Tag Backwoods/Survival

Death Trap (1977)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , November 13th, 2012 @ 8:15 pm
  • AKA: Eaten Alive

  • Director: Tobe Hooper

  • Writer: Alvin L. Fast, Mardi Rustam, Kim Henkel (screen adaptation)

  • Starring: Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, Marilyn Burns

  • Run Time: 91 mins

Death Trap (1977)

He’s out there and he’s got murder on his mind!

A psychotic redneck runs a dilapidated hotel in the backwater swamps of Louisiana, killing people who upset him or his business and feeding them to his giant pet crocodile that he keeps locked up in the swamp.

 

Tobe Hooper’s follow up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacreis this? Boy, the dude really fell from grace quickly didn’t he? Shot in the same grainy, low budget style that made The Texas Chain Saw Massacresuch a grim classic, Death Trapcomes off as wanting to be a Leatherface and co. follow up but never really does anything worthwhile to achieve that goal. It’s almost as if Hooper caught lightning in bottle with his previous film and attempts to replicate that success, simply substituting backwoods Texas for rural Louisiana. Whilst Death Trap isn’t a particularly well-made film, there’s no question that it’s got a strangely perverse quality which warrants at least a look.

Death Trap’s main problem is that the narrative is all over the place. The story here doesn’t follow any major plot threads and meanders between the numerous random strangers who end up at the hotel before being offed by crazy Judd for whatever reason. There is the underlying search for the missing hooker from the beginning but most of the characters who visit the hotel aren’t involved in this search so it begs the question of whether it is actually the main plot or not. We never really know what pushes Judd over the edge to kill either so by the time he’s taken care of another stranger, you’re just happy to sit back and believe that the guy is just a total fruitcake. The script really needed some serious work here.

As expected for a low budget film, the crocodile doesn’t look too hot (or an alligator as some characters in the film claim) and has limited movement. But thankfully Hooper realised this and keeps it mainly covered in the swamp, only using it sparingly for a few shots where actors try and free themselves from the jaws of the model monster. No one and nothing is spared from this croc, even a poor dog!

But the croc isn’t the main source of violence from the film – that comes from Judd himself who is a dab hand with a scythe. Hooper shoots the death scenes here with gritty realism. Too often in horror films, one blow is enough to kill someone. Here, Hooper strings the death out, causing victims to bleed or gasp for breath as they hit the floor, trying in vain to escape or defend themselves. Death isn’t instant and this is where Hooper earns brownie points. As with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, you know that the victims here are suffering and going through hell before they eventually die. There’s a reasonably smattering of blood and Hooper even throws in some T&A to try and liven things up. But Death Trap is slow going and excitement is in short supply. The scenes drag out way longer than needed, the exposition takes for too long and there are only a handful of half-decent set pieces which are few and far between.

As for the cast, well it’s a pretty decent bunch of performances given the craziness around them. Neville Brand is great as Judd. I don’t think he had much of a clue where the character should be heading so he went for it and it works though Hooper could have cut back the amount of time he gave to his rambling monologues. Robert Englund, looking very young and pre-Freddy Krueger fame, appears as a horny redneck that uses the hotel as a meeting ground for hookers. Marilyn Burns, fresh from screaming her lungs out in the finale of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, is also in the film.

 

Death Trap is far too similar to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to work, given that it’s not a patch on its predecessor and seems content in trying to replicate its success without knowing why it has become a classic. Death Trap has got a few decent moments but there’s very little to stop the craziness, an incoherent script and lack of solid direction from ripping it up.

 

 ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Paintball (2009)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , October 1st, 2012 @ 11:38 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Daniel Benmayor

  • Writer: Mario Schoendorff

  • Starring: Brendan Mackey, Jennifer Matter, Patrick Regis, Iaione Perez

  • Run Time: 86 mins

Paintball (2009)

There’s nothing like a brush with death to make you feel alive

A team of eight adrenaline junkies are taken into a remote forest for the ultimate game of paintball in Europe’s largest paintball sanctuary. When one of their team is shot and killed by a live round, the group suddenly realise that the stakes of their game have just risen as a mysterious masked paintballer sets out to kill them one-by-one.

 

Anyone who has ever been paintballing will know that it’s not the sort of sport for everyone. Some will love it and rise to the occasion, revelling in the chance to become a general for a day. Others will hate it and wish for the game to finish quickly. It’s the only chance that ‘ordinary’ people will ever get to being in some sort of combat situation. For those younger males who’ve grown up on Call of Duty and the like, you’ll love the chance to act it out for real. However if you have played it before and you’re not very good, you’ll find yourself being killed early on and sitting out the rest of the game, watching the commando-wannabes crawl and sprawl across the battlefield for hours at a time. It can be a great game to compete in but ultimately disappointing and frustrating if you get the chance to play. Paintball is exactly the same. It’s got the potential to be a great film but it isn’t and doesn’t even come close which is both unsatisfactory and frustrating.

