First off I want to say thank you Film Deviant for the copy of this flick. I won it through a contest with them and I really recommend you guys check them out. Great stuff over there.
Anyways, on to the review. This isn't going to be a long review, cause I don't have a lot to say about this flick. It actually will probably be my shortest review. A Horrible Way to Die is one of those flicks I heard quite a bit about on various horror-related sites and blogs. It had a lot of hype about it and was getting some great buzz. So.....when I won if from Film Deviant, I was looking forward to it.
Basically, the story of A Horrible Way to Die is an escaped murderer is in pursuit of his ex-girlfriend, who has fled to start a new life in a small town.We see this murderer/exboyfriend being transported somewhere from the prison, then we see that he has escaped. He is killing people along the way and we assume he is heading back to his ex-girlfriend.
While this is going on, we see his ex girlfriend attending AA meetings and eventually meeting a fellow participant in the meeting. He asks her out and they begin seeing each other. After a little while, the ex girlfriend realizes that her ex boyfriend has escaped from prison and is making his way to her.
I tried and tried to get into this flick and just couldn't. I thought it was painfully slow with very little action or anything to keep my interest. You might like this slow kind of movie, and if you do, awesome, but I just can't handle it. I wanted to go to sleep it was so boring.
For a positive, I can say the story was fairly original, the acting was very realistic, and the inevitable twist at the end was pretty good. I just hate the meat of the movie didn't keep my interest. I really wanted to like this flick and to give it a glowing review, but I just can't.
This isn't a flick I will re-visit, re-watch, or recommend. I do however suggest you read a few other reviews before deciding not to watch it. I have several friends that enjoyed it, so maybe its just me, i don't know. Either way, not enough things happened to keep my interested and for my personal suggestion, I say skip.
Necronomicon: Book of the Dead follows H. P. Lovecraft (played by Jeffrey Combes from Re-animator, The Frighteners, etc) in the 1930s as he enters a secretive library guarded by Monks in his search of the Necronomicon, the “Book of the Dead”. Upon discovering the book he comes across three stories written in it, “The Drowned”, “The Cold” and “Whispers”, and as he copies them to his own parchment he watches the stories unfold before his eyes, as well as our own, while inadvertently unleashing a terrible beast protecting the Necronomicon.
I saw this movie years ago, actually waaaay back in 1995, and forgot all about it until re-discovering it through a recent conversation. My first, and only til this point, viewing of Necronomicon Book of the Dead was a unique experience to say the least. I rented it for 2 Bucks or something from a grocery store, that you might remember, by the name of Kroger. I went in with my parents one night and saw the vhs and instantly HAD to watch it. I went home and my parents actually let me stay up and watch it by myself. I started watching it and was really digging it when toward the end of the first story (The Drowned), it cut to a porno that someone had obviously recorded over part of the movie. Being 11 years old, I might not have minded that, but for nearly 2 minutes, I had to watch a completely naked mexican guy ride a horse in slow motion across a beach. Not necessarily the highlight of year 11 for me. Anyways, after the 2 minutes or so of mexican guy riding a horse naked in slow motion, the movie cut back. I missed a really cool part (which I figured out later) but I atleast had the rest of the movie to look forward to.
Thanks for listening to an old story of my childhood, I promise i'm getting to the review now.
Necronomicon's first story as I mentioned earlier is "The Drowned", an atmospheric little tale of a man who loses his wife and child in an accident at sea, and in a selfish attempt to bring them back to life he suffers even more horrors than he ever imagined. It's got some cool visuals and an awesome monster, though the monster isn't shown for long unfortunately. Probably my least favorite of the three stories, but not a bad thing.
The second story is called "The Cold" and is directed by Shusuke Kaneko famous for the Death Note adaptations. In this story we follow a nosy reporter investigating the disappearances of hundreds of people in one single neighborhood over several decades. His nosiness ultimately gets him involved in an experiment taken from the Necronomicon that grants eternal life to anything organic as long as its atmosphere is replicated after death, which leads the reporter to a sinister demise. Once again, the fx are awesome and the atmosphere is fun and campy. This segment kinda feels like an early Full Moon flick to me, I don't know why.
The final story is hands down my favorite. The segment is called "Whispers" and is directed by Brian Yuzna of From Beyond/Re-animator fame.This one follows a female police officer in hot pursuit of a vehicle driving by a man known as “The Butcher”. She suffers a terrible crash that leaves her partner, who is also the father of her unborn child, in the hands of The Butcher, and time is running out if she wishes to save him. She enters the lair of the butcher, and soon realizes that despite her plans to abort her pregnancy, The Butcher will not let that happen…for dire reasons. I gotta say that this one is damn creepy. The older couple underground are amazing and the whole segment has an incredible sense of dread. I absolutely loved this segment. The only thing I have to criticize is the fx on the creatures at the very end. I can't say much though, because this WAS 1993 and fx are not what they are now. It will prob make you laugh a little though.
