Mummy's Needed

Another review and another bad movie. Seems to be the story of my life lately, but at least I can laugh at some of these movies. Today I watched Evil Unleashed: The Mummy (2003). I have had it awhile now but been holding off watching it because I couldn't find any 3D glasses. A friend stopped by with two pairs of 3D glasses, so I was all set for some 3D action! Sadly, it didn't work. The movie can be watched in normal 2D or in 3D, so I told it 3D and put the glasses on. Maybe it doesn't like the red/blue glasses but either way it wasn't working, so I had to watch it in boring 2D instead. Not that 3D would have helped this movie out too much anyway I'm afraid. Update: if I really wanted to watch it in grand 3D, I would have to spend an extra $70. Hmmm....$70 plus $10 or whatever it is for the dvd = I will pass and spend my money else where. Thanks but I don't need 3D that badly.

Evil Unleashed: The Mummy opens in ancient Egypt, which looks a lot California. Some Princess has declared her love for her god. No one else seems to like this, since the god she has fallen in love with is the evil god. They try to talk her out of killing herself, but she believes her god will grant her everlasting life instead of letting her die. She stabs herself and dies because, well, that is what evil gods do, they lie to you. Remember that! Being Egyptians, they turn her into a mummy and place a curse on her.

Fast forward to present day. A team of archeologists discover where she has been buried, and when they try to dig her out they are attacked by a bunch of rubber and/or plastic scorpions. Did you know that scorpions can jump? I didn't either, but they did a fine job of it in this movie. Somehow all the artifacts that were uncovered end up at some college, where one of the professors tries to call forth the Princess. In order to do this he tricks some of his students, who all seem more interested in sitting around drinking beer then anything else. So for once they nailed the average college student! Good job guys. It's probably the only thing they made look real.

Once the mummy comes back to life, she goes on a killing spree. She is still trying to get her god to grant her everlasting life you see. I guess the god has told her to kill people and rip out their hearts. Oddly enough, all the hearts look the same. She kills the poor professor that did the little chat that brought her back, and rips his heart out. She kills a guard in one of the quickest neck snapping scenes I've ever watched. If you blink you will miss it. Next she goes after the four college students that helped out. There are two women and two guys, and she picks off the guys first. I would tell you their names but I didn't care enough to catch them, and the end credits didn't say who played which character.

She kills both guys at different times, but in the same way. She suddenly appears before them and starts to do a little dance, where she ends up taking off her top. To them she looks like she did before she died, very pretty. But to us she looks as a mummy would look. I guess this type of thing happens every day to these two guys, because they don't act shocked or surprised by a woman appearing out of nowhere. She stabs them both and takes their hearts, but still her god isn't pleased. The two women show up and find the bodies of the guys. The blonde picks up the dagger and the mummy appears and attacks them. Being a smart mummy, she attacks the one without the dagger. The one with the dagger is too busy trying to open the door (with the dagger no less), instead of helping her friend who is being choked to death. They both manage to get away though. Phew.

The lead archeologist shows up, I thought he died back when they first showed him, but I was wrong. He tells the two women that they have to gather up all the artifacts, kill the Princess, and bury it all in holy ground. Lucky for them, the blonde knows where there is some holy land, and drives them there. She says it is only an hour away, but they make it feel like they drive all night and part of the day. As the blonde starts to fall asleep at the wheel, the mummy so kindly appears in front of them, and wakes them all up. The archeologist asks how much longer it will be and the blonde says, "I told you it is an hour drive!" They finally get there and manage to kill the Princess. The other woman stabs the Princess in the back, and even though the dagger didn't look long enough to do this, it comes out the front of her chest. They get back to their home thinking it is all over. But when one of them puts their feet up, we see one of the artifacts stuck to the bottom of her shoe because of some gum. The mummy shows up again and kills them both sadly.

Sorry I took so long to go over the plot, but I wanted to show how stupid it was at times. The effects were outright bad for this movie. What little there were. The mummy looked normal enough at first, but I guess from being alive again, the skin disappears, and it is basically nothing but bones by the end of the movie. The props look so bad. The dagger looked so cheap that I was waiting for it to bend or outright break, but it never did. The acting was really bad at times and the blonde couldn't decide if she was too scared or too dumb to do anything, and then other times she seemed fairly smart. The sound was really bad at times as well. At one point the voices were off with the movement of their mouths. I don't think because the voice over words were changed, but because someone just didn't time it right.

