By Jake Dee

Director: Eli Roth
Starring: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd
Released: 2002

Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever focuses on a group of college kids who retreat to a secluded woodland as a way to blow off pre-graduation steam. We’ve got the tough posing pretty boy named Jeff (Joey Kerns), the crude smack talking Burt (James DeBello), and the ultra hairy but emasculated sissy boy Paul (Rider Strong). The women, offering little range outside their hair color, are the blonde Karen (Jordan Ladd, who has become a horror regular) and the brunette Marcy (the beautiful Cerina Vincent). The quintet hops in a pick up and peels down the road, we instantly get the feel of a campy teen ’80s slasher flick. All the caricatures are represented! Only this isn’t your typical slasher, but more about the contagion of a deadly flesh eating virus.

continue reading "Cabin Fever Review"

By Jake Dee

Director: Neil LaBute

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn

Released: 2006

Nic Cage is one of the few bankable stars left in Hollywood. Demanding a whopping $20 million per picture (sometimes in excess of), his films can still generate quite a box office stir. He fills seats as they say, and as reward for it, studios spit piles of money at him. Not every film of his hits, mind you, but by and large he does pretty well. I can’t figure it out really, the guy has played about three variations of the same role for the last decade plus. Slight variations at that! Ever since he panned Oscar gold in 1996 for his work as a suicidal drunk in Leaving Las Vegas, we’ve seen him play tepid roles in flicks like Face/Off, Con Air, City of Angels, 8MM, Snake Eyes, etc. etc. Then, by the turn of the century, Cage made an interesting departure in off beat films like Adaptation, Matchstick Men, even the Weather Man, to a degree. But alas, the real Nic Cage stood up in 2006, first with Ghost Rider and never more apparent than in Neil LaBute’s remake of The Wicker Man.

continue reading "The Wicker Man (2006) Review"

By Jim McFadden

For everyone who thought a thriller based on the pagan rituals practiced on remote Scottish islands would be interesting, The Wicker Man is an 88 minute rebuttal. Or, if you managed to get your hands on the “essential” UK Director’s cut, a 100 minute rebuttal. Either way, I think when the film’s over, you’ll be a believer.

Although this movie was remade starring Nicholas Cage, I decided to review the original because, well, it doesn’t star Nicholas Cage.

continue reading "The Wicker Man (1973) Review"

By Jake Dee

Director: Louis Morneau

Starring: Lou Diamond Phillips, Dina Meyer

Released: 1999

Many in the film industry believe 1999 was a renaissance year. An indelible shift had been marked in Hollywood by a slew of great films released during those twelve months. Movies became edgy again, challenging; doing so in a manner that shook the status quo, both personally and on the level of entertainment. Directors seemed to bear a distinct voice, impressively finding a way to translate it to the screen. That year we saw films like American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club, Magnolia, Three Kings; the list is extensive. Bats, unfortunately, is NOT one of those films!

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By Lee Arcuri

There are certain movies that pretty much demand a drinking game be involved. If you’re on the lookout for a new one, this is your flick. Or if you and your friends are hanging out and perhaps you all, for no particular reason that I would ever endorse in print, have the munchies. Or, you know, like maybe you have a severe injury, and your doctor prescribed in a totally legal fashion some powerful pain killers. And you are taking a high dose of said pain killers. Or maybe you drank some cough syrup with codeine in it. Any of these circumstances would be a great time to rent this movie.

continue reading "Killer Pad Review"

By Edward Staiger

Directed by Gerard Kikoine

Starring Anthony Perkins, Glynnis Barber

This isn’t a “clever” Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde meets Jack the Ripper thriller, this is a “clever” Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde IS Jack the Ripper thriller. And, as portrayed by a typically deranged and idiosyncratic Anthony Perkins (Hitchcock’s Psycho, plus the franchise that followed), the filmmakers could have thrown in Count Dracula and Boy George as well.

continue reading "Edge of Sanity (1989) Review"

By Lee Arcuri

Hostel: Part II has two penises in it. I just thought I’d start with that.

I’m pretty sure the first Hostel was for boys. About 75% of that movie is just a couple of dudes drinking and scoring with hot chicks, all of the nudity is of girls, etc.

So Part II was made for the girls. The main characters are girls, a girl gets to be the hero, etc. Also, there are two penises. Two. One right near the beginning, and one right at the end. They’re like bookends. All this for you, ladies.

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By David Grant

From Dusk Til Dawn has a special place in my heart. Not for its brilliance, but rather the comedy that was never meant to be.

