Blood Reaper (2003)

A group of friends goes camping for the weekend and meets up with a serial killer in a gas mask.  A guy with a guitar wanders up to the group's campfire the first night, warning them to leave and playing a song he's written about the serial killer.  For some reason, they aren't alarmed.

Lots of nonsensical things happen and there is never any information revealed about the killer or why he is doing the killings.

One Man's Justice (1995)

aka One Tough Bastard

After John North's daughter is killed by a man in federal protection, North decides he will seek justice - which includes teaming up with a drug dealing kid and lots of killing.  Fairly forgettable action flick with a title that should have been used by Steven Seagal.

Marina Monster (2008)

Idiots who fall or are pushed off docks in the marina are eaten by a shark, which consists of a fin in the water.  The people flounder, then submerge.  Yup, shark got 'em.

Meanwhile Earl Molar must call his father Commodore, which leads to a standing joke that will make you want to shoot yourself.  "Father... I mean, Commodore Molar..."  It's endlessly repeated and not funny the first time.

At the beginning of the movie, there are around four minutes of nothing but sailboats in the distance on the water. Then at the end, there are minutes full of a shot of ripples in the water.  Since there are no credits anywhere in the video, I'm assuming this is where they were supposed to go. 

One of the worst movies I've ever seen, and that's saying something.

Raptor Island (2004)

A group of ill-prepared navy seals set out to rescue an elite operative held hostage by terrorists and end up on an island inhabited by dinosaurs.

Oh Lorenzo Lamas, why must your navy seals be so inept?  They have an inflatable boat, but no repair.  They are weighted down with high tech equipment and huge knapsacks, but they do not seem to have anything they need.  

And let's not even talk about the cave full of dinosaurs or the ridiculous female operative, who seems incapable of taking care of herself.   

Warriors of the Wasteland (1982)

aka I Nuovi Barbari

Post-apocalyptic ridiculousness ripe with bad hair, future cars, explosions, laser sounds, big should pads, and a beheading all in the first ten minutes!   This is a combination of fourth rate Mad Max mixed with Megaforce's motorcycles and gangs dressed in white. It would seem like a bad idea to dress in white after the apocalypse, but their outfits are spotless.

The Templars want to kill everyone, while Fred Williamson is a mercenary who helps out our loner hero, Scorpion.  There are cars with bubble tops, a little kid mechanic, a bad guy with a disturbing cod piece, and cars so slow that a woman wearing high heels in sand can out run them.  Yup, everything in the future looks super cheap.

Bad hair and big shoulder pads.

The Gore Gore Girls (1972)

Another Herschell Gordon Lewis film with gore and strip clubs.  Obnoxious detective Abraham Gentry is hired by a newspaper to investigate a series of stripper murders.  Gentry carries a walking stick, has a distinguished mustache, wears a suit, and demands a clean glass when ordering his seltzer water.

The strippers are dispatched by various methods involving gore, such as cleavers, meat tenderizer, and boiling oil.  A woman's liberation group is protesting the strip clubs, and one stripper says the leader of the group has threatened to kill the strippers.  There is also a large insane gentleman who sits at the bar, draws faces on vegetables and then smashes them to bits.

Gentry is too clever for his own good, but does crack me up with the question, "please tell me everything you can about Suzy Creampuff."  Also amusing is the bottle brought to the scene by the killer, which has a label on it that states "Acid, Made in Poland."

The Wizard of Gore (1970)

I don't like gore, but I love Herschell Gordon Lewis's movies.  The music is great and the actors sound like they just came off the stage at a community theater.  Montag the Magician has a delivery similar to Criswell from Plan 9.

Montag's show consists of him telling his audience that they will see live gore on stage, and then asking for a volunteer.  Surprisingly, the audience does not look alarmed.  

When the poor woman gets on stage, Montag butchers her, pulls her guts out, and at the end of the act, shows that it was all an illusion as she doesn't have a mark on her.  Later that night, the woman is found murdered by the same method that Montag used on stage.

