Frostbiter (1996)

Two idiot hunters on Manitou Island break a sacred circle of skulls and release the spirit of the Wendigo. Other hunters get stuck on the island in a snow storm and take refuge in the old shack that is within the broken circle. The shapeshifting Wendigo tries to kill them all before they can figure out that they must close the circle to contain it and save themselves.

The music throughout the film is too loud, which makes it really hard to hear the dialogue. There is some claymation like something out of a Ray Harryhausen film.

Arachnid (2001)

A ragtag band of scientists and their nature guides crash land on an island full of spiders when their plane mysteriously stops working. There is a subplot about the female pilot looking for her brother, a navy pilot who has disappeared while flying a new plane.

There is lots of icky spider spit and their webbing looks like cotton candy. The characters aren't too bright. One of the women falls into a hole, something grabs her, and she loses her shoe. A guy then sticks his frickin' head down the hole to retrieve the shoe, real bright.

Oh yeah, and the giant spiders are alien life forms that come from outer space. But don't let that fool you because it's only touched upon and overall the movie is not that interesting.

Thrillkill (1984)

Carly writes programs for video games, which sounds very cool until you realize that it's the early 1980s when computers were the size of a car and games were in he incredibly primitive DOS format. (Do kids today even know what DOS is?)

Carly has just finished programming a new game called Thrillkill. Perhaps this game was cutting edge in 1984, but I find that hard to believe it as it's not even up to the level of something like Berzerk, from the early 1980s.

For the past three years, Carly has been siphoning money from her employer through fake accounts. Caspar, the head of the company, has figured out something is going on and sets out to make Carly pay for her disgressions. Caspar has a voice like Dracula and uses random pauses mid-sentence, kind of like a cross between William Shatner and Bela Lugosi.

The convoluted storyline involves Carly's sister showing up unexpectedly with a friend, a secret password written on a book of matches, and location of the stolen money hidden within the game, which one must play and beat in order to enter the secret password. How inconvenient.

With twists and turns in the storyline, and no one who is actually what they appear to be, there is potential for a good movie. Unfortunately, it's not a very good storyline, or a very good video game. In the words of Thrillkill, "Welcome to Thrillkill, the game that plays you." Uh yeah, right.

Terror in the Swamp (1985)

A professor and his lackey experiment on a Nutria (a small rodent) to produce a large animal that can be hunted for it's giant pelt. The man sized rodent with a tail is running wild in the swamps, which anagers hillbilly brothers Jessie and T-Bob because their traps are being poached.

Rumors of a monster in the swamp prompts the offer of a reward for a fur-bearing animal weighing more than one hundred and fifty pounds. This sends tons of Cajuns into the swamps, riding in boats filled with shotguns and alchohol.

The sheriff decides to send Green Berets to locate the monster. They stomp carelessly through the woods and end up shooting at a kid, which makes one wonder if they are Green Berets due to the color of their hats, rather than any real military training.

There is a crazy swamp lady who laughs too much, T-Bob cries, and a shack explodes during a fight. The Nutria is never seem very clearly as it is too dark in the woods to tell what he looks like, but the one glimpse we do get appears to be a man in a shabby ape suit.

Also there is Officer Bruce, not the brightest guy on the force. When Bruce finds clear mystery liquid in a jug, he sniffs it and takes a big swig. He also decides it is a good idea to spray insecticide on the river where the drunken rednecks are boating during the monster hunt. The clouds of insecticide make it difficult for anyone to see and cause the hillbillys to discharge their guns, drive in circles, and drink even more.,

The Visitor (1979)

Eight year old Katie is an odd, creepy little child who finds a gun in a present box at her birthday, wields it like a lunatic and shoots her Mom, paralyzing her from the waist down. Mom hires housekeeper (Shelly Winters) who knows there is something evil about little spooky Katie. Detective Jake Durham (Glenn Ford) is investigating the birthday party shooting and knows there is something not quite right with Katie. But he doesn't get much done when a bird flies into his car and he promptly dies.

Katie scares everyone except super old Jersey (John Huston), who wears khaki outfits, babysits her, and has come to the US to walk on rooftops in front of a line of bald men holding boxes. While Katie dispatches everyone in her path, Jersey always has the upper hand in their interactions. Katie gets angrier and angrier until, in a scene right out of "Enter the Dragon", Katie chases Jersey into a room of mirrors. Her frustration grows as all she can find is his reflection, and in anger smashes mirror after mirror.

There is only one genuine scare in the film, which is when Mom comes home after leaving Katie in the hospital, but finds her playing Pong in the living room. Oddly enough Mom doesn't seem concerned as to why or how Katie has come home, but apologizes for their fight earlier in the day.