Two bank robbers played by George Clooney (Seth) and Quentin Tarantino (Richie) kidnap a priest named Jacob played by Harvey Keitel on their way to Mexico.

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By Edward Staiger

FROGS (1972)
Directed by George McCowan
Starring Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark

THE NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972)
Directed by William F. Claxton
Starring Janet Leigh, Stuart Whitman, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley

By 1972 the pre-Jaws, pre-Spielberg “creature features” community had exhausted outer space and all the animals then guest-starring on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom as source material to threaten humankind. What could they come up with next? Another 50-foot Woman? As if combing the scalp of the cosmos, they scraped together what became Frogs and The Night of the Lepus - that is, bottom-of-the-barrel reptiles, mutant bunny rabbits and the usual roster of Hollywood has-beens.

continue reading "Lame-2-For-1!: Frogs (1972) and The Night Of The Lepus (1972) Reviews"

By Lee Arcuri

I can think of a great many positive things about this movie. For instance, there was a six-shooter packing Grandma Werewolf who was fun for a few minutes. My grandmother only knits. Let’s see, what else?

continue reading "Skinwalkers Review"

By Lee Arcuri

As I’m sure you’ve already guessed from the title, Blood & Chocolate is about a girl who can turn into a wolf.

Let me give you some insight into how the title of this movie was chosen.

Marketing Guy#1: So, we’re thinking a movie called “Blood” will really get the male demographic interested.
Marketing Guy#2: Wait, what about the chicks? Girls don’t like blood.
Marketing Guy#1: What do girls like? Flowers? Backrubs?
Marketing Guy#2: Hmmm… “Blood and Foot Massages.”
Marketing Guy#1: No wait, I got it. “Blood and Chocolate.”
Marketing Guy#2: Yeah!
(high five)

continue reading "Blood and Chocolate Review"

By Lee Arcuri

Hollywood has definitely had an effect on my video game preferences. I now seem to only enjoy video games that have no potential for a film adaptation. Games like Pong, or Minesweeper, or even my calculator application on my laptop. Honestly, when Air Hockey: The Movie comes out, you’ll be able to find me taking a nap. In my oven.

continue reading "Silent Hill Review"

By Edward Staiger

Directed and edited by Anthony M. Lanza

Starring Bruce Dern, Pat Priest, Casey Kasem

Less incredible than stupefying. This “drive-in” B-movie now-considered-cult-classic contains what’s probably the most ludicrously inappropriate theme song in movie history, a romantic ballad dripping with platitudes and aptly called “Incredible.” Sung fearlessly three or four times during the picture by somebody named Bobbie Boyle like a martyr about ready to be sacrificed to the title monster or like a singer who had absolutely no idea that her vocal was going to be attached to anything quite as trashy as The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, the whole shebang, like Bobbie’s rendition, is played straight-faced, serious. And beyond that, because that’s the norm and charm of B-horrors of this period, there’s also something sordid afoot. This keeps the viewer properly voyeuristic — in effect, the viewer becomes two-headed as well, one head fixed on the sordid, the other on the overriding silliness.

continue reading "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971) Review"

By Alex Del Negro

There is a common problem I notice whenever I watch any sort of zombie movie. In most cases, it is the clear intent of the filmmaker to scare the audience through images of vicious, shambling, brain-thirsty undead; and yet, no matter how frightening a world this zombie apocalypse promises us, I nevertheless can’t help but feel somewhat excited for all the inventive, stress-relieving zombie killing I’ll be able to do when this whole thing goes down.

continue reading "Resident Evil: Extinction Review"

By Alex Del Negro

“Dracula 3000″ is proof positive that there is in fact a God, and that he hates us all.

…I fear I may have offended some people with that statement. Please allow me to explain.

One can only conclude, from the fact that “Dracula 3000″ exists at all, that the film thereby demonstrates a certain supernatural influence in its creation. No mere mortal could possibly have conceived and constructed something so terrible, so monumentally torturous, that it occupies a realm of failure altogether outside the lexicon of modern human experience. That this film was somehow approved, funded, and produced by a group of people who believed the work to be a financially sound investment only further demonstrates that either this movie was released through an act of a vengeful, wrathful Deity, or Satan; the latter of which was supposedly created by our favorite father figure who then summarily failed to stop his evil design, thus indirectly proving my point.

continue reading "“Dracula 3000;” The 3000th Greatest Dracula Film There Is."