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BA_Harrison
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Horror films that didn't quite make my top 100 list.
BA_Harrison's Favourite Horror Movies of all time
Reviews
Street Trash (2024)
An enjoyably daft and incredibly messy melt movie.
Who would have ever imagined that 37 years after low-budget cult body horror Street Trash, we'd be getting another dose of Tenafly Viper-fuelled craziness? Not me, that's for sure, but here it is - the follow up to Jim Muro's madcap melt movie.
What do we expect from a new Street Trash film? Lots of melting hobos and the occasional severed dick gag, that's what, and director Ryan Kruger more than delivers: this one is much messier and more manic than the original, with gallons of blood and multi-coloured goop splashed around as nasty Mayor Mostert (Warrick Grier) attempts to exterminate the city's homeless population with Tenafly Viper gas.
Only a brave group of down-and-outs can save the day: sex and drug addict Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael), Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson), Chef (Joe Vaz), crackheads Wors and Pap (Lloyd Martinez Newkirk and Shuraigh Meyer) and crazy 2-Bit (Gary Green).
To put it simply, this film is bonkers. It took me a while to get into the spirit of things, but once I did, I had lots of fun with it. The characters are crazy, there's a lot more melting than in Muro's original, with excellent practical effects, and there's actually a better story this time around, as the street trash freedom fighters plot to overthrow the government to end their extermination.
Obviously, this type of film isn't going to appeal to everyone - it probably isn't going to appeal to most sane people, to be honest - but if you enjoy over-the-top trashy horror (think Troma at its most absurd) then you might have a good time. I actually enjoyed this more than the original, but then that one didn't have an invisible, blue, sex-obsessed, potty-mouthed creature called Sockle in it (stay right to the end of the credits to see just how filthy he is!).
6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.
Movie Maniacs (1936)
Three is not the magic number.
I love Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, but The Three Stooges do absolutely nothing for me, their childish slapstick routines leaving me stony faced. This short sees the guys (Larry, Moe and Curley) travelling to Hollywood where they hope to become famous; after sneaking into a studio and being mistaken for New York film executives, they cause chaos on the set of a movie.
If you're a fan of the trio, I guess this one will keep you entertained, but all of the face-slapping, eye-poking, head-bopping and cross-dressing failed to make me crack a smile, and even at just 17 minutes, I found myself quite bored with this one. I'm willing to give the trio a couple more goes to try and amuse me: this was an early effort from the Stooges and they might get better, but I have my doubts.
Fright Show (1985)
Critics - who needs them?
A pair of wise-cracking movie critics present four horror sci-fi shorts.
Dr. Dobermind sees a young girl suffering from scary hallucinations after an encounter with a creepy taxidermist at a museum. The story for this one is fairly weak and ends without a satisfactory resolution. Look out for the bit clearly inspired by the mirror scene from Poltergeist. Amazingly, director Jonathan Mostow went on to make U-571 and Terminator 3.
Illegal Alien is a parody of Ridley Scott's Alien. The humour isn't great (the front of the spaceship is shaped like a nose - the ship's name.... The Nostrilomo), but the makers have to be applauded for even attempting to reproduce the style and atmosphere of Scott's film on an extremely low budget.
In Night Fright, a horror-loving boy who is afraid of the dark finds a monster lurking in his bedroom, but his father won't believe him. The monster eats the dad, and the boy's older brother, but the whole thing turns out to be a dream - or was it? This is predictable stuff, but still quite fun. One scene had me checking to see if the director was Victor Salva. It wasn't.
The final story is The Thing In The Basement, in which some beer-swilling buddies have their poker night interrupted by an alien creature. This one is very silly, but probably the most enjoyable of the bunch, with monster make-up by John Carl Buechler and a smattering of gore.
To be honest, all four stories are watchable - it's the wraparound nonsense involving the film critics that really tests one's patience.
4.5/10, rounded down to 4 for those critics!
Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante: Revolución Tóxica (2011)
A zombie bomb.