While I hate to say this, if you want to watch a bad movie I would suggest you watch Demons At The Door instead of Evil Unleashed: The Mummy. Yes it did make me laugh at it because of how bad it got. But if I was given the choice to watch one of those two movies again, I would have to go with Demons At The Door.
1 out of 5 Lame looking mummies

Avenging Dead

Before I put this movie into my dvd player, I have to say I was a little worried about it. Why you ask? Mostly because it calls itself a "humorous horror tale". There haven't been too many horror movies that I have liked, when they make sure to try and make things funny. Maybe I was being hard on it. After all, I really loved Dead & Breakfast even though it had a lot of humor in it. The fact that I never heard of The Revolting Dead (2003), didn't play into it any. There have been plenty of movies that I have never heard of, but still enjoyed. Was this one of those films? Or did I just watch another flop?

From the opening credits I knew I was dealing with a fairly low budget film. The credits are done in a neat way, with them all shown on gravestones. But it was all CGI and done poorly at that. Low budget doesn't always equal a bad movie though. But lets just say the way the opening credits looked, it just made me more worried about what was coming up next. Not looking too good so far, is it my friends?

The Revolting Dead is about a small town where the family that runs the local mortuary, is getting away with reusing coffins and grave robbing. I assume it is a small town, since we never actually see the town. There are basically only four locations: the cemetery, the mortuary, an auto shop and a 24/7 diner. Anyway, at the opening of the film they are digging up a grave when a couple gets into a fight, and the boyfriend leaves after being told the girlfriend is pregnant. He doesn't see what is going on, but she does and is killed for it. Six months go by and the sister of the man we saw being dug up, shows up to pay her respects, since she wasn't able to make it for the funeral. When Marissa (Shelly Delayne) touches the headstone, she has a vision of her brother being pushed back into the grave, minus a casket. She swears he will have his vegeance. and leaves to confront the Crains.

Marissa doesn't accuse them of grave robbing but of neglect, complaining of high grass and that the headstone is dirty. While there she notices the sister of the family is wearing a gold cross, that belonged to her brother. She then goes back and casts a spell, so that the dead can seek revenge on those that wronged them. You see, Marissa happens to be a powerful druid. Meanwhile the Crains keep putting bodies in the ground and digging them up later. The sister, Betsy (Lindsey Lofaso) even kills one man with the help of her brother Sonny (Benjamin Keepers). They kill the guy by hanging him. The Sheriff (Chip Campbell) comes by and deems it a suicide, even though there was nothing around that he could have stood on to hang himself.

Finally the dead attack the Crains. They don't bother anyone else, unless they get in the way. Seems a little strange for zombies, but they were raised up for revenge against those that wronged them, so I let that part go. Once they get their revenge they head back to their graves, and all is well. Until it is decided the graveyard is the future site of a mall, and they start to dig up the graves.

The effects and acting I can throw together, because at times I thought good and very bad about both. The magical effects were very lame looking, while the horror effect weren't great, but some of it was pretty good. One corpse that is basically nothing more than bones, now looked very gross to me. While I don't really like gross, it was nice to see instead of bad effects. The zombies didn't look much different than they did before becoming zombies. So there were not a lot of makeup/effects there. The acting I really enjoyed at times, like the mother of the Crains, Millicent (Bokahra Robinson). She was the head of the family, very demanding and at time abusive. There was also an incest scene between Millicent and Sonny. Ok, that had nothing to do with the acting, but I just found it somewhat out of place for a movie, and I had to say something about it.

The primary problem with The Revolting Dead is this: it takes way too long to get to the revenge the dead are promised. I love it when a movie spends the time to set things up, letting us know the characters some, so we will care a little about them. At the same time, a movie can take too long on the set up, much like The Revolting Dead did. Marissa casts her spell and we see her brother and the woman that was killed rise up. Then they pretty much just disappear for a long time. Same way with the other dead we see rise up from time to time. Where they went and what they are waiting for, is something that is never explained. Once the zombies do make their attack and the gore begins, it is too little too late. This last part only lasts maybe 10 minutes, and it is the last 10 minutes of the movie. As for the humor, I didn't find any of it funny, but maybe some people would.