Any successful horror film will have you care about the characters. I mean let’s face it if you don’t like someone you’re not going to be rooting for them to survive the situation. The best scripts are those which allow the characters to get a bit of empathy from the viewer. So it’s to Paintball‘s detriment that this bunch of characters are so badly written and presented that you’ll not care who lives and who dies. The closest we get to knowing anything about them is the brief sequence on the jeep at the beginning where each person introduces themselves by name. That’s about it for characterisation because once the paintball game gets underway they all run around with the same combat attire and with their faces covered by masks. Pay close attention to the beginning because once names are thrown around during the commotion, it’s hard to remember who is who.

The acting is atrocious too and consists purely of the group shouting, screaming, swearing a lot and running around in the forest. It seems that every actor here has some form of accent. Maybe it was to distinguish who is who but the accents really get in the way of any form of characterisation. If one of them spoke differently, we’d at least be able to remember them. Since everyone has them, it’s a waste of time. The characters are so interchangeable that it doesn’t really matter who gets killed off because none of them have a redeeming factor. The game of paintball requires teamwork and the characters here all want the chance to live out some form of survivalist fantasy. So when their fantasy becomes reality and the situation becomes a matter of life and death, the film doesn’t really do anything with it. They still run around as if they’re playing the game, barking out orders to each other and

I don’t actually recall the camera lens staying still through the entire film. It’s always on the move and there are some weird angles at times. Two characters are about to have a knife fight yet the camera lingers on their midsections as opposed to whole body shots. It’s quite unsettling on the eyes and it gets frustrating to see the camera shaking and twisting every minute. Stay still and let me have a look at what’s going on! Handheld cameras can have their use but not for an entire film – it’s just too frenetic.

The constant use of the thermal vision goggles by the killer was a nice touch too as you see a lot of the film from a first-person perspective. I thought it would be overworked but it’s more effective as the film goes on. Forget the film being overly bloody because most of the kills happen through the first-person vision of these goggles so it’s just white liquid spurting across the screen. This effect doesn’t actually disguise the brutality of some of the death scenes, it just gives them all a unique spin. It’s a neat touch especially during one scene where one unlucky victim is pummelled by a rifle butt. It adds a pleasing visual style to the proceedings and is arguably the highlight of the film. These thermal vision moments also contribute to the unveiling of the big plot twist. Borrowing it from Hostel doesn’t help matters although I suppose it makes sense and the way it’s revealed to the viewer is pretty good.

 

Paintball has got some great visuals and odd moments of inspired genius so it’s a pity that the script lets it down in a big way with really weak characters and a complete lack of tension and atmosphere. For paintball purists only but even then you’d rather be playing it than watching it.

 

 ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Trailer Park of Terror (2008)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , September 29th, 2012 @ 5:22 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Steven Goldmann

  • Writer: Timothy Dolan

  • Starring: Nichole Hiltz, Lew Temple, Jeanette Brox, Myk Watford

  • Run Time: 96 mins

Trailer Park of Terror (2008)

Fear Has A New Home!

Six trouble high school students and their youth ministries pastor are on their way back from an outdoor retreat in the mountains when their bus crashes during a storm. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, the group seeks refuge at a seemingly abandoned trailer park. However this trailer park is home to a group of redneck zombies led by Norma, a buxom blonde who struck a deal with the Devil when her lover boy was killed by jealous suitors in the park.

 

With a title like Trailer Park of Terror, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that it’s not going to be the prettiest, tactful and thought-provoking film out there. You’re going to get sleaze, filth and as much stereotyping as you can shake a stick at. Combine Two Thousand Maniacs! with John Waters’ legendary filthy classic Pink Flamingos and throw in Rob Zombie’s penchant for white trash cinema and you’ve got some idea of what to expect. With a morbid sense of humour, a ‘middle finger approach’ to taste and more depraved cruelty than any man is fit to watch in ninety-one minutes, Trailer Park of Terror means well and plays well for the most part.

The film opens with the back story about Norma and how the zombies came to be which is all well and good given that she spends her first few minutes wearing just a bra. I’m not American so don’t exactly get the whole ‘redneck’ thing but the way the films portray them as backwoods, inbred, retarded and perverted is just a little too clichéd now. I’m sure they’re mostly nice people really but you wouldn’t think it should you ever watch a horror film. Then the film switches to the present day to give us our band of travelling zombie chow in their bus. The characters are (surprise, surprise) of the stock variety and are so one-dimensional that labelling them as token slut, token goth and token asshole is actually quite demeaning to the word token. Their obligatory opening words are all filled with sarcastic barbs, designed to give us an immediate insight into their minds and one-line summaries of their character so that our pre-conceived notions of stereotypes come into effect. Smart work, Mr Writer – let the audience do the hard work so that you don’t have to.

The film knows that characters aren’t going to matter too much later on and these scenes are kept mercifully brief but the problem is that the redneck zombies don’t appear until the half-way point so you had better get sitting comfortably. When they do finally appear, the zombies look as good as they have any right to be. Some of them clearly are just wearing masks but the make-up jobs on a few of them look top drawer. They’ve all got a nice 80s-vibe to them akin to the likes of Night of the Demons and Return of the Living Dead. They’ve got a lot of cheesy one-liners too and the actors in the make-up all ham it up to immense levels. The pot-smoking country music-loving zombie is the funniest of the group, belting out a few musical numbers from the top of his trailer. It’s all silly and jokey but it’s clearly just padding out the running time a little more in between attacks. And it really gets on your nerves after the first couple of songs!

