Tiki (2006)

Amy, a shy and super dorky college student, is mercilessly tormented by a group of girls who used to be popular in high school.  After she wins the lead in their theater class production, they decide to send her a love note from the professor she has a crush on.  

After their trick humiliates Amy and they cruelly laugh in her face, Amy suffers a series of seizures and falls into a coma.  Amy's voodoo practicing Aunt comes to town with her Tiki doll and vows revenge on those who have done her wrong.  That's when the killing begins.

The Tiki appears to be handheld and wiggled in front of the camera while the sound of tiny feet is heard.  It's ridiculous, but it also makes the Tiki kind of cute which is probably not the best effect for a tiny killing machine.

Cryptz (2002)

The comedy falls flat in this story of buddies Tymez Skwair, Likrish, and Fuzzy Down, who end up in a vampire strip club and have to be rescued by their martial artist mentor Truck.  How many more movies are there going to be about vampire strip clubs?  The first time I heard that concept it was interesting, but it seems to be on it's way to becoming a cliche.  Perhaps it's time for strip clubs full of werewolves.

Raiders of the Damned (2005)

In the future, humans live underground due to a government virus which has turned people into zombies.  The zombies are contained behind a massive wall, which would seem to mount an argument that as long as they didn't venture beyond the wall everything would be fine.  But that would be too easy.

After a scientist and his assistant are kidnapped by zombies, crazy, sickly looking scientist Richard Grieco organizes a rescue mission for them, and then promptly disappears from the film.

The zombies are military men who can speak and think rationally.  Unfortunately their makeup is completely horrible, with lines where the latex appliances attach to their faces.  It is completely obvious that something is stuck on their faces and around their mouths it will remind you of a ventriloquist dummy.  

Low budget movies don't have to be this bad.

Cold Prey (2006)

A Norwegian film about a group of college students who head off into the mountains for a day of snowboarding.  When one of the guys breaks his leg, they look for the closest shelter and end up at a deserted ski lodge.  

They make a fire, get some food, and find newspaper clippings about a young boy who disappeared at the lodge years ago.  Soon after they discover a room in the basement with clippings of other  disappearances and current styles of clothing which shows the place is not as deserted as they thought.

The film does a good job of building the tension, although the ending is not as big a surprise as it is supposed to be.  A decent film which I have heard has a sequel which is not as good.

Cliffhanger (1993)

Sylvester Stallone is Gabe Walker, part of a rescue team who saves people who get stuck on mountains.  When fellow rescuer Hal and Hal's girlfriend get stuck, Gabe is one of the team that rescues them.  

When Hal's girlfriends safety belt slips, she is left hanging on for her life while repeatedly screaming, "I can't hold on. Don't let me die!"  Due to Hal's injury, Gabe must be the one to save her.  But she's dead weight, will do nothing to save herself, and slips out of Gabe's grip. Gave quits the team and Hal blames Gabe for his girlfriend's death.

A year or two later, Gabe is back in town when a call for help is received from high on the mountain.  Hal and Gave grudgingly team up and end up being held captive by a gang who has stolen money from the treasury and needs their help locating where it fell from their airplane.  Typical Stallone movie written by Stallone himself.

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

In the future, Tokyo has a wave of killings committed by Engineers, crazy killers who have a key shaped evil gene in their body.  If you chop an appendage off an Engineer, the appendage will regenerate as a weapon.  The only way to kill these monsters is to remove the key shaped evil from their body.

The police force has been privatized and they run strange commercials on tv, alongside other bizarre commercials for things like cutely designed cutting knifes for school girls.

The film is fairly gory and has some good effects, but the weird, freaky stuff that happens is all sort of random and overall you'll be wondering what is going on most of the time.

Piranha (1995)

Roger Corman's remake of 1978's Piranha doesn't change much from the original.  A search for missing teens leads to a pool in an old government research facility.  When the pool is drained, the experimental killing machines known as Piranhas are unleashed into the river and make their way down stream where a new resort is opening up.  Warnings to close the beaches are unheeded and the piranha feast on the flesh of those in the water.  

I'd watch the original rather than this one, unless you want to see Punky Brewster get mangled by Piranha.

Crowley (2008)

Stuttering professor Oliver Haddo gets into a virtual reality scuba suit and ends up being possessed by the spirit of Aleister Crowley, who proceeds to cause havoc and spew bodily fluids around campus.  He wishes to permanently take residence in the professor and starts black magic rituals.