I am very tempted to give this a 1 rating, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to do that. That doesn't mean I liked the overall movie, because I didn't. I did like small parts of it and, well....I liked some of the actresses. Maybe that is a stupid reason to bump up my rating, but I'm not doing that because of them alone. But it is part of the reason though. All in all though, I can't tell you to go out and find this one. If you are really into zombies then maybe, but even then you will be pushing your love for them with this one.
2 out of 5 Families that steal together

Dream A Little Dream

Over at Stacie's blog, Final Girl, she wrote up a review for the 1988 film Bad Dreams. I bought the movie along with her next selection for the film club, Visiting Hours. Look for the review for that movie here soon. So Stacie, if you are reading my blog still, I'm not trying to copy you. After reading her review, I decided to watch it next to see what I thought about it. Unlike Stacie, I had never watched this one before, so I wondered if my view of the film would be different because of that.

Bad Dreams is about suicide basically. It starts out showing us a cult called Unity Field. It is sometime in the 70's, and the message of the 60's is still showing. Peace, love and happiness. Harris (Richard Lynch), the leader of the cult, decided that in order to achieve a oneness, they will all die together. He pours gasoline over each of the members and the strikes a match. They all take this in stride, except for Cynthia (Jennifer Rubin). At the last possible moment, she decides this is all wrong and tries to run. But an explosion throws her into a wall where she is found later, alive but in a coma.

Thirteen years later she wakes up. She is placed into a support group in order to adjust to the 80's. The group is for people that suffer from borderline personality disorder. An odd group to adjust to the 80's with, but doctors know best right? As Cynthia begins to remember more about what happened to her before she went into a coma, Harris begins to show up. He wants Cynthia to join his family of Unity Field in death. They aren't complete without her, so he says anyway. She still doesn't want to give up on life yet, so Harris says he will take the members of her new little group instead. One by one, they all end up being killed. Some are done in interesting ways, while some aren't so interesting. But not all is as cut and dry (no pun intended) as it looks. Is Harris back, or is there some other reason Cynthia is seeing him?

The makeup effects were done by Michelle Burke, who has gone on to even bigger films. The latest being Mission: Impossible 3. There are a few places that might have been done a little better, but overall I was really impressed with the effects. Harris sometimes appears to Cynthia all normal looking, while at other times he is all burned up. The burned up version works really well. The only effect I didn't care for was when one of the characters plunges his hand onto a knife. I was easy to tell the hand was a fake. Of course I would hope it would be a fake hand, but it would be more gross and frightening if it looked more like a real hand.

The rest of the cast is rounded out with Dean Cameron, Bruce Abbott, Harris Yulin, Susan Barnes and Elizabeth Daily. There are more of course, but those are the ones that I knew from other movies, and stood out to me. Sometimes the acting seemed a little too much, but maybe that was supposed to be that way, since they are slightly crazy folks. The only time I had a hard time believing what was happening in the movie, was when a cop's gun is taken out of his holster by one of the doctors. The other two cops never draw their weapons, even when the gun is pointed at someone other than them. Once this doctor is killed (by someone who isn't a cop), the camera goes back to the cops. You see two of them already walking away, while the third simply shakes his head and then leaves. To me it seemed like they didn't care at all.

I noticed, after watching Bad Dreams, that some people were saying that it is nothing more than A Nightmare On Elm Street rip off. I really think that is an unfair comparison, because as any horror fan knows, that movie is a slasher flick at its core. Freddy kills people while they are sleeping. None of that happens in Bad Dreams. I would be hard pressed to call this a slasher flick. In fact, I would be hard pressed to say this movie has anything at all to do with dreams. As I said before, this is about suicide. I can't say anymore than that, without giving away more of the movie, and I don't want to do that for this one. While this isn't one of the greats, it isn't all that bad either. Check it out sometime, but please be fair to the movie makers and don't compare it to other movies before watching it.
3 out of 5 Suicidal Tendencies

Bad Movies 101

Ok class. If you want to know how to make a bad movie then look no further. Demons At The Door (2003), has to rank down there at the bottom of the pile. So study this movie closely, and you will be sure to pick up on everything. Alright, so making a bad movie isn't the best idea in the world. So study this movie so you know not what to do!

The plot (if you want to call it a plot) is pretty simple really. A small team of people have discovered the door to hell, and are either studying or guarding it. They also discovered "The Eye Of Satan", which is supposed to help Satan take his true form on Earth. It would be bad if Satan got his evil hands on it, so it makes all the more sense to have it right there by the gate to hell, right? I thought so too. The gate gets blown to bits, when a guy shows up with a gun and some explosives taped to his back. He means well I guess, since he wants to blow up these people before they release Satan. But he ends up helping out the cause instead.

