s -- I don't really think the two sub-genres share very much in common. At its base level, the evil captures people in torture porn and slowly harms them.  The captured only escape the evil through great personal (normally physical) sacrifice.  In a slasher film, the evil chases and kills a group of people until their pluckiest (normally female) member defeats it.  Maybe even more generally, it's mean-spirited torture vs. just-for-fun inventive murders by people in silly masks.  Could be a generational thing, but give me a slasher over some torture any day. (7/10)




Dark Floors (2008) directed by Pete Riski
Here I was, expecting a complete crapstorm for the remaining six Ghost House Underground movies I need to watch and this one reminds me never to take reviews too seriously.  I liked it.  I thought it was cool.  The 4.6 rating on IMDb seems ridiculously low to me.  Perhaps the IMDb raters are upset that nothing is ever explained by the end of the movie.  And that the reset button is pushed so that nearly everything we've seen doesn't really matter.  I suppose those are valid reasons to hate on it, though they don't bother me so much.

The movie takes place in a hospital, when a group of folks step off an elevator and discover it deserted.  There are causality loops and banshees and heavy metal album cover monsters and zombies and a really Scandinavian-looking Satan.  And, hey, it's William Hope!  I haven't seen him in since he was pathetically killed by Julia in Hellraiser II twenty-two years ago.  Dude needs more work.  He's great in the Walter Peck/Carter Burke/Craig Toomey asshole role.  Anyway, I enjoyed the heck out of the movie, even if I'm not sure what was really going on. (7/10)




The Last House in the Woods (2006) directed by Gabriele Albanesi
Speaking of crapstorms, here's a real brown one.  Everyone seems to think they can make their own Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  They can't.  Italians, if this movie is any indication, are particularly bad at the redneck cannibal family sub-genre.  It's not even worth writing about.  The movie's a mass of bad acting, badly aped moments from TCM and characters making dumb choices. (3/10)

October 14th

Stepfather II (1989) directed by Jeff Burr
Well, I think the Stepfather concept is probably best limited to one film.  What else can you really do with it?  Terry O'Quinn moves to a new town, finds a new single mom to woo and then goes crazy.  It's probably not necessary to sit through such a story more than once, no matter how fun O'Quinn is to watch in the role.

I also have a theory that the Stepfather's organs are reversed.  In the first film, he gets stabbed in the upper-left side of the chest.  In the this one, he gets stabbed in that area twice, once with a wedding cake knife and a second time with the claw end of a hammer.  There's no way his heart is on the left side.  No way.  He's definitely a reverse person.   Maybe that's why he kills? (6/10)




Dance of the Dead (2008) directed by Gregg Bishop
The second Ghost House movie is a whole bunch of fun.  I'm pretty confident this'll be one of those movies the high school-aged kids of today will get all nostalgic about twenty years from now.  It has a feeling that reminds me of '80s horror movies from when I was a kid.  Maybe this is partially because Dance of the Dead bears a little bit of similarity to The Return of the Living Dead.  Both feature zombies -- and science class animals -- resurrected by some kind of toxic waste chemical, both are funny and both have the brains-eating type of zombies.  This is also the first "fast zombie" movie where the speedy zombies didn't bother me.  I especially liked the scene in which the dead literally fly out of their graves; it's quite beautiful.  I'll be picking this one up. (8/10)




Saw IV (2007) directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
I'm so disappointed Jigsaw's really dead.  That means the only way we get to see him in the next three movies is through conveniently discovered video and audio tapes.  That's going to get had to buy by part VII.  Weak.  I'm sure there'll be more flashbacks featuring John Kramer as well, but I really can't imagine what else we need to know about the guy's past.  This movie gives us his secret origin: a junkie killed his unborn son.  I can't think of anything else we'd need know about him.  Maybe the series will surprise me?

I do like that they're trying something new for every movie.  It'd be very easy just to have Jigsaw teach a new set of people a lesson each movie as he did in the first.  I suppose that's what he's still doing now, but at least it's from a different perspective.  This time, he attempts to get Sgt. Rigg to help with his lessons.  Which I found hard to swallow.  Sure, Rigg is very motivated to avenge Kerry and find Det. Matthews.  Sure, a guy who films himself raping and killing women is pure scum and deserves justice.  But, strapping him into a Jigsaw device?  Really, a policeman trying to stop Jigsaw is going to do that?  I don't buy it. (6/10)

6WH: October 25th

The final week of Halloween begins. Man, time flies when it's your favorite season.

Tales from the Darkside: "I'll Give You a Million" (1984) directed by John Harrison
A couple of evil businessmen make a deal that one will buy the other's soul for $1 million. Turns out, the devil loves collecting the souls of evil business men. When the seller dies, he grabs the seller's soul before the buyer collects. The shock of witnessing this gives the buyer a fatal heart attack and the devil grabs his soul as well. It's an all right EC comics-style episode. (6/10)


The Stepfather (1987) directed by Joseph Ruben
I love horror remakes. Not because I like to watch them -- most of them are wastes of time -- but because they almost always herald a special edition DVD/BD release of the original movie. It's even better when, like The Stepfather, the movie's never been released at all. It's been years since I've watched this one on VHS back in high school. It must have made some kind of impression on me, as I bought the new DVD without a thought.

I think the impression made came mostly from Terry O'Quinn, who turns in an excellent performance. O'Quinn as Blake actually only kills two people onscreen. Much more interesting is watching Blake struggle to contain his insanity/anger as his new family falls short of the '50s TV family ideal in his head. Some of the subtle things he does will his facial expressions nail the character of a sociopath. (7/10)