The movie is confusing as the virtual reality idea is never fleshed out.  I'm not sure what the point of the experiment was or why it started with a virtual receptionist in an office.

Simon Callow does an excellent job as Haddo/Crowley.  The film was co-written by Bruce Dickinson, of Iron Maiden fame.

Vampires (2004)

aka Out For Blood

Kevin Dillon is a detective who is assigned the task of looking for a missing woman who was last seen at a dance club.  Not only does he find her the first night, but she invites him back to a private party.

The party turns out to be a blood sucking vampire party.  Dillon is bitten and becomes the stupidest soon-to-be vampire of them all, putting tin foil over his car windows to keep out the sun while reading vampire books written by his ex-wife.  The police won't believe his story and no one seems concerned about the gaping wound in his neck.

The head vampire looks like the drawing on the dvd cover and all the other vampires have that stupid sunken eyed, huge cheekboned faces that are so popular now.

American Ninja (1985)

Private Joe Armstrong is a hard working loner, and the military doesn't like that.  His own platoon hates him because he tried to protect the general's daughter from a ninja attack and members of the platoon were killed.  They tell Joe he should have just let the ninjas steal the government property and next time he should just let the ninjas do what they want. 

When popular Corporal Curtis Jackson challenges Joe to a fight and is roundly beaten, Joe earns Jackson's respect and friendship.  When they discover the ninjas have an inside man, they team up to save the general's daughter and put the ninjas out of business.

Michael Dudikoff is pretty wooden, but this is still one of the better 1980s ninja releases.  I remember seeing this in the theater when it was released and it's still an enjoyable movie, although don't expect anything great from it.

Mother's Day (1980)

I love late 1970s/ early 1980s horror movies, and was excited about this.  But I guess I should have looked at the description since I do not like movies that revolve around victimizing women and sexual assault.

Three women who went to college together go on a yearly outing to camp in the woods and are kidnapped by two backwoods brothers with a twisted, domineering mother. 

After being assaulted, one of the woman dies and the other two decide to take revenge for their friend.

The whole movie just makes you feel icky and I didn't enjoy it.  The only thing I did like was the scene of a pseudo Bigfoot vaulting out of the bushes, which came out of nowhere and was amusing though it was supposed to be scary.

Organizm (2008)

aka Living Hell

The only movie I've ever seen with CGI vomit, Organizm was better than I expected. Then again, I watched The Wind right before this and anything would seem good after that fiasco.  

Frank heads to a military facility that is scheduled for demolition as he needs to warn them about the danger that lies within.  When he was a child, his mother carved the address of an underground storage unit into his hands and told him he was responsible for making sure what was inside was never unleashed.  Unfortunately in her haste to make him remember, good old mom never mentioned anything about how the friggin' hell to stop this thing if it was released.  

After Frank crashes the dismantling of the secret government facility, he tells them the exact location of the thing and that it must not be disturbed.  The military immediately gets out their hazmat suits and unleashes the very thing Frank told them to contain.  This causes Frank to get into a snit where he essentially says, "I told you the exact location of the secret project.  You weren't supposed to open it but you did. Now leave me alone."  Great job, Frank, great job.

But Frank's a lucky guy. His mother may not have given him any clue as to how to stop this thing, but he just happens to talk to the one guy in town who used to work at the base and was sworn to secrecy by the government when the thing was locked in the vault.  Yippee!

The one question I need answered is how much blood does Frank have, because he lost a ton of it but still managed to live and not have a peaked complexion.

The Wind (2001)

The Wind is not a good name for a horror film.  Then again, it's not a very good movie.  Claire tells three of her male friends that she's been hanging out with their friend Bob for a few months, he thought they were dating, and after she told him they weren't, he sent her a weird card.  Oddly enough, the group gets incensed, waits for Bob in the woods, and kills him.

The only explanation we ever get for this ridiculous decision is a description on the dvd about the wind bringing murderous rage to a group of college kids.   The movie begins with stock footage and a boring narrative, but the film itself does nothing to portray the wind having any affect on these kids.  It isn't even windy in the movie.  If you don't read the box, you'll just think these kids are a bunch of stupid assholes....actually you'll think that anyway.

Martial Outlaw (1993)

Kevin and Jack are brothers, but they don't get along.  Kevin works for the DEA, is reliable, well liked, and a straight arrow. Jeff is a cop who is crooked, hits his wife, and resents that he has to take care of their father.