When creepy Katie turns around, she is a monster with light is streaming out of the holes in her face. She pounces on Mom, drags her to the second floor, and then throws her down the stairs. This is when Jersey sends the freakin' birds.

Anticipating the public fury over Jersey's birds of death, the movie ends with happy kids in hot Jesus Heaven, while Katie smiles and gazes about lovingly. To make the point perfectly clear and avoid the lawsuits for emotional trauma, we are then treated to the phrase, "We don't kill kids. We just kill evil." Well played, Jersey....well played.

Rise: Blood Hunter (2007)

Lucy Liu is Sadie, a reporter for a local paper, who stumbles upon a vampire, ends up his next victim, and wakes up in the morgue as a vampire with no idea what's happening. You'd think a vampire who decides to kill the vampires who killed her would make for an exciting plot, but you'd be dead wrong.

The movie is mostly Liu standing, walking, and staring. There is a whole lot of nothing in this movie, and what is there, is slow moving and often pointless. There are flashbacks all over the place and most come on without warning so it may take you a second to realize that the film has cut back to when she was human.

In one scene, she stands on the edge of a bridge, watching the traffic below before deciding to throw herself over the edge. The next thing we see, she is in a bed with bandages on her face, being nursed back to health by a man who says "Welcome to Mexico." So I guess when a vampire falls off a bridge, they land in Mexico. Uh yeah.....

On the plus side Sadie has a crossbow which only takes her 4.3 seconds to load. On the downside, she spends most of her time standing around doing nothing. Adolescent males should note that Liu is naked a few times during the film.

The Quick and the Undead (2006)

Ryn Baskin, a cut-rate, spaghetti western, Clint Eastwood type, collects pinkies from zombies as the US government has a bounty on zombie fingers. His rival, Blythe Remington - a soap opera name if ever there was one - steals Ryn's bag of pinkies, leaves him for dead, and plans to infect people with the zombie virus in order to make more money on pinkies.

The US looks like a spaghetti western, with dusty ghost towns dotting the landscape. Remington and his gang hole up in a huge building which isn't ideal for securing against zombies. Ryn, who is immune to zombie bites because he sucks out the poison, follows them to get his bounty back and havoc ensues.

The zombies are few and far between. While some of the makeup is pretty good, the zombies themselves are fairly lame and appear not to have any idea how to effectively stagger.

Terminal Justice (1995)

When I first looked at the cover, I thought it said Cybertech PhD, which sounded ridiculously awesome!  But alas, it was not to be.  Bobby Chase is  a cop who has night vision eyes due to a tragic eye accident during the war in Russia.  After his old partner is killed, Bobby vows to track down the killer.   

In another part of the plot, Bobby is assigned to protect an actress whose image was used for a virtual reality sex program.  There are threats to kidnap and clone her, so Bobby must be on guard.

Luckily it's 2008 and the police can link right into his night vision eyes so they see everything he does.  Yes, 2008..... a bad choice for a future film as it's not far enough into the future.  The computers of the future are laughable, and all the future technology is embarrassing.

Mutant (1984)

Two brothers end up in a small town where something is amiss. They find a dead body which disappears after they try to report it, making the local sheriff label them as troublemakers.  Then the younger brother disappears.  When the older brother tries to figure out what happened, he discovers that the town has a zombie problem.

Chiller (1985)

In the cryogenic storage chamber there are shuffing feet covered in tin foil. This rouses our guard to investigate, thus finding his replacement who jumps out from behind a storage tank, as well as a leak in one of the containers.

The leaky cylinder contains Miles Creighton, a big league executive who died ten years earlier. His mother couldn't bare to part with him and had him crygenically frozen until such time as the process of bringing the dead back to life had been perfected. Unfortunately the temperature in the container has dropped below the point where he can be refrozen and the only option is to attempt to revive the human popsicle that is Miles.

Thankfully Miles was wrapped in the finest tin foil known to man, thus preventing freezer burn, and doctors are able to revive him. He lingers in a coma until violent convulsions wrack his body, while an inept nurse fails to call anyone to assist him. Luckily it doesn't signal death, but life and Miles is deemed good enough to go home, where he immmediately creeps out his sister and finds that his dog hates him.

Mom declares her zombie son head of the company and he promptly throws out everything the company has done over the past ten years, including charitable activities, church donations, and snuffs out anyone who gets in his way. Even though he's super creepy, Mom worships him and hardly anyone questions what a jerk he is. No one even seems all that unnerved by the fact that he's been dead for the past ten years, which is very odd.