Necronomicon: Book of the Dead was a fun watch. It's just as good as I remember (sans the naked mexican dude on a horse) and holds up surprisingly well. The fx are practical and pretty great, except for the end of "Whispers." Acting is all either pretty good or above average and I don't have a lot of complaints for the flick. There are times it kind of drags, and it definitely has a distinctive 90s "feel", which can be good or bad depending on your tastes. Overall, you would be crazy not to see this flick. Its not the best, but its far from the worst, and a pretty fun flick.
So I had heard some seriously BAD stuff about this flick, like HORRIBLE reviews. Some claiming its worthless and one of the worst films of all time. Despite all of the negative press regarding Creature, I somehow felt compelled to see it. I guess I have a soft spot for rubber-suited monsters, crocodile/alligators, and louisiana backwater hicks. Anyways, I finally got the chance to see it and went for it. Was it worth it? Check out my review.
Creature starts out with a group of preppy kids driving in an SUV, headed for a camping trip in Louisiana. They stop buy this rundown gas station and happen to hear about the legend of Lockjaw, a half man/half alligator creature that is rumored to roam the swamp . The group then goes out to see the supposed dilapidated home the creature.
Although this sounds like your normal run of the mill monster movie. Probably the same kind you come to expect on the SyFy Channel at 1:00 am, it actually changes up things quite a bit. It of course starts out with Lockjaw killing the kids off one by one, but eventually the kids realize Lockjaw isn't the only threat they need worry about.
Sid Haig (Spider Baby, House of 1000 Corpses/Devils Rejects) is the headlining actor as you probably know already and does a decent job of portraying the main backwater hick (even though its almost exactly the same as his role as Capt. Spaulding) and was a lot of fun in the flick. The other actors were ok, and did a decent job throughout, not really any standouts, but I wasn't expecting there to be.
Now to the gore, there is hardly any. Most deaths/kills are off screen and the ones that are on screen are very tame (by a horror fan's standards anyways). So, if you're expecting lots of gore, be prepared to be disappointed in that aspect.
I'm sure Lockjaw isn't going to be a new horror icon and he really doesn't deserve to. I think the design was cool, he looked very "rubbery", but that was ok with me. His overall look was pretty cool. Definitely "action figure" material in my opinion, if that makes sense. I would like to see him in a sequel, but I just don't see this flick taking off enough to have a sequel. With more work on the script, some more gore, etc, this could have been a killer B flick.
I will go on record as saying that Creature is no where near as bad as some of the reviews are making it. I have definitely seen much worse and actually enjoyed watching this flick. Is it great? No. Is it a classic? By no means. Was it fun? Absolutely. It harkens back to the late 80s when just about anything could be made, monsters were rubbery and Swamp Thing ruled. Check it out, you may just enjoy it.
Slasher films and holidays go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It gives the makers of such films two easy starting points in their creation. On the one hand holidays have built in name recognition. “There’s a movie called Happy Birthday to Me! Why I have birthdays! I must go see it!” On the other, it gives them an easy to explain back story and motivation for the slasher. His mother was killed on Christmas by a dude in a Santa suit so he must now don a Santa suit and kill folks. Of course, by now, most of the good holidays have been used ad naseum. So, what’s a poor film maker to do?
This brings us to Uncle Sam, the first horror movie, not involving aliens or Tom Cruises, to take place on the 4th of July.
Our film begins in Kuwait, where random army guys find a chopper shot down by friendly fire. In the chopper is a guy lucky enough to be named Sam and have a nephew. He is also a rather spry dead guy who shoots the guys who find him. I’m guessing the army sent more guys out and those guys weren’t at all put off by the first set of guys being shot, because…
Next we head to Small Town, USA a few days before the 4th of July. Sam’s nephew has a room full of military related stuff, because he rather liked his uncle, Sam. The kid may or may not be having a bad dream and knocks over a photo of Sam and promptly steps on the glass. The kid’s blood has better self- control than an alien-infected guy’s in Antarctica.
A brief interlude about the kid: It’s said that Disney has a cloning facility where they make perfect clones to star on their T.V. shows and sing terrible songs and generally just part tweens from their cash. I imagine it as a sterile state of the art facility with a really nice cafeteria. There is also a dilapidated factory on the seamier side of town that grows fairly hideous B-movie kids. This kid and the kid from Troll 2 look to have been grown in the same vat. End of interlude.