The first two Plaga Zombie films were reasonably entertaining nonsense, full of cartoonish gore and absurd characters, but Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante: Revolución Tóxica really, really, REALLY got on my nerves, the inane goofiness dialled up to eleven. Directors (and stars) Pablo Parés, Hernán Sáez, and Paulo Soria are clearly aiming for a Peter Jackson-style blend of horror and comedy (Max is obviously modelled on Derek in Bad Taste) but what they actually give us is puerile trash that delivers the gore but completely fails when it comes to the laughs (in desperation, the film features not one, but two fart gags).
The plot sees the three heroes of the previous films -- Max (Hernán Sáez), Bill (Pablo Parés) and John (Berta Muñiz) -- once again battling zombies, only this time around they learn that the reanimated dead are hosts to aliens that are planning to invade the Earth. The trio devise a daft scheme to blow up the aliens' mothership which involves turning a zombie into a bomb. However, Max develops a father/son relationship with the zombie (which he names Junior) that threatens to scupper the plan. This leads to some excruciatingly awful, intendedly touching scenes, with Max repeatedly wailing 'Junior' in his whiny voice. Meanwhile, Bill and John wander the town, encountering more zombies and a rogue FBI agent, none of which is particularly entertaining.
Things get even worse towards the end of the film with a terrible musical scene in which the guys belt out a hugely annoying theme song while the zombies dance in the background. It was almost bad enough to make me want to switch off, but I had made it that far, so I wasn't about to let the film beat me. To add insult to injury, an end credits scene shows that the zombie/alien situation is far from over, promising yet another movie (which finally came out in 2021).
Nabonga (1944)
Crabbe vs. Crash
I haven't the foggiest idea why this poverty row jungle flick is called Nabonga. I thought it might be the name of the film's obligatory man-in-an-ape-suit gorilla; however, that turned out to be called Samson. But even though the title doesn't make any sense, I still had fun with the movie, which stars Buster Crabbe as Ray Gorman, who is trying to find the long-lost stolen treasure that could clear his dead father's name. His search leads him to the jungles of deepest, darkest Africa, where he hears tales of a white witch. Could this witch be the now-grown-up daughter of embezzler Stockwell (Herbert Rawlinson), whose plane crashed as he fled with his ill-gotten gains?
In a gender reversal of the Tarzan legend, Stockwell's daughter Doreen, who was also on the plane, has been living in the jungle since the crash, protected by the mighty gorilla that she saved after it was shot by hunters. When Gorman finally tracks down the missing girl - now a ravishing beauty in figure hugging animal skin outfit, with perfect hair and makeup - he is understandably smitten, but isn't about to let a gorgeous jungle dame stop him from taking back the jewels and returning them to their rightful owners. Unfortunately, nasty hunter Carl Hurst (Barton MacLane) is also after the valuables and will stop at nothing to get his greedy paws on them.
Nabonga travels down a well trodden jungle path, with serial-style adventure and excitement that sees Crabbe putting his Tarzan experience to good use by wrassling a crocodile, loyal companion Tobo (Prince Modupe) being savaged by Samson (the ape played by professional primate performer Crash Corrigan), Julie London looking sexy in her jungle dress, and plenty of fisticuffs between Gordon and Hurst. It's nothing that hasn't been done many times before, but it's still enjoyable, and ideal entertainment for a rainy Sunday afternoon.
5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.
Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996)
The end of Darkman? I hope not.
Every time Darkman fails with his experiments, he trashes his lab in a fit of rage; because of this, he always needs to buy new equipment, finding the money to do so by stealing from organised criminals. After Darkman (Arnold Vosloo) rips off crime boss Peter Rooker (Jeff Fahey), he makes a new enemy, but also learns to care again, risking all to protect Rooker's long-suffering wife Angela (Roxann Dawson) and young daughter Jenny (Alicia Panetta).