After the family priest figures out that Miles has no soul and Miles tries to rape his sister, Mom's brain starts cranking and she locks him in the freezer, only to send us right back into a loop to the beginning of the film where there are now multiple cryogenic container failures in the storage facility. Uh oh....

There is never any explanation for the tin foil feet in the opening sequence. Also it seems like a major design flaw to have to walk through the cryogenic storage room to get to the security control room. Their architect should be shot.

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

When I think of Richard Burton and James Earl Jones, I think of two really great actors. So how the hell did they get into the mess that is Exorcist II?

While the movie asks if goodness brings evil upon itself, the movie's answer is a convoluted mess of nothing. Instead we get the Synchronizer, in which Father Lamont synchs up with little Reagan MacNeil via a hippie head band adorned with flashing lights. We are also treated to Reagan tap dancing to Lullaby of Broadway in the most disturbing see through hat, intercut with scenes of Father Lamont being chased and hit with stones while on his African trip to find the demon Pazuzu. Since the two are synched, the effect of the stones on Lamont's head causes Reagan to stagger and catapult off the stage during her tap dancing routine.

The film also features hordes of locusts, Dana Plato as a child who can't talk, a psychiatric institute with glass rooms which afford no privacy during treatment, Reagan's house of mirrors, and James Earl Jones in a giant locust suit. How could they go so wrong?

The most memorable moment of this movie is when Father Lamont tries to beat out a fire with a crutch. A crutch?!? How the hell is that going to help? In fact, if Lamont hadn't interfered, perhaps the flaming box of fire would have gone out after incinerating itself.

Instead Lamont's flailing crutch spreads fire throughout the basement passageway until Dr. Tuskin grabs a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. Yes, sad but true - there is a fire extinguisher in the hallway but Father Lamont chooses a crutch as a valid implement of fire fighting.

Nightmare at Noon (1988)

A mute albino in a van filled with computers puts a green glowing substance in a small town's water supply, which turns them into homicidal maniacs. Ken and Cheri Griffiths who are traveling through town in their RV and get trapped in town after the albino's minions turn on some sort of machine that generates a force field around the town. Sheriff George Kennedy and his deputy daughter try to control the town and stop the homicidal townsfolk from killing each other. 

Under Siege (1992)

Steven Seagal is Casey Rybek, a former navy seal who has been busted down to cook status after punching out a commanding officer. He's loved by the Captain and crew, except for a few officers who are sticklers and the irritating Commander Krill, played to annoying perfection by Gary Busey.

It's the Captain's birthday and Rybek is planning a special meal, but Cmdr. Krill locks the troublemaking Rybek in the meat freezer because he has plans of his own - namely flying in a stripper, band, and catering crew. Not the best idea when you're on a battleship carrying nuclear missiles, but no one really questions it.

Before you know it, the entire crew are locked below deck in the foc'sle, courtesy of Cmdr. Krill and the cut throat band mercenaries who came aboard under the guise of musicians and caterers. Led by the the animated Tommy Lee Jones as the currently insane fomer CIA agent William Stranix, the bad guys plan to load the nuclear missiles onto a stolen submarine, then sell them for millions of dollars.

It's a great plan except for one big problem and that hideous problem, such as it were, is Steven Seagal. Rybek's position as the cook belies the fact that he has special forces and counter terrorist training. Cmdr. Krill's disdain for Rybek as well as Rybek's propensity to state, "I'm just the cook," lead hijinks to ensue as Seagal proceeds to kill or maim everyone within a hundred foot radius.Under Siege is a fairly decent action movie and arguably Seagal's last flick before his expanding ego and waistline made his career self-destruct. After watching his recent films, I was stunned at how thin and young he looks here. It's too bad Seagal didn't have a better grip on why it's not a good idea to be in charge of everything on his own movies. If he had people around him who dared to say no, and who he was willing to listen to, then maybe he could have stayed on top of the action film genre.

The House on Skull Mountain

Wow! Check out Skull Mountain, how'd you like to have a house there? An excellent title and cool poster artwork belie the fact that this mediocre film is not so much about super creepy glowing eyed skull mountain, so much as it is about an old dead lady and voodoo. Thus it is a huge disappointment - unless you like voodoo films, which I don't.

Creaky old Pauline Christophe sends letters to her remaining kin, none of whom know her, and promptly kicks the bucket. When her long lost relatives arrive, they find Pauline in the ground and a surly butler who seems upset that the four descendents will be around for the reading of the will.