The goofy sense of fun and mischievousness that the film toys with is brutally cast aside during the scenes of cruelty and torture. These zombies don’t just want to get your brains, they want to chop off your arms, smash through your spinal column and turn you into beef jerky. The beef jerky scene alone is nasty, as one unlucky teenager is slowly peeled before being dunked into a bathtub of boiling oil. The scene feels like it goes on forever, such is the nauseating way the victim is slowly toyed with. They could have just dunked him into the oil but no, this is a 2008 horror film so that means excess is the key and torture is necessary. The ‘less is more’ strategy of yesteryear has been replaced by ‘show everything and string it out for as long you can.’ With the film being as hokey and cheesy as it had been up until this point, this scene seems a little out of place. But that seems like an overriding problem with the film. It’s played too over-the-top for anything to be taken seriously so when there’s an effective moment, it’s all lost in the goofiness.

 

Trailer Park of Terror is daft, silly and extremely cheesy which is fun at times and pretty cringe-worthy in others. Whether you like this or not will really depend on your mood. It’s that type of film. Just make sure you have a good wash afterwards as this film will make you feel dirty!

 

 ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Hills Have Eyes II, The (2007)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , September 29th, 2012 @ 5:16 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Martin Weisz

  • Writer: Wes Craven, Jonathan Craven

  • Starring: Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Jacob Vargas, Flex Alexander

  • Run Time: 89 mins

The Hills Have Eyes II (2007)

The Lucky ones die fast

A squad of National Guard are sent into the New Mexico desert on a supply mission to a team that is installing a new system into an abandoned facility. When they get there, they find no sign of the team until a distress call is received from the hills. Making their way up the hills, the soldiers are attacked by a group of mutants and equipment is damaged and stolen. With no way of getting back down the hill, the remaining soldiers must find their way through an old mine to get back to base.

 

The 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes certainly surprised me as being a brutal, gory and relentless ride which, in many ways, bettered the original. And just like the revamped The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake in 2003 saw a sequel, Alexandre Aja’s slick remake has spawned a sequel for whatever cash-related reason. Out went Aja, the man responsible for the disturbing and savage nature of the original, and out with him went that brutal and unforgiving edge – you got the sense that anything went in his film and there would be no prisoners, no matter how sick or depraved it was going to be. In its place comes a totally out-of-place comic tone, more mutants you can shake a stick at, more characters to get killed and more gore. Say goodbye to everything that made the remake such a great ride.

The problems with The Hills Have Eyes II are evident from the start and that lies with the characters. For starters, I don’t want to see a bunch of soldiers being chewed up, decapitated and hacked to pieces because surely they should be trained enough to deal with this sort of thing better than anyone (I know you don’t get mutant-fighting training anywhere but at least they practice combat regularly as opposed to say, me who has never done anything like that and wouldn’t stand a chance against the mutants). I like seeing ordinary people put into extraordinary situations and seeing how they cope with it. So by throwing the best prepared humans into that situation and watch them suffer doesn’t really hit the same nerve.

Secondly, if you’re going to give me soldiers, then at least make an effort to humanise them and characterise them a little. Names are for tombstones in films like this and it’s funny how you won’t remember 90% of the names by the middle of the film, let alone the end. Instead just sit back and call them their token names: hotshot, black guy, coward, hot chick, etc. It borders spoof at times with the silliness of the characters. Do you remember a little film called Aliens back in the 80s? That involved a bunch of bad ass soldiers taking on acid-spitting aliens. But James Cameron never once let the characters descend into caricatures. He humanised them, gave each one personality traits and made the audience care about them, even the ones who didn’t survive too long. Here they’re just going through the motions of the generic “macho bullshit” that soldiers are portrayed as having in the movies.

They also do some of the most ludicrous things I’ve seen in a horror film and as such, plot developments can be seen way ahead of time. Thinking of climbing down a mountain using a rope? Good idea but stand around dithering for ages and you’re going to be in for it! I can’t really comment on the actors involved because some of them may suck, some of them may have talent – it’s just impossible to see through the awful script. And when you consider who wrote this – WES CRAVEN no less, it’s a complete travesty.

Now I’ve had a rant over the script and characters, where else to begin? Well the fact that the film descends into a pointless sequence of chases around the dark, abandoned mine is a start. The Descent showed how you could breathe a little life back into a setting as over-used as this with its sense of claustrophobia and constantly lurking danger. No such atmosphere or skill here, just annoying characters stumbling around the dark looking for an exit or looking to be killed. How about the silly comic tone that the film has? In one moment, a mutant pulls an arm of one of the guys and waves it back at him. Mildly amusing when you see it but totally out of place here. The gore stakes have been ramped up but without the savage tone, without the brutality and without the violence of the original, it’s all wasted.

 

The Hills Have Eyes II is a pointless, stupid exercise in gore. It’s a total rush job and it smacks of pandering to the modern horror fans who only watch these films to be shocked with blood and gore. Does anyone know how to create a story any more? Or build up suspense? Even former genre icons like Wes Craven seem to have lost their way.