Darkman III: Die, Darkman, Die is an unfairly maligned sequel, not nearly as bad as some of the reviews would have you believe. Once again, Arnold Vosloo is more than acceptable as Peyton Westlake (AKA Darkman), but it is the introduction of Jeff Fahey as villain Rooker that makes this film better than expected, Fahey giving a great performance as the evil crime lord, but also as Westlake posing as Rooker, which requires a more nuanced performance, one that he achieves with aplomb.
As with Darkman II, part III is shot on a much tighter budget than Sam Raimi's original, which means that the action set-pieces are less spectacular, but the pace is snappy and the script inventive, and the whole thing is executed with just the right amount of pulp comic-book silliness. I would love to see the Darkman franchise get a reboot, preferably with a decent budget and Sam Raimi back in the director's chair. I can dream...
6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.
Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995)
The Mummy vs Dr. Giggles.
Peyton Westlake, AKA Darkman (Arnold Vosloo replacing Liam Neeson), isn't very happy when he learns that crime boss Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake), the man who made him a monster, is still alive and is rebuilding his empire, starting by killing scientist Dr. David Brinkman (Jesse Collins), the one man who could help Westlake perfect his synthetic skin formula.
Darkman II: The Return of Durant is pure comic book silliness, so it's best to ignore things like villain Durant surviving the helicopter crash in part 1 or the fact that 6ft 2" Vosloo becomes considerably shorter when he puts on the synthetic face of another person. It's also got nuclear powered particle weapons, and an underground lair for Peyton Westlake, so don't expect anything but preposterous action.
Despite being shot on a tighter budget than Sam Raimi's original by a director with less panache, Darkman II is a more than reasonable sequel - more economical with its action set pieces, but with a solid performance by Vosloo, an enjoyably over the top turn by Drake and a decent supporting cast, Lawrence Dane being particularly fun as mad scientist and weapons expert Dr. Alfred Hathaway. The film doesn't hold back on the violence either, with the beating and killing of Brinkman and the assassination of TV news anchor Jill Randall (Kim Delaney) being unexpected given the sympathetic nature of the characters.
While there's nothing to rival the brilliant 'pink elephant' scene in the original, this sequel still earns a very reasonable 6/10 from me.
Necronomicon (1993)
Sinister monks, tentacled monsters, spinal fluid injections and ancient aliens.
Jeffrey Combs plays American writer H. P. Lovecraft, who learns of a monastery where a copy of the Necronomicon is guarded by monks. Sneaking into the vault, Lovecraft reads the book, taking notes for inspiration for his stories...
This 1993 horror anthology, with segments directed by Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans and Shusuke Kaneko, kicks off with Gans' The Drowned, inspired by Lovecraft's short story 'The Rats in the Walls'. Bruce Payne stars as Edward De Lapoer, who inherits a run down hotel where he finds the Necronomicon and uses it to bring his wife back from the dead, just as his ancestor once did; unfortunately, Edward discovers that in doing so, he has awakened a gigantic monster that lives beneath the hotel. It's not an auspicious start to the film, being a drawn out, mostly dull and somewhat confusing story, the only good thing about the tale being the one-eyed tentacled creature at the end.
Much better is story number two, The Cold, in which a young woman rents a room in an apartment building, which is also home to scientist Dr. Richard Madden (David Warner), who tells her that he has a rare condition that requires him to maintain a low room temperature. It eventually transpires that Madden has developed a method of sustaining life indefinitely, a process that requires injections of spinal fluid taken from fresh bodies. Solid direction from Kaneko, excellent performances (Warner is as great as always), and a wonderfully gory finale make this one a whole lot of demented fun.
Lastly, we have Brian Yuzna's Whispers, in which pregnant policewoman Sarah (Signy Coleman) goes in search of her partner Paul (also the father of her unborn child), who has been abducted by the serial killer known as The Butcher; her search leads her to a subterranean world inhabited by ancient aliens that feed on bone marrow. This one is also very enjoyable, Sarah's descent into a gruesome charnel house inhabited by extraterrestrials getting weirder by the minute, the woman being attacked by Paul's brainless corpse before becoming a victim herself.