A sports reporter, who was at the show with his news reporter girlfriend Sherry, figures out this connection.  His first thought is that a maniac at Montag's shows is following the girls and killing them in the same fashion.  Later he begins to suspect Montag.  His girlfriend is skeptical, as are the police.

After five women are killed after being on stage with Montag, Sherry volunteers to be the next woman who Montag performs his trick on.  When her boyfriend professes his concern, Sherry cluelessly asks, "What can go wrong?"  

There is bad acting all over this film and some of the hairstyles are ridiculous.  Perhaps my favorite moment was when two of the reporters eat at a place called Chicken Unlimited!  Wow, I would totally eat there. With that name, how could you not?

There is a twist ending that I didn't see coming, and which is now cliche.  But at the time I believe it was less common, so is forgivable.

Bite Me (2004)

The owner of a failing strip club stashes a crate of government marijuana in his back room, not realizing that it also contains some strange bugs.  The bugs attack his bartender and strippers, so an exterminator is hired.  The bugs resemble those Cootie kids toys, and are totally unscary.

I'm not a fan of this movie, but my friends thought it was pretty good.  What I liked best about the movie was that the strip club had a giant dinosaur behind it, which didn't figure much into the movie but was amusing nonetheless.

Torso (1973)

aka I Corpi Presentano Tracce di Violenza Carnale

Female students are being strangled and stabbed, but the police have no clues except that the killer has a red and blue scarf.  One co-ed suspects a man she knows until she realizes his scarf is a blue design on red.  I was unaware that they were being so specific in their scarf descriptions.

A few girls decide to go out of town to get away from it all at a big estate overlooking the village. Unfortunately terror follows them and they become the next victims.

I'm not sure what it is about Italian films, but they are so creepy and leave me feeling disturbed and slightly sick when the movie is over.  So although I don't enjoy them, they are quite effective.

This movie also reminded me that CGI has robbed us of all the fantastic falling dummy scenes.  There is nothing better than a body going off a cliff when it's legs bend unnaturally and it's obvious that it is only a lifeless dummy.

Dangerous Worry Dolls (2008)

Eva's life is hell. She's in a woman's prison where the warden hates her.  A few women are beating on her because she won't be their drug mule.  One of the guards is making dirty movies with the prisoners in the basement (and Eva's next).  And her sister no longer wants to bring her daughter to visit and has threatened to take custody away even after Eva is released.

Eva's daughter gives her a gift of a small box of worry dolls.  So before she goes to bed that night, she whispers her worries to the dolls and puts them under her pillow.  The dolls are supposed to take away her worries.  But they didn't mention that it would be by crawling into her ear at night, living in a huge pimple on her forehead, and taking over her brain.

The most ridiculous thing about this film is that the pimple on Eva's forehead becomes this massive thing growth and no one seems to notice.  People have conversations with her as if there is nothing wrong.  If someone I saw everyday had a dinner roll sized pimple in the middle of their forehead and it wasn't there yesterday, I'd have to say something.

There's really only one active worry doll in the film.  All it does is crawl through her ear, and then stick it's head out of the pimple on her forehead.  Even worse, it has this high pitched voice that is so silly, you'll laugh.

And the whole thing with Carl the prison guard is just plain embarrassing, but what else would you expect from a Charles Band film.

Blood Beat (1985)

It's Christmas - time for the family to gather and celebrate the holidays to a Casio soundtrack.  Gary goes hunting in the woods while wearing a walkman. Seems like a bad idea, but he does manage to live through it and bag a deer.

As Gary engages in way too much deer gutting (bleech!), Ted and Dolly arrive home from college.  As they exchange greetings of love in front of the dead deer, Ted introduces his girlfriend Sarah, who he has invited home without telling anyone.  

Mom is an odd woman who looks like Cher if she'd never had plastic surgery.  She paints strange abstract art, is known to go into trances, and was expecting Sarah even though Ted didn't tell anyone he was bringing her.  Mom even has a present for Sarah, even though she stares at her as if she hates her when they first meet.