After the reading, the remaining Christophe's are stalked by death, which makes the living members wonder what the hell is going on. Particulary interested is Andrew, the only white member of the family, played by Victor French. Andrew is an anthropology professor at the University of Maine, and he wants to dig into the family history to figure out where he fits in the family. As he is only a few generations from Pauline, you'd think that would be fairly easy to discover without much research.

As the threat to the family members increases, the question becomes whether Pauline has come back from the grave for her voodoo revenge, or whether it is prehaps her snooty butler, who resents the family and is known to practice voodoo.

Anonymous Rex (2004)

Anonymous Rex proposes that dinosaurs did not become extinct, but currently make up ten percent of the Earth's population. The dinosaurs have developed hologram projections to disguise this fact. But they are able to identify each other by pheromones, particularly when sniffing the back of each others necks.

Dinosaurs have strategically placed themselves throughout society in positions of authority in order to help and protect their own kind. Their human disguises are so effective that they find themselves paying the price of never being able to truly be themselves, a conflicting burden indeed.

Daniel Baldwin, contrary to his usual questionable pseudo-acting, turns in a solid performance as one of two cops that are the main focus of the film. He and his partner discover there has been a rash of Dino-suicides and suspect that there is more to them than it appears, possibly murder.

The Dinosaur Cops (which would have been a much more enticing title for the film) are on the opposite political side from Raul, a dino who advocates unleashing hopped up, caraniverous dinos on the human population. Raul's theory is that this will start a war which will release the dinosaurs from their self-imposed prison of lies.

The film is a decent outing with an interesting idea, as long as you can stand some lame dialogue and cliche plot points.

The Being (1983)

Pottsville is a sleepy little town where nothing ever happens, unless you count the campaign to stamp out smt and the recent rash of random killings. Pottsville also boasts the "most sophisticated dump site in the country," which is something to be proud of, I guess, except that it apparently spawned the gooey icky monster that is killing everyone.

The town sheriff is constantly underwhelmed by the horrible events confronting the town, especially when he is face to face with large piles of goo. Even when the victim is his girlfriend...or wife or hooker. It's never clear what his relationship is to the human sized pile of gelatin in the bed, but since he was starting to take his pants off, he had some sort of intimate relationship with it. To add to the confusion, the sheriff is dating the girl at the local diner, which may be why he doesn't care that much about the monster made mess in his bed.

The town's mayor is involved in the cover up at the dump and is reminiscent of the mayor in Jaws who continues to deny any responsibility or possibility of a problem because it will cost the town lots of money. Once again, a mayor's concern about potential business earnings overrides the need for public safety and the sophisticated dumps place as a monster breeding ground is secure.

Scenes to watch for are: the opening scene with the kid running through the junkyard where day turns to night and back again; the junkyard kid crashing a car trying to escape the monster only to find the monster has somehow hidden in the trunk?!?;and the monster jumping on Martin Landau's back (now that's good movie making!)

Also listen for the music which sounds like someone has let a monster loose on the piano.

Chillers (1987)

Chillers is the story of five strangers stuck in a bus terminal late at night telling each other about their recent nightmares. Most of the actors are not very good and the stories all have fairly predictable outcomes. In fact, we had all seen this movie before, but none of us could remember any of the individual story lines. We didn't even remember the kid whose catchphrase was, "That's not scary." How could that not lodge in your head?

The stranded passengers nightmares are as follows:

1. female swimmer who has sex with dreamy diver who turns out to be dead
   
2. boy on camping trip whose scout leader is wolfy and crazy
   
3. woman in love with newsman on her tv who turns out to be vampire
   
4. guy who can bring the dead back to life with his thoughts accidentally revives psycho killer
   
5. college professor with interest in a local dig is targeted by evil deity in student who visited dig site
   

The concept about the guy who can bring the dead back to life is the most interesting. But there are far too many unanswered questions, among them why does everyone come back looking perfectly healthy and clean in their funeral suit? Also when you call the parents of a dead child to say that you've brought the kid back to life, why wouldn't they immediately hang up the phone? And the parent's actually drive into town to pick up their recently un-deceased kid, and don't seem creeped out by this at all. Yikes!

By far the worst story is the woman who is in love with the local tv newsman. As she stares longingly at the tv, she starts a monologue that begins, "You don't bring me flowers..." which made me think she quoting from the Neil Diamond song of the same name. Thankfully that was not the case, instead she chooses to be even crazier by stating that even though he never thinks about her, she's happy to see him every night on the tv. Then she scares the hell out of every sane viewer by saying one of the stupidest lines ever said with total sincerity, "I love you, newsman!"