The film closes with Lovecraft being discovered by the monks, who turn out to be something not quite human. Also directed by Yuzna, the wraparound story erupts into total craziness, ending the film on a suitably OTT note.
Rating each tale individually, I give The Drowned 3/10, The Cold 8/10, and Whispers 7/10, with the wraparound getting 6/10. Averaging these out, the film gets 6/10 overall. Worth a go for fans of Lovecraft.
N. B. Ignore the fact that two of the stories being written down by Lovecraft are actually take place several decades after the writer's death.
The Dentist 2 (1998)
Bernsen knows the drill.
This second outing for Corbin Bernsen's psychotic dentist, Dr. Feinstone, is better than the original. The basic plot bears similarities to The Stepfather (1987), as Feinstone escapes from a mental hospital and travels to the small Missouri town of Paradise, where he adopts a new identity, Dr. Lawrence Caine, and tries his best to live a normal lifestyle. Of course, his mental state deteriorates and he soon gets up to his old tricks.
Brian Yuzna's style is more in evidence in this sequel, with some fun hallucinations and more gore than before (with the torture of nosey Bev Trotter, played by Susanne Wright, being the film's nasty highlight), and Bernsen sems to be having more fun in the role this time around, especially towards the end of the film when he goes full-on crazy. The film also sees the return of Linda Hoffman as Feinstone's wife Brooke, who is hellbent on revenge (the doctor having removed all of her teeth and her tongue in the first film), and gives us a better 'final girl', Feinstone's unsuspecting love interest Jamie Devers (Jillian McWhirter). Part 2 also stars horror regular Clint Howard as an unfortunate patient, and Wendy Robie, who played the crazy woman from Wes Craven's excellent The People Under The Stairs.
Apparently, a script has been written for The Dentist 3: New Legacy, and Yuzna is keen to direct, but Lionsgate own the rights and haven't given the go ahead yet. Another appointment with Dr. Feinstone... yes please!
6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.
The Dentist (1996)
Feinstone suffers from a dental breakdown.
Brian Yuzna's The Dentist took me a bit by surprise: coming from the director who gave us Society and Reanimator, I fully expected the film to be a campy schlock horror full of outrageous scenes of excessive blood and guts. But while the film does deliver some gory moments, it isn't anywhere near as OTT as I imagined; I found it to be more psychological (with a dash of dark humour) than splattery.
The film centres on the psychosis of the titular character, Dr. Alan Feinstone, a fastidious control freak whose obsessiveness over filth pushes him over the edge, turning him into a crazed killer. Feinstone's beautiful wife's infidelity (she's screwing the pool man) is the catalyst for the dentist's deterioration, forcing him to take drastic measures to prevent further moral decay.
Feinstone punishes his wife by pulling out all of her teeth and cutting out her tongue, slices up Matt the pool guy, shoots a neighbour's dog, and then dishes out the pain to staff and patients at his clinic, eventually turning his attention to young Sarah (Virginya Keehne), who has an appointment to have her braces removed. This sounds like a gore-hound's idea of heaven, and those with a fear of going to the dentist might want to think twice about watching, but I was little disappointed by the lack of wild and crazy special effects (only the torture of an unscrupulous IRS guy comes close).
5/10.
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Worse than Beetlejuice.
I hated Edward Scissorhands when I saw it 34 years ago, and having just rewatched the movie for the first time since then, I can say that I still don't like it. It's a treacly, romantic fantasy love story that sees director Tim Burton going overboard with his quirky gothic weirdness. Here's ten things that I hate about the film:
1. Winona Ryder: I never understood the appeal.
2. The scissor hands: why would an inventor give his creation scissors for hands when almost anything, even nothing, would be preferable? Short answer: he wouldn't.
3. Edward's aesthetic: firstly, much of the look of the character is a rip-off of The Tailor from German children's book Struwwelpeter. And then Burton pops him in a leather bondage outfit that wouldn't look out of place in an S&M sex club and gives him his own messy hairstyle (we get it, Tim... you identify as the outcast weirdo).