 

 ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , September 29th, 2012 @ 5:03 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Declan O'Brien

  • Writer: Connor James Delaney, Alan B. McElroy (characters)

  • Starring: Tom Frederic, Janet Montgomery, Gil Kolirin, Christian Contreras

  • Run Time: 92 mins

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)

What You Don’t See Will Kill You

A group of dangerous criminals are transported through a remote rural backwoods area in order to avoid a potential jail-break attempt by one of the inmates’ gangs. But the bus is soon forced off the road by a truck and soon the criminals and guards start to be picked off one-by-one by inbred mutants who have been living in the mountains.

 

After two entertaining instalments, it was only a matter of time before the Wrong Turn series derailed and this is the culprit – a limp, by-the-numbers sequel. What could be worse than a group of stereotypical teenagers smoking pot and getting naked? Well it’s the group of stereotypical prisoners that are unleashed in this one. I mean seriously, how many films do we see where each group of convicts contains one complete psycho, one rapist, one weasel/little runt, one of the silent types and not to mention the guards, one of whom is usually a family man or dreams of a better life? Are American prisons that full of equal numbers of ethnic groups that each prisoner transfer contains Hispanics and white skinheads? And who thinks that having a horror film full of nasty, ruthless and depraved convicts is a good idea? We’re supposed to root for the people who fall victim to the mutants, not the other way around.

The script is all over the place and this is the film’s downfall. There’s actually a reasonable story in there waiting to come out with the cons killing the mutant’s kid and sticking his head on a pole as warning for him to back off. But the film does nothing with this vengeance story and it’s virtually dropped as soon as it happens. The mutant doesn’t seem to get any more angry or any more determined to kill them (after all, he was going to kill them all anyway) and apart from a stand-off with the head con later in the film, that’s it. The script also spends a lot of time establishing a couple of characters but then throws it all out of the window in the final scene which opens the door to another sequel. I think that says it all when the entire characterisation of the film is blown away just for the benefit of a ‘plot twist’ finale and sequel set up.

Too much of the film is spent with the cons bickering about the money that they find in an armoured truck in the woods (upside down and in the middle of nowhere no less – go figure that out) and it almost turns into a mini-episode from the second season of Prison Break. The group of characters then spend the rest of the film wandering around aimlessly in the dark, occasionally falling foul of another hillbilly trap before arguing with each other again. The dialogue is terrible and whoever wrote it obviously thought that a lot of swearing and profanity from Tamar Hassan’s psycho Chavez character would be a good idea. His performance is awful too and when he’s not struggling to disguise his thick British accent, he’s just shouting abuse at the top of his voice. The other actors don’t fair much better and it’s arguably the innate cackling and howling from ‘Three Fingers’ that makes for the best performance.

I will say that the film isn’t boring and at least manages to keep a steady pace. The CGI kills, as ridiculous as some of them may look, are actually quite inventive and there are a few decent practical effects including one of the cons stepping into a full-body barbed wire trap before being dragged off down the road. Unfortunately some of the novelty value is quickly eroded by the lousy CGI effects which follow the initial shock of seeing someone diced into three! The film needed more female characters (come on, this is a horror film after all and we need breasts – this film’s sole quota being filled in the first five minutes but worth the watch!) to put into peril.

The film needed less macho crap, less pointless arguing and more mutants. It’s as simple as that. This mutant has some uncanny ability to teleport anywhere in the woods at any time so he sits up in trees, appears from behind doors and can outrun a speeding truck and appear in the road a couple of miles further along from where the characters last saw him. A few more mutants would have alleviated that problem. The budget for this one looks to have been dramatically cut resulting in fewer mutants, more stupid CGI gore and some of the worst green screen effects work since the dawn of movie making. Take a look at the background in the driving scenes and it’s like something out of the 40s where some lousy rear projection is played whilst stagehands rock the prop vehicles from side to side.

 

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead isn’t the sequel I was hoping for and is such a disappointment after the last sequel. With annoying characters, some grade school script problems and a general sense of reducing the sum of its successful parts, the ‘franchise’ has certainly taken a wrong turn somewhere – let’s hope the next sequel finds the right route!

 

 ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , September 29th, 2012 @ 4:58 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Joe Lynch

  • Writer: Turi Meyer, Al Septien, Alan B. McElroy (characters)

  • Starring: Erica Leerhsen, Henry Rollins, Texas Battle, Aleksa Palladino

  • Run Time: 96 mins

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

In the Forest, Only They Can Hear You Scream.

Six contestants taking part in a survival reality TV show find themselves pitted against a family of hideously deformed and inbred cannibals in the woods in West Virginia.

 

A belated sequel to 2003′s Wrong Turn, you would be forgiven for thinking that this would be a straight rehash with more blood, guts and a bigger body count. That’s what horror sequels are supposed to do, right? Well if you think that Wrong Turn 2: Dead End is going to be any different, you’re wrong.