So anyways, the kid really loved his uncle and wants to be like him. It a not-so-shocking twist later is turns out that Sam was –spoiler alert- an abusive asshole. Yeah, I know, shocking. He takes Sam’s medals to school for a bit of impromptu show and tell. His teacher, a former conscientious objector, gets called a coward and somehow doesn’t smack the kid. The teacher, it should be noted, is played by Timothy Bottoms. Bottoms was on the short lived show “That’s My Bush” where he was George W. Bush. Yeah, “suck it future draft dodging former president,” says the film makers in an oddly psychic moment.
A military guy delivers Sam’s body straight to his sister-in-law’s house and puts the coffin right there in the living room. No one seems to be terribly sad about the death or in any hurry to arrange a funeral. I guess the coffin really ties the room together. The kid loosens 1 of the locks on the coffin. Not all, mind you. Just one. But it proves to be enough to allow Sam to exit later. So that’s alright.
Sam is resurrected by some asshole teens who practice their constitutionally protected right to burn an American flag right over his freshly dug grave replete with a tombstone. So, I suppose, the widow did make some hasty arrangements while nothing was happening, which in this movie could have been at any time.
Meanwhile, across town, a guy on stilts and in an Uncle Sam outfit decides to do what comes naturally; stares at tits on the second story of a house. Well, either that doesn’t sit well with zombie Sam or he just needs the outfit. He kills him and steals his outfit. Staring at tits is as American as apple pie and baseball. I'm sure the Founding Fathers, if not for the 20 layers of clothes that women wore and general lack of porn, loved tits as well and would have stared at them if given a chance.
This leads me to my next major issue. Slasher villains have to follow certain rules. This is what defines them. Sam ostensibly kills people for being unpatriotic. As the film goes on he tends to lose his focus and kills people for dating his widow or cutting ribs poorly.
The big July 4th celebration begins. Sam stalks around killing a kid who sings the National Anthem poorly, a shady politician and several other people like the above mentioned girl who seems less than enthused about preparing ribs.
A burned, blind, crippled kid is introduced. He looks suspiciously like the kid who is the ½ in 2 and ½ Men after a particularly vicious burn from Charlie Sheen. What does he do in the movie other than demonstrate the dangers of fireworks? Nothing. His parents are played by P. J. Soles and Thom McFadden. Oh look! People from Halloween and 976-Evil are in this! Get a camera.
Burned kid get talked to and creepily touched by Sam. Why? The burned kid and the creepy kid are friends. How does Sam know this? No idea. It probably doesn’t matter. Burned kid tells creepy kid that his uncle is skulking about. So the kids seek the aid of Isaac Hayes to kill Sam. Isaac Hayes and Sam have some sort of past. We learn this by a quickly glimpsed present given to Hayes, a pair of balls in a rather nice case with a note suggesting that Hayes lacks balls. Hayes and the kids find Sam and kill him with a cannon of all things.
The kid decides that maybe the military isn’t for him, because they produce evil zombie killers or something, and throws away his toys at the end. The movie can’t even be bothered to sequel bait.
Should you watch this? Probably not. But it will make you feel as if you are getting your $15 per month’s worth out of Netflix.
So I remember the box art to this flick when I was a kid. Totally Gruesome, Totally 80s Big Box. I was always too scared to rent it, so alas, I never got to see it, UNTIL NOW. Man, when I came across this bad boy while trolling through various vhs site, I about POOPED. I immediately looked for it. When I found it, you would have thought it was my birthday. Anyways, here is my review, and here is a look at the old school VHS cover I was talking about, if you've never seen it.
So basic plot point goes like this, Six high school seniors on a camping trip are ambushed by killer rednecks who kill their victims & sell the remains to a local hamburger joint. So obviously you have the killer rednecks hunting down the kids and killing/eating them. Before too long, the kids fight back, managing to kill some of the rednecks.
This is 1980s Shot on Video Big Box Horror AT ITS BEST. I would rank this up there easily with Cannibal Campout, Video Violence 1&2, and Woodchipper Massacre as being some of the finest SOV Horror. The score is complete 80s, the acting is pretty atrocious at times, and it looks like scratched shit. I loved it.
This movie is so entertaining, and I don't understand why it isn't more of a cult classic. As much as I love heavy hitters like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween, I would prefer this kind of stuff anyday. This was made in a better time in history and there will never be a time period again where you are able to see movies like this. It was a time when a guy could literally get his camera and record a movie in a weekend, spend a little money for box art, etc. and actually get it into a movie store. It was incredible, and I hate that Hollywood has taken over so much, disallowing any kind of creativity of this level to be presented to the horror movie fan. Sorry, enough of my ranting, back to the movie.
Despite what you see on the VHS box cover, there is hardly any blood in this movie.You do get to see some gut munching, a hilarious decapitation (probably my favorite part), and some pretty horrible death effects. I think this movie was a blast, but next time i'm going to drink some beers and add some friends, and I think the fun will multiply ten fold.
