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Reviews
My Amityville Horror (2012)
Not just another Amityville documentary.
Great movie. It's more about childhood trauma and human perception than about the scary things that may or may not have happened at the Amityville house.
If you're looking for a good ghost story or spectacular new revelations you're going to be disappointed. My Amityville horror asks more questions than it answers and does it in a fascinating way.
Daniel Lutz is obviously scarred by everything that took place and uses the opportunity to exorcise some demons of his own. Does that make him a reliable witness? That's up to the viewer.
Highly recommended.
Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
Harold P. Warren's dream
Fertilizer salesman Harold P. Warren had a dream. He decided to invest $19.000 of his own money in making one of the scariest ever to hit the big screen. Except, Harold knew nothing about making movies, he had no professional actors and only had one hand-held camera that could film for only 32 seconds at a time. Without sound.
It's the story about a family who get stranded in the middle of nowhere and look for help in an old scary house. The only one who's there to welcome them is the creepy servant Torgo. Before the night is over they find themselves at the mercy of The Master and his evil cult.
Placed at a #4 spot on the IMDb bottom 100, this has got to be one of the worst movies of all time, right?
I think it depends on how you define a bad movie.
I've seen plenty of million dollar Hollywood movies that bored me to death. And Manos didn't. In fact, I loved it. Warren's pure lack of cinematic vision and experience is what gives this movie its unique atmosphere. The recurring library music, the choppy editing, the weird sound loops all contribute to the movie's surreal qualities. For instance the scene where Torgo (in my opinion, one of the most enigmatic heroes in B-movie history) tries to touch the face of Margaret goes on and on. In and out of focus. Nothing's really happening, but still you can't look away. It could have come straight out of a David Lynch movie. The fact that Warren probably didn't mean this scene to be weird and surreal doesn't mean that it's not working on a whole different level. It is what it is, intended or not.
I've never seen the MST version and I'm not going to. It's like kicking a dog when it's already down. Watch the great documentary Hotel Torgo instead to learn something about the movie's interesting and often hilarious background. And watch the normal version of the film. You might see Harold P. Warren's dream of making his masterpiece. He invested his money, wrote a script and made his damn horror movie. He followed his passion and the fact that he failed completely is utterly irrelevant. 47 years later, people still watch it. They love it or hate it, but they'll never forget it.
Now does that sound like one of the worst movies ever?
Cell Count (2012)
Count me out...
A man and a woman check into a facility that offers them a cure for a mysterious plague-like disease that's ravaging the planet. But not everything is as it seems and soon they have to fight for their lives.
Obviously, this movie has borrowed a lot from David Cronenberg's early films, like Rabid. But where Cronenberg's movies are worth watching because of the multiple layers of the plot, Cell Count is as flat as a pancake. It tries very hard to be something it's not.
While a movie like Cube uses its low budget to its advantage, the direction and script of Cell Count are hopelessly incapable of creating any suspense at all. The unknown cast isn't half that bad, but the script gives them very little depth. Some of the dialog is seriously laughable, like the speech the doctor gives to the husband in the beginning of the movie asking him (with the usual thick German accent of every mad scientist) if he wants to see his wife die in pain and vomit or if he wants to save her. Most of the movie's events don't make any sense at all (SPOILER) like when the doctor releases a psychopath on the ward, or leaves a patient who's having an attack lying on the floor to suffer, just to study the psychological effects. Or the fact that a highly secretive facility owned by a big corporation has only one nurse and one guard. In fact, the entire movie you're waiting for the pieces of the puzzle to fit together. Except, they never do. The serious lack of humor isn't helping either.
After 45 minutes, the movie seems to pick up the pace, but the director obviously thought it was a good idea to film every climactic scene in slow-motion and without sound, except for the (decent) score. After using this trick for the third time, it just gets annoying.
(SPOILER): At the end of the movie, we're treated to Daniel Baldwin, who comes to save the day. And then it just ends in the middle of the story, making room for a sequel that no-one in their right mind would want to see.
I gave Cell Count a chance based on the very cool movie poster that seems to be inspired by exploitation movies from the late 70's, early 80's. I should've remembered that in the early days of VHS, the covers usually promised more than they could deliver. As is the case with Cell Count.
My advise: avoid this one, like the plague.