Sarah, who has one of the worst mullets ever seen in film, is a very odd girl.  She gets freaked out by Mom's paintings and sees a trunk with a samurai suit and sword next to her bed.  When the family goes hunting, Sarah screams, becomes solarized and runs off, eventually barreling full tilt into a gut shot stranger who bleeds on her and then dies.

Sarah's room becomes electrified, the family starts getting mad at her, the samurai stalks people in town, and we hear the blood beat, da dum da dum like a heart.  Heartbeat, it's a bloodbeat.

Gary's hand becomes electrified, Mom uses her powers to try to make the evil go away, food flies out of the cabinets to attack Gary, Ted and Dolly hide in the closet, Dolly screams too much and Sarah is a huge part of the problem.  Then it ends.  Huh?  Wtf?!?  What just happened?  They don't explain anything!

Out of Reach (2004)

Former government agent turned survivalist and animal activist William Lansing becomes pen pals with a thirteen year old orphan girl in Europe who is sold to a villainous fencer who traffics in young girls. 

I know Seagal wants to show his sensitive side, hence his bonding with small children in all of his movies.  But there is something super creepy about the fifty plus year old Seagal writing to a thirteen year old girl, and it's even creepier that she's an orphan.

This is another in the long line of Seagal movies where it looks like he's wearing a bad Bela Lugosi wig and his voice is partially dubbed by someone who sounds nothing like him.  It's confusing.

Bram Stoker's Burial of the Rats (1995)

Wow, this movie should have been called Bram Stoker's Boobs and Rats.    The plot follows Bram Stoker as he is kidnapped by a band of women who hate men. They are led by Adrienne Barbeau, who also controls the rats by playing her rat pipe.

The rats can pick a man clean in seconds, leaving only a gleaming white skeleton, which comes in useful to the man hating, rat loving women.

Bram is scheduled to be killed, but somehow avoids it, falls in love with one of the women, and starts becoming a favorite of the queen after she reads his well written prose.  In his initiation, he the hair on his chest looks like a question mark or a seven.  I truly have no idea whether he has odd chest hair or has been strategically shaved. 

When the military attack the rat women, there is grass on the ground, but when Bram crawls out afterwards the landscape is covered with snow. Huh?

Also, wouldn't a band of women prefer some sort of entertainment other than naked dancing girls?

Doll Graveyard (2005)

When Sophie breaks a vase, her abusive father forces her to dig a grave for her dolls in the backyard.  As she is climbing out of the hole, she slips and falls backwards into it.  Rather than seeing if she is okay, her father buries her with the dolls to cover up the accident. What a great dad.

Cut to current day, where a father and his two teenagers are living in the house.  The son, Guy, finds one of the dolls poking out of ground, and as he is an action figure collector, he cleans up the doll and displays it in his room.

While dad is out on his first date, DeeDee invites some girl friends over to drink and smoke pot.  Two overbearing jocks decide to crash the party and tie up Guy in the process.  Then the dolls go nuts and Sophia's spirit starts taking over Guy.  The teens are idiots as they continue to stay in the house after the killings start and neglect to call for help until several of them are already dead.

Another Charles Band movie in the tradition of the Puppet Master films - small dolls killing people with their small weapons.  The creepiest one is the doll with the jagged mouth, ick!

Decadent Evil II (2007)

Sugar and Dex are back, and with Morella gone, try to track down the next head of the bloodline.  Once again, they end up in a vampire strip club with a mystery bloodsucker closing in on 10,000 kills and all the power that it brings.

With even less of a story than the first one, we boringly watch Dex and Sugar bumble their way through another evil bloodsucking strip club - it's so much less entertaining than that sounds.

Decadent Evil (2005)

Beginning with footage from a previous film to explain the back story, such as it is, the plot involves Morella, a vampire who runs a strip club.  When she hits 10,000 kills, she will become the leader and ruler of all those she's bitten.

She has two vampire strippers, Sugar and Spyce, who help her procure victims.  But Sugar is really a good vampire who has fallen in love with a mortal.  Morella warns her off mortals as she once loved a mortal who cheated on her.  But she got him back by turning him into a little creature that she keeps in a cage in her room.  