An angel shows up and explains about "The Eye Of Satan", and then tells them they have been chosen to battle the demons that will be showing up. After informing them of this wonderful news, he leaves. The demons come and try to trick our band of heroes into coming out with the object they seek for their master. But these are smart heroes and it never really works. So instead they have some battles with the demon's and win the day. In order to re-seal the door to hell, the last guy to live takes some explosives inside the door, and sets them off. He then goes and gives Satan (shown as a pug dog of all things), what he had been after all along, but with a little surprise attached to it. He blows up Satan (who knew it would be that easy?), and takes over as the master of hell.

Not too bad of a plot I guess. Thing is though, Demons At The Door is just so, so bad of a movie. I don't mean one or two things, but the entire movie! The effects are very cheesy. The explosions are very poorly done. Some sparks and once in a while some CGI fire are included as well. The demons are sillier than they are scary. In fact, with one demon (see picture above), as it looked into the camera, you could see the person inside the suit through the mouth of the demon. The acting was very poor as well. Sometimes the voice over work didn't match up with the mouth of the person saying it at all. The film seemed a little skippy at times. Normally I would say that is because of the dvd and/or my dvd player. But I really don't think that was the case, because it has very small skips, that might not have been so noticeable, if the skips didn't happen a lot. I think the director (Roy Knyrim) needs to go back to film school again, and I will tell you why. Two people are standing and talking to each other. As one talks, instead of showing just the person's head or head and body, it shows his body only. The guy has a nice body, but what was the point? That is just one example, and there are just too many to keep going.

There are two good things I can say about Demons At The Door. First, that it made me laugh at times. Not because the movie was trying to be funny most of the time, but because it was just so bad that I had to laugh at it. Second, one of the deaths was actually pretty cool. One character gets his head sucked down a drain, and as the body falls away you see the spine sticking out of the sink. I thought that was pretty neat really, and have never seen it before in a movie. But it was hardly enough to save this movie. One other silly thing I must tell you about before I go. The same character, before he dies, sees like dirty water coming up from the drain, and hears demon voices. So what does he do? He grabs the plunger and goes to work on that drain! Yeah that will show those evil demons! Anyway, if you are the type that really enjoys a bad movie, then you should rush out and try to find this one, because you won't be disappointed at all. I wouldn't suggest it to anyone else, unless you happen to get a chance to see it for free.
1 out of 5 Buckets of yellow demon blood

Pet Peeves Part One

I went to see Silent Hill, Saturday and loved the movie. Maybe I will create a review for it later on. I would like to thank my friends Candy and Stacie (over at Final Girl blog) for explaining a little bit of the plot for me. Silent Hill is one of those movies I have to watch more than once, to pick up on everything. I don't mind that as long as it is a good movie, and Silent Hill was that indeed.

So why a post about pet peeves? I thought my readers might like to know what makes me tick just a little bit, so I decided to share. I think everyone knows what a pet peeve is, but just in case you don't: a pet peeve is something that really annoys me, and I mean really annoys me. You know what I mean don't you? Like a movie theater saying it doesn't make any money, even though they charge almost $10 for a large drink and popcorn? Well, that is a different pet peeve that I wanted to talk about today.

What I wanted to talk about...ok, what I wanted to complain about is putting commercials in my movie. I don't mean directly into the movie, but having commercials playing before the movie and before the trailers for new movies. I used to not like the trailers, and I still don't sometimes. If the trailers are for types of movies I am going to see once the movie starts, then great, bring them on. I go to the theaters to get away from commercials. They don't need to be there. Outside of movie channels, commercials are everywhere on tv. You can't change the channel without taking the chance of coming into the middle of one. I know it is all about money, and that is why they are being shown. But I beg of you! Please take away the commercials on the big screen! I will simply stay at home to watch those if I want to watch them.

I am done now. I named this part one just because I may or may not do this again. Just a warning, so be ready if you should see another one.

Life Like Doll

What happens when someone because completely obsessed with another person? Stalk them? Control them? Maybe kill them? Dead Doll (2004) explores that a little, but it isn't a person that is being obsessed over, but a life like doll. This movie sounded interesting to me based on the movie description. Lets see if you agree, shall we? Romi Koch and Goran Dukic star in this eerie tale about a ghost who exacts the ultimate revenge. After an artist's volatile confrontation with his girlfriend turns horribly awry, he murders her and hides the body in a piece of sculpture that holds her likeness. But her rage-filled spirit refuses to rest before she's wreaked havoc on the lives of the men she encounters wherever she goes. Can she be stopped? And if so, how?