4. The sickeningly 'haunting' choral score by Danny Elfman. Every time it strikes up, I wanna hurl.
5. The topiary: somehow, Edward shapes small bushes into large sculptures. He actually makes the bushes bigger by cutting them with his scissors. He's Alan Titchmarsh and Paul Daniels all rolled into one.
6. The ice sculptures: where does Edward get the huge blocks of ice from? And how does he get them into the attic?
7. All of the characters: I didn't like any of them. The neighbours were intentionally obnoxious, the inventor was an idiot, and Kim was played by Winona Ryder.
8. Those stupid hairstyles: Edward does one bad haircut, and then they all want one. As if.
9. That stupid cookie machine: the whisk whisks for about 2 seconds and the cookie cutters dangle loosely over the dough but somehow it produces perfectly cut cookies. But it's quirky, so who cares? I do!
10. The ending: Kim tells the angry mob that Edward is dead, so they just turn around and go home. They don't bother to check for themselves. And no-one in the next several decades goes to see why snow pours out of the castle on the hill. Aaargh!
I'm sure there are many more things that I didn't like about this film, but to list them would require me to watch the film again and take notes, and I'm not doing that. I guess the thing that gets my back up the most is the way that many people treat Edward Scissorhands like it's a masterpiece. It's not.
Der Hund von Baskerville (1929)
The chilling howl of the Baskerville hound... in a silent movie.
Unless you want to see a bunch of people flapping their gums soundlessly while someone tinkles on a piano, or you are a Holmes completist, you would probably be better off watching one of the many later versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles (I recommend the definitive 1939 talkie starring Basil Rathbone). That's not to say that this silent film is entirely worthless but so much of what makes Sherlock Holmes great is the famous detective's way with words, particularly his banter with best bud Watson. Without that repartee, the film is lacking.
Thought lost for many years, an incomplete tape of Richard Oswald's 1929 The Hound of the Baskervilles was eventually discovered in the basement of a church in Poland and digitally restored, with stills replacing the missing footage. It's a fairly faithful adaptation of Conan Doyle's novel, with decent production design, the Baskerville manor and the windswept moors being particularly impressive, and the ending delivers some excitement, as Holmes becomes trapped in a tunnel that is rapidly filling up with water, but the bulk of the film is unevenly paced (definitely not helped by the missing scenes). The film was a commercial failure on its original release, probably because it came out just as sound was coming in.
Girls Nite Out (1982)
I couldn't bear it.
The wild and wacky college students of Girls' Nite Out -- one of whom is so zany that he is called Maniac -- are some of the most irritating characters to be found in any '80s slasher. The jocks, the nerds, the frat boys, and the sorority sisters are all thoroughly deserving of a nasty death at the claws of a deranged killer in a basketball mascot bear suit. So is the college radio DJ, who only seems to own records by The Lovin' Spoonful and Ohio Express, but sadly he survives to play Summer In The City another day.
I might have been a bit more forgiving of the extremely annoying characters had the kills in the film been super creative and gory, but they're extremely unimaginative: there's plenty of blood as the bear slashes at it's victims' throats with its claws, but none of the deaths are memorable.
Somehow, the makers of this crapfest convinced Hal Holbrook to sign on the dotted line, and he is easily the best thing about the whole film, even if it appears that he shot all of his scenes on a single day and they just edited him into the movie when needed.
I rate Girls' Nite Out, 1.5/10, rounded down to 1 for the lack of a shower scene when one is desperately needed.
Heretic (2024)
Grant is great.
I'm not sure what I was expecting from Heretic, but it certainly wasn't deep theological discourse and intense religious diatribe courtesy of Hugh Grant. Not that I have a problem with that: when Grant's character, Mr. Reed, is challenging the doctrines of organised religion, the film is actually very engaging and frequently funny, the actor putting in a marvellously offbeat performance, Reed frequently making a lot of sense. Of course, this is a horror film, so even though a lot of what Grant's character says seems logical, the extremes he eventually goes to to prove his point are not at all reasonable.
Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher play Mormon missionaries who pay Mr. Reed a visit with the hope of converting him to their religion. Reed, however, has his own sinister agenda. What follows is an intense game of cat and mouse, the missionaries desperately trying to reason with their host while trying to find a way to escape from his home.
The film's strongest scenes are those in the first half of the film, in which Reed disquietingly questions the girls' beliefs while positing plausible alternatives - Grant is both affable and subtly menacing. Much of the first hour is simply conversation between Reed and the missionaries, and yet it is superbly unsettling, hinting at the man's craziness without going over the top. The latter half of the film is slightly less effective, visceral horror replacing the verbal dread, but it is still entertaining, and the film closes leaving the viewer with plenty of food for thought.
7/10.
Soultaker (1990)
Just die already.
Five twenty-somethings - Zach (Gregg Thomsen), Natalie (Vivian Schilling), Brad (David Shark), Tommy (Chuck Williams) and Candice (Cinda Lou Freeman) - are involved in a terrible car crash. Four of them believe that they have somehow survived, having been thrown clear of the wreck, but, in reality, their souls have been displaced from their bodies (which are taken to a hospital and put on life support). As they try to figure out what has happened to them, a mysterious man (Joe Estevez) attempts to collect their souls.
Soultaker has an interesting enough premise, but poor performances, a weak script and lacklustre direction by Michael Rissi make the film about as thrilling as the film's Summerfest, the lame festival where the friends get together at the beginning. The final race against time as Zach desperately tries to revive himself and his girlfriend Natalie before their life supports are turned off is a masterclass in ineptitude: drawn out and incredibly tedious, but wholly predictable, it's far from the edge-of-the-seat ending that was intended.
Qu mo jing cha (1990)
Mr. Vampire in cop's clothing.
Lam Ching-Ying--Mr. Vampire himself--is Uncle Feng, a Hong Kong policeman who uses magic to battle an evil sorceress (Michiko Nishiwaki), head of a drug smuggling operation. When he's not fighting ghosts, vampires and ghouls, Feng tries to keep two randy cops from pestering his pretty niece Lin (Mei-Wah Wong).
Like so many supernatural Hong Kong movies, Magic Cop mixes comedy with its horror, and your level of enjoyment will depend on your sense of humour. I always struggle with Hong Kong comedy, so the gags, and the irritating comedic characters, did spoil the film somewhat for me. As far as I am concerned, Magic Cop works best when it forgets all about the silly slapstick and concentrates on delivering horror, magic and crazy action, which it thankfully does in the very entertaining finalé that ends the film on a high.
Magic Cop also features just a smidgen of kung fu, but I would have liked to have seen more, especially considering the presence of Nishiwaki and the amazing Billy Chow as the sorceress's servant.
Overall, I rate Magic Cop 6/10.
Mo deng ru lai shen zhang (1990)
Lacking in martial arts AND laughs.
I'm a big fan of Yuen Wah, Joey Wang and Andy Lau, but Kung Fu vs. Acrobatic, which stars all three, was a huge disappointment for me, the emphasis on puerile Hong Kong comedy rather than martial arts. What a waste of talent!
When friends Charles and Chi (Lau and Pak-Cheung Chan) travel to mainland China on business, they discover a cave where they awaken a beautiful princess (Wang) and her handmaiden (Siu-Wai Mui), who have been magically frozen for hundreds of years; unfortunately, they also reanimate evil warlord Tien Chien (Wah), who has the hots for the princess (and who can blame him?). Having swallowed half a magic pill each, Charles and Chi now have special powers, which they will need to master if they are to defeat Tien Chien.
Hong Kong comedy is something that generally leaves my ribs untickled, so the vast majority of this film proved hard for me to endure. A glut of really dated visual effects did nothing to help matters, and for a film with 'kung fu' and 'acrobatic' in the title, this one is severely lacking in the fight stakes. The dreadful animated turtle sequence was the final straw.