Not a good movie by any means, the puppet in the cage is fairly useless.  It just makes little whiny noises and at one point manages to crawl up on the bed with naked chick about to be killed.  From the ending and the video of behind the scenes, the film makers were way too enamored with the rutting puppets.  It's probably only funny if you're there when they film it... and maybe even that is giving them too much credit.

Wicked Little Things (2006)

Hey, another horror film about miners!  Yet this one has a twist because it's about children ghost zombie miners. 

A widow and her children move into an old family home which has been abandoned for years. Unfortunately it's in a mining town where there was a collapse at the mine that killed the child miners inside.  Now they roam the woods at night, tearing people apart. 

At first I didn't find the children scary at all. But as the film goes on, the group of zombie ghost child miners gets larger and their eyes get blacker.  By the end the swarm of dead childrenwith black eyeballs running through the night woods carrying picks is really creepy - other than the bad wigs on some of the kids. And when the kids kill, blood flies into the air as if they're beating on puddles.

While an interesting concept,  but there are too many questions left unanswered.

1. how can anyone move their children to a house that hasn't been lived in for twenty years without ever checking it out to make sure it is actually inhabitable?  She didn't make sure the utilities were working, that it was clean, that it had any usable furniture, or that the skeleton key works in the lock.  Plus she only brought a couple of suitcases. 
2. when the mother keeps finding the front door open in the middle of the night, she seems totally unconcerned as to how it got open.  She doesn't check on her daughters or check to see if someone else is in the house. Way to go, mother of the year!
3. the townsfolk know to stay out of the woods and don't go out after dark, yet the plumber does not leave before dark and the teenagers go parking in the woods.
4. why are the kids indiscriminately killing everyone they see? how do they discern who is descended from the mine owner and who is from a mining family? why have they become cannibals and how does giving them a butchered pig help keep them from killing?
5. when the mother is looking for Emma, she goes into the mine to find her.  But she has to walk through cobwebs, so obviously no one has gone in there for years.
6. if a lawyer or real estate agent looked at the deed, then shouldn't they have been able to tell her it is a miner's deed rather than actual ownership of the land?

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Years ago on Valentine's Day, some miners left their posts to head off to the dance and there was an explosion and cave in that killed some miners.  Since that day, no one in the town has celebrated February 14th - until now.

The young folk in town decide that it's time to have a Valentine's dance. But when the decorations go up, the mayor gets a human heart in the mail and promises of a massacre unless he cancels the festivities.

The young miners and their dates are outraged and decide to hold the dance anyway at the local mine owned by TJ's father.  As the young folk blow off steam at their drinking, dancing, sexing party, some of the group goes into the mine to get romantic and scare the girls.  Unfortunately there's a killer who knows the mine and he's after anyone having a good time.

This is one of the better slashers of the early 80s.

Dead Silence (2007)

After a ventriloquist's dummy mysteriously shows up on his doorstep and his wife is murdered, Jamie goes back to his hometown where he delves into the legend of Mary Shaw, a vaudevillian ventriloquist who was murdered and buried with her dolls.  

Oh sweet jesus, why are ventriloquist dummies so freakin' scary?  Mary Shaw and her wall of dummies was unnerving and I slept with the lights on after I watched this.  It's not that it's the scariest thing you'll ever see, it's what your imagination does with it.  Plus the look on the victims faces and the end of the film are disturbing.  

Honestly, if a ventriloquist dummy ever shows up unannounced on my doorstep, I am not bringing it into my house.  I have also emphatically told my friends that they can never buy me a ventriloquist dummy, (which they had considered for comedic effect.)

Evil Bong (2006)

A nerd moves in with three stoners who buy a mail order bong that turns out to be filled with evil and a strip club.  So basically this move is bout pot and boobs.

That stupid looking thing on the cover is actually the evil bong.  Although it talks, it's mouth can hardly move, which makes one wonder why they bothered to make it move at all.  

Miner's Massacre (2003)

A group of friends head out to the dessert to look for a secret cache of gold that was hidden years ago by an evil miner.  In their pursuit of this treasure, they run into the ghost of the miner, complete with pick axe and killing anyone who comes anywhere near him.  Luckily you won't care as all the characters are annoying and unlikable. 