Sticking to the same formula of a bunch of pretty boys and hot chicks being stranded in the woods and hunted down one-at-a-time by a bunch of inbred cannibals, it surprisingly doesn’t seem stale at all. The original Wrong Turn is a particular favourite of mine from the last ten years of horror films, simply because it didn’t skimp on the visuals when someone was sliced and diced. It got nasty when it needed to and it was just a fun all-round watch (having Eliza Dushku in a glorious white top didn’t harm things either). This sequel sticks rigidly to the formula and ups the ante with some more gruesome kills – in fact some of the most entertaining kills I’ve seen for years (though the years have been sparse for creativity).

The original tried to go for a more serious atmosphere more akin to one of the late 70s backwoods horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Wrong Turn 2: Dead End goes for the jugular and becomes just a fun, light-hearted, no-brains hardcore splatter fest! The pacing is cranked up. There are more characters to dispose of (the good ol’ “sequels have a higher body count rule”) and the blood flows freely. One of the reasons the film works is because of the script. Not just your cut-and-rush job like most sequels, the writers actually spend a bit of time getting us used to the characters before all hell breaks loose. Granted the characters are all stock (the slut, the comic relief, token black guy, ex-army ranger, etc) but at least some of them are made out to be more than just things where axes and sharp objects should be inserted. Even the inbred cannibals are given some development – you realise towards the end of the film that they’re not just maniacs but actually a loving family who know no better than the life they have chosen.

It still doesn’t stop the brutality though and believe me, lovers of gore and splatter will find plenty to marvel here. I don’t really want to spoil the film for those who may be pondering a look but there are some hilarious deaths, some nasty ones and some of both. The film opens with a kick ass kill and it doesn’t let up from there right until the final showdown. Get the sick bags ready.

Out of the cast, you’ll no doubt recognise Erica Leerhsen from the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but that’s about it for the younger cast. It’s rapper-turned-spoken word maestro Henry Rollins who steal the show as the gung-ho presenter of the reality show who reverts to type when the threat of the cannibals hits home. Also of note is the gigantic Ken Kirzinger who plays the dad of the cannibal family – this is one big dude you don’t want to mess with.

On the flip side to all of this, if you’ve seen one backwoods horror you’ve pretty much seen them all. With recent remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and its terrible sequel as well as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its terrible prequel, the market is pretty crowded. Cannibals and mutants are a bit over-exposed at the moment so expect the same generic scenes of grunting dialogue, freakish lifestyles (what cannibal movie wouldn’t have a dinner scene?) and disgusting living quarters. Also despite the character development at the start, the dialogue is pretty annoying at best with the exception of some one-liners from Rollins. There are some irritating people in there you want hacked to pieces from the start and thankfully the film fulfils your wishes.

 

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End whips up an awesome mix of thrills and spills despite presenting us the same meal we horror fans have been gorging on for so long now. Director Joe Lynch has clearly made a film by horror fans for horror fans and one that doesn’t disappoint. Top sequel and I can’t wait for his next flick.

 

 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 

 

 

Paradise Lost (2006)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , September 29th, 2012 @ 3:30 pm
  • AKA: Turistas

  • Director: John Stockwell

  • Writer: Michael Ross

  • Starring: Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Olivia Wilde, Desmond Askew

  • Run Time: 96 mins

Paradise Lost (2006)

Go Home.

A group of young travellers are marooned in a remote Brazilian beach town when their coach is involved in a crash. After a wild night of partying leaves them without their belongings, a local teenager, Kiko, tells them that he will take them to his uncle’s house in the jungle so that they can regroup and get in touch with the authorities. It is only when they arrive at the house that the group realise the intentions of Kiko and his uncle all along – they are to be harvested so that their organs can be sold on the black market.

 

The torture porn or ‘gorenography’ fad of horror has quickly outstayed its welcome, if it ever had one originally. Horror films are no longer about generating tension, creating atmosphere and truly scaring people, they are simply about showing as much gore and nastiness as possible! I could pinpoint the likes of Hostel and Saw for bringing the sheer unpleasant nature of torture, suffering and splatter to the mainstream but it was already creeping in before hand. Now what we get is that pretty much every mainstream horror (that doesn’t involve ghosts or supernatural events) has gone down the route of blood, torture, suffering, pain, sickness and perversion. Directors are showing what was always suggested in these films – like people having body parts ripped off, their Achilles tendons being sliced off or being raped by mutants for the sake of entertainment. As a fan, there is only so much you can take before it just gets repetitive. After a while, it’s not a case of seeing whether the next horror film can out-do the last one in the nastiness stakes but seeing how far it will take it. Paradise Lost comes along at precisely the wrong moment for me to be able to look at it in anything other than being a tepid cash-in on the current fad.

At least it’s short and to the point and doesn’t try and over stay its welcome. It knows its characters are never going to get past its audience thinking “she’s fit” or “he’s buff” so they hired young actors to fit the bills of the cardboard cut outs on display. That’s all I’m going to say about the cast because they’re not worth mentioning anymore. The film seemingly knows no one is watching it to study screenwriting or understand the English language. But at least make a damn effort to give a bit of life to the dialogue. You could cut out the opening half an hour from here and paste it into pretty much any recent horror film and it wouldn’t be too far off. A group of good-looking teenagers begin drinking, drugging up and shagging everything in sight before being dumped into a situation they don’t understand with a maniac after them. They do the most stupid things, are given ridiculous situations to deal with that would never happen in real life and meet some of the most blatant local stereotypes going.