A generous 3/10, one point each for Wang, Wah and Lau.
Il gioco delle ombre (1991)
One of the most boring films I have ever seen.
How do you review a film that you didn't understand, other than by saying you didn't understand it? I didn't understand A Play of Shadows.
My Aurum Encyclopedia of Horror describes the film as an arty ghost story halfway between Wim Wenders and Pupi Avati, but I watched it anyway. And it was every bit as boring, pretentious and utterly baffling as I expected. And long: two hours, which is like an eternity when the whole film is so confusing and slow.
The plot has something to do with a novelist with a big nose who rents an old house only to be affected by the property, which may or may not be haunted. I honestly don't know. Or care.
Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
An enjoyable mess.
Frankenstein Unbound was Roger Corman's first film as director in twenty years, and it's a disjointed but enjoyable mess: a sometimes camp, sometimes pretentious sci-fi horror, but never less than entertaining.
John Hurt plays 21st century scientist Joe Buchanan, whose experiments cause a rift in time and space that hurl him to Switzerland in the year 1817; there, he meets Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia), whose monster (Nick Brimble) is demanding that his creator builds him a mate, a task that would benefit from Buchanan's advanced knowledge of electricity.
The plot might be all over the place, but Corman keeps things interesting throughout, with a decent pace, cool monster make-up, a bit of gore, and a great cast that includes Bridget Fonda as Mary Godwin, with Jason Patric and Michael Hutchence putting in amusing performances as decadent, foppish poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley.
The ending throws any semblance of logic into the void, making no sense whatsoever, as Buchanan transports himself, Frankenstein and his monster to a barren snowy wasteland, where they do battle with each other. The time travelling doctor defeats the creature with lasers controlled by hand gestures (?!?!), after which he discovers a futuristic city.
6/10 - if you can accept this film's unusual approach, there's fun to be had.
Tales of the Unexpected: Sauce for the Goose (1984)
Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexceptional.
Aspiring actor Stephen Shaw (Robert Morse) helps Olivia (Gloria Grahame) to arrange the death of her wealthy husband, after which he marries her, secretly plotting to kill his new wife so that he can have her money for himself and be with blonde beauty Gloria (Lisa Dunsheath). But when Olivia cottons on to Stephen's scheme, she comes up with her own plan for revenge...
You've got to love just how carefree the makers of this episode were: they clearly couldn't give two hoots how cheap and daft this one looks, as evidenced by the very silly vacation montage filmed on a budget of two buttons and a washer. The plot is far from the best that the show had to offer, the ending is predictable, and the acting is deliberately goofy, but the tackiness of the whole thing makes it more fun that it really has any right to be.
The First Power (1990)
And the last power (no sequels were made).
Satanic serial killer Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober) is sent to the gas chamber despite warnings not to do so from sexy psychic Tess Seaton (Tracy Griffith). LA cop Russell Logan (Lou Diamond Phillips) pays the price for not listening to Tess: he is menaced by the spirit of the dead killer, who has been granted the power of resurrection by the devil and is now able to possess the living.
The First Power is a fairly formulaic occult thriller, the 'body hopping' plot reminiscent of both Shocker and The Horror Show (both 1989), the film beefed up by some well executed action scenes. Phillips is terribly miscast as a tough LA cop -- he simply doesn't look old enough for the part -- but Kober is great as the villain, while Griffith is simply gorgeous as the hero's eventual love interest.
Gore is kept to a minimum (the pentagrams carved on the victims, an impalement on a metal pole and bullet wounds in the head) and scares are limited to a couple of predictable dream sequences (no doubt influenced by the Elm Street films) and the killer crashing through windows.
5.5/10 rounded up to 6 for IMDb.
Circus of the Dead (2014)
Roll up! roll up! roll up! Witness evil clowns going kill crazy!