The makeup on the miner is as bad as the cover makes it appear.  The movie has cameo's by Richard Lynch, Karen Black, John Phillip Law, and Martin Kove.  

The only amusing thing about the film is that the gold in the mine is already processed.  

Axe 'Em (2002)

Friends go to an old farm house for the weekend and a machete killer shows up.  Yes, that's right, the Axe 'Em killer uses a machete.   I guess no one involved with the movie had an axe they could borrow.  

This is cheap movie making at it's worst.  The sound appears to have been done with the in-camera mic and lots of the dialogue is completely unintelligible.  

There is a lot of food eating in this film.  So much eating that I suspect they got free food from restaurants in exchange for promising to eat it on camera.  It's really ridiculous.

This is just bad, bad, bad.  There are pointless scenes that go nowhere, an rrrrrr sound like out of Young Frankenstein, and you can even hear the director yell "cut" at one point before the scene ends.  Truly horrible.

Flight of the Living Dead (2007)

Scientists transport their newest experiment - a virus which brings flesh back to life and a donor body - on a commercial airline.  It's our pilots last flight before he retires to happily fulfill his dreams with his wife.  Death sentence confirmed, sir.

When the flight hits a storm, the crate in the cargo hold starts to leak and the guard in the hazmat suit doesn't notice until the body in the crate is reanimated.  Even then the idiot guard manages to shoot out the plane's communications rather than the raving zombie in front of him.

As zombies take over the plane, a small group tries to survive by banding together.  Two of the men have guns as one is an air marshall and the other was a lawman escorting a convict to a trial.

The screeching zombies sound like Pterodactyls, there is tin foil on the cargo area walls, the floors are cardboard thin, the air vents are big enough to crawl through, and surprisingly you can stuff about five zombies behind a plane's bathroom mirror.  

Biggest mistake of all?  Opening the cockpit door and letting in your sickly looking co-pilot when the plane is overrun by zombies.

Petrified (2006)

An alien mummy wanders around a hospital for nymphomaniacs looking for his hand and sucking the life out of anyone in his way, while a federal agent on an antique deal gone wrong tries to track down the alien.

The mummy aspect is portrayed by wrappings that are so  forgettable that I forgot it was a mummy as well as an alien.

I'm not a big Full Moon fan and this movie didn't do anything to change that.

Brain of Blood (1972)

Amir, the dictator of a small European country, is near death and arranges with a US doctor to transplant his brain into a young body.  Amir must be shipped to the US within a certain number of hours after death in order to have the transplant be a success.  This begs the question, why didn't Amir just travel before he died, thus relieving the question of whether the doc would have enough time to complete the transplant.

Once dead, Amir is wrapped in tin foil and his body placed in the care of his nehru jacketed advisor, Dr. Robert Nigserian.  Robert delivers Amir's corpse to crazy old brain guy, Dr. Lloyd Trenton.  Lloyd will be assisted by his twisted little dwarf sidekick and has sent his ward Gor out to look for a body for Amir's brain.

As is always the case when you send a retarded mutant to find a suitable freshly dead body, Gor causes a burglar to fall off a fire escape and break necessary bones, thus rendering the body useless.  As the allotted time for transplant is almost up and no body is available, wacky Lloyd decides to use the powerful, yet mutated Gor as the donor body.  Hilarity ensues.

Directed by Al Adamson, this is a mess of a movie.  It runs from boring to ridiculous, and all points in between.  There are some decent chase scenes as Robert chases a thug across rooftops and through the city.  

Skinwalkers (2006)

It's werewolf vs. werewolf, which is not as exciting as you would think.  There are two opposing groups of werewolves and both are interested in the fate of Timothy, a thirteen year old boy who holds to the key to their existence or extinction.

There is a prophecy that when the moon turns blood red and Timothy turns thirteen, the werewolf curse will end.  So the nice werewolves protect Timothy as they want to become normal again.  The bad werewolves look like something out of a biker movie, enjoy their wolfy power, and like to kill.  Thus they want  to kill Timothy.

