For Once, I Have Something Nice To Say About A Horror Movie

It's very rare that I rent or buy a horror movie and actually end up liking it. Revenge of the Rats has proven to be the exception. It's foreign, German in fact, and some of the dubbing is a bit odd, but it's not bad. Really the only thing I didn't like was the utterly predictable part with the dog; a little girl loses her dog in a tunnel full of killer rats, and the damn thing miraculously turns up alive at the end of the movie.

The movie is set in Frankfurt, where there has been a garbage strike during a record heat wave. The city has become infested with rats. Not just ordinary rats, either. These rats carry a mutant strain of meningitis and become vicious whenever anyone tries to clean the city. I liked this a lot. It's actually worth more than the $5 I paid for it.

If for some reason you wanted to look this movie up in the IMDB, it's listed under its German title, Ratten - sie werden dich kriegen! I'm not sure why it isn't listed under it's English title as well, but it isn't. Anyway, I liked this move a lot. I give it four and a half yos.

A Confusing Mishmash

I like horror movies. I like old horror movies. I thought that a movie that uses clips from old horror movies edited with modern footage to make a new film sounded like a good idea. Unfortunately, if Terror in Tropics is any indication, it is a very bad idea.

I know that many old horror movies have plots that make almost no sense. This one goes one better (or maybe worse) and has a plot that makes absolutely no sense. There are mad scientists, murders, gorillas, deformed henchmen, dinosaurs, and spunky reporters. A guy dies and leaves all his money to twelve strangers, but they have to go to his private island to claim it. Meanwhile, some thieves have stolen the map that shows the true location of Skull Island (from King Kong). Everybody gets on an ocean liner. Then they find a survivor from the expedition to Skull Island. Then Several people are murdered. Then they all arrive on Fog Island for the reading of the will. Several other people are murdered. The reporters are locked in a closet. Then somehow everything turns out alright.

Besides a nonsensical plot, the acting sucks. I've seen high school plays with better acting. And, the old and new scenes don't mesh well. They go through the trouble to make the new film look like old film, but it doesn't look quite like actual old film, and the modern sound doesn't have the same quality as the old sound.

I picked this one up for about $4. It was too expensive at that price. Really, the only reason I gave this thing as good a rating as I did is because I liked the one extra: Gregory Mank's discussion of "Poverty Row" films. This gets it two and a half yo-yos.

A Decent Zombie Movie

I was at my local K-Mart earlier today and I picked up a couple of cheap horror movies. I've actually managed to watch one so far. It's a zombie movie called The Ghouls. According to the box, this was an "Official Selection [at the] Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival," an "Official Selection [of] Rue Morgue's Indie Terror Fest," and the "Winner [for] Best Film [at] Saints and Sinners IV." These guys must have way lower standards than me.

Don't get me wrong; this wasn't a terrible movie. I think I can safely say that this is the best independently produced zombie movie I've seen. Of course, that's not saying very much. Here are my gripes:

1. The hero is a dick. He's a stringer (a kind of reporter). He's the sort of reporter who'd rather film somebody dieing than lift a finger to try and save that person's life. Seriously, his girlfriend dumps him because she knows he filmed some children being burned alive and ignored their cries for help.

2. It's so slow to start. We see our "hero" filming a serial killer, filming a high-speed car chase, selling a story, getting dumped, getting drunk, getting high, having weird flashbacks, and generally being a dick before we see even one zombie.

3. The zombies are stupid even for zombies. All of their victims are either killed or severely mutilated before being dragged off to the zombie larder: except for the "hero." Him they don't touch, so he can escape and kill them all on his way out.

The one thing I did like about this movie was that some effort obviously went into it in areas other than makeup and gore effects. The acting is actually good. Other than the plot hole at the end, the writing is pretty good. While the lighting almost universally dark, this seems to be intentional as opposed the more usual "to cheap to hire somebody" mentality I think lies behind a lot of these movies.

This really isn't a bad film. I don't think it's all that great either, though. If you like zombie movies, you might like this one. I give The Ghouls three and a half yo-yos.

A Horror DVD I Actually Kind of Liked

I was at WalMart the other day and I picked up a couple of DVDs from their 2/$11 bin. They were both Japanese horror stuff. I've watched the one called J-Horror Anthology: Legends. Judging from the Amazon reviews (2 one star, 1 two star, and 2 five star), most people either loved this DVD or hated it. I just sort of liked it.

The DVD is made of six short segments, which appear to be from some sort of Japanese anthology series (like The Twilight Zone). From a strictly "are they scary" perspective, they're not all that great. Of course, from that perspective almost no horror movie is that great since none of them scare me. The only one that even came close for me was "she Bear," which is about two schoolgirls who get chased by a demoniacal woman with a teddy bear.

"Nurarihyon" wasn't even remotely scary, but I don't think it was supposed to be. It's about a boy who befriends a mischievous spirit. "Yamaba" is a pretty generic story about some kind of evil spirit. "Peony Lamp" is a fairly decent story about a samurai and the ghost that loves him. "Heartbroken Trip" is a decent story about a woman who goes to a haunted hot springs. "Lost Souls" was pretty spooky, but confusing.

I should point out that this DVD isn't dubbed; it uses subtitles. I would have liked the DVD if the subtitles weren't so crappy. They aren't at the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" level of Engrish, but they sure were pretty bad in spots.

With the sub-par subtitles, and the varying quality of the stories, I give J-Horror Anthology: Legends three and a half yo-yos.

Stop Clowning Around

Oh my God!