Chocolate (2008)
Stunning!
I love it when a movie takes me by surprise. When I popped the Blue-Ray of Chocolate I expected to be entertained like I was when I first saw Prachya Pinkaew's Ong-Bak. But Chocolate did more than just entertain. It completely blew me away.
And that's mainly because of Jeeja Yanin's overwhelming charismatic debut. When you see her in this movie it's very hard to believe this is her first starring role. Her acting is great and her martial arts are more than impressive. I had to use the re-wind button several times to convince myself that some of the moves I just watched were actually real. Action director Panna Rittikrai deserves a lot of credit for coming up with some of the most original fighting scenes I've seen in a long time.
As the extra's on the disc show, Yanin's been working on this role for 4 years and it shows. The end credits show some behind the scenes footage where she injures herself several times , which makes her effort even more convincing.
Yanin plays Zen, an autistic girl who has a gift for mastering all martial arts she sees on TV or in real life. When her mother has to be treated for cancer she and her friend Moom find a list with names of people (usually smalltime gangsters) who owe her mother money. So after all of them refuse to pay (of course) she uses her abilities to get the money the hard way.
The story may be a little melodramatic, especially in the first 30 minutes, but is always convincing. It also gives the action scenes an emotional depth that's lacking in most action movies. Especially in the final sequence where Zen has to fight the evil gang of Boss No. 8.
All of this, together with the great supporting cast (especially Pongpat Wachirabunjong as the creepy gangster) and director Prachya Pinkaew visual flair, makes this a must-see for every action fan.
Western filmmakers could learn something from this.
An instant classic!
Chatterbox! (1977)
Good taste is in the eye of the beholder
Chatterbox is a great movie. Candice Rialson's performance is spot on. The musical intermezzo's a hilarious, especially the one where Candice performs before a live audience for the first time. And the happy end (with a twist) is just great.
The overall tone is tongue in cheek. It's obviously they weren't trying to make Citizen Cane here.
For those people who say this is a bad movie, I'm just wondering. Did they really expect an insightful drama about a woman with a singing vagina?
It is what it is: a wonderful piece of cult-trash cinema. And I loved every minute of it...
Devi Maa (2006)
Psychedelic Bollywood madness...
I bought the DVD of Devi Maa at an eastern market for just one Euro at a little shop that had tons of cheap Indian movies with weird looking covers. I'd never heard of the movie before. The only reason why I bought it was because of the cool cover: a pretty girl dressed as a Kali like goddess with a cobra. I was more than pleasantly surprised when I watched the actual movie.
The story's about a woman who accidentally sacrifices her daughter to the goddess Devi Maa. Both she and her husband spend the rest of their life fighting Devi Maa and the evil lord of the underworld called Sattan (with double T).
This movie has all the thing's you'd expect from a Bollywood flick: melodrama, songs and dance and a plot that goes all over the place. Usually, I don't really care for the musical intermezzo's in Bollywood flicks, but here they're accompanied by strangely surreal video's and cheap but very creative use of CGI. Some sequences reminded me of the Jackson's video for Can You Feel It. The movie ends with an over-the-top battle between the father, Devi Maa and Sattan who's taken the shape of a giant fire-breathing skeleton warrior (although I don't think the director was influenced by Ray Harryhausen here).
A priceless piece of Bollywood insanity. Absolutely worth watching, if you can get your hands on a copy.
Tom (1973)
Not as "bad" as some people say...
Entertaining movie about a Vietnam veteran who gets into trouble with the African American brother of a friend of his who was killed in Vietnam. When racist cops get involved, the situation escalates...
Clark will not go down in history as a great director or actor, but at least he had the guts to address some racial issues in a low budget blaxploitation movie. He doesn't take the easy way out.
Not only the white people are racists this time. In The Bad Bunch it's a human trademark.
I've read a some negative reviews about this one. Bad acting, directing and disturbing stereotypes. Come on, it's still a B-movie. Clark is no Scorcese. But he did make a damn entertaining movie, which is more than I can say for the majority of blaxploitation movies from that era...
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Lynch's best so far.