As usual per this type of movie, Timothy's mother is clueless and incredibly annoying.

Frankensteins Castle of Freaks (1974)

Dr. Frankenstein experiments on a caveman who was killed while running around the countryside.  A creepy dwarf who was kicked out of the castle teams up with another cavemen to fight the doctor's reanimated caveman.  While this is going on, the doctor's daughter and her friends visit the castle for a ribald romp.  Very weird.

Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001)

Gun-toting Burt is back to take on the next wave of graboids and shriekers that threaten the small town of Perfection.  The town folk are using the graboid legend as a basis for tourism when new monsters show up.  As in Tremors 2, there is another mutation which results in flying monsters.  Luckily Burt is still there with his arsenal and the town bands together to fight the monsters.  

Other than Michael Gross as Burt, there are no main characters from the previous films, and is a step down from first two films.

Tremors II: Aftershocks (1996)

Mexico is overrun with graboids and Earl heads south with a new sidekick hoping to make some money.  Things go well at first with tried methods for dispatching of the monsters, but there has been an evolution and now there are also monsters known as shriekers who can see body heat.  This isn't as good as the original film, but is an okay sequel.

The Island (2005)

This movie blatantly rips off the 1979 movie The Clonus Horror, which was skewered by MST3K.  You can find reviews that compare the similarities, and they are staggering.

The plot is the same - a colony of clones is groomed for rich bastards who can afford to pay for replacement body parts. When the clones bodies are needed, they are told they have won the lottery and will be shipped out to live a wonderful life on "the island."

One clone discovers something from outside their compound, which leads to more discoveries and the horror of the truth. The clones escape to try to tell their sponsor what is really going on, assuming that they will be horrified and stop the death of the clones.  Huge gap in the reasoning since the person has paid to have this clone grown in case they need the body parts.

Fade to Black (1980)

Eric Binford is obsessed with the movies. His room is plastered with movie posters, he works at a movie company, and he has a movie projector in his room where he spends his nights watching classic films projected on the bedroom walls.

Eric's obsession is the only thing he has going for him.  He has no friends, his co-workers pick on him, and his wheelchair bound aunt constantly belittles him, reminding him that he destroyed her life. The movies are the only things in his life that don't disapprove of him.

After repeated abuse, Eric snaps and begins killing those who have tormented him.  For each kill he takes on the persona and costume of a classic movie character.

Dennis Christopher does a fantastic job portraying a range of emotions from vulnerability to rage, making you feel sorry for Eric and scared of him.

Black Demons (1991)

aka Demoni 3

A brother, sister, and her boyfriend head into Brazil to study voodoo.  The brother attends a voodoo ceremony and secretly records it.  

While traveling, their jeep breaks down in the middle of nowhere and they meet a couple of hikers, who happen to be renting a plantation home a short distance away.  

The brother goes to the plantation's cemetery, plays the voodoo tape and awakes a group of slave zombies who are seeking revenge.

It takes awhile for them to figure out there is evil afoot. When they try to escape in the jeep, the lunkhead boyfriend somehow drives off the road.  Then the brother slashes all the tires, which oddly enough are fine the next day.

Terrible, terrible acting in this one and some accents that are hard to understand.  The zombies are decent for a voodoo movie, but the best thing about the movie is the cover art.

Miami Vice (2006)

I don't know why there are so many movies based on old tv shows.  If the show was good, there is no need to remake it. Similarly if it was bad, there is no need to remake it.  So stop. Just stop.  Is there nothing else they can think up?  Are there no original thoughts in their heads?  Can they not think of names for two other characters?  As per usual, once they've updated the characters, they may as well have started with new ones.

Crockett and Tubbs spout terrible dialogue, keep us in the dark about what is going on, and run around with guns in this horribly disjointed mess.

  

Weasels Rip My Flesh (1979)

This is the type of movie that I love.  Made on 8mm film by  high school students, it's low budget fun with a giant mutant weasel.  The acting isn't great and neither is the script, but it's got a certain charm to it. Plus it's from a time when it was rare for kids to have the equipment necessary to make a film.