I highly recommend this movie to everybody. Its seriously the most fun I have had watching a movie in a loooooooooong time and brought back so much nostalgia from when I was a kid. A time when I picked a movie based on the biggest box and the goriest cover. Behind this movie you could just tell that the people in it had great love for the flick and were really having fun. Great stuff and I hope everyone gives Lunch Meat the chance it deserves. On a partial side note, I created a petition targeting Anchor Bay Entertainment to try and get a Blu-Ray Special Edition of this film released. Please take a second, head over HERE, and sign it for me! Also HERE is the link for the facebook fan page I created/admin.
Flashback to 1996, i'm 12 years old, in my bed, when suddenly I wake up from a nightmare. I'm sweating, breathing heavy, and my eyes are darting around the dark room. What was that in the corner? Is someone, or some THING, over there? I can't see. "MOM! DAD!" I scream. A couple moments later, my dad comes into the room, turns the light on and yells "WHATS WRONG?!??!" Thats when I realize nothing was in my room and I just had a nightmare. A nightmare that involved a werewolf lurking around the outside of my house, preparing its sudden entry, I tell my parents, but no one believes me.
What caused my terror? Obviously something I did that day must have sparked this nightmare. Well, something did spark this nightmare, that often reoccured over the next few months, and that movie was Bad Moon.
You might have read reviews about Bad Moon, hell, you may have actually watched Bad Moon at some point, and if you're like the 208309234 other reviewers and critics out there, you probably hated it. I've came across remarks such as "This one hits rock bottom.the only originality is that the hero was bitten (why by the way?) in the jungle,while making love with his girl friend who was less lucky and got eaten by the beast.", "The rest of the movie is so trite,so hackneyed and so "déjà vu " it's extraordinary people should produce such drivel, and even "Horrible movie, horrible effects, lame werewolf, probably the worst movie I've ever sat through." Before you pass this movie off as "horrible" or "trite", read my review and see what a fan thinks.
Bad Moon starts off with a big, gory, BANG. We open up the movie with a character that we find out later to be known as Uncle Ted, apparently some kind of researcher, bangin' the hell outta some chick in a tent in the jungle. From the jungle comes this massive werewolf that rips the chick apart and screws Ted up pretty good before he manages to fire a shot off and survive.
Soon after, Ted is living back in the Pacific Northwest, in an old Airstream parked next to a lake. He waits a couple months to contact his sister Janet, who lives a few hours away. Janet talks Ted into moving his trailer into her backyard and living there. Suffice to say, he does.
As soon as Ted moves in, Janet's dog, Thor, whom is a freakin' bad ass, automatically senses something is wrong with Ted. Ted and Thor develop this kind of, mutual disrespect(?) for each other. Ted even goes as far as to pee on the land, just to kinda claim it his territory. Oh yeah, and they have a staredown, that continously zooms closer and closer to their eyes, alternating between the two. Cheesy? hell yeah, but I like cheesy.
So anyway, SPOILER. If you didn't already know, Ted is a werewolf after being attacked and surviving. He tries to refrain from hurting anyone by going into the woods before nightfall and chaining himself to a big tree. Doesn't work for too long and he starts killing people.
Let me take a quick side turn here and talk about the transformation and the werewolf. TOP notch. I believe it definitely ranks up there with The Howling and the transformation scene from American Werewolf in London. This werewolf is MASSIVE. It is probably 8 foot tall, hulking, drooling, huge ass teeth and some sick long fingered claws. Probably my favorite werewolf an I would probably kill for an 18" figure.
Ok, sorry about that, back to the story. Ted starts transforming and killing people and Thor begins protecting the family and the house. Have I mentioned that Thor is a bad ass? If not, then let me tell you, in all caps, HE IS A BAD ASS. I need a dog like this. All the dogs I have ever had have just laid around. None of them wanted to protect me from a werewolf. Anyways, this movie is apparently an adaptation of a book called "Thor" so that tells you that the dog plays a pretty important part of the story.
This flick is from Eric Red, someone I'm actually a big fan of. I liked The Hitcher and I loved Body Parts (A flick that hasn't gotten the justice it deserves). I believe he did a great job of the flick and made a horror fans werewolf movie (gore, great werewolf, boobs).
So needless to say, I love this movie. I loved it when I was 12 and it was keeping me up at night, and I love it at 27. If you're a fan of horror and more specifically, werewolves, you owe it to yourself to watch this movie and give it a chance. It deserves more credit than it has received.
On a side note, this review came about because of a conversation with Yell! Magazine and Eric King (Robocop's Sad Side) from Back Online, Back On Duty. They are also both reviewing the movie, so make sure to check them both out, courtesy of the links provided. Also check out their facebook pages (links below) and give them both some LIKES!
Yell! Magazine - Facebook
Back Online, Back On Duty/Robocop's Sad Side - Facebook