The one problem with Hollywood's tendency to cast unnaturally good looking actors, is that when you see people on the screen who look like your next door neighbor, it's unnerving.

Also of note - the guy who can bring people back to life is one of the lead actors in Invasion of the Space Preachers.

The Dark (1979)

The city streets aren't safe after dark, especially when there's a killer with the nickname "The Mangler" on the loose. Mangler has been killing young women, but the blind man that is tip tapping along the dark streets every night better be careful. Look out man! Mangler's on the loose!...unless this is a very clever ruse and the blind man is the Mangler. Hmmmm....

Well that's just a bit too clever I guess, as the writers veer off into the wildly imaginative plot that The Mangler is really a space monster with laser eyes who sort of resembles Frankenstein. His laser eyes can even throw a man across a Monestery into a wall, which leads to the man exploding, woah! Sounds fantastic, but they only do it once.

William Devane plays a father searching for the serial killer that murdered his daughter, and looks like a cross between Steven King and Alice Cooper. With his David Cassidy shag, he feels comfortable walking around drinking coffee while wearing the world's ugliest bathrobe.

I love the dvd cover but the movie lacks excitement. And what's up with the blind guy? He's always tip tapping around the police out on the street during their investigations. Does he have some strange knack for walking near crime scenes? Or is he just completely lost, aimlessly wandering around town trying to figure out where the hell he is?

And what about the ending narration which states that "only the blind have nothing to fear in the dark." Huh? Is this to justify putting a blind guy in the film? Oh my aching brain!

Best dialogue:

"I could make a wild guess, but it would be wild and useless."

"Of the millions of possible alien encounters, man has had his first..."

"Mangler's a zombie.... Mangler's a zombie..." - newsboy on street

Drive Thru (2007)

Orange County's rich teens sure love their gangsta clothes, pool parties, and haunted houses for yearbook fund raising. They also love fast food restaurant Hellaburger, with it's creepy Horny the Clown mascot.

McKenzie and boyfriend Fisher accidentally use a ouija board at the end of their rocking pool party, and unleash a force that keeps leaving clues to let McKenzie know who is going to die next. Unfortunately the clues are so obscure that they aren't at all useful and McKenzie essentially spins in circles with a bag over her head, metaphorically speaking of course.

The first clue was the license plate number of her friends, who left the party early to get food at Hellaburger. It seems like a rich girl such as McKenzie should have better food than Horny the Clown, but I guess since these friends were the ghetto white rappers of Orange County, they needed to get their fast food fix.

Once McKenzie figures out that the kids who are dying all have a connection to her Mom's old high school friends, Mom is forced to reveal her horrible secret, and we're forced to admit that this is way too much into Nightmare on Elm Street territory to be a coincedence.

Killer Clowns are inherently spooky, and a drive thru clown with his big head and large metal plated mouth is just plain creepy. But the writing is so horrible that it is completely distracting and overwhelms anything you might be able to say that would be positive. Only those who want to see evil clowns or dont' care about the quality of their slasher flicks should watch this one.

Lastly I must comment about the darkroom scenes. McKenzie is horrified as she hangs up her 8x10 glossy prints to dry. They show her friends at the time of their death. But in order to make her prints, she would have had to: look at the negatives; align and focus them in the enlarger; expose the photographic paper; put the paper in the developer to keep an eye on when to remove it and place it in the stop bath; then leave it in the fixer for at least a few minutes. Also it is customary to do a contact sheet from the negatives before this process to see which negatives are worth printing. So her darkroom experience is just ridiculous.

But not as ridiculous as the fact that her prints were black and white, the dark room only had b/w enlargers, yet at the police station, her photos are miraculously in color?!

Stephen King's Desperation (2006)

A small town Sheriff who is possessed by an ancient spirit named Tak begins hauling highway travelers to the local jail, if he doesn't kill them first.

David, son of Ralph aka Max Headroom, has taken up praying and sees a vision of his dead sister who hands him a lump of glowing kryptonite, which turns out to be green soap. David soaps himself up, slips through the bars, gets a gun to kill the dog the sheriff left in charge, and releases the rest of the jailed victims.

Once outside, the group loses it's grip on cranial functioning and hides in the old theater. Rather than running away or sending someone to get help, they hang out on the stage and talk, thus ensuring the death of a few more of the characters.

For such an all powerful deity, Tak's well is extremely lame, and as his disembodied voice uselessly yells for one of our heroes to go away, we are left wondering how he took over the Sheriff's body and killed everyone in the aptly named desert town, Desperation.

The credits list someone as "pie carver". Oddly enough I have no idea who that is as no one was addressed by that moniker and no one carved any pies.