I selected this picture for a reason. I wanted to point out that it calls itself "a horrible comedy". They certainly got the horrible right. So what about the comedy part? Maybe a few scenes would have made me laugh, if they weren't so stupid. The problem is, I could see this being a good movie. I never really thought much about this movie as I was watching it. But I kept thinking, this could have been so much better. There was a back story to the main story, that of the death of the woman that becomes the doll. This was all done in flashbacks, and it became annoying after a while. Very few movies work with a lot of flashbacks in them. The ending is the reason why they did all this in a bunch of flashbacks. But maybe they could have had one long one at the start, and then a shorter one at the end.

The "sculpture" is actually a realistic sex doll. The movie starts with the guy that makes the sex dolls, and I wasn't sure if she was a real person made to look like a doll, or a doll that was coming to life. The flashbacks only added to my confusion, even though she did look like a doll (not moving at all in other words). The flashbacks weren't in order so at times it showed him fighting with the girlfriend and other times creating the doll. Because of that I wasn't sure if she was a real person or a doll all along. This was probably done on purpose, so again the reveal would be more of a shock. What is the big reveal? It's what the description already told you. That he put her body inside the doll. Nice of them to spoil the ending, no?

So this guy has already made her into a doll when the movie starts. A couple of guys come to pick up a large box for shipment, and one of them becomes obsessed with the doll. That is what the movie is about really. Almost everyone that comes in contact with the doll becomes obsessed with it, and does whatever it takes to own it and keep it. I was thinking the doll would come to life, as much as a doll can come to life anyway, and kill people off. But that never happened. She would come to life in people's minds, but never for real.

The only scene I will probably remember from Dead Doll is when one guy goes to have sex with the doll, and discovers some glass that was put inside the vagina. How he could have missed this piece of glass is beyond me. This was a fairly big piece, and I don't know how it could have gotten in there without damaging the doll.

The acting didn't bother me too much here, but the movie itself did. Maybe because of the description, I had my mind set for a different kind of movie. But I don't think that was the total reason I didn't like it. I didn't hate this movie, I just didn't like it. If you enjoy bad movies then maybe you will like it better than I did.
2 out of 5 Sex Dolls

More Hauntings

I enjoyed the haunted house so much that I decided to watch another ghost movie. Instead of visiting another house, I went with a haunted submarine. Not a yellow one, just a haunted one. I will admit right away, that I didn't understand everything about this movie. At times I felt a little lost while watching it, because I didn't understand it.

Below (2002) is set in 1943 during WWII. An American sub is ordered to pick up some people that were found drifting on a life raft. As they are rescuing these people, they spot a war ship coming on strong. As they dive to get away, news spreads quickly that one of three people rescued is a woman. Kingsley (Dexter Fletcher) and Claire (Olivia Williams) are two of three, and tell the sub's Lieutenant (Bruce Greenwood) about how their ship was sunk.

There is some action and tension, as they try to avoid the German ship that is after them. Meanwhile, strange things are happening. A record player starts to play on its own, things move seemingly on their own, and strange images and sounds abound. We learn through a series of flash backs, sometimes visions, that the Captain of the sub either accidentally drowned or was hit by one of the crew and then drowned. It is assumed the Captain has come back to haunt the sub. As things turn to bad (can't surface to get fresh air) to worse (most of the crew is killed), they discover the sub is on track to where they sank a German ship.

The remaining crew figures out that they didn't sink a German ship after all. It was a British hospital ship instead. The Captain wanted to help the people that survived, but the Lieutenant didn't want to, and didn't want anyone else to know what had happened. They argued and the Captain ended up getting hit and fell into the water. It is left up to us, who we think is haunting the sub: the drowned Captain, or the dead from the British ship. Either way, the sub is heading back to where this tragic event happened, there is nothing the remaining crew can do about it, and they are running out of clean air.

The effects were really good in this movie. As far as the ghost, we never really see what it or they look like. It sort of blends into the water or metal. Often times I wasn't sure I was seeing something until it moved. I enjoyed that a lot, since it wasn't overdone. It left it to my mind to figure out if it was there or not. As I said before, I had a hard time understanding things in this movie. My confusion was mostly when it came to the problems with the sub. I think I had an easier time following The Hunt For The Red October than I did Below, when it came to what was being said about the subs. One other thing I thought was really neat, was when the German ship was using its anchors to drag the bottom to try and snag the sub. I don't know if they would actually do that, but it was neat to see.