It’s the turn of some Brazilians to get the ‘poor backwards third world country’ tag here. Public transport not even fit for scrap metal (look at that bus!). Horny bikini-clad Samba honeys willing to put out for any strangers. And villages full of mud and disease in the middle of the jungle. Come on guys, at least keep it real. After all that happens to the main characters in the first twenty minutes, you would think they least would want to do is follow some Brazilian guy they just met into the jungle to crash at his uncle’s house whilst they sort out their passport situation. Ever heard of a consulate or embassy? Might I also add that by this point you’ve totally forgotten that this is supposed to be a horror film. There has been absolutely nothing to class it as horror so far, more like teenage drama. It’s got the pace of a sloth and nothing interesting has happened.

Things do pick up a little bit when the big reveal hits and the group realise that they’re in trouble but it’s a little too late to save the film. The big payoff for gore fans is supposed to be the scene where one unlucky teenager has her internal organs removed one at a time. But you know, after seeing numerous hospital and doctor programmes on TV, this scene did little to gross me out. And the most stupid thing is that we know what the villain wants after the first ten minutes courtesy of a scene with one of his minions discussing his plans. So all along we know that he wants to harvest the travellers for their organs. Wouldn’t it have been so much more interesting if we didn’t know what he wanted until he started operating? Now that would have had more impact. Instead you spend most of the film bracing yourself for the eventual harvesting scene and it’s absolutely crap and has no shock value whatsoever. It’s not even that bloody and the front cover with it’s splattering of blood would have you believe that this is a gore-fest. There’s hardly a scare to be had throughout the rest of the film so it really beats me as to what this film is trying to be? A thriller with horror elements or a horror with no horror elements?

 

Paradise Lost targets its audience pretty well with the attractive cast, nudity and potential for nasty shenanigans so dumb teenagers who have never seen a horror film may love it. But for me, it’s simply a stale leftover from Hostel reworked into a full blown feature film. This is one paradise you would want to remain lost forever.

 

 ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Harpoon: The Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (2009)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , August 17th, 2012 @ 12:58 am
  • AKA:

  • Director: Júlíus Kemp

  • Writer: Sjón Sigurdsson

  • Starring: Gunnar Hansen, Pihla Viitala, Nae, Terence Anderson

  • Run Time: 84 mins

Harpoon: The Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (2009)

Hunting humans in the cold Icelandic waters

A group of tourists take a whale watching trip off the coast of Iceland but when the captain suffers a freak accident and is mortally wounded, they are forced to take refuge aboard an old whaling ship that responds to their distress call. However this ship is home to a family of disgruntled ex-whalers who now take to hunting and killing humans since their previous past time was outlawed.

 

If there were awards for the film with the greatest title ever, surely this has to be up there with them! An Icelandic take on your ‘backwoods’ slasher featuring a family of retarded and mentally unstable psychopaths, Harpoon: The Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre gets billed as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre set aboard a whaling ship but it’s a lot more straightforward and less demented than that. It’s Iceland’s first foray into modern horror (the country made a few in the 80s but this is their first take on horror since Hostel and Saw turned up the notch of nastiness). Given their fellow Scandinavian countries have been making some decent horror films of late, it’s only right that the Icelandic nation gets a claim to horror fame. But despite having plenty of style, Harpoon: The Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre is just a European version of the same old stuff that the Americans have been making for years.

It’s a pity because the set up itself is excellent and the bizarre sequence of events that set the tourists aboard the whaling ship is nicely strung out. The Icelandic cinematography is splendid and really gives you a sense of isolation that it going to be needed later on. The whaling ship itself looks creepy and rather desolate. To say that it’s a big ship is an understatement but, for some reason, the characters only tend to hang around the same parts and thus the scale of the ship is downplayed. There’s little in the way of hide-and-seek as most of the tourists are dispatched within a few minutes of realising they’re all screwed. The ‘turn’ in the film where the psycho family attack the tourists is awesome, complete with a hammer-to-the-skull moment. But it’s at this point that the film unfortunately loses steam and instead of delivering another bloody European horror blow, it turns itself into a derivative American slasher. The tourists all separate aboard the ship and each of the family set off to hunt and kill them. The tourists all attempt to save themselves without thinking of anyone else and the rest of the film is just a rather lacklustre series of scenes of stalking and killing.

Most of the kills are by-the-book – not counting the awesome death-by-whaling-harpoon – but we don’t get a really good look at anything. Either the kill happens off screen or the camera is facing in a way so that you can’t see much at all. Very disappointing indeed especially given that there’s more blood and guts in the titles as real life footage of whales being hunted and killed is shown. The whole thing doesn’t really have an urgent sense of dread or an uncompromising atmosphere – it’s got little atmosphere at all which is a crime given how kick ass some of the parts of the ship were.