When the two end up working on the same case, they clash (surprise) and Jeff uses his position to tip off the mafia while demanding a big pay out for the information.

An okay action flick in the typical vein of all other American martial arts movies in the 1990s.

Alien Apocalypse (2005)

After 40 years in space, Bruce Campbell and his crew come back to Earth to find a Planet of the Apes situation with alien insects ruling the planet.  The aliens have come here to harvest wood and humans are slave labor in olde tyme saw mills.  

The film is ripe with exceptionally bad wigs and is so tedious that I would have ripped it out of the dvd player if Bruce Campbell hadn't been in it.  Sure, there are a few funny parts, Campbell emits his regular guy sort of charm, and the site of an alien biting off someone's head is pretty neat.  But it's a hard film to watch and when  you're done, you'll wish you'd spent the time doing something else.

All Soul's Day:Dia de los Muertos (2005)

In the 1950's Jeffrey Combs and his family stay at a hotel in a small Mexican town and the daughter is killed by the dead. What happened to the rest of the family?  No idea.

Back in  the present, a couple traveling in Mexico has an accident in a small town when they hit a funeral procession and a living mutilated woman spills out of the coffin.  The strange sheriff takes charge of the woman, and since their car won't start, they decide to stay at the hotel.  Everyone in town is creepy and it just happens to be All Souls Day, when the dead come back to life.

After the accident and maimed woman, you'd expect them to be upset, but shortly afterwards they seem to have even forgotten why they are there.  While they wait for their friends to come down to pick them up, they get drunk and naked.

The dead have been coming back to town on All Soul's Day for a century due to a terrible secret from the town's past.  The four friends must try to survive, even though there must be a sacrifice that night.  The ending is so stupid you won't believe you sat through the movie just to get this resolution.

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

I haven't seen the other Resident Evil movies and I haven't played the video game.  Not knowing the back story and having nothing to compare it to, it was a bit confusing as to why Alice has special powers.  

A virus has spread over the earth and turned most of the populace into zombies who can run fast.  A convoy of survivors is traveling in search of other survivors.  When some zombie crows attack them, they get unexpected help from Alice who then joins the group.

Alice is hiding from a company called Umbrella who wants to grab her as her blood holds the key to immunizing themselves from the plague.  Alice has clones, so I'm not sure why they can't use clone blood.  Instead they spend all their time tracking Alice.

The movie didn't have any character development and the plot is pretty thin, but it did keep me entertained.

Spontaneous Combustion (1990)

Brad Dourif has always given me the creeps.  If he's in a film, I get squeamish about watching it because he has played such disturbing characters.  I wasn't interested in seeing this movie, but boy was I wrong.  While his character has serious problems, he showed what a good actor he is by not being creepy at all in this.

Sam's parents were test subjects in atomic experiments. His mother became pregnant during the experiments and both parents died by spontaneous combustion on the day that he was born.  

As a adult, Sam is having headaches and finds that when he gets angry, fire streams from his body.  When he gets angry at someone, they end up being burned alive.  Sam figures out it has something to do with the fire in his body and the experiments on his parents.

The end was fairly predictable and Sam's fate was not what I would have wished, but overall a decent story and worth watching.

Witchhouse 3 (2001)

A woman leaves her abusive boyfriend and goes to stay with two friends who are doing a documentary on witchcraft.  The three women get drunk and decide to do an incantation which summons a spirit. 

Strange things start happening in the house.  Sadly none of the women are smart enough to figure out that it is due to their ritual.  You would expect people doing a documentary on witchcraft to be more aware that this could happen. 

Then again, the primary filmmaker doesn't seem to be very professional. Her interview method consists of chasing someone on the street dressed like a witch while screaming, "do you want to be in a documentary on witchcraft?"  

Nothing to recommend this one.

Mr. Hell (2006)

Oh god, this is just awful.  As a child Tyler found her father murdered and was almost killed herself by Mr. Hell, a serial killer who collects his victims eyeballs.   Tyler's playground was the restricted laboratory her father worked in and Mr. Hell meets his demise in toxic chemicals as he tries to kill Tyler.

Now Tyler is an adult and she's a security guard at the same laboratory facility that is being cleaned by an incompetent toxic waste team who somehow bring Mr. Hell back to life. 

This is a difficult movie to get through and leaves you wishing you hadn't wasted your time.  There are so many reasons this doesn't work.  But the thing that sticks in my mind is Mr. Hell is supposed to be charming and have an IQ of 160, but comes off as a moronic homicidal buffoon.