The acting was really good in Below. I thought Olivia was a bit cold, but maybe that was the right way to play it. I mean she is the only female on the sub, so unless she really was a slut, I don't think that would be a good time to be too nice and flirty. To my surprise, one of my favorite actors was in this movie. Ever since I watched him in Out Cold I have been a fan. He's Zach Galifianakis, and you can't miss him because of the big red beard he almost always has. I was never sure what he did on the sub, other than read scary stories to the rest of the crew, and telling them to look up words they didn't understand. Matthew Davis also did a great job, but seemed a little young yet to be an officer.

Even though I didn't understand everything, it didn't keep me from enjoying this movie. It had more action than most horror movies, but the ghosts were still there. Not all fans of horror movies will like this one. Liking war movies will help for sure. I'm not a big fan of them, but have watched a few. I never felt scared, but it did make me feel tense at times, and not just because of the action either. I would say at the very least to give it a try. It just might surprise you!
4 out of 5 Sinking Submarines

Ghostly Tales

I got the old time machine going and went back to 1961 to watch The Innocents. I don't think I have ever heard of it, but it did get a lot of good reviews. I was reading a few small ones before writing this. There is good reason this movie got some good reviews, since I really enjoyed it as well.

The Innocents is a ghost story at its heart. Or is it? An uncle hires a governess (Deborah Kerr) to watch over his nephew and niece, who are orphans. The last governess died and he is finally getting around to replacing her. Miss Giddens goes and meets the two children, Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stephens). At first, everything seems as normal as a big house with a few people in it could be. After a while though, Miss Giddens starts to notice weird sounds, and the children act a bit strange at times. She sees a man and woman that she can't explain, and when she tells the housekeeper (Megs Jenkins) about it she is told the people she described are dead. Miss Giddens starts putting the pieces together, and believes that the children are being possessed by the spirits of the two dead lovers, so they can be together again. I don't know why they can't be together in the afterlife, and I don't think that question was ever raised. She believes that the spirits are evil in nature, so she sets about to rid the children of the spirits. Are the children really possessed or is Miss Giddens slipping into madness?

I can't talk about the effects for this movie because there are none. It was filmed in black and white, and I'm sure there wasn't much for effects anyways being released in 1961. The Innocents instead relies heavily on atmosphere and creepy music/sound effects. I can't explain how well that was pulled off for this movie. There were many times the movie pulled me into the story big time. I think the movie being in black and white really helped add to things. Seeing a scary looking man slowly come out of blackness and then slowly disappear back into it, really creeped me out. The acting was great from everyone. I can't say enough good things about the child actors, especially Miles. At times he would seem way older than he should have been.

I feel like I should apologize to my readers. I'm trying to rain down praise for The Innocents because I loved it so much, but I can't seem to find the right words and the correct way to do so. So I will say this, I know ghost stories don't appeal to everyone. But if they do to you, then you really need to check out this movie.
5 out of 5 Things that go bump in the night

RV Time

In order for me to beat a dead horse here, I watched yet another horror/comedy. Why? I don't know. It was just what was given to me. However, I hope you noticed that instead of saying it was a comedy/horror, like I did with The Janitor, I listed Dead & Breakfast (2004) as a horror/comedy. The reason being, I just thought the horror part was played out more in this one, and it wasn't as silly as it could be in The Janitor. Oh the comedy was certainly there, but not so much in my face all the time. Plus, for whatever reason, I liked the comedy better in this movie.

Dead & Breakfast is about 3 couples that are heading to a wedding in a RV, but get a little lost on the way. They end up in a very small town named Lovelock, where everyone calls you friend. They end up at a bed and breakfast type place and spend the night. Sometime during the night a murder happens. Of course the police suspect one of them did it, and they make the group stay in town. One of them become possessed by an evil spirit, and sets out to possess the rest of the town.

That is a short version of the plot really. I wanted to talk more about the movie itself, instead of the plot. If you want to know, I did enjoy the plot of the movie. The effects I enjoyed. It could be a silly at times, with the amount of blood that would come squirting out. We keep getting reminded that the possessed people aren't zombies, but the only way they could be killed is if you shoot them in the head. Sounds like a zombie to me but whatever. There are a lot of bullet wounds and a few severed heads, and lots and lots of blood. I didn't really notice any fake body parts this time around, except for the severed heads. It's not too often they look real though, so I'm used to that.

The acting...I can't say enough good things about the acting in this movie. I really enjoyed it. Nothing seemed to over the top to me, and was well done across the board. There are a few faces I knew from this movie, even though I had never heard of the movie itself. Gina Philips (Jeepers Creepers), Jeremy Sisto (May, Wrong Turn), and David Carradine (Kill Bill V1, V2). Dead & Breakfast has a big cast to it. Even so, I thought everyone did a wonderful job.