The villains are bland and try a little too hard to play to type – the domineering mother, the thuggish older brother and the dim, runt-like brother. The tourists themselves are a motley bunch of stereotypes – the Japanese guy with the camera, the French guy who says “oo la la” a little too much (get him some onions and beret as well why don’t you!) and the butch German women. In fact the most interesting character is the Japanese girl, Endo, who turns from being a servant girl into a rather ruthless killer, out for herself and no one else. It’s a really weird character and one that hangs around in the background at the start when some of the other characters are getting more exposure and development.

This is the film’s worst problem – there’s no real main character. At first we think its Pihla Viitala’s character that is nearly raped and then caught and stripped by the religious nut brother. Then the film switches focus to Terence Anderson’s Leon who again looks like he’s going to be the saviour and save the day. But towards the end of the film, it’s Endo who is the main focus and her cold-hearted approach to everyone else’s life remains frustratingly unexplained. Gunnar Hansen (the original Leatherface) makes a small cameo and is clearly only top-billed because of his infamous horror legacy. He hardly has any lines, isn’t in the film for long and is cast as the unfortunate captain so don’t expect much in the way of in-jokes towards anything chainsaw-related. It’s definitely a missed opportunity.

 

I really wanted to like Harpoon: The Rekjavik Whale Watching Massacre but maybe I was expecting the whole thing to be a little more grim, distasteful and brutal than it ended up given the more recent Scandinavian horror films I’ve seen (Cold Prey, Dead Snow, etc). Disappointing but still not without its own merit.

 

 ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, The (2006)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , August 16th, 2012 @ 9:33 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Jonathan Liebesman

  • Writer: Sheldon Turner (screenplay & story), David J. Schow (story)

  • Starring: Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Diora Baird, Matthew Bomer

  • Run Time: 91 mins

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

The Only Thing More Shocking than How it Ended, Is How it All Began.

Two young men decide to take their girlfriends with them when they enlist to serve to Vietnam and head off on a cross-country road trip. On their way through a remote part of Texas, they become the first victims of the sadistic Hewitt family.

 

I’ll be the first to admit that I got it a bit wrong with my visions of doom for the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – it wasn’t half bad considering they were re-tooling a classic for the modern era. It stuck fairly close to the original, added a few nasty surprises (such as R. Lee Ermey as the scene-stealing Sheriff) and at least paid a bit of tribute to its origins whilst trying to get itself over with the fans. Success breeds sequels in Hollywood and it was only time before Leatherface and co. came calling again. Well they have come calling again but this time it was in a prequel to a remake! There’s not many of those lying around, is there? Having watched Leatherface and his different incarnations and interpretations upon the screen, I was interested to see how they decided to give birth to the monster. After all there has to be some starting point for the infamous killer with sewn-on faces and a chainsaw for his best friend. All of the other big horror icons have had their births and starting points mapped out (some more so than others, Freddy Kruger…) so why not Leatherface?

To say this was ‘The Beginning’ and about how things started off is a joke. There is about ten minutes of back story to Leatherface to begin the film off and then that is it. They covered pretty much the same stuff in the remake so what’s the point in rehashing old material? Here it seems like it was rushed past to get straight to the chainsaws and gore moments because that’s where the money comes from. The cannibal family is also back for more here with R. Lee Ermey reprising his role as the Sheriff, or at least not the Sheriff for the first part of the film. Once again we’re given a weak back story to how he became Sheriff and it’s pretty poor to say the least. You’d have expected the film to delve more deeply into the mindsets of these characters but no. There was such a good story hiding behind this cannibalistic family but you’re not going to get it here. All you’re going to get is a routine modern horror flick.

You know the type – sadistic, ruthless and gory as hell. Normally I’m all for a bit of blood and guts, mutilation and massacring but there’s just no point to it here. It all seems rather forced and pointless. Modern horror cinema has upped the stakes so much in the brutality stakes that each subsequent film has to be nastier and more sadistic than the last. There’s only so far that you can go before people start switching off and I am one of them here. Beating, maiming and torturing the teenagers just has no point to it here. Believe me though, they do get maimed, tortured and beaten up! I watched the unrated version and although I could still hear the echoes of the censor’s scissors cutting the film, it doesn’t leave much to the imagination. You nearly get to see (at long last I might add) just what the chainsaw can really do as Leatherface slices a guy up on a table as his girlfriend covers underneath getting drenched in blood and entrails.

I guess part of the blame in not really caring about the film lies in the fact that the story has been rushed over to get the ‘good bits’ up front and centre. The characters are just not interesting in the slightest. I couldn’t care less if Leatherface chops them up. There’s no apathy with the characters at all. Even the cannibal family doesn’t have much in the way of development. Hell usually I’m rooting for the bad guys in these films because the heroes and heroines are so bland but in this case, I’m just stood shrugging at whoever comes out on top.

R. Lee Ermey gives it his all once again as the Sheriff and he kicks ass big time. He was great in the remake but he gets a little over-exposed in this one. He’s the nastiest piece of work to come out of a horror film in a long while simply because he’s not a lumbering psycho with a mask and sharp weapon – he’s just a badass redneck with a taste for flesh and a sadistic streak that would go down a real treat in something like Hostel. Andrew Bryniarski is imposing and perfectly suited to the role of Leatherface. The film treats him with a little respect at least and he’s one aggressive, relentless and scary-looking killer. No cowering like a woman or dressing in drag for him in this one.