After being bitten by an animal, two kids throw some radioactive liquid down a  weasel hole, which in turn causes a gigantic, mutated, rabid weasel to begin wreaking havoc on the town.  There is ample gore for a homemade movie as arms fly, people are attacked, and giant weasels are hit by cars.

Watch for the scene where they find a metal door opening up from a hill in the ground and then cut to the group climbing into a room via a cellar window.  It's creative, but doesn't fool anyone.

Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust (2008)

A box of pastries delivered to a movie studio inexplicably contains the Gingerdead Man, who looks quite disgusting when thought of as something that could be eaten.  No one notices this massive icky cookie, even when he starts tromping around the studio on a killing spree.

There are many in-jokes and references as the plot involves a the filming of a low budget horror picture.  I'm not a Full Moon fan, but the idea of a killer gingerbread man is pretty funny.

The Majorettes (1986)

The movie starts out as a slasher when the high school majorettes keep getting murdered.  Then after revealing the killer about 2/3 of the way through the film, it changes over to an action movie with the high school quarterback becoming a one man army of vengeance against local drug dealers and thugs.  It veers so violently off course that you'll forget that there is even a killer who is still running loose.

To sum it up, it's another film directed by Bill Hinzman with subpar acting and dialogue.  This is only of interest for those who wish to see every 80s slasher flick.

Touch of Her Flesh (1967)

Richard's wife is a real winner.  While he's at work she cheats on him in a long, tame 1960s sex montage.  When Richard comes home unexpectedly and walks in on her, his horror and our boredom force him wordlessly out the door and into the street where he is hit by a car.

Richard ends up with an eyepatch and a wheelchair, ranting endlessly about his hatred of women and his need to kill hookers, who he insists die naked in public.  Oh sweet Richard... sweet, crazy, murderous Richard.

His killing spree starts when he puts slow acting poison on some roses and sends them to a topless dancer.  After being priced by a poisoned thorn, she goes back on stage and slowly collapses.  Yup, it's a long way to go for the first death.

The film features nudity, tons of hairspray, a lack of dialogue, death by blowgun, and a woman who puts straightening her hair above making sure she is safely away from the killer.

The Wicker Man (2006)

Detective Edward Malus gets a letter from his ex fiance Willow asking for his help in finding her daughter Rowan, who been missing for two weeks. She wants Malus to fly to Summersisle off the coast of Washington.

Malus hasn't heard from Willow since she walked out on him without explanation eight years ago. Unlike the majority of the population who would totally blow off such a letter, Malus confirms his loser status by flying up there at his own expense.

Malus bribes a pilot to take him to Summersisle, which turns out to be a an island inhabited by a strange beekeeping cult of women. Disturbing enough on it's own that he is stuck on this island full of women who don't like outsiders (especially men) until the supply copter comes back, but he also has a deadly bee allergy. How convenient to end up on Bee Island.

The island colony is run by Sister Summersisle. The school teaches that women are superior to men, and men are idiots whose only usefulness is breeding. Yes, Detective Malus ought to be really effective at investigating Rowan's disappearance.

When he starts his inquiries, he is told conflicting stories. One is that Willow never had a child. The other is that her child died. Willow insists that both are lies. In the course of tracking down the real story, Malus manages to get locked in an underground water tunnel, bumps into a beehive, and runs into a field of hives while being chased by a swarm. Malus turns out to confirm the teachings of the island as he is quite the idiot.

Malus only brings one suit, yet it is always clean, and his version of emotion is yelling. Then the ending is one of those "six months later" type of endings that will make you say aaarggh!! This is one terrible film.

The Reaping (2007)

Katherine, a former missionary who currently teaches at a University, is called in to investigate a small southern town whose river is said to have turned to blood.  Katherine is a skeptic but upon having water from the river analyzed, she finds it is blood.

The locals feel it's the work of a young girl who is said to have murdered her brother in the river.  The question becomes is the girl evil or is something else going on in the town.  

Lots of religion, a few good scares, well shot, but not anything special.