As you may remember, I occasionally like to rent B horror movies on DVD. When I run I run across something really bad, I review it here. If I ever find anything good, I'll review it here, too. Sadly, Mr. Jingles is not one of the good ones. It is a very, very bad movie.

It's basically a knock off of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies, only with a clown. I don't mean that the clown kills people in their dreams like Freddy did, I mean he makes jokes when he's killing. Unfortunately, unlike Freddy he's not even remotely funny. Nor, is he remotely scary. He just sucks. Almost everything in this movie sucks.

Things that don't suck: 1) The scary clown makeup; 2) The gore effects; 3) The lighting; 4) The sound. This is a step up from some of the movies I've panned. Some of them just had good gore effects and make up. Still, what this movie lacks is good acting, good dialogue, a plot that makes sense, and originality.

As I said, the plot is strongly reminiscent of A Nightmare On Elm Street. Mr. Jingles was wrongfully accused of being a pedophile (Freddy was a child killer). Mr. Jingles was beaten up by an angry mob (Freddy was killed by an angry mob). Mr. Jingles is killed after breaking out of prison and comes back from the dead for vengeance (Freddy comes back from the dead for vengeance). Mr. Jingles kills a bunch of teenagers and a few other people who get in his way (Freddy kills a bunch of teenagers).

Unfortunately, the plot is much lamer than Nightmare's. They never really explained how Freddy came back, but Mr. Jingles, despite being in a mental hospital (or jail, the plot wasn't all that clear on this), and despite being brutally abused and raped by guards and fellow inmates, manages to get ahold of a book on demonology and learns black magic. This enables him to cast a spell as he lays dying, so he can come back to kill again. (By the way, did you ever here a gun go "click, click, click" in a movie instead of "bang!" or something. If you want to see that, then watch this movie, because that's what the gun that kills Mr. Jingles does.)

The ending is really stupid too. A guy who's supposed to be dead somehow miraculously survives and shows up to save the heroine from the cops. Then Mr. Jingles kills the cops. There's nothing even remotely resembling a resolution to the plot. It's like a TV episode that's "To Be Continued," only there's no way in Hell I'd ever watch the next part of this piece of crap. It gets 1 yo-yo, and that's being generous.

Mirror Mirror on My Face...

I picked up a copy of the Mirrormask DVD at K-Mart the other day, and I finally got around to watching it. Seeing as how Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, and the Jim Henson Company were involved, I expected to be stunned, and I was--visually anyway. I'm not so sure about the plot.

The opening scenes, set in the real world, were very boring. Sure, they set up the plot, but still, I just kept hoping the movie would hurry up and get to the good stuff. Once we get to the dream world, or whatever it was, things do pick up. People get attacked by shadows and sphinxes. There are flying books and flying towers. There are queens and evil twins.

I really didn't like the ending at all. Sorry, Neil, but "She woke up and found that it had all been a dream," is never a good ending. Tacking on an "or was it?" doesn't really improve things at all.

Still, as I said, the movie is visually stunning. This makes it well worth seeing despite the surprisingly weak plot. I'll give it 3.5 out of 5 helpful books.

An amateurish piece of crap

Normally, I don't review movies very often, but when I rent one that is a god-awful piece of crap, I feel obligated to warn people against (if I ever rent something that is unexpectedly great, I'll probably review that too). Anyway, this past weekend,
I rented several movies, one of which was Dead Life.

This is the most amateurish movie I have ever seen. The acting ranged from horrible to mediocre. The film seemed to have been shot on an old-fashioned home-movie camera, by someone who'd never held a camera before. The sound was so bad in spots that the dialogue was indecipherable. The lighting was poor, as there were several scenes where it was either too dark or too light to see properly. The writing was just horrible, with a nonsensical plot and dialogue that sounds like it was written by a high school student. Don't think that the movie was completely terrible, they seem to have actually spent some money on the gore make up. Unfortunately, that was the only thing they seem to have put any money or effort into.

Stay away from this movie. I give it 1 yo-yos.

A very, very bad movie...

Okay, before I write about the new Harry Potter book, I'd like to warn you about a very bad movie I had the misfortune to rent called Shadows of the Dead. I was lulled in by the summary on the back:

"A couple's weekend getaway turns into a nightmare after they are stranded in the woods and discover what they assume to be a dead body. The assumption is wrong and John (Jonathan Flanigan) and his girlfriend Jennifer (Beverly Hynds) are infected with a deadly disease that will soon ravage their bodies. With no place to go, and no one to turn to, they are forced to find shelter in a deserted cabin. This is where they'll find safety, but this is also where they'll experience a slow and torturous death. They must come to terms with their inevitable deaths, the temptation to kill others to sustain their own lives, and the consequences of murder. They will cling to one another's love and support, but in the end.... all great love stories end tragically."

Don't be fooled. This movie is more horrible that horrific. The people involved seem to have no idea of the meaning of "dramatic tension." The only really tense part comes in the beginning when the unappealing, young couple are in their car, with a flat tire, in the middle of a dark forest. There is a zombie outside, unfortunately, it is a very stupid zombie (even by zombie standards) and can't be bothered to muster a serious attack (though it does manage to infect the main characters). After that the film is mostly the two main characters sitting around talking about how horrible it is to be a zombie. There is one scene of gratuitous (and fundamentally unsatisfying) violence.

My recommendation is that you should never buy this movie. I would only recommend renting it if you have insomnia. My rating is 1 yo-yo. This movie is only useful as a soporific of a coaster.