 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is a banal exercise in terror and torture which serves up plenty of gut-spilling moments and stomach-churning nastiness but little else. It’s basically just a rehash of the remake which in itself was a rehash of the original. Given that the whole purpose of the film was supposedly to give Leatherface and the Hewitt family some back story, it fails miserably. In fact it doesn’t fail, it doesn’t even try.

 

 ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Just Before Dawn (1981)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , August 15th, 2012 @ 5:52 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Jeff Liebermann

  • Writer: Mark Arywitz (screenplay), Gregg Irving (screenplay), Jonas Middleton

  • Starring: George Kennedy, Mike Kellin, Chris Lemmon, Gregg Henry

  • Run Time: 90 mins

Just Before Dawn (1981)

Will Anyone Survive Those Hours Just Before Dawn?

Five campers set off on a weekend excursion to a remote piece of land that one of them has inherited. They are warned by the local ranger that there is a machete-wielding maniac loose in the woods who has been terrorising people but the group ignore his warnings as simple scaremongering. However what they find is much worse as a family of hillbillies wants them off the land, sending their massive machete-wielding son out to kill them.

 

More akin to the barmy backwoods mentality of Deliverance and brutal realism of The Hills Have Eyes than the teenage slash fests of Friday the 13th that it’s commonly branded with, Just Before Dawn has a large fan base within the horror community but is little-known outside of it. There are infinitely more famous horror films from the early 80s including the original My Bloody Valentine and The Burning but this one never seems to get a mention. Maybe it’s because the few people who have seen it don’t like it because it’s not the all-out slasher that they were expecting. Maybe it’s simply because it seems to have been released a little too late and would have fitted perfectly into the mid-70s backwoods horror cycle. To anyone who has seen the likes of Wrong Turn but hasn’t seen this, then consider Just Before Dawn an older, more toned down version.

Just Before Dawn takes a while to get going. The first thirty minutes or so are filled with your standard character development threads but thankfully this group of people aren’t just mind-numbingly dull and generic teenagers but responsible, mature young adults who make rational decisions and feel ‘real.’ They’re actually out in the woods to climb and explore, not to get drunk and smoke weed. Of all the shocks! The characters that last longer in the film really get fleshed out and traverse some wonderful arcs as different characters show their true selves under the stress of the situation. The alpha male, ‘not-scared-of-anything’ guy turns into a complete wuss by the end and the meek, timid ‘final girl’ steps up to the task of trying to get the group out alive. The transformations are handled well and they don’t seem out of place.

During this time, there are plenty of stalking scenes with the huge, bulky mountain man watching on from a distance. You always get the feeling that this guy is within a few feet of the group at all times, you just can’t see him. The film doesn’t follow usual convention by having the killer suddenly jump out and shout boo with a huge blast of sound. The scares and tension come from within existing shots. People will be talking to each other, kissing or doing something else and you’ll see the killer in the background either coming towards them or getting himself into position (I’ll call you a liar if you tell me you don’t get chills when he swings onto the camper van). This goes on for too long though and its way too drawn out, leading to lots of dull stretches where little happens. The killer spends too much time lurking and not enough time chopping. It’s this stop-start mentality that harms Just Before Dawn in the long run. You think its picking up a bit of steam only for it to suddenly stop and have to start from scratch.

Just Before Dawn scores massive points with the locations it was filmed in. The cinematography is exceptional and the forest wilderness has never looked more dangerous. The camera lingers over some excellent panoramic shots to really give you the sense that these people are stuck in the middle of nowhere. Waterfalls, rock faces, dense forests and unforgiving trails all lead to nowhere. There’s no help coming. These people are here on there own. It nails the realism aspect down to a tee. Also nailed down is the blood. Considering the era in which this film was made, it’s unusual to see that the film keeps its gore to a bare minimum. During the early 80s, blood was thrown around like confetti at a wedding but director Jeff Liebermann opts to keep things low key. Don’t get me wrong, there are a couple of decent pay-offs where blood is necessary but Just Before Dawn doesn’t need to resort to these cheap tricks to get a kick out of the audience. It uses it’s locations to generate tension and the previously mentioned use of shots of the killer to ramp up the fear factor.

Amongst the cast attempting to survive these harsh lands are a few names which will no doubt ring a bell with people. George Kennedy is the feature name on show here and, although he spends the majority of the film riding around the woods on a white horse like some pompous Roman general, he’s still able to lend some heavyweight credibility to the film. Gregg Henry, who may be more familiar to genre fans as his role as the mayor in Slither, is the unlucky guy to have inherited the land in the middle of nowhere. Performances across the board are decent enough because the script keeps the characters real. These people aren’t trying to fit into generic stereotypes and come off all the more lifelike as a result.

 

I can see why Just Before Dawn is so well thought-of in the horror genre with it’s brutal realism sandwiched between some downright eerie moments and decent scares. But then I can see why it’s little-known to anyone else with its heel-dragging, sluggishness and insistence to keep things low key. It stands out from its 80 teen horror rivals by a country mile but can’t hold a candle to its more respected backwoods horror brethren.

 

 ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

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