Every once in a while a drawing would come up, that kind of had scenes from the movie. They were black and white, and red drawlings. Mostly they help separate scenes a little. I thought it was a nice touch, and liked seeing them as they popped up. Another thing I liked about Dead & Breakfast was the music. About as often as the drawings, we would be treated to a song. A guy in the film (Zach Selwyn) would break into a song about the movie. I think I really, really liked this, just because I really liked the music and songs. If you don't like the music, then I can understand how this would get you annoyed very quickly. One of my favorite scenes is when a song is being played and the possessed people start to break out in dance. That really had me smiling and laughing.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone. I'm sure you would need to be a fan of horror movies, in order not to be too grossed out by all the blood and all though. Even though I thought this was more of a horror movie instead of a comedy, I wasn't scared by anything. Then again it takes something special to scare me anymore. If it did scare me, then I would give Dead & Breakfast my highest rating. But since it didn't I will knock it down one point, even though I hate to, since I really loved this movie. I will be sure to buy this movie someday, because I'm already looking forward to watching it again.
4 out of 5 Dancing Zombies

The Cleaning Crew

From the description for this movie, it sounded pretty good, at least to me. A janitor goes crazy and kills those that make fun of him. Sounded like a fun movie to me, in a horror kind of way. Instead I find a movie with a lot of camp in it. I have knocked a few movies for having too much comedy in my horror movie. Just so you know, I don't mind comedy in my horror movie. But I do want more horror than comedy. I just feel there are too many movies being made that, because they have gore in them, are being classified as horror instead of what they really are, comedy.

The Janitor (2003) stars Andy Signore, who also helped direct and did a few other things I believe. I really liked Andy as the crazy janitor. He was really creepy looking, and the way he acted worked. I thought this movie could have been really scary if they had let it be so. Instead it reminded of the Troma films, lots of gore and blood, but very little or no scares...just a stab at making things funny. The fact that Lloyd Kaufman makes a cameo appearance adds to that. I'm not saying The Janitor failed at being funny, but it wasn't what I was expecting. When a movie isn't what I thought it was going to be, then I have a hard time getting into it. If I would watch this movie in a week or two with comedy on my mind, then more than likely I would enjoy it a lot more.

The effects for this movie were fairly well done, if only over the top at times. Sure it was easy to tell that the body parts were sometimes rubber, but to me that didn't take away from the film, mostly because it fit in with it being more of a comedy. I have to admit that I didn't really get some of the effects. For example, Andy starts pulling on Lloyd's arm after Lloyd makes fun of him. Instead of the arm pulling apart at the wrist, elbow or shoulder, it comes apart between the wrist and elbow. That's a pretty odd place. The acting was also a bit over the top in places. In some movies I might complain about that, but for this one it didn't bother me so much. For the most part, I really enjoyed the characters and the acting. They even got me to laugh a few times, even though I felt let down while watching.



I really enjoyed the "making of" feature on the dvd for The Janitor. It wasn't the normal show a few behind the scenes footage, and have the actors say all kinds of good things about the movie. Instead we are treated to a true making of a movie feature. They talk just about everything. This ranged from how they went about casting the parts, to finding people for the effects and so on. The movie was shot over 14 days, so that explains why some of the effects weren't always great.

Bottom line is, if you like the comedy/horror type of movies, then you really should check this one out. I'm very sure you will like this movie. As for me....I just can't help but think this could have been a really scary movie. Andy is a fairly big man. I don't know why anyone would pick on or make fun of him on purpose. I know I sure wouldn't. Maybe the film makers had the right idea by making it more of a comedy, instead of a true horror movie. After all, a killer using cleaning supplies to kill people with, does sound a little funny.
2 out 5 Killer Janitors

Film Club Day

I am pleased to announce my participation in Final Girl's Film Club! I have been reading Stacie's blog for a while now, and have posted a comment or two over there. When I read that she wanted to start a film club, I got pretty excited since it was her blog that inspired my own.

Stacie picked out the movie Bloody Murder (1999) as the one to start things off with. At first I thought Bloody Murder might be a Friday The 13th rip off, a man in a hockey mask, a summer camp, a creepy old man giving warnings, and a legend about a killer that lives in the woods. I don't know if we ever see the local killer, Trevor Moorhouse, or not. They talk about him a lot, but it turns out he isn't the killer for our story. All we know is that someone is killing off the counselors that are trying to set up the camp before the kids get there.