This weekend I watched Mullholland Drive. It's absolutely brilliant. I was totally absorbed by this movie and it's been a long time since that happened. Although it didn't all make sense, on a subconscious level it did. (I know that sounds pretentious but that's the way it felt). And the scene in the theatre where a woman sings a heartbreaking Spanish version of Roy Orbisons crying was so perfect. It succeeded in 5 minutes what took Moulin Rouge 2 hours to do. Move the audience. Less is more! And Naomi Watts is so perfect. Forget Halle Berry. She should have gotten the oscar. In the beginning she acted like someone who stepped out of Beverly Hills 90210 and I wasn't really looking forward to her acting in this movie. But (of course) I should have known better. It was all a farce. She turns into someone so complex that you're almost embarrassed to be spying on her.
So if you haven't seen it, you should.
Just don't try to explain it afterwards, 'cause there probably is more than one interpretation possible, if there is any at all.
Jerry
Los sin nombre (1999)
shocking
This is a movie you have to see. I went to a horror marathon yesterday evening. They were showing horrormovies in two cinema's in my hometown. I actually wanted to see Ginger Snaps but I accidentally went to the wrong movie. And I'm so glad I did.
The movie was Nameless (or it's original spanish title Los Sin Nombre). It's about a mother who loses her daughter to a child murderer.
5 years later she receives a phonecall from someone who claims to be her daughter and says she is in danger. The acting in this movie, especially by Emma Vilarasau as the mother is very impressive.
The movie starts very graphically with the discovery of the corpse. After that the story gets a little slower and the characters and the plot start to develop.
When I read the reviews on the imdb, they were very mixed. Some people even called it boring, which I totally do not understand. Although, except for the beginning, the movie isn't really graphic. The horror comes from the situation of the characters and the situation they have to face.
The atmosphere is a little like se7en, but if you thought the ending in that movie was shocking, the conclusion to this nightmare will feel like a punch in the stomach.
After the final scene the whole theatre was silent. They just stared at the end credits in shock. If that's not a recommendation, I don't know what is. So don't be scared of subtitles. See this movie
Jerry
Da Mo wu ying quan (1979)
bruce Le is back....
First of all, This is not a sequel to the Lo Lieh classic King Boxer. It's a Bruce Le movie. Of all the bruce Lee wannabees Bruce Le is my favourite. Not because he is such a good actor. It's just the opposite. His movies are completely over the top. Most people hate it. Some people (like me) love it.
The story is about a man called Wang Lung (Bruce Lee) who has to find his uncle. He holds the secret about a treasure burried in World War 2. But before he does he has to fight an evil gang led by the very pretty Lita Velasquez.
Don't expect a solid story. What you can expect is pure 70's Kung Fu madness. See Bruce fight a gang of midget hitmen. Watch him being crushed by a giant masseuse and fighting the good old shaolin bronzemen.
The only thing worse than the storyline is the awfull dubbing, obviously done by people who don't speak english. And Bruce sounds like a robot.
At the end of the movie I was wondering: whatever happened to the treasure. Then I thought: does it really matter. I had fun.
Si wang ta (1980)
kung-fu-trash that'll have you laughing for days
Of all the trashy kung-fu flicks made in the late seventies, I'd have to say this is my favourite. Not because it's so good, but because it's so bad. The story is similar to hundreds of other karate-movies: A man is killed by a drugs-syndicate and his brother takes revenge by kicking them all to kingdom come.
What makes this movie so terribly bad, is the use of old footage of Bruce Lee (who "plays" the part of the older brother). It includes scenes cut from his movies (some of which were made when he was still a kid) and even parts of his funeral. To cover up the use of old footage (as if we didn't know that already) they chose to use a stand-in in some of the scenes. Add to that the dreadful acting, directing, music (also stolen from other movies) and camera-work and you've got an instant kung-fu-trash classic. The result has to be seen to be believed. It had me laughing for days.
Cosa avete fatto a Solange? (1972)
Edgar Wallace goes giallo
This is a good murder mystery, based on an Edgar Wallace novel. It has all the ingredients of a good giallo: horrible murders, sex, religion and nightmarish flashbacks.(Especially the one at the end is bound to give you bad dreams).
The plot isn't always logical, and the acting isn't very convincing. But the direction is good and the music by Ennio Morricone is one of the best scores he has ever made.
If you like the movies of Dario Argento, you'll love this one.