If you've seen all of the Terrifier films but still haven't had your fill of sadistic killer clowns, then Circus of the Dead might do the trick. The psychotic circus performers in this film don't have Art the clown's style and wicked sense of humour, but they do deliver when it comes to killing people in extremely nasty ways.
The latest victims of Papa Corn (Bill Oberst Jr.) and his gang of creepy clowns are the Johnson family - Donald (Parrish Randall), his adulterous wife Tiffany (Chanel Ryan) and his two daughters - who rue the day the decided to go to the circus. This film's sole purpose is to shock with its violence and in that it succeeds: the acting is a bit off, the sound quality isn't great and certain plot points take some swallowing, but the gory nastiness is definitely eye-opening, with one scene involving a pregnant woman being particularly disturbing.
Yes, some of the 10/10 reviews are most likely fake, but all of the 1/10 and 2/10 reviews can be dismissed just as easily: no, Circus of the dead isn't the greatest horror film ever made, but it's far from the worst - gore hounds should find plenty to enjoy about this sick puppy.
Dracula's Widow (1988)
Dracula's Widow > Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula.
Soft-core sex star Silvia Kristel plays Vanessa, Dracula's widow, who bites Hollywood wax museum owner Raymond (Lenny von Dohlen), making him her unwilling slave. Josef Sommer plays Lieutenant Hap Lannon, whose investigation into a series of brutal murders leads him to believe that a vampire is on the loose in tinseltown.
Call me crazy, but I actually prefer Christopher Coppola's Dracula's Widow over his uncle Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 version of Dracula: it might not be as technically polished or as star-studded as Francis's film, but it's more fun - a schlocky vampire yarn with wooden performances, hokey special effects, a smattering of nudity (although Kristel keep her clothes on for a change), some surprisingly graphic gore and an over-use of strong coloured lighting. It's trash, but it's entertaining trash.
6/10.
N. B. The greatest Coppola family vampire film is Vampire's Kiss (1988), starring Christopher's brother, Nicolas Cage - that one is wild. Cage also appeared in the 2023 vampire film Renfield, which isn't as great, but still worth a look.
Subspecies V: Blood Rise (2023)
Subspecies V: Bloody hell, here we go again...
Producer Charles Band and director Ted Nicoloau's long-awaited Subspecies V: Blood Rise takes place during the Holy Crusades and shows how Christian knight Radu (Anders Hove) came to be the nasty vampire we know and hate from the earlier films.
For the fifth film in a franchise, it's not an entirely worthless effort: the origins story makes a nice change from the previous movies, which had become very repetitive, and Anders Hove puts in another solid performance as Radu, although his advancing years do make it hard to accept him as a younger version of his character (especially as the crusading knight - a little too old to be swinging a sword). Perhaps it would have been wiser for Hove to step aside and allow Radu to be played by someone new.
Overall, though, if you're a fan of the series, this one should prove entertaining enough and is better than I had expected. I rate Blood Rise 5.5/10 rounded up to 6 for IMDb.
Subspecies: The Awakening (1998)
I wish that Radu would stay dead.
After Hammer's Dracula, Subspecies' Radu (Anders Hove) must be cinema's most indestructible vampire: he's been staked, decapitated, stabbed, shot, burnt to a crisp and impaled on a tree - and he keeps on coming back for more! Subspecies: The Awakening, part four of the Subspecies series, sees the ugly vampire once again trying to keep hold of the ancient relic known as the bloodstone while also seeking revenge on Michelle (Denice Duff), the fledgling vampiress who left him for dead.
I guess if you have enjoyed the previous three Subspecies films then you'll probably like this one too, as it is simply more of the same, albeit with a cheaper shot-on-video aesthetic and no teeny tiny demons. I can't say that I'm a fan of the franchise, the films let down by meandering plot lines that go nowhere slowly and terrible acting from a predominantly Eastern European cast. There's lots of people being bitten on the neck or boobs, with a mad doctor thrown in for good measure, but it's all feeling very tired and predictable. As always, Radu dies at the end, staying dead for a bit longer than usual, before returning last year in Subspecies V: Blood Rise.