[rating: 3.5] Here's a film which truly got lost in the shuffle of horror movies past. Some may contend that it didn’t, actually—what, with a remake of the classic picture having just come out in 2005. But trust me, it has, and I’ll tell you why. First, it’s kind of a poorly put together picture. There are several different storylines, none of which we care about. When I try to remember “what happens” in this film, for the benefit of telling people who haven’t seen it, I can hardly remember anything about Jamie Lee Curtis’ character, who is purportedly the lead. And I can just barely remember the storyline of the priest and his turn-of-the-century pirate booty. But do you know what I can remember? I can remember the excellent, masterful, intriguing, wonderful storyline of Stevie Wayne, the seductive and solitary female disc jockey who stays up to all hours of the night while all this weird shit happens in her town. Eventually, the late night DJ must risk her life to stay at her post, but she does, and it’s great. It's so great that Stevie's character alone earns this film four stars in my book. She’s trapped in her little radio station ...

[rating: 3] The Friday the 13th series has a long history spanning a whole bunch of movies, and in any situation like that you're going to have a vast range in terms of quality. Jason Goes to Hell was by and large pretty nifty whereas Jason X was a complete piece of shit. The original film was a great one, to be sure, but when it came time for each passing sequel, you never quite knew what you were in for. My feeling is that, of all the sequels, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is by far the best. In fact, I'm even inclined to say it outshines the original picture, and that's pretty impressive for any series that's four movies deep. This chapter of the story has a whole heck of a lot of things about it that I love, some of them quirky oddities and some of them genuine horror moments, that help it to stand a cut above the rest. Let's take a look at some of those things. The GoreThe gushy bits are the real star of any Friday the 13th movie. Thankfully, this one was made a time when the prevailing trend in horror was to ...

[rating: 5] Poltergeist is, without a doubt, the best movie in the haunted house genre that there ever was. When ghosts are your primary threat, things tend to be the same: there are bumps in the night, people walk through cold spots, maybe the hallways and rooms in the house seem to rearrange themselves, but that's about it. Think of movies like The Haunting and the recent version of House on Haunted Hill. Ho hum, am I right? I'm right. It takes a certain special something to make a ghost story particularly compelling and Poltergeist's got it. I don't exactly know what that indefinable quality is, but it's present here where it's so often absent in other movies. Well, to be fair, I do know at least part of what makes this movie succeed: Steven Spielberg. The film is technically directed by Tobe Hooper,with Steven Spielberg in the role of executive producer, but Spielberg's fingerprints are all over it and I mean that in the best way possible. Everything that has made so many of his movies the successful and enduring modern classics that they are is present here. Sometimes it's just a matter of the way the movie feels, if you ...

[rating: 5] They really knew how to make movies back in the early 1930s. A taut and effective story told without any superfluous filler and it's all over in an hour and ten minutes. Yes, please! Plus, there's the whole thing about how this movie is still considered essential watching more than 75 years after its release, which is generally indicative of pretty awesome quality. Frankenstein is the greatest of the classic monster movies from Universal, and none of the other tellings of the tale that have been made since has ever come close to this one. The movie takes Mary Shelley's original novel and improves on it. Yes, folks, Frankenstein is one of that rare breed, the film that's better than the novel on which it is based. We all know the story. If anybody here doesn't know the story, you can just go home right now because what in the hell is wrong with you? A scientist digs up corpses and builds himself a manmonster! Manmonster terrorizes people, mob has torches, the monster meets his demise (OR DOES HE?!) and that's that. On the surface, that doesn't seem too wildly impressive; that, in the words of one Lita Ford, ain't ...

[rating: 1.5] A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: The Gay One Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is revered by horror fans the world over. Each of the films in the series has scenes that are remembered as classics or contributed something to the legacy of Freddy Krueger. Each of them, that is, except for this first sequel.This particular film is largely forgotten at best and deliberately overlooked at worst. Although it's doubtful that it was ever the conscious intent of anyone involved in the filmmaking process, Freddy's Revenge has come to be known as the one where the villainous Freddy Krueger serves as a metaphor for the hero coming to terms with his own homosexuality. I swear to god that isn't a joke.Having been ostensibly killed at the end of the first movie, Freddy needs somebody to resurrect him; enter our hero, a fairly feminine guy by the name of Jesse. Jesse's family has just moved to Elm Street and, wouldn't you know, they've moved into the very house where Nancy had all her trouble in the previous picture. Jesse finds himself tormented by horrible visions of himself as Freddy, and the line between what he dreams about and what ...