Zombie Aftermath (1982)

aka The Aftermath

Astronauts who have been unable to establish any contact with Earth for some time, crash their spaceship into the ocean.  The two who survive the landing come to shore in a scene right out of Planet of the Apes, and wander off into Los Angeles to find human contact.

The two decide to live in an abandoned mansion and eventually meet women and children with which to form surrogate families.  I guess the apocalypse messes with your emotions because the lead character claims he is in love after having known this woman for less than a day.

The villains in this film are not zombies, as would be expected from the title, but a motorcycle gang who do the disturbing things that bikers do.  

As for zombies, there aren't any - unless you include the three or four mutants who ineptly try to corner a young boy.  But since they don't look or act like zombies and are only briefly in the film, I can safely say this movie is severely lacking in zombies.

The score is totally inappropriate as it sound like something out of an old cartoon. The acting is on par with someone performing in their own backyard, and the writing is just plain bad.

My favorite scene in the whole movie is near the beginning as the astronauts come up the skeletons at a beach party.  They decide to raid their belongings and take anything useful, coming away with a machete and kerosene.  Surely that was the most dangerous beach party ever.

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005)

Years ago at a school dance, a girl named Mary was accidentally killed by a brutish jock who was mad when she refused to make out with him.  No one ever knew what happened to her, but legend has it if you say her name three times she'll come to get you.  So three high school girls decide to test the odd's and carnage ensues.

Anyone who is afraid of what might be hiding under their bed -and I am - will get totally creeped out by the scenes of Mary crawling out from under the bed.  Otherwise I'm not sure if there's anything that would be all that scary.

Smiley Face (2007)

Jane is an aspiring actress and a total stoner. While stoned, she eats all her roommates cupcakes, not realizing they are laced with pot.  The rest of the film is spent following Jane's adventures as she tries to get to her audition, bake another batch of pot cupcakes for her roommate, and pay the drug dealer who she is supposed to meet at a pro-hemp festival in Venice.  Needless to say everything goes horribly wrong.

I got sucked into this one by a scene posted on Youtube in which Jane ponders why a former professor has a large framed  picture of corn.  She concludes that people frame pictures of things they love and decides she'll hang a picture of lasagne on her wall, which then leads to a President Garfield reference.  For some reason, I am a sucker for humor regarding lesser known Presidents of the 1800s. Oh actually it's probably because I have a history degree. But I digress...

As the film progressed, I found myself less and less enchanted with it, and ended up feeling disappointed.  There were some funny scenes and the opening was good, but overall it left me feeling like I wished I hadn't spent the time to watch it.  Anna Faris did a great job as Jane and there were some funny scenes, but it just didn't hold up over all.

Doomsday (2008)

God damn these post-apocalyptic movies - can any of them exist without the Mad Max mohawks and vehicles? Or what about Escape From New York? The lead character even has an eye patch!? Oh movie, what will I do with you?

Twenty five years earlier a virus wreaked havoc in Scotland, killing those who contracted it, and causing England to make a massive wall to keep the plague from spreading into it's cities. As time passed, it was assumed that everyone outside the wall had died. Within the past few years, cameras set up to take aerial photos of city streets in Glasgow started to show people.

The virus has broken out in London, so the government decides to send Major Eden Sinclair outside the wall to Glasgow. Once there, she and her ridiculously small team has 48 hours to find out if Dr. Marcus Kane - a scientist working in Glasgow at the time of the outbreak - discovered a cure for the virus, or how else these people managed to survive.


For military personnel, these people are pretty stupid and end up being attacked by Sol and his mohawked Mad Max tribe. There is even a strange dance number in the middle of the torture of the soldiers, where Sol and some girls do a sort of burlesque/vaudeville act and dance stupidly to 80s songs by Fine Young Cannibals, Adam and the Ants, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. And the Mad Max crowd goes wild...yay. Wow, they are really hard up for entertainment if this is acceptable. And don't tell me it's the apocalypse. Just because there's an apocalypse doesn't mean you have to settle for sub-par jokers on stage doing a crappy act.

It starts off well and does have Malcolm McDowell in it, but it goes downhill pretty quickly and ends up leaving you cold.