The effects for Bloody Murder were terrible. Considering all the killings that take place, we get very little blood. A couple of the counselor's get arrows through them, one gets his throat cut and so on. The throat getting cut was probably the worst effect I have seen in a movie so far. All we get is a red line across the throat. No blood is flowing from the wound, even though it is supposed to be deep enough to keep him from calling out loud enough to be heard. At one point there appears to be two cuts. To finish him off the killer uses one of those claw things, that is a gardening tool. He plunges this thing into the counselor's back, and now we have a dead counselor. The problem with this scene is that it is very obvious the claw tool never goes through the shirt, much less skin.

I didn't really get the police in this movie. They bring one guy in for questioning. But when another counselor disappears, they simply bring him back and then let him go. They arrest another guy, thinking he is doing the killing. Once it is discovered that he isn't the killer, the police come back out to catch the real killer, and bring this guy with them. I would think they would leave him back at the station, in order to keep him out of danger, at least I would have.

Was it just me or did it take them a long time to walk from place to place? Just a walk down to the lake seemed like an all day trek to me. As you can see, I don't have a whole lot of good things to say about Bloody Murder. The plot could be confusing at times, the effects were poor at best, and the acting wasn't much better. Even so, I had fun being part of the film club, and I'm looking forward to the next movie that Stacie picks out for us.
2 out of 5 Dead Counselors

Another Mirror, Another Day

Before I get into the review for this movie, I would just like to say that in my last post I said that Return Of The Boogeyman was Boogeyman 3. But according to the clips on Boogeyman 2, this movie is actually Boogeyman 4. Got that? Good. Now you can explain to me which movie is which in this series, because I'm really confused over it.

Return Of The Boogeyman is about a psychic dreamer (Kelly Galindo), that is being stalked by the Boogeyman in some of her dreams. In order to get to the bottom of it, her doctor tries to help her figure out who this Boogeyman is. Basically that is the entire plot. We never find out why the Boogeyman is after her. There are a lot of flashbacks to the original movie (again), but this time it isn't as bad as the previous one. There are a lot of flashbacks though. There seemed to be a little bit of different footage at times though. I'm not sure if this was stuff that might have been edited out, or filmed and added in for this movie. It really wasn't worth watching all the flashbacks, for these minor differences.

There is only one new death in Return Of The Boogeyman, and that being a woman that gets electrocuted while taking a bath. This is first seen in one of the psychic's dreams and is shown, over and over again. Maybe it was just me, but I really didn't like the director's (Deland Nuse) style. I'm not sure how long the tub scene went on, but it was a lot longer than was needed. It was pretty straight forward and I'm not that dumb to need a scene repeated over and over again, so I can understand what is going on. She sees this before it actually happens, and manages to get an address of the place where it will occur. Funny that she was able to get an address she never sees, but has no idea who the people are she is seeing in the dreams.

Anyway, when they get to the house they discover that no women live there. The occupants are a group of guys that are in a rock band together. What bothered me about these scenes, was that the lighting was very dull, almost having a black and white quality to it. The images from the tv being watched have a nice crisp color to them, but everything else is very dull looking. It was only the scenes set at this location that were like this.

By the end of the movie we are basically watching the original movie and flashing to the present day, every once in a while. In the present day we find our psychic lying naked on a mirror. I have no idea why she is naked, unless it helps her channel better. These aren't straight flashbacks to the original movie. The movie itself is being shown, but the voices can barely be heard or can't be heard at all. Instead we have the psychic's voice giving us a play by play of what we are watching. She is usually saying things just behind what we are seeing, but sometimes she would get ahead of herself and describe something that would happen just after she said it. Maybe, like me, she had watched the original movie before.

The writer(s?) came up with the idea that it was the psychic that told Willy (from the orignal movie) how to destroy the mirror. With three words: mirror, water, well. Maybe not in that order, but if I remember right it was. We can hear that repeated a couple of times, then we see Willy mouth the word "well", before they carry it out and dump it into the well. The psychic believes this has taken care of her present day problem, and goes out to her car. When she looks in the rear view mirror she sees the Boogeyman.

Maybe, just maybe, if I hadn't watched the original movie just days before, instead of years apart, I would have liked this movie a little more. That being said, I can't really say much for the new things in Return Of The Boogeyman. I found it very boring, and struggled to stay awake during it - and this was in the middle of the day. Not a movie I can really suggest to anyone.
1 out of 5 Psychic Love Lines