[rating: 0] From the wonderful one dollar bin at Wal-Mart comes today's movie, a thing called The Terror. When I saw that one-dollar price tag coupled with the statement that the film stars Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff, there was no way in hell I was gonna pass that up. Turning this holy relic over in my hand, I read the description and discover that it's a period thing, set in the Napoleonic wars. With Jack Nicholson!! Jack Nicholson is a soldier in Napoleon's army? Yes, please! Oh, and did I mention Boris Karloff? Please oh please god tell me that Jack Nicholson will don a saucy beret and try to chop up an accented Frankenstein with an axe! My every fantasy, both erotic and otherwise, is summed up in that sentence. Will this movie contain such delights? Will it be even better than that? Let's find out, you and I, as together we experience the terror of The Terror. As the movie begins, a storm is raging. At the same time, but not necessarily in the same place, an old man is wandering about his castle. Or a castle, anyway. I presume it's his and that he's not a goldurn squatter. ...

[rating: 4] Carrie could have been the most well acted film of all time. Sissy Spacek as Carrie and Piper Laurie as her mother have been praised extensively ever since the movie came out, and none of it has been undeserved. They're wonderful. The supporting cast, too, is phenomenal. Amy Irving as Sue Snell, P.J. Soles as that girl who always has a red hat on, some blond guy who looks a lot like Roger Daltrey from Tommy as the boyfriend, everyone is just great. This film is 100% full of excellence in actors, you're tempted to say. And then along comes John Travolta stinking his way across the screen as idiot/hoodlum Billy Nolan. However, if we can ignore Travolta's stupid voice and irritating face and awful everything, what we're left with is a movie full to bursting with dynamite performances. The movie tells the story of Carrie White, a weird, ugly girl that nobody likes. When she's left completely bewildered by getting her extremely delayed first period one day in gym class, all the other girls torment and laugh at her. Her belated entry into puberty and and her strong emotional reactions to the taunts of her classmates lead her down ...

[rating: 2] Sleepaway Camp, dating from 1983, is as fine an example as you will find of how an incredibly bizarre twist ending can transform your otherwise unremarkable horror movie into an instant cult classic. The title of the film and the fact that you'll find it in the horror section basically tells you everything you need to know about the story. In a plot that totally is original and in no way cribs anything from Friday the 13th at all, people at a summer camp are killed off in gruesome ways by a mysterious, unseen assailant. Have you ever heard of anything so innovative? I submit that you probably have not. Our main characters are Angela and her cousin Ricky, two young kids who are spending the summer at the titular camp. Angela is extremely shy and reserved. Ricky is a bland nobody who has a crush on a girl named Judy. Judy's a total bitch, though, and is ignoring poor Ricky, instead spending her time acting like a slut and getting all up ons with a bunch of Olda Boys. And then, for some reason, people start getting killed basically at random. First to go is the camp's cook, who ...

[rating: 2.5] Quentin Tarantino has a style, and Robert Rodriguez has a style.Long before Grindhouse, they created a film which gave away their individual preferences as filmmakers, and that film was From Dusk Til Dawn. Tarantino likes dusty, contemporary spaghetti western-tinged crime stories, usually involving a road trip, full of verbose characters rambling at each other before suddenly drawing their guns and shooting it out. Rodriguez likes hackneyed dialogue and ridiculously over-the-top action sequences, usually involving monsters with heavy makeup. So in Dawn, which was written by Tarantino and directed by Rodriguez, it’s not surprising to find that it’s a tale of two styles. We open on the Gecko brothers, recent outlaws on the lam, headed for Mexico. They’re holding up a liquor store when a meddlesome Texas Ranger appears, and they’re forced to shoot everyone in the joint and blow it up. Then it’s a short jaunt across Texas to the Mexican border, where the brothers (played by George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) abscond in a broken family’s motor home, with the family held hostage. This was vintage Tarantino—each character had an elaborate backstory and a strong will to be on top of the situation. There are flaws here, and they’re self conscious. The modern Tarantino, ...

[rating: 3] Every once in a while, a movie comes along and re-defines its genre. Its visuals are unique and fresh, its storyline is original, and it tears down longstanding stereotypes about its own mythos. Unfortunately, 28 Days Later, the latest “ground breaking” zombie movie from Alex Garland and Danny Boyle, isn’t one of these movies. Or, more accurately, it doesn’t know if it wants to be one of these movies or not. It certainly does have some elements of originality. The “zombies” are much more aggressive than we usually see them, and the scenes in which they are featured are just sparse enough, and intense enough, that they are worth quality scares. And shots of deserted downtown London are striking enough at the film’s outset to propel the viewer into the second act, which is good, because the first act is not much more than a jumbled bunch of confusion—and perhaps it was meant to be that way, as our protagonist is similarly lost in his landscape. Yes, our young Jim, played well by Cillian Murphy, wakes up in a hospital bed with no idea what has happened to him. Half his head is shaved and he has a long beard—